This collection of essays challenges the traditional patriarchal approach to sacred literature by highlighting gender parity in sacred texts and envisioning the rise of the matriarchy in the future. The authors redefine Biblical Greek words like malakoi and arsenokoitai used in condemnation of homosexuality, and Qur'anic words like darajah and qawwamun, used for establishing patriarchy. One author reexamines the role of the Nepalese Teej festival of fasting and worship of the god Shiva in promoting male hegemony in Hinduism. Other papers examine passages like Proverbs 31:1-31, the stories of Sarah and Rahab in the Bible, the role of Mary in the Qur'an, and the Dharmic conversion in chapter 27 of the Lotus Sutra. This book makes it clear that sacred literature is subject to human understanding as it evolves through space and time. Today, as more women are educated and actively engaged in political, economic, and social life, religions are challenged to redefine gender roles and norms.

"If he had lived among the Greeks, he would now be numbered among the stars." So wrote Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in his epitaph for Francis Mercury van Helmont. Leibniz was not the only contemporary to admire and respect van Helmont, but although famous in his own day, he has been virtually ignored by modern historians. Yet his views influenced Leibniz, contributed to the development of modern science, and fostered the kind of ecumenicalism that made the concept of toleration conceivable.
The progressive nature of van Helmont's thought was based on his deep commitment to the esoteric doctrines of the Lurianic Kabbalah. With his friend Christian Knorr von Rosenroth, van Helmont edited the "Kabbala Denudata (1677-1684), the largest collection of Lurianic Kabbalistic texts available to Christians up to that time. Because the subject matter of this work appears so difficult and arcane, it has never been appreciated as a significant text for understanding the emergence of modern thought. However, one can find in it the basis for the faith in science, the belief in progress, and the pluralism characteristic of later western thought. The Lurianic Kabbalah thus deserves a place it has never received in histories of western scientific and cultural developments.
Although van Helmont's efforts contributed to the development of religious toleration, his experience as a prisoner of the Inquisition accused of "Judaising" reveals the problematic relations between Christians and Jews during the early-modern period. New Inquisitional documents relating to van Helmont's imprisonment will be discussed to illustrate the difficulties faced by anyone advocating philo-semitism and toleration at the time.

Viewed through the lens of the ancient talmudic, midrashic, and kabbalistic commentaries, this book examines, in biblical sequence, the scriptural passages related to our ancestral mothers, wives, and daughters. The chosen excerpts, clearly documented, seek to illuminate the question of what it may mean to be truly feminine, truly wise-how actions which appear to be malevolent, or at the very least, misguided, when superficially viewed, may, in fact, have been engineered to produce the greatest good. Barbara L. Thaw Ronson has not chosen to view the Bible as an historical document, attempting to uncover its often cryptic meanings based upon the societal dictates at the time in question; rather, she explores the Bible by perceiving it solely as a timeless Divine doctrine: to illuminate the value and significance of prayer and the individual woman's relationship with her Creator (which informs her relationship with family and neighbor). and to discover and highlight the idea of Woman that exists independently of the era into which she finds herself born.

The bilingual (Aramaic-Hebrew) concordance to the Targum of the Prophets is the product of an international project based in the Theological University of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands, Kampen (ThUK) and supported by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). With this publication a major research tool becomes available to those engaged in Biblical and Jewish Studies.
For the first time meaningful quotations from the Targum and the Masoretic Hebrew text of the Bible are set out in parallel so that the user of the concordance can study the translation technique of the Targum in much greater detail than was hitherto possible.
The concordance opens up Targum Jonathan to scholars in various fields. It is an indispensable tool not only for research in the fields of textual criticism and the history of interpretation of the Hebrew Bible, but also for the study of early Judaism, the New Testament and patristics.
To facilitate consultation on the basis of the Hebrew, every concordance per book contains a Hebrew-Aramaic index. The final volume will contain additions and corrections, a cumulative Aramaic-Hebrew index, as well as an English-Aramaic index.

In Midrash and Theory, David Stern presents an approach to midrashic literature that is responsible and responsive to the principles of Contemporary theory.

As midrash -- the literature of classical Jewish Scriptural interpretation -- has undergone a revival in the larger Jewish community, the midrashic imagination has shown itself capable of exercising a powerful influence and hold on a new type of contemporary Jewish writing. Stern examines this phenomenon from the perspective of the cultural relevance of midrash and its connection to its original historical and literary contexts. Stern also explores the impact of modern literary theory on midrashic studies, and the resultant changes on the focus, the methods, and the intellectual assumptions of this field. By exploring this linkage, Stern provides not only an introduction to the midrashic tradition, but a fascinating insight into the impact of contemporary theory on an entire field of study.

"The Peshi?ta of Daniel" sets forth an analysis of the Syriac text of the Book of Daniel. It discusses the relationship of the Peshi?ta text of Daniel to the Hebrew/Aramaic text of this portion of Scripture, and its relationship to the Old Greek and Theodotionic versions as well. Making use of the Leiden edition of the Syriac text, it seeks to evaluate the text-critical value of the Peshi?ta of Daniel. It also describes various translation techniques employed in the Peshi?ta of Daniel and evaluates its qualities as a translation.

Daisetz Suzuki discusses the influence of the Lankavatara Sutra in the expression of Zen ideas. He examines the legends that Bodhidharma, the supposed founder of Zen in China, took with him only the Lanka text, and that Bodhidharma was only one in a line of teachers of the Lanka Sutra in China. Suzuki explores the fundamental themes of the sutra -- the acceptance of the Void, the career of the Bodhisattva, and the unreality of perception.

This book attempts to answer the question of why Laban the Aramean, a rather harmless character as presented in the biblical text, is generally portrayed in rabbinic literature as a major enemy of Jacob and Israel. It is argued that the portrait of Laban as a villain developed as a result of rabbinic hermeneutics, and that the characteristics which are attributed to him in rabbinic literature were not arbitrarily chosen due to a particular interest in his person or a wish to endow him with a certain set of negative characteristics. It rather derives from interaction between the rabbis and the biblical text in a process where the rabbis filled in gaps that they perceived in the biblical text and explained inconsistencies with material provided by the Bible itself and by material taken from their ideological code. The book draws attention to the role that exegesis of the Bible played in the formation of the opinions and world view of the rabbis as well as the inseparability of exegesis and ideology.

Some eighty per cent of Muslims in the contemporary world speak languages other than Arabic, the language of the Qur'an. To respond to the needs of their communities, Muslim scholars and laypersons must increasingly explain and communicate the meanings of the Qur'an in their own languages - including through the medium of Qur'an commentary and translation. The Qur'an and its Readers Worldwide provides an introduction to this rich and expanding field of endeavour. It brings together a selection of Qur'an commentaries and translations produced across the twentieth century to the present day, and ranging in provenance from the regions of the traditional Islamic heartlands to the new loci of global Islam. Individual chapters examine works in Arabic, Bosnian, Chinese, English, German, Malay, Persian, Swahili, Turkish and Urdu, each viewed in terms of the impact of modernity on the encounter with the Qur'an, providing an English readership with an exceptionally broad overview. Situating these works in their cultural and national settings, this volume focuses attention on the relationship between language, culture and sociopolitical environment in Qur'an commentary and translation. It highlights the linkages between the Qur'an translations and commentaries studied and the developments and debates that generated them, and to which they respond, whether associated with colonial realities, the challenges of nation building, or the search for ways to reconstruct Islamic culture in the face of new legal frameworks or societal models. Through a detailed introduction and a series of case studies this book illustrates the defining trends in Qur'an commentary worldwide, addressing evolving questions of authorship, message, intended readership and media of communication. It highlights the continued relevance of Quraan commentary as an authoritative Islamic tradition in a period of growing direct engagement with the sacred text. It also samples debates concerning Qur'anic meaning in translation that are pertinent for many millions of Muslims today, and that look set to grow in tandem with globalisation.

In an effort to respond to the baseless criticism that Jewish law is overly preoccupied with religious ritual at the expense of issues having to do with interpersonal relationships, the author presents a detailed exploration of the vast attention that the masters of Jewish thought have given to relations between and among individuals. This book is not a legal guide to interpersonal relationships in Jewish life, nor is it a volume of moral exhortation. Rather, Rabbi Feldman aims to convey the importance of his subject by exhibiting its hallowed place within the structure of Jewish law and within the analysis that interpersonal relationships have been given among the giants in the field of Jewish thought.