The thousand-year-old Sanskrit classic the Bhagavatapurana, or "Stories of the Lord," is the foundational source of narratives concerning the beloved Hindu deity Krishna. For centuries pious individuals, families, and community groups have engaged specialist scholar-orators to give week-long oral performances based on this text. Seated on a dais in front of the audience, the orator intones selected Sanskrit verses from the text and narrates the story of Krishna in the local language. These sacred performances are thought to bring blessings and good fortune to those who sponsor, perform, or attend them. Devotees believe that the narratives of Krishna are like the nectar of immortality for those who can appreciate them. In recent years, these events have grown in number, scale, and popularity. Once confined to private homes or temple spaces, contemporary performances now fill vast public arenas, such as sports stadiums, and attract live audiences in the tens of thousands while being simulcast around the world. In Seven Days of Nectar, McComas Taylor uncovers the factors that contribute to the explosive growth of this tradition. He explores these events through the lens of performance theory, integrating the text with the intersecting worlds of sponsors, exponents and audiences. This innovative approach, which draws on close textual reading, philology, and ethnography, casts new light on the ways in which narratives are experienced as authentic and transformative, and more broadly, how texts shape societies.

The book of Esther was a conscious reaction to much of the conventional wisdom of its day, challenging beliefs regarding the Jerusalem Temple, the land of Israel, Jewish law, and even God. Aaron Koller identifies Esther as primarily a political work, and shows that early reactions ranged from ignoring the book to 'rewriting' Esther in order to correct its perceived flaws. But few biblical books have been read in such different ways, and the vast quantity of Esther-interpretation in rabbinic literature indicates a conscious effort by the Rabbis to present Esther as a story of faith and traditionalism, and bring it into the fold of the grand biblical narrative. Koller situates Esther, and its many interpretations, within the intellectual and political contexts of Ancient Judaism, and discusses its controversial themes. His innovative line of enquiry will be of great interest to students and scholars of Bible and Jewish studies.

Originally published in 1921, this book presents the text of the Talmud, Tractate Berakhot in an English translation, with a detailed introduction, commentary, glossary and indices. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Judaism, translations of the Talmud and theology.

Centering on the first extant martyr story (2 Maccabees 7), this study explores the "autonomous value" of martyrdom. The story of a mother and her seven sons who die under the torture of the Greek king Antiochus displaces the long-problematic Temple sacrificial cult with new cultic practices, and presents a new family romance that encodes unconscious fantasies of child-bearing fathers and eternal mergers with mothers. This study places the martyr story in the historical context of the Hasmonean struggle for legitimacy in the face of Jewish civil wars, and uses psychoanalytic theories to analyze the unconscious meaning of the martyr-family story.

Was Jesus of Nazareth a real historical person or a fictional character in a religious legend? What do the Dead Sea Scrolls reveal about the origins of Christianity? Has there been a conspiracy to suppress information in the Scrolls that contradicts traditional church teaching? John Allegro addresses these and many other intriguing questions in this fascinating account of what may be the most significant archaeological discovery of the twentieth century.
As one of the original scholars entrusted with the task of deciphering these ancient documents, Allegro worked on some of the most important texts, including the Biblical commentaries. In 1961, King Hussein of Jordan appointed him to be honorary advisor to the Jordanian government on the Dead Sea Scrolls. In his engaging and highly readable style, Allegro conveys the excitement of the initial archaeological find and takes the reader on a journey of intellectual discovery that goes to the heart of Western culture. Allegro suggests that Christianity evolved out of the Messianic theology of the Essenes, the Jewish sect that wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls.
This new edition of Allegro's book also contains an essay in which he describes the in-fighting among the scholars assigned to study the scrolls and his thirty-year battle to release all of the texts to the public. Allegro was one of the first scholars to protest the long delay in publishing the Scrolls and to criticize his colleagues for their secretive and possessive attitudes. This issue has recently been the focus of national media coverage, with the result that after forty years, open access to all of the Dead Sea Scrolls has finally been permitted.
If he had lived to see it, John Allegro would have been very pleased by this resolution of the controversy. In the same spirit of free inquiry that Allegro championed, Prometheus is reissuing his book in paperback to encourage open discussion of these important ancient texts.

This is the second volume of a translation of India's most beloved and influential epic saga, the monumental R?m?ya?a of V?lm?ki. Of the seven sections of this great Sanskrit masterpiece, the Ayodhyak???a is the most human, and it remains one of the best introductions to the social and political values of traditional India. This readable translation is accompanied by commentary that elucidates the various problems of the text--philological, aesthetic, and cultural. The annotations make extensive use of the numerous commentaries on the R?m?ya?a composed in medieval India. The substantial introduction supplies a historical context for the poem and a critical reading that explores its literary and ideological components.

Tradition and the Formation of the Talmud offers a new perspective on perhaps the most important religious text of the Jewish tradition. It is widely recognized that the creators of the Talmud innovatively interpreted and changed the older traditions on which they drew. Nevertheless, it has been assumed that the ancient rabbis were committed to maintaining continuity with the past. Moulie Vidas argues on the contrary that structural features of the Talmud were designed to produce a discontinuity with tradition, and that this discontinuity was part and parcel of the rabbis' self-conception. Both this self-conception and these structural features were part of a debate within and beyond the Jewish community about the transmission of tradition. Focusing on the Babylonian Talmud, produced in the rabbinic academies of late ancient Mesopotamia, Vidas analyzes key passages to show how the Talmud's creators contrasted their own voice with that of their predecessors. He also examines Zoroastrian, Christian, and mystical Jewish sources to reconstruct the debates and wide-ranging conversations that shaped the Talmud's literary and intellectual character.

Assuming no prior knowledge, The Qur'an: A Philosophical Guide is an introduction to the Qur'an from a philosophical point of view. Oliver Leaman's guide begins by familiarizing the readers with the core theories and controversies surrounding the text. Covering key theoretical approaches and focusing on its style and language, Leaman introduces the Qur'an as an aesthetic object and as an organization. The book discusses the influence of the Qur'an on culture and covers its numerous interpreters from the modernizers and popularizers to the radicals. He presents a close reading of the Qur'an, carefully and clearly presenting a variety of philosophical interpretation verse-by-verse. Explaining what the philosopher is arguing, relating the argument to a particular verse, and providing the reader with the means to be part of the discussion, this section includes: - Translated extracts from the text - A range of national backgrounds and different cultural and historic contexts spanning the classical and modern period, the Middle East, Europe and North America - Philosophical interpretations ranging from the most Islamophobe to the extreme apologist - A variety of schools of thought and philosophers such as Peripatetic, Illuminationist, and Sufi. Written with clarity and authority and showing the distinct ways a variety of thinkers have sought to understand the text, The Qur'an: A Philosophical Guide introduces readers to the value of interpreting the Qur'an philosophically.

The Owner's Manual to the Soul is a summary of the spiritual service that God asks of us as described in traditional Jewish texts. By learning and applying the teachings in this book, one will then be ready for the "light" of Kabbalistic meditation.

At last, an edition of the Bhagavad Gita that speaks with unprecedented fidelity and clarity. It contains an unusually informative introduction, the Sanskrit text of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute's critical edition, an accurate and accessible English translation, a comprehensive glossary of names and epithets, and a thorough index.

For countless generations families have lived in isolated communities in the Godavari Delta of coastal Andhra Pradesh, learning and reciting their legacy of Vedas, performing daily offerings and occasional sacrifices. They are the virtually unrecognized survivors of a 3,700-year-old heritage, the last in India who perform the ancient animal and soma sacrifices according to Vedic tradition. In Vedic Voices, David M. Knipe offers for the first time, an opportunity for them to speak about their lives, ancestral lineages, personal choices as pandits, wives, children, and ways of coping with an avalanche of changes in modern India. He presents a study of four generations of ten families, from those born at the outset of the twentieth century down to their great-grandsons who are just beginning, at the age of seven, the task of memorizing their Veda, the Taittiriya Samhita, a feat that will require eight to twelve years of daily recitations. After successful examinations these young men will reside with the Veda family girls they married as children years before, take their places in the oral transmission of a three-thousand-year Vedic heritage, teach the Taittiriya collection of texts to their own sons, and undertake with their wives the major and minor sacrifices performed by their ancestors for some three millennia. Coastal Andhra, famed for bountiful rice and coconut plantations, has received scant attention from historians of religion and anthropologists despite a wealth of cultural traditions. Vedic Voices describes in captivating prose the geography, cultural history, pilgrimage traditions, and celebrated persons of the region. Here unfolds a remarkable story of Vedic pandits and their wives, one scarcely known in India and not at all to the outside world.

The Bhagavad Gita is one of the most widely read Hindu scriptures in the Western world. Taking the form of a dialogue between the warrior Arjuna and the divine Krishna on the eve of battle, it is concerned with the most profound aspects of social and religious duty, and the relationship of human beings to God. In its eighteen short chapters it explores the spiritual struggle of the human soul and the search for both the true self and eternal life, culminating in an unparalleled vision of God the omnipotent.

For the first time in human history, the Zohar, the sacred 2,000-year old guide to the books of the Bible, appears in English! With an unabridged translation and general commentary written for the layperson, this powerful text brings serenity, wisdom and hope, giving order and harmony to the chaos of modern life!

Neelima Shukla-Bhatt offers an illuminating study of Narsinha Mehta, one of the most renowned saint-poets of medieval India and the most celebrated bhakti (devotion) poet from Gujarat, whose songs and sacred biography formed a vital source of moral inspiration for Gandhi. Exploring manuscripts, medieval texts, Gandhi's more obscure writings, and performances in multiple religious and non-religious contexts, including modern popular media, Shukla-Bhatt shows that the songs and sacred narratives associated with the saint-poet have been sculpted by performers and audiences into a popular source of moral inspiration.
Drawing on the Indian concept of bhakti-rasa (devotion as nectar), Narasinha Mehta of Gujarat reveals that the sustained popularity of the songs and narratives over five centuries, often across religious boundaries and now beyond devotional contexts in modern media, is the result of their combination of inclusive religious messages and aesthetic appeal in performance. Taking as an example Gandhi's perception of the songs and stories as vital cultural resources for social reconstruction, the book suggests that when religion acquires the form of popular culture, it becomes a widely accessible platform for communication among diverse groups. Shukla-Bhatt expands upon the scholarship on the embodied and public dimension of bhakti through detailed analysis of multiple public venues of performance and commentary, including YouTube videos.
This study provides a vivid picture of the Narasinha tradition, and will be a crucial resource for anyone seeking to understand the power of religious performative traditions in popular media.

The Records of Mazu and the Making of Classical Chan Literature explores the growth, makeup, and transformation of Chan (Zen) Buddhist literature in late medieval China. The volume analyzes the earliest extant records about the life, teachings, and legacy of Mazu Daoyi (709-788), the famous leader of the Hongzhou School and one of the principal figures in Chan history. While some of the texts covered are well-known and form a central part of classical Chan (or more broadly Buddhist) literature in China, others have been largely ignored, forgotten, or glossed over until recently. Poceski presents a range of primary materials important for the historical study of Chan Buddhism, some translated for the first time into English or other Western language. He surveys the distinctive features and contents of particular types of texts, and analyzes the forces, milieus, and concerns that shaped key processes of textual production during this period. Although his main focus is on written sources associated with a celebrated Chan tradition that developed and rose to prominence during the Tang era (618-907), Poceski also explores the Five Dynasties (907-960) and Song (960-1279) periods, when many of the best-known Chan collections were compiled. Exploring the Chan School's creative adaptation of classical literary forms and experimentation with novel narrative styles, The Records of Mazu and the Making of Classical Chan Literature traces the creation of several distinctive Chan genres that exerted notable influence on the subsequent development of Buddhism in China and the rest of East Asia.

Fakhr al-Din Razi's "Tafsir", "The Great Exegesis', also known as "Mafatih al-Ghayb", is one of the great classics of Arabic and Islamic scholarship. Written in the twelfth century, this commentary on the Qur'an has remained until today an indispensable reference work. "The Great Exegesis" is a compendium not only of Qur'anic sciences and meanings, but also Arabic linguistics, comparative jurisprudence, Aristotelian and Islamic philosophy, dialectic theology and the spirituality of Sufism.---The present volume is the first ever translation into English from "The Great Exegesis" and focuses on the first chapter of the Qur'an, the "Fatiha". This scholarly yet accessible translation gives readers a thorough understanding of the most commonly recited chapter of the Qur'an; it also opens up for readers a window into the thought and practice of one of Islam's greatest theologians. This volume includes a foreword by Professor M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, King Fahd Professor of Islamic Studies, University of London.

A word conventionally imbued with melancholy meanings, "diaspora" has been used variously to describe the cataclysmic historical event of displacement, the subsequent geographical scattering of peoples, or the conditions of alienation abroad and yearning for an ancestral home. But as Daniel Boyarin writes, diaspora may be more constructively construed as a form of cultural hybridity or a mode of analysis. In A Traveling Homeland, he makes the case that a shared homeland or past and traumatic dissociation are not necessary conditions for diaspora and that Jews carry their homeland with them in diaspora, in the form of textual, interpretive communities built around talmudic study. For Boyarin, the Babylonian Talmud is a diasporist manifesto, a text that produces and defines the practices that constitute Jewish diasporic identity. Boyarin examines the ways the Babylonian Talmud imagines its own community and sense of homeland, and he shows how talmudic commentaries from the medieval and early modern periods also produce a doubled cultural identity. He links the ongoing productivity of this bifocal cultural vision to the nature of the book: as the physical text moved between different times and places, the methods of its study developed through contact with surrounding cultures. Ultimately, A Traveling Homeland envisions talmudic study as the center of a shared Jewish identity and a distinctive feature of the Jewish diaspora that defines it as a thing apart from other cultural migrations.

The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha addresses the Old Testament Apocrypha, known to be important early Jewish texts that have become deutero-canonical for some Christian churches, non-canonical for other churches, and that are of lasting cultural significance. In addition to the place given to the classical literary, historical, and tradition-historical introductory questions, essays focus on the major social and theological themes of each individual book. With contributions from leading scholars from around the world, the Handbook acts as an authoritative reference work on the current state of Apocrypha research, and at the same time carves out future directions of study. This Handbook offers an overview of the various Apocrypha and relevant topics related to them by presenting updated research on each individual apocryphal text in historical context, from the late Persian and early Hellenistic periods to the early Roman era. The essays provided here examine the place of the Apocrypha in the context of Early Judaism, the relationship between the Apocrypha and texts that came to be canonized, the relationship between the Apocrypha and the Septuagint, Qumran, the Pseudepigrapha, and the New Testament, as well as their reception history in the Western world. Several chapters address overarching themes, such as genre and historicity, Jewish practices and beliefs, theology and ethics, gender and the role of women, and sexual ethics.