Ritual and Rhetoric in Leviticus uses rhetorical analysis to expose the motives behind the writing of the central book of the Torah/Pentateuch and its persuasive function in ancient Judaism. The answer to the question, 'who was trying to persuade whom of what by writing these texts?' proves to be quite consistent throughout Leviticus 1-16: Aaronide high priests and their supporters used this book to legitimize their monopoly over the ritual offerings of Jews and Samaritans. With this priestly rhetoric at its center, the Torah supported the rise to power of two priestly dynasties in Second Temple Judaism. Their ascendancy in turn elevated the prestige and rhetorical power to the book, making it the first real scripture in Near Eastern and Western religious traditions.

A unique, step-by-step book and audio compact disc package that will lead the novice through each step of learning how to chant Torah. Divided into 13 lessons and additional useful appendices and bibliography, the book allows the reader to "self-teach" the important principles of Torah cantillation.

The Talmud is one of the most significant religious texts in the world, second only to the Bible in its importance to Judaism. As the Bible is the word of God, The Talmud applies that word to the lives of its followers. In a range of styles including commentary, parables, proverbs and anecdotes, it provides guidance on all aspects of everyday life from ownership to commerce to relationships. This selection of its most illuminating passages makes accessible the centuries of Jewish thought within The Talmud. Norman Solomon's clear translation from the Bavli (Babylonian) Talmud is accompanied by an introduction on its arrangement, social and historical background, reception and authors. This edition also includes appendixes of background information, a glossary, time line, maps and indexes.

One of the most popular Asian classics for roughly two thousand years, the Vimalakirti Sutra stands out among the sacred texts of Mahayana Buddhism for its conciseness, its vivid and humorous episodes, its dramatic narratives, and its eloquent exposition of the key doctrine of emptiness or nondualism. Unlike most sutras, its central figure is not a Buddha but a wealthy townsman, who, in his mastery of doctrine and religious practice, epitomizes the ideal lay believer. For this reason, the sutra has held particular significance for men and women of the laity in Buddhist countries of Asia, assuring them that they can reach levels of spiritual attainment fully comparable to those accessible to monks and nuns of the monastic order.

Esteemed translator Burton Watson has rendered a beautiful English translation from the popular Chinese version produced in 406 C.E. by the Central Asian scholar-monk Kumarajiva, which is widely acknowledged to be the most felicitous of the various Chinese translations of the sutra (the Sanskrit original of which was lost long ago) and is the form in which it has had the greatest influence in China, Japan, and other countries of East Asia. Watson's illuminating introduction discusses the background of the sutra, its place in the development of Buddhist thought, and the profundities of its principal doctrine: emptiness.

Before the Bible reveals the landscape of scripture in an era prior to the crystallization of the rabbinic Bible and the canonization of the Christian Bible. Most accounts of the formation of the Hebrew Bible trace the origins of scripture through source critical excavation of the archaeological "tel" of the Bible or the analysis of the scribal hand on manuscripts in text-critical work. But the discoveries in the Dead Sea Scrolls have transformed our understanding of scripture formation. Judith Newman focuses not on the putative origins and closure of the Bible but on the reasons why scriptures remained open, with pluriform growth in the Hellenistic-Roman period. Drawing on new methods from cognitive neuroscience and the social sciences as well as traditional philological and literary analysis, Before the Bible argues that the key to understanding the formation of scripture is the widespread practice of individual and communal prayer in early Judaism. The figure of the teacher as a learned and pious sage capable of interpreting and embodying the tradition is central to understanding this revelatory phenomenon. The book considers the entwinement of prayer and scriptural formation in five books reflecting the diversity of early Judaism: Ben Sira, Daniel, Jeremiah/Baruch, Second Corinthians, and the Qumran Hodayot (Thanksgiving Hymns). While not a complete taxonomy of scripture formation, the book illuminates performative dynamics that have been largely ignored as well as the generative role of interpretive tradition in accounts of how the Bible came to be.

"The Quran in Plain English: A Simple Translation for Children and Young People".

Imagine a world where the Hadith (authentic sayings) of Prophet Muhammad is on major news headlines and media outlets. Since the onset of the twenty first century, the rise of Islamophobia pushed Muslim minorities in the western hemisphere towards the fields of activism and civic engagement. This book is a steppingstone towards bringing that vision into reality by inspiring, informing and guiding a new generation of volunteers, community workers, and activists who quote Muhammad's words in their meetings, marketing material, and chants. A world like ours is in dire need to hear the timeless principles of the man who was divinely sent as a mercy to all of mankind.

Riyad As Salihin: The Gardens of the Righteous, is one of the most famous works of Imam Nawawi. This collection of authentic hadiths can be briefly defined as a book of enhancing morals, mannerliness, encouraging goodness, and warning against the evil. This work consists of the wisdom of the noble Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, setting the criteria about the manners to be observed by individuals. Since the time it was published, Riyad As Salihin has been a must read on the way to deepening in Islamic teaching. This work we present to you with pride is an abridged version of the full compilation.

An unlikely cast of characters reinterprets the first five books of the Bible, as divided into the 54 Torah portions that are traditionally read over the course of the year. Writers include: Damon Lindelof, creator of the television series Lost (on Abraham's binding of Issac); essayist Sloane Crosley on the Ten Plagues; novelist Aimee Bender on the Tower of Babel; and Joshua Foer on Esau's brotherly spat with Jacob. Other contributors include actor/director Josh Radnor (How I Met Your Mother); Go the F**k to Sleep's Adam Mansbach; Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Auburn; Sam Lipsyte; Rebecca Odes; Susan Dominus; A.J. Jacobs; and more.

This book approaches the Dhamma, the Buddha's teaching, from a Buddhistic perspective, viewing various individual teachings presented in hundreds of early discourses of Pali canon, comprehending them under a single systemic thought of a single individual called the Buddha. It explicates the structure of this thought, going through various contextual teachings and teaching categories of the discourses, treating them as necessary parts of a liberating thought that constitutes the right view of one who embraces the Buddha's teaching as his or her sole philosophy of life. It interprets the diverse individual dhammas as being in congruence with each other; and as contributory to forming the whole of the Buddha's teaching, the Dhamma. By exploring some selected topics such as ignorance, configurations, not-self, and nibbana in thirteen chapters, the book enables readers to understand the whole (the Dhamma) in relation to the parts (the dhammas), and the parts in relation to the whole, while realizing the importance of studying every single dhamma category or topic not for its own sake but for understand the entirety of the teaching. This way of viewing and explaining the teachings of the discourses enables readers to clearly comprehend the teaching of the Buddha in early Buddhism.

In World of Wonders, Alf Hiltebeitel addresses the Mahabharata and its supplement, the Harivamsa, as a single literary composition. Looking at the work through the critical lens of the Indian aesthetic theory of rasa, "juice, essence, or taste," he argues that the dominant rasa of these two texts is adbhutarasa, the "mood of wonder." While the Mahabharata signposts whole units of the text as "wondrous" in its table of contents, the Harivamsa foregrounds a stepped-up term for wonder (ascarya) that drives home the point that Vishnu and Krishna are one. Two scholars of the 9th and 10th centuries, Anandavardhana and Abhinavagupta, identified the Mahabharata's dominant rasa as santarasa, the "mood of peace." This has traditionally been received as the only serious contestant for a rasic interpretation of the epic. Hiltebeitel disputes both the positive claim that the santarasa interpretation is correct and the negative claim that adbhutarasa is a frivolous rasa that cannot sustain a major work. The heart of his argument is that the Mahabharata and Harivamsa both deploy the terms for "wonder" and "surprise" (vismaya) in significant numbers that extend into every facet of these heterogeneous texts, showing how adbhutarasa is at work in the rich and contrasting textual strategies which are integral to the structure of the two texts.

This book is the first of two volumes that aim to produce something not previously attempted: a synthetic history of Muslim responses to the Bible, stretching from the rise of Islam to the present day. It combines scholarship with a genuine narrative, so as to tell the story of Muslim engagement with the Bible. Covering Sunni, Imami Shi'i and Isma'ili perspectives, this study will offer a scholarly overview of three areas of Muslim response, namely ideas of corruption, use of the Biblical text, and abrogation of the text. For each period of history, the important figures and dominant trends, along with exceptions, are identified. The interplay between using and criticising the Bible is explored, as well as how the respective emphasis on these two approaches rises and falls in different periods and locations. The study critically engages with existing scholarship, scrutinizing received views on the subject, and shedding light on an important area of interfaith concern.

Few doctrines in Islam have engendered as much contention and disagreement as those surrounding the imamate, the office of supreme leader of the Muslim community after the death of the Prophet. In the medieval period while the caliphate still existed, rivalry among the claimants to that most lofty position was particularly intense. The early 5th/11th-century Ismaili da'i Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani worked for most of his life in the eastern lands of the Islamic world, principally within the hostile domain of the Abbasid caliphs and the Buyid amirs.At a critical point he was summoned by the da'wa to Egypt where he taught and wrote for several years before returning once again to Iran and Iraq. About 405/1015, just prior to his move from Iraq to Cairo, he composed a treatise he called Lights to Illuminate the Proof of the Imamate (al-Masabih fi ithbat al-imama) in the bold hope of convincing Fakhr al-Mulk, the Shi'i wazir of the Buyids in Baghdad, to abandon the Abbasids and support the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim. For that purpose he produced a long, interconnected series of philosophically sophisticated proofs, all leading logically to the absolute necessity of the imamate. This work is thus unique both in the precision of its doctrine and in the historical circumstance surrounding its composition. The text appears here in a modern critical edition of the Arabic original with a complete translation, introduction and notes.

Environmental issues are an ever-increasing focus of public discourse and have proved concerning to religious groups as well as society more widely. Among biblical scholars, criticism of the Judeo-Christian tradition for its part in the worsening crisis has led to a small but growing field of study on ecology and the Bible. This volume in the Oxford Handbook series makes a significant contribution to this burgeoning interest in ecological hermeneutics, incorporating the best of international scholarship on ecology and the Bible. The Handbook comprises 30 individual essays on a wide range of relevant topics by established and emerging scholars. Arranged in four sections, the volume begins with a historical overview before tackling some key methodological issues. The second, substantial, section comprises thirteen essays offering detailed exegesis from an ecological perspective of selected biblical books. This is followed by a section exploring broader thematic topics such as the Imago Dei and stewardship. Finally, the volume concludes with a number of essays on contemporary perspectives and applications, including political and ethical considerations. The editors Hilary Marlow and Mark Harris have drawn on their experience in Hebrew Bible and New Testament respectively to bring together a diverse and engaging collection of essays on a subject of immense relevance. Its accessible style, comprehensive scope, and range of material means that the volume is a valuable resource, not only to students and scholars of the Bible but also to religious leaders and practitioners.

As the living scriptural heritage of more than a billion people, the Qur'an (Koran) speaks with a powerful voice. Just as other scriptural religions, Islam has produced a long tradition of interpretation for its holy book. Nevertheless, efforts to introduce the Qur'an and its intellectual heritage to English-speaking audiences have been hampered by the lack of available resources. The Cambridge Companion to the Qur'an seeks to remedy that situation. In a discerning summation of the field, Jane McAuliffe brings together an international team of scholars to explain its complexities. Comprising fourteen chapters, each devoted to a topic of central importance, the book is rich in historical, linguistic and literary detail, while also reflecting the influence of other disciplines. For both the university student and the general reader, The Cambridge Companion to the Qur'an provides a fascinating entree to a text that has shaped the lives of millions for centuries.

The Bhagavad Gita is one of the most revered texts of all time, but it's often impenetrable to the 21st-century seeker. In "Gita Wisdom," Joshua Greene retells this timeless text in a completely new way, revealing that it is, in essence, a heart-to-heart talk between two friends about the meaning of life. As Krishna and his friend Arjuna reminisce on a battlefield known as Kurukshetra, readers learn that the two played together as children, were close as young men, and became family when Arjuna married Krishna's sister. In later life the men shared extraordinary adventures, including a journey to places outside the known universe. Like all great literature, the Gita explores the human condition: who we are, where we came from, and why we're here. With a helpful glossary that lists names, terms, and places, this accessible, enlightening retelling is the perfect introduction to the Gita's venerable wisdom.

One of the best-known and best-loved works of Buddhist literature, the Dhammapada forms part of the oldest surviving body of Buddhist writings, and is traditionally regarded as the authentic teachings of the Buddha himself, spoken by him in his lifetime, and memorized and handed on by his followers after his death. A collection of simple verses gathered in themes such as 'awareness', 'fools' and 'old age', the Dhammapada is accessible, instructional and mind-clearing, with lessons in each verse to give ethical advice and to remind the listener of the transience of life.