This book challenges the dominant scholarly notion that the Qur'an must be interpreted through the medieval commentaries shaped by the biography of the prophet Muhammad, arguing instead that the text is best read in light of Christian and Jewish scripture. The Qur'an, in its use of allusions, depends on the Biblical knowledge of its audience. However, medieval Muslim commentators, working in a context of religious rivalry, developed stories that separate Qur'an and Bible, which this book brings back together. In a series of studies involving the devil, Adam, Abraham, Jonah, Mary, and Muhammad among others, Reynolds shows how modern translators of the Qur'an have followed medieval Muslim commentary and demonstrates how an appreciation of the Qur'an's Biblical subtext uncovers the richness of the Qur'an's discourse. Presenting unique interpretations of 13 different sections of the Qur'an based on studies of earlier Jewish and Christian literature, the author substantially re-evaluates Muslim exegetical literature. Thus The Qur'an and Its Biblical Subtext, a work based on a profound regard for the Qur'an's literary structure and rhetorical strategy, poses a substantial challenge to the standard scholarship of Qur'anic Studies. With an approach that bridges early Christian history and Islamic origins, the book will appeal not only to students of the Qur'an but of the Bible, religious studies and Islamic history.

The essays in this compendium examine Late-Biblical writings dating from the Hellenistic period that relate to religion and society. A focus is placed on threat scenarios and on the drawing of differences to the Hellenistic environment and the question of identity for believers during the pre-Christian centuries.

In 1946 the first of the Dead Sea Scroll discoveries was made near the site of Qumran, at the northern end of the Dead Sea. Despite the much publicized delays in the publication and editing of the Scrolls, practically all of them had been made public by the time of the fiftieth anniversary of the first discovery. That occasion was marked by a spate of major publications that attempted to sum up the state of scholarship at the end of the twentieth century, including The Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls (OUP 2000). These publications produced an authoritative synthesis to which the majority of scholars in the field subscribed, granted disagreements in detail.
A decade or so later, The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls has a different objective and character. It seeks to probe the main disputed issues in the study of the Scrolls. Lively debate continues over the archaeology and history of the site, the nature and identity of the sect, and its relation to the broader world of Second Temple Judaism and to later Jewish and Christian tradition. It is the Handbook's intention here to reflect on diverse opinions and viewpoints, highlight the points of disagreement, and point to promising directions for future research.

This third volume of The Zohar: Pritzker Edition completes the Zohar's commentary on the book of Genesis. Here we find spiritual explorations of numerous biblical narratives, including Jacob's wrestling with the angel, Joseph's kidnapping by his brothers, his near seduction by Potiphar's wife, his interpretation of Pharaoh's dreams, and his reunion with his brothers and father. Throughout, the Zohar probes the biblical text and seeks deeper meaning-for example, the divine intention behind Joseph's disappearance, or the profound significance of human sexuality. Divine and human realities intertwine, affecting one another. Toward the end of Genesis, the Bible states: Jacob's days drew near to die-an idiomatic expression that the Zohar insists on reading hyperliterally. Each human being is challenged to live his days virtuously. If he does, those days themselves are woven into a garment of splendor; at death, they "draw near," enveloping him, escorting him to the beyond. Sefer ha-Zohar (The Book of Radiance) has amazed and overwhelmed readers ever since it emerged mysteriously in medieval Spain toward the end of the thirteenth century. Written in a unique Aramaic, this masterpiece of Kabbalah exceeds the dimensions of a normal book; it is virtually a body of literature, comprising over twenty discrete sections. The bulk of the Zohar consists of a running commentary on the Torah, from Genesis through Deuteronomy.

This book offers new translations of the Tiruppavai and Nacciyar Tirumoli, composed by the ninth-century Tamil mystic and poetess Kotai. Two of the most significant compositions by a female mystic, the Tiruppavai and Nacciyar Tirumoli give expression to her powerful experiences through the use of a vibrant and bold sensuality, in which Visnu is her awesome, mesmerizing, and sometimes cruel lover. Kotai's poetry is characterized by a richness of language in which words are imbued with polyvalence and even the most mundane experiences are infused with the spirit of the divine. Her Tiruppavai and Nacciyar Tirumoli are garlands of words, redolent with meanings waiting to be discovered. Today Kotai is revered as a goddess, and as a testament to the enduring relevance of her poetry, her Tiruppavai and Nacciyar Tirumoli continue to be celebrated in South Indian ritual, music, dance, and the visual arts.
This book aims to capture the lyricism, beauty, and power of Kotai's original works. In addition, detailed notes based on traditional commentaries, and discussions of the ritual and performative lives of the Tiruppavai and Nacciyar Tirumoli highlight the importance of this ninth-century poet and her two poems over the past one thousand years.

The Koren Talmud Bavli is a groundbreaking edition of the Talmud that fuses the innovative design of Koren Publishers Jerusalem with the incomparable scholarship of Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz. The Koren Talmud Bavli Standard Edition is a full-size, full-color edition that presents an enhanced Vilna page, a side-by-side English translation, photographs and illustrations, a brilliant commentary, and a multitude of learning aids to help the beginning and advanced student alike actively participate in the dynamic process of Talmud study.

Read our customer guide The Torah is the essence of Jewish tradition; it inspires each successive generation. The current JPS translation, based on classical and modern sources, is acclaimed for its fidelity to the ancient Hebrew.

The Koren Talmud Bavli is a groundbreaking edition of the Talmud that fuses the innovative design of Koren Publishers Jerusalem with the incomparable scholarship of Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz. The Koren Talmud Bavli Standard Edition is a full-size, full-color edition that presents an enhanced Vilna page, a side-by-side English translation, photographs and illustrations, a brilliant commentary, and a multitude of learning aids to help the beginning and advanced student alike actively participate in the dynamic process of Talmud study.

Most scholars believe that the numerous similarities between the Covenant Code (Exodus 20:23-23:19) and Mesopotamian law collections, especially the Laws of Hammurabi, which date to around 1750 BCE, are due to oral tradition that extended from the second to the first millennium. This book offers a fundamentally new understanding of the Covenant Code, arguing that it depends directly and primarily upon the Laws of Hammurabi and that the use of this source text occurred during the Neo-Assyrian period, sometime between 740-640 BCE, when Mesopotamia exerted strong and continuous political and cultural influence over the kingdoms of Israel and Judah and a time when the Laws of Hammurabi were actively copied in Mesopotamia as a literary-canonical text. The study offers significant new evidence demonstrating that a model of literary dependence is the only viable explanation for the work. It further examines the compositional logic used in transforming the source text to produce the Covenant Code, thus providing a commentary to the biblical composition from the new theoretical perspective. This analysis shows that the Covenant Code is primarily a creative academic work rather than a repository of laws practiced by Israelites or Judeans over the course of their history. The Covenant Code, too, is an ideological work, which transformed a paradigmatic and prestigious legal text of Israel's and Judah's imperial overlords into a statement symbolically countering foreign hegemony. The study goes further to study the relationship of the Covenant Code to the narrative of the book of Exodus and explores how this may relate to the development of the Pentateuch as a whole.

Only preserved in a single manuscript in Tehran, this remarkable twelfth-century Qur'anic commentary by Muhammad b. 'Abd al-Karim al- Shahrast=an=i marks the achievement of a lifelong, arduous quest for knowledge. Shahrast=an=i began writing Mafatih al-asr=ar or Keys to the Arcana towards the end of his life and the work reflects the brilliant radicalism of his more private religious views. The introduction and opening chapter of this virtually unknown work is presented here in a bilingual edition, which also includes an introduction and contextual notes by Dr Toby Mayer.
In Keys to the Arcana, Shahrast=an=i breaks down the text of the Qur'an and analyses it from a linguistic point of view, with reference to the history of Qur'anic interpretation. The author's ultimate aim is to use an elaborate set of complimentary concepts - the 'keys' of the work's title - to unearth the esoteric meanings of the Qur'anic verses, which he calls the 'arcana' of the verses (asr=ar al-=ay=at). A historian of religious and philosophical doctrines, Shahrast=an=i has generally been considered to be a spokesman for the Sunni religious establishment under the Seljuqs. The complimentary concepts in question, however, appear to derive from the Isma'ili Shi'i intellectual tradition, indicating that the author may have been secretly involved in the Isma'ili movement.
Shahrast=an=i 's unusually esoteric and highly systematic exegesis of the Qur'an provides a vivid picture of the mature state of scriptural commentary in the twelfth-century CE. Dr Mayer's meticulous translation of Shahrast=an=i 's Introduction and Commentary on S=urat al-Fatiha, supplemented by the Arabic text, allows the reader and scholar access to this intriguing Muslim intellectual work for the first time.

From the early years of the Common Era to 1700, Indian intellectuals explored with unparalleled subtlety the place of emotion in art. Their investigations led to the deconstruction of art's formal structures and broader inquiries into the pleasure of tragic tales. Rasa, or taste, was the word they chose to describe art's aesthetics, and their passionate effort to pin down these phenomena became its own remarkable act of creation. This book is the first in any language to follow the evolution of rasa from its origins in dramaturgical thought-a concept for the stage-to its flourishing in literary thought-a concept for the page. A Rasa Reader incorporates primary texts by every significant thinker on classical Indian aesthetics, many never translated before. The arrangement of the selections captures the intellectual dynamism that has powered this debate for centuries. Headnotes explain the meaning and significance of each text, a comprehensive introduction summarizes major threads in intellectual-historical terms, and critical endnotes and an extensive bibliography add further depth to the selections. The Sanskrit theory of emotion in art is one of the most sophisticated in the ancient world, a precursor of the work being done today by critics and philosophers of aesthetics. A Rasa Reader's conceptual detail, historical precision, and clarity will appeal to any scholar interested in a full portrait of global intellectual development. A Rasa Reader is the inaugural book in the Historical Sourcebooks in Classical Indian Thought series, edited by Sheldon Pollock. These text-based books guide readers through the most important forms of classical Indian thought, from epistemology, rhetoric, and hermeneutics to astral science, yoga, and medicine. Each volume provides fresh translations of key works, headnotes to contextualize selections, a comprehensive analysis of major lines of development within the discipline, and exegetical and text-critical endnotes, as well as a bibliography. Designed for comparativists and interested general readers, Historical Sourcebooks is also a great resource for advanced scholars seeking authoritative commentary on challenging works.

This book seeks to understand the major mythological role models that mark the moral landscape navigated by young Hindu women. Traditionally, the goddess Sita, faithful consort of the god Rama, is regarded as the most important positive role model for women. The case of Radha, who is mostly portrayed as a clandestine lover of the god Krishna, seems to challenge some of the norms the example of Sita has set. That these role models are just as relevant today as they have been in the past is witnessed by the popularity of the televised versions of their stories, and the many allusions to them in popular culture. Taking the case of Sita as main point of reference, but comparing throughout with Radha, Pauwels studies the messages sent to Hindu women at different points in time. She compares how these role models are portrayed in the most authoritative versions of the story. She traces the ancient, Sanskrit sources, the medieval vernacular retellings of the stories and the contemporary TV versions as well. This comparative analysis identifies some surprising conclusions about the messages sent to Indian women today, which belie the expectations one might have of the portrayals in the latest, more liberal versions. The newer messages turn out to be more conservative in many subtle ways. Significantly, it does not remain limited to the religious domain. By analyzing several popular recent and classical hit movies that use Sita and Radha tropes, Pauwels shows how these moral messages spill into the domain of popular culture for commercial consumption.

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.

Eknath Easwaran, translator of the best-selling edition of the Dhammapada, sees this powerful scripture as a perfect map for the spiritual journey. Said to be the text closest to the Buddha's actual words, it is a collection of short teachings memorized during his lifetime by his disciples. Easwaran presents the Dhammapada as a guide to spiritual perseverance, progress, and ultimately enlightenment -- a heroic confrontation with life as it really is, with straight answers to our deepest questions. We witness the heartbreak of death, for instance -- what does that mean for us? What is love? How does karma work? How do we follow the spiritual life in the midst of work and family? Does nirvana really exist, and if so, what is it like to be illumined? In his interpretation of Buddhist themes, illustrated with stories from the Buddha's life, Easwaran offers a view of the concept of Right Understanding that is both exhilarating and instructive. He shares his experiences on the spiritual path, giving the advice that only an experienced teacher and practitioner can offer, and urges us to answer for ourselves the Buddha's call to nirvana -- that mysterious, enduring state of wisdom, joy, and peace.

A political crisis erupts when the Persian government falls to fanatics, and a Jewish insider goes rogue, determined to save her people at all costs. God and Politics in Esther explores politics and faith. It is about an era in which the prophets have been silenced and miracles have ceased, and Jewish politics has come to depend not on commands from on high, but on the boldness and belief of each woman and man. Esther takes radical action to win friends and allies, reverse terrifying decrees, and bring God's justice into the world with her own hands. Hazony's The Dawn has long been a cult classic, read at Purim each year the world over. Twenty years on, this revised edition brings the book to much wider attention. Three controversial new chapters address the astonishingly radical theology that emerges from amid the political intrigues of the book.

The first volume of a world-renowned scholar's long-awaited Qur'an commentary, now available in English Angelika Neuwirth's six-volume commentary, published originally in Germany, offers a historical and philological analysis of the form, structure, and semantic message of each of the 114 Qur'anic suras. It brings together the fruits of the past hundred years of modern scholarship and provides access to the aesthetic, theological, linguistic, and semantic background required to appreciate the unique novelty, force, and historical position of the Qur'an. Contextualizing the Qur'anic message in the broader world of late antiquity, it bridges the gaps between the inner-Islamic scholarly world and the academy. Skillfully translated by Samuel Wilder, this first volume focuses on the Meccan suras, the earliest and often the most aesthetically striking and compelling part of the corpus of Qur'anic proclamations.

For decades, Koren's combination Siddur-Humash has been a favorite in Israel. For the first time this convenient volume is available in an American edition. The Koren Talpiot Shabbat Humash offers all the tefillot recited on Shabbat according to American custom and when visiting Israel, from Erev Shabbat though Motza'ei Shabbat, together with the Torah and Haftara readings. The Hebrew text is laid out in Koren style, in Koren Siddur and Tanakh Fonts, and discreet English instructions throughout. Published in cooperation with the Orthodox Union.

Festive cover by renowned Jerusalem artist Yair Emanuel.