In his articles Stefan Reif's articles have dealt with Jewish biblical exegesis and the close analysis of the evolution of Jewish prayer texts. Some fourteen of these that appeared in various collective volumes are here made more easily available, together with a major new study of Numbers 13, an introduction and extensive indexes. Reif attempts to establish whether there is any linguistic, literary and exegetical value in the traditional Jewish interpretation of the Hebrew Bible for the modern scientific approach to such texts and whether such an approach itself is always free of theological bias. He demonstrates how Jewish liturgical texts may illuminate religious teachings about wisdom, history, peace, forgiveness, and divine metaphors. Also clarified in these essays are notions of David, Greek and Hebrew, divine metaphors, and the liturgical use of the Hebrew Bible.

Zen Buddhism is often said to be a practice of "mind-to-mind transmission" without reliance on texts -- in fact, some great teachers forbid their students to read or write. But Buddhism has also inspired some of the greatest philosophical writings of any religion, and two such works lie at the center of Zen: The Heart Sutra, which monks recite all over the world, and The Diamond Sutra, said to contain answers to all questions of delusion and dualism. This is the Buddhist teaching on the "perfection of wisdom" and cuts through all obstacles on the path of practice.

As Red Pine explains: "The Diamond Sutra may look like a book, but it's really the body of the Buddha. It's also your body, my body, all possible bodies. But it's a body with nothing inside and nothing outside. It doesn't exist in space or time. Nor is it a construct of the mind. It's no mind. And yet because it's no mind, it has room for compassion. This book is the offering of no mind, born of compassion for all suffering beings. Of all the sutras that teach this teaching, this is the diamond."

The Old Testament is integrally bound to the history and culture of Ancient Israeland the Ancient Middle East. This collection of essays primarily employs approaches from the fields of literary history andarcheology. It makes an important contribution to cultural and religious historical aspects of kingship and prophecy. It also casts a new light on questions regarding institutional education and worship practices, on the possibilities and limitations of religious historical comparison, and on Biblical interpretation in a Judeo-Christian context.

Imam Nawawi's commentary on Sahih Muslim is one of the most highly regarded works in Islamic thought and literature. Accepted by every sunni school of thought, and foundational in the Shaafi school, this text, available for the first time in English, is famed throughout the Muslim world. After the Qur'an, the prophetic traditions are the most recognised source of wisdom in Islam. Amongst the collected Hadith, Sahih Muslim is second only to the the collection of Imam Bukhari. With a commentary by Imam Nawawi, whose other works are amongst the most widely-read books on Islam, and translated by Adil Salahi, a modern scholar of great acclaim, this immense work, finally available to English readers, is an essential addition to every Muslim library, and for anybody with an interest in Islamic thought. Volume 3 includes the complete Book of Cleansing, which covers purity, cleanliness, ablution, wudu and prayer, as well part of the Book of Prayer.

This book distinguishes Islam as a spiritual message from the sociopolitical context of its revelation. While the sacred text of the Quran reveals a clear empowerment of women and equality of believers, such spirit is barely reflected in the interpretations. Trapped between Western rhetoric that portrays them as submissive figures in desperate need of liberation, and centuries-old, parochial interpretations that have almost become part of the "sacred," Muslim women are pressured and profoundly misunderstood. Asma Lamrabet laments this state of affairs and the inclination of both Muslims and non-Muslims to readily embrace flawed human interpretations that devalue women rather than remaining faithful to the meaning of the Sacred Text. Full of insight, this study carefully reads the Qur'an to arrive at its deeper spiritual teachings.

Opening Israel's Scriptures is a collection of thirty-six essays on the Hebrew Bible, from Genesis to Chronicles, which gives powerful insight into the complexity and inexhaustibility of the Hebrew Scriptures as a theological resource. Based on more than two decades of lectures on Old Testament interpretation, Ellen F. Davis offers a selective yet comprehensive guide to the core concepts, literary patterns, storylines, and theological perspectives that are central to Israel's Scriptures. Underlying the whole study is the primary assumption that each book of the canon has literary and theological coherence, though not uniformity. In both her close readings of individual texts and in her broad demonstrations of the coherence of whole books, Davis models the best practices of contemporary exegesis, integrating the insights of contemporary scholars with those of classical theological resources in Jewish and Christian traditions. Throughout, she keeps an eye to the experiences and concerns of contemporary readers, showing through multiple examples that the critical interpretation of texts is provisional, open-ended work-a collaboration across generations and cultures. Ultimately what she offers is an invitation into the more spacious world that the Bible discloses, which challenges ordinary conceptions of how things "really" are.

This book studies the absolute reality of the Qur'an, which is signified by the struggle of truth against falsehood in the framework of monotheistic unity of knowledge and the unified world-system induced by the consilience of knowledge. In such a framework the absolute reality reveals itself not by religious dogmatism. Rather, the methodology precisely comprises its distinctive parts. These are namely the 'primal ontology' as the foundational explained axiom of monotheistic unity; the 'secondary ontologies' as explanatory replications of the law of unity in the particulars of the world-system; 'epistemology' as the operational model; and 'phenomenology' as the structural nature of events induced by the monotheistic law, that is by knowledge emanating from the law. The imminent methodology remains the unique explanatory reference of all events that take place, advance, and change in continuity across continuums of knowledge, space, and time.

Reading Hebrew Bible Narratives introduces readers to narrative traditions of the Old Testament and to methods of interpreting them. Part of the Essentials of Biblical Studies series, this volume presents readers with an overview of exegesis by mainly focusing on a self-contained narrative to be read alongside the text. Through sustained interaction with the book of Ruth, readers have opportunities to engage a biblical book from multiple perspectives, while taking note of the wider implications of such perspectives for other biblical narratives. Other select texts from Hebrew Bible narratives, related by theme or content to matters in Ruth, are also examined, not only to assist in illustrating this method of approach, but also to offer reinforcement of reading skills and connections among different narrative traditions. Considering literary analysis, words and texts in context, and reception history, this brief introduction gives students an overview of how exegesis illuminates stories in the Bible.

This bilingual edition of the "Qur'an," the Holy Book of Islam, was first published in the United States in 1988. Ahmed Ali, the distinguished Pakistani novelist, poet, critic, and diplomat, presents this elegant and poetic translation in a contemporary and living voice. On each page, the original Arabic and the translated English sit side by side, encouraging the reader to draw from both texts. Professor Ali also includes notes where necessary, providing the full meaning of each word and phrase. This accessible volume is truly essential for both scholars and followers of Islam.

The figure of Sakuntala appears in many forms throughout South Asian literature, most famously in the "Mahabharata" and in Kalidisa's fourth-century Sanskrit play, "Sakuntala and the Ring of Recollection." In these two texts, Sakuntala undergoes a critical transformation, relinquishing her assertiveness and autonomy to become the quintessentially submissive woman, revealing much about the performance of Hindu femininity that would come to dominate South Asian culture. Through a careful analysis of sections from "Sakuntala" and their various iterations in different contexts, Romila Thapar explores the interactions between literature and history, culture and gender, that frame the development of this canonical figure, as well as a distinct conception of female identity.

This colorful, illustrated Hebrew siddur makes tefillot fun and accessible for children aged 3-6. Created with the educational organization MiBereshit, the siddur includes 28 short tefillot, from Modeh Ani through Shema, Adon Alom, Kiddush, Birkat Hamazon and more. Your children will love joining characters Effy and Noa on their happy adventures through the siddur.

The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls more than sixty years ago has revealed a wealth of literary compositions which rework the Hebrew Bible in various ways. This genre seems to have been a popular literary form in ancient Judaism literature. However, the Qumran texts of this type are particularly interesting for they offer for the first time a large sample of such compositions in their original languages, Hebrew and Aramaic. Since the rewritten Bible texts do not use the particular style and nomenclature specific to the literature produced by the Qumran community. Many of these texts are unknown from any other sources, and have been published only during the last two decades. They therefore became the object of intense scholarly study. However, most the attention has been directed to the longer specimens, such as the Hebrew Book of Jubilees and the Aramaic Genesis Apocryphon. The present volume addresses the less known and poorly studied pieces, a group of eleven small Hebrew texts that rework the Hebrew Bible. It provides fresh editions, translations and detailed commentaries for each one. The volume thus places these texts within the larger context of the Qumran library, aiming at completing the data about the rewritten Bible.

Lament, mourning, and the transmissibility of a tradition in the aftermath of destruction are prominent themes in Jewish thought. The corpus of lament literature, building upon and transforming the biblical Book of Lamentations, provides a unique lens for thinking about the relationships between destruction and renewal, mourning and remembrance, loss and redemption, expression and the inexpressible. This anthology features four texts by Gershom Scholem on lament, translated here for the first time into English. The volume also includes original essays by leading scholars, which interpret Scholem's texts and situate them in relation to other Weimar-era Jewish thinkers, including Walter Benjamin, Franz Rosenzweig, Franz Kafka, and Paul Celan, who drew on the textual traditions of lament to respond to the destruction and upheavals of the early twentieth century. Also included are studies on the textual tradition of lament in Judaism, from biblical, rabbinic, and medieval lamentations to contemporary Yemenite women's laments. This collection, unified by its strong thematic focus on lament, shows the fruitfulness of studying contemporary and modern texts alongside the traditional textual sources that informed them.

This collection of leading scholars presents reflections on both wisdom as a general concept throughout history and cultures, as well as the contested nature of the category of Wisdom Literature. The first half of the collection explores wisdom more generally with essays on its relationship to skill, epistemology, virtue, theology, and order. Wisdom is examined in a number of different contexts, such as historically in the Hebrew Bible and its related cultures, in Egypt and Mesopotamia, as well as in Patristic and Rabbinic interpretation. Additionally, wisdom is examined in its continuing relevance in Islamic, Jewish, and Christian thought, as well as from feminist, environmental, and other contextual perspectives. The second half of the volume considers "Wisdom Literature" as a category. Scholars address its relation to the Solomonic Collection, its social setting, literary genres, chronological development, and theology. Wisdom Literature's relation to other biblical literature (law, history, prophecy, apocalyptic, and the broad question of "Wisdom influence") is then discussed before separate chapters on the texts commonly associated with the category. Contributors take a variety of approaches to the current debates surrounding the viability and value of Wisdom Literature as a category and its proper relationship to the concept of wisdom in the Hebrew Bible. Though the organization of the volume highlights the independence of wisdom as concept from "Wisdom Literature" as a category, seeking to counter the lack of attention given to this question in the traditional approach, the inclusion of both topics together in the same volume reflects their continued interconnection. As such, this handbook both represents the current state of Wisdom scholarship and sets the stage for future developments.

The thirteenth-century Jewish mystical classic Sefer ha-Zohar (The Book of Splendor), commonly known as the Zohar, took shape against a backdrop of rising anti-Judaism in Spain. Mystical Resistance reveals that in addition to the Zohar's role as a theological masterpiece, its kabbalistic teachings offer passionate and knowledgeable critiques of Christian majority culture. During the Zohar's development, Christian friars implemented new missionizing strategies, forced Jewish attendance at religious disputations, and seized and censored Jewish books. In response, the kabbalists who composed the Zohar crafted strategically subversive narratives aimed at diminishing Christian authority. Hidden between the lines of its fascinating stories, the Zohar makes daring assertions that challenge themes important to medieval Christianity, including Christ's Passion and ascension, the mendicant friars' new missionizing strategies, and Gothic art's claims of Christian dominion. These assertions rely on an intimate and complex knowledge of Christianity gleaned from rabbinic sources, polemic literature, public Church art, and encounters between Christians and Jews. Much of the kabbalists' subversive discourse reflects language employed by writers under oppressive political regimes, treading a delicate line between public and private, power and powerlessness, subservience and defiance. By placing the Zohar in its thirteenth-century context, Haskell opens this text as a rich and fruitful source of Jewish cultural testimony produced at the epicenter of sweeping changes in the relationship between medieval Western Europe's Christian majority and its Jewish minority.

While Buddhism has no central text comparable to the Bible or Koran, there is a powerful body of scripture from across Asia that encompasses the "dharma," or the teachings of the Buddha. In this rich anthology, eminent scholar Donald S. Lopez, Jr., brings together works from a broad historical and geographical range, and from such languages as Pali, Sanskrit, Tibetan, Chinese, and Japanese. There are tales of the Buddha's past lives, a discussion of qualities and qualifications for a monk, and an exploration of the many meanings of enlightenment. Together they provide a vivid picture of the Buddha and of the vast and profound nature of the Buddhist tradition.

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.

Printed editions of midrashim, rabbinic expositions of the Bible, flooded the market for Hebrew books in the sixteenth century. First published by Iberian immigrants to the Ottoman Empire, they were later reprinted in large numbers at the famous Hebrew presses of Venice. This study seeks to shed light on who read these new books and how they did so by turning to the many commentaries on midrash written during the sixteenth century. These innovative works reveal how their authors studied rabbinic Bible interpretation and how they anticipated their readers would do so. Benjamin WIlliams focuses particularly on the work of Abraham ben Asher of Safed, the Or ha-Sekhel (Venice, 1567), an elucidation of midrash Genesis Rabba which contains both the author's own interpretations and also the commentary he mistakenly attributed to the most celebrated medieval commentator Rashi. Williams examines what is known of Abraham ben Asher's life, his place among the Jewish scholars of Safed, and the publication of his book in Venice. By analysing selected passages of his commentary, this study assesses how he shed light on rabbinic interpretation of Genesis and guided readers to correct interpretations of the words of the sages. A consideration of why Abraham ben Asher published a commentary attributed to Rashi shows that he sought to lend authority to his programme of studying midrash by including interpretations ascribed to the most famous commentator alongside his own. By analysing the production and reception of the Or ha-Sekhel, therefore, this work illuminates the popularity of midrash in the early modern period and the origins of a practice which is now well-established-the study of rabbinic Bible interpretation with the guidance of commentaries.