The articles in this volume investigate changes in texts that became to be regarded as holy and unchangeable in Judaism and Christianity. The volume seeks to draw attention to the "empirical" evidence from Qumran, the Septuagint as well as from passages in the Hebrew Scriptures that have been shaped by the use of other texts. The contributions are divided into three main sections: The first section deals with methodological questions concerning textual changes. The second section consists of concrete examples from the Hebrew Bible, Qumran and Septuagint on how the texts were changed, corrected, edited and interpreted. The contributions of the third section will investigate the general influence and impact of Deuteronomistic ideology and phraseology on later texts.

The present volume is one of the first to concentrate on a specific theme of biblical interpretation in the Dead Sea Scrolls, namely the book of Genesis. In particular the volume is concerned with the links displayed by the Qumranic biblical interpetation to the inner-biblical interpretation and the final shaping of the Hebrew scriptures. Moshe Bar-Asher studies cases of such inner biblical interpretative comments; Michael Segal deals with the Garden of Eden story in the scrolls and other contemporary Jewish sources; Reinhard Kratz analizes the story of the Flood as preamble for the lives of the Patriarchs in the Hebrew Bible; Devorah Dimant examines this theme in the Qumran scrolls; Roman Viehlhauer explores the story of Sodom and Gomorrah; George Brooke and Atar Livneh discuss aspects of Jacob's career; Harald Samuel review the career of Levi; Liora Goldman examines the Aramaic work the Visions of Amram; Lawrence Schiffman and Aharon Shemesh discuss halakhic aspects of stories about the Patriarchs; Moshe Bernstein provides an overview of the references to the Patriarchs in the Qumran scrolls.

Since the Buddha did not fully explain the theory of persons that underlies his teaching, in later centuries a number of different interpretations were developed. This book presents the interpretation by the celebrated Indian Buddhist philosopher, Candrakirti (ca. 570-650 C.E.). Candrakirti's fullest statement of the theory is included in his Autocommentary on the Introduction to the Middle Way (Madhyamakavatarabhasya), which is, along with his Introduction to the Middle Way (Madhyamakavatara ), among the central treatises that present the Prasavgika account of the Madhyamaka (Middle Way) philosophy. In this book, Candrakirti's most complete statement of his theory of persons is translated and provided with an introduction and commentary that present a careful philosophical analysis of Candrakirti's account of the selflessness of persons. This analysis is both philologically precise and analytically sophisticated. The book is of interest to scholars of Buddhism generally and especially to scholars of Indian Buddhist philosophy.

The holy book of Islam, the Koran as a book is the result of: 1. revelations given to Muhammad in the period 610- 632 (Muhammad's death) 2. writing down of these revelations by people around Muhammad in a period probably starting some years after 610, and ending a couple of years after 632 3. compiling of these writings stretching from mid-630s and perhaps until mid-650s 4. vowelling and dotting of the text (ancient Arabic was written without dots, leaving some letters look identical, and without vowels, which can make two different words look identical). Old Koran Essential to the reading of the Koran are the interpretations, which are still conducted, but which were more normal and accepted in the first centuries of Islam. As the Koran has a structure and a language, as well as allusions, which often are difficult for the normal Muslim to understand, a whole science were built around the comprehension of the Koran. The early Muslims studied history, language and nature science in an effort of understanding the Koran better. The product is surprisingly well accepted by the whole Muslim society, and no Muslim child or adult of today, studying the Koran, does this without help from the interpretations built on the early science of the Koran.

In this collection, continental and diasporan African women interrogate the concept "sacred text" and analyze ways oral and written religious "texts" intersect with violence against African-descended women and girls. While the sanctioned idea of a sacred text is written literature, this project interrupts that conception by drawing attention to speech and other embodied practices that have sacral authority within the social imaginary. As a volume focused on religion and violence, essays in this collection analyze religions' authorization of violence against women and girls; contest the legitimacy of some religious "texts"; and affirm other writing, especially memoir, as redemptive. Unraveling and Reweaving Sacred Canon in Africana Womanhood arises from three years of conversation of continental and diasporan women, most recently continued in the July 6-10, 2014 Consultation of African and African Disaporan Women in Religion and Theology and privileges experiences and contexts of continental and diasporan African women and girls. Interlocutors include African traditionalists, Christian Protestants and Catholics, Muslims, and women embodying hybrid practices of these and other traditions.

The book of Numbers in Hebrew, Bemidbar, In the Wilderness is a key text for our time. It is among the most searching, self-critical books in all of literature about what Nelson Mandela called the long walk to freedom. Its message is that there is no shortcut to liberty. Numbers is not an easy book to read, nor is it an optimistic one. It is a sober warning set in the midst of a text the Hebrew Bible that remains the West s master narrative of hope.

The Mosaic books, especially Exodus and Numbers, are about the journey from slavery to freedom and from oppression to law-governed liberty. On the map, the distance from Egypt to the Promised Land is not far. But the message of Numbers is that it always takes longer than you think. For the journey is not just physical, a walk across the desert. It is psychological, moral, and spiritual. It takes as long as the time needed for human beings to change....

You cannot arrive at freedom merely by escaping from slavery. It is won only when a nation takes upon itself the responsibilities of self-restraint, courage, and patience. Without that, a journey of a few hundred miles can take forty years. Even then, it has only just begun.

Winner of the Association for Jewish Libraries 2012 Judaica Bibliography Award This is the first comprehensive bibliography on the Karaites and Karaism. Including over 8,000 items in twenty languages, this bibliography, with its extensive annotations, thoroughly documents the present state of Karaite Studies and provides a solid foundation for future research. Special attention has been given to the organizational structure of the bibliography. A detailed table of contents and a complete set of indices enable the reader to easily navigate through the material. Translations of items from non-Western languages increase the bibliography s utility for the English-speaking reader. Especially noteworthy are the listings of obscure eastern European publications and the analysis of many periodical publications which enable unprecedented access to this material. It is an essential reference tool for Karaite and Jewish Studies. This is an essential guide to any serious study of Karaism or of medieval (and to a large extent, also modern) Jewry. "Shaul Stampfer, Hebrew University of Jerusalem" ""Bibliographia Karaitica" is a major reference work that will remain of great use for Jewish studies scholars working in many areas of specialization long into the future." "Fred Astren, San Francisco State University"

Islam is often seen as a religious tradition in which hell does not play a particularly prominent role. This volume challenges this hackneyed view. Locating Hell in Islamic Traditions is the first book-length analytic study of the Muslim hell. It maps out a broad spectrum of Islamic attitudes toward hell, from the Quranic vision(s) of hell to the pious cultivation of the fear of the afterlife, theological speculations, metaphorical and psychological understandings, and the modern transformations of hell. Contributors: Frederick Colby, Daniel de Smet, Christiane Gruber, Jon Hoover, Mohammad Hassan Khalil, Christian Lange, Christopher Melchert, Simon O'Meara, Samuela Pagani, Tommaso Tesei, Roberto Tottoli, Wim Raven, and Richard van Leeuwen.

This volume presents a critical edition of the Judaeo-Arabic translation and commentary on the book of Esther by Saadia Gaon (882-942). This edition, accompanied by an introduction and extensively annotated English translation, affords access to the first-known personalized, rationalistic Jewish commentary on this biblical book. Saadia innovatively organizes the biblical narrative-and his commentary thereon-according to seven "guidelines" that provide a practical blueprint by which Israel can live as an abased people under Gentile dominion. Saadia's prodigious acumen and sense of communal solicitude find vivid expression throughout his commentary in his carefully-defined structural and linguistic analyses, his elucidative references to a broad range of contemporary socio-religious and vocational realia, his anti-Karaite polemics, and his attention to various issues, both psychological and practical, attending Jewish-Gentile conviviality in a 10th-century Islamicate milieu.

In 1896, Rabbi Solomon Schechter of Cambridge University stepped into the attic of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo and there found the largest treasure trove of mediaeval and early manuscripts ever discovered. He had entered the synagogue's genizah - its repository for damaged and destroyed Jewish texts - which held nearly 300,000 individual documents, many of which were over 1,000 years old.

This is the full edition of the early Upanisads, the central scriptures of Hinduism. Featuring Patrick Olivelle's acclaimed new English translation (Oxford, 1996), it also includes the complete Sanskrit text, as well as variant readings, scholarly emendations, and explanations of Olivelle's choices of particular readings. The volume also contains a concordance of the two recensions of the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad, and an extensive bibliography.

Fifty years after the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls there have been many advances in the field of Qumran Studies. Yet much work remains undone. In particular the study of the scrolls has continued to follow long established historical critical methods while largely falling to incorporate recent advances in literary, ideological and sociological approaches. The essays collected here are the result of the Bristol Colloquium on the Dead Sea Scrolls held in September 2003. Here, ten scholars working in a diversity of areas demonstrate how these recent advances in scholarship increase our knowledge of the scrolls, their historical context, and their impact on modern critical scholarship. The contributors consider a wide range of approaches, ranging across discussions in sociology, anthropology, literary studies, post-colonialism and ideological criticism. These essays will help to take Qumran Studies forward in new and creative ways. This is volume 52 in the Library of Second Temple Studies series (formerly the Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha Supplement series).

This volume discusses various conceptions of family and kinship in the context of deuterocanonical literature. After analyzing the topic family in a narrow sense of the term, the articles investigate general ideas of morality, respect, or love and take a critical look at representations of gender, power, and social norms in Judaism and Early Christianity.

What accounts for the seemingly atypical pattern of scriptural exegesis that Paul uses to interpret Exodus 34 in 2 Cor 3:7-18? While previous scholars have approached this question from a variety of angles, in this monograph, Michael Cover grapples particularly with the evidence of contemporaneous Jewish and Greco-Roman commentary traditions. Through comparison with Philo of Alexandria's Allegorical Commentary, the Pseudo-Philonic homilies De Jona and De Sampsone, the Anonymous Theaetetus Commentary, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Seneca's Epistulae morales, and other New Testament texts, Paul's interpretation of Exodus emerges as part of a wider commentary practice that Cover terms "secondary-level exegesis." This study also provides new analysis of the way ancient authors, including Paul, interwove commentary forms and epistolary rhetoric and offers a reconstruction of the context of Paul's conflict with rival apostles in Corinth. At root was the legacy of Moses and of the Pentateuch itself, how the scriptures ought to be read, and how Platonizing theological and anthropological traditions might be interwoven with Paul's messianic gospel.