|
Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > Non-Christian sacred works & liturgy > Sacred texts > General
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 book examines the emergence of self-knowledge as a determining
legal consideration among the rabbis of Late Antiquity, from the
third to the seventh centuries CE. Based on close readings of
rabbinic texts from Palestine and Babylonia, Ayelet Hoffmann Libson
highlights a unique and surprising development in Talmudic
jurisprudence, whereby legal decision-making incorporated personal
and subjective information. She examines the central legal role
accorded to individuals' knowledge of their bodies and mental
states in areas of law as diverse as purity laws, family law and
the laws of Sabbath. By focusing on subjectivity and
self-reflection, the Babylonian rabbis transformed earlier legal
practices in a way that cohered with the cultural concerns of other
religious groups in Late Antiquity. They developed sophisticated
ideas about the inner self and incorporated these notions into
their distinctive discourse of law.
The Bhagavad Gita opens with a crisis - Prince Arjuna despairs on
the battlefield, unsure if he should fight his kinsmen in a
dreadful war. For Easwaran, the Gita's epic battle represents the
war in our own hearts and Arjuna's anguish reflects the human
condition: torn between opposing forces, confused about how to
live. Sri Krishna's timeless guidance, Easwaran argues, can shed
light on our dilemmas today. Placing the Gita's teachings in a
modern context, Easwaran explores the nature of reality, the
illusion of separateness, the search for identity, the meaning of
yoga, and how to heal the unconscious. The key message of the Gita
is how to resolve our conflicts and live in harmony with the deep
unity of life, through the practice of meditation and spiritual
disciplines. Sri Krishna doesn't tell Arjuna what to do. He points
out the prince's choices, and then leaves it to Arjuna to decide.
Easwaran shows us clearly how these teachings still apply - and
how, like Arjuna, we must take courage and act wisely if we want
our world to thrive.
The Rigveda is a monumental text in both world religion and world
literature, yet outside a small band of specialists it is little
known. Composed in the latter half of the second millennium BCE, it
stands as the foundational text of what would later be called
Hinduism. The text consists of over a thousand hymns dedicated to
various divinities, composed in sophisticated and often enigmatic
verse. This concise guide from two of the Rigveda's leading
English-language scholars introduces the text and breaks down its
large range of topics-from meditations on cosmic enigmas to
penetrating reflections on the ability of mortals to make contact
with and affect the divine and cosmic realms through sacrifice and
praise-for a wider audience.
This book reveals- for the first time ever - the extraordinary
impact of Huldah the prophet on our Bible. She was both a leader of
exilic Jews and a principal author of Hebrew Scripture. She penned
the Shema: the ardent, prayerful praise that millions of worshipers
repeat twice daily. Moreover, Jesus quoted as his own last words
the ones that Huldah had written centuries before - "Into your hand
I commit my spirit". Huldah was an extraordinary writer - arguably
she ranks among the best in Hebrew Scripture. As such, she added to
God's Word a feminine aspect that has inspired numberless believers
- men and women alike. This book's new techniques reveal that
though subjected to extreme verbal abuse, Huldah surmounted her
era's high barriers to women. As elder, queen mother, and war
leader during the sixth century BCE, she helped shape Israel's
history. And what, then, can this book mean to scholars - both
women and men? Feminists need a rallying point and a heroine, and
Huldah makes a superb one. In years ahead, experts might well place
Huldah alongside the very greatest women of antiquity; indeed, they
may even conclude that she is among the most influential people in
human history.
In this book we deal with combinations of concepts defining
individuals in the Talmud. Consider for example Yom Kippur and
Shabbat. Each concept has its own body of laws. Reality forces us
to combine them when they occur on the same day. This is a case of
"Identity Merging." As the combined body of laws may be
inconsistent, we need a belief revision mechanism to reconcile the
conflicting norms. The Talmud offers three options: 1 Take the
union of the sets of the rules side by side 2. Resolve the
conflicts using further meta-level Talmudic principles (which are
new and of value to present day Artificial Intelligence) 3. Regard
the new combined concept as a new entity with its own Halachic
norms and create new norms for it out of the existing ones. This
book offers a clear and precise logical model showing how the
Talmud deals with these options.
Dhammapada means "the path of dharma," the path of truth, harmony,
and righteousness that anyone can follow to reach the highest good.
Easwaran's translation of this classic Buddhist text is the
best-selling edition in its field, praised by Huston Smith as a
"sublime rendering." The introduction gives an overview of the
Buddha's teachings that is penetrating and clear - accessible for
readers new to Buddhism, but also with fresh insights and practical
applications for readers familiar with this text. Chapter
introductions place individual verses into the context of the
broader Buddhist canon. Easwaran is a master storyteller, and his
opening essay includes many stories that make moving, memorable
reading, bringing young Siddhartha and his heroic spiritual quest
vividly to life. But Easwaran's main qualification for interpreting
the Dhammapada, he said, was that he knew from his own experience
that these verses could transform our lives. This faithful
rendition brings us closer to the compassionate heart of the
Buddha.
The author states in his preface: For a thousand years, from its
earliest documents of the second century to the High Middle Ages,
Rabbinic Judaism preferred to compose and collect anecdotes, not to
construct of them sustained and connected biographies. This is a
study of the inclusion of biographical narratives about sages in
some of the components of the unfolding canon of Rabbinic Judaism
in the formative age, the documents of the first six centuries
C.E., exclusive of the two Talmuds. A sage here is defined as a man
who embodies the Rabbinic system. A sage-story, then, is an
anecdote about the life and deeds of a Rabbinic sage. A
biographical narrative in general is the record of things done on a
concrete and specific past-tense occasion by named individuals. The
stories are not told as part of a sustained biographical account of
those individuals' lives, birth to death. I am able in this way to
correlate the unfolding of the authorized biography in the
counterpart-Christian one. The documentary hypothesis yields the
correlation between the advent of the Christian authorized
biography and the advent of the sage-story in the later documents
of the Rabbinic canon.
From disagreement over an Islamic Center in New York to clashes
between Christians and Muslims in Egypt, tension between the three
Abrahamic faiths often runs high. Yet for all their differences,
these three traditions Judaism, Islam, and Christianity share much
in common. Three Testaments brings together for the first time the
text of the Torah, the New Testament, and the Quran, so that
readers can explore for themselves the connections, as well as the
points of departure, between the three faiths. Notable religion
scholars provide accessible introductions to each tradition, and
commentary from editor Brian Arthur Brown explores how the three
faiths may draw similarities from the ancient Zoroastrian
tradition. This powerful book provides a much-needed interfaith
perspective on key sacred texts.
 |
ee
(Paperback)
Heinrich W. Guggenheimer
|
R1,011
R894
Discovery Miles 8 940
Save R117 (12%)
|
Ships in 10 - 15 working days
|
|
This volume, the second of a five-volume edition of the third order
of the Jerusalem Talmud, deals in part I (Sotah) with the ordeal of
the wife suspected of adultery (Num 5) and the role of Hebrew in
the Jewish ritual. Part II (Nedarim) is concerned with Korban and
similar expressions, vows and their consequences, and vows of women
(Num 30).
Translating Totality in Parts offers an annotated translation of
two of preeminent Chinese Tang dynasty monk Chengguan's most
revered masterpieces. With this book, Chengguan's Commentaries to
the Avatamsaka Sutra and The Meanings Proclaimed in the
Subcommentaries Accompanying the Commentaries to the Avatamsaka
Sutra are finally brought to contemporary Western audiences.
Translating Totality in Parts allows Western readers to experience
Chengguan's important contributions to the religious and
philosophical theory of the Huayan and Buddhism in China.
After World War II, Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich (1921-2007) published
works in English and German by eminent Israeli scholars, in this
way introducing them to a wider audience in Europe and North
America. The series he founded for that purpose, Studia Judaica,
continues to offer a platform for scholarly studies and editions
that cover all eras in the history of the Jewish religion.
|
|