The forgotten legacy of religious Jewish anarchism, and the adventures and ideas of its key figures, finally comes to light in this book. Set in the decades surrounding both world wars, No masters but God identifies a loosely connected group of rabbis and traditionalist thinkers who explicitly appealed to anarchist ideas in articulating the meaning of the Torah, traditional practice, Jewish life and the mission of modern Jewry. Full of archival discoveries and first translations from Yiddish and Hebrew, it explores anarcho-Judaism in its variety through the works of Yaakov Meir Zalkind, Yitshak Nahman Steinberg, Yehudah Leyb Don-Yahiya, Avraham Yehudah Heyn, Natan Hofshi, Shmuel Alexandrov, Yehudah Ashlag and Aaron Shmuel Tamaret. With this ground-breaking account, Hayyim Rothman traces a complicated story about the modern entanglement of religion and anarchism, pacifism and Zionism, prophetic anti-authoritarianism and mystical antinomianism. -- .

John Locke's 1695 enquiry into the foundations of Christian belief is here presented for the first time in a critical edition. Locke maintains that the essentials of the faith, few and simple, can be found by anyone for themselves in the Scripture, and that this provides a basis for tolerant agreeement among Christians. An authoritative text is accompanied by abundant information conducive to an understanding of Locke's religious thought.

This is an examination ofthe eschatological and messianic elements in the first twelve chapters of LXX Isaiah. The focus is on this section because it represents a discrete unit within the book and contains several pericopes which were significant in the development of early Jewish and Christian eschatological and messianic ideas.The first part of the book surveys the discussion of eschatology and messianism in LXX Isaiah and the outlines the issues involved. There is also a study of the book's translation technique, focusing on the question of contextual interpretation and actualization, and attempting to identify the mechanism by which eschatological traditions are imprinted in the translation. In the second part, the author analyses the rendering of the well-known messianic oracles of LXX Isaiah 1-12, namely, 7:14-16, 9:5(6)-6(7), and 11:1-5. Besides the close exegetical analysis of the specific passages, there is also a study of their immediate context.This monograph suggests that the primary goal of the translator was to communicate the meaning of the text, as he understood it, rather than to make it the vehicle of his own ideology. A number of renderings that have been seen as theologically motivated could be explained simply on linguistic and co-textual grounds, and, while there is theological interpretation in individual cases, is not possible to identify any conscious systematization. In the light of this study, the eschatological and messianic hopes of the translator of LXX Isaiah 1-12 can be said to come only partly into view in his translation.

The Tractate Ketubot ("marriage contracts") discusses inter alia the sum specified at the time of marriage to be paid in the event of divorce or the husband's death, together with the mutual obligations of man and wife, the wife's property, the law of inheritance in the female line and the widow's rights. The Tractate Nidda ("Female impurity") regulates conduct during menstruation (cf. Lev 15:19ff) and after birth (Lev 12); further topics are women's life stages, puberty and various medical questions.

Can religions be compared? For decades the discipline of religious studies was based on the assumption that they can. Postmodern and postcolonial reflections, however, raised significant doubts. In social and cultural studies the investigation of the particular often took precedence over a comparative perspective. Interreligious Comparisons in Religious Studies and Theology questions whether religious studies can survive if it ceases to be comparative religion. Can it do justice to a globalized world if it is limited on the specific and turns a blind eye on the general? While comparative approaches have come under strong pressure in religious studies, they have started flourishing in Theology. Comparative theology practices interfaith dialogue by means of comparative research. This volume asks whether theology and religious studies are able to mutually benefit from their critical and constructive reflections. Can postcolonial criticism of neutrality and objectivity in religious studies create new links with the decidedly perspectival approach of comparative theology? In this collection scholars from theology and religious studies discuss the methodology of interreligious comparison in the light of recent doubts and current objections. Together with the contributors, Perry Schmidt-Leukel and Andreas Nehring argue that after decades of critique, interreligious comparison deserves to be reconsidered, reconstructed and reintroduced.

This book reexamines the central themes of Reformation theology. Chung considers the energy of the Spirit as the "Spiritus Creator "within the natural world, the Spirit's place in the Trinity, the role of the Spirit in election, the controversial question of the third use of the law, and the effects of the Spirit for the life of the world. In addressing these and many other issues, this book clearly and carefully describes the fundamental shape of Reformation thinking and introduces the reader to what was and is at stake in the Reformation's insistence on the centrality of the Gospel.

In recent bilateral ecumenical dialogue the aim of the dialogue has been to reach some form of doctrinal consensus. The three major chapters of the book discuss the variety of forms of doctrinal consensus found in ecumenical dialogues among Anglicans, Lutherans and Roman Catholics. In general, the dialogue documents argue for agreement/consensus based on commonality or compatibility. Each of the three dialogue processes has specific characteristics and formulates its argument in a unique way. The Lutheran-Roman Catholic dialogue has a particular interest in hermeneutical questions and proposes various forms of 'differentiated' or perspectival forms of consensus. The Anglican-Roman Catholic dialogue emphasises the correctness of interpretations. The documents consciously look towards a 'common future', not the separated past. "Ecclesiological Investigations" brings together quality research and inspiring debates in ecclesiology worldwide from a network of international scholars, research centres and projects in the field.

There is no doubt about Baeck's contribution to Jewish theology in the twentieth century: it has been significant. Without ever departing completely from the ancient wellsprings of orthodoxy, he was a studious observer of the intellectual currents of his time and ambience; under theinfluence of liberal Jewish theology, he drew on and reworked those currents, weaving them into his own theological thought. A special aspect of Baeck's work is that he remained in critical confrontation with Christianity throughout his life, acting as a kind of builder of bridges between the two faiths." (From the Introduction.) It is on this aspect that the author focuses his study inwhich he examines Leo Baeck's critical evaluation of Martin Luther and Protestantism. At the same time Homolka shows how close the intellectual links between liberal Christian and liberal Jewish theology had become before the Holocaust: both sides attempted a new definition of the "essence" of their faiths and were searching for a new identity in an increasingly pluralistic and secular society.

Where the Waters Meet offers the reader a new way of viewing an old subject. So often psychology and counselling therapies have been, and still are, seen as competitors, or even enemies, vying for supremacy as the true religion. This book invites us to take a fresh look at these two fields, each with their own experience and dogma, and view them in a different light. We are introduced to complementarity, an approach through which vital common factors begin to break through the barriers of convention and jargon. This book is written from deeply held convictions about faith and about therapy and emerges from several decades of experience in ordained ministry, and of working as a psychodynamic counsellor. The author is passionate about both the healing process of therapy and the life-giving inspiration of faith. He sees the two not as enemies but as intrinsically linked.

The 'ethical turn' in anthropology has been one of the most vibrant fields in the discipline in the past quarter century. It has fostered new dialogue between anthropology and philosophy, psychology, and theology, and seen a wealth of theoretical innovation and influential ethnographic studies. This book brings together a global team of established and emerging leaders in the field and makes the results of this fast-growing body of diverse research available in one volume. It is split into five parts, covering the philosophical and other intellectual sources of the ethical turn; inter-disciplinary dialogues; emerging conceptualizations of core aspects of ethical agency such as freedom, responsibility, and affect; and the diverse ways in which ethical thought and practice are institutionalized in social life. Authoritative and cutting-edge, it is essential reading for researchers and students in anthropology, philosophy, psychology and theology, and will set the agenda for future research in the field.

In secular Europe the veracity of modern science is almost always taken for granted. Whether they think of the evolutionary proofs of Darwin or of spectacular investigation into the boundaries of physics conducted by CERN's Large Hadron Collider, most people assume that scientific enquiry goes to the heart of fundamental truths about the universe. Yet elsewhere, science is under siege. In the USA, Christian fundamentalists contest whether evolution should be taught in schools at all. And in Muslim countries like Tunisia, Egypt, Pakistan and Malaysia, a mere 15 per cent of those recently surveyed believed Darwin's theory to be 'true' or 'probably true'. This thoughtful and passionately argued book contends absolutely to the contrary: not only that evolutionary theory does not contradict core Muslim beliefs, but that many scholars, from Islam's golden age to the present, adopted a worldview that accepted evolution as a given. Guessoum suggests that the Islamic world, just like the Christian, needs to take scientific questions - 'quantum questions' - with the utmost seriousness if it is to recover its true heritage and integrity. In its application of a specifically Muslim perspective to important topics like cosmology, divine action and evolution, the book makes a vital contribution to debate in the disputed field of 'science and religion'.