Mordecai M. Kaplan (1881-1983), founder of Reconstructionism and the rabbi who initiated the first Bat Mitzvah, also produced the longest Jewish diary on record. In twenty-seven volumes, written between 1913 and 1978, Kaplan shares not only his reaction to the great events of his time but also his very personal thoughts on religion and Jewish life. In Communings of the Spirit: The Journals of Mordecai M. Kaplan Volume III, 1942-1951, readers experience his horror at the persecution of the European Jews, as well as his joy in the founding of the State of Israel. Above all else, Kaplan was concerned with the survival and welfare of the Jewish people. And yet he also believed that the well-being of the Jewish people was tied to the safety and security of all people. In his own words, "Such is the mutuality of human life that none can be saved, unless all are saved". In the first volume of Communings of the Spirit, editor Mel Scult covers Kaplan's early years as a rabbi, teacher of rabbis, and community leader. In the second volume, readers experience the economic problems of the 1930s and their shattering impact on the Jewish community. The third volume chronicles Kaplan's spiritual and intellectual journey in the 1940s. With candour and vivid detail, Kaplan explores his evolving beliefs concerning a democratic Judaism; religious naturalism; and the conflicts, uncertainties, and self-doubts he faced in the first half of the twentieth century, including his excommunication by the ultra-Orthodox in 1945 for taking a more progressive approach to the liturgy. In his publications, Kaplan eliminated the time-honored declarations of Jewish chosen-ness as well as the outdated doctrines concerning the resurrection of the dead. He wanted a prayer book that Jews could feel reflected their beliefs and experiences; he believed that people must mean what they say when they pray. Kaplan was a man of contradictions, but because of that, all the more interesting and significant. Scholars of Judaica and rabbinical studies will value this honest look at the preeminent American Jewish thinker and rabbi of our times.

Movement, smell, vision, and other perceptual experiences are ways of thinking and orienting ourselves in the world. And yet the appeal to experience as resource for theology, though a significant shift in contemporary scholarship, has seldom received nuanced investigation. How do embodied differences like gender, race, disability, and sexuality highlight theological analysis and connect to perceptual experience and theological imagination? In Meaning in Our Bodies, Heike Peckruhn offers historical and cultural comparisons, showing how sensory experience may order normalcy, social status, or communal belonging. Ultimately, she argues that scholars who appeal to the importance of bodily experiences need to acquire a robust and nuanced understanding of how sensory perceptions and interactions are cultural and theological acts of making meaning.

"My desire is that this book may help readers to know more fully the God of biblical revelation and, as a result, to proclaim God as the God of life". Who is God? Where is God? How are we to speak of God? Gutierrez looks at these classic questions through a review of the Bible, and his answers challenge all Christians to a deepening of faith.

This reader shows why Edward Schillebeeckx remains one of the most influential Catholic theologians of the 20th century. Spanning more than half a century and including several texts that appear in English for the first time, it enables students to understand how Edward Schillebeeckx's thought resonates with current debates in theology, for instance on ecology and secularization. T&T Clark Reader in Edward Schillebeeckx includes selections from both pre- and post-Conciliar texts that illustrate the evolution in Schillebeeckx's thought, while also pointing towards the deep underlying continuity which comes from his essential commitment to his faith. His Christological Trilogy, which was a touchstone for doctrinal controversy and methodological progress, is represented here, as well as important works on ministry, the sacraments, hermeneutics, secularization, and the environment. These complex theological topics are broken down in every chapter with the help of explanatory notes, discussion questions and further reading suggestions. This reader is an essential resource which will enable students to contextualize and unpack the rich layers within Schillebeeckx's theology.

Mighty Baal: Essays in Honor of Mark S. Smith is the first edited collection devoted to the study of the ancient Near Eastern god Baal. Although the Bible depicts Baal as powerless, the combined archaeological, iconographic, and literary evidence makes it clear that Baal was worshipped throughout the Levant as a god whose powers rivalled any deity. Mighty Baal brings together eleven essays written by scholars working in North America, Europe, and Israel. Essays in part one focus on the main collection of Ugaritic tablets describing Baal's exploits, the Baal Cycle. Essays in part two treat Baal's relationships to other deities. Together, the essays offer a rich portrait of Baal and his cult from a variety of methodological perspectives. The Harvard Semitic Studies series publishes volumes from the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East. Other series offered by Brill that publish volumes from the Museum include Studies in the Archaeology and History of the Levant and Harvard Semitic Monographs, https://hmane.harvard.edu/publications.

This is a new interpretation of Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov that scrutinizes it as a performative event (the “polyphony” of the novel) revealing its religious, philosophical, and social meanings through the interplay of mentalités or worldviews that constitute an aesthetic whole. This way of discerning the novel’s social vision of sobornost’ (a unity between harmony and freedom), its vision of hope, and its more subtle sacramental presuppositions, raises Tilley’s interpretation beyond the standard “theology and literature” treatments of the novel and interpretations that treat the novel as providing solutions to philosophical problems. Tilley develops Bakhtin’s thoughtful analysis of the polyphony of the novel using communication theory and readers/hearer response criticism, and by using Bakhtin's operatic image of polyphony to show the error of taking "faith vs. reason", argues that at the end of the novel, the characters learned to carry on, in a quiet shared commitment to memory and hope.

Bonhoeffer's writings include a significant amount of biblical interpretation, but his potential contributions in the fields of biblical studies and theological exegesis of Scripture have not been sufficiently explored. This study reassesses some of his key exegetical writings in light of his theology of revelation and bibliology, unfolding the ways in which his reading of the Bible is determined by his theology of Scripture. Through this analysis, Joel Banman demonstrates that the uniting factor of Bonhoeffer's biblical interpretation is not methodological but bibliological: he reads Scripture as the living word of the present Christ.