Christianity, Judaism and Islam - the Children of Abraham - constitute the spiritual foundations of Western civilization. They affect the interactions of entire nations and individuals, though their history is often understood as one of conflict and controversy. The present volume documents past encounters and confrontations, though it also shows that the history of the three faiths is not merely one of conflict but also one of co-existence and dialogue. The rich shared theological traditions of the Abrahamic religions provide positive encouragement to present-day meetings between their followers. The book contains 16 contributions by scholars from various fields of religious studies. It should appeal to everyone interested in interreligious encounters.

This pioneering study is the first full-length exploration of the relationship between Judaism and the world's religions. Beginning with an examination of the biblical view of pagan worship, the book traces the history of Jewish attitudes towards other religious traditions in the rabbinic period, the Middle Ages, the early modern age and contemporary times. In the final part of this volume, the author formulates a radically new Jewish theology of religious pluralism. In his view, what is now required is for Jews to free themselves from the absolutes of the past. No longer should they regard Judaism as embodying God's full and final revelation; instead, the Divine should be placed at the centre of the universe of faiths. Given such a shift in perspective, the way would then be open for interfaith dialogue of the most profound kind. From its ancient origins Judaism adopted a generally tolerant attitude to other traditions - what is possible today is for this spirit of tolerance to deepen and serve as a foundation for a common quest with like-minded adherents of other faiths for spiritual insight and religious truth. This study is a vital source for all those who seek to understand Judaism in relation to the world's major religions.

How does the story of the Exodus echo in our own generation and in our own lives?

"For us to hear the Oneness of God, we must grow into a place where the cosmic and the political are deeply the same truth." from Part V

The story Jews retell on Passover is about rising up against tyranny, about the triumph of the God who sides with the despised against a resplendent emperor. Exploring how this tale applies to our own time enriches the ancient account and it expands and transforms the community for which Exodus is a collective family story.

Exodus is not only the saga of the escape from slavery, but also a story of courage, celebration, rebirth and community from which people of all faith traditions have learned and can continue to learn. Calling us to relearn and rethink the Passover story, Rabbi Arthur O. Waskow and Rabbi Phyllis O. Berman share:

The enduring spiritual resonance of the Hebrews' journey for our own time Social justice, ecological and feminist perspectives on the Exodus How the Passover story has been adapted and used by African American as well as Christian and Muslim communities to provide insight and inspiration.

With contributions by

Dr. Vincent Harding: Exodus in African America: A Great Camp Meeting

Dr. S. Ayse Kadayifci-Orellana: Exodus in the Qur an: Mercy, Compassion, and Forgiveness

Ched Myers and Russell Powell: Exodus in the Life and Death of Jesus "

Christianson uses a variety of methods from art criticism to Todorov''s actantial model to sketch a compr ehensive picture of some hitherto neglected narrative elemen ts in Qoheleth''s text. '

The Roman destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 was a watershed event in the religious, political, and social life of first-century Jews. This book explores the reaction to this event found in Jewish apocalypses and related literature preserved among the Pseudepigrapha (4 Ezra, 2 Baruch, 3 Baruch, 4 Baruch, Sibylline Oracles 4 and 5, and the Apocalypse of Abraham). While keeping the historical context of their composition in mind, the author analyzes the texts with a view to answering the following questions: What do these texts tell us about Jewish attitudes toward the Roman Empire? How did Jews understand the situation in post-70 Judea through the lens of Israel s past, especially the Babylonian sack of Jerusalem in 587 B.C.?

Covering over a thousand years of history (from the Assyrian exile in the eighth century BCE to late Roman times), this book makes an important contribution to the fields of Jewish studies, biblical studies, ancient Near Eastern studies, Samaritan Studies, and early Christian history by challenging the oppositional paradigm that has traditionally characterized the historical relations between Jews and Samaritans. The approach is multi-disciplinary, engaging exciting new discoveries in archaeology, such as the site surveys of ancient Samaria and the major excavations at the holy site of Mt. Gerizim in central Israel; new discoveries in epigraphy, such as the publication of the Samaria papyri dating to the late-Persian period (375-335 BCE), the publication of hundreds of late-Persian period Samarian coins, and the publication of hundreds of fragmentary Mt. Gerizim inscriptions (dating mostly to the late-third and early-second centuries BCE); as well as new discoveries in biblical studies, such as the diverse collection of Pentateuchal manuscripts found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Only by recognizing the close ties that developed between Samaria and Judah during the much of the first millennium BCE can one explain how the two communities became so similar in belief and practice, even sharing a common set of foundational scriptures (the Pentateuch). Paradoxically, accounting for how two such similar groups as the Samaritans and Jews became alienated from one another during the Maccabean and Roman periods involves explaining how the two were so closely related in the first place. The solution to this puzzle is to be found in earlier Israelite history.

Recent scholarship on ancient Judaism, finding only scattered references to messiahs in Hellenistic- and Roman-period texts, has generally concluded that the word ''messiah'' did not mean anything determinate in antiquity. Meanwhile, interpreters of Paul, faced with his several hundred uses of the Greek word for ''messiah, '' have concluded that christos in Paul does not bear its conventional sense. Against this curious consensus, Matthew V. Novenson argues in Christ among the Messiahs that all contemporary uses of such language, Paul's included, must be taken as evidence for its range of meaning. In other words, early Jewish messiah language is the kind of thing of which Paul's Christ language is an example.
Looking at the modern problem of Christ and Paul, Novenson shows how the scholarly discussion of christos in Paul has often been a cipher for other, more urgent interpretive disputes. He then traces the rise and fall of ''the messianic idea'' in Jewish studies and gives an alternative account of early Jewish messiah language: the convention worked because there existed both an accessible pool of linguistic resources and a community of competent language users. Whereas it is commonly objected that the normal rules for understanding christos do not apply in the case of Paul since he uses the word as a name rather than a title, Novenson shows that christos in Paul is neither a name nor a title but rather a Greek honorific, like Epiphanes or Augustus.
Focusing on several set phrases that have been taken as evidence that Paul either did or did not use christos in its conventional sense, Novenson concludes that the question cannot be settled at the level of formal grammar. Examining nine passages in which Paul comments on how he means the word christos, Novenson shows that they do all that we normally expect any text to do to count as a messiah text. Contrary to much recent research, he argues that Christ language in Paul is itself primary evidence for messiah language in ancient Judaism.

The Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America houses the largest and most comprehensive collection of Judaica and Hebraica in the Western Hemisphere; since its establishment one hundred years ago, seekers of knowledge throughtout the world have availed themselves of its vast resources. It was not through mere chance, hoever, that this magnificent collection of manuscripts and rare books came into being. Its existence is owed to the efforts of farsighted Seminary presidents, diligent librarians and supportive members of the community. Leaders such as Solomon Schechter, Cyrus Adler, Louis Finkelstein and Gershon D. Cohen understood that without an adequate library no teaching program of higher Jewish learning could proceed. In turn, they attracted edicated librarian-scholars such as Alexander Marx, Nahum Sarna and Menaham Schmelzer, who diligently organized the Library's officail treasures, making them available not only to faculty and students, but to the general public as well. Moreover, the tradition of concerned philanthropy established in the past by Jacob Schiff, Louis Marshall, Felix Warburg and Judge Mayer Sulzberger, is now being carried on by generous friends of the Library. As we stand on the threshold of the Library's second century, its objectives are as clear today as they were one hundredyears ago; to enable men and women to study, teach and observe the tenets of their Faith.

Millions of American Christians see U.S. support for the State of Israel as a God-ordained responsibility. Millions more see the ''special relationship'' between the two countries as a bond that should never be challenged, much less broken. Robert O. Smith provides an in-depth look at the English Protestant tradition of Judeo-centric prophecy interpretation at the heart of this popular affinity. In 2006, John Hagee founded Christians United for Israel. Several high-level policymakers, both Christians and Jews, flocked to endorse the effort. Soon, however, questions rose about apparently anti-Catholic and anti-Islamic ideas contained in Hagee's preaching and writing. More Desired Than Our Owne Salvation explores the content of Christian Zionist attitudes, their resonance in popular American culture, and the history of the ideas that have contributed to present realities. After discussing polling data and exploring how Black Protestant views clarify general American attitudes, Smith revisits sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Protestant interpretations of scripture and history. The Pope and the Turk figured significantly, identified by both Luther and Calvin as the two heads of the Antichrist. Protestant exiles from England carried these ideas back to Elizabethan England, provided a nationalist twist, and set Anglo-American history on a new path. The resulting English Protestant tradition of Judeo-centric prophecy interpretation shaped Puritan identity, which was then transferred to New England, where it began informing the foundations of American vocation and self-understanding. Through its developments and adaptations, this Judeo-centric tradition provided English colonists and Anglo Americans with purpose and vision. When the State of Israel was founded in 1948, many Americans readily welcomed it as a prophetic counterpart, a country whose preservation ''may be more desired then our owne salvation.''

This is the fourth volume of the hard-copy edition of a journal that has been published online (www.jgrchj.net) since 2000. Volume 1 was for 2000, Volume 2 was for 2001-2005, Volume 3 is for 2006, and Volume 4 for 2007. As they appear, the hardcopy editions will replace the online materials. The scope of JGRChJ is the texts, language and cultures of the Graeco-Roman world of early Christianity and Judaism.The papers published in JGRChJ are designed to pay special attention to the 'larger picture' of politics, culture, religion and language, engaging as well with modern theoretical approaches.

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 Polish Jews in Israel: Polish-Language Press, Culture, and Politics Elzbieta Kossewska presents a study of the political history of Polish Jews in Israel and their cultural and intellectual achievements, with particular emphasis on the Polish-language press. The book describes Polish immigrants' adaptation in Israeli society after World War II, and shows the shifting of emigrants' attitudes and viewpoints against the backdrop of the Israeli political system. The book contains numerous testimonies, memoirs, and personal documents from Polish journalists and writers that have never been published before. These anecdotes, biographical curiosities, and fascinating details create an evocative and colorful picture of the lives of key figures of post-war Polish life in Israel.

Books and writing, according to Jacques Derrida, are always concerned with questions of life and death. Nowhere is this more true than regarding the heavenly book motif, which plays an important role in early Judeo-Christian literature, and particularly in apocalypses. This book identifies four sub-types of the motif the books of life, deeds, fate, and action and examines their development and function primarily in Jewish and Christian apocalypses. It argues that the overarching function of the motif is to signify life and death for those inscribed: earthly life and death in its early appearances and eternal destiny in later texts. The first full-length analysis of the heavenly book motif in English, this study highlights a vital element of the genre apocalypse.

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.

An International Josephus Colloquium met in Haifa on 2 - 6 July, 2006. It gathered scholars from Japan, Germany, France, Norway, Italy, Britain, Israel, and the USA who represented different disciplines: bible, history, Judaism, and archaeology. The connecting structure of all the participants was the ancient Jewish historian Flavius Josephus. The fruit of this meeting is presented in twenty four articles and an introduction. "Flavius Josephus: Interpretation and History" is a multi-disciplinary collection of research on Josephus, the man, the historian, his era, and his writings. It will be of great use to scholars as well as the general public, who take an interest in the literary work of one of the most controversial figures of his era.

Dov Fedler was a "laatlammetjie", born and bred in Johannesburg in 1940 just as Hitler was getting into his stride. A third child was not on his parents' "want-list". It was hard enough supporting two much older children and a printing business struggling to exist.

When Dov was about three his mother had a "nervous breakdown" which is when he remembers seeing his first pencil and knowing precisely what it was that he wanted to do with his life. There are no coincidences in Dov's life. He believes that a hand of destiny has steered his path towards becoming a leading South African cartoonist for more than 45 years. Many dramatic encounters (not with aliens or spirits, but with everyday people) have shaped him and he wouldn't have missed any of it.

Dov's story is intensely personal and honest, with a powerful combination of humour, emotion and community history. OUt Of Line attempts to do a few short things. It is an autobiography but it is also an attempt to capture a particular history of a specific generation; that of the Jewish baby boomers who descended from mainly Lithuanian stock.

THE FREEHOF INSTITUTE OF PROGRESSIVE HALAKHAH The Freehof Institute of Progressive Halakhah is a creative research center devoted to studying and defining the progressive character of the halakhah in accordance with the principles and theology of Reform Judaism. It seeks to establish the ideological basis of Progressive halakhah, and its application to daily life. The Institute fosters serious studies, and helps scholars in various portions of the world to work together for a common cause. It provides an ongoing forum through symposia, and publications including the quarterly newsletter, HalakhaH, published under the editorship of Walter Jacob, in the United States. The foremost halakhic scholars in the Reform, Liberal, and Progressive rabbinate along with some Conservative and Orthodox colleagues as well as university professors serve on our Academic Council.

This sweeping survey of the history of Kabbalah in Italy represents a major contribution from one of the world's foremost Kabbalah scholars. The first to focus attention on a specific center of Kabbalah, Moshe Idel charts the ways that Kabbalistic thought and literature developed in Italy and how its unique geographical situation facilitated the arrival of both Spanish and Byzantine Kabbalah.
Idel analyzes the work of three major Kabbalists--Abraham Abulafia, Menahem Recanati, and Yohanan Alemanno--who represent diverse schools of thought: the ecstatic, the theosophical-theurgical, and the astromagical. Directing special attention to the interactions and tensions among these forms of Jewish Kabbalah and the nascent Christian Kabbalah, Idel brings to light the rich history of Kabbalah in Italy and the powerful influence of this important center on the emergence of Christian Kabbalah and European occultism in general.

The early 1930's were a period of dire foreboding for the entire world. The dark clouds of World War II were rapidly gathering, as the Jewish population of Europe was becoming especially vulnerable to the most hideous form of genocide that had ever been devised. It was with this background that a young boy made his way to school on the morning after Kristalnacht. In the fascinating and absorbing chapters that follow, the author, Norbert Weinberg, vividly describes how his family made it to the shores of America, via a year in London. Dressed in European-style knickers and hardly able to speak English, the boy tackles his social and educational challenges. His success is apparent when he is ordained as a rabbi at Yeshiva University in New York. Many captivating incidents and situations are discussed as the rabbi meets with personages such Senator Edward Kennedy, President Jimmy Carter and opens a session of the House of Representatives with an invocation. But the heart of the book lies in his warm relationships with congregants, members of other faiths and family. The pages are infused with humor as when, for example, the rabbi is housed in a small hotel in Quebec City, Canada, for a rabbinical interview. A brooding portrait of Jesus stares at him from over his bed. How do they get along? Or when, in that same city, he was invited to a formal event at which everyone raised a glass of wine to toast the Queen and his wine was not kosher. Was this a soluble predicament? The poignant pages of this book promise to warm the heart of every reader.