|
|
Books > Religion & Spirituality > Non-Christian sacred works & liturgy > Sacred texts > General
A trial lawyer by trade, a Christian by heart - author Mark Lanier
has trained in biblical languages and devoted his life to studying
and living the Bible. Living daily with the demands of his career
and the desire for a godly life, Lanier recognizes the importance
and challenge of finding daily time to spend in God's Word. His
study of the first five books of the Bible - the Torah, the Law -
has brought Life to his life. In Torah for Living, Lanier shares a
year's worth of devotionals - one for each day of the year. In each
devotional, Lanier reflects on the biblical text, relates the text
to the struggles facing faithful readers of the Bible, and
concludes with a prayer for the day.
The Bhagavata Purana is one of the most important, central and
popular scriptures of Hinduism. A medieval Sanskrit text, its
influence as a religious book has been comparable only to that of
the great Hindu epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Ithamar
Theodor here offers the first analysis for twenty years of the
Bhagavata Purana (often called the Fifth Veda ) and its different
layers of meaning. He addresses its lyrical meditations on the
activities of Krishna (avatar of Lord Vishnu), the central place it
affords to the doctrine of bhakti (religious devotion) and its
treatment of older Vedic traditions of knowledge. At the same time
he places this subtle, poetical book within the context of the
wider Hindu scriptures and the other Puranas, including the similar
but less grand and significant Vishnu Purana. The author argues
that the Bhagavata Purana is a unique work which represents the
meeting place of two great orthodox Hindu traditions, the
Vedic-Upanishadic and the Aesthetic. As such, it is one of India s
greatest theological treatises. This book illuminates its character
and continuing significance."
The World Religions Anthology: Faith, Worldview, Spirituality
provides students with a thoughtful and insightful overview of some
of the religions of the world and helps them identify both the
differences between them and the underlying themes and values that
connect them. The anthology is organized into nine chapters, the
first of which gives students a foundational understanding of what
constitutes religion and how to approach the study of sacred texts.
Additional chapters explore what are often referred to as Eastern
religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, and Jainism.
Students also learn about the Abrahamic religions, studying in turn
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Each chapter includes an
introduction and post-reading questions to provide context and
facilitate learning, reflection, and discussion. The World
Religions Anthology is an exemplary anthology for foundational
courses in world religions and the study of religious texts.
The essay Reading and studying the Qur'an is an updated English
version of the work appeared in Italian (Rome 2021) Leggere e
studiare il Corano which deals with the contents of the Qur'an, the
style and formal features of the text, the history and fixation of
it and an poutline of the reception in Islamic literature. The aim
of the work is to give a reader a description of what he/she can
find in the Islamic holy text and the state of the critical debates
on all the topics dealt with, focusing mainly on the growing
scholarly literature which appeared in the last 30 years. As such,
the work is unique in combining the aim to give comprehensive
information on the topic and, at the same, time, reconstruct the
critical debate in a balanced outline also emphasizing confessional
approaches and the dynamics in the study of the Qur'an. There is
nothing similar in contemporary scholarship and the book is a
handbook for students and scholars of Islam but also for readers in
religious studies who need to know how the main questions related
to the Islamic text have been discussed in recent scholarship.
|
|