In 1143 Robert of Ketton produced the first Latin translation of the Qur'an. This translation, extant in 24 manuscripts, was one of the main ways in which Latin European readers had access to the Muslim holy book. Yet it was not the only means of transmission of Quranic stories and concepts to the Latin world: there were other medieval translations into Latin of the Qur'an and of Christian polemical texts composed in Arabic which transmitted elements of the Qur'an (often in a polemical mode). The essays in this volume examine the range of medieval Latin transmission of the Qur'an and reaction to the Qur'an by concentrating on the manuscript traditions of medieval Qur'an translations and anti-Islamic polemics in Latin. We see how the Arabic text was transmitted and studied in Medieval Europe. We examine the strategies of translators who struggled to find a proper vocabulary and syntax to render Quranic terms into Latin, at times showing miscomprehensions of the text or willful distortions for polemical purposes. These translations and interpretations by Latin authors working primarily in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Spain were the main sources of information about Islam for European scholars until well into the sixteenth century, when they were printed, reused and commented. This volume presents a key assessment of a crucial chapter in European understandings of Islam.

This book is a collection of readings from Sallie McFague's most essential theological works. In this collection, Sallie McFague offers a lucid and powerful guide to theological thinking about God and the world, individual and community, humanity and nature, reality and metaphor, the sacramental and the prophetic, and the critical issue of climate change. She calls Christians to new feeling, new acting, and new thinking.

For all Muslims the Qur'an is the word of God. In the first centuries of Islam, however, many individuals and groups, and some Shi'is, believed that the generally accepted text of the Qur'an is corrupt. The Shi'is asserted that redactors had altered or deleted among other things all passages that supported the rights of 'Ali and his successors or that condemned his enemies. One of the fullest lists of these alleged changes and of other variant readings is to be found in the work of al-Sayyari (3rd/9th century), which is indeed among the earliest Shi'i books to have survived. In many cases the alternative readings that al-Sayyari presents substantially contribute to our understanding of early Shi'i doctrine and of the early and numerous debates about the Qur'an in general.

The first half of the book of Daniel contains world-famous stories like the Writing on the Wall. These stories have mostly been transmitted in Aramaic, not Hebrew, as has the influential apocalypse of Daniel 7. This Aramaic corpus shows clear signs of multiple authorship. Which different textual layers can we tease apart, and what do they tell us about the changing function of the Danielic material during the Second Temple Period? This monograph compares the Masoretic Text of Daniel to ancient manuscripts and translations preserving textual variants. By highlighting tensions in the reconstructed archetype underlying all these texts, it then probes the tales' prehistory even further, showing how Daniel underwent many transformations to yield the book we know today.

The Scriptures of Ancient Judaism: A Secular Introduction provides students with a scholarly exploration of the literature and themes of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible and cognate Near Eastern materials. The text features diverse interdisciplinary and methodological points of view from secular biblical scholars, offering readers a comprehensive, thoughtful, and accessible point of entry to the study of the ancient world and the religious heritage of Judaism. The text approaches the scriptures of ancient Judaism without religious bias or dogmatic intent. Rather, the book is designed to ignite interest in the history and literature of the ancient world and to present the latest scholarship related to the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible. Students are introduced to Israelite religious traditions, their unique worldviews, and offered a primer on how to read ancient texts. Later chapters examine the histories and cultures of the ancient Near East and Jewish historiography. Legal texts, prophetic texts, biblical poetry and wisdom literature, and apocalyptic writings found within the Hebrew Bible and other related texts are analyzed. Providing students a rich and complete introduction, The Scriptures of Ancient Judaism is an ideal text for courses in biblical studies.

For the first time, the dramatic changes the Qur'anic code underwent during the Umayyad period (660-750 C.E.) are analysed and presented on the basis of a selection of material in good part unpublished. In Qur'ans of the Umayyads, Francois Deroche offers a chronology of the various developments which marked the period, in an approach combining philology, art history, codicology and palaeography. The conclusions he reaches challenge the traditional account about the writing down of the Qur'an and throw a new light on the role of the Umayyads in its handwritten diffusion. Winner of 23rd I.R. Iran World Award for the Book of the Year 2016!

In A Discourse and Register Analysis of the Prophetic Book of Joel, Colin M. Toffelmire presents a thorough analysis of the text of Joel from the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics. While traditional explorations of Joel generally engage the book from an historical or literary perspective, here Toffelmire examines syntactic and semantic patterning in the book, and builds from there toward a description of the linguistic register and context of situation that these linguistic patterns suggest. This work also showcases the usefulness of discourse analysis grounded in Systemic Functional Linguistics for the analysis of ancient texts.

This collection presents innovative research by scholars from across the globe in celebration of Gabriele Boccaccini's sixtieth birthday and to honor his contribution to the study of early Judaism and Christianity. In harmony with Boccaccini's determination to promote the study of Second Temple Judaism in its own right, this volume includes studies on various issues raised in early Jewish apocalyptic literature (e.g., 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch, 4 Ezra), the Dead Sea Scrolls, and other early Jewish texts, from Tobit to Ben Sira to Philo and beyond. The volume also provides several investigations on early Christianity in intimate conversation with its Jewish sources, consistent with Boccaccini's efforts to transcend confessional and disciplinary divisions by situating the origins of Christianity firmly within Second Temple Judaism. Finally, the volume includes essays that look at Jewish-Christian relations in the centuries following the Second Temple period, a harvest of Boccaccini's labor to rethink the relationship between Judaism and Christianity in light of their shared yet contested heritage.

The study of the Books of Chronicles has focused in the past mainly on its literary relationship to Historical Books such as Samuel and Kings. Less attention was payed to its possible relationships to the priestly literature. Against this backdrop, this volume aims to examine the literary and socio-historical relationship between the Books of Chronicles and the priestly literature (in the Pentateuch and in Ezekiel). Since Chronicles and Pentateuch (and also Ezekiel) studies have been regarded as separate fields of study, we invited experts from both fields in order to open a space for fruitful discussions with each other. The contributions deal with connections and interactions between specific texts, ideas, and socio-historical contexts of the literary works, as well as with broad observations of the relationship between them.

Winner of the 2020 Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion: Historical Studies In her groundbreaking investigation from the perspective of the aesthetics of religion, Isabel Laack explores the religion and art of writing of the pre-Hispanic Aztecs of Mexico. Inspired by postcolonial approaches, she reveals Eurocentric biases in academic representations of Aztec cosmovision, ontology, epistemology, ritual, aesthetics, and the writing system to provide a powerful interpretation of the Nahua sense of reality. Laack transcends the concept of "sacred scripture" traditionally employed in religions studies in order to reconstruct the Indigenous semiotic theory and to reveal how Aztec pictography can express complex aspects of embodied meaning. Her study offers an innovative approach to nonphonographic semiotic systems, as created in many world cultures, and expands our understanding of human recorded visual communication. This book will be essential reading for scholars and readers interested in the history of religions, Mesoamerican studies, and the ancient civilizations of the Americas. "This excellent book, written with intellectual courage and critical self-awareness, is a brilliant, multilayered thought experiment into the images and stories that made up the Nahua sense of reality as woven into their sensational ritual performances and colorful symbolic writing system." - David Carrasco, Harvard University

This volume is a collection of fresh essays in honor of Professor John T. Townsend. It focuses on the interpretation of the common Jewish and Christian Scripture (the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament) and on its two off-shoots (Rabbinic Judaism and the New Testament), as well as on Jewish-Christian relations. The contributors, who are prominent scholars in their fields, include James L. Crenshaw, Goeran Eidevall, Anne E. Gardner, Lawrence M. Wills, Cecilia Wassen, Robert L. Brawley, Joseph B. Tyson, Eldon J. Epp, Yaakov Elman, Rivka Ulmer, Andreas Lehnardt, Reuven Kimelman, Bruce Chilton, and Michael W. Duggan. "an engaging and impressive scholarly work." - Zev Garber, Los Angeles Valley College, The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 81.3 (2019)

This work presents to the scholarly world the hitherto unpublished trove of over 500 catchwords that were attached to Masoretic doublet notes in the Leningrad Codex. All the doublets with their catchwords are listed both in the chronological order of their first appearance in the Bible and again on their second appearance. The nature of the catchwords, their purpose, and their relation to other Masoretic notes are described in detail, and suggestions are made how they can be of value to biblical scholars.

Nagarjuna's Vigrahavyavartani is an essential work of Madhyamaka Buddhist philosophical literature. Written in an accessible question-and-answer style, it contains Nagarjuna's replies to criticisms of his philosophy of the "Middle Way." The Vigrahavyavartani has been widely cited both in canonical literature and in recent scholarship; it has remained a central text in India, Tibet, China, and Japan, and has attracted the interest of greater and greater numbers of Western readers.
In The Dispeller of Disputes, Jan Westerhoff offers a clear new translation of the Vigrahavyavartani, taking current philological research and all available editions into account, and adding his own insightful philosophical commentary on the text. Crucial manuscript material has been discovered since the earlier translations were written, and Westerhoff draws on this material to produce a study reflecting the most up-to-date research on this text. In his nuanced and incisive commentary, he explains Nagarjuna's arguments, grounds them in historical and textual scholarship, and explicitly connects them to contemporary philosophical concerns.