Here, in one compact volume, is the episode of the great Hindu epic the Mahabharata known as The Message of the Master or the Song of God, in which Krishna reveals himself to be a god and expounds on the duties of the warrior, the prince, and all those who wish to follow in the path of the divine. This 1907 volume is a compilation of the best English translations available at the turn of the 20th century edited by one of the most influential thinkers of the early New Age movement known as New Thought, which was intensely interested in all manner of spirituality and serves as a succinct introduction to Hindu philosophy. A beloved guide to living a fulfilling life, this is essential reading for those interested in global religion and comparative mythology.American writer WILLIAM WALKER ATKINSON (1862 1932) aka Theron Q. Dumont was born in Baltimore and had built up a successful law practice in Pennsylvania before professional burnout led him to the religious New Thought movement. He served as editor of the popular magazine New Thought from 1901 to 1905, and as editor of the journal Advanced Thought from 1916 to 1919. He authored dozens of New Thought books including Arcane Formula or Mental Alchemy and Vril, or Vital Magnetism under numerous pseudonyms, some of which are likely still unknown today.

Rabbinic hermeneutics in ancient Judaism reflects this multifaceted world of the text and of reality, seen as a world of reference worth commentary. As a mirror, it includes this world but perhaps also falsifies reality, adapting it to one's own aims and necessities. It consists of four parts: Part I, considered as introduction, is the description of the "Rabbinic Workshop" (Officina Rabbinica), the rabbinic world where the student plays a role and a reformation of a reformation always takes place, the world where the mirror was created and manufactured. Part II deals with the historical environment, the world of reference of rabbinic Judaism in Palestine and in the Hellenistic Diaspora (Reflecting Roman Religion); Part III focuses on magic and the sciences, as ancient (political and empirical) activities of influence in the double meaning of receiving and adopting something and of attempt to produce an effect on persons and objects (Performing the Craft of Sciences and Magic). Part IV addresses the rabbinic concern with texts (Reflecting on Languages and Texts) as the main area of "influence" of the rabbinic academy in a space between the texts of the past and the real world of the present.

The present volume provides a comparative look at the contents and layout features of secondary annotations in biblical manuscripts across linguistic traditions. Due to the privileged focus on the text in the columns, these annotations and the practices that produced them have not received the scholarly attention they deserve. The vast richness of extant verbal and figurative notes accompanying the biblical texts in the intercolumns and margins of the manuscript pages have thus been largely overlooked. The case studies gathered in this volume explore Jewish and Christian biblical manuscripts through the lens of their annotations, addressing the various relationships between the primary layer of text and the secondary notes, and exploring the roles and functions of annotated manuscripts as cultural artifacts. By approaching biblical manuscripts as potential "notepads", the volume offers theoretical reflection and empirical analyses of the ways in which secondary notes may shed new light on the development and transmission of text traditions, the shifting engagement with biblical manuscripts over time, as well as the change of use and interpretation that may result from the addition of the notes themselves.

Papers collected in this volume try to illuminate various aspects of philosophical theology dealt with by different Jewish and early Christian authors and texts (e.g. the Acts of the Apostles, Philo, Origen, Gregory of Nazianzus), rooted in and influenced by the Hellenistic religious, cultural, and philosophical context, and they also focus on the literary and cultural traditions of Hellenized Judaism and its reception (e.g. Sibylline Oracles, Prayer of Manasseh), including material culture ("Elephant Mosaic Panel" from Huqoq synagogue). By studying the Hellenistic influences on early Christianity, both in response to and in reaction against early Hellenized Judaism, the volume intends not only to better understand Christianity, as a religious and historical phenomenon with a profound impact on the development of European civilization, but also to better comprehend Hellenism and its consequences which have often been relegated to the realm of political history.

Since the Buddha did not fully explain the theory of persons that underlies his teaching, in later centuries a number of different interpretations were developed. This book presents the interpretation by the celebrated Indian Buddhist philosopher, Candrakirti (ca. 570-650 C.E.). Candrakirti's fullest statement of the theory is included in his Autocommentary on the Introduction to the Middle Way (Madhyamakavatarabhasya), which is, along with his Introduction to the Middle Way (Madhyamakavatara ), among the central treatises that present the Prasavgika account of the Madhyamaka (Middle Way) philosophy. In this book, Candrakirti's most complete statement of his theory of persons is translated and provided with an introduction and commentary that present a careful philosophical analysis of Candrakirti's account of the selflessness of persons. This analysis is both philologically precise and analytically sophisticated. The book is of interest to scholars of Buddhism generally and especially to scholars of Indian Buddhist philosophy.

In Preface to Paradise Lost, C. S. Lewis presents an illuminating reflection on John Milton's Paradise Lost, the seminal classic that profoundly influenced Christian thought as well as Lewis's own work. Lewis a revered scholar and professor of literature closely examines the style, content, structure, and themes of Milton's masterpiece, a retelling of the biblical story from the Fall of Humankind, Satan's temptation, and the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. Considering this story within the context of the Western literary tradition, Lewis offers invaluable insights into Paradise Lost and the nature of literature itself, unveiling the poem's beauty and its wisdom. With a clarity of thought and a style that are the trademarks of Lewis's writing, he provides answers with a lucidity and lightness that deepens our understanding of Milton's immortal work. Also inspiring new readers to revisit Paradise Lost, Lewis reminds us of why elements including ritual, splendour and joy deserve to exist and hold a sacred place in human life. One of Lewis's most revered scholarly works, Preface to Paradise Lost is an indispensable read for new and lifelong fans of Lewis's writing.

The articles in this volume investigate changes in texts that became to be regarded as holy and unchangeable in Judaism and Christianity. The volume seeks to draw attention to the "empirical" evidence from Qumran, the Septuagint as well as from passages in the Hebrew Scriptures that have been shaped by the use of other texts. The contributions are divided into three main sections: The first section deals with methodological questions concerning textual changes. The second section consists of concrete examples from the Hebrew Bible, Qumran and Septuagint on how the texts were changed, corrected, edited and interpreted. The contributions of the third section will investigate the general influence and impact of Deuteronomistic ideology and phraseology on later texts.

The present volume is one of the first to concentrate on a specific theme of biblical interpretation in the Dead Sea Scrolls, namely the book of Genesis. In particular the volume is concerned with the links displayed by the Qumranic biblical interpetation to the inner-biblical interpretation and the final shaping of the Hebrew scriptures. Moshe Bar-Asher studies cases of such inner biblical interpretative comments; Michael Segal deals with the Garden of Eden story in the scrolls and other contemporary Jewish sources; Reinhard Kratz analizes the story of the Flood as preamble for the lives of the Patriarchs in the Hebrew Bible; Devorah Dimant examines this theme in the Qumran scrolls; Roman Viehlhauer explores the story of Sodom and Gomorrah; George Brooke and Atar Livneh discuss aspects of Jacob's career; Harald Samuel review the career of Levi; Liora Goldman examines the Aramaic work the Visions of Amram; Lawrence Schiffman and Aharon Shemesh discuss halakhic aspects of stories about the Patriarchs; Moshe Bernstein provides an overview of the references to the Patriarchs in the Qumran scrolls.

This study examines by a meticulous analysis of abundant rabbinic citations the pluralism of the Halakhah in the pre-70 period which stands in contrast to the fixed Halakhah of later periods. The Temple's destruction provoked, for political motives, the initiation of this significant shift, which protracted itself, in developmental stages, for a longer period. The transition from the Tannaitic to the Amoraic era was a consequential turning point on the extended path from flexibility to rigidity in Jewish law.

The holy book of Islam, the Koran as a book is the result of: 1. revelations given to Muhammad in the period 610- 632 (Muhammad's death) 2. writing down of these revelations by people around Muhammad in a period probably starting some years after 610, and ending a couple of years after 632 3. compiling of these writings stretching from mid-630s and perhaps until mid-650s 4. vowelling and dotting of the text (ancient Arabic was written without dots, leaving some letters look identical, and without vowels, which can make two different words look identical). Old Koran Essential to the reading of the Koran are the interpretations, which are still conducted, but which were more normal and accepted in the first centuries of Islam. As the Koran has a structure and a language, as well as allusions, which often are difficult for the normal Muslim to understand, a whole science were built around the comprehension of the Koran. The early Muslims studied history, language and nature science in an effort of understanding the Koran better. The product is surprisingly well accepted by the whole Muslim society, and no Muslim child or adult of today, studying the Koran, does this without help from the interpretations built on the early science of the Koran.

The Holy Qur,an was the revealation given to Prophet Muhammad (P.B.U.H.) from Allah (God)by way of the Angel Gabriel (S.R.A.) approx. 1400 A.D.

This volume discusses various conceptions of family and kinship in the context of deuterocanonical literature. After analyzing the topic family in a narrow sense of the term, the articles investigate general ideas of morality, respect, or love and take a critical look at representations of gender, power, and social norms in Judaism and Early Christianity.

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.

What accounts for the seemingly atypical pattern of scriptural exegesis that Paul uses to interpret Exodus 34 in 2 Cor 3:7-18? While previous scholars have approached this question from a variety of angles, in this monograph, Michael Cover grapples particularly with the evidence of contemporaneous Jewish and Greco-Roman commentary traditions. Through comparison with Philo of Alexandria's Allegorical Commentary, the Pseudo-Philonic homilies De Jona and De Sampsone, the Anonymous Theaetetus Commentary, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Seneca's Epistulae morales, and other New Testament texts, Paul's interpretation of Exodus emerges as part of a wider commentary practice that Cover terms "secondary-level exegesis." This study also provides new analysis of the way ancient authors, including Paul, interwove commentary forms and epistolary rhetoric and offers a reconstruction of the context of Paul's conflict with rival apostles in Corinth. At root was the legacy of Moses and of the Pentateuch itself, how the scriptures ought to be read, and how Platonizing theological and anthropological traditions might be interwoven with Paul's messianic gospel.

Fifty years after the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls there have been many advances in the field of Qumran Studies. Yet much work remains undone. In particular the study of the scrolls has continued to follow long established historical critical methods while largely falling to incorporate recent advances in literary, ideological and sociological approaches. The essays collected here are the result of the Bristol Colloquium on the Dead Sea Scrolls held in September 2003. Here, ten scholars working in a diversity of areas demonstrate how these recent advances in scholarship increase our knowledge of the scrolls, their historical context, and their impact on modern critical scholarship. The contributors consider a wide range of approaches, ranging across discussions in sociology, anthropology, literary studies, post-colonialism and ideological criticism. These essays will help to take Qumran Studies forward in new and creative ways. This is volume 52 in the Library of Second Temple Studies series (formerly the Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha Supplement series).