In this highly original study, David Gillis demonstrates that the Mishneh torah, Maimonides' code of Jewish law, has the structure of a microcosm. Through this symbolic form, Maimonides presents the law as designed to perfect the individual and society by shaping them in the image of the divinely created cosmic order. The commandments of the law thereby bring human beings closer to fulfilling their ultimate purpose, knowledge of God. This symbolism turns the Mishneh torah into an object of contemplation that itself communicates such knowledge. In short, it is a work of art. Gillis unpacks the metaphysical and cosmological underpinnings of Maimonides' scheme of organization with consummate skill, allowing the reader to understand the Mishneh torah's artistic dimension and to appreciate its power. Moreover, as he makes clear, uncovering this dimension casts new light on one of the great cruxes of Maimonides studies: the relationship of the Mishneh torah to his philosophical treatise The Guide of the Perplexed. A fundamental unity is revealed between Maimonides the codifier and Maimonides the philosopher that has not been fully appreciated hitherto. Maimonides' artistry in composition is repeatedly shown to serve his aims in persuading us of the coherence and wisdom of the halakhic system. Gillis's fine exegesis sets in high relief the humane and transcendental purposes and methods of halakhah as Maimonides conceived of it, in an argument that is sure-footed and convincing.

For the first time, in one, book, are the three most popular English translations of the Qur an: the ones by Abdullah Yusuf Ali, Marmaduke Pickthall, and Muhammad Habib Shakir. Two of them, Abdullah Yusuf Ali and Muhammad Habib Shakir are Arabic scholars

In Enchanted Dulcinea, this English translation of the novel by Mexican author Angelina Muniz-Huberman, Dulcinea travels in a car writing novels in her mind about several Dulcineas: a medieval princess on a quest, a nineteenth-century lady-in-waiting in Mexico, and a twentieth-century young woman who was sent to Russia as a girl to escape the Spanish Civil War and later journeys to Mexico to reunite with her parents. Unsure of her identity, Dulcinea remembers, debates, and records memories of her exile. As she circles Mexico City, she examines the role of memory, speech, and writing through her fragmented narrative voice. Dulcinea explores her place in the world through storytelling, blurring the line between reality and imagination. This novel pairs a lyrical and contemplative style with experimental writing to present common themes of identity formation and exile in a unique form. Dulcinea's quest is also one of spiritual connection with apocalyptic and mystical overtones. With allusions to both Christian and Jewish mystical traditions, this novel reveals a crypto-Jewish presence typical of Muniz-Huberman's writing, forming part of a Sephardic literary tradition. This edition includes an introduction and annotations by the translator, Rebecca Marquis.

The "Upanishads" are the sacred writings of Hinduism. They are perhaps the greatest of all the books in the history of world religions. Their origins predate recorded history, being revealed to the Rishis of the Vedic civilization some 5000 to 10,000 years ago. Many see them as the kernel of the mystical, philosophical truths that are the basis of the Higher World religion of Hinduism, their cradle, of which Buddhism is a successor and Judaism is an offshoot. With Islam and Christianity being offshoots of Judaism, this makes them the foundational documents for understanding and practising religion today. Much of the original text of the "Upanishads" is archaic and occasionally corrupted, but it does convey a moral and ethical thrust that is abundantly clear. Alan Jacobs uses modern free verse to convey the essential meaning and part of the original text. He omits Sanskrit words as far as possible and the commentary provided is contemporary rather than ancient.

The book of Numbers in Hebrew, Bemidbar, In the Wilderness is a key text for our time. It is among the most searching, self-critical books in all of literature about what Nelson Mandela called the long walk to freedom. Its message is that there is no shortcut to liberty. Numbers is not an easy book to read, nor is it an optimistic one. It is a sober warning set in the midst of a text the Hebrew Bible that remains the West s master narrative of hope.

The Mosaic books, especially Exodus and Numbers, are about the journey from slavery to freedom and from oppression to law-governed liberty. On the map, the distance from Egypt to the Promised Land is not far. But the message of Numbers is that it always takes longer than you think. For the journey is not just physical, a walk across the desert. It is psychological, moral, and spiritual. It takes as long as the time needed for human beings to change....

You cannot arrive at freedom merely by escaping from slavery. It is won only when a nation takes upon itself the responsibilities of self-restraint, courage, and patience. Without that, a journey of a few hundred miles can take forty years. Even then, it has only just begun.

Human cultures, especially religious groups but also secular artists and performers, often ritualize bodies as sacred books and books as divine beings. An international team of scholars addresses this theme of books as sacred beings in this volume through an impressively diverse range of primary material and perspectives. These studies show the wide variety of ways in which books, bodies, and beings intermingle in material sacred texts manipulated by human bodies, and also in literary and artistic depictions of transcendent textual bodies. The boundary between material immanence and spiritual transcendence turns out to be very thin indeed when people use books. The chapters on specific book practices in different cultures are bracketed by an introduction to the collection and by a concluding essay that extrapolates on the widespread theme of books as sacred beings.

Mirigavati or The Magic Doe is the work of Shaikh Qutban Suhravardi, an Indian Sufi master who was also an expert poet and storyteller attached to the glittering court-in-exile of Sultan Husain Shah Sharqi of Jaunpur. Composed in 1503 as an introduction to mystical practice for disciples, this powerful Hindavi or early Hindi Sufi romance is a richly layered and sophisticated text, simultaneously a spiritual enigma and an exciting love-story full of adventures. The Mirigavati is both an excellent introduction to Sufism and one of the true literary classics of pre-modern India, a story that draws freely on the large pool of Indian, Islamic, and European narrative motifs in its distinctive telling of a mystical quest and its resolution. Adventures from the Odyssey and the voyages of Sindbad the Sailor-sea voyages, encounters with monstrous serpents, damsels in distress, flying demons and cannibals in caves, among others-surface in Suhravardi's rollicking tale, marking it as first-rate entertainment for its time and, in private sessions in Sufi shrines, a narrative that shaped the interior journey for novices. Before his untimely death in 2009, Aditya Behl had completed this complete blank verse translation of the critical edition of the Mirigavati, which reveals the precise mechanism and workings of spiritual signification and use in a major tradition of world and Indian literature.

The goal of this book is to suggest that Jesus as a creative artist was heavily influenced by the Hebrew Bible's Book of Proverbs. It posits that he created some of his short parables from specific verses found in Proverbs, suggests that he expanded some basic sapient themes present in this book when composing his parables, and shows him reacting negatively to the commonly held belief that this Book's overall concept of wisdom is that the wise are rewarded and the fools are punished by God through their own self-destructive choices and subsequent actions. Thus this text points to Jesus as an inventive artist, a concept not usually associated with him, and it complicates simplistic ways of defining biblical wisdom. Part I demonstrates how Jesus might have created his tales from specific proverbs found in the Book of Proverbs. The overarching theme for these parables is wisdom: Jesus as wisdom (I Cor. 1:24) speaking wisdom in new ways. Part II discusses Jesus as a self-actualized artist who creatively designed these tales. It examines what shaped Jesus' artistry, what might have been the sources of his literacy, why he might have chosen to expand individual proverbs imaginatively in order to create his moral tales, and how his wisdom enhanced conventional attitudes toward wisdom as the former included and clarified his new "kingdom of God" concepts. This book could be used in courses treating Literature and the Bible, Biblical Art, The Humanity of Jesus, and Wisdom Literature Common to Christians and Jews.

This volume is a systematic and comprehensive introduction to one of the most read texts in South Asia, the Bhagavad-gita. The Bhagavad-gita is at its core a religious text, a philosophical treatise and a literary work, which has occupied an authoritative position within Hinduism for the past millennium. This book brings together themes central to the study of the Gita, as it is popularly known - such as the Bhagavad-gita's structure, the history of its exegesis, its acceptance by different traditions within Hinduism and its national and global relevance. It highlights the richness of the Gita's interpretations, examines its great interpretive flexibility and at the same time offers a conceptual structure based on a traditional commentarial tradition. With contributions from major scholars across the world, this book will be indispensable for scholars and researchers of religious studies, especially Hinduism, Indian philosophy, Asian philosophy, Indian history, literature and South Asian studies.

The Scholastic Culture of the Babylonian Talmud studies how and in what cultural context the Talmud began to take shape in the scholastic centers of rabbinic Babylonia. Bickart tracks the use of the term tistayem ("let it be promulgated") and its analogs, in contexts ranging from Amoraic disciple circles to Geonic texts, and in comparison with literatures of Syriac-speaking Christians. The study demonstrates increasing academization during the talmudic period, and supports a gradual model of the Talmud's redaction.

In this engaging book of commentary on the Talmud, the author upends the long-held theory of the immutability of halakhah, Jewish law. In her detailed analysis of over 80 short halakhic anecdotes in the Babylonian Talmud, the author shows that the Talmud itself promotes halakhic change. She leads the reader through one sugya (discussion unit) after another, accumulating evidence for her rather radical thesis. Along the way, she teases out details of what life was like 1500 years ago for women in their relationships with men and for students in their relationships with mentors. An eye-opening read by one of today's leading Talmud scholars.

Metaphors are a vital linguistic component of religious speech and serve as a cultural indicator of how groups understand themselves and the world. The essays compiled in this volume analyze the use, function, and structure of metaphors in Jewish writings from the Hellenistic-Roman period (including the works of Philo and the texts of Qumran), as well as in apocryphal early Christian texts and inscriptions.

Scholars, thinkers, and activists around the world are paying increasing attention to a legal reform method that promises to revolutionize the way people think about Islamic law. Known as "The Objectives of the Shari'a" (maqasid al-shari'a), the theory offers a way to derive and apply new Islamic laws using an ancient methodology. The theory identifies core objectives that underlie Islamic law, and then looks at inherited Islamic laws to see whether they meet those objectives. According to the maqasid theory, historical Islamic laws that meet their objectives should be retained, and those that do not-no matter how entrenched in practice or embedded in texts-should be discarded or reformed. Recently, several scholars have questioned the maqasid theory, arguing that it is designed not to reform laws, but to support existing power structures. They warn that adopting the maqasid wholesale would set the reform project back, ensuring that inherited Islamic laws are never fully reformed to agree with contemporary values like gender-egalitarianism and universal human rights. The Objectives of Islamic Law: The Promises and Challenges of the Maqasid al-Shari'a captures the ongoing debate between proponents and skeptics of the maqasid theory. It raises some of the most important issues in Islamic legal debates today, and lays out visions for the future of Islamic law.

The Babylonia Talmud is an immense collection of laws, practices, and customs of the Jewish people, edited in its present form in the fifth century. Tractate Megilla (literally, 'scroll') concerns a deep exegesis of the history and customs of the holiday of Purim, when the Jewish people in ancient Persia were saved through the intervention of Queen Esther at the last minute from extermination by the wicked Haman. It is a holiday of gaiety and commemoration. The Talmud is often extremely difficult to understand, and tractate Megilla is no exception. The Whole Megilla is an effort to explain the text, page by page, for interested readers. It affords the reader an opportunity to capture the flavor of the Talmud and follow the notoriously demanding text.