This edition goes beyond others that largely leave readers to their own devices in understanding this cryptic work, by providing an entree into the text that parallels the traditional Chinese way of approaching it: alongside Slingerland's exquisite rendering of the work are his translations of a selection of classic Chinese commentaries that shed light on difficult passages, provide historical and cultural context, and invite the reader to ponder a range of interpretations. The ideal student edition, this volume also includes a general introduction, notes, multiple appendices -- including a glossary of technical terms, references to modern Western scholarship that point the way for further study, and an annotated bibliography.

This book offers new translations of the Tiruppavai and Nacciyar Tirumoli, composed by the ninth-century Tamil mystic and poetess Kotai. Two of the most significant compositions by a female mystic, the Tiruppavai and Nacciyar Tirumoli give expression to her powerful experiences through the use of a vibrant and bold sensuality, in which Visnu is her awesome, mesmerizing, and sometimes cruel lover. Kotai's poetry is characterized by a richness of language in which words are imbued with polyvalence and even the most mundane experiences are infused with the spirit of the divine. Her Tiruppavai and Nacciyar Tirumoli are garlands of words, redolent with meanings waiting to be discovered. Today Kotai is revered as a goddess, and as a testament to the enduring relevance of her poetry, her Tiruppavai and Nacciyar Tirumoli continue to be celebrated in South Indian ritual, music, dance, and the visual arts.
This book aims to capture the lyricism, beauty, and power of Kotai's original works. In addition, detailed notes based on traditional commentaries, and discussions of the ritual and performative lives of the Tiruppavai and Nacciyar Tirumoli highlight the importance of this ninth-century poet and her two poems over the past one thousand years.

The Gandharan birch-bark scrolls preserve the earliest remains of Buddhist literature known today and provide unprecedented insights into the history of Buddhism. This volume presents three manuscripts from the Bajaur Collection (BC), a group of nineteen scrolls discovered at the end of the twentieth century and named after their findspot in northwestern Pakistan. The manuscripts, written in the Gandhari language and Kharosthi script, date to the second century CE. The three scrolls-BC 4, BC 6, and BC 11-contain treatises that focus on the Buddhist concept of non-attachment. This volume is the first in the Gandharan Buddhist Texts series that is devoted to texts belonging to the Mahayana tradition. There are no known versions of these texts in other Buddhist traditions, and it is assumed that they are autographs. Andrea Schlosser provides an overview of the contents of the manuscripts and discusses their context, genre, possible authorship, physical layout, paleography, orthography, phonology, and morphology. Transliteration and translation of the texts are accompanied by notes on difficult terminology, photographs of the reconstructed scrolls, an index of Gandhari words with Sanskrit and Pali equivalents, and a preliminary transliteration of the scroll BC 19. The ebook edition of Three Early Mahayana Treatises of Gandhara is openly available at DOI 10.6069/9780295750750.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER "Dennis Prager has put together one of the most stunning commentaries in modern times on the most profound document in human history. It's a must-read that every person, religious and non-religious, should buy and peruse every night before bed. It'll make you think harder, pray more ardently, and understand your civilization better." - Ben Shapiro, host of "The Ben Shapiro Show" "Dennis Prager's commentary on Exodus will rank among the greatest modern Torah commentaries. That is how important I think it is. And I am clearly not alone... It might well be on its way to becoming the most widely read Torah commentary of our time-and by non-Jews as well as by Jews." - Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, bestselling author of Jewish Literacy Why do so many people think the Bible, the most influential book in world history, is outdated? Why do our friends and neighbors - and sometimes we ourselves - dismiss the Bible as irrelevant, irrational, immoral, or all of these things? This explanation of the Book of Exodus, the second book of the Bible, will demonstrate that the Bible is not only powerfully relevant to today's issues, but completely consistent with rational thought. Do you think the Bible permitted the trans-Atlantic slave trade? You won't after reading this book. Do you struggle to love your parents? If you do, you need this book. Do you doubt the existence of God because belief in God is "irrational?" This book will give you reason after reason to rethink your doubts. The title of this commentary is, "The Rational Bible" because its approach is entirely reason-based. The reader is never asked to accept anything on faith alone. As Prager says, "If something I write does not make rational sense, I have not done my job." The Rational Bible is the fruit of Dennis Prager's forty years of teaching the Bible to people of every faith, and no faith. On virtually every page, you will discover how the text relates to the contemporary world and to your life. His goal: to change your mind - and then change your life.

Hadith is understood here in its broader meaning as the bulk of the texts which contain information on the prophet Muhammad and his Companions, having the form of transmissions from them. The reliability of this material as a source for early Islam is still a highly debated issue. This selection of articles presents the different points of view in this debate and the varying methodological approaches with which scholars trained in modern secular sciences have tried to find a solution to the problem.

This book explores the seminal curriculum work of Joseph Schwab in the light of a Rabbinic Judaism to which Schwab did not-even, perhaps, could not-refer, but which Alan Block asserts might be central to a fuller understanding of Schwab's prescriptions for 'The Practical'. Using the language and methods of Rabbinic Judaism and Schwab's eclectic arts, Talmud, Curriculum, and The Practical opens a new, practical perspective onto American education, studying and redefining issues confronting education at the beginning of a new century and a new millennium.

In an age when physical books matter less and less, here is a thrilling story about a book that meant everything. This true-life detective story unveils the journey of a sacred text - the tenth-century annotated bible known as the Aleppo Codex - from its hiding place in a Syrian synagogue to the newly founded state of Israel. Based on Matti Friedman's independent research, documents kept secret for fifty years, and personal interviews with key players, the book proposes a new theory of what happened when the codex left Aleppo, Syria, in the late 1940s and eventually surfaced in Jerusalem, mysteriously incomplete. The codex provides vital keys to reading biblical texts. By recounting its history, Friedman explores the once vibrant Jewish communities in Islamic lands and follows the thread into the present, uncovering difficult truths about how the manuscript was taken to Israel and how its most important pages went missing. Along the way, he raises critical questions about who owns historical treasures and the role of myth and legend in the creation of a nation.

Providing commentary on three oft-recited chapters of the Holy Qur'an, this excerpt of the monumental discourse by 18th-century mystic and scholar Ahmad ibn 'Ajiba presents both an example of Islamic erudition based on traditional sources as well as insight into his own personal journey of discovery. Each verse is expounded upon with an exoteric explanation as well as related with an esoteric commentary to the mystic path of Islam, Sufism. As one of the few scholarly translations of traditional Qur'anic exegesis, this volume affords the previously unacquainted access not only to how educated Muslims have understood the dominant themes of these three chapters since the earliest days of Islam but also to how traditional Sufic sources have viewed the same themes in respect to the microcosm of the soul and the journey towards God.

The Qur'an's biblical foregrounds have long formed a controversial concern within Qur'anic Studies, with field-leading scholars debating the Muslim scripture's complex relationship and response to the Judeo-Christian canon. This contentious subject has largely overshadowed, however, a reciprocal, yet no less rich, question which motivates the present study. Rather than read the Muslim scripture in light of its biblical antecedents, The Qur'an & Kerygma adopts the inverse approach, situating the Qur'an as itself the formative foreground to Western literary innovation and biblical exegesis, stretching from late antiquity in the 9th century to postmodernity in the 20th. The book argues, in particular, that Qur'anic readings and renditions have provoked and paralleled key developments in the Christian canon and its critique, catalyzing pivotal acts of authorship and interpretation which have creatively contoured the language and legacy of biblical kerygma. Structured chronologically, the study's span of more than a millennium is sustained by its specific concentration on four case studies selected from representative areas and eras, exploring innovative translations and interpretations of the Qur'an authored by Christian literati from 9th-century Andalucia to 20th-century North America. Mirroring its subject matter, the book engages a literary critical approach, offering close-readings of targeted texts frequently neglected and never before synthesized in a single study, highlighting the stylistic, as well as spiritual, influence on Western authors exercised by Islamic writ.

This volume offers a complete translation of the Samyutta Nikaya, "The Connected Discourses of the Buddha," the third of the four great collections in the Sutta Pitaka of the Pali Canon. The Samyutta Nikaya consists of fifty-six chapters, each governed by a unifying theme that binds together the Buddha's suttas or discourses. The chapters are organized into five major parts.
The first, The Book with Verses, is a compilation of suttas composed largely in verse. This book ranks as one of the most inspiring compilations in the Buddhist canon, showing the Buddha in his full grandeur as the peerless "teacher of gods and humans." The other four books deal in depth with the philosophical principles and meditative structures of early Buddhism. They combine into orderly chapters all the important short discourses of the Buddha on such major topics as dependent origination, the five aggregates, the six sense bases, the seven factors of enlightenment, the Noble Eightfold Path, and the Four Noble Truths.
Among the four large Nikayas belonging to the Pali Canon, the Samyutta Nikaya serves as the repository for the many shorter suttas of the Buddha where he discloses his radical insights into the nature of reality and his unique path to spiritual emancipation. This collection, it seems, was directed mainly at those disciples who were capable of grasping the deepest dimensions of wisdom and of clarifying them for others, and also provided guidance to meditators intent on consummating their efforts with the direct realization of the ultimate truth.
The present work begins with an insightful general introduction to the Samyutta Nikaya as a whole. Each of the five parts is also provided with its own introduction, intended to guide the reader through this vast, ocean-like collection of suttas.
To further assist the reader, the translator has provided an extensive body of notes clarifying various problems concerning both the language and the meaning of the texts.
Distinguished by its lucidity and technical precision, this new translation makes this ancient collection of the Buddha's discourses accessible and comprehensible to the thoughtful reader of today. Like its two predecessors in this series,
"The Connected Discourses of the Buddha" is sure to merit a place of honour in the library of every serious student of Buddhism.