In his Book of Marvels and Travels, Sir John Mandeville describes a journey from Europe to Jerusalem and on into Asia, and the many wonderful and monstrous peoples and practices in the East. Written in the fourteenth century, the Book is a captivating blend of fact and fantasy, an extraordinary travel narrative that offers some revealing and unexpected attitudes towards other races and religions. It was immensely popular, and numbered among its readers Chaucer, Columbus, and Thomas More. Here Mandeville tells us about the Sultan in Cairo, the Great Khan in China, and the mythical Christian prince Prester John. There are giants and pygmies, cannibals and Amazons, headless humans and people with a single foot so huge it can shield them from the sun. Forceful and opinionated, the narrator is by turns learned, playful, and moralizing, with an endless curiosity about different cultures.
Anthony Bale provides a lively new translation along with an introduction that considers questions of authorship and origins, the early travel narrative, Crusading and religious difference, fantasy and the European Age of Discovery, and Mandeville's pervasive popularity and influence. The book includes helpful notes on historical context that provide insights into medieval culture and attitudes. There are also three maps, an index of places and a general index, and a note on medieval measurements.
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This volume presents international perspectives on interreligious dialogue, with a particular focus on how this can be found or understood within biblical texts. The volume is in four parts covering both the Old and New Testaments (and related Greco Roman texts) as well as the history of reception and issues of hermeneutics. Issues of the relationships between religious cultures are assessed both in antiquity and modernity In Part 1 (Old Testament) contributions range from the discussion of the bible and plurality of theologies in church life (Erhard Gerstenberger) to the challenge of multi-culturalism (Cornelis Van Dam). Part 2 (New Testament and Greco-Roman Texts) considers such things as Pagan, Jewish and Christian historiography (Armin Baum) and the different beliefs it is possible to discern in the Ephesian community (Tor Vegge). Part 3 provides issues from the history of reception - including the role of Jesus in Islam (Craig A. Evans). The volume is completed by a hermeneutical reflection by Joze Krasovec, which draws the threads of dialogue together and questions how we can best examine the bible in a modern, international, multicultural society.

Breaking new ground in Christian - Jewish dialogue Deep Calls to Deep uses a new paradigm, one which is marked by "experiential theology": a theology that addresses and emerges out of day to day lived experience of practising Christians and Jews. The product of a unique four year dialogue process - designed, orchestrated and led by Rabbi Tony Bayfield - the book brings together a diverse array of important Christian and Jewish scholars to engage in conversation. Themes discussed include Modern Western culture; how Christians and Jews should live in a modern Western democracy; how Christians and Jews cope with their past; the legacy of our shared Scriptures; the question of religious absolutism; the meaning of respect; Christian particularism; and the land of Israel

This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by the Religious Matters in an Entangled World program, Utrecht University, the Netherlands. Public manifestations of Islam remain fiercely contested across the Global West. Studies to date have focused on the visual presence of Islam - the construction of mosques or the veiling of Muslim women. Amplifying Islam in the European Soundscape is the first book to add a sonic dimension to analyses of the politics of Islamic aesthetics in Europe. Sound does not respect public/private boundaries, and people experience sound viscerally. As such, the public amplification of the azan, the call to prayer, offers a unique opportunity to understand what is at stake in debates over religious toleration and secularism. The Netherlands were among the first European countries to allow the amplification of the azan in the 1980s, and Pooyan Tamimi Arab explores this as a case study embedded in a broader history of Dutch religious pluralism. The book offers a pointed critique of social theories that regard secularism as all-encompassing. While cultural forms of secularism exclude Muslim rights to public worship, Amplifying Islam in the European Soundscape argues that political and constitutional secularism also enables Muslim demands for amplifying calls to prayer. It traces how these exclusions and inclusions are effected through proposals for mosques, media debates, law and policy, but also in negotiations on the ground between residents, municipalities and mosques.