The festive meal texts of Deuteronomy 12-26 depict Israel as a unified people participating in cultic banquets - a powerful and earthy image for both preexilic Judahite and later audiences. Comparison of Deuteronomy 12:13-27, 14:22-29, 16:1-17, and 26:1-15 with pentateuchal texts like Exodus 20-23 is broadened to highlight the rhetorical potential of the Deuteronomic meal texts in relation to the religious and political circumstances in Israel during the Neo-Assyrian and later periods. The texts employ the concrete and rich image of festive banquets, which the monograph investigates in relation to comparative ancient Near Eastern texts and iconography, the zooarchaeological remains of the ancient Levant, and the findings of cultural anthropology with regard to meals.

During the high Middle Ages, the tosafists flourished in northern Europe and revolutionized the study of the Talmud. These Jewish scholars did not participate in the philosophical and religious thought that concerned Christendom, and today they are seen as having played a limited role in mystical or esoteric studies. Ephraim Kanarfogel now challenges this conventional view of the tosafists, showing that many individuals were influenced by ascetic and pietistic practices and were involved with mystical and magical doctrines. He traces the presence of these disciplines in the pre-Crusade period, shows how they are intertwined, and suggests that the widely available Hekhalot literature was an important conduit for this material. He also demonstrates that the asceticism and esotericism of the German Pietists were an integral part of Ashkenazic rabbinic culture after the failure of Rashbam and other early tosafists to suppress these aspects of pre-Crusade thinking. The identification of these various forms of spirituality places the tosafists among those medieval rabbinic thinkers who sought to supplement their Talmudism with other areas of knowledge such as philosophy and kabbalah, demonstrating the compatibility of rabbinic culture and mysticism. These interests, argues Kanarfogel, explain both references to medieval Ashkenazic rabbinic figures in kabbalistic literature and the acceptance of certain ascetic and mystical practices by later Ashkenazic scholars. Drawing on original manuscript research, Kanarfogel makes available for the first time many passages produced by lesser known tosafists and rabbinic figures and integrates the findings of earlier and contemporary scholarship, much of it published only in Hebrew. "Peering through the Lattices" provides a greater appreciation for these texts and opens up new opportunities for scholarhship in Jewish history and thought.

Praeger, in collaboration with the distinguished International Center for University Teaching of Jewish Civilization, Jerusalem, and in association with Israeli's Open University, has undertaken the publication of this multi-volume series. Binah brings together for the first time in English seminal articles in Jewish history, thought, and culture. This landmark series, edited by Joseph Dan and under the general supervision of Moshe Davis, will provide resource materials for students enrolled in courses in Jewish studies, religion, history, literature, sociology, cultural anthropology, and philosophy. Binah includes topics from the Biblical period through the 20th century. Each volume of articles is approximately 300 pages in length. An introduction explains the criteria for selecting the articles and indicates their contribution to Jewish history, thought, and culture. The articles, not previously translated, are adapted from their original Hebrew sources in order to make them more accessible to the undergraduate reader, but the editors have made every effort to remain faithful to the intent of the original authors. Each article is preceded by a statement that indicates the original source, a brief biographical sketch of the author placing the article within the framework of his life-work, and the name of the translator/adaptor. The series is bound in both a hardcover library version and in a loose-leaf format, allowing the instructor maximum flexibility in utilizing the materials. By special agreement, purchasers acquire the right to make copies of the articles for student use. Thus, instructors can virtually build a package of readings for their students.

Perhaps no declaration incites more theological and moral outrage than a human's claim to be divine. Those who make this claim in ancient Jewish and Christian mythology are typically represented as the most hubristic and dangerous tyrants. Their horrible punishments are predictable and still serve as morality tales in religious communities today. But not all self-deifiers are saddled with pride and fated to fall. Some who claimed divinity stated a simple and direct truth. Though reviled on earth, misunderstood, and even killed, they received vindication and rose to the stars. This book tells the stories of six self-deifiers in their historical, social, and ideological contexts. In the history of interpretation, the initial three figures have been demonized as cosmic rebels: the first human Adam, Lucifer (later identified with Satan), and Yaldabaoth in gnostic mythology. By contrast, the final three have served as positive models for deification and divine favor: Jesus in the gospel of John, Simon of Samaria, and Allogenes in the Nag Hammadi library. In the end, the line separating demonization from deification is dangerously thin, drawn as it is by the unsteady hand of human valuation.

This book investigates the re-discovery of Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed by the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement in Germany of the nineteenth and beginning twentieth Germany. Since this movement is inseparably connected with religious reforms that took place at about the same time, it shall be demonstrated how the Reform Movement in Judaism used the Guide for its own agenda of historizing, rationalizing and finally turning Judaism into a philosophical enterprise of 'ethical monotheism'. The study follows the reception of Maimonidean thought, and the Guide specifically, through the nineteenth century, from the first beginnings of early reformers in 1810 and their reading of Maimonides to the development of a sophisticated reform-theology, based on Maimonides, in the writings of Hermann Cohen more then a hundred years later.

Crises and catastrophes of all kinds have always confronted humans with great challenges. The present study examines the question of how literary texts process and deal with these challenges through the imaginary world of metaphors. It concentrates on the metaphor of childbirth, which compares people racked with crisis to women in labour (and sometimes vice versa). The texts examined are taken from the Ancient Orient and the Old Testament, together with a text exemplar from the Qumran corpus, which takes up the metaphor of childbirth and develops it further.

The historical involvement of Jews in the political Left is well known, but far less attention has been paid to the political and ideological factors which attracted Jews to the Left. After the Holocaust and the creation of Israel many lost their faith in universalistic solutions, yet lingering links between Jews and the Left continue to exist.

The purpose of The Jewish Communities in New England is to inform readers about the Jewish community in each of the six New England States: Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Factual, inspirational, and poetic, it serves as a scholarly guide to institutions of Jewish life in this dynamic American region. Stocked with valuable information about community, schools, restaurants, and synagogues, Keith Warwick's study will appeal to members of the Jewish community, sociologists, teachers, cultural anthropologists, and the general reader.

This volume suggests that reading and writing about literature are ways to gain an ethical understanding of how we live in the world. Postmodern narrative is an important way to reveal and discuss who are society's victims, inviting the reader to become one with them. A close reading of fiction by Toni Morrison, Patrick Suskind, D.M. Thomas, Ian McEwan and J.M. Coetzee reveals a violence imposed on gender, race and the body-politic. Such violence is not new to the postmodern world, but reflects Western culture's religious traditions, as this book demonstrates through a reading of stories from the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament.

The series Beihefte zur Zeitschrift fur die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft (BZAW) covers all areas of research into the Old Testament, focusing on the Hebrew Bible, its early and later forms in Ancient Judaism, as well as its branching into many neighboring cultures of the Ancient Near East and the Greco-Roman world.

This is the second volume of the hard-copy edition of a journal that has been published online (www.macdiv.ca/jgrchj) since 2000. Volume 1 was for 2000, Volume 2 is for 2001-2005, and Volume 3 will be for 2006. As they appear, the hard-copy editions will replace the online materials. The scope of JGRChJ is the texts, language and cultures of the Graeco-Roman world of early Christianity and Judaism. The papers published in JGRChJ are designed to pay special attention to the 'larger picture' of politics, culture, religion and language, engaging as well with modern theoretical approaches. Zeba Crook The Divine Benefactions of Paul the Client Hans Forster 7Q5 = Mark 6.52-53: A Challenge for Textual Criticism? Malcolm Choat and Alanna Nobbs Monotheistic Formulae of Belief in Greek Letters on Papyrus from the Second to the Fourth Century Galen K. Johnson The Tribulation in Revelation and its Literary-Theological Milieu Douglas C. Mohrmann Boast Not in your Righteousness from the Law: A New Reading of Romans 10.6-8 Jintae Kim The Concept of Atonement in Hellenistic Thought and 1 John Jintae Kim The Concept of Atonement in Early Rabbinic Thought and the New Testament Writings Craig Keener 'Let the Wife Have Authority over her Husband' (1 Corinthians 11.10) Patrick James Participial Complementation in Roman and Byzantine Documentary Papyri: ejpivstamai, manqavnw, euJrivskw Jesper Svartvik How Noah, Jesus and Paul Became Captivating Biblical Figures: The Side Effects of the Canonization of Slavery Metaphors in Jewish and Christian Texts

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE brings to students, researchers and practitioners in all of the social and language-related sciences carefully selected book-length publications dealing with sociolinguistic theory, methods, findings and applications. It approaches the study of language in society in its broadest sense, as a truly international and interdisciplinary field in which various approaches, theoretical and empirical, supplement and complement each other. The series invites the attention of linguists, language teachers of all interests, sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, historians etc. to the development of the sociology of language.

The Guide for the Perplexed (Hebrew: Moreh Nevuchim, Arabic: dalalat al ha'irin is one of the major works of Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, better known as Maimonides, or the Rambam.

It is the main source of his philosophical views. The main purpose of the work is to expound on Maaseh Bereishit and Maaseh Merkavah (the sections of Jewish mysticism dealing with Creation from Genesis and the passage of the Chariot from Ezekiel), these being the two main mystical texts in the Tanakh.

The problematic literary relationship among the Synoptic Gospels has given rise to numerous theories of authorship and priority. Rethinking the Synoptic Problem familiarizes readers with the main positions held by New Testament scholars and updates evangelical understandings of this much-debated area of research. Contributors Craig L. Blomberg Darrell L. Bock William R. Farmer Scot McKnight Grant R. Osborne "An exciting and readable overview of the present state of the Synoptic problem. The entries are balanced, probing, and incisive, making the volume a valuable introduction for all who would learn more about the knotty but inescapable enigma at the heart of the Gospels." -David Dungan, University of Tennessee "This set of essays by first-class conservative New Testament scholars constitutes a fine case study of competing views on the Synoptic debate. This volume is eminently fair and helps the reader sort out complex evidence in the study of Gospel parallels. A commendable attitude of humility attends the discussion." -Royce G. Gruenler, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary David Alan Black (D.Theol., University of Basel) is professor of New Testament and Greek at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. David R. Beck (Ph.D., Duke University) is associate professor of New Testament and Greek at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

After World War II, Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich (1921-2007) published works in English and German by eminent Israeli scholars, in this way introducing them to a wider audience in Europe and North America. The series he founded for that purpose, Studia Judaica, continues to offer a platform for scholarly studies and editions that cover all eras in the history of the Jewish religion.

The series Religion and Society (RS) contributes to the exploration of religions as social systems- both in Western and non-Western societies; in particular, it examines religions in their differentiation from, and intersection with, other cultural systems, such as art, economy, law and politics. Due attention is given to paradigmatic case or comparative studies that exhibit a clear theoretical orientation with the empirical and historical data of religion and such aspects of religion as ritual, the religious imagination, constructions of tradition, iconography, or media. In addition, the formation of religious communities, their construction of identity, and their relation to society and the wider public are key issues of this series.

There is no adequate understanding of contemporary Jewish and Christian theology without reference to Martin Buber. Buber wrote numerous books during his lifetime (1878-1965) and is best known for I and Thou and Good and Evil. Buber has influenced important Protestant theologians like Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, Paul Tillich, and Reinhold Niebuhr. His appeal is vast--not only is he renowned for his translations of the Hebrew Bible but also for his interpretation of Hasidism, his role in Zionism, and his writings in psychotherapy and political philosophy.In addition to a general introduction, each chapter is individually introduced, illuminating the historical and philosophical context of the readings. Footnotes explain difficult concepts, providing the reader with necessary references, plus a selective bibliography and subject index.

Middle Platonism explained how a transcendent principle could relate to the material world by positing an intermediary, modeled after the Stoic active cause, that mediated the supreme principle's influence to the world while preserving its transcendence. Having similar concerns as Middle Platonism, Hellenistic Jewish sapientialism, early Christianity, and Gnosticism appropriated this intermediary doctrine as a means for understanding their relationship to God and to the cosmos. However, these traditions vary in their adaptation of this teaching due to their distinctive understanding of creation and humanity's place therein. The Jewish writings of Philo of Alexandria and Wisdom of Solomon espouse a holistic ontology, combining a Platonic appreciation for noetic reality with an ultimately positive view of creation and its place in human fulfillment. The early Christians texts of 1 Cor 8:6, Col 1:15-20, Heb 1:2-3, and the prologue of John provide an eschatological twist to this ontology when the intermediary figure finds final expression in Jesus Christ. Contrarily, Poimandres (CH 1) and the Apocryphon of John, both associated with the traditional rubric "Gnosticism", draw from Platonism to describe how creation is antithetical to human nature and its transcendent source.