Sin, often defined as a violation of divine will, remains a crucial idea in contemporary moral and religious discourse. The apparent familiarity of the concept, however, obscures its origins within the history of Western religious thought. This book examines a watershed moment in the development of sin as an idea-namely, within the language and culture of ancient Israel-by examining the primary metaphors used for sin in the Hebrew Bible. Drawing from contemporary theoretical insights coming out of linguistics and philosophy of language, this book offers a comprehensive look at four patterns of metaphor that pervade the biblical texts: sin as burden, sin as an account, sin as path or direction, and sin as stain or impurity. In exploring the permutations of these metaphors and their development within the biblical corpus, the book offers a compelling account of how a religious and theological concept emerges out of the everyday thought-world of ancient Israel. Key aspects of the approach to metaphor adopted in this book, such as the patterning of metaphor, the notion of metaphorical construal, and how metaphors become lexicalized over time, also have important ramifications for the study of biblical and ancient Near Eastern texts more broadly.

Redemption and Resistance brings together an eminent cast of contributors to provide a state-of-the-art discussion of Messianism as a topic of political and religious commitment and controversy. By surveying this motif over nearly a thousand years with the help of a focused historical and political searchlight, this volume is sure to break fresh ground. It will serve as an attractive contribution to the history of ancient Judaism and Christianity, of the complex and often problematic relationship between them, and of the conflicting loyalties their hopes for redemption created vis--vis a public order that was at first pagan and later Christian. Although each chapter is designed to stand on its own as an introduction to the topic at hand, the overall argument unfolds a coherent history. The first two parts, on pre-Christian Jewish and primitive Christian Messianism, set the stage by identifying two entities that in Part III are then addressed in the development of their explicit relationship in a Graeco-Roman world marked by violent persecution of Jewish and Christian hopes and loyalties. The story is then explored beyond the Constantinian turn and its abortive reversal under Julian, to the Christian Empire up to the rise of Islam.

This book looks at the relationship between biblical Hebrew verbs and the passage of time in narrative. It offers a summary of previous studies and theories, and argues that one possible way of understanding the fundamental meanings of Hebrew verbs is by examining the role played by the four main verb forms in ordering time.

In 1638, a small book of no more than 92 pages in octavo was published "appresso Gioanne Calleoni" under the title "Discourse on the State of the Jews and in particular those dwelling in the illustrious city of Venice." It was dedicated to the Doge of Venice and his counsellors, who are labelled "lovers of Truth." The author of the book was a certain Simone (Simha) Luzzatto, a native of Venice, where he lived and died, serving as rabbi for over fifty years during the course of the seventeenth century. Luzzatto's political thesis is simple and, at the same time, temerarious, if not revolutionary: Venice can put an end to its political decline, he argues, by offering the Jews a monopoly on overseas commercial activity. This plan is highly recommendable because the Jews are "wellsuited for trade," much more so than others (such as "foreigners," for example). The rabbi opens his argument by recalling that trade and usury are the only occupations permitted to Jews. Within the confines of their historical situation, the Venetian Jews became particularly skilled at trade with partners from the Eastern Mediterranean countries. Luzzatto's argument is that this talent could be put at the service of the Venetian government in order to maintain - or, more accurately, recover - its political importance as an intermediary between East and West. He was the first to define the role of the Jews on the basis of their economic and social functions, disregarding the classic categorisation of Judaism's alleged privileged religious status in world history. Nonetheless, going beyond the socio-economic arguments of the book, it is essential to point out Luzzatto's resort to sceptical strategies in order to plead in defence of the Venetian Jews. It is precisely his philosophical and political scepticism that makes Luzzatto's texts so unique. This edition aims to grant access to his works and thought to English-speaking readers and scholars. By approaching his texts from this point of view, the editors hope to open a new path in research into Jewish culture and philosophy that will enable other scholars to develop new directions and new perspectives, stressing the interpenetration between Jews and the surrounding Christian and secular cultures.

This companion volume to "Judaism and Other Religions" provides the first extensive collection of traditional and academic Jewish approaches to the religions of the world, focusing on those Jewish thinkers that actually encounter the other world religions of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism--that is, it moves beyond the theory of inclusive/exclusive/pluralistic categories and looks at Judaism's interactions with other faiths "in practice."

This is not just another book of records. The Guiness Book of World Records has done that job admirably, and it would be difficult to improve upon it. This book is primarily about the people who established or broke a record that had already been established.

The Bible contains passages that allow both scholars and believers to project their hopes and fears onto ever-changing empirical realities. By reading specific biblical passages as utopia and dystopia, this volume raises questions about reconstructing the past, the impact of wishful imagination on reality, and the hermeneutic implications of dealing with utopia - "good place" yet "no place" - as a method and a concept in biblical studies. A believer like William Bradford might approach a biblical passage as utopia by reading it as instructions for bringing about a significantly changed society in reality, even at the cost of becoming an oppressor. A contemporary biblical scholar might approach the same passage with the ambition of locating the historical reality behind it - finding the places it describes on a map, or arriving at a conclusion about the social reality experienced by a historical community of redactors. These utopian goals are projected onto a utopian text. This volume advocates an honest hermeneutical approach to the question of how reliably a past reality can be reconstructed from a biblical passage, and it aims to provide an example of disclosing - not obscuring - pre-suppositions brought to the text.

This is the first book about the meals of Early Judaism. As such it breaks important new ground in establishing the basis for understanding the centrality of meals in this pivotal period of Judaism and providing a framework of historical patterns and influences.

Rabbi Reuben Kaufman's Great Sects and Schisms in Judaism is a compact, but comprehensive study of the many cults and sects, from biblical to modern times, which have been the offshoots of Judaism.

The product of many years of intensive work, this volume represents the first time a comprehensive study of such magnitude and scope has been prepared for the reading public. Combining the skills of journalist and scholar, the author has composed a work that is not only easy-to-read, but is meticulous in its factual information. Mr. Beller is a Canadian journalist who spent many years in Latin America studying all the communities and their people at first hand.

Among the articles included in this Hebrew-English anthology are: . The Hebrew Manuscript as Source for the Study of History and Literature . A Fifteenth Century Hebrew Book List . Rashi's Commentary on the Pentateuch and on the Five Scrolls (Venice, 1538) . One Hundred Years of the Genizah Discovery and Research in the United States . Building a Great Judaica Library - At What Price? . The Liturgy of the Rothschild Mahzor . Two Philosophical Passages in the Liturgical Poetry of Rabbi Isaac Ibn Giat . The New Jewish Theological Seminary Library Prof. Menahem Schmelzer is Professor Emeritus of Medieval Hebrew Literature and Jewish Bibliography at The Jewish Theological Seminary. He has been a full-time member of the JTS faculty since 1961, and served as Librarian from 1964 to 1987. In addition to writing numerous articles and reviews for scholarly journals, Prof.. Schmelzer was Associate Division Editor of the "Modern Jewish Scholarship" section of Encyclopaedia Judaica. He has lectured at the Leo Baeck Institute, Yeshiva University and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In 1992, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1999, he was the recipient of an honorary degree from the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies in Chicago. He was appointed as a Distinguished Visiting Senior Scholar at the Kluge Center in the Library of Congress for a four-month period in 2004.

Who Rules the Synagogue? explores how American Jewry in the nineteenth century transformed from a lay dominated community to one whose leading religious authorities were rabbis. Previously, scholars have chartered the religious history of American Judaism during this era, but Zev Eleff reinterprets this history through the lens of religious authority. Early in the century, American Jews consciously excluded rabbinic forces from playing a role in their community's development. By the final decades of the 1800s, ordained rabbis were in full control of America's leading synagogues and large sectors of American Jewish life, most notably in the commotion caused by the Pittsburgh rabbinic conference of 1885. Eleff weaves together the significant episodes and debates that shaped American Judaism during this formative period, and places this story into the larger context of American religious history and modern Jewish history.

This book deals with the life and thought of an original but neglected religious thinker who, perhaps more than any other in the history of Jewish thought, grappled with the problems inherent in the idea of God's unity. Rabbi Aaron Horowitz is generally acknowledged to be the most outstanding, systematic exponent of the profound Habad theory of Hasidism. With the renewed interest in Jewish mysticism in general and Hasidism in particular, this work can serve as an excellent introduction to the more intricate and stimulating ideas of the Movement, normally to be found only in recondite tomes written in difficult Rabbinic Hebrew and therefore beyond the scope of even serious students of the subject. One of the most striking features of the book is the way it demonstrates that there is a close affinity between Habad thought and Far Eastern spirituality. Dr Jacobs has succeeded in bringing a vanished world to life for the modern reader.

This book aims to bring a new way of understanding Ezra 9-10, which has become known as an intermarriage 'crisis', to the table. A number of issues, such as ethnicity, religious identity, purity, land, kinship, and migration, orbit around the central problem of intermarriage. These issues are explored in terms of their modern treatment within anthropology, and this information is used to generate a more informed, sophisticated, understanding of the chapters within Ezra itself. The intermarriage crisis in Ezra is pivotal for our understanding of the postexilic community. As the evidence from anthropology suggests, the social consciousness of ethnic identity and resistance to the idea of intermarriage which emerges from the text point to a deeper set of problems and concerns, most significantly, relating to the complexities of return-migration. In this study Katherine E. Southwood argues that the sense of identity which Ezra 9-10 presents is best understood by placing it within the larger context of a return migration community who seek to establish exilic boundaries when previous familiar structures of existence have been rendered obsolete by decades of existence outside the land. The complex view of ethnicity presented through the text may, therefore, reflect the ongoing ideology of a returning separatist group. The textualization of this group's tenets for Israelite identity, and for scriptural exegesis, facilitated its perpetuation by preserving a charged nexus of ideas around which the ethnic and religious identities of later communities could orbit. The multifaceted effects of return-migration may have given rise to an increased focus on ethnicity through ethnicity being realized in exile but only really being crystallized in the homeland.

Rosenberg looks to the Qumran scrolls for clues to the relationship of the Essenes or Sadoqites to the early Christians. He finds that many of their beliefs, including the expectation of a Moreh Sedeq or Correct Teacher, were taken on by the early Christians and shaped in the early days of the Church.

By comparing Qumran texts with New Testament materials, Rosenberg shows that, in Christian teaching, Jesus plays the part of the three separate persons who, according to the Sadoqites, were supposed to represent and embody sedeq or divine justice. This book will be of interest to all who are concerned with Judaism and the evolution of Christianity.

"In this book, Miriamne Ara Krummel complicates the notion of the English Middle Ages as a monolithic age of Christian faith. Cataloguing and explicating the complex depictions of semitisms to be found in medieval literature and material culture, this volume argues that Jews were always present in medieval England, and it is only in rereading the historical record that it has been considered Judenrein-without Jews"--

Samuel Fleischacker defends what the Enlightenment called "revealed religion": religions that regard a certain text or oral teaching as sacred, as wholly authoritative over one's life. At the same time, he maintains that revealed religions stand in danger of corruption or fanaticism unless they are combined with secular scientific practices and a secular morality. The first two parts of Divine Teaching and the Way of the World argue that the cognitive and moral practices of a society should prescind from religious commitments -- they constitute a secular "way of the world," to adapt a phrase from the Jewish tradition, allowing human beings to work together regardless of their religious differences. But the way of the world breaks down when it comes to the question of what we live for, and it is this that revealed religions can illumine. Fleischacker first suggests that secular conceptions of why life is worth living are often poorly grounded, before going on to explore what revelation is, how it can answer the question of worth better than secular worldviews do, and how the revealed and way-of-the-world elements of a religious tradition can be brought together.