4Q Pesher Nahum, long considered one of the most important Qumran texts for understanding the historical context of the Dead Sea Scrolls, is the focus of this critical study. The author presents new readings and undertakes extensive analysis and reconstruction of broken text. Areas of focus include text-critical implications for the biblical text of Nahum, scribal practices, and formal and composition patterns common throughout the Qumran Pmesharim. One of the contraversial aspects of the study is a challenge to accepted thought; that the mysterious "Lion of Wrath" figure of the text has nothing to do with the Hasmonaean king Alexander Jannaeus. Rather, this study argues that Pesher Nahum portrays a coming conquest from the "Kittim", and the "Lion of Wrath" is to be understood within well-known biblical motifs of a Nebuchadnezzar-like foreign invader coming to deliver the wrath of God upon a sinful Israel.

Qur'anic exegesis has become the battleground of political Islam and theological conflict among various Muslim schools of thought. Using comparative and contrastive methodology, examples from the Qur'an are investigated in the light of various theological views to delineate the birth, development and growth of Qur'anic exegesis.

The political status quo, in the past and at present, has impinged upon Qur'anic exegesis more than on any other discipline in Islamic studies. This book illustrates the dichotomy between mainstream and non-mainstream Islam, showing how Qur'anic exegesis reflects the subtle dogmatic differences and political cleavages in Islamic thought. Chapters explore in depth the intrusive views of the compilers of early exegesis manuscripts, the scepticism among Western scholars about the authenticity of early Muslim works of exegesis and of prophetic tradition, and the role of exegesis as a tool to reaffirm the Qur'an as a canon.

Written to appeal to those with comparative exegetical interests as well as those focused on Islamic studies in general, this book will be an important reference for research students, scholars, and students of Islamic Studies, Theology, Religious studies and Middle Eastern Studies.

This volume explores the relationship between the Qur'an and the Jewish and Christian traditions, considering aspects of continuity and reform. The chapters examine the Qur'an's retelling of biblical narratives, as well as its reaction to a wide array of topics that mark Late Antique religious discourse, including eschatology and ritual purity, prophetology and paganism, and heresiology and Christology. Twelve emerging and established scholars explore the many ways in which the Qur'an updates, transforms, and challenges religious practice, beliefs, and narratives that Late Antique Jews and Christians had developed in dialogue with the Bible. The volume establishes the Qur'an's often unique perspective alongside its surprising continuity with Judaism and Christianity. Chapters focus on individual suras and on intra-Qur'anic parallels, on the Qur'an's relationship to pre-Islamic Arabian culture, on its intertextuality and its literary intricacy, and on its legal and moral framework. It illustrates a move away from the problematic paradigm of cultural influence and instead emphasizes the Qur'an's attempt to reform the religious landscape of its time. The Qur'an's Reformation of Judaism and Christianity offers new insight into the Islamic Scripture as a whole and into recent methodological developments, providing a compelling snapshot of the burgeoning field of Qur'anic studies. It is a key resource for students and scholars interested in religion, Islam, and Middle Eastern Studies.

Judith Abrams, author of the highly acclaimed The Talmud for Beginners, Volumes I & II, creates yet another way of making Talmud study easy and accessible for the novice. Rabbi Abrams has chosen to work with the Steinsaltz Edition of the Talmud, edited and with commentary by Adin Steinsaltz, one of the greatest Jewish thinkers of the twentieth century. This volume is a must for both student and teacher.

This is a rich, informative, and inspiring compendium of the Christian tradition of prayer and contemplation from the earliest days of the Church to the present day. Included are selections from St. Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, St. Clement of Rome, St. Gregory of Nyssa, John Cassian, St. Augustine, St. Gregory of Sinai, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bonaventure, St. Ignatius Loyola, St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Julian of Norwich, Brother Lawrence, St. Francis de Sales, St. Vincent de Paul, Lancelot Andrewes, St. Elizabeth of the Trinity, St. Edith Stein, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Hans Urs von Balthasar and Pope John Paul II. Levering has selected readings that capture how Christian saints and spiritual leaders through the ages have understood what prayer is, why we pray, and how we pray. The selections also integrate the Eastern Orthodox and Western understandings of prayer and contemplation. The book is perfect for study, meditation, and inspiration.

The Sanskrit Mahabharata is one of the most important texts to emerge from the Indian cultural tradition. At almost 75,000 verses it is the longest poem in the world, and throughout Indian history it has been hugely influential in shaping gender and social norms. In the context of ancient India, it is the definitive cultural narrative in the construction of masculine, feminine and alternative gender roles.

This book brings together many of the most respected scholars in the field of Mahabharata studies, as well as some of its most promising young scholars. By focusing specifically on gender constructions, some of the most innovative aspects of the Mahabharata are highlighted. Whilst taking account of feminist scholarship, the contributors see the Mahabharata as providing an opportunity to frame discussion of gender in literature not just in terms of the socio-historical roles of men and women. Instead they analyze the text in terms of the wider poetic and philosophical possibilities thrown up by the semiotics of gendering. Consequently, the book bridges a gap in text-critical methodology between the traditional philological approach and more recent trends in gender and literary theory.

Gender and Narrative in the Mahabharata will be appreciated by readers interested in South Asian studies, Hinduism, religious studies and gender studies.

Studying the many ideas about how giving charity atones for sin and other rewards in late antique rabbinic literature, this volume contains many, varied, and even conflicting ideas, as the multiplicity must be recognized and allowed expression. Topics include the significance of the rabbis' use of the biblical word "tzedaqah" as charity, the coexistence of the idea that God is the ultimate recipient of tzedaqah along with rabbinic ambivalence about that idea, redemptive almsgiving, and the reward for charity of retention or increase in wealth. Rabbinic literature's preference for "teshuvah" (repentance) over tzedeqah to atone for sin is also closely examined. Throughout, close attention is paid to chronological differences in these ideas, and to differences between the rabbinic compilations of the land of Israel and the Babylonian Talmud. The book extensively analyzes the various ways the Babylonian Talmud especially tends to put limits on the divine element in charity while privileging its human, this-worldly dimensions. This tendency also characterizes the Babylonian Talmud's treatment of other topics. The book briefly surveys some post-Talmudic developments. As the study fills a gap in existing scholarship on charity and the rabbis, it is an invaluable resource for scholars and clergy interested in charity within comparative religion, history, and religion.

Providing commentary on the controversial revisionist school of Qur'anic studies, this book explores the origins, scholarship and development of the Qur'an. The collection of articles, each written by a distinguished author, treat very familiar passages of the Qur'an in an original manner, combining thorough philology, historical anthropology, and cultural history. This book addresses in a critical fashion the hottest issues in recent works on the Quran. Among other things, the contributors analyze the controversial theories of Luxenberg regarding Syriac and the Quran, and in particular his argument that the term Hur refers not to virgins but to grapes.

Jewish thought since the Middle Ages can be regarded as a sustained dialogue with Moses Maimonides, regardless of the different social, cultural, and intellectual environments in which it was conducted. Much of Jewish intellectual history can be viewed as a series of engagements with him, fueled by the kind of 'Jewish' rabbinic and esoteric writing Maimonides practiced. This book examines a wide range of theologians, philosophers, and exegetes who share a passionate engagement with Maimonides, assaulting, adopting, subverting, or adapting his philosophical and jurisprudential thought. This ongoing enterprise is critical to any appreciation of the broader scope of Jewish law, philosophy, biblical interpretation, and Kabbalah. Maimonides's legal, philosophical, and exegetical corpus became canonical in the sense that many subsequent Jewish thinkers were compelled to struggle with it in order to advance their own thought. As such, Maimonides joins fundamental Jewish canon alongside the Bible, the Talmud, and the Zohar.

The Story of Creation in the Qur'an is an exposition of the Qur'anic verses relating to the nature of physical phenomena, including the origins of the universe, the nature of light, matter, space and time, and the evolution of biological and sentient beings.

In this book Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri demonstrates that the verses in the Qur'an relating to the outer physical phenomena are not separate from inner phenomena and states, but in fact reflect them. The Qur'an gives us a unified view of existence drawing us from multiplicity to unity, in order to live appropriately from a unified foundation in a world of multiplicity. This is missing from other books, which only focus on matching outer phenomena to scientific discovery without inner reflection.

The Story of Creation in the Qur'an relates outer patterns and symbols to inner experiences and metaphors bringing out the Gnostic elements not just the prescriptive and phenomenal descriptions.

The similarities and differences between poetry and worship have intrigued writers since at least the nineteenth century, when John Keble declared that poetic symbols could almost partake of the nature of sacraments. Since then poets, philosophers and literary critics alike have evoked the terms 'sacrament' and 'incarnation' to make claims about art and poetry. Extending and challenging this critical tradition, this book explores the influence of sacramental belief on the works of three Roman Catholic poets: the nineteenth-century Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins, the Anglo-Welsh artist David Jones and the Australian poet Les Murray. The author explores the idea that the incarnation and the sacraments embody both God's immanence and God's transcendence and argues that Hopkins, Jones and Murray all endeavour to enclose the 'open mystery' of the Divine while recognizing that it cannot be imprisoned. The volume sets their writings in conversation with each other's, as well as with literary, philosophical and theological discourse. The result is a study that shows the wonders, the mysteries and the difficulties of the sacramental worldview and its central place in the writings of these three major Catholic poets.

Buddhist Manuscript Cultures explores how religious and cultural practices in premodern Asia were shaped by literary and artistic traditions as well as by Buddhist material culture. This study of Buddhist texts focuses on the significance of their material forms rather than their doctrinal contents, and examines how and why they were made.

Collectively, the book offers cross-cultural and comparative insights into the transmission of Buddhist knowledge and the use of texts and images as ritual objects in the artistic and aesthetic traditions of Buddhist cultures. Drawing on case studies from India, Gandhara, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Mongolia, China and Nepal, the chapters included investigate the range of interests and values associated with producing and using written texts, and the roles manuscripts and images play in the transmission of Buddhist texts and in fostering devotion among Buddhist communities.

Contributions are by reputed scholars in Buddhist Studies and represent diverse disciplinary approaches from religious studies, art history, anthropology, and history. This book will be of interest to scholars and students working in these fields.

An essential introductory text for the study of the Qur'an, its content, and its place in Muslim society.
An insightful and authoritative introduction to the book at the heart of Muslim life, written by a well-known Islamic scholar
Examines the doctrines contained in the Qur'an, providing a comprehensive explanation of their significance to individual Muslims and the societies in which they live
Surveys the key themes of the Qur'an, its most significant historical interpretations, and some of the most significant figures who transmitted and taught the sacred scripture over the centuries
Considers the influence of the Qur'an on all major aspects of Muslim society, including personal relationships, popular culture, law, art and architecture, political movements, science, and literature
Helps the reader to understand the Qur'an, while throwing a much-needed light on what it means to be a Muslim.

This book recapitulates chapters in two comprehensive accounts of the theology of Rabbinic Judaism, which deal with the two principal components of the native categories of the Rabbinic canon Aggadah, lore, and Halakhah law. Jacob Neusner abbreviates some chapters in the two systematic accounts, The Theology of the Oral Torah: Revealing the Justice of God (1999) and The Theology of the Halakhah (2001). In this book, Neusner supplies a precis of the principal theological topics that have occupied him for the past two decades. In this way, he gains an audience of colleagues with an interest in the theology of Rabbinic Judaism who are unlikely to read the long books with their elaborate repertoire of sources that set forth Neusner s principal results. The systematic Theology of the Halakhah and its equally systematic companion for the Aggadah, The Theology of the Oral Torah: Revealing the Justice of God, tell a single, continuous story. Seen together, the two large and distinct realms of discourse portray one Judaism: an integrated world-view (Aggadah), way of life (Halakhah), and account of the social entity, Israel. All together, these represent Neusner s answer to the critical question of defining Rabbinic Judaism: how do the diverse, autonomous documents of Rabbinic Judaism in its formative age coalesce, like the Mishnah, which transcends documentary limits and joins the Halakhah to the Aggadah in a single coherent formulation, and of what does that statement consist? In The Rabbinic System, he conveys, as a single continuous narrative, the tale that the Halakhah and the Aggadah as theological constructions jointly tell.

The canonical documents of Rabbinic Judaism impose upon most of their components fixed patterns of rhetoric, recurrent logic of coherent discourse, and a well-defined topic or program, for example, a commentary on a biblical book or on a legal topic. But some few compositions and composites of the Rabbinic canon of late antiquity diverge from the formal norms of the compilations in which they occur. In these pages, Neusner assembles anomalous compositions that occur in the Mishnah, Tosefta, four Tannaite Midrashim, and Genesis Rabbah, and he further tests the uniformity of the forms that govern in a familiar chapter of the Bavli. Neusner's surveys show for the documents probed here that some small segment of the composites and compositions of the surveyed documents does not conform to the indicative rules of rhetoric, topic, and logic. Consequently, we face the challenge of constructing models of lost documents of the Rabbinic canon, conforming to the models governing anomalous compositions. These follow other topical and rhetorical norms and therefore belong in other, different types of documents from those in which they now are located. These anomalous writings in topic, logic, or rhetoric (or all three) in theory reveal indicative characteristics other than the ones defining the compositions and composites of the documents in which they are now located.

There is much more to the Qur'an than the selective quotations favoured by Islamic fundamentalists. This book provides a student-friendly guide to the many ways in which the Qur'an can be read.

Designed for both Muslims and Western non-Muslim students, it examines the Qur'an in Western scholarship as well as giving an overview of the rich interpretive traditions from the time of the Prophet Muhammad to the present day.

This guide is a concise introduction to all aspects of the Qur'an: history, understanding and interpretation, providing:

• coverage of both pre-modern and modern periods
• plenty of examples to illustrate key points and aid student understanding
• summaries, timelines and a glossary.

This collection of essays draws on work done in 2011-2012. The author takes up several topics in the systemic analysis of Judaism, its literature, and its theology. The reason for periodically collecting and publishing essays and reviews is to give them a second life, after they have served as lectures or as summaries of monographs or as free-standing articles or as expositions of Judaism in collections of comparative religions. This re-presentation serves a readership to whom the initial presentation in lectures or specialized journals or short-run monographs is inaccessible. Some of the essays furthermore provide a precis, for colleagues in kindred fields, of fully worked out monographs.

A RUSA 2007 Outstanding Reference Title

The Qur'an is the source of inspiration for one of the world's major religions, followed today by over a billion people. It plays a central role in Islam and ever since it appeared fourteen hundred years ago has been the subject of intense debate. Some of this has been carried out by Muslims and some by those hostile or indifferent to Islam, producing a very wide range of views.

Authored by forty-three international experts, the objective of The Qur'an: An Encyclopedia is to present this diversity of thought, approach and school without priority, in order to give a strong appreciation of the range of response that the text has provoked throughout its history and providing students and researchers with a powerful one-volume resource covering all aspects of the text and its reception.

Islam and the Qur'an are much in the news today and there is a public debate going on in which things are said about the Qur'an without much knowledge or understanding of the book. Every effort has been made to help the reader use the Encyclopedia as an investigative tool in Quranic studies. The volume assumes no previous knowledge of the Qur'an, Islam or Arabic. Technical terms are explained in the text itself and the style of each entry is designed to be as self-contained as possible. Entries are cross-referenced and many include a brief bibliography. At the end of the work there is a substantial annotated bibliography providing a detailed guide to the most significant books, journals and articles in Qur'anic Studies. There is a full index.

The readership will include those seeking basic information on the Qur'an, however the substantial number of longerentries means that it will also be used by specialists.

Refractions of the Scriptural is a transdisciplinary collection of essays that seeks to construct a new field of scholarly inquiry with scriptures as a fraught category, analytical wedge, and site for excavation and problematization. The book focuses on the ways in which individual and social bodies manipulate-and are manipulated by- the politics and power encoded in language and formalized canonical knowledge. Scriptures, in this sense, function as complex phenomena that are instrumental to social conservatism as well as social critique and social change. The essays in this volume, written by established and up-and-coming scholars across a wide range of disciplines, seek to locate, engage, and interpret the ways in which the scriptural shapes and reshapes people and the dynamics of identity formation. The chapters are organized around four domains or types of inquiry: the cognitive, the conscientized, the inscriptive, and the formative. It will be of interest to scholars of religion, as well as those interested more broadly in critical social and historical studies.

Originally published in 1967, this Companion is designed to help readers of the Qur'an by giving them necessary background information. An account is given of ideas peculiar to the Qur'an, and the main variant interpretations are noted. A full index of Qur'anic proper names and an index of words commented on has been provided. Based on A J Arberry's translation, this Companion can be used with other translations, or indeed with the original text, since the verses are numbered.

Providing commentary on the controversial revisionist school of Qur anic studies, this book explores the origins, scholarship and development of the Qur'an. The collection of articles, each written by a distinguished author, treat very familiar passages of the Qur an in an original manner, combining thorough philology, historical anthropology, and cultural history.

This book addresses in a critical fashion the hottest issues in recent works on the Quran. Among other things, the contributors analyze the controversial theories of Luxenberg regarding Syriac and the Quran, and in particular his argument that the term Hur refers not to virgins but to grapes.

Is post-modern society devoid of sacramentality or a sense of the sacred? This question is central to the challenges posed by revolutionary post-modern sensibilities that tend to render the rites for the celebration of the sacraments obsolete and irrelevant. To address this issue, the author applies the post-modern emphasis on plurality and radical particularity to the communal dimension of traditional societies exemplified in the worldview of the Igbo people of Southeast Nigeria to shed light on the liturgical celebration of reconciliation in the Church today. The contention is that the sacraments are multi-vocal symbols that cannot command the same meaning in different contexts. In this connection, this book provides a clear notion of the theological foundation, principle and framework of the sacrament of reconciliation and offers a practical guide for its authentic liturgical celebration in a plural context. Its argument is that all are being summoned to interpersonal encounter through dialogue, or a relationship founded on mutual recognition and respect for difference. On this basis, the book proposes possible reconciliation rites drawn from the Igbo communal existence that have the capacity to accommodate people with other faith perspectives in a common liturgical celebration of the sacrament of reconciliation.