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Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > Non-Christian sacred works & liturgy
The corpus coranicum eludes familiar categories and resists strict
labels. No doubt the threads woven into the fabric are
exceptionally textured, varied, and complex. Accordingly, the
introductory chapter of this book demonstrates the application of
form criticism to the text. Chapter two then presents a
form-critical study of the prayer genre. It identifies three
productive formulae and addresses distinct social settings and
forms associated with them. The third chapter begins by defining
the liturgy genre vis-a-vis prayer in the Qur'an. Drawing a line
between the hymn and litany forms, this chapter treats each in
turn. Chapter four considers the genre classified as wisdom
literature. It identifies sapiential formulae and sheds light on
wisdom contexts. The fifth chapter examines the narrative genre
writ large. It also surveys narrative blocks of the long saga. The
subsequent chapter on the proclamation genre inspects a set of
vocative formulae, which occurs in the messenger situation. The
concluding chapter looks at the corpus through synchronic and
diachronic lenses. In the end, Qur'anic genres encapsulate the
form-critical elements of formulae, forms, and settings, as well as
an historical dimension.
The biblical figure Melchizedek appears just twice in the Hebrew
Bible, and once more in the Christian New Testament. Cited as both
the king of Shalem-understood by most scholars to be Jerusalem-and
as an eternal priest without ancestry, Melchizedek's appearances
become textual justification for tithing to the Levitical priests
in Jerusalem and for the priesthood of Jesus Christ himself. But
what if the text was manipulated? Robert R. Cargill explores the
Hebrew and Greek texts concerning Melchizedek's encounter with
Abraham in Genesis as a basis to unravel the biblical mystery of
this character's origins. The textual evidence that Cargill
presents shows that Melchizedek was originally known as the king of
Sodom and that the later traditions about Sodom forced biblical
scribes to invent a new location, Shalem, for Melchizedek's
priesthood and reign. Cargill also identifies minor, strategic
changes to the Hebrew Bible and the Samaritan Pentateuch that
demonstrate an evolving, polemical, sectarian discourse between
Jews and Samaritans competing for the superiority of their
respective temples and holy mountains. The resulting literary
evidence was used as the ideological motivation for identifying
Shalem with Jerusalem in the Second Temple Jewish tradition. A
brief study with far-reaching implications, Melchizedek, King of
Sodom reopens discussion of not only this unusual character, but
also the origins of both the priesthood of Christ and the role of
early Israelite priest-kings.
The essays in this volume address the conundrum of how Jewish
believers in the divine character of the Sinaitic revelation
confront the essential questions raised by academic biblical
studies. The first part is an anthology of rabbinic sources, from
the medieval period to the present, treating questions that reflect
a critical awareness of the Bible. The second part is a series of
twenty-one essays by contemporary rabbis and scholars on how they
combine their religious beliefs with their critical approach to the
Bible.
Comedy is both relative, linked to a time and culture, and
universal, found pervasively across time and culture. The Hebrew
Bible contains comedy of this relative, yet universal nature.
Melissa A. Jackson engages the Hebrew Bible via a comic reading and
brings that reading into conversation with feminist-critical
interpretation, in resistance to any lingering stereotype that
comedy is fundamentally non-serious or that feminist critique is
fundamentally unsmiling.
Dividing comic elements into categories of literary devices,
psychological/social features, and psychological/social function,
Jackson examines the narratives of a number of biblical characters
for evidence of these comic elements. The characters include the
trickster matriarchs, the women involved in the infancy of Moses,
Rahab, Deborah and Jael, Delilah, three of David's wives (Michal,
Abigail, Bathsheba), Jezebel, Ruth, and Esther. Nine particularly
instructive points of contact between comedy and feminist
interpretation emerge: both (1) resist definition, (2) exist amidst
a self/other, subject/object dichotomy, (3) emphasise and utilise
context, (4) promote creativity, (5) acknowledge the concept of
distancing, (6) work towards revelation, (7) are subversive, (8)
are concerned with containment and control, and (9) enable
survival. The use of comedy as an interpretive lens for the Hebrew
Bible is not without difficulties for feminist interpretation.
While maintaining an uncomfortable, even painful, awareness of the
hold patriarchy retains on the Hebrew Bible, feminist critics can
still choose to allow comedy's revelatory, subversive, survivalist
nature to do its work revealing, subverting, and surviving.
Although seldom studied by biblical scholars as a discrete
phenomenon, ritual violence is mentioned frequently in biblical
texts, and includes ritual actions such as disfigurement of
corpses, destruction or scattering of bones removed from a tomb,
stoning and other forms of public execution, cursing, forced
depilation, the legally-sanctioned imposition of physical defects
on living persons, coerced potion-drinking, sacrificial burning of
animals and humans, forced stripping and exposure of the genitalia,
and mass eradication of populations. This book, the first to focus
on ritual violence in the Hebrew Bible, investigates these and
other violent rites, the ritual settings in which they occur, their
various literary contexts, and the identity and aims of their
agents in order to speak in an informed way about the contours and
social aspects of ritual violence as it is represented in the
Hebrew Bible.
Arguing with Aseneth shows how the ancient Jewish romance known as
Joseph and Aseneth moves a minor character in Genesis from
obscurity to renown, weaving a new story whose main purpose was to
intervene in ancient Jewish debates surrounding gentile access to
Israel's God. Written in Greco-Roman Egypt around the turn of the
era, Joseph and Aseneth combines the genre of the ancient Greek
novel with scriptural characters from the story of Joseph as it
retells Israel's mythic past to negotiate communal boundaries in
its own present. With attention to the ways in which Aseneth's tale
"remixes" Genesis, wrestles with Deuteronomic theology, and adopts
prophetic visions of the future, Arguing with Aseneth demonstrates
that this ancient novel inscribes into Israel's sacred narrative a
precedent for gentile inclusion in the people belonging to Israel's
God. Aseneth is transformed from material mother of the sons of
Joseph to a mediator of God's mercy and life to future penitents,
Jew and gentile alike. Yet not all Jewish thinkers in antiquity
drew boundary lines the same way or in the same place. Arguing with
Aseneth traces, then, not only the way in which Joseph and Aseneth
affirms the possibility of gentile incorporation but also ways in
which other ancient Jewish thinkers, including the apostle Paul,
would have argued back, contesting Joseph and Aseneth's very
conclusions or offering alternative, competing strategies of
inclusion. With its use of a female protagonist, Joseph and Aseneth
offers a distinctive model of gentile incorporation-one that
eschews lines of patrilineal descent and undermines ethnicity and
genealogy as necessary markers of belonging. Such a reading of this
narrative shows us that we need to rethink our accounts of how
ancient Jewish thinkers, including our earliest example from the
Jesus Movement, negotiated who was in and who was out when it came
to the people of Israel's God.
Jeremiah in History and Tradition examines aspects of the Book of
Jeremiah from a variety of perspectives including historical,
textual, redaction, and feminist criticism, as well as the history
of its reception. The book looks afresh at the Book of Jeremiah
through the lens of intertextuality and reception history in the
broadest sense, exploring Jeremiah in its historical context as
well as the later history and interpretation of the text, and also
reconsidering aspects of the Book of Jeremiah's traditions. This
volume features essays from a unique assembly of scholars, both
seasoned and new. It is divided into two parts: "Jeremiah in
History", which explores a variety of readings of Jeremiah from the
point of view of classical historical criticism; and "Jeremiah in
Tradition", which discusses the portraits and use of both the book
and the figure of Jeremiah in extra-biblical traditions. Offering
challenging new theories, Jeremiah in History and Tradition is
invaluable to scholars and students in the field of Biblical
Studies. It is a useful resource for anyone working on the
interpretation of the biblical text and the readings of the text of
Jeremiah throughout history.
It is commonly asserted that heresy is a Christian invention that
emerged in late antiquity as Christianity distinguished itself from
Judaism. Heresy, Forgery, Novelty probes ancient Jewish disputes
regarding religious innovation and argues that Christianity's
heresiological impulse is in fact indebted to Jewish precedents. In
this book, Jonathan Klawans demonstrates that ancient Jewish
literature displays a profound unease regarding religious
innovation. The historian Josephus condemned religious innovation
outright, and later rabbis valorize the antiquity of their
traditions. The Dead Sea sectarians spoke occasionally-and perhaps
secretly-of a "new covenant," but more frequently masked newer
ideas in rhetorics of renewal or recovery. Other ancient Jews
engaged in pseudepigraphy-the false attribution of recent works to
prophets of old. The flourishing of such religious forgeries
further underscores the dangers associated with religious
innovation. As Christianity emerged, the discourse surrounding
religious novelty shifted dramatically. On the one hand, Christians
came to believe that Jesus had inaugurated a "new covenant,"
replacing what came prior. On the other hand, Christian writers
followed their Jewish predecessors in condemning heretics as
dangerous innovators, and concealing new works in pseudepigraphic
garb. In its open, unabashed embrace of new things, Christianity
parts from Judaism. Christianity's heresiological condemnation of
novelty, however, displays continuity with prior Jewish traditions.
Heresy, Forgery, Novelty reconsiders and offers a new
interpretation of the dynamics of the split between Judaism and
Christianity.
The Tibetan Book of the Dead was traditionally used as a mortuary text, read or recited in the presence of a dying or dead person. As a contribution to the science of death and of rebirth, it is unique among the sacred books of the world. The texts have been discovered and rediscovered in the West during the course of almost the entire 20th century, starting with Oxford's edition by W Y Evans-Wentz in 1927. The new edition includes a new foreword, afterword and suggested further reading list by Donald S Lopez Jr to update and contextualize this pioneering work. Lopez examines the historical background of OUP's publication, the translation against current scholarship, and its profound importance in engendering both scholarly and popular interest in Tibetan religion and culture.
For legendary Talmud scholar and prolific author Rabbi Adin
Even-Israel Steinsaltz, the Lubavitcher Rebbe embodied a lifelong
mission to better the world. Far surpassing the role of teacher,
Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson was at once a scientific mind and
faithful believer; educational innovator and social activist;
spiritual guide and master network builder.
My Rebbe is Rabbi Steinsaltz's long-awaited personal testament
to the man whose passion and vision transformed Chabad-Lubavitch
from a tiny group of Chassidim into an educational and spiritual
movement that spans the globe. With the admiration of a close
disciple, the astute observation of a scholar and the spiritual
depth of a mystic, Steinsaltz crafts an intimate portrait of a
revolutionary religious leader whose dedication to intellectual,
religious, and spiritual principles impacted generations of
followers.
This volume collects several articles by scholar Uri Zur on various
areas in the field of Jewish studies. Topics discussed include
different types of structure in Talmudic texts from a literary
point of view, the study of the Aramaic language utilized in the
Bible and the Talmud from a linguistic and interpretive
perspective, the redaction of sugyot in the Talmud Bavli analyzed
from a textual point of view, and matters of halakha and halakhic
rules. The author also examines contemporary topics such as modern
Judaism in Israel and peacemaking efforts grounded in the
Pentateuch and Jewish tradition.
Reading Hebrew Bible Narratives introduces readers to narrative
traditions of the Old Testament and to methods of interpreting
them. Part of the Essentials of Biblical Studies series, this
volume presents readers with an overview of exegesis by mainly
focusing on a self-contained narrative to be read alongside the
text. Through sustained interaction with the book of Ruth, readers
have opportunities to engage a biblical book from multiple
perspectives, while taking note of the wider implications of such
perspectives for other biblical narratives. Other select texts from
Hebrew Bible narratives, related by theme or content to matters in
Ruth, are also examined, not only to assist in illustrating this
method of approach, but also to offer reinforcement of reading
skills and connections among different narrative traditions.
Considering literary analysis, words and texts in context, and
reception history, this brief introduction gives students an
overview of how exegesis illuminates stories in the Bible.
This book distinguishes Islam as a spiritual message from the
sociopolitical context of its revelation. While the sacred text of
the Quran reveals a clear empowerment of women and equality of
believers, such spirit is barely reflected in the interpretations.
Trapped between Western rhetoric that portrays them as submissive
figures in desperate need of liberation, and centuries-old,
parochial interpretations that have almost become part of the
"sacred," Muslim women are pressured and profoundly misunderstood.
Asma Lamrabet laments this state of affairs and the inclination of
both Muslims and non-Muslims to readily embrace flawed human
interpretations that devalue women rather than remaining faithful
to the meaning of the Sacred Text. Full of insight, this study
carefully reads the Qur'an to arrive at its deeper spiritual
teachings.
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