The question of how the Bible received its unusual form has been a question addressed by scholars since critical study of the text began. Early attention focused on the Pentateuch and the Primary History. Archival Historiography in Jewish Antiquity argues that Ezra and Nehemiah, late texts sometimes overlooked in such discussions, reveal another piece of this longstanding puzzle. Laura Carlson Hasler suggests that the concept of archival historiography makes sense of Ezra and Nehemiah's unusual format and place in the Bible. Adapting the symbolic quality of ancient Near Eastern archives to their own purposes, the writers of these books found archiving an expression of religious and social power in a colonized context. Using the book of Esther as a comparative example, Carlson Hasler addresses literary disruption, a form unpalatable to modern readers, as an expected element of archival historiography. This book argues that archiving within the experience of trauma is more than sophisticated history writing, and in fact served to facilitate Judean recovery after the losses of exile.

This book seeks to understand the major mythological role models that mark the moral landscape navigated by young Hindu women. Traditionally, the goddess Sita, faithful consort of the god Rama, is regarded as the most important positive role model for women. The case of Radha, who is mostly portrayed as a clandestine lover of the god Krishna, seems to challenge some of the norms the example of Sita has set. That these role models are just as relevant today as they have been in the past is witnessed by the popularity of the televised versions of their stories, and the many allusions to them in popular culture. Taking the case of Sita as main point of reference, but comparing throughout with Radha, Pauwels studies the messages sent to Hindu women at different points in time. She compares how these role models are portrayed in the most authoritative versions of the story. She traces the ancient, Sanskrit sources, the medieval vernacular retellings of the stories and the contemporary TV versions as well. This comparative analysis identifies some surprising conclusions about the messages sent to Indian women today, which belie the expectations one might have of the portrayals in the latest, more liberal versions. The newer messages turn out to be more conservative in many subtle ways. Significantly, it does not remain limited to the religious domain. By analyzing several popular recent and classical hit movies that use Sita and Radha tropes, Pauwels shows how these moral messages spill into the domain of popular culture for commercial consumption.

Joshua Berman engages the text of the Hebrew Bible from a novel perspective -- as a document of social and political thought. He proposes that the Pentateuch can be read as the earliest prescription on record for the establishment of an egalitarian polity. The blueprint that emerges is that of a society that would stand in stark contrast to the social orders found in the surrounding cultures of the ancient Near East -- Egypt, Mesopotamia, Ugarit, and the Hittite Empire -- where the hierarchical structure of the polity was centered on the figure of the king and his retinue. Berman shows that the Pentateuch's egalitarian ideal is articulated in comprehensive fashion and is expressed in its theology, politics, economics, use of technologies of communication, and in its narrative literature. Throughout, he invokes parallels from the modern period as heuristic devices to illuminate the ancient developments under study. Thus, for example, the constitutional principles in the Book of Deuteronomy are examined in the light of principles espoused by Montesquieu, and the rise of the novel in 18th-century England serves to illuminate the advent of new modes of storytelling in biblical narrative.

"so both thrive both discovering bliss-real power is female it rises from beneath" These 81 brief poems from the 5th century BCE make up a foundational text in world culture. In elegant, simple yet elusive language, the Daodejing develops its vision of humankind's place in the world in personal, moral, social, political and cosmic terms. Martyn Crucefix's superb new versions in English reflect - for the very first time - the radical fluidity of the original Chinese texts as well as placing the mysterious 'dark' feminine power at their heart. Laozi, the putative author, is said to have despaired of the world's venality and corruption, but he was persuaded to leave the Daodejing poems as a parting gift, as inspiration and as a moral and political handbook. Crucefix's versions reveal an astonishing empathy with what the poems have to say about good and evil, war and peace, government, language, poetry and the pedagogic process. When the true teacher emerges, no matter how detached, unimpressive, even muddled she may appear, Laozi assures us "there are treasures beneath".

The tenets of Islam cannot be grasped without a proper understanding of the Qur'an. In this important new introduction, Muhammad Haleem examines its recurrent themes -- life and eternity, marriage and divorce, peace and war, water and nourishment -- and for the first time sets these in the context of the Qur'an's linguistic style. Professor Haleem examines the background to the development of the surahs (chapters) and the ayahs (verses) and the construction of the Qur'an itself. He shows that popular conceptions of Islamic attitudes to women, marriage and divorce, war and society, differ radically from the true teachings of the Qur'an.

The author applies the fields of gender studies, psychoanalysis, and literature to Talmudic texts. In opposition to the perception of Judaism as a legal system, he argues that the Talmud demands inner spiritual effort, to which the trait of humility and the refinement of the ego are central. This leads to the question of the attitude to the Other, in general, and especially to women. The author shows that the Talmud places the woman (who represents humility and good-heartedness in the Talmudic narratives) above the character of the male depicted in these narratives as a scholar with an inflated sense of self-importance. In the last chapter (that in terms of its scope and content could be a freestanding monograph) the author employs the insights that emerged from the preceding chapters to present a new reading of the Creation narrative in the Bible and the Rabbinic commentaries. The divine act of creation is presented as a primal sexual act, a sort of dialogic model of the consummate sanctity that takes its place in man's spiritual life when the option of opening one's heart to the other in a male-female dialogue is realized.

This is volume 13 of the edition of the complete Jerusalem Talmud. Within the Fourth Order Neziqin ("damages"), these two tractates deal with various types of oaths and their consequences (Sevu'ot) and laws pertaining to Jews living amongst gentiles, including regulations about the interaction between Jews and "idolators" ('Avodah Zarah).

Translating the Hebrew Bible in Medieval Iberia provides the princeps diplomatic edition and a comprehensive study of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Hunt. 268. The manuscript, produced in the Iberian Peninsula in the late thirteenth century, features a biblical glossary-commentary in Hebrew that includes 2,018 glosses in the vernacular and 156 in Arabic, and to date is the only manuscript of these characteristics known to have been produced in this region. Esperanza Alfonso has edited the text and presents here a study of it, examining its pedagogical function, its sources, its exegetical content, and its extraordinary value for the study of biblical translation in the Iberian Peninsula and in the Sephardic Diaspora. Javier del Barco provides a detailed linguistic study and a glossary of the corpus of vernacular glosses. For a version with a list of corrections and additions, see https://digital.csic.es/handle/10261/265401.

Tendentious Historiographies surveys ten Jewish literary works composed in Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek between the 8th and the mid-2nd century BCE, and shows that each deals with major problems of the Jewish populations in the Land of Israel or in the dispersions. Michael Chyutin provides insightful and at times surprising explorations of the purpose behind these texts. Jonah is viewed as a grotesque, a parody of prophetic writing. Ahiqar preaches the breaking of religious, national and familial frameworks and supports assimilation into the local society. Esther calls for Jewish national and familial solidarity and recommends concealment of religious identity. Daniel preaches individual observance of the religious precepts. Susannah also advocates national and religious solidarity. Tobit tells the story of the founders of the sect of the Therapeutes. Ruth supports the Jews who did not go into exile in Babylon. The play Exagoge and the romance Joseph and Aseneth support the Oniad temple in Egypt. Finally, Judith supports the moderate approach of the Jerusalem priests against the Hasmoneans' demand for violent struggle.

Weaving together Jewish lore, the voices of Jewish foremothers, Yiddish fable, midrash and stories of her own imagining, Ellen Frankel has created in this book a breathtakingly vivid exploration into what the Torah means to women. Here are Miriam, Esther, Dinah, Lilith and many other women of the Torah in dialogue with Jewish daughters, mothers and grandmothers, past and present. Together these voices examine and debate every aspect of a Jewish woman's life -- work, sex, marriage, her connection to God and her place in the Jewish community and in the world. The Five Books of Miriam makes an invaluable contribution to Torah study and adds rich dimension to the ongoing conversation between Jewish women and Jewish tradition.

A unique resource for understanding the Islamic Holy Book. As Islamic terrorism becomes a distressingly common feature of life in North America and Europe, it has become increasingly important for non-Muslims to be aware of the ideology that animates and motivates jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women and others--an ideology that's rooted in Islam's holy book, the Qur'an. English-speaking people, however, have found attempts to understand the Qur'an and Islam impeded by unclear, densely worded translations and explanatory notes written by Islamic apologists attempting to conceal, rather than reveal, how Islamic jihadis use the texts and teachings of the Qur'an to justify violence and supremacism, and to make recruits of peaceful Muslims. The Critical Qur'an, in contrast, makes clear the passages that are used to incite violence. Historian and Islamic scholar Robert Spencer elucidates the Qur'anic text with extensive references to the principal tafsir, or commentaries, that mainstream Muslims use today to understand the Qur'an, showing how interpretations that sanction violence are unfortunately not outliers, but central in Islamic theology. The Critical Qur'an is the Islamic counterpart to numerous critical and skeptical editions of the Bible that have appeared over the last century and more. It is the one edition of Islam's book that doesn't shy away from elucidating why the holy book of Islam is so frequently quoted and referred to with reverence by people who commit and/or justify acts of violence. It is a basic resource for everyone who wishes to understand the persistent phenomenon of Islamic terrorism, and the peculiar provenance of this most provocative book.

The 1928 Book of Common Prayer is a treasured resource for traditional Anglicans and others who appreciate the majesty of King James-style language. This classic edition features a Presentation section containing certificates for the rites of Baptism, Confirmation, and Marriage. The elegant burgundy hardcover binding is embossed with a simple gold cross, making it an ideal choice for both personal study and gift-giving.
The 1928 Book of Common Prayer combines Oxford's reputation for quality construction and scholarship with a modest price - a beautiful prayer book and an excellent value.

The Koren Sacks Siddur is the first new Orthodox Hebrew/English siddur in a generation. The Siddur marks the culmination of years of rabbinic scholarship, exemplifies Koren's tradition of textual accuracy and intuitive graphic design, and offers an illuminating translation, introduction and commentary by one of the world's leading Jewish thinkers, Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks. Halakhic guides to daily, Shabbat, and holiday prayers supplement the traditional text. Prayers for the State of Israel, its soldiers, and national holidays, for the American government, upon the birth of a daughter and more reinforce the Siddur's contemporary relevance. A special Canadian Edition is the first to include prayers for the Canadian government within the body of the text.

This book examines two English translations of Mishkat ul-Masabih by Al-Tabrizi and reflects on some of the key issues relating to Hadith translation. The highly instructional nature of the Prophetic Hadith means that the comprehensibility of any translation is of great importance to a non-Arabic speaking Muslim, and there is a need to analyze available translations to determine whether these texts can function properly in the target culture. The volume considers the relevance of skopos theory, the concept of loyalty, and the strategies of the translators in question. There are also chapters that focus on the translation of Islamic legal terms and metaphors related to women, formulaic expressions, and reported non-verbal behavior in Fazlul Karim's (1938) and Robson's (1960) versions of the text.

Few studies focus on the modes of knowledge transmission (or concealment), or the trends of continuity or change from the Ancient to the Late Antique worlds. In Antiquity, knowledge was cherished as a scarce good, cultivated through the close teacher-student relationship and often preserved in the closed circle of the initated. From Assyrian and Babylonian cuneiform texts to a Shi'ite Islamic tradition, this volume explores how and why knowledge was shared or concealed by diverse communities in a range of Ancient and Late Antique cultural contexts. From caves by the Dead Sea to Alexandria, both normative and heterodox approaches to knowledge in Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities are explored. Biblical and qur'anic passages, as well as gnostic, rabbinic and esoteric Islamic approaches are discussed. In this volume, a range of scholars from Assyrian studies to Jewish, Christian and Islamic studies examine diverse approaches to, and modes of, knowledge transmission and concealment, shedding new light on both the interconnectedness, as well as the unique aspects, of the monotheistic faiths, and their relationship to the ancient civilisations of the Fertile Crescent.

Opening Israel's Scriptures is a collection of thirty-six essays on the Hebrew Bible, from Genesis to Chronicles, which gives powerful insight into the complexity and inexhaustibility of the Hebrew Scriptures as a theological resource. Based on more than two decades of lectures on Old Testament interpretation, Ellen F. Davis offers a selective yet comprehensive guide to the core concepts, literary patterns, storylines, and theological perspectives that are central to Israel's Scriptures. Underlying the whole study is the primary assumption that each book of the canon has literary and theological coherence, though not uniformity. In both her close readings of individual texts and in her broad demonstrations of the coherence of whole books, Davis models the best practices of contemporary exegesis, integrating the insights of contemporary scholars with those of classical theological resources in Jewish and Christian traditions. Throughout, she keeps an eye to the experiences and concerns of contemporary readers, showing through multiple examples that the critical interpretation of texts is provisional, open-ended work-a collaboration across generations and cultures. Ultimately what she offers is an invitation into the more spacious world that the Bible discloses, which challenges ordinary conceptions of how things "really" are.

The devotion to the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ and particularly to His Holy Face is one of the oldest in the Christian tradition. This venerable devotion was practiced by such great saints as St. Augustine of Hippo, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Gertrude the Great, St. Mechtilde, St. Edmund, St. Bonaventure and St. Therese of Lisieux.
Beginning in 1844, Our Lord appeared to Sr. Mary of St. Peter and expressed His desire that whole world should know and practice this devotion in reparation for man s blasphemy. Through the efforts of Sr. Mary St. Peter, Ven. Leo DuPont and countless others, this devotion has become one of the most loved, and remains one of the most needed in our time.
Eternal Father, we offer Thee the Adorable Face of Thy Well Beloved Son for the honor and glory of Thy Holy Name and for the salvation of all men. Prayer of Pope Blsd. Pius IX