Focusing on the Avestan and Pahlavi versions of the Sih-rozag, a text worshipping Zoroastrian divine entities, this book explores the spiritual principles and physical realities associated with them. Introducing the book is an overview of the structural, linguistic and historico-religious elements of the Avestan Sih-rozag. This overview, as well as reconstructing its approximate chronology, helps in understanding the original ritual function of the text and its relationship to the other Avestan texts.The book then studies the translation of the text in the Middle Persian language, Pahlavi, which was produced several centuries after its initial composition, when Avestan was no longer understood by the majority of the Zoroastrian community. Addressing the lacuna in literature examining an erstwhile neglected Zoroastrian text, The Sih-Rozag in Zoroastrianism includes a detailed commentary and an English translation of both the Avestan and Pahlavi version of the Sih-rozag and will be of interest to researchers and scholars of Iranian Studies, Religion, and History.

Walk the path of holiness, stir your faith in God, and break free from the bonds of a sinful nature with Joyce Meyer's Galatians commentary, featuring inspiring questions and space for your reflections. Paul's letter to the church at Galatia speaks largely to how important it was to Paul that the people embrace unity in Christ, no matter their differences. Galatians teaches that we're only justified by faith in Christ only and encourages us to pursue a life of holiness, not in our own strength, but in the knowledge of God's empowering grace in our lives. In this comprehensive study tool, Joyce Meyer offers an in-depth look at Galatians and emphasizes that we are not only saved by faith, we must learn to live by faith as well.

This bilingual edition of the "Qur'an," the Holy Book of Islam, was first published in the United States in 1988. Ahmed Ali, the distinguished Pakistani novelist, poet, critic, and diplomat, presents this elegant and poetic translation in a contemporary and living voice. On each page, the original Arabic and the translated English sit side by side, encouraging the reader to draw from both texts. Professor Ali also includes notes where necessary, providing the full meaning of each word and phrase. This accessible volume is truly essential for both scholars and followers of Islam.

The timeless epic of Hindu faith contains a simple, vivid message of daily inspiration for millions throughout the world. This powerful, beautiful scripture is translated into clear, meaningful English which can be read as a living contemporary message that touches the most urgent personal and social problems. (July)

No work has informed Jewish life and history more than the Talmud. This unique and vast collection of teachings and traditions contains within it the intellectual output of hundreds of Jewish sages who considered all aspects of an entire people's life from the Hellenistic period in Palestine (c. 315 B.C.E.) until the end of the Sassanian era in Babylonia (615 C.E.). This volume adds the insights of modern talmudic scholarship and criticism to the growing number of more traditionally oriented works that seek to open the talmudic heritage and tradition to contemporary readers. These central essays provide a taste of the myriad ways in which talmudic study can intersect with such diverse disciplines as economics, history, ethics, law, literary criticism, and philosophy.

Contributors: Baruch Micah Bokser, Boaz Cohen, Ari Elon, Meyer S. Feldblum, Louis Ginzberg, Abraham Goldberg, Robert Goldenberg, Heinrich Graetz, Louis Jacobs, David Kraemer, Geoffrey B. Levey, Aaron Levine, Saul Lieberman, Jacob Neusner, Nahum Rakover, and David Weiss-Halivni.

Written by four outstanding Torah scholars, the JPS Torah Commentary series represents a fusion of the best of the old and new. Utilizing the latest research to enhance our understanding of the biblical text, it takes its place as one of the most authoritative yet accessible Bible commentaries of our day. The JPS Torah Commentary series guides readers through the words and ideas of the Torah. Each volume is the work of a scholar who stands at the pinnacle of his field. every page contains the complete traditional Hebrew text, with cantillation notes, the JPS translation of the Holy Scriptures, aliyot breaks, Masoretic notes, and commentary by a distinguished Hebrew Bible scholar, integrating classical and modern sources. Each volume also contains supplementary essays that elaborate upon key words and themes, a glossary of commentators and sources, extensive bibliographic notes, and maps.

2022 Top Ten Book from Academy of Parish Clergy The teachings of the great twentieth-century Jewish thinker Martin Buber empower us to enter a spiritual dimension that often passes unnoticed in the daily routine. In A Year with Martin Buber, the first Torah commentary to focus on his life's work, we experience the fifty-four weekly Torah portions and eleven Jewish holidays through Buber's eyes. While best known for the spiritual concept of the I-Thou relationship between people, Buber graced us with other fundamentals, including Over Against, Afterglow, Will and Grace, Reification, Inclusion, and Imagine the Real. And his life itself-including his defiance of the Nazis, his call for Jewish-Arab reconciliation, and his protest of Adolf Eichmann's execution-modeled these teachings in action. Rabbi Dennis S. Ross demonstrates Buber's roots in Jewish thought and breaks new ground by explaining the broader scope of Buber's life and work in a clear, conversational voice. He quotes from the weekly Torah portion; draws lessons from Jewish commentators; and sets Buber's related words in context with Buber's remarkable life story, Hasidic tales, and writing. A wide variety of anecdotal illustrations from Buber as well as the author's life encourages each of us to "hallow the everyday" and seek out spirituality "hiding in plain sight."

"The books line up on my shelf like bright Bodhisattvas ready to take tough questions or keep quiet company. They stake out a vast territory, with works from two millennia in multiple genres: aphorism, lyric, epic, theater, and romance."
--Willis G. Regier, "The Chronicle Review"

"No effort has been spared to make these little volumes as attractive as possible to readers: the paper is of high quality, the typesetting immaculate. The founders of the series are John and Jennifer Clay, and Sanskritists can only thank them for an initiative intended to make the classics of an ancient Indian language accessible to a modern international audience."
--"The Times Higher Education Supplement"

"The Clay Sanskrit Library represents one of the most admirable publishing projects now afoot. . . . Anyone who loves the look and feel and heft of books will delight in these elegant little volumes."
--"New Criterion"

"Published in the geek-chic format."
--"BookForum"

"Very few collections of Sanskrit deep enough for research are housed anywhere in North America. Now, twenty-five hundred years after the death of Shakyamuni Buddha, the ambitious Clay Sanskrit Library may remedy this state of affairs."
--"Tricycle"

aNow an ambitious new publishing project, the Clay Sanskrit Library brings together leading Sanskrit translators and scholars of Indology from around the world to celebrate in translating the beauty and range of classical Sanskrit literature. . . . Published as smart green hardbacks that are small enough to fit into a jeans pocket, the volumes are meant to satisfy both the scholar and the lay reader. Each volume has a transliteration of the original Sanskrit texton the left-hand page and an English translation on the right, as also a helpful introduction and notes. Alongside definitive translations of the great Indian epics -- 30 or so volumes will be devoted to the Maha-bharat itself -- Clay Sanskrit Library makes available to the English-speaking reader many other delights: The earthy verse of Bhartri-hari, the pungent satire of Jayanta Bhatta and the roving narratives of Dandin, among others. All these writers belong properly not just to Indian literature, but to world literature.a
--"LiveMint"

aThe Clay Sanskrit Library has recently set out to change the scene by making available well-translated dual-language (English and Sanskrit) editions of popular Sanskritic texts for the public.a
--"Namarupa"

In India's great epic the Maha-bharata, the eighth book, aKarna, a recounts the events that occurred during the mighty hero Karna's two days as general of the Kaurava army. This second volume resumes on the war's seventeenth and penultimate day. This will be a momentous day for the Bharata clans and especially for a number of their most distinguished heroes, with some of the epic's most telegraphed events reaching their climax. Not only will the epic's most anticipated duel between its greatest champions Arjuna and Karna be played out to its cruel and tragic end, but one of the more gruesome episodes in the epic will also take place with Duhshasana meeting the fate that has long waited him since his brazen maltreatment of Draupadi in the assembly hall.

Co-published by New York University Press and the JJC Foundation

For more on this title and other titles in the Clay Sanskrit series, please visit http: //www.claysanskritlibrary.org

Millions of people who cast the I Ching to find answers to their deepest questions refer to the classic Wilhelm/Baynes translation of the ancient Chinese divinatory text, The I Ching or Book of Changes, published by Princeton University Press. The I Ching Companion: An Answer for Every Question is a study guide to be used in conjunction with the Wilhelm/Baynes translation. The I Ching oracle has survived millennia exactly because of its elusive nature. It is replete with phrases and imagery that are unfamiliar to the Western mind. The text in itself tells many stories from ancient China, when the Chou overthrew the Shang dynasty, and contains every aspect of the human experience, both secular and spiritual. Richards has compiled a concordance of the primary symbols in the Wilhelm/Baynes text -- such as "to cross the great water", "furthering", the four directions, colors, "the great man", "the inferior man", and the "superior man" -- so that students of the I Ching can conduct their own study and gain their own understanding of how the changes described by the I Ching are connected in an eternal cycle of beginning, conflict, and resolution.

Richards offers detailed, yet easy-to-follow instructions for consulting the oracle. Drawing parallels between the body's chakras and the lines of a hexagram, she reveals an entirely new way in which the I Ching can be used as a tool for achieving emotional balance. The I Ching answers questions, and in so doing, peace of mind -- our life's quest -- is attained. This guide can help facilitate that quest.

'Human Rights and Reformist Islam' critiques traditional Islamic approaches to the question of compatibility between human rights and Islam, and argues instead for their reconciliation from the perspective of a reformist Islam. The book focuses on six controversial case studies: religious discrimination; gender discrimination; slavery; freedom of religion; punishment of apostasy; and arbitrary or harsh punishments. Explaining the strengths of structural ijtihad, Mohsen Kadivar's draws on the rational classification of Islamic teachings as temporal or permanent on the one hand, and four criteria of being Islamic on the other: reasonableness, justice, morality and efficiency. He rejects all of the problematic verses and Hadith according to these criteria. The result is a powerful, solutions-based argument based on reformist Islam - providing a scholarly bridge between modernity and Islamic tradition in relation to human rights.

This book examines culture, religion and polity in the context of Buddhism. Gananath Obeyesekere, one of the foremost analytical voices from South Asia develops Freud's notion of 'dream work', the 'work of culture' and ideas of no-self (anatta) to understand Buddhism in contemporary Sri Lanka. This work offers a restorative interpretation of Buddhist myths in contrast to the perspective involving deconstruction. The book deals with a range of themes connected with Buddhism, including oral traditions and stories, the religious pantheon, philosophy, emotions, reform movements, questions of identity and culture, and issues of modernity. This fascinating volume will greatly interest students, teachers and researchers of religion and philosophy, especially Buddhism, ethics, cultural studies, social and cultural anthropology, Sri Lanka and modern South Asian history.

The Old Testament is integrally bound to the history and culture of Ancient Israeland the Ancient Middle East. This collection of essays primarily employs approaches from the fields of literary history andarcheology. It makes an important contribution to cultural and religious historical aspects of kingship and prophecy. It also casts a new light on questions regarding institutional education and worship practices, on the possibilities and limitations of religious historical comparison, and on Biblical interpretation in a Judeo-Christian context.

Winner of the Herbert Baxter Adams Prize A Longman-History Today Book Prize Finalist A Sheik Zayed Book Award Finalist Winner of the Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year "Deeply thoughtful...A delight."-The Economist "[A] tour de force...Bevilacqua's extraordinary book provides the first true glimpse into this story...He, like the tradition he describes, is a rarity." -New Republic In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a pioneering community of Western scholars laid the groundwork for the modern understanding of Islamic civilization. They produced the first accurate translation of the Qur'an, mapped Islamic arts and sciences, and wrote Muslim history using Arabic sources. The Republic of Arabic Letters is the first account of this riveting lost period of cultural exchange, revealing the profound influence of Catholic and Protestant intellectuals on the Enlightenment understanding of Islam. "A closely researched and engrossing study of...those scholars who, having learned Arabic, used their mastery of that difficult language to interpret the Quran, study the career of Muhammad...and introduce Europeans to the masterpieces of Arabic literature." -Robert Irwin, Wall Street Journal "Fascinating, eloquent, and learned, The Republic of Arabic Letters reveals a world later lost, in which European scholars studied Islam with a sense of affinity and respect...A powerful reminder of the ability of scholarship to transcend cultural divides, and the capacity of human minds to accept differences without denouncing them." -Maya Jasanoff "What makes his study so groundbreaking, and such a joy to read, is the connection he makes between intellectual history and the material history of books." -Financial Times

The Bhagavad Gita is one of the most widely read Hindu scriptures in the Western world. Taking the form of a dialogue between the warrior Arjuna and the divine Krishna on the eve of battle, it is concerned with the most profound aspects of social and religious duty, and the relationship of human beings to God. In its eighteen short chapters it explores the spiritual struggle of the human soul and the search for both the true self and eternal life, culminating in an unparalleled vision of God the omnipotent.

What do we know about the Book of Job? Not very much. The hero complains endlessly. He has just lost his children all his livestock. He scratches his ulcers. The misfortunes of which he complains are all duly enumerated in the prologue. They are misfortunes brought on him by Satan with God's permission. We think we know, but are we sure? Not once in the Dialogues does Job mention either Satan or anything about his misdeeds. Could it be that they are too much on his mind for him to mention them? Possibly, yet Job mentions everything else, and does much more than mention. He dwells heavily on the cause of his misfortune, which is none of those mentioned in the prologue. The cause is not divine, satanic nor physical, but merely human.

This multidisciplinary collective volume advances the scholarly discussion on the origins of Islam. It simultaneously focuses on three domains: texts, social contexts, and ideological developments relevant for the study of Islam's beginnings -- taking the latter expression in its broadest possible sense. The intersections of these domains need to be examined afresh in order to obtain a clear picture of the concurrent phenomena that collectively enabled both the gradual emergence of a new religious identity and the progressive delimitation of its initially fuzzy boundaries.

This book presents the Book of Ecclesiastes as a single coherent work, whose ideas are consistent and collectively form a comprehensive worldview. Moreover, in contrast to the prevailing view in the research literature - it presents the Book of Ecclesiastes as a work with an essentially positive outlook: Kohelet's fault-finding is aimed not at the world itself, or how it functions, but at the people who persist in missing out on the present, on what it has to offer, and of the ability to enjoy all that exists and is available. Contrasting with these are Koheleth's positive perscriptions to make the most of the present. To my mind, his remonstrations are meant to "clear the way" for his positive recommendations - to clear the path, as it were, of the obstacles to accepting reality. These two aspects, the negative and the positive, come together in this investigation into Koheleth's belief, which is founded on an acceptance of all that God has created.

Dhammapada means "the path of dharma," the path of truth, harmony, and righteousness that anyone can follow to reach the highest good. Easwaran's translation of this classic Buddhist text is the best-selling edition in its field, praised by Huston Smith as a "sublime rendering." The introduction gives an overview of the Buddha's teachings that is penetrating and clear - accessible for readers new to Buddhism, but also with fresh insights and practical applications for readers familiar with this text. Chapter introductions place individual verses into the context of the broader Buddhist canon. Easwaran is a master storyteller, and his opening essay includes many stories that make moving, memorable reading, bringing young Siddhartha and his heroic spiritual quest vividly to life. But Easwaran's main qualification for interpreting the Dhammapada, he said, was that he knew from his own experience that these verses could transform our lives. This faithful rendition brings us closer to the compassionate heart of the Buddha.

One of India's greatest epics, the Ramayana pervades the country's moral and cultural consciousness. For generations it has served as a bedtime story for Indian children, while at the same time engaging the interest of philosophers and theologians. Believed to have been composed by Valmiki sometime between the eighth and sixth centuries BC, the Ramayana tells the tragic and magical story of Rama, the prince of Ayodhya, an incarnation of Lord Visnu, born to rid the earth of the terrible demon Ravana. An idealized heroic tale ending with the inevitable triumph of good over evil, the Ramayana is also an intensely personal story of family relationships, love and loss, duty and honor, of harem intrigue, petty jealousies, and destructive ambitions. All this played out in a universe populated by larger-than-life humans, gods and celestial beings, wondrous animals and terrifying demons. With her magnificent translation and superb introduction, Arshia Sattar has successfully bridged both time and space to bring this ancient classic to modern English readers.

In the last three decades, hundreds of books and essays have been published on women, gender, and Jewish Studies. This burgeoning scholarship has not been adequately theorized, contextualized, or historicized. This book argues that Jewish feminist studies is currently constrained by multiple frames of reference that require re-examination, a self-critical awareness, and a serious reflective inquiry into the models, paradigms, and assumptions that inform, shape, and define this area of academic interest. This book is the first critical analysis of Jewish feminist scholarship, tracing it from its tentative beginnings in the late 1970s to contemporary academic articulations of its disciplinary projects. It focuses on the assumptions, evasions, omissions, inconsistencies, and gaps in this scholarship, and notably the absence of debate, contestation, and interrogation of authoritative articulations of its presumed goals, investments, and priorities. The book teases out implicit thinking about mapping, direction, and orientation from introductions to leading anthologies and engages critically with the few explicitly theoretical works on Jewish feminist studies, contesting ideas that have become hegemonic in some areas, and interrogating the limitations these theories impose on future trajectories in Jewish feminist studies. Each chapter outlines the theoretical assumptions that inform salient publications in the field, providing a close reading of scholarly texts that justify certain practices. The book is divided into four chapters, each of which focuses on a different frame of reference. It outlines the way in which the various frames that have so far been imposed on Jewish feminism, the ethnocentric, liberal, personal, masculinist, and essentialist, have arrested its theoretical elaboration and articulation. The book includes both interdisciplinary anthologies on gender and Jewish identity and disciplinary publications in history, literature, philosophy, cultural studies, and Holocaust studies.