The influence of Buddhism on the Chinese language, on Chinese literature and on Chinese culture in general cannot be overstated, and the language of most Chinese Buddhist texts differs considerably from both Classical and Modern Chinese. This reader aims to help students develop familiarity with features of Buddhist texts in Chinese, including patterns of organization, grammatical features and specialized vocabulary. It also aims to familiarize students with the use of a range of resources necessary for becoming independent readers of such texts. Chinese Buddhist Texts is suitable for students who have completed the equivalent of at least one year's college level study of Modern Chinese and are familiar with roughly one thousand of the commonest Chinese characters. Previous study of Classical Chinese would be an advantage, but is not assumed. It is an ideal textbook for students taking relevant courses in Chinese studies programs and in Buddhist studies programs. However, it is also possible for a student to work through the reader on his or her own. Further online resources are available at: lockgraham.com

The influence of Buddhism on the Chinese language, on Chinese literature and on Chinese culture in general cannot be overstated, and the language of most Chinese Buddhist texts differs considerably from both Classical and Modern Chinese. This reader aims to help students develop familiarity with features of Buddhist texts in Chinese, including patterns of organization, grammatical features and specialized vocabulary. It also aims to familiarize students with the use of a range of resources necessary for becoming independent readers of such texts. Chinese Buddhist Texts is suitable for students who have completed the equivalent of at least one year's college level study of Modern Chinese and are familiar with roughly one thousand of the commonest Chinese characters. Previous study of Classical Chinese would be an advantage, but is not assumed. It is an ideal textbook for students taking relevant courses in Chinese studies programs and in Buddhist studies programs. However, it is also possible for a student to work through the reader on his or her own. Further online resources are available at: lockgraham.com

The Mahabharata, one of the major epics of India, is a sourcebook complete by itself as well as an open text constantly under construction. This volume looks at transactions between its modern discourses and ancient vocabulary. Located amid conversations between these two conceptual worlds, the volume grapples with the epic's problematisation of dharma or righteousness, and consequently, of the ideal person and the good life through a cluster of issues surrounding the concept of agency and action. Drawing on several interdisciplinary approaches, the essays reflect on a range of issues in the Mahabharata, including those of duty, motivation, freedom, selfhood, choice, autonomy, and justice, both in the context of philosophical debates and their ethical and political ramifications for contemporary times. This book will be of interest to scholars and researchers engaged with philosophy, literature, religion, history, politics, culture, gender, South Asian studies, and Indology. It will also appeal to the general reader interested in South Asian epics and the Mahabharata.

Dead Sea: New Discoveries in the Cave of Letters is a multidisciplinary study of the Cave of Letters in the Nahal Hever of the Judean desert, a site reputed for having contained the most important finds evidencing the Bar Kokhba revolt, including the cache of bronzes found buried there and the papers of Babatha, one of the few direct accounts of the context of the Bar Kokhba revolt in the second century CE. Chapters by diverse scholars report on and discuss the ramifications of the 1999-2001 expedition to the site, the first organized archaeological activity there since the expeditions at Nahal Hever by Yigal Yadin in 1960-1961. Using advanced technological methodologies alongside more "traditional" archaeological techniques, the team explored several research hypotheses. The expedition sought to determine whether the material collected in the cave could substantiate the hypothesis that the cave was a place of refuge during both the Bar Kokhba revolt and the earlier Great Revolt against the Roman Empire. The expedition also researched the viability of a relatively long-term occupation of the cave while under siege by Roman forces, questioning whether occupants would have been able to cook, sleep, etc., without severely degrading the cave environment as a viable place for human habitation. The individual chapters represent the result of analysis by scholars and scientists on different aspects of the material culture that the expedition uncovered.

Mindfulness Mutts and Dharma DogsReaders of Start With Why, You Are Here and Whatever You Are, Be A Good One will love the quotes and teachings of Zen Dogs. Advice from Zen Leaders. Join some cuddly puppies for the timeless teachings of Buddhism along with key lessons our canine companions are here to remind us of-such as how to live in the now-in Zen Dogs. Don't let the adorable dogs fool you-they have plenty of mindfulness wisdom to share in the form of quotes and verses. These timeless verses will continue to be helpful and relevant to your life for years to come. Daily Mindfulness. Meditate along with these verses daily. Every dog is a living example of loving kindness, a central tenet of the Buddha, which they reteach us with every affectionate lick and joy-filled wag of the tail. Learn from the dutiful dog to be true in body and mind. If you appreciated the mindfulness encouragement from Peace Is Every Step, The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching and Together Is Better, get yourself a copy of Zen Dogs. Let your inner Zen Dog guide you to enlightenment.

Four Testaments brings together four foundational texts from world religions-the Tao Te Ching, Dhammapada, Analects of Confucius, and Bhagavad Gita-inviting readers to experience them in full, to explore possible points of connection and divergence, and to better understand people who practice these traditions. Following Brian Arthur Brown's award-winning Three Testaments: Torah, Gospel, Quran, this volume of Four Testaments features essays by esteemed scholars to introduce readers to each tradition and text, as well as commentary on unexpected ways the ancient Zoroastrian tradition might connect Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Hinduism, along with the Abrahamic faiths. Four Testaments aims to foster deeper religious understanding in our interconnected and contentious world.

The Mishnah is the foundational document of rabbinic law and, one could say, of rabbinic Judaism itself. It is overwhelmingly technical and focused on matters of practice, custom, and law. The Oxford Annotated Mishnah is the first annotated translation of this work, making the text accessible to all. With explanations of all technical terms and expressions, The Oxford Annotated Mishnah brings together an expert group of translators and annotators to assemble a version of the Mishnah that requires no specialist knowledge.

The last and most intriguing book of the Ramayana, the Uttara Kanda is rendered here by noted Sanskrit scholar Arshia Sattar in vivid, sensuous detail. First composed around 500 BCE, it tells the story of an unjustly exiled prince, the abduction of his wife from the forest by a ten-headed demon king, his alliance with a band of magical monkeys, and the internal and external battles he must fight to win back his wife and keep her. India's great Sanskrit epic brings to readers the classic dilemmas every individual faces: love versus duty, destiny and free will, the public and the private self, the pull of family, and the right to personal happiness. These universal problems are layered with the quintessentially Indian ideas of karma (action) and dharma (duty).The book explores what it means to be human in a complex and demanding world, considering the parameters and contexts in which we make the decisions that will determine the color and tenor of our lives, the choices that make us who we are. It also offers a great, albeit tragic, love story-a story of the demands and pressures of love and how we might fail those that we love most. Accompanied by Sattar's thoughtful essays weighing the moral complexity of this most enduring of epics, this translation crystallizes her deep and intimate knowledge of the Ramayana in a way that is utterly compelling.

The last and most intriguing book of the Ramayana, the Uttara Kanda is rendered here by noted Sanskrit scholar Arshia Sattar in vivid, sensuous detail. First composed around 500 BCE, it tells the story of an unjustly exiled prince, the abduction of his wife from the forest by a ten-headed demon king, his alliance with a band of magical monkeys, and the internal and external battles he must fight to win back his wife and keep her. India's great Sanskrit epic brings to readers the classic dilemmas every individual faces: love versus duty, destiny and free will, the public and the private self, the pull of family, and the right to personal happiness. These universal problems are layered with the quintessentially Indian ideas of karma (action) and dharma (duty).The book explores what it means to be human in a complex and demanding world, considering the parameters and contexts in which we make the decisions that will determine the color and tenor of our lives, the choices that make us who we are. It also offers a great, albeit tragic, love story-a story of the demands and pressures of love and how we might fail those that we love most. Accompanied by Sattar's thoughtful essays weighing the moral complexity of this most enduring of epics, this translation crystallizes her deep and intimate knowledge of the Ramayana in a way that is utterly compelling.

In 1143 Robert of Ketton produced the first Latin translation of the Qur'an. This translation, extant in 24 manuscripts, was one of the main ways in which Latin European readers had access to the Muslim holy book. Yet it was not the only means of transmission of Quranic stories and concepts to the Latin world: there were other medieval translations into Latin of the Qur'an and of Christian polemical texts composed in Arabic which transmitted elements of the Qur'an (often in a polemical mode). The essays in this volume examine the range of medieval Latin transmission of the Qur'an and reaction to the Qur'an by concentrating on the manuscript traditions of medieval Qur'an translations and anti-Islamic polemics in Latin. We see how the Arabic text was transmitted and studied in Medieval Europe. We examine the strategies of translators who struggled to find a proper vocabulary and syntax to render Quranic terms into Latin, at times showing miscomprehensions of the text or willful distortions for polemical purposes. These translations and interpretations by Latin authors working primarily in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Spain were the main sources of information about Islam for European scholars until well into the sixteenth century, when they were printed, reused and commented. This volume presents a key assessment of a crucial chapter in European understandings of Islam.

New Horizons in Qur'anic Linguistics provides a panoramic insight into the Qur'anic landscape fenced by innate syntactic, semantic and stylistic landmarks where context and meaning have closed ranks to impact morphological form in order to achieve variegated illocutionary forces. It provides a comprehensive account of the recurrent syntactic, stylistic, morphological, lexical, cultural, and phonological voids that are an iceberg looming in the horizon of Qur'anic genre. It is an invaluable resource for contrastive linguistics, translation studies, and corpus linguistics. Among the linguistic topics are: syntactic structures, ellipsis, synonymy, polysemy, semantic redundancy, incongruity, and contrastiveness, selection restriction rule, componential features, collocation, cyclical modification, foregrounding, backgrounding, pragmatic functions and categories of shift, pragmatic distinction between verbal and nominal sentences, morpho-semantic features of lexical items, context-sensitive word and phrase order, vowel points and phonetic variation. The value of European theoretical linguistics to the analysis of the Qur'anic text at a macro level has been overlooked in the academic literature to date and this book addresses this research gap, providing a key resource for students and scholars of linguistics and specifically working in Arabic or Qur'anic Studies.

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 Qur'an is the foundational sacred text of the Islamic faith. Traditionally revered as the literal word of God, its pronouncements and discussions form the bedrock of Islamic beliefs and teachings. Notwithstanding its religious pre-eminence and the fact that it is the sacred text for over one billion of the world's Muslims, the Qur'an is also considered to be the matchless masterpiece of the Arabic language. Its historical impact as a text can be discerned in all aspects of the heritage of the Arabic literary tradition. Over recent decades, academic engagement with the Qur'an has produced an impressive array of scholarship, ranging from detailed studies of the text's unique language, style and structure, to meticulous surveys of its contents, concepts and historical contexts. The Oxford Handbook of Qur'anic Studies is an essential reference and starting point for those with an academic interest in the Qur'an. It offers not only detailed reviews of influential subjects in the field, but also a critical overview of developments in the research discourse. It explores the tradition of Qur'anic exegesis and hermeneutics, making it a comprehensive academic resource for the study of the Qur'an. No single volume devoted to such a broad academic survey of the state of the field currently exists.

This book examines the emergence of self-knowledge as a determining legal consideration among the rabbis of Late Antiquity, from the third to the seventh centuries CE. Based on close readings of rabbinic texts from Palestine and Babylonia, Ayelet Hoffmann Libson highlights a unique and surprising development in Talmudic jurisprudence, whereby legal decision-making incorporated personal and subjective information. She examines the central legal role accorded to individuals' knowledge of their bodies and mental states in areas of law as diverse as purity laws, family law and the laws of Sabbath. By focusing on subjectivity and self-reflection, the Babylonian rabbis transformed earlier legal practices in a way that cohered with the cultural concerns of other religious groups in Late Antiquity. They developed sophisticated ideas about the inner self and incorporated these notions into their distinctive discourse of law.

Steve D. Fraade offers a new translation, with notes, and detailed commentary to the Dead Sea Scroll most commonly called the Damascus Document, based on both ancient manuscripts from caves along the western shore of the Dead Sea, and medieval manuscripts from the Cairo Geniza. The text is one of the longest and most important of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Its importance derives from several aspects of its contents: its extensive collections of laws, both for the sectarian community that authored it and for the rest of Israel; some of the oldest examples of scriptural interpretation, both legal and narrative, both implicit and explicit, with important implications for our understanding of the evolving status of the Hebrew canon; some of the clearest expressions, often in hortatory form, of the community's self-understanding as an elect remnant of Israel that understands itself in dualistic opposition to the rest of Israel, its practices, and its leaders; important expressions of the community's self-understanding as a priestly alternative to the sacrificial worship in the Jerusalem Temple; expressions of an apocalyptic, eschatological understanding of living as the true Israel in the "end of days;" important expressions of attitudes toward woman, sexual activity, and marriage; importance for our understanding of ancient modes of teaching and of ritual practice; importance for the study of the history of the Hebrew language and its scribal practices. The volume contains a substantial introduction, dealing with these aspects of the Damascus Document and locating its place within the Dead Sea Scrolls more broadly as well as the historical context of ancient Judaism that gave rise to this text.

An Invitation to Biblical Poetry is an accessibly written introduction to biblical poetry that emphasizes the aesthetic dimensions of poems and their openness to varieties of context. It demonstrates the irreducible complexity of poetry as a verbal art and considers the intellectual work poems accomplish as they offer aesthetic experiences to people who read or hear them. Chapters walk the reader through some of the diverse ways biblical poems are organized through techniques of voicing, lineation, and form, and describe how the poems' figures are both culturally and historically bound and always dependent on later reception. The discussions consider examples from different texts of the Bible, including poems inset in prose narratives, prophecies, psalms, and wisdom literature. Each chapter ends with a reading of a psalm that offers an acute example of the dimension under discussion. Students and general readers are invited to richer and deeper readings of ancient poems and the subjects, problems, and convictions that occupy their imagination.

This new edition of Scriptures of the World's Religions uses selections from scriptures to examine the world's religions. It emphasizes religions that are practiced today and features English translations that are accessible to the layperson. This edition examines the collected sacred texts revered by these religions themselves. There are special benefits to exploring the world's religions through selections from their scriptures. In most cases, the sacred texts are the oldest written documents in the tradition, and we gain a sense of immediate connection with these religions by studying the same documents that followers have been reading for millennia.