Sceptical Paths offers a fresh look at key junctions in the history of scepticism. Throughout this collection, key figures are reinterpreted, key arguments are reassessed, lesser-known figures are reintroduced, accepted distinctions are challenged, and new ideas are explored. The historiography of scepticism is usually based on a distinction between ancient and modern. The former is understood as a way of life which focuses on enquiry, whereas the latter is taken to be an epistemological approach which focuses on doubt. The studies in Sceptical Paths not only deepen the understanding of these approaches, but also show how ancient sceptical ideas find their way into modern thought, and modern sceptical ideas are anticipated in ancient thought. Within this state of affairs, the presence of sceptical arguments within Medieval philosophy is reflected in full force, not only enriching the historical narrative, but also introducing another layer to the sceptical discourse, namely its employment within theological settings. The various studies in this book exhibit the rich variety of expression in which scepticism manifests itself within various context and set against various philosophical and religious doctrines, schools, and approaches.

The text of the Qur'an appears to many to be desperately muddled and lacking any coherence. The Composition of the Qur'an provides a systematic presentation of the writing processes (or rhetoric) and argues that there is indeed a coherence to the Qur'anic text. Michel Cuypers shows that the ancient Semitic texts, of which the Qur'an is a part, do not obey the Greek rhetoric and that their basic principle is therefore not progressive linearity, but symmetry which can take several forms, following precise rules. He argues that the knowledge of this rhetorical code allows for a radically new analysis of the structure and rhetoric of the Qur'an. Using copious amounts of examples from the text, The Composition of the Qur'an provides a new theoretical synthesis of Qur'anic rhetoric as well as a methodology for their application in further exegesis. A landmark publication in the field of Qur'anic Studies, this volume will be of interest to scholars and researchers in Islamic Studies, Religious Studies and Arabic Studies.

In this collection, continental and diasporan African women interrogate the concept "sacred text" and analyze ways oral and written religious "texts" intersect with violence against African-descended women and girls. While the sanctioned idea of a sacred text is written literature, this project interrupts that conception by drawing attention to speech and other embodied practices that have sacral authority within the social imaginary. As a volume focused on religion and violence, essays in this collection analyze religions' authorization of violence against women and girls; contest the legitimacy of some religious "texts"; and affirm other writing, especially memoir, as redemptive. Unraveling and Reweaving Sacred Canon in Africana Womanhood arises from three years of conversation of continental and diasporan women, most recently continued in the July 6-10, 2014 Consultation of African and African Disaporan Women in Religion and Theology and privileges experiences and contexts of continental and diasporan African women and girls. Interlocutors include African traditionalists, Christian Protestants and Catholics, Muslims, and women embodying hybrid practices of these and other traditions.

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Is it possible to rethink the multilayered and polyvalent Christology of the Qur'an against the intersecting of competing peripheral Christianities, anti-Jewish Christian polemics, and the making of a new Arab state in the 7th-century Near East? To what extent may this help us to decipher, moreover, the intricate redactional process of the quranic corpus? And can we unearth from any conclusions as to the tension between a messianic-oriented and a prophetic-guided religious thought buried in the document? By analysing, first, the typology and plausible date of the Jesus texts contained in the Qur'an (which implies moving far beyond both the habitual chronology of the Qur'an and the common thematic division of the passages in question) and by examining, in the second place, the Qur'an's earliest Christology via-a-vis its later (and indeed much better known) Muhamadan kerygma, the present study answers these crucial questions and, thereby, sheds new light on the Qur'an's original sectarian milieu and pre-canonical development.

Psalms 146-150, sometimes called "Final Hallel" or "Minor Hallel", are often argued to have been written as a literary end of the Psalter. However, if sources other than the Hebrew Masoretic Text are taken into account, such an original unit of Psalms 146-150 has to be questioned. "The End of the Psalter" presents new interpretations of Psalms 146-150 based on the oldest extant evidence: the Hebrew Masoretic Text, the Hebrew Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Greek Septuagint. Each Psalm is analysed separately in all three sources, complete with a translation and detailed comments on form, intertextuality, content, genre, and date. Comparisons of the individual Psalms and their intertextual references in the ancient sources highlight substantial differences between the transmitted texts. The book concludes that Psalms 146-150 were at first separate texts which only in the Masoretic Text form the end of the Psalter. It thus stresses the importance of Psalms Exegesis before Psalter Exegesis, and argues for the inclusion of ancient sources beyond to the Masoretic Text to further our understanding of the Psalms.

Muslims believe that the Qur'an represents the words of God as revealed by the Angel Gabriel to Muhammad over a period of approximately twenty-three years, beginning in 610 AD, when he was forty, and concluding in 632 AD, the year of his death. All of it came from the mouth of one man. More people read the Quran than any other book ever written.This new edition of the book has been published to help Muslims not fluent in Arabic to understand the meaning of the words. It includes an English translation by Abdullah Yusuf Ali and a transliteration into Roman text by Abdul Haleem Eliyasee.However, it is important to remember at all times that the authoritative text is the Quran itself. These translations and transliterations are only intended to be helpful guides. They are not substitutes for the original.Every Muslim is required to read and understand the Quran to the extent of his ability. The words "To The Extent of his ability" is key. Obviously, a man who cannot speak Arabic and who is poorly educated will not be able to achieve the same level of understanding that a highly literate and educated native speaker of Arabic can. Nevertheless, even the poorly educated man must try to read and understand the actual words of the Quran. There is no Pope or supreme authority in Islam. Every man is his own authority. This is what Muslims believe.

The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls more than sixty years ago has revealed a wealth of literary compositions which rework the Hebrew Bible in various ways. This genre seems to have been a popular literary form in ancient Judaism literature. However, the Qumran texts of this type are particularly interesting for they offer for the first time a large sample of such compositions in their original languages, Hebrew and Aramaic. Since the rewritten Bible texts do not use the particular style and nomenclature specific to the literature produced by the Qumran community. Many of these texts are unknown from any other sources, and have been published only during the last two decades. They therefore became the object of intense scholarly study. However, most the attention has been directed to the longer specimens, such as the Hebrew Book of Jubilees and the Aramaic Genesis Apocryphon. The present volume addresses the less known and poorly studied pieces, a group of eleven small Hebrew texts that rework the Hebrew Bible. It provides fresh editions, translations and detailed commentaries for each one. The volume thus places these texts within the larger context of the Qumran library, aiming at completing the data about the rewritten Bible.

The Holy Qur,an was the revealation given to Prophet Muhammad (P.B.U.H.) from Allah (God)by way of the Angel Gabriel (S.R.A.) approx. 1400 A.D.

This volume contains the papers presented at the 2017 meeting of the SBL Program Unit on Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature in Boston, MA. The theme of the sessions was the interpretation of Torah in deuterocanonical literature. The contributions cover a variety of concepts and themes related to Torah and trace these through the Hebrew Bible, into the Septuagintal deuterocanonical books and other relevant and cognate literature.

This magnum opus is not another catalogue of the forms of biblical literature, but a deeply reflected account of the significance of form itself. Buss writes out of his experience in Western philosophy and the intricate involvement of biblical criticism in philosophical history. Equally, biblical criticism and the development of notions of form are related to social contexts, whether from the side of the aristocracy (tending towards generality) or of the bourgeois (tending towards particularity) or of an inclusive society (favouring a relational view). Form criticism, in Buss's conception, is no mere formal exercise, but the observation of interrelationships among thoughts and moods, linguistic regularities and the experiences and activities of life. This work, with its many examples from both Testaments, will be fundamental for Old and New Testament scholars alike.>

'Content analysis'-which is a computer-assisted form of textual analysis-is used to examine divine activity in six prophetic texts, comparing God's activity to that of humans. In this methodologically innovative study, the author concludes, in the light of quantitative data, that God is harsher to non-Israelites than to Israelites in all the texts, and much kinder to Israelites in Joel than in the typical prophet. God and humans are involved in much the same kinds of physical and mental processes, but to considerably different degrees. Griffin argues persuasively that the God of the prophets is not the 'wholly other' of some theologies, but neither do his actions follow exactly the human pattern.

"Re-Biographing and Deviance" examines the Jewish Midrashic model for self-renewal through time. In this important new study, author Rotenberg questions how traditional Judaism, with its contradictory notions of teshuvah (repentance) and of remembrance of the past, allows for the contemporary Jew to maintain a healthy cognitive dialogue between past failures and future aspirations. The author illustrates how the Midrashic narrative philosophy entails a psychotherapeutic system for reinterpretation of past sins into positive future-oriented biographies--which in turn provide fuel for Jewish vitality and its continuity between past, present and future.

The Qur'an makes extensive use of older religious material, stories, and traditions that predate the origins of Islam, and there has long been a fierce debate about how this material found its way into the Qur'an. This unique book argues that this debate has largely been characterized by a failure to fully appreciate the Qur'an as a predominately oral product. Using innovative computerized linguistic analysis, this study demonstrates that the Qur'an displays many of the signs of oral composition that have been found in other traditional literature. When one then combines these computerized results with other clues to the Qur'an's origins (such as the demonstrably oral culture that both predated and preceded the Qur'an, as well as the "folk memory" in the Islamic tradition that Muhammad was an oral performer) these multiple lines of evidence converge and point to the conclusion that large portions of the Qur'an need to be understood as being constructed live, in oral performance. Combining historical, linguistic, and statistical analysis, much of it made possible for the first time due to new computerized tools developed specifically for this book, Bannister argues that the implications of orality have long been overlooked in studies of the Qur'an. By relocating the Islamic scripture firmly back into an oral context, one gains both a fresh appreciation of the Qur'an on its own terms, as well as a fresh understanding of how Muhammad used early religious traditions, retelling old tales afresh for a new audience.

Both the Quran and Bible purportedly hold the keys to creation, but when you examine both closely, only one of them holds up.

A closer examination of Muhammad's life and the Quran shows that both are opposed to all that God declares pure and holy. Join author John Tharp, who has traveled the world and studied these texts side by side, as he explores

why it's no accident that the Ten Commandments were omitted from the Quran; which facts show Muhammad's life and teachings are not pure and holy; how Islam's teachings contribute to a world full of turmoil.

Tharp also examines the secrets that Muslims don't share with people outside of their religion, as well as the future implications of the continuing conflict between Islam and Christianity.

Cross the boundaries that divide Christianity, Islam and, other world religions to determine how and why they are different and why these differences are important. You'll develop a deep understanding of how satanic deception breeds hostility against those who live a godly life in "The Quran."