Yitzhak Berger advances a distinctive and markedly original interpretation of the biblical book of Jonah that resolves many of the ambiguities in the text. Berger contends that the Jonah text pulls from many inner-biblical connections, especially ones relating to the Garden of Eden. These connections provide a foundation for Berger's reading of the story, which attributes multiple layers of meaning to this carefully crafted biblical book. Focusing on Jonah's futile quest and his profoundly troubled response to God's view of the sins of humanity, Berger shows how the book paints Jonah as a pacifist no less than as a moralist.

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.

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 book that challenges our most basic assumptions about Judeo-Christian monotheism Contrary to popular belief, Judaism was not always strictly monotheistic. Two Gods in Heaven reveals the long and little-known history of a second, junior god in Judaism, showing how this idea was embraced by rabbis and Jewish mystics in the early centuries of the common era and casting Judaism's relationship with Christianity in an entirely different light. Drawing on an in-depth analysis of ancient sources that have received little attention until now, Peter Schafer demonstrates how the Jews of the pre-Christian Second Temple period had various names for a second heavenly power-such as Son of Man, Son of the Most High, and Firstborn before All Creation. He traces the development of the concept from the Son of Man vision in the biblical book of Daniel to the Qumran literature, the Ethiopic book of Enoch, and the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria. After the destruction of the Second Temple, the picture changes drastically. While the early Christians of the New Testament took up the idea and developed it further, their Jewish contemporaries were divided. Most rejected the second god, but some-particularly the Jews of Babylonia and the writers of early Jewish mysticism-revived the ancient Jewish notion of two gods in heaven. Describing how early Christianity and certain strands of rabbinic Judaism competed for ownership of a second god to the creator, this boldly argued and elegantly written book radically transforms our understanding of Judeo-Christian monotheism.

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.

"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"

The Book of Shalya recounts in gory detail the final destruction of the Kaurava army and the defeat of its leader, Dur-yodhana. In this first volume heroic duels and martial speeches abound as Shalya, the king of the Madras, is made general of the Kaurava army, only to be slaughtered in his turn.

The Book of Shalya recounts in gory detail the final destruction of the Kaurava army and the defeat of its leader, Duryodhana. In this first volume heroic duels and martial speeches abound as Shalya, the king of the Madras, is made general of the Kaurava army, only to be slaughtered in his turn.

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

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

Written in the early eighth century, the "Kojiki" is considered Japan's first literary and historical work. A compilation of myths, legends, songs, and genealogies, it recounts the birth of Japan's islands, reflecting the origins of Japanese civilization and future Shinto practice. The "Kojiki" provides insight into the lifestyle, religious beliefs, politics, and history of early Japan, and for centuries has shaped the nation's view of its past. This innovative rendition conveys the rich appeal of the "Kojiki" to a general readership by translating the names of characters to clarify their contribution to the narrative while also translating place names to give a vivid sense of the landscape the characters inhabit, as well as an understanding of where such places are today. Gustav Heldt's expert organization reflects the text's original sentence structure and repetitive rhythms, enhancing the reader's appreciation for its sophisticated style of storytelling.

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

In an age when physical books matter less and less, here is a thrilling story about a book that meant everything. This true-life detective story unveils the journey of a sacred text - the tenth-century annotated bible known as the Aleppo Codex - from its hiding place in a Syrian synagogue to the newly founded state of Israel. Based on Matti Friedman's independent research, documents kept secret for fifty years, and personal interviews with key players, the book proposes a new theory of what happened when the codex left Aleppo, Syria, in the late 1940s and eventually surfaced in Jerusalem, mysteriously incomplete. The codex provides vital keys to reading biblical texts. By recounting its history, Friedman explores the once vibrant Jewish communities in Islamic lands and follows the thread into the present, uncovering difficult truths about how the manuscript was taken to Israel and how its most important pages went missing. Along the way, he raises critical questions about who owns historical treasures and the role of myth and legend in the creation of a nation.

This book is the first to present current scholarship on gender and in regional and sectarian versions of the Ramayana. Contributors explore in what ways the versions relate to other Ramayana texts as they deal with the female persona and the cultural values implicit in them. Using a wide variety of approaches, both analytical and descriptive, the authors discover common ground between narrative variants even as their diversity is recognized. It offers an analysis in the shaping of the heterogeneous Rama tradition through time as it can be viewed from the perspective of narrating women's lives. Through the analysis of the representation and treatment of female characters, narrative inventions, structural design, textual variants, and the idiom of composition and technique in art and sculpture are revealed and it is shown what and in which way these alternative versions are unique. A sophisticated exploration of the Ramayana, this book is of great interest to academics in the fields of South Asian Studies, Asian Religion, Asian Gender and Cultural Studies.

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.

At the birth of the United States, African Americans were excluded from the newly-formed Republic and its churches, which saw them as savage rather than citizen and as heathen rather than Christian. Denied civil access to the basic rights granted to others, African Americans have developed their own sacred traditions and their own civil discourses. As part of this effort, African American intellectuals offered interpretations of the Bible which were radically different and often fundamentally oppositional to those of many of their white counterparts. By imagining a freedom unconstrained, their work charted a broader and, perhaps, a more genuinely American identity. In Pillars of Cloud and Fire, Herbert Robinson Marbury offers a comprehensive survey of African American biblical interpretation. Each chapter in this compelling volume moves chronologically, from the antebellum period and the Civil War through to the Harlem Renaissance, the civil rights movement, the black power movement, and the Obama era, to offer a historical context for the interpretative activity of that time and to analyze its effect in transforming black social reality. For African American thinkers such as Absalom Jones, David Walker, Zora Neale Hurston, Frances E. W. Harper, Adam Clayton Powell, and Martin Luther King, Jr., the exodus story became the language-world through which freedom both in its sacred resonance and its civil formation found expression. This tradition, Marbury argues, has much to teach us in a world where fundamentalisms have become synonymous with "authentic" religious expression and American identity. For African American biblical interpreters, to be American and to be Christian was always to be open and oriented toward freedom.

A young woman forced to fight for her beliefs. A chaplain with a secret that could determine the fate of a kingdom. England, 1452. Under the reign of King Henry VI the country is on the brink of civil war after the Hundred Years' War. Young mystic Lady Isabelle d'Albret Courteault's family is forced to flee the Duchy of English Gascony for a new and unforeseeable life in England. While they become established in the courts, Lady Isabelle discovers dark secrets about their chaplain and tutor. As their growing relationship places her in harm's way, can she remain steadfast in her promises to uphold the monarchy and her faith? Set amidst a period of grave uncertainty, this is the story of a woman learning to stand up for her beliefs in a patriarchal world - a beautifully crafted narrative of faith, love and grace.

One of the most influential books in the history of literature, recognized as the greatest literary masterpiece in Arabic, the Qur'an is the supreme authority and living source of all Islamic teaching, the sacred text that sets out the creed, rituals, ethics, and laws of Islam. First published in 2004, M. A. S. Abdel Haleem's superb English translation has been acclaimed for both its faithfulness to the original and its supreme clarity. Now Haleem's translation is published side-by-side with the original Arabic text, to give readers a greater appreciation and understanding of the holy book.
Revised for the new edition, this translation is written in contemporary language that remains true to the meaning and spirit of the original, making the text crystal clear while retaining all of this great work's eloquence. It is now set page-for-page against the most widespread traditional calligraphic Arabic text, for the benefit of Muslims who wish to make the connection between the translation and the Arabic text, as well as Arabic readers and non-Arabs learning to read the Qur'an in Arabic. As in the original volume, the translation is completely free from the archaisms, incoherence, and alien structures that mar other translations. Furthermore, Haleem includes notes that explain geographical, historical, and personal allusions as well as an index in which Qur'anic material is arranged into topics for easy reference. His introduction traces the history of the Qur'an, examines its structure and stylistic features, and considers issues related to militancy, intolerance, and the subjection of women.
This brilliant bilingual edition of the Qur'an is the best available English-language translation. It has been approved by Al-Azhar University, the oldest Muslim university and the world's leading institution for the study of Arabic and Islam.

In Christ Died for Our Sins, Jarvis J. Williams argues a twofold thesis: First, that Paul in Romans presents Jesus' death as both a representation of, and a substitute for, Jews and Gentiles. Second, that the Jewish martyrological narratives in certain Second Temple Jewish texts are a background behind Paul's presentation of Jesus' death. By means of careful textual analysis, Williams argues that the Jewish martyrological narratives appropriated and applied Levitical cultic language and Isaianic language to the deaths of the Torah-observant Jewish martyrs in order to present their deaths as a representation, a substitution, and as Israel's Yom Kippur for non-Torah-observant Jews. Williams seeks to show that Paul appropriated and applied this same language and conceptuality in order to present Jesus' death as the death of a Torah-observant Jew serving as a representation, a substitution, and as the Yom Kippur for both Jews and Gentiles. Scholars working in the areas of Romans, Pauline theology, Second Temple Judaism, atonement in Paul, or early Christian origins will find much to stimulate and provoke in these pages.

With the current turmoil in the Middle East, there is a growing interest about Islam--the world's second largest religion and one of the fastest growing--and its holy book, the Koran (or Qur'an). Now, with this easy-to-follow, plain-English guide, you can explore the history, structure, and basic tenets of Islam's sacred scripture.

"The Koran For Dummies" is for non-Muslims interested in the Koran as well as Muslims looking to deepen their understanding. Islamic scholar Sohaib Sultan provides a clear road map, revealing: The meaning of Koran and its basic messageThe Koran's place in history and in Islamic spiritual lifeExplanations of its language, structure, and narrative styleHow to live by the Koran's teachingsThe Koran's role in key global issues, such as Jihad vs. terrorismDifferent interpretations of the Koran

No other book provides such a straightforward look at what the Koran says, how it says it, and how believers live according to its guidance. From how the Koran was received by Mohammed and how it was compiled to how it's interpreted by Islam's two main branches, you'll see how to put the Islamic faith in perspective.

Plus, you'll discover: What the Koran really says about women and civil lawHow Islam relates to Judaism and ChristianityThe Koran's view of God, prophets, mankind, and the selfHow its teachings are lived and recited every day by devout MuslimsCommon misconceptions of the KoranHow to raise a family the Koranic way

Complete with lists of important passages, Koranic terminology, famous quotes, and further reading resources, "The Koran For Dummies" makes it easy and enjoyable for you to grasp the teachings and significance of Islam's holy book.

Thanks to these generous donors for making the publication of this book possible: Joel D. and Tammy S. Rubin.

The third volume of the acclaimed English edition of "Miqra'ot Gedolot"

First published 500 years ago as the "Rabbinic Bible," the biblical commentaries known as "Miqra'ot Gedolot" have inspired and educated generations of Hebrew readers. With this edition, the voices of Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Nachmanides, Rashbam, and other medieval Bible commentators come alive once more, speaking in a contemporary English translation annotated and explicated for lay readers.

Each page of this third volume in The Commentators' Bible series contains several verses from the "Book of Numbers," surrounded by both the 1917 and 1985 JPS translations, and by new contemporary English translations of the major commentators. The book also includes an introduction, a glossary of terms, a list of names used in the text, notes on source texts, a special topics list, and resources for further study.

This large-format volume is beautifully designed for easy navigation among the many elements on each page, including explanatory notes and selected additional comments from the works of Bekhor Shor, Hizkuni, Abarbanel, Sforno, Gersonides, and others.

Biblical ethics and eloquence reached a pinnacle with the great writing Prophets - from Amos, Isaiah and Jeremiah, to Zechariah. Prophethood has also been central to Islam. Muhammad, its final messenger, is coupled with Allah in the Islamic faith, through confession or shahadah.