Inconsistencies in the Torah is a critical intellectual history of the theories of textual growth in biblical studies. The historical critical approach to the Pentateuch has long relied upon scholarly intuition concerning some of its narrative and legal discrepancies, which scholars have taken as signs of fragmentation and competing agendas. Those hypotheses are, Joshua A. Berman argues, based on anachronistic, nineteenth-century understandings of ancient Near Eastern and biblical law as statutory law. Indeed, the Pentateuch's inconsistencies are not dissimilar to types of narrative inconsistencies from Egyptian monumental inscriptions and the historical prologues of the Hittite vassal treaty tradition. Berman here explores the inconsistencies between the Pentateuch's four corpora of law by surveying the history of legal theory and its influence on the critical study of biblical law. He lays bare how the intellectual movements of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries impeded the proper execution of historical critical method in the study of the Pentateuch. Ultimately he advocates a return to the hermeneutics of Spinoza and the adoption of a methodologically modest agenda. This book is a must-read for Biblicists looking to escape from the impasse and extreme fragmentation gripping the field today.

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).

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.

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.

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 Ramayana tells the tale of Rama and his beloved Sita, but its narratives and intent, as with all great literature, point to the grand themes of life, death and righteousness. Originally written in ancient Sanskrit, the elegant, epic work is a key part of the canon of both Hinduism and Buddhism. It continues to inspire art, theatre, poetry and temple architecture, dominating the spiritual landscape of the vast Indian sub-continent and the diaspora throughout the rest of the world. This deluxe new edition revives Ralph T. H. Griffith's evocative verse translation and abridges it for the modern reader - bringing the gripping narrative to the forefront. The Flame Tree Gothic Fantasy, Classic Stories and Epic Tales collections bring together the entire range of myth, folklore and modern short fiction. Highlighting the roots of suspense, supernatural, science fiction and mystery stories, the books in Flame Tree Collections series are beautifully presented, perfect as a gift and offer a lifetime of reading pleasure.

According to a longstanding interpretation, book religions are agents of textuality and logocentrism. This volume inverts the traditional perspective: its focus is on the strong dependency between scripture and aesthetics, holy books and material artworks, sacred texts and ritual performances. The contributions, written by a group of international specialists in Western, Byzantine, Islamic and Jewish Art, are committed to a comparative and transcultural approach. The authors reflect upon the different strategies of "clothing" sacred texts with precious materials and elaborate forms. They show how the pretypographic cultures of the Middle Ages used book ornaments as media for building a close relation between the divine words and their human audience. By exploring how art shapes the religious practice of books, and how the religious use of books shapes the evolution of artistic practices this book contributes to a new understanding of the deep nexus between sacred scripture and art.

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 Septuagint is the term commonly used to refer to the corpus of early Greek versions of Hebrew Scriptures. The collection is of immense importance in the history of both Judaism and Christianity. The renderings of individual books attest to the religious interests of the substantial Jewish population of Egypt during the Hellenistic and Roman periods, and to the development of the Greek language in its Koine phase. The narrative ascribing the Septuagint's origins to the work of seventy translators in Alexandria attained legendary status among both Jews and Christians. The Septuagint was the version of Scripture most familiar to the writers of the New Testament, and became the authoritative Old Testament of the Greek and Latin Churches. In the early centuries of Christianity it was itself translated into several other languages, and it has had a continuing influence on the style and content of biblical translations. The Oxford Handbook of the Septuagint features contributions from leading experts in the field considering the history and manuscript transmission of the version, and the study of translation technique and textual criticism. The collection provides surveys of previous and current research on individual books of the Septuagint corpus, on alternative Jewish Greek versions, the Christian 'daughter' translations, and reception in early Jewish and Christian writers. The Handbook also includes several conversations with related fields of interest such as New Testament studies, liturgy, and art history.

So what exactly is Islam? And what does the Koran (Qur'an), Islam's most sacred text, REALLY teach? Professor Khalid Sayyed presents this insightful and comprehensive study, that will undoubtedly shed light on a number of problematic themes concerning the practice and philosophy of Islam in today's world. This attractively-priced paperback version, fully indexed, is a must for any serious student of Islam..... A review from Dr Syed Husain, Cambridge University: "To my mind, what makes THE QURAN'S CHALLENGE TO ISLAM most welcome is the author's desire to avert clashes caused by misunderstandings about Islam today. Illustrating the author's ground-breaking research, this unusual piece of work convincingly acquaints the Muslim as well as the non-Muslim world with what Islam is and what it really means. Sayyed very clearly highlights the differences and conflicts which the Muslim Holy Scripture has with the conventional beliefs of Islam."

The tension between reason and revelation has occupied Jewish philosophers for centuries, who were committed, on the one hand, to defending Judaism, and, on the other hand, to remaining loyal to philosophical principles. Maimonides is considered the most prominent Jewish religious philosopher, whose aim was to reconcile philosophy, in particular Aristotelian philosophy, with the fundamental principles of Judaism. But many other Jewish thinkers, before and after him, also struggled with this task, raising the question whether it is possible to attain this reconciliation. The connection between philosophy and religion was often not an obvious one. As a consequence, it could serve in some cases as grounds for supporting Maimonides' project, while in others it could lead to rejection. Scepticism and Anti septicism in Medieval Jewish Thought focuses on sceptical questions, methods, strategies, and approaches raised by Jewish thinkers in the Middle Ages. In a series of lectures, we examine the variety of attitudes presented by these thinkers, as well as the latest readings of contemporary scholars concerning those attitudes.

In the State of Israel, the unique family law derives from ancient Jewish law, halakhic traditions, and an extensive legal tradition spanning many centuries and geographic locations. This book examines Israeli family law in comparison with the corresponding law in the United States and illuminates common issues in legal systems worldwide. The Israeli system is primarily controlled by the religious law of the parties. Thus, religious courts were also established and granted enforcement powers equivalent to those of the civil courts. This is a complex situation because the religious law applied in these courts is not always consistent with gender equality and civil rights practiced in civil court. This book seeks to clarify that tension and offer solutions. The comprehensive analysis in this book may serve as a guide for those interested in family law: civil court judges, rabbinical court judges, lawyers, mediators, arbitrators, and families themselves. Topics central to the book include issues subject to modification, the right of a minor to independent status, extramarital relationships, and joint property.

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.