The work of Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin, the Neziv, ranks amongst the most often read rabbinic literature of the nineteenth century. His breadth of learning, unabashed creativity, and penchant for walking against the stream of the rabbinic commentarial establishment has made his commentaries a favorite amongst rabbinic scholars and scholars of rabbinics alike. Yet, to date, there has been no comprehensive and systematic attempt to place his intellectual oeuvre into its historical context - until now. In the Pillar of Volozhin, Gil Perl traces the influences which helped mould and shape the Neziv's thinking while also opening new doors into the world of early nineteenth century Lithuanian Torah scholarship, an area heretofore almost completely untouched by academic research.

This volume contains fi fteen articles, many in Hebrew, by leading scholars. The articles cover a broad range of subjects, from an analysis of biblical narratives as expounded in the midrash and by medieval commentators, through a discussion of Maimonides' attitude towards midrash and an analysis of talmudic aggadah as expounded by oriental scholars, to polemics concerning the attitude to aggadah in the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, and culminating with an analysis of interpretation of aggadah by latter-day talmudic scholars. There are also articles about the essence of aggadah, its literary conventions and its relation to law, and two articles which deal with a passage in the Passover Haggadah. The participants include: E. Eizenman, N. Ilan, G. Blidstein, Y. Blau, M. Bregman, A. Grossman, H. Davidson, C. Horowitz, O. Viskind-Elper, H. Mak, A. Atzmon, A. Kadari, A. Rozenak, M. Shmidman, and J. Tabory.

Maimonides was one of the greatest Jewish personalities of the Middle Ages: a halakhist par excellence, a great philosopher, a political leader of his community, and a guardian of Jewish rights. In 1180 CE, Maimonides composed his Halakhic magnum opus, the Mishneh Torah, which can be described without exaggeration as the greatest code of Jewish law to be composed in the post- Talmudic era, unique in scope, originality and language. In addition to dealing with an immense variety of Jewish law, from the laws of Sabbath and festival observances, dietary regulations, and relations between the sexes to the sacrifi cial system, the construction of the Temple, and the making of priestly garments, the Mishneh Torah represents Maimonides' conception of Judaism. Maimonides held that the version of Judaism believed in and practiced by many pious Jews of his generation had been infected with pagan notions. In the Mishneh Torah, he aimed at cleansing Judaism from these non-Jewish practices and beliefs and impressing upon readers that Jewish law and ritual are free from irrational and superstitious practices. Without Red Strings or Holy Water explores Maimonides' views regarding God, the commandments, astrology, medicine, the evil eye, amulets, magic, theurgic practices, omens, communicating with the dead, the messianic era, midrashic literature, and the oral law. 'Without Red Strings or Holy Water' will be of interest to all who are interested in the intellectual history of Judaism.

In the second book of Samuel, the prophet Nathan tells King David that God will give to him and his descendants a great and everlasting kingdom. In this study William Schniedewind looks at how this dynastic Promise has been understood and transmitted from the time of its first appearance at the inception of the Hebrew monarchy until the dawn of Christianity. He shows in detail how, over the centuries, the Promise grew in importance and prestige.

This book investigates the Matthean use of bread and the breaking of bread in light of cognitive conceptual metaphor, which are not only intertwined within Matthew's narrative plots but also function to represent Matthew's communal identity and ideological vision. The metaphor of bread and its cognitive concept implicitly connect to Israel's indigenous sense of identity and religious imagination, while integrating the socio-religious context and the identity of Matthean community through the metaphoric action: breaking of bread. While using this metaphor as a narrative strategy, Matthew not only keeps the Jewish indigenous socio-religious heritage but also breaks down multiple boundaries of religion, ethnicity, gender, class, and the false prejudice in order to establish an alternative identity and ideological vision. From this perspective, this book presents how the Matthean bread functions to reveal the identity of Matthew's community in-between formative Judaism and the Roman Empire. In particular, the book investigates the metaphor of bread as a source of Matthew's rhetorical claim that represents its ideological vision for an alternative community beyond the socio-religious boundaries. The book also reviews Matthean contexts by postcolonial theories - hybridity and third space - subverting and deconstructing the hegemony of the dominant groups of formative Judaism and the imperial ideology of Rome.

Scripturalizing the Human is a transdisciplinary collection of essays that reconceptualizes and models "scriptural studies" as a critical, comparative set of practices with broad ramifications for scholars of religion and biblical studies. This critical historical and ethnographic project is focused on scriptures/scripturalization/scripturalizing as shorthand for the (psycho-cultural and socio-political) "work" we make language do for and to us. Each essay focuses on an instance of or situation involving such work, engaging with the Bible, Book of Mormon, Bhagavata Purana, and other sacred texts, artifacts, and practices in order to explore historical and ongoing constructions of the human. Contributors use the category of "scriptures"-understood not simply as texts, but as freighted shorthand for the dynamics and ultimate politics of language-as tools for self-illumination and self-analysis. The significance of the collection lies in the window it opens to the rich and complex view of the highs and lows of human-(un-)making as it establishes the connections between a seemingly basic and apolitical religious category and a set of larger social-cultural phenomena and dynamics.

One of the cornerstones of the religious Jewish experience in all its variations is Torah study, and this learning is considered a central criterion for leadership. Jewish Women's Torah Study addresses the question of women's integration in the halachic-religious system at this pivotal intersection. The contemporary debate regarding women's Torah study first emerged in the second half of the 19th century. As women's status in general society changed, offering increased legal rights and opportunities for education, a debate on the need to change women's participation in Torah study emerged. Orthodoxy was faced with the question: which parts, if any, of modernity should be integrated into Halacha? Exemplifying the entire array of Orthodox responses to modernity, this book is a valuable addition to the scholarship of Judaism in the modern era and will be of interest to students and scholars of Religion, Gender Studies and Jewish Studies.

This book offers an innovative examination of the question: why did early Christians begin calling their ministerial leaders "priests" (using the terms hiereus/sacerdos)? Scholarly consensus has typically suggested that a Christian "priesthood" emerged either from an imitation of pagan priesthood or in connection with seeing the Eucharist as a sacrifice over which a "priest" must preside. This work challenges these claims by exploring texts of the third and fourth century where Christian bishops and ministers are first designated "priests": Tertullian and Cyprian of Carthage, Origen of Alexandria, Eusebius of Caesarea, and the church orders Apostolic Tradition and Didascalia Apostolorum. Such an examination demonstrates that the rise of a Christian ministerial priesthood grew more broadly out of a developing "religio-political ecclesiology". As early Christians began to understand themselves culturally as a unique polis in their own right in the Greco-Roman world, they also saw themselves theologically and historically connected with ancient biblical Israel. This religio-political ecclesiology, sharpened by an emerging Christian material culture and a growing sense of Christian "sacred space", influenced the way Christians interpreted the Jewish Scriptures typologically. In seeing the nation of Israel as a divine nation corresponding to themselves, Christians began appropriating the Levitical priesthood as a figure or "type" of the Christian ministerial office. Such a study helpfully broadens our understanding of the emergence of a Christian priesthood beyond pagan imitation or narrow focus on the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist, and instead offers a more comprehensive explanation in connection with early Christian ecclesiology.

Addressing the question of the origins of the Zoroastrian religion, this book argues that the intransigent opposition to the cult of the daevas, the ancient Indo-Iranian gods, is the root of the development of the two central doctrines of Zoroastrianism: cosmic dualism and eschatology (fate of the soul after death and its passage to the other world). The daeva cult as it appears in the Gathas, the oldest part of the Zoroastrian sacred text, the Avesta, had eschatological pretentions. The poet of the Gathas condemns these as deception. The book critically examines various theories put forward since the 19th century to account for the condemnation of the daevas. It then turns to the relevant Gathic passages and analyzes them in detail in order to give a picture of the cult and the reasons for its repudiation. Finally, it examines materials from other sources, especially the Greek accounts of Iranian ritual lore (mainly) in the context of the mystery cults. Classical Greek writers consistently associate the nocturnal ceremony of the magi with the mysteries as belonging to the same religious-cultural category. This shows that Iranian religious lore included a nocturnal rite that aimed at ensuring the soul's journey to the beyond and a desirable afterlife. Challenging the prevalent scholarship of the Greek interpretation of Iranian religious lore and proposing a new analysis of the formation of the Hellenistic concept of 'magic,' this book is an important resource for students and scholars of History, Religion and Iranian Studies.

By providing an annotated translation of, and applying the methods of literary criticism to, a first-century account of the life of the saint Purna, this study introduces the reader to the richness and complexity of an essential Buddhist genre.

Despite considerable scholarly efforts for many years, the last two decades of the Kingdom of Israel are still beneath the veil of history. What was the status of the Kingdom after its annexation by Assyria in 732 BCE? Who conquered Samaria, the capital of the Kingdom? When did it happen? One of the primary reasons for this situation lies in the discrepancies found in the historical sources, namely the Hebrew Bible and the Assyrian texts. Since biblical studies and Assyriology are two distinct disciplines, the gaps in the sources are not easy to bridge. Moreover, recent great progress in the archaeological research in the Southern Levant provides now crucial new data, independent of these textual sources. This volume, a collection of papers by leading scholars from different fields of research, aims to bring together, for the first time, all the available data and to discuss these conundrums from various perspectives in order to reach a better and deeper understanding of this crucial period, which possibly triggered in the following decades the birth of "new Israel" in the Southern Kingdom of Judah, and eventually led to the formation of the Hebrew Bible and its underlying theology.

In Chapter 38:21-25, the Qur'an relates a very short narrative about the biblical King David's seeking and receiving God's forgiveness. The earliest Muslim exegetes interpreted the qur'anic verses as referring to the Hebrew Bible's story of David's adultery with Bathsheba, as related in 2 Samuel 12:1-13. Later Muslims, however, having developed the concept of prophetic impeccability, radically reinterpreted those verses to show David as innocent of any wrongdoing since, in the Muslim tradition, he is not only a king, but a prophet as well. David in the Muslim Tradition: The Bathsheba Affair outlines the approach of the Qur'an to shared scriptures, and provides a detailed look at the development of the exegetical tradition and the factors that influenced such exegesis. By establishing four distinct periods of exegesis, Khaleel Mohammed examines the most famous explanations in each stratum to show the metamorphosis from blame to exculpation. He shows that the Muslim development is not unique, but is very much in following the Jewish and Christian traditions, wherein a similar sanitization of David's image has occurred.

Education and Curricular Perspectives in the Qur'an is a unique academic study that focuses on different perspectives of education curriculum in the Qur'an. Sarah Risha explains how Allah Almighty, as the great teacher, communicated His divine message, the Qur'an, which may be considered as the textbook, to His students, the prophets. The primary source is the Qur'an itself, and sayings of the Prophet Mohammed when necessary. While curriculum is a broad term, Risha addresses five aspects in particular to examine how the Qur'an deals with this vital element, and connects this central religious text to current academic curriculum studies.

What social conditions and intellectual practices are necessary in order for religious cultures to flourish? Paul Griffiths finds the answer in "religious reading" --- the kind of reading in which a religious believer allows his mind to be furnished and his heart instructed by a sacred text, understood in the light of an authoritative tradition. He favorably contrasts the practices and pedagogies of traditional religious cultures with those of our own fragmented and secularized culture and insists that religious reading should be preserved.

The Qur'an is regarded by Muslims as the direct word of God, timeless and unchanged. It is used not only for prayer and worship but as a path which can lead the believer to a closer understanding of the essence of their relationship with God. In this thought-provoking, considered study of the scripture of Islam, Mona Siddiqui explores the 'big themes' of prophecy, law, sin and salvation from her dual position as a believer and a scholar.

Analysis of inner-biblical exegesis ordinarily involves examination of the intertextual relationship between two texts within the biblical corpus. But in many cases there is an often overlooked intertext that serves as a bridge between the two texts. Such an intermediary text reads the primary text in a manner similar to the way the tertiary text reads it and supplies a missing link in a very subtle yet identifiable manner. The direction of dependence between texts of this kind is not as important in the present study as the direction in which these texts were meant to be read by those who gave them their final shape.

The R m yana of V lm ki is considered by many contemporary Hindus to be a foundational religious text. But this understanding is in part the result of a transformation of the epic s receptive history, a hermeneutic project which challenged one characterization of the genre of the text, as a work of literary culture, and replaced it with another, as a work of remembered tradition.

This book examines R m yana commentaries, poetic retellings, and praise-poems produced by intellectuals within the r vaisnava order of South India from 1250 to 1600 and shows how these intellectuals reconceptualized R ma s story through the lens of their devotional metaphysics. r vaisnavas applied innovative interpretive techniques to the R m yana, including allegorical reading, " lesa "reading (reading a verse as a "double entendre"), and the application of vernacular performance techniques such as word play, improvisation, repetition, and novel forms of citation. The book is of interest not only to R m yana specialists but also to those engaged with Indian intellectual history, literary studies, and the history of religions."

This book investigates the manner in which the Qur'an and sunna depict female personalities in their narrative literature. Providing a comprehensive study of all the female personalities mentioned in the Qur'an, the book is selective in the personalities of the sunna, examining the three prominent women of ahl al-bayt; Khadija, Fatima, and Zaynab. Analysing the major sources of Imami Shi'i Islam, including the exegetical compilations of the eminent Shi'i religious authorities of the classical and modern periods, as well as the authoritative books of Shi'i traditions, this book finds that the varieties of female personalities are portrayed as human beings on different stages of the spiritual spectrum. They display feminine qualities, which are often viewed positively and are sometimes commendable traits for men, at least as far as the spiritual domain is concerned. The theory, particularly regarding women's humanity, is then tested against the depiction of womanhood in the hadith literature, with special emphasis on Nahj al-Balagha. Contributing a fresh perspective on classical materials, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Islamic Studies, Women's Studies and Shi'i Studies.

An introduction to the major themes and passages of the holy book of Islam, this book invites readers of any religion -- or none -- to meditate on verses of the Quran as support for spiritual practices and growth. It guides the reader through the rich tapestry of the Quran, weaving through a number of themes, including the mystery of God, surrender to the divine will, and provisions for the spiritual journey. Quranic verses are supplemented by sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, the words of Rumi and other Sufi poets, and relevant quotations and insights from Jewish and Christian sources. The book also offers practical suggestions for expanding and strengthening one's spiritual sinews.

During the Reformation, the Book of Psalms became one of the most well-known books of the Bible. This was particularly true in Britain, where people of all ages, social classes and educational abilities memorized and sang poetic versifications of the psalms. Those written by Thomas Sternhold and John Hopkins became the most popular, and the simple tunes developed and used by English and Scottish churches to accompany these texts were carried by soldiers, sailors and colonists throughout the English-speaking world. Among these tunes were a number that are still used today, including 'Old Hundredth', 'Martyrs', and 'French'. This book is the first to consider both English and Scottish metrical psalmody, comparing the two traditions in print and practice. It combines theological literary and musical analysis to reveal new and ground-breaking connections between the psalm texts and their tunes, which it traces in the English and Scottish psalters printed through 1640. Using this new analysis in combination with a more thorough evaluation of extant church records, Duguid contends that Britain developed and maintained two distinct psalm cultures, one in England and the other in Scotland.

This book examines in detail the concept of "abrogation" in the Qur an, which has played a major role in the development of Islamic law and has implications for understanding the history and integrity of the Qur anic text. The term has gained popularity in recent years, as Muslim groups and individuals claim that many passages about tolerance in the Qur an have been abrogated by others that call on Muslims to fight their enemies. Author Louay Fatoohi argues that this could not have been derived from the Qur an, and that its implications contradict Qur anic principles. He also reveals conceptual flaws in the principle of abrogation as well as serious problems with the way it was applied by different scholars.

Abrogation in the Qur an and Islamic Law traces the development of the concept from its most basic form to the complex and multi-faceted doctrine it has become. The book shows what specific problems the three modes of abrogation were introduced to solve, and how this concept has shaped Islamic law. The book also critiques the role of abrogation in rationalizing the view that not all of the Qur anic revelation has survived in the "mushaf," or the written record of the Qur an. This role makes understanding abrogation an essential prerequisite for studying the history of the Qur anic text. "

Recently, voices were raised in the worldwide Christian ecumenical movement that it was high time the Protestant-Catholic fundamental topic "Holy Scripture and Tradition" was approached and ecumenically reviewed. In Germany, this has already been achieved by the "OEkumenischer Arbeitskreis evangelischer und katholischer Theologen" (Ecumenical Study Group of Protestant and Catholic Theologians; founded in 1946). The results of this study group were published in the 1990s under the title "Verbindliches Zeugnis" by Theodor Schneider and Wolfhart Pannenberg. This edition provides the essence of the three volume work for the first time in English. The treatment of this age-long dispute in Protestant and Catholic theology, but first of all its fundamental settlement can thus be recognised and discussed in the international ecumenical dialogue.

The Bhagavad Gita which is often referred to as simply the Gita, is a 700-verse scripture that is part of a Hindu epic. It is a sacred text of the Hindus.