2010 reprint of 1939 edition. The Reverend Justinas Pranaitis (1861-1917) was a Lithuanian Catholic priest, Russian Master of Theology and Professor of the Hebrew Language at the Imperial Ecclesiastical Academy of the Roman Catholic Church in Saint Petersburg, Russia. He published The Talmud Unmasked as an anti-Semitic tract called Christianus in Talmude Iudaeorum in Latin in 1892 under the imprimatur of the Archbishop Metropolitan of Mogilev. This tract was subsequently translated into Polish (1892), French (1892), German (1894), Russian (1911), Lithuanian (1912), Italian (1939), English (1939) and Spanish. In 1912, Pranaitis was called to testify as an expert witness in Jewish hatred of Christians in the famous case of Menahem Mendel Beilis. During the course of that trial his credibility rapidly evaporated, however, when the defense demonstrated his ignorance of some simple Talmudic concepts and definitions, such as hullin, to the point where many in the audience occasionally laughed out loud when he clearly became confused and couldn't even intelligibly answer some of the questions asked by my lawyer. According to accounts of the trial, "cross-examination of Pranaitis has weakened evidentiary value of his expert opinion, exposing lack of knowledge of texts, insufficient knowledge of Jewish literature. Because of amateurish knowledge and lack of resourcefulness, Pranaitis' expert opinion is of very low value." The significance of The Talmud Unmasked is as an influential anti-Semitic tract written from a Catholic perspective.

One of the most popular Asian classics for roughly two thousand years, the Vimalakirti Sutra stands out among the sacred texts of Mahayana Buddhism for its conciseness, its vivid and humorous episodes, its dramatic narratives, and its eloquent exposition of the key doctrine of emptiness or nondualism. Unlike most sutras, its central figure is not a Buddha but a wealthy townsman, who, in his mastery of doctrine and religious practice, epitomizes the ideal lay believer. For this reason, the sutra has held particular significance for men and women of the laity in Buddhist countries of Asia, assuring them that they can reach levels of spiritual attainment fully comparable to those accessible to monks and nuns of the monastic order.

Esteemed translator Burton Watson has rendered a beautiful English translation from the popular Chinese version produced in 406 C.E. by the Central Asian scholar-monk Kumarajiva, which is widely acknowledged to be the most felicitous of the various Chinese translations of the sutra (the Sanskrit original of which was lost long ago) and is the form in which it has had the greatest influence in China, Japan, and other countries of East Asia. Watson's illuminating introduction discusses the background of the sutra, its place in the development of Buddhist thought, and the profundities of its principal doctrine: emptiness.

In Understanding the Talmud: A Modern Reader's Guide for Study, Rabbi Edward S. Boraz presents a thoughtful introduction to the Talmud designed for study by the untrained reader. Using a unique approach, Rabbi Boraz focuses on a specific selection from one tractate of the Talmud, allowing readers to uncover the moral and theological concerns of the text. The portion he has selected comes from the tractate Bava Metziah and deals with the conditions under which an oath may be administered in a civil lawsuit. On the surface this issue appears mundane and far removed from the domain of holiness. However, when the discourse is studied in relation to passages from Scripture, Midrash, and Mishnah that are also presented, it becomes a spiritual and ethical adventure. Before embarking on this journey of discovery, the reader is given a concise explanation of the rules of logic and the argumentative style utilized in the Talmud. It becomes evident that the Talmud's style is essential to its mission to understand the timeless messages of Torah in the context of the ever-changing world in which we live. Equipped with the necessary background, the reader is prepared to delve into the texts.

No work has informed Jewish life and history more than the Talmud. This unique and vast collection of teachings and traditions contains within it the intellectual output of hundreds of Jewish sages who considered all aspects of an entire people's life from the Hellenistic period in Palestine (c. 315 B.C.E.) until the end of the Sassanian era in Babylonia (615 C.E.). This volume adds the insights of modern talmudic scholarship and criticism to the growing number of more traditionally oriented works that seek to open the talmudic heritage and tradition to contemporary readers. These central essays provide a taste of the myriad ways in which talmudic study can intersect with such diverse disciplines as economics, history, ethics, law, literary criticism, and philosophy.

Contributors: Baruch Micah Bokser, Boaz Cohen, Ari Elon, Meyer S. Feldblum, Louis Ginzberg, Abraham Goldberg, Robert Goldenberg, Heinrich Graetz, Louis Jacobs, David Kraemer, Geoffrey B. Levey, Aaron Levine, Saul Lieberman, Jacob Neusner, Nahum Rakover, and David Weiss-Halivni.

2009 reprint of 1939 edition. The Reverend Justinas Pranaitis (1861-1917) was a Lithuanian Catholic priest, Russian Master of Theology and Professor of the Hebrew Language at the Imperial Ecclesiastical Academy of the Roman Catholic Church in Saint Petersburg, Russia. He published The Talmud Unmasked as an anti-Semitic tract called Christianus in Talmude Iudaeorum in Latin in 1892 under the imprimatur of the Archbishop Metropolitan of Mogilev. This tract was subsequently translated into Polish (1892), French (1892), German (1894), Russian (1911), Lithuanian (1912), Italian (1939), English (1939) and Spanish. In 1912, Pranaitis was called to testify as an expert witness in Jewish hatred of Christians in the famous case of Menahem Mendel Beilis. During the course of that trial his credibility rapidly evaporated, however, when the defense demonstrated his ignorance of some simple Talmudic concepts and definitions, such as hullin, to the point where many in the audience occasionally laughed out loud when he clearly became confused and couldn't even intelligibly answer some of the questions asked by my lawyer. According to accounts of the trial, "cross-examination of Pranaitis has weakened evidentiary value of his expert opinion, exposing lack of knowledge of texts, insufficient knowledge of Jewish literature. Because of amateurish knowledge and lack of resourcefulness, Pranaitis' expert opinion is of very low value." The significance of The Talmud Unmasked is as an influential anti-Semitic tract written from a Catholic perspective.

Steiner sees Krishna as a great spiritual teacher and the Bhagavad Gita as a preparation, though still abstract, for the coming of Christ and the Christ impulse as the living embodiment of the world, law, and devotion, represented by the three Hindu streams of Veda, Sankhya, and Yoga. For him, the epic poem of the Bhagavad Gita represents the fully ripened fruit of Hinduism, whereas Paul is related but represents the seed of something entirely new. In the last lecture, Steiner reveals Krishna as the sister soul of Adam, incarnated as Jesus, and claims Krishas Yoga teachings streamed from Christ into Paul.

The holy book of Islam, the Koran as a book is the result of: 1. revelations given to Muhammad in the period 610- 632 (Muhammad's death) 2. writing down of these revelations by people around Muhammad in a period probably starting some years after 610, and ending a couple of years after 632 3. compiling of these writings stretching from mid-630s and perhaps until mid-650s 4. vowelling and dotting of the text (ancient Arabic was written without dots, leaving some letters look identical, and without vowels, which can make two different words look identical). Old Koran Essential to the reading of the Koran are the interpretations, which are still conducted, but which were more normal and accepted in the first centuries of Islam. As the Koran has a structure and a language, as well as allusions, which often are difficult for the normal Muslim to understand, a whole science were built around the comprehension of the Koran. The early Muslims studied history, language and nature science in an effort of understanding the Koran better. The product is surprisingly well accepted by the whole Muslim society, and no Muslim child or adult of today, studying the Koran, does this without help from the interpretations built on the early science of the Koran.

This text is a translation of chapters 17-30 of Arya Nagarjuna's immense "Exegesis on the Great Perfection of Wisdom Sutra" (Mahaprajnaparamita-upadesa). It is a free-standing section of that commentary exclusively devoted to analyzing and explaining the various levels of practice of the bodhisattva's six perfections. In it, Nagarjuna sets forth numerous stories, analogies, and analyses as he reveals the deepest meaning of giving, moral virtue, patience, vigor, meditative discipline, and transcendent wisdom, the six primary qualities cultivated by a bodhisattva in progressing toward buddhahood. The translation is by the American monk, Bhikshu Dharmamitra. This volume includes facing-page source text in both traditional and simplified scripts as well as extensive text-structure outlining provided by the translator.

"The Essentials of Buddhist Meditation" is a classic Buddhist meditation instruction manual deeply rooted in the Indian Buddhist "calming-and-insight" meditation tradition. Within its tradition, it is the universally-acknowledged standard beginning-to-intermediate meditation manual, one which offers perhaps the most reliable, comprehensive, and practically-useful Buddhist meditation instruction currently available in English. The author of "The Essentials" is the sixth-century monk and meditation master, Shramana Zhiyi (Chih-i), one of the most illustrious figures in the history of Chinese Buddhism. Master Zhiyi is famous for his role in the founding of the Tiantai teachings lineage and for his authorship of a quartet of meditation manuals of which this is one. The translator of this volume is the American monk, Bhikshu Dharmamitra, a translator of numerous classic works from the Indian and Chinese Buddhist traditions.

Kabbalah holds the secrets to a path of conscious awareness. In this compact book, noted spiritual teacher DovBer Pinson presents 32 key concepts of Kabbalah and shows their value in opening the gates of perception. From the Introduction: Simply translated, Kabbalah means "that which is received." Looking deeper, the word Kabbalah can mean to be open and receptive, to challenge one's own internal navigational system in order to see, hear, and be open to... more. We must be receptive to a teaching to fully absorb it. We turn ourselves into vessels and invite within that which we wish to understand or grasp. In this way, we become receptacles, dispensaries, and a part of the Kabbalah. We become vessels of this tradition by opening the self to a higher reality, and viewing the spirit within the matter. We raise our consciousness to the point where the Divine within all creation is revealed. As we pursue a deeper awareness, we become less ego-centered and more attuned to the deeper significance of our surroundings. About the author: Rabbi DovBer Pinson heads the Iyyun Center in Brownstone Brooklyn. He has written several books, including Inner Rhythms: The Kabbalah of Music; Reincarnation & Judaism: The Journey of the Soul; Meditation & Judaism: Exploring Meditative Paths and Jewish Wisdom of the Afterlife.

Nine short essays exploring the K'iche' Maya story of creation, the Popol Vuh. Written during the lockdown in Chicago in the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic, these essays consider the Popol Vuh as a work that was also written during a time of feverish social, political, and epidemiological crisis as Spanish missionaries and colonial military deepened their conquest of indigenous peoples and cultures in Mesoamerica. What separates the Popol Vuh from many other creation texts is the disposition of the gods engaged in creation. Whereas the book of Genesis is declarative in telling the story of the world's creation, the Popol Vuh is interrogative and analytical: the gods, for example, question whether people actually need to be created, given the many perfect animals they have already placed on earth. Emergency uses the historical emergency of the Popol Vuh to frame the ongoing emergencies of colonialism that have surfaced all too clearly in the global health crisis of COVID-19. In doing so, these essays reveal how the authors of the Popol Vuh-while implicated in deep social crisis-nonetheless insisted on transforming emergency into scenes of social, political, and intellectual emergence, translating crisis into creativity and world creation.

This is the second volume of a translation of India's most beloved and influential epic saga, the monumental R?m?ya?a of V?lm?ki. Of the seven sections of this great Sanskrit masterpiece, the Ayodhyak???a is the most human, and it remains one of the best introductions to the social and political values of traditional India. This readable translation is accompanied by commentary that elucidates the various problems of the text--philological, aesthetic, and cultural. The annotations make extensive use of the numerous commentaries on the R?m?ya?a composed in medieval India. The substantial introduction supplies a historical context for the poem and a critical reading that explores its literary and ideological components.

The name Bhagavad Gita sounds exotic; but the truths it teaches are the essential truths of every great teaching. To understand the Gita is to understand truth, religion, and the depth of each person's divine nature.

The Treasury of the True Dharma Eye (Shobogenzo) is the masterwork of Dogen (1200-1253), founder of the Soto Zen Buddhist sect in Kamakura-era Japan. It is one of the most important Zen Buddhist collections, composed during a period of remarkable religious diversity and experimentation. The text is complex and compelling, famed for its eloquent yet perplexing manner of expressing the core precepts of Zen teachings and practice. This book is a comprehensive introduction to this essential Zen text, offering a textual, historical, literary, and philosophical examination of Dogen's treatise. Steven Heine explores the religious and cultural context in which the Treasury was composed and provides a detailed study of the various versions of the medieval text that have been compiled over the centuries. He includes nuanced readings of Dogen's use of inventive rhetorical flourishes and the range of East Asian Buddhist textual and cultural influences that shaped the work. Heine explicates the philosophical implications of Dogen's views on contemplative experience and attaining and sustaining enlightenment, showing the depth of his distinctive understanding of spiritual awakening. Readings of Dogen's Treasury of the True Dharma Eye will give students and other readers a full understanding of this fundamental work of world religious literature.

Tradition and the Formation of the Talmud offers a new perspective on perhaps the most important religious text of the Jewish tradition. It is widely recognized that the creators of the Talmud innovatively interpreted and changed the older traditions on which they drew. Nevertheless, it has been assumed that the ancient rabbis were committed to maintaining continuity with the past. Moulie Vidas argues on the contrary that structural features of the Talmud were designed to produce a discontinuity with tradition, and that this discontinuity was part and parcel of the rabbis' self-conception. Both this self-conception and these structural features were part of a debate within and beyond the Jewish community about the transmission of tradition. Focusing on the Babylonian Talmud, produced in the rabbinic academies of late ancient Mesopotamia, Vidas analyzes key passages to show how the Talmud's creators contrasted their own voice with that of their predecessors. He also examines Zoroastrian, Christian, and mystical Jewish sources to reconstruct the debates and wide-ranging conversations that shaped the Talmud's literary and intellectual character.

Since its appearance in China in the third century, the Lotus Sutra has been regarded as one of the most illustrious scriptures in the Mahayana Buddhist canon. The object of intense veneration among generations of Buddhists in China, Korea, Japan, and other parts of East Asia, it has attracted more commentary than any other Buddhist scripture and has had a profound impact on the great works of Japanese and Chinese literature. Conceived as a drama of colossal proportions, the text takes on new meaning in Burton Watson's translation. Depicting events in a cosmic world that transcends ordinary concepts of time and space, the Lotus Sutra presents abstract religious concepts in concrete terms and affirms that there is a single path to enlightenment - that of the bodhisattva - and that the Buddha is not to be delimited in time and space. Filled with striking imagery. memorable parables, and countless revelations concerning the universal accessibility of Buddhahood, the Lotus Sutra has brought comfort and wisdom to devotees over the centuries and stands as a pivotal text in world literature. As Watson notes, "The Lotus Sutra is not so much an integral work as a collection of religious texts, an anthology of sermons, stories and devotional manuals, some speaking with particular force to persons of one type or in one set of circumstances, some to those of another type or in other circumstances. This is no doubt one reason why it has had such broad and lasting appeal over the ages and has permeated so deeply into the cultures that have been exposed to it".

What is the nature of the Qur’an? It might seem a straightforward question, but there is no consensus among modern communities of the Qur’an, both Muslim and non-Muslim, upon the answer. And why should there be?

On numerous occasions throughout history, Muslims from different legal schools or denominations, as well as Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians and others, have agreed to disagree. The Qur’anic interpreters, jurists and theologians of medieval Baghdad, Cairo and Cordoba coexisted peacefully in spite of their diverging beliefs. Seeking to revive this ‘ethics of disagreement’ of Classical Islam, this volume explores the different relationships societies around the world have with the Qur’an and how our understanding of the text can be shaped by studying the interpretations of others. From LGBT communities to urban African American societies, it represents the true diversity of communities of the Qur’an in the twenty-first century, and the dialogue and debate that can flow between them.

Features seven different colours on each page that represent the seven rules of Tajweed. This work also features a golden purse.