The Jewish culture of the Hellenistic and early Roman periods established a basis for all monotheistic religions, but its main sources have been preserved to a great degree through Christian transmission. This Guide is devoted to problems of preservation, reception, and transformation of Jewish texts and traditions of the Second Temple period in the many Christian milieus from the ancient world to the late medieval era. It approaches this corpus not as an artificial collection of reconstructed texts-a body of hypothetical originals-but rather from the perspective of the preserved materials, examined in their religious, social, and political contexts. It also considers the other, non-Christian, channels of the survival of early Jewish materials, including Rabbinic, Gnostic, Manichaean, and Islamic. This unique project brings together scholars from many different fields in order to map the trajectories of early Jewish texts and traditions among diverse later cultures. It also provides a comprehensive and comparative introduction to this new field of study while bridging the gap between scholars of early Judaism and of medieval Christianity.

This is a literary and theological study of the Biblical Antiquities of Pseudo-Philo--a long, well-written reinterpretation of the Hebrew Bible written by a Palestinian Jew of the first century C.E. Using the methodologies of redaction and literary criticism, Murphy provides an analysis of the whole of the Biblical Antiquities. After a chapter-by-chapter analysis, Murphy addresses several topics more generally--major characters, major themes, and the historical context of the work. Full concordances to the Latin text are provided to assist future research on Pseudo-Philo. This book will prove an important resource for students of Jewish interpretation of the Bible at the end of the Second Temple period. It also sheds light on Jewish thought of the period regarding covenant, leadership in Israel, women in Israel, relations with Gentiles, divine providence, divine retribution, eschatology, and many other subjects. Furnishing a broad interpretive context for future work on the Biblical Antiquities, this study gives students of the Bible access to an important literary and religious product of first-century Judaism.

This book presents the Book of Ecclesiastes as a single coherent work, whose ideas are consistent and collectively form a comprehensive worldview. Moreover, in contrast to the prevailing view in the research literature - it presents the Book of Ecclesiastes as a work with an essentially positive outlook: Kohelet's fault-finding is aimed not at the world itself, or how it functions, but at the people who persist in missing out on the present, on what it has to offer, and of the ability to enjoy all that exists and is available. Contrasting with these are Koheleth's positive perscriptions to make the most of the present. To my mind, his remonstrations are meant to "clear the way" for his positive recommendations - to clear the path, as it were, of the obstacles to accepting reality. These two aspects, the negative and the positive, come together in this investigation into Koheleth's belief, which is founded on an acceptance of all that God has created.

In this book, Angelika Neuwirth provides a new approach to understanding the founding text of Islam. Typical exegesis of the Qur'an treats the text teleologically, as a fait accompli finished text, or as a replica or summary of the Bible in Arabic. Instead Neuwirth approaches the Qur'an as the product of a specific community in the Late Antique Arabian peninsula, one which was exposed to the wider worlds of the Byzantine and Sasanian empires, and to the rich intellectual traditions of rabbinic Judaism, early Christianity, and Gnosticism. A central goal of the book is to eliminate the notion of the Qur'an as being a-historical. She argues that it is, in fact, highly aware of its place in late antiquity and is capable of yielding valuable historical information. By emphasizing the liturgical function of the Qur'an, Neuwirth allows readers to see the text as an evolving oral tradition within the community before it became collected and codified as a book. This analysis sheds much needed light on the development of the Qur'an's historical, theological, and political outlook. The book's final chapters analyze the relationship of the Qur'an to the Bible, to Arabic poetic traditions, and, more generally, to late antique culture and rhetorical forms. By providing a new introduction to the Qur'an, one that uniquely challenges current ideas about its emergence and development, The Qur'an and Late Antiquity bridges the gap between Eastern and Western approaches to this sacred text.

The Anguttara arranges the Buddha's discourses in accordance with a numerical scheme, intended to promote retention and easy comprehension. In an age when writing was still in its infancy, this proved to be the most effective way to ensure that the disciples could grasp and replicate the structure of a teaching.

‘In death thy glory in heaven, in victory thy glory on earth.  Arise therefore, Arjuna, with thy soul ready to fight’

The Bhagavad Gita is an intensely spiritual work that forms the cornerstone of the Hindu faith, and is also one of the masterpieces of Sanskrit poetry. It describes how, at the beginning of a mighty battle between the Pandava and Kaurava armies, the god Krishna gives spiritual enlightenment to the warrior Arjuna, who realizes that the true battle is for his own soul.

Juan Mascaró’s translation of The Bhagavad Gita captures the extraordinary aural qualities of the original Sanskrit. This edition features a new introduction by Simon Brodbeck, which discusses concepts such as dehin, prakriti and Karma.

In World of Wonders, Alf Hiltebeitel addresses the Mahabharata and its supplement, the Harivamsa, as a single literary composition. Looking at the work through the critical lens of the Indian aesthetic theory of rasa, "juice, essence, or taste," he argues that the dominant rasa of these two texts is adbhutarasa, the "mood of wonder." While the Mahabharata signposts whole units of the text as "wondrous" in its table of contents, the Harivamsa foregrounds a stepped-up term for wonder (ascarya) that drives home the point that Vishnu and Krishna are one. Two scholars of the 9th and 10th centuries, Anandavardhana and Abhinavagupta, identified the Mahabharata's dominant rasa as santarasa, the "mood of peace." This has traditionally been received as the only serious contestant for a rasic interpretation of the epic. Hiltebeitel disputes both the positive claim that the santarasa interpretation is correct and the negative claim that adbhutarasa is a frivolous rasa that cannot sustain a major work. The heart of his argument is that the Mahabharata and Harivamsa both deploy the terms for "wonder" and "surprise" (vismaya) in significant numbers that extend into every facet of these heterogeneous texts, showing how adbhutarasa is at work in the rich and contrasting textual strategies which are integral to the structure of the two texts.

A Critical Study of Classical Religious Texts in Global Contexts: Challenges of a Changing World challenges toxic stereotypes of world religions by providing scholarly investigations into classic sacred texts in global contexts. By engaging more perspectives, important connections, and more, complex and humanizing "stories" are developed, inviting the reader to see the face of the "Other" and, perhaps, to see a bit of oneself in that face. In today's world of increasing polarization and the rise of nationalism, the contributors to this volume welcome the reader to join them in a shared humanity that seeks understanding. A red thread that runs through each chapter relates to the challenges that globalization brings to the sacred texts in various contextual settings. The contributors describe various circumstances related to reading and interpreting sacred writings-whether historical or more recent-which continue to have an influence today. The essays in this volume view these religious texts in relation to four dichotomies: minority-majority, diaspora-homeland, center-periphery of the globalized world, and secular-religious. These elements by no means exhaust the issues, but they serve as a starting point for a discussion of relevant contexts in which sacred texts are read. The breadth of research represented stimulates a deeper understanding that is vital if we are to move beyond stereotypes and religious illiteracy to meaningfully engage the "Other" with wisdom and empathy-important virtues in today's world. A Critical Study of Classical Religious Texts in Global Contexts will appeal to scholars and graduate students of religious studies, sacred scriptures, and post-colonial studies, as well as informed and inquisitive general readers interested in exploring interfaith dialogue and broadening their religious literacy.

In this masterful new study of the ancient poetry of The Song of Songs, Elaine T. James explores the Song's underlying interest in the natural world. Engaging with the fields of geography, landscape architecture, and literature, James critiques the tendency of scholars to reify a perceived dichotomy between "nature" and "culture" and instead argues that the poetic attention to landscape indicates an awareness of a viewer. Nature is here a poetic device that informs James's close-readings of agrarianism, gardens, cities, social control, and feminism and the gaze in the Song. With this two-fold emphasis on landscape and lyric, Landscape of the Song of Songs shows how the Song persistently envisions a world in which human lovers are embedded in the natural world, complexly enfolded in relationships of fragility and care.

Was Jesus of Nazareth a real historical person or a fictional character in a religious legend? What do the Dead Sea Scrolls reveal about the origins of Christianity? Has there been a conspiracy to suppress information in the Scrolls that contradicts traditional church teaching? John Allegro addresses these and many other intriguing questions in this fascinating account of what may be the most significant archaeological discovery of the twentieth century.
As one of the original scholars entrusted with the task of deciphering these ancient documents, Allegro worked on some of the most important texts, including the Biblical commentaries. In 1961, King Hussein of Jordan appointed him to be honorary advisor to the Jordanian government on the Dead Sea Scrolls. In his engaging and highly readable style, Allegro conveys the excitement of the initial archaeological find and takes the reader on a journey of intellectual discovery that goes to the heart of Western culture. Allegro suggests that Christianity evolved out of the Messianic theology of the Essenes, the Jewish sect that wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls.
This new edition of Allegro's book also contains an essay in which he describes the in-fighting among the scholars assigned to study the scrolls and his thirty-year battle to release all of the texts to the public. Allegro was one of the first scholars to protest the long delay in publishing the Scrolls and to criticize his colleagues for their secretive and possessive attitudes. This issue has recently been the focus of national media coverage, with the result that after forty years, open access to all of the Dead Sea Scrolls has finally been permitted.
If he had lived to see it, John Allegro would have been very pleased by this resolution of the controversy. In the same spirit of free inquiry that Allegro championed, Prometheus is reissuing his book in paperback to encourage open discussion of these important ancient texts.

Is anything ever not an interpretation? Does interpretation go all the way down? Is there such a thing as a pure fact that is interpretation-free? If not, how are we supposed to know what to think and do? These tantalizing questions are tackled by renowned American thinker John D Caputo in this wide-reaching exploration of what the traditional term 'hermeneutics' can mean in a postmodern, twenty-first century world. As a contemporary of Derrida's and longstanding champion of rethinking the disciplines of theology and philosophy, for decades Caputo has been forming alliances across disciplines and drawing in readers with his compelling approach to what he calls "radical hermeneutics." In this new introduction, drawing upon a range of thinkers from Heidegger to the Parisian "1968ers" and beyond, he raises a series of probing questions about the challenges of life in the postmodern and maybe soon to be 'post-human' world.'

'Hate is not conquered by hate: hate is conquered by love. This is a law eternal.' Captivating aphorisms illustrating the Buddhist dhamma, or moral system. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions.

This Oxford Handbook is a serious resource for the study of the literature of the Writings (Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ruth, Esther, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Ezra-Nehemiah, Chronicles, Daniel) of the Hebrew Bible, including its context and its scriptural/canonical shape and reception. A first section provides an overview of the post-exilic period in which much of the Writings was written, focusing on history, archeology, and the development of major literary traditions, all of which provide the context for understanding and interpreting this literature. A second section contains creative studies of the books in the Writings, focusing on structure, purpose, and distinctive characteristics of this very diverse literature. A third section looks at the Writings from larger and longer perspectives including the ancient Near East, developing Judaism and Christianity, Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls, music and the arts, and its canonization and reception by Judaism and Christianity. This handbook has a focus on the special character and shape of the Writings as scripture and canon, including the recurring issues of diversity and difference, dates of canonization, its special relationship to other scripture and canon (Torah, Prophets, New Testament), and its interpretation in religious and non-religious communities.

Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav (1772-1810) is widely considered to be one of the foremost visionary storytellers of the Hasidic movement. The great-grandson of the Ba'al Shem Tov, founder of the movement, Rabbi Nachman came to be regarded as a great figure and leader in his own right, guiding his followers on a spiritual path inspired by Kabbalah. In the last four years of his life he turned to storytelling, crafting highly imaginative, allegorical tales for his Hasidim. Three-time National Jewish Book Award winner Howard Schwartz has masterfully compiled the most extensive collection of Nachman's stories available in English. In addition to the well-known Thirteen Tales, including "The Lost Princess" and "The Seven Beggars," Schwartz has included over one hundred narratives in the various genres of fairy tales, fables, parables, dreams, and folktales, many of them previously unknown or believed lost. One such story is the carefully guarded "Tale of the Bread," which was never intended to be written down and was only to be shared with those Bratslavers who could be trusted not to reveal it. Eventually recorded by Rabbi Nachman's scribe, the tale has maintained its mythical status as a "hidden story." With utmost reverence and unfettered delight, Schwartz has carefully curated A Palace of Pearls alongside masterful commentary that guides the reader through the Rabbi's spiritual mysticism and uniquely Kabbalistic approach, ultimately revealing Rabbi Nachman to be a literary heavyweight in the vein of Gogol and Kafka. Vibrant, wise, and provocative, this book is a must-read for any lover of fairy tales and fables.

Winner, 2020 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Studies, Modern Language Association The novel, the literary adage has it, reflects a world abandoned by God. Yet the possibilities of novelistic form and literary exegesis exceed the secularizing tendencies of contemporary literary criticism. Showing how the Qur'an itself invites and enacts critical reading, Hoda El Shakry's Qur'anic model of narratology enriches our understanding of literary sensibilities and practices in the Maghreb across Arabophone and Francophone traditions. The Literary Qur'an mobilizes the Qur'an's formal, narrative, and rhetorical qualities, alongside embodied and hermeneutical forms of Qur'anic pedagogy, to theorize modern Maghrebi literature. Challenging the canonization of secular modes of reading that occlude religious epistemes, practices, and intertexts, it attends to literature as a site where the process of entextualization obscures ethical imperatives. Engaging with the Arab-Islamic tradition of adab-a concept demarcating the genre of belles lettres, as well as social and moral comportment-El Shakry demonstrates how the critical pursuit of knowledge is inseparable from the spiritual cultivation of the self. Foregrounding form and praxis alike, The Literary Qur'an stages a series of pairings that invite paratactic readings across texts, languages, and literary canons. The book places twentieth-century novels by canonical Francophone writers (Abdelwahab Meddeb, Assia Djebar, Driss Chraibi) into conversation with lesser-known Arabophone ones (Mahmud al-Mas'adi, al-Tahir Wattar, Muhammad Barrada). Theorizing the Qur'an as a literary object, process, and model, this interdisciplinary study blends literary and theological methodologies, conceptual vocabularies, and reading practices.

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.

The Koren Talmud Bavli is a groundbreaking edition of the Talmud that fuses the innovative design of Koren Publishers Jerusalem with the incomparable scholarship of Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz. The Koren Talmud Bavli Standard Edition is a full-size, full-color edition that presents an enhanced Vilna page, a side-by-side English translation, photographs and illustrations, a brilliant commentary, and a multitude of learning aids to help the beginning and advanced student alike actively participate in the dynamic process of Talmud study.

This book, which is a collection of various essays on Africa and the Bible, is a must-read for scholars and students who are interested in exploring the intersection between the Bible and public spaces exposing the liberating and oppressing strands of the Bible. Given the enchanted African worldview, which includes belief in miracles, divine healing and prosperity, the Bible is the go-to-authority of many religious activities. Though at home, the Bible's role and function needs closer assessment. The critical question tackled in this volume is: how can Africa read the Bible from its various contexts to recover its usefulness on issues of gender, patriarchy and political and economic liberation? Yet equally, how do we guard against oppressive discourses that find support from the Bible such as polygamy, viewing women as unequal to men and growing economic disparities? In addition, throughout history, Africans are made to be comfortable with theologies that further distance them away from economic and political processes, such as the belief in an angry God who punishes and demands utter obedience-theologies which have sustained particular asymmetric socio-economic and political structures across the continent. This book is important because it traces the sociological contours in the Bible in relation to Africa, sensitizing us to the liberating strands and, at the same time, making us aware of the pathos associated with the literary reading of the Bible.

The last and most intriguing book of the Ramayana, the Uttara Kanda is rendered here by noted Sanskrit scholar Arshia Sattar in vivid, sensuous detail. First composed around 500 BCE, it tells the story of an unjustly exiled prince, the abduction of his wife from the forest by a ten-headed demon king, his alliance with a band of magical monkeys, and the internal and external battles he must fight to win back his wife and keep her. India's great Sanskrit epic brings to readers the classic dilemmas every individual faces: love versus duty, destiny and free will, the public and the private self, the pull of family, and the right to personal happiness. These universal problems are layered with the quintessentially Indian ideas of karma (action) and dharma (duty).The book explores what it means to be human in a complex and demanding world, considering the parameters and contexts in which we make the decisions that will determine the color and tenor of our lives, the choices that make us who we are. It also offers a great, albeit tragic, love story-a story of the demands and pressures of love and how we might fail those that we love most. Accompanied by Sattar's thoughtful essays weighing the moral complexity of this most enduring of epics, this translation crystallizes her deep and intimate knowledge of the Ramayana in a way that is utterly compelling.

The Bhagavad Gita is one of the most widely read Hindu scriptures in the Western world. Taking the form of a dialogue between the warrior Arjuna and the divine Krishna on the eve of battle, it is concerned with the most profound aspects of social and religious duty, and the relationship of human beings to God. In its eighteen short chapters it explores the spiritual struggle of the human soul and the search for both the true self and eternal life, culminating in an unparalleled vision of God the omnipotent.