The eighteen studies in this volume in honor of Moshe Bernstein on the occasion of his 70th birthday mostly engage with Jewish scriptural interpretation, the principal theme of Bernstein's own research career as expressed in his collected essays, Reading and Re-Reading Scripture at Qumran (Brill, 2013). The essays develop a variety of aspects of scriptural interpretation. Although many of them are chiefly concerned with the Dead Sea Scrolls, the significant contribution of the volume as a whole is the way that even those studies are associated with others that consider the broader context of Jewish scriptural interpretation in late antiquity. As a result, a wider frame of reference for scriptural interpretation impinges upon how scripture was read and re-read in the scrolls from Qumran.

Bulus ibn Raja' (ca. 955-ca. 1020) was a celebrated writer of Coptic Christianity from Fatimid Egypt. Born to an influential Muslim family in Cairo, Ibn Raja' later converted to Christianity and composed The Truthful Exposer (Kitab al-Wadih bi-l-Haqq) outlining his skepticism regarding Islam. His ideas circulated across the Middle East and the Mediterranean in the medieval period, shaping the Christian understanding of the Qur'an's origins, Muhammad's life, the practice of Islamic law, and Muslim political history. This book includes a study of Ibn Raja''s life, along with an Arabic edition and English translation of The Truthful Exposer.

In The Qumran Manuscripts of Lamentations: A Text-Critical Study, the first large-scale investigation of the topic, Gideon Kotze establishes how the four Lamentations manuscripts from Qumran present the content of the biblical book. Kotze takes as his point of departure the contributions of the Dead Sea scrolls to the discipline of Old Testament textual criticism and treats the Qumran manuscripts of Lamentations, the Masoretic text and the ancient translations as witnesses to the content of the book and not only as witnesses to earlier forms of its Hebrew text. By focusing the analysis on variant readings and textual difficulties, the study arrives at a better understanding of these manuscripts as representatives of both the text and the content of Lamentations.

Three Translations of the Koran (Al-Qu'ran) side-by-side with each verse not split across pages. This book compiles three English translations of the Koran, by Abdullah Yusuf Ali, Marmaduke Pickthall and Mohammad Habib Shaki, in three columns, aligned so it is possible to read across and compare translations for each verse.

Recent arguments surrounding the meaning and message of the Qur'an often focus on whether or not it supports or exhorts violence. Such arguments, though, tend to ignore the fact that the scriptures found there speak to various aspects of life and living. The Qur'anic Narrative attempts to show that the Qur'an has an inspiring message that aims to enlighten the path of those who embrace it and guides them through the journey of life. Exploring various themes related to everyday experiences, Safi reveals the meaning of the Qur'an with regard to issues of spirit, faith, charity, patience, fasting, salvation, pride, charity, moral discipline, and other relevant topics.

In an attempt to recapture the Islamic spirit promoted in the Qur'an, this book offers an approach that speaks to areas of life many people are concerned about. It pastes together a narrative that is more consistent and more representative of the overall Qur'anic message, which, the author contends, is ultimately one of peace and hope. Safi places the Qur'an in context, too, by examining its meaning to early recipients of the scriptures and its place in that particular social and historical context. He continues by updating that meaning for modern readers and adherents, relating the intended meaning to an evolving human audience and to contemporary experiences. The author contends that extremist readings are misinterpretations and that those who may view the Qur'an as a holy text that encourages, even demands, violence are incorrect. Ultimately, readers will come away from this work with a broader appreciation of the Qur'an and its intended meaning and message.

This unique work takes a method of textual analysis commonly used in studies of ancient Western and Eastern manuscripts and applies it to twenty-one early Qur'an manuscripts. Keith Small analyzes a defined portion of text from the Qur'an with two aims in view: to recover the earliest form of text for this portion, and to trace the historical development of this portion to the current form of the text of the Qur'an. Small concludes that though a significantly early edited form of the consonantal text of the Qur'an can be recovered, its original forms of text cannot be obtained. He also documents the further editing that was required to record the Arabic text of the Qur'an in a complete phonetic script, as well as providing an explanation for much of the development of various recitation systems of the Qur'an. This controversial, thought-provoking book provides a rigorous examination into the history of the Qur'an and will be of great interest to Quranic Studies scholars.

The father-daughter dyad features in the Hebrew Bible in all of narratives, laws, myths and metaphors. In previous explorations of this relationship, the tendency has been to focus on discrete stories - notable among them, Judges 11 (the story of Jephthah's human sacrifice of his daughter) and Genesis 19 (the dark tale of Lot's daughters' seduction of their father). By taking the full spectrum into account, however, the daughter emerges prominently as (not only) expendable and exploitable (as an emphasis on daughter sacrifice or incest has suggested) but as cherished and protected by her father. Depictions of daughters are multifarious and there is a balance of very positive and very negative images. While not uncritical of earlier feminist investigations, this book makes a contribution to feminist biblical criticism and utilizes methods drawn from the social sciences and psychoanalysis. Alongside careful textual analysis, Johanna Stiebert offers a critical evaluation of the heuristic usefulness of the ethnographic honour-shame model, of parallels with Roman family studies, and of the application and meaning of 'patriarchy'. Following semantic analysis of the primary Hebrew terms for 'father' ( ) and 'daughter' ( ), as well as careful examination of inter-family dynamics and the daughter's role vis-a-vis the son's, alongside thorough investigation of both Judges 11 and Genesis 19, and also of the metaphor of God-the-father of daughters Eve, Wisdom and Zion, Stiebert provides the fullest exploration of daughters in the Hebrew Bible to date.

This monograph examines the principle of dispensation in the Qur'an, which seems to be, if not unique, articulated in a new manner compared to previous religions (cf. Deut 12,32). The Qur'anic dispensations have never been systematically studied and this monograph aims to fill this vacuum in the fields of Qur'anic studies and the Study of Religion.