If God knows human actions in advance, do humans really have freedom of choice? Throughout the centuries various solutions have been offered as to how to retain or reconcile both the concepts of divine omniscience and human freedom. One solution focuses on the idea of middle knowledge. This theory originates with the Spanish Jesuit Luis de Molina, was contested by Reformed theologians such as Herman Bavinck, and makes a remarkable comeback among present-day analytical philosophers such as William Lane Craig. Apart from a wealth of philosophical considerations, the appeal to biblical texts also plays an important role in the work on middle knowledge by each of these thinkers. The book examines their writings and investigates how contemporary biblical scholars interpret the biblical texts used by them. The author elaborates a creative proposal as to how these gained insights apply to the theory of middle knowledge and what this means for our overall evaluation of this theory.

The largely Arabo-centric approach to the academic study of tafsir has resulted in a lack of literature exploring the diversity of Qur'anic interpretation in other areas of the Muslim-majority world. The essays in The Qur'an in the Malay-Indonesian World resolve this, aiming to expand our knowledge of tafsir and its history in the Malay-Indonesian world. Highlighting the scope of Qur'anic interpretation in the Malay world in its various vernaculars, it also contextualizes this work to reveal its place as part of the wider Islamic world, especially through its connections to the Arab world, and demonstrates the strength of these connections. The volume is divided into three parts written primarily by scholars from Malaysia and Indonesia. Beginning with a historical overview, it then moves into chapters with a more specifically regional focus to conclude with a thematic approach by looking at topics of some controversy in the broader world. Presenting new examinations of an under-researched topic, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Islamic studies and Southeast Asian studies.

Can Christians read biblical meaning into qur'anic texts? Does this violate the intent of those passages? What about making positive reference to the Qur'an in the context of an evangelistic presentation or defence of biblical doctrines? Does this imply that Christians accept the Muslim scripture as inspired? What about Christians who reside in the world of Islam and write their theology in the language of the Qur'an - Arabic? Is it legitimate for them to use the Qur'an in their explorations of the Christian faith? This book explores these questions and offers a biblically, theologically, and historically informed response. For years evangelical Christians seeking answers to questions like these have turned to the history of Protestant Christian interaction with Muslim peoples. Few are aware of the cultural, intellectual, and theological achievements of Middle Eastern Christians who have resided in the world of Islam for fourteen centuries. Their works are a treasure-trove of riches for those investigating contemporary theological and missiological questions.

This book is the first to present current scholarship on gender and in regional and sectarian versions of the Ramayana. Contributors explore in what ways the versions relate to other Ramayana texts as they deal with the female persona and the cultural values implicit in them. Using a wide variety of approaches, both analytical and descriptive, the authors discover common ground between narrative variants even as their diversity is recognized. It offers an analysis in the shaping of the heterogeneous Rama tradition through time as it can be viewed from the perspective of narrating women's lives. Through the analysis of the representation and treatment of female characters, narrative inventions, structural design, textual variants, and the idiom of composition and technique in art and sculpture are revealed and it is shown what and in which way these alternative versions are unique. A sophisticated exploration of the Ramayana, this book is of great interest to academics in the fields of South Asian Studies, Asian Religion, Asian Gender and Cultural Studies.

Using a commentary on the influential text, the Manjusri-namasamgiti, 'The Chanting of the Names of Manjusri', this book deals with Buddhist tantric meditation practice and its doctrinal context in early-medieval India. The commentary was written by the 8th-9th century Indian tantric scholar Vilasavajra, and the book contains a translation of the first five chapters. The translation is extensively annotated, and accompanied by introductions as well as a critical edition of the Sanskrit text based on eight Sanskrit manuscripts and two blockprint editions of the commentary's Tibetan translation. The commentary interprets its root text within an elaborate framework of tantric visualisation and meditation that is based on an expanded form of the Buddhist Yoga Tantra mandala, the Vajradhatu-mandala. At its heart is the figure of Manjusri, no longer the familiar bodhisattva of wisdom, but now the embodiment of the awakened non-dual gnosis that underlies all Buddhas as well their activity in the cosmos. The book contributes to our understanding of the history of Indian tantric Buddhism in a period of significant change and innovation. With its extensively annotated translation and lengthy introductions the book is designed to appeal not only to professional scholars and research students but also to contemporary Buddhists.

Qur'anic Studies Today brings together specialists in the field of Islamic studies to provide a range of essays that reflect the depth and breadth of scholarship on the Qur'an. Combining theoretical and methodological clarity with close readings of qur'anic texts, these contributions provide close analysis of specific passages, themes, and issues within the Qur'an, even as they attend to the disciplinary challenges within the field of qur'anic studies today. Chapters are arranged into three parts, treating specific figures appearing in the Qur'an, analysing particular suras, and finally reflecting on the Qur'an and its "others." They explore the internal dimensions and interior chronology of the Qur'an as text, its possible conversations with biblical and non-biblical traditions in Late Antiquity, and its role as scripture in modern exegesis and recitation. Together, they are indispensable for students and scholars who seek an understanding of the Qur'an founded on the most recent scholarly achievements. Offering both a reflection of and a reflection on the discipline of qur'anic studies, the strong, scholarly examinations of the Qur'an in this volume provide a valuable contribution to Islamic and qur'anic studies.

In Indian mythological texts like the Mahabharata and Ramayana, there are recurrent tales about gleaners. The practice of "gleaning" in India had more to do with the house-less forest life than with residential village or urban life or with gathering residual post-harvest grains from cultivated fields. Gleaning can be seen a metaphor for the Mahabharata poets' art: an art that could have included their manner of gleaning what they made the leftovers (what they found useful) from many preexistent texts into Vyasa's "entire thought"-including oral texts and possibly written ones, such as philosophical debates and stories. This book explores the notion of non-violence in the epic Mahabharata. In examining gleaning as an ecological and spiritual philosophy nurtured as much by hospitality codes as by eating practices, the author analyses the merits and limitations of the 9th century Kashmiri aesthetician Anandavardhana that the dominant aesthetic sentiment or rasa of the Mahabharata is shanta (peace). Mahatma Gandhi's non-violent reading of the Mahabharata via the Bhagavad Gita are also studied. This book by one of the leaders in Mahabharata studies is of interest to scholars of South Asian Literary Studies, Religious Studies as well as Peace Studies, South Asian Anthropology and History.

This book approaches the Dhamma, the Buddha's teaching, from a Buddhistic perspective, viewing various individual teachings presented in hundreds of early discourses of Pali canon, comprehending them under a single systemic thought of a single individual called the Buddha. It explicates the structure of this thought, going through various contextual teachings and teaching categories of the discourses, treating them as necessary parts of a liberating thought that constitutes the right view of one who embraces the Buddha's teaching as his or her sole philosophy of life. It interprets the diverse individual dhammas as being in congruence with each other; and as contributory to forming the whole of the Buddha's teaching, the Dhamma. By exploring some selected topics such as ignorance, configurations, not-self, and nibbana in thirteen chapters, the book enables readers to understand the whole (the Dhamma) in relation to the parts (the dhammas), and the parts in relation to the whole, while realizing the importance of studying every single dhamma category or topic not for its own sake but for understand the entirety of the teaching. This way of viewing and explaining the teachings of the discourses enables readers to clearly comprehend the teaching of the Buddha in early Buddhism.

Few books have had a more profound impact on human history than the Qur'an. It shapes the beliefs, lives and behaviour of over 1.5 billion Muslims, who regard it as the Word of God, revealed to the Prophet Muhammad. Speaking directly to Muslims, it has been the basic source of law, morality and politics for over 1,400 years. Almost everything that happens in a Muslim society is a direct or indirect product of what the Qur'an says. But what does the Qur'an really say? How should it be read and interpreted? What is the significance of its teachings, if any, for the 21st century? In this enlightening and highly readable book, Ziauddin Sardar, one of the foremost Muslim intellectuals of our time, offers a refreshingly new interpretation of the Qur'an. Emphasising plurality and inclusiveness, Sardar demonstrates the importance of reading the verses of the Qur'an in the context in which they were revealed, and highlights the relevance of its teachings for today. Sardar reads the Qur'an from several perspectives.He begins with the traditional, verse-by-verse interpretations and subsequently shows how the multilayered verses and stories of the Sacred Text are open to a number of different and more enlightening interpretations. He also reads the Quran thematically, exploring its basic concepts and themes, painting a dynamic picture of the kind of society that the Qur'an aims to create. Also scrutinised is what the Qur'an says about such contemporary topics as power and politics, the rights of women, suicide, domestic violence, sex, homosexuality, the veil, freedom of expression and evolution. Throughout, Sardar uses several different methods, from traditional exegesis to hermeneutics, critical theory and cultural analysis to draw fresh and contemporary lessons from the Sacred Text. He shows what the Qur'an means to individuals like himself, why its interpretation has been so controversial throughout history, and how translations can be used to promote misunderstanding as well as enlightenment. Argumentative and lively, Reading the Qur'an is an insightful guide to understanding the Sacred Text of Muslims in these conflict-ridden and distressing times.Whatever one believes or does not believe, the central importance of the Qur'an in today's globalised world cannot be ignored.

'Letters of Light' is a translation of over ninety passages from a well-known Hasidic text, 'Ma'or va-shemesh', consisting of homilies of Kalonymus Kalman Epstein of Krakow, together with a running commentary and analysis by Aryeh Wineman. With remarkable creativity, the Krakow preacher recast biblical episodes and texts through the prism both of the pietistic values of Hasidism, with its accent on the inner life and the Divine innerness of all existence, and of his ongoing wrestling with questions of the primacy of the individual vis-a-vis of the community. The commentary traces the route leading from the Torah text itself through various later sources to the Krakow preacher's own reading of the biblical text, one that often transforms the very tenor of the text he was expounding. Though composed almost two centuries ago, 'Ma'or va-shemesh' comprises an impressive spiritual statement, many aspects of which can speak to our own time and its spiritual strivings.

This book examines a central issue in talmudic studies that concerns the genesis of halakhic (legal) divergence between the Talmuds produced by the Palestinian rabbinic community (c. AD 370) and the Babylonian rabbinic community (c. AD 650). Hayes analyses selected divergences between parallel passages of the two talmuds and debates whether external influences or internal factors best account for the differences.

Impurity and Gender in the Hebrew Bible explores the role of female blood in the Hebrew Bible and considers its theological implications for future understandings of purity and impurity in the Jewish religion. Influenced by the work of Jonathan Klawans (Sin and Impurity in Ancient Judaism), and using the categories of ritual and moral impurities, this book analyzes the way in which these categories intersect with women and with the impurity of female blood, and reads the biblical foundations of purity and blood taboos with a feminist lens. Ultimately, the purpose of this book is to understand the intersection between impurity and gender, figuratively and non-figuratively, in the Hebrew Bible. Goldstein traces this intersection from the years 1000 BCE-250 BCE and ends with a consideration of female impurity in the literature of Qumran.

Wisdom of Love strives to challenge the discrepancy between the way in which source texts relate to love and the way in which they are perceived to do so, introducing readers to the extensive, profound and significant treatment of love in the Jewish canon. This is a book about love, not its repression; an opportunity to study the wisdom of love, not those who lack such wisdom and are unlikely to ever acquire it. Wisdom of Love brings about not only a change in perception - recognizing the existence of the wisdom of love per se - but also the realization, that this wisdom is the very foundation of religious wisdom as a whole, rather than a peripheral branch of it. All love derives from a single source: love between man and woman. It is from this source that all other manifestations of love, such as love of God, love of wisdom, love of one's fellow, draw their meaning.

"The Horizontal Society" is an exposition of rabbinic thought as exemplified by Maimonides. The thought streams of Greece, Rome, and Christendom serve as a contrast. This work is in the Hebrew rhetorical tradition of melisa. The main text in five sections--The God of Israel, The Books of Israel, The Governance of Israel, The Memory of Israel, and The Folly of Israel-focuses on these core matters. It includes numerous references to orient the reader. The mode is similar to the author's previous work, such as "Golden Doves with Silver Dots: Semiotics and Textuality in Rabbinic Tradition," interacting with the latest thought from today's academy. This book illustrates the horizontal organization of the Jewish people. Other social organization is based on hierarchy. Two principles made this difference possible for Israel. First, the Hebrew Scriptures alone propose that every human being is created in the image of God. This necessitates the absolute equality of every human being. Second, the Sinai covenant establishes the Law as the supreme authority. Whereas in other societies, might is the source of authority, in Judaism authority is limited by the Law. These principles were summarized by the last Prophet of Israel: "Had not one God created us? Why do we deal treacherously..., profaning the covenant of our fathers?" (Mal 2:10). There is a subdivided bibliography of forty pages, including both Jewish and "Western" sources. The scholarly apparatus includes indices of terms, names, and subjects. There are also seventy appendices of interest to rabbinic readership.

The study of classical Jewish texts is flourishing in day schools and adult education, synagogues and summer camps, universities and yeshivot. But serious inquiry into the practices and purposes of such study is far rarer. In this book, a diverse collection of empirical and conceptual studies illuminates particular aspects of the teaching of Bible and rabbinic literature to, and the learning of, children and adults. In addition to providing specific insights into the pedagogy of Jewish texts, these studies serve as models of what the disciplined study of pedagogy can look like. The book will be of interest to teachers of Jewish texts in all contexts, and will be particularly valuable for the professional development of Jewish educators.

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.