Ten spyte daarvan dat die Bybel eeue oud is, lees miljoene mense wereldwyd uit verskillende taal- en kultuurgroepe dit steeds met die verwagting om iets daarin te vind wat vir hulle persoonlike en spirituele lewe van waarde kan wees. Nietemin is die Bybel oorspronklik bedoel vir mense wat in ’n pre-industriele en prewetenskaplike wereld geleef het. Hulle huise, stede, plase, lewensomstandighede, kleding en gebruike het radikaal verskil van die wat ons vandag ken – wat die vraag laat ontstaan: hoe kan die reusegaping tussen hierdie antieke tekste en moderne lesers oorbrug word. Geskiedenis en geskrifte stel hedendaagse lesers aan die wereld van die ou Nabye-Ooste bekend – vanaf die ou Israeliete se oorlewingstryd, tot die godsdienstige literatuur wat geskryf is om hulle die lewe te help hanteer en sin te maak uit gebeure wat hul lewe beinvloed het – en lei die leser sodoende tot groter begrip en insig in die verskillende kontekste van die Bybel se wordingsgeskiedenis.

This volume is based upon the seventh series of lectures delivered at Yale University on the Foundation established by the late Dwight H. Terry of Plymouth, Connecticut, through his gift of an endowment fund for the delivery and subsequent publication of "Lectures on Religion in the Light of Science and Philosophy." The deed of gift declares that "the object of this Foundation is not the promotion of scientific investigation and discovery, but rather the assimilation and interpretation of that which has been or shall be hereafter discovered, and its application to human welfare, especially by the building of the truths of science and philosophy into the structure of a broadened and purified religion. The beliefs of men in the past, the author makes clear, were inevitably inspired by their fears of an incomprehensible universe and were derived from their ideas of the supernatural. Science has gradually created a new set of sanctions; and the religion of today, freed from the dread of the unknown, must be formed on this new foundation. Professor Montague proceeds to outline the basis of a philosophy of life reconceived from this point of view, applying to it the term Promethean Religion. It is a volume which will stimulate new thought and discussion, a distinguished addition to the important volumes already published on the Dwight Harrington Terry Foundation.

Best known today as one of the earliest critics of John Locke, John Norris (1657-1711) incorporated ideas of Augustine, Malebranche, Plato, the Cambridge Platonists, and the scholastics into an original synthesis that was highly influential on the philosophy and theology of his day. W. J. Mander presents a much-needed study of this unjustly neglected thinker, and the different perspectives he offers on this seminal period in philosophical history.

This book describes Martin Bucer (1491-1551) as a teacher of theology, focusing on his time as Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge between 1549 and 1551. The book is centered on his 1550 Cambridge lectures on Ephesians, and investigates them in their historical context, exploring what sort of a theologian Bucer was. The lectures are examined to find out how they represent Bucer's method of teaching and "doing" theology, and shed light on the relationship between biblical exegesis and theological formulation as he understood it. Divided into two interconnected parts, the book first sets the historical context for the lectures, including a broad sketch of scholastic method in theology and the biblical humanist critique of that method. It then closely examines Bucer's practice in the Cambridge lectures, to show the extent to which he was a theologian of the biblical humanist school, influenced by the method Erasmus set forth in the Ratio Verae Theologiae in which true theology begins, ends, and is best "done" as an exercise in the exegesis of the Word of God.

The present volume is one of the first to concentrate on a specific theme of biblical interpretation in the Dead Sea Scrolls, namely the book of Genesis. In particular the volume is concerned with the links displayed by the Qumranic biblical interpetation to the inner-biblical interpretation and the final shaping of the Hebrew scriptures. Moshe Bar-Asher studies cases of such inner biblical interpretative comments; Michael Segal deals with the Garden of Eden story in the scrolls and other contemporary Jewish sources; Reinhard Kratz analizes the story of the Flood as preamble for the lives of the Patriarchs in the Hebrew Bible; Devorah Dimant examines this theme in the Qumran scrolls; Roman Viehlhauer explores the story of Sodom and Gomorrah; George Brooke and Atar Livneh discuss aspects of Jacob's career; Harald Samuel review the career of Levi; Liora Goldman examines the Aramaic work the Visions of Amram; Lawrence Schiffman and Aharon Shemesh discuss halakhic aspects of stories about the Patriarchs; Moshe Bernstein provides an overview of the references to the Patriarchs in the Qumran scrolls.

Belief in the importance of angels was as widespread and intense in the early modern era as it had been in the middle ages. This volume is the first to consider how ideas about the nature, existence and activities of angels negotiated the religious, intellectual and cultural upheavals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The contributors explore the fate and fortunes of these heavenly protectors and messengers against the backdrop of the Renaissance and Reformation and in the context of scientific change. Ranging from the British Isles and continental Europe to New England and Latin America, they consider how angels were implicated in the processes of Protestant and Catholic renewal, their relationship with witchcraft and magic, and their representation in literature and art. Based on original research, the essays offer genuinely fresh insight into the moments and movements that defined the early modern world.

This is the first volume of Robert Cumming Neville's magnum opus, Theology as Symbolic Engagement. Neville is the premier American systematic theologian of our time. His work is profoundly influenced by Paul Tillich, Friedrich Schleiermacher, and the American pragmatists John Dewey and Charles Sanders Pierce. From Tillich he takes the notion of religion, art, and morality as symbol, and the notion that religion is the substance of culture and culture the form of religion. Thus, theology is symbolic engagement with cultural forms, and Neville explores the ways that such engagement occurs among various religious traditions. One of the most important tasks in theology is to devise ways of testing, correcting, or affirming claims that we had been unable to question before. This book will argue that "system" in theology is not merely correlating assertions, but rather building perspectives from which we can render the various parts of theology vulnerable for assessment. In fact, one of the unique features of this book is its engagement with other religions. Such dialogue has been a feature of Neville's work from the beginning. Theology as Symbolic Engagement breaks the boundaries of systematic theology and moves away from the static character that characterizes such enterprises from Barth onward. Instead, Neville's book showcases the dynamic character of all theology. The hallmark of this entire project is its effort to show theology to be hypothetical and to make it vulnerable to correction.

Archbishop of Canterbury from 1272 until his death in 1279, the Dominican friar Robert Kildwardby has long been known primarily for his participation in the Oxford Prohibitions of 1277, but his contributions spread far wider. A central figure in the Late Middle Ages, Kilwardby was one of the earliest commentators of the work of Aristotle, as well as an unwavering proponent of Augustinian thought and a believer of the plurality of forms. Although he was a prominent thinker of the time, key areas of his philosophical thought remain unexamined in contemporary scholarship. Jose Filipe Silva here offers the first book-length analysis of Kilwardby's full body of work, which is essential in understanding both the reception of Aristotle in the Latin West and the developments of later medieval philosophy. Beginning with his early philosophical commitments, Silva tracks Kilwardby's life and academic thought, including his theories on knowledge, moral happiness, and the nature of the soul, along with his attempts to reconcile Augustinian and Aristotelian thought. Ultimately, Robert Kilwardby offers a comprehensive overview of an unsung scholar, solidifying his philosophical legacy as one of the most influential authors of the Late Middle Ages.

Written by internationally renowned scholars, this "Companion" maps the moral teachings of the world's religions, and also charts new directions for work in the field of religious ethics.
Now available in paperback, this is a rich resource for understanding the moral teachings and practices of the world's religions
Includes detailed discussions of issues in moral theory
Offers extensive treatment of the world's major religious traditions, including Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Chinese religions and African religions
Compares the ways in which the religions provide resources for addressing current moral challenges in areas such as ecology, economics, global dynamics, religious war, human rights and other topics.

What if there is no strong evidence that God exists? Is belief in God when faced with a lack of evidence illegitimate and improper? Evidentialism answers yes. According to Evidentialism, it is impermissible to believe any proposition lacking adequate evidence. And if any thesis enjoys the status of a dogma among philosophers, it is Evidentialism. Presenting a direct challenge to Evidentialism are pragmatic arguments for theism, which are designed to support belief in the absence of adequate evidence. Pascal's Wager is the most prominent theistic pragmatic argument, and issues in epistemology, the ethics of belief, and decision theory, as well as philosophical theology, all intersect at the Wager. Other prominent theistic pragmatic arguments include William James's celebrated essay, 'The Will to Believe'; a posthumously published and largely ignored pragmatic argument authored by J.S. Mill, supporting the propriety of hoping that quasi-theism is true; the eighteenth-century Scottish essayist James Beattie's argument that the consoling benefit of theistic belief is so great that theistic belief is permissible even when one thinks that the existence of God is less likely than not; and an argument championed by the nineteenth-century French philosopher Jules Lachelier, which based its case for theistic belief on the empirical benefits of believing as a theist, even if theism was very probably false. In Pascal's Wager: Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God, Jeff Jordan explores various theistic pragmatic arguments, and the objections employed against them. Jordan presents a new version of the Wager, what he calls the 'Jamesian Wager', and argues that the Jamesian Wager survives the objections hurled against theistic pragmatic arguments and provides strong support for theistic belief. In addition to arguing for a sound version of the Wager, Jordan also argues that there is a version of Evidentialism compatible with a principled use of pragmatic arguments, and that the Argument from Divine Silence fails. Objections found in Voltaire, Hume, and Nietzsche against the Wager are scrutinized, as are objections issued by Richard Swinburne, Richard Gale, and other contemporary philosophers. The ethics of belief, the many-gods objection, the problem of infinite utilities, and the propriety of a hope based acceptance are also examined.

This book investigates the relationship between cult and ethics in the book of Isaiah. Part I attempts to revise some of the common Old Testament views on prophets and cult. After inspecting cultic concepts such as sacrifice, purity and impurity, holiness, and the Promised Land, it suggests that the priestly and prophetic understandings of the role of the Ancient Israelite cult were essentially the same. This general proposition is then tested on the book of Isaiah in Part II: each chapter there analyses the key passage on cult and ethics in the three main parts of the book, namely, Isa 1:10-17; 43:22-28; and 58:1-14 and concludes that, even though the role of cult and ethics in each part of the book varies significantly, the underlying principles behind the teaching about ritual and social justice in the various parts of the book of Isaiah are the same. Furthermore, these principles are cultic in nature, and in accord with priestly teaching. Far from being anti-ritualistic, the studied texts are concerned with what can be labelled The Ethical Dimension of Cult. The reason behind the variations of the role of cult and ethics in the book called Isaiah seems to be cultic as well, namely the purity or impurity of the people and the land before, during, and after the Babylonian exile.

The collection of essays contains nineteen contributions that aim at locating the Song of Songs in its ancient context as well as addressing problems of interpretation and the reception of this biblical book in later literature. In contrast to previous studies this work devotes considerable attention to parallels from the Greek world without neglecting the Ancient Near East or Egypt. Several contributions deal with the use of the Song in Byzantine, Medieval, German Romantic and modern Greek Literature. Due to the interdisciplinary nature of the collection new perspectives and avenues of approach are opened.