God Hanuman has an important place in India and is worshipped by millions of people. He is a god who is the archetype of honesty, loyalty and courage. More than any other folk god, Hanuman is endowed with human qualities so much cherished in the Indian tradition. There is no scholarly work in English on Hanuman that utilises Sanskrit literature to delineate his importance as a god and as confidant of Rama. Although Hanuman is a popular folk god in India, he has not received attention commensurate with his popularity from scholars of religion and mythology. This study seeks to fill this gap and explores the human and superhuman role of Hanuman in Sanskrit texts. With the Ramayana as the basic source, Sanskrit plays and Puranas have also been studied to unravel the complexity of Hanumans personality and its development as a character in flesh and blood. Hanuman is also analysed in the context of religious tradition centred on Ramayana. The study focuses on the evolution and change in the theology of Hanuman. He appears as an incarnation of Siva, a god in his own right, a tribal deity and a hero god with power and virility who destroys evil. At a mundane level Hanuman is an ideal human, an upright man, a trusted friend of Rama, a statesman and a brave warrior. In the bhakti tradition, he is the lord, the object of bhakti.

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972) was one of the twentieth century's most influential Jewish thinkers, a respected theologian and enthusiastic civil rights activist who marched to Selma with Martin Luther King, Jr. His theology emphasized the immediacy of wonder and awe, yet his writing was studded with signs of his vast knowledge of traditional scholarship. No other Jewish thinker of note in the twentieth century used such a wide range of texts so extensively. Abraham Joshua Heschel and the Sources of Wonder is the first book to demonstrate how Heschel's political, intellectual, and spiritual commitments were embedded in his reading of Jewish tradition. By shedding new light on how Heschel's theological project reconciled the demands of tradition and the modern world, Michael Marmur offers an inspirational lesson in how contemporary Jewish thought can embrace both the texts of the past and the challenges of the present.

What can we know about God by reason alone? Philosophical theology is the attempt to obtain such knowledge. An ancient tradition, which is perhaps more influential now than ever, tries to derive the attributes of God from the principle that God is the greatest possible being. Jeff Speaks argues that that constructive project is a failure. He also argues that the related view that the concept of God is the concept of a greatest possible being is a mistake. In the last chapter, he sketches an alternative path forward.

The early Christian Church was a chaos of contending beliefs. Some groups of Christians claimed that there was not one God but two or twelve or thirty. Some believed that the world had not been created by God but by a lesser, ignorant deity. Certain sects maintained that Jesus was human but not divine, while others said he was divine but not human. In Lost Christianities, Bart D. Ehrman offers a fascinating look at these early forms of Christianity and shows how they came to be suppressed, reformed, or forgotten. All of these groups insisted that they upheld the teachings of Jesus and his apostles, and they all possessed writings that bore out their claims, books reputedly produced by Jesus's own followers. Modern archaeological work has recovered a number of key texts, and as Ehrman shows, these spectacular discoveries reveal religious diversity that says much about the ways in which history gets written by the winners. Ehrman's discussion ranges from considerations of various "lost scriptures"-including forged gospels supposedly written by Simon Peter, Jesus's closest disciple, and Judas Thomas, Jesus's alleged twin brother-to the disparate beliefs of such groups as the Jewish-Christian Ebionites, the anti-Jewish Marcionites, and various "Gnostic" sects. Ehrman examines in depth the battles that raged between "proto-orthodox Christians"- those who eventually compiled the canonical books of the New Testament and standardized Christian belief-and the groups they denounced as heretics and ultimately overcame. Scrupulously researched and lucidly written, Lost Christianities is an eye-opening account of politics, power, and the clash of ideas among Christians in the decades before one group came to see its views prevail.

This book explores one of the great questions of our time: How can we preserve our sense of what it means to be a person while at the same time accepting what science tells us to be true--namely, that human nature is continuous with the rest of nature? What, in other words, does it mean to be a person in a world of things? Alan Mittleman shows how the Jewish tradition provides rich ways of understanding human nature and personhood that preserve human dignity and distinction in a world of neuroscience, evolutionary biology, biotechnology, and pervasive scientism. These ancient resources can speak to Jewish, non-Jewish, and secular readers alike. Science may tell us what we are, Mittleman says, but it cannot tell us who we are, how we should live, or why we matter. Traditional Jewish thought, in open-minded dialogue with contemporary scientific perspectives, can help us answer these questions. Mittleman shows how, using sources ranging across the Jewish tradition, from the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud to more than a millennium of Jewish philosophy. Among the many subjects the book addresses are sexuality, birth and death, violence and evil, moral agency, and politics and economics. Throughout, Mittleman demonstrates how Jewish tradition brings new perspectives to--and challenges many current assumptions about--these central aspects of human nature. A study of human nature in Jewish thought and an original contribution to Jewish philosophy, this is a book for anyone interested in what it means to be human in a scientific age.

How the rabbis of the Talmud transformed Jewish law into a way of thinking and talking about everything Typically translated as "Jewish law," halakhah is not an easy match for what is usually thought of as law. This is because the rabbinic legal system has rarely wielded the political power to enforce its rules, nor has it ever been the law of any state. Even more idiosyncratically, the talmudic rabbis claim the study of halakhah is a holy endeavor that brings a person closer to God-a claim no country makes of its law. Chaim Saiman traces how generations of rabbis have used concepts forged in talmudic disputation to do the work that other societies assign not only to philosophy, political theory, theology, and ethics but also to art, drama, and literature. Guiding readers across two millennia of richly illuminating perspectives, this panoramic book shows how halakhah is not just "law" but an entire way of thinking, being, and knowing.

The year 2009 is the Anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th publication of his book on "The Origin of Species". The ideas which Darwin stimulated lie at the heart of our understanding of the natural world. They offer and elegant scientific account which elicits a positive response from and gives much to theology. Yet in recent years the Intelligent Design movement amongst creationists in the United States in opposition, not only to Darwinism, but also and consistently, to contemporary Western values and to mainstream liberal theology. It is now infiltrating the United Kingdom. In this book a group of scientists and theologians unite to honour Charles Darwin, expressing their common conviction that Darwinian evolution marks a very great advance in human understanding of the world and that Intelligent Design is an unproductive dead end. "Intelligent Faith" will be of interest not only to thinking people with an interest in theology and science but also to sixth formers, school discussion groups and university societies.

Nietzsche and Jewish Political Theology is the first book to explore the impact of Friedrich Nietzsche's work on the formation of Jewish political theology during the first half of the twentieth century. It maps the many ways in which early Jewish thinkers grappled with Nietzsche's powerful ideas about politics, morality, and religion in the process of forging a new and modern Jewish culture. The book explores the stories of some of the most important Jewish thinkers who utilized Nietzsche's writings in crafting the intellectual foundations of Jewish modern political theology. These figures' political convictions ranged from orthodox conservatism to pacifist anarchism, and their attitude towards Nietzsche's ideas varied from enthusiastic embrace to ambivalence and outright rejection. By bringing these diverse figures together, the book makes a convincing argument about Nietzsche's importance for key figures of early Zionism and modern Jewish political thought. The present study offers a new interpretation of a particular theological position which is called "heretical religiosity." Only with modernity and, paradoxically, with rapid secularization, did one find "heretical religiosity" at full strength. Nietzsche enabled intellectual Jews to transform the foundation of their political existence. It provides a new perspective on the adaptation of Nietzsche's philosophy in the age of Jewish national politics, and at the same time is a case study in the intellectual history of the modern Jewry. This new reading on Nietzsche's work is a valuable resource for students and researchers interested in philosophy, Jewish history and political theology.

A Profound and Stirring Call to Action in Our Troubled World from One of America's Great Religious Leaders

"Conscience may be understood as the hidden inner compass that guides our lives and must be searched for and recovered repeatedly. At no time more than our own is this need to retrieve the shards of broken conscience more urgent." from the Introduction

This clarion call to rethink our moral and political behavior examines the idea of conscience and the role conscience plays in our relationships to government, law, ethics, religion, human nature and God and to each other. From Abraham to Abu Ghraib, from the dissenting prophets to Darfur, Rabbi Harold Schulweis probes history, the Bible and the works of contemporary thinkers for ideas about both critical disobedience and uncritical obedience. He illuminates the potential for evil and the potential for good that rests within us as individuals and as a society.

By questioning religion's capacity and will to break from mindless conformity, Rabbi Schulweis challenges us to counter our current suppressive culture of obedience with the culture of moral compassion, and to fulfill religion s obligation to make room for and carry out courageous moral dissent."

For centuries, Jews have been known as the "people of the book." It is commonly thought that Judaism in the first several centuries CE found meaning exclusively in textual sources. But there is another approach to meaning to be found in ancient Judaism, one that sees it in the natural world and derives it from visual clues rather than textual ones. According to this conception, God embedded hidden signs in the world that could be read by human beings and interpreted according to complex systems. In exploring the diverse functions of signs outside of the realm of the written word, Swartz introduces unfamiliar sources and motifs from the formative age of Judaism, including magical and divination texts and new interpretations of legends and midrashim from classical rabbinic literature. He shows us how ancient Jews perceived these signs and read them, elaborating on their use of divination, symbolic interpretation of physical features and dress, and interpretations of historical events. As we learn how these ancient people read the world, we begin to see how ancient people found meaning in unexpected ways.

In Before Jonathan Edwards, Adriaan Neele seeks to balance the recent academic attention to the developments of intellectual history after Jonathan Edwards. Neele presents the first comprehensive study of Edwards's use of Reformed orthodox and Protestant scholastic primary sources in the context of the challenges of orthodoxy in his day. Despite the breadth of Edwards scholarship, his use of primary sources has been little analyzed. Yet, as Neele proves, Edwards's thinking on the importance of these primary sources has significant implications not only for the status of the New England theology of pre-Revolutionary America but also for our understanding of Edwards today. This volume locates Edwards's ideas in the context of the theological and philosophical currents of his day, as well as in the pre-modern exchange of books and information during the colonial period. The pre-Revolutionary status of theology and philosophy in the wake of the Enlightenment had many of the same problems we see in our theological education today with respect to the use and appropriation of classical theology in a 21st-century context. Ideas about the necessity of classical primary sources of Christianity in sustaining our theological education are once again becoming important, and Edwards offers many relevant insights. Edwards was not unique in his deployment of these primary sources; many New England pastors, including Cotton Mather (166301728), preached and wrote about the necessity of orthodox theology. Edwards's distinction came in his thinking about the issues set forth in these sources at a transitional moment in the history of Christian thought.

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.

This engaging argument for the future of Jewish theology, written by a renowned Jewish scholar, provides a rounded introduction to the faith, its history, and its place in the modern world. *Explores foundational Jewish structures and concepts through the discussion and interpretation of Jewish texts *Argues that we must acknowledge holiness as a ritual and ethical reality in order to heal the rift between different forms of Jewish practice and theology *Covers historical context as well as the relations between Judaism, Israel and the wider world today *Speaks to both Jews and non-Jews and demonstrates through textual readings how Jews, Christians, and Muslims can understand and share their theological riches

In a spontaneously wide-ranging conversation one winter evening in Japan, sociologist of religion Bryan Wilson and Buddhist philosopher Daisaku Ikeda recognized the importance of explaining and learning about their respective worldviews. "Human Values in a Changing World" is the record of their further exchanges on how they see the religious response to the human condition. Their contrasting approaches - one, as an academic, and the other, as a lay Buddhist - allow for a constructive critique of preconceptions otherwise unexamined in their own cultural contexts."There is an intimate connection between faith and the fruits of commitment," Wilson says at one point. To which Ikeda responds that while the benefits of faith to momentary happiness are perhaps not the core value of a religion, they can inspire and lead people to become aware of that core value or fundamental truth. The two men's observations on the origins of religious sensibilities move from the spiritual and the moral to the politics of private and public life. Although published some years ago, "Human Values in a Changing World" addresses topics and issues which are of perennial importance to human flourishing, including: sexual morality, the limits of tolerance and religious freedom, the future of the family, the belief in an afterlife, and the idea of sin.

During the first months of the First Crusade, groups of crusaders attacked the Jewish communities in the Rhineland, forcing them to choose between death and conversion. Many converted, but many others choose to die as martyrs. Among these, some were killed by the crusaders, some killed themselves, each other or even their own children in order to prevent forcible conversion. These events are described in a number of Latin accounts, but also in three Hebrew Chronicles, and in a number of Hebrew liturgical poems. These Hebrew Chronicles introduce many new ideas connected to martyrdom which are not found in earlier Jewish martyr texts. They also differ considerably from contemporary texts on martyrdom, written by Jews living under Muslim rule. The purpose of the present study is as follows: (i) to outline the most salient features of this new ideology of martyrdom found in the Hebrew Crusade Chronicles and how it differs from earlier Jewish tradition; (ii) to try to trace the roots of these new ideas, both by showing how the Chroniclers develop earlier Jewish ideas and also how they borrow notions and concepts from their Christian surroundings; (iii) to show what rhetorical means the Chroniclers use in order to present these innovations as firmly anchored in tradition; (iv) to attempt to explain why this ideology develops at this particular time and place, and thereby contribute some further methodological reflections on the study of religious change, especially in a situation of persecution and oppression; (v) to challenge the old paradigm that the Ashkenazic Jewish communities lived in isolation from their non-Jewish surroundings, and to suggest that a serious study of any medievalJewish text must take into consideration the culture and current notions of the non-Jewish community in which the text was composed.

Is God to blame? This is often the question that comes to mind when we confront real suffering in our own lives or in the lives of those we love. Pastor Gregory A. Boyd helps us deal with this question honestly and biblically, while avoiding glib answers. Writing for ordinary Christians, Boyd wrestles with a variety of answers that have been offered by theologians and pastors in the past. He finds that a fully Christian approach must keep the person and work of Jesus Christ at the very center of what we say about human suffering and God's place in it. Yet this is often just what is missing and what makes so much talk about the subject seem inadequate and at times even misleading. What comes through inIs God to Blame? is a hopeful picture of a sovereign God who is relentlessly opposed to evil, who knows our sufferings and who can be trusted to bring us through them to renewed life.

This study contributes to the debate over the function of Davidic sonship in the Gospel of Mark. In contrast to William Wrede's paradigm, Max Botner argues that Mark's position on Jesus's ancestry cannot be assessed properly though isolated study of the name David (or the patronym son of David). Rather, the totality of Markan messiah language is relevant to the question at hand. Justification for this paradigm shift is rooted in observations about the ways in which ancient authors spoke of their messiahs. Botner shows that Mark was participant to a linguistic community whose members shared multiple conventions for stylizing their messiahs, Davidic or otherwise. He then traces how the evangelist narratively constructed his portrait of Christ via creative use of the Jewish scriptures. When the Davidssohnfrage is approached from within this sociolinguistic framework, it becomes clear that Mark's Christ is indeed David's son.

Are we looking mostly to please God or ourselves? The myth of Narcissus describes a young man who dies because he falls in love with his own reflection. When surrounded by the Narcissistic messages of contemporary societyyouve got to believe in yourself we need to listen to a Bible teacher from a past age who can drag us back to reflecting less on ourselves and more on God. Jonathan Edwards, perhaps the greatest of all American Bible teachers, was so God-centered. In The God-Centered Life, Dr. Josh Moody calls us to listen to Edwards in order that we might stop living for ourselves and start living the God-centered life. How to do church, teach the Bible, have a healthy family, deal with failure, engage postmodernism, assess spiritual experiences and more are envisioned through the eyes of Jonathan Edwards with freshness and accessibility. A study guide is included and further resources can be found at . Josh Moody (PhD, University of Cambridge) is Senior Pastor of Trinity Baptist Church, New Haven, Connecticut, serving the Yale community and surrounding New England region. He is also the author of Authentic Spirituality and Jonathan Edwards and the Enlightenment. The God-Centered Life is a graced prescription for truly engaging todays culture.... R. Kent Hughes, Senior Pastor Emeritus, College Church in Wheaton Tremendous. Extremely well-written. It will be a blessing for many.... I heartily commend this work as a timely and valuable resource.... David S. Dockery, President, Union University Josh Moody is uniquely qualified to bring the reader along the path of a greater joy of knowing God and loving God through a person whose life was ablaze for this Triune God of glory and grace.Paul Lim, Assistant Professor of the History of Christianity, Vanderbilt University Potent, thoughtful, and constructive.... R. Albert Mohler, Jr., President, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary At last, someone who stands in the tradition of Edwards as a pastor-scholar, interpreting and applying the lessons from Jonathan Edwards for today.... E. David Cook, Holmes Professor, Wheaton College, Fellow, Green College, Oxford I recommend this book most highly, praying that Josh Moodys labors will encourage the kinds of Edwards influenced lives and congregations that our world so desperately needs.... Douglas A. Sweeney, Associate Professor of Church History, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School Josh Moody (PhD, University of Cambridge) is Senior Pastor of Trinity Baptist Church, New Haven, Connecticut, serving the Yale community and surrounding New England region. He is also the author of Authentic Spirituality and Jonathan Edwards and the Enlightenment.