This present volume is a modest effort to analyze some of the moral dilemmas of our time, and to indicate elements of hope for the futur. The essays refer to a variety of complex situations, each of which seems to threaten our generation, but which, appraoched creatively, may turn out to be a stage in the improvement of the human condition. The volume is based on the premise that consideration of man's ethical life should be given the same attention now directed to scientific and technological achievemnt, and indeed that this achievemnet be utilized, when possible, for the better understanding of the meaning and goals of life. From the Foreward by Louis Finkelstein

The second of four volumes covering the history of Judaism from 540 BCE to 250 CE, this book deals with the encounter of Judaism with the Hellenistic culture spread throughout the Mediterranean world and beyond by Alexander the Great and his successors. Drawing upon recent scholarship in archaeology, history and scriptures, the contributors describe the religious, social and cultural rejection and adoption of Hellenism by Judaism. Illustrated with plates and diagrams, the text will prove an invaluable resource to scholars and general readers interested in Jewish or Mediterranean history.

The first three volumes of The Cambridge History of Judaism cover the history of the Jews from the Exile in 5 87 B.C.E. to the early Roman period extending into the third century C.E. A comprehensive examination is made of all the relevant literary and archeological sources, and special attention is given to the interaction of Iranian, Semitic, Hellenistic and Roman cultures. The contributors include both Jewish and Gentile scholars from many countries, and this History thus helps to deliver the study of Jewish history and Christian origins from geographical and religious limitations, and contributes to a deeper understanding and a broader tolerance. This first volume opens with three introductory chapters to the work as a whole dealing with the geographical background, the chronology and the numismatic history of Judaism. The remainder of this volume concentrates on the Persian period, the two and a half centuries following the Babylonian Exile.

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1919. Excerpt: ... I THE POLITICAL IDEAL OF THE PROPHETS A Study In Biblical Zionism OF the numerous obstructions which the human understanding encounters in its search for truth none perhaps are more troublesome than those which Francis Bacon, philosopher as well as politician, so quaintly designated as idola fori, "the idols of the market" "those namely which have entwined themselves around the understanding from the associations of words and names," and are "either the names of things which have no existence, or they are the names of actual objects, but confused, badly defined, and hastily and irregularly abstracted from things." As the subject of this paper will unavoidably lead me to speak of politics, politicians and things political, I must begin by earnestly entreating you to dismiss from your minds those unpleasant, nay, repulsive associations which have encrusted these words in our own times and surroundings, and to transfer your thoughts to the days of old when man was best defined as a "political animal," when Paper read in the Course of Public Lectures of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America on April 1, 1909. Published in the Jewish Comment on March 11, 1910. A Hebrew translation of this essay, prepared by the author, was published in the Hebrew monthly Hatoren in 1915 and reprinted in pamphlet form by the Hebrew Society "Ahieber" in New York. "political" and "ideal were not yet a contradiction, and when politics were rather the lever to lift man from the stupor and selfishness of animal existence to human virtue and self-sacrifice. If politics be inseparable from compromise-mongering and trading in convictions, then no greater insult to prophecy and no grosser misconception of its message could be possible than to associate it with politics. But if "pol...

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