Criticism and exegesis of sacred texts

The birth of the Christian Church, and what it means for modern religion and philosophy.

What is the book of Genesis about?

In this exciting volume, a renowned New Testament scholar provides his lectures on New Testament theology and provides us a window on his approach on a variety of issues.

From the Sunday Times bestselling author of A History of the Bible, this is the story of how the Bible has been translated, and why it mattersThe Bible is held to be both universal and specific, the source of fundamental truths inscribed in words that are exact and sacred.

Embedded within the Bible lies a largely unknown story of the founding of early Israel and its religion, interwoven with tales documenting the creation of the Torah.

Is anything ever not an interpretation?

A critical reconsideration of the repeated use of the biblical letters of Paul.

As the site of several miracles in the Jewish and Christian traditions, the Jordan is one of the world's holiest rivers.

When Mieke Bal reread the story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife as an adult, she was struck by differences between her childhood memories of a moral tale and what she read today.

The Buddhist saint Nagarjuna, who lived in South India in approximately the second century CE, is undoubtedly the most important, influential, and widely studied Mahayana Buddhist philosopher.

The Nay Science offers a new perspective on the problem of scientific method in the human sciences.

In Created Equal, Joshua Berman engages the text of the Hebrew Bible from a novel perspective, considering it as a document of social and political thought.

"e;I beheld Lucifer towering over me in mock splendor with his wretched black bow, Heartseeker; and in its draw was nocked an arrow of flame plucked from the very bowels of hell.

The explosive growth of the immigrant population since the 1960s has raised concerns about its impact on public life, but only recently have scholars begun to ask how religion affects the immigrant experience in our society.

In his pathbreaking Israel in Egypt James K.

Bodhidharma, its first patriarch, reputedly said that Zen Buddhism represents "e;a special transmission outside the teaching/Without reliance on words and letters.

Scholars of the Hebrew Bible have in the last decade begun to question the historical accuracy of the Israelite sojourn in Egypt, as described in the book of Exodus.

The Dasam Granth is a 1,428-page anthology of diverse compositions attributed to the tenth Guru of Sikhism, Guru Gobind Singh, and a topic of great controversy among Sikhs.

Books, audiotapes, and classes about yoga are today as familiar as they are widespread, but we in the West have only recently become engaged in the meditative doctrines of the East--only in the last 70 or 80 years, in fact.

Ruth Langer offers an in-depth study of the birkat haminim, a Jewish prayer for the removal of those categories of human being who prevent the messianic redemption and the society envisioned for it.

Scholars of the Hebrew Bible have in the last decade begun to question the historical accuracy of the Israelite sojourn in Egypt, as described in the book of Exodus.

Books, audiotapes, and classes about yoga are today as familiar as they are widespread, but we in the West have only recently become engaged in the meditative doctrines of the East--only in the last 70 or 80 years, in fact.

In Created Equal, Joshua Berman engages the text of the Hebrew Bible from a novel perspective, considering it as a document of social and political thought.

Aysha Hidayatullah presents the first comprehensive analysis of contemporary feminist interpretations of the Qur'an.

The explosive growth of the immigrant population since the 1960s has raised concerns about its impact on public life, but only recently have scholars begun to ask how religion affects the immigrant experience in our society.

In his pathbreaking Israel in Egypt James K.

Recent years have seen a remarkable surge in interest in the book of Genesis - the first book of the Hebrew Bible, and a foundational text of Western culture.

Bodhidharma, its first patriarch, reputedly said that Zen Buddhism represents "e;a special transmission outside the teaching/Without reliance on words and letters.

The Hebrew text of the Torah has never been finalized down to the last letter.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead is one of the texts that, according to legend, Padma-Sambhava was compelled to hide during his visit to Tibet in the late 8th century.

The Kalacakratantra, the latest and most comprehensive Buddhist Tantra available in its original Sanskrit, has never been the topic of a full scale scholarly study.

This critical study traces the development of the literary forms and conventions of the Babylonian Talmud, or Bavli, analyzing those forms as expressions of emergent rabbinic ideology.

This is a literary and theological study of the Biblical Antiquities of Pseudo-Philo--a long, well-written reinterpretation of the Hebrew Bible written by a Palestinian Jew of the first century C.

Although primogeniture is commonly assumed to have prevailed throughout the world and firstborns are regarded as most likely to achieve success, many of the most prominent figures in biblical literature are younger offspring, including Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Samuel, David, and Solomon.

Traditionally, the Talmud was read as law, that is, as the authoritative source for Jewish practice and obligations.

Texts about war pervade the Hebrew Bible, raising challenging questions in religious and political ethics.

In this book, Hayes addresses the central concern in talmudic studies over the genesis of halakhic (legal) divergence between the Talmuds produced by the Palestinian rabbinic community (c.

Unnamed characters--such as Lot's wife, Jephthah's daughter, Pharaoh's baker, and the witch of Endor--are ubiquitous in the Hebrew Bible and appear in a wide variety of roles.

Reimagining the Bible collects a dozen essays by Howard Schwartz.

This is the study of an anonymous ancient work, usually called Joseph and Aseneth, which narrates the transformation of the daughter of an Egyptian priest into an acceptable spouse for the biblical Joseph, whose marriage to Aseneth is given brief notice in Genesis.

Ronald S.

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.

From the days of Plato, the problem of the efficacy and adequacy of the written word as a vehicle of human communication has challenged mankind, yet the mystery of how best to achieve clarity and exactitude of written expression has never been solved.

Ayatollah al-Sayyid Abu al-Qasim al Musawi al-Khui (1899-1992) was one of the most respected and widely acclaimed authorities on Twelver Shi'ite Islam in this century.

Positioned at the boundary of traditional biblical studies, legal history, and literary theory, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation shows how the legislation of Deuteronomy reflects the struggle of its authors to renew late seventh- century Judean society.

6 Ezra is a short oracular writing that is included in the biblical Apocrypha as the final two chapters (15-16) of Ezra, or 2 Esdras.

In the late-second century, Tatian the Assyrian constructed a new Gospel by intricately harmonizing Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

In the late-second century, Tatian the Assyrian constructed a new Gospel by intricately harmonizing Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

In the late fourth and early fifth centuries, during a fifty-year stretch sometimes dubbed a Pauline "e;renaissance"e; of the western church, six different authors produced over four dozen commentaries in Latin on Paul's epistles.

In the late fourth and early fifth centuries, during a fifty-year stretch sometimes dubbed a Pauline "e;renaissance"e; of the western church, six different authors produced over four dozen commentaries in Latin on Paul's epistles.