Judaism: sacred texts and revered writings

June O.

Self-restraint or self-mastery may appear to be the opposite of erotic desire.

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.

Lauren Monroe argues that the use of cultic and ritual language in the account of the Judean King Josiah's reforms in 2 Kings 22-23 is key to understanding the history of the text's composition, and illuminates the essential, interrelated processes of textual growth and identity construction in ancient Israel.

Why is the number seven lucky--even holy--in almost every culture?

Winner of Honorable Mention in the Jordan Schnitzer Book Awards of the Association for Jewish StudiesMoshe Simon-Shoshan offers a groundbreaking study of Jewish law (halakhah) and rabbinic story-telling.

The Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation of Jewish sacred writings) is of great importance in the history of both Judaism and Christianity.

Drawing on the great progress in Talmudic scholarship over the last century, The Stabilization of Rabbinic Culture is both an introduction to a close reading of rabbinic literature and a demonstration of the development of rabbinic thought on education in the first centuries of the Common Era.

The Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation of Jewish sacred writings) is of great importance in the history of both Judaism and Christianity.

The Tenacity of Unreasonable Beliefs is a passionate yet analytical critique of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scriptural fundamentalists.

Most scholars believe that the numerous similarities between the Covenant Code (Exodus 20:23-23:19) and Mesopotamian law collections, especially the Laws of Hammurabi, which date to around 1750 BCE, are due to oral tradition that extended from the second to the first millennium.

In the traditional Jewish liturgy, a man thanks God daily for not having been made a gentile, a woman, or a slave.

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.

The concepts of purity and pollution are fundamental to the worldview reflected in the Hebrew Bible, yet the ways biblical texts apply these concepts to sexual relationships remain largely overlooked.

First published in 2004, The Jewish Study Bible is a landmark, one-volume resource tailored especially for the needs of students of the Hebrew Bible.

By the early twenty-first century, a phenomenon that once was inconceivable had become nearly commonplace in American society: the public spiritual teacher who neither belongs to, nor is authorized by a major religious tradition.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.

David Weiss Halivni's The Formation of the Babylonian Talmud, originally published in Hebrew and here translated by Jeffrey L.

June O.

Are You Not a Man of God?

The disengagement of recent academic biblical study from church and synagogue has been widely noted, even by those within the discipline.

The disengagement of recent academic biblical study from church and synagogue has been widely noted, even by those within the discipline.

In the late eighteenth century, German Jews began entering the middle class with remarkable speed.

In the late eighteenth century, German Jews began entering the middle class with remarkable speed.

Mystics are path-breaking religious practitioners who claim to have experience the infinite, word-defying Mystery that is God.

Medieval Jewish philosophers have been studied extensively by modern scholars, but even though their philosophical thinking was often shaped by their interpretation of the Bible, relatively little attention has been paid to them as biblical interpreters.

The classical Rabbinic tradition (legal, discursive, and exegetical) claims to be Oral Torah, transmitted by word of mouth in an unbroken chain deriving its authority ultimately from diving revelation to Moses at Sinai.

One day in 1599, in the Spanish village of Saria, seven-year-old Maria Angela Astorch fell ill and died after gorging herself on unripened almonds.

Ernie Hollands, a career criminal, said Christ appeared to him in his cell in Millhaven Penitentiary.

Sufism, the name given to Islamic mysticism, has been the subject of many studies, but the orders through which the organizational aspect of the Sufi spirit was expressed has been neglected.

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.

For many centuries Jews have been renowned for the efforts they put into their children's welfare and education.

For many centuries Jews have been renowned for the efforts they put into their children's welfare and education.

Jewish culture places a great deal of emphasis on texts and their means of transmission.

Jewish culture places a great deal of emphasis on texts and their means of transmission.

Dozens of books, articles, television shows, and films relating "e;near-death"e; experiences have appeared in the past decade.

The first readable and accurate translation of twenty of the most authoritative Hindu documents pertaining to ascetic ideals and the ascetic way of life, this text opens to students a major source for the study of the Hindu ascetical institutions and of the historical changes they underwent during a period of a thousand years or more.

The first anthology of Jewish mythology in English, Tree of Souls reveals a mythical tradition as rich and as fascinating as any in the world.

The existence of suffering poses an obvious problem for the monotheistic religions.

Why do some citizens vote while others do not?

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

This is the fourth volume in an influential series that presents a basic revaluation of the nature of mysticism.

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.

This study examines the history of the psychoanalytic theory of mysticism, starting with the seminal correspondence between Freud and Romain Rolland concerning the concept of "e;oceanic feeling.

This book is the sequel to Robert Forman's well-received collection, The Problem of Pure Consciousness (Oxford, 1990).

Comprising well over a thousand pages of densely written Aramaic, the compilation of texts known as the Zohar represents the collective wisdom of various strands of Jewish mysticism, or kabbalah, up to the thirteenth century.

The anthology is a ubiquitous presence in Jewish literature--arguably its oldest literary genre, going back to the Bible itself, and including nearly all the canonical texts of Judaism: the Mishnah, the Talmud, classical midrash, and the prayerbook.

Joseph Dan is one of the world's leading authorities on Jewish mysticism.

Seth Whitaker argues that the Psalm texts function as the structural and theological backbone of Hebrews from start to finish, and that few scholars have examined the use of Psalms outside of quotations or connected the author of Hebrews' use of Psalms with his broader eschatological outlook.

'If something else can capture your attention Then it's not love, but just a trivial passion -Love is that flame which, once it blazes up, Burns everything but the Beloved up.