The Babylonian Talmud was compiled in the third through sixth centuries CE, by rabbis living under Sasanian Persian rule in the area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
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.
In 1391 many of the Jews of Spain were forced to convert to Christianity, creating a new group whose members would be continually seeking a niche for themselves in society.
The book of Genesis tells us that God made a covenant with Abraham, promising him a glorious posterity on the condition that he and all his male descendents must be circumcised.
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.
While Western Jain scholarship has focused on those texts and practices favoring male participation, the Jain community itself relies heavily on lay women's participation for religious education, the performance of key rituals, and the locus of religious knowledge.
The foundation for all study of biblical law is the assumption that the Covenant Code is the oldest legal code in the Hebrew Bible and that all other laws are revisions of that code.
Throughout history, the persecutions of the Jewish people have been central to their identity and to the cohesion of their religion and cultural heritage.
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.