Explore the vast range of titles available.

Elka Klein's writings have illuminated reciprocal and distinctive characteristics of the social and intellectual lives of Jewry in Iberia and by comparison Northern Europe during the High Middle Ages. This article honors her insights, by comparing the development of biblical hermeneutics at the Abbey of St. Victor in Paris and in the writings of Abraham ibn Ezra. Hugh of St. Victor's introduction to the study of Scripture, Didascalicon, provides a program for the individual student to integrate all branches of human knowledge into the search for Divine Wisdom that may be found only in Scripture. The innovation in Hugh's program is the emphasis on the \"literal\" or \"historical\" sense of Scripture as the solid basis for the development of theological study. Grammar and rhetoric were stepping stones that led the young theologians to higher levels of Divine Wisdom. The introduction to Abraham ibn Ezra's commentary on the Pentateuch constitutes a parallel point of orientation for twelfth-century Jewish readers. A close reading of ibn Ezra's prologue maps the hermeneutical approaches that different communities – Christian, rabbinic Jewish, and Karaite – utilized in their expositions of the Pentateuch. After critiquing each community, ibn Ezra offers his own approach that builds an overall framework for correct interpretation on the foundation of grammar and the rabbinic oral tradition. From this perspective, the article demonstrates that during this period Jews and Christians, both in Iberia and Northern Europe, focused on harmonizing reason and revelation. Both communities used grammar as the primary criterion for evaluating the accumulation of traditional sources. Both approaches intended to develop students, who were capable of understanding that \"reason is the angel that mediates between God and humanity.\"

Over the past few decades, there has been a dramatic and unprecedented shift in Jewish-Christian relations, including signs of a new, improved Christian attitude towards Jews.Christianity in Jewish Termsis a Jewish theological response to the profound changes that have taken place in Christian thought. The book is divided into ten chapters, each of which features a main essay, written by a Jewish scholar, that explores the meaning of a set of Christian beliefs. Following the essay are responses from a second Jewish scholar and a Christian scholar. Designed to generate new conversations within the American Jewish community and between the Jewish and Christian communities,Christianity in Jewish Termslays the foundation for better understanding. It was named a Choice Outstanding Academic Book of 2001.

This is a dissertation about demagogues and democracy, with a special focus on the role of the critic in offering commentary which can serve either as a check on or an enabling factor for the demagogue. Each of the three chapters focuses on a particular demagogue as representative of a particular era characterized by the political theater where demagogues performed before the demos . The three demagogues are the Athenian general Cleon, the Louisiana Governor and U.S. Senator Huey Long, and the American President Ronald Reagan. The types of demagogue each exemplifies are, respectively, the Ancient Demagogue, Modern Demagogue, and Postmodern Demagogue. The political thinkers who play the strongest role in my account are Aristophanes, Plato, Max Weber, and Bertolt Brecht. Each chapter addresses five common themes. First, I discuss the political theater of each era, and how evolving technology and social organization of the audience influenced the theatrical element of demagoguery. Second, I focus on the “ungovernability” which made up each demagogue's method, and how such ungovernability—which I divide into two types, private and institutional—was achieved. Third, I discuss what I call “critics' errors”—the interesting mistakes certain commentators on demagogues made when attempting critiques of their politics. Fourth, I approach “transcendence”—the spiritual or daimonic character of demagogues' appeals to the public, a fact which helps explain the relative inability of many critics to understand them. Finally, I discuss “checking the demagogue”—the methods and insights available to critics wishing seriously to counter the demagogue's hold on the demos. In general, the dissertation regards the demagogue as a peculiar paradox of democracy. Both citizens and institutions can choose to yield their self-control to him; they can elect ungovernability. As Plato noted, the demagogue can then readily establish a tyranny with the very powers citizens and institutions have voluntarily given him. He is therefore not distinct from democracy but, rather confusingly, of it and against it. This means that democracy and the appetites are interwoven. Whereas our first instinct is often to exorcise demagogues rather than simply control them, perhaps we ought instead to recognize them as indigenous, rather than foreign, to democracy.