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People under Power
This volume presents a batch of incisive new essays on the relationship between Roman imperial power and ideology and Christian and Jewish life and thought within the empire. Employing diverse methodologies that include historical criticism, rhetorical criticism, postcolonial criticism, and social historical studies, the contributors offer fresh perspectives on a question that is crucial for our understanding not only of the late Roman Empire, but also of the growth and change of Christianity and Judaism in the imperial period.
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The spirit within me : self and agency in ancient Israel and Second Temple Judaism
The first full-length study of the evolution of self and agency in ancient Israelite anthropology Conceptions of \"the self\" have received significant recent attention in philosophy, anthropology, and cultural history. Scholars argue that the introspective self of the modern West is a distinctive phenomenon that cannot be projected back onto the cultures of antiquity. While acknowledging such difference is vital, it can lead to an inaccurate flattening of the ancient self. In this study, Carol A. Newsom explores the assumptions that govern ancient Israelite views of the self and its moral agency before the fall of Judah, as well as striking developments during the Second Temple period. She demonstrates how the collective trauma of the destruction of the Temple catalyzed changes in the experience of the self in Israelite literature, including first-person-singular prayers, notions of self-alienation, and emerging understandings of a defective heart and will. Examining novel forms of spirituality as well as sectarian texts, Newsom chronicles the evolving inward gaze in ancient Israelite literature, unveiling how introspection in Second Temple Judaism both parallels and differs from forms of introspective selfhood in Greco-Roman cultures.
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Writing on water : the sounds of Jewish prayer
\"\"Writing on Water\" is a first-hand account of the thoughts, lives and rituals of the secretly practicing strictly religious Jews during the era of Communism in Eastern Europe (primarily in Budapest) with especial focus on their traditional ritual chant as part of a total acoustic experience (\"soundscape\"). The book is based on extensive fieldwork and analysis of orally transmitted material. The subject matter is unique both in the choice of the communities and its focus on sound. I attempt to explain how melodies and soundscapes become the sustaining/protective \"environment\", as well as the vehicle, for the expression of world-orientation - in a situation when open speech is inconceivable. The first part of the book is a journey toward the lives/sounds of these communities, the second contains documentary interviews, and the third describes the communities' disintegration after 1990. The book conveys scholarly results through poetry, prose-poems and art-photos\"-- Provided by publisher.
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The Insight of Unbelievers
In the year 1309, Nicholas of Lyra, an important Franciscan Bible commentator, put forth a question at the University of Paris, asking whether it was possible to prove the advent of Christ from scriptures received by the Jews. This question reflects the challenges he faced as a Christian exegete determined to value Jewish literature during an era of increasing hostility toward Jews in western Europe. Nicholas's literal commentary on the Bible became one of the most widely copied and disseminated of all medieval Bible commentaries. Jewish commentary was, as a result, more widely read in Latin Christendom than ever before, while at the same moment Jews were being pushed farther and farther to the margins of European society. His writings depict Jews as stubborn unbelievers who also held indispensable keys to understanding Christian Scripture. In The Insight of Unbelievers, Deeana Copeland Klepper examines late medieval Christian use of the Hebrew Bible and Jewish interpretation of Scripture, focusing on Nicholas of Lyra as the most important mediator of Hebrew traditions.Klepper highlights the important impact of both Jewish literature and Jewish unbelief on Nicholas of Lyra and on Christian culture more generally. By carefully examining the place of Hebrew and rabbinic traditions in the Christian study of the Bible, The Insight of Unbelievers elaborates in new ways on the relationship between Christian and Jewish scholarship and polemic in late medieval Europe.
eBook
Imperialism and jewish society, 200 B.C.E. to 640 C.E
This provocative new history of Palestinian Jewish society in antiquity marks the first comprehensive effort to gauge the effects of imperial domination on this people. Probing more than eight centuries of Persian, Greek, and Roman rule, Seth Schwartz reaches some startling conclusions--foremost among them that the Christianization of the Roman Empire generated the most fundamental features of medieval and modern Jewish life.
Schwartz begins by arguing that the distinctiveness of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and early Roman periods was the product of generally prevailing imperial tolerance. From around 70 C.E. to the mid-fourth century, with failed revolts and the alluring cultural norms of the High Roman Empire, Judaism all but disintegrated. However, late in the Roman Empire, the Christianized state played a decisive role in ''re-Judaizing'' the Jews. The state gradually excluded them from society while supporting their leaders and recognizing their local communities. It was thus in Late Antiquity that the synagogue-centered community became prevalent among the Jews, that there re-emerged a distinctively Jewish art and literature--laying the foundations for Judaism as we know it today.
Through masterful scholarship set in rich detail, this book challenges traditional views rooted in romantic notions about Jewish fortitude. Integrating material relics and literature while setting the Jews in their eastern Mediterranean context, it addresses the complex and varied consequences of imperialism on this vast period of Jewish history more ambitiously than ever before.Imperialism in Jewish Societywill be widely read and much debated.
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Andalus and Sefarad : on philosophy and its history in Islamic Spain
Al-Andalus, the Iberian territory ruled by Islam from the eighth to the fifteenth centuries, was home to a flourishing philosophical culture among Muslims and the Jews who lived in their midst. Andalusians spoke proudly of the region's excellence, and indeed it engendered celebrated thinkers such as Maimonides and Averroes. Sarah Stroumsa offers an integrative new approach to Jewish and Muslim philosophy in al-Andalus, where the cultural commonality of the Islamicate world allowed scholars from diverse religious backgrounds to engage in the same philosophical pursuits. Stroumsa traces the development of philosophy in Muslim Iberia from its introduction to the region to the diverse forms it took over time, from Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism to rational theology and mystical philosophy. She sheds light on the way the politics of the day, including the struggles with the Christians to the north of the peninsula and the Fa t imids in North Africa, influenced philosophy in al-Andalus yet affected its development among the two religious communities in different ways. While acknowledging the dissimilar social status of Muslims and members of the religious minorities, Andalus and Sefarad highlights the common ground that united philosophers, providing new perspective on the development of philosophy in Islamic Spain.
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Practicing Piety in Medieval Ashkenaz
In the urban communities of medieval Germany and northern France, the beliefs, observances, and practices of Jews allowed them to create and define their communities on their own terms as well as in relation to the surrounding Christian society. Although medieval Jewish texts were written by a learned elite, the laity also observed many religious rituals as part of their everyday life. InPracticing Piety in Medieval Ashkenaz, Elisheva Baumgarten asks how Jews, especially those who were not learned, expressed their belonging to a minority community and how their convictions and deeds were made apparent to both their Jewish peers and the Christian majority.
Practicing Piety in Medieval Ashkenazprovides a social history of religious practice in context, particularly with regard to the ways Jews and Christians, separately and jointly, treated their male and female members. Medieval Jews often shared practices and beliefs with their Christian neighbors, and numerous notions and norms were appropriated by one community from the other. By depicting a dynamic interfaith landscape and a diverse representation of believers, Baumgarten offers a fresh assessment of Jewish practice and the shared elements that composed the piety of Jews in relation to their Christian neighbors.
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