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Foreigners and Their Food explores how Jews, Christians, and Muslims conceptualize \"us\" and \"them\" through rules about the preparation of food by adherents of other religions and the act of eating with such outsiders. David M. Freidenreich analyzes the significance of food to religious formation, elucidating the ways ancient and medieval scholars use food restrictions to think about the \"other.\" Freidenreich illuminates the subtly different ways Jews, Christians, and Muslims perceive themselves, and he demonstrates how these distinctive self-conceptions shape ideas about religious foreigners and communal boundaries. This work, the first to analyze change over time across the legal literatures of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, makes pathbreaking contributions to the history of interreligious intolerance and to the comparative study of religion.

This Companion to Comparative Theology offers a survey of historical developments, contemporary approaches and future directions in a field of theology that has experienced rapid growth and expansion in the past decades.

Because religion is so central to the lives and experience of the vast majority of people throughout the world, it figures very prominently in a variety of ways in interhuman relations. Unfortunately, 'religion' often appears to be one of the potent sources of mistrust, discord and strife between and among individuals, groups and cultures. What frequently lies at the root of such suspicion and dissension is general ignorance concerning the religious other, a lack of knowledge about his or her beliefs, aspirations and views of the good and morally honorable life. And even if people have some factual knowledge about other religions, they regularly display little understanding of them and their adherents. Learning both to know and understand people of other faiths and their religions is absolutely requisite to the realization of paradigms of coherent and intelligent 'convivance,' that is, living together in sensible, peaceable and cooperative harmony. An effective agency for fostering such knowledge and understanding is the discipline of theology of religions, which examines how religions have and ought to view other religions. And it is particularly the practice of comparative theology of religions which bears the most promise in this regard. The present symposium consists of precisely this kind of comparative exercise and may be viewed as an important contribution to the development of a new project which endeavors to enlarge the horizon and broaden the focus and reflection of theology of religions as that has been gradually developed during the last few decades, a new enterprise, in other words, which seeks to universalize and mutualize theology-of-religions discourse. One of the important things this volume shows is that the views religions have of other religions differ from one another in very substantial ways, which is explained by the fact that they derive from diverging paradigms of faith, belief and ritual and specific cultural and social contexts. This textbook demonstrates how strongly different Hindu, Buddhist, Shinto and Confucian views are from those of Islam, Judaism and Christianity, which latter in turn also exhibit considerable differences among themselves. These differences are greater than people immersed in their own cultures often realize or expect. It is becoming ever more clear that ignorance of or disinclination to acknowledge or refusal to accept these real differences constitute major root causes of serious conflicts in the world. The essays in this book, written by representatives of the major world religions, offer descriptive and/or prescriptive appraisals of other religions in general or one other religion in particular from the perspective of the religion of the author concerned. It is hoped that this unique exercise in intercultural theology of religions will generate insights and new forms of understanding which can be used by religious leaders and other educators to help correct the disposition toward religious haughtiness, insularity and communalism and the dangerous leanings toward interreligious suspicion, antipathy and animosity which are all too often evident in our contemporary societies.

As a work in comparative theology, this book presents how an Islamic concept of sainthood (walāya) informs Christian theology in answering one question that emerges from today's multi-faith context: \"Is it possible for Christians to recognize non-Christians as saints?\".

The author investigates how The Life of Buddha became a highly successful Christian narrative in the Middle Ages, while also exploring how it was possible for the founder of Buddhism to be celebrated as a saint in Catholic and Orthodox calendars. To this end, the journey of the legend from India to the Western world is traced. Special attention is given to the narrative's circulation in the Romanian space, where it first entered in the Slavonic language. The oldest Slavonic manuscript is a Middle Bulgarian codex from the early 15th century, once kept at Neamț Monastery and now housed in the Library of the Romanian Academy in Bucharest. The first, and most valuable, Romanian translation of The Life of Barlaam and Josaphat was made in 1648 by Udriște Năsturel from a Slavonic original. Since then, the work has sparked continuous interest, as evidenced by the numerous manuscript copies in which it circulated, the multiple translations, and its influence in other cultural domains. In the 15th century, when only Slavonic versions of the text circulated in Romanian territory, scenes from the lives of the two ascetics were depicted on the walls of Neamț Monastery, painted by the decorative artists of Prince Stephen the Great.

Comparing Religions is a next-generation textbook which expertly guides, inspires, and challenges those who wish to think seriously about religious pluralism in the modern world. A unique book teaching the art and practice of comparing religions Draws on a wide range of religious traditions to demonstrate the complexity and power of comparative practices Provides both a history and understanding of comparative practice and a series of thematic chapters showing how responsible practice is done A three part structure provides readers with a map and effective process through which to grasp this challenging but fascinating approach The author is a leading academic, writer, and exponent of comparative practice Contains numerous learning features, including chapter outlines, summaries, toolkits, discussion questions, a glossary, and many images Supported by a companion website (available on publication) at www.wiley.com/go/kripal, which includes information on individual religious traditions, links of other sites, an interview with the author, learning features, and much more.

In general terms, the concept of revelation (wahy), which can also be expressed as the communication of the authority of Godhead with mankind, has been interpreted in different ways in various religions, cultures and even by different thinkers. This divergence of opinion will have a profound impact on our intellectual landscape. The meanings attributed to certain concepts have the capacity to direct our perceptions and shape our understanding in significant ways. Revelation represents a significant concept,particularly in the context of understanding religious beliefs and practices within their own cultural and historical contexts. This article will examine the concept of revelation in Hinduism, with a particular focus on the meanings attributed to the Vedas, the Hindu sacred texts, and the Qur'anic revelation, with reference to its terminological or conventional meanings. The existing literature on the subject tends to focus on the expression of revelation (wahy) in Hinduism, with little attention paid to a detailed comparison of the essence of this concept in the context of its use in Islamic religion, which is its terminological or conventional (ıstılāhī) origin. Without emphasising its metaphorical meaning, it is observed that the expression 'God's revelation' used for the Vedas, the Hindu sacred texts, causes various perception problems in understanding the truth of this religion and making sense of its sacred things. This study, aimed at addressing stated deficiency and contributing to resolving perception issues, initially underscores the importance of the meanings ascribed to concepts in human attempts to understand and briefly highlights the importance of knowing the terminological meanings of concepts used within a particular discipline for an accurate comprehension of that discipline. Then, a brief semantic analysis of the concept of wahy and the related terms such as kashf, ilhām, shruti, and revelation is provided, which lays the groundwork for identifying the most suitable concept to use when addressing the topic of revelation in Hinduism. By drawing attention to the qualities such as the fact that the wahy, has the property of inzāl and tenzīl, has Arabic and talkable (kalāmī) quality, has limited to “a chosen messenger” and that this has a matter under the control of the sender not the receiver of the revelation, the main framework of the essence (māhiyah) dimension of this concept has been tried to be drawn. Subsequently, the origin and divine connection of the Vedas in Hindu thought have been described, and the semantic contour line (implications) of the concept of revelation in Hinduism have been elucidated. Accordingly, it has been determined that there is no consensus among Hindus regarding the origin or divine connection of the Hindu sacred texts, the Vedas; these texts are believed to have been obtained by the rishis, or wise seers, through personal ascetic practices, kashf (unveiling), and mushāhadah (witnessing); therefore, this process is not an external event but rather an internal, spiritual occurrence that can only be achieved through pure nature, virtuous actions, and significant effort. In this context, it has been emphasized that revelation can only occur within theistic religions that maintain a distinction between God and the world, on the other hand, in Hinduism, which is characterized by a pantheistic conception of God that implies a unity between God and the world, the use of concepts such as keşf(intuition) and ilhām (inspiration) is more appropriate than the concept of wahy (revelation).

Mass elections are key mechanisms for collective decision-making. But they are also blamed for creating intergroup enmity, particularly while they are underway; politicians use polarizing campaign strategies, and losing sides feel resentful and marginalized after results are announced. I investigate the impact of election proximity—that is, closeness to elections in time–on social cleavages related to religion, a salient form of group identity worldwide. Integrating data from ~1.2 million respondents across 25 cross-country survey series, I find no evidence that people interviewed shortly before or after national elections are more likely to express negative attitudes toward religious outgroups than those interviewed at other times. Subgroup analysis reveals little heterogeneity, including by levels of political competition. Generalized social trust, too, is unaffected by election calendars. Elections may not pose as great a risk to social cohesion as is commonly feared.

It has been seen that all commentators from Muqatil to modern times said that the Psalms is a holy book sent to the prophet Dâvûd. It is known that one of the next term commentators Biqai considered the holy book and has made long quotes and has shown the book of Psalms as a reference. Some of the later commentators said that the Zebûr mentioned in Quran is Psalms that Jews and Christians have, as Biqai did. When it follows to process that last fourteen centuries, approach of commentaries and their reading format was changed and distinctness according to time, geography and culture. In this article, essence of Zabur in the Ouran that takes part in Surah al-İsrâ 17/ 55, Surah an-Nisâ 4/163 and Surah Anbiya 21/ 105. One of our questions is if it is possible to argue that “Zabur” in the Qfuran is psalms in Tafsir literature.

Even gods are not always above bureaucracy. Societies very different from each other have entertained the idea that the heavens might be arranged much like an earthly bureaucracy, or that mythological beings might exercise their power in a way that makes them resembles bureaucrats. The best-known case is the Chinese “celestial bureaucracy,” but the idea is also found in (to take nearly random examples) Ancient Near Eastern cosmology, the Hebrew Bible, Late Antiquity, and modern popular culture. The primary sources discussed in this essay pertain to an area of history where bureaucracy was historically underdeveloped, namely medieval Scandinavia. Beginning with the Glavendrup runestone from the 900s, I examine a way of thinking about divine power that seems blissfully bureaucracy-free. Moving forwards in time to Adam of Bremen’s description of the temple at Uppsala (1040s–1070s), I find traces of a tentative, half-formed bureaucracy in the fading embers of Scandinavian paganism. In the 1220s, well into the Christian era, I find Snorri Sturluson concocting a version of Old Norse myth which proposes a novel resolution between the non-bureaucratic origins of his mythological corpus and the burgeoning bureacratization of High Medieval Norway. Although my focus is on medieval Scandinavia, transhistorical comparisons are frequently drawn with mythological bureaucrats from other times and places. In closing, I synthesise this comparative material with historical and anthropological theories of the relationship between bureaucracy and the divine.