The figure of Abraham has been extensively discussed in Jewish and Early Christian Literature. This collection of essays follows the impact of Abraham across biblical texts, including the Pseudigrapha and Apocrypha into early Greek, Latin and Gnostic literature. The essays also turn a spotlight onto those Abrahamic texts that have yet to receive scholarly attention.
Diverse processes of democratic participation - and exclusion - are closely bound by ritual acts and complexes. This collection is the result of collaborations and conversations between international researchers who have focused on the use of those cultural resources identifiable as “ritual” as they reassemble democracy. The main question integrating the collection concerns the ways in whic…
This innovative volume focuses on the significance of early Christianity for modern means of addressing poverty. The volume offers rigorous study of poverty and its alleviation in both earliest Christianity and today’s world. In this light, in seven major areas, an expert in early Christianity in its Jewish and Greco-Roman settings is paired with an expert in modern strategies for addressing …
The purpose of this book is to combine perspectives of scholars from Africa on Child Theologies from a variety of theological sub-disciplines to provide some theological and ministerial perspectives on this topic. The book disseminates original research and new developments in this study field, especially as relevant to the African context. In the process it addresses also the global need to he…
This unique book offers a Catholic view of the Holy Land in the debate that rages among Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Alain Marchadour and David Neuhaus, two biblical scholars and priests living in Jerusalem, clearly analyze the Promised Land—as concept, history, and contested terrain—in Catholic teaching and doctrine. They offer an analytical reading of the entire Christian Bibl…
The term ´Judeo-Christian` in reference to a tradition, heritage, ethic, civilization, faith etc. has been used in a wide variety of contexts with widely diverging meanings. Contrary to popular belief, the term was not coined in the United States in the middle of the 20th century but in 1831 in Germany by Ferdinand Christian Baur. By acknowledging and returning to this European perspective and…
This volume examines in inter-disciplinary perspective the degree to which the medieval Ashkenazi were innovative in the area of communal activity surrounding burial and mourning customs. The topics cover liturgical poetry as well as statutory prayers confessions, final testimonies and acts of charity funeral and mourning rites the influences of the surrounding non-Jewish the effects of major a…
"This volume assembles twenty-three essays by Erich S. Gruen, who has written extensively on the literature and history of early Judaism and the experience of the Jews in the Greco-Roman world. Twenty-two of the articles have previously been published, and one new one was composed for the volume."
Given the recent interest in the emotions presupposed in early religious literature, it has been thought useful to examine in this volume how the Jews and early Christians expressed their feelings within the prayers recorded in some of their literature. Specialists in their fields from academic institutions around the world have analysed important texts relating to this overall theme and to wha…
Buddhism, often described as an austere religion that condemns desire, promotes denial, and idealizes the contemplative life, actually has a thriving leisure culture in Asia. Justin McDaniel looks at the growth of Asia's culture of Buddhist leisure through a study of architects responsible for monuments, museums, amusement parks, and other sites. In conversation with noted theorists of material…