The late Karl-Johan Illman was a professor of Biblical and Judaic studies at Abo Akademi University in bo/Turku, Finland. A beloved and respected figure in the Judeo-Christian dialogue and an accomplished scholar of Judaism, he is remembered in this memorial volume by leading scholars of Biblical and Judaic studies in Europe and North America.

This collection of systematic Auseinandersetzungen articulates difference and spells out what is at issue. Learning atrophies when political consensus substitutes for criticism, and when other than broadly-accepted viewpoints, approaches, and readings find a hearing only with difficulty, if at all. The editors therefore have invited colleagues systematically to outline their views in an Auseinandersetzung with contrary ones. The several participants explain how, in broad and sweeping terms, they see the state of learning in their areas of special interest. The editors invited...

The Review of Rabbinic Judaism, the first and only annual to focus upon Rabbinic Judaism in particular, will publish principal articles, essays on method and criticism, systematic debates (Auseindersetzungen), occasional notes, long book reviews, reviews of issues of scholarly journals, assessments of textbooks and instructional materials, and other media of academic discourse, scholarly and educational alike. The Review fills the gap in the study of Judaism, which is left by the prevailing division of Rabbinic Judaism among the standard historical periods (ancient,...

This book answers the following question for Judaism: among all the things that happened in antiquity, what are the events that, seen from the perspective of the world that would endure, turn out to shape the long future? How did axiological events identify the focal points of the unfolding religious system, Judaism, in its formulation by the rabbinic sages of ancient times? This is the system that originated, in its own telling, with God's teaching to Moses at Sinai in the Torah, in written and traditional form. Of all that happened to the Jews in the millennium from the formation of the...

This second volume of a two-part project displays the best of contemporary Israeli, North American, and European scholarship on the Mishnah, revealing the intellectual vitality of scholarship in all three centers of learning. Because of the many viewpoints included here, it is the most representative selection of contemporary Mishnah-study available in any collection in a Western language.

The seven essays in this book address formative Judaic writings in the time of the Mishnah and the Talmud, the first six centuries of the Common Era, and formative Christianity in the first six centuries of the Common Era. The essays explore the areas where Judaism and Christianity have intersected.