This volume presents a wide-ranging selection of Jewish theological responses to the Holocaust. It will be the most complete anthology of its sort, bringing together for the first time: (1) a large sample of ultra-orthodox writings, translated from the Hebrew and Yiddish; (2) a substantial selection of essays by Israeli authors, also translated from the Hebrew; (3) a broad sampling of works written in English by American and European authors. These diverse selections represent virtually every significant theological position that has been articulated by a Jewish thinker in response to the...

This volume presents a wide-ranging selection of Jewish theological responses to the Holocaust. It will be the most complete anthology of its sort, bringing together for the first time: (1) a large sample of ultra-orthodox writings, translated from the Hebrew and Yiddish; (2) a substantial selection of essays by Israeli authors, also translated from the Hebrew; (3) a broad sampling of works written in English by American and European authors. These diverse selections represent virtually every significant theological position that has been articulated by a Jewish thinker in response to the...

In this book, Shlomo Biderman examines the views, outlooks, and attitudes of two distinct cultures: the West and classical India. He turns to a rich and varied collection of primary sources: the Rg Veda, the Upanishads, and texts by the Buddhist philosophers Nagarjuna and Vasubandhu, among others. In studying the West, Biderman considers the Bible and its commentaries, the writings of such philosophers as Plato, Descartes, Berkeley, Kant, and Derrida, and the literature of Kafka, Melville, and Orwell. Additional sources are Mozart's Don Giovanni and seminal films like Ingmar...

Drawn by invitation from a number of countries, a group of scholars undertakes to explore the means by which the very attempt to grasp religions leads to a repeated process of internal reinterpretation and, often, transformation. Essays on interpretation in religion in general are followed by essays that probe various hermeneutical aspects of ancient Egyptian religion, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The range of these essays is impressive -- from semiosis, problems of translation, and the pragmatic assignment of meaning, to prayer, divine commands, the invisibility ascribed to...

Myths and Fictions -- the third in a series of books on comparative philosophy and religion -- is a collection of original essays, none previously published, on the theory and the actuality of myths and fictions in the different cultures of the world. Through all the essays there runs the question of the relation of literal truth to truth conceived in other ways or dimensions. Taken as a whole, the book makes a serious attempt to get beyond the confines of any single culture and enter into the mythical imagination of the ancient Hindus, Chinese, Hebrews and Christians, and by this act...

At the core of Scripture and Knowledge lies the problem of the nature of religious knowledge. The author argues that religion is a particular framework rather than a particular content or defined set of performances. He sees this framework as epistemological, that is, as one that furnishes believers with a conception of knowledge alternative to that of philosophical reasoning. The thesis on the epistemological nature of religion will be developed by the examination of the concept of scripture as a body of authoritative and even infallible texts. The concept of scripture is presented as...

At the end of the millennium, the dominant philosophical mood is relativistic. Ideals, opinions, and values are rarely judged in absolute or universal terms. Instead, subjective views are juxtaposed and assessed in relation to one another and none is accepted finally in and for itself but characterized in relation to its whole environment.
In this collection of essays, philosophers of widely divergent views and emphases try to assess the tension between relativism and absolutism in the general domains of philosophy and religion. In the closing section of the book, an extensive article...