How does religion cope with changing situations? Are orthodoxy and liberalism really competing strategies? The essays in this volume argue three views. (1)Orthodoxy is not to be seen as the real and original form of a given religion, but as an idealized original form that should be construed as a construction in reaction to changes in time. (2) Over the ages, liberalism - despite its laudable strive for adaptation - has been less successful than generally assumed. This lesson from history can be quite important in view of the adaptation processes for Muslims in Western Europe. (3) Of great...

In their recent book The Silent God, Marjo Korpel and Johannes de Moor presented a provocative view on the concept of divine silence in ancient Israel. In their view, divine silence can be explained as an answer to a variety of circumstances. Additionally, they opt for the view that divine silence needs to be answered by appropriate human conduct. The essays in this volume applaud and challenge their views from different perspectives: exegetical, ancient Near Eastern, semantic, philosophical etc. Some authors hint at the view that divine silence should be construed as an indication of...

The fifth meeting of the Edinburgh prophecy network focussed on the presence of prophets and prophecy in narrative texts. The papers in this volume scrutinize the image of prophecy through the analysis of narrative processes. The papers deal with a great time span: from the Hittite Empire, via the Hebrew Bible, Judaism and Islam, up to the early Modern Period. Although all sorts of variations could be detected - especially due to the variety of temporal contexts, some features are recurring especially in view of the anthropological phenomenon of prophecy and its function in narratives.

Religion is a hot topic on the public stages of secular societies, not in its individualized liberal or orthodox form, but rather as a public statement, challenging the divide between the secular neutral space and the religious. In this new challenging modus, religion raises questions about identity, power, rationality, subjectivity, law and safety, but above all: religion questions, contests and even blurs the borders between the public and the private. These phenomena urge to rethink what are often considered to be clear differences between religions, between the public and the private and...