Kategoria BISAC: Religion >> Judaism - History

On the Origins of Judaism examines the formation of one of the oldest monotheistic religions. The book covers a diverse range of themes: the identity of those who produced and canonized the Hebrew Bible and subsequently shaped its interpretation; the significance and impact of Second Isaiah and the books of Ezra and Nehemiah; the roots of Jewish apocalyptic literature, and the possible origins of the Exodus story; the ethical systems of the Hebrew Bible and the Athenian tragedians; and the place of food and drink in the Qumran community. On the Origins of Judaism is the most comprehensive...

On the Origins of Judaism examines the formation of one of the oldest monotheistic religions. The book covers a diverse range of themes: the identity of those who produced and canonized the Hebrew Bible and subsequently shaped its interpretation; the significance and impact of Second Isaiah and the books of Ezra and Nehemiah; the roots of Jewish apocalyptic literature, and the possible origins of the Exodus story; the ethical systems of the Hebrew Bible and the Athenian tragedians; and the place of food and drink in the Qumran community. On the Origins of Judaism is the most comprehensive...

This volume explores issues of moral character found in the different text versions of the book of Esther. First the study suggests the two most common approaches to perceived moral problems in the story of Esther: avoidance and transformation. Then it investigates selected portions of the Hebrew Masoretic Text, the Greek Septuagint Text, and the Greek Alpha-Text stories of Esther, focusing on issues of morality via character analysis. Finally it concentrates on the moral ambiguity found in all three versions, and on the ways in which moral character in the Greek stories has been...

Much of the primary research summarized here relates to Cambridge Genizah manuscripts, a thousand-year-old source that testifies to liturgical (as well, of course, as non-liturgical) developments that greatly predate other source material. When the research is concerned with pre-Genizah history, the Genizah evidence is also relevant since the historian of religious ideas must ultimately decide how to date, characterize, and conceptualize its contents and how to explain where they vary significantly from what became, or is regarded (rightly or wrongly) as having become, the standard...

Sectarianism in Qumran: A Cross-Cultural Perspective explores the sectarian characteristics of the system of beliefs and laws of the two major Qumran sects of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the yahad and the Damascus Covenant, using theories of sectarianism and related topics in sociology, anthropology and the study of religion. It discusses Qumranic moral and purity boundaries, cultic rituals, wealth, gender, atonement, revelation mysticism, structure and organization and compares them with those of seven sects of the same (introversionist) type: the early Anabaptists, Mennonites,...