Kategoria BISAC: Religion >> Judaism - History

Mentioned in literally hundreds of cuneiform inscriptions dating from the 2nd millenium BCE, the Habiru formed scattered bands of runaway slaves and other fugitives who maintained themselves on the outskirts of the settled areas of the Middle East. Constituting a social class rather than an extended...

Recent years have witnessed an unprecedented growth in the study of Jewish civilization throughout the world. Globally, over 1,300 universities and colleges offer courses on some aspect of Jewish civilization. Some universities in areas which had little contact with Jewish heritage, such as the former Soviet Union, the Pacific Rim, and Africa, are increasingly introducing such studies into their course offerings.

This volume addresses the challenge of developing courses of study about Jewish civilizations appropriate for different peoples in many parts of the world at the same time....

There emerged in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries a new Jewish elite, notes Moshe Idel, no longer made up of prophets, priests, kings, or rabbis but of intellectuals and academicians working in secular universities or writing for an audience not defined by any one set of religious beliefs. In "Old Worlds, New Mirrors" Idel turns his gaze on figures as diverse as Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida, Franz Kafka and Franz Rosenzweig, Arnaldo Momigliano and Paul Celan, Abraham Heschel and George Steiner to reflect on their relationships to Judaism in a cosmopolitan, mostly European,...

In 1880 the Jewish community in Palestine encompassed some 20,000 Orthodox Jews; within sixty-five years it was transformed into a secular proto-state with well-developed political, military, and economic institutions, a vigorous Hebrew-language culture, and some 600,000 inhabitants. The Origins of Israel, 1882 1948: A Documentary History chronicles the making of modern Israel before statehood, providing in English the texts of original sources (many translated from Hebrew and other languages) accompanied by extensive introductions and commentaries from the volume editors.
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Daniel H. Weiss offers an insightful new reading of Religion of Reason, arguing that the style and method of Cohen's...

In this volume, Etkes enters a rich and heated debate over the origins of the movement, as well as the historicity of its mythic founder, Rabbi Israel Ba'al Shem...

Menasseh ben Israel (1604-1657) war einer der bekanntesten Rabbiner des fruhneuzeitlichen Europa. Beruhmtheit erlangte er vor allem durch die Verhandlungen, die er mit Oliver Cromwell uber die Ruckkehr der Juden nach England fuhrte. Doch die Englandverhandlungen machten nur den letzten Schritt in einer Reihe von Vermittlungsbemuhungen aus. Menasses ganzes Schreiben und Wirken war von dem Programm bestimmt, christlichen Gelehrten Wissen uber das Judentum zukommen zu lassen und den Sefarden so zu Anerkennung und einer Verbesserung ihrer politischen Situation zu verhelfen. Damit reagierte...

Ben Sira lived in an era when Hellenistic influences continued to spread in Palestine. The supreme political power was in the hands of foreign rulers. Under these circumstances it is no wonder that Ben Sira discusses the position of foreign nations in several passages. The tone varies due to the given context. This study demonstrates that Ben Sira's relationship to foreign nations is best defined as "balanced," as his attitude is neither thoroughly hostile nor that of uncritically embracing Gentiles. On the basis of certain passages, one can get the impression that even the foreigners...

The series Beihefte zur Zeitschrift fur die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft (BZAW) covers all areas of research into the Old Testament, focusing on the Hebrew Bible, its early and later forms in Ancient Judaism, as well as its branching into many neighboring cultures of the Ancient Near East and the Greco-Roman world.