Kategoria BISAC: Religion >> Judaism - History

Few events in the history of Spain have provoked as much controversy as the expulsion of the Jews in 1492. Conflicts within the Catholic Church, suspicions within the newly unified Spain, and the claims of Spanish merchants combined to make the Spain of Ferdinand and Isabella intolerant and inquisitorial. Yet the roots of Spanish anti-Semitism went deeper. In this concise survey of the expulsion of the Sephardic Jews, Joseph Perez studies the evolution of the Jewish community in Spain from the time of the Visigoths to the reign of the Catholic kings. He explores the Jewish community s role...

Miriam Bodian's study of crypto-Jewish martyrdom in Iberian lands depicts a new type of martyr that emerged in the late 16th century--a defiant, educated judaizing martyr who engaged in disputes with inquisitors. By examining closely the Inquisition dossiers of four men who were tried in the Iberian peninsula or Spanish America and who developed judaizing theologies that drew from currents of Reformation thinking that emphasized the authority of Scripture and the religious autonomy of individual interpreters of Scripture, Miriam Bodian reveals unexpected connections between Reformation...

Between 1949 and 1967 few Israelis had questioned the boundaries established during Israel's war for independence. Zionist and religious ideologies that advocated Jewish control over all the "Land of Israel"--the areas of Jewish settlement in biblical times--lay dormant. The 1967 victory, which brought the bulk of these territories under Israeli control, rekindled traditional sentiments for the reestablishment of Jewish sovereignty in all these territories. These sentiments became a powerful political force within Israel and provide a growing potential for violence. This book examines...

This fifth volume of the With Eyes Toward Zion series brings together 19 internationally renowned scholars to interpret how Jerusalem returned to the world stage in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The rediscovery of the Holy Land coincided with the greatest era of Christian missions and the birth of Zionism, and the face of Jerusalem began to change markedly. This volume explores those changes, looking at the influx of travelers and explorers to the Holy Land, and the evolving theological concepts among the various religious groups. This discussion of the rediscovery of the Holy Land...

Generations of scholars have debated the influence of Greco-Roman culture on Jewish society and the degree of its impact on Jewish material culture and religious practice in Palestine and the Diaspora of antiquity. Judaism and Hellenism in Antiquity examines this phenomenon from the aftermath of Alexander's conquest to the Byzantine era, offering a balanced view of the literary, epigraphical, and archeological evidence attesting to the process of Hellenization in Jewish life and its impact on several aspects of Judaism as we know it today.

Lee Levine approaches this broad...

J.H. Hexter's classic survey of the historical roots of Judaism and Christianity is now available with a new preface and updated bibliography. The book defines the main components, principal influences, and most significant transformations of ancient Hebrew religious beliefs and then considers those of Christianity, showing how early Christianity arose out of the Judaic heritage.

The first part of the book deals with the evolution of ancient Israel down to the end of the sixth century B.C.; the second chronicles the transition from Judaism to Christianity and the struggle of...

Although the ethnic-religious tradition that became classical Judaism solidified around 100 CE, its roots are found in the ancient biblical tales of the Israelites. Stories of the descent into Egypt, the Exodus under Moses, and the eventual rise of the Israelite monarchy are essential to understanding classical rabbinic Judaism. Through the lens of modern biblical scholarship, Hayes explores the shifting cultural contexts--the Babylonian exile, the Roman Empire, the Byzantine period, the rise of Christianity--that affected Jewish thought and practice, and laid the groundwork for the...