The emergence of the Hebrew Christian movement in nineteenth-century Britain
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In nineteenth-century Britain the majority of Jewish believers in Christ worshipped in Gentile churches. Some attained ethnic and institutional independence. A few debated the implications of incorporating into their worship the observance of Jewish tradition, and advocated the theological and liturgical independence of Hebrew Christianity, characterised by opponents as the "scandal of particularity". Previous scholarship has documented several Hebrew Christian initiatives but this monograph breaks new ground by identifying almost forthy discrete institutions as components of a century-long movement. The book analyses the major pioneers, institutions and ideologies of this movement and recounts how, through identity negotiation, hebrew Christians - and also their Gentile supporters - prepared the way for the development in the twentieth century of Messianic Judaism.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [261]-268) and index. :
9789004216273 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Reading the Fifth Veda Studies on the Mahabharata-- Essays by Alf Hiltebeitel. Volume 1.
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Often spoken of as the 'Fifth Veda', id est, as a text in continuity with the four Vedas and outweighing them all in size and import, the Mahābhārata presents a complex mythological and narrative landscape, incorporating fundamental ethical, social, philosophic, and pedagogic issues. In a series of position pieces and essays written over a span of 30 years, Alf Hiltebeitel, Columbian Professor of Religion, History, and Human Sciences at The George Washington University, articulates a compelling new approach to the epic: as a literary work of fundamental theological and philosophical significance rich in metaphor and meaning. In this three-part volume, the editors gather some of Hiltebeitel's seminal writings on the epic along with new pieces written especially for the volume. This two volume edition collects nearly three decades of Alf Hiltebeitel's researches into the Indian epic and religious tradition. The two volumes document Hiltebeitel's longstanding fascination with the Sanskrit epics: volume 1 presents a series of appreciative readings of the Mahābhārata (and to a lesser extent, the Rāmāyaṇa), while volume 2 focuses on what Hiltebeitel has called "the underground Mahābhārata," id est, the Mahābhārata as it is still alive in folk and vernacular traditions. Recently re-edited and with a new set of articles completing a trajectory Hiltebeitel established over 30 years ago, this work constitutes a definitive statement from this major scholar. Comprehensive indices, cross-referencing, and an exhaustive bibliography make it an essential reference work. For more information on the second volume please click here .
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004216204 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The Origins and Evolution of the Moses Nativity Story /
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This book traces the development of the Moses nativity story from pre-Biblical sources through its Biblical formulation, and continues to trace its evolution in post-Biblical literature, from the Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, and Jewish Hellenistic writings, through Rabbinic literature, and up to Medieval Jewish exegesis. Influence of the Moses nativity story is also detected in Christian writings: hence this book also traces the evolution of the story in the New Testament and early Christian works. This study uses a literary-typological approach, similar to that of the Gunkel-Gressmann school and the method used by Loewenstamm. However, unlike these scholars and their disciples, who focused primarily on the biblical stage, this book gives equal attention to all stages of the evolution of the birth story pattern; and, while providing a detailed analysis of each work, also focuses on continuity, tracing the path along which the literary pattern of the Moses nativity story developed.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [191]-196) and indexes. :
9789004378810 :
0169-8834 ;
Critical reflections on religion and media in contemporary Bali /
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Scholars of religion have always worked closely with media of one kind or another, from sacred books and archaic languages to cassette-sermons and the Internet. Yet comparatively little attention has been paid to the ways we actually use these and other media in the pursuit of historical inquiry. Drawing on ethnographic and archival research conducted on the Indonesian island of Bali, this book offers a critique of the media-related assumptions underpinning fields as diverse in their subject matter and approach as the history of religions, British cultural studies and Old Javanese philology. Its central contention is that more nuanced attention to problems of media will have serious implications for how we think about the study of religions, past and present.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047429937 :
0169-8834 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
When the Goddess was a Woman Mahabharata Ethnographies-- Essays by Alf Hiltebeitel. Volume 2.
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Explicitly acknowledging its status as a strī-śūdra-veda (a Veda for women and the downtrodden), the Mahābhārata articulates a promise to bring knowledge of right conduct, fundamental ethical, philosophical, and soteriological teachings, and its own grand narrative to all classes of people and all beings. Hiltebeitel shows how the Mahābhārata has more than lived up to this promise at least on the ground in Indian folk traditions. In this three-part volume, he journeys over the overlapping terrains of the south Indian cults of Draupadī (part I) and Kūttāṇṭavar (part II), to explore how the Mahābhārata continues to be such a vital source of meaning, and, in part III, then connects this vital tradition to wider reflections on prehistory, sacrifice, myth, oral epic, and modern theatre. This two volume edition collects nearly three decades of Alf Hiltebeitel's researches into the Indian epic and religious tradition. The two volumes document Hiltebeitel's longstanding fascination with the Sanskrit epics: volume 1 presents a series of appreciative readings of the Mahābhārata (and to a lesser extent, the Rāmāyaṇa), while volume 2 focuses on what Hiltebeitel has called "the underground Mahābhārata," id est, the Mahābhārata as it is still alive in folk and vernacular traditions. Recently re-edited and with a new set of articles completing a trajectory Hiltebeitel established over 30 years ago, this work constitutes a definitive statement from this major scholar. Comprehensive indices, cross-referencing, and an exhaustive bibliography make it an essential reference work. For more information on the first volume please click here .
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004216228 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Toward the Millennium, Messianic Expectations from the Bible to Waco.
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This collection of 16 articles represents a selection of the papers delivered in the course of a seminar (1995-1996) at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and its concluding joint symposium held at the Institute and Princeton University. Wide-ranging in scope, the volume covers messianic expectations from biblical times up to modern and contemporaneous adaptations, whereby the focus lies on the messianic concept within Judaism: diversity and variety of messianic expectations in antiquity; messianic movements at the time of the Crusades and around the fifth millennium (1240); the 'Pseudo'-Messiah Sabbatai Avi in the early modern period; the philosophers Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig and Walter Benjamin with respect to their thinking about messianism as well as the Lubavitch movement. Also included are investigations on pagan Graeco-Roman writings and messianic strands in the medieval and baroque Christian context. The section on the modern period contains contributions dealing with the Ahmaddiyya movement in India, messianic currents in the socio-political culture of the Weimar Republic as well as certain messianic aspects in the very recent so-called Branch Davidian community in Waco, Texas. The broad spectrum of stimulating analyses provides a fresh re-evaluation of an apparently timeless phenomenon.
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1 online resource. :
9789004378995
The Pragmatics of Defining Religion : Contexts, Concepts and Contests /
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This volume promotes a pragmatic, anti-essentialist and anti-hegemonic approach to the problem of the definition of religion. It argues that definitions of religion are context-bound strategies for pursuing a variety of purposes, extra-academic as well as academic. Religions being immensely varied, complex and multi-functional phenomena, they need to be studied by several academic disciplines from many different perspectives. It is, therefore, legitimate and useful that many definitions of religions are developed. The volume has contributions from scholars in Philosophy of Religion, the Comparative Study of Religions, Anthropology of Religion, Sociology of Religion and Psychology of Religion. It has chapters on the polemics of defining religion in modern contexts, the history of the concept of religion, and the methodology of its definition; it includes several definition proposals.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004379091 :
0169-8834 ;
Changing Christian Paradigms and their Implications for Modern Thought /
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Though the Bible and creeds have provided a compass for Christianity from earliest times, the frameworks of thought within which they have been understood have constantly changed, the contribution of Augustine to these changes being fundamental. This book traces, first, these changes chronologically and shows how they have led to the separation of religion and science, faith and reason, supernatural and natural, and so to current materialism: but also to radical alterations to our understanding of God and his relationship to the world. The second part shows in more detail how these changes have altered the significance of major features of Christian faith and led to serious incoherences. And the third part shows, not only how pre-Augustinian and Biblical understandings cohere closely with modern science, but that they have radical implications for our understanding of man, his place in nature and survival of death, for Jesus Christ and for the role of the Churches.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [335]-339) and index. :
9789004378803 :
0169-8834 ;
Religions and education in antiquity : studies in honour of Michel Desjardins /
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Religions and Education in Antiquity gathers ten essays on teaching and learning in the contexts of ancient Western religions, including Judaism, early Christianity and Gnostic Christian traditions. Beginning with an overview of religious education in the ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean worlds, editor Alex Damm and the contributors together demonstrate the mutual influence of religion and education on each other; the relevance of educational traditions in addressing (for instance) historical or exegetical issues; and the thoroughgoing importance of education to religious life across time and space in antiquity. Highly useful to scholars of religion, theology, classics and education, this volume affords a state of the art study on pedagogy and learning in ancient religious contexts.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004384613 :
0169-8834 ;
Intertextuality in the tales of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav : a close reading of Sippurey Maʼasiyot /
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Until 1806, Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav (1772-1810) disseminated his thoughts on redemption through homilies. In 1806, however, Nahman chose the genre of tales as an additional and innovative means of religious discourse. An academic close reading of all of the tales, known as Sippurey Ma'asiyot , has not yet been undertaken. As the first comprehensive scholarly work on the whole selection of tales and contrary to previous scholarship, this book does not reduce the tales to biographical expressions of Nahman's tormented soul and messianic aspirations. Instead, it treats them as religious literature where the concept of "intertextuality" is considered essential to explain how Nahman defines his theology of redemption and invites his listeners and readers to appropriate his religious world-view.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [637]-642) and index. :
9789047420170 :
0169-8834 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Claiming Knowledge, Strategies of Epistemology from Theosophy to the New Age.
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This volume deals with the transformation of religious creativity in the late modern West. Its point of departure is a set of esoteric beliefs, from Theosophy to the New Age. It shows how these traditions have adapted to the cultural givens of each successive epoch. The claims of each movement have been buttressed by drawing on various structural characteristics of late modernity. The advance of science has resulted in attempts to claim scientific status for religious beliefs. Globalization has given rise to massive loans from other cultures, but also to various strategies to radically reinterpret foreign elements. Individualism has led to an increasing reliance on experience as a source of legitimacy. The analytical tools applied to understanding religious modernization shed light on changes that are fundamentally reshaping many religious traditions. This publication has also been published in hardback, please click here for details.
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1 online resource. :
9789047403371
A Chinese Paradigm of the Jingtu Famen : The Buddhist Thought and Practice of Sheng'an Shixian (1686-1734) and Other Patriarchs /
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This vigorously-researched publication for advanced graduate students and fellow scholars of the Chinese Pure Land tradition ( Jingtu famen ) in the wider context of Chinese Buddhism extends the horizon opened up by recent leading scholars to reconstruct a more insightful understanding of the Jingtu famen and the notion of zong . Focusing on previously unstudied writings of Shixian and other patriarchs, the findings support the argument that the Jingtu famen is an advanced form of Mahāyānist meditation rooted in the Mādhyamika and Yogācāra traditions. The original English translation of Master Shixian's writings provided also paves the way for other researchers to conduct new and extended studies.
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1 online resource (325 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004545533
The Devotion and Promotion of Stigmatics in Europe, c. 1800-1950 : Between Saints and Celebrities /
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In the nineteenth century a new type of mystic emerged in Catholic Europe. While cases of stigmatisation had been reported since the thirteenth century, this era witnessed the development of the 'stigmatic': young women who attracted widespread interest thanks to the appearance of physical stigmata. To understand the popularity of these stigmatics we need to regard them as the 'saints' and religious 'celebrities' of their time. With their 'miraculous' bodies, they fit contemporary popular ideas (if not necessarily those of the Church) of what sanctity was. As knowledge about them spread via modern media and their fame became marketable, they developed into religious 'celebrities'.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004439351
9789004439191
Muhammad 'Abduh and his interlocutors : conceptualizing religion in a globalizing world /
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In Muḥammad ʿAbduh and his Interlocutors: Conceptualizing Religion in a Globalizing World , Ammeke Kateman offers an account of Muḥammad ʿAbduh's Islamic Reformism in a context in which ideas increasingly crossed familiar geographical, religious and cultural frontiers. Presenting an alternative to the inadequate perspective of "Westernization", Kateman situates the ideas of Muḥammad ʿAbduh (Egypt, 1849-1905) on Islam and religion amongst those of his interlocutors within a global intellectual field. Ammeke Kateman's approach documents the surprising pluralism of ʿAbduh's interlocutors, the diversity in their shared conceptualizations of religion and the creativity of ʿAbduh's own interpretation. In this way, the conceptualizations of ʿAbduh and his contemporaries also shed light on the diversified global genealogy of the modern concept of religion.
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Revision of author's thesis (doctoral)--Universiteit van Amsterdam, 2016, titled Shared questions, diverging answers : Muḥammad ʻAbduh and his interlocutors on 'religion' in a globalizing world. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004398382 :
0169-8834 ;
Buddhist apologetics in East Asia : countering the neo-Confucian critiques in the Hufa lun and the Yusŏk chirŭi non /
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While the Neo-Confucian critique of Buddhism is fairly well-known, little attention has been given to the Buddhist reactions to this harangue. The fact is, however, that over a dozen apologetic essays have been written by Buddhists in China, Korea, and Japan in response to the Neo-Confucians. Buddhist Apologetics in East Asia offers an introduction to this Buddhist literary genre. It centers on full translations of two dominant apologetic works-the Hufa lun (護法論), written by a Buddhist politician in twelfth-century China, and the Yusŏk chirŭi non (儒釋質疑論), authored by an anonymous monk in fifteenth-century Korea. Put together, these two texts demonstrate the wide variety of polemical strategies and the cross-national intertextuality of East Asian Buddhist apologetics.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004407886
The Brahmo Samaj and its Vaiṣṇava Milieus : Intersections of Hindu Knowledge and Love in Nineteenth Century Bengal /
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In The Brahmo Samaj and its Vaiṣṇava Milieus: Intersections of Hindu Knowledge and Love in Nineteenth Century Bengal , Ankur Barua offers an intellectual history of the motif of religious universalism in the writings of some intellectuals associated with the Brahmo Samaj (founded in 1828). They constructed Hindu worldviews that were simultaneously rooted in some ancient Sanskritic materials and orientated towards contemporary universalist visions with western hues. These constructions were shaped by their dialectical engagements with three groups: members of the Bengali middle classes with sceptical standpoints ('Young Bengal'), Christian missionaries, and Hindu Vaiṣṇava thinkers. In this genealogy of religious universalisms, Barua indicates how certain post-1900 formulations of the universalist compass of Hinduism were being enunciated across Brahmo circles from the 1820s.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004445383
9789004445246