The Fall of the Angels /
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The fall of the angels is one of the biblical narratives which, above all in the history of the bible's reception, have developed an extraordinary effect: In the biblical canon they appear just as hints (Gen. 6; Isaiah 14; Apocalypse 12). Little concern for the text as well as a tradition and reception not covered by the canon makes the narrative grow and change considerably, as well as freely negotiate in the popular media of iconography, liturgy and theatre. As a completed narrative the fall of the angels appears only in the literature of the apocalyptic movement. The so-called Henoch tradition provides revelations about the cosmos and the secrets of Heaven and Earth. Through this mystery our present world is coded as a battle between good and evil.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047404330
9789004126688
Death Rituals, Ideology, and the Development of Early Mesopotamian Kingship : Toward a New Understanding of Iraq's Royal Cemetery of Ur /
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At the beginning of Mesopotamia's Early Dynastic period, the political landscape was dominated by temple administrators, but by the end of the period, rulers whose titles we translate as "king" assumed control. This book argues that the ritual process of mourning, burying, and venerating dead elites contributed to this change. Part one introduces the rationale for seeing rituals as a means of giving material form to ideology and, hence, structuring overall power relations. Part two presents archaeological and textual evidence for the death rituals. Part three interprets symbolic objects found in the Royal Cemetery of Ur, showing they reflect ideological doctrines promoting the office of kingship. This book will be particularly useful for scholars of Mesopotamian archaeology and history.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047416791
9789004146358
Participatory Learning : Religious Education in a Globalizing Society /
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In many respects children and youths receiving religious instruction in our culture resemble extraterrestrial beings doing an orientation course. Religion and religiosity are unknown quantities which they have hardly encountered at home. Religion seems something else, something greater. This book is a study of the foundations of religious education, centered around six concepts: religion in a globalizing society, religious tradition, religion, the religious self, learning through participation and interreligious learning.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047402121
9789004130012
Joshua /
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Codex Vaticanus (4th cent. CE) includes the oldest, and probably the most important, complete copy of the Greek translation of the biblical book of Joshua (or Jesus, in Greek). The translation had been made some five centuries earlier (2nd cent. BCE) from a Hebrew version of Joshua which differed at many points from the Hebrew text now familiar to us. It was mostly rather literal; and, where it appears surprisingly free, it is often inviting attention to relevant passages in the books of Moses. What the first scribe of the Codex wrote is transcribed uncorrected. The deliberately literal rendering into English on facing pages provides ready access to alternative forms of the many proper names in Joshua. The commentary discusses both translation and exegetical technique.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047405337
9789004138421
Religion as a Profession /
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This volume offers a conceptual and empirical study of the religious profession. It takes as its point of departure professionalisation theory that is discussed and applied to a profession in mainstream religion, in this case Dutch Catholic ministry. The book entails a well-documented empirical study of attitudes of clergy and lay personnel in the Dutch Roman-Catholic Church regarding the pastoral profession. Their attitudes towards church authority, apostolicity, sacramental efficacy, accession to the office, and spiritual role are described extensively. The research clarifies the extent to which these religious attitudes act as a positive or negative motif to engage in policies that are aimed at a professional development of the occupation. The book offers an excellent insight into basic characteristics of a religious profession.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047407805
9789004144521
The Jews in Sicily, Volume 6 (1458-1477) /
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This volume in the series Documentary History of the Jews in Italy illustrates the history of the Jews in Sicily from 1458 to 1477. It is the sequel to the first five volumes and covers the events during the rule of King John. Although John continued the policies of his father Alphonso towards the Jews of the island, there is a distinct deterioration in their position during his times. After years of incitement by the members of the Mendicant Orders, anti-Jewish riots broke out in various parts of the Sicily. The worst of them was the massacre in Modica in 1474. During that period the Jewish minority of Sicily continued to flourish economically and socially. Nearly a thousand documents, many of them published here for the first time, record the fortunes of the Jews and their relationships with the authorities and their Christian neighbours. Much new information has come to light, and many facets of Jewish life in Sicily have been uncovered. The abundance of historical records in the archives of the Crown and of local authorities compares favourably with the relative scarcity of surviving documentation in earlier centuries. Therefore, again, many documents had to be reported in summary form. The volume is provided with additional bibliography and indexes, while the introduction has been relegated to the end of the series on the Jews of the island.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047414261
9789004140769
Religion and the Good Life /
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Studies in Theology and Religion,10 In this volume, fourteen philosophers of religion reflect on religious views of the good life. Some authors focus on positive religion and its specific religious representations of the good life, while others abstract from these and focus on philosophical religion and its conceptual articulations of the good life. The tension between positive religion and philosophical religion, between representation and concept, is itself also analyzed. This volume is a result of the co-operation of the philosophers of religion who are senior members of the Netherlands School for Advanced Studies in Theology and Religion NOSTER. Religion and the Good Life Religion and the Good Life: Introduction - Marcel Sarot (Utrecht) and Wessel Stoker (Amsterdam) PART I - THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN REPRESENTATION AND CONCEPT The Tension between Representation and Concept as a Challenge for Philosophy of Religion - Peter Jonkers (Utrecht) Beyond Representation and Concept: The Language of Testimony - R.D.N. van Riessen (Kampen) PART II - THE TENSION BETWEEN REPRESENTATION AND CONCEPT Seduction and Guidance: Some Remarks on the Ambiguities of Reason and Reflective Thought in Connection with Religion and the Good Life - W. Dupré (Nijmegen) The Good Life is Historical - Ben Vedder (Nijmegen) The Quality of Life: Comic Vision in Charles Dickens and Iris Murdoch - Henry Jansen (Amsterdam) Narrative, Atonement, and the Christian Conception of the Good Life - Gijsbert van den Brink (Leyden) Myths and the Good Life: Ricoeur's Hermeneutical Approach to Myth - Wessel Stoker (Amsterdam) Bhajans and their Symbols: Religious Hermeneutics of "the Good Life" - Hendrik M. Vroom (Amsterdam) PART III - REPRESENTATIONS OF THE GOOD LIFE Models of the Good Life - Marcel Sarot (Utrecht) The Highest Good and the Kingdom of God in the Philosophy of Kant: A Moral Concept and a Religious Metaphor of the Good Life - Donald Loose (Tilburg-Rotterdam) Jacques Derrida and Messianity - Victor Kal (Amsterdam) Skepticism and the Meaning of Life - Michael Scott (Manchester) Ultimate Happiness and the Love of God - Vincent Brümmer (Utrecht) Human Being and the Natural Desire for God: Reflections on the Natural and the Supernatural - Eef Dekker (Utrecht).
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004493476
9789023240693
The Revelation of the Name YHWH to Moses : Perspectives from Judaism, the Pagan Graeco-Roman World, and Early Christianity /
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The revelation of YHWH's name to Moses is a momentous event according to the Old Testament. The name 'Yahweh' is of central importance in Judaism, and 'Yahwism' became tantamount to Jewish monotheism. As such, this designation of God also attracted the attention of pagan writers in the Graeco-Roman period. And early Christians had to deal with this divine name as well. These three perspectives on YHWH constitute the framework for this volume. It appears that the Name of God and its revelation to Moses constitute a major theme which runs from the book of Exodus through the Old Testament, early Judaism, and early Christianity. It also attracted pagan philosophical interest, both positive and negative. The Name of God was not only perceived from an insider's perspective, but also provoked a reaction from outsiders. The combined perspectives show the fundamental importance of the divine Name for the formation of Jewish and Christian identities.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047411031
9789004153981
Petrus de Alvernia, Sententia super librum 'De vegetabilibus et plantis' /
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This volume is the first edition of Petrus de Alvernia's Sententia super librum 'De vegetabilibus et plantis' . The treatise 'De vegetabilibus et plantis', which goes back to the Peripatetic Nicolaus of Damascus and has an interesting tradition (from Greek into Syrian, from Syrian into Arabic, from Arabic into Latin), was considered to be a work of Aristotle's and was among the subjects prescribed for study in the Facultas Artium in Paris. Petrus de Alvernia's Sententia should primarily be regarded as an exposition of this often problematic work for the students of this faculty. The Introduction discusses the tradition of 'De vegetabilibus et plantis', the authenticity of the ascription of the commentary to Petrus de Alvernia, the characteristiscs of the commentary, and its relation to the commentary by Albertus Magnus.The Text is followed by indices nominum, locorum, plantarum, and verborum potiorum.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004453340
9789004117662
Die Renaissance der Städte in Nordsyrien und Nordmesopotamien : Städtische Entwicklung und wirtschaftliche Bedingungen in ar-Raqqa und Ḥ̣arrān von der Zeit der beduinischen Vorherr...
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The period between 950 and 1150 A.D. is regarded as "turning point in the history of the Islamic Culture" from the Early Islamic to the Late Medieval civilization. What led to the urban decline in between and the later recovery? Ḥ̣arrān and al-Raqqa serve as paradigma for the development in Northern Syria and Northern Mesopotamia. The collapse of the ʿAbbasid state left the region cornered between Buyids, Fatimids and Byzantines to the nomadic tribes not acquainted with urban culture. After 1086 A.D., measures undertaken by the Seljuqs in order to safeguard their hegemony led to a renaissance of cities inspite of permanent power struggles and the crusades. They based their rule on fortified places. The financing of the army led to the distribution of land as fiefs ( iqtaʿ ) and subsequently to a dislodgement of nomads and a recultivation of former agricultural land. Cash money for the treasury was generated by skimming long distance trade; this in turn required public security on the roads. An analysis of the monetary circulation according to archaeological and literal evidence serves as measure for the economic recovery. A corpus of the coin production in al-Raqqa, ḥarrān and al-Ruha'/Edessa supplements the textual sources.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004492240
9789004122741
The Origins of Islamic Jurisprudence : Meccan Fiqh before the Classical Schools /
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The current view among Western scholars of Islam concerning the early development of Islamic jurisprudence was shaped by Joseph Schacht's famous study on the subject published 50 years ago. Since then new sources became available which make a critical review of his theories possible and desirable. This volume uses one of these sources to reconstruct the development of jurisprudence at Mecca, virtually unknown until now, from the beginnings until the middle of the second Islamic century. New methods of analysis are developed and tested in order to date the material contained in the earliest compilations of legal traditions more properly. As a result the origins of Islamic jurisprudence can be dated much earlier than claimed by Schacht and his school.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004491533
9789004121317
Aristotelian Rhetoric in Syriac : Barhebraeus, Butyrum Sapientiae, Book of Rhetoric /
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This volume contains the Syriac text, edited for the first time, of the commentary on Aristotle's Rhetoric by Bar Hebraeus (died 1286) in his Cream of Wisdom. The text is accompanied by an English translation, and the volume also includes an introduction, commentary, and three glossaries (Syriac, Greek and Arabic). Bar Hebraeus' commentary is based on the lost Syriac version of Aristotle's treatise, but the author also drew heavily on the commentary of Ibn Sina (Avicenna). The text therefore provides a unique insight into the nature of that lost version, and also exemplifies the way Bar Hebraeus blended the Aristotle of the Graeco-Syriac translation literature with the more recent philosophy of Ibn Sina.
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Includes the text of the Ketava de-reṭoriḳah of Bar Hebraeus in Syriac and English. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047415817
9789004145177
Poetics of Islamic Historiography : Deconstructing Ṭabarī's History /
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Offering a new approach to the study of Ṭabarī's History , the most comprehensive historical work written by a classical Muslim historian, this book applies concepts developed by critical theorists and suggests a reading of historiographical material that is not primarily concerned with reconstructing the facts. The book consists of two parts. Part one exposes the assumptions involved in writing classical Islamic history, especially the mimetic aspiration of the sources and the practice that subverts it. Part two examines in detail four significant events in the history of early Islam and demonstrates how a deconstructionist reading subjects endows these with a considerably different meaning and subjects them to new light.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047405092
9789004137936
The Arabic Version of the Nicomachean Ethics /
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This volume offers a critical edition of the only extant Arabic manuscript of the Nicomachean Ethics. A comprehensive introduction by the late Douglas M. Dunlop describes the influence this major Aristotelian work had on Arabic literature. Dunlop's annotated English translation includes important references to the Greek text of the Ethics. The appendix includes a select Greek-Arabic glossary.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047415565
9789004146471
The Buwayhid Dynasty in Iraq 334H./945 to 403H./1012 : Shaping Institutions for the Future /
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A study of the development of political and social institutions in Baghdad, center of the Abbasid Caliphate, in that neglected period between Abbasid collapse and the coming of the Seljuk Turks. Three brothers, Daylemite mercenaries from the southern Caspian succeeded in establishing a dynasty that lasted nearly a century, controlling Iraq, a good part of Iran and the Gulf. The period has been labled the "Iranian intermezzo" but careful examination shows that the dynasty shaped the basic institutions to which the Seljuks would fall heir: the chief amirate, the system of army fiefs and the bureaucracy. It was a period of profound change and dislocation which fostered an open and creative cultural atmosphere. The Caliphate, bereft of power, was re-established as the center of authority and legitimation.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004492363
9789004128606
A Muslim Theologian in the Sectarian Milieu : ʿAbd al-Jabbār and the Critique of Christian Origins /
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In 385 AH/AD 995 the Qāḍī 'Abd al-Jabbār, well known for his Mu'tazilī theological writings, wrote the Confirmation of the Proofs of Prophecy , a work that includes a creative polemic against Christianity. 'Abd al-Jabbār reinterprets the Bible, Church history (especially the lives of Paul and Constantine) and Christian practice to argue that Christians changed the Islamic religion of Jesus. The present work begins with an examination of the controversial theory that this polemic was borrowed from an unkown Judaeo-Christian group. The author argues that 'Abd al-Jabbār's polemic is better understood as a response to his particular milieu and the on-going inter-religious debates of the medieval Islamic world. By examining the life and thought of 'Abd al-Jabbār, along with the Islamic, Christian and Jewish antecedants to his polemic, the author uncovers the intimate relationship between sectarian controversy and the development of an Islamic doctrine on Christianity.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047405825
9789004139619
The Practical Imperialist : Letters from a Danish Planter in German East Africa 1888-1906 /
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This book provides a rare opportunity to follow the daily life on and around plantations and towns in the first years of the German colonial presence in East Africa, as seen through the eyes of a Danish master farmer working for the German East Africa Company. There are few memoirs and personal letters from these years, and existent letters are primarily by explorers, colonial officials, missionaries or the occasional settler. Lautherborn's material provides one of the very few entry points into the daily business of colonial expansion and consolidation in the early years of German East Africa as seen through the eyes of a practical man trying to do a job in a complex and changing world.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047408468
9789004147423
Muslim Religious Institutions in Imperial Russia : The Islamic World of Novouzensk District and the Kazakh Inner Horde, 1780-1910 /
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Russia's Muslim religious institutions on the steppe frontier, during the imperial period, are examined in detail in this book. This study is based on a Turkic manuscript history entitled the Tavarikh-i Alti Ata, compiled in 1910. It examines the mosques, madrasas, imams, mu'adhdhins, and Sufis of a single district and in adjoining regions of the Kazakh steppe, areas that were inhabited by several Muslim communities, including Tatar peasants and merchants, Bashkir and Kazakh nomads, and Muslim Cossacks. The study compares the information from the manuscript with published sources on Islamic institutions in the Volga-Ural region, using it as a case study to draw conclusions for Russia as a whole. Special emphasis is placed on the social and communal functions of these institutions for the Muslim minorities inhabiting rural Russia.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004492325
9789004119758
Excellence and Precedence : Medieval Islamic Discourse on Legitimate Leadership /
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This volume focuses on how legitimate leadership came to be defined in the formative period of Islam in terms of two key Qur'anic concepts: moral excellence ( faḍl/faḍīla ) and precedence ( sābiqa ). These two concepts undergirded a specific discourse on leadership which developed in the first century of Islam. This discourse is reconstructed through careful scrutiny of the manāqib literature in particular, which contains detailed accounts of the excellences attributed to the Rāshidūn caliphs. This book stresses that all early factions, including the proto-Shī'a, subscribed to the Qur'ānically-mandated vision of a righteous polity guided by its most morally excellent members. Such a conclusion forces us to rethink the nature of leadership in the earliest period and reconsider the criteria invoked to establish its legitimacy.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004492196
9789004120433
The Biography of Muḥammad : The Issue of the Sources /
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This book deals with the controversial value of the sources on which the biography of Muhammad, the founder of Islam, is based. Discussions on this topic have been going on for more than a century but it has become especially debated during the last two decades. This volume contains ten articles which are the outcome of an international colloquium on the issue. Part one of the book examines the development of the Muslim tradition concerning the life of Muhammad while the other part focuses on the historical reliability of the source material. The volume reflects not only the most recent methodological developments in the study of the life of Muhammad but also the improvement of its material-basis due to sources which have only recently become available or which have been neglected.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004452909
9789004115132