The emergence of urbanism in Iraq occurred under the distinctive climatic conditions of the Mesopotamian plain; rainy winters and extremely hot summers profoundly affected the formation and development of these early cities. Sunlight and Shade in the First Cities explores the relationship between society, culture and lived experience through the way in which sunlight was manipulated in the urban built environment. Light is approached as both a physical phenomenon, which affects comfort and the practical usability of space, and as a symbolic phenomenon rich in social and religious meaning. Through the reconstruction of ancient urban light environments, to the extent possible from the archaeological remains, the location, timing and meaning of activities within early Mesopotamian cities become accessible. Sunlight is shown to have influenced the formation and symbolism of urban architecture and shaped the sensory experience of urban life.From cities as part of the sunlit landscape, this work progresses to consider city forms as a whole and then to the examination of architectural types; residential, sacred and palatial. Architectural analysis is complemented by analysis of contemporary textual sources, along with iconographic and artefactual evidence. The cities under detailed examination are limited to those on the Mesopotamian plain, focusing on the Early Dynastic periods up to the end of the second millennium BC.This volume demonstrates the utility of light as a tool with which to analyse, not just ancient Mesopotamian settlements, but the built environment of any past society, especially where provision of, or protection from sunlight critically affects life. The active influence of sunlight is demonstrated within Mesopotamian cities at every scale of analysis.

Dieses groe internationale Standardwerk vereinigt christliche und judische Fachleute aus aller Welt. Es stellt die alttestamentliche Exegese von den Anfangen innerbiblischer Schriftdeutung bis zur gegenwartigen Forschung umfassend dar. Der erste Teilband fuhrt von den Kanonfragen uber fruhjudische, neutestamentliche, rabbinische und patristische Deutungen bis zu Augustin. Er endet mit einer Zusammenfassung uber Kirche und Synagoge als jeweiligen Mutterboden fur die Entwicklung verbindlicher Schriftauslegung. Das Werk ist auf funf Teilbande angelegt, die im Abstand von ein bis zwei Jahren erscheinen.

When scholarship presents the histories, belief systems, and ritual patterns of specific religious groups, it often privileges victori­ous and élite fractions of those communities to the detriment an

Geoffrey P. Miller argues that the narratives from Genesis to Second Kings present a sophisticated argument for political obligation and for limited monarchy as the best form of government. The Hebrew Bible, in this sense, can be considered as one of the earliest political philosopies of the western world.The Garden of Eden story identifies revelation, consent, utopia, natural law, ownership, power, patriarchy, and justice as bases for political obligation. The stories of life after the expulsion from Eden argue that government and law are essential for a decent life. The Genesis narratives recognize patriarchal authority but also identifies limits based on kinship, higher authority and power. The book of Exodus introduces the topic of political authority, arguing that nationhood strictly dominates over other forms of political organization. The Sinai narratives explore two important sources of authority: revelation and consent of the governed. The book of Joshua presents a theory of sovereignty conceived of as the exclusive and absolute control over territory. The book of Judges examines two types of national government: military rule and confederacy. It argues that military rule is inappropriate for peacetime conditions and that the confederate form is not strong enough to deliver the benefits of nationhood. The books of Samuel and Kings consider theocracy and monarchy. The bible endorses monarchy as the best available form of government provided that the king is constrained by appropriate checks and balances. Contrary to the view of some scholars, no text from Genesis to Second Kings disapproves of monarchy as a form of government.

Can digital games help us understand real life religion? With World Youth Day: Religious Interaction at a Catholic Festival, Skjoldli suggests that they can. The change is particularly visible from Skjoldlis new theoretical framework religious interaction, which draws on digital game studies. The framework centers on three key termsinteraction, interface, and immersion. Interaction constitutes the core of the stipulative definition of religion operative in this framework: interaction with culturally postulated superhuman persons. Interface represents the means by which interaction takes place. When interaction becomes emotionally charged, immersion takes placewhether it happens in religious contexts, gaming contexts, or other human activities like watching sports, reading books, playing instruments, listening and/or dancing to music. Religious immersion, Skjoldli suggests, is helpful for understandingand making intelligiblethe emotional charge of human-superhuman relationships, the power and vulnerability of the religious interfaces that enable them, the significance of emotionally charged experiences they afford, and the vexation expressed when interactions are frustrated by distraction, distortion, or destruction.In this book, Skjoldli employs her religious interaction framework in an analysis of how the Catholic festival World Youth Day (WYD) changed the meaning of pilgrimage in Catholicism. WYD emerged from a ritual, historical, and cultural context abundant associations to pilgrimage as the term is conventionally understood by scholars. WYDs are also consistently called pilgrimages, even when the host locations are not officially sanctioned as such. A substantive investment for the Catholic Church centrally, locally, and for the local event organizers, each WYD draws hundreds of thousands to millions of young Catholics from around the world. The pope always participates by giving speeches and leading some of the ceremonies. WYD is persistently referred to as a pilgrimage, and Skjoldli analyzes what pilgrimage has meant, what it means now, and how it changed in the context of WYD.

At the end of the 11th century the ancient Hexateuch Ms. Ambrosianus A 147 inf. underwent a general restoration: the original majuscule writing was retraced throughout, some lost sheets were replaced, and a great number of variant readings were added, being sometimes preferred to the original text. The purpose of the restoration appears to have been a revision of the Septuagint text in order to make it conform to the Masoretic. Mariachiara Fincati provides a complete analysis of each individual modification by comparing each of them with extant Christian and Jewish Greek translations of the biblical text.

Shaped by five hundred years of Lutheran impact and with a strong influence of big majority churches, Scandinavian secularity is a very interesting and fruitful material for the historical and contemporary theoretical debate on the secular. It can be discussed, for example, whether the strong position of Human Rights and of the Scandinavian welfare state might be interpreted in continuity with the historical influence of Protestant traditions. Is there something like a hidden sacrality implicit in the Scandinavian secular?

Three recent and commercially successful series of novels employ and adapt the resources of popular fantasy fiction to create visions of religious identity: J.K. Rowlings Harry Potter books, Phillip Pullmans Dark Materials and Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins Left Behind series. The act of creating fantasy counter-worlds naturally involves all three stories in the creation of what Mike Gray terms "transfigurations of transcendence": hopeful albeit paradoxical encodings of the ambiguous, non-observable reality whose primary locus in modern society is the societally extra-systemic human individual. Popular fantasy fiction turns out to involve acts of world-creation that are inherently religious and inherently paradoxical.A substantive examination shows that all three are involved in more or less intentional re-narrations of traditional Christian beliefs and narratives. The atheist His Dark Materials series does not deny but re-imagines the Christian visions of selfhood; the traditionalist Left Behind series does not simply replicate but modifies its own declared values; the apparent secularity of the Harry Potter series is shaped by its creative reception of Christian patterns and narratives. While the stories visions of selfhood clearly clash, the basic paradoxes involved in their struggle to articulate transcendence expose significant parallels and a productive conversation with the Christian tradition.It is not simply that popular fantasy fiction is theologically relevant the Christian Heilsgeschichte, too, proves to be highly relevant in popular culture. However, while far from obsolescent, models of religious identity in contemporary society require criticism and creativity and, as evinced most powerfully in the Harry Potter stories, a flair for constructive engagement with paradox.

Aufsatze und AbhandlungenLogos, Dike, Kosmos in der Entwicklung der griechischen Philosophie · Thorild und Herder · Galileo: a New Science and a New Spirit · Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. A Study in the History of Renaissance Ideas · The Influence of Language upon the Development of Scientific Thought · Newton and Leibniz · Hermann Cohen, 1842-1918 · Some Remarks on the Question of the Originality of the Renaissance · The Place of Vesalius in the Culture of the Renaissance · Judaism and the Modern Political Myths · The Concept of Group and the Theory of Perception · Galileos Platonism · The Myth of the State · Thomas Manns Goethe-Bild. Eine Studie uber "Lotte in Weimar" · Structuralism in Modern Linguistics · Albert Schweitzer as Critic of Nineteenth-Century EthicsZur logik der Kulturwissenschaften. Funf StudienDer Gegenstand der Kulturwissenschaft · Dingwahrnehmung und Ausdruckswahrnehmung · Naturbegriffe und Kulturbegriffe · Formproblem und Kausalproblem · Die "Tragodie der Kultur"Rousseau, Kant, Goethe.Two essaysKant and Rousseau · Goethe and the Kantian PhilosophyRezensionen und kleine SchriftenNachtrage

Die judische Literatur aus der Zeit des Zweiten Tempels zeichnet sich durch extensiven Gebrauch autoritativer Schriften aus. Die Textfunde von Qumran haben dieses Charakteristikum antik-judischer Literatur besonders deutlich gemacht. Bislang war die Wissenschaft zur Identifikation solcher Zitate und Anspielungen auf die Textkenntnis der Forschenden angewiesen. Seit kurzem ist ihre Identifikation mit Hilfe elektronischer Datenbanken moglich geworden. Unter Ruckgriff auf die neue Technologie stellt diese Publikation erstmals umfassende Listen der Zitate von und Anspielungen auf die Bucher der Hebraischen Bibel in der judischen Literatur aus der Zeit des Zweiten Tempels zusammen. Viele der hier genannten Zitate und Anspielungen wurden erstmalig identifiziert. Die hier vorgelegten Listen sind ein unverzichtbares Hilfsmittel fur alle, die zum antiken Judentum im Allgemeinen oder zur Auslegungs- und Textgeschichte der Hebraischen Bibel im Besonderen arbeiten. Die Zitate und Anspielungen werden zum einen nach der Buch-, Kapitel- und Versfolge der Hebraischen Bibel angeordnet und zum anderen nach der Sequenz der zitierenden und anspielenden Texte.

Suk Yu Chan provides a revisit of John Calvins interpretation of the doctrine of divine providence and builds upon a vast repository of quality research conducted by previous Reformation scholars. The author adopts a historical approach to explore Calvins works from 15341559, and argues that from 15341541, Calvin used the image of the fountain to portray God as the source of everything, who has power to preserve and give life to all creatures on earth. Between the Latin edition of the Institutes in 1539 and the French translation of that work in 1541, Calvin was indecisive about the definition of special providence, articulating a fitful relationship between providence and soteriology in these two texts. In 1552, Calvin gradually ceased using the image of the fountain to portray God as the source of everything, and he also delivered three definitions of divine providence: general providence, special providence, and the very presence of God. Based on the theological understanding of divine providence which he had developed from 15341552, Calvin presented his exegesis on the Book of Job and the Book of Psalms through his sermons and commentaries. Furthermore, Calvin also discussed the importance of the human role in Gods providence. While Calvins theological understanding of Gods providence was inherited by his successor, Theodore Beza, Beza applied it differently in his exegesis on the Book of Job. From 15341559, Calvin formulated his biblical doctrine of divine providence, articulating that divine providence is heavenly providence which is comprised of eternal predestination and divine preservation.

The Nehemiah Memoir, the narrative of the royal cupbearer sent to rebuild Jerusalem, is central to Ezra-Nehemiahs account of Persian Judah. Yet its emphasis on one individuals efforts makes it a text that ill-fits the books story of a communal restoration. Sean Burt analyzes the nature of this curious text through the lens of genre criticism and identifies the impact of its use of genres on its early reception in Ezra-Nehemiah. Drawing upon contemporary theorists of literary genre, within the field of biblical studies and beyond, he builds an understanding of genre capable of addressing both its flexibility and its necessarily historical horizon. Burt argues that the Nehemiah Memoir makes use of two ancient genres: the novelistic court tale (e.g. Esther, Ahiqar, and others) and the "official memorial," or "biographical" genre used across the ancient Near East by kings and other governmental officials for individual commemoration. This study contends that the narrative subtly shifts genres as it unfolds, from court tale to memorial. Nehemiah the courtier becomes Nehemiah the governor. While these genres reveal an affinity to one another, they also highlight a central contradiction in the narratives portrait of Nehemiah. Nehemiah is, like the people of Jerusalem, beholden to the whims of a foreign ruler, but he also simultaneously represents Persias power over Jerusalem. Burt concludes that the Nehemiah Memoirs combination of these two ultimately incommensurate genres can account for how the writers of Ezra-Nehemiah modified and corrected Nehemiahs problematic story to integrate it into Ezra-Nehemiahs vision of a holistic restoration enacted by a unified people.

In January 2011, the David and Jemima Jeselsohn Epigraphic Center for Jewish History held its second international conference at Bar-Ilan University, dedicated to the memory of Professor Hanan Eshel, the founding academic director of the center who passed away on April 8th, 2010. This collection of articles, traces, when taken together, daily lifein the land of Israel from the First Temple Period through the time of the Talmud, as seen in the various types of inscriptions from those periods that have been discovered and published. Schiffmans summary of Hanans work serves as an introduction to the book. A?ituv discusses the language and religious outlook of the Kuntilet Ajrud inscriptions. Mazar and A?ituv survey the quite large corpus of short inscriptions found in Mazars excavation of Tel Re?ov, south of Beth-Shean. Maeir and Eshel deal with four very short more-or-less contemporary inscriptions found at Tell es-Safi, identified as the major Philistine city of Gath. Demsky deals with the theoretical aspects of literacy in ancient Israel. Grabbe discusses the functions of the scribe during the Second Temple Period. Zissu, Langford, Ecker and Eshel report on both an Aramaic-language graffito and a Latin one, inscribed on the wall of a first and 2nd century CE oil press from of Khirbet Arak Hala in the Judean Shephelah. Rappaports survey of Jewish coins from the Persian Period through the Bar-Kokhba Revolt, focusing on the Hasmonean coins. Amit describes a group of bread stamps and oil seals, in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and Latin, found in different parts of the country. Klein and Mamalya describe two Byzantine Period Nabatean Christian burial sites and their epitaphs.

The first two chapters discuss the religious practices of the Hasmoneans. Chapter 1 explores why the Maccabees regarded Hanukkah as a festival of renewal, specifically of those traditions related to the Temple cult. Chapter 2 examines the manner in which the Hasmoneans used the protection and maintenance of the Jewish Temple to legitimize their ruleand how they worked to place the Temple at the center of the Jewish religion. Chapters 35 deal with different perspectives in the Hellenistic world on the role of government and royal ideologies. Specifically, chapter 3 explores both the Hellenistic and Jewish contexts for Hasmonean government and kingship. Regev shows how the Hasmonean dynasty built up its religious (in contrast to political) authority, suggesting that the Hasmonean state was not a conventionally Hellenistic one, but rather a national monarchy, closer to Macedonian in type. Chapter 4 attempts to decipher the meaning of the symbols and epigraphs on Hasmonean coins, and examines how both Hellenistic symbols and Jewish concepts were employed to reinforce the dynastys authority and introduce Jewish national ideas into the populace. Chapter 5 then undertakes a comparative social-archaeological analysis of the Hasmonean palaces in Jericho in an effort to gain insight into their royal ideology. The author compares the Hasmonean palaces to other Hellenistic palaces especially the Herodian palaces. Finally, the concluding chapter integrates the previous findings into a new understanding of and appreciation for the Hasmoneans creation of an innovative Jewish corporal identity, one whose echoes we can still hear today.

Hip-hop is a deeply spiritual culture, a culture that since its beginnings has provided urban youth all over the world with a sense of place, being and direction, with knowledge of self and knowledge of cultural heritage. By examining a number of rap tunes and graffiti walls, Carl Petter Opsahl explores different spiritualities and religious traditions informing hip-hop culture, including, Christianity, Nation of Islam, Nation of Gods and Earths and indigenous spiritualities. By developing a theoretical framework of hybrid spirituality, Opsahl outlines spiritual strategies of survival and resistance in contexts of oppression and struggle.He provides basic introductions to recent research on spirituality, to hip-hop culture and its esthetic practices and to Islam in the USA and the teachings of Nation of Islam and Nation of Gods and Earths. Then follow in-depth analyzes of hip-hop cultural expressions. One chapter is devoted to the study of graffiti murals, exploring artworks by some of New Yorks finest writers such as TATS CRU, TRACY 168, TOO FLY and QUEEN ANDREA. Then follows a chapter on rap and Christianity, featuring explorations of Lauryn Hill, 2Pac and a number of Christian rappers including G.R.I.T.S. Another chapter explores Islamic influences on rap, with studies on Public Enemy, Wu-Tang Clan, Erykah Badu and Mos Def.Embedded in rhythms, rhymes, colors and shapes, the exploration of hip hop spirituality expands the horizon of studies in spirituality.

"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh" (Ezechiel 36:26). This biblical image, particularly significant for Jews, Christians, and Muslims, gives insight into the central issues of this book: how a greater readiness to reconcile can take place among individuals and groups who experience the "suffering of the other," even in the midst of a protracted conflict such as the Israeli-Palestinian one. This book offers a collection of essays written by the team members of a transdisciplinary DFG project between Jena University, Ben Gurion University, Tel Aviv University, and the Wasatia Academic Institute.

Reconciliation studies are concerned with the processes of rebuilding and improving damaged relationships after major wrongdoings. They focus on factors such as law, economics, and international relations, as well as on elements such as emotions and ethics, culture and religion, media and education. Reconciliation research therefore requires a transdisciplinary approach, to analyse both the procedures leading to the recognition of truth as well as those in which justice is administered; both the impact of public apologies and cooperation agreements; both the implementation of memory policies and civil society initiatives; both the outcomes of trauma therapy and intergenerational encounter groups. While on the surface the relationships in question are those between states, groups, organisations, and individuals, at a deeper level reconciliation always addresses and involves many axes of damaged relationships: those with others (intergroup); those with ones own group (intragroup); those with oneself; those with the environment; and those with transcendence. Reconciliation studies deal, therefore, with a much broader spectrum of relationships than that taken into consideration by neighbouring disciplines such as conflict resolution and peace studies.In this volume, Francesco Ferrari and Davide Tacchini brought together examples of Leiners approach to reconciliation studies as a cooperative project of different disciplines.The articles are divided into two sections:1. A series of case studies about Japan-South Korea relations, German-Czech reconciliation, Nagorno-Karabakh conflict using the methods of Martin Leiner, Sayyid Qutb view of American society, and South Africans revisiting TRC.2. A series of theoretical clarifications on reconciliation and moderation from a Palestinian point of view, evolutionary game theory looking at reconciliation processes by a team of economists, grace and reconciliation from a Catholic theological point of view, philosophical reflections on the concept of reconciliation after Auschwitz, cognitive and affective aspects in reconciliation from a Catholic theological point of view, ecology and spatiality of reconciliation seen by a social geographer, and political dimensions of reconciliation.

The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth familiarized itself with Christian Hebraism in the first half of the 16th century. "In Search of the Genuine Word of God" sketches out the process in three chapters. The first one deals with the development of modern Hebrew studies in Western Europe, the second gives an account of the academic and religious level of Hebrew scholarship in the Commonwealth in the 16th century and at the beginning of the 17th century, and the third is devoted to Polish translations of the Hebrew Bible, which were the most significant consequences of the reception of the West-European Christian Hebraism in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in Renaissance.Knowledge of Hebrew would be spread in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth through personal contacts of magnates and church dignitaries with the Western European Hebrew experts, through Jewish converts teaching Semitic languages, through foreign studies at European universities and through books. Polish Christian Hebraism was not creative; local humanists and reformers who communicated with adherents of Judaism contributed but little to domestic Hebrew studies. Only scholarly trends occasioned by different Christian confessions come to our notice. Hebrew studies were undertaken within universities or religious movements. The purpose was practical: to have direct access to the original Hebrew Bible for the sake of theological disputes or to have proper translation tools for rendering the Scripture in Polish.

This book aims to open up the discussion and research of the up to now unstudied period of the History of the Hebrew Bible text: the period from the apparent stabilization of the Hebrew biblical text until the standardization that is reflected in the manuscripts of biblical text, those including the Masorah (c. 2nd 9th centuries A.D.). What took place from the time of the standardization of the consonantic text of the Hebrew Bible until the appearance of the first Masoretic codices? How was the biblical text preserved in the meantime? What was the body of notes that makes up the Masorah formed? How can the diversity of the textual traditions contained in the Masorah be explained and be consistent with the idea of a text established and standardized centuries before?

Miryam T. Brand explores how texts of the Second Temple period address the theological problem of the existence of sin and describe the source of human sin. By surveying the relevant Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, and Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as the works of Philo and (where relevant) Josephus, the study determines the extent to which texts presentation of sin is influenced by genre and sectarian identification and identifies central worldviews regarding sin in the Second Temple period. The analysis is divided into two parts; the first explores texts that reflect a conviction that the source of sin is an innate human inclination, and the second analyzes texts that depict sin as caused by demons. The author demonstrates that the genre or purpose of a text is frequently a determining factor in its representation of sin, particularly influencing the texts portrayal of sin as the result of human inclination versus demonic influence and sin as a free choice or as predetermined fact. Second Temple authors and redactors chose representations of sin in accordance with their aims. Thus prayers, reflecting the experience of helplessness when encountering God, present the desire to sin as impossible to overcome without divine assistance. In contrast, covenantal texts (sectarian texts explaining the nature of the covenant) emphasize freedom of choice and the human ability to turn away from the desire to sin. Genre, however, is not the only determining factor regarding how sin is presented in these texts. Approaches to sin in sectarian texts frequently built upon already accepted ideas reflected in nonsectarian literature, adding aspects such as predestination, the periodization of evil, and a division of humanity into righteous members and evil nonmembers.