A SCHOLARLY BOOK REPOSITORY363 start with P start with P
Saint Mary of Egypt has fascinated theologians, poets, and artists since the seventh century. Her story is richly evocative, encompassing sin and sanctity, concupiscence and asceticism, youth and old age. In Promiscuous Grace, Sonia Velázquez thinks with Saint Mary of Egypt about the relationship between beauty and holiness. Drawing on an archive spanning Spanish medieval poetry, Baroque paintings, seventeenth-century hagiography, and Balzac’s Le chef-d’œuvre inconnu, Velázquez argues for the importance of the senses on the surface of religious texts on her way to revealing why the legend of Saint Mary of Egypt still matters today.
“Remember the Promise Keepers?” queries a recent media story on the evangelical men’s movement that captured America’s imagination and generated intense controversy during much of the 1990s. This group of Christian men, who promoted adherence to a strict code of conduct that masculinized conservative religious and social values, now evokes little more than a hazy memory of football stadiums teeming with men whose tear-stained faces and clasped arms signaled spiritual transformation. What happened? What factors contributed to their demise? What broader insights can be gleaned from the rapid rise and fall of the movement?
John P. Bartkowski has written the first account scrutinizing the turbulent forces that contributed to the group’s wild popularity, declining fortunes, and current efforts to reinvent itself. He provides a broad and balanced portrait of the movement while evaluating its impact on the landscape of American religion. Bartkowski argues that there are many insights to be gained about the changing contours of American religion, culture, and social life through a study of the Promise Keepers. By carefully examining their character and contagious appeal, Bartkowski provides new insights about evangelicalism, gender, family, therapeutic culture, sport, and multiculturalism.
Why has religion persisted across the course of human history? Secularists have predicted the end of faith for a long time, but religions continue to attract followers. Meanwhile, scholars of religion have expanded their field to such an extent that we lack a basic framework for making sense of the chaos of religious phenomena. To remedy this state of affairs, Martin Riesebrodt here undertakes a task that is at once simple and monumental: to define, understand, and explain religion as a universal concept.
Instead of propounding abstract theories, Riesebrodt concentrates on the concrete realities of worship, examining religious holidays, conversion stories, prophetic visions, and life-cycle events. In analyzing these practices, his scope is appropriately broad, taking into consideration traditions in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Daoism, and Shinto. Ultimately, Riesebrodt argues, all religions promise to avert misfortune, help their followers manage crises, and bring both temporary blessings and eternal salvation. And, as The Promise of Salvation makes clear through abundant empirical evidence, religion will not disappear as long as these promises continue to help people cope with life.
Multifaceted insights into female life in prophetic contexts
Both prophets and prophetesses shared God’s divine will with the people of Israel, yet the voices of these women were often forgotten due to later prohibitions against women teaching in public. This latest volume of the Bible and Women series focuses on the intersection of gender and prophecy in the Former Prophets (Joshua to 2 Kings) as well as in the Latter Prophets of the Hebrew Bible. Essays examine how women appear in the iconography of the ancient world, the historical background of the phenomenon of prophecy, political and religious resistance by women in the biblical text, and gender symbolism and constructions in prophetic material as well as the metaphorical discourse of God. Contributors Michaela Bauks, Athalya Brenner-Idan, Ora Brison, L. Juliana Claassens, Marta García Fernández, Irmtraud Fischer, Maria Häusl, Rainer Kessler, Nancy C. Lee, Hanne Løland Levinson, Christl M. Maier, Ilse Müllner, Martti Nissinen, Ombretta Pettigiani, Ruth Poser, Benedetta Rossi, Silvia Schroer, and Omer Sergi draw insight into the texts from a range of innovative gender-oriented approaches.
This longstanding and highly regarded volume is the first to explore the doctrine of prophetic revelation, a critical and definitive area of Islamic religious and political thought. In it, the esteemed Islamic scholar Fazlur Rahman traces the inception of this doctrine from ancient Greek texts, its interpretation and elaboration by Muslim philosophers in order to suit their vision of the Prophet, and, finally, the varying degrees of acceptance of these convergent ideas by the Muslim orthodoxy.
The latest edition of this classic text includes a new foreword by Islamic studies expert Michael Sells, confirming Prophecy in Islam as the best source on its subject after more than half a century. This longstanding and highly regarded volume is the first to explore the doctrine of prophetic revelation, a critical and definitive area of Islamic religious and political thought. In it, the esteemed Islamic scholar Fazlur Rahman traces the inception of this doctrine from ancient Greek texts, its interpretation and elaboration by Muslim philosophers in order to suit their vision of the Prophet, and, finally, the varying degrees of acceptance of these convergent ideas by the Muslim orthodoxy.
The latest edition of this classic text includes a new foreword by Islamic studies expert Michael Sells, confirming Prophecy in Islam as the best source on its subject after more than half a century.
Volume 18, The Leonard J. Arrington Lecture Series
The Special Collections and Archives of Utah State University's Merrill-Cazier Library houses the personal and historical collection of Leonard J. Arrington, renowned scholar of the American West.
The Leonard J. Arrington Mormon History Lecture annually hosts the presentation of current research by a leading scholar. Among the lecturers have been such notable historians as Thomas G. Alexander, Richard L. Bushman, Sarah Barringer Gordon, Howard Lamar, Jan Shipps, Donald Worster, and Pulitzer Prize-winner Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.
American culture warriors have plenty to argue about, but battles over such issues as abortion and torture have as much to do with rhetorical style as moral substance. Cathleen Kaveny reframes the debate about religion in the public square by focusing on a powerful stream of religious discourse in American political speech: the Biblical rhetoric of prophetic indictment.
“Important and path-breaking. The place of religious discourse in the American public square has received much attention for many years, but the role of prophetic indictment has been largely overlooked. Kaveny’s book not only opens a ‘new front’ in these debates, but starts the conversation with a rich analysis of the history and function of prophetic discourse.”
—Kathleen A. Brady, Commonweal
“A monumental achievement, and a much-needed addition to the academic and societal conversation about the role of religion in public life. In precise prose and with careful analysis, Kaveny challenges some of the leading theorists about public discourse and puts forward her own theories, all accompanied by a storyteller’s gift for anecdote and a philosopher’s talent for explication.”
—Michael Sean Winters, National Catholic Reporter
In nineteenth-century America, many black women left their homes, their husbands, and their children to spread the Word of God. Descendants of slaves or former “slave girls” themselves, they traveled all over the country, even abroad, preaching to audiences composed of various races, denominations, sexes, and classes, offering their own interpretations of the Bible. When they were denied the pulpit because of their sex, they preached in tents, bush clearings, meeting halls, private homes, and other spaces. They dealt with domestic ideologies that positioned them as subservient in the home, and with racist ideologies that positioned them as naturally inferior to whites. They also faced legalities restricting blacks socially and physically and the socioeconomic reality of often being part of a large body of unskilled laborers.
Jarena Lee, Julia Foote, Maria Stewart, and Frances Gaudet were four women preachers who endured such hardships because of their religious convictions. Often quoting from the scripture, they insisted that they were indeed prophesying daughters whom God called upon to preach. Significantly, many of these women preachers wrote autobiographies in which they present images of assertive, progressive, pious women—steadfast and unmovable in their religious beliefs and bold in voicing their concerns about the moral standing of their race and society at large.
Chanta M. Haywood examines these autobiographies to provide new insight into the nature of prophesying, offering an alternative approach to literature with strong religious imagery. She analyzes how these four women employed rhetorical and political devices in their narratives, using religious discourse to deconstruct race, class, and gender issues of the nineteenth century.
By exploring how religious beliefs become an avenue for creating alternative ideologies, Prophesying Daughters will appeal to students and scholars of African American literature, women’s studies, and religious studies.
Some of the contributors to this anthology look at the religious side of the prophet and explore his inner, spiritual world. Others look at secular issues. Some view the relevance of his activity as a treasure seer since this is one part of the puzzle that has not been fully investigated by Mormons generally.
In pursuing the prophet puzzle, contributors seek to understand Joseph Smith, not to judge him, knowing that he is an enigma for believer and skeptic alike. As non-Mormon historian Jan Shipps, a contributor to this collection, observes, “The mystery of Mormonism cannot be solved until we solve the mystery of Joseph Smith.”
Contributors include Thomas G. Alexander, Robert D. Anderson, Gary James Bergera, Newell G. Bringhurst, Richard L. Bushman, Eugene England, Lawrence Foster, Ronald V. Huggins, Lance S. Owens, Karl C. Sandberg, Jan Shipps, Joseph Smith, Susan Staker, Alan Taylor, Richard S. Van Wagoner, Dan Vogel, and Steven C. Walker.
The United States was founded on a commitment to religious tolerance. Based on this commitment, it has become one of the most religiously diverse and religiously observant liberal democracies in the world. Inherent in this political reality is the question, "What is the appropriate relationship between religious beliefs and public life?" This is not a new question, but in contemporary US politics it has become a particularly insistent one. In this intelligent, wide-ranging book, Kristin Heyer provides new and nuanced answers.
Prophetic and Public employs the discourse of public theology to consider what constitutes appropriate religio-political engagement. According to Heyer, public theology connects religious faith, concepts, and practices to their public relevance for the wider society. Her use of public theology concepts to address the appropriate possibilities and limits for religio-political engagement in the United States is both useful and enlightening.
Heyer approaches the relationship between public morality and religious commitment through the example of the Catholic Church. She looks at two prominent Catholics—Michael Baxter and Bryan Hehir—as a way of discussing norms for practice of public theology. Heyer also analyzes case studies of three US Catholic advocacy groups: The US Conference of Catholic Bishops, NETWORK, and Pax Christi USA. Through her analysis she shows the various ways that the organizations' Catholic identity impacts their social and political efforts. From her investigations come norms that define possibilities and limits for political actions based on religious conviction.
This deeply thoughtful book examines what is truly fundamental and inescapable about public life and private religious belief in the United States. In doing so, it makes skillful use of the tools of theology, philosophy, law, and advocacy to demonstrate that the Catholic Church reveals great diversity in its public theology, providing legitimate options for a faithful response to urgent political issues.
Michael Hubbard MacKay traces the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' claim to religious authority and sets it within the context of its times. Delving into the evolution of the concept of prophetic authority, MacKay shows how the Church emerged as a hierarchical democracy with power diffused among leaders Smith chose. At the same time, Smith's settled place atop the hierarchy granted him an authority that spared early Mormonism the internal conflict that doomed other religious movements. Though Smith faced challenges from other leaders, the nascent Church repeatedly turned to him to decide civic plans and define the order of both the cosmos and the priesthood.
To the practical modern mind, the idea of divine prophecy is more ludicrous than sublime. Yet to our cultural forebears in ancient Greece and Rome, prophecy was anything but marginal; it was in fact the basic medium for recalling significant past events and expressing hopes for the future, and it offered assurance that divinities truly cared about mere mortals. Prophecy also served political ends, and it was often invoked to support or condemn an emperor's actions. In Prophets and Emperors, David Potter shows us how prophecy worked, how it could empower, and how the diverse inhabitants of the Roman Empire used it to make sense of their world.
This is a fascinating account of prophecy as a social, religious, and political phenomenon. The various systems of prophecy--including sacred books, oracles, astrological readings, interpretation of dreams, the sayings of holy men and women--come into sharp relief. Potter explores the use of prophecy as a nieans of historical analysis and political communication, and he describes it in the context of the ancient city. Finally, he traces the reformation of the prophetic tradition under the influence of Christianity in the fourth century.
Drawing on diverse evidence--from inscriptions and ancient prophetic books to Greek and Roman historians and the Bible--Potter has produced a study that will engage anyone interested in the religions of the ancient Mediterranean and in the history and politics of the Roman Empire.
A new, expanded edition of a classic reference tool
This volume of more than 170 documents of prophecy from the ancient Near East brings together a representative sample of written documents from Mesopotamia, the Levant, and Egypt dating to the second and first millennia BCE. Nissinen's collection provides nonspecialist readers clear translations, transliterations, and discussions of oracles reports and collections, quotations of prophetic messages in letters and literature, and texts that reference persons with prophetic titles. This second edition includes thirty-four new texts.
Features:
- Modern, idiomatic, and readable English translations
- Thirty-four new translations
- Contributions of West Semitic, Egyptian, and Luwian sources from C. L. Seow, Robert K. Ritner, and H. Craig Melchert
The leading voices in science studies have argued that modern science reflects dominant social interests of Western society. Following this logic, postmodern scholars have urged postcolonial societies to develop their own “alternative sciences” as a step towards “mental decolonization”. These ideas have found a warm welcome among Hindu nationalists who came to power in India in the early 1990s. In this passionate and highly original study, Indian-born author Meera Nanda reveals how these well-meaning but ultimately misguided ideas are enabling Hindu ideologues to propagate religious myths in the guise of science and secularism.
At the heart of Hindu supremacist ideology, Nanda argues, lies a postmodernist assumption: that each society has its own norms of reasonableness, logic, rules of evidence, and conception of truth, and that there is no non-arbitrary, culture-independent way to choose among these alternatives. What is being celebrated as “difference” by postmodernists, however, has more often than not been the source of mental bondage and authoritarianism in non-Western cultures. The “Vedic sciences” currently endorsed in Indian schools, colleges, and the mass media promotes the same elements of orthodox Hinduism that have for centuries deprived the vast majority of Indian people of their full humanity.
By denouncing science and secularization, the left was unwittingly contributing to what Nanda calls “reactionary modernism.” In contrast, Nanda points to the Dalit, or untouchable, movement as a true example of an “alternative science” that has embraced reason and modern science to challenge traditional notions of hierarchy.
"[A] fascinating and sometimes iconoclastic view of saints in the medieval period." —Sandra R. O'Neal, Theological Studies
"[An] important new book. . . . [And] an excellent piece of scholarship." —Diane L. Mockridge, Method & Theory in the Study of Religion
"[Kleinberg's] style is clear and accessible and his observations insightful; the book is a pleasure to read." —Veronica Lawrence, Theological Book Review
"Original and interesting. . . . [Kleinberg] has made a major contribution." —Anne L. Clark, American Historical Review
"Kleinberg's concern is not just with perceptions of sanctity, but, refreshingly, with what actually happened: and he is especially good on the conflict of the two. . . . [This] is not just a book but a way of thought, and one that promises interesting conversations at all levels from the church porch to the tutorial and the academic conference." —Helen Cooper, Times Literary Supplement
A valuable resource with productive avenues for inquiry
In this collection of essays dealing with the prophetic material in the Hebrew Bible, scholars explore the motifs, effects, and role of forced migration on prophetic literature. Contributors focus on the study of geographical displacement, social identity ethics, trauma studies, theological diversification, hermeneutical strategies in relation to the memory, and the effects of various exilic conditions in order to open new avenues of study into the history of Israelite religion and early Judaism.
Features:
- An introductory essay that presents a history of scholarship and an overview of the collection
- Ten essays examining the rhetoric of exile in the prophets
- Current, thorough approaches to the issues and problems related to historical and cultural features of exile in biblical literature
The Prophet’s Whistle is a study of the ancient, nonliterary features of the Quran, many of which are often overlooked by historians and the public. George Archer corrects this striking absence by using observations from the anthropologies of living oral cultures, the cognitive sciences of literacy, and the study of other dead oral cultures. The Prophet’s Whistle shows that the thought systems of the Quran are oral, through and through, but by the end of the life of its Prophet, the Quran likewise hints at a personal and cultural embrace of writing and the mindsets of literate people.
One of the most heated debates in recent times among Christian ethicians has been over what has come to be called "proportionalism." Opponents have argued that proportionalists are intent on relativizing theology norms and theh concept of intrinsic evil. Proponents, on the other hand, argue that they are merely developing a traditional notion of proportion of reason. Bernard Hoose puts this debate in context by showing its roots in the writings of European moral theologians and its flowering in the writings of their American colleagues. He uncovers a number of confusions that have bedeviled the argument while revealing how important the issues are for establishing in coherent Christian ethics in the twentieth century.
Jeffrey Nichols examines how prostitution became a focal point in the moral contest between Mormons and gentiles and aided in the construction of gender systems, moral standards, and the city's physical and economic landscapes. Gentiles likened polygamy to prostitution and accused polygamous Mormons of violating Christian norms of family structure and sexual behavior. Defending their church and its ideals, Mormons blamed gentiles for introducing the sinful business of prostitution into their honorable city. Nichols traces the interplay of prostitution and reform from the 1890s, when the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began to move away from polygamy, to World War I, when Mormon and gentile moral codes converged at the expense of prostitutes. He also considers how the conflict over polygamy distinguished Salt Lake City from other cities struggling to abolish prostitution in the Progressive Era.
In The Protestant Ethic Revisited, pioneering sociologist Philip Gorski revisits the question raised by Max Weber in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism about how the Christian West was reshaped by world-changing energies of the Calvinist movement. Gorski not only considers the perennial debate about religion and capitalism, but he also devotes particular attention to the influence of Calvinism on the political development of the West.
The Protestant Ethic Revisited is a masterful new collection of Gorski's essays on religion and comparative historical sociology. Reflecting the aim of much of Gorski's work, this anthology shows how nationalism, secularism, politics, and religion in public life are either older—or less stable—than previously thought.
"In Protestant-Catholic-Jew Will Herberg has written the most fascinating essay on the religious sociology of America that has appeared in decades. He has digested all the relevant historical, sociological and other analytical studies, but the product is no mere summary of previous findings. He has made these findings the basis of a new and creative approach to the American scene. It throws as much light on American society as a whole as it does on the peculiarly religious aspects of American life. Mr. Herberg. . . illumines many facets of the American reality, and each chapter presents surprising, and yet very compelling, theses about the religious life of this country. Of all these perhaps the most telling is his thesis that America is not so much a melting pot as three fairly separate melting pots."—Reinhold Niebuhr, New Yorks Times Book Review
Based on extensive field research, including interviews with notable figures in the Protestant churches in the region, the essays in this volume address broad topics such as the church's involvment in environmentalism, pacifism, and other dissident movements, as well as issues particular to Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, (1949–1989), Hungary, Yugoslavia (1945-1991), Bulgaria, and Romania. The final volume in the three-volume work "Christianity Under Stress," Protestantism and Politics in Eastern Europe and Russia will prove invaluable to anyone hoping to understand not only the workings of religion under Communism, but the historical and contemporary interactions of church and state in general.
Contributors. Paul Bock, Lawrence Klippenstein, Paul Mojzes, Earl A. Pope, Joseph Pungur, Sabrina Petra Ramet, Walter Sawatsky, N. Gerald Shenk, Gerd Stricker, Sape A. Zylstra
A new critical text for Proverbs drawing from many manuscripts
This first volume of The Hebrew Bible: A Critical Edition series, features a critical text of Proverbs with extensive text-critical introductions and commentaries. This and future HBCE volumes bring together a scholar’s critical decisions into a single text. construct an eclectic text, drawing from many manuscripts or placing entirely variant texts side by side. A common approach for critical editions of other ancient books, including the New Testament, the eclectic approach and scope used in the HBCE is a first of its kind for the Hebrew Bible.
Features:
- Emendations set in context rather than singly and marginally
- Introduction that sets out the method and purpose of the volume
- Extensive list of abbreviations and sigla
Spirited verse.
Prudentius (Aurelius Prudentius Clemens) was born in AD 348 probably at Caesaraugusta (Saragossa) and lived mostly in northeastern Spain, but visited Rome between 400 and 405. His parents, presumably Christian, had him educated in literature and rhetoric. He became a barrister and at least once later on an administrator; he afterwards received some high honor from Emperor Theodosius. Prudentius was a strong Christian who admired the old pagan literature and art, especially the great Latin poets whose forms he used. He looked on the Roman achievement in history as a preparation for the coming of Christ and the triumph of a spiritual empire.
The Loeb Classical Library edition of the poems of Prudentius is in two volumes. Volume I presents: “Preface” (Praefatio); “The Daily Round” (Liber Cathemerinon); twelve literary and attractive hymns, parts of which have been included in the Breviary and in modern hymnals; “The Divinity of Christ” (Apotheosis), which maintains the Trinity and attacks those who denied the distinct personal being of Christ; “The Origin of Sin” (Hamartigenia) attacking the separation of the “strict” God of the Old Testament from the “good” God revealed by Christ; “Fight for Mansoul” (Psychomachia), which describes the struggle between (Christian) Virtues and (Pagan) Vices; and the first book of “Against the Address of Symmachus” (Contra Orationem Symmachi), in which pagan gods are assailed.
The second volume contains the second book of “Against the Address of Symmachus,” opposing a petition for the replacement of an altar and statue of Victory; “Crowns of Martyrdom” (Peristephanon Liber), fourteen hymns to martyrs mostly of Spain; “Lines To Be Inscribed under Scenes from History” (Tituli Historiarum), forty-nine four-line stanzas that are inscriptions for scenes from the Bible depicted on the walls of a church; and an Epilogue.
Spirited verse.
Prudentius (Aurelius Prudentius Clemens) was born in AD 348 probably at Caesaraugusta (Saragossa) and lived mostly in northeastern Spain, but visited Rome between 400 and 405. His parents, presumably Christian, had him educated in literature and rhetoric. He became a barrister and at least once later on an administrator; he afterwards received some high honor from Emperor Theodosius. Prudentius was a strong Christian who admired the old pagan literature and art, especially the great Latin poets whose forms he used. He looked on the Roman achievement in history as a preparation for the coming of Christ and the triumph of a spiritual empire.
The Loeb Classical Library edition of the poems of Prudentius is in two volumes. Volume I presents: “Preface” (Praefatio); “The Daily Round” (Liber Cathemerinon); twelve literary and attractive hymns, parts of which have been included in the Breviary and in modern hymnals; “The Divinity of Christ” (Apotheosis), which maintains the Trinity and attacks those who denied the distinct personal being of Christ; “The Origin of Sin” (Hamartigenia) attacking the separation of the “strict” God of the Old Testament from the “good” God revealed by Christ; “Fight for Mansoul” (Psychomachia), which describes the struggle between (Christian) Virtues and (Pagan) Vices; and the first book of “Against the Address of Symmachus” (Contra Orationem Symmachi), in which pagan gods are assailed.
The second volume contains the second book of “Against the Address of Symmachus,” opposing a petition for the replacement of an altar and statue of Victory; “Crowns of Martyrdom” (Peristephanon Liber), fourteen hymns to martyrs mostly of Spain; “Lines To Be Inscribed under Scenes from History” (Tituli Historiarum), forty-nine four-line stanzas that are inscriptions for scenes from the Bible depicted on the walls of a church; and an Epilogue.
Sigmund Mowinckel is widely recognized as one of the leading forces in Psalms research during the twentieth century. Indeed, the culmination of Mowinckel’s thought and work, The Psalms in Israel’s Worship, continues to play a significant role in Psalms scholarship today. Not as well known are the seminal studies that prepared the ground for Mowinckel’s later work, the six Psalmenstudien that are translated here into English for the first time. In these studies Mowinckel explores with care and in detail such topics as: “'Awen and the Psalms of Individual Lament”; “YHWH’s Enthronement Festival and the Origin of Eschatology”; “Cultic Prophecy and Prophetic Psalms”; “The Technical Terms in the Psalm Superscriptions”; “Blessing and Curse in Israel’s Cult and Psalmody”; and “The Psalmists.” Anyone interested in Psalms study, especially the possible role of the New Year’s enthronement festival within Israel’s cult and its relation to the Psalter, will find much to consider in these classic works.
Sigmund Mowinckel is widely recognized as one of the leading forces in Psalms research during the twentieth century. Indeed, the culmination of Mowinckel’s thought and work, The Psalms in Israel’s Worship, continues to play a significant role in Psalms scholarship today. Not as well known are the seminal studies that prepared the ground for Mowinckel’s later work, the six Psalmenstudien that are translated here into English for the first time. In these studies Mowinckel explores with care and in detail such topics as: “'Awen and the Psalms of Individual Lament”; “YHWH’s Enthronement Festival and the Origin of Eschatology”; “Cultic Prophecy and Prophetic Psalms”; “The Technical Terms in the Psalm Superscriptions”; “Blessing and Curse in Israel’s Cult and Psalmody”; and “The Psalmists.” Anyone interested in Psalms study, especially the possible role of the New Year’s enthronement festival within Israel’s cult and its relation to the Psalter, will find much to consider in these classic works.
A fresh analysis of that sheds new light on the Psalms of Solomon
Researchers whose work focuses on the Psalms of Solomon, experts on the Septuagint, and scholars of Jewish Hellenistic literature take a fresh look at debates surrounding the text. Authors engage linguistic, historical, and theological issues including the original language of the psalms, their historical setting, and their theological intentions with the goal of expanding our understanding of first-century BCE Jewish theology.
Features:
- New methods applied to open questions of authorship and historical context
- Focusd scholarly attention on a work of theological and literary importance
- Revised essays originally presented at the First International Meeting on the Psalms of Solomon
Explore new approaches to the Psalms of Solomon
The Psalms of Solomon: Texts, Contexts, and Intertexts explores a unique pseudepigraphal document that bears witness to the 63 BCE Roman conquest of Jerusalem. Essays address a variety of themes, notably their political, social, religious, and historical contexts, through the lens of anthropology of religion, cognitive science, socioeconomic theory, and more. Contributors include Kenneth Atkinson, Eberhard Bons, Johanna Erzberger, Angela Kim Harkins, G. Anthony Keddie, Patrick Pouchelle, Stefan Schreiber, Shani Tzoref, and Rodney A. Werline.
A stimilating description and interpretation of the recurrence of the Christ archetype in the modern novel. Moseley discusses novelists from Conrad and Turgenev to Camus and Hemingway.
The first sustained conversation between Marxism, postcolonialism, and psychoanalysis in biblical studies
This volume pursues critical readings of the Bible that put psychoanalysis into conversation with Marxist and postcolonial criticism. In these essays psychoanalysis provides a way to mediate between Marxism's materialist groundings and postcolonialism's resistance against empire. The essays in the volume illuminate the way empire has shaped the biblical text by looking at the biblical texts' silences, ruptures, oversights, over-emphases, and inexplicable elements. These details are read as symptoms of a set of oppressive material relations that shaped and continue to haunt the text in the ascendancy of the text in the name of the West.
Features:
- Essays and responses from multiple perspectives and geographical locations, including Africa, Australia, Oceania, Latin America, and North America
- Psychoanalysis that considers how the traumas of colonialism manifest both materially and psychically
- Close readings of biblical texts
Because Christianity and psychology deal with different levels of truth and speak vastly different languages, efforts to unify them often create more problems than they solve. What is needed is a better way to think about the relationship—an approach that does justice to the emerging insights from psychological science and biblical scholarship and that can enrich our understanding of both. In this volume, two accomplished psychologists show how this complementary dialogue can unfold, giving us a broader, deeper understanding of ourselves, our relationships, and our place in the cosmos.
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With this goal in mind, editors Timothy Sisemore and Joshua Knabb have made one of the world’s major religions the subject of a separate chapter. In addition, they have arranged for each chapter to be written by a psychologist who practices—or is culturally connected with—that religion. This marks the book’s unique contribution to the field: it is the product of people who have lived the world’s religions, not merely studied them. By taking such a respectful approach, the book promotes an appreciation for the ways that religious belief animates, inspires, and instructs its adherents. Moreover, the indigenous point-of-view of these essays will help scholars identify their own biases when researching religious groups, allowing them to produce more accurate and holistic analyses.
Psychologists understand that religion and spirituality provide meaning and purpose to billions of people around the globe. But the actual experience of these beliefs eludes the grasp of the reductionistic methods of science. With this resource at their side, psychologists in academic and clinical settings will be equipped to understand religious experience from the bottom-up, and honor the beliefs and practices of the people they are trying to help.
For thousands of years, political leaders have unified communities by aligning them against common enemies. However, today more than ever, the search for “common” enemies results in anything but unanimity. Scapegoats like Saddam Hussein, for example, led to a stark polarization in the United States. Renowned neuropsychiatrist and psychologist Jean-Michel Oughourlian proposes that the only authentic enemy is the one responsible for both everyday frustrations and global dangers, such as climate change—ourselves. Oughourlian, who pioneered an “interdividual” psychology with René Girard, reveals how all people are bound together in a dynamic, contingent process of imitation, and shows that the same patterns of irrational mimetic desire that bring individuals together and push them apart also explain the behavior of nations.
A provocative look at America on the couch.In Psychotherapy as Religion, William Epstein sets out to debunk claims that psychotherapy provides successful clinical treatment for a wide range of personal and social problems. He argues that the practice is not a science at all but rather the civil religion of America, reflecting the principles of radical self-invention and self-reliance deeply embedded in the psyche of the nation. Epstein begins by analyzing a number of clinical studies conducted over the past two decades that purport to establish the effectiveness of psychotherapeutic treatments. He finds that each study violates in some way the standard criteria of scientific credibility and that the field has completely failed to establish objective procedures and measurements to assess clinical outcomes. Epstein exposes psychotherapy’s deep roots in the religious and intellectual movements of the early nineteenth century by demonstrating striking parallels between various types of therapy and such popular practices as Christian Science and spiritualism. Psychotherapy has taken root in our culture because it so effectively reflects our national faith in individual responsibility for social and personal problems. It thrives as the foundation of American social welfare policy, blaming deviance and misery on deficiencies of character rather than on the imperfections of society and ignoring the influence of unequal and deficient social conditions while requiring miscreants to undergo the moral reeducation that psychotherapy represents. This is a provocative, brilliantly argued look at America on the couch. Psychotherapy as Religion is essential reading for anyone interested in the history and current state of mental health.
Documenting a wide range of reactions to two radically different events—the invasion of Iraq and the creation of the faith-based initiatives program—Tipton charts the new terrain of religious and moral argument under the Bush administration from Pat Robertson to Jim Wallis. He then turns to the case of the United Methodist Church, of which President Bush is a member, to uncover the twentieth-century history of their political advocacy, culminating in current threats to split the Church between liberal peace-and-justice activists and crusaders for evangelical renewal. Public Pulpits balances the firsthand drama of this internal account with a meditative exploration of the wider social impact that mainline churches have had in a time of diverging fortunes and diminished dreams of progress.
An eminently fair-minded and ethically astute analysis of how churches keep moral issues alive in politics, Public Pulpits delves deep into mainline Protestant efforts to enlarge civic conscience and cast clearer light on the commonweal and offers a masterly overview of public religion in America.
During the 1980s, religious traditions around the world, from Islamic fundamentalism to Catholic liberation theology, began making their way, often forcefully, out of the private sphere and into public life, causing the "deprivatization" of religion in contemporary life. No longer content merely to administer pastoral care to individual souls, religious institutions are challenging dominant political and social forces, raising questions about the claims of entities such as nations and markets to be "value neutral", and straining the traditional connections of private and public morality.
Casanova looks at five cases from two religious traditions (Catholicism and Protestantism) in four countries (Spain, Poland, Brazil, and the United States). These cases challenge postwar—and indeed post-Enlightenment—assumptions about the role of modernity and secularization in religious movements throughout the world.
This book expands our understanding of the increasingly significant role religion plays in the ongoing construction of the modern world.
Public Spectacles in Roman and Late Antique Palestine introduces readers to the panoply of public entertainment that flourished in Palestine from the first century BCE to the sixth century CE. Drawing on a trove of original archaeological and textual evidence, Zeev Weiss reconstructs an ancient world where Romans, Jews, and Christians intermixed amid a heady brew of shouts, roars, and applause to watch a variety of typically pagan spectacles.
Ancient Roman society reveled in many such spectacles—dramatic performances, chariot races, athletic competitions, and gladiatorial combats—that required elaborate public venues, often maintained at great expense. Wishing to ingratiate himself with Rome, Herod the Great built theaters, amphitheaters, and hippodromes to bring these forms of entertainment to Palestine. Weiss explores how the indigenous Jewish and Christian populations responded, as both spectators and performers, to these cultural imports. Perhaps predictably, the reactions of rabbinic and clerical elites did not differ greatly. But their dire warnings to shun pagan entertainment did little to dampen the popularity of these events.
Herod’s ambitious building projects left a lasting imprint on the region. His dream of transforming Palestine into a Roman enclave succeeded far beyond his rule, with games and spectacles continuing into the fifth century CE. By then, however, public entertainment in Palestine had become a cultural institution in decline, ultimately disappearing during Justinian’s reign in the sixth century.
Italian preachers during the Reformation era found themselves in the trenches of a more desperate war than anything they had ever imagined. This war—the splintering of western Christendom into conflicting sects—was physically but also spiritually violent. In an era of tremendous religious convolution, fluidity, and danger, preachers of all kinds spoke from the pulpit daily, weekly, or seasonally to confront the hottest controversies of their time. Preachers also turned to the printing press in unprecedented numbers to spread their messages.
Emily Michelson challenges the stereotype that Protestants succeeded in converting Catholics through superior preaching and printing. Catholic preachers were not simply reactionary and uncreative mouthpieces of a monolithic church. Rather, they deftly and imaginatively grappled with the question of how to preserve the orthodoxy of their flock and maintain the authority of the Roman church while also confronting new, undeniable lay demands for inclusion and participation.
These sermons—almost unknown in English until now—tell a new story of the Reformation that credits preachers with keeping Italy Catholic when the region’s religious future seemed uncertain, and with fashioning the post-Reformation Catholicism that thrived into the modern era. By deploying the pulpit, pen, and printing press, preachers in Italy created a new religious culture that would survive in an unprecedented atmosphere of competition and religious choice.
Pulpits of the Lost Cause: The Faith and Politics of Former Confederate Chaplains during Reconstruction is the first in-depth study of former chaplains that juxtaposes their religion and politics, thereby revealing important insights about the Lost Cause movement. Steve Longenecker demonstrates that while some former chaplains vigorously defended the Lost Cause and were predictably conservative in the pulpit, embracing orthodoxy and resisting religious innovation, others were unexpectedly progressive and advocated on behalf of evolution, theological liberalism, and modern biblical criticism.
Former Confederate chaplains embodied both the distinctive white, Southern, regional identity and the variation within it. Most were theologically conservative and Lost Cause racists. But as with the larger South, variation abounded. The Lost Cause, which Longenecker interprets as a broad popular movement with numerous versions, meant different things to different chaplains. It ranged from diehard-ism to tempered sectional forgiveness to full reconciliation to a harmless once-a-year Decoration Day ritual.
This volume probes the careers of ten former chaplains, including their childhoods, wartime experiences, Lost Cause personas, and theologies, making use of manuscripts and published sermons as well as newspapers, diaries, memoirs, denominational periodicals, letters, and the books they themselves produced. In theology, many former chaplains were predictably conservative, while others were unexpectedly broad-minded and advocated evolution, theological liberalism, and modern Biblical criticism. One former chaplain became a social-climbing Harvard progressive. Another wrote innovative, liberal theology read by European scholars. Yet another espoused racial equality, at least in theory if not full practice. Additionally, former chaplains often exhibited the fundamental human trait of compartmentalization, most notably by extolling the past as they celebrated the Lost Cause while simultaneously looking to the future as religious progressives or New South boosters. The stereotypical preacher of the Lost Cause—a gray-clad Bible thumper—existed sufficiently to create the image but hardly enough to be universally accurate.
Understanding and expressing unconditional love—also called agape love—can be a lifelong quest. First, however, we must ask ourselves and others what it is. Is it an action, a universal energy, or a creative principle? And if we understand it, can its expression ever be realized, or is it simply a divine attribute?
These and other questions are addressed in an inspirational and practical style in this philosophical essay from Sir John Templeton. He seeks to define pure, unlimited love as the "transcendent power of divine love that expresses itself through our hearts and minds when we are open and receptive to it." Its greatest attributes are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Another important concept is that God's love is given to us because we seek and accept it, not because we deserve it. It is the humble and sincere person who is most receptive to God's perfect love. This love can be awakened in other people through the action of love itself. We learn what it is from those who have it, and we can begin to recognize it through loving service to others.
Basic reality seems to be that the more you try to be like God by radiating unlimited love, the more you become flooded by waves of love from others and from God. Sir John summarizes with the statement, "How wonderful it would be if we could begin to say whenever we meet or depart, 'God loves you and I do too.'" This, in fact, is the essence of pure, unlimited love—a concept we can understand and can begin to practice in our daily lives. This thoughtful book can serve as an inspiration as well as a step-by-step guide on how to put this into practice.
The nature of Puritanism in America and the role of emotion in religion is the subject of this important and useful collection of five religious orations, discussed and appraised by Professor White for students of Puritanism and rhetoric. The five orations presented here consist of three by Jonathan Edwards, “Future Punishment,” “Distinguishing Marks,” and “The Nature of the Affections”; one by Charles Chauncy, “Enthusiasm Described and Caution’d Against”; and one by Ebenezer Gay, “Natural Religion, as Distinguished from Revealed.”
In the first or introductory part of the book, Professor White discusses in considerable detail the broader implications of the confrontation between rationalists and revivalists in New England, represented by the following orations, during this most important upheaval in the Colonies prior to the Revolution. The orations themselves are arranged to represent the force and counterforce of reason versus emotionalism and the precarious balance maintained momentarily and, eventually, lost. And in the third part of the book Professor White provides critical analysis and suggested appraisal for further interpretation and inquiry.
Puritan Spirits in the Abolitionist Imagination reveals how the leaders of the nineteenth-century abolitionist movement—from landmark figures like Ralph Waldo Emerson to scores of lesser-known writers and orators—drew upon the Puritan tradition to shape their politics and personae. In a striking instance of selective memory, reimagined aspects of Puritan history proved to be potent catalysts for abolitionist minds. Black writers lauded slave rebels as new Puritan soldiers, female antislavery militias in Kansas were cast as modern Pilgrims, and a direct lineage of radical democracy was traced from these early New Englanders through the American and French Revolutions to the abolitionist movement, deemed a “Second Reformation” by some. Kenyon Gradert recovers a striking influence on abolitionism and recasts our understanding of puritanism, often seen as a strictly conservative ideology, averse to the worldly rebellion demanded by abolitionists.
Puritanism and Modernist Novels offers new formal and contextual readings of early modernist novels by Oscar Wilde, E. M. Forster, James Joyce, and Ford Madox Ford. Hinojosa demonstrates that, while they long for escape, these authors still question the value of the novelistic narrative of confinement and escape. Bridging modernist and novel studies, Puritanism and Modernist Novels contributes to conversations about secularization and religion in both fields, highlighting the limitations created by the secularization narrative of modernity.
Eighty million baby boomers are heading toward retirement. Some are retiring now, either out of choice or because they have been laid off. Others will work for a few more years until their retirement plans kick in, until they feel they can retire, or until they're forced to retire. Whatever their age at retirement, they will have better health and live longer than their parents. And each of them will face these questions:
•Do I want a reason to get up in the morning and be excited about the day ahead?•Do I still want to make a difference in the world?
They need a vision—a goal that takes into account their experience, wisdom, strengths, and limitations, and gives purpose to their lives.
Dr. Harold G. Koenig, with expertise in the fields of geriatrics, mental health, and religion, explains that the notion of retirement was in fact a marketing tool developed in the post–World War II period. Continuing today, society's image of retirement is based largely on myths, such as: things will get better when you retire—you'll be able to do everything you wanted to but couldn't when you worked. In fact, these beliefs can be harmful, leading to emotional issues, identity crises, and problems with physical health.
Citing current scientific and medical research, Koenig illustrates how having a purpose motivates and energizes people in their retirement years. He presents a step-by-step guide to identifying a goal toward which they can strive. And he shows how striving for that goal in itself brings meaning, satisfaction, and a sense of reward to retirement years.
"Finding purpose is more urgent than ever during the retirement years, when the search for purpose becomes one of the deepest of human longings," says Koenig. His Purpose and Power in Retirement is an invaluable resource for everyone heading toward retirement, and for anyone seeking meaning in life.
The key, he argues, is simple: direct, systematic, and creative programs that engage undergraduates on the question of purpose. Backing up his argument with rich data from a Lilly Endowment grant that funded such programs on eighty-eight different campuses, he shows that thoughtful engagement of the notion of vocational calling by students, faculty, and staff can bring rich rewards for all those involved: greater intellectual development, more robust community involvement, and a more proactive approach to lifelong goals. Nearly every institution he examines—from internationally acclaimed research universities to small liberal arts colleges—is a success story, each designing and implementing its own program, that provides students with deep resources that help them to launch flourishing lives.
Flying in the face of the pessimistic forecast of higher education’s emaciated future, Clydesdale offers a profoundly rich alternative, one that can be achieved if we simply muster the courage to talk with students about who they are and what they are meant to do.
Pursuing Morality is an in-depth and fascinating study of ordinary life in Myanmar’s southeast through a unique ethnographic focus on Buddhist Plong (Pwo) Karen. Based on extensive in-depth fieldwork in the small city of Hpa-an, the capital of Karen State, Justine Chambers shines a new light on Plong Buddhists’ lives and the many ways they broker, traverse, enact, cultivate, defend, and pursue moral lives.
This is the first ethnographic study of Myanmar to add to a growing body of anthropological scholarship that is referred to as the “moral turn.” Each chapter examines the lives of Plong Buddhists from different vantage points, calling into question many assumptions about Southeast Asian values and the nature of Buddhist Theravada practice. Critiquing the notion that moral coherence is necessary for ethical selfhood, Chambers demonstrates how the pursuit of morality is varied, performative, and embedded in an affective notion of the self as a moral agent in a relationship with wider structural political forces. This vivid account of everyday life in Myanmar complements existing scholarship on the region and offers a deeper understanding of Buddhism, moral anthropology, and ethics in Southeast Asia.
The Pyramid under the Cross looks at the epic project of Christianization as well as the limits of the Spanish spiritual colonizers' power to accomplish it. The book focuses on activities of Franciscan missionaries who, as the first religious order to arrive, occupied the most important political and social centers in the Valley of Mexico and set the strategies of evangelization that others would follow. One such activity, the Nahua theater of evangelization, is represented as an exemplary case of the inevitable cultural negotiation involved in the missionary process. The author explores not only the imposition of a Eurocentric worldview upon the Nahua but also the hybridization of this view as the spiritual colonizer attempted to encompass a new non-Western constituency and the latter interpreted Christianity according to its own cultural paradigms.
The book treats a wide range of texts—the Historia eclesiástica indiana, the Confessionario Mayor, the Coloquios de los Doce, and more—both by renowned Franciscan figures such as Gerónimo de Mendieta, Alonso de Molina, Bernardino de Sahagún, and by Nahua grammarians Antonio Valeriano de Azcapotzalco, Andrés Leonardo de Tlatelolco, and others. Díaz Balsera engages the cultural constraints of all the actors in the episodes she relates in order to show how the exchange between them resulted in the appropriation and/or alteration of the Spanish discourses of spiritual domination—sometimes even in their breakdown—and how it brought about the emergence of Nahua Christian subjects that would never fully leave behind their ancient ways of relating to the gods.
The Pyramid under the Cross will be of interest to readers in the areas of Hispanic literatures, history, religion, anthropology, Latin American and cultural studies, and to those working in the field of colonial studies.
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