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The articles collected in this volume share a very similar goal: to decolonize our understanding of antiquity, thus allowing modernity to converse with antiquity without constraining the latter to be either the direct precedent or the thoroughly other of the former. It is certainly true that the past is a foreign country. However, history has repeatedly demonstrated that colonialism never contributed to mutual understanding and constructive exchange of ideas, and that such is the dialogue we should strive forthwith our contemporaries as well as with our ancestors.
Religion is living culture. It continues to play a role in shaping political ideologies, institutional practices, communities of interest, ways of life and social identities. Mediating Faiths brings together scholars working across a range of fields, including cultural studies, media, sociology, anthropology, cultural theory and religious studies, in order to facilitate greater understanding of recent transformations. Contributors illustrate how religion continues to be responsive to the very latest social and cultural developments in the environments in which it exists. They raise fundamental questions concerning new media and religious expression, religious youth cultures, the links between spirituality, personal development and consumer culture, and contemporary intersections of religion, identity and politics. Together the chapters demonstrate how belief in the superempirical is negotiated relative to secular concerns in the twenty-first century.
This book examines the relationship between several of the most prominent American biblical archaeologists and Zionism. While these scholars have been studied and historicized to some extent, little work has been done to understand their role in the history of the Palestinian–Israeli conflict. Two defining differences in the archaeologists’ arguments were their understanding of culture and their views on objectivity versus relativism. Brooke Sherrard Knorr argues that relativist archaeologists envisioned the ancient world as replete with cultural change and opposed the establishment of a Jewish state, while those who believed in scholarly objectivity both envisioned the ancient world’s...
Next Year in Jerusalem recognizes that Jews have often experienced or imaged periods of exile and return in their long tradition. The fourteen papers in this collection examine this phenomenon from different approaches, genres, and media. They cover the period from biblical times through today. Among the exiles highlighted are the Babylonian Exile (sixth century BCE), the exile after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple (70 CE), and the years after the Crusaders (tenth century CE). Events of return include the aftermath of the Babylonian Exile (fifth century BCE), the centuries after the Temple’s destruction (first and second CE), and the years of the establishment of the modern State of Israel (1948 CE). In each instance authors pay close attention to the historical settings, the literature created by Jews and others, and the theological explanations offered (typically, this was seen as divine punishment or reward for Israel’s behavior). The entire volume is written authoritatively and accessibly.
In The Origins of the Canon of the Hebrew Bible: An Analysis of Josephus and 4 Ezra, Juan Carlos Ossandón Widow examines the thorny question of when, how, and why the collection of twenty-four books that today is known as the Hebrew Bible was formed. He carefully studies the two earliest testimonies in this regard—Josephus’ Against Apion and 4 Ezra—and proposes that, along with the tendency to idealize the past, which leads to consider that divine revelation to Israel has ceased, an important reason to specify a collection of Scriptures at the end of the first century CE consisted in the need to defend the received tradition to counter those that accepted more books.
Is the New Testament inherently violent? In this book a well-regarded New Testament scholar offers a balanced critical assessment of charges and claims that the Christian scriptures encode, instigate, or justify violence. Thomas Yoder Neufeld provides a useful introduction to the language of violence in current theological discourse and surveys a wide range of key ethical New Testament texts through the lens of violence/nonviolence. He makes the case that, contrary to much scholarly opinion, the New Testament is not in itself inherently violent or supportive of violence; instead, it rejects and overcomes violence. [Published in the UK by SPCK as Jesus and the Subversion of Violence: Wrestling with the New Testament Evidence.]
Indigenous and African Diaspora Religions in the Americas explores spirit-based religious traditions across vast geographical and cultural expanses, including Canada, the United States, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico, Brazil, and Chile. Using interdisciplinary research methods, this collection of original perspectives breaks new ground by examining these traditions as typologically and historically related. This curated selection of the traditions allows readers to compare and highlight convergences, while the description and comparison of the traditions challenges colonial erasures and expands knowledge about endangered cultures. The inclusion of spirit-bas...
The first introduction to the history and method of biblical-psychological interpretation.
Religion in America, 7th Edition provides a comprehensive yet concise introduction to the changing religious landscape of the United States. Extensively revised and updated to reflect current events and trends, this new edition continues to engage students in reflection about religious diversity. Julia Corbett-Hemeyer presents the study of religion as a tool for developing appreciation of communities of faith other than one’s own and for understanding the dynamics at work in religion in the United States today.
First Published in 2015. Daily newspaper headlines, talk radio and cable television broadcasts, and Internet news web sites continuously highlight the relationship between religion and violence. These media contain stories about such diverse incidents as suicide attacks by Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Pakistan, and elsewhere, and assassinations of doctors who perform abortions by white American Christian true believers in the United States. How does one make sense of the role of religion in violence, and of perpetrators of violence who cite religion as a motivation? This encyclopedia includes a wide range of entries: biographies of key figures, historical events, religious groups, countries and regions where religion and violence have intersected, and practices, rituals, and processes of religious violence.