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This study highlights the contributions of the great philosopher-talmudist Moses Maimonides to the rationalist, “plain sense” (peshat) tradition of Jewish Bible exegesis, assessing his place in the Geonic-Andalusian school and showing how he harnessed Greco-Arabic learning to open new hermeneutical possibilities.
Notions of history and the past contained in literature of the Karaite Jewish sect offer insight into the relationship of Karaism to mainstream rabbinic Judaism and to Islam and Christianity. Karaite Judaism and Historical Understanding describes how a minority sectarian religious community constructs and uses historical ideology. It investigates the proportioning of historical ideology to law and doctrine and the influence of historical setting on religious writings about the past. Fred Astren discusses modes of representing the past, especially in Jewish culture, and then poses questions about the past in sectarian--particularly Judaic sectarian--contexts. He contrasts early Karait...
Judah Hadassi was the most prominent Karaite Jewish author of twelfth-century Byzantium, steeped in Karaite and Byzantine Greek traditions. In Theological Encounters at a Crossroads: An Edition and Translation of Judah Hadassi’s Eshkol ha-kofer, First Commandment, and Studies of the Book’s Judaeo-Arabic and Byzantine Contexts, a scientific edition of the first quarter of the Hebrew text of Hadassi’s magnum opus is presented with an English translation, a summary of his theology, a discussion of his use of the Greek language, and a linguistic analysis and transcription of all the Greek terms which appear in Hebrew letters in the entire treatise. This book should be of interest to students of Jewish thought, Hebrew literature and medieval Byzantine culture and language.
Joseph Dan, the Gershom Scholem Professor of Kabbalah Emeritus at the Hebrew University and long-time Professor of Jewish Studies at the Freie Universitat Berlin, is one of the most influential figures in the fields of Jewish mystical thought, homiletical and ethical literature, modern Messianism and Hasidism, and contemporary 'belles-lettres'. His studies of the diverse aspects of Jewish creativity, with close attention to the dialectics of religious-cultural continuity versus historical innovation, provide a comprehensive overview of the complex history of Jewish thought and its multiple creative faces. It is precisely for this reason, to honor Joseph Dan's multifaceted research, that his ...
This volume of essays presents a compelling and comprehensive analysis of the intriguing issue of the gift of the land of Israel and the fate of the Canaanites as presented in diverse biblical sources. Jewish thought has long grappled with the moral and theological implications and challenges of this issue. Innovative interpretive strategies and philosophical reflections were offered, modified, and sometimes rejected over the centuries. Leading contemporary scholars follow these threads of interpretation offered by Jewish thinkersfrom antiquity to modern times.
This volume consists of a critical edition of the Arabic translation and commentary of Yefet ben Eli the Karaite on the entire Abraham narrative. The edition is preceded by an extensive introduction in which the author discusses various facets of Yefet’s exegesis.
In his academic career, that by now spans six decades, Daniel J. Lasker distinguished himself by the wide range of his scholarly interests. In the field of Jewish theology and philosophy he contributed significantly to the study of Rabbinic as well as Karaite authors. In the field of Jewish polemics his studies explore Judeo-Arabic and Hebrew texts, analyzing them in the context of their Christian and Muslim backgrounds. His contributions refer to a wide variety of authors who lived from the 9th century to the 18th century and beyond, in the Muslim East, in Muslin and Christian parts of the Mediterranean Sea, and in west and east Europe. This Festschrift for Daniel J. Lasker consists of four...
Winner of the Association for Jewish Libraries 2012 Judaica Bibliography Award! This is the first comprehensive bibliography on the Karaites and Karaism. Including over 8,000 items in twenty languages, this bibliography, with its extensive annotations, thoroughly documents the present state of Karaite Studies and provides a solid foundation for future research. Special attention has been given to the organizational structure of the bibliography. A detailed table of contents and a complete set of indices enable the reader to easily navigate through the material. Translations of items from non-Western languages increase the bibliography’s utility for the English-speaking reader. Especially n...
This Noble House explores the preoccupation with biblical genealogy that emerged among Jews in the Islamic Near East between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries. Arnold Franklin looks to Jewish society's fascination with Davidic ancestry, examining the profusion of claims to the lineage that had already begun to appear by the year 1000, the attempts to chart the validity of such claims through elaborate genealogical lists, and the range of meanings that came to be ascribed to the House of David in this period. Jews and Muslims shared the perception that the Davidic line and the noble family of the Prophet Muhammad were counterparts to one another, but captivation with Davidic lineage was j...
This book presents a critical edition and translation of Salmon b. Yeroham’s Judaeo-Arabic commentary on Qohelet. The introduction situates the work in the history of Qohelet exegesis and discusses the primary themes: asceticism, eschatology, opposition to philosophy.