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The print edition is available as a set of two volumes (9789004327955).
In a book with a bold new view of medieval Jewish history, written in a style accessible to nonspecialists and students as well as to scholars in the field, Marina Rustow changes our understanding of the origins and nature of heresy itself. Scholars have long believed that the Rabbanites and Qaraites, the two major Jewish groups under Islamic rule, split decisively in the tenth century and from that time forward the minority Qaraites were deemed a heretical sect. Qaraites affirmed a right to decide matters of Jewish law free from centuries of rabbinic interpretation; the Rabbanites, in turn, claimed an unbroken chain of scholarly tradition. Rustow draws heavily on the Cairo Geniza, a reposit...
The contributors to this wide-ranging work of scholarship and analysis include mentors, colleagues, friends, and students of the late Magda al-Nowaihi, an outstanding scholar of Middle East studies whose diverse interests and energy inspired numerous colleagues. The book's first part is devoted to Arabic elegy, the subject of an unfinished work by al-Nowaihi from which this volume takes its title. Included here is a previously unpublished lecture on elegy delivered by al- Nowaihi herself. Other contributors examine this poetic form in both classical and modern contexts, from a number of angles, including the partial feminization of the genre, making this volume perhaps the most comprehensive...
In Christian Identity amid Islam in Medieval Spain Charles L. Tieszen explores a small corpus of texts from medieval Spain in an effort to deduce how their authors defined their religious identity in light of Islam, and in turn, how they hoped their readers would distinguish themselves from the Muslims in their midst. It is argued that the use of reflected self-image as a tool for interpreting Christian anti-Muslim polemic allows such texts to be read for the self-image of their authors instead of the image of just those they attacked. As such, polemic becomes a set of borders authors offered to their communities, helping them to successfully navigate inter-religious living.
Salmon b. Yeroham (fl. 930-960) – foundational figure in the Jerusalem school of Karaite exegesis – produced a substantial and influential corpus of polemical writing and biblical interpretation, including commentaries on Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Lamentations, Qohelet, Esther, Ruth, and Daniel. Asceticism, Eschatology, Opposition to Philosophy: The Arabic Translation and Commentary of Salmon ben Yeroham on Qohelet (Ecclesiastes) presents a first critical edition of the Judaeo-Arabic Qohelet commentary together with an annotated English translation. The introduction situates Salmon’s work in the history of Jewish Qohelet exegesis, explains Salmon’s method of translating Q...
The biblical hermeneutics of the illustrious philosopher-talmudist Moses Maimonides (1138-1204) has long been underappreciated, and viewed in isolation from the celebrated philological schools of “plain sense” (peshat) Jewish Bible exegesis. Aiming to redress this imbalance, this study identifies Maimonides’ substantial contributions to that interpretive movement, assessing its achievements in cultural context. Like others in the rationalist Geonic-Andalusian school, Maimonides’ understanding of Scripture was informed by Arabic learning. Drawing upon Greco-Arabic logic, poetics, politics, physics and metaphysics, as well as Muslim jurisprudence, he devised sophisticated new approaches to key issues that occupied other exegetes, including a variety of interpretive cruxes, the reconciliation of Scripture with reason, a legal hermeneutics for deriving halakhah (Jewish law) from Scripture, and the nature of interpretation itself. "It is a valuable contribution to the entire study of medieval biblical exegesis and will undoubtedly serve as the basis of all subsequent discussions of Maimonides' hermeneutics." Daniel J. Lasker, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
In Unveiling the Hidden—Anticipating the Future: Divinatory Practices Among Jews Between Qumran and the Modern Period, Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas and Dorian Gieseler Greenbaum collect ten studies based on primary sources ranging from Qumran to the modern period and covering Europe and the Mediterranean basin. The studies show Jews practising divination (astrology, bibliomancy, physiognomy, dream requests, astral magic, etc.) and implementing the study and practice of the prognostic arts in ways that allowed Jews to make them "Jewish," by avoiding any conflict with Jewish law or halakhah. These studies focus on the Jewish components of this divination, providing specific firsthand details about the practices and their practitioners within their cultural and intellectual contexts—as well as their fears, wishes, and anxieties—using ancient scrolls and medieval manuscripts in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Judaeo-Arabic. Contributors are Michael D. Swartz, Helen R. Jacobus, Alessia Bellusci, Blanca Villuendas Sabaté, Shraga Bar-On, Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas, Amos Geula, Dov Schwartz, Joseph Ziegler, and Charles Burnett.
Focusing on the Iberian Peninsula but examining related European and Mediterranean contexts as well, Forced Conversion in Christianity, Judaism and Islam traces how Christians, Jews, and Muslims grappled with the contradictory phenomenon of faith brought about by constraint and compulsion. Forced conversion brought into sharp relief the tensions among the accepted notion of faith as a voluntary act, the desire to maintain “pure” communities, and the universal truth claims of radical monotheism. Offering a comparative view of an important yet insufficiently studied phenomenon in the history of religions, this collection of essays explores the ways in which religion and violence reshaped these three religions and the ways we understand them today.
"A Comparative History of Literatures in the Iberian Peninsula" is the second comparative history of a new subseries with a regional focus, published by the Coordinating Committee of the International Comparative Literature Association. As its predecessor for East-Central Europe, this two-volume history distances itself from traditional histories built around periods and movements, and explores, from a comparative viewpoint, a space considered to be a powerful symbol of inter-literary relations. Both the geographical pertinence and its symbolic condition are obviously discussed, when not even contested.Written by an international team of researchers who are specialists in the field, this history is the first attempt at applying a comparative approach to the plurilingual and multicultural literatures in the Iberian Peninsula. The aim of comprehensiveness is abandoned in favor of a diverse and extensive array of key issues for a comparative agenda."A Comparative History of Literatures in the Iberian Peninsula" undermines the primacy claimed for national and linguistic boundaries, and provides a geo-cultural account of literary inter-systems which cannot otherwise be explained.
Un análisis riguroso de Israel, desde su rica historia antigua hasta su gran reto ante la modernidad. Un nuevo espacio de reflexión e intercambio de experiencias y conocimientos.