Download or read book Converts Heretics and Lepers written by James Arthur Diamond and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: James Diamond's new book consists of a series of studies addressing Moses Maimonides' (1138-1204) appropriation of marginal figures--lepers, converts, heretics, and others--normally considered on the fringes of society and religion. Each chapter focuses on a type or character that, in Maimonides' hands, becomes a metaphor for a larger, more substantive theological and philosophical issue. Diamond offers a close reading of key texts, such as the Guide of the Perplexed and the Mishneh Torah, demonstrating the importance of integrating Maimonides' legal and philosophical writings. Converts, Heretics, and Lepers fills an important void in Jewish studies by focusing on matters of exegesis and hermeneutics as well as philosophical concerns. Diamond's alternative reading of central topics in Maimonides suggests that literary appreciation is a key to deciphering Maimonides' writings in particular and Jewish exegetical texts in general. "Converts, Heretics, and Lepers is a very sophisticated exploration of Maimonidean religious philosophy. Although there have been numerous studies on Maimonides, perhaps more than any other Jewish thinker, James Diamond manages to approach the master from fresh perspectives. The result is a stunningly lucid and deep engagement with Maimonides." --Elliot Wolfson, Abraham Lieberman Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, New York University "A series of extraordinarily close readings of core texts of Maimonides', readings which illuminate the delicate interplay of philosophical and religious ideas in Maimonides. In his previous work, Diamond convincingly illustrated the way in which Maimonides carefully chooses, subtly interprets, and circumspectly weaves together rabbinic materials to address philosophers and talmudists alike, each in their own idiom. This book is a further expression of Diamond's mastery of this intricate methodology and is a work to be studied and re-studied. All students of Maimonides are in his debt." --Menachem Kellner, University of Haifa "James Diamond's book about Maimonides is a welcome addition to the regular stream of books about the thinker Jews have rightly called 'the great eagle.' His unique contribution to the Maimonidean literature is to show that the true Jewish philosopher like Maimonides is always an outsider in ordinary Jewish thought, and he is thus uniquely able to appreciate and explicate what Jews and other worshipers of the One God have to learn from other outsiders like himself." --David Novak, J. Richard and Dorothy Shiff Professor of Jewish Studies, University of Toronto

Download or read book Converts Heretics and Lepers written by James Arthur Diamond and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: James Diamond's new book consists of a series of studies addressing Moses Maimonides' (1138-1204) appropriation of marginal figures--lepers, converts, heretics, and others--normally considered on the fringes of society and religion. Each chapter focuses on a type or character that, in Maimonides' hands, becomes a metaphor for a larger, more substantive theological and philosophical issue. Diamond offers a close reading of key texts, such as the Guide of the Perplexed and the Mishneh Torah, demonstrating the importance of integrating Maimonides' legal and philosophical writings. Converts, Heretics, and Lepers fills an important void in Jewish studies by focusing on matters of exegesis and hermeneutics as well as philosophical concerns. Diamond's alternative reading of central topics in Maimonides suggests that literary appreciation is a key to deciphering Maimonides' writings in particular and Jewish exegetical texts in general. "Converts, Heretics, and Lepers is a very sophisticated exploration of Maimonidean religious philosophy. Although there have been numerous studies on Maimonides, perhaps more than any other Jewish thinker, James Diamond manages to approach the master from fresh perspectives. The result is a stunningly lucid and deep engagement with Maimonides." --Elliot Wolfson, Abraham Lieberman Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, New York University "A series of extraordinarily close readings of core texts of Maimonides', readings which illuminate the delicate interplay of philosophical and religious ideas in Maimonides. In his previous work, Diamond convincingly illustrated the way in which Maimonides carefully chooses, subtly interprets, and circumspectly weaves together rabbinic materials to address philosophers and talmudists alike, each in their own idiom. This book is a further expression of Diamond's mastery of this intricate methodology and is a work to be studied and re-studied. All students of Maimonides are in his debt." --Menachem Kellner, University of Haifa "James Diamond's book about Maimonides is a welcome addition to the regular stream of books about the thinker Jews have rightly called 'the great eagle.' His unique contribution to the Maimonidean literature is to show that the true Jewish philosopher like Maimonides is always an outsider in ordinary Jewish thought, and he is thus uniquely able to appreciate and explicate what Jews and other worshipers of the One God have to learn from other outsiders like himself." --David Novak, J. Richard and Dorothy Shiff Professor of Jewish Studies, University of Toronto

Download or read book Medieval Heresies written by Christine Caldwell Ames and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-02 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comparative history of heresy in Latin and Greek Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, spanning the fourth to the sixteenth century.

Download or read book Hakol Kol Yaakov written by Robert A. Harris and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-02-08 with total page 565 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hakol Kol Yaakov: The Joel Roth Jubilee Volume contains twenty articles dedicated to Rabbi Joel Roth, written by colleagues and students. Some are academic articles in the general area of Talmud and Rabbinics, while others are rabbinic responsa that treat an issue of contemporary Jewish law. In his career, Joel Roth has been known as a scholar and teacher of Talmud par excellence, and, without question, as the preeminent decisor of Jewish law for the Conservative movement of his generation. In the meticulous style and approach of the Talmud scholarship of his generation, Roth painstakingly and precisely assayed the vast array of rabbinic legal sources, and proceeded to apply these in pedagogy, in scholarship and particularly in the production of contemporary legal responsa. The articles in this volume reflect the unique and integrated voice and vision that Joel Roth has brought to the American Jewish community.

Download or read book The Birth of Popular Heresy written by R. I. Moore and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 1995-01-01 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An edited collection of letters, chronicles, and sermons written, in the main, by clerics and other highly placed church officials during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. R.I. Moore uses them to analyse the beginning and development of popular heresy.

Download or read book Christian Inversion of Jewish Nationalist Monotheism and its Modern Romantic Narcissist Betrayal written by Patrick Madigan and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2023-11-03 with total page 600 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a history of Western culture, divided into two parts. The first concerns the aggressive championing of monotheism by Jewish people as their distinctive national culture (although they only fell into or embraced it late in their development). Jesus offended by proposing an inversion of the divine protocols and an agenda more in harmony with international political realities: the one God proposed to use the Jews to reach (and transform) the entire human race, which was the actual object of His redemptive and creative energies. With the Renaissance widening opportunities for study, travel, learning and discovery, authorities had greater difficulty justifying limitations on individuals’ freedom of expression of heterodox artistic, political, philosophical or religious positions. This book explores the difficult modern psychological adjustment of dealing with a world with diminishing centers of authority – where it often seems as if no one is in charge – while also doing justice to one’s feelings of frustration and lack of fulfillment without becoming a radical narcissist.

Download or read book Menachem Kellner Jewish Universalism written by Hava Tirosh-Samuelson and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-07-14 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Menachem Kellner is Professor Emeritus of Jewish Thought at the University of Haifa and now chair of the Department of Philosophy and Jewish thought at Shalem College in Jerusalem.

Download or read book Jewish Christian Difference and Modern Jewish Identity written by Shalom Goldman and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2015-06-09 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an exploration of what would seem to be a simple question, but is actually the object of a profound quest—“who is a Jew?” This is a deeply complex issue, both within Judaism, and in interactions between Jews and Christians. Jewish–Christian Difference and Modern Jewish Identity: Seven Twentieth-Century Converts contends that in the twentieth century the Jewish–Christian relationship has changed to the extent that definitions of Jewish identity were reshaped. The stories of the seven influential and creative converts that are related in this book indicate that the borders dividing the Jewish and Christian faiths are, for many, more fluid and permeable than ever before.

Download or read book Maimonides the Universalist written by Menachem Kellner and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-04 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Maimonides’ Mishneh torah presents not only a system of Jewish law, but also a system of values. This study focuses on the moral and philosophical meditations that close each volume of his code. The authors analyse these concluding passages to uncover the universalist outlook underlying Maimonides’ halakhic thought.

Download or read book Reinventing Maimonides in Contemporary Jewish Thought written by James A. Diamond and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-20 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first critical study of how Maimonides has been read by leading Orthodox rabbis in our time shows that some have tried to liberate themselves from his influence, others have built on his ideas generating vibrant controversy, and yet others have sought to recreate Maimonides in their own image.

Download or read book Maimonides and the Shaping of the Jewish Canon written by James A. Diamond and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-10-27 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines a wide range of theologians, philosophers, and exegetes who share a passionate engagement with Maimonides, assaulting, adopting, subverting, or adapting his philosophical and jurisprudential thought. This ongoing enterprise is critical to any appreciation of the broader scope of Jewish law, philosophy, biblical interpretation, and Kabbalah.

Download or read book Rethinking the Messianic Idea in Judaism written by Michael L. Morgan and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2014-11-28 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the centuries, the messianic tradition has provided the language through which modern Jewish philosophers, socialists, and Zionists envisioned a utopian future. Michael L. Morgan, Steven Weitzman, and an international group of leading scholars ask new questions and provide new ways of thinking about this enduring Jewish idea. Using the writings of Gershom Scholem, which ranged over the history of messianic belief and its conflicted role in the Jewish imagination, these essays put aside the boundaries that divide history from philosophy and religion to offer new perspectives on the role and relevance of messianism today.

Download or read book Idolatry written by Alon Goshen-Gottstein and published by Academic Studies PRess. This book was released on 2023-05-16 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Idolatry, or its Hebrew equivalent Avodah Zarah ̧ is a fundamental feature of a Jewish view of other religions. All religions must pass the test of whether they are compliant with a Jewish view of religions as being free from the worship of another God. With the advance in interfaith relations, positions have been affirmed that clear most major contemporary religions from the charge of idolatry. What remains of “idolatry” once it no longer serves as a tool for evaluating other faiths? Does the category continue to have theological appeal? What are its internal uses? A cadre of Jewish scholars and thought leaders explore in this volume what the continuing relevance of “idolatry” is and how it might continue to inform our religious horizons, allowing us to distinguish between good and bad religion, both within Judaism and beyond.

Download or read book We Are Not Alone written by Menachem Kellner and published by Academic Studies PRess. This book was released on 2021-08-10 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed addressed Jews of his day who felt challenged by apparent contradictions between Torah and science. We Are Not Alone: A Maimonidean Theology of the Other uses Maimonides’ writings to address Jews of today who are perplexed by apparent contradictions between the morality of the Torah and their conviction that all human beings are created in the image of God and are the object of divine concern, that other religions have value, that genocide is never justified, and that slavery is evil. Individuals who choose to emphasize the moral and universalist elements of Jewish tradition can often find support in positions explicitly held by Maimonides or implied by his teachings. We Are Not Alone offers an ethical and universalist vision of traditionalist Judaism.

Download or read book Power and Progress written by Alexander Green and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2019-09-01 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The philosopher and biblical commentator Joseph Ibn Kaspi (1280–1345) was a provocative Jewish thinker of the medieval era whose works have generally been overlooked by modern scholars. Power and Progress by Alexander Green is the first book in English to focus on a central aspect of his work: Ibn Kaspi's philosophy of history. Green argues that Ibn Kaspi understood history as guided by two distinct but interdependent forces: power and progress, both of which he saw manifest in the biblical narrative. Ibn Kaspi discerned that the use of power to shape history is predominantly seen in the political competition between kingdoms. Yet he also believed that there is historical progress in the continuous development and dissemination of knowledge over time. This he derived from the biblical vision of the divine chariot and its varied descriptions across different biblical texts, each revealing more details of a complex, multifaceted picture. Although these two concepts of what drives history are separate, they are also reliant upon one another. National survival is dependent on the progress of knowledge of the order of nature, and the progress of knowledge is reliant on national success. In this way, Green reveals Ibn Kaspi to be more than a mere commentator on texts, but a highly innovative thinker whose insights into the subtleties of the Bible produced a view of history that is both groundbreaking and original.

Download or read book Andalus and Sefarad written by Sarah Stroumsa and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An integrative approach to Jewish and Muslim philosophy in al-Andalus Al-Andalus, the Iberian territory ruled by Islam from the eighth to the fifteenth centuries, was home to a flourishing philosophical culture among Muslims and the Jews who lived in their midst. Andalusians spoke proudly of the region's excellence, and indeed it engendered celebrated thinkers such as Maimonides and Averroes. Sarah Stroumsa offers an integrative new approach to Jewish and Muslim philosophy in al-Andalus, where the cultural commonality of the Islamicate world allowed scholars from diverse religious backgrounds to engage in the same philosophical pursuits. Stroumsa traces the development of philosophy in Muslim Iberia from its introduction to the region to the diverse forms it took over time, from Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism to rational theology and mystical philosophy. She sheds light on the way the politics of the day, including the struggles with the Christians to the north of the peninsula and the Fāṭimids in North Africa, influenced philosophy in al-Andalus yet affected its development among the two religious communities in different ways. While acknowledging the dissimilar social status of Muslims and members of the religious minorities, Andalus and Sefarad highlights the common ground that united philosophers, providing new perspective on the development of philosophy in Islamic Spain.

Download or read book Athens and Jerusalem written by David Novak and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2019-11-04 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the relation of philosophy and theology? This question has been a matter of perennial concern in the history of Western thought. Written by one of the premier philosophers in the areas of Jewish ethics and interfaith issues between Judaism and Christianity, Athens and Jerusalem contends that philosophy and theology are not mutually exclusive. Based on the Gifford Lectures David Novak delivered at the University of Aberdeen in 2017, this book explores the commonalities and common concerns that exist between philosophy and theology on metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical questions. Where are they different and where are they the same? And, how can they speak to one another?