Download or read book Ramban as a Guide to Today s Perplexed written by Moshe M. Eisemann and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Colors of Veracity written by Vera Schwarcz and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2014-09-03 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Colors of Veracity, Vera Schwarcz condenses four decades of teaching and scholarship about China to raise fundamental questions about the nature of truth and history. In clear and vivid prose, she addresses contemporary moral dilemmas with a highly personal sense of ethics and aesthetics. Drawing on classical sources in Hebrew and Chinese (as well as several Greek and Japanese texts), Schwarcz brings deep and varied cultural references to bear on the question of truth and falsehood in human consciousness. An attentiveness to connotations and nuance is apparent throughout her work, which redefines both the Jewish understanding of emet (a notion of truth that encompasses authenticity) and the Chinese commitment to zhen (a vision of the real that comprises the innermost sincerity of the seeker’s heart-mind). Works of art, from contemporary calligraphy and installations to fake Chinese characters and a Jewish menorah from Roman times, shed light light on the historian’s task of giving voice to the dread-filled past. Following in the footsteps of literary scholar Geoffrey Hartman, Schwarcz expands on the “Philomela Project, which calls on historians to find new ways of conveying truth, especially when political authorities are bent on enforcing amnesia of past traumatic events. Truth matters, even if it cannot be mapped in its totality. Veracity is shown again and again to be neither black nor white. Schwarcz’ accomplishment is a subtle depiction of “fractured luminosity,” which inspires and sustains the moral conviction of those who pursue truth against all odds.

Download or read book THE RAMBAM CHUMASH The Five Books Compact Ed written by and published by . This book was released on 2021-01-26 with total page 822 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE RAMBAM CHUMASH - Maimonides Torah based on The Guide for the Perplexed is an English-Hebrew Chumash with delineated parshiot including comprehensive and extensive footnotes sourced from one of the greatest works of Jewish philosophy ever written, the Rambam's Moreh Nevuchim - The Guide for the Perplexed.

Download or read book I Brought You Unto Me written by Moshe M. Eisemann and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Maimonides written by Moshe Halbertal and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-11-24 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive and accessible account of the life and thought of Judaism's most celebrated philosopher Maimonides was the greatest Jewish philosopher and legal scholar of the medieval period, a towering figure who has had a profound and lasting influence on Jewish law, philosophy, and religious consciousness. This book provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to his life and work, revealing how his philosophical sensibility and outlook informed his interpretation of Jewish tradition. Moshe Halbertal vividly describes Maimonides's childhood in Muslim Spain, his family's flight to North Africa to escape persecution, and their eventual resettling in Egypt. He draws on Maimonides's letters and the testimonies of his contemporaries, both Muslims and Jews, to offer new insights into his personality and the circumstances that shaped his thinking. Halbertal then turns to Maimonides's legal and philosophical work, analyzing his three great books—Commentary on the Mishnah, the Mishneh Torah, and the Guide of the Perplexed. He discusses Maimonides's battle against all attempts to personify God, his conviction that God's presence in the world is mediated through the natural order rather than through miracles, and his locating of philosophy and science at the summit of the religious life of Torah. Halbertal examines Maimonides's philosophical positions on fundamental questions such as the nature and limits of religious language, creation and nature, prophecy, providence, the problem of evil, and the meaning of the commandments. A stunning achievement, Maimonides offers an unparalleled look at the life and thought of this important Jewish philosopher, scholar, and theologian.

Download or read book The Quest for the Historical Adam written by William VanDoodewaard and published by Reformation Heritage Books. This book was released on 2015-04-01 with total page 437 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Was Adam really a historical person, and can we trust the biblical story of human origins? Or is the story of Eden simply a metaphor, leaving scientists the job to correctly reconstruct the truth of how humanity began? Although the church currently faces these pressing questions—exacerbated as they are by scientific and philosophical developments of our age—we must not think that they are completely new. In The Quest for the Historical Adam , William VanDoodewaard recovers and assesses the teaching of those who have gone before us, providing a historical survey of Genesis commentary on human origins from the patristic era to the present. Reacquainting the reader with a long line of theologians, exegetes, and thinkers, VanDoodewaard traces the roots, development, and, at times, disappearance of hermeneutical approaches and exegetical insights relevant to discussions on human origins. This survey not only informs us of how we came to this point in the conversation but also equips us to recognize the significance of the various alternatives on human origins. It also includes a foreword written by Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr. Table of Contents: 1. Finding Adam and His Origin in Scripture 2. The Patristic and Medieval Quest for Adam 3. Adam in the Reformation and Post-Reformation Eras 4. Adam in the Enlightenment Era 5. Adam in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries 6. The Quest for Adam: From the 1950s to the Present 7. What Difference Does It Make? Epilogue: Literal Genesis and Science?

Download or read book Maimonides written by Joel L. Kraemer and published by Doubleday Religion. This book was released on 2010-02-09 with total page 642 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This authoritative biography of Moses Maimonides, one of the most influential minds in all of human history, illuminates his life as a philosopher, physician, and lawgiver. A biography on a grand scale, it brilliantly explicates one man’s life against the background of the social, religious, and political issues of his time. Maimonides was born in Córdoba, in Muslim-ruled Spain, in 1138 and died in Cairo in 1204. He lived in an Arab-Islamic environment from his early years in Spain and North Africa to his later years in Egypt, where he was immersed in its culture and society. His life, career, and writings are the highest expression of the intertwined worlds of Judaism and Islam. Maimonides lived in tumultuous times, at the peak of the Reconquista in Spain and the Crusades in Palestine. His monumental compendium of Jewish law, the Mishneh Torah, became a basis of all subsequent Jewish legal codes and brought him recognition as one of the foremost lawgivers of humankind. In Egypt, his training as a physician earned him a place in the entourage of the great Sultan Saladin, and he wrote medical works in Arabic that were translated into Hebrew and Latin and studied for centuries in Europe. As a philosopher and scientist, he contributed to mathematics and astronomy, logic and ethics, politics and theology. His Guide of the Perplexed, a masterful interweaving of religious tradition and scientific and philosophic thought, influenced generations of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish thinkers. Now, in a dazzling work of scholarship, Joel Kraemer tells the complete story of Maimonides’ rich life. MAIMONIDES is at once a portrait of a great historical figure and an excursion into the Mediterranean world of the twelfth century. Joel Kraemer draws on a wealth of original sources to re-create a remarkable period in history when Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions clashed and mingled in a setting alive with intense intellectual exchange and religious conflict.

Download or read book Nahmanides written by Moshe Halbertal and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-22 with total page 451 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A broad, systematic account of one of the most original and creative kabbalists, biblical interpreters, and Talmudic scholars the Jewish tradition has ever produced Rabbi Moses b. Nahman (1194–1270), known in English as Nahmanides, was the greatest Talmudic scholar of the thirteenth century and one of the deepest and most original biblical interpreters. Beyond his monumental scholastic achievements, Nahmanides was a distinguished kabbalist and mystic, and in his commentary on the Torah he dispensed esoteric kabbalistic teachings that he termed “By Way of Truth.” This broad, systematic account of Nahmanides’s thought explores his conception of halakhah and his approach to the central concerns of medieval Jewish thought, including notions of God, history, revelation, and the reasons for the commandments. The relationship between Nahmanides’s kabbalah and mysticism and the existential religious drive that nourishes them, as well as the legal and exoteric aspects of his thinking, are at the center of Moshe Halbertal’s portrayal of Nahmanides as a complex and transformative thinker.

Download or read book Rambam s Ladder written by Julie Salamon and published by Workman Publishing. This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes the eight-step program of giving by the twelfth-century Jewish scholar, Ramdam, and how it applies to contemporary life.

Download or read book The Torah and Its God written by Jordan Jay Hillman and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2001 with total page 581 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This detailed examination of the Torah (the first five books of the Bible) lays particular emphasis on the role and character of the Torah's transcendent God, as its central protagonist. Viewing both the Torah and its God as purely human creations, humanist Jordan Jay Hillman seeks in no way to devalue this hugely influential book. His aim instead is to reinterpret it as a still vital text that used theistic means appropriate to its time to inspire a people toward their worthiest human purposes. It is thus for its "timeless themes" rather than its "dated particularities" (including its model of a transcendent God) that we should honor the Torah in our time as both the wellspring of Judaic culture and a major influence on Christian and Islamic ethics and morals. From his humanist perspective and his background as a lawyer and professor of law at Northwestern University (now emeritus), Hillman offers many insights into the narrative and wide-ranging legal code of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy-including their many contradictions and anomalies. His analysis draws on a broad scholarly consensus regarding the "Documentary Theory," as it bears on the identities and periods of the Torah's human sources. This thorough explication of an often misunderstood ancient text will help humanists, and many theists alike, to appreciate the rich moral, ethical, and cultural heritage of the Torah and its enduring relevance to our time.

Download or read book GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED written by E. F. Schumacher and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 1978-05-31 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of the world wide best-seller, Small Is Beautiful, now tackles the subject of Man, the World, and the Meaning of Living. Schumacher writes about man's relation to the world. man has obligations -- to other men, to the earth, to progress and technology, but most importantly himself. If man can fulfill these obligations, then and only then can he enjoy a real relationship with the world, then and only then can he know the meaning of living. Schumacher says we need maps: a "map of knowledge" and a "map of living." The concern of the mapmaker--in this instance, Schumacher--is to find for everything it's proper place. Things out of place tend to get lost; they become invisible and there proper places end to be filled by other things that ought not be there at all and therefore serve to mislead. A Guide for the Perplexed teaches us to be our own map makers. This constantly surprising, always stimulating book will be welcomed by a large audience, including the many new fans who believe strongly in what Schumacher has to say.

Download or read book Rambam written by Rochel Yaffe and published by Hachai Publishing. This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brilliant scholar, dedicated physician, prolific author, Torah leader... Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon was all of these and much more. But what were his early years like? What struggles and challenges did he endure? This biography tells the story of the Rambam's life in a well-researched, sometimes fictionalized narrative for independent readers. The author includes many well-known facts and incidents from the life of this Torah giant, as well as some fascinating, less-familiar details. Actual excerpts from the Rambam's extensive writings are seamlessly incorporated into the action, and footnoted for reference. This spellbinding treatment pulls readers into the life and history of an influential leader of the Jewish People.

Download or read book A Guide for the Perplexed written by Dara Horn and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2013-09-09 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While consulting at an Egyptian library, software prodigy Josie Ashkenazi is kidnapped and her talent for preserving memories becomes her only means of escape as the power of her ingenious work is revealed, while jealous sister Judith takes over Josie's life at home.

Download or read book Torah Through Time written by Shai Cherry and published by Jewish Publication Society. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book provides a highly readable, engaging introduction to Jewish biblical interpretation." - Jewish Book World "Cherry has analyzed the biblical commentary of some of the renowned Jewish scholars of the last 2,000 years. The result is a work of excellent scholarship and imagination." - Booklist ?Cherry shows how the Torah functions as literature that is fluid, compelling, and persistently generative of new meanings.? ? Christian Century Every commentator, from the classical rabbi to the modern-day scholar, has brought his or her own worldview, with all of its assumptions, to bear on the reading of holy text. This relationship between the text itself and the reader's interpretation is the subject of Torah Through Time. Shai Cherry traces the development of Jewish Bible commentary through three pivotal periods in Jewish history: the rabbinic, medieval, and modern periods. The result is a fascinating and accessible guide to how some of the world's leading Jewish commentators read the Bible. Torah Through Time focuses on specific narrative sections of the Torah: the creation of humanity, the rivalry between Cain and Abel, Korah's rebellion, the claim of the daughters of Zelophechad, and legal matters concerning Hebrew slavery. Cherry closely examines several different commentaries for each of these source texts, and in so doing he analyzes how each commentator resolves questions raised by the texts and asks if and how the commentator's own historical frame of reference -- his own time and place -- contributes to the resolution. A chart at the end of each chapter provides a visual summary that helps the reader understand the many different elements at play.

Download or read book Problems and Parables of Law written by Josef Stern and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A central topic in medieval Jewish philosophy and thought was the explanation of the Mosaic commandments. From Philo and Saadiah on, thinkers sought to uncover "reasons for the commandments" (ta'amei ha-mitzvot) both to demonstrate the rationality of divine legislation and to motivate performance of the commandments. Like many received topics, this enterprise was radically transformed in the hands of Maimonides. In this first book-length treatment of a subject that has been relatively overlooked by scholars since Isaac Heinemann's classic work in the 1950s, Josef Stern offers an original analysis of two major themes in Maimonides' explanation of the Law and its impact on Nahmanides. The first theme is Maimonides' reconceptualization of the huqqim, those commandments that were traditionally asserted either to have no reason or a reason that is unknown or unknowable. The second theme is Maimonides' application of his method of multi-leveled interpretation that treats texts as parables with "external" and "internal" meaning to the explanation of commandments with multiple reasons. Both of these innovative modes of explanation are adopted by Nahmanides, who refined and adapted Maimonides' structures of interpretation to express diametrically opposed contents. From this perspective there emerges a picture of the relation between these two seminal figures of medieval Judaism that is much more subtle than the received opinion that bluntly opposes them, the radical arch rationalist against the mystical traditionalist. Inquiry into ta'amei ha-mitzvot served as a locus for discussion of a broad range of philosophical topics: the attributes of God, the grounds of law and legal obligation, the structure of explanation and interpretation, idolatry, friendship and love, the status of astrology and magic, and attitudes toward the body. Stern demonstrates both the philosophical importance of these topics in Maimonides' and Nahmanides' thought and the relevance of their writings to contemporary philosophical discussions.

Download or read book written by Abraham ben Moses ben Maimon and published by Feldheim Publishers. This book was released on 2008 with total page 680 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A jewel in the crown of the Feldheim Torah Classics Library! This awe-inspiring work written in Judaeo-Arabic and completed around the year 1230 by the illustrious son of Maimonides, Rabbeinu Avraham, is now available for the first time in English translation with a facing Hebrew version of the original text. Famed for his appointment as Rais al-Yahud, leader of the Jews, at the age of eighteen, Rabbeinu Avraham was the undisputed leader of the Jewish people of his time. In this masterpiece, he directs the reader in how to attain the level of chasid, a person who strives to go beyond the minimal requirements of the law to experience a strong sense of closeness and intimacy with God. Crafting this clear and brilliant English translation was a formidable challenge, and one that the translator devoted many years to undertake successfully. This treasure has remained hidden until now, but we are privileged to receive it in our own times glittering with wisdom and purity, authored by a saintly scholar whose powerful words can help us change and refine the course of our own lives. With a fascinating biography of Rabbeinu Avraham, extensive footnotes, a citation index of the text, as well as an index of references the author makes to the works of his father, the Rambam.

Download or read book Educating People of Faith written by John H. Van Engen and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2004 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A much-needed addition to the emerging literature on the formative power of religious practices, "Educating People of Faith" creates a vivid portrait of the lived practices that shaped the faith of Jews and Christians in synagogues and churches from antiquity up to the seventeenth century. This significant book is the work of Jewish, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant scholars who wished to discover and describe how Jews and Christians through history have been formed in religious ways of thinking and acting. Rather than focusing solely on either intellectual or social life, the authors all use the concept of practices as they attend to the embodied, contextual character of religious formation. Their studies of religious figures, community life, and traditional practices such as preaching, sacraments, and catechesis are colorful, detailed, and revealing. The authors are also careful to cover the nature of religious education across all social levels, from the textual formation of highly literate rabbis and monks engaged in Scripture study to the local formation of illiterate medieval Christians for whom the veneration of saints' shrines, street performances of religious dramas, and public preaching by wandering preachers were profoundly formative. "Educating People of Faith" will benefit scholars and teachers desiring a fuller perspective on how lived practices have historically formed people in religious faith. It will also be useful to practical theologians and pastors who wish to make the resources of the past available to practitioners in the present. Contributors: John C. Cavadini Anne L. Clark Lawrence S. Cunningham Joseph Goering RobertGoldenberg Stanley Samuel Harakas Robert M. Kingdon Blake Leyerle Michael A. Signer Philip M. Soergel David C. Steinmetz John Van Engen Lee Palmer Wandel Robert Louis Wilken Elliot R. Wolfson