Download or read book Unbinding the Binding of Isaac written by Mishael Caspi and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 2006 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unbinding the Binding of Isaac is an anthology of three faiths' interpretations of the Genesis 22:1-19 story. The various exegeses of this story have been mined by the Jewish, Islamic, and Christian faiths for a protracted period of time. The "Aqedah," as the binding story is known universally, stimulates the interests and imaginations of theologians, linguists, poets, historians, and artists of various skills and stripes. The Aqedah continues to stimulate inquiry and application to modern situations. Unbinding the Binding of Isaac is at once ancient and modern in its scope, purpose, and relevance to scholarly inquiry regarding this ongoing debate.

Download or read book But Where is the Lamb written by James Goodman and published by Schocken. This book was released on 2013-09-10 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “I didn’t think he’d do it. I really didn’t think he would. I thought he’d say, whoa, hold on, wait a minute. We made a deal, remember, the land, the blessing, the nation, the descendants as numerous as the sands on the shore and the stars in the sky.” So begins James Goodman’s original and urgent encounter with one of the most compelling and resonant stories ever told—God’s command to Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. A mere nineteen lines in the book of Genesis, it rests at the heart of the history, literature, theology, and sacred rituals of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. For more than two millennia, people throughout the world have grappled with the troubling questions about sacrifice, authority, obedience, and faith to which the story gives rise. Writing from the vantage of “a reader, a son, a Jew, a father, a skeptic, a historian, a lover of stories, and a writer,” Goodman gives us an enthralling narrative history that moves from its biblical origins to its place in the cultures and faiths of our time. He introduces us to the commentary of Second Temple sages, rabbis and priests of the late antiquity, and early Islamic exegetes (some of whom imagined that Ishmael was the nearly sacrificed son). He examines Syriac hymns (in which Sarah stars), Hebrew chronicles of the First Crusade (in which Isaac often dies), and medieval English mystery plays. He looks at the art of Europe’s golden age, the philosophy of Kant and Kierkegaard, and the panoply of twentieth-century interpretation, sacred and profane, including the work of Bob Dylan, Elie Wiesel, and A. B. Yehoshua. In illuminating how so many others have understood this story, Goodman tells a gripping and provocative story of his own.

Download or read book The Sacred the Digital written by F.G. (Frank) Bosman and published by MDPI. This book was released on 2019-04-18 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Video game studies are a relative young but flourishing academic discipline. But within game studies, however, the perspective of religion and spirituality is rather neglected, both by game scholars and religion scholars. While religion can take different shapes in digital games, ranging from material and referential to reflexive and ritual, it is not necessarily true that game developers depict their in-game religions in a positive, confirming way, but ever so often games approach the topic critically and disavowingly. The religion criticisms found in video games can be categorized as follows: religion as (1) fraud, aimed to manipulate the uneducated, as (2) blind obedience towards an invisible but ultimately non-existing deity/ies, as (3) violence against those who do not share the same set of religious rules, as (4) madness, a deranged alternative for logical reasoning, and as (5) suppression in the hands of the powerful elite to dominate and subdue the masses into submission and obedience. The critical depictions of religion in video games by their developers is the focus of this special issue.

Download or read book Figuring Jerusalem written by Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2022-04-22 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Figuring Jerusalem explores how Hebrew writers have imagined Jerusalem, both from the distance of exile and from within its sacred walls. For two thousand years, Hebrew writers used their exile from the Holy Land as a license for invention. The question at the heart of Figuring Jerusalem is this: how did these writers bring their imagination “home” in the Zionist century? Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi finds that the same diasporic conventions that Hebrew writers practiced in exile were maintained throughout the first half of the twentieth century. And even after 1948, when the state of Israel was founded but East Jerusalem and its holy sites remained under Arab control, Jerusalem continued to figure in the Hebrew imagination as mediated space. It was only in the aftermath of the Six Day War that the temptations and dilemmas of proximity to the sacred would become acute in every area of Hebrew politics and culture. Figuring Jerusalem ranges from classical texts, biblical and medieval, to the post-1967 writings of S. Y. Agnon and Yehuda Amichai. Ultimately, DeKoven Ezrahi shows that the wisdom Jews acquired through two thousand years of exile, as inscribed in their literary imagination, must be rediscovered if the diverse inhabitants of Jerusalem are to coexist.

Download or read book Jephthah s Daughter Sarah s Son written by Maria E. Doerfler and published by University of California Press. This book was released on 2020-01-02 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Late antiquity was a perilous time for children, who were often the first victims of economic crisis, war, and disease. They had a one in three chance of dying before their first birthday, with as many as half dying before age ten. Christian writers accordingly sought to speak to the experience of bereavement and to provide cultural scripts for parents who had lost a child. These late ancient writers turned to characters like Eve and Sarah, Job and Jephthah as models for grieving and for confronting or submitting to the divine. Jephthah's Daughter, Sarah’s Son traces the stories these writers crafted and the ways in which they shaped the lived experience of familial bereavement in ancient Christianity. A compelling social history that conveys the emotional lives of people in the late ancient world, Jephthah's Daughter, Sarah's Son is a powerful portrait of mourning that extends beyond antiquity to the present day.

Download or read book Mothers in the Jewish Cultural Imagination written by Marjorie Lehman and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2017-08-01 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most Jews will feel intimately familiar with and attached to the figure of the ‘Jewish mother’, yet few have questioned representations of mothers and motherhood in Jewish culture. This volume aims to fill this gap by bringing to the fore the vast network of symbols and images which Jews have associated with mothers from the Bible to the modern period. It demonstrates the complex ways in which the Jewish mother has been used to construct and frame Jewish religion and culture.

Download or read book Iconographic Exegesis of the Hebrew Bible Old Testament written by Izaak J. de Hulster and published by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. This book was released on 2015-10-28 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Iconographic exegesis combines the study of biblical texts (exegesis) with the study of ancient expressions of visual art (iconography).Studying ancient visual art that is contemporary with the documents of the Old Testament gives remarkable insight, not only on the meaning and historical context of the biblical text, but also because it facilitates greater understanding of how the ancient authors and audiences saw, thought, and made sense of the world. Iconography thus merits close attention as another avenue that can lead to a more nuanced and more complete understanding of the biblical text.Each chapter of this book provides an exegesis of a particular biblical text or theme. The book is organized around the tripartite structure of the Hebrew Bible, and demonstrates that iconographical exegesis is pertinent to "every nook and cranny" of the Bible.Within the three parts, there is special emphasis on Genesis, Isaiah, and the Psalms in order to make the book attractive for classes that deal with one or more of these books and might therefore include an iconographic perspective.In addition to connecting with a major issue in biblical interpretation, theology, or visual studies each chapter will end with one or two exercises directing the reader/student to comparable texts and images, enabling them to apply what was described in the chapter for themselves. This approach enables beginners as well as advanced readers to integrate iconography into their toolbox of exegetical skills.

Download or read book Myth Literature and the Unconscious written by Leon Burnett and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-05-01 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At a time when the place and significance of myth in society has come under renewed scrutiny, Myth, Literature, and the Unconscious contributes to shaping the new interdisciplinary field of myth studies. The editors find in psychoanalysis a natural and necessary ally for investigations in myth and myth-informed literature and the arts. At the same time the collection re-values myths and myth-based cultural products as vital aids to the discipline and practice of psychoanalysis. The volume spans a vast geo-cultural range (including ancient Egypt, India, Japan, nineteenth-century France, and twentieth-century Germany) and investigates cultural products from the Mahabharata to J. W. Goethe's opus and eighteenth-century Japanese fiction, and from William Blake's visionary poetry to contemporary blockbuster television series. It encompasses mythic topics and figures such as Oedipus, Orpheus, the Scapegoat, and the Hero, while mobilising Freudian, Jungian, object relations, and Lacanian psychoanalytic approaches.

Download or read book Men in the Bible and Related Literature written by John Tracy Greene and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2015-06-18 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Men in the Bible is the result of the Seminar in Biblical Characters in Three Traditions of the International Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting that was held at St. Andrews University, Scotland, in 2013. This volume brings together the best papers presented at the Seminar in the form of formal essays. These treat such biblical issues as the profession of the shepherd; the lawgiver; the trickster; fathers and sons; relations among relatives; marriage; inheritance; interpreting prop ...

Download or read book Abraham s Silence written by J. Richard Middleton and published by Baker Academic. This book was released on 2021-11-16 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is traditional to think we should praise Abraham for his willingness to sacrifice his son as proof of his love for God. But have we misread the point of the story? Is it possible that a careful reading of Genesis 22 could reveal that God was not pleased with Abraham's silent obedience? Widely respected biblical theologian, creative thinker, and public speaker J. Richard Middleton suggests we have misread and misapplied the story of the binding of Isaac and shows that God desires something other than silent obedience in difficult times. Middleton focuses on the ethical and theological problem of Abraham's silence and explores the rich biblical tradition of vigorous prayer, including the lament psalms, as a resource for faith. Middleton also examines the book of Job in terms of God validating Job's lament as "right speech," showing how the vocal Job provides an alternative to the silent Abraham. This book provides a fresh interpretation of Genesis 22 and reinforces the church's resurgent interest in lament as an appropriate response to God.

Download or read book Derrida and the Time of the Political written by Suzanne Guerlac and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-16 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An intellectual event, Derrida and the Time of the Political marks the first time since Jacques Derrida’s death in 2004 that leading scholars have come together to critically assess the philosopher’s political and ethical writings. Skepticism about the import of deconstruction for political thought has been widespread among American critics since Derrida’s work became widely available in English in the late 1970s. While Derrida expounded political and ethical themes from the late 1980s on, there has been relatively little Anglo-American analysis of that later work or its relation to the philosopher’s entire corpus. Filling a critical gap, this volume provides multiple perspectives on the political turn in Derrida’s work, showing how deconstruction bears on political theory and real-world politics. The contributors include distinguished scholars of deconstruction whose thinking developed in close proximity to Derrida’s, as well as leading political theorists and philosophers who engage Derrida’s thought from further afield. The volume opens with a substantial introduction in which Pheng Cheah and Suzanne Guerlac survey Derrida’s entire corpus and position his later work in relation to it. The remaining essays address the concerns that arise out of Derrida’s analysis of politics and the conditions of the political, such as the meaning and scope of democracy, the limits of sovereignty, the relationship between the ethical and the political, the nature of responsibility, the possibility for committed political action, the implications of deconstructive thought for non-Western politics, and the future of nationalism in an era of globalization and declining state sovereignty. The collection is framed by original contributions from Hélène Cixous and Judith Butler. Contributors. Étienne Balibar, Geoffrey Bennington, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, Pheng Cheah, Hélène Cixous, Rodolphe Gasché, Suzanne Guerlac, Marcel Hénaff, Martin Jay, Anne Norton, Jacques Rancière, Soraya Tlatli, Satoshi Ukai

Download or read book Bethsaida in Archaeology History and Ancient Culture written by J. Harold Ellens and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2014-06-12 with total page 550 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is an archaeological analysis, history, and description of a key excavation of the site of biblical Bethsaida, the most important Holy Land location in the narrative of Jesus’ life. This volume presents some of the pre-eminent biblical archaeological scholars in the field, all of whom were associated with Professor John T. Greene, either in the process of decades of archaeological exploration of the ancient site of Bethsaida, or in some other related activity in the field of biblical studies and religion. Professor Greene has been a leading scholar in the excavation and publication of field reports and historical and biblical analysis of the rich lode of discoveries that Bethsaida has revealed to us. This volume will be the highly sought-after summary of the historical-biblical information now available about ancient Bethsaida, the location at which Jesus vacationed, taught, healed, and announced his self-perception as the promised Jewish Messiah who became a new kind of Christian Messiah after his death by crucifixion on a Roman cross in approximately 30 CE in Jerusalem. Bethsaida in Archaeology, History, and Ancient Culture: A Festschrift in Honor of John T. Greene, describes the operational life of the ordinary people, religious communities, military movements, and socio-political hierarchy, from a ground-level perspective of the centuries before and during the lifetimes of Philo Judaeus, Jesus of Nazareth, and Flavius Josephus. It is unique in its popular presentation of this key era for scholarly research, appealing to both scholars in the field and informed non-professional readers, as well as scholars in corollary disciplines. This volume will be immensely sought after by a wide range of those persons who expect interesting, important, and highly readable works from municipal and academic libraries, as well as the popular book stores throughout the English speaking world.

Download or read book Ritual Unbound written by Thomas Cousineau and published by University of Delaware Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study explores the vestiges of primitive sacrificial rituals that emerge in a group of canonical modernist novels, including The Turn of the Screw, Heart of Darkness, The Good Soldier, The Great Gatsby, and To the Lighthouse. It argues that these novels reenact a process that achieved its seminal expression in the Genesis story of The Binding of Isaac, in which Abraham, having been prevented from sacrificing Isaac, offers up a ram in his place. Modernist reenactments of this pattern present narrators who, although vigorously protesting the victimization of certain characters, unfailingly seize upon others as their surrogates. Each novel is designed in such a way, however, as to resist the reconstruction of a sacrificial ritual to which its narrator is prone. The resulting tension between the binding and unbinding of ritual persecution dramatizes the paradox that we can neither believe convincingly in the guilt of our scapegoats nor imagine a society that has dispensed with them entirely. Thomas Cousineau is Professor of English at Washington College in Maryland.

Download or read book A Life in Parables and Poetry Mishael Maswari Caspi written by John T. Greene and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2020-08-10 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No detailed description available for "A Life in Parables and Poetry: Mishael Maswari Caspi".

Download or read book Biblical Blaspheming written by Yvonne Sherwood and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-09-06 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the persistence of 'blasphemy' in modern secular democracies and examines ways of talking and thinking about the Bible.

Download or read book Beyond Faith Belief Morality and Memory in a Fifteenth Century Judeo Iberian Manuscript written by Michelle M. Hamilton and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2014-11-13 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Beyond Faith: Belief, Morality and Memory in a Fifteenth-Century Judeo-Iberian Manuscript, Michelle M. Hamilton sheds light on the concerns of Jewish and converso readers of the generation before the Expulsion. Using a mid-fifteenth-century collection of Iberian vernacular literary, philosophical and religious texts (MS Parm. 2666) recorded in Hebrew characters as a lens, Hamilton explores how its compiler or compilers were forging a particular form of personal, individual religious belief, based not only on the Judeo-Andalusi philosophical tradition of medieval Iberia, but also on the Latinate humanism of late 14th and early 15th-century Europe. The form/s such expressions take reveal the contingent and specific engagement of learned Iberian Jews and conversos with the larger Iberian, European and Arab Mediterranean cultures of the 15th-century.

Download or read book A Practical Discipleship Model That Fosters Spiritual Maturity written by Owar Ojha Ojulu and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2023-11-09 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jesus challenges us to live in him and continue living out the truth so that we claim our allegiance to Christ and live as disciples free from fear and from cultural customs that contradict the gospel message. This project has found that the lack of discipleship training among the Anyuwaa churches has resulted in a lack of understanding of what this ministry entails—teaching and making disciples. In addition, failure to embed elements of the Anyuwaa culture into the discipleship approach, and the persistence of certain elements of Anyuwaa life that run counter to gospel beliefs, has inflamed this crisis. Therefore, this book presents a call for the church to challenge the culture of syncretism and the fear of witchdoctors, to shift its paradigm and begin interpreting the gospel message, utilizing contextual elements but interpreting them through the lens of the gospel, calling people to embrace gospel values within their own cultural context. When we start interpreting strong cultural beliefs and traditions through the truth of the gospel, it is proof that we have come to the best discipleship approach, as we speak the truth of the gospel in the life our church and the hearts of our believers.