Renowned scholar Alan Segal offers startlingly new insights into the origins of rabbinic Judaism and Christianity. These twin descendants of Hebrew heritage shared the same social, cultural, and ideol
Part of the World Sprituality series, this is a broad-ranging, illustrated, scholarly treatment of core topics in Jewish spirituality from the earliest text references in Biblical times, through Secon
Following a detailed introduction to the world of messianic ideology and its significance in Jewish history, The Messiah Texts traces the progress of the messianic legend from its biblical beginnings
Before the First World War, Jiri Langer, a youth in Prague of Jewish parentage, suddenly packed his few belongings and to the consternation of his family, made a journey into a remote part of eastern
Leon (Judah Aryeh) Modena was a major intellectual figure of the early modern Italian Jewish community--a complex and intriguing personality who was famous among contemporary European Christians as we
"An excellent overview of the history of Jewish mysticism from its early beginnings to contemporary Hasidism...scholarly and complex."?Library Journal "An excellent work, clear and solidly documented
Originally published in 1961, this study of the religion of Southern Sudan's Dinka people is now considered a minor classic of social anthropology. Lienhardt examines the complex meanings of divine im
Buber poetically interprets the central aspects of Hasidic life, offers a selection of sayings from Baal-Shem-Tov, and movingly recounts his personal path to Hasidism.
In this book Buber completed his lifework of recreating and interpreting Hasidism. Here he makes explicit the place of Hasidism among world religions, contrasting it with biblical prophecy, Spinoza, F
While Jews in the land of Israel in ancient times shared much in common - scripture, reverence for the Temple and its cult, some traits as one 'Orthodox' Judaism. Diverse 'Judaisms' flourished, each with its particular way of life, world view, and definition of the social entity, or 'Israel'. Because there was no single, unitary Judaism, there also was no one 'Messiah-idea' or 'Messianic doctrine'. Various readings of the Messiah-theme reached definition in the various, unrelated religious systems or Judaisms produced by those Jews - hence 'Judaisms' and 'their Messiahs'. In this book, distinguished specialists in various Judaisms of late antiquity, including Christian scholars, take up the differing roles of the Messiah-idea in the various traditions examined. Dealing with the best-documented Judaic systems - the Essene community at Qumran, Christian Judaisms represented by Mark and by Matthew, the nascent rabbinic Judaism portrayed in the Mishnah, the Judaic system implicit in the wr
An authoritative look at Judaism's historical sweep and distinctive religious dimensions, showing how it developed out of the Hebrew Bible and has diversified throughout history and throughout the wo
Arnaldo Momigliano is the greatest contemporary scholar of the history and historiography of classical civilization. M.I. Finley has written in the New Statesman that "there is no one alive today who
