Divine Scapegoats PDF Download
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download Divine Scapegoats PDF full book. Access full book title Divine Scapegoats by Andrei A. Orlov. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Andrei A. Orlov
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438455844
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 354
Get Book Here
Book Description
Divine Scapegoats is a wide-ranging exploration of the parallels between the heavenly and the demonic in early Jewish apocalyptical accounts. In these materials, antagonists often mirror features of angelic figures, and even those of the Deity himself, an inverse correspondence that implies a belief that the demonic realm is maintained by imitating divine reality. Andrei A. Orlov examines the sacerdotal, messianic, and creational aspects of this mimetic imagery, focusing primarily on two texts from the Slavonic pseudepigrapha: 2 Enoch and the Apocalypse of Abraham. These two works are part of a very special cluster of Jewish apocalyptic texts that exhibit features not only of the apocalyptic worldview but also of the symbolic universe of early Jewish mysticism. The Yom Kippur ritual in the Apocalypse of Abraham, the divine light and darkness of 2 Enoch, and the similarity of mimetic motifs to later developments in the Zohar are of particular importance in Orlov's consideration.
Author: Andrei A. Orlov
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438455844
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 354
Get Book Here
Book Description
Divine Scapegoats is a wide-ranging exploration of the parallels between the heavenly and the demonic in early Jewish apocalyptical accounts. In these materials, antagonists often mirror features of angelic figures, and even those of the Deity himself, an inverse correspondence that implies a belief that the demonic realm is maintained by imitating divine reality. Andrei A. Orlov examines the sacerdotal, messianic, and creational aspects of this mimetic imagery, focusing primarily on two texts from the Slavonic pseudepigrapha: 2 Enoch and the Apocalypse of Abraham. These two works are part of a very special cluster of Jewish apocalyptic texts that exhibit features not only of the apocalyptic worldview but also of the symbolic universe of early Jewish mysticism. The Yom Kippur ritual in the Apocalypse of Abraham, the divine light and darkness of 2 Enoch, and the similarity of mimetic motifs to later developments in the Zohar are of particular importance in Orlov's consideration.
Author: Pinchas Giller
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441110321
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 233
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: Daniel Reiser
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110535882
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 462
Get Book Here
Book Description
This book analyzes and describes the development and aspects of imagery techniques, a primary mode of mystical experience, in twentieth century Jewish mysticism. These techniques, in contrast to linguistic techniques in medieval Kabbalah and in contrast to early Hasidism, have all the characteristics of a full screenplay, a long and complicated plot woven together from many scenes, a kind of a feature film. Research on this development and nature of the imagery experience is carried out through comparison to similar developments in philosophy and psychology and is fruitfully contextualized within broader trends of western and eastern mysticism.
Author: Sara Fortuna
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351541390
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 202
Get Book Here
Book Description
Aracoeli (1982) was the last novel written by Elsa Morante (1912-85), one of the most significant Italian writers of the twentieth century. The journey, both geographical and memorial, of a homosexual son in search of his dead mother is a first-person narrative that has puzzled many critics for its darkness and despair. By combining scholars from different disciplines and cultural traditions, this volume re-evaluates the esthetical and theoretical complexity of Morante's novel and argues that it engages with crucial philosophical and epistemological questions in an original and profound way. Contributors explore the manifold tensions staged by the novel in connection with contemporary philosophical discourse (from feminist/queer to political theory to psycho-analysis) and authors (such as Emilio Gadda, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Pedro Almodovar). The Power of Disturbance shows that by creating a 'hallucinatory' representation of the relationship between mother and child, Aracoeli questions the classical distinction between subject and object, and proposes an altogether new and subversive kind of writing. Manuele Gragnolati teaches Italian literature at Oxford University, where he is a Fellow of Somerville College. Sara Fortuna teaches philosophy of language at the Universita Guglielmo Marconi in Rome.
Author: Steven Kepnes
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108415431
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 513
Get Book Here
Book Description
A comprehensive review of the entire tradition of Jewish Theology from the Bible to the present from leading world scholars.
Author: Oded Yisraeli
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110432765
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 273
Get Book Here
Book Description
This monograph discusses the Zohar, the most important book of the Kabbalah, as a late strata of the Midrashic literature. The author concentrates on the 'expanded' biblical stories in the Zohar and on its relationship to the ancient Talmudic Aggadah. The analytical and critical examination of these biblical themes reveals aspects of continuity and change in the history of the old Aggadic story and its way into the Zoharic corpus. The detailed description of this literary process also reveals the world of the authors of the Zohar, their spiritual distress, mystical orientations, and self-consciousness.
Author: Caroline Vander Stichele
Publisher: Society of Biblical Lit
ISBN: 1628370130
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 298
Get Book Here
Book Description
Examine a rich history of spiritual interpretations from antiquity to the present Since the sixteenth century CE, the field of biblical studies has focused on the literal meaning of texts. This collection seeks to rectify this oversight by integrating the study of esoteric readings into academic discourse. Case studies focusing on the first three chapters of Genesis cover different periods and methods from early Christian discourse through zoharic, kabbalistic and alchemical literature to modern and post-postmodern approaches. Features: Discussions, comparisons, and analyses of esoteric appropriations of Genesis 1–3 Essays on creation myths, gender, fate and free will, the concepts of knowledge, wisdom, and gnosis Repsonses to papers that provide a range of view points
Author: Jonathan Garb
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108882978
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 536
Get Book Here
Book Description
Jonathan Garb's A History of Kabbalah: From the Early Modern Period to the Present Day is a lucid and sophisticated account of the multifaceted nature of Jewish mysticism, focusing on its development from the spiritual revolution that took place in Safed in the sixteenth century until the present. Opening the secrets of the kabbalah to a wider audience, Garb judiciously argued that how important the mystical and esoteric tradition has been in Jewish history and in the cultural and intellectual life of Europe more generally. One of the more methodologically innovative aspects of Garb's book is his contention that kabbalah became a major factor in the religious life of Jews in the modern age due to print and others forms of rapid communication, a process that has magnified significantly in recent years due to the digital revolution. Informative and provocative, A History of Kabbalah will surely be of interest to a wide readership.
Author: Aaron W. Hughes
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253221641
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 377
Get Book Here
Book Description
Breaking with strictly historical or textual perspectives, this book explores Jewish philosophy as philosophy. Often regarded as too technical for Judaic studies and too religious for philosophy departments, Jewish philosophy has had an ambiguous position in the academy. These provocative essays propose new models for the study of Jewish philosophy that embrace wider intellectual arenas—including linguistics, poetics, aesthetics, and visual culture—as a path toward understanding the particular philosophic concerns of Judaism. As they reread classic Jewish texts, the essays articulate a new set of questions and demonstrate the vitality and originality of Jewish philosophy.
Author: David Birnbaum
Publisher: New Paradigm Matrix
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 414
Get Book Here
Book Description
In one of his most famous poems, Robert Frost imagines himselfstanding at a crossroads in a “yellow wood” and having to decidewhich path forward to choose. The poem turns on the fact thatneither path clearly recommends itself as the “better” one to choose:both are covered in yellow autumnal leaves, one is “just as fair” as theother, and both lead to destinations that Frost cannot see.1 In justtwenty lines, the poet thus suggests the plight of moderns who mustmake decisions in life that may eventually be perceived as mattersof great importance, but that feel hardly even to matter much whenthey are actually being made. That is surely a challenge we all face,but how exactly to deal with it is challenging to say. It surely seemsexaggerated to conclude from the poet’s reverie that our decisionsin life don’t really matter at all simply because we cannot say at theoutset where they may ultimately lead us—much less that they haveno real importance because we will end up in the same place anyway.Those conclusions both feel just a bit irrational, but neither shouldwe read the poem’s famous conclusion—that the poet’s decision totravel the path less taken has ended up making all the difference inhis life—as suggesting that the wisest choices in life are invariablythose spurned by the majority. Surely, for all the oylem may be agoylem, it can’t always be unwise to make some specific decision inlife merely because many others have previously chosen to make it!2 Martin S. Cohen(The Yiddish aphorism, one of my own father’s favorites, conveys thesame message as the one attributed, possibly spuriously, to AlexanderHamilton according to which “the masses are asses.”)The Torah offers a different take on the decision to choose onepath forward in life over another. Speaking from the edge of his ownlife, Moses begins by imagining two paths stretching forth beforethe Israelites as they contemplate their future. And he knows theirnames, too: they are the paths of blessing and of curse, “a blessingif you obey all the commandments of the Eternal, your God, thatI am commanding you this day, and a curse if you do not obey thecommandments of the Eternal, your God, and swerve off the paththat I am commanding you today…” (Deuteronomy 11:26–28).Later in his speech, Moses returns to that same trope and describesthat same choice in far greater detail:Behold, by commanding you today to love the Eternal,your God, and to walk in God’s ways and to keep God’scommandments and statutes and laws, I am placing beforeyou today, on the one hand, life and goodness, and, on theother, death and evil. And so shall you live and flourish as theEternal, your God, blesses you in the land that you are nowentering to possess. If, however, your heart should turn awayand you stop obeying—such that you actually turn to apostasyand prostrate yourself before alien gods and worship them—then I am telling you clearly today that you shall surely perish,that you will not live for long on the land that you are aboutto cross the Jordan to enter and possess. I call heaven andearth on this day as my witnesses that I am placing beforeyou life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life, so thatyou live, you and your progeny. And love the Eternal, yourGod, by obeying God’s voice and by cleaving unto God—forit is God who grants you your life and who determines howlong shall last the days you dwell on the land that the Eternal3 Prefaceswore to grant to your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob(Deuteronomy 30:15-20).The title of the volume you are holding is taken from the end ofthis very passage, where the Torah presents Moses instructing thepeople how to deal with the choice that lies before them. U-vaḥartaba-ḥayyim (“choose life”), he commands—and his meaning feelsclear and unambiguous: to secure a long life for yourself and yourprogeny, choose to live in God’s service, choose to devote yourself toobeying God’s voice, and choose to cleave unto God all the days ofyour life. And the aggregate result of all that wise choosing will leadto the greatest choice of all: the choice to embrace life at its fullestand richest, both as individuals linked personally to the Almightyin covenantal intimacy and as citizens of a nation linked to theAlmighty in exactly the same way.There are countless ways to respond to the injunction to chooselife, and each of the authors in this volume has chosen one to explorein his or her essay. Some are theoretical in nature and deal with thelarger notion of how choice and obligation interact in the context ofreligion. Others are more practical and treat of the specific ways inwhich individuals might respond to the biblical obligation to chooselife in the context of the consequential decisions that we find ourselvesfaced with in life. Still others are rooted in history and presentthe way the injunction to choose life was understood by differentthinkers at different moments in Jewish history. And some haveused the scriptural injunction to choose life as a jumping-off pointfor considering the notion of free will itself, and pondering how thetheological notion that God is all-knowing can be reconciled withthe sense people have of being able freely to make real, meaningfulchoices in life.The authors who have contributed essays to this volume address4 Martin S. Cohenall of these questions. Our authors come from a wide range ofbackgrounds: many are congregational rabbis, while others areteachers and academics, and still others work in the Jewish world indifferent capacities. They are a disparate group, our authors: men andwomen, older and younger, staunchly traditionalist and more liberallyoriented, Israelis and Diaspora-based. Yet, for all they are different,they are also united by the common belief that the written word,and particularly in the form of the essay, is a useful and satisfyingmedium in which to explore Judaism and Jewishness itself in a deepand meaningful way.This is not a book solely for Jews of any particular spiritualorientation; nor, for that matter, is it a book solely for Jewish readers.Rather, we hope that this anthology may open a door for all whopossess the kind of curiosity about Jewish religion and culture thatcannot be dealt with effectively by platitudes or even heartfelt opedpieces, but rather by thoughtful, text-based studies intended toinform, to persuade, and to inspire. I feel privileged to present thework of these authors to the reading public and I hope our readerswill likewise feel that this is a remarkable collection.Unless otherwise indicated, all translations here are the authors’own work. Biblical citations of the NJPS refer to the completetranslation of Scripture first published under the title Tanakh: TheHoly Scriptures by the Jewish Publication Society in 1985. The fourletterHebrew name of God is rendered in this volume almost alwaysas “the Eternal” or “Eternal God” (although authors have sometimesdeparted from this convention, as dictated by the constraints of theirown writing).I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the othersenior editors of the Mesorah Matrix series, David Birnbaum andBenjamin Blech, as well as Saul J. Berman, our associate editor. Theyand our able staff have all supported me as I’ve labored to bring this5 Prefacevolume together and I am grateful to them all.As always, I must also express my gratitude to the men andwomen, and particularly to the lay leadership, of the synagogueI serve as rabbi, the Shelter Rock Jewish Center in Roslyn, NewYork. Possessed of the unwavering conviction that their rabbi’s bookprojects are part and parcel of his service to them (and, throughthem, to the larger community of those interested in learning aboutJudaism through the medium of the well-written word), they areremarkably supportive of my literary efforts as author and editor. Iam in their debt, and I am pleased to acknowledge that debt formally,here and whenever I publish my own work or the work of others.
