Author: J. W. Van Henten
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9789004109766
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 372
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Book Description
This book offers a fresh interpretation of the theme of noble death in 2 and 4 Maccabees which highlights the hitherto largely neglected political-patriotic significance of the "Maccabean martyrs" for the message of both works.
Author: Judith Lieu
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0567658821
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 289
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Book Description
A ground-breaking study in the formation of early Christian identity, by one of the world's leading scholars.In Neither Jew Nor Greek, Judith Lieu explores the formation and shaping of early Christian identity within Judaism and within the wider Graeco-Roman world in the period before 200 C.E. Lieu particularly examines the way that literary texts presented early Christianity. She combines this with interdisciplinary historical investigation and interaction with scholarship on Judaism in late Antiquity and on the Graeco-Roman world.The result is a highly significant contribution to four of the key questions in current New Testament scholarship: how did early Christian identity come to be formed? How should we best describe and understand the processes by which the Christian movement became separate from its Jewish origins? Was there anything special or different about the way women entered Judaism and early Christianity? How did martyrdom contribute to the construction of early Christian identity? The chapters in this volume have become classics in the study of the New Testament and for this Cornerstones edition Lieu provides a new introduction placing them within the academic debate as it is now.
Author: Raʻanan S. Boustan
Publisher: Mohr Siebeck
ISBN: 9783161487538
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 416
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Book Description
"This study provides a critical analysis of Nurcholish Madjid's attempt to interpret Islam within the framework of modern Indonesia. Special attention is paid to his ideas and activities during the years leading to the 1998 downfall of President Soeharto, and the development towards democracy that followed. Although many of these ideas have been embraced by significant sectors of official Indonesia, they have also received harsh criticism from the representatives of more conservative interpretations of Islam and, more recently, from secular Muslims as well."--BOOK JACKET.
Author: Johan Leemans
Publisher: Peeters Publishers
ISBN: 9789042916883
Category : Christian martyrs
Languages : en
Pages : 492
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Book Description
Throughout its history, persecutions and martyrdom have been Christianity's faithful companions. Remarkably enough, Christians have always valued martyrdom in a positive way. This positive evaluation of martyrdom most certainly has to do with the absolute, uncompromising nature of it. The martyrs' lives and deaths represent the most uncompromising of answers to the divine call. The focus of the contributions in this volume is not in the first place on reconstructing the historical events of the martyr's life and death "wie es eigentlich gewesen ist," but on the discourse generated by this event as mediated in texts. More than a Memory aims to explore the reciprocal relationship between this discourse of martyrdom and the construction of Christian identity. It will do so by presenting a number of test cases in which this dynamic can be seen at work. They will lead the reader through the entire history of Christianity, starting with the Martyrdom of Lyons and Vienne in the second century and ending in the Latin America of the 1960's. Each article will present a test case of discourse-analysis, attempting to explore the issue of how a document or coherent group of documents contributed to create a distinct Christian identity. Taken together, the essays provide an array of examples of how martyrdom impinged on the way Christian identity has been negotiated in the Christian past. In doing this, the volume at the same time illustrates the sheer importance of martyrdom and the reflection and writing about it throughout the history of Christianity until today.
Author: Jan Willem van Henten
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004497544
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 360
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Book Description
This volume deals with the presentation of the so-called Maccabean martyrs and the elder Razis in 2 and 4 Maccabees, discussing the religious, the political as well as the philosophical aspects of noble death in these writings. It argues that the theme of martyrdom is a very important part of the self-image of the Jews as presented by the authors of both works. Eleazar, the anonymous mother with her seven sons and Razis should, therefore, be considered heroes of the Jewish people. The first part of the book discusses the sources and the second part deals with the descriptions of noble death. This section of the book also offers extensive discussions of related non-Jewish traditions which highlight the political-patriotic dimension of noble death as described in 2 and 4 Maccabees.
Author: Shmuel Shepkaru
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521842815
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 434
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Book Description
This book presents a linear history of Jewish martyrdom, from the Hellenistic period to the high Middle Ages. Following the chronology of sources, the study challenges the general consensus that martyrdom was an original Hellenistic Jewish idea. Instead, Jews like Philo and Josephus internalized the idealized Roman concept of voluntary death and presented it as an old Jewish practice. The centrality of self-sacrifice in Christianity further stimulated the development of rabbinic martyrology and the talmudic guidelines for passive martyrdom. However, when forced to choosed between death and conversion in medieval Christendom, Ashkenazic Jews went beyond these guidelines, sacrificing themselves and loved ones. Through death not only did they attempt to prove their religiosity, but also to disprove the religious legitimacy of their Christian persecutors. While martyrs and martyrologies intended to show how Judaisim differed from Christianity, they, in fact, reveal a common mindset.
Author: Nicholas Peter Legh Allen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000767329
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 291
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Book Description
This volume examines Jewish literature produced from c. 700 B.C.E. to c. 200 C.E. from a socio-theological perspective. In this context, it offers a scholarly attempt to understand how the ancient Jewish psyche dealt with times of extreme turmoil and how Jewish theology altered to meet the challenges experienced. The volume explores various early Jewish literature, including both the canonical and apocryphal scripture. Here, reference is often made to a divine epiphany (a moment of unexpected and prodigious revelation or insight) as a response to abuse, suffering and passion. Many of the chapters deal with these issues in relation to the Antiochan crisis of 169 to 164 B.C.E. in Judea, one of the more notable periods of oppression. This watershed event appears to have served as a catalyst for the new apocalyptic texts which were produced up until c. 200 C.E, and which reflect a new theological dynamic in Judaism – one that informed subsequent Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism. Passion, Persecution and Epiphany in Early Jewish Literature will be of interest to anyone working on the Bible (both Masoretic and LXX) and early Jewish literature, as well as students of Jewish history and the Levant in the classical period.
Author: Stephen Finlan
Publisher: Society of Biblical Lit
ISBN: 1589831527
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 275
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Book Description
Author: Daniel R. Schwartz
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004215344
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 565
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Book Description
These twenty studies ask whether changes in different fields of ancient Jewish culture were caused by the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, what changed for other reasons, and what did not change despite that event.
Author: Aaron Koller
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107729807
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 277
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Book Description
The book of Esther was a conscious reaction to much of the conventional wisdom of its day, challenging beliefs regarding the Jerusalem Temple, the land of Israel, Jewish law, and even God. Aaron Koller identifies Esther as primarily a political work, and shows that early reactions ranged from ignoring the book to 'rewriting' Esther in order to correct its perceived flaws. But few biblical books have been read in such different ways, and the vast quantity of Esther-interpretation in rabbinic literature indicates a conscious effort by the Rabbis to present Esther as a story of faith and traditionalism, and bring it into the fold of the grand biblical narrative. Koller situates Esther, and its many interpretations, within the intellectual and political contexts of Ancient Judaism, and discusses its controversial themes. His innovative line of enquiry will be of great interest to students and scholars of Bible and Jewish studies.
