Showing 20 results for subject:"Religion / General"
Nordic Religions in the Viking Age
Thomas Andrew DuBois
Thomas DuBois unravels for the first time the history of the Nordic religions in the Viking Age. "A seminal study of Nordic religions that future scholars will not be able to avoid."—Church History
Brigham Young
American Moses
Leonard J. Arrington
"Published by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf"--T.p. verso.
Traditions of the Bible
A Guide to the Bible As It Was at the Start of the Common Era
James L. Kugel
From the creation and the tree of knowledge through the Exodus from Egypt and the journey to the promised land; James Kugel shows us how the earliest interpreters of the scriptures radically transformed the Bible.
Hittite Texts and Greek Religion
Contact, Interaction, and Comparison
Ian Rutherford
Our knowledge of ancient Greek religion has been transformed in the last century by an increased understanding of the cultures of the Ancient Near East. Using preserved cuneiform texts, this book explores cases of contact or influence between Ancient Greece and the Hittites to further our understanding of the complex history of religious practices.
Structure and Creativity in Religion
Hermeneutics in Mircea Eliade's Phenomenology and New Directions
Douglas Allen
Sinceits founding by Jacques Waardenburg in 1971, Religion and Reason has been a leading forum for contributions on theories, theoretical issues and agendas related to the phenomenon and the study of religion. Topics include (among others) category formation, comparison, ethnophilosophy, hermeneutics, methodology, myth, phenomenology, philosophy of science, scientific atheism, structuralism, and theories of religion. From time to time the series publishes volumes that map the state of the art and the history of the discipline.
The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy
Ernst Cassirer
This provocative volume, one of the most important interpretive works on the philosophical thought of the Renaissance, has long been regarded as a classic in its field. Ernst Cassirer here examines the changes brewing in the early stages of the Renaissance, tracing the interdependence of philosophy, language, art, and science; the newfound recognition of individual consciousness; and the great thinkers of the period—from da Vinci and Galileo to Pico della Mirandola and Giordano Bruno. The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy discusses the importance of fifteenth-century philosopher Nicholas Cusanus, the concepts of freedom and necessity, and the subject-object problem in Renaissance thought. “This fluent translation of a scholarly and penetrating original leaves little impression of an attempt to show that a ‘spirit of the age’ or ‘spiritual essence of the time’ unifies and expresses itself in all aspects of society or culture.”—Philosophy
The Koran: A Very Short Introduction
Michael Cook
This Very Short Introduction explores the significance of the Koran both in the modern world and in traditional Muslim culture. Michael Cook provides a lucid and direct account of the Koran as codex, as scripture, as liturgy, and as the embodiment of truth, and examines its means of formation and dissemination. He also discusses issues of interpretation for certain key verses, demonstrating that fecundity of the text for readers throughout the world.
Chuang-Tzu for Spiritual Transformation
An Analysis of the Inner Chapters
Robert Elliott Allinson
This book offers a fundamentally new interpretation of the philosophy of the Chuang-Tzu. It is the first full-length work of its kind which argues that a deep level cognitive structure exists beneath an otherwise random collection of literary anecdotes, cryptic sayings, and dark allusions. The author carefully analyzes myths, legends, monstrous characters, paradoxes, parables and linguistic puzzles as strategically placed techniques for systematically tapping and channeling the spiritual dimensions of the mind. Allinson takes issue with commentators who have treated the Chuang-Tzu as a minor foray into relativism. Chapter titles are re-translated, textual fragments are relocated, and inauthentic, outer miscellaneous chapters are carefully separated from the transformatory message of the authentic, inner chapters. Each of the inner chapters is shown to be a building block to the next so that they can only be understood as forming a developmental sequence. In the end, the reader is presented with a clear, consistent and coherent view of the Chuang-Tzu that is more in accord with its stature as a major philosophical work.
Religion and Ritual in Ancient Egypt
Emily Teeter
This book is a vivid reconstruction of ancient Egyptian religious rituals that were enacted in temples, tombs, and private homes.
The Courage To Be Catholic
Crisis, Reform, And The Future Of The Church
George Weigel
From a leading expert on American Catholic life, a bracing challenge to the Church to seize the current crisis as an opportunity to return to the core of classic Catholicism.
The Formation of Hanbalism
Piety Into Power
Nimrod Hurvitz
Ahmad Ibn Hanbal (d. 855) was the eponymous founder of a school of law. This study moves beyond conventional biography to integrate the story of Ibn Hanbal's life with the main events during a crucial formative period in Islamic history.
The World of Roman Song
From Ritualized Speech to Social Order
Thomas N. Habinek
In this bold work, Thomas Habinek offers an entirely new theoretical perspective on Roman cultural history. Although English words such as literature and religion have their origins in Latin, the Romans had no such specific concepts. Rather, much of the sense of these words was captured in the Latin word carmen, usually translated into English as song. Habinek argues that for the Romans, song encompassed a wide range of ritualized speech, including elements of poetry, storytelling, and even the casting of spells. Habinek begins with the fraternal societies, or sodalitates, which predated the Republic and endured into the Imperial era, and whose rites, although adapted over time to different deities and cults, were from the beginning centered on song (perhaps most notably in the ancient Carmen Saliare). He goes on to show how this early use of song became a paradigm for cultural reproduction throughout Roman history. Ritual mastery of the chaos of everyday life, embodied and enacted in song, produced and transmitted the beliefs on which Roman culture was founded and by which Roman communities were sustained. By the emergence of the Empire, song, in all of its senses, served in particular to reproduce the power of the state, organizing relations of power at every level of society. --Johns Hopkins University Press.
The Mandaeans
Ancient Texts and Modern People
Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley
The Mandaeans were a gnostic sect that arose in the Middle East around the same time as Christianity. This text examines the lives and religion of contemporary Mandaeans and provides an introduction to the religion, showing how its ancient texts inform the living religion, and vice versa.
A Wall of Separation?
Debating the Public Role of Religion
Mary Segers, Ted G. Jelen
Should the wall of separation between church and state be permeable or inviolable? This question has been hotly contested since the nation's founding and contentious debates persist today. With a collection of the most significant documents and an introduction by Clarke E. Cochran that provides the historical context of the debate, prominent scholars Mary Segers and Ted Jelen debate the impact of organized religion on the democratic process, examine its influence on political discourse, and discuss its significance for the creation of public policy. The authors illuminate the constitutional implications of using religion to cultivate public morality and discuss the complexities of creating a civic-minded citizenry in a pluralistic society.
Strife in the Sanctuary
Religious Schism in a Jewish Community
Phil Zuckerman
For more than forty years there was a single synagogue in the quiet town of Williamette, Oregon. But then disagreements over gender roles, homosexuality, Israeli politics, and other issues tore the synagogue in two. Where there was once one Jewish community under one roof, there are now two hostile congregations_one Reconstructionist, one Orthodox_across the street from one another. Through a year as a participant in both congregations and in-depth interviews, Zuckerman tells a mesmerizing story of this religious schism. Strife in the Sanctuary then contemplates why religious groups split apart and how religious symbols come to mean different things to different groups. The first book-length study of a single congregation breaking in two, Strife in the Sanctuary provides a welcome ethnographic study for sociologists of religion. Plus, its moving story makes it an excellent read for undergraduate classes or anyone interested in religious divisions.
The Great Unraveling
Losing Our Way in the New Century
Paul R. Krugman
A respected economist shares a collection of his columns from "The New York Times" that analyzes the course of the American economy, looking at the collapse of fiscal responsibility, corporate scandals, and how the nation can get back on track.
God of Battles
Holy Wars of Christianity and Islam
Peter Partner
Peter Partner shows how the ideal of the crusade, "God's War", came to permeate medieval Christendom, and how it influenced later Western societies. Above all, this book examines the fear that Islamic fundamentalism excites in the west and warns against allowing crusading war propaganda to affect our judgment today. 24 illustrations. Maps.
Zeus
A Journey Through Greece in the Footsteps of a God
Tom Stone
Traces the four-thousand-year history of the charismatic father of the Greek gods, from his origins in the Russian steppes and reign on Mount Olympus to his approaching end in Christian Constantinople, in an account that follows the author's journeys to relevant sites in Greek mythology.