Bøger i Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion serien

Sefer Yeṣirah, or "Book of Formation," is one of the most influential Jewish compositions of late antiquity. First attested to in the tenth century C.E. and attributed by some to the patriarch Abraham himself, Sefer Yeṣirah claims that the world was created by the powers of the decimal number system and the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. This short, enigmatic treatise was considered canonical by Jewish philosophers and Kabbalists and has fascinated Western thinkers and writers as diverse as Leibnitz and Borges. Nonetheless, Sefer Yesirah is nearly impossible to contextualize, mainly owing to its unique style and the fact that it does not refer to, nor is it referenced by, any other source in late antiquity. After a century and a half of modern scholarship, the most fundamental questions regarding its origins remain contested: Who wrote Sefer Yeṣirah? Where and when was it written? What was its "original" version? What is the meaning of this treatise?In "Sefer Yeṣirah" and Its Contexts, Tzahi Weiss explores anew the history of this enigmatic work. Through careful scrutiny of the text''s evolution, he traces its origins to the seventh century C.E., to Jews who lived far from rabbinic circles and were familiar with the teachings of Syriac Christianity. In addition, he examines the reception of Sefer Yeṣirah by anonymous commentators and laypeople who, as early as the twelfth century C.E., regarded Sefer Yeṣirah as a mystical, mythical, or magical treatise, thus significantly differing from the common rabbinic view in that period of the text as a philosophical and scientific work. Examined against the backdrop of this newly sketched historical context, Sefer Yeṣirah provides a unique and surprising aperture to little-known Jewish intellectual traditions of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages which, despite their distance from the rabbinic canon, played a vital role in the development of medieval Jewish learning and culture.

In A Traveling Homeland, Daniel Boyarin makes the case that the Babylonian Talmud is a diasporist manifesto producing and defining the practices that constitute Jewish diasporic identity in the form of textual, interpretive communities built around talmudic study.

Analyzing the layers of interpretation in the Sifra and the transformation of Rabbi Akiva's portrayal in rabbinic literature more broadly, Azzan Yadin-Israel traces an ideological shift toward scriptural authority and away from received traditions.

This book explores the sexual slander of Jews in Christian texts from the first through fifth centuries. These early Christian representations of Jewish sexuality reveal how Church fathers used accusations of fleshliness, bestiality, and licentiousness as strategies to differentiate the "spiritual" Christian from the "carnal" Jew.

This study examines the concept of yetzer hara, or evil inclination. Analyzing the some one hundred and fifty appearances of the yetzer in rabbinic literature, Rosen-Zvi contends that the term should not be read under the traditional rubric of sexual desire, but rather in the context of ancient Jewish demonology.

Founding the Fathers explores the development of early Christian history and theology as a discipline in four nineteenth-century Protestant seminaries in the United States. Archival sources reveal how professors adjusted German scholarship to fit Americans' evangelical assumptions and to make the Catholic past more palatable.

Benjamin H. Dunning explores the variety of approaches to sexual difference in second- and third-century Christian thought with particular attention to the ways in which the legacy of the apostle Paul fueled, shaped, and also constrained approaches to the issue.

"Remains of the Jews" studies the rise of Christian Empire in late antiquity through the dense and complex manner in which Christian authors wrote about Jews in the charged space of the "holy land".

What was it like in the household of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph? The extracanonical Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Protogospel of James offer some answers. In stories of household conflict, as well as in scenes of courage and love, ancient Christians learned about human ignorance, divine omniscience, and the worth of family life.

Judaism is often described as a religion that tolerates, even celebrates arguments with God. In Pious Irreverence, Dov Weiss has written the first scholarly study of the premodern roots of this distinctively Jewish theology of protest, examining its origins and development in the rabbinic age (70 CE-800 CE).

The Iranian Talmud reexamines the Babylonian Talmud-one of Judaism's most central texts-in the light of Persian literature and culture, providing an unprecedented and accessible overview to the vibrant world of pre-Islamic Iran that shaped the Bavli.

In The Virgin in Song, Thomas Arentzen explores the characterization of Mary in the songs of Romanos the Melodist, one of the greatest liturgical poets of Byzantium. Romanos's hymns shaped a figure, Arentzen argues, who related intimately to her flock in a formative period of Christian orthodoxy.

Naftali S. Cohn provides an innovative understanding of the rabbinic authors of the Mishnah and their intense focus on the Temple. He contends that the memory of the Temple served a political function for the rabbis, arguing for their own importance within the complex social landscape of Jewish society in Roman Palestine.

Punishment and Freedom offers a fresh look at classical rabbinic texts about criminal law from the perspective of legal and moral philosophy, arguing that the Rabbis constructed an extreme positivist view of law that is based in divine command and that is related to the rabinnic notion notion of human freedom and responsibility.

This book investigates the mappings of ideas about sexual and ethnic difference in Galilee during the centuries following the last Jewish revolt against the Roman Empire.

In Jews, Gentiles, and Other Animals, Mira Beth Wasserman undertakes a close reading of Avoda Zara, arguably the Babylonian Talmud's most scandalous tractate. According to Wasserman, Avoda Zara is where this Talmud joins the humanities in questioning what it means to be a human.

In Textual Mirrors, Dina Stein draws on literary theory, folklore studies, and semiotics to closely examine midrashic tales in which self-reflexivity operates as a central element. Within these texts, rabbinic discourse itself becomes the object of reflection, both complicating and confirming its religious and ideological principles.

This first full-length study of Jesus' circumcision reimagines the language of difference and identity in early Christianity. From his earliest appearance in the Gospel of Luke to the medieval Feast of the Circumcision, Christ circumcised embodies a new way of imagining Christians and their creation of a new religious culture.

Kissing was one of the most widely practiced early Christian rituals. Kissing Christians presents the first comprehensive study of how ancient controversies concerning this rite became part of larger debates regarding the internal structure of ancient Christian communities and their relations with outsiders.

Narrating the Law: A Poetics of Talmudic Legal Stories creates a new theoretical framework for considering the relationship between law and narrative, models a new method of studying Talmudic law, and fills out the picture of the cultural life of the rabbis who contributed to the Talmud.

Demonstrating that as Augustine defined and became a "Catholic" self, he also intently engaged with his former Manichaean faith, Augustine's Manichaean Dilemma, Volume 2 explores the close interplay of these two processes in Augustine's works up to and including the Confessions.

An in-depth examination of the asceticism practiced at the White Monastery in Upper Egypt in the fifth century, using diverse sources, including monastic rules, theological treatises, sermons, letters, and material culture.

In Christianity, Empire, and the Making of Religion in Late Antiquity, Jeremy M. Schott examines the ways in which conflicts between Christian and pagan intellectuals over religious, ethnic, and cultural identity contributed to the transformation of Roman imperial rhetoric and ideology in the early fourth century C.E.

Presents a study of midrash - the biblical exegesis, parables, and anecdotes of the Rabbis. This work examines early, tannaitic legal midrash, focusing on the interpretive tradition associated with the figure of Rabbi Ishmael. It also locates the Rabbi Ishmael hermeneutic within the religious landscape of Second Temple and post-Temple literature.

Why did early Christians claim their "otherness" as resident aliens, strangers, and sojourners so vocally? Aliens and Sojourners explores the markedly different ways that Christians used the rhetoric of their own marginality in order to variously situate Christian identity in relation to the ancient Roman world.

Jason David BeDuhn reconstructs Augustine's decade-long adherence to Manichaeism, apostasy from it, and subsequent conversion to Nicene Christianity.

Kessler shows how the rabbis of the third through sixth centuries turned to non-Jewish writings on embryology and procreation to explicate the biblical insistence on the primacy of God's role in procreation at the expense of the biological parents.

The author reads the Book of Revelation as a text firmly situated in the world of imperial Roman Asia Minor, where it was written. He argues that Revelation is a Christian version of that world, complete with its own gladiatorial combats and other public spectacles.