SUBJECT INDEX:

RELIGION

The Paterik of the Kievan Caves Monastery
Muriel Heppell, Translator
The Kievan Caves Monastery was for centuries the most important Ukrainian monastic establishment. It was the outstanding center of literary production, and its monks served throughout the territory of Rus' as bishops and monastic superiors. Heppell now makes available the first complete English translation of the Paterik.
Hardcover 1989
Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America
Matthew Avery Sutton
Aimee Semple McPherson was the most flamboyant and controversial minister in the United States between the world wars, building a successful megachurch, a mass media empire, and eventually a political career to resurrect what she believed was America's Christian heritage. Sutton's definitive study reveals the woman as a trail-blazing pioneer, her life marking the beginning of Pentecostalism's advance to the mainstream of American culture.
Hardcover 2007
The Aldo Moro Murder Case
Richard Drake
Aldo Moro's kidnapping and violent death in 1978 had much the same effect in Italy as the assassination of President John F. Kennedy had in the United States, with both cases giving rise to endless conspiracy theories. In his thorough account of the long and anguished quest for justice in the Moro murder case, Richard Drake provides a detailed portrait of the tragedy and its aftermath as complex symbols of a turbulent age in Italian history.
Hardcover
Alienated Minority
Kenneth Stow
This narrative history surveying one thousand years of Jewish life integrates the Jewish experience into the context of the overall culture and society of medieval Europe. It presents a new picture of the interaction between Christians and Jews in this tumultuous era.
Paperback 1998 / Hardcover
An Early Tibetan Survey of Buddhist Literature
Edited by Kurtis R. Schaeffer
Edited by Leonard W. J. van der Kuijp
This volume is a study and edition of Bcom Idan ral gri's (1227-1305) Bstan pa rgyas pa rgyan gyi nyi 'od. Likely composed in the last decades of the thirteenth century, this systematic list of Buddhist Sutras, Tantras, Shastras, and related genres translated primarily from Sanskrit and other Indic languages holds an important place in the history of Buddhist literature in Tibet.
Hardcover 2004
An Ecstasy of Folly
Laura Salah Nasrallah
Who is a true prophet? Who has real access to divine realms of knowledge? Early Christian communities accused each other's prophets of madness and of making false claims to divine knowledge. This book argues that early Christians did not seek to answer questions about true prophecy or to define madness and rationality, but rather used this discourse in order to control knowledge, to establish their own authority, and to define Christian identity.
Paperback 2004
An Updated Vedic Concordance
Edited by Marco Franceschini
After one hundred years, the well-known Vedic Concordance of Maurice Bloomfield has finally been updated. The first edition, published in 1906, was a complete alphabetic index of all Vedic mantras then known. Several important texts belonging to the oldest stratum of Indian literature have been published since and are included in this new edition.
Mixed 2008
Ancient Mystery Cults
Walter Burkert
The foremost historian of Greek religion providers the first comprehensive, comparative study of a little-known aspect of ancient religious beliefs and practices.
Hardcover 1987 / Paperback
Ancient Religions
Sarah Iles Johnston, General Editor
Religious beliefs and practices, which permeated all aspects of life in antiquity, traveled well-worn routes throughout the Mediterranean: itinerant charismatic practitioners peddled their skills as healers, purifiers, cursers, and initiators; and vessels decorated with illustrations of myths traveled with them. This collection of essays, drawn from the groundbreaking reference work Religion in the Ancient World, offers an expansive, comparative perspective on this complex spiritual world.
Paperback 2007
The Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles
François Bovon, Editor
Ann Graham Brock, Editor
Christopher R. Matthews, Editor
This collection provides a rich, multilayered analysis of a long-neglected branch of early Christian apocryphal literature that examines the relationship between tradition and redaction, uses of language, and the fluid border between literary criticism and motif analysis.
Paperback 1999 / Hardcover 1999
The Apostolic Fathers, I, I Clement. II Clement. Ignatius. Polycarp. Didache
Edited and translated by Bart D. Ehrman
The writings of the Apostolic Fathers give a rich and diverse picture of Christian life and thought in the period immediately after New Testament times. Some of them were accorded almost Scriptural authority in the early Church. This new Loeb edition reflects the latest scholarship.
Hardcover 2003
The Apostolic Fathers, II, Epistle of Barnabas. Papias and Quadratus. Epistle to Diognetus. The Shepherd of Hermas
Edited and translated by Bart D. Ehrman
The writings of the Apostolic Fathers give a rich and diverse picture of Christian life and thought in the period immediately after New Testament times. Some of them were accorded almost Scriptural authority in the early Church. This new Loeb edition of these essential texts reflects current idiom and the latest scholarship.
Hardcover 2003
Appropriately Subversive
Tova Hartman Halbertal
How do mothers reconcile conflicting loyalties--to their religious traditions, and to the daughters whose freedoms are also constrained by those traditions? Searching for answers, Tova Hartman Halbertal interviewed mothers of teenage daughters in religious communities: Catholics in the United States, Orthodox Jews in Israel. Her book illuminates one of the moral questions of our time--how best to protect children and preserve community, without being imprisoned by tradition.
Hardcover 2003
Arguing the Just War in Islam
John Kelsay
Jihad, with its many terrifying associations, is a term widely used today, though its meaning is poorly grasped. Kelsay's timely and important work focuses on jihad of the sword in Islamic thought, history, and culture. Making use of original sources, Kelsay delves into the tradition of shari'a--Islamic jurisprudence and reasoning--and shows how it defines jihad as the Islamic analogue of the Western "just" war.
Hardcover 2007
Armenian and Iranian Studies
James R. Russell
This book brings together select articles published in disparate journals and volumes over the past two decades. Some deal exclusively with either Armeniaca (ancient, medieval, and modern) or Iranica (pre-Islamic); in the case of the former, there is an emphasis on the sources and religious material of heroic epic and of folklore. A number of studies also deal with the visionaries of the Armenian tradition--Mashtots', Narekats'i, Ch'arents'. In the Iranian area, there are publications on Irano-Judaica and the culture of the Parsi Zoroastrians of India.
Hardcover 2005
The Ascension of Authorship
Jed Wyrick
This book traces the history of the idea of the author in the ancient world, beginning with the attribution practices of Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism. Wyrick argues that the fusion of Jewish and Hellenistic approaches toward attribution helped lead to St. Augustine's reinvention of the writer of scripture as an author whose texts were governed by both divine will and human intent.
Paperback 2004 / Hardcover 2004
Awash in a Sea of Faith
Jon Butler
Challenging the formidable tradition that places early New England Puritanism at the center of the American religious experience. Yale historian Jon Butler offers a new interpretation of three hundred years of religious and cultural development. Butler stresses the instability of religion in Europe where state churches battled dissenters, magic, and astonishingly low church participation. He charts the transfer of these difficulties to America, including the failure of Puritan religious models, and describes the surprising advance of religious commitment there between 1700 and 1865. Through the assertion of authority and coercion, a remarkable sacralization of the prerevolutionary countryside, advancing religious pluralism, the folklorization of magic, and an eclectic, syncretistic emphasis on supernatural interventionism, including miracles, America emerged after 1800 as an extraordinary spiritual hothouse that far eclipsed the Puritan achievement -even as secularism triumphed in Europe.
Hardcover 1990 / Paperback 1992
Being a Buddhist Nun
Kim Gutschow
This book offers the first ethnography of Tibetan Buddhist society from the perspective of its nuns. Gutschow lived for more than three years among these women, collecting their stories, observing their ways, and studying their lives. This richly textured picture of the little known culture provides valuable insight into the relationship between women and religion in South Asia today.
Hardcover 2004
Beloved Strangers
Anne C. Rose
Interfaith marriage is a visible and often controversial part of American life--and one with a significant history. Rose draws a vivid picture of interfaith marriages over the century before World War I, their problems and their social consequences. She shows how mixed-faith families became agents of change in a culture moving toward pluralism.
Hardcover 2001
The Betrayal of Faith
Emma Anderson
Anderson uses one man's compelling story to explore the collision of Christianity with traditional Native religion in colonial North America. Pastedechouan's story illuminates key struggles to retain and impose religious identity on both sides of the seventeenth-century Atlantic, even as it has a startling relevance to the contemporary encounter between native and nonnative peoples.
Hardcover 2007
Beyond Essence
Lori K. Pearson
This book demonstrates the intimate connection between Troeltsch's philosophical writings on the essence of Christianity and his historical investigations of Christianity's past. Pearson argues that as a result of his historical work, Troeltsch moved beyond the category of essence and sought new ways of theorizing Christian identity in the context of modernity's pluralistic yet fragmented society.
Paperback 2008
Beyond the Synagogue Gallery
Karla Goldman
Focusing on the nineteenth century, Beyond the Synagogue Gallery recounts the emergence of new roles for American Jewish women in public worship and synagogue life. Karla Goldman's study of changing patterns of female religiosity is a story of acculturation--of adjustments made to fit Jewish worship into American society. This account of the evolving religious identity of American Jewish women expands our understanding of women's religious roles and of the Americanization of Judaism in the nineteenth century.
Hardcover 2000 / Paperback 2001
The Bible As It Was
James L. Kugel
This is a guide to the Hebrew Bible unlike any other. Leading us chapter by chapter through its most important stories--from the Creation and the Tree of Knowledge through the Exodus from Egypt and the journey to the Promised Land--James Kugel shows how a group of anonymous ancient interpreters radically transformed the Bible and made it into the book that has come down to us today.
Hardcover 1997 / Paperback 1999
The Bible in the Twelfth Century
Laura Light
Among the Houghton's medieval manuscripts was an exhibition of twelfth century Biblical manuscripts. Light's catalogue catches the culture of the medieval book at its height, not only in Bibles but in breviaries, lectionaries, commentaries, and works of the Doctors and Fathers of the Church.
Paperback 2005
Boston Priests, 1848-1910
Donna Merwick
Merwick rejects the usual assumption that Boston Catholicism is, definitively, Irish Catholicism. In her penetrating study of three distinct generations of Boston priests in the late nineteenth century, the author shows that Irish Catholicism met with steady opposition. Her account of the struggle of Boston clerics and intellectuals to relate their faith to their experiences in the changing city provides a new interpretation of Boston Catholic culture.
Hardcover 1973
Buddhism and Ecology
Mary Evelyn Tucker, Editor
Duncan Ryuken Williams, Editor
In this book, twenty religionists and environmentalists examine Buddhism's understanding of the intricate web of life. In noting the cultural diversity of Buddhism, they highlight aspects of the tradition which may help formulate an effective environmental ethics, citing examples from both Asia and the United States of socially engaged Buddhist projects to protect the environment.
Paperback 1998 / Hardcover 1998
Burning to Read
James Simpson
Amid present-day conflagrations, this illuminating book reminds us of the sources, and profound consequences, of Christian fundamentalism in the sixteenth century. Simpson focuses on the cultural transformation in early modern England that allowed common people to read the Bible for the first time. The last wave of fundamentalist reading in the West provoked 150 years of violent upheaval; as we approach a second wave, this powerful book alerts us to our peril.
Hardcover 2007
Caitanya Caritamrta of Krsnadasa Kaviraja
Edward C. Dimock, Translator & Commentator
Tony K. Stewart, Editor
The Caitanya Caritamrta is an early-seventeenth-century Bengali and Sanskrit biography of the great saint and Vaisnava leader Caitanya (1486-1533 c.e.), by the poet and scholar Krsnadasa, who has been given by Bengali tradition the title Kaviraja--"Prince of Poets."
Hardcover 2000
Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic
Frank M. Cross
The essays in this volume address key aspects of Israelite religious development. Cross traces the continuities between early Israelite religion and the Canaanite culture from which it emerged; explores the tension between the mythic and the historical in Israel's religious expression; and examines the reemergence of Canaanite mythic material in the apocalypticism of early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Hardcover 1973 / paper 1997
Capitalism as Religion? A Study of Paul Tillich's Interpretation of Modernity
Francis Ching-Wah Yip
The relationship between religion and modern culture remains a controversial issue within Christian theology. This book focuses on Paul Tillich's interpretation of modern culture and the influence of capitalism. Using the concept of "cultural modernity," Francis Ching-Wah Yip reconstructs Tillich's interpretation of modernity and shows that Tillich's notion of theonomy served to underscore the problems of modernity and to develop a response.
Paperback
Catalog of the Bernice and Henry Tumen Collection of Jewish Ceremonial Objects in the Harvard College Library and the Harvard Semitic Museum
Compiled by Violet Gilboa
This volume features photographic reproductions of 166 Jewish ceremonial objects including wine cups; beakers; Sabbath lamps; candlesticks; spice boxes; Hanukkah lamps; Torah pointers; crowns, shields, and finials; plates for the Passover Seder and other occasions; charity boxes; Esther scrolls; containers for the etrog fruit used on Sukkot; marriage rings; amulets; and others.
Paperback 2005
The Channeling Zone
Michael F. Brown
Brown explores the scope and substance of the practice called channeling as a window on the persistent New Age movement. He offers a lively firsthand assessment of the hopes, fears, and obsessions of the thousands of Americans who have abandoned mainstream religions in search of direct and improvisational contact with spiritual beings.
Hardcover 1997 / Paperback 1999
Charisma and Compassion
C. Julia Huang
Tzu-Chi (Compassion Relief) began as a tiny, grassroots women's charitable group; today in Taiwan it runs three state-of-the-art hospitals, a television channel, and a university. Based on extensive fieldwork in Taiwan, Malaysia, Japan, and the United States, this book explores the transformation of Tzu-Chi.
Hardcover 2009
Christian Art
Rowena Loverance
What makes works of art Christian? And what, as such, distinguishes them from other works? These are the questions at the center of this book, which is at once a sumptuously illustrated survey of Christian art across space and time and a probing study of what "Christian art" really means, how it functions, where it arises, and whom it serves.
Hardcover 2007
Christian Hebraists and Dutch Rabbis
Aaron L. Katchen
Hardcover 1985
Christianity and American Democracy
Hugh Heclo
Mary Jo Bane
Michael Kazin
Alan Wolfe
Christianity, not religion in general, has been important for American democracy. With this bold thesis, Heclo offers a panoramic view of how Christianity and democracy have shaped each other over the years, and how their relationship is changing in the present day. Responding to his challenging argument, Mary Jo Bane, Michael Kazin, and Alan Wolfe criticize, qualify, and amend it. The result is a lively debate about a momentous tension in American public life.
Hardcover 2007
Christianity and Ecology
Dieter T. Hessel, Editor
Rosemary Radford Ruether, Editor
What can Christianity as a tradition contribute to the struggle to secure the future well-being of the earth community? This collaborative volume, the third in the series on religions of the world and the environment, explores problematic themes that contribute to ecological neglect or abuse and offer constructive insight into and responsive imperatives for ecologically just and socially responsible living.
Paperback 2000 / Hardcover 2000
Christianity and the Transformation of the Book
Anthony Grafton
Megan Williams
Christianity and the Transformation of the Book combines broad-gauged synthesis and close textual analysis to reconstruct the kinds of books and the ways of organizing scholarly inquiry and collaboration among the Christians of Caesarea, on the coast of Roman Palestine. The book explores the dialectical relationship between intellectual history and the history of the book, even as it expands our understanding of early Christian scholarship.
Hardcover 2006 / Paperback 2008
Christianity in China
Suzanne Wilson Barnett, Editor
John King Fairbank, Editor
These studies examine writings by Protestant missionaries in China from 1819 to 1890. Nine historians contribute to a composite picture of the missionary pioneers, the literature they produced, the changes they sustained through immersion in Chinese culture, and their efforts to interpret that culture for their constituencies at home.
Hardcover 1985
Chronology and Recensional Development in the Greek Text of Kings
James Donald Shenkel
Hardcover 1968
Church, Politics, and Society in Spain, 1750-1874
William J. Callahan
Nowhere in Europe has the Roman Catholic Church exerted a more mystical hold on the life of a nation than it has in Spain. Yet this hold has not been unchanging or unchallenged. This contribution to European historical literature provides a clear and dispassionate account of successive ecclesiastical-secular conflicts and controversies, and deftly summarizes the diverse ideological and intellectual currents of the times.
Hardcover 1984
The Clash Within
Martha C. Nussbaum
While America is focused on religious militancy and terrorism in the Middle East, democracy has been under siege from religious extremism in another critical part of the world. As Nussbaum reveals in this penetrating look at India today, the forces of the Hindu right pose a disturbing threat to its democratic traditions and secular state. Nussbaum's long-standing professional relationship with India makes her an excellent guide to its recent history.
Hardcover 2007 / Paperback 2008
Colleges in Controversey
John W. Padberg
Padberg has written the first full-length study of these colleges, from their revival in 1815 to their suppression in 1880. Drawing almost exclusively on archival material not previously utilized, Father Padberg places his study against the background of anti-clericalism, revolution, the Second Empire, and the first decade of the Third Republic.
Hardcover 1969
Commentaries, Volume 1, Books I-II
Pius II
Edited by Margaret Meserve
Edited by Marcello Simonetta
Pius II (1405-1464) began life as Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini in a small town near Siena, and became a famous Latin poet and diplomat. Originally an opponent of the papacy, he eventually reconciled himself with the Roman church and became a priest, then a cardinal. Finally he was elected Pope Pius II (1458) and dedicated his pontificate to organizing a pan-European crusade against the Ottoman Empire. Pius's Commentaries, the only autobiography ever written by a pope, was composed in elegant humanistic Latin modeled on Caesar and Cicero. This edition contains a fresh Latin text based on the last manuscript written in Pius's lifetime and an updated and corrected version of the 1937 translation.
Hardcover 2004
Commentaries, Volume 2, Books III-IV
Pius II
Edited by Margaret Meserve
Edited by Marcello Simonetta
The Renaissance popes were among the most enlightened and generous patrons of arts and letters in the Europe of their day. The diaries of Pius II give us an intimate glimpse of the life and thought of one of the greatest of the Renaissance popes. Commentaries, the only autobiography ever written by a pope, was composed in elegant humanistic Latin modeled on Caesar and Cicero. This edition contains a fresh Latin text based on the last manuscript written in Pius's lifetime and an updated translation.
Hardcover 2007
Confucian Traditions in East Asian Modernity
Tu Wei-Ming, Editor
Seventeen scholars from varying fields here consider the implications of Confucian concerns--self-cultivation, regulation of the family, social civility, moral education, well-being of the people, governance of the state, and universal peace--in industrial East Asia.
Paperback 1996 / Hardcover
Congregations in America
Mark Chaves
This book provides a comprehensive overview of the most significant form of collective religious expression in American society: local congregations. Among its more surprising findings, the book reveals that, despite the media focus on the political and social activities of religious groups, the arts are actually far more central to the workings of congregations.
Hardcover 2004
Constantinople and the Latins
Angeliki E. Laiou
In this penetrating account of Andronicus' foreign policy, Laiou focuses on Byzantium's relations with the Latin West, the far-reaching domestic implications of the hostility of western Europe, and the critical decision that faced Andronicus: whether to follow his father's lead and allow Byzantium to become a European state or to keep it an Eastern, orthodox power.
Hardcover 1972
Contraception
John T. Noonan
Originally published in 1965, Contraception received unanimous acclaim from all quarters as the first thorough, scholarly, objective analysis of Catholic doctrine on birth control. More than ever this subject is of acute concern to a world facing serious population problems, and the author has written an important new appendix examining the development of and debates over--the doctrine in the past twenty years.
Hardcover 1986
Countertraditions in the Bible
Ilana Pardes
In this eye-opening book, llana Pardes explores the tense dialogue between dominant patriarchal discourses of the Bible and counter female voices.
Hardcover 1992 / Paperback
The Craft of Zeus
John Scheid
Jesper Svenbro
Carol Volk, Translator
In this dazzling commentary on Greek and Roman myth and society, weaving emerges as a metaphor rich with possibility. From rituals symbolizing the cohesion of society to the erotic and marital significance of weaving, this lively book defines the logic of one of the central concepts in Greek and Roman thought.
Hardcover 1996 / Paperback 2001
Creation of the Sacred
Walter Burkert
Sacrifice is essential to all religions. Could there be a natural, even biological, reason? Why are sacrifice and numerous other religious rituals and concepts shared by so many different cultures? In this extraordinary book, one of the world's leading authorities on ancient religions explores the possibility of natural religion.
Hardcover 1996 / Paperback 1998
The Creationists
Ronald L. Numbers
In light of the embattled status of evolutionary theory, particularly as "intelligent design" makes headway against Darwinism in the schools and in the courts, this now classic account of the roots of creationism assumes new relevance. Expanded and updated to account for the appeal of intelligent design and the global spread of creationism, The Creationists offers a thorough, clear, and balanced overview of the arguments and figures at the heart of the debate.
Paperback 2006
Creativity and Tradition
Israel Ta-Shma
This volume brings together sixteen of Ta-Shma's outstanding studies originally written in English, four of which are published here for the first time. Set in Germany, northern France, Italy, Poland, and Spain, these essays focus on leading rabbinic scholars and their writings, as well as important issues of Jewish intellectual history, such as the nature of halakhah and aggadah, kabbalah and spirituality, childhood, and popular religion.
Hardcover 2007
Crisis and Reform
Borys Gudziak
Crisis and Reform provides an excellent overview of the ecclesiastical structures in Eastern Slavic lands from their Christianization to the late sixteenth century.
Hardcover 1999 / Paperback 2001
Crossing and Dwelling
Thomas A. Tweed
A deeply researched and vividly written study, this book depicts religion in place and in movement, dwelling and crossing. Drawing on insights from the natural and social sciences, Tweed's work is grounded in the gritty particulars of distinctive religious practices, even as it moves toward ideas about cross-cultural patterns. It offers a responsible way to think broadly about religion, a topic that is crucial for understanding the contemporary world.
Hardcover 2006 / Paperback 2008
Culture and the State in Late Choson Korea
JaHyun Kim Haboush, Editor
Martina Deuchler, Editor
Investigating the late sixteenth through the nineteenth century, this work looks at the shifting boundaries between the Choson state and the adherents of Confucianism, Buddhism, Christianity, and popular religions. The contributors argue that the power of each group and the space it occupied were determined by a dynamic interaction of ideology, governmental policies, and the group's self-perceptions. Collectively, the volume counters the static view of the Korean Confucian state and elucidates its relationship to the wider Confucian community and religious groups.
Hardcover 1999 / Paperback 2002
The Dalai Lama at MIT
Edited by Anne Harrington
Edited by Arthur Zajonc
Their meeting captured headlines; the waiting list for tickets was nearly 2000 names long. If you were unable to attend, this book will take you there. Including both the papers given at the conference, and the animated discussion and debate that followed, The Dalai Lama at MIT reveals scientists and monks reaching across a cultural divide, to share insights, studies, and enduring questions.
Hardcover 2006 / Paperback 2008
The Damnation of Theron Ware
Harold Frederic
Edited by Everett Carter
This Faustian tale of the spiritual disintegration of a young minister, written in the 1890s, deals subtly and powerfully with the impact of science on innocence and the collective despair that marked the transition into the modern age.
Hardcover 1960 / Paperback 1996
The Dao of Muhammad
Zvi Ben-Dor Benite
This book documents an Islamic-Confucian school of scholarship that flourished, mostly in the Yangzi Delta, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Drawing on previously unstudied materials, it reconstructs the network of Muslim scholars responsible for the creation and circulation of a large corpus of Chinese Islamic written material--the so-called Han Kitab. Overturning the idea that participation in Confucian culture necessitated the obliteration of all other identities, this book offers insight into the world of a group of scholars who felt that their study of the Islamic classics constituted a rightful "school" within the Confucian intellectual landscape.
Hardcover 2005
Daoism and Ecology
N. J. Girardot, Editor
James Miller, Editor
Xiaogan Liu, Editor
Roger T. Ames
E. N. Anderson
Joanne D. Birdwhistell
Robert Ford Campany
Vincent F. Chu
Edward Davis
Stephen L. Field
Russell B. Goodman
Thomas H. Hahn
David L. Hall
Jonathan R. Herman
Russell Kirkland
Terry F. Kleeman
Livia Kohn
Michael LaFargue
Chi-tim Lai
Ursula K. Le Guin
Yuanguo Li
Ming Liu
Weidong Lu
Jeffrey F. Meyer
Rene Navarro
Jordan Paper
Lisa Raphals
Kristofer Schipper
Daniel Seitz
Linda Varone
Richard G. Wang
Jiyu Zhang
The authors in this volume consider the intersection of Daoism and ecology, looking at the theoretical and historical implications associated with a Daoist approach to the environment. They also analyze perspectives found in Daoist religious texts and within the larger Chinese cultural context in order to delineate key issues found in the classical texts.
Paperback 2001 / Hardcover 2001
Death and Social Order in Tokugawa Japan
Nam-lin Hur
During the Tokugawa period (1600-1868) every household was expected to be affiliated with a Buddhist temple, and every citizen had to be given a Buddhist funeral. These customs gave rise to the danka system of funerary patronage, which became a public institution when the shogunate adopted it as an effective means of controlling the populace. In this study, Hur follows the historical development of the danka system and details the social forces, political concerns, and religious beliefs that drove this "economy of death."
Hardcover 2007
Decadence and Catholicism
Ellis Hanson
Ellis Hanson traces the intersections of the aesthetic, erotic, and religious in the decadent literature of the late nineteenth century. The decadents--including Oscar Wilde, Charles Baudelaire, J. K. Huysmans, Walter Pater, and Paul Verlaine--found in the Catholic Church a peculiar language that gave them a means of artistic and sexual expression. Hanson shows how Catholicism offered both the hysterical symptom and the last hope for paganism amid the dullness of Victorian puritanism and bourgeois materialism.
Paperback 1998 / Hardcover 1998
Decoding the Rabbis
Marc Saperstein
Hardcover 1980
Defender of the Faith
Lawrence Levine
Paperback
Deliverance and Submission
Kelly H. Chong
South Korea is home to some of the largest evangelical Protestant congregations in the world. This book investigates the meaning of—and the reasons behind—a particular aspect of contemporary South Korean evangelicalism: the intense involvement of middle-class women.
Hardcover 2008
Demons and the Making of the Monk
David Brakke
In this finely written study of demonology and Christian spirituality in fourth- and fifth-century Egypt, David Brakke examines how the conception of the monk as a holy and virtuous being was shaped by the combative encounter with demons. Drawing on biographies of exceptional monks, collections of monastic sayings and stories, letters from ascetic teachers to their disciples, sermons, and community rules, Brakke crafts a compelling picture of the embattled religious celibate.
Hardcover 2006
Der Rig-Veda, Part IV, Index, Aus dem Sanskrit ins Deutsche Ubersetzt und mit einem Laufenden Kommentar Versehem, von Karl Friedrich Geldner
Vedas
Edited by Karl Friedrich Geldner
Hardcover 1957
Der Rig-Veda: Aus dem Sanskrit ins Deutsche Übersetzt und mit einem laufenden Kommentar versehen von Karl Friedrich Geldner
Edited and translated by Karl Friedrich Geldner
The Rigveda is the oldest Indian and one of the oldest Indo-European texts. It is a collection of 1,028 hymns addressed to the gods, composed in highly poetic and notoriously difficult Archaic Sanskrit. Medieval Indian commentaries and especially the modern Western scholarship of the past 150 years have increasingly shed more light on its poetry, religion, and ritual as well as on its contemporary meaning. The Rigveda has been translated in scholarly fashion only once during the twentieth century, and that was into German in 1951 by K. F. Geldner. Geldner's volumes have long been out of print; they are reprinted here in one useful reference volume.
Paperback 2003
Deus Destroyed
George Elison
Paperback 1988
Diaspora
Erich S. Gruen
What was life like for Jews settled throughout the Mediterranean world of Classical antiquity--and what place did Jewish communities have in the diverse civilization dominated by Greeks and Romans? In a probing account of the Jewish diaspora in the four centuries from Alexander the Great's conquest of the Near East to the Roman destruction of the Jewish Temple, Gruen reaches often surprising conclusions.
Hardcover 2002 / Paperback 2004
Diplomacy and Dogmatism
De Lamar Jensen
Showing how Continental diplomacy was dominated by religious zeal in the late sixteenth century, and how the fanaticism of the French religious wars formed a prelude to a reaction toward political absolutism, Jensen draws on a fund of untapped manuscript and printed sources, including Mendoza's coded letters, some of which he was the first to decipher.
Hardcover 1964
The Dissent of the Governed
Stephen L. Carter
Between loyalty and disobedience; between recognition of the law's authority and realization that the law is not always right: in America, this conflict is historic, with results as glorious as the mass protests of the civil rights movement and as inglorious as the armed violence of the militia movement. In an impassioned defense of dissent, Stephen Carter argues for the dialogue that negotiates this conflict and keeps democracy alive. His book portrays an America dying from a refusal to engage in such a dialogue, a polity where, indeed, everybody speaks, but nobody listens.
Hardcover 1998 / Paperback 1999
Divided by Faith
Benjamin J. Kaplan
Can people coexist in peace when their basic beliefs are irreconcilable? Kaplan responds by taking us back to early modern Europe, when the issue of religious toleration was no less pressing than it is today. Divided by Faith is both history from the bottom up and a much-needed challenge to our belief in the triumph of reason over faith. This compelling story reveals that toleration has taken many guises in the past and suggests that it may well do the same in the future.
Hardcover 2007
Documentary Sources for the History of the Rus' Metropolitanate
Andrei Pliguzov
This work is the first collection of source materials on Orthodox Church history published in the United States, and the first to specialize in the medieval doctrine of the Rus' Metropolitanate. The publication presents over 250 documents in chronological order, including many formerly unknown to scholars.
Hardcover
The Dome of the Rock
Oleg Grabar
This book tells the story of the Dome of the Rock, from the first fateful decades of its creation to its modern acquisition of different and potent meanings for Muslim, Christian, and Jewish cultures. Primarily it is as a work of art that the Dome of the Rock stands out from these pages, understood for the quality that allows it to transcend the constrictions of period and perhaps even those of faith and culture.
Hardcover 2006
Doubting Thomas
Glenn W. Most
From the New Testament, Glenn W. Most traces Thomas's permutations through the centuries: as Gnostic saint, missionary to India, paragon of Christian orthodoxy, hero of skepticism, and negative example of doubt, blasphemy, and violence. This work shows how Thomas's story, in its many guises, touches upon central questions of religion, philosophy, hermeneutics, and, not least, life.
Hardcover 2005 / Paperback 2007
Early Christian Rhetoric
Amos N. Wilder
Mr. Wilder study of early Christian rhetoric, first published in this country and in England in 1964, was hailed as the basic work on the literary art of the New Testament, important for its analysis of oral forms and for its insight into the novelty of New Testament speech. In his introduction to this reissue Mr. Wilder explains more particularly the aim and method of the work, discusses the significance of his approach in current biblical interpretation, and considers some recent developments in the specifically "literary" and rhetorical aspects of New Testament study.
Hardcover 1971
Early Christianity and Greek Paidea
Werner Jaeger
This small book, the last work of a world-renowned scholar, has established itself as a classic. It provides a superb overview of the vast historical process by which Christianity was Hellenized and Hellenic civilization became Christianized.
Hardcover 1961 / Paperback
Ecumenism in the Age of the Reformation
Donald Nugent
This work on the colloquy presents the dialectical complexities of the sixteenth-century theology--a theology that had emerged with binding strands of religious idealism and political interest. Theology was, indeed, the medium of discourse, but it was not an end in itself. Rather, it was a means to a higher goal: religious reconciliation.
Hardcover 1974
Emplacing a Pilgrimage
Barbara Ambros
The sacred mountain oyama (literally, “Big Mountain”) has loomed over the religious landscape of early modern Japan.Ambros provides a narrative history of the mountain and its place in contemporary society and popular religion by focusing on the development of the oyama cult and its religious, political, and socioeconomic contexts.
Hardcover 2008
Enchanting Powers
Lawrence E. Sullivan, Editor
Contributions by Judith Becker
Contributions by Philip V. Bohlman
Contributions by John Chernoff
Contributions by Michael W. Harris
Contributions by Jonathan D. Hill
Contributions by Moshe Idel
Contributions by Victoria Lindsay Levine
Contributions by Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Contributions by Rulan Chao Pian
Contributions by Regula Burckhardt Qureshi
Contributions by Kay Kaufman Shelemay
The Confucian Sacrificial Ceremony, the Choctaw ball game, the "drum history" of the Dagbamba, the chanting of the Qur'an--these are some of the topics addressed in this collection of essays by eminent musicologists, anthropologists, historians, and religionists as they consider the intersection of musics and religions in different world cultures.
Paperback 1997 / Hardcover
English Chantries
Alan Kreider
The chantries of medieval England were founded in the belief that intercessory masses could shorten the period spent by souls in purgatory. Kreider writes about chantries' social, religious, and numerical importance; the significance of purgatory in their founding; and the theological and economic changes of the 1530s and 1540s that caused the government to jettison traditional practices concerning prayers for the deceased.
Hardcover 1979
Ephesos, Metropolis of Asia
Edited by Helmut Koester
This volume brings together studies of Ephesos--a major city in the Greco-Roman period and a primary center for the spread of Christianity into the Western world--by an international array of scholars from the fields of classics, fine arts, history of religion, New Testament, ancient Christianity, and archaeology.
Paperback 2004
Episcopal Power and Florentine Society, 1000-1320
George Dameron
This first detailed study of the bishops of Florence tells the story of a dynamic Italian lordship during the most prosperous period of the Middle Ages. Drawing upon a rich base of primary sources, Dameron demonstrates that the nature of the Florentine episcopal lordship results from the tension between seigneurial pressure and peasant resistance.
Hardcover 1991
Erbadistan ud Nirangistan
Firoze M. Kotwal, Editor
James W. Boyd, Editor
Paperback 1981
Everyday Jihad
Bernard Rougier
Translated by Pascale Ghazaleh
As southern Lebanon becomes the latest battleground for Islamist warriors, Rougier plunges us into the heavily populated Palestinian refugee camp at Ain al-Helweh, which became a site for militant Sunni Islamists in the early 1990s. Rougier documents how Sunni fundamentalists, through their own interpretations of sacred texts and jihad, took root in this Palestinian milieu, and explains how radical religious allegiances overcome traditional nationalist sentiment in communities marked by poverty and despair.
Hardcover 2007 / Paperback 2008
Evil and/or/as the Good
Brook Ziporyn
"Other than the devil, there is no Buddha; other than the Buddha, there is no devil." The Chinese monk Siming Zhili (960-1028) uttered this remark as part of his justification for his self-immolation. An exposition of the intent, implications, and resonances of this one sentence, this book expands and unravels the context in which the seeming paradox of the ultimate identity of good and evil is to be understood. In analyzing this idea, Brook Ziporyn provides an overview of the development of Tiantai thought from the fifth through the eleventh centuries in China.
Hardcover 2000
The Evolution-Creation Struggle
Michael Ruse
In his latest book, Ruse uncovers surprising similarities between evolutionist and creationist thinking. Exploring the underlying philosophical commitments of evolutionists, he reveals that those most hostile to religion are just as evangelical as their fundamentalist opponents. But more crucially, and reaching beyond the biblical issues at stake, he demonstrates that these two diametrically opposed ideologies have, since the Enlightenment, engaged in a struggle for the privilege of defining human origins, moral values, and the nature of reality.
Hardcover 2005 / Paperback 2006
Experiences of Place
Mary N. MacDonald, Editor
Place and orientation are important aspects of human experience. Place evokes geography and culture and conjures up history and myth. Place is not only a particular physical location but an idea, a mental construction that captures and directs the human relationship to the world.The distinguished contributors to this volume invite us to reflect on the significance of places, real and imagined, in the religious traditions they study and on how places are known, imagined, remembered, and struggled for.
Paperback 2003 / Hardcover 2003
The Failure of Political Islam
Olivier Roy
Carol Volk, Translator
Olivier Roy demonstrates that the Islamic Fundamentalism of today is still the Third Worldism of the 1960s: populist politics and mixed economies of laissez-faire for the rich and subsidies for the poor. In Roy's striking formulation, those marching today beneath Islam's green banners are the same as the "reds" of yesterday, with similarly dim prospects of success. Richly informed, powerfully argued, and clearly written, this is a book that no one trying to understand Islam can afford to overlook.
Hardcover 1996 / Paperback 1998
Faith in Fiction
David S. Reynolds
The first full-length study of early religious fiction from the Revolution to the Civil War, this book explores a long forgotten genre of writing. Ranging over the fiction of some 250 American writers, Reynolds provides an overview of the bestsellers of their time and the popular culture of the period.
Hardcover 1981
Faith on the Margins
Charles H. Parker
In the wake of the 1572 revolt against Spain, the new Dutch Republic outlawed Catholic worship and secularized all church property. Calvinism prevailed as the public faith, yet Catholicism experienced a resurgence in the first half of the seventeenth century, with membership rivaling that of the Calvinist church. In a wide-ranging analysis of a marginalized yet vibrant religious minority, Parker examines this remarkable revival.
Hardcover 2008
The Faithful
James M. O'Toole
Shaken by the ongoing clergy sexual abuse scandal, and challenged from within by social and theological division, Catholics in America are at a crossroads. O’Toole tells the story of this ancient church from the perspective of ordinary Americans, the lay believers who have kept their faith despite persecution from without and clergy abuse from within.
Hardcover 2008
The Faithful Shepherd
David D. Hall
This description of the Americanization of the Puritan ministry as it was transported to the New England colonies offers a host of new insights into American religious history. This book also affords the reader one of the freshest and most comprehensive histories of the seventeenth-century New England mind and society.
Paperback 2006
Falaquera's Epistle of the Debate
Steven Harvey
Hardcover 1988 / Paperback
Famine in China and the Missionary
Paul Richard Bohr
Paperback
The Feast of Fools
Harvey Cox
In this fascinating interpretation of contemporary culture and theology, Harvey Cox examines both the loss and reemergence of festivity and fantasy in Western civilization. He evaluates both processes from a theological perspective, defining festivity as the capacity for genuine revelry and joyous celebration and defining fantasy as the faculty for envisioning radically alternative life situations. t speaks directly to such contemporary movements as the theology of hope, the rapidly disappearing radical theology, and the theology of culture. For many it will provide a new perspective on the renewal of religious life and the secular search for religious experience.
Hardcover 1969
Fierce Communion
Helena Wall
Helena Wall shows what life was like in colonial America, a culture where individuals and family were subordinated to the demands of the community. Using local town, church, and especially court records from every colony, she examines the division of authority between family and community throughout colonial America.
Hardcover 1990 / Paperback 1995
The Fire Spreads
Randall J. Stephens
Pentecostalism came to the South following the post-Civil War holiness revival, a northern-born crusade that emphasized sinlessness and religious empowerment. With the growth of southern Pentecostal denominations and the rise of new, affluent congregants, the movement slipped cautiously into the evangelical mainstream. By the 1980s the once-apolitical faith looked entirely different: while many still watched and waited for spectacular signs of the end, a growing number did so as active political conservatives.
Hardcover 2008
The First Jesuits
John W. O'Malley
John O'Malley gives us the most comprehensive account ever written of the Society of Jesus in its founding years, one that heightens and transforms our understanding of the Jesuits in history and today.
Paperback / Hardcover
Flesh Made Word
Aviad Kleinberg
Translated by Jane Marie Todd
In the fourth century a new narrative genre captured the imagination of the faithful—the moving accounts of the lives of Christian saints.Kleinberg argues that the saints’ stories of medieval Europe were more than edifying entertainment. By telling and retelling the story of virtue and salvation, by expanding the religious imagination of the West, they were shaping and reshaping Christianity itself.
Hardcover 2008
The Flowering of Muslim Theology
Josef van Ess
Translated by Jane Marie Todd
The Flowering of Muslim Theology discusses the emergence of theology in the classical period and offers acute and illuminating comparisons with the Christian (and Jewish) traditions. In this lucid and authoritative introduction to classical Islam, Josef van Ess opens a window on the intellectual world that gave rise to Muslim theology. This work gives a wider audience rare insight into Islam's past.
Hardcover 2006
The Folger Library Edition of The Works of Richard Hooker, Volume III, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity
Richard Hooker
P. G. Stanwood, Editor
Hardcover
The Folger Library Edition of The Works of Richard Hooker, Volume IV, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity
Richard Hooker
John E. Booty, Editor
Hardcover
The Folger Library Edition of The Works of Richard Hooker, Volumes I and II, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity:
Richard Hooker
Georges Edelen, Editor
Edited by W. Speed Hill
Hardcover
The Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker, Volume V, Tractates and Sermons
Richard Hooker
W. Speed Hill, Editor
Edited by Laetitia Yeandle
Commentaries by Egil Grislis
Hardcover
The Foochow Missionaries, 1847-1880
Ellsworth C. Carlson
Paperback 1973
For Prophet and Tsar
Robert D. Crews
In stark contrast to the popular "clash of civilizations" theory that sees Islam inevitably in conflict with the West, Robert D. Crews reveals the remarkable ways in which Russia constructed an empire with broad Muslim support. For Prophet and Tsar unearths the fascinating relationship between an empire and its subjects. As America and Western Europe debate how best to secure the allegiances of their Muslim populations, Crews offers a unique and critical historical vantage point.
Hardcover 2006
Four Cultures of the West
John W. O'Malley
The workings of Western intelligence in our day--whether in politics or the arts, in the humanities or the church--are as troubling as they are mysterious, leading to the questions: Where are we going? What in the world were we thinking? By exploring the history of four "cultures" so deeply embedded in Western history that we rarely see their instrumental role in politics, religion, education, and the arts, this timely book provides a broad framework for addressing these questions in a fresh way.
Hardcover 2004 / Paperback 2006
The Framework of the New Testament Stories
Arnold Ehrhardt
Dr. Ehrhardt considers that New Testament teaching could benefit by being more closely related to its context and background than is often the case. He suggests that the method of the presentation of the Gospel is important, as well as the intention behind it. It is hoped that these essays, many of which aim at giving a fresh, rather than a final view, may prove stimulating by asking unfamiliar questions and offering new solutions.
Hardcover 1964
From Puritan to Yankee
Richard L. Bushman
Hardcover / Paperback
Genesis and Geology
Charles Gillispie
Nicolaas Rupke
First published in 1951, Genesis and Geology describes the background of social and theological ideas and the progress of scientific researches which, between them, produced the religious difficulties that afflicted the development of science in early industrial England.
Paperback 1996
The Genesis of Secrecy
Frank Kermode
Drawing on the venerable tradition of biblical interpretation, Kermode examines some enigmatic passages and episodes in the gospels. From his reading come ideas about what makes interpretation possible--and often impossible. He considers ways in which narratives acquire opacity, and he asks whether there are methods of distinguishing all possible meaning from a central meaning which gives the story its structure.
Hardcover 1979 / Paperback
Gershom Scholem
David Biale
Paperback
God the Problem
Gordon Kaufman
The most discussed and most significant issue on the religious scene today is whether it is possible, or even desirable, to believe in God. Mr. Kaufman's valuable study does not offer a doctrine of God, but instead explores why God is a problem for many moderns, the dimensions of that problem, and the inner logic of the notion of God as it has developed in Western culture.
Hardcover 1972 / Paperback
God's Universe
Owen Gingerich
Are the creative forces of our vast cosmos purposeful, and in fact divine? Professor Emeritus of Harvard's Department of Astronomy and the Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Owen Gingerich, argues that an individual can be both a creative scientist and a believer in divine design--that indeed the very motivation for scientific research can derive from a desire to trace God's handiwork. Gingerich carves out "a theistic space" from which it is possible to contemplate a universe where God plays an interactive role, unnoticed yet not excluded by science.
Hardcover 2006
God's War
Christopher Tyerman
The Crusades are perhaps both the most familiar and most misunderstood phenomena of the medieval world, and here Christopher Tyerman explores the centuries of violence committed in the name of religious devotion Tyerman uncovers a system of belief bound by paranoia and wishful thinking, and a culture founded on war as an expression of worship, social discipline, and Christian charity. Drawing on the most recent scholarship, and told with great authority, God's War is the definitive account of a fascinating story that continues to haunt our contemporary world.
Hardcover 2006 / Paperback 2008
The Goindval Pothis
Gurinder S. Mann
Hardcover
Greek Religion
Walter Burkert
In this book Walter Burkert, the most eminent living historian of ancient Greek religion, has produced the standard work for our time on that subject. First published in German in 1977, it has now been translated into English with the assistance of the author himself. A clearly structured and readable survey for students and scholars, it will be welcomed as the best modern account of any polytheistic religious system.
Hardcover 1985 / Paperback
Green Sisters
Sarah McFarland Taylor
Green sisters are environmentally active Catholic nuns working to heal the earth as they cultivate new forms of religious culture. Inviting us into their world, Taylor offers a firsthand understanding of the experiences of women whose lives bring together orthodoxy and activism, and whose lifestyle provides a compelling view of sustainable living.
Hardcover 2007
Greetings in the Lord
AnneMarie Luijendijk
This is the first book-length study on Christians in the ancient Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus, the site where some of the most important and oldest fragments of early Christian books were unearthed. Bringing the people in these dry papyrus letters and documents back to life, the book reveals how diverse Christians lived in this city of diverse situations.
Paperback 2008
The Hagiography of Kievan Rus
Translated with an introduction by Paul Hollingsworth
Among the finest products of early Ukrainian literature were the Lives of the first Rus' saints. Hollingsworth provides a lucid introduction that discusses each saint and his or her cult in the historical as well as social contexts and examines the literary and textual features of the Rus' vitae.
Paperback 1992 / Hardcover 1992
Harvard Judaica
Charles Berlin
Harvard's Judaica Collection is one of the world's great Judaica collections, and is the largest collection of Israeli and Israel-related publications outside of Israel. This book traces the history of the collection from Harvard's founding, with special emphasis on the accelerated growth in the past four decades.
Hardcover 2005
Hasidism
Bezalel Safran, Editor
Hardcover 1988 / Paperback
Hearing Things
Leigh Eric Schmidt
"Faith cometh by hearing"--so said Saint Paul, and devoted Christians from Augustine to Luther down to the present have placed particular emphasis on spiritual arts of listening. In quiet retreats for prayer, in the noisy exercises of Protestant revivalism, in the mystical pursuit of the voices of angels, Christians have listened for a divine call. But what happened when the ear tuned to God's voice found itself under the inspection of Enlightenment critics? This book takes us into the ensuing debate about "hearing things"--an intense, entertaining, even spectacular exchange over the auditory immediacy of popular Christian piety.
Hardcover 2000 / Paperback 2002
Heaven Below
Grant Wacker
Grant Wacker gives an in-depth account of the religious practices of American pentecostal churches. He examines various aspects of pentecostal culture, including rituals, speaking in tongues, the authority of the Bible, the central role of Jesus in everyday life, the gifts of prophecy and healing, ideas about personal appearance, women's roles, and race relations.
Hardcover 2001 / Paperback 2003
The Hermeneutics of Sacred Architecture: Experience, Interpretation, Comparison, Volume 1, Monumental Occasions
Lindsay Jones
The two volumes of this investigation into how we perceive sacred architecture propose an original interpretation of built environments as ritual-architectural events. Exploring the world's cultures and religious traditions, Volume One maps out patterned responses to sacred architecture according to the human experience, mechanism, interpretation, and comparison of architecture. Volume Two, an exercise in comparative morphology, offers a comprehensive framework of ritual-architectural priorities by looking at architecture as orientation, as commemoration, and as ritual context.
Paperback 2000 / Hardcover 2000
The Hermeneutics of Sacred Architecture: Experience, Interpretation, Comparison, Volume 2, Hermeneutical Calisthenics
Lindsay Jones
The two volumes of this investigation into how we perceive sacred architecture propose an original interpretation of built environments as ritual-architectural events. Exploring the world's cultures and religious traditions, Volume One maps out patterned responses to sacred architecture, while Volume Two serves as an exercise in comparative morphology.
Paperback 2000 / Hardcover 2000
Hinduism and Ecology
Christopher Key Chapple, Editor
Mary Evelyn Tucker, Editor
This fourth volume in the series exploring religions and the environment investigates the role of the multifaceted Hindu tradition in the development of greater ecological awareness in India. The twenty-two contributors ask how traditional concepts of nature in the classical texts might inspire or impede an eco-friendly attitude among modern Hindus, and they describe some grassroots approaches to environmental protection.
Paperback 2000 / Hardcover 2000
Historical Atlas of Islam
Malise Ruthven
Azim Nanji, With
From the birth of the prophet Muhammed to the independence of post-Soviet Muslim states in Central Asia, this accessible and informative atlas explains the historical evolution of Islamic societies. Rich in narrative and visual detail that illuminates the story of Islamic civilization, this is an indispensable resource to anyone interested in world history and religion.
Hardcover 2004
A History of Private Life, Volume I, From Pagan Rome to Byzantium
Series edited by Phillippe Ariès
Series edited by Georges Duby
Paul Veyne, Volume editor
Arthur Goldhammer, Translator
First of the widely celebrated and sumptuously illustrated series, this book reveals in intimate detail what life was really like in the ancient world.
Hardcover 1987 / Paperback 1992
History of Vardan and the Armenian War
Elishe
Translated with commentary by Robert W. Thomson
Elishē's History of Vardan and the Armenian War expresses in more general terms his attitude as a Christian Armenian to the problems of cultural survival and patriotism in a hostile environment. His history profoundly influenced Armenian writers from classical times to the present; its hero, Vardan, remains the ideal figure of a patriot even in Soviet Armenia.
Hardcover 1982
The History of an Islamic School of Law
Nurit Tsafrir
The Hanafi school of law is one of the oldest legal schools of Islam, coming into existence in the eighth century in Iraq, and surviving up to the present. So closely is the early development of the Hanafi school interwoven with non-legal spheres, such as the political, social, and theological, that the study of it is essential to a proper understanding of medieval Islamic history. Tsafrir offers a thorough examination of the first century and a half of the school's existence, the period during which it took shape.
Hardcover 2004
History, Theory, Text
Elizabeth A. Clark
In this work of sweeping erudition, one of our foremost historians of early Christianity considers a variety of theoretical critiques to examine the problems and opportunities posed by the ways in which history is written. Elizabeth Clark argues forcefully for a renewal of the study of premodern Western history through engagement with the kinds of critical methods that have transformed other humanities disciplines in recent decades.
Hardcover 2004 / Paperback 2004
Holding Bishops Accountable
Timothy D. Lytton
The prevalence of the sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy and its shocking cover-up by church officials have obscured the largely untold story of the tort system’s remarkable success in bringing the scandal to light. The lessons of clergy sexual abuse litigation give us reason to reconsider the case for tort reform and to look more closely at how tort litigation can enhance the performance of public and private policymaking institutions.
Hardcover 2008
The Holy Grail
Richard Barber
Barber traces the history of the legends surrounding the Grail, beginning with Chrétien de Troyes's great romances of the twelfth century and the medieval Church's religious version of the secular ideal. He pursues the myths through Victorian obsessions and enthusiasms to the popular bestsellers of the late twentieth century that have embraced its mysteries. From Lancelot to Parsifal, chivalric romances to Wagner's Ring, T. S. Eliot to Monty Python, the Grail has fascinated and lured the Western imagination from beyond the reach of the ordinary world.
Hardcover 2004 / Paperback 2005
The Home Base of American China Missions, 1880-1920
Valentin H. Rabe
Hardcover 1978
Homosexuality and Civilization
Louis Crompton
How have major civilizations of the last two millennia treated people who were attracted to their own sex? In a narrative tour de force, Louis Crompton chronicles the lives and achievements of homosexual men and women alongside a darker history of persecution, as he compares the Christian West with the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome, Arab Spain, imperial China, and pre-Meiji Japan.
Hardcover 2003 / Paperback 2006
How Sweet the Sound
David W. Stowe
Musical expression is at the heart of the American spiritual experience. And nowhere can you gauge the depth of spiritual belief and practice more than through the music that fills America's houses of worship. How Sweet the Sound traces the evolution of sacred music from colonial times to the present, from the Puritans to Sun Ra, and shows how these cultural encounters have produced a rich harvest of song and faith.
Hardcover 2004
The Huguenots in America
Jon Butler
In this first modern history of the Huguenots' New World experience, Jon Butler traces the Huguenot diaspora across late seventeenth-century Europe, explores the causes and character of their American emigration, and reveals the Huguenots' secular and religious assimilation in three remarkably different societies--Boston, New York, and South Carolina.
Hardcover 1984 / Paperback
Identity Reflections
Brian R. Dott
Mount Tai in northeastern China has long been a sacred site. Throughout history, it has been a magnet for both women and men from all classes--emperors, aristocrats, officials, literati, and villagers. This book examines the behavior of those who made the pilgrimage to Mount Tai and their interpretations of its sacrality and history, as a means of better understanding their identities and mentalities.
Hardcover 2005
Idolatry
Moshe Halbertal
Avishai Margalit
Naomi Goldblum, Translator
"You shall have no other gods besides Me." This injunction, handed down through Moses three thousand years ago, marks one of the most decisive shifts in Western culture: away from polytheism toward monotheism. Ranging with authority from the Talmud to Maimonides, from Marx to Nietzsche and on to G. E. Moore, this brilliant account of a subject central to our culture also has much to say about metaphor, myth, and the application of philosophical analysis to religious concepts and sensibilities. Its insights into pluralism and intolerance, into the logic and illogic of the arguments religions aim at each other, make Idolatry especially timely and valuable in these days of dark and implacable religious difference.
Paperback 1998 / Hardcover
Imagining the Sacred Past
Samantha Kahn Herrick
Investigating the role of religious tradition in the legitimation of power and the establishment of identity, Herrick illuminates the often murky early history of the duchy of Normandy. Innovative in its historical use of hagiographical literature, this work advances our understanding of early Normandy and the Vikings' transformation from pagan raiders to Christian princes, shedding light on the intersection of religious tradition, identity, and power.
Hardcover 2007
In Face of Mystery
Gordon Kaufman
In the symbolic world of Christianity, which millions have inhabited for centuries, is there room for modern and postmodern life--for today's real world of cultural relativism and religious pluralism, of scientific knowledge and historical understanding? In Face of Mystery draws these two worlds together in a full-scale reconception of Christian theology.
Paperback / Hardcover
In Potiphar's House
James L. Kugel
In this illuminating study of early biblical interpretation, James Kugel examines a series of exegetical stories that elaborate on the Joseph narrative in Genesis.
Paperback
Inside the Vatican
Thomas Reese
Drawing on more than a hundred interviews with Vatican officials, this book affords a firsthand look at the people, the politics, and the organization behind the institution. Throughout, revealing and colorful anecdotes from church history and the present day bring the unique culture of the Vatican to life.
Hardcover 1996 / Paperback 1998
Inventing Superstition
Dale B. Martin
Martin provides the first detailed genealogy of the idea of superstition, its history over eight centuries, from classical Greece to the Christianized Roman Empire of the fourth century C.E. With illuminating reference to the writings of philosophers, historians, and medical teachers he demonstrates that the concept of superstition was invented by Greek intellectuals to condemn popular religious practices and beliefs, especially the belief that gods or other superhuman beings would harm people or cause disease. Tracing the social, political, and cultural influences that informed classical thinking about piety and superstition, nature and the divine, Inventing Superstition exposes the manipulation of the label of superstition in arguments between Greek and Roman intellectuals on the one hand and Christians on the other, and the purposeful alteration of the idea by Neoplatonic philosophers and Christian apologists in late antiquity.
Hardcover 2004 / Paperback 2007
Islam and Ecology
Edited by Richard C. Foltz
Edited by Frederick M. Denny
Edited by Azizan Baharuddin
The articulation of an Islamic environmental ethic in contemporary terms is all the more urgent because Western-style conservation efforts do not fit all cultural and philosophical traditions. This volume outlines the Islamic view of the cosmic order and reviews the ways an Islamic world view can be interpreted, reassessed, and applied to such environmental problems as pollution and water scarcity.
Paperback 2003 / Hardcover 2003
Islam and the Secular State
Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na`im
What should be the place of Shari‘a—Islamic religious law—in predominantly Muslim societies of the world? In this book, a Muslim scholar and human rights activist envisions a positive and sustainable role for Shari‘a, based on a profound rethinking of the relationship between religion and the secular state in all societies.
Hardcover 2008
Islam without Fear
Raymond William Baker
For the last several decades an influential group of Egyptian scholars and public intellectuals has been having a profound effect in the Islamic world. Raymond Baker offers a compelling portrait of these New Islamists--Islamic scholars, lawyers, judges, and journalists who provide the moral and intellectual foundations for a more fully realized Islamic community, open to the world and with full rights of active citizenship for women and non-Muslims.
Hardcover 2003 / Paperback 2006
Islamic Legal Interpretation
Muhammad Khalid Masud, Editor
Brinkley Messick, Editor
David Powers, Editor
The world knows of Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa in the Salman Rushdie case, yet this key institution in Muslim society has not been the subject of a major examination until now. Islamic Legal Interpretationoffers a casebook of interdisciplinary analyses of fatwas over a wide range of times and places.
Hardcover 1996
The Islamic Marriage Contract
Edited by Asifa Quraishi
Edited by Frank E. Vogel
It is often said that marriage in Islamic law is a civil contract, not a sacrament. This volume collects papers from many disciplines examining the Muslim marriage contract. Articles cover doctrines as to marriage contracts (e.g., may a wife stipulate monogamy?); historical instances; comparisons with Jewish and canon law; contemporary legal and social practice; and projects of activists for women worldwide.
Hardcover 2008
The Islamic School of Law
Edited by Peri Bearman
Edited by Rudolph Peters
Edited by Frank E. Vogel
The Islamic school of law, or madhhab, is a concept on which a substantial amount has been written but of which there is still little understanding, and even less consensus. This collection of selected papers from the III International Conference on Islamic Legal Studies, held in May 2000 at the Harvard Law School, offers building blocks toward the entire edifice of understanding the complex development of the madhhab, a development that even in the contemporary dissolution of madhhab lines and grouping continues to fascinate.
Hardcover 2006
Jesus among Her Children
Melanie Johnson-DeBaufre
This book explores how scholarly constructions of Christian origins participate in contemporary efforts to confirm or challenge particular understandings of the essence of Christianity. Johnson-DeBaufre offers alternative readings to key Q texts, readings that place an interest in the community that shaped Jesus at the center of inquiry.
Paperback 2006
Jewish Immigrant Associations and American Identity in New York, 1880-1939
Daniel Soyer
How did the vast number of Jewish immigrants from different regions of Eastern Europe form their American ethnic identity? In his answer to this question, Daniel Soyer examines how Jewish immigrant hometown associations (landsmanshaftn) transformed old-world communal ties into vehicles for integration into American society.
Hardcover 1997
Jewish Thought in the Seventeenth Century
Isadore Twersky, Editor
Bernard Septimus, Editor
Hardcover 1987 / Paperback
Jewish and Islamic Law
Gideon Libson
Gideon Libson's highly original work on custom is the first attempt to present a comprehensive comparative study of Jewish-Islamic law on a particular topic during the early Middle Ages. His in-depth study of Islamic law--its sources, legal schools, and extensive legal literature--together with his expertise in the wide range of geonic and rabbinic literature enable him to determine the influence of Muslim practice on geonic custom.
Hardcover 2003
The Jews in the Greek Age
Elias Bickerman
Bickerman presents a vivid account of the Jewish people from the conquest of Palestine by Alexander the Great in 332 B.C.E. to the revolt of the Maccabees. In a historical narrative told with consummate skill, he portrays Jewish life in the context of a broader picture of the Near East and traces the interaction between the Jewish and Greek worlds throughout this period.
Hardcover 1988 / Paperback 1990
John Jewel and the Problem of Doctrinal Authority
W. M. Southgate
John Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury, was, after Archbishop Parker, the most important English churchman in the decisive Elizabethan era. His organizational work and voluminous doctrinal writings contributed largely to the stabilization of the Anglican Church in the early years of Elizabeth's reign. Among the most effective apologists in an age noted for them, an eminent humanist and patristic scholar, Bishop jewel brought the spirit of the new enlightenment to bear on the problem of authority which naturally arose after the Reformation's initial years of rupture and polemics.
Hardcover 1962
Journey to the East
Liam Matthew Brockey
It was one of the great encounters of world history: highly educated European priests confronting Chinese culture for the first time in the modern era. This “journey to the East” is explored by Brockey as he retraces the path of the Jesuit missionaries who sailed from Portugal to China.
Hardcover 2007 / Paperback 2008
Judeophobia
Peter Schäfer
Taking a fresh look at what the Greeks and Romans thought about Jews and Judaism, Peter Schäfer locates the origin of anti-Semitism in the ancient world and firmly establishes Hellenistic Egypt as the generating source of anti-Semitism, with roots extending back into Egypt's pre-Hellenistic history.
Hardcover 1997 / Paperback 1998
Katha Aranyaka
Edited and translated by Michael Witzel
Dating to the first half of the first millennium B.C.E., the Katha Aranyaka is a ritualistic and speculative text that deals with a dangerous Vedic ritual that provides its sponsor with a new body after death. In a new critical edition, Michael Witzel presents this work which transitions the Vedic ritual into the philosophy of the Upanishads. The text is preceded by an extensive introduction in English and followed by a German translation.
Hardcover 2005
The Language of Canaan
Mason I. Lowance, Jr
This is a study of New England figurative language from 1600 to 1850, from the English and Continental origins of Puritanism to the symbolic writings of Thoreau. It enriches our understanding of Puritan thought and expression and traces the influence of Puritanism on later American writing.
Hardcover 1980
Late Antiquity
Peter Brown
Paperback 1998
A Latterday Confucian
Susan Chan Egan
Hardcover 1988
The Le Mans Forgeries
Walter A. Goffart
The episcopal biographies, saints' lives, charters, and poems known collectively as the "Le Mans forgeries" are an intricate puzzle that has occupied critics of medieval sources ever since the seventeenth century. On the basis of extensive manuscript study, Goffart disentangles the order of composition and authoritatively pronounces on the authenticity of the eighty-four Le Mans charters. Most of all, he insists that the forgeries are an essay on church property and its law.
Hardcover 1966
Leaves from Paradise
Edited by Jeffrey F. Hamburger
A pair of leaves recently acquired by Houghton Library presents an opportunity to examine the illuminated sequence composed in honor of John the Evangelist. The richly decorated fragments promise to transform our understanding of the special place of Christ’s “beloved disciple” in 14th-century art, liturgy, theology, and mysticism.
Paperback 2008
The Limits of Enlightenment
Edward Breuer
This book explores the early Jewish confrontation with modernity and its attendant cultural and religious challenges. Focusing on the burgeoning eighteenth-century interest in the study of Scripture, Edward Breuer examines the complex relationship between the Jewish Enlightenment and the German Aufklärung.
Paperback / Hardcover
The Literary Guide to the Bible
Robert Alter, Editor
Frank Kermode, Editor
Rediscover the incomparable literary richness and strength of a book that all of us live with an many of us live by. An international team of renowned scholars, assembled by two leading literary critics, offers a book-by-book guide through the Old and New Testaments as well as general essays on the Bible as a whole, providing an enticing reintroduction to a work that has shaped our language and thought for thousands of years.
Hardcover 1987 / Paperback 1990
Lives of Eminent Korean Monks
Peter H. Lee
Paperback 1969
Localizing Paradise
D. Max Moerman
Although located far from the populated centers of traditional Japan, the three Kumano shrines occupied a central position in the Japanese religious landscape. This book encompasses both the historical and the ideological Kumano--not only a stage for the performance of asceticism and pilgrimage, but also a place of the imagination, a topic of literary and artistic representation. By studying Kumano's particular religious landscape, we can better understand the larger, common religious landscape of premodern Japan.
Hardcover 2006
Lord Bishop
Standish Meacham
Hardcover 1970
Lost Soul
John Makeham
Since the mid-1980s, Taiwan and mainland China have witnessed a sustained resurgence of academic and intellectual interest in ruxue—“Confucianism”—variously conceived as a form of culture, an ideology, a system of learning, and a tradition of normative values. This study aims to show how ruxue has been conceived in order to assess the achievements of this enterprise.
Hardcover 2008
Love and Joy
Yochanan Muffs
Thorkild Jacobsen
This first single-volume collection of the pivotal writings of this great religious humanist includes his studies of love and joy as metaphors, the laws of war in ancient Israel, the figurative nature of legal language, the role of the prophet and prophetic speech, and the expressions of belonging which united a culture.
Paperback / Hardcover
Making Americans
Andrea Most
This book examines two interwoven narratives crucial to an understanding of twentieth-century American culture: the stories of Jewish acculturation and of the development of the American musical. Here we delve into the work of the most influential artists of the genre during the years surrounding World War II and encounter new interpretations of classics such as The Jazz Singer, Babes in Arms, Oklahoma!, Annie Get Your Gun, South Pacific, and The King and I. We see how the communities these musicals invented and the anthems they popularized constructed a vision of America that fostered self-understanding as the nation became a global power.
Hardcover 2004
Martin Luther
Richard Marius
Few figures in history have defined their time as dramatically as Martin Luther. In this occasionally irreverent--but always humane--biography, Richard Marius provides a full portrait of Luther: his inner compulsions, his struggle with himself and his God, the gestation of his theology, his relations with contemporaries, and his responses to opponents. Focusing in particular on the productive years 1516-1525, Marius' detailed account of Luther's writings yields a rich picture of the development of Luther's thought on