- 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 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 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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 2009
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- On the Donation of Constantine
- Lorenzo Valla
- Translated by G. W. Bowersock
- Valla (1407-1457) was the most important theorist of the humanist movement. His most famous work is On the Donation of Constantine, an oration in which Valla uses new philological methods to attack the authenticity of the most important document justifying the papacy's claims to temporal rule. It appears here in a new translation with introduction and notes by G. W. Bowersock, based on the critical text of Wolfram Setz.
- Hardcover 2007
- On the Donation of Constantine
- Lorenzo Valla
- Translated by G. W. Bowersock
- Valla (1407–1457) was the leading theorist of the Renaissance humanist movement. In On the Donation of Constantine he uses new philological methods to attack the authenticity of the most important document justifying the papacy’s claims to temporal rule, in a brilliant analysis that is often seen as marking the beginning of modern textual criticism. This volume provides a new translation with introduction and notes by Bowersock.
- Paperback 2008
- Out of the Cave
- Edna Ullmann-Margalit
- Since the inception of Dead Sea Scrolls research, a central theory has emerged, which asserts that the scrolls belonged to the Essenes, a sect whose center was at the nearby site of Qumran. In Out of the Cave, philosopher Edna Ullmann-Margalit focuses on this theory, exploring the different arenas, and ways, in which contesting theories of the scrolls do battle. In this context she finds fascinating examples of issues that only amplify the already intrinsic interest of the Dead Sea scrolls.
- Hardcover 2006
- Pilgrimage
- Simon Coleman
- John Elsner
- This book is a fascinating guide through the vast and varied cultural territory that pilgrimages have covered across the ages. The first book to look at the phenomenon and experience of pilgrimage through the multiple lenses of history, religion, sociology, anthropology, and art history, this sumptuously illustrated volume explores the full richness of sacred travel.
- Paperback 1997 / Hardcover 1997
- Playing with God
- William J. Baker
- Like no other nation on earth, Americans eagerly blend their religion and sports. This book traces this dynamic relationship from the Puritan condemnation of games as sinful in the seventeenth century to the near deification of athletic contests in our own day.
- Hardcover 2007
- Rebuilding Buddhism
- Sarah LeVine
- David N. Gellner
- Rebuilding Buddhism describes in evocative detail the experiences and achievements of Nepalis who have adopted Theravada Buddhism. This form of Buddhism was introduced into Nepal from Burma and Sri Lanka in the 1930s, and its adherents have struggled for recognition and acceptance ever since. Based on extensive fieldwork, interviews, and historical reconstruction, the book provides a rich portrait of the different ways of being a Nepali Buddhist over the past seventy years.
- Hardcover 2005 / Paperback 2007
- The Reformation of the Keys
- Ronald K. Rittgers
- Unlike other Protestants, Lutherans chose not to abolish private confession but to change it to suit their theological convictions and social needs. In a fascinating examination of this new religious practice, Ronald Rittgers traces the development of Lutheran private confession, demonstrating how it consistently balanced competing concerns for spiritual freedom and moral discipline. The reformation of private confession was part of a much larger reformation of the power of the keys that had profound implications for the use of religious authority in sixteenth-century Germany.
- Hardcover 2004
- Religions of the Ancient World
- Edited by Sarah Iles Johnston
- Religious beliefs and practices, which permeated all aspects of life in antiquity, traveled well-worn routes throughout the Mediterranean. New gods encountered in foreign lands by merchants and conquerors were sometimes taken home to be adapted and adopted. A full understanding of this complex spiritual world unfolds in Religions of the Ancient World, the first basic reference work that collects and organizes available information to offer an expansive, comparative perspective.
- Hardcover 2004
- Reliving Golgotha
- Richard C. Trexler
- In Reliving Golgotha, Richard Trexler brings an important new perspective to religious spectacle in an engrossing exploration of the annual passion play at Iztapalapa, the largest and poorest borough of Mexico City. After tracing the history of European passion theater, Trexler examines the process by which representations of the passion were established in the Americas, especially in New Spain.
- Hardcover 2003
- Resurrection, Immortality, and Eternal Life in Intertestamental Judaism and Early Christianity
- George W. E. Nickelsburg
- In this groundbreaking publication, originally published in 1972, George Nickelsburg places ideas in their historical circumstances as he probes biblical and postbiblical texts and challenges widely accepted scholarship. This book provides a window into aspects of the ancient apocalyptic worldview whose dynamics and functions are often misunderstood.
- Paperback 2007
- Sisters in Arms
- Jo Ann Kay McNamara
- Sisters in Arms is the first definitive history of Catholic nuns in the Western world. Unfolding century by century, this epic drama encompasses every period from the dawn of Christianity to the present.
- Hardcover 1996 / Paperback 1998
- What Happened at Vatican II
- John W. O'Malley
- During four years in session, Vatican Council II held television audiences rapt with its elegant, magnificently choreographed public ceremonies, while its debates generated front-page news on a near-weekly basis. This book captures the drama of the council, depicting the colorful characters involved and their clashes with one another.
- Hardcover 2008
- What Is Gnosticism?
- Karen L. King
- A distinctive Christian heresy? A competitor of burgeoning Christianity? A pre-Christian folk religion traceable to "Oriental syncretism"? How do we account for the disparate ideas, writings, and practices that have been placed under the Gnostic rubric? King's book is both a thorough and innovative introduction to the twentieth-century study of Gnosticism and a revealing exploration of the concept of heresy as a tool in forming religious identity.
- Hardcover 2003 / Paperback 2005