Religion

A title that proceeds through the canon of the Old Testament and the apocrypha, judiciously presenting the state of historical, archaeological, and literary understanding of the biblical text, and engaging the student in questions of significance and interpretation for the contemporary world.

"Cutting across disciplinary boundaries and challenging traditional understandings of historical cultures, this handbook examines and interrogates the ways in which gender, sexuality, and religion were mutually constructed and negotiated in ancient Near Eastern societies. Chapters look at ritual and ceremonial practices, iconographic representations, mythological and divinatory texts, personal beliefs, and piety, focusing on the intersections of gender, sexuality and religion as a central category of inquiry"--

Anknüpfend an ÖBS 57 versammelt der Band Studien zu den Psalmen und dem Psalter, darunter eine Erstveröffentlichung zur frühen Nachgeschichte von Psalm 91. Bereits früher erschienene Beiträge werden in überarbeiteter und teils erweiterter Form neu zugänglich gemacht.

Argues that ancient yantra (robot) tales reveal how their Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain authors thought about the nature of humanity and our role in a cosmos filled with divine and natural forces.

In the 1860s, a series of reforms imposed by Tsar Alexander II dramatically began modernizing and reshaping life in imperial Russia. However, for a generation of Jewish artists and intellectuals educated under earlier doctrines, the reforms became an opportunity to interrogate and construct a new view of Jewish identity. Questionable People: Inventing Modern Jewish Selves in the Russian Empire, 1860-1890 explores how these young intellectuals, the maskilim, used self-expression, fashion, dress, and their artistic work to define themselves. Differentiating themselves from what came before, maskilim crafted Jewish identities within a modernizing Russia. While many surveys of the Great Reforms and Jews in the Russian Empire examine assimilation and urbanization, Questionable People focuses on the reformers themselves, their self-construction and work as unique to their era, rather than part of a larger transitional moment. Svetlana Natkovich analyzes the maskilim as a group existing between social and economic classes in a time of change, a generation of thinkers forced to radically assert their self-hoods. Questionable People locates the common ground between the social and intellectual histories of Jewish modernization.

Wellbeing can be described in purely secular terms, but a spiritual perspective on Wellbeing adds considerable depth and scope, distinguishing it from superficial or momentary happiness. Wellbeing in spiritual terms reaches out beyond the individual towards relationship which can embrace both interpersonal relationships and relationship with the natural world. In order to accommodate the spiritual dimension we offer the term 'Well-becoming', with a focus on the past and the present as they develop into the future, and thus generate an evolutionary perspective. We suggest that in our times the scientific paradigm itself needs to expand and evolve in order to embrace the subjective/emotional and intuitive/spiritual modes of awareness. Otherwise we are left isolated, with all that matters most, humanly, on one side, and the scientific/technological perspective divorced from humane values on the other, and threatening to dominate. Nowhere is this more evident than in the environmental crisis where human beings enact upon the planet and ourselves the adverse results of a progressive alienation from our physical and spiritual natures, and thereby from our relationship with the natural world. We look to psychotherapeutic understandings and eco-social interventions into wellbeing and well-becoming to lead us forward from this tragic predicament. The book benefits greatly by including rich cross-cultural comparisons from a Brazilian context.

Wellbeing can be described in purely secular terms, but a spiritual perspective on Wellbeing adds considerable depth and scope, distinguishing it from superficial or momentary happiness. Wellbeing in spiritual terms reaches out beyond the individual towards relationship which can embrace both interpersonal relationships and relationship with the natural world. In order to accommodate the spiritual dimension we offer the term 'Well-becoming', with a focus on the past and the present as they develop into the future, and thus generate an evolutionary perspective. We suggest that in our times the scientific paradigm itself needs to expand and evolve in order to embrace the subjective/emotional and intuitive/spiritual modes of awareness. Otherwise we are left isolated, with all that matters most, humanly, on one side, and the scientific/technological perspective divorced from humane values on the other, and threatening to dominate. Nowhere is this more evident than in the environmental crisis where human beings enact upon the planet and ourselves the adverse results of a progressive alienation from our physical and spiritual natures, and thereby from our relationship with the natural world. We look to psychotherapeutic understandings and eco-social interventions into wellbeing and well-becoming to lead us forward from this tragic predicament. The book benefits greatly by including rich cross-cultural comparisons from a Brazilian context.

"Gender and Authority in the Late Medieval Church analyzes the relationship between patriarchy and governance in the English church between 1200 and 1500."--