Until recent times, the collection of Salomon Maimons early works written in Hebrew, Hesheq Shelomo, was not included into the scientific circulation. An article of professor Gideon Freudenthal on the formation of the young Maimon, filled this lacuna, proving the importance of the analysis of philosophers early works for the comprehension of his literary heritage in general. Freudenthal had studied and published Maimons introduction to Hesheq Shelomo, and then one of the collections treatises, Maаse Livnat (...) ha-Sаppir, consecrated to the ideas and notions of kabbalah. In his analysis Freudenthal had focused on Maimons rational interpretation of kabbalah. The present article represents an attempt to expand Freudenthals research, adding an analysis of another aspect of young Maimons thought. We will try to show that kabbalah, generally understood by early Maimon as ancient Jewish knowledge, had, according to the thinker, to complete philosophy and mitigate arising in it problems. In his early works Maimon was not only criticizing widely occurring profane kabbalah, but also Maimonides philosophy. According to Maimon, it is not possible to understand the true kabbalah without philosophy, but philosophical knowledge is not complete and often erroneous without kabbalah: the true kabbalah rectifies and adjusts it. The critic of Aristotelianism and its derivate, proposed by Maimon in his early works, can add clarity to the understanding of the development of his philosophical thought in the late period. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Naharaim Jahrgang: 9 Heft: 1-2 Seiten: 151-178.

Joseph Gikatilla's early works, composed during the 1270s, have been understood by many scholars as a fusion of Kabbalah and philosophy—an approach that he abandoned in his later compositions. This paper argues that Gikatilla's early works are in fact consistent with his later works, and that the differences between the two can be explained by the polemical engagement during his early period with Jewish philosophy and Christian missionizing. By subtly drawing Jewish students (...) of philosophy away from Aristotelian speculation and towards Kabbalah, Gikatilla sought in his early works to lay the foundation for an understanding of Judaism based on kabbalistic mytho-poesis and ecstatic mystical experience. (shrink)

The article analyses mystical teaching of Hasidism in the early works of Martin Buber (before publication of “I and Thou” in 1923) in the context of the concept of Orientalism by E. Said. Analysis is based on the M. Buber’s appeal to Hasidic sources in the 1900s-1910s (in particular, in his first two collections, “Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav” and “The Legend of Baal Shem”). Two factors allow examining Hasidism in the early Buber’s writings in the context of (...) Orientalism: a growing interest in the Orient in the circles of European Jewish intellectuals during late 19th cent, as well as the negative stereotype of traditional East European Jew (Ostjuden, “an Eastern Jews”) present in the modernized Jewish society. The article demonstrates that this stereotype is closely related to the criticism of Hasidism by representatives of the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah). In particular, the accusations of traditional Eastern European Jews of inclination to vanity and prejudice, as well as of subjugation to the infinite power of the miracle workers (tzadikim), clearly have a source in maskilic criticism of Hasidism. The Buber’s turn towards Hasidism took place in mid-1900s. It was connected with Buber’s interest in Oriental mysticism, and with his social activities as “cultural Zionist”. Overcoming the “Ostjude” stereotype turned out to be an essential part of Buber’s cultural program. Buber reconstructs Jewish mysticism as an integral phenomenon, the subject of academic study. According to Buber, the most striking manifestation of this phenomenon is the Eastern-Euro pean mystical movement of Hasidism. It is from Ostjuden that the source of Hasidic wisdom is linked, which in the essays of the cycle of “Judaism” is a true “light from the East.”. (shrink)

This book offers new perspectives on the early and formative years of the German-Jewish philosopher Hans Jonas, through innovative studies of his German and Hebrew work in pre-war Germany and Palestine. Covering all facets of Jonas's early work, the book brings together leading scholars to explore key conceptual, historical, genealogical, and biographical contexts. Some of the main topics examined include his deep intellectual history of Western thought and its origins in late antiquity through the category of (...) Gnosis, the intellectual influence of Heidegger, Bultmann, Husserl, and Spengler, his relation to Christian theology, and his interest in Judaism and Zionism. Existing research on his early work is not only limited in size but also often methodologically deficient, for it is common to interpret the early in light of the late and as teleologically leading to it. By introducing new materials and addressing new questions, this book offers innovative perspectives on Jonas's intellectual project as a whole and provides a historical and conceptual foundation for further scholarly explorations of his oeuvre. Providing fresh insights into the work of one of the twentieth century's most influential philosophers, the book will appeal to students and researchers working in intellectual history, Jewish studies, and religion. (shrink)

The transformation of Noah into a Christian ideal in the writings of Aphrahat and Ephrem, with the resulting denigration of Noah in much rabbinic exegesis, is well documented. The purpose of this essay is to examine the characterization of Noah in the liturgical setting. Four groups of works are examined: the Hebrew Avodah poems and the hymns of Ephrem the Syrian ; and the kontakia of Romanos the Melodist and the liturgical poems of the Jewish poet Yannai. (...) These sources reveal that the individual poets felt great freedom to shape the character of Noah in distinctive ways, engaging with the various traditions of interpretation evident in the prose sources but using them in individualized ways. The resulting picture of Noah, when these poetic sources are brought to bear on the discussion, is much less predictable and more dynamic than might be assumed from study of the more“academic” prose sources alone. (shrink)

In the latter part of the fifteenth century, a Jewish translator, working together with a Slavic amanuensis, translated into the East Slavic language of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania three medieval Hebrew translations of Arabic philosophical texts: the Logical Terminology, a short work on logic attributed to Maimonides (but probably by a different medieval Jewish author); and two sections of the Muslim theologian Al-Ghazali's famous Intentions of the Philosophers. Highlighting the unexpected role played by Jewish translators (...) as agents of cultural transmission in the heady messianic atmosphere leading up to the year 1492, these texts drew the attention of the Orthodox Church authorities as being in the possession of the enlightened heretical sect known as the Judaizers, which had emerged in Novgorod and spread to Moscow. Reflecting three and even four layers of translation, Prof. Moshe Taube's new triple-language critical edition of the Logika of the Judaizers displays the Slavic texts alongside the Hebrew translations on which they are based and accompanies them with a modern English translation. In his comprehensive introduction and commentary, Taube surveys earlier scholarly efforts to identify the provenance and purport of the translations, discusses the linguistic and textological issues raised by these early Ruthenian texts, puts forward the likely dissimilar motivations of the Jewish translator and the Christians who commissioned the work, and reveals the translator's probable identity. The present publication, a long-awaited desideratum, will be of interest not only to historians of the Great Duchy of Lithuania and of the principality of Muscovy, but also to scholars of Jewish history and of the history of philosophy and science, as well as to linguists studying the history of the Belorussian, Ukrainian and Russian languages. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Enlightenment in the Colony: The Jewish Question and the Crisis of Postcolonial CultureSpencer Hawkins (bio)Mufti, Aamir. Enlightenment in the Colony: The Jewish Question and the Crisis of Postcolonial Culture. Princeton UP, NJ: Princeton, 2007. xv + 325 pp.Mufti’s comparison of the Jewish question and the Indian Partition invites readers to join building projects that delineate and then endanger minorities within nations. Literature about minorities speaks (...) a language deliberately distant from the national one. Minority status has little to do with population numbers for Aamir Mufti; instead it signifies [End Page 61] tential victimization through disproportional rights, since “minority is always potentially exile” (Mufti 13). This definition of minority suits his two examples—Jews in Germany and Muslims in India—since in the twentieth century both fledgling nations adopted forms of nationalism that regarded the lives of these minorities as contaminants to the purity of the emergent national body. The prologue catalogues the brutality in India that prompted Mufti to write this book. Among the horrors listed were the destruction of Babri Mosque at Ayodhya in 1992 and the videotaped gang rapes of Muslim women that became a widespread form of entertainment in India. While Mufti reads violence toward minorities as correlative with the rise of nationstates, he considers similarities and differences between nation building in the West and in the subcontinent. In both cases, the new establishment of political equality for citizens came along with the desire to pare down the number of officially recognized citizens. Muslim and Jewish minorities migrated to “minority” nations in the collapsing British Empire, in present-day Pakistan and Israel, respectively, during the respective formations of India and Germany. By founding nations on formerly British-occupied territory, minorities potentially would enjoy the role of nationalist majorities. This solution strikes Mufti as spreading the nationalist contagion onto the minority.The whole book lets literature mark broad cultural attitudes and phenomena. The first chapter observes incipient Jewish nationalism in a work by a British author, Daniel Deronda by George Eliot, who spent time in Germany and grew fascinated with the Jewish question while abroad. Her Britishness reinforces a pattern in Mufti’s schema: British powers facilitate the rise of nationalism among minorities in India and in Germany. Daniel Deronda comes at the tail end of a long discourse on Jews’ relation to Europe. The first of Mufti’s cases within canonical literature is the hope for tolerance and a dialogue of cultures, which G. E. Lessing allegorizes through a drama about Saladin, the Muslim sultan of Egypt and Syria, who learns to trust the eponymous Jewish merchant in Nathan the Wise. “Muslim” stands in for “Christian” since Nathan’s alienation is allegorical for the alienation of Jews in Lutheran Germany. Heinrich Heine weighs in on the advantages to assimilation in this period with his fragmentary novel The Rabbi from Bacherach, where religiously raised Jewish children feel comforted when they hear the Tale of the Nibelungen from Father Rhein, the personification of a river that figures generally for German national myth and, in Heine’s story, as a possible source of comfort for partially assimilated minorities. If we read literature as a barometer of cultural pressures, then the appeal of assimilation for European Jews declines in the late colonial nineteenth century when George Eliot inscribed religion into the “secular” discourse of national citizenship.Since the Israeli state is outside of the range of his argument, we leave the Jewish Question with George Eliot’s philo-Semitism in Daniel Deronda, where the only hope for European Jews is to become a nation and to occupy the Palestinian territory. Mufti compares the concerns of early Zionism and Pakistani nationalism side by side in chapter 2. Pakistani issues dominate chapters 3 to 5. In chapter 2, he launches the comparison with the parallel between Hebrew’s development as a national language to identify [End Page 62] Jews secularly and culturally, not just religiously, and Urdu’s transition from a vernacular language to a national language with the secular goal of creating a Pakistani culture freed from Hindi’s erstwhile predominance. When he depicts language choice as mimetic of specific cultural trends, Mufti indicates the shape of... (shrink)

Books reviewed:James D. G. Dunn and John W. Rogerson, Eerdmans Commentary on the BibleYairah Amit, Reading Biblical Narratives. Literary Criticism and the Hebrew BibleThomas L. Leclerc, Yahweh is Exalted in Justice: Solidarity and Conflict in IsaiahNuria Calduch‐Benages, Joan Ferrer, and Jan Liesen, La sabiduría del Escriba/Wisdom of the Scribe: Diplomatic Edition of the Syriac Version of the Book of Ben Sira according to Codex Ambrosianus, with Translations in Spanish and EnglishSidnie White Crawford and Leonard J. Greenspoon, The Book of (...) Esther in Modern ResearchPaolo Sacchi, The History of the Second Temple PeriodMary E. Mills, Biblical Morality. Moral Perspectives in Old Testament NarrativesRichard Swinburne, The Resurrection of God IncarnateH. Benedict Green, Matthew, Poet of the BeatitudesC. K. Barrett, On Paul. Essays on His Life, Work and Influence in the Early ChurchMichael D. Goulder, Paul and the Competing Mission in CorinthByron R. McCane, Roll Back the Stone: Death and Burial in the World of JesusMagnus Zetterholm, The Formation of Christianity in Antioch: A Social‐Scientific Approach to the Separation between Judaism and ChristianityDale V. Irvin and Scott W. Sunquist, History of the World Christian Movement, Volume I: Earliest Christianity to 1453Francis Clark, The ‘Gregorian’ Dialogues and the Origins of Benedictine MonasticismMichael Frassetto, The Year 1000: Religious and Social Response to the Turning of the First MillenniumPatrick Nold, Pope John XXII and his Franciscan Cardinal: Bertrand de la Tour and the Apostolic Poverty ControversyTeresa P. Reed, Shadows of Mary: Reading the Virgin Mary in Medieval TextsMichael D. Bailey, Battling Demons: Witchcraft, Heresy, and Reforma in the Late Middle AgesColm Lennon, An Irish Prisoner of Conscience of the Tudor Era: Archbishop Richard Creagh of Armagh, 1523–86Judith S. Graham, Puritan Family Life: The Diary of Samuel SewallCrawford Gribben, The Puritan Millennium. Literature and Theology, 1550‐1682M. Feingold, Jesuit Science And The Republic of LettersRobert Bireley, The Jesuits And The Thirty Years War: Kings, Courts, and ConfessorsTorkel Brekke, Makers of Modern Indian Religion in the Late Nineteenth CenturyP. Koslowski, The Concept of God, the Origin of the World, and the Image of the Human in the World ReligionsPeter Koslowski, The Origin and the Overcoming of Evil and Suffering in the World ReligionsJ. H. Laenen, Jewish Mysticism: An IntroductionBarbara Bowe, Biblical Foundations of Spirituality: Touching a Finger to the FlameThomas G. Weinandy and Daniel A. Keating, The Theology of St Cyril of Alexandria. A Critical AppreciationJames D. G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, Volume 1Daniel W. Hardy, Finding the Church: The Dynamic Truth of AnglicanismS. Mark Heim, The Depth of the Riches: A Trinitarian Theology of Religious EndsJohn Webster, Word and Church. Essays in Christian DogmaticsAlister E. McGrath, A Scientific Theology. Volume 1: NatureJames Alison, On Being LikedMichael J. Langford, A Liberal Theology for the Twenty‐First Century: A Passion for ReasonGuy Mansini and James G. Hart, Ethics and Theological Disclosures:The Thought of Robert SokolowskiMark A. Wrathall, Religion After MetaphysicsGerd Van Riel, Pleasure and the Good Life: Plato, Aristotle, and the NeoplatonistsNomy Arpaly, Unprincipled Virtue: An Inquiry into Moral AgencyGernot Böhme, Ethics in Context: The Art of Dealing with Serious QuestionsErica Appelros, God in the Act of Reference: Debating Religious Realism and Non‐RealismMark C. Murphy, Natural Law and Practical RationalityRichard Brian Davis, The Metaphysics of Theism and ModalityJ. Brower and K. Guilfoy, The Cambridge Companion to AbelardBrian Davies, Thomas Aquinas: Contemporary Philosophical PerspectivesStephen J. Pope, The Ethics of AquinasKevin White and Romanus Cessario, On The Virtues John CapreolusSteven Shakespeare, Kierkegaard, Language and the Reality of GodSusan M. Felch and Paul J. Contino, Bakhtin and Religion: A Feeling for FaithRuth Coates, Christianity in Bakhtin: God and the Exiled AuthorDavid Michael Levin, The Philosopher's Gaze: Modernity in the Shadows of EnlightenmentCharles Guignon and David R. Hiley, Richard RortyCelia E. Deane‐Drummond, Biology and Theology TodayOswaldo de Rivero, The Myth of Development: The Non‐Viable Economies of the 21st Century. (shrink)

This paper compares the associative system of early-learned verbs and body parts in Hebrew with previously published data on American English (Maouene, Josita, Shohei Hidaka & Linda B. Smith. 2008. Body parts and early-learned verbs. Cognitive Science 32(7). 1200–1216). Following the methodology of the former study, 51 Hebrew-speaking college students gave the first body part that came to mind for each of 103 early-learned Hebrew verbs, 81 of which were translational equivalents. Rate of convergence (...) and divergence and underlying patterns were used to make inferences about the constraints at work. Overall convergence (92.3% of the Hebrew data and 93.7% of the English data) reveal similar entropy levels, comparable semantic field shapes of verbs organized by body parts and similar general cluster patterns of verbs by body parts. Most divergence lies in the infrequent responses (offered fewer than 1% of the time) which arise around body parts that are internal, very detailed, very general categorically, used in figurative language, uniquely provided and tend to be subject to cultural taboos. This is a new contribution, as previous work has not quantified the relative proportion of convergent to divergent associations. We discuss how these findings support neural and developmental continuity and stability in the verbal system with respect to the categorization of verbs by body parts cross-culturally. (shrink)

Moses Mendelssohn is considered the foremost representative of Jewish Enlightenment. In _No Religion without Idolatry_, Gideon Freudenthal offers a novel interpretation of Mendelssohn’s general philosophy and discusses for the first time Mendelssohn’s semiotic interpretation of idolatry in his _Jerusalem _and in his Hebrew biblical commentary. Mendelssohn emerges from this study as an original philosopher, not a shallow popularizer of rationalist metaphysics, as he is sometimes portrayed. Of special and lasting value is his semiotic theory of idolatry. From a (...) semiotic perspective, both idolatry and enlightenment are necessary constituents of religion. Idolatry ascribes to religious symbols an intrinsic value: enlightenment maintains that symbols are conventional and merely signify religious content but do not share its properties and value. Without enlightenment, religion degenerates to fetishism; without idolatry it turns into philosophy and frustrates religious experience. Freudenthal demonstrates that in Mendelssohn’s view, Judaism is the optimal religious synthesis. It consists of transient ceremonies of a “living script.” Its ceremonies are symbols, but they are not permanent objects that could be venerated. Jewish ceremonies thus provide a religious experience but frustrate fetishism. Throughout the book, Freudenthal fruitfully contrasts Mendelssohn's views on religion and philosophy with those of his contemporary critic and opponent, Salomon Maimon. _No Religion without Idolatry _breaks new ground in Mendelssohn studies. It will interest students and scholars in philosophy of religion, Judaism, and semiotics. "In this lucid and provocative study, Gideon Freudenthal offers an original and compelling reading of Mendelssohn as well as a defense of the possibility of religious rationalism more generally. This book is not only an excellent contribution to a growing body of scholarship on Mendelssohn and early modern philosophy, but it also significantly sharpens and advances contemporary conversations about the relations between religion and reason." —_Leora Batnitzky, Princeton University_ "In this masterful study, Gideon Freudenthal demonstrates how Mendelssohn’s philosophy, including his philosophy of religion, is grounded in semiotics. The result is a landmark work that not only successfully challenges standard interpretations of Mendelssohn’s 'enlightened Judaism' and its alleged inconsistency but also effectively invites reconsideration of the very possibility of 'religion without idolatry.'" —_Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Boston University_ "In focusing on Mendelssohn's 'semiotics of idolatry,' Gideon Freudenthal writes as a philosopher fully at home in multiple traditions: contemporary philosophy, eighteenth-century philosophy, Jewish biblical exegesis, and comparative religion. The result is a systematic and penetrating study, based on the Hebrew as well as the German texts, that engages Mendelssohn on perhaps the most critical issue of his understanding of religion with unprecedented philosophical rigor and imagination." —_David Sorkin, City University of New York Graduate Center_. (shrink)

This essay further substantiates the author’s earlier thesis that St. Bonaventure’s De reductione was the second half (or resumptio) of his inaugural lecture atParis. After reviewing the central aspect of that thesis, the essay further shows how an unedited inaugural sermon, Fons sapientiae Verbum Dei in excelsis (found in Vatican Burghesiani 157) received the De reductione in its earliest form, particularly in its use of specific authorities and its division of the lights of knowledge. The discovery of this sermon further (...) confirms in its reception of the De reductione that the work was originally an inaugural lecture. The essay then further explores the purpose and uniqueness of the De reductione as an inaugural lecture by comparing it to Fons sapientiae. (shrink)

The ArgumentIt is well known that theTractatusof Peter of Spain (later Pope John XXI) was one of the most popular logic textbooks in the Middle Ages and early Renaissance. Less known is theTractatus'sconsiderable reputation and diffusion among the Jews, as evidenced by five translations, two commentaries, and what appears to be anabbreviatio— if not of theTractatusitself, then of a similar work. The present article attempts to understand the phenomenon of theTractatus'spopularity and offers an analysis of the three translations whose (...) authors are known — those by Shemaryah ha-Ikriti (Greece, early to mid-fourteenth century), Abraham Abigdor (late fourteenth century), and Judah b. Samuel Shalom (either Italy or Spain, mid-fifteenth century) — and their subsequent fate. The more popular versions of Abraham Abidgor and Judah Shalom provided Jewish students, many of whom would likely become physicians, with a grounding in logic comparable to that of their Christian counterparts. (shrink)

Medieval and early modern Jewish philosophers developed their thinking in conversation with various bodies of literature. The influence of ancient Greek – primarily Aristotle (and pseudo-Aristotle) – and Arabic sources was fundamental for the very constitution of medieval Jewish philosophical discourse. Toward the late Middle Ages Jewish philosophers also established a critical dialogue with Christian scholastics. Next to these philosophical corpora, Jewish philosophers drew significantly upon Rabbinic sources (Talmud and the numerous Midrashim) and the (...) class='Hi'>Hebrew Bible. In order to clarify the unique as well as shared elements in the thought of medieval Jewish philosophers, we will begin this chapter with a brief study of some early Rabbinic sources on the purpose of the world, i.e., why it came to be and why it is sustained in existence. In the second part of this chapter, we will study Maimonides’ critique of the veracity and usefulness of the belief in (anthropocentric) teleology, and the critical reception of his views by later philosophers. The third part will address discussions of divine teleology in Kabbalistic literature. Our exposition will concentrate mostly on a specific early-eighteenth-century text that is one of the most lucid and rigorous presentations of Lurianic Kabbalah. The fourth and final section will elucidate Spinoza’s critique of teleology, its precise target and scope, and its debt to earlier sources discussed in this chapter. (shrink)

When social work emerged as a profession in the first decades of the 20th century, it was strongly influenced by emancipatory motives introduced by various sociocultural and religious movements, and at the same time devoted itself to the construction and maintenance of a powerful welfare and nation state. Transnational agents and social movements promoted these processes and played a crucial role in establishing and developing national welfare systems and relevant professional discourses. This article examines the gendered construction of the social (...) work profession through the transnational history of early social work between Germany and the Jewish community in Palestine in the first half of the 20th century. By adopting a biographical approach to the specific paths of Jewish women practitioners who had been educated in German-speaking countries, immigrated to mandatory Palestine, and engaged themselves in the emerging field of social work, we will trace the construction of the profession as deeply embedded in social power relations. At the same time, we will trace its (re)construction as led mainly by female pioneers, who were concerned with emancipation, discrimination and migration. (shrink)

The review demonstrates that there are four main historiographical approaches to explanation of the role of Mendelssohn’s philosophy in the emergence of the Haskalah project: traditional approach ; social historiography ; the approach practiced by researchers of early Jewish proponents of Enlightenment’s ; the researches of Mendelssohn's Jewish texts, the concept of “Political Theology”, and the interpretation of Mendelssohn’s ideas in the works of Leo Strauss.

Charlotte Wolff was born in Riesenburg, West Prussia into a middle-class Jewish family. She studied philosophy and then medicine at several German universities, completing her doctorate in Berlin in 1926. Working in various institutions over the next few years, she was also interested in psychotherapy and had a small private medical and psychotherapeutic practice. In 1933 she was forced to leave Germany because of the Nazi regime, and settled for a few years in Paris. As a German refugee she (...) was unable to practice medicine, so she began her research into the correlation between hand traits and personality. In 1936 she went to London to continue her research work and lived there until her death. An active lesbian from an early age, her later research turned to sexology and her writing on lesbianism and bisexuality were influential early works in the field. This is a great opportunity to rediscover her early work, including her first autobiography. (shrink)

This third volume in the definitive edition of Dewey's early work opens with his tribute to George Sylvester Morris, the former teacher who had brought Dewey to the University of Michigan.

ArgumentThe Ashkenazi grammars of Hebrew written between roughly 1600 and 1800 fill a modest and largely forgotten shelf in the Jewish scholarly library. At first sight, especially when compared with the medieval Jewish and contemporary Christian Hebrew traditions, they seem to lack technical sophistication. As this paper hopes to demonstrate, however, this apparent lack of sophistication was not so much an intrinsic flaw as a deliberate choice. For the earliest Ashkenazi textbooks were not about studying grammar, (...) but about teaching Hebrew. By adapting the existing descriptive models to the needs of the classroom and the gemeyne leytn, Jewish scholars and teachers in such cities as Prague, Wilhelmsdorff, and Amsterdam hoped to find and instruct new audiences. Depending on context and target audience, they either relied on Hebrew, Yiddish, or on an intricate interplay of the two for maximum success and efficiency. It was this innovative combination of didactic simplification and functional bilingualism that allowed them not only to reach a new readership, but also to equip that readership to henceforth read their Bible and prayers with unprecedented autonomy. (shrink)

It has long been considered that Arabic algebra scarcely left any traces in mathematical literature of Hebrew expression. Thanks to the unpublished sources we have discovered, and to an attentive examination of already-known texts, one can no longer subscribe to such a judgement. The evidence we examine in this first article sheds light on the circulation, in erudite Jewish circles, of Arabic algebraic knowledge in Spain, Italy, Provence, and Sicily, between the 12th and the 14th centuries. The Epistle (...) on number by the Castillian astronomer Isaac ben Salomon al-A[hudot]dab was written in Sicily at the end of the 14th century, and based on the Talkhi[sudot] a'mal al-[hudot]isab of Ibn al-Banna' (1256-1321). That part of the Epistle that is devoted to algebra follows the tradition of al-Karaji. It offers, for the first time in Hebrew, a rational presentation of arithmetical operations extended to algebraic expressions. (shrink)

Excerpt from The Semitic Religions: Hebrew, Jewish, Christian, Moslem John croall, Esq., of Southfield, being deeply interested in the defence and maintenance of the doctrines of the Christian Religion, and desirous of increasing the religious literature of Scotland, instituted a Lectureship. The Lectures shall be delivered biennially in Edinburgh, Shall be not less than six in number, and shall be devoted to a consideration of the Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion and the Doctrines of the Christian Religion. (...) About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

Rabbis of thirteenth-century Spain were often exposed to two traditions, that of Northern France-Germany and that of Moslem Spain. Until now, the dominant discussion of how they balanced the contrast has been Bernard Septimus' analysis of Nahmanides (Ramban), who managed to draw fruitfully on both. Rabbenu Yonah b. Abraham of Gerona, Ramban's only slightly less famous relative, presents a useful counterexample.Rabbenu Yonah's early works reflect an almost-total immersion in Northern French ways of thinking and writing. Only gradually does (...) he engage ideas from Moslem Spain, suggesting that the mixing of the two traditions in his later writings resulted from years of slow growth and exposure to such Moslem Spanish authors as Rif, R. Bahye ibn Paquda, and Maimonides.His example suggests that how to react to these differing influences was a continuing issue for these rabbis, and that tracking it offers an important key to understanding the intellectual history of the rabbis of that era. (shrink)

Moses Maimonides, known by the acronym "Rambam," was unquestionably the foremost intellectual figure of medieval Judaism. Born in Cordova, Spain, forced at an early age to conceal his faith, he emigrated to Morocco and then Palestine before settling in Egypt, where financial necessity compelled him to study medicine and where he eventually became personal physician to Saladin. Although his medical skills were renowned and his writings in this field were widely studied throughout the Western world in the following centuries, (...) Maimonides' primary interest was theology. He devoted ten years to preparing Mishnah Torah and fifteen years to The Guide to the Perplexed - the first written in Hebrew, the second in Arabic. These studies of Jewish law were first considered radical in their efforts to reconcile religious and scientific thought, but later became pillars of traditional Jewish faith. Dr. Lenn Goodman has prepared new translations from these works, arranging the extensive excerpts by topic to focus on Maimonides' principal contributions to philosophy. These are accompanied by commentary and analysis, clarifying the complexities of his thought and providing the historical and religious background required by the modern lay reader. The introduction details Rambam's life and evaluates his role in history and theology. The study of Maimonides is essential to the understanding of Judaism and Western culture. Rambam makes his writings accessible to those who cannot work from the original texts, and meaningful to those who have not had extensive previous exposure to medieval theology. — Publisher description. (shrink)

G.E.M. Anscombe famously claimed that ‘the Hebrew-Christian ethic’ differs from consequentialist theories in its ability to ground the claim that killing the innocent is intrinsically wrong. According to Anscombe, this is owing to its legal character, rooted in the divine decrees of the Torah. Divine decrees confer a particular moral sense of ‘ought’ by which this and other act-types can be ‘wrong’ regardless of their consequences, she maintained. There is, of course, a potentially devastating counter-example. Within the Torah, Abraham (...) is apparently commanded by God to slaughter and set fire to his innocent son, Isaac. For attempting to do so, he is praised in the Biblical passage and by later Jewish and Christian commentators. This paper examines rabbinic and early Christian analyses of the story and finds that it was not unambiguously held by these interpreters that God absolutely prohibits killing the innocent, until the time of Augustine, whose position on the story evolved over time. (shrink)

Georg Agricola’s De Re Metallica (1556) is an impressive work about mining arts and sciences, still used as a reference work to understand the mining world of his time and to analyze the relationships between scholars and practitioners. This essay begins by studying how Agricola presents the underground surveying, also known as geometria subterranea. How does the author’s mathematics relate to contemporary geometry or to actual surveying practices? Second, the essay contrasts his scholarly approach with sixteenth-century administrative and technical documents, (...) as well as mining sermons. Comparing the practical geometry contained in the De Re Metallica with different kinds of sources helps to question the relationships between the arts and natural and exact sciences in the practical settings of early modern Europe. Finally, it argues for a distinction between the inquiry on the historical progress of mathematics in civil life and philosophical questions about the rise of new sciences. (shrink)

In 1538, a partnership of Jewish silk makers in the city of Bologna published a book entitled Sefer Ḥasidim, a compendium of rituals, stories, and religious instruction that primarily originated in medieval Franco-Germany. This book tells the story of how these men came to produce such a book.

This chapter contains sections titled: Maimonides' Life Philosophical Influences Early Works Major Works Reception of Maimonides' Works further reading.

This article pays tribute to the contribution made by Yolanda Dreyer regarding critique on the prevalence of patriarchy in society, as well as her defence of homosexuality as a normal sexual orientation. Taking as point of departure her work on the woman as created in God's image, it is argued that understanding the metaphor 'created in God's image' as referring to rule over all, and not as created as man and woman, has important implications for the relationship between man and (...) woman, as well as the normalisation of relationships between the same sex. (shrink)

In this book, Françoise Mirguet traces the appropriation and reinterpretation of pity by Greek-speaking Jewish communities of Late Antiquity. Pity and compassion, in this corpus, comprised a hybrid of Hebrew, Greek, and Roman constructions; depending on the texts, they were a spontaneous feeling, a practice, a virtue, or a precept of the Mosaic law. The requirement to feel for those who suffer sustained the identity of the Jewish minority, both creating continuity with its traditions and emulating dominant (...) discourses. Mirguet's book will be of interest to scholars of early Judaism and Christianity for its sensitivity to the role of feelings and imagination in the shaping of identity. An important contribution to the history of emotions, it explores the role of the emotional imagination within the context of Roman imperialism. It also contributes to understanding how compassion has come to be so highly valued in Western cultures. (shrink)

Volume 4 of’ “The Early Works” series covers the period of Dewey’s last year and one-half at the University of Michigan and his first half-year at the University of Chicago. In addition to sixteen articles the present volume contains Dewey’s reviews of six books and three articles, verbatim reports of three oral statements made by Dewey, and a full-length book, The Study of Ethics. Like its predecessors in this series, this volume presents a “clear text,” free of interpretive (...) or reference material. Apparatus, including references, corrections, and emendations, is confined to appendix material. Fredson Bowers, the Consulting Textual Editor, has provided an essay on the textual principles and procedures, and Wayne A. R. Leys, Professor of Philosophy at Southern Illinois University, has written an Introduction discussing the relationship between Dewey’s writings of this period and his later work. That Dewey’s scholarship and writing was at an especially high level during 1893 and 1894 may be considered an index to the significance of this two-year period. (shrink)

When we think of "heaven," we generally conjure up positive, blissful images. Heaven is, after all, where God is and where good people go after death to receive their reward. But how and why did Western cultures come to imagine the heavenly realm in such terms? Why is heaven usually thought to be "up there," far beyond the visible sky? And what is the source of the idea that the post mortem abode of the righteous is in this heavenly realm (...) with God? Seeking to discover the roots of these familiar notions, this volume traces the backgrounds, origin, and development of early Jewish and Christian speculation about the heavenly realm -- where it is, what it looks like, and who its inhabitants are. Wright begins his study with an examination of the beliefs of ancient Israel's neighbors Egypt and Mesopotamia, reconstructing the intellectual context in which the earliest biblical images of heaven arose. A detailed analysis of the Hebrew biblical texts themselves then reveals that the Israelites were deeply influenced by images drawn from the surrounding cultures. Wright goes on to examine Persian and Greco-Roman beliefs, thus setting the stage for his consideration of early Jewish and Christian images, which he shows to have been formed in the struggle to integrate traditional biblical imagery with the newer Hellenistic ideas about the cosmos. In a final chapter Wright offers a brief survey of how later Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions envisioned the heavenly realms. Accessible to a wide range of readers, this provocative book will interest anyone who is curious about the origins of this extraordinarily pervasive and influential idea. (shrink)

The catholic reception of John Henry Newman’s work is traditionally focused on his late writings, though Newman developed almost his entire philosophical and theological program during his Anglican years. Especially his Oxford University Sermons provide an epistemology that challenged the current rationalist interpretation of faith. In his analysis of ethical sagacity, Aristotle’s point of departure is the spoudaios, a person with well-formed character. Newman adapted this perspective for his investigation of the concept of faith. It drew his attention to the (...) relation of reason and affections. And it made him aware of the role of informal reasoning, the Aristotelian phronesis, which Newman combined with John Locke’s epistemology into a broader, humanistic concept of rationality. (shrink)

This article combines the disciplines of textual/linguistic analysis, anthropology, and perceptual psychology to examine selected ancient Jewish mystical texts that claim to describe the praxis for ascents into heaven and encounters with angelic spirits in order to reconstruct the psychosocial context of these literary works. Specifically, the article examines Hekhalot or "Divine Palaces" texts that deal with hydromancy, giving attention to their mythic–symbolic assumptions, their described preparatory and triggering rituals, and their accounts of the ASC (altered states of (...) consciousness) visions resulting from these rituals that are experienced by the practitioners. The article suggests that these accounts correlate with ASC practices identified in the literature and additionally suggests that although the mystical texts are written to resemble biblical accounts of revelatory experiences, the texts under consideration are more than works of fabulous imagination; they are literary artifacts of an actual ecstatic ASC praxis among the Jews of Late Antiquity. (shrink)

This third volume in the definitive edition of Dewey's early work opens with his tribute to George Sylvester Morris, the former teacher who had brought Dewey to the University of Michigan. Morris's death in 1889 left vacant the Department of Philosophy chairmanship and led to Dewey's returning to fill that post after a year's stay at Minnesota. Appearing here, among all his writings from 1889 through 1892, are Dewey's earliest comprehensive statements on logic and his first book on ethics. (...) Dewey's marked copy of the galley-proof for his important article The Present Position of Logical Theory, recently discovered among the papers of the Open Court Publishing Company, is used as the basis for the text, making available for the first time his final changes and corrections. The textual studies that make The Early Works unique among American philosophical editions are reported in detail. One of these, A Note on Applied Psychology, documents the fact that Dewey did not co-author this book frequently attributed to him. Six brief unsigned articles written in 1891 for a University of Michigan student publication, the Inlander, have been identified as Dewey's and are also included in this volume. In both style and content, these articles reflect Dewey's conviction that philosophy should be used as a means of illuminating the contemporary scene; thus they add a new dimension to present knowledge of his early writing. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper offers an account of the early career of Martha Kneale, née Hurst, and of the five papers she published between 1934 and 1950. One on metaphysical and logical necessity, from 1938, is particularly interesting. In it she considers the metaphysics of time and offers an explanation of ‘the necessity of the past’, which has some resemblance to Kripke’s ideas about metaphysical necessities, in that it assigns an important role to experience in how we come to know (...) them. But Kneale’s view is very different from Kripke’s, depending not on doctrines about rigid designation but rather on recognition of the failure of the atomist/empiricist account of ‘simple’ and ‘complex’ concepts. That account cannot deal with such things as the relations of the determinates of a determinable like colour. A plausible corollary of this, which Kneale exploits, is that some of our experience reveals to us that there are phenomena which are intrinsically complex in having multiple distinguishable aspects, but where those aspects are inseparable. Other of the papers show Kneale to have been pursuing interesting lines of thought about McTaggart’s argument against the reality of time and on the mind-body problem. (shrink)

The renowned Christian theologian Bernard Lonergan was also a professor, teaching courses on theological method at universities in Canada, the United States, and Italy. This volume records his lectures and teaching materials, thus preserving and elucidating his intellectual development between the publication of Insight in 1957 and Method in Theology in 1972. The present volume contains a record of the lectures delivered in 1962, 1964, and 1968. This is the most 'interactive' volume yet published in the Collected Works series. (...) The audio recordings of the 1962 and 1968 lectures are now available on the website www.bernardlonergan.com, as are PDF files of original papers from his 1964 institute at Georgetown. These lectures help to elucidate the development of Lonergan's ideas on such key notions as horizon, conversion, and meaning, as well as his evolving opinion on how best to divide theology into fields of specialization. (shrink)

The objective of this work is to investigate the philosophical anthropology that underpins the anthropology of the Early Christians. It is curious to know why Christian anthropology is intellectually and practically inclined towards the philosophical anthropology of the Platonic tradition rather than the theological-philosophical tradition of the biblical Hebrew people in the Old Testament. Today the emphasis on Christian anthropology is that the human person is an integration of body and soul. Contrary to this position, the writer maintains (...) that the Christian anthropology, especially during the period of the early Christians, fundamentally conceives the human person as a composite of soul and body, which is a conscious employment of Platonic anthropology. This article observes that, as regards the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, there is a dichotomy between theological coherency and the actual Christian practice on the Christian conception of the human person. Hence, this work argues that the Platonic influence on the philosophical anthropology of the Early Christian was a deliberate act to give a more rational foundation to the theological problematic on the resurrection of the dead and on the resurrected body. It explains why Aquinas’s theological cum philosophical thinking, though overwhelmingly an Aristotelian ground, could not “Aristotelize” his philosophical anthropology. (shrink)

Volume 1 of The Early Works of John Dewey, 1882-1898 is entitled Early Essays and Leibniz's New Essays Concerning the Human Understanding, 1882-1888. Included here are all Dewey's earliest writings, from his first published article through his book on Leibniz. The materials in this volume provide a chronological record of Dewey's early development--beginning with the article he sent to the Journal of Speculative Philosophy in 1881 while he was a high-school teacher in Oil City, Pennsylvania, and (...) closing with his widely-acclaimed work on Leibniz in the Grigg's Series of German Philosophical Classics, written when he was an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan. During these years be-tween 1882 and 1888, Dewey's life course was established: he decided to follow a career in philosophy, completed doctoral studies at Johns Hopkins University, became an Instructor at the University of Michigan, was promoted to Assistant Professor, and accepted a position as Chairman of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota. With the publication of Psychology, he became well known among scholars in this country; a series of articles in the British journal Mind brought him prominence in British philosophical circles. His articles were abstracted in the Revue philosophique. None of the articles collected in this volume was reprinted during the author's lifetime. For the first time, it is now possible for Dewey scholars to study consecutively in one publication all the essays which originally appeared in many periodicals. (shrink)

The two brothers Julius and Adolf Hurwitz were born in the middle of the nineteenth century in a small town near Hanover (not far from Göttingen). Already during their schooldays, the two of them became acquainted with mathematical problems and both started to study mathematics, but while the younger brother Adolf turned out to be extremely successful in his research, the elder brother and his work seem to be almost forgotten. This paper examines the lives and works of the (...) two brothers with particular emphasis on the contributions of Julius Hurwitz, and the subsequent reception of their research. It deals with the development of an arithmetical theory for complex continued fractions by Julius and Adolf Hurwitz around 1890 and its rediscovery in the twentieth century. (shrink)

The renowned Christian theologian Bernard Lonergan was also a professor, teaching courses on theological method at universities in Canada, the United States, and Italy. This volume records his lectures and teaching materials, thus preserving and elucidating his intellectual development between the publication of Insight in 1957 and Method in Theology in 1972. The present volume contains a record of the lectures delivered in 1962 (Regis College, Toronto), 1964 (Georgetown University), and 1968 (Boston College). This is the most 'interactive' volume yet (...) published in the Collected Works series. The audio recordings of the 1962 and 1968 lectures are now available on the website www.bernardlonergan.com, as are PDF files of original papers from his 1964 institute at Georgetown. These lectures help to elucidate the development of Lonergan's ideas on such key notions as horizon, conversion, and meaning, as well as his evolving opinion on how best to divide theology into fields of specialization. (shrink)

This volume explores the early Jewish understanding of divine knowledge as divine presence, which is embodied in major biblical exemplars, such as Adam, Enoch, Jacob, and Moses. The study treats the concept of divine knowledge as the embodied divine presence in its full historical and interpretive complexity by tracing the theme through a broad variety of ancient Near Eastern and Jewish sources, including Mesopotamian traditions of cultic statues, creational narratives of the Hebrew Bible, and later (...) class='Hi'>Jewish mystical testimonies. Orlov demonstrates that some biblical and pseudepigraphical accounts postulate that the theophany expresses the unique, corporeal nature of the deity that cannot be fully grasped or conveyed in some other non-corporeal symbolism, medium, or language. The divine presence requires another presence in order to be transmitted. To be communicated properly and in its full measure, the divine iconic knowledge must be "written" on a new living "body" which can hold the ineffable presence of God through a newly acquired ontology. Embodiment of Divine Knowledge in Early Judaism will provide an invaluable research to students and scholars in a wide range of areas within Jewish, Near Eastern, and Biblical Studies, as well as those studying religious elements of anthropology, philosophy, sociology, psychology, and gender studies. Through the study of Jewish mediatorial figures, this book also elucidates the roots of early Christological developments, making it attractive to Christian audiences. (shrink)

One of the most persistent and popular bourgeois myths about Spinoza is that of his unwillingness to participate in any kind of political struggle whatever. This myth is sustained particularly by those non-Marxist historians of philosophy who contend that the essence of Spinozism is the development of a new form of religiosity, free of the limitations of any national religion. Such a conception of the Dutch thinker is partially based on facts related by his first biographers, particularly Lucas. As we (...) know, Lucas, in his Life of Benedict Spinoza, written in French between 1678 and 1688, writes that the philosopher's father, Michael de Spinoza, lacking funds and being unable to establish his son in commerce, chose for him the career of a rabbi, and with this in mind placed the young Spinoza in the Amsterdam kheder, where he gained an excellent knowledge of classical Hebrew and studied to perfection the Old Testament and the considerably more voluminous Talmud. Even during his period of instruction, Spinoza, having found many contradictions in the Bible and Talmud, placed the rabbis who were his teachers in untenable positions and this subsequently led to a conflict between him and the leadership of the Amsterdam Jewish community. This report by Spinoza's first biographer suggests the idea that the young Spinoza had crystallized his ideas as early as his stay in the kheder. This we find stated in many of the non-Marxist studies devoted to him. Soviet writings on Spinoza also usually repeat Lucas' view entirely without criticism . However, certain foreign researches of recent decades, which have given consideration to documents and firsthand reports published in 1932 by the Dutch researcher Vaz Dias and, more recently, certain other documents have necessitated considerable corrections in the biographies both by Lucas and Colerus. In these works — of which the book by the French researcher Madeleine Francés, Spinoza dans les pays Neerlandais de la seconde moitié du XVII siècle, Vol. I, Paris, 1937, and that of the American researcher, Lewis Feuer, Spinoza and the Rise of Liberalism, Boston, 1958, are particularly worthy of mention — serious attempts are made to demonstrate the social roots and essence of Spinozism. The biographical data presented in these works contribute to a clarification of the real reasons for the conflict between the young Spinoza and the leadership of the Jewish community of Amsterdam. According to these writers, Spinoza's father was a wealthy man and, in all probability, did not intend to make a rabbi of his son. There can be no question that the young Spinoza attended the elementary classes of the Jewish school, but his name is not found in the lists of students in its higher grades, from which future rabbis emerged. Beginning approximately at the age of thirteen, Bento helped his father in his commercial and financial operations. However, after his father's death, Baruch himself took charge of these matters during the period 1654-1656 and, as these documents suggest, demonstrated considerable skill in commercial and financial affairs. However, the activities of merchant and financier did not appeal to the young man. The discrepancy between his intellectual interests and the nature of his occupation proved so irreconcilable that the future philosopher, who had established numerous scholarly and personal ties outside the Jewish community, drifted farther and farther both from his business and the community, until finally he was excommunicated, and broke with the community. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Judaism and EnlightenmentHeidi Morrison RavvenAdam Sutcliffe. Judaism and Enlightenment. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. xv + 314. Cloth, $60.00.Adam Sutcliffe's detailed and wide-ranging historical study of the image of the Jews and of Judaism in the minds of Enlightenment thinkers very broadly conceived might better be [End Page 343] titled Enlightenment Myths of Jews and Judaism. Sutcliffe admirably captures the consistently mythic portrayal of Jews and (...) Judaism mostly offered as interpretations of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) rather than with reference to actual living or historical Jews. Although not explicitly acknowledged, what Sutcliffe offers the reader is a comprehensive catalogue of Enlightenment ideology or, better, theologizing about Judaism and the Jews. I say theologizing because the ubiquitous stark ambivalence toward the Jews that Sutcliffe argues Enlightenment thinkers to a person harbored, from the early Christian Hebraists and Kabbalists to the deists, to Voltaire and beyond the Enlightenment proper even to Freud (whom Sutcliffe not completely in jest regards as the last philosophe) echoes and reconfigures the quintessential Christian ambivalence toward Jews as both God's chosen and God's rejected. Christianity's need to legitimate the Hebrew Bible as the Old Testament stands in perpetual conflict with its need to de-legitimate the Jews as its rightful owners and heirs. Sutcliffe is utterly convincing that the Enlightenment conception of the Jews has irreducible mythic and conflictual aspects.The author's intended purpose, however, which is to convince the reader that Judaism and the Jews are the paradigmatic crux of the unassimilability of the mythic and particular by Enlightenment reason and hence to bring into question Enlightenment ideals themselves, is less convincing. Instead the data Sutcliffe amasses seem to point to the conclusion that Enlightenment thinkers were deeply imbued with mythic categories and ancient prejudices not easily sloughed off by mere protestations of rational autonomy and commitment to universal ideals.Sutcliffe's mistake is to grant to the Enlightenment thinkers their ground on both their self-valuation as exemplars of the deployment of universal reason or rational universalism and also their classification of Judaism as particularist mythos in opposition to just such reason. What Sutcliffe's carefully collected and exhaustively presented data suggest, instead, is that when it came to Judaism, the Enlightenment thinkers were neither rational nor universalist but instead culture bound and impassioned. The book's great strength is its admirable and exhaustive scholarly grasp of European Enlightenment works and its systematic presentation of the Jews in the imagination of these Enlighteners. Nevertheless, missing from this book is a scholarly understanding of Jewish sources both biblical and post-biblical and especially of Jewish philosophy. As a result, Judaism (and even the Hebrew Bible) signify to the author what Enlighteners mistakenly and prejudicially cast it as, namely, Europe's quintessential mythic particularism. But this caricature ignores the reality of rabbinic Judaism's profoundly rationalist tendencies and also the universalist aspirations and claims of the Jewish philosophic tradition whose deep roots go back to the Hellenistic era, let alone the universality of the Bible which is hardly less than that of Shakespeare. Hence Sutcliffe perpetuates a negative (and false) stereotype in the name of valorizing it. In this he is persuaded by a post-modernist agenda suggested, but not generally intrusive, throughout the book and made explicit at the end.Particularly jarring is Sutcliffe's inclusion of Spinoza in his catalogue of Enlightenment villifiers of Judaism as a form of unassimilable particularism and mythic primitivism. Spinoza instead clearly and repeatedly argues in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus that biblical Judaism is exemplified par excellence by its universalist ethics and hence it is the Ancient Jewish Commonwealth that ought to serve as an exemplar for the Dutch republic and all modern polities, as Michael Rosenthal has admirably shown in several essays. Spinoza draws this conclusion from the deployment of what he explicitly develops as his scientific method of reading texts, a method he argues is the same as the scientific method of amassing the data of nature and systematizing it in order to let its explanatory categories emerge therefrom (Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, vii). The central result of using the scientific method on the Bible... (shrink)

This paper examines the manner in which the early modern scholarly debate concerning the true age of the world was shaped by philological and text-critical scholarship on the work of the first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus. Traditionally, historians have earmarked the late seventeenth century as a time of uncertainty and crisis for biblical chronologists, as scholars became increasingly aware of corruptions within existing versions of scripture and of the manner in which scriptural chronology was contradicted by pagan sources. (...) I hope to show how, in response to these doubts, scholars during this period also developed a pronounced interest in the chronology – and consequently the textual history – of the first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, whom scholars considered the oldest and therefore best surviving witness to the original state of the biblical text in the time of the Apostles. I have drawn two important conclusions from this development. Firstly, I show that the development of philological and text-critical scholarship on non-biblical texts was a direct result of theological issues relating to biblical authority and chronology. Secondly, I argue that this philological scholarship was key to undermining orthodox faith in the stability and reliability of the biblical text itself. (shrink)

This Article discusses the first steps of Israeli copyright law, dating it back to Ottoman times, which is earlier than thus far discussed in the literature. The account provides an early case of legal globalization through colonialism. The imposition of copyright law in Palestine enables us to observe the difficulties of applying an uninvited legal transplant and to trace its dynamics. The discussion queries the fate of copyright law in Mandate Palestine from two perspectives. First, the Colonial-Imperial point of (...) view: I ask why the British government imposed copyright law in the newly administered territory only a month after the establishment of the civil administration in 1920 and then replaced it in 1924. The answers are to be found in the general imperial agenda, its Palestine agenda, as well as the nature of copyright and the personal background of those involved. Second, from the local point of view, I trace the first steps of copyright law within the Hebrew community and especially within the literary circle in the 1920s. The local needs of the literary field concerned the author-publisher relationship, attribution, the integrity of the work and international transactions. However, the answers to these problems were not found in the law but rather in private ordering, namely contracts and social norms. (shrink)