Through A Speculum That Shines

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Through a Speculum That Shines

Author : Elliot R. Wolfson
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 069121509X
Total Pages : 463 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (912 download)

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Book Synopsis Through a Speculum That Shines by : Elliot R. Wolfson

Download or read book Through a Speculum That Shines written by Elliot R. Wolfson and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-30 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive treatment of visionary experience in some of the main texts of Jewish mysticism, this book reveals the overwhelmingly visual nature of religious experience in Jewish spirituality from antiquity through the late Middle Ages. Using phenomenological and critical historical tools, Wolfson examines Jewish mystical texts from late antiquity, pre-kabbalistic sources from the tenth to the twelfth centuries, and twelfth- and thirteenth-century kabbalistic literature. His work demonstrates that the sense of sight assumes an epistemic priority in these writings, reflecting and building upon those scriptural passages that affirm the visual nature of revelatory experience. Moreover, the author reveals an androcentric eroticism in the scopic mentality of Jewish mystics, which placed the externalized and representable form, the phallus, at the center of the visual encounter. In the visionary experience, as Wolfson describes it, imagination serves a primary function, transmuting sensory data and rational concepts into symbols of those things beyond sense and reason. In this view, the experience of a vision is inseparable from the process of interpretation. Fundamentally challenging the conventional distinction between experience and exegesis, revelation and interpretation, Wolfson argues that for the mystics themselves, the study of texts occasioned a visual experience of the divine located in the imagination of the mystical interpreter. Thus he shows how Jewish mystics preserved the invisible transcendence of God without doing away with the visual dimension of belief.

Through a Speculum that Shines

Author : Elliot R. Wolfson
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780691017228
Total Pages : 466 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (172 download)

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Book Synopsis Through a Speculum that Shines by : Elliot R. Wolfson

Download or read book Through a Speculum that Shines written by Elliot R. Wolfson and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Judaic scholar Elliot Wolfson's triple award-winning study examines Jewish mystical texts from late antiquity, pre-kabbalistic sources from the 10th to the 12th centuries, and 12th- and 13th-century kabbalistic literature, describing Jewish mysticism and the overwhelmingly visual nature of religious experience in Jewish spirituality from antiquity through the late Middle Ages.

Alef, Mem, Tau

Author : Elliot R. Wolfson
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520246195
Total Pages : 346 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (22 download)

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Book Synopsis Alef, Mem, Tau by : Elliot R. Wolfson

Download or read book Alef, Mem, Tau written by Elliot R. Wolfson and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2006-04-05 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alef, Mem, Tau also discusses Islamic mysticism and Buddhist thought in relation to the Jewish esoteric tradition as it opens the possibility of a temporal triumph of temporality and the conquering of time through time."

Language, Eros, Being

Author : Elliot R. Wolfson
Publisher : Fordham Univ Press
ISBN 13 : 0823224201
Total Pages : 792 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (232 download)

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Book Synopsis Language, Eros, Being by : Elliot R. Wolfson

Download or read book Language, Eros, Being written by Elliot R. Wolfson and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2009-08-25 with total page 792 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This long-awaited, magisterial study-an unparalleled blend of philosophy, poetry, and philology-draws on theories of sexuality, phenomenology, comparative religion, philological writings on Kabbalah, Russian formalism, Wittgenstein, Rosenzweig, William Blake, and the very physics of the time-space continuum to establish what will surely be a highwater mark in work on Kabbalah. Not only a study of texts, Language, Eros, Being is perhaps the fullest confrontation of the body in Jewish studies, if not in religious studies as a whole. Elliot R. Wolfson explores the complex gender symbolism that permeates Kabbalistic literature. Focusing on the nexus of asceticism and eroticism, he seeks to define the role of symbolic and poetically charged language in the erotically configured visionary imagination of the medieval Kabbalists. He demonstrates that the traditional Kabbalistic view of gender was a monolithic and androcentric one, in which the feminine was conceived as being derived from the masculine. He does not shrink from the negative implications of this doctrine, but seeks to make an honest acknowledgment of it as the first step toward the redemption of an ancient wisdom. Comparisons with other mystical traditions-including those in Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam-are a remarkable feature throughout the book. They will make it important well beyond Jewish studies, indeed, a must for historians of comparative religion, in particular of comparative mysticism. Praise for Elliot R. Wolfson: "Through a Speculum That Shines is an important and provocative contribution to the study of Jewish mysticism by one of the major scholars now working in this field."-Speculum

Giving Beyond the Gift

Author : Elliot R. Wolfson
Publisher : Fordham Univ Press
ISBN 13 : 0823255727
Total Pages : 576 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (232 download)

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Book Synopsis Giving Beyond the Gift by : Elliot R. Wolfson

Download or read book Giving Beyond the Gift written by Elliot R. Wolfson and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2014-02-03 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the co-dependency of monotheism and idolatry by examining the thought of several prominent twentieth-century Jewish philosophers—Cohen, Buber, Rosenzweig, and Levinas. While all of these thinkers were keenly aware of the pitfalls of scriptural theism, to differing degrees they each succumbed to the temptation to personify transcendence, even as they tried either to circumvent or to restrain it by apophatically purging kataphatic descriptions of the deity. Derrida and Wyschogrod, by contrast, carried the project of denegation one step further, embarking on a path that culminated in the aporetic suspension of belief and the consequent removal of all images from God, a move that seriously compromises the viability of devotional piety. The inquiry into apophasis, transcendence, and immanence in these Jewish thinkers is symptomatic of a larger question. Recent attempts to harness the apophatic tradition to construct a viable postmodern negative theology, a religion without religion, are not radical enough. Not only are these philosophies of transcendence guilty of a turn to theology that defies the phenomenological presupposition of an immanent phenomenality, but they fall short on their own terms, inasmuch as they persist in employing metaphorical language that personalizes transcendence and thereby runs the risk of undermining the irreducible alterity and invisibility attributed to the transcendent other. The logic of apophasis, if permitted to run its course fully, would exceed the need to posit some form of transcendence that is not ultimately a facet of immanence. Apophatic theologies, accordingly, must be supplanted by a more far-reaching apophasis that surpasses the theolatrous impulse lying coiled at the crux of theism, an apophasis of apophasis, based on accepting an absolute nothingness—to be distinguished from the nothingness of an absolute—that does not signify the unknowable One but rather the manifold that is the pleromatic abyss at being’s core. Hence, the much-celebrated metaphor of the gift must give way to the more neutral and less theologically charged notion of an unconditional givenness in which the distinction between giver and given collapses. To think givenness in its most elemental, phenomenological sense is to allow the apparent to appear as given without presuming a causal agency that would turn that given into a gift.

Circle in the Square

Author : Elliot R. Wolfson
Publisher : State University of New York Press
ISBN 13 : 143842437X
Total Pages : 284 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (384 download)

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Book Synopsis Circle in the Square by : Elliot R. Wolfson

Download or read book Circle in the Square written by Elliot R. Wolfson and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book deals with aspects of the gender imaging of God in a variety of medieval kabbalistic sources. It provides the key to understanding the phenomenological structures of mystical experience as well as the thematic correlation of esotericism and eroticism that is central to the kabbalah. The author examines the role of gender utilizing current feminist studies and cultural anthropology. He explores the themes of the feminization of the Torah, the correlation of circumcision and vision of God, the phallocentric understanding of divine creation as a process of inscription mythologized as an act of sexual self-gratification, and the phenomenon of gender-crossing in kabbalistic myth and ritual. Collectively, the studies explore in great depth the androcentric phallocentrism that is characteristic of medieval Jewish mysticism.

The Zohar

Author : Daniel Chanan Matt
Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780804757126
Total Pages : 608 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (571 download)

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Book Synopsis The Zohar by : Daniel Chanan Matt

Download or read book The Zohar written by Daniel Chanan Matt and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sefer ha-Zohar (The Book of Radiance) has amazed and overwhelmed readers ever since it emerged mysteriously in medieval Spain toward the end of the thirteenth century. Written in a unique, lyrical Aramaic, this masterpiece of Kabbalah exceeds the dimensions of a normal book; it is virtually a body of literature, comprising over twenty discrete sections. The bulk of theZohar consists of a running commentary on the Torah, from Genesis through Deuteronomy. This fourth volume of The Zohar: Pritzker Edition covers the first half of Exodus. Here we find mystical explorations of Pharaoh's enslavement of the Israelites, the birth of Moses, the deliverance from Egypt, the crossing of the Red Sea, and the Revelation at Mount Sinai. Throughout, the Zohar probes the biblical text and seeks deeper meaningfor example, the nature of evil and its relation to the divine realm, the romance of Moses andShekhinah, and the inner meaning of the Ten Commandments. In the context of the miraculous splitting of the Red Sea, Rabbi Shim'on reveals the mysterious Name of 72, a complex divine name consisting of 216 letters (72 triads), formed out of three verses in Exodus 14. These mystical interpretations are interwoven with tales of the Companionsrabbis wandering through the hills of Galilee, sharing their insights, coming upon wisdom in the most astonishing ways from a colorful cast of characters they meet on the road.

Heavenly Torah

Author : Abraham Joshua Heschel
Publisher : A&C Black
ISBN 13 : 9780826408020
Total Pages : 876 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

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Book Synopsis Heavenly Torah by : Abraham Joshua Heschel

Download or read book Heavenly Torah written by Abraham Joshua Heschel and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 876 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: his most ambitious scholarly achievement, his three-volume study of Rabbinic Judaism, is only now appearing in English.

The Zohar: Reception and Impact

Author : Boaz Huss
Publisher : Liverpool University Press
ISBN 13 : 178962486X
Total Pages : 392 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (896 download)

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Book Synopsis The Zohar: Reception and Impact by : Boaz Huss

Download or read book The Zohar: Reception and Impact written by Boaz Huss and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-12 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National Jewish Book Awards Finalist for the Nahum N. Sarna Memorial Award for Scholarship, 2016. From its first appearance, the Zohar has been one of the most sacred, authoritative, and influential books in Jewish culture. Many scholarly works have been dedicated to its mystical content, its literary style, and the question of its authorship. This book focuses on different issues: it examines the various ways in which the Zohar has been received by its readers and the impact it has had on Jewish culture, including the fluctuations in its status and value and the various cultural practices linked to these changes. This dynamic and multi-layered history throws important new light on many aspects of Jewish cultural history over the last seven centuries. Boaz Huss has broken new ground with this study, which examines of the reception and canonization of the Zohar as well as its criticism and rejection from its inception to the present day. His underlying assumption is that the different values attributed to the Zohar are not inherent qualities of the zoharic texts, but rather represent the way it has been perceived by its readers in different cultural contexts. He therefore considers not only the attribution of different qualities to the Zohar through time but also the people who were engaged in attributing such qualities and the social and cultural functions associated with their creation, re-creation, and rejection. For each historical period from the beginning of Zohar scholarship to the present, Huss considers the social conditions that stimulated the veneration of the Zohar as well as the factors that contributed to its rejection, alongside the cultural functions and consequences of each approach. Because the multiple modes of the reception of the Zohar have had a decisive influence on the history of Jewish culture, this highly innovative and wide-ranging approach to Zohar scholarship will have important repercussions for many areas of Jewish studies.

A Dream Interpreted Within a Dream

Author : Elliot R. Wolfson
Publisher : Zone Books (Mit Press)
ISBN 13 : 9781935408147
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (81 download)

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Book Synopsis A Dream Interpreted Within a Dream by : Elliot R. Wolfson

Download or read book A Dream Interpreted Within a Dream written by Elliot R. Wolfson and published by Zone Books (Mit Press). This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of the wakeful character of the dream and the dreamful character of wakefulness. Dreams have attracted the curiosity of humankind for millennia. In A Dream Interpreted Within a Dream, Elliot Wolfson guides the reader through contemporary philosophical and scientific models to the archaic wisdom that the dream state and waking reality are on an equal phenomenal footing--that the phenomenal world is the dream from which one must awaken by waking to the dream that one is merely dreaming that one is awake. By interpreting the dream within the dream, one ascertains the wakeful character of the dream and the dreamful character of wakefulness. Assuming that the manner in which the act of dreaming is interpreted may illuminate the way the interpreter comprehends human nature more generally, Wolfson draws on psychoanalysis, phenomenology, and neuroscience to elucidate the phenomenon of dreaming in a vast array of biblical, rabbinic, philosophical, and kabbalistic texts. To understand the dream, Wolfson writes, it is necessary to embrace the paradox of the fictional truth--a truth whose authenticity can be gauged only from the standpoint of its artificiality. The dream, on this score, may be considered the semblance of the simulacrum, wherein truth is not opposed to deception because the appearance of truthfulness cannot be determined independently of the truthfulness of appearance.

Kabbalah

Author : Moshe Idel
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780300046991
Total Pages : 444 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (469 download)

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Book Synopsis Kabbalah by : Moshe Idel

Download or read book Kabbalah written by Moshe Idel and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1988-01-01 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this prizewinning new interpretation of Jewish mysticism, Moshe Idel emphasizes the need for a comparative and phenomenological approach to Kabbalah and its position in the history of religion. Idel provides fresh insights into the origins of Jewish mysticism, the relation between mystical and historical experience, and the impact of Jewish mysticism on western civilization. "Idel's book is studded with major insights, and innovative approaches to the entire history of Judaism, and mastery of it will be essential for all serious students of Jewish thought."--Arthur Green, New York Times Book Review "Moshe Idel's original, scholarly, and stimulating study of Kabbalah contains the promise of a masterwork."--Elie Wiesel "Moshe Idel's book can help the nonspecialized reader to reconsider the whole of Kabbalistic tradition in comparison with many aspects of contemporary thought."--Umberto Eco "There can be no dispute about the importance and originality of Idel's work. Offering a wealth of complementary insights to Gershom Scholem and his school, it will command a great deal of attention and serious discussion."--Alexander Altmann

A River Flows from Eden

Author : Melila Hellner-Eshed
Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0804776245
Total Pages : 488 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (47 download)

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Book Synopsis A River Flows from Eden by : Melila Hellner-Eshed

Download or read book A River Flows from Eden written by Melila Hellner-Eshed and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-29 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Zohar, the jewel in the crown of Jewish mystical literature, the verse "A river flows from Eden to water the garden" (Genesis 2:10) symbolizes the river of divine plenty that unceasingly flows from the depths of divinity into the garden of reality. Hellner-Eshed's book investigates the flow of this river in the world of the Zoharic heroes, Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai and his disciples, as they embark upon their wondrous spiritual adventures. By focusing on the Zohar's language of mystical experience and its unique features, the author is able to provide remarkable scholarly insight into the mystical dimensions of the Zohar, namely the human quest for an enhanced experience of the living presence of the divine and the Zohar's great call to awaken human consciousness.

The Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic and Mysticism

Author : Geoffrey W. Dennis
Publisher : Llewellyn Worldwide
ISBN 13 : 0738748145
Total Pages : 504 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (387 download)

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Book Synopsis The Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic and Mysticism by : Geoffrey W. Dennis

Download or read book The Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic and Mysticism written by Geoffrey W. Dennis and published by Llewellyn Worldwide. This book was released on 2016-02-08 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jewish esotericism is the oldest and most influential continuous occult tradition in the West. Presenting lore that can spiritually enrich your life, this one-of-a-kind encyclopedia is devoted to the esoteric in Judaism—the miraculous and the mysterious. In this second edition, Rabbi Geoffrey W. Dennis has added over thirty new entries and significantly expanded over one hundred other entries, incorporating more knowledge and passages from primary sources. This comprehensive treasury of Jewish teachings, drawn from sources spanning Jewish scripture, the Talmud, the Midrash, the Kabbalah, and other esoteric branches of Judaism, is exhaustively researched yet easy to use. It includes over one thousand alphabetical entries, from Aaron to Zohar Chadesh, with extensive cross-references to related topics and new illustrations throughout. Drawn from the well of a great spiritual tradition, the secret wisdom within these pages will enlighten and empower you. Praise: "An erudite and lively compendium of Jewish magical beliefs, practices, texts, and individuals...This superb, comprehensive encyclopedia belongs in every serious library."—Richard M. Golden, Director of the Jewish Studies Program, University of North Texas, and editor of The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition "Rabbi Dennis has performed a tremendously important service for both the scholar and the novice in composing a work of concise information about aspects of Judaism unbeknownst to most, and intriguing to all."—Rabbi Gershon Winkler, author of Magic of the Ordinary: Recovering the Shamanic in Judaism

The Texture of the Divine

Author : Aaron W. Hughes
Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 0253110874
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (531 download)

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Book Synopsis The Texture of the Divine by : Aaron W. Hughes

Download or read book The Texture of the Divine written by Aaron W. Hughes and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2003-12-09 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Texture of the Divine explores the central role of the imagination in the shared symbolic worlds of medieval Islam and Judaism. Aaron W. Hughes looks closely at three interrelated texts known as the Hayy ibn Yaqzan cycle (dating roughly from 1000--1200 CE) to reveal the interconnections not only between Muslims and Jews, but also between philosophy, mysticism, and literature. Each of the texts is an initiatory tale, recounting a journey through the ascending layers of the universe. These narratives culminate in the imaginative apprehension of God, in which the traveler gazes into the divine presence. The tales are beautiful and poetic literary works as well as probing philosophical treatises on how the individual can know the unknowable. In this groundbreaking work, Hughes reveals the literary, initiatory, ritualistic, and mystical dimensions of medieval Neoplatonism. The Texture of the Divine also includes the first complete English translation of Abraham Ibn Ezra's Hay ben Meqitz.

Open Secret

Author : Elliot R. Wolfson
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231146310
Total Pages : 473 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (311 download)

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Book Synopsis Open Secret by : Elliot R. Wolfson

Download or read book Open Secret written by Elliot R. Wolfson and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Menaḥem Mendel Schneerson (1902-1994) was the seventh and seemingly last Rebbe of the Habad-Lubavitch dynasty. Marked by conflicting tendencies, Schneerson was a radical messianic visionary who promoted a conservative political agenda, a reclusive contemplative who built a hasidic sect into an international movement, and a man dedicated to the exposition of mysteries who nevertheless harbored many secrets. Schneerson astutely masked views that might be deemed heterodox by the canons of orthodoxy while engineering a fundamentalist ideology that could subvert traditional gender hierarchy, the halakhic distinction between permissible and forbidden, and the social-anthropological division between Jew and Gentile. While most literature on the Rebbe focuses on whether or not he identified with the role of Messiah, Elliot R. Wolfson, a leading scholar of Jewish mysticism and the phenomenology of religious experience, concentrates instead on Schneerson's apocalyptic sensibility and his promotion of a mystical consciousness that undermines all discrimination. For Schneerson, the ploy of secrecy is crucial to the dissemination of the messianic secret. To be enlightened messianically is to be delivered from all conceptual limitations, even the very notion of becoming emancipated from limitation. The ultimate liberation, or true and complete redemption, fuses the believer into an infinite essence beyond all duality, even the duality of being emancipated and not emancipated--an emancipation, in other words, that emancipates one from the bind of emancipation. At its deepest level, Schneerson's eschatological orientation discerned that a spiritual master, if he be true, must dispose of the mask of mastery. Situating Habad's thought within the evolution of kabbalistic mysticism, the history of Western philosophy, and Mahayana Buddhism, Wolfson articulates Schneerson's rich theology and profound philosophy, concentrating on the nature of apophatic embodiment, semiotic materiality, hypernomian transvaluation, nondifferentiated alterity, and atemporal temporality.

Along the Path

Author : Elliot R. Wolfson
Publisher : SUNY Press
ISBN 13 : 9780791424087
Total Pages : 302 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (24 download)

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Book Synopsis Along the Path by : Elliot R. Wolfson

Download or read book Along the Path written by Elliot R. Wolfson and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1995-07-01 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book demonstrates the complexity of Jewish mysticism in the history of religions. The author provides a morphology of the deep structures of thought that emerge from the basic texts of Jewish mysticism. Combining the most sophisticated philological and phenomenological methods, he explores fundamental issues.

Is there a Judeo-Christian Tradition?

Author : Emmanuel Nathan
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 311041659X
Total Pages : 295 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (14 download)

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Book Synopsis Is there a Judeo-Christian Tradition? by : Emmanuel Nathan

Download or read book Is there a Judeo-Christian Tradition? written by Emmanuel Nathan and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2016-03-21 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The term ‘Judeo-Christian’ in reference to a tradition, heritage, ethic, civilization, faith etc. has been used in a wide variety of contexts with widely diverging meanings. Contrary to popular belief, the term was not coined in the United States in the middle of the 20th century but in 1831 in Germany by Ferdinand Christian Baur. By acknowledging and returning to this European perspective and context, the volume engages the historical, theological, philosophical and political dimensions of the term’s development. Scholars of European intellectual history will find this volume timely and relevant.