Search results for ""JCB Mohr (Paul Siebeck)""

The relevance of the Targums (Aramaic translations of the Hebrew Bible) for the understanding of the New Testament has been a matter of dispute over the past three hundred years, principally by reason of the late date of the Targum manuscripts and the nature of the Aramaic. The debate has become more focused by reason of the Qumran finds of pre-Christian Aramaic documents (1947) and the identification of a complete text of the Palestinian Targum of the Pentateuch in the Vatican Library (Codex Neofiti, 1956). Martin McNamara traces the history of the debate down to our own day and the annotated translation of all the Targums into English. He studies the language situation (Aramaic and Greek) in New Testament Palestine and the interpretation of the Scriptures in the Targums, with concepts and language similar to the New Testament. Against this background relationships between the Targums and the New Testament are examined. A way forward is suggested by regarding the tell-like structure of the Targums (with layers from different ages) and a continuum running through for certain texts.

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The apostle Paul's understanding of his role and responsibilities in transferring the cult of Jesus Christ to new lands to found new groups devoted to this immigrant son of God is not unique. His modus operandi cannot be adequately explained in terms of Jewish precedents. Rather, Paul's pattern is a creative appropriation of the enduring Greek model of the founder, the key figure in Greek imaginings of the formation of social space, whether colony or cult. Cult foundation inscriptions as well as literary descriptions show that such foundations were laid according to persistent elements of a pattern originating in Greek foundation narratives focused on the oracular selection of the founder-figure and his obedience to a divine impetus for cult innovation. With the help of modern culture studies, especially postcolonial critique, Paul's letters show that he not only appropriated this traditional Greek model and applied it to the foundation of his churches, but creatively adapted it for purposes of group self-definition and his own sensibilities. While Paul uses few technical foundation terms, his reliance on divine visionary endorsement of his transfer of the Christ cult to new places, the way the apostle exercises authority over the communities he has founded, his attempt to integrate his Greek communities into the sacred history of Israel, and the strategies used against him by his opponents reveal his use of the Greek foundational model. Paul shares the discourse and action of contemporary cult founders who, like him, were obeying their deity's call for transferal to a new location.

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Recent studies highlight the character of Deuteronomy's laws of public officials (Deut. 16.18-18.22) as the first draft for a constitutional government of the future. Sarah Pearce explores what these laws meant for Jewish interpreters and their communities in the Second Temple period. Her focus is on the reception and transformation of Deuteronomy's laws on the organisation of justice (Deut. 16.18-17.13): the appointment of local judiciaries; the authority and function of the central court; and the prohibition of single testimony. The author offers a detailed commentary on these laws in sources including the Masoretic Text, the Samaritan Pentateuch, Greek Deuteronomy, the Books of Chronicles, the Temple Scroll, the Damascus Document, Philo of Alexandria, and Josephus. Her aim is to understand the ancient interpreters of Deuteronomy, first and foremost, in their own terms and their own contexts.

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Timothy P. Henderson examines the apologetic and polemical characteristics of the Gospel of Peter and demonstrates that this early Christian text was composed by reworking material from the New Testament gospels. He suggests that the category of Second Temple Jewish writings known as "Rewritten Bible" provides the best analogy for understanding the literary relationship between the Gospel of Peter and the canonical texts. An important feature of this study is its investigation of the ways in which certain criticisms and claims from those outside the Christian movement, including both Jews and Gentiles, played a formative role in the composition of the Gospel of Peter and led its author to alter details from previous accounts in an attempt to provide a more compelling demonstration of Christian claims. Henderson also surveys many parallels from other early Christian literature in order to establish more clearly the apologetic traits of this fascinating gospel.

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The reception of ancient Christian literature in the 17th century was not limited to theology or dogmatics; the multitude of genres is indicative of the way patristic texts were dealt with. Using selected paradigms (comparative literature, encyclopedias, biblical hermeneutics, interdenominational conflict, philology, philosophical argumentation), the articles in this volume provide a quantitative evaluation of patristic quotations in the 17th century while also focusing on the way in which the altered understanding of the patristic texts is linked to the changed conditions under which they were read. In spite of the progress made in scholarship in the 17th century, there was a crisis in education and breaks with tradition. One of the results of this was that Augustine in particular lost his previously unchallenged position in the 16th century. With contributions by:Silke-Petra Bergjan, Hanns Christof Brennecke, Irene Dingel, Ralph Häfner, Karla Pollmann, Scott Mandelbrote, Diana Stanciu, Johann Anselm Steiger

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The Apostle Paul's reference to the "tongues of angels" (1 Cor 13.1) has always aroused curiosity, but it has rarely been the object of a history-of-traditions investigation. Few readers of Paul's words are aware of the numerous references and allusions to angelic languages in Jewish and Christian texts. John C. Poirier presents the first full-length study of the concept of angelic languages, and the most exhaustive attempt to assemble the evidence for that concept in ancient Jewish and early Christian texts. He discusses possible references to angelic languages in the New Testament, pseudepigraphic writings (both Jewish and Christian), the Dead Sea scrolls, rabbinic texts, patristic references, magical writings, and epigraphy. The discussion is divided between those witnesses that understand angels to speak Hebrew, and those that understand angels to speak an esoteric heavenly language.

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More than 20 years have passed since the downfall of socialist systems. To accelerate transformation processes utmost priority was given to the recognition of property rights, an indispensable requirement for free market economies. Regulators soon came to realize that the success of transformation was conditioned on a more systematic approach towards codified civil law and business law. Numerous comparative law studies on individual Eastern European states have been undertaken, but they fail to portray the dynamic in its full scope. Studies adopting long-term perspectives and offering multi-nation comparisons are particularly rare. In March 2009, a symposium was held at the Hamburg Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Law to address these shortcomings. In this conference volume Christa Jessel-Holst, Rainer Kulms, and Alexander Trunk assemble the contributions by international policy advisors and scholars from Eastern and South Eastern Europe (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia and Ukraine) assessing codification processes in classic civil law fields and company and capital market laws. In spite of comparable transformation problems, the individual processes are moving forward quite disparately, oscillating between 'old' socialist codifications, legislative projects faithful to the acquis communautaire and new codifications with a distinctly autonomous approach. Nonetheless, most transformation states are united in their effort to establish efficient court systems which can handle the acquis without being positivistic.Contributors:Jürgen Basedow, Rainer Kulms, Michel Nussbaumer, Frederique Dahan, Thomas Meyer, Alexander Komarov, Volodymyr Kossak, Jelena Perović, Camelia Toader, Verica Trstenjak, Christian Takoff, Tatjana Josipović, Meliha Povlakić, Dušan Nikolić, Mirko Vasiljević, Alexandra Makovskaya, Oleg Zaitsev, Ionuţ Raduleţu, Tania Bouzeva, Radu Catană, András Kisfaludi, Krzysztof Oplustil, Arkadiusz Radwan

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This volume brings together both young and mature philosophers from the analytic and process traditions to dialogue on central questions in the areas of metaphysics, philosophy of religion, philosophical theology, and philosophy of language. The papers not only fill a massive gap in the intersections of interest between analytic and process scholars of religion but also demonstrate beyond any doubt that two traditions of process and analysis are integral to current philosophical movements and debates. The main questions discussed here include the nature of 'good' metaphysics, the application of modal discourse to the understanding of God's reality, God's epistemic nature, and the grammar of 'the world'. With contributions by:Vincent Colapietro, Daniel A. Dombrowski, Roland Faber, Patrick N. Horn, James A. Keller, George R. Lucas, Jr., D. Z. Phillips, Randy Ramal, Jay W. Richards, Peter Simons, Charles Taliaferro, Donald W. Viney

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Approaching the historical Jesus is a fascinating task, one which is open to a large number of interpretations. It is difficult to reach a consensus on this, and both methodological insight and an exchange of scholarly ideas are required. New Testament writings are multifaceted, and this fact seems to preclude a closer understanding of the activities and identity of the Nazareth rabbi. However, Jesus' life may be seen as a jouney which reflects uncommon trends and a definite perspective: the relation between himself and God, the Father. This book explores difficult subjects which are not usually dealt with in the "Third Quest," such as Jesus' birth and his family. Moreover, the reader will find other key issues which are crucial for research on the historical Jesus, such as his baptism, the question of whether or not he was a mystic and the traditions he initiated.

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To understand reality in terms of what is possible has methodological implications which a contemplative philosophy makes explicit. The goal is no longer to determine how things are or must be but rather to provide an overview of how they could be and the diversity with which they already appear. The function of philosophy is not the discovery of a single answer but rather a careful description of the diversity and the heterogeneity of possible answers in different contexts and practices. This approach, inspired by Wittgenstein, was applied to the philosophy of religion by Dewi Z. Phillips (1934-2006) in particular. This volume explores his contemplative philosophy of religion in an intense and lively discussion, showing how the description of religious faith and the access to its practice and language change unexpectedly and provocatively in this way of thinking.

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This volume collects thirty essays by Shaye J.D. Cohen. First published between 1980 and 2006, these essays deal with a wide variety of themes and texts: Jewish Hellenism; Josephus; the Synagogue; Conversion to Judaism; Blood and Impurity; the boundary between Judaism and Christianity. What unites them is their philological orientation. Many of these essays are close studies of obscure passages in Jewish and Christian texts. The essays are united too by their common assumption that the ancient world was a single cultural continuum; that ancient Judaism, in all its expressions and varieties, was a Hellenism; and that texts written in Hebrew share a world of discourse with those written in Greek. Many of these essays are well-known and have been much discussed in contemporary scholarship. Among these are: "The Significance of Yavneh" (the title essay), "Patriarchs and Scholarchs," "Masada: Literary Tradition, Archaeological Remains, and the Credibility of Josephus," "Epigraphical Rabbis," "The Conversion of Antoninus," "Menstruants and the Sacred in Judaism and Christianity," and "A Brief History of Jewish Circumcision Blood."

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This volume serves as a companion piece to the ongoing edition of Cotton Mather's Biblia Americana (1693-1728), the first comprehensive Bible commentary composed in British North America. Written by some of the most prominent scholars in the field, the essays in this collection offer original in-depth studies of Mather and his hitherto unpublished scriptural interpretations in the historical context of the Early Enlightenment, and the rise of Pietism. Transcending the pejorative image of the Puritan witch-doctor, Mather emerges from these essays as an erudite scholar and cosmopolitan theologian who was fully immersed in the rising developments of biblical exegesis around the turn of the eighteenth century. In facing the challenge of historical criticism or in examining the meaning of race and gender in the Bible, Mather wrestled with religious questions that are still relevant today.

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Sang M. Lee studies the cosmic drama of salvation which Paul describes in his undisputed writings. Utilizing the two pillars of Paul's theology - anthropology and cosmology - his aim is to understand how God's salvific drama develops in Paul's narrative world against the backdrop of the intellectual world of Judeo-Hellenistic traditions, including Greek philosophical works, Jewish wisdom and apocalyptic literature, and Philo's writings. Paul's salvific drama is woven from four interrelated acts: Act I (the law-less period), Act II (the law period), Act III (the age of the church) and Act IV (the Parousia). Special attention is paid to the key elements of the drama: God's master plan as its plot, time and space as its stage, and its various characters who can be divided into three main categories (evil, double-faced and good). In particular, the author focuses on the main characters - conscience, the Mosaic law, and Christ and the Spirit - who play important roles for God's long-range soteriological and pedagogical plan for humanity.

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In this excellent, thoroughly-researched and thoughtful study, J. aims to steer a path between these divergent views, and to provide a way out of what has become a scholarly impasse. […] J.'s study is a model of sober scholarship. […] this is a fine study that will undoubtedly become the standard discussion of Antipas for some time to come."Helen Bond in Theologische Literaturzeitung 133 (2008), pp. 379-381"Jensen has written a persuasive and comprehensive study on Antipas and his impact on Galilee. He has given us significant background information to our understanding of the Gospels and the historical Jesus."Christoph Stenschke in Religion and Theology 16 (2009), pp.111-115"We recommend the book to every scholarly or seminary library, and to all individuals interested in the origins of Christianity."Zdzislaw J. Kapera in The Polish Journal of Biblical Research 6 (2007), pp.193-194"His bibliography is a goldmine for those interested in Galilean archaeology, and a set of helpful illustrations, maps, and charts enhances the work. This book is a must read for anyone interested in historical Jesus; indeed, it undermines so much current scholarship on Christian origins that it (and Galilee generally) is a good place to begin."Jonathan L. Reed in Bulletin of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity 35 (2007), S. 10-11"This is an important study, one that no scholar writing on the cultural climate of first-century Galilee or the historical Jesus can afford to ignore. It is a fine exemplar of thoroughness and nuance and will quickly become the standard reference work on Herod Antipas's impact on the region."Die ungekürzte Rezension von Mark A. Chancey finden Sie auf www.bookreviews.org"This seems to be a model historical study."L.L. Grabbe in Journal for the Study of the Old Testament - Book List 31.5 (2007), S. 48-49"This work is a major up-to-date contribution on the life and reign of Herod Antipas. Jensen is to be commenended for his research and insight. Although he deals with complex and detailed issues, the book is easy to read and follow because it is so well organized and well written. For anyone who wants to learn about Herod Antipas and first-century Galilee, this book is a must."Harold W. Hoehner in Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 50 (2007), S. 833-835

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Social, cultural, theological, and economic presentations of children offer important clues to understanding the development of Christianity and society in Late Antiquity. This volume brings together studies of a diverse collection of sources - patristic texts, apocrypha, medicinal treatises, hagiography, pseudepigrapha, papyri, and more - illuminating how children mediated the relationship between Christian thought and Late Antique society. The contributors address the existence of children's culture, medicine and healing of children, disability and deformed children, the economic condition of orphans, theological appropriations of children, the presentations of family relationships in Christian thought, monasticism and family obligations, early Christian response to pedophilia and the formation of Christian ethical identity, and the role of children in apocryphal texts. With contributions by: Reidar Aasgaard, Tony Burke, Carole Monica C. Burnett, Susan R. Holman, Cornelia B. Horn; Inta Ivanovska, Nicole Kelley, Chrysi Kotsifou, John W. Martens, Robert R. Phenix, Carrie Schroeder, Ville Vuolanto

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Harold W. Attridge has engaged in the interpretation of two of the most intriguing literary products of early Christianity, the Gospel according to John and the Epistle to the Hebrews. His essays explore the literary and cultural traditions at work in the text and its imaginative rhetoric aiming to deepen faith in Christ by giving new meaning to his death and exaltation. His essays on John focus on the literary artistry of the final version of the gospel, its playful approach to literary genres, its engaging rhetoric, its delight in visual imagery. He situates that literary analysis of both works within the context of the history of religion and culture in the first century, with careful attention to both Jewish and Greco-Roman worlds. Several essays, focusing on the phenomena connected with "Gnosticism", extend that religio-historical horizon into the life of the early Church and contribute to the understanding of the reception of these two early Christian masterpieces.

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The book, which consists of some previously published and unpublished essays, examines a variety of issues relevant to the study of ancient Judaism and Christianity and their interaction, including polemic, proselytism, biblical interpretation, messianism, the phenomenon normally described as Jewish Christianity, and the fate of the Jewish community after the Bar Kokhba revolt, a period of considerable importance for the emergence not only of Judaism but also of Christianity. The volume, typically for a collection of essays, does not lay out a particular thesis. If anything binds the collection together, it is the author's attempt to set out the major fault lines in current debate about these disputed subjects, and in the process to reveal their complex and entangled character.

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The theme of wealth is one of the perennial hot topics in Lukan interpretation, as scholars have often found Luke's teachings on the proper use of wealth to be intractably self-contradictory. Christopher M. Hays addresses the apparent incongruity in Luke's ethical paraenesis. Alternately disputing and drawing upon earlier accounts of Lukan wealth ethics, he argues that Luke's Gospel narrates a spectrum of behaviors which actualize the basic principle of renunciation of all. Undertaking a narrative-critical, ethic description, he shows that in Luke's Gospel the manifestation of a disciple's renunciation depends upon two factors: the disciple's vocation and his or her wealth. The author proceeds to analyze the text of Acts and to demonstrate that Luke displays the Jerusalem community, and to a lesser extent, the Diaspora Church, as faithfully appropriating and enacting Jesus' teachings on possessions.

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Scheduled to appear in 10 volumes, this scholarly edition of Cotton Mather's Biblia Americana (1693-1728) makes available for the first time the oldest comprehensive commentary on the Bible composed in British North America. Combining encyclopaedic discussions of biblical scholarship with scientific speculations and pietistic concerns, Biblia represents one of the most significant untapped sources in American religious and intellectual history. Mather's commentary not only reflects the growing influence of Enlightenment thought (Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, and Newton) and the rise of the transatlantic evangelical awakening; it also marks the beginnings of historical criticism of the Bible as text in New England.Volume 1 (Genesis) of Cotton Mather's Biblia Americana is particularly valuable because Mather addresses some of the most hotly debated questions of his age: Are the six days of God's creation to be taken literally? Can the geological record of the earth's age be reconciled with biblical chronology? Were there men before Adam? How many animals fit into Noah's Ark? Was Noah's Flood a local or global event? Why are the religions of the ancient Canaanites, Egyptians, and Greeks so similar to the revealed religion of Moses? Did God dictate the Bible to his prophets, and how many (if any) of the books of the Pentateuch did Moses write? Such questions were as relevant during the early Enlightenment as, indeed, they are to many believers today. Edited, introduced, annotated, and indexed by Reiner Smolinski, Mather's commentary on Genesis is as rich in its critical texture as it is surprisingly modern in its answers to many central concerns of the Christian faith.

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Tractate Sukkah from the Babylonian Talmud presents a broad spectrum of rabbinical sources from Erez Israel and Babylon that explicitly examine issues relating to women. Some of these sources were created by sages who lived in Erez Israel in the time of the second temple and after its destruction and were called "Tannaim", and the others were created by sages who lived in Erez Israel and in Babylon from the third until the seventh century and were called "Amoraim". All the sources can be divided into two categories: topics directly connected to women and Sukkot, and matters indirectly associated with women that were incorporated into the sugiot (Talmudic fragments).Shulamit Valler's commentary to Tractate Sukkah includes an intensive study of all the sources which are connected to women and gender in this Tractate, thus leading to interesting findings regarding reality, conceptions and lifestyle.

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The first-century C.E. Jewish historian Flavius Josephus is our main source of information for the early history of the Samaritans, a community closely related to Judaism whose development as an independent religion is commonly dated in the Hellenistic-Roman period. Josephus' two main works, Jewish War and Jewish Antiquities, contain a number of passages that purport to describe the origin, character and actions of the Samaritans. In composing his histories, Josephus drew on different sources, some identifiable others unknown to us. Contemporary Josephus research has shown that he did so not as a mere compiler but as a creative writer who selected and quoted his sources carefully and deliberately and employed them to express his personal views. Rather than trying to isolate and identify Josephus' authorities and to determine the meaning these texts had in their original setting, Reinhard Pummer examines what Josephus himself intended to convey to his audience when he depicted the Samaritans in the way he did. He attempts to combine composition criticism and historical research and argues that the differences in Josephus' portrayal of the Samaritans in War on the one hand and in Antiquities on the other are due to the different aims the historian pursued in the two works.

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Recent developments in the study of ancient Near Eastern prophecy, as well as new archaeological models of the development of ancient Judah and Israel, have significant implications for biblical prophetic literature. Jason Radine proposes a reassessment of the book of Amos in light of these developments. In comparison with the evidence for prophecy in the ancient Near East (including ancient Israel), biblical prophetic literature stands out as a distinctly different phenomenon. The author proposes that the book of Amos is not a work of "prophecy" as the phenomenon is known from the ancient Near East, but rather a religio-political document explaining and justifying the withdrawal of divine favor from the northern kingdom. The book of Amos uses lamentation language to describe the Assyrian conquest of Israel, but also makes social justice accusations that justify the northern kingdom's destruction.

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This book is the first volume of a series designed to discuss problems of transnational civil procedure. This first volume on current topics of international litigation is the result of an international symposium in Nagoya, Japan. The contributions discuss problems of provisional measures, international class actions, taking evidence abroad, and preclusive effects of foreign judgments. This first symposium in Nagoya, Japan, is a part of the international research project "Establishing a New Framework for Realizing Effective Transnational Business Litigation" which is sponsored by the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science and organized by the University of Nagoya, Japan, in cooperation with the University of Freiburg, Germany. The contributions of this volume analyze the laws of England, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Finland, Japan and the United States in areas of special significance for international business litigation. Each chapter of the book contains not only the papers but also the discussions and comments of distinguished participants of the symposium from all over the world.

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"Private law beyond the state" is a topic that is fashionable, important, and widely discussed. Yet it presents so many different aspects and perspectives that it has, so far, remained remarkably poorly understood. Precisely because globalization moves the law "beyond the state", lawyers find themselves forced to rethink private law and its relation to the state. This volume brings together contributions of leading scholars from the United States, Israel and Germany exploring the topic from different perspectives: legal history, law and economics, legal sociology, private international law, and law and anthropology. They aim at clarifying and structuring current debates, focussing on the historical, conceptual, and epistemological relations between private law and the state as well as on their relevance for legal argument; on the actors involved in processes connecting and dividing private law and the state; and on the fundamental normative questions that result from these processes.

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Scholars have long discussed whether the writer of Hebrews might have been influenced by Philo of Alexandria. In spite of any disagreement, though, academics have almost universally concurred that even if bits and pieces of Philo's thinking should have filtered through to Hebrews, Philo and Hebrews certainly differed with respect to their biblical hermeneutics. Philo, the philosopher, read the Old Testament allegorically, whereas the Christian author of Hebrews committed himself only to typological exegesis. Stefan Nordgaard Svendsen challenges this consensus, arguing that the writer of Hebrews not only employed Philo's allegorical method, but also developed his own readings of Scripture through critical rereadings of Philo's exegetical results. This study sheds new light on the intellectual framework of Hebrews as well as on the letter's purpose and rhetorical strategies.

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This book provides the reader for the first time with a history of pre-kabbalistic Jewish mysticism. It covers the period from the Hebrew Bible (Ezekiel) up to Merkavah mysticism, the first full-fledged mystical movement in late antiquity. Many scholars have dealt with Merkavah mysticism proper and its ramifications for classical rabbinic Judaism, but very few have paid full attention to the evidence of the Hebrew Bible, the apocalyptic literature, Qumran, and Philo. It is this gap between the Hebrew Bible and Merkavah mysticism that Peter Schäfer wishes to fill in a systematic and reflective manner. In addressing the question of the origins of Jewish mysticism, he asks whether we can rightfully and sensibly speak of Jewish mysticism as a uniform and coherent phenomenon that started some time in the mythical past of the Hebrew Bible and later developed into what would become Merkavah mysticism and ultimately the Kabbalah. Instead of imposing a preconceived notion of "mysticism" on a great variety of relevant literatures, belonging to different communities at different times and on different places, the author proceeds heuristically and asks what these literatures wish to convey about the age-old human desire to get close to and communicate with God.Peter Schäfer has dedicated much of his scholarly life to the history of Jewish mysticism. The Origins of Jewish Mysticism summarizes his views in an accessible way, directed at specialists as well as at a broader audience.

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Scholars use patrons and benefactors in the interpretation of Jesus and the Gospels, but this practice needs re-evaluation. Many New Testament studies build from outdated classical scholarship and only superficial interaction with archaeological research. Recent classical studies have improved modern understanding of these ancient categories tremendously. Archaeological advances shed new light on first-century Palestine. Jonathan Marshall evaluates the categories of patrons and benefactors in light of the findings of new classical studies and archaeological work. He offers a much needed clarification between socio-historical "patron-client" relationships and Roman patrocinium. He also elucidates differences between patrocinium and benefaction. An in-depth investigation of cities, villages, and leadership in first-century Palestine reveals the minimal attestation of benefaction and, still less, patrocinium in the area and among the people. The dearth or, in some cases, complete lack of honorary inscriptions is one obvious pointer in this direction. An analysis of three passages in Luke (6:17-38; 14:1-24; 22:14-34) follows. The analysis demonstrates that Luke does not adopt the specific terminology of patrocinium. Use of the benefactor category is present but limited while debt to Jewish cultural influences predominates. One discovers that Luke's presentation of Jesus, in these three passages, matches well the historical realia of Jesus' day.

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Wrath and mercy of the gods were some of the significant religious features in antiquity. They interpret human experiences of suffering and affliction as well as those of protection and welfare. Due to the different characters and responsibilities of the deities, a remarkable range of constellations of divine benevolence and malevolence becomes evident, sometimes without allowing insight into the motives of the decisions made. This is why the actions of the gods are often viewed as emotional and arbitrary, lacking any degree of transparency. Consequently, the gods are subjected to philosophical and theological criticism. They are regarded by some as unreliable and obscure in any case, while others launch an attack on them, questioning their existence. The relationship between divine wrath and mercy requires a great deal of perception in the monotheistic religions, as it is no longer possible to attribute wrath and mercy to different deities. Wrath and mercy become characteristic features of one god only. In all monotheistic religions, it is a matter of theological concern to question the relationship between wrath and mercy on the basis of authoritative texts and religious experience. The comparison of these approaches provides valuable information on the very essence of the religions investigated from this central perspective.

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Birke Häcker explores the English and German law on impaired consent transfers of movable property and their reversal in comparative perspective, paying particular attention to the interaction - within each legal system - between the rules and principles of contract law, property law, and the law of unjust(ified) enrichment. In two-party situations, the author focuses on the relationship between contract and conveyance and the closely related question of the transferor's position in the event of the transferee's insolvency. While German law resolves these issues by reference to the well-established principles of separation and abstraction, the relevant English law is still unsettled. The author argues for a generalized power model of so-called 'proprietary restitution' and seeks to demonstrate that conveyances by delivery are best regarded as abstract in English as well as in German law, but explains why English law nevertheless lacks the gist of abstraction à la BGB. Building on this analysis, the author then goes on to examine three-party situations. She looks first at the position of third parties who have acquired the object in question before the transferor has had a chance to reclaim it (raising issues of bona fide purchase and 'leapfrogging') and thereafter at the extent to which the transferor can assert rights to the object's traceable substitutes. As far as English law is concerned, the author shows that the supposed 'third party rights bar to rescission' is not only unnecessary, but misconceived, and that it ought to be abolished.

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George H. van Kooten offers a radical contextualization of Paul's view of man within the Graeco-Roman discourse of his day. On the one hand, important anthropological terminology such as "image of God" and "spirit" derives from the Jewish creation accounts of Genesis 1-2. On the other hand, this terminology appears to be compatible with reflections of Graeco-Roman philosophers on man as the image of God and on man's mind, and is supplemented with Platonic concepts such as "the inner man." For this reason, the author traces the development of Paul's anthropology against the background of both ancient Judaism and ancient philosophy. Although he takes his starting point from Jewish texts, and is not out of tune with particular Jewish thoughts about the close relation between man and God, Paul, like Philo of Alexandria, seems to owe a lot to contemporary philosophical anthropology. Paul's view, for instance, that man needs to be "transformed into the image of God" lacks Jewish antecedents, but reflects the pagan philosophical notion of man's assimilation to God. George H. van Kooten emphasizes that it is no longer possible to deny the relevance of a Greek context for Paul's view of man, and argues that Paul should be understood in the wake of the 1st cent. BC introduction of a comprehensive Platonic doctrine of man's assimilation to God through virtue. Paul's anthropology, which calls for inner transformation and is universally applicable, criticizes the superficial values of the sophistic movement in Corinth and the anthropomorphic images of the gods, and offers a strategy to overcome the ethnic tensions which divide the Christian community in Rome.

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The authors of this volume present a detailed philosophico-theological discussion of the relation between religion and metaphysics. If thinkers like Richard Rorty and Kai Nielsen are right to insist that metaphysical speculation must be abandoned for good, then what are the prospects for religion? Is belief in an omnipotent God not inexctricably linked with belief in a metaphysical ground of all being? Indeed, can one even speak intelligibly about causal or moral necessity without invoking the notion of a transcendent reality? On the other hand, is the concept of metaphysics not as multi-faceted as the modes of religious discourse themselves? The contributors approach these questions from their own distinctive (philosophical and theological) perspectives, in the process disentangling some of the complex conceptual issues surrounding religion and metaphysics.

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This is a collection of twenty-four essays by Richard Bauckham first published between 1976 and 2008, some of which have been updated for this volume. Many aspects of the literature and thought of early Judaism are covered, including life after death, the provenance of the Pseudepigrapha, the Jewish apocalypses, the book of Tobit, the Horarium of Adam, and the Contra Apionem of Josephus. There are discussions of 'the parting of the ways' between early Judaism and early Christianity and of the relevance of early Jewish literature for the study of the New Testament. Other essays throw light on specific aspects or texts of early Christianity by relating them to their early Jewish context. These include studies of the delay of the parousia, the restoration of Israel in Luke-Acts, and the use of Latin names by Paul and other Jews in the early Christian movement. The essays in this volume result from the author's conviction, throughout his career, that the New Testament texts can only be understood adequately through wide-ranging and detailed study of the Judaism of the late Second Temple period.

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Since the problem of theodicy concerns all dimensions of human existence and cannot be reduced to a logical problem of consistency, it cannot be resolved by means of a theodicy, a rational defense of God before the tribunal of human reason. But how can we deal with 'the wound of negativity?' Claudia Welz explores responses that do not end up in a theodicy. Instead of asking about the origin and sense (or non-sense) of evil and suffering, she considers God's (non)phenomenality, the dialectics of God's givenness and hiddenness. Neither God nor evil is given 'as such;' rather, God and evil are determined for someone as something within specific contexts of experience. How does God appear in human life, and how is his phenomenal presence or non-presence related to the ambiguities of our lives? In the center of the book, Kierkegaard's and Rosenzweig's answers, their reasons for having no reason to defend God and their ethics of love are discussed 'between' German idealism and French phenomenology. Both of them follow Kant's practical turn of the problem of theodicy, oppose Hegel's theodicy through history and anticipate Levinas' idea to look for the traces of God's transcendence in human movements of self-transcendence. Moreover, they have remarkable contributions to the current debates on 'metaphysics of presence' and 'onto-theology.' In dialogue with Levinas, the presence of God's love is in question, in dialogue with Derrida God's presence as a gift, and in dialogue with Marion the gift of God's presence as a so-called 'saturated' self-giving phenomenon. In conclusion to these discussions, theology is developed as semiotic phenomenology of the Invisible.

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Money mattered to the apostle Paul. One economic endeavor of signal importance for Paul was the monetary fund that he organized among the largely Gentile congregations of his mission for the Jewish-Christian community in Jerusalem.David J. Downs investigates this offering from a variety of angles. He begins with an attempt to piece together a relative chronological account, based primarily on information from Paul's epistles, of the apostle's fundraising efforts on behalf of the Jerusalem church. After reconstructing this complex story, Downs examines the socio-cultural context of the collection, focusing on analogous forms of giving among ancient pagan and Jewish voluntary associations, including practices of benefaction, common funds, care for the poor, and translocal economic links among these associations.With this chronological and socio-cultural context in mind, the author then explores Paul's use of several cultic metaphors to frame the contribution as a religious offering consecrated to God. Drawing on recent work in the field of metaphor theory, Downs contends that Paul metaphorically frames his readers' responsive participation in the collection as an act of cultic worship, thus underscoring the point that the fulfillment of mutual obligations within the community of believers results in praise, not human benefactors, but to God, the one from whom all benefactions come. This rhetorical strategy suggests that even the very human action of raising money for those in material need originates in "the grace ( charis) of God" and will eventuate in "thanksgiving ( charis) to God" (2 Cor 9:14-15).

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Leading scholars in early Christianity, Judaic studies, classics, history and archaeology explore the ways that memories were retrieved, reconstituted and put to use by Jews, Christians and their pagan neighbours in late antiquity, from the third century B.C.E. to the seventh century C.E.

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The New Testament idea of deliverance from the power of Satan has posed special problems and even acute embarrassment for interpreters since the Enlightenment. Often the Gospel exorcisms are rationalized or a demythologizing agenda is pursued which divorces redemption from the world in which we live.Richard H. Bell stresses that if the deliverance from Satan is understood within an appropriate understanding of myth, then it can lead not only to an enrichment of New Testament Theology but also to a deeper understanding of the world in which we find ourselves. A theory of myth is developed which does justice not only to the world of 'narrative' but also to the mysteries of the 'physical world'. This is done by building on the phenomenal distinction as introduced by Kant and further developed by Schopenhauer. The resulting theory of myth is then applied to two seemingly disparate examples of redemption from Satan found in the New Testament: first, the exorcisms of Jesus; secondly, the redemption of the human being from the power of Satan through the cross and resurrection of Christ as found in the Pauline tradition and in the letter to the Hebrews. Then the author makes an attempt to relate these two forms of redemption to each other and to draw some conclusions as to how these myths of deliverance from Satan can be considered true.

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This book presents twelve selected investigations of textual composition, interpretation, revision, and transmission. With these studies, Bernard Levinson draws upon the literary forebears of biblical law in cuneiform literature and its reinterpretation in the Second Temple period to provide the horizon of ancient Israelite legal exegesis. The volume makes a sustained argument about the nature of textuality in ancient Israel: Israelite scribes were sophisticated readers, authors, and thinkers who were conscious of their place in literary and intellectual history, even as they sought to renew and transform their cultural patrimony in significant ways. Originally published over a decade and a half, the significantly revised and updated studies gathered here explore the connections between law and narrative, show the close connections between Deuteronomy and the Neo-Assyrian loyalty oath tradition, address the literary relationship of Deuteronomy and the Covenant Code, reflect upon important questions of methodology, and explore the contributions of the Bible to later western intellectual history. The volume offers essential reading for an understanding of the Pentateuch and biblical law."This collection of essays is a testimony to Levinson's methodological brilliance and broad perspective as a bridge-builder between the various factions of Hebrew Bible scholarship."Armin Lange in Journal of Ancient Judaism 1 (2010), S. 122"The collection as a whole triumphantly vindicates the significance of biblical law, the essential function of diachronic analysis (source and redaction criticism, and historical contextualization) in interpretation, and, especially in the last section, the established positions of the critical tradition in the succession of Wellhausen. The footnotes and bibliography are a superb resource for the study of biblical law. And the publishers have produced a beautiful volume worthily complementing a fine text."Walter J. Houston in Journal of Semitic Studies 55 (2010), S. 312-313

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Is science a 'market of ideas'? Not according to the economics of science. Science is competitive, but scientific competition is not market competition. Nor is scientific competition the same as competition between universities. Scientific competition is, first of all, competition between individual scientists. Current science policies shift the boundary between scientific competition, where scientists provide public goods in the hope to acquire status among their peers, and market competition in science, where the results of research are private property protected by patents or other means, in favor of the market. However, the economic ring of the political slogans cannot conceal a serious lack of understanding of scientific competition behind the reform proposals.Like market competition, scientific competition is highly complex, involving many different institutions-universities, markets, funding organizations, scientific journals and others-and using its own decision procedures, typically based on peer review. How do these institutions work, and how do they interact? Will academic labor markets still attract the scientific talent in the near future? How should universities decide whom to hire? Is the peer review process reliable? Can we find out what science has to tell us by letting scientists vote on the issues? Why do scientists mostly stick to the rules? This volume sheds new light on these and other aspects of science and scientific competition, with theoretical and empirical contributions from economics, law, political science, sociology, and philosophy of science.This title was made possible in Open Access within the Knowledge Unlatched Select Round 2018 by numerous participating libraries.

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"In the humanities, if they are to remain alive, it is necessary to have a relationship to the thought as well as to the thinker from the past" (Karl Rahner). Rudolf Smend attempts to establish such a relationship for one single branch of the humanities, which however can be seen as particularly paradigmatic. He does this in rough descriptions of 15 scholars who had a certain share in contributing to the history of Old Testament scholarship. He begins with the French physician Jean Astruc and the English Bishop Robert Lowth. Using the names for God, Astruc was the first to show that Genesis was based on various sources and manuscript traditions, and Lowth discovered the fundamental principle of Hebrew poetry (the "parallelismus membrorum"). At the end of the book the author discusses scholars whom he knew personally: Albrecht Alt, Gerhard v. Rad, Martin Noth, Isac Leo Seeligmann and Walther Zimmerli.

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Designing a good unemployment insurance scheme is a delicate matter. In a system with no or little insurance, households may be subject to a high income risk, whereas excessively generous unemployment insurance systems are known to lead to high unemployment rates and are costly both from a fiscal perspective and for society as a whole. Andreas Pollak investigates what an optimal unemployment insurance system would look like, i.e. a system that constitutes the best possible compromise between income security and incentives to work. Using theoretical economic models and complex numerical simulations, he studies the effects of benefit levels and payment durations on unemployment and welfare. As the models allow for considerable heterogeneity of households, including a history-dependent labor productivity, it is possible to analyze how certain policies affect individuals in a specific age, wealth or skill group. The most important aspect of an unemployment insurance system turns out to be the benefits paid to the long-term unemployed. If this parameter is chosen too high, a large number of households may get caught in a long spell of unemployment with little chance of finding work again. Based on the predictions in these models, the so-called "Hartz IV" labor market reform recently adopted in Germany should have highly favorable effects on the unemployment rates and welfare in the long run.

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This monograph presents all the neo-Punic texts which have been published up to now. The author also mentions those texts which are difficult or even unreadable. The intention of the work is to give an overview of these texts, which in many instances were published in less accessible journals or other editions, for everyone working in this or adjacent fields: Northwest-Semitic epigraphy, North-African society in the Roman period and also Old Testament studies. The short commentary on each text gives information about the reading adhered to by the editor and also about readings proposed by others in order to give the reader the chance to judge for himself. In several instances, the author proposes new readings. As the readings and the meaning of the texts form the basis of this edition, it will also be useful for scholars working on Semitic linguistics in general.

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Ivar Vegge shows that the ancient Mediterranean world was especially sensitive to idealized praise and blame or threats as hortative means. This is reflected in the pedagogy of the moral philosophers (psychagogy) and in the letter-writing tradition (epistolography), and to some extent also in the rhetorical tradition. Paul utilizes this method in 2 Corinthians.Developing a suggestion by R. Bieringer, the author starts by arguing that 2 Cor 7:5-16 is a highly idealized description of reconciliation (i.e. praise) where the aim is to exhort to full reconciliation. He then interprets a number of idealized expressions of confidence in the addressee - spread throughout the letter - as supporting the appeals for reconciliation with Paul and the collection. 2 Cor 10-13 resembles the harsh tone and aim of Paul's "tearful letter" - i.e. sorrow leading to the Corinthians' repentance and finally to reconciliation with Paul (cf. 2 Cor 2:1-4; 7:5-12), as claimed by partition theories (Hausrath-Kennedy, Weiss-Bultmann and Schmithals-Bornkamm) - but is not itself the "tearful letter." Paul simply reuses the same strategy.The apologetic elements in the letter repeatedly lead up to and substantiate the appeals for reconciliation. This leads to the conclusion that 2 Corinthians is one single letter about reconciliation.

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The present German tax system is complicated, non-transparent and does not follow any theoretical model of taxation in a consistent way. Moreover, in the light of international tax competition, German tax rates are too high and thus scare away economic activity. Therefore, a fundamental tax reform is imperatively required in Germany. Michael Stimmelmayr analyzes the outcome and especially the efficiency gains of capital income tax reforms which is, however, an intricate task. The simultaneous alteration of several tax rates will induce multiple economy wide repercussions as well as different first and second round effects, as firms and households will change their optimal behaviour due to taxation. For these reasons, a dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) model is the only instrument which allows for a consistent quantification of all short and long run effects arising from capital income tax reforms. The simulation results show that, for example, the 2000 German Tax Reform will lead to a substantial increase in GDP of approximately 6% in the long run. But, in the short run the reform is very expensive since the gains of economic growth will occur at a later stage in time. Moreover, due to the enhanced economic activity the wealth of German households will increase by nearly one percent in the long run. In addition to the 2000 German Tax Reform, the introduction of a flat tax of 25% - the so called "Kirchhof's Einfachsteuer " - as well as a consumption based tax system is analyzed in detail.

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Modern philosophy begins with Descartes' discovery of an apparently indubitable realm of subjectivity. The Cartesian approach confronts philosophy with the problem of transcendence: At the same time as we appear to have secured an immanent realm of subjectivity, it becomes a problem how we can establish the existence of something outside this realm. What could possibly force - or even motivate - a subject, in possession of itself, to recognize a God, a world, or a peer outside itself? Thus, Descartes' philosophical legacy is a problem rather than a solution: the problem of subjectivity and transcendence. How is it possible to combine a post-Cartesian emphasis on subjectivity with a strong conception of transcendence? What notions of subjectivity and transcendence will we have to commit ourselves to? Despite the fact that the problem is central to modern philosophy and theology, no single volume has so far been dedicated to the problem of subjectivity and transcendence. This volume thus fills an important gap. The 12 chapters address the problem of subjectivity and transcendence from a variety of different perspectives: historical, philosophical, theological, and psychopathological.Contents: Arne Grøn and Søren Overgaard: Introduction - Arne Grøn: Subjectivity and Transcendence: Problems and Perspectives - Ingolf U. Dalferth: Beyond Understanding? Transcending Our Limits and the Limits of Our Transcending - Josef Parnas: Subjectivity in Schizophrenia: The Minimal Self is too Small - Merold Westphal: Intentionality and Transcendence - Søren Overgaard: In Defense of Subjectivity: Husserl, Levinas, and the Problem of Solipsism - Henrik Vase Frandsen: Transcendence of the Appeal - Sovereignty of the Subject - Dan Zahavi: Subjectivity and Immanence in Michel Henry - Claudia Welz: The Presence of the Transcendent - Transcending the Present? Kierkegaard and Levinas on Subjectivity and the Ambiguity of God's Transcendence - Iben Damgaard: Passion for the Possible: A Kierkegaardian Approach to Subjectivity and Transcendence - George Pattison: Desire, Decreation and Unknowing in the God-Relationship: Mystical Theology and its Transformation in Kierkegaard, Simone Weil and Dostoevsky - Caspar Wenzel Tornøe: God and the Demiurge: Subjectivity and Transcendence from a Theological Perspective - Saskia Wendel: The Emergence of Transcendence in Self-Consciousness: Towards a Rehabilitation of a Transcendental Position of Philosophy of Religion

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The concept of faith is at the core of Paul's theology, and the classic assage for his understanding of pistis is Genesis 15:6. After discussing the history of scholarship on the Pauline concept of faith, Benjamin Schließer explores the literary, tradition-historical and structural questions of Genesis 15 and offers a detailed exegesis of verse 6 with its fundamental terms "count", "righteousness", and "believe". He then points to the theological significance of this testimony on Abraham for the Jewish identity; it comes into sight in a multifaceted and nuanced process of reception, from later Old Testament texts (Psalm 106; Nehemiah 9) to a broad array of literature from Second Temple Judaism (Septuagint, Sirach 44, Jubilees 14, 4QPseudo-Jubilees, 4QMMT, 1Maccabees, Philo). In the final and most substantial step, he asks about Paul's "hermeneutics of faith": How does Paul, in his exegesis of the Genesis quote in Romans 4, come to view Abraham as the father of all believers? What is the concept of faith that he develops on the basis of Genesis 15:6? Taking into account the manifold textual and thematic links between Romans 4, Romans 3:21-31, and Romans 1:16-17, a unique, twofold structure of "faith" discloses itself: Pistis designates first a divinely established sphere of power, i.e., a new, christologically determined salvation-historical reality, and second human participation in this reality, i.e., individual believing in the community of believers. Particularly the first aspect is generally overlooked in modern scholarship.

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Johannes Corrodi Katzenstein offers a contribution to the current debate on Kierkegaard, mostly concerning the rationality of religious belief and the presumed religious neutrality ("autonomy") of philosophical and scientific thought. More specifically, his book is an attempt to relate Kierkegaard's theory of the "stages of life" (aesthetic, ethical, religious) to issues that have been of utmost concern to Anglo-American (analytical) philosophy, such as the nature of truth, rational knowledge, objectivity, etc. From this angle, Kierkegaard turns out to be not the irrationalist he has often been made into but rather the outspoken witness of a passion that guides all thinking, i.e. the passion to think what cannot be thought. An attempt is made to show that for Kierkegaard, anticipating some of the arguments of contemporary postsecular philosophy, the ideal of "pure" or autonomous reason inevitably has its basis in a pre-rational, often tacit commitment to an origin whose primary home is in religious faith. Rather than precluding dialogue, awareness of these deeper forces and starting-points of our various philosophical and scientific outlooks is a critical requirement for mutual understanding between secularist and religious perspectives and traditions competing for cultural and political dominance.

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Inge Kroppenberg nimmt die gestiegene Bedeutung der Testierfreiheit in der "Erbengesellschaft" zum Anlass, die dogmatischen Konturen der Gestaltungsbefugnis von Todes wegen herauszuarbeiten. Ihre Untersuchung trägt in dreierlei Hinsicht zu einem neuen Verständnis bei: erstens, indem sie die Testierfreiheit als zivilrechtliches Prinzip vor einer zu stark verfassungsrechtlich geprägten Anschauung in Schutz nimmt. Die Gestaltungsbefugnis von Todes wegen wird in der verfassungsgerichtlichen Rechtsprechung als Verfügungsbefugnis über den Tod hinaus beschrieben. Damit erscheint sie als Fortsetzung des Rechts der Lebenden mit anderen rechtsgeschäftlichen Mitteln und wird zudem mit der Vorstellung eines "Leistungseigentums" verknüpft. Es zeigt sich des Weiteren, dass an die Gestaltungsbefugnis von Todes wegen Strukturmerkmale heran getragen werden, die aus dem Recht der Lebenden stammen, im Erbrecht aber Fremdkörper sind. Das gilt zum einen für den erbrechtlichen Typenzwang, der in Anlehnung an den sachenrechtlichen konzipiert wird. Es gilt aber vor allem für die Anleihen, die beim lebzeitigen Vertragsparadigma gemacht werden und die diachrone Struktur des erbrechtlichen Rechtsgeschäfts außer Acht lassen.Drittens ist es der Autorin um ein genuin rechtsgeschäftliches Verständnis der Testierfreiheit zu tun. Das klingt selbstverständlich, ist es aber nicht. So behaupten familienerbrechtliche Deutungen der Gestaltungsbefugnis von Todes wegen einen Leitbildcharakter der gesetzlichen für die rechtsgeschäftliche Erbfolge. Ihre Interpretation als besonderes Persönlichkeitsrecht des Erblassers zur Todesverarbeitung verengt schließlich den privatrechtlichen Freiheitsraum von Todes wegen inhaltlich auf eine Reflexion über Mortalität.

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Øystein Lund gives a new approach to texts in Isaiah 40-55 that deal with ways and desert transformation. Earlier exegesis has mainly read these texts in a literal way. In recent years, exegetes have pointed out that the so-called 'exodus texts' should rather be interpreted metaphorically. The author supports this, and accordingly seeks to continue this discourse by systematizing, intensifying, and deepening the argumentation for a metaphorical reading. He argues that most of the way-texts in Isaiah 40-55 are interrelated, and gradually contribute to explore questions regarding the way-situation of the people. The way-theme appears in the prologue, and in 40:27 a problem approach is established when the people is addressed: "How can you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, 'My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right passes by my God'"? Several subsequent way-texts are related to this text, and together these draw a coherent picture in which the problematic way-situation of the people in the past and present is transformed. JHWH establishes new ways in which he leads his people through their difficult landscape. Øystein Lund argues that such a coherent reading of the way-texts gives good meaning, which is consistent with the over all message of Isaiah 40-55.

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