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The reason why Levinas distances himself from a mere historico-critical reading becomes clear from his philosophy: neither the object/text nor the subject/reader can be understood solely from their historical contexts, not even by merging the two historical horizons. This holds well for the understanding of the Talmud and for understanding literature tout court. In a way, the Bible offers a model for understanding literature as such, by emphasizing the status of the book (and any book) as a living reality, opening up the reader to that living reality. The Talmud offers an access to the living reality in all its details and paradoxes, without being submerged into pre-critical adherence to miracles 10 Searching the biblical context of each quotation in order to assess the tonality of the argument is one of the hermeneutical devices that Levinas learned from his Talmud teacher Chouchani. See also the debate between Rabbi Joshua and Rabbi Eliezer, a battle of quotations from Scripture, each adding an aspect of freedom versus constraint, in Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 97b–98a, and my Het gelaat van de Messias (1992, 76–97 and 162). 11 See Levinas, Quatre lectures talmudiques, (1968, 26–33, 120). The reference to Chouchani is on page 26. 12 Here again the influence of Chouchani may be felt, who constantly and bluntly confronted his disciples with different conclusions of the same debate, mocking pious readings. See also Elie Wiesel, “Le juif errant” in Le chant des morts (1966), for a romanticized picture of this legendary teacher-clochard. Salomon Malka, in Monsieur Chouchani: L’enigme du maitre du xx siecle (1994), offers many anecdotes, but apparently the Talmudic method remains for the writer an enigma. Reading literature is being confronted with “sense,” sense of life and sense of the other. The subject confronted with the other is ultimately confronted with a sense that transcends horizons. Levinas’s understanding of the Talmud displays considerable distance from a hermeneutical process in which the subject is merely enriched by broadening his horizon. Levinas understands literature as a serious matter, dealing as it does with the meaning of life and uprooting the reading subject from its comfortable instalment in the world. On one hand, philological and historical tools as such are not sufficient to realize this confrontation.

It would be easy to dismiss the theme of this book, Die Letzte am Schafott, as no more than an expression of a Catholic triumphant attitude. During the French revolution, possessions of convents were confiscated and whoever resisted was sentenced to death and executed under the guillotine. The French Revolution would be no more than a demonstration of the barbarous attitude of the idolatry of Reason over against the devotion to true faith. The story, however, goes far deeper than that. This becomes clear when we focus on two of the main characters: Two young girls, strongly differing in temperament and background; and two spiritual leaders in the convent diametrically opposed to one another. We will note that the story contains a sharp criticism of traditional Catholic ideas about self-sacrifice and martyrdom. Simultaneously, the story offers a passionate picture of true martyrdom, which can only be reached by acknowledging existential fear and a deep love of life.

Sacrifice seems to belong to a religious context of the past. In Sacrifice in Modernity: Community, Ritual, Identity it is demonstrated how sacrificial themes remain an essential element in our post-modern society. The shaping of community, performing rituals and the search for identity, three main characteristics of traditional sacrifice, are dynamics of our modern times as well which cannot be understood without sacrificial awareness. This is demonstrated in such areas as the German poet Holderlin, Harry Potter, martyrdom, the Twilight Saga, the Japanese writer Endo, Tarkovsky, movies and more.

The phenomenon of martyrdom is more than 2000 years old but, as contemporary events show, still very much alive. Martyrdom: Canonisation, Contestation and Afterlives examines the canonisation, contestation and afterlives of martyrdom and connects these with cross-cultural acts and practices of remembrance. Martyrdom appeals to the imagination of many because it is a highly ambiguous spectacle with thrilling deadly consequences. Imagination is thus a vital catalyst for martyrdom, for martyrs become martyrs only because others remember and honour them as such. This memorialisation occurs through rituals and documents that incorporate and re-interpret traditions deriving from canonical texts. The canonisation of martyrdom generally occurs in one of two ways: First, through ritual commemoration by communities of inside readers, listeners, viewers and participants, who create and recycle texts, re-interpreting them until the martyrs ultimately receive a canonical status, or second, through commemoration as a means of contestation by competing communities who perceive these same people as traitors or terrorists. By adopting an interdisciplinary orientation and a cross-cultural approach, this book goes beyond both the insider admiration of martyrs and the partisan rejection of martyrdoms and concisely synthesises key interpretive questions and themes that broach the canonised, unstable and contested representations of martyrdom as well as their analytical connections, divergences and afterlives in the present.

Marcel Poorthuis discusses the radical re-interpretation of the story about seven boys who fall asleep for several centuries in a cave during the persecution by Emperor Decius. They refused to burn incense before ‘idols made by hands’ and fled into a cave, where God took their spirits and brought them to heaven. The story has been associated with martyrdom and has pre-Christian forerunners but it was transmitted in a Syriac- Christian version by Jacob of Serugh (451-521 CE). The Qur’ān recycles this story, but its thrust is wholly different. Ironically, the story in Sura 18 has been transformed into an anti-Christian polemic. This story in turn has been re-created in the novel My Father’s Notebook (Spijkerschrift) by the Iranian-Dutch writer Kader Abdollah (translated in English as My Father’s Notebook, 2006). The story symbolises the future return of happiness and beauty for the people, persecuted both under the Shah and under Khomeini.

In post-Biblical interpretations of Abraham, much emphasis is placed on him being persecuted. Abraham leaving Ur of the Chaldeans is interpreted as an escape from the tyranny of Nimrod. Curiously, Abraham is instrumental afterwards in expelling the bond-maid Hagar into the desert. In Black feminist theology, Hagar becomes the paragon of the experience of women made slaves. Even more surprising is the transformation of Hagar in Islam, in which she becomes the first person to perform the Hajj. As such, these examples (of Abraham and Hagar) show how the experience of being a fugitive is constitutive to religious identity.

Just before the outbreak of World War 1, a group of writers, artists and philosophers decided to establish a spiritual rule over Europe, the Forte Kreis. The group aimed at a reconciliation in Europe, by establishing pacifism, but also between East and West by creating a new language. Their thoughts have been documented a several archives in Europe. By bringing them together, a picture emerges of a blend of elitist naiveté and prophetic foresight. The need for a supra-national spiritual guidance seems as relevant today as it was hundred years ago.

Christ's descensus ad inferos and the Rabbinic story of the arch heretic Elisha show some remarkable parallels: the temporary abode of the deceased in the netherworld, God’s compassion which reaches to the deepest depths, the power of repentance which reaches beyond the grave; the importance of solidarity which transcends the boundaries between life and death. Although the Rabbinic story is told as a personal story only while the descensus ad inferos refers to Christ and his salvific work, both stories reveal the condition humaine, by inviting people to have profound compassion with all of humanity, with the dead and the living, a compassion which may even contribute to salvation.

Sanctifying Texts, Transforming Rituals: Encounters in Liturgical Studies offers a collection of essays in which the close connection between narrative texts and liturgical practice is elaborated, a variety of ritual aspects of the liturgy and the dialogues between different liturgical languages and media has been studied.

The similes and parables in lslamic tradition are strongly influenced by their Jewish and Christian predecessors. Still to consider them as mere imitations of a better original does not do justice to the specific transformations into ma genuinely Islamic story

The motif of the descent of the “sons of God” to the daughters of men was liberated from its hybrid connotations indicating a mixture between the divine and the human, once it was instead interpreted to mean that the sons of Seth had descended towards the daughters of Cain. The influence of this theme in Syriac Christianity upon Islamic authors is worth considering, documenting as it does a direct contact between the two religions. In addition, the related topic of Adam’s body being taken out of Paradise into the Ark constitutes a fruitful theme for interreligious narrative transformations. Especially noteworthy is the designation of Adam’s body as bema, which can be connected to Syriac liturgical usage for the separation between men and women in the church. This may shed new light upon similar regulations in the synagogue.

Sacrifice seems to belong to a religious context of the past. In Sacrifice in Modernity: Community, Ritual, Identity it is demonstrated how sacrificial themes remain an essential element in our post-modern society. The shaping of community, performing rituals and the search for identity, three main characteristics of traditional sacrifice, are dynamics of our modern times as well which cannot be understood without sacrificial awareness. This is demonstrated in such areas as the German poet Holderlin, Harry Potter, martyrdom, the Twilight Saga, the Japanese writer Endo, Tarkovsky, movies and more.

The estrangement of Kafka’s stories are not peculiar to his writing, but can be traced in Jewish parables as well. This article demonstrates that bizarre elements, cruel behaviour and lack of information constitute essential devices of parables. Especially in the collection of the Seder Eliyahu, these devices are prominent, which helps the reader to acknowleg=dge them as well in the parables of the New Testament.

Levinas'rejection of a historical ciritcal approach to sacred texts as well as his depreciation of Spinoza's view of the Bible might bring him close to fundamentalism. A thorough analysis is necessary to demonstrate essential differences. Levinas'rejection of a historical ciritcal approach to sacred texts as well as his depreciation of Spinoza's view of the Bible might bring him close to fundamentalism. A thorough analysis is necessary to demonstrate essential differences. In a way Levinas' attitude to the Talmud comes close to Heidegger's attitude towards presocratic philosophy.

Sacrifice is a well known form of ritual in many world religions. Although the actual practice of animal sacrifice was largely abolished in the later history of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, it is still recalled through biblical stories, the ritual calendar and community events. The essays in this volume discuss the various positions regarding the value of sacrifice in a wide variety of disciplines such as history, archaeology, literature, philosophy, art and gender and post-colonial studies. In this context they examine a wide array of questions pertaining to the 'actuality of sacrifice' in various social, historical and intellectual contexts ranging from the pre-historical to the post-Holocaust, and present new understandings of some of the most sensitive topics of our time.

The study of the relationship between Jewish and Christian interpretations of Scripture has long suffered from a methodological naivete that was characteristic of the overall approach to the relationship between Judaism and Christianity. After having mapped out the psalm's significance in post-biblical Judaism, more specifically in sources prior to or contemporaneous with the New Testament period, this chapter deals with the Christian evidence of the first four centuries, starting with, but not limiting ourselves, to the New Testament writings. It examines Jewish, mainly rabbinic, sources which are generally later than the New Testament era and can be dated to the Christian patristic period (fourth-fifth century), if not later. The interpretation of Psalm 2 in Judaism and Christianity is a striking example of the complicated forms of interaction that took place between both religious traditions from the period of post-biblical Judaism and early Christianity until the Middle Ages. Keywords: early Christianity; New Testament; post-biblical Judaism; Psalm 2; Scripture

The internet documents an expanding universe of ideologies and opinions, groups, and identities that cannot be found elsewhere. This chapter analyses the image formation of Kabbalah on the internet. By searching for transformations of the concept of Kabbalah, the chapter discovers in what way this concept transcends traditional religious and cultural barriers to form new identities that can perhaps no longer be understood along traditional denominational lines. In the first instance, the analysis of Kabbalah sites on the internet seems to confirm a well-known distinction between Judaism and postmodern New Age: the sites with a Jewish sender, although in principle reaching out to mankind as a whole, offer Jewish sources only, whereas the New Age sites prefer to transcend denominational boundaries by connecting Jewish and Christian sources with their supposed pre-Christian and extra-Jewish parallels. Keywords: Christian sources; denominational boundaries; internet; Jewish sources; Judaism; Kabbalah; postmodern New Age