Search

Idolatry, or its Hebrew equivalent Avodah Zarah¸ is a fundamental feature of a Jewish view of other religions. All religions must pass the test of whether they are compliant with a Jewish view of religions as being free from the worship of another God. With the advance in interfaith relations, positions have been affirmed that clear most major contemporary religions from the charge of idolatry. What remains of “idolatry” once it no longer serves as a tool for evaluating other faiths? Does the category continue to have theological appeal? What are its internal uses? A cadre of Jewish scholars and thought leaders explore in this volume what the continuing relevance of “idolatry” is and how it might continue to inform our religious horizons, allowing us to distinguish between good and bad religion, both within Judaism and beyond.

For whom was the Hebrew Bible written? How much truth does it contain? What, according to the Bible, is the place of men and women in the world? What connection is there between the Bible and morality? In'I AM'Mark Glouberman supplies new answers to these old questions. He does this by establishing that the foundational scripture of the West is, first and foremost, a philosophical document, not a theological tract, nor yet the religious history of a nation. The author identifies the Bible's fundamental principle, the ontological principle of particularity. This principle, he shows, is what makes the Bible the revolutionary text that it is. God's'I AM WHO I AM'asserts the principle, of which the Bible's deity is a personified form. God's self-identification also points to the real, anthropological, meaning of the ism called'monotheism.'A portion of Glouberman's book is devoted to illustrating the Bible's live relevance in many of the areas where modern philosophers congregate, including moral philosophy, political philosophy, metaphysics, and epistemology. Isn't it a bit late in the day for the Bible's meaning to be revealed? Glouberman says that it's about time.

Language: Hebrew The Hebrew Bible is the cornerstone of Judaism and Jewish culture; as such, it also provides the foundation for the other two monotheistic religions, Christianity and Islam. It is a book that embodied numerous revolutions, the most prominent of which was the Monotheistic Revolution, the replacement of polytheism with the belief in one all-powerful God who both created the world and governs it. Among the other revolutionary ideas that are put forward by the Bible we find the establishment of the Sabbath, the granting of one city — Jerusalem — a monopoly over holiness, the opposition to human kingship, and the moral dimensions of prophecy, to name just a few. Over the centuries and millennia, these revolutionary ideas have continued to attract and inspire readers, believers, interpreters and artists.

Ausgehend von der Analyse des im Johannesevanglium häufigen Verbes'pisteúein'zeigt die vorliegende Untersuchung, dass Theologie und Christologie im vierten Evangelium vereint sind. Das ist der christologische Monotheismus des vierten Evangeliums, der den Monotheismus des Alten Testaments annimmt, aber hinzufügt, dass Jesus der einzige Offenbarer Gottes ist. Eine Analyse der 18 Belege des „Geistparakleten“ im vierten Evangelium zeigt auch, dass sich der vierte Evangelist einer trinitarischen Gottesvorstellung bewusst ist, welche die Basis des späteren trinitarischen Monotheismus der Kirchenvätern und Konzilien darstellt.

Der Band versammelt Studien des Autors zu aktuellen Fragen des Deuteronomistischen Geschichtswerks, der Komposition der Klaglieder, zum Monotheismus und zum Bilderverbot. Neben methodischen und hermeneutischen Aspekten werden rezeptionsgeschichtliche und theologische Themen bearbeitet. Der Band enthält Beiträge zu Texten aus allen Kanonteilen Gen 34, Ex 18; Dtn 34; Jos 23; 2 Kön 17; Ps 8; 95; 104: Klgl 1 und Klgl 3.

Matthew Lynch examines ways that the one God became known and experienced through institutions according to the book of Chronicles. Chronicles recasts Israel's earlier histories from the vantage point of vigorous commitments to the temple and its supporting institutions (the priesthood and royal house), and draws out the numerous ways that those institutions mediate divine power and inspire national unity. By understanding and participating in the reestablishment of these institutions, Chronicles suggests that post-exilic Judeans could reconnect to the powerful God of the past despite the appallingly impoverished state of post-exilic life. However, Chronicles contends that God was not beholden by those participating in the temple system. As such, it constitutes a via media between two regnant perspectives on the relationship between biblical monotheism and particularism, one which sees in monotheism an inherent move beyond particularism, and another which sees a problematic appeal to monotheism to legitimate powerful institutions. While Chronicles gives expression to the profound resonances between institutional and divine greatness, it is also careful to resist linking divine power and institutional power in absolute terms.

The story of Abraham smashing his father's idols might be the most important Jewish story ever told and the key to how Jews define themselves. In a work at once deeply erudite and wonderfully accessible, Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin conducts readers through the life and legacy of this powerful story and explains how it has shaped Jewish consciousness. Offering a radical view of Jewish existence, The Gods Are Broken! views the story of the young Abraham as the “primal trauma” of Jewish history, one critical to the development of a certain Jewish comfort with rebelliousness and one that, happening in every generation, has helped Jews develop a unique identity. Salkin shows how the story continues to reverberate through the ages, even in its connection to the phenomenon of anti-Semitism. Salkin's work—combining biblical texts, archaeology, rabbinic insights, Hasidic texts (some never before translated), philosophy, history, poetry, contemporary Jewish thought, sociology, and popular culture—is nothing less than a journey through two thousand years of Jewish life and intellectual endeavor.

'God Crucified'and Other Essays on the New Testament's Christology of Divine Identity The basic thesis of this important book on New Testament Christology, sketched in the first essay'God Crucified, is that the worship of Jesus as God was seen by the early Christians as compatible with their Jewish monotheism. Jesus was thought to participate in the divine identity of the one God of Israel. The other chapters provide more detailed support for, and an expansion of, this basic thesis. Readers will find not only the full text of Bauckham's classic book God Crucified, but also groundbreaking essays, some of which have never been published previously

En esta obra tenemos la información necesaria para comprender la cosmovisión monotíesta judía. Vemos que la idea de Jesús como Dios era perfectamente reconciliable con esa cosmovisión, y que la Cristología más temprana ya era la más elevada: Jesús es Dios. Tanto el Jesús exaltado, como el humano y crucificado pertenecen a la identidad única de Dios. Bauckham explica que esta visión tiene consecuencias importantes para la idea del Nuevo Testamento sobre Dios. La identidad divina de Jesús se encuentra tnato en su humillación, sufrimiento y muerte, como en su gloria celestial.

This book discusses the first-century implications of applying Old Testament texts about the divine to Jesus. It summarizes recent views on the significance of this practice. It then collects pre-Christian and first-century Jewish parallels, and notices that most centre on the angel, wisdom, glory and word of the Lord, although application to non-divine figures also occurs. The evidence is that some Christians in the 50s worked with a redefinition of monotheism in which they included the Father and Jesus. Such a view explains the New Testament salvation-historical perspective in regard to the Old Testament belief on the theophany of God and the belief in God as the object of invocation.

This is the first full-scale assessment of the theological, social and ideational implications of our new understandings of ancient Israel's social and religious development. Scholars now stress the gradual emergence of Israel out of the culture of ancient Palestine and the surrounding ancient Near East rather than contrast Israel with the ancient world. Our new paradigms stress the ongoing and unfinished nature of the monotheistic'revolution', which is indeed still in process today. Gnuse takes a further bold step in setting the emergence of monotheism in a wider intellectual context: he argues brilliantly that the interpretation of Israel's development as both an evolutionary and revolutionary process corresponds to categories of contemporary evolutionary thought in the biological and palaeontological sciences (Punctuated Equilibrium).

The distinction between clean and unclean animals, probably originating in tensions between shepherds and farmers, is in the biblical laws of Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 transformed into an important theological principle. In this wide-ranging and elegantly written study, Houston argues that the avoidance of'unclean'foods is a mark of the exclusive devotion of Israel to one god. In a concluding chapter, it is suggested that the abolition of the distinction in early Christianity corresponds to the universal horizon of the new faith.