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The series Studies and Texts in Scepticism contains monographs, translations, and collected essays exploring scepticism in its dual manifestation as a purely philosophical tradition and as a set of sceptical strategies, concepts, and attitudes in the cultural field - especially in religions, perhaps most notably in Judaism. In such cultural contexts scepticism manifests as a critical attitude towards different dimensions and systems of secular or revealed knowledge and towards religious and political authorities. It is not merely an intellectual or theoretical worldview, but a critical form of life that expresses itself in such diverse phenomena as religion, literature, and society. Further book series of the Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies are Jewish Thought, Philosophy, and Religion and the Yearbook of the Maimonides Centre for Advances Studies.
The Reformed tradition is characterized by a rigorous commitment to theological formulation, yet it is equally known for its commitment to rooting its life and practice in the authority of God’s Word. While these two commitments are commonly acknowledged, the path from biblical interpretation to doctrinal formulation is often overlooked. Examining a diverse group of thinkers across the chronological and international spectrum of the Reformed tradition, this book demonstrates the depth and intricacies involved in the tasks of exegesis and dogmatic construction, the ways they intersect, and the effect it has on the church. Table of Contents: Preface - Richard A. Muller 1. An Appreciation of ...
This book examines how Johannes Buxtorf's works helped to transform seventeenth-century Hebrew studies from the hobby of a few experts into a recognized academic discipline. The first two chapters examine Buxtorf's career as a professor of Hebrew and as an editor and censor of Jewish books in Basel. Successive chapters analyze his anti-Jewish polemical books, grammars and lexicons, and manuals for Hebrew composition and literature, including the first bibliography devoted to Jewish books. The final chapters treat his work in biblical studies, examining his contribution to Targum and Massorah studies, and his position on the age and doctrinal authority of the Hebrew vowel points. The chapters on anti-Jewish polemics and the vowel points will interest Jewish historians and Church historians.
According to a commonplace narrative, the rise of modern political thought in the West resulted from secularization—the exclusion of religious arguments from political discourse. But in this pathbreaking work, Eric Nelson argues that this familiar story is wrong. Instead, he contends, political thought in early-modern Europe became less, not more, secular with time, and it was the Christian encounter with Hebrew sources that provoked this radical transformation. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Christian scholars began to regard the Hebrew Bible as a political constitution designed by God for the children of Israel. Newly available rabbinic materials became authoritative gui...
Richard H. Popkin has already been celebrated in two Festschriften as one of the century's greatest historians of philosophy.This latest book, whose editors were among those who prepared the first two volumes, centers on Popkin's crucial role in bringing together scholars from around the world in a long series of academic conferences and learned meetings which helped transform the field from one of solitary endeavour into a 'Republic of Letters'.Publications by Richard H. Popkin: Isaac la Peyrère (1596-1676): His Life, Work and Influence, ISBN: 978 90 04 08157 4 Edited by Y. Kaplan, H. Méchoulan and R.H. Popkin, Menasseh ben Israel and his World, ISBN: 978 90 04 09114 6 Third Force in Seve...
This study proposes that both constitutively and rhetorically (through ironic, inferential, and indirect application), Ps 106(105) serves as the substructure for Paul’s argumentation in Rom 1:18–2:11. Constitutively, Rom 1:18–32 hinges on the triadic interplay between “they (ex)changed” and “God gave them over,” an interplay that creates a sin–retribution sequence with an a-ba-ba-b pattern. Both elements of this pattern derive from Ps 106(105):20, 41a respectively. Rhetorically, Paul ironically applies the psalmic language of idolatrous “(ex)change” and God’s subsequent “giving-over” to Gentiles. Aiding this ironic application is that Paul has cast his argument in t...
The Reformation transformed Christian Hebraism from the pursuit of a few into an academic discipline. This book explains that transformation by focusing on how authors, printers, booksellers, and censors created a public discussion of Hebrew and Jewish texts.
In this sequel to Muller's 'The Unaccommodated Calvin' (OUP 2000), the author carries his approach forward, with the goal of overcoming a series of 19th- and 20th-century theological frameworks characteristic of much of the scholarship on Reformed orthodoxy, or 'Calvinism after Calvin'.
This volume is the first to adopt systematically a comparative approach to the role of ancient texts and traditions in early modern scholarship, science, medicine, and theology. It offers a new method for understanding early modern knowledge.
Menasseh ben Israel (1604–1657) was one of the best-known rabbis in early modern Europe. In the course of his life he became an important Jewish interlocutor for Christian scholars interested in Hebrew studies and negotiated with Oliver Cromwell and Parliament the return of the Jews to England. Born to a family of former conversos, Menasseh was versed in Christian theology and astutely used this knowledge to adapt the content and tone of his publications to the interests and needs of his Christian readers. Judaism for Christians: Menasseh ben Israel (1604–1657) is the first extensive study to systematically focus on key titles in Menasseh’s Latin works and discuss the success and failu...