Living Law

Living Law
Author: Miguel Vatter
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2021-01-08
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0197546528

It is often assumed that modern democratic government has a special link with Christianity or was made possible due to Christianity. As a challenge to this belief and echoing a long-held assumption in the republican tradition, Hannah Arendt once remarked that "Washington's and Napoleon's heroes were named Moses and David." In this book, Miguel Vatter reconstructs the political theology of German Jewish philosophers during the twentieth century and their attempts to bring together the Biblical teachings on politics with the Greek and Roman traditions of political philosophy. Developed alongside modern experiences with anti-Semitism, the rise of Zionism, and the return of charismatic authority in mass societies, Jewish political theology in the twentieth century advances the radical hypothesis that the messianic idea of God's Kingdom correlates with a post-sovereignty, anarchist political condition of non-domination. Importantly, Jewish philosophers combined this messianic form of democracy with the ideal of cosmopolitan constitutionalism, which is itself based on the identity of divine law and natural law. This book examines the paradoxical unity of anarchy and rule of law in the democratic political theology developed by Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, Gershom Scholem, Leo Strauss, and Hannah Arendt. Critical of the Christian theological underpinnings of modern representative political institutions, this group of highly original thinkers took up the banner of Philo's project to unify Greek philosophy with Judaism, and rejected the separation between faith and reason, as well as the division between Biblical revelation and pagan philosophy. The Jewish political theology they developed stands for the idea that human redemption is inseparable from the redemption of nature. Living Law offers an alternative genealogy of political theology that challenges the widespread belief that modern republican political thought is derived from Christian sources.

The Land of the Body

The Land of the Body
Author: Sarah Pearce
Publisher: Mohr Siebeck
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2007
Genre: History
ISBN: 9783161492501

This book presents the first extended study of the representation of Egypt in the writings of Philo of Alexandria. Philo is a crucial witness, not only to the experiences of the Jews of Alexandria, but to the world of early Roman Egypt in general. As historians of Roman Alexandria and Egypt are well aware, we have access to very few voices from inside the country in this era; Philo is the best we have. As a commentator on Jewish Scripture, Philo is also one of the most valuable sources for the interpretation of Egypt in the Pentateuch. He not only writes very extensively on this subject, but he does so in ways that are remarkable for their originality when compared with the surviving literature of ancient Judaism. In this book, Sarah Pearce tries to understand Philo in relation to the wider context in which he lived and worked. Key areas for investigation include: defining the 'Egyptian' in Philo's world; Philo's treatment of the Egypt of the Pentateuch as a symbol of 'the land of the body'; Philo's emphasis on Egyptian inhospitableness; and his treatment of Egyptian religion, focusing on Nile veneration and animal worship.

The Idea of Israel in Second Temple Judaism

The Idea of Israel in Second Temple Judaism
Author: Jason A. Staples
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 451
Release: 2021-05-20
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1108915485

In this book, Jason A. Staples proposes a new paradigm for how the biblical concept of Israel developed in Early Judaism and how that concept impacted Jewish apocalyptic hopes for restoration after the Babylonian Exile. Challenging conventional assumptions about Israelite identity in antiquity, his argument is based on a close analysis of a vast corpus of biblical and other early Jewish literature and material evidence. Staples demonstrates that continued aspirations for Israel's restoration in the context of diaspora and imperial domination remained central to Jewish conceptions of Israelite identity throughout the final centuries before Christianity and even into the early part of the Common Era. He also shows that Israelite identity was more diverse in antiquity than is typically appreciated in modern scholarship. His book lays the groundwork for a better understanding of the so-called 'parting of the ways' between Judaism and Christianity and how earliest Christianity itself grew out of hopes for Israel's restoration.

Paul and the Imperial Authorities at Thessalonica and Rome

Paul and the Imperial Authorities at Thessalonica and Rome
Author: James R. Harrison
Publisher: Mohr Siebeck
Total Pages: 460
Release: 2011
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9783161498800

James R. Harrison investigates the collision between Paul's eschatological gospel and the Julio-Claudian conception of rule. The ruler's propaganda, with its claim about the 'eternal rule' of the imperial house over its subjects, embodied in idolatry of power that conflicted with Paul's proclamation of the reign of the risen Son of God over his world. This ideological conflict is examined in 1 and 2 Thessalonians and in Romans, exploring how Paul's eschatology intersected with the imperial cult in the Greek East and in the Latin West. A wide selection of evidence - literary, documentary, numismatic, iconographic, archeological - unveils the 'symbolic universe' of the Julio-Claudian rulers. This construction of social and cosmic reality stood at odds with the eschatological denouement of world history, which, in Paul's view, culminated in the arrival of God's new creation upon Christ's return as Lord of all. Paul exalted the Body of Christ over Nero's 'body of state', transferring to the risen and ascended Jesus many of the ruler's titles and to the Body of Christ many of the ruler's functions. Thus, for Paul, Christ's reign challenged the values of Roman society and transformed its hierarchical social relations through the Spirit.

The Studia Philonica Annual XXVIII, 2016

The Studia Philonica Annual XXVIII, 2016
Author: David T. Runia
Publisher: SBL Press
Total Pages: 477
Release: 2016-11-04
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0884141829

Celebrate the contributions of David T. Runia The Studia Philonica Annual is a scholarly journal devoted to the study of Hellenistic Judaism, particularly the writings and thought of the Hellenistic-Jewish writer Philo of Alexandria. More than fifteen scholars from around the world offer contributions to this special edition of the Annual in honor of Professor David T. Runia on the occasion of his 65th birthday and retirement from his post as Master of Queens College, University of Melbourne. Professor Runia is internationally recognized as one of the world's foremost experts on Philo of Alexandria. As founder of The Studia Philonica Annual, he has been editor or coeditor for twenty-seven years. He initiated a Philo Bibliography project prior to the Annual and incorporated the bibliography into the Annual from the outset. It serves as the primary bibliography for Philonic studies worldwide.

By the Same Word

By the Same Word
Author: Ronald Cox
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 409
Release: 2009-02-26
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3110212145

Middle Platonism explained how a transcendent principle could relate to the material world by positing an intermediary, modeled after the Stoic active cause, that mediated the supreme principle’s influence to the world while preserving its transcendence. Having similar concerns as Middle Platonism, Hellenistic Jewish sapientialism, early Christianity, and Gnosticism appropriated this intermediary doctrine as a means for understanding their relationship to God and to the cosmos. However, these traditions vary in their adaptation of this teaching due to their distinctive understanding of creation and humanity’s place therein. The Jewish writings of Philo of Alexandria and Wisdom of Solomon espouse a holistic ontology, combining a Platonic appreciation for noetic reality with an ultimately positive view of creation and its place in human fulfillment. The early Christians texts of 1 Cor 8:6, Col 1:15-20, Heb 1:2-3, and the prologue of John provide an eschatological twist to this ontology when the intermediary figure finds final expression in Jesus Christ. Contrarily, Poimandres (CH 1) and the Apocryphon of John, both associated with the traditional rubric “Gnosticism”, draw from Platonism to describe how creation is antithetical to human nature and its transcendent source.

The New Testament Moses

The New Testament Moses
Author: John Lierman
Publisher: Mohr Siebeck
Total Pages: 396
Release: 2004
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9783161482021

"This is a study of the NT witness to how Jews and Jewish Christians perceived the relationship of Moses with Israel and with the Jewish people. This is a narrowly tailored study, focusing specifically on that relationship without treating Moses in the New Testament comprehensively. The study consults ancient writings and historical material to situate the NT Moses in a larger milieu of Jewish thought. It contributes both to the knowledge of ancient Judaism and the to illumination of NT religion and theology, especially Christology."