The Legends of the Jews

The Legends of the Jews
Author: Louis Ginzberg
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 504
Release: 1998-05-13
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780801858956

Never Before Available in Paperback, Louis Ginzberg's landmark seven-volume The Legends of the Jews assembles the many elaborations and embellishments of Biblical stories that flourished in the centuries following the Bible's own creation. Ginzberg devoted most of his life to gathering these legends from their original sources - written in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Syrian, Aramaic, Ethiopic, Arabic, Persian, and Old Slavic - and reproducing them completely, accurately, and vividly. He presents them in their traditional Biblical sequence and reconciles the sometimes contradictory versions of the same stories found in different sources. In addition to four volumes of the legends themselves, The Legends of the Jews includes two indispensable volumes of notes, which provide the sources for every legend, as well as a comprehensive index to the people, places, and motifs found in the legends and their sources.

The Tragedy of a Generation

The Tragedy of a Generation
Author: Joshua M. Karlip
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 399
Release: 2013-06-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674074947

The Tragedy of a Generation is the story of a failed ideal: an autonomous Jewish nation in Europe. It traces the origins of two influential strains of Jewish thought—Yiddishism and Diaspora Nationalism—and documents the waning hopes and painful reassessments of their leading representatives against the rising tide of Nazism and the Holocaust.

Werewolves, Witches, and Wandering Spirits

Werewolves, Witches, and Wandering Spirits
Author: Kathryn A. Edwards
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2002-10-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0271091096

Bringing together scholars from Europe, America, and Australia, this volume explores the more fantastic elements of popular religious belief: ghosts, werewolves, spiritualism, animism, and of course, witchcraft. These traditional religious beliefs and practices are frequently treated as marginal in more synthetic studies of witchcraft and popular religion, yet Protestants and Catholics alike saw ghosts, imps, werewolves, and other supernatural entities as populating their world. Embedded within notarial and trial records are accounts that reveal the integration of folkloric and theological elements in early modern spirituality. Drawing from extensive archival research, the contributors argue for the integration of such beliefs into our understanding of late medieval and early modern Europe.