This work was originally published in the Brown Judaic Studies series in 1984 by Scholars Press. It was first brought to my attention by Sarah Schwarz at Penn. The book describes the thinking of the Hellenistic Jewish community outside Palestine, beyond rabbinic influence, in the early days of the Christian church. It particularly addresses their influences on the Church, their interactions with it, and their shared cultural perceptions. The author's social-anthropologic approach to the history of religion was ground-breaking. This new edition of the work is accompanied by a comprehensive new introduction and updated bibliographysituating the book in the literature, bringing its content up to date, and describing its influence on subsequent work.

In this timely book, authors Matthew and Terces Engelhart present the idea that love before appearances is the antidote to our spiritual, environmental, and social degradation. Exploring topics such as mission statements, manager as coach, human resources as a sacred culture, and inspirational meetings, they offer a manual for building a spiritual community at the workplace—a vital concept in an age when work consumes the bulk of most adults’ time. Business, the authors explain, is all about providing a service, product, or experience the market wants, and no business can succeed by failing to understand this point. However, integrating the concept of “Sacred Commerce” into business can provide both financial success and spiritual satisfaction. Stressing that every business is an opportunity to make a lasting impact on the lives of both clients and employees, the Engelharts share the tools they’ve learned in their own enterprises to fulfill this vision. Sacred Commerce is the ideal mix of the personal and the practical—a guidebook written by people who have felt success, not just spent it. Dissatisfaction with work is at record levels, and the Engelharts show that you don’t have to suffer personally—or give up your humanity—to pay the mortgage.

Sacred Commerce is a groundbreaking book which explores the past and the future of commerce. It tells of the Merchant Priests of ancient Egypt who practiced it and the skill of emotional alchemy they mastered in their pursuit of beauty goodness and truth. This book completes Ayman's work on the map of Emotional Intelligence and its four cornerstone model as explored in his international best seller "Executive EQ: Emotional Intelligence in Leadership and Organizations", co-authored with Dr. Robert Cooper.

Known as "the Garbo of Chinese letters" for her elegance and the aura of mystery that surrounded her, Eileen Chang is regarded as one of the greatest and most influential modern Chinese novelists and cultural critics of the twentieth century. In Written on Water, first published in 1945 and now available for the first time in English, Chang offers essays on art, literature, war, and urban life, as well as autobiographical reflections. Chang takes in the sights and sounds of wartime Shanghai and Hong Kong, with the tremors of national upheaval and the drone of warplanes in the background, and inventively fuses explorations of urban life, literary trends, domestic habits, and historic events. These evocative and moving firsthand accounts examine the subtle and not-so-subtle effects of the Japanese bombing and occupation of Shanghai and Hong Kong. Eileen Chang writes of friends, colleagues, and teachers turned soldiers or wartime volunteers, and her own experiences as a part-time nurse. Her nuanced depictions range from observations of how a woman's elegant dress affects morale to descriptions of hospital life. With a distinctive style that is at once meditative, vibrant, and humorous, Chang engages the reader through sly, ironic humor; an occasionally chatty tone; and an intense fascination with the subtleties of modern urban life. The collection vividly captures the sights and sounds of Shanghai, a city defined by its mix of tradition and modernity. Chang explores the city's food, fashions, shops, cultural life, and social mores; she reveals and upends prevalent attitudes toward women and in the process presents a portrait of a liberated, cosmopolitan woman, enjoying the opportunities, freedoms, and pleasures offered by urban life. In addition to her descriptions of daily life, Chang also reflects on a variety of artistic and literary issues, including contemporary films, the aims of the writer, the popularity of the Peking Opera, dance, and painting.

Focusing on the economic culture of colonial New England, Heavenly Merchandize views commerce through the eyes of four generations of Boston merchants, drawing upon their personal letters, diaries, business records, and sermon notes to reveal how merchants built a modern form of exchange out of profound transitions in the puritan understanding of discipline, providence, and the meaning of New England. --From publisher's description.

Jack Lightstone's Commerce of the Sacred remains an original and influential contribution to Judaic studies. Lightstone offers critical perspectives on the practices and beliefs of Greco-Roman Jews who lived outside of Palestine and beyond rabbinic control or influence. He investigates their influence on early Christians and examines how the two communities defined themselves in relation to each another. He challenges the view of Judaism as a single set of practices and beliefs and argues that Jews of the Greco-Roman Diaspora did not retain a shared, biblical 'perception of the world' centered on the Jerusalem temple. Rather, they believed multiple points of contact between God and man could be made through particular rites: prayer in the presence of the sacred scrolls, pleas for help at the tombs of dead saints and martyrs, and the interventions of holy men with alleged supernatural powers, to name a few. Many early Christians also participated in this Judaic 'commerce of the sacred', blurring the social and religious boundaries that distinguished Jews and Christians. Lightstone innovatively combines approaches from the history of religions and social anthropology to provide a different picture of Judaism during this period. Featuring a new foreword and an updated bibliography, Commerce of the Sacred resituates the Jews in the Greco-Roman world.

This extensive work explores the changing world of religions, faiths and practices. It discusses a broad range of issues and phenomena that are related to religion, including nature, ethics, secularization, gender and identity. Broadening the context, it studies the interrelation between religion and other fields, including education, business, economics and law. The book presents a vast array of examples to illustrate the changes that have taken place and have led to a new world map of religions. Beginning with an introduction of the concept of the “changing world religion map”, the book first focuses on nature, ethics and the environment. It examines humankind’s eternal search for the sacred, and discusses the emergence of “green” religion as a theme that cuts across many faiths. Next, the book turns to the theme of the pilgrimage, illustrated by many examples from all parts of the world. In its discussion of the interrelation between religion and education, it looks at the role of missionary movements. It explains the relationship between religion, business, economics and law by means of a discussion of legal and moral frameworks, and the financial and business issues of religious organizations. The next part of the book explores the many “new faces” that are part of the religious landscape and culture of the Global North (Europe, Russia, Australia and New Zealand, the U.S. and Canada) and the Global South (Latin America, Africa and Asia). It does so by looking at specific population movements, diasporas, and the impact of globalization. The volume next turns to secularization as both a phenomenon occurring in the Global religious North, and as an emerging and distinguishing feature in the metropolitan, cosmopolitan and gateway cities and regions in the Global South. The final part of the book explores the changing world of religion in regards to gender and identity issues, the political/religious nexus, and the new worlds associated with the virtual technologies and visual media.