Women in the Bible, Qumran and Early Rabbinic Literature: Their Status and Roles explores the different attitudes toward the woman’s guilt for the expulsion from the Garden and human’s calamities and the legal ramifications of her lower social and legal status regarding independence, ownership and membership in the community.

The essays in Sacred Texts and Disparate Interpretations shed new light on core themes in Qumran studies, such as the textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible, history of the Qumran community, Hebrew philology and paleography, Wisdom and religious poetry.

The first full treatment of Jewish childhood in the Roman world. Explores the lives of minors both inside and outside the home.

In this book, Joseph Citron offers the first comprehensive analysis of Prague Rabbi Isaiah Horowitz’s (c.1565-c.1626) magnum opus of Jewish ethical literature, the Shnei Luhot Ha-Berit. Citron’s close philological analysis reveals the pioneering nature of the work in creating an organic Jewish theological system rooted in the mystical structures of Kabbalah, cultivating an orthodoxy in thought and legal practice based upon its principles. It provided a platform for laypeople to attain great spiritual heights by emphasising that God could be served and cleaved to through mundane activity, and that Judaism demanded deep emotion and joy as much as Talmudic erudition or meticulous observance. The Shelah's paradigms significantly influenced 17th-century Sabbatean movement, the 18th-century Hasidic movement, and Jewish Orthodoxy in the 19th century. The book is essential for scholars and laypeople alike wishing to understand the evolution of Judaism in Central and Eastern Europe in the early modern period.

Is the difference of male and female to be “completely shaken off” so that men and women are no longer men and women but merely human beings? The great seventh-century saint Maximus the Confessor said yes, but such thinking is difficult if not impossible to reconcile with much else in Christian tradition that obliges men and women to live as either men or women. Origen’s Revenge contrasts the two main sources of early Christian thinking on male and female: the generally negative view of Greek philosophy, limiting sexual distinction to the body and holding the body in low regard, and the much more positive view of Hebrew Scripture, in which sexual distinction and reproduction are both deemed naturally good and necessary for human existence. These two views account for much of the controversy in early Christianity concerning marriage and monasticism. They also still contribute to current controversies over sex roles, gender identity, and sexual ethics. Origen’s Revenge also develops the more Hebrew line of early Christian thought to propose a new understanding of male and female with a firmer grounding in scripture, tradition, theology, and philosophy and with profound implications for all human relationships, whether social, political, or spiritual.

It has been over 30 years since John Collins’ seminal study The Apocalyptic Imagination first came out. In this timely volume, Apocalyptic Thinking in Early Judaism: Engaging with John Collins’ The Apocalyptic Imagination, leading international experts of Jewish apocalyptic critically engage with Collins’ work and add to the ongoing debate with articles on current topics in the field of apocalyptic studies. The subjects include the genre and sub categories of apocalypses, demonology, the character of dream visions, the books of Enoch, the significance of Aramaic texts, and apocalyptic traditions in the Dead Sea Scrolls as well as in Paul’s writings. The volume ends with Collins’ response to the articles.

An essential resource for scholars and students Since the publication of the first edition of Early Judaism and Its Modern Interpreters in 1986, the field of early Judaism has exploded with new data, the publication of additional texts, and the adoption of new methods. This new edition of the classic resource honors the spirit of the earlier volume and focuses on the scholarly advances in the past four decades that have led to the study of early Judaism becoming an academic discipline in its own right. Essays written by leading scholars in the study of early Judaism fall into four sections: historical and social settings; methods, manuscripts, and materials; early Jewish literatures; and the afterlife of early Judaism.