Joseph Albo on Free Choice

Joseph Albo on Free Choice
Title Joseph Albo on Free Choice PDF eBook
Author Shira Weiss
Publisher Oxford University Press
Pages 233
Release 2017-08-07
Genre Religion
ISBN 0190684445

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Scripture is replete with narratives that challenge a variety of philosophical concepts; including morality, divine benevolence, and human freedom. Free choice, a significant and much debated concept in medieval philosophy, continues to be of great interest to contemporary philosophers and others. However, scholarship in biblical studies has primarily focused on compositional history, philology, and literary analysis, not on the examination of the philosophy implied in biblical texts. In this book, Shira Weiss focuses on the Hebrew Bible's encounter with the philosophical notion of free choice, as interpreted by the fifteenth-century Spanish Jewish philosopher Joseph Albo in one of the most popular Hebrew works in the corpus of medieval Jewish philosophy: Albo's Examining narratives commonly interpreted as challenging human freedom--the Binding of Isaac, the Hardening of Pharaoh's Heart, the Book of Job, and God's Choice of Israel--Albo puts forward innovative arguments that preserve the concept of free choice in these texts. Despite the popularity of The Book of Principles, Albo has been commonly dismissed as an unoriginal thinker. As a result, argues Weiss, the major original contribution of his philosophy-his theory of free choice as explained in unique exegetical interpretations-has been overlooked. This book casts new light on Albo by demonstrating both the central importance of his views on free choice in his philosophy and the creative ways in which they are presented.

Joseph Albo on Free Choice

Joseph Albo on Free Choice
Title Joseph Albo on Free Choice PDF eBook
Author Shira Weiss
Publisher Oxford University Press
Pages 233
Release 2017-08-07
Genre Religion
ISBN 0190684437

Download Joseph Albo on Free Choice Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Scripture is replete with narratives that challenge a variety of philosophical concepts; including morality, divine benevolence, and human freedom. Free choice, a significant and much debated concept in medieval philosophy, continues to be of great interest to contemporary philosophers and others. However, scholarship in biblical studies has primarily focused on compositional history, philology, and literary analysis, not on the examination of the philosophy implied in biblical texts. In this book, Shira Weiss focuses on the Hebrew Bible's encounter with the philosophical notion of free choice, as interpreted by the fifteenth-century Spanish Jewish philosopher Joseph Albo in one of the most popular Hebrew works in the corpus of medieval Jewish philosophy: Albo's Examining narratives commonly interpreted as challenging human freedom--the Binding of Isaac, the Hardening of Pharaoh's Heart, the Book of Job, and God's Choice of Israel--Albo puts forward innovative arguments that preserve the concept of free choice in these texts. Despite the popularity of The Book of Principles, Albo has been commonly dismissed as an unoriginal thinker. As a result, argues Weiss, the major original contribution of his philosophy-his theory of free choice as explained in unique exegetical interpretations-has been overlooked. This book casts new light on Albo by demonstrating both the central importance of his views on free choice in his philosophy and the creative ways in which they are presented.

The Book of Job in Jewish Life and Thought

The Book of Job in Jewish Life and Thought
Title The Book of Job in Jewish Life and Thought PDF eBook
Author Jason Kalman
Publisher Hebrew Union College Press
Pages 606
Release 2021-12-20
Genre Religion
ISBN 0878201955

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Despite its general absence from the Jewish liturgical cycle and its limited place in Jewish practice, the Book of Job has permeated Jewish culture over the last 2,000 years. Job has not only had to endure the suffering described in the biblical book, but the efforts of countless commentators, interpreters, and creative rewriters whose explanations more often than not challenged the protagonist's righteousness in order to preserve Divine justice. Beginning with five critical essays on the specific efforts of ancient, medieval, and modern Jewish writers to make sense of the biblical book, this volume concludes with a detailed survey of the place of Job in the Talmud and Midrashic corpus, in medieval biblical commentary, in ethical, mystical, and philosophical tracts, as well as in poetry and creative writing in a wide variety of Jewish languages from around the world from the second to sixteenth centuries.

Hasdai Crescas on Codification, Cosmology and Creation

Hasdai Crescas on Codification, Cosmology and Creation
Title Hasdai Crescas on Codification, Cosmology and Creation PDF eBook
Author Ari Ackerman
Publisher BRILL
Pages 246
Release 2022-08-01
Genre Philosophy
ISBN 9004518657

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This work focuses on the conception of God of the medieval Jewish philosopher and legal scholar, Hasdai Crescas (1340-1410/11). It demonstrates that Crescas’ God is infinitely creative and good and explores the parallel that Crescas implicitly draws between God as creator and legislator.

The Life of the Soul

The Life of the Soul
Title The Life of the Soul PDF eBook
Author Andrea Gondos
Publisher SUNY Press
Pages 490
Release 2024-12-01
Genre Religion
ISBN

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The Life of the Soul surveys the wide-ranging theories Jewish mystics have offered to the vexing question – what precisely transpires after we die? A common element in their theories is that human life is a part of a larger ecosystem of being which also includes plants, animals, and inanimate things, like rocks. They further maintained that the soul does not perish with the demise of the body, but is rather renewed and recycled into new forms of embodied existence in the lower world. Each essay highlights how reincarnation, also known as metempsychosis or the transmigration of souls, is not a marginalized concept but is instead central to understanding a variety of perplexing issues in Judaism, including catastrophic events in Jewish history, theodicy, the rationale for biblical commandments, the complex identity of biblical figures, and the issues of sin, punishment, and redemption. Just as the concept of reincarnation is inherently about boundary crossing, its investigation similarly bridges diverse epistemic fields and disciplines—religion, philosophy, psychology, history, ritual, gender, and cultural studies. Weaving together kabbalistic speculations and Jewish philosophical ideas drawn from distinct geographical regions and historical periods, this book is poised to serve as a point of departure for future comparative investigations on the life of the soul in Judaism and Eastern religious traditions.

The Many Faces of Job

The Many Faces of Job
Title The Many Faces of Job PDF eBook
Author Choon-Leong Seow
Publisher Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Pages 846
Release 2024-02-02
Genre Religion
ISBN 3110568470

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the Handbooks of the Bible and Its Reception (HBR) provide comprehensive introductions to individual topics in biblical reception history. They address a wide range of academic fields and interdisciplinary matters, including reception of the Bible in various contexts and historical periods; in diverse geographic areas; in particular cultural, social, and political contexts; and in relation to important biblical themes, topics, and figures.

Medieval Jewish Philosophical Writings

Medieval Jewish Philosophical Writings
Title Medieval Jewish Philosophical Writings PDF eBook
Author Charles Manekin
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Pages 253
Release 2008-01-03
Genre Philosophy
ISBN 1139467557

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Medieval Jewish intellectuals living in Muslim and Christian lands were strongly concerned to recover what they regarded as a 'lost' Jewish philosophical tradition. As part of this project they transmitted and produced many philosophical and scientific works and commentaries, as well as philosophical commentary on scripture, in Judaeo-Arabic and Hebrew, the principal literary languages of medieval Jewry. This volume presents translations of seven prominent medieval Jewish rationalists: Saadia Gaon, Solomon ibn Gabirol, Moses Maimonides, Isaac Albalag, Moses of Narbonne, Levi Gersonides, Hasdai Crescas and Joseph Albo - including, for the first time in English, the complete Falaquera abridgement of Gabirol's Source of Life. These works range over topics that are both theological (e.g. the creation of the world) and philosophical (e.g. determinism and free choice), but they are characterized by two overarching principles: the unity of truth, and its accessibility to human reason.