When the New Testament authors wrote their inspired documents, they assumed that their readers were familiar with the customs and controversies of the Jewish tradition. Modern-day readers, however, do not have the luxury of intuitively knowing what the original readers knew. In Customs and Controversies Julius Scott adeptly surveys this body of knowledge. Scott makes readily available what scholarly research and recent archaeology have to tell us about Intertestamental Judaism. He presents up-to-date information on the efforts to reconstruct Old Testament institutions, the scribal traditions, the religious sects (including the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the community of Qumran), as well as Judaism's thinking on such matters as the final age, the kingdom of God, the messianic hope, and the Gentiles.

The Rites Controversies in the Early Modern World is a collection of fourteen articles focusing on debates concerning the nature of “rites” raging in intellectual circles of Europe, Asia and America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The controversy started in Jesuit Asian missions where the method of accommodation, based on translation of Christianity into Asian cultural idioms, created a distinction between civic and religious customs. Civic customs were defined as those that could be included into Christianity and permitted to the new converts. However, there was no universal consensus among the various actors in these controversies as to how to establish criteria for distinguishing civility from religion. The controversy had not been resolved, but opened the way to radical religious scepticism. Contributors are: Claudia Brosseder, Michela Catto, Gita Dharampal-Frick, Pierre Antoine Fabre, Ana Carolina Hosne, Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia, Giuseppe Marcocci, Ovidiu Olar, Sabina Pavone, István Perczel, Nicholas Standaert, Margherita Trento, Guillermo Wilde and Ines G. Županov.

Accompanying DVD-ROM contains ... "current and historical legislation affecting communal land and affidavits by rural applicants, state officials and traditional leaders in pending litigation concerning land rights and chiefly power"--Page 4 of cover.

This two-volume set is a broad compendium of the law, policies, and legal influences that affect the food on our plates today. As food increasingly impacts our health and our wallets, we need to understand the enormous effect of law—both U.S. law and international regulations—on the safety and availability of the food we eat. The A-Z Encyclopedia of Food Controversies and the Law was compiled to help readers do just that. The most comprehensive work covering food and law, the encyclopedia surveys laws related to organics, obesity, and fair trade. It tackles the intersection of law and religious belief, for example with kosher and halal foods, as well as controversies over labeling practices and consumer protection in general. And it looks at the relationship of class to food, exposing poor urban areas that possess few sources of fresh food so that residents are forced to rely on convenience stores and fast food for nutrition. As background, the set also presents a basic history of food-related law to show us how we got where we are.

Trade integration contributes substantially to economic development and poverty alleviation. In recent years much progress was made to liberalize the trade regime, but customs procedures are often still complex, costly and non-transparent. This situation leads to misallocation of resources. 'Customs Modernization Handbook' provides an overview of the key elements of a successful customs modernization strategy and draws lessons from a number of successful customs reforms as well as from customs reform projects that have been undertaken by the World Bank. It describes a number of key import procedures, that have proved particularly troublesome for customs administrations and traders, and provides practical guidelines to enhance their efficiency. The Handbook also reviews the appropriate legal framework for customs operations as well as strategies to combat corruption.