We understand the world around us in terms of built spaces. Such spaces are shaped by human activity, and in turn, affect how people live. Through an analysis of archaeological and textual evidence from the beginnings of Hasmonean influence in Galilee, until the outbreak of the First Jewish War against Rome, this book explores how Judaism was socially expressed: bodily, communally, and regionally. Within each expression, certain aspects of Jewish identity operate, these being purity conceptions, communal gatherings, and Galilee's relationship with the Hasmoneans, Jerusalem, and the Temple in its final days.

Places and spaces are key factors in how individuals and groups construct their identities. Identity theories have emphasised that the construction of an identity does not follow abstract and universal processes but is also deeply rooted in specific historical, cultural, social and material environments. The essays in this volume explore how various groups in Late Antiquity rooted their identity in special places that were imbued with meanings derived from history and tradition. In Part I, essays explore the tension between the Classical heritage in public, especially urban spaces, in the form of ancient artwork and civic celebrations and the Church's appropriation of that space through doctrinal disputes and rival public performances. Parts II and III investigate how particular locations expressed, and formed, the theological and social identities of Christian and Jewish groups by bringing together fresh insights from the archaeological and textual evidence. Together the essays here demonstrate how the use and interpretation of shared spaces contributed to the self-identity of specific groups in Late Antiquity and in so doing issued challenges, and caused conflict, with other social and religious groups.

Throughout history, the relationship between Jews and their land has been a vibrant, much-debated topic within the Jewish world and in international political discourse. Identity and Territory explores how ancient conceptions of Israel—of both the land itself and its shifting frontiers and borders—have played a decisive role in forming national and religious identities across the millennia. Through the works of Second Temple period Jews and rabbinic literature, Eyal Ben-Eliyahu examines the role of territorial status, boundaries, mental maps, and holy sites, drawing comparisons to popular Jewish and Christian perceptions of space. Showing how space defines nationhood and how Jewish identity influences perceptions of space, Ben-Eliyahu uncovers varied understandings of the land that resonate with contemporary views of the relationship between territory and ideology.

Learning through original texts can be a powerful heuristic tool. This book collects a dozen classic readings that are generally accepted as the most significant contributions to the philosophy of space. The readings have been selected both on the basis of their relevance to recent debates on the nature of space and on the extent to which they carry premonitions of contemporary physics. In his detailed commentaries, Nick Huggett weaves together the readings and links them to our modern understanding of the subject. Together the readings indicate the general historical development of the concept of space, and in his commentaries Huggett explains their logical relations. He also uses our contemporary understanding of space to help clarify the key ideas of the texts. One goal is to prepare the reader (both scientist and nonscientist) to learn and understand relativity theory, the basis of our current understanding of space. The readings are by Zeno, Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, Descartes, Newton, Leibniz, Clarke, Berkeley, Kant, Mach, Poincaré, and Einstein.

Historical surveys of the concept of space considers Judeo-Christian ideas about space, Newton's concept of absolute space, space from 18th century to the present. Numerous original quotations and bibliographical references. "Admirably compact and swiftly paced style." — Philosophy of Science. Foreword by Albert Einstein.

In New Testament scholarship, the study of space has been underrepresented in comparison with the study of time. While Jesus’ life and ministry have been intensively explored in terms of eschatology—i.e., with time significance—space has tended to be treated as simply a given room or inactive backdrop where events took place. Interest in the space where Jesus ministered has, however, gradually increased, and space has received greater attention from sociological and literary perspectives. In particular, spatial investigations into the social circumstances of Galilee, the place of origin of Jesus’ missional movement, have begun to attract serious scholarly attention. The important functions of space in literature are also becoming better recognized: spatial settings serve not only to generate atmosphere but also to disclose the purposes and themes of narratives. This book explores Jesus’ Galilean ministry in Mark 4:35—8:21 through the use of spatial analysis, dividing space into three categories: social, geographical, and allusive. The study of each space discovers social, literary, and theological implications of Jesus’ missional movement in Galilee.

What is a Galilean? What were the criteria of defining a person as a Galilean - archaeologically or with respect to literary sources such as Josephus or the rabbis? What role did religion play in the process of identity formation? Twenty-two articles based on papers read at conferences at Cambridge, Wuppertal and Yale by experts from 7 countries shed light on a complex region, the pivotal geographic and cultural context of both earliest Christianity and rabbinic Judaism. In these papers, ancient Galilee emerges as a dynamic region of continuous change, in which religion, 'ethnicity', and 'identity' were not static monoliths but had to be negotiated in the context of a multiform environment subject to different influences.

Combining research methods from various areas of mathematics and physics, Probabilistic Models of Cosmic Backgrounds describes the isotropic random sections of certain fiber bundles and their applications to creating rigorous mathematical models of both discovered and hypothetical cosmic backgrounds. Previously scattered and hard-to-find mathematical and physical theories have been assembled from numerous textbooks, monographs, and research papers, and explained from different or even unexpected points of view. This consists of both classical and newly discovered results necessary for understanding a sophisticated problem of modelling cosmic backgrounds. The book contains a comprehensive description of mathematical and physical aspects of cosmic backgrounds with a clear focus on examples and explicit calculations. Its reader will bridge the gap of misunderstanding between the specialists in various theoretical and applied areas who speak different scientific languages. The audience of the book consists of scholars, students, and professional researchers. A scholar will find basic material for starting their own research. A student will use the book as supplementary material for various courses and modules. A professional mathematician will find a description of several physical phenomena at the rigorous mathematical level. A professional physicist will discover mathematical foundations for well-known physical theories.

In his latest book, Sean Freyne draws on his detailed knowledge of Galilean society in the Roman period, based on both literary and archaeological sources, to give a fresh and provocative reading of the Jesus-story within its Galilean setting. Jesus, a Jewish Galilean focuses on the religious as well as the social and political environment and examines the ways in which the Jewish religious experience had expressed itself in Galilee. It examines the ways in which the Jewish tradition in both the Pentateuch and the Prophets had constructed notions of an ideal Galilee. These provided the raw material for Jesus' own response to the issues of the day, from which he fashioned his own distinctive views of Israel's restoration and his own role in that project. Although Freyne is in touch with all recent scholarship about the historical Jesus, he brings his own distinctive take on the issues both with regard to Galilean society and Jesus' grounding in his own religious tradition. His Jesus is both Jewish and yet distinctive in his concerns and the ways in which he responds to the ecological, social and religious issues of his own time and place. Freyne seeks to retrieve the theological importance of Jesus' own message, something that has been lost sight of in the trend to present him primarily as a social reformer, while acknowledging the dangers of modernising Jesus.

About the Book The book has an interesting topic that would attract curiosity. To read it only high school mathematics is needed. But physics concepts may be challenging. However, that is not a problem for those keen thinkers who pursue scientific truth with passion. Which giant will you stand by: Einstein or Newton? You would make the right decision after reading. There are 8 Sections in the main part of the book: In Section 1. The primary concepts of space and time are described. The most important concepts are "attached space", "overlapping space" and "identity of universe instant". GT (Galilean Transformation) is a natural product from the primary concepts of space and time and there is no room left for LT (Lorentz Transformation). In Section 2. Under Einstein's Postulate of "absolute velocity of light", LT is formally deduced. In searching the light wavefront sphere the missing light source system is found to be a normal Galilean system that would lead a group of Lorentz systems by determining their space and time through LT. That means LT totally relies on light source system. In Section 3. Using light source system as a stepping stone Lorentz system can be explored. It has been found that Lorentz space dilating outwards from its central plane while the systemic part of Lorentz time contracting toward the initial instant. However, the Transformation Principle of "identical spatial spot at identical instant" forbids these strange things happening, so that no way for LT to gain "real meaning". In Section 4. The Assertion of "moving rod contracts and moving clock slower" and other paradoxes, as well as the relativistic mechanics, have been discussed and analyzed. It is ascertained that all are the product from a serious conceptual error of "applying LT wrongly on second party body". In Section 5. It is recognized that, causing the so-called relativity of simultaneity, the local-time part of Lorentz time varies along the î-axis in Lorentz space at a universe instant t but, once preset at initial instant, would never change. That is a shocking finding that the Lorentz local-time actually is a false time of no flux, and hence the whole Lorentz time with a false part becomes untrustworthy. The consequence cannot be more serious. The whole building of SR would collapse immediately as a fundamental stone has to be withdrawn. In Section 6. The famous M-M Experiment has been re-interpreted carefully. After clarifying all historical mistakes involving the false concept of ether, the M-M Experiment is ascertained that, apart from negating the existence of ether, it confirms the concept of light source Galilean system but has no any support for SR. In section 7. The Doppler Effect of sound is introduced first for the sake of contrasting. Then light's Doppler Effect is profoundly analyzed. Comes out a conclusion that Doppler Effect and SR's Postulate are bound to be mutually exclusionary. It is another shocking finding that there would be no Doppler Effect for light if SR' Postulate is true, but if light really has Doppler Effect then SR's Postulate must be wrong. The existence of Doppler Effect in astronomy is unarguable evidence denying the Postulate and SR. In section 8. With so many fatal problems, SR has to be justified as a pseudoscience. In tracking Einstein's path to SR, it is discovered that he proposed the Postulate without reasonable logic in first. No wonder SR would end in a verdict of a pseudoscience.