Against the scholarly consensus that assumes early Christians were involved in a rivalry for converts with contemporary Jews, this book shows that the target of patristic writers was rather a symbolic Judaism, and their aim was to define theologically the young church's identity. In identifying and categorizing the hypotheses put forward by modern scholars to defend their view of a Jewish-Christian "conflict", this book demonstrates how current theories have generated faulty notions about the perceptions and motivations of ancient Christians and Jews. Beyond its relevance to students of the early church, this book addresses the broader question of Christian responsibility for modern anti-Semitism. It shows how the focus on a supposedly social rivalry, obscures the depth and disquieting nature of the connections between early anti-Judaism and Christian identity.

Learn to live the message of the Good Samaritan and make a global impact, using the resources already at your disposal. If there were a popularity contest among all the parables of Jesus, the Good Samaritan would probably win. Nobody is against the Good Samaritan because being against the Good Samaritan is like being against Mother Theresa or Oskar Schindler or the firefighters who ran into the World Trade Center. In that same popularity contest, the Shrewd Manager would probably finish last. The Shrewd Manager is lazy, deceitful, and double-crossing. Yet in this alluringly freakish parable, Jesus actually holds up the Shrewd Manager as an example, as he does with the Good Samaritan. This book is about learning to live the message of the Good Samaritan in the context of the globalized world of the twenty-first century. This means learning to love our global neighbor wisely by harnessing the resources at our disposal—our time, talents, opportunities, and money—on behalf of those who are victims of injustice, disease, violence, and poverty. The early disciples were pretty clueless about worldly resources such as time, talent, and money—and unfortunately today we still don’t really get it. There are too many kind, well-intentioned twenty-first-century people with indisputably good intentions but whose impact on the needy is hampered by their inability to diagnose problems properly, harness the resources available to them to solve the right problems, and understand cause-and-effect relationships. Shrewd Samaritan will help develop a framework to better love and care for our neighbors in an age of globalization, when the people in our neighborhoods, or at least those in our potential sphere of influence, has expanded dramatically. Increasingly it will become our global neighbor who takes us out of our comfort zone and challenges us with the needs of a broken world.

This volume investigates Proclus' own thought and his wide-ranging influence within late Neoplatonic, Alexandrine and Byzantinian philosophy and theology. It further explores how Procline metaphysics and doctrines of causality influence and transition into Arabic and Islamic thought, up until Richard Hooker in England, Spinoza in Holland and Pico in Italy. John Dillon provides a helpful overview of Proclus' thought, Harold Tarrant discusses Proclus' influence within Alexandrian philosophy and Tzvi Langermann presents ground breaking work on the Jewish reception of Proclus, focusing on the work of Joseph Solomon Delmedigo (1591-1655), while Stephen Gersh presents a comprehensive synopsis of Proclus' reception throughout Christendom. The volume also presents works from notable scholars like Helen Lang, Sarah Wear and Crystal Addey and has a considerable strength in its presentation of Pseudo-Dionysius, Proclus' transmission and development in Arabic philosophy and the problem of the eternity of the world. It will be important for anyone interested in the development and transition of ideas from the late ancient world onwards.

This work provides a new Stoic reading of the Fourth Gospel with particular attention to its cosmology, epistemology, and ethics.

This lucidly written study is unique in that there is no book extant by an economic historian that discusses Talmudic economics in the light of modern economics. Its major focus is on the intricate debates, statements and principles that were forged by the Talmudic Rabbis. This ancient storehouse of learning includes a wealth of economic knowledge of modern sophistication. The book taps these "economic treasures" by way of analytic inquiry. The authors, both economic historians and economists, through their study of the original dialectics in the Talmud, were able to discern a wide range of macro- and micro-economic ideas of major significance. These concepts when viewed from either a contemporary or a modern perspective, display an extraordinary degree of insight and sophistication. Indeed, sections of the Talmud and the reflections of subsequent commentators on those passages, embody a wealth of economic thought that was later to become significant in the reasoning of political economists, or of their professional academic successors.

Weiss contends that the wide spectrums of theological beliefs illustrate the internal diversities of these two faiths as well as their commonalities."--BOOK JACKET.