Exploring the link between German biblical interpretation and anti-Semitism, this book is a fresh, comprehensive study of leading German exegetes, concluding that although Nazism brought anti-Semitic exegesis to a head, age-old thought structures provided powerful legitimation for oppression.

Theological and Semitic Literature for the YearS 1898-1901: A Supplement to the American Journal of Theology and the American Journal of Semite Languages and Literatures.

Jesus the Jewish Theologian establishes Jesus firmly within the context of first-century Judaism and shows how understanding Jesus' Jewishness is crucial for interpreting the New Testament and for understanding the nature of Christian faith. Insights from Jewish literature, archeology, and tradition help modern readers place Jesus within his original context. Particular attention is given to the Jewish roots of Jesus' teaching concerning the kingdom of God.

This book is a collection of essays about the invention—and disappearance—of the ‘Semites’ and the lingering effects, both institutional and theologico-political, of this invention.

Reading Shakespeare in Jewish Theological Frameworks: Shylock Beyond the Holocaust uses Jewish theology to mount a courageous new reading of a four-hundred-year-old play, The Merchant of Venice. While victimhood and antisemitism have been the understandable focus of the Merchant critical history for decades, Lion urges scholars, performers, and readers to see beyond the racism in Shakespeare's plays by recovering Shakespearean themes of potentiality and human flourishing as they emerge within the Jewish tradition itself. Lion joins the race conversation in Shakespeare studies today by drawing on the intellectual history and oppression of the Jewish people, borrowing from thinkers Franz Rosenzweig and Abraham Joshua Heschel as well as Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas, and rabbis from the Talmud to today. This volume interweaves post-confessional, Protestant, Catholic, Muslim, Jewish, and mystical ideas with Shakespeare's poetry and opens conversations of prophecy, love, spirituality, care, and community. It concludes with brief critical sketches of Antony and Cleopatra, Hamlet, and Macbeth to demonstrate that Shakespeare when interpreted through Jewish theological frameworks can point to post-credal solutions and transformed societal paradigms of repair that encourage action and the shaping of a finer world.

JPS is proud to reissue Cohen and Mendes-Flohr’s classic work, perhaps the most important, comprehensive anthology available on 20th century Jewish thought. This outstanding volume presents 140 concise yet authoritative essays by renowned Jewish figures Eugene Borowitz, Emil Fackenheim, Blu Greenberg, Susannah Heschel, Jacob Neusner, Gershom Scholem, Adin Steinsaltz, and many others. They define and reflect upon such central ideas as charity, chosen people, death, family, love, myth, suffering, Torah, tradition and more. With entries from Aesthetics to Zionism, this book provides striking insights into both the Jewish experience and the Judeo-Christian tradition.

The Greek Life of Adam and Eve is a brooding epic that explores experiences of disease, death, and hope through a riveting reinvention of the stories of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and Seth. Now, for the first time, Jack Levison offers the English-speaking world its first comprehensive commentary on this saga. The introduction offers analyses, sweeping in scope and rich in detail, for which no comparable discussions exist in any language. Chapter one details literary character—narrative flow, characters, and reconstructions of literary growth. With consummate clarity, chapter two brings order to the scholarly chaos surrounding Greek manuscripts, Greek text forms, versions (Latin, Armenian, Georgian, Slavonic), and the history of research. Chapter three investigates provenance: external references to the Greek Life and evidence for either a Jewish or Christian origin; Levison demonstrates that arguments for either a Jewish or Christian provenance cannot bear the weight scholars have laid on them. The commentary is equally comprehensive, with far-reaching discussions of the Greek illuminated by the foreground of Jewish scripture and the milieu of ancient Greek and Hebrew literature. With a fresh translation and bibliography.