Thinking about God

Thinking about God PDF

Author: Kari H. Tuling

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2020-08

Total Pages: 405

ISBN-13: 0827618468

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A Top Ten Book for Parish Ministry from the Academy of Parish Clergy Who--or what--is God? Is God like a person? Does God have a gender? Does God have a special relationship with the Jewish people? Does God intervene in our lives? Is God good--and, if yes, why does evil persist in the world? In investigating how Jewish thinkers have approached these and other questions, Rabbi Kari H. Tuling elucidates many compelling--and contrasting--ways of thinking about God in Jewish tradition. Thinking about God addresses the genuinely intertextual nature of evolving Jewish God concepts. Just as in Jewish thought the Bible and other historical texts are living documents, still present and relevant to the conversation unfolding now, and just as a Jewish theologian examining a core concept responds to the full tapestry of Jewish thought on the subject all at once, this book is organized topically, covers Jewish sources (including liturgy) from the biblical to the postmodern era, and highlights the interplay between texts over time, up through our own era. A highly accessible resource for introductory students, Thinking about God also makes important yet challenging theological texts understandable. By breaking down each selected text into its core components, Tuling helps the reader absorb it both on its own terms and in the context of essential theological questions of the ages. Readers of all backgrounds will discover new ways to contemplate God. Access a study guide.

Son of God

Son of God PDF

Author: Garrick V. Allen

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2019-02-08

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 1646020081

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In antiquity, “son of god”—meaning a ruler designated by the gods to carry out their will—was a title used by the Roman emperor Augustus and his successors as a way to reinforce their divinely appointed status. But this title was also used by early Christians to speak about Jesus, borrowing the idiom from Israelite and early Jewish discourses on monarchy. This interdisciplinary volume explores what it means to be God’s son(s) in ancient Jewish and early Christian literature. Through close readings of relevant texts from multiple ancient corpora, including the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Greco-Roman texts and inscriptions, early Christian and Islamic texts, and apocalyptic literature, the chapters in this volume engage a range of issues including messianism, deification, eschatological figures, Jesus, interreligious polemics, and the Roman and Jewish backgrounds of early Christianity and the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The essays in this collection demonstrate that divine sonship is an ideal prism through which to better understand the deep interrelationship of ancient religions and their politics of kingship and divinity. In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume include Richard Bauckham, Max Botner, George J. Brooke, Jan Joosten, Menahem Kister, Reinhard Kratz, Mateusz Kusio, Michael A. Lyons, Matthew V. Novenson, Michael Peppard, Sarah Whittle, and N. T. Wright.

The Jewish God Question

The Jewish God Question PDF

Author: Andrew Pessin

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2018-11-15

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1538110997

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This book shares what a diverse array of Jewish thinkers have said about the interrelated questions of God, the Book, the Jewish people, and the Land of Israel. Accessible chapters present fascinating insights from ancient times to today, from Philo to Judith Plaskow. An intriguing and provocative book for readers wrestling with big questions.

God

God PDF

Author: Josh Barkin

Publisher: Torah Aura Productions

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 104

ISBN-13: 1934527084

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Rabbinical students, young Jewish teachers and other young Jews give their personal answers to difficult questions about God.

Your Evolving Soul

Your Evolving Soul PDF

Author: Byron Belitsos

Publisher: Red Wheel/Weiser

Published: 2017-05-25

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 1579830374

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Sparks of genuine revelation are contained in many religions and esoteric systems. Your Evolving Soul declares that we’ve been graced with a new revelation for our time: the little-known Urantia Book, which has quietly sold over one million copies in a dozen languages. According to the author of this comparative analysis, the disclosures about self, soul, and spirit in the Urantia Revelation stand alone in their coherence and richness of detail. Your Evolving Soul is the first book to fully explain this advanced teaching for the ordinary reader, offering clarity and inspiration for those on any path. Belitsos compares the Urantia Book’s futuristic teachings about the threefold design of the human self-system to the models of selfhood proposed by many previous thinkers, ranging from from Plato and Saint Augustine to Carl Jung and Ken Wilber. He provides essential context for this discussion by illumining the relationship of the Urantia text to scientific psychology and to the world’s religions, with special emphasis on Christianity and Buddhism. Your Evolving Soul also provides an introduction to the cosmology, theology, and philosophy of the Urantia teaching, and reveals its many affinities with contemporary integral theory and modern theology. Through his lucid interpretation of the Urantia Revelation, the author offers a model of the human self and soul to be tested, examined, and compared—not a finished truth to be accepted as doctrine. Readers of this book will discover a plausible hypothesis of how our evolving soul becomes an immortal vehicle of our true identity. They also learn how our soul-making decisions can lead to the development of a creative, loving, unified, and perfected personality, now and into the afterlife.

Two Gods in Heaven

Two Gods in Heaven PDF

Author: Peter Schäfer

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2020-03-03

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 0691181322

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"In this book Peter Schäfer casts light on the common assumption that Judaism from its earliest formulations was strictly monotheistic. Over and over again in the Hebrew Bible the biblical writers insist upon the idea that there is one and only one God. But the biblical text is multifarious and contains many sources that subvert from within the strong monotheistic thesis. Old Canaanite deities such as Baal and El, although pushed to the edges, prove stubbornly persistent. They come to the forefront in, for example, the famous "Son of Man" of chapter 7 of the Book of Daniel. In sum, Schäfer argues that monotheism was an ideal in ancient Judaism that was consistently aspired to, but never fully achieved. Through close textual analysis of the Bible and certain key post-biblical sources, Schäfer tracks the long history of a second, younger, subordinate God next to the senior Jewish God YHWH. One might expect that with early Christianity's embrace of this idea (in the form of Jesus Christ), Judaism would have abandoned it utterly. But the opposite was the case. Even after Christianity usurps the original Jewish notion of a second, younger God, certain post-biblical Jewish circles-in particular early Jewish mystical circles-maintained and revived it with the archangel "Metatron," a controversial figure whose very existence is questioned and fiercely debated by the rabbis of the Babylonian Talmud. This book was originally published in Germany by C.H. Beck Verlag in 2016"--

Arguing with God

Arguing with God PDF

Author: Anson Laytner

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 0765760258

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As an old proverb puts it, "Two Jews, three opinions." In the long, rich, tumultuous history of the Jewish people, this characteristic contentiousness has often been extended even unto Heaven. Arguing with God is a highly original and utterly absorbing study that skates along the edge of this theological thin ice--at times verging dangerously close to blasphemy--yet also a source of some of the most poignant and deeply soulful expressions of human anguish and yearning. The name Israel literally denotes one who "wrestles with God." And, from Jacob's battle with the angel to Elie Wiesel's haunting questions about the Holocaust that hang in the air like still smoke over our own age, Rabbi Laytner admirably details Judaism's rich and pervasive tradition of calling God to task over human suffering and experienced injustice. It is a tradition that originated in the biblical period itself. Abraham, Moses, Elijah, and others all petitioned for divine intervention in their lives, or appealed forcefully to God to alter His proposed decree. Other biblical arguments focused on personal or communal suffering and anger: Jeremiah, Job, and certain Psalms and Lamentations. Rabbi Laytner delves beneath the surface of these "blasphemies" and reveals how they implicitly helped to refute the claims of opponent religions and advance Jewish doctrines and teachings.

Finding God

Finding God PDF

Author: Rifat Sonsino

Publisher: Jason Aronson Incorporated

Published: 1986

Total Pages: 140

ISBN-13: 9780876680155

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"This is a book about God, specifically about the different ways Jews have spoken of God throughout history. In its examination of 4,000 years of Jewish thought, it presents the broad spectrum of theological opinions that have been explored and affirmed by great Jewish thinkers, ancient and modern." "Many Jews today avoid speaking about God. Unable to accept the traditional notions presented to them as authoritative, they often turn to other faiths or cults that offer the possibility of spiritual expression more in keeping with their personal God concept. Unaware of the variety within Judaism, they abandon their religious community in the mistaken impression that their longing for God cannot be satisfied within the faith of their ancestors." "In this book, the authors skillfully present ten distinct Jewish theological perspectives, each of which has something to say to us today about our lives as individuals and as Jews. Each grapples with the following crucial questions: What is God? Is there more than one God? What is God's name? How can we know God? What is God's relationship to the world? Does God have a special relationship with the Jewish people? What does God "want" from us? How does God relate to me? Why is there evil in the world?" ""If we make it possible for one Jew to reclaim his or her Jewish spiritual identity," the authors write, "if we help others to begin to talk about God without ambivalence or embarrassment, if we serve as a catalyst for further study of these and other Jewish thinkers, we will consider our work worthwhile.""--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Essential Judaism: Updated Edition

Essential Judaism: Updated Edition PDF

Author: George Robinson

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2016-04-12

Total Pages: 704

ISBN-13: 1501117750

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An award-winning journalist tells you everything you need to know about being Jewish in this user-friendly guide that explains not only what Jews do and believe, but why.

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