In the fourteenth century a controversy arose in the Eastern empire between the Eastern Orthodox Theologian Gregory Palamas and a philosopher and monk from Calabria in southern Italy by the name of Barlaam. Barlaam was working on the problem of union between the Roman and Byzantine churches in the 1330s and actually acted as the representative of the Orthodox church. In his discussions, in which he repudiated the use of filioque (the addition to the Creed of the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son), he argued for the unknowable and unapproachable nature of God. Gregory did not take kindly to what he perceived to be agnostic tendencies in Barlaam's thought, and he wrote a treatise about the procession of the Holy Spirit. However, it was particularly Barlaam's later attack on the hesychasts, a certain group of Orthodox monks, that led to a bitter debate between Gregory and Barlaam. Several basic issues were involved, centering on man's knowledge of God. The ideas that were defined in the debate by Palamas became crucial for the future of Eastern Orthodox thought.

Addresses the implications of a document found in the Archivio di Stato di Siena which affirms a connection between Farinata degli Uberti, a Florentine conspicuously encountered by Dante the pilgrim in Inferno 10, and the Sienese Ghibellines with whom he and his fellow Florentine Ghibellines joined, in an alliance which produced the Sienese victory at the battle of Montaperti in 1260.

Dante From Two Perspectives: The Sienese Connection is the 15th in a series of publications occasioned by the annual Bernardo Lecture at the Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies (CEMERS) at Binghamton University. This series offers public lectures which have been given by distinguished medieval and Renaissance scholars on topics and figures representative of these two important historical, religious and intellectual periods.

In Dante From Two Perspectives, Cook and Herzman start from the perspective provided by several decades of collaboration in which they have combined the two disciplines of History and Literature in their teaching and writing about Dante, and the perspective that several decades of living, studying, and teaching in Siena have given to their understanding of Dante and the Commedia. They attempt to deal in a formal way with the implications of a document found in the Archivio di Stato di Siena which affirms a connection between Farinata degli Uberti, a Florentine conspicuously encountered by Dante the pilgrim in Inferno 10, and the Sienese Ghibellines with whom he and his fellow Florentine Ghibellines joined, in an alliance which produced the Sienese victory at the battle of Montaperti in 1260.

In Boccacio's Decameron, Cervigni sees a parodic echo of the circles of Dante's Divine Comedy, and asks whether Bocaccio envisions the voyage of the brigata as similar to Dante the Pilgrim's journey toward the center, first the abysmal center of Lucifer, then towards the highest center, God.

From Divine to Human is the sixteenth in a series of publications occasioned by the annual Bernardo Lecture at the Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies (CEMERS) at Binghamton University. This series offers public lectures which have been given by distinguished medieval and Renaissance scholars on topics and figures representative of these two important historical, religious, and intellectual periods.

Presents parts of the Judaic tradition of wisdom, concentrating on the oral part of the Torah, represented by the documents of law and scriptural exegesis.

Out of the treasures of the religion set forth by the Torah, the religion world know as Judaism, come insights into the human condition-truths for the well-considered life-that everyone may share. Centuries of reflection upon the meaning of everyday events, the outcome of folly, and the reward of wisdom in ordinary affairs have constituted a long period of tradition. Guided by the Torah, the ancient Judaic sages wrote down what they had learned out of the past and observed for themselves, setting forth this wisdom over time.

Presented here are parts of the Judaic tradition of wisdom, concentrating on the oral part of the Torah, represented by the documents of law and scriptural exegesis, the Talmud of Babylonia and Midrash compilations, respectively. The Talmud (encompassing both law and scriptural exegesis, halakhah and aggadah) is one of the great classical writings of human civilization-enduring, influential, nourishing.

Explores the history of how the Eden story in Genesis has been understood.

The essays contained in this volume constitute, not a continuous narrative of the history of how the Eden story in Genesis has been understood, but rather a series of snapshots taken at different moments in that history. They include examples of Christian, Jewish, and Islamic interpretations of Genesis in different periods, places and contexts. They address popular movements, learned exegesis, literary appropriations and modern theology and philosophy. They move from antiquity to the twentieth century, and span a spectrum from orthodox to heterodox interpretations of the Eden narrative.

Explores the interpretive problems, complexities, and legacies of Schopenhauer's encounter with ancient India.

Schopenhauer, perhaps more than any other Western philosopher, has been associated with Asian, and specifically Indian philosophy. The problem in the last 150 years of commentarial literature has been assessing what his relationship to Indian thought was. Both European and Indian scholars have vacillated over the years from great confidence that Schopenhauer's system was inspired by and even representative of classical Indian thought to a concurrence that Schopenhauer's knowledge of pre-systematic Hinduism and Buddhism was superficial and his invoking of their ideas was meant to reflect ideas and cultural presuppositions that were his own.

The Veil of Maya explores the interpretive problems, complexities, and legacies of Schopenhauer's encounter with ancient India. It sets out to determine exactly to what degree the formation of Schopenhauer's system was influenced by his knowledge of Indian philosophy, exposes his Eurocentric prejudices and reactions to India, as well as details how his understanding of the concept of maya profoundly affected his theories of knowledge, metaphysics and ethics. This study will challenge us to rethink both the dangers and the possibilities of cross-cultural philosophical reflection.

Examines the effects of the Crusades from a variety of perspectives.

The Crusades examines how the Crusades affected peoples and terrains; agriculture, art, and archeology; military and urban architecture; literature and music; and the attitudes of the Christian West towards the Muslim East and vice versa. In researching it, a work in progress even today, it is imperative to keep in mind the fact that one is dealing with an event in history where the right exists side by side with the wrong; the good with the bad; the beautiful with the ugly; charity, generosity, and nobility with cruelty, selfishness, and treachery-a task which is, for the historian, as difficult as working on the Holocaust while listening to Wagner.

Addresses Jacoff's own discomfort with Dante's reiteration of the deicide charge against the Jews in Paradiso 7 and elsewhere.

Rachel Jacoff's Dante and the Jewish Question is the thirteenth in a series of publications occasioned by the annual Bernardo Lecture at the Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies (CEMERS) at Binghamton University. This series offers public lectures which have been given by distinguished medieval and Renaissance scholars on topics and figures representative of these two important historical, religious, and intellectual periods.

Dante and the Jewish Question begins with recent expressions of discomfort that two distinguished medievalists have noted in their relationship to texts that are at once beloved but also pernicious in their propagation of misogynistic and anti-Semitic clichés. This essay addresses Jacoff's own discomfort with Dante's reiteration of the deicide charge against the Jews in Paradiso 7 and elsewhere. It explores Dante's divergence from his major source, St. Anselm's own complex relationship of the medieval Church to the Jews in the thirteenth century and some of the theories that have been proposed by historians for the increasing sense of danger the Church manifests in this period. It concludes with a discussion of the issues at state in teaching such issues and their pertinence to our own historical moment.

Examines Avicenna's phenomenological considerations of the question of being.

The Phenomenological Quest between Avicenna and Heidegger investigates Avicenna's (Ibn Sina's; 980-1037) ontological, epistemological, mystic, and linguistic accounts of being while at the same time accounting for Martin Heidegger's critique of the history of metaphysics. This investigation constitutes one of the first elaborate examinations of Avicenna's phenomenological considerations of the question of being. The consideration of Avicenna's philosophical works has been mainly conducted through primary Arabic medieval texts that have not yet been translated into English, French, or German, nor sufficiently addressed by Western scholarship.

Martin Heidegger claims that the history of metaphysics is the history of the oblivion of being while holding that his fundamental ontology presents a genuine phenomenological account that attempts to overcome metaphysics. However, Avicenna's philosophical works do testify to the emergence of a phenomenological philosophical tradition that took the question of being to be the most central question of philosophical investigations. This Avicennian philosophical heritage grounded subsequent developments that attested to the rise of a new strain in ontology that overcomes substance and subject based ontology while being characterized by salient phenomenological dimensions. To sum up, Avicenna's philosophical accounts of being present phenomenological dimensions in ontology that offer alternative phenomenological methods of investigation in ontology that would contribute to the renewal of philosophy in general, and ontology and metaphysics in particular.

The thirty-fourth volume published on this foundation.

The deed of gift declares that the object of this foundation is not the promotion of scientific investigation and discovery, but rather the assimilation and interpretation of that which has been or shall be hereafter discovered, and its application to human welfare, especially by the building of the truths of science and philosophy into the structure of a broadened and purified religion. The founder believes that such a religion will greatly stimulate intelligent effort for the improvement of human conditions and the advancement of the race in strength and excellence of character. To this end it is desired that a series of lectures given by men eminent in their respective departments, on ethics, the history of civilization and religion, biblical research, all sciences and branches of knowledge which have an important bearing on the subject, all the great laws of nature, especially of evolution... also such interpretations of literature and sociology as are in accord with the spirit of this foundation, to the end that the Christian spirit may be nurtured in the fullest light of the world's knowledge and that mankind may be helped to attain its highest possible welfare and happiness upon this earth. The present work constitutes the thirty-fourth volume published on this foundation.

The main portion of this book is a translation of an Arabic work extolling the person and mission of Jesus, whose life and teachings form the foundation of the Christian faith. That its author was a Muslim, and one who wrote several other books in defense of his own faith, may seem strange for Christian readers who know little about Islam. Yet Muslim readers will hardly find this remarkable. In concert with their holy book, the Qur'an, Muslims have consistently regarded Jesus as one of the most esteemed of a long line of prophets. Like most Christians, they believe that he was born of the Virgin Mary, performed many miracles, and most importantly, was called by God to be the bearer of divine revelation to the Jews. This book virtually ignores the Islamic literature about Jesus, and instead draws almost exclusively from the New Testament, especially the four Gospels.

Explores the canon of Rabbinic literature.

Rabbinic literature in its formative age, from the Mishnah through the Bavli, ca. 100-600 c.e., is comprised by documents that relate to one another in three ways. First, they are autonomous and self-contained; second, they are connected with one another; and third, they are continuous with one another. Some point to the connections, in the form of parallel versions of sayings or stories, as evidence against the theory that the documents possess integrity.

Volume Three reprises Neusner's The Peripatetic Saying: The Problem of the Thrice-Told-Tale in Talmudic Literature (Chico, 1985; Scholars Press for Brown Judaic Studies). It responds to critics of the documentary reading of the canonical documents of Rabbinic Judaism in the formative age who make much of the variations in manuscript readings of sayings and stories. These variations are so different from one another that, so the critics maintain, they call into question the very conception of a document. Each manuscript (let alone each compilation) has its own representation of a given compilation; there are no determinate documents. That is because the documentary program of rhetoric, topic, and logic of coherent discourse makes no impact on sayings or stories that circulate beyond the limits of any one document. All we have are diverse versions of we-know-not what. For the sample covered in these pages, claims that parallels move from document to document vastly exaggerate the range of variation. The variant readings are paltry and pointless, just like the parallels to which Volumes One and Two are devoted.

Rabbinic literature is viewed here as an expression of the concepts of the Rabbis, creative concepts that canalized their thinking. This book is concerned chiefly with the wider aspects of the rabbinic mind. It discusses such problems as the transmission of social values, the integration of the self, and the relation of the self to society. It treats such topics as the category of significance, indeterminacy of belief, normal mysticism, the commonplace and the holy, rabbinic dogma, and the relation of rabbinic thought to philosophy. The sources on which these discussions are based are drawn from both the Haggadah and the Halakah.

Explores Western and Muslim scholarship on multiple aspects of the Twelver Shi'ite tradition.

Shi'ite Heritage brings together Western and Muslim scholarship on multiple aspects of the Twelver Shi'ite tradition, including history, authority, jurisprudence, ritual, and interactions with the Sunnite majority. Nearly half of the two dozen essays included have been translated from Arabic or Persian into English in collaboration with the authors. Both modern views and the classical background are treated in this collection, and each section is introduced in a prefatory essay.

Translations and commentaries on Greek philosophy.

Discoveries in Telford's translations and commentaries on Greek philosophy are discoveries so basic and so important as to drastically change the significance of almost everything the Greeks said. These discoveries were made in two areas, Greek linguistics and philosophic and scientific procedure, which, until one man had become skilled in both, had never before impacted on each other. Telford discovered that what the Greeks tried to say was obscured by the modern projection, upon both their language and their works, of precisely the reductive way of thinking that their philosophy was designed to correct.

Above all, Telford shows the Greeks were well aware of the procedures they used, while today there are few who even understand the relevance of procedure to science or philosophy. And it is procedure, far more than the discoveries dependent upon it, that constitutes not only the greatest contribution of the Greeks, but the knowledge from which modern science might most sensibly profit. Moreover, Telford's explanation of the nature of procedure in all science, the variety of ways in which inquiry may be accomplished, is by far the most complete to be found.

Examines the transitions to democracy in Africa.

What conditions motivate a transition to democracy? Can the dynamics of a transition influence its outcome? Under what circumstances has democracy been consolidated in Africa? This trilogy of questions has become necessary in light of the current democratic wave engulfing Africa and the rest of the world. In examining the conditions that initiate democratic transitions, this book investigates the circumstances under which democracy movements have operated between 1980 and 1990. It concludes that, contrary to dominant democratic theory, the transitions to democracy in Africa have occurred under declining levels of development. With regard to transitions, the book recognizes that they have their own dynamics. Two main types of transitions are discerned: top-down and bottom-up. The book argues that in spite of the restrictive nature of top-down transitions, they offer a better opportunity for democratic consolidation because of the consensus between elites of the pro-democracy regime and their counterparts in the authoritarian regime, a condition that is normally absent under bottom-up transitions.

Finally, relying on the cases of consolidated democracies, the book derives an African democracy model. The model delineates five main conditions that facilitate democratic consolidation, including good leadership, relevant political institutions, external support, civic space, and a reasonable level of development. It cautions, however, that these are not sufficient conditions, nor are all of them necessary. Since countries have unique historical circumstances, specific countries will have to combine conditions in the model that are relevant to that society to consolidate its democracy. The right combination will depend on the specific needs of the individual country.

Explores the philosophical theology of Alfred North Whitehead.

This study focuses on the philosophical theology of Alfred North Whitehead. Whitehead follows the tradition of the great rationalists in depicting a deity, which is embedded in the philosophical structure of the cosmos. He provides one of the most consistent models of the deity in our philosophical tradition. Contemporary theologians, such as John B. Cobb Jr. and Schubert M. Orden, turn to Whitehead for support of their own theories. This work is also an attempt to explicate and critically analyze their contribution toward formulating a doctrine of God.

Selected papers from the Dowling College Mediterranean Conference.

The aim of this series is to trace out the main lines of intellectual, cultural, and scientific development from which emerge the fundamental features of our contemporary perspectives on the Mediterranean.

The study of the Masorah to Onqelos, when undertaken in constant reference to textually reliable sources of the targum, enables one to appreciate just how scrupulous and systematic this ancient translation is. The many levels of consciousness and sensitivity to both meaning and form that are reflected in Onqelos are indeed an amazing discovery to the modern scholar, who has only in recent decades been weaned off index cards, and instead has come to rely even more heavily upon concordances and computerized databases. Here is an ancient translation that applies the principles of translational convergence and divergence, as simultaneously demanded by several concentric contexts. The meturgeman of Onqelos displays a keen ear for the most immediate and superficial context, namely, the simple sense of the original Hebrew biblical text. At the same time, his mind reverberates with centuries of traditional rabbinic interpretation, which he integrates into the seemingly innocent and literal translation. Beyond that, he does not lose sense of the living context for which he is creating his work--the congregation of simple worshippers in the Sabbath synagogue, whose religious practice and faith he instructs by conveying to them the biblical message both in their vernacular and at their assumed level of understanding. The Masorah texts make it clear that we are dealing with a conscious activity and process on the part of the earlier translator. In fact, many of the translational techniques that we have rediscovered in recent years were fully known and explicity expressed in these masoretic notes and lists compiled hundreds of years ago. Whereas the Masorah to the MT notes infrequent vocabulary and grammatical forms in order to prevent their disappearance at the hands of later copyists, the Masorah to the targum is mostly interested in the preservation of the translational choices made by the earlier meturgeman.

The autobiography of painter and Binghamton University professor Dr. Irving Zupnick, who served in Panama in World War II, then studied Art History at Columbia Teachers College in the 1950s.