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Uncovers the history of creative adaptation and transformation through a close analysis of the creation of the Sefer Hasidim book.
 
In 1538, a partnership of Jewish silk makers in the city of Bologna published a book entitled Sefer Hasidim, a compendium of rituals, stories, and religious instruction that primarily originated in medieval Franco-Germany. How these men, of Italian and Spanish descent, came to produce a book that would come to shape Ashkenazic culture, and Jewish culture more broadly, over the next four centuries is the basis of this kaleidoscopic study of the history of Hebrew printing in the sixteenth century.
 
During these early years of printing, the classic works of ancient and medieval Hebrew and Jewish literature became widely available to Jewish (and non-Jewish) readers for the first time. Printing, though, was not merely the duplication and distribution of pre-existing manuscripts, it was the creative adaptation and transformation of those manuscripts by printers. Ranging from Catholic Bologna to Protestant Basel to the Jewish heartland of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Joseph A. Skloot uncovers the history of that creativity by examining the first two print editions of Sefer Hasidim. Along the way, he demonstrates how volumes that were long thought to be eternal and unchanging were in fact artifacts of historical agency and contingency, created by and for human beings.
 

Isaiah 24–27, the so-called Isaiah Apocalypse, is often regarded as one of the latest sections added to the book of Isaiah. The formation and interpretation of these chapters are widely recognized as important matters for understanding the compositional history of Isaiah, emerging religious thought in the Persian period, and scribal techniques for late biblical materials. The essays in this volume explore these and other important issues of Isaiah 24–27 in light of the abundant recent research on these chapters. In addition, this volume outlines new directions forward for research on these pivotal chapters and their place in Isaiah and the prophetic literature generally. The contributors are Micaël Bürki, Paul Kang-Kul Cho, Stephen L. Cook, Wilson de A. Cunha, Carol J. Dempsey, Janling Fu, Christopher B. Hays, J. Todd Hibbard, Hyun Chul Paul Kim, Beth Steiner, John T. Willis, Archibald L. H. M. van Wieringen, and Annemarieke van der Woude.

The Friar and the Maya offers a full study and new translation of the Relación de las Cosas de Yucatán (Account of the Things of Yucatan) by a unique set of eminent scholars, created by them over more than a decade from the original manuscript held by the Real Academia de la Historia in Madrid. This critical and careful reading of the Account is long overdue in Maya studies and will forever change how this seminal text is understood and used.
 
For generations, scholars used (and misused) the Account as the sole eyewitness insight into an ancient civilization. It is credited to the sixteenth-century Spanish Franciscan, monastic inquisitor, and bishop Diego de Landa, whose legacy is complex and contested. His extensive writings on Maya culture and history were lost in the seventeenth century, save for the fragment that is the Account, discovered in the nineteenth century, and accorded near-biblical status in the twentieth as the first “ethnography” of the Maya. However, the Account is not authored by Landa alone; it is a compilation of excerpts, many from writings by other Spaniards—a significant revelation made here for the first time.
 
This new translation accurately reflects the style and vocabulary of the original manuscript. It is augmented by a monograph—comprising an introductory chapter, seven essays, and hundreds of notes—that describes, explains, and analyzes the life and times of Diego de Landa, the Account, and the role it has played in the development of modern Maya studies. The Friar and the Maya is an innovative presentation on an important and previously misunderstood primary source.