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An incomparable interdisciplinary study of the history of Judah

Experts from a variety of disciplines examine the history of Judah during the seventh century BCE, the last century of the kingdom’s existence. This important era is well defined historically and archaeologically beginning with the destruction layers left behind by Sennacherib’s Assyrian campaign (701 BCE) and ending with levels of destruction resulting from Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonian campaign (588-586 BCE). Eleven essays develop the current ongoing discussion about Judah during this period and extend the debate to include further important insights in the fields of archaeology, history, cult, and the interpretation of Old Testament texts.

Features

• A new chronological frame for the Iron Age IIB-IIC
• Close examinations of archaeology, texts, and traditions related to the reigns of Hezekiah, Manasseh, and Josiah
• An evaluation of the religious, cultic, and political landscape
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Mormon prophet John Taylor’s life is usually recounted as a series of anecdotes: singing hymns in Carthage Jail before a mob assassinated Joseph and Hyrum Smith, Taylor’s life spared when, according to myth, his pocketwatch stopped a bullet; his practice of polygamy, including taking a wife fifty years his junior while on the run as a fugitive from federal marshals; and his 1886 revelation that said God would not revoke the law of plural marriage, “for it is everlasting,” a revelation whose authenticity was questioned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for over a century but became the foundational text for breakaway sects continuing the practice of polygamy. Yet there was more to Taylor than his role in the martyrdom, his plural wives, his clashes with the federal government, and the legacy of fundamentalist Mormonism.

Taylor spent his first two decades in his home country of England before immigrating to Canada. His first wife, Leonora, was initially more interested when missionaries knocked on their door. But once he committed to the church, John Taylor was unflappable in his faith and zealous in his dedication. The Taylors moved from Toronto to Ohio, then to Missouri, and finally to Illinois as they followed their faith and their prophet Joseph Smith. John became an apostle in 1838 and a publisher thereafter, printing church newspapers. He followed Brigham Young to the Salt Lake Valley, where he became a prominent church and political leader for decades before finally ascending to the head of the faith in 1880.

In this timeless biography, Samuel W. Taylor weaves the threads of his grandfather’s life into a rich tapestry. Drawing on letters, speeches, diaries, and reminiscences, a well-rounded and riveting portrait of the third Mormon prophet comes into focus. A professional writer by trade, Samuel Taylor was uniquely suited to tell this story—and what a story it is.

The central contention of the “New Atheism” of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens is that there has for several centuries been a war between science and religion, that religion has been steadily losing that war, and that at this point in human history a completely secular scientific account of the world has been worked out in such thorough and convincing detail that there is no longer any reason why a rational and educated person should find the claims of any religion the least bit worthy of attention.

But as Edward Feser argues inThe Last Superstition, in fact there is not, and never has been, any war between science and religion at all. There has instead been a conflict between two entirely philosophical conceptions of the natural order: on the one hand, the classical “teleological” vision of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas, on which purpose or goal-directedness is as inherent a feature of the physical world as mass or electric charge; and the modern “mechanical” vision of Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, and Hume, according to which the physical world is comprised of nothing more than purposeless, meaningless particles in motion. As it happens, on the classical teleological picture, the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and the natural-law conception of morality are rationally unavoidable. Modern atheism and secularism have thus always crucially depended for their rational credentials on the insinuation that the modern, mechanical picture of the world has somehow been established by science. Yet this modern “mechanical” picture has never been established by science, and cannot be, for it is not a scientific theory in the first place but merely a philosophical interpretation of science. Moreover, as Feser shows, the philosophical arguments in its favor given by the early modern philosophers were notable only for being surprisingly weak. The true reasons for its popularity were then, and are now, primarily political: It was a tool by which the intellectual foundations of ecclesiastical authority could be undermined and the way opened toward a new secular and liberal social order oriented toward commerce and technology. So as to further these political ends, it was simply stipulated, by fiat as it were, that no theory inconsistent with the mechanical picture of the world would be allowed to count as “scientific.” As the centuries have worn on and historical memory has dimmed, this act of dogmatic stipulation has falsely come to be remembered as a “discovery.”

However, not only is this modern philosophical picture rationally unfounded, it is demonstrably false. For the “mechanical” conception of the natural world, when worked out consistently, absurdly entails that rationality, and indeed the human mind itself, are illusory. The so-called “scientific worldview” championed by the New Atheists thus inevitably undermines its own rational foundations; and into the bargain (and contrary to the moralistic posturing of the New Atheists) it undermines the foundations of any possible morality as well. By contrast, and as The Last Superstition demonstrates, the classical teleological picture of nature can be seen to find powerful confirmation in developments from contemporary philosophy, biology, and physics; moreover, morality and reason itself cannot possibly be made sense of apart from it. The teleological vision of the ancients and medievals is thereby rationally vindicated – and with it the religious worldview they based upon it.

This volume presents a penetrating interview and sixteen essays that explore key intersections of medieval religion and philosophy. With characteristic erudition and insight, RémiBrague focuses less on individual Christian, Jewish, and Muslim thinkers than on their relationships with one another. Their disparate philosophical worlds, Brague shows, were grounded in different models of revelation that engendered divergent interpretations of the ancient Greek sources they held in common. So, despite striking similarities in their solutions for the philosophical problems they all faced, intellectuals in each theological tradition often viewed the others’ ideas with skepticism, if not disdain. Brague’s portrayal of this misunderstood age brings to life not only its philosophical and theological nuances, but also lessons for our own time.

A Brill classic now in paperback from SBL Press

This critical edition of the Life of Adam and Eve in Greek is based on all available manuscripts. In the introduction the history of previous research is summarized, and the extant manuscripts are presented. Next comes a description of the grammatical characteristics of the manuscripts’ texts, followed by a detailed study of the genealogical relationships between them, resulting in a reconstruction of the writing’s history of transmission in Greek. On the basis of all this information, the Greek text of the Life of Adam and Eve in its earliest attainable stage, is established.

Features:

• Illustrations of textual relationships and variants
• Indices for subjects, passages, words in the text, variants, and additions and revisions
Full critical apparatus with relevant evidence from the manuscripts