This volume collects thirty essays by Shaye J.D. Cohen. First published between 1980 and 2006, these essays deal with a wide variety of themes and texts: Jewish Hellenism; Josephus; the Synagogue; Conversion to Judaism; Blood and Impurity; the boundary between Judaism and Christianity. What unites them is their philological orientation. Many of these essays are close studies of obscure passages in Jewish and Christian texts. The essays are united too by their common assumption that the ancient world was a single cultural continuum; that ancient Judaism, in all its expressions and varieties, was a Hellenism; and that texts written in Hebrew share a world of discourse with those written in Greek. Many of these essays are well-known and have been much discussed in contemporary scholarship. Among these are: The Significance of Yavneh (the title essay), Patriarchs and Scholarchs, Masada: Literary Tradition, Archaeological Remains, and the Credibility of Josephus, Epigraphical Rabbis, The Conversion of Antoninus, Menstruants and the Sacred in Judaism and Christianity, and A Brief History of Jewish Circumcision Blood.

Here, at last, are the long-awaited Sather Classical Lectures of the great historian Arnaldo Momigliano, In a masterly survey of the origins of ancient historiography, Momigliano captures those features of an ancient historian's work that not only gave it importance in its own day but also encouraged imitation and exploitation in later centuries. He reveals the extent to which Greek, Persian, and Jewish historians influenced the Western historiographic tradition, and then goes on to examine the first Roman historians and the emergence of national history. In the course of his exposition, he traces the development of antiquarian studies as distinctive branch of historical research from antiquity to the modern period, discusses the place of Tacitus in historical thought, and explores the way in which ecclesiastical historiography has developed a tradition of its own. All these lectures illustrate Momigliano's unrivaled ability to combine the study of classical texts and the history of classical scholarship. First delivered in 1962, the lectures were revised during the next fifteen years and then held for annotation that was never completed. They are now published from the author's manuscripts, collated and checked by Momigliano's literary executor, Anne Marie Meyer, of the Warburg Institute, with a foreword by Riccardo Di Donato, of the University of Pisa. The text is printed as the author left it. Sather Classical Lectures, 54

Music and religion have, throughout history, walked hand in hand. In the rites and rituals of small tribal religions, great world religions, and more recent New-Age and neo-heathen movements, different kinds of music have been used to celebrate the gods, express belief and help believers get in contact with the divine. This innovative book focuses on how mainstream and counter-cultural groups use religion and music to negotiate the challenges of modernisation and globalisation in the European context: a region under-explored by existing literature on the subject. With its internal ethnic diversity, ever-expanding borders and increasing differentiation, Europe has undergone massive dislocation in recent years. The authors show that, in the midst of such change, rock, pop and dance music may in their various forms be used by their practitioners as resources for new kinds of spiritual and religious identification, even as these forms are used as symbols of the deficiencies of secular society. Focusing on Christianity, Judaism, Islam and New Religious Movements, the book explores such topics as Norwegian Black Metal and Neo-paganism, contemporary Jewish Music in the UK, the French hip hop scene, the musical thinking of Muslim convert Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and European dance music culture. It offers an ideal introduction to leading-edge thinking at the exciting interface of 'music and religion'.

Text: English, German