This chapter makes a case for using the Medina I verse counting system for stylometric analysis of the Qur’an rather than the conventional Kufan system. It delineates likely suras of the early Meccan Qur’an according to mean verse length (MVL), and it estimates a timeline for revelation.

In this chapter, we will expand our prophetic coverage, exploring the books of Jeremiah, Obadiah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Ezekiel, and the second portion of Isaiah. Lengthy books like Jeremiah and Ezekiel are considered “major,” whereas the shorter books, such as the single-chapter Obadiah, are deemed “minor prophets.” Some books include personal details about the prophet, whereas others like Nahum are virtually devoid of such information. However, all of these writing prophets articulated Yahweh’s messages in the seventh century bceand through the crises leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 bceand the ensuing exile.

We will note how the traumatic events of Israel’s changing world impacted the urgency, tone, and even theological emphases of the prophets. For example, Second Isaiah contains one of the most explicit Old Testament statements of monotheism. In Ezekiel, we will observe the first focus on the role of individual responsibility for sin, along with an especially personal tone by means of the first-person voice. Finally, we will encounter the concept of the “Day of the Lord,” which represents Israel’s move toward eschatology.

Analytic philosophy of religion is a vibrant area of inquiry, but it has generally focused on generic forms of theism or on Christianity. David Shatz here offers a new and fresh approach to the field in a wide-ranging and engaging introduction to the analytic philosophy of religion from the perspective of Judaism. Exploring classical Jewish texts about philosophical topics in light of the concepts and arguments at the heart of analytic philosophy, he demonstrates how each tradition illuminates the other, yielding a deeper understanding of both Jewish sources and general philosophical issues. Shatz also advances growing efforts to imagine Jewish philosophy not only as an engrossing, invaluable part of Jewish intellectual history but also as a creative, constructive enterprise that mines the methods and literature of contemporary philosophy. His book offers new pathways to think deeply about God, evil, morality, freedom, ethics, and religious diversity, among other topics.

This chapter considers the next seven suras by MVL. These units feature increased reference to God’s retribution in human history; clarification that jinn and demons are unable to access the heavenly realm, and that the message is brought down by God’s spirit; exhortations for Muhammad to be patient since repentance may yet occur among the disbelievers; evidence of a believer community in the process of formation; signs of mixed feelings in the Messenger for his doomed kin; and indications about possible written recording of suras.

This chapter deals with five subsequent suras by MVL and three others apparently revealed at this stage. The chapter discusses Qur’anic self-referentiality, Muhammad’s leadership role, Arabic letters and vocative forms, Q 54 in conjunction with an astronomical prodigy of 614 CE, the sack of Jerusalem, Q 1 and 112 and the framing of the text, and the proclamation of Q 15 in coincidence with a heightening expectation of the world’s end.

In the Extra Help, you’ll keep learning how to tackle any Greek sentence, including the next ‘branch’: the adjective. This chapter includes some extra work for consolidation, for those who have a mid-term break.

The Extra Help covers different Greek verb ‘tenses’, showing you some patterns that will save you time in the long run, and will help you relate every stage of parsing a verb to the information the verb communicates. In the Extra Material, you’ll discover some major uses of the imperfect tense.

This chapter explores the types of people drawn to extreme right activism, and stresses there is no single class or type of person the movement appeals to. Rather, it suggests the extreme right offers an alternate community bound by an emotional regime in which a diverse range of people with shared grievances can feel connected to a wider community of activism. It draws on ethnographic analyses of extreme right groups, including the National Front, the British National Party and the English Defence League. It also argues that, while these activists demonstrate genuine political concerns that should be listened to, it is highly problematic to present them as reflective of the communities they are active in. The extreme right’s activists are outliers, not typical of their communities.

This chapter illustrates how a biblical text can bring certain philosophical problems to the fore, especially when attention is paid to its literary techniques. Such techniques are used in midrashic interpretations but have been put to extensive use by contemporary biblical scholars like Robert Alter. The story in Genesis of Joseph and his brothers provides a dramatic rendition of a philosophical problem: the seeming opposition between God’s control of history and human free will. I show how the problem is expressed through the narrative; discuss how a variety of midrashim and biblical exegeses address the problem; and relate the issue at hand to work by analytic philosophers such as Harry Frankfurt, Thomas Flint, and Peter Van Inwagen.

This chapter investigates the social dimension of individuality in Works of Love with a particular focus on the issue of human equality in the context of Kierkegaard’s contemporary age. The first part examines Kierkegaard’s critique in A Literary Review of the dominance of a numerical idea of equality in the modern age. This diagnosis forms the background for examining in the second part his radical ethical idea of neighbor love as the true human equality developed in Works of Love. The third part examines Kierkegaard’s criticism of the contemporary political struggle for social equality in Works of Love and in his journal observations on the communist idea of equality. I seek to bring out both strengths and weaknesses in Kierkegaard’s approach to human equality in a critical discussion of Kierkegaard’s example of a disregarded poor charwoman and his arguments against the political struggle for social equality.

Deals with divine actions: are events in the world caused by divine interventions or by laws of nature? If both, which dominates? While some Jewish thinkers maintain that God is the only cause of anything, and that belief in other causes is a form of paganism or idolatry, others surprisingly endorse some form of naturalism (the idea that events in the world are brought about by natural causes). In the chapter I explore, through Jewish texts reasons that have been used to ground a theistic naturalist position.

Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) wrote about love throughout his brief but productive philosophical career. His most extended and focused treatment of this central topic is 1847’s two-part series of “deliberations” entitled Works of Love (Kjerlighedens Gjerninger). Works of Love had a controversial reception. Despite Kierkegaard’s specific intention that this book correct the impression he had left with readers that he did “not know anything about the social aspect of things” (KJN 4, NB:118/SKS 20, 86), critics nevertheless interpreted the text as being solipsistic, bitter, and hectoring. Notoriously panned by weighty judges, Works of Love was condemned by Theodor Adorno as “nothing less than the annihilation of love and the installment of sinister domination.” K. E. Løgstrup famously indicted the text as “a brilliantly thought out system of safeguards against being forced into a close relationship with other people.” Martin Buber similarly read Works of Love as precisely the opposite of a contribution to the understanding of humanity’s sociality but rather as a rejection of love for others in favor of love for God.