El rigor y la gloria: el Juicio Final y su repercusión en la modernidad

This work presents a historical journey on the doctrine of the Last Judgment, starting from its antecedents in ancient Judaism, its rise in the millennial ideology of the Middle Ages, until reaching certain perspectives of its repercussion in Modernity. The Final Judgment forms a doctrine that combines the image of God as a rigorous judge who executes the Law, applying the punishments or prizes related to the works carried out in life, with the vision of a glorious king who will manifest his messianic kingdom in which the human beings will be saved by grace of divine intervention.

Celsus in his World

Celsus penned the earliest known detailed attack upon Christianity. While his identity is disputed and his anti-Christian treatise, entitled the True Word, has been exclusively transmitted through the hands of the great Christian scholar Origen, he remains an intriguing figure. In this interdisciplinary volume, which brings together ancient philosophers, specialists in Greek literature, and historians of early Christianity and of ancient Judaism, Celsus is situated within the cultural, philosophical, religious and political world from which he emerged. While his work is ostensibly an attack upon Christianity, it is also the defence of a world in which Celsus passionately believed. It is the unique contribution of this volume to give voice to the many dimensions of that world in a way that will engage a variety of scholars interested in late antiquity and the histories of Christianity, Judaism and Greek thought.

The separation between ethics and politics: Max Weber on ancient Judaism and modernity

For Max Weber, modernity is characterized by a tragic conflict among value spheres, each claiming to possess the ‘true meaning’ of human life. In particular, Weber argues that while the political sphere is dominated by the unifying, exclusionary, power-driven, and war-prone nation state, the ethical sphere is characterized by the universalization of individually based, deontological norms. For Weber, I argue, the modern separation between the ethical and political spheres originates in ancient Judaism. His work on Judaism, mostly neglected by political theorists, describes the emergence of politics as an autonomous, naturalistic sphere with the establishment of kingship. Biblical prophets, simultaneously, were the inventors of an idealistic, mulish, universal ethics Weber termed the ‘ethics of ultimate ends’. Thus, against the Greek model harmonizing ethics and politics, Judaism invented an antagonistic model of the two. This Jewish imagination lay dormant for almost two millennia but returned to the stage in secularized modernity.

Samaritans, Biblical Studies, and Ancient Judaism: Recent Trends

In this article, I survey recent trends in Samaritan studies, with a particular focus on biblical studies and the interactions of Samaritan Israelites with other religious traditions. While remaining entrenched in discussion of the origins of Samaritans, scholars have firmly embraced the idea of processual Samaritan identity, emerging over time and in a non-genealogical sense alongside and interwoven with Judean/Jewish self-definition. Extensive work clusters, in particular, at three nodes: the study of Hebrew-language scriptures, archaeological excavations, and the remodelling of identity-production in a constructivist form. I also sketch out the directions in which the field is moving, with growing and productive emphasis on Aramaic, Arabic, and late antiquity. Finally, I identify some of the quirks of Samaritan studies as it might be encountered, in particular a continued effort to salvage Samaritans for biblical studies, somewhat intermittent interdisciplinarity, and practices of engagement with Samaritan Israelites themselves.

The Covenant Renewal Ceremony as the Main Function of Qumran

Unlike any other group or philosophy in ancient Judaism, the yaḥad sect obliged all members of the sect to leave their places of residence all over the country and gather in the sect’s central site to participate in a special annual ceremony of renewal of the covenant between God and each of the members. The increase of the communities that composed the sect and their spread over the entire country during the first century BCE required the development of the appropriate infrastructure for hosting this annual gathering at Qumran. Consequently, the hosting of the gathering became the main function of the site, and the southern esplanade with the buildings surrounding it became the epicenter of the site.