Skip to main content

Guy G Stroumsa

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Comparative Religion, Emeritus

University of Oxford, Faculty of Theology and Religion, Emeritus

Followers

5,970

Following

287

Public Views

Guy G. Stroumsa is Martin Buber Professor Emeritus of Comparative Religion, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Professor Emeritus of the Study of the Abrahamic Religions, and Emeritus Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford. He is a Member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Zurich. He received the Humboldt Research Award, the Leopold-Lucas Prize, and the Rothschild Prize. He is a Chevalier de l’Ordre du Mérite.

Author of fifteen books and more than one hundred and forty articles, editor or co-editor of twenty-one books. Among his recent publications: Religions d’Abraham: histoires croisées (Geneva, 2017), The Scriptural Universe of Ancient Christianity (Cambridge, Mass, 2016), The Making of the Abrahamic Religions in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2015), A New Science: the Discovery of Religion in the Age of Reason (Cambridge, Mass., 2010), and The End of Sacrifice: Religious Transformations of Late Antiquity (Chicago, 2009; paperback 2012; Original French edition, 2005; also Italian, German and Hebrew translations).

less

Johannes Zachhuber

University of Oxford

Dartmouth College

Martin van Bruinessen

Universiteit Utrecht

Ephraim (Effie) Shoham-Steiner

Ben Gurion University of the Negev

Francesca Gazzano

University of Genova

Bar-Ilan University

The University of Sydney

Jan N . Bremmer

University of Groningen

Boston College

Alexander Skinner

Virtual Centre for Late Antiquity

InterestsView All (16)

Uploads

Festschrift by Guy G Stroumsa

*Scriptures, Sacred Traditions, and Strategies of Religious Subversion: Studies in Discourse with the Work of Guy G. Stroumsa*, eds. Moshe Blidstein, ‎Serge Ruzer, ‎Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018)

Articles & Reviews by Guy G Stroumsa

Guy G. Stroumsa, “The Study of Religion and the Spirit of Orientalism: Cultural Transformations and Scholarly Shifts,” in Hans-Peter Grosshans, ed., Religion and Change: Fourth Annual Conference 2021 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2023): 63-76

Religion and Change, 2023

Like all social institutions, religions constantly change, evolving and transforming themselves. ... more Like all social institutions, religions constantly change, evolving and transforming themselves. Sometimes, when one can speak of brutal transformations and of religious revolutions, this truism is obvious to all.1 But more often, the conatus of religions entails their more or less 'peaceful' evolution. Now, while all religions have a potential for radical transformation in their DNA, they are instinctively more inclined toward conservatism, and the function of their hermeneutical systems, while permitting change when deemed necessary or unavoidable, consists essentially in slowing down the pace of such change, and making sure, it goes unnoticed, or almost unnoticed. Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist who won a Nobel Prize in economics, has shown that we all function with two parallel systems of thought: 'Thinking, Fast and Slow,' as he entitled his book on the topic. Similarly, I propose we identify two alternate patterns of religious change: slow versus fast. Religion and society at large, then, are complementary motors, actors, and objects of change in history. In a permanent dialectical relationship with one another, religion and society are taking turns at initiating change, responding to it, modulating it, and transforming the direction, intensity, and even the very nature of this change. In a recently published book, The Idea of Semitic Monotheism: The Rise and Fall of a Scholarly Myth, I sought to understand some societal dimensions of the idea of Semitic monotheism, an idea coined by Ernest Renan in the mid-19th century and developed in European scholarship in the subsequent decades. This idea was interdependent with both new perceptions of Judaism and Islam and transformed attitudes toward Jews and Muslims. Hence, I tried to highlight various veiled connections between the history of religions, then a growing scholarly discipline, and some deep changes in European societies, related to secularization processes. I shall present a few preliminary reflections on this research here, which, I think, bear directly on the topic of our conference, from a particular but capital angle. It barely needs mentioning that since the early modern Great Discoveries, 1 This text was read (on zoom) as a keynote lecture at the Conference of the European Academy of Religion in Münster on September 1, 2021. I wish to thank Professor Hans-Peter Grosshans for his kind invitation to deliver the lecture. The text is adapted from the introduction to my Guy G.

Guy G. Stroumsa, “Renan, le judaïsme et l’islam: Orientalisme et monothéisme,” in Mara Rescio, et al., eds., Non uno itinere Ebraismi, cristianesimi, modernità: Studi in onore di Mauro Pesce in occasione del suo ottantesimo compleanno [=Humanitas, no. 76] (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2021), 529-538

Tout au long du 19e siècle, la naissance de ce qu'on peut appeler philologia orientalis, et la dé... more Tout au long du 19e siècle, la naissance de ce qu'on peut appeler philologia orientalis, et la découverte des affinités entre le Sanskrit et les langues européennes transformèrent de façon radicale la perception de l'Orient. Le cas d'Ernest Renan est ici emblématique. Renan (1823-1892) est, de loin, la figure centrale de l'histoire des religions en France, et fait partie, au xix e siècle, des savants européens les plus remarquables. Dans L'avenir de la science, un livre de jeunesse qui représente sa réaction aux évènements de 1848, même s'il ne fut publié que deux ans avant sa mort, il écrit: «L'étude comparée des religions, quand elle sera définitivement établie sur la base solide de la critique, formera le plus beau chapitre de l'histoire de l'esprit humain, entre l'histoire des mythologies et l'histoire des philosophies» 1. La figure de Renan est impressionnante: jeune séminariste breton arrivé à Paris de Tréguier, son village natal, il perdit vite la foi, convaincu que l'étude critique de la Bible réfutait l'interprétation catholique des Écritures. Une carrière fulgurante le porta, à trente-sept ans, à la chaire d'hébreu du Collège de France 2. Renan, cependant, ne se satisfaisait pas de sa recherche en philologie sémitique. Il rédigea plusieurs travaux historiques capitaux, des réflexions philosophiques, et même quelques textes littéraires, ainsi que ses mémoires. Sans être politiquement actif, il s'exprima souvent dans l'arène publique, traitant d'un large éventail de sujets. Je pense en particulier à son essai sur l'idée de nation, sans doute son texte le plus célèbre aujourd'hui 3. Bien que Renan se présentât comme étant, fondamentalement, un philologue, c'est manifestement dans une autre clé que celle des biblistes et historiens des religions allemands qu'il s'exprimait. Son travail n'était pas moins technique et méticuleux que le leur, mais il conservait des hori

Guy G. Stroumsa, “Reading Origen in Jerusalem,” Tablet Magazine (26 July 2021)

Reading Origen in Jerusalem A collection of 29 recently discovered homilies by the early Church F... more

Guy G. Stroumsa, “When the Orient Moved East: Judaism and Islam in Nineteenth-Century Scholarship,” in Sarah Stroumsa and Guy G. Stroumsa, eds., Eine dreifältige Schnur: Über Judentum, Christentum, und Islam in Geschichte und Wissenschaft (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020), 126-209

Guy G. Stroumsa, “Afterword: The God of Time and the End of Times,” in Domenico Agostini and Samuel Thrope, eds., The Bundahišn: The Zoroastrian Book of Creation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 195-198

Guy G. Stroumsa, “Do as you’d be done by – Review of ‘The Lost Art of Scripture: Rescuing the Sacred Texts’, by Karen Armstrong,” Times Literary Supplement (TLS) (27 March 2020): 32

Guy G. Stroumsa, “Review of ‘Priest of Nature: The Religious Worlds of Isaac Newton’, by Rob Iliffe,” Journal of Theological Studies, vol. 70, no. 2 (October 2019): 904-905

Guy G. Stroumsa, “Review of ‘Penser la tolérance durant l'antiquité tardive’, by Peter Van Nuffelen,” Journal of Theological Studies, vol. 70, no. 2 (October 2019): 860-861

Guy G. Stroumsa, “Comparer à travers champs? Polythéismes et monothéismes,” ASDIWAL. Revue genevoise d'anthropologie et d'histoire des religions, vol. 14 (2019): 65-71

Guy G. Stroumsa, “History of Religions: The Comparative  Moment,” in Renaud Gagné, Simon Goldhill, and Geoffrey E.R. Lloyd, eds., Regimes of Comparatism: Frameworks of Comparison in History, Religion and Anthropology (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 318-342

Guy G. Stroumsa, “Anquetil Duperron et les origines de la philologie orientale: l’orientalisme est un humanisme,” Asdiwal, vol. 13 (2018): 161-174

Hagit Amirav, Emmanouela Grypeou, and Guy G. Stroumsa, “Foreword and Acknowledgements,” in Apocalypticism and Eschatology in Late Antiquity: Encounters in the Abrahamic Religions, 6th-8th Centuries (Turnhout: Peeters, 2018), VII-XV

图书在版编目( C I P )数据 : Chinese translation of: Guy G. Stroumsa, “Difficult Wisdom: Buber and Levinas on Hebrew Humanism,” Jewish Studies 15 (Shandong University Press, 2018): 14-24

Guy G. Stroumsa, “Open Religion and its Enemies,” in Jonathan Sacks and Simon Burridge, eds., Confronting Religious Violence: A Counternarrative (Baylor University Press, 2018), 59-73, 231-234

Guy G. Stroumsa, “The Duty of Subversion,” in Moshe Blidstein, Serge Ruzer, and Daniel Stoekl Ben Ezra, eds., Scriptures, Sacred Traditions, and Strategies of Religious Subversion: Studies in Discourse with the Work of Guy G. Stroumsa (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018), 275-279

Guy G. Stroumsa, “Tentations du christianisme: Henri Bergson, Simone Weil, Emmanuel Levinas,” in Guy G. Stroumsa, Religions d’Abraham: Histoires croisees (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 2017), 297-330

La tragedie du nazisme, qui barre d'iine laige trace noire rhistoire de ThUinanite au xx® siecle,... more La tragedie du nazisme, qui barre d'iine laige trace noire rhistoire de ThUinanite au xx® siecle, restera pour les juife grav^ dans leur chair, indelebile dans leur memoire. De nombrenx intellectuels juifs europeens avaient clairement pressenti la vague de persecutions sans prec^ent qui allait frapper les juifs. Souvent, ce pressentiment ne leur fit pas changer de cap dans leur odyssee religieuse, dans leur reflexion sur la nature de la religion et Tessence de Dieu. Avec un courage intellectuel admirable, ces «juifs de la catastrophe », pour utiliser Texpression de Jean-Amery, osdrent parfois se demarquer radicalement du Dieu d'Isfael et de la tradition juive, et s'expriment a haute voix-avec parrh^sia, aurait dit Paul. Emblematique, Freud, qui public Der Mann Moses und die monotheistische Religion dans son exil londonien, alors qu*il est presque mourant, faisant montre d'un grand interet pour la religion et son histoire, se tenant au coxirant des publications savantes 1 .

Guy G. Stroumsa, “In Search of a New Paradigm,” in Guy G. Stroumsa, ed., Comparative Studies in the Humanities (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities Press, 2018), 7-13

Guy G. Stroumsa, “Arthur James Balfour’s Religious and Intellectual World,” Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, IX. 5 (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 2018), 97-108

(1848-1930), 'the last Grandee', as one of his bi ographers called him, cuts a rather interesting... more (1848-1930), 'the last Grandee', as one of his bi ographers called him, cuts a rather interesting figure among British politi cians.1 Although, as Prime Minister (1902-1905), he secured the Entente Cordiale with France, his greatest claim to fame remains the letter he sent to Lord Rothschild on behalf of the British Government on 2 November 1917, supporting the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine. Lord Balfour's personality was a particularly complex one: Side by side with the gifted Conservative politician was the intellectual whose curiosity seems to have had few equivalents among British prime ministers. This complexity did not necessarily gain him intellectual respect. There is a per sistent image of him as a dilettante, touching a number of ideas and topics without seriously engaging them and their implications 2-a judgment that might seem to be confirmed by his famous obiter dictum: 'Nothing matters very much, and few things matter at all'. The following pages propose to test this judgment, through a review of some of Balfour's most important writings. Throughout his life, and side by side with his political career, he published extensively on a large num ber of topics, from the philosophy of history, 3 literature (Jane Austen, Sir Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson), music (Handel) and painting (the Pre-Raphaelites) to the supernatural (he was among the first members of

Guy G. Stroumsa, “The Discrete Charm of Intellectual Subversion,” in Luca Giuliani, ed., Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, Jahrbuch 2016-2017 (Berlin: Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, 2018), 195-198

*Scriptures, Sacred Traditions, and Strategies of Religious Subversion: Studies in Discourse with the Work of Guy G. Stroumsa*, eds. Moshe Blidstein, ‎Serge Ruzer, ‎Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018)

Guy G. Stroumsa, “The Study of Religion and the Spirit of Orientalism: Cultural Transformations and Scholarly Shifts,” in Hans-Peter Grosshans, ed., Religion and Change: Fourth Annual Conference 2021 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2023): 63-76

Religion and Change, 2023

Like all social institutions, religions constantly change, evolving and transforming themselves. ... more Like all social institutions, religions constantly change, evolving and transforming themselves. Sometimes, when one can speak of brutal transformations and of religious revolutions, this truism is obvious to all.1 But more often, the conatus of religions entails their more or less 'peaceful' evolution. Now, while all religions have a potential for radical transformation in their DNA, they are instinctively more inclined toward conservatism, and the function of their hermeneutical systems, while permitting change when deemed necessary or unavoidable, consists essentially in slowing down the pace of such change, and making sure, it goes unnoticed, or almost unnoticed. Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist who won a Nobel Prize in economics, has shown that we all function with two parallel systems of thought: 'Thinking, Fast and Slow,' as he entitled his book on the topic. Similarly, I propose we identify two alternate patterns of religious change: slow versus fast. Religion and society at large, then, are complementary motors, actors, and objects of change in history. In a permanent dialectical relationship with one another, religion and society are taking turns at initiating change, responding to it, modulating it, and transforming the direction, intensity, and even the very nature of this change. In a recently published book, The Idea of Semitic Monotheism: The Rise and Fall of a Scholarly Myth, I sought to understand some societal dimensions of the idea of Semitic monotheism, an idea coined by Ernest Renan in the mid-19th century and developed in European scholarship in the subsequent decades. This idea was interdependent with both new perceptions of Judaism and Islam and transformed attitudes toward Jews and Muslims. Hence, I tried to highlight various veiled connections between the history of religions, then a growing scholarly discipline, and some deep changes in European societies, related to secularization processes. I shall present a few preliminary reflections on this research here, which, I think, bear directly on the topic of our conference, from a particular but capital angle. It barely needs mentioning that since the early modern Great Discoveries, 1 This text was read (on zoom) as a keynote lecture at the Conference of the European Academy of Religion in Münster on September 1, 2021. I wish to thank Professor Hans-Peter Grosshans for his kind invitation to deliver the lecture. The text is adapted from the introduction to my Guy G.

Guy G. Stroumsa, “Renan, le judaïsme et l’islam: Orientalisme et monothéisme,” in Mara Rescio, et al., eds., Non uno itinere Ebraismi, cristianesimi, modernità: Studi in onore di Mauro Pesce in occasione del suo ottantesimo compleanno [=Humanitas, no. 76] (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2021), 529-538

Tout au long du 19e siècle, la naissance de ce qu'on peut appeler philologia orientalis, et la dé... more Tout au long du 19e siècle, la naissance de ce qu'on peut appeler philologia orientalis, et la découverte des affinités entre le Sanskrit et les langues européennes transformèrent de façon radicale la perception de l'Orient. Le cas d'Ernest Renan est ici emblématique. Renan (1823-1892) est, de loin, la figure centrale de l'histoire des religions en France, et fait partie, au xix e siècle, des savants européens les plus remarquables. Dans L'avenir de la science, un livre de jeunesse qui représente sa réaction aux évènements de 1848, même s'il ne fut publié que deux ans avant sa mort, il écrit: «L'étude comparée des religions, quand elle sera définitivement établie sur la base solide de la critique, formera le plus beau chapitre de l'histoire de l'esprit humain, entre l'histoire des mythologies et l'histoire des philosophies» 1. La figure de Renan est impressionnante: jeune séminariste breton arrivé à Paris de Tréguier, son village natal, il perdit vite la foi, convaincu que l'étude critique de la Bible réfutait l'interprétation catholique des Écritures. Une carrière fulgurante le porta, à trente-sept ans, à la chaire d'hébreu du Collège de France 2. Renan, cependant, ne se satisfaisait pas de sa recherche en philologie sémitique. Il rédigea plusieurs travaux historiques capitaux, des réflexions philosophiques, et même quelques textes littéraires, ainsi que ses mémoires. Sans être politiquement actif, il s'exprima souvent dans l'arène publique, traitant d'un large éventail de sujets. Je pense en particulier à son essai sur l'idée de nation, sans doute son texte le plus célèbre aujourd'hui 3. Bien que Renan se présentât comme étant, fondamentalement, un philologue, c'est manifestement dans une autre clé que celle des biblistes et historiens des religions allemands qu'il s'exprimait. Son travail n'était pas moins technique et méticuleux que le leur, mais il conservait des hori

Guy G. Stroumsa, “Reading Origen in Jerusalem,” Tablet Magazine (26 July 2021)

Reading Origen in Jerusalem A collection of 29 recently discovered homilies by the early Church F... more

Guy G. Stroumsa, “When the Orient Moved East: Judaism and Islam in Nineteenth-Century Scholarship,” in Sarah Stroumsa and Guy G. Stroumsa, eds., Eine dreifältige Schnur: Über Judentum, Christentum, und Islam in Geschichte und Wissenschaft (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020), 126-209

Guy G. Stroumsa, “Afterword: The God of Time and the End of Times,” in Domenico Agostini and Samuel Thrope, eds., The Bundahišn: The Zoroastrian Book of Creation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 195-198

Guy G. Stroumsa, “Do as you’d be done by – Review of ‘The Lost Art of Scripture: Rescuing the Sacred Texts’, by Karen Armstrong,” Times Literary Supplement (TLS) (27 March 2020): 32

Guy G. Stroumsa, “Review of ‘Priest of Nature: The Religious Worlds of Isaac Newton’, by Rob Iliffe,” Journal of Theological Studies, vol. 70, no. 2 (October 2019): 904-905

Guy G. Stroumsa, “Review of ‘Penser la tolérance durant l'antiquité tardive’, by Peter Van Nuffelen,” Journal of Theological Studies, vol. 70, no. 2 (October 2019): 860-861

Guy G. Stroumsa, “Comparer à travers champs? Polythéismes et monothéismes,” ASDIWAL. Revue genevoise d'anthropologie et d'histoire des religions, vol. 14 (2019): 65-71

Guy G. Stroumsa, “History of Religions: The Comparative  Moment,” in Renaud Gagné, Simon Goldhill, and Geoffrey E.R. Lloyd, eds., Regimes of Comparatism: Frameworks of Comparison in History, Religion and Anthropology (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 318-342

Guy G. Stroumsa, “Anquetil Duperron et les origines de la philologie orientale: l’orientalisme est un humanisme,” Asdiwal, vol. 13 (2018): 161-174

Hagit Amirav, Emmanouela Grypeou, and Guy G. Stroumsa, “Foreword and Acknowledgements,” in Apocalypticism and Eschatology in Late Antiquity: Encounters in the Abrahamic Religions, 6th-8th Centuries (Turnhout: Peeters, 2018), VII-XV

图书在版编目( C I P )数据 : Chinese translation of: Guy G. Stroumsa, “Difficult Wisdom: Buber and Levinas on Hebrew Humanism,” Jewish Studies 15 (Shandong University Press, 2018): 14-24

Guy G. Stroumsa, “Open Religion and its Enemies,” in Jonathan Sacks and Simon Burridge, eds., Confronting Religious Violence: A Counternarrative (Baylor University Press, 2018), 59-73, 231-234

Guy G. Stroumsa, “The Duty of Subversion,” in Moshe Blidstein, Serge Ruzer, and Daniel Stoekl Ben Ezra, eds., Scriptures, Sacred Traditions, and Strategies of Religious Subversion: Studies in Discourse with the Work of Guy G. Stroumsa (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018), 275-279

Guy G. Stroumsa, “Tentations du christianisme: Henri Bergson, Simone Weil, Emmanuel Levinas,” in Guy G. Stroumsa, Religions d’Abraham: Histoires croisees (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 2017), 297-330

La tragedie du nazisme, qui barre d'iine laige trace noire rhistoire de ThUinanite au xx® siecle,... more La tragedie du nazisme, qui barre d'iine laige trace noire rhistoire de ThUinanite au xx® siecle, restera pour les juife grav^ dans leur chair, indelebile dans leur memoire. De nombrenx intellectuels juifs europeens avaient clairement pressenti la vague de persecutions sans prec^ent qui allait frapper les juifs. Souvent, ce pressentiment ne leur fit pas changer de cap dans leur odyssee religieuse, dans leur reflexion sur la nature de la religion et Tessence de Dieu. Avec un courage intellectuel admirable, ces «juifs de la catastrophe », pour utiliser Texpression de Jean-Amery, osdrent parfois se demarquer radicalement du Dieu d'Isfael et de la tradition juive, et s'expriment a haute voix-avec parrh^sia, aurait dit Paul. Emblematique, Freud, qui public Der Mann Moses und die monotheistische Religion dans son exil londonien, alors qu*il est presque mourant, faisant montre d'un grand interet pour la religion et son histoire, se tenant au coxirant des publications savantes 1 .

Guy G. Stroumsa, “In Search of a New Paradigm,” in Guy G. Stroumsa, ed., Comparative Studies in the Humanities (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities Press, 2018), 7-13

Guy G. Stroumsa, “Arthur James Balfour’s Religious and Intellectual World,” Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, IX. 5 (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 2018), 97-108

(1848-1930), 'the last Grandee', as one of his bi ographers called him, cuts a rather interesting... more (1848-1930), 'the last Grandee', as one of his bi ographers called him, cuts a rather interesting figure among British politi cians.1 Although, as Prime Minister (1902-1905), he secured the Entente Cordiale with France, his greatest claim to fame remains the letter he sent to Lord Rothschild on behalf of the British Government on 2 November 1917, supporting the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine. Lord Balfour's personality was a particularly complex one: Side by side with the gifted Conservative politician was the intellectual whose curiosity seems to have had few equivalents among British prime ministers. This complexity did not necessarily gain him intellectual respect. There is a per sistent image of him as a dilettante, touching a number of ideas and topics without seriously engaging them and their implications 2-a judgment that might seem to be confirmed by his famous obiter dictum: 'Nothing matters very much, and few things matter at all'. The following pages propose to test this judgment, through a review of some of Balfour's most important writings. Throughout his life, and side by side with his political career, he published extensively on a large num ber of topics, from the philosophy of history, 3 literature (Jane Austen, Sir Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson), music (Handel) and painting (the Pre-Raphaelites) to the supernatural (he was among the first members of

Guy G. Stroumsa, “The Discrete Charm of Intellectual Subversion,” in Luca Giuliani, ed., Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, Jahrbuch 2016-2017 (Berlin: Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, 2018), 195-198

Guy G. Stroumsa, “The Scriptural Galaxy of Late Antiquity,” in Josef Lössl and Nicholas J. Baker-Brian, eds., The Companion to Religion in Late Antiquity (Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley, 2018), 553-570

Guy G. Stroumsa, *Religion as Intellectual Challenge in the Long Twentieth Century: Selected Essays* (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2021)

Like the essays in its twin volume, The Crucible of Religion in Late Antiquity: Selected Essays (... more Like the essays in its twin volume, The Crucible of Religion in Late Antiquity: Selected Essays (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2021), those collected here have been only slightly edited, also in order to provide some unity in the pattern of references. I have not attempted, however, to update these references. Today, I should formulate the problems, and express my own though, rather differently. I am grateful to Dr. Henning Ziebritzki, Director of Mohr Siebeck, for his kind offer to publish these two volumes. At Mohr Siebeck, Elena Müller skillfully accompanied the project. I am deeply indebted to David L. Dusenbury, for his close and generous collaboration on the copy editing of these two volumes, throughout the long and difficult period of various limitations and lockdowns, in Jerusalem as elsewhere, during the Coronavirus pandemic. This book is dedicated to two dear friends, met in Cambridge (Mass.), across the ocean, almost fifty years ago. In Jerusalem, it is through crossing another, more insidious divide between East and West that we meet. In tragic circumstances, theirs is the face of dignity and wisdom.

Guy G. Stroumsa, *The Crucible of Religion in Late Antiquity: Selected Essays* (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2021)

Guy G. Stroumsa, *The Idea of Semitic Monotheism: The Rise and Fall of a Scholarly Myth* (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021)

Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxfo... more

Sarah Stroumsa and Guy G. Stroumsa, *Eine dreifältige Schnur: Über Judentum, Christentum und Islam in Geschichte und Wissenschaft* (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020)

Guy G. Stroumsa, *Religions d’Abraham: histoires croisées* (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 2017)

Guy G. Stroumsa, *Jerusalem as Cultural Memory: Three Essays* (Rounded Globe Publications Online; 2017)

Guy G. Stroumsa, *The Scriptural Universe of Ancient Christianity* (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2016)

L ate antiquity saw a revolution in literate culture the consequences of which would be no less d... more L ate antiquity saw a revolution in literate culture the consequences of which would be no less dramatic than that of the invention of the movable type in early modernity. I refer here not only to the transformation of the physical support of books but also, and more importantly, to the redaction of foundational texts of new religions, from Chris tian ity to Islam, which perceived themselves as world religions (Manichaeism would be the fi rst religion to defi ne itself as such from the very start). These texts circulated almost freely between religious communities throughout the ecumene-and also across religious lines. In an age of religious empires, it was by the book, rather than by the sword, that the new world religions conquered, and that would remain true, to a great extent, for the Islamization of the Near East. In this early "global village," within and without the borders of the Roman Empire, it was often in translation that those texts circulated, and that commentaries were elaborated, usually in writing but also orally. Such changes were radical, but in the Roman world the status of books underwent changes of an even more drastic nature. These pertained to their role in religion and religious education. Several religious trends developed in that period, for which vari ous revealed, sacred scriptures were a cardinal ele ment in their self-defi nition. Hence, we

Guy G. Stroumsa, *A New Science: The Discovery of Religion in the Age of Reason* (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010)

Guy G. Stroumsa, *Il riso di Cristo: La rivoluzione del cristianesimo antico* (Turin: Paideia, 2014)

Guy G. Stroumsa, *Kets ‘Eidan ha-Qorbanot: ha-mahapekha ha-datit shel shilhei ha-‘et ha-‘atiqa* (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2013)

Guy G. Stroumsa, *Die Ende des Opferkults: Die religiösen Mutationen der Spätantike* (Berlin: Verlag der Weltreligionen, 2011)

Guy G. Stroumsa, *The End of Sacrifice: Religious Transformations in Late Antiquity* (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009)

Guy G. Stroumsa, *Le rire du Christ: Essais sur le christianisme antique* (Paris: Bayard, 2006)

Guy G. Stroumsa, *La fine del sacrificio: Le mutazioni religiose della tarda antichita* (Turin: Einaudi, 2006)

Guy G. Stroumsa, *La fin du sacrifice: Mutations religieuses de l'antiquité tardive* (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2005)

Guy G. Stroumsa, *La sapienza nascosta: Tradizioni esoteriche e radici del misticismo cristiano* (Rome: Arkeios, 2000)

Guy G. Stroumsa, *Kanon und Kultur: Zwei Studien zur Hermeneutik des antiken Christentums* (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1999)

Guy G. Stroumsa, *La formazione dell'identità cristiana* (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1999)

Guy G. Stroumsa, *Barbarian Philosophy: The Religious Revolution of Early Christianity* (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999)

This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that permitted by copyr... more This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that permitted by copyright law) without the publisher's written permission. The applies particularly to reproductions, translations, microfilms and storage and processing in electronic systems. The book was typeset by Guide-Druck in Tübingen using Times typeface, printed by Guide-Druck in Tübingen on non-aging paper from Papierfabrik Niefern and bound by Heinr. Koch in Tübingen.

Jacques Le Brun and Guy G. Stroumsa, *Les Juifs présentés aux Chrétiens: Cérémonies et coutumes qui s'observent aujourd'hui parmi les Juifs, par Léon de Modène* (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1998)

1=1'I? T o \ i s d r o i t s d e t r a d u c t i o n , d e r e p r o d u c t i o n e t d ' a d a ... more

*Apocalypticism and Eschatology in Late Antiquity: Encounters in the Abrahamic Religions, 6th-8th Centuries*, eds. Hagit Amirav, Emmanouela Grypeou, and Guy G. Stroumsa (Turnhout: Peeters, 2018)

*Comparative Studies in the Humanities*, ed. Guy G. Stroumsa (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities Press, 2018)

Guy G. Stroumsa, *The Making of the Abrahamic Religions in Late Antiquity* (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015)

*The Oxford Handbook of the Abrahamic Religions*, eds. Adam Silverstein, Guy G. Stroumsa and Moshe Blidstein* (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015)

Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxfo... more Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work. The editors wish to dedicate this Handbook to two towering scholars in recognition of their pioneering work in deciphering the roots of the Abrahamic religions and fostering relations between children of Abraham

*Priests and Prophets among Pagans, Jews and Christians*, eds. Beate Dignas, Robert Parker and Guy G. Stroumsa (Leuven: Peeters, 2013)

*Jews of Byzantium: Dialectics of Minority and Majority Cultures*, eds. Robert Bonfil, Oded Irshai, Guy G. Stroumsa, and Rina Talgam (Leiden: Brill, 2011)

*Paradise in Antiquity: Jewish and Christian Views*, eds. Markus Bockmuehl and Guy G. Stroumsa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)

*Gershom Scholem and Morton Smith: Correspondence, 1945-1982*, ed. Guy G. Stroumsa (Leiden: Brill, 2008)

*Christians and Christianity in the Holy Land from the Origins to the Latin Kingdoms*, eds. Ora Limor and Guy G. Stroumsa (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006)

*Homer, The Bible and Beyond: Literary and Religious Canons in the Ancient World*, eds. Margalit Finkelberg and Guy G. Stroumsa (Leiden: Brill, 2003)

*Das 17. Jahrhundert und die Ursprünge der Religionsgeschichte*, eds. Jan Assmann and Guy G. Stroumsa [= Archiv für Religionsgeschichte, vol. 3] (Munich, Leipzig: Saur, 2002)

*Self and Self-Transformation in the History of Religions*, eds. David Shulman and Guy G. Stroumsa (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001)

*Transformations the Inner Self in Ancient Religions*, eds. Jan Assmann and Guy G. Stroumsa (Leiden: Brill, 1999)

*Dream Cultures: Towards a Comparative History of Dreaming*, eds. David Shulman and Guy G. Stroumsa (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999)

*Self, Soul and Body in Religious Experience*, eds. Albert Baumgarten, Jan Assmann, and Guy G. Stroumsa (Leiden: Brill, 1998)

*Sharing the Sacred: Religious Contacts and Conflicts in the Holy Land, 1st-15th Cent.*, eds. Arieh Kofsky and Guy G. Stroumsa (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi, 1998)

*Tolerance and Intolerance in Early Judaism and Christianity*, eds. Graham N. Stanton and Guy G. Stroumsa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)

Shlomo Pines, *Studies in the History of Religion (The Collected Works of Shlomo Pines, volume IV*, ed. Guy G. Stroumsa (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1996)

*Secrecy and Concealment: Studies in the History of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Religions*, eds. Hans Georg Kippenberg and Guy G. Stroumsa (Leiden: Brill, 1995)

*Contra Iudaeos: Ancient and Medieval Polemics Between Christians and Jews*, eds. Ora Limor and Guy G. Stroumsa (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996)