Books about Sectarian from Amazon.com

Bringing together texts from a variety of sectarian traditions, this reader provides the broadest selection of primary source Hindu literature available to date.

The volume is divided into two major parts. The first section presents selections that explore major themes in classical Sanskrit traditions, including those in the Vedic, Upanisadic, and Dharma literatures, as well as the classical philosophical-religious schools. The second part includes selections that highlight the sectarian and devotional movements related to major deities such as Vishnu, Shiva, Krishna, Rāma, Sant, Tantra, and the goddess figures.

In addition to a general introductory chapter on Indian literature, each major section is introduced by an essay that places the selections within the context of Hindu history. This comprehensive reader stands on its own as an indispensable anthology of original textual sources for courses in Hinduism, while also serving as a companion volume to the text The Many Colors of Hinduism: A Thematic-Historical Introduction..
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The Older Testament is a radically new approach to many problems of both Old and New Testaments It takes as a basis the theology of the book of Enoch, lost to western Christendom for many centuries, but here recognized as providing the most consistent set of clues to the nature of Israel's pre-exilic religion. Reformers and editors of the Second Temple period sought to remove from the biblical texts all traces of the older ways, which now survive only in the apparently bizarre themes and imagery of certain Pseudepigrapha. Margaret Barker traces some of the ways in which the Deuteronomic standpoint came to dominate future readings of the Hebrew Bible as well as scholarly conceptions of Israel's religious development. Her reconstruction of the pre-Deuteronomic religion throws a startling light on much of the imagery of the New Testament and shows how closely the earlier Christian expectations were based upon the ancient royal cult in Jerusalem. This book represents an important and original contribution to our understanding of Judaism and early Christianity..
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One of the most innovative thinkers in the field of Islamic Studies was John Wansbrough (1928-2002), Professor of Semitic Studies and Pro-Director of London University's School of Oriental and African Studies. Critiquing the traditional accounts of the origins of Islam as historically unreliable and heavily influenced by religious dogma, Wansbrough suggested radically new interpretations very different from the views of both the Muslim orthodoxy and most Western scholars.

In The Sectarian Milieu Wansbrough "analyses early Islamic historiography -or rather the interpretive myths underlying this historiography—as a late manifestation of Old Testament `salvation history.'" Continuing themes that he treated in a previous work, Quranic Studies, Wansbrough argues that the traditional biographies of Muhammad (Arabic sira and maghazi) are best understood, not as historical documents that attest to "what really happened," but as literary texts written more than one hundred years after the facts and heavily influenced by Jewish, and to a lesser extent Christian, interconfessional polemics. Thus, Islamic "history" is almost completely a later literary reconstruction, which evolved out of an environment of competing Judeo-Christian sects. As such, Wansbrough felt that the most fruitful means of analyzing such texts was literary analysis. Furthermore, he maintained that it was next to impossible to extract the kernel of historical truth from works that were created principally to serve later religious agendas. Although his work remains controversial to this day, his fresh insights and approaches to the study of Islam continue to inspire scholars. This new edition contains a valuable assessment of Wansbrough's contributions and many useful textual notes and translations by Gerald Hawting (University of London), plus the author's 1986 Albert Einstein Memorial Lecture, "Res Ipsa Loquitur.".
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In this book, Sandra Barney examines the transformation of medical care in Central Appalachia during the Progressive Era and analyzes the influence of women volunteers in promoting the acceptance of professional medicine in the region. By highlighting the critical role played by nurses, clubwomen, ladies' auxiliaries, and other female constituencies in bringing modern medicine to the mountains, she fills a significant gap in gender and regional history.

Barney explores both the differences that divided women in the reform effort and the common ground that connected them to one another and to the male physicians who profited from their voluntary activity. Held together at first by a shared goal of improving the public welfare, the coalition between women volunteers and medical professionals began to fracture when the reform agendas of women's groups challenged physicians' sovereignty over the form of health care delivery. By examining the professionalization of male medical practitioners, the gendered nature of the campaign to promote their authority, and their displacement of community healers, especially female midwives, Barney uncovers some of the tensions that evolved within Appalachian society as the region was fundamentally reshaped during the era of industrial development..
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