New Books in Religion
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.
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2176
Lewis Glinert, “The Story of Hebrew” (Princeton...
For this episode, New Books in Jewish Studies interviews Lewis Glinert, Professor of Hebrew Studies at Dartmouth College, where he is also affiliated with the Program in Linguistics. His book, The Story of Hebrew (Princeton University Press, 2017),
33 min
2177
Rhiannon Graybill, “Are We Not Men? Unstable Ma...
Rhiannon Graybill‘s Are We Not Men? Unstable Masculinity in the Hebrew Prophets (Oxford University Press, 2016) offers an innovative approach to gender and embodiment in the Hebrew Bible, revealing the male body as a source of persistent difficulty for...
33 min
2178
Alec Ryrie, “Protestants: The Faith that Made t...
500 years ago, a German monk and professor named Martin Luther started a well-intentioned movement to reform “the Church” (Jesus founded only one, after all). Luther’s object was not to split the Church, but to bring it into conformity with what he tho...
64 min
2179
Scott A. Mitchell, “Buddhism in America: Global...
Scott A. Mitchell‘s recent monograph, Buddhism in America: Global Religion, Local Contexts (Bloomsbury, 2016), provides a much-needed up-to-date overview of Buddhism in the United States. To tackle such a large topic,
58 min
2180
Brandon D. Crowe, “The Last Adam: A Theology of...
One scholar famously referred to the Gospels of the New Testament as passion narratives with long introductions. Such a view, however, tends to minimize the theological importance of Jesus’ life and ministry before his death. In today’s podcast, Dr.
33 min
2181
Yuval Harari, “Jewish Magic before the Rise of ...
Jewish Magic Before the Rise of Kabbalah (Wayne State University Press, 2017) opens new vistas not only on the history of the practice of magic throughout Jewish history, but on the variety and syncretistic depth of such practices.
35 min
2182
Joseph Lumbard, “The Study Quran: A New Transla...
The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary (HarperOne, 2015) represents years of effort from a team of dedicated translators and editors (Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Joseph Lumbard, Maria Dakake, Caner Dagli, and Mohammad Rustom).
54 min
2183
Sarah Hammerschlag, “Broken Tablets: Levinas, D...
In Broken Tablets: Levinas, Derrida, and the Literary Afterlife of Religion (Columbia University Press, 2016), Sarah Hammerschlag, Associate Professor of Religion and Literature at the University of Chicago Divinity School,
31 min
2184
Elizabeth Hayes Alvarez, “The Valiant Woman: Th...
When people think of the Virgin Mary in terms of American religious history, there is a tendency to focus on opposition. For instance, Catholic devotion to Mary on the one side, and Protestant critique of that devotion on the other side. However,
60 min
2185
Richard Weikart, “Hitler’s Religion: The Twiste...
Trying to figure out what Hitler “really” thought about anything is difficult because he was–among many other things–a clever, opportunistic politician and a very prolix one at that. Over the course of his 20+ career he gave thousands of speeches,
60 min
2186
Molly Worthen, “Apostles of Reason: The Crisis ...
Beginning with a network of reformed figures that orbited around Billy Graham, from J. Howard Pew’s money to Carl Henry’s passion for cultural esteem, Molly Worthen’s Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism (Oxford Univer...
66 min
2187
Jordan D. Rosenblum, “The Jewish Dietary Laws i...
In The Jewish Dietary Laws in the Ancient World Jordan D. Rosenblum explores how cultures critique and defend their religious food practices. In particular he focuses on how ancient Jews defended the kosher laws, or kashrut, and how ancient Greek,
45 min
2188
Paul Harvey, “Bounds of Their Habitation: Race ...
Paul Harvey is a professor of history at the University of Colorado. His book Bounds of Their Habitation: Race and Religion in American History (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017) provides an accessible and expansive narrative of the relationship between ra...
57 min
2189
Benjamin Schonthal, “Buddhism, Politics and the...
In his recent monograph, Buddhism, Politics and the Limits of Law: The Pyrrhic Constitutionalism of Sri Lanka (Cambridge University Press, 2016), Benjamin Schonthal examines the relationship between constitutional law and religious conflict in Sri Lank...
70 min
2190
Steven Dilday, “The Exegetical Labors of the Re...
Matthew Poole (1624-1679) was an English Nonconformist theologian educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge; he held the rectory of St Michael le Querne in London from 1649 to 1662. Poole is principally associated with the work Synopsis Criticorum Biblic...
30 min
2191
Benjamin Schreier, “The Impossible Jew: Identit...
What is Jewish about Jewish American literature? While the imaginative possibilities are numerous many scholars approach literary products with an established notion of a Jewish identity before they reach their subjects.
44 min
2192
David Rohl, “Exodus: Myth or History? (Thinking...
Archaeologists and scholars of the ancient Near East regularly make statements to the effect that there is absolutely no archaeological evidence for many events of the Bible, including Israel’s sojourn in Egypt, the Exodus out of Egypt,
40 min
2193
Kerry Pimblott, “Faith in Black Power: Religion...
When you think of black power, do you think about churches and religious institutions, or do you relate them more to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s? How do the social justice struggles of the past relate to those of today?
48 min
2194
Piotr Kosicki, “Vatican II Behind the Iron Curt...
Many historians have documented the Second Vatican Council yet virtually no attention has been devoted to the Catholics who found themselves living behind an iron curtain at the end of the 1940s. Piotr Kosicki’s edited volume,
64 min
2195
Nathan Hofer, “The Popularisation of Sufism in ...
Medieval Egypt had a rapid influx of Sufis, which has previously been explained through reactionary models of analysis. It was argued that the widespread popularity of Sufism was marked by a public adoption of practices that satisfied the masses in way...
47 min
2196
Joshua Guthman, “Strangers Below: Primitive Bap...
Before the Bible Belt fastened itself across the South, competing factions of evangelicals fought over the faith’s future, and a contrarian sect, self-named the Primitive Baptists, made its stand. In Strangers Below: Primitive Baptists and American Cul...
48 min
2197
David Willgren, “The Formation of the ‘Book’ of...
How was the ‘Book’ of Psalms formed, and why? The first question relates to the diachronic growth of the collection, while the second relates to issues of purpose–to what end are psalms being juxtaposed in a collection? On this show,
46 min
2198
Erik W. Davis, “Deathpower: Buddhism’s Ritual I...
In his recent monograph, Deathpower: Buddhism’s Ritual Imagination in Cambodia (Columbia University Press, 2015), Erik W. Davis explores funerary ritual in contemporary Cambodian Buddhism and the way in which Buddhist monks manage death such that its n...
70 min
2199
Alan J. Levinovitz, “The Limits of Religious To...
The Pope said that Donald Trump wasn’t much of a Christian if all he can think about is building walls. Trump replied that it was “disgraceful” for a any leader, even the Pope, “to question another man’s religion or faith.
55 min
2200
Matthew Pehl, “The Making of Working-Class Reli...
Matthew Pehl is an associate professor of history at Augustana University. His book, The Making of Working-Class Religion (University of Illinois Press, 2016), gives us a rich and deep study of working class religion in Detroit beginning with the growt...
56 min