Religion & Spirituality

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The Mandaeans were a gnostic sect that arose in the Middle East around the same time as Christianity. This text examines the lives and religion of contemporary Mandaeans and provides an introduction to the religion, showing how its ancient texts inform the living religion, and vice versa.

In this bold work, Thomas Habinek offers an entirely new theoretical perspective on Roman cultural history. Although English words such as literature and religion have their origins in Latin, the Romans had no such specific concepts. Rather, much of the sense of these words was captured in the Latin word carmen, usually translated into English as song. Habinek argues that for the Romans, song encompassed a wide range of ritualized speech, including elements of poetry, storytelling, and even the casting of spells. Habinek begins with the fraternal societies, or sodalitates, which predated the Republic and endured into the Imperial era, and whose rites, although adapted over time to different deities and cults, were from the beginning centered on song (perhaps most notably in the ancient Carmen Saliare). He goes on to show how this early use of song became a paradigm for cultural reproduction throughout Roman history. Ritual mastery of the chaos of everyday life, embodied and enacted in song, produced and transmitted the beliefs on which Roman culture was founded and by which Roman communities were sustained. By the emergence of the Empire, song, in all of its senses, served in particular to reproduce the power of the state, organizing relations of power at every level of society. --Johns Hopkins University Press.

Works of Martin Luther is a classic collection of the writings of the religious leader. No historical study of current issues--politics or social science or theology--can far proceed without bringing the student face to face with the principles asserted by the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century and its great leader, Martin Luther Martin Luther was the author of substantial body of written works at the service of the Reformation. All his life Luther published theological writings. His commitment also induced him to write political and polemical texts. According to Yves Congar, a Dominican, “Luther was one the greatest religious geniuses in History… who redesigned Christianity entirely.”

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Daniel Deleanu continues in Wor(l)d Religions the logosophistic adventure started in Principles of Logosophism, The Logoarchetype and Logosophistic Investigations. Unlike the other three books from the logosophistic series, Wor(l)d Religions appeals to a wider array of readers. Daniel Deleanu chooses a rational methodology, namely that exposed by Immanuel Kant in his essay Fundamental Principals of the Metaphysic of Morals. By this approach, the creator of logosophism does not intend to reduce the study of religion to a strict framework of empirical determinism, but, on the contrary, he wishes to prove that the analytical study religion should have all the attributes of science. By eliminating most of the subjective properties of world religions, which are due to the nature of the observer rather than the religions themselves, the author traces a common path of all major beliefs, leading to the most important archetype of humankind, the Word (the logoarchetype), which is associated with the Divinity in every spiritual tradition.

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The first step toward a solid foundation in Buddhist thought! The Foundation of Buddhist Thought series is an excellent introduction to Tibetan Buddhism. These unique books, based on the curriculum of a popular course of the same name, were developed by Geshe Tashi Tsering, a Tibetan scholar renowned for his ability to render Buddhist teachings accessible and relevant to everyday life. Geshe Tashi Tsering's Foundation of Buddhist Thought courses are systematic introductions to Buddhist philosophy and practice. With this series of books drawn from his highly successful courses, his insights can now be enjoyed by a wide audience of both specialists and newcomers to the Buddhist tradition. Geshe Tashi's presentations combine rigor and comprehensiveness with lucidity and accessibility, never divorced from the basic humanity and warmth of his personality. In Geshe Tashi, we encounter the new generation of Tibetan monk-scholars teaching in the West who are following in the eminent footsteps of Geshe Wangyal and Geshe Sopa. This volume, the first of six, provides a complete presentation the Buddha's seminal Four Noble Truths, which summarize the fundamentals of the Buddhist worldview. Indeed, they are an essential framework for understanding all of the other teachings of the Buddha.