On April 19, 1993, at least seventy-four people lost their lives near Waco, Texas, in the confrontation between the followers of David Koresh and the federal agents outside his compound. These groups, clearly, inhabited two different conceptual worlds. Yet both then and now, it seemed that neither journalists nor law-enforcement experts nor the public was aware of the rich tradition of messianic, revolutionary politics behind groups like Koresh's, a history that stretches back, unbroken, to the early Middle Ages.
Winner of the 2020 European Walter Benjamin Prize, The Revolution is the Emergency Break is a rich discussion of Walter Benjamin’s lesser-known writings by renowned social scientist Michael Löwy. Translated into several languages but available in English for the very first time, Löwy’s book brings together the philosophical, literary, theological and cultural aspects of Benjamin’s writings, including his relation to figures such as Gershom Scholem and Franz Rosenzweig, his interpretation of historical materialism, surrealism, anti-fascism and anarchism, his contribution to understanding capitalism as a religion, and his relevance for Latin America and ecology today. The concept of revolution in his writings – not only the political ones but also those that deal with art, literature or theology, run through the work, connecting the various chapters. The Revolution is the Emergency Break also features four new chapters in this collection. Written in a clear-eyed, accessible language, The Revolution is the Emergency Break is a must-read for researchers, teachers and students interested in the works of this influential German intellectual.
Presents a revised account of the revolution of 1966-1969 - Examines the social and political consequences of the upheaval - Deng Xiaoping - Democracy movement - Tienamnen Incident - Mao Zedong - The hundred flowers - Great Leap Forward.
In what may well rank as the finest political and intellectual history of the twentieth century, the late J. L. Talmon explores the origins of the schism within European society between the totalitarians of Right and Left as well as the split between an acceptance of the historical national community as the natural political and social framework and the vision of a socialist society achieved by a universal revolutionary breakthrough. This, the third and final volume of Talmon's history of the modern world, brings to bear the resources of his incisive scholarship to examine the workings of the ironies of totalitarianism as well as the resources of democracy.
"Pastors and leaders of the ancient church interpreted the Bible theologically, believing Scripture as a whole witnessed to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Modern interpreters of the Bible questioned this premise. But in recent decades, a critical mass of theologians and biblical scholars has begun to reassert the priority of a theological reading of Scripture. The Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible enlists leading theologians to read and interpret Scripture for the twenty-first century. In this addition to the series, Douglas Harink offers an insightful theological exegesis of 1 & 2 Peter that will be of use to professors and students in New Testament, the Epistles of Peter, and theological interpretation courses, as well as pastors, church leaders, and libraries." --Book Jacket.
In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries a small but conspicuous fringe of the Jewish population became the world's most resolute, intellectually driven, and philosophical revolutionaries, among them the pre-Marxist Karl Marx. Yet the roots of their alienation from existing society and determination to change it extend back to the very heart of the Enlightenment, when Spinoza and other philosophers living in a rigid, hierarchical society colored by a deeply hostile theology first developed a modern revolutionary consciousness. Leading intellectual historian Jonathan Israel shows how the radical ideas in the early Marx's writings were influenced by this legacy, which, he argues, must be understood as part of the Radical Enlightenment. He traces the rise of a Jewish revolutionary tendency demanding social equality and universal human rights throughout the Western world. Israel considers how these writers understood Jewish marginalization and ghettoization and the edifice of superstition, prejudice, and ignorance that sustained them. He investigates how the quest for Jewish emancipation led these thinkers to formulate sweeping theories of social and legal reform that paved the way for revolutionary actions that helped change the world from 1789 onward--but hardly as they intended.
The Messianic Secret, which one century on is still the point of departure for all studies of the Gospel of Mark and of an understanding of the literary methods of the Gospel writers, is now available in English in this translation by J.C.G. Greig. Wrede's primary concern in his discussion of Mark is the doctrine of the messianic secret, the notion of a Jesus who, assuming messiahship at baptism, keeps it secret for much of his ministry until, after the confessions of Peter, he introduces the disciples to the idea of a suffering and dying Messiah. The idea of such a secret can be shown, from a study of the other Gospels, to have developed variously, and above all to go back to a period prior to Mark's work as the earliest evangelist. Wrede finds the theological source of the idea of a secret about the messiahship in a contrast between what the Church came to think of Jesus and how his life had been understood during his ministry. He suggests that because the Church came to think of Jesus as Messiah after the Resurrection, they came to explain the lack of explicit declaration of his messiahship by Jesus during his ministry by suggesting that (nevertheless) Jesus had after all secretly revealed himself as the Messiah. The doctrine of the messianic secret is, says Wrede, the after-effect of the idea of the Resurrection as the beginning of Jesus' messianic office". Furthermore, if this doctrine could have arisen only at a time when nothing was known of any open claim on Jesus' part to be Messiah, this seems to be positive evidence that Jesus actually did not represent himself as Messiah. Wrede was among the first to recognise the creative contribution of the writers of the Gospels, and to emphasise the necessity of a historical approach to the Church's traditions if we are to avoid a naive misunderstanding of the perspective from which the Gospels are written. His work is thus the foundation stone not only in the study of Mark, about whom he still has much to teach us, but also in the vexed area of the contribution of the evangelists to the Gospel. In this field Wrede's work is still essential reading, unsurpassed by the advances of the Form Critics, the Redaction Critics, whose work draws directly on his, and even of the more advanced literary critics of the present day.
A study of Mahdist movements focusing on abrupt discontinuities, revolutions as apocalyptic breaks, and on the reaction of the ruling authorities as counter-revolution, as reversion to continuity within a single civilizational zone defined by its cultural unity as the Persianate world.
Power is an issue that is attracting increased interest among philosophers, theologians and social scientists. The gospel of Mark, especially in 10:32-45, contains teachings attributed to Jesus about the use and abuse of power. This book applies a combination of different methods and approaches: mainly orality, criticism, literary criticism and a sensitivity for the social and cultural environment of the text, showing the centrality of Jesus's message on the issue of power both for the plot and for the theology of Mark. This message is a call to practice leadership in a way that is subversive toward the networks of power of the empire.
