In a recent essay, Nicole Loraux identified a pattern of scholarly dependence on the origins of a particular deity for the interpretation of how human beings at various, specific times and places related to and used that figure to meet the needs of their lives. Shifting social and political conditions, such as the development and modification of the Athenian polis, led to changes in people's religious needs and are reflected by modifications, sometimes radical, in the conceptualization and worship of their gods. Loraux discussed the problems that this scholarly perspective brought to the study of goddesses in particular, where focus on the origins of many goddesses in a hypothesized worship of a Great Goddess of fertility can obscure our understanding of the ways in which these figures met the needs of individuals and cities at specific points in antiquity.

Christian anti-Jewish polemics have a long and rich history, stretching all the way back to the early stages of the new faith community. Anti-Jewish treatises dot the history of Christian literature from the third century onward. By contrast, Jews seem to have been much less concerned with combatting Christianity. It has been widely noted that the earliest Jewish compositions devoted to anti-Christian polemics stem from the twelfth century. While the twelfth-century provenance of the earliest Jewish anti-Christian tracts has long been recognized, little attention has been focused on the significance of this dating. The fact that sometime toward the end of the twelfth century, perhaps in the 1160s or 1170s, two anti-Christian works, the forerunners of a substantial body of Jewish anti-Christian polemical-apologetic works, were composed almost simultaneously begs interpetation. What changes gave rise to a new Jewish sensitivity, to a need to present Jewish readers with formulation and rebuttal of Christian claims? The answer clearly lies in the enhanced agressiveness of western Christendom toward the Jews, as well as other non-Christians, a development that has been recognized and discussed extensively in modern scholarly literature. In the face of an increasingly aggressive Christendom, Jewish intellectual and spiritual leadership had to reassure the Jewish flock of the rectitude of the Jewish vision and the nullity of the Christian faith. This is precisely what the first two anti-Christian treatises, the Milhamot ha-Shem of Jacob ben Reuven and the Sefer ha-Berit of Joseph Kimhi, undertook to achieve. Given the pioneering nature of these works, it is striking that insufficient scholarly attention has been accorded to these two efforts. They surely have much to tell both of perceived Christian thrusts and of meaningful Jewish rebuttal of these challenges.

In this article I shall argue that Friedrich Schleiermacher found the self that Immanuel Kant lost. Two steps are necessary to support this argument. First, I shall demonstrate that Kant knew that he had lost the self. Second, I shall demonstrate that Schleiermacher knew that he had found the self that Kant had lost. I am aware that these two demonstrations will not actually prove that Schleiermacher did find the self that Kant lost. I believe, however, that if we understand why Kant thought that he had lost the self and if we understand the way in which Schleiermacher believed that he retrieved this self, we shall be better off. We shall have discovered a way to reach beyond the limits of our own mental constructs and affirm the unity and integrity of life itself.

In the past decade a number of influential theologians have claimed, based on the analogy of modern science, that Christian theology is or should be public discourse, a public discipline which is addressed to all people and which uses criteria acceptable to all. This claim is usually contrasted with a view in which theology is understood as private, subjective, authoritarian, based on faith or a special revelation, and limited to a particular community. In this essay I shall explore in particular David Tracy's claim that theology should be public discourse, point out some difficulties with regard to this claim, and make an alternative proposal.

In traditional Judeo-Christian mythology, chaos and cosmos are seen as antagonistic forces that have been vying for supremacy throughout time. According to this worldview, chaos describes the amorphous state of emptiness in which all forms are confounded in a universal confusion without structure or hierarchy. Geographically it is situated in the unexplored wilderness that surrounds and encroaches upon the ordered domain. Chaos is the realm of darkness and barrenness, symbolized either as a deep, boundless, watery abyss (Sheol) or a fiery pit in the bowels of the earth (Hell). Chaos has several incarnations: at times it is presented as a dragon or water monster who joins in primordial combat with a cultural hero; in other cases it is personified as the devil. When historicized, it is represented by Israel's enemies, such as the Egyptians in the Red Sea episode of Exodus 15. Not only primeval disorder, but all disruptive forces that periodically threaten the world are manifestations of chaos: hurricane, flood, fire, earthquake, famine, war, crime, and death. It cannot be forever annihilated, but only suppressed for a limited time. The victories of order remain more or less precarious; at best, chaos can be held at bay, forced to retreat to the marginal areas that surround the world of light.