During the formative period of disputation over the theology of Arius, the emperor Licinius ruled over the eastern Roman provinces. The emperor Constantine was directly involved in the doctrinal controversy only after his victory over Licinius in 324. But Constantine’s engagement in imperial politics had already shaped his thinking about theology. In imperial successions sons were sometimes promoted but also sometimes overlooked. Emperors introduced a new five-year cycle for calculating taxes and often held annual consulships. Emperors identified with deities such as Jupiter and Hercules. At the Council of Nicaea, Constantine was hence ready to debate with bishops over the theology of Father and Son, the annual date of Easter, and the simultaneous divinity and humanity of Jesus Christ. One bishop who attended the council was Eusebius of Caesarea, whose panegyric equated the emperor with the Son of God. Constantine himself strengthened the association by funding churches in honor of Jesus’s nativity and resurrection in the Holy Land and by publicizing a story about his own vision of a cross in the sky. The Council of Nicaea had been a crucible for the formation of both a theology of God and a political philosophy of a Christian emperor.

How the long-standing genre of historical manuscripts show how writers worked with a broad and important sense of their place within a tradition.

On the history and major movements in the editing of medieval texts, with a detailed case study that permits a step-by-step explication of how one can go about editing a text that exists in more than one instantiation.

The essay seeks to identify in what way there is particularity to a Jewish theology of religions, as compared with the emergence of the field of theology of religions within a Christian context. Concern of Christian authors is with the problem of salvation and the common typology of exclusivism, inclusivism, pluralism reflects this concern. This typology does not translate well into a Jewish context and we must identify the concerns that lie at the heart of a Jewish theology of religions. The primary concern is that of the legitimacy of the other religion. The issue is negotiated first and foremost through the lens of idolatry (Avoda Zara) as well as through other lenses, such as the question of religious truth. The concerns of a Jewish theology of religions are illustrated through three case studies: Maimonides, R. Menachem Meiri and Rav Kook.

A basic premise of the Hebrew Bible is that God enters into relationship with humans. The beliefs that God exists independently of us and that we can acquire some knowledge of that fact would appear to make theological realism the most suitable Jewish theological orientation. While theological realism has had a number of proponents among modern and contemporary Jewish thinkers, it is a minority position that has long been overshadowed by other approaches to Jewish theological language. This chapter introduces the wider discussion of theological realism within philosophy of religion and Christian theology, places the work of Jewish proponents of theological realism within both the larger and the Jewish contexts, and then surveys the main alternatives to theological realism among Jewish thinkers including the “theo-realism” of Buber and Heschel, and Wittgensteinian, poetic, fictionalist, and apophatic approaches to Jewish theology. The chapter concludes by pointing to new resources in the theory of reference that can help bolster the case for Jewish theological realism.

Although ‘film’ remains in common usage as a generic term, digital technology has made it inaccurate when applied to work no longer shot, edited or distributed on chemically coated celluloid. The ‘photochemical era’ has ended, and rapid developments in the distribution and consumption of audio-visual products have reduced distinctions between what is viewed in the home and what is seen in public. This Companion takes as its remit feature-length productions, both those commonly perceived as ‘delivering’ the plays, and those that appropriate them as the starting-point for work that makes no such claim. These are all to some degree adaptations, but some are more adapted than others: consequently the first group of chapters focuses on the various ways in which screen versions of Shakespeare’s works have figured in a changing media environment.

Overview of scripts, and the ways in which scripts spread across geographical space and through time. Various scripts’ biographies are overviewed, showing the diversity of possible scripts in early medieval Europe: their longevity and functionality

Surveying Shakespeare adaptations in Classical Hollywood from the failure of Sam Taylors Taming of the Shrew in 1929 to the final triumph of Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Julius Caesar in 1953, this chapter looks at how Hollywood film endeavoured to become the ‘new Shakespeare’ while Shakespeare film adaptation gained the reputation for being, as Louis B. Mayer famously declared, ‘box office poison’. Focusing on the marketing of Hollywood Shakespeare adaptations, the chapter reveals how in their eagerness to please everyone, promoters of these films reveal some of the underpinning strategies for adapting Shakespeare in Classical Hollywood. ‘Exploitation’ and ‘showmanship’ (terms used in film marketing in Classical Hollywood) offer an approach to film adaptation that focuses on the consumer rather than the author, the adaptation not as interpretation but as product, not as something to be revered, but as something to be sold.

This article seeks to make sense of the theological debates within Jewish feminism which were focused on identifying the core theological problem for achieving gender justice, and on inquiring about the importance of halakhah for Jewish feminist life. The article claims that quite interestingly, and although the Orthodox tendency was and remains to emphasize halakhah and minimize theology, Orthodox feminists dealt mainly with theology while a Reform feminist dealt with halakhah. All in all, fifty years into the process it can be said that all currents of Jewish feminism accept the primacy of theology over halakhah. Even those who believe that halakhah has a place in Jewish feminism understand that halakhic change that stands alone and is not anchored in a complete theological doctrine is impossible.

Does the idea that a text might express God’s will make any sense in the modern world? Modern Jewish theology, in part under the impetus of modern biblical criticism, has overwhelmingly moved toward a view of God as beyond speech, and of the Torah, correspondingly, as the record of various human beings’ attempts to figure out what God might want of them, rather than a divine intervention into human affairs. If any human/divine encounter lies behind the Torah, it is thought, that encounter can be conceived only as a silent, ineffable I-Thou moment. The Torah cannot literally be God’s word; that is at best a rough metaphor.

This essay attempts to bring out the motivations for the above view and then, wholly, to upend it — from a perspective as committed to the accuracy of modern Biblical criticism, and to a progressive understanding of God and halacha, as that of those who uphold it. Maimonides says that we should see every verse and every letter of the Torah as “contain[ing] within it wisdom and wonders to whomever the Lord has granted the wisdom to discern it” — as, in a robust sense, divine. “In Defense of Verbal Revelation” recuperates a modern, progressive version of Maimonides’ view.

The chapter discusses The Hollow Crown, a two-season television series, produced by Sam Mendes and broadcast on BBC2 in 2012 and 2016, placed in the context of earlier adaptations of the history plays. It argues that the series exemplifies a number of the central controversies surrounding contemporary Shakespeare adaptation, including political agendas, screen and stage traditions of acting and textual interpretation, together with the changing awareness of the viewing public of Shakespeare as a (high or pop) cultural phenomenon. The series also illustrates diverse responses to a number of critical debates, from the representation of female, non-English or non-British voices and accents, colour-blind or colour-conscious casting, set against the demands of historical realism expected from the contemporary screen. In this way, it offers a perfect case study for the Shakespearean history play on British television in the twenty-first century.