The late antique world was filled with demons. These demons were constantly present and always at the ready to attack unsuspecting humans. Like almost everyone else in late antiquity, the rabbis of Sasanian Babylonia were aware of demonic threats and took steps to protect themselves and their communities from harm. But while demons were a danger, they were also an opportunity for creativity, identity formation, and community building for the rabbis. In fact, some Babylonian rabbis “thought with” demons in order to organize their environment and imbue their world with larger spatial meanings.

Is it possible to believe that the implications of the Christian Gospel are of such a kind that it cannot be communicated directly, and that the implications of the Christian Gospel are of such a kind that it ought to be preached on the street? Whether such a view is indeed “possible” did not bother the great paradoxical thinker, Søren Kierkegaard, who appeared to hold it. Indeed, one of the most enduring elements of Kierkegaard's theological legacy is his rigorously dialectical approach to Christian communication. For the reader of Kierkegaard, comprehending his (in)direct communication is typically both a frustrating and inspirational affair. On the one hand, Kierkegaard believed that the Gospel—precisely because of its unique existential consequences—cannot be preached directly; and on the other hand, he believed in the impassioned proclamation of this very same Gospel for the very same reasons. Traveling through his enigmatic authorship, one finds both of these aspects side by side, back to front, or sometimes one on top of the other. It is well noted that although Kierkegaard displays different stages of emphasis, he never totally relinquishes the importance of either method. It is the question of this article to re-engage this dialectical quandary, and to see how the paradoxical juxtaposition might prove both directly and indirectly instructive to a theology of Christian proclamation.

Currently there is no widespread agreement on what constitutes gnosis or the gnostic identity in the ancient world. The best option, it seems, is to offer a polythetic classification wherein gnostic thinkers or groups possess a range of characteristics without any one group or thinker possessing all of them. Yet even if widespread agreement on a set of characteristics were attained, it still would not explain how gnostic groups emerged, developed, and crafted their own specific identities.

In the study of the history of biblical scholarship, there has been a tendency among historians to emphasize biblical philology as a force which, together with the new philosophy and the new science of the seventeenth century, caused the erosion of universal scriptural authority from the mid-seventeenth century onwards. A case in point is Jonathan Israel's impressive account of how biblical criticism in the hands of Spinoza paved the way for the Enlightenment. Others who have argued for a post-Spinozist rise of biblical criticism include Frank Manuel, Adam Sutcliffe, and Travis Frampton. These scholars have built upon longer standing interpretations such as those of Hugh Trevor-Roper and Paul Hazard. However, scholars in the past two decades such as Anthony Grafton, Scott Mandelbrote and Jean-Louis Quantin have altered the picture of an exegetical revolution inaugurated by Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), Spinoza (1632–1677), and Richard Simon (1638–1712). These heterodox philosophers in fact relied on philological research that had been largely developed in the first half of the seventeenth century. Moreover, such research was carried out by scholars who had no subversive agenda. This is to say that the importance attached to a historical and philological approach to the biblical text had a cross-confessional appeal, not just a radical-political one.

When religious tolerance appears in the literature on ecumenicism, religious pluralism, and other modes of peaceful coexistence, it is frequently juxtaposed with the words “beyond,” “more than,” and “is not enough.” To be sure, it is generally conceded in these contexts, tolerance is an improvement on intolerance, and, relatively speaking, then, a fine thing, as far it goes. For many, however, it does not go very far. “Religious tolerance,” we are told, “however virtuous, does nothing to remove our ignorance of one another.” It is thought to lack strenuousness, and hence, to be unsuited for modern moral conflicts, which tend increasingly toward the polarity characteristic of war: “Tolerance, especially of the knee-jerk variety. . . works as long as people can slink off by themselves, avoiding contact, and never facing up to what they truly believe.” No one says, “I am fighting for [fill in the blank] with all the toleration I can muster.”

At the time of Shahab Ahmed's untimely death on 17 September 2015, he left behind many admiring colleagues, students, friends, and family, as well as a weighty tome of monumental significance—What Is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic. It is tragic when an author's first book is published posthumously, perhaps even more so in this case given that Ahmed's work is poised to have a pervasive influence on the field of Islamic Studies and has already garnered numerous accolades. Like a supermassive celestial body, this dense book exerts an irresistible attraction and alters the intellectual trajectory of those drawn into its orbit. What Is Islam? poses difficult questions no one in the field can ignore, even if one disagrees with its premises, methods, or conclusions. We are collectively the poorer for being unable to engage directly with the author in the many discussions that are sure to be provoked by the book's meteoric impact.

In 1977, legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin published Taking Rights Seriously, and it quickly received wide notice. At the time recently appointed H.L.A. Hart's successor at Oxford, Dworkin combined jurisprudential analysis with pointed commentary on United States Supreme Court cases, the latter developed principally in essays in the New York Review of Books. Defining law through its aspiration to justice and defining justice in terms of rights, Dworkin argued that judges were entitled to use moral philosophy both to interpret legal rules through the principles they instantiate and to fill in gaps in the law by leveraging general legal concepts into more precise conceptions. Often paired with his contemporary John Rawls's Theory of Justice, Dworkin's theory that judges should rework the law when possible to insure “equal concern and respect” was seen to elaborate the practical meaning of Rawls's first principle of justice (equal rights to basic liberties) as well as to boost the activism of judges, whom he encouraged to model “Hercules.”

The Ba‘al Shem Tov, founder of Hasidism (known by the acronym, the “BeShT”), was a charismatic teacher with extraordinary impact. While hasidic traditions record his vehement opposition to documentation of his teachings, his disciples nevertheless wrote what they remembered, and hasidic literature is suffused with traditions about him and conveyed by him.

The history of the Reformation begins, and often ends, with Martin Luther. The history of Luther's biography is a chronicle of the perspectives from which Luther has been approached. Throughout the twentieth century, with few exceptions, his greatness was accepted as being beyond question, with each interpreter offering a new explanation for the Reformer's heroic place in European religious history. Scott Hendrix has been contributing to Luther studies since Luther and the Papacy (1981); his Short Introduction (2010) and an earlier biography (2009) are marked by lucidity and accuracy. His careful work on the little-known Urbanus Rhegius (1489–1541) and other Reformers has brought these significant participants in the expansion of religious reform out of the shadows of historical oblivion. For care with material and clarity of exposition, Hendrix is well positioned to write the American Luther biography of this anniversary year.

There are two errors in footnote 1 of the article by Elizabeth Schrader, published online on 8 September 2016 and also appearing in print in this issue of Harvard Theological Review.

This dissertation explores discussions of prophecy in early Christianity focusing on Origen of Alexandria's works. It argues that Origen engages the contested terms of prophetic activity to persuade his audience(s) toward the cultivation of a particular moral self.