If any one thing marks early modern history, it is religious transformation. Confessional and pietist movements, both European firsts, are prominent examples of such catalysts for change.1 In large parts of the Islamic world in the 15th and 16th centuries, it was Sufi piety that carried the day. The historiographical record reveals strikingly new imaginaires and novel modes of connectivity to the past. The focus in this paper is on the manifold ways in which new forms of religiosity redefined the landscape of politics in the eastern Islamic world. It traces invocations of the past in Fakhr al-Dīn Kāshifī’s (d. 1532) Rashaḥāt ‘ayn al-ḥayāt 2 (Sprinklings from the Fountain of Life), a 16th-century collected biography of Naqshbandī Sufi masters, to argue that the classificatory schema adopted by the author reveals a template of secularity that marks a significant departure from past manners of adherence.

This working paper is derived from a larger research project exploring what I consider to be a tenuous but persistent form of “public culture” extending between Inner Asia and Europe over the course of the 18th and, especially, 19th centuries. This “stranger relationality,” as Michael Warner would have it, was mediated by new forms and routes of Eurasianist textual circulation. In this late imperial period, spread along the frontiers of the Qing, Tsarist, and British empires, Tibetan, Mongolian, and Buryat monks read works by European and East Asian intellectuals on all manner of technical knowledge, and began writing not to fellow scholastics or local readers, but to a global community of “the knowledgeable” (Tib. mkhas pa; Mon. baγsi, nomčin). The social site of what I am exploring as a new form of reading, interpreting, and writing in Asia’s heartland was the dispersed web of monastic colleges (Tib. grwa tshang; Mon. datsang) that connected generations of polyglot and cosmopolitan scholastics across the otherwise diverse and segregated socio-political blocs of late imperial Central and Eastern Tibet, north China, all Mongolian territories, and Siberia. My ongoing research is revealing how the practices of secularity (as defined by the Multiple Secularities framework) enacted by this commonwealth of frontier, synthetic scholastics was repurposed in the early 20th century, in the ruins of the Qing and Tsarist empires, to invent the social imaginaries, national subjects, civil societies, and other products of socialist secularism that produced modern Inner Asia (and continues to legitimize claims by Russia and the PRC on its Inner Asian frontiers). In this working paper, I will briefly introduce the social sites of my sources, the Buddhist monastic colleges that spanned the Sino-Russian frontiers, and provide a few examples of synthetic scholastic products that emerged in this previously unstudied form of Eurasianist public culture (c. 1750–1930s). I will also share some preliminary arguments I have drawn about the ways that practices of secularity amongst the actors my work considers led directly to the creation of the modern public sphere, civil society, and ironically, revolutionary institutional forms and models of history that had violently erased scholastic culture from public life.

Die Reformation fußt auf Voraussetzungen, die weit ins Mittelalter zurückreichen und ist ohne Protagonisten aus dem klösterlichen Milieu wie den 'entlaufenen Mönch' Luther undenkbar. Anlass genug für die Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig, zum Reformationsjubiläum die untergegangenen Geisteswelten der sächsischen Klöster anhand ihrer Bibliotheken in Szene zu setzen. Präsentiert werden herausragende Handschriften und Frühdrucke des 11. bis 15. Jahrhunderts aus den intellektuellen 'Hotspots' Sachsens im Mittelalter.

The goal of this paper is to provide a bird’s eye view on what might qualify as ‘the mother of all distinctions’ within Islamicate history affecting the regulation of human conduct. It is a rather ‘soft’ distinction, whereby the ethical and literary tradition of adab works as an harmonious counterpoint, more than as a sheer alternative, to the normative discourse subsumed under the notion of shari‘a, the law originating from Divine will (shar‘). Adab does so, however, while clearly affirming a distinctive, non-divine (and in this sense ‘secular’) source of norms of human interaction. The paper is divided into two parts: the first delineates the traits of adab in pre-colonial times, while the second focuses on key transformations it underwent during the colonial era.

A wide variety of Buddhist writings originating on the Indian subcontinent and elsewhere in South and Southeast Asia were translated into Chinese between the mid-second and the early eleventh centuries C.E. As this material was read, digested, commented upon, and integrated into daily life, Chinese audiences came to be familiar with Buddhism’s basic teaching that overcoming all forms of suffering (Ch. ku 苦; Skt. duḥkha) is its core function. As one of the most obvious forms of suffering encountered in everyday human life, illness was a frequent topic of concern in these discourses. Of particular concern was the question of the relationship between the alleviation of the suffering of illness and the total, final salvation from suffering of all kinds (commonly referred to as Ch. niepan 涅槃; Skt. nirvāṇa; among other terms). This question appears and reappears across the genres of the Buddhist canon. From sūtras (loosely meaning “scriptures”), to disciplinary texts, ritual manuals, narratives, parables, philosophical treatises, and poetry, illness and healing are everywhere in Buddhist literature.

Dieser Artikel geht der Frage nach, ob Niklas Luhmanns hoch-abstrakte und komplexe Systemtheorie für die Religionswissenschaft überhaupt brauchbar ist. Auf eine kurze Einführung in Luhmanns Religionstheorie folgt eine inhaltliche Auseinandersetzung mit den Argumenten ihrer Kritiker, namentlich mit Rudi Laermans und Gert Verschraegen sowie Peter Beyer. Kritik an Luhmanns Ideen zur Religion von Seiten derer, die seiner Systemtheorie gegenüber insgesamt offen sind, richtet sich häufig gegen dessen Behauptung, der spezifische Code des Religionssystems bestehe in der Leitunterscheidung Transzendenz/Immanenz, an der sich religiöse Kommunikation orientiere. In diesem Zusammenhang wird Luhmann vorgeworfen, seine Theorie sei gewissermaßen theologisch kontaminiert und christozentrisch. Peter Beyer meint in diesem Zusammenhang, der tatsächliche Code des Religionssystems bestehe eher in dem Dual Heil/Verdammnis. Ich versuche in diesem Artikel zu zeigen, dass die Kritik am Code Transzendenz/Immanenz auf einem grundlegenden Missverständnis seines Konzepts von Transzendenz sowie seiner funktionalen Religionsbestimmung basiert. Luhmanns gesamte Religionstheorie kann nur mit dem Code Transzendenz/Immanenz funktionieren. Abschließend wird die Brauchbarkeit von Luhmanns Religionstheorie mit Blick auf die Analyse historischer Diskurse betont, innerhalb derer die Grenzen zwischen religiösen und nicht religiösen Kultursegmenten ausgehandelt werden – unabhängig vom Gebrauch des Begriffs ‚Religion‘.

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The clean-slate acts of the Hebrew Bible, i.e., the Year of Jubilee in Leviticus 25 and the Šemittah Year and the Law of Slave Release in Deut 15:1-18, are a part of the tradition of clean-slate acts in the ancient Near East. In these acts, those who have become indebted and have loss land and freedom, are given a fresh start. Through comparing the biblical clean-slate acts with the evidence of clean-slate acts in ancient Mesopotamia including the existing Edict of Ammiṣaduqa and fragments of an edict from Samsuiluna, the Holiness Code’s Year of Jubilee and Deuteronomy’s Šhemittah Year and the Law of Slave Release are brought into sharper focus. The goal of this book is to use the lens of the ancient Near Eastern clean-slate acts to better understand not only the biblical acts but the role they play within their respective law codes. Through the clean-slate acts, both the Holiness Code and Deuteronomy set economic justice as a cornerstone of their theology. They serve as a culmination of what it means to be the people of YHWH. Analyzing the biblical clean-slate acts in light of the larger tradition shows that the Year of Jubilee and the Šemittah Year and the Law of Slave Release call the people of Israel to be participants in renewal, blessing, and providing justice for the community.:Table of Contents Abbreviations vii A Note on the Spellings of Names ix Chapter 1: Introduction 1 General Tendencies of the Research 2 Leviticus 25 2 Deuteronomy 15:1-18 5 The Relationship between Lev 25 and Deut 15:1-18 8 Lev 25 and Deut 15:1-18 and the Ancient Near East 12 Ancient Near Eastern Literature and the Hebrew Bible 15 Methodology 17 Chapter 2: From Freedom to Slavery. 20 Introduction 20 Causes of Debt in the Hebrew Bible 21 Loans 22 Taxes and Corvée 23 Consequences of Debt in the Hebrew Bible 25 Oppression of the Poor in the Literary Prophets 27 Debt in Ancient Mesopotamia 32 Interest-Bearing Loans 33 Taxes and Corvée 36 Consequences of Debt in Ancient Mesopotamia 38 Loss of Land 38 Loss of Freedom 39 Conclusion 43 Excursus 1: Debt in Ancient Egypt 44 General Survey 44 Debt-Slavery under Joseph - Genesis 47:13-26 45 Chapter 3: Economic Justice and Clean Slate Traditions in Ancient Mesopotamia 47 Introduction 47 Ur-Namma (regnal years: 2112-2095 B.C.E., Ur): 49 Lipit-Ištar (regnal years: 1934-1924 B.C.E., Isin) 51 Ur-Ninurta (regnal years: 1923-1896 B.C.E., Isin) 53 Sumulael (regnal years: 1880-1845 B.C.E., Babylon) 54 Sabium (regnal years: 1884-1831 B.C.E., Babylon) 54 Hammurabi (regnal years: 1792-1750 B.C.E., Babylon) 55 Samsuiluna (regnal years: 1749-1712 B.C.E., Babylon) 58 Abiešuḫ (regnal years: 1711-1684 B.C.E., Babylon) 63 Ammiditana (regnal years: 1683-1647 B.C.E., Babylon) 63 Date and Attribution Uncertain 64 Ammiṣaduqa (regnal years: 1646-1626 B.C.E., Babylon) 64 Conclusion 71 Chapter 4: Esarhaddon’s Neo-Assyrian Clean-Slate Acts 73 Introduction 73 Sennacherib and Babylonia 73 Esarhaddon’s Restoration of Babylon 77 Conclusion 84 Chapter 5: Dating the Holiness Code and Deuteronomy 87 Introduction 87 Overview 87 Deuteronomy 88 The Holiness Code 90 The Role of the Covenant Code 93 Evidence from Jeremiah 34 98 Authorship 101 Deuteronomy 102 The Holiness Code 106 Conclusion 109 Chapter 6: The Year of Jubilee in Leviticus 25 111 Introduction 111 Textual Issues 112 Land as Subject of Sabbath 112 Meaning of יוֹבֵל and דְּרוֹר 112 Debates 114 Questions of Redaction 119 Pronoun Switching 119 Cities 120 Structure 122 Sabbath and Jubilee 123 The Debt-Spiral and Clean-Slate Remedies 126 Key Issues and Themes 134 Sabbath: Not for the Poor 134 Debt and Debt Relief 135 Cities 136 Theology 137 Particularity 137 The Exodus Event and the Israelites as YHWH’s Slaves 138 The Land is YHWH’s 142 The Jubilee as Holy 144 The Day of Atonement and Created Order 146 In the Context of the Holiness Code 149 Conclusion 150 Chapter 7: The Šemittah Year and Law of Slave Release in Deuteronomy 15:1-18 152 Introduction 152 Šemittah 152 Debates 154 Debt Forgiveness or Deferment 154 Same or Double Work in v. 18 156 Structure 157 The Šemittah Year (15:1-11) 161 The Law of Slave Release (15:12-18) 165 Key Issues and Themes 166 Sabbath Rhythm 166 Generosity 168 Right Attitude 171 חטא in Deuteronomy 172 Particularity 174 Slave Laws in Deuteronomy 15:12-18 and Exodus 21:2-11 175 Theology 179 Care for the Poor Kin 179 The Gift of Land 180 Slavery in Egypt and the Exodus Event 181 Sovereignty of YHWH 182 Šemittah Year, Torah, and Joy 185 Conclusion 186 Excursus 2: A Clean-Slate Act in Nehemiah 5:1-13 187 Introduction 187 The Narrative 188 The Vocabulary 189 Shared Themes 191 The Nehemiah Memoir as Self-Presentation and Propaganda 192 Conclusion 194 Chapter 8: Comparisons and Conclusions 196 Introduction 196 Divine versus Human Agency 197 Sabbath 201 Forward-Looking 204 Provisions for the Future 207 Divine Ownership 209 Exclusivity 209 The Exodus Event 212 The Land and the Promise of Blessing 215 Community Ethics 217 Different Approaches 219 Community in Deuteronomy 221 The Land and YHWH’s Sovereignty in the Holiness Code 224 Conclusions 225 Bibliography 228

Der KONID Survey 2019 ist eine repräsentative Bevölkerungsumfrage für die Wohnbevölkerung ab 16 Jahren in Deutschland und der Schweiz zum Thema Zivilgesellschaft, soziale Identitäten und Religion. Die Studie wird verantwortet vom Team des von DFG und SNF gemeinsam geförderten deutsch-Schweizer Forschungsprojekts 'Konfigurationen individueller und kollektiver religiöser Iden- titäten und ihre zivilgesellschaftlichen Potentiale' (KONID). Der Forschungsbe- richt enthält erste Ergebnisse zur Bedeutung religiöser Identität in der Gegen- wart. Weitere Informationen zum Projekt finden Sie auf der Projekthomepage: https://resic.info.