New open access journal

Relegere: studies in religion and reception is a new open-access, peer-reviewed journal from the University of Otago (New Zealand)
The journal publishes studies of the transmission, reception and effect of religious ideas, narratives and images within any medium, including oral tradition, film, television, literature and drama.
Vol.1, no.1 (2011) is now available (click "current" on the webpage)
Contents of the first issue include

• Rethinking premodern Japanese Buddhist texts: a case study of Prince Shotoku's "Sangyo-gisho" (Mark Dennis)
• Life of Brian or Life of Jesus? Uses of critical Biblical scholarship and non-orthodox views of Jesus in "Monty Python's Life of Brian" (James Crossley)

Religion and politics

Two stories highlighting the tensions where religious sensibilities and politics clash

(1) Via GoogleNews - report from Associated Press on Israel's opening up of the traditional site of the baptism of Jesus on the River Jordan to visitors on a daily basis - a scheme which is opposed by both the Jordanians and the Palestinians

(2) Report from Turkey's Hurriyet newspaper (online) on demands by Turkey's Syriac Christian community to be able to use traditional Syriac surnames (a law of 1934 had banned the use of "foreign" surnames in Turkey)

Stock moves : Jewish studies

All large and standard sized books on Jewish studies have been moved to their new location on Level B of the Library
These comprise:

• QI - Biblical studies
• QJ - Palestine / Israel (in Western languages)
• QN - Hebrew (ancient, medieval and modern)
• QO - Jews and Judaism
• QPA & QPB - Yiddish and Ladino (selected titles only)

Reference books for these subjects are still on Level C for the time being, but will be relocated to Level B shortly.

Digital Dictionary of Buddhism : new online resource

SOAS Library now has access to this resource, which comprises both the Digital Dictionary of Buddhism (DDB) and the CJKV-English dictionary (CJKV-E) for Sinitic characters and compounds related to East Asian cultural, political and intellectual history.

DDB is a compilation of Buddhist terms, texts, temples, schools and persons etc found in Buddhist canonical resources which began in print form in 1986 and migrated online in 1995. The initial focus was on East Asia, but it grew to include other Buddhist disciplines and texts. The website includes external links to other lexical, textual and bibliographic resources on Buddhism.

The Library’s subscription allows unlimited searches of both resources (DDB and CJKV-English) on-campus. SOAS staff and students are also able to make unlimited searches off-campus using the link below.

http://www.buddhism-dict.net/ddb/ [On-campus]

http://bit.ly/DigitalDB [Off-campus]

Jewish communities in West Africa: book review

Forgotten diaspora: Jewish communities in West Africa and the making of the Atlantic World, by Peter Mark and José da Silva Horta

This book is currently on order for SOAS Library. Its focus is on two communities of Sephardic Jews who settled in Portudal and Joal in Senegambia in the early 17th century

Read a review by Dr. Tobias Green (Centre for West African Studies, University of Birmingham) from the H-Luso-Africa pages of the Humanities and Social Sciences Net online

Jews and Christians in 5th and 6th century Arabia: book review

Professor Hagith Sivan of the Department of History, University of Kansas, writes about the collected 2008 conference proceedings published in Paris in 2010 as Juifs et chrétiens en Arabie aux Ve et VIe siècles: regards croisés sur les sources (edited by Joëlle Beaucamp, Françoise Briquel-Chatonnet and Christian Julien Robin)


Read her opinions in the Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Find this book in SOAS Library at QO296.396 / 750253

A qualification in secularism?

Colleges and universities have long offered degree courses in religious studies and theology, but now one college in the USA has moved to offer the first degree programme in secularism.
Pitzer College is "a small liberal arts institution" in Southern California  and the course will comprise modules such as "God, Darwin and Design in America", "Anxiety in the Age of Reason" and "Bible as literature"
Read more in this online article from the New York Times