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

Prophets of the past: book review

Michael Brenner's "Prophets of the past: interpreters of Jewish history" (published in translation by Princeton University Press in 2010) is reviewed on Humanities and Social Sciences Net Online by Professor Moshe Rosman of the Department of Jewish History at Bar Ilan University.

Michael Brenner is Professor of Jewish History and Culture at the University of Munich. His book looks at Jewish historiography from the 18th century to the present

Find the book in SOAS Library at QO909 / 743994

New open-access book on Christianity and Judaism in late antiquity

Heresy and identity in late Antiquity (ed. by Holger Zellentin & Eduard Iricinschi; Mohr Siebeck, 2008)

Available in full-text from GoogleBooks, this monograph explores "the ways in which late antique groups defined their own socio-political borders and created secure in-group identities by means of discourses on "heresy" and "heretics"'

This book will be of interest to people studying Orthodox Christianity, early Christianity and Jewish-Christian relations in late antiquity

The link will shortly be posted to the Library subject guide for Religions, under Electronic Publications

The Jews of Central Asia: history and cuisine

Online article from the Jerusalem Post in which chef Dennis Wasko explores the history of the Bukharian Jews of today's Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, including their cuisine.
A recipe for Bukharian Plov (a chicken and rice dish) is included!