This book deals with the art of persuasion in the past and present. There are three parts: the art of persuasion and the audience reaction in ancient Greece, the art of persuasion and the audience reaction in ancient Rome at the time of the early Roman republic, and the lecturer and audience in present days - issues, dangers and suggested solutions.

The focus of the book is the discussion of the concept of divinity and worship that is reflected in the priestly philosophy and law, and changes found in this concept. It signs off by displaying the changes that occurred in the world of priesthood as an attempt to cope with the socio-religious crisis which led to the disconnect between morality and worship. The book examines the relationship between activity of the priests to the vision of the classical prophets, led by Isaiah Ben- amotz . In this book Knohl proposes that the Priestly Source (P) dates from a much earlier period than it is usually dated to, and consequently that the Holiness Code (H) represents an addition to the law code of P, rather than the standard interpretation which is the reverse. Knohl suggests that H might have been inserted into P in order for the Temple priesthood to respond to the growing Prophetic movements.

This study in cognitive science brings together traditional philosophical questions about meaning and meaning relationships with recent findings in cognitive psychology, neurology, ethno-linguistics, and new methods of semantic research. Part 1 is a query into the nature of meaning relations as projected in the notion of conceptual and semantic fields. Words related in meaning are organized in a semantic field. Theoretical as well as methodological questions about semantic fields are dealt with in the light of new findings about conceptual networks, memory structure, retrieval mechanisms, and the modularity of language as revealed by differences of age, status, sex, culture, etc. It is suggested that a firm basis exists for further research in relations in various semantic fields, viewing these fields as the actual realization of cognitive networks. Part 2 details the obstacles as well as the benefits gained in conducting research on a semantic field of a difficult philosophical concept such as ‘similarity’. Verbs, nouns, adjectives, prepositions, and idiomatic expressions of similarity and related notions (mainly in Hebrew) are examined through their semantic relations and their respective roles in the semantic field. Two main conclusions result from this investigation: a) ‘Similarity’ is a bundle of relations rather than a unitary concept. It gathers under one roof subtypes of similarity such as: analogy and comparison, parallelism, duplication, part-whole relations, copy, forgery, and mistaken identification. Each subtype has its own logical characteristics. b) The mechanism that gathers these subtypes of similarity under one concept, ‘similarity’, is based on a quasi-contradiction or tension between unity and plurality, between precision (‘the very image’) and loose ends (‘images’). These two characteristics of ‘similarity’ account for its aptness to perform its cognitive function as an adjuster, a liaison between newly acquired, unlabeled information and a whole body of structured knowledge. Part 3 sets forth further applications of the semantic field method. Alternations of closely related words and expressions in the field shed new light on the choice of words and the issue of selectional restriction in meaning. Alternation of related discourse metaphors points out their nature as rule-governed devices. Several rules of meaning render such metaphors understandable and meaningful. This study is an initial step toward a theory of the logical-semantic basis of metaphor. The complete book shows what is gained by combining traditional philosophical and linguistic questions with modern research methods and their findings.

Sacred songs of the Sephardic Jews are known for their eloquence, sublime lyrics and depth of emotion and thought. Rabbi Solomon ibn Gabirol is responsible for this to a large extent- he was one of the principal contributors to the style. This book seeks to clarify Ibn Gabirol's unique contribution to the Sepharadic piyutim and to piyutim in General. Both in the newly introduced content , and the original form principles, which instructed all the poets from then on. Special emphasis has been placed on the mutual affinity between content and form. The book is intended for researchers, students, enthusiasts and medieval poetry and Solomon ibn Gabirol fans.

The book of Job brings forth the basic questions of the human existence: Is there a reason for suffering? Is there a moral order in the world? What is the place of man in the universe and what is the secret of the relationship between god and man? In this collection of essays, researchers from the biblical, literature, philosophy and art fields, deal with the different facets of the book - the experience which Job was put through compared to the binding of Isaac, Jobs' loneliness compared to that of Jeremiah, the question of Job as a tragic figure, the fear of god and the depictions of Job in medieval art.

Over the course of three hundred years, from the mid-14th century to the mid-17th century, the sages of Germany and Poland, who dealt with Halakha, ethics and philosophy, discussed questions concerning sin and repentance. This study examines the different approaches to these issues in the sages' writings.

In 1920, Jacob Neubauer published his PhD dissertation, originally written in German and submitted to the University of Leipzig. This book presents to the Hebrew reader a full edited translation based upon the two-part study, which substantially contributes to the research of marriage laws in the Talmud and of the historiography of Jewish law.