Eduard Meyer

Eduard Meyer (1855-1930) was among the most important historians of his age. After Mommsen he is the best known German ancient historian. From 1902 he taught ancient history in Berlin and from 1919/20 he was vice-chancellor. His most important work "Geschichte des Altertums" includes the ancient oriental cultures, contains a sociological- anthropological methodology and considers all humane studies, especially religious history. This collection treats aspects of Meyer's biography - including his journey to America, his relations with his contemporaries (M. Weber, O. Spengler, U.von Wilamowitz), his university politics, his role in the First World War, his positions on Christianity and Judaism, history of philosophy, and particular research results and their effect.

Eduard Meyer (1855-1930) was among the most important historians of his age. After Mommsen he is the best known German ancient historian. From 1902 he taught ancient history in Berlin and from 1919/20 he was vice-chancellor. His most important work "Geschichte des Altertums" includes the ancient oriental cultures, contains a sociological- anthropological methodology and considers all humane studies, especially religious history. This collection treats aspects of Meyer's biography - including his journey to America, his relations with his contemporaries (M. Weber, O. Spengler, U.von Wilamowitz), his university politics, his role in the First World War, his positions on Christianity and Judaism, history of philosophy, and particular research results and their effect.

Max Weber wrote these methodological essays in the closest intimacy with actual research and against a background of constant and intensive meditation on substantive problems in the theory and strategy of the social sciences. They were written between 1903 and 1917, the most productive of Max Weber's life, when he was working on his studies in the sociology of religion and Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Weber had done important work in economic and legal history and had taught economic theory. On the basis of original investigations, he had acquired a specialist's knowledge of the details of German economic and social structure. His always vital concern for the political prosperity of Germany among the nations thrust him deeply into discussion of political ideals and programs. Weber's methodology still holds interest for us. Some of its shortcomings, from the contemporary viewpoint, may be attributed to the fact that some of the methodological problems that he treated could not be satisfactorily resolved prior to certain actual developments in research technique. These few qualifications aside, the work remains a pioneering work in large scale social research, from one of the field's masters.

Max Weber and His Contemporaries provides an unrivalled tour d'horizon of European intellectual life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and an assessment of the pivotal position within it occupied by Max Weber. Weber's many interests in and contributions to, such diverse fields as epistemology, political sociology, the sociology of religion and economic history are compared with and connected to those of his friends, pupils and antagonists and also of those contemporaries with whom he had neither a personal relationship nor any kind of scholoarly exchange. Several contributors also explore Weber's attitudes towards the most important political positions of his time (socialism, conservatism and anarchism) and his own involvement in German politics. This volume contributes not only to a better understanding of one of the most eminent modern thinkers and social scientists, but also provides an intellectual biography of a remarkable generation. This book was first published in 1987.

Most studies of how early Judaism related to the non-Jewish world and how it was perceived by others start no earlier than the Hellenistic period. Joseph Blenkinsopp argues that we must go further back, to the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and its temple and the liquidation of the political and religious infrastructure monarchy, priesthood, scribalism, prophecy which had sustained the Judean state for centuries. / Moving beyond the ideologically driven approaches of scholars over the past two centuries, he explores such pragmatic issues as the emergence of a distinctive group identity in the aftermath of the fall of the Judean state, the degree of continuity-discontinuity between national identity before the exile and competition among distinct group for legitimacy after it, and the historical realities behind the idea of a restoration in a fundamentally different world, with neither monarchy nor statehood and a much-diminished temple. / Judaism, the First Phase is a fresh and potentially stunning look at Jewish origins, tracing the legacy of Ezra and Nehemiah. Ideal for scholars and students.

This book helps explain some of Max Weber's key concepts such as charisma, asceticism, mysticism, pariah-people, prophets, salvation, and theodicy and places them within the context of Weber's sociology of religion.