The purpose of this study was to see how Luke depicted the Roman Empire and in particularits people through his gospel. Around the time of the gospels? composition, 70-80 A.D., tensions were high between the Jewish people and their Roman occupants. However, it was during this period of high tension that a small group of Jews distinguished themselves not only by claiming that the promised savior, the Messiah, had arrived but also by including non-Jewish members into their ranks. The stated question is how this group of Christians reasoned both among themselves but also with their surroundings.

The aim of this essay is to study the religious education which the Jewish Community of Göteborg offers to members between six and fourteen years of age. The main question of the essay is ?what function does the religious afternoon education serve for the Jewish Community of Göteborg??To answer this question I have interviewed four people who in various ways are engaged in the religious education. To analyse the result I have used Danièle Herviue-Léger?s theory ?religion as a chain of memory?.

This master thesis is an ethnological study focusing members of a young, urban Jewishdiaspora in Sweden. The study's aim is to problematize and describe the relation between theJewish minority that is regarded as religious, and the secular normative majority societyregarded as non-religious. The study explores questions regarding social positioning,belonging and memory and how Jewish traditions are practiced in contemporary Sweden. Themethodological approaches are interviews and participation observations with a specific focuson food; its symbolic value and how food can materialize identities and communicatememories. The empirical data comprises 24 interviews in total, of which 11 interviews havebeen chosen and thus constitute the material on which the study's analysis is made upon.

The purpose of this examination is to investigate how Judisk Krönika, a periodical which was introduced in 1932 with the aim of disseminating Jewish culture and tradition in Sweden, uses history to make comments about its role in contemporary history, specifically during the first two years of the First Intifada. A second purpose was to examine how this use of history differed from results shown in earlier studies comprising the 1960s and the 2000s. The method in use is qualitative; the source material has been read thoroughly and scrutinized in search of the authors open and hidden messages and intentions. The main finding shows that four major themes could be identified: anti-Semitism(anti-Zionism); memory; ethnonational and media. The most dominant theme during the 1980s, as opposed to the 1960s and the 2000s focus on Zionism and Jewish culture respectively, is memory, that could be described as hegemonic and as a part of a existential use of history, which aims for survival and preservation of the Jewish culture in times of conflict..

In December 2004 the Jewish congregation Judiska Församlingen i Malmö wrote to Lund University regarding the cranium of a Jewish man, which had been in the University's possession ever since he committed suicide while in custody in Lund in 1879. The congregation requested that the remains be given to them and buried according to Jewish custom. In February of 2005 Lund University decided to appease the request. This essay examines the debate which followed.The main focus of the study is on which kinds of arguments were used in the debate, who participated and which aspects of the human remains were considered important by the debaters.The study has shown that clear differences exist regarding the types of arguments used by those in favour of the repatriation and by those who opposed it. There were also differences in who took a stand in favour of it and who was against it.

In this essay I have tried to describe the rich tradition of thoughts about the afterlife in Judaism. The first part contains litterary studies and the second part is based on interviews with religious representatives. The first part is a description of the progress of thought in history around the issue afterlife. The sources reveal a vast amount of intellectual work on the issue. I have tried to follow the path of thought, and how it developed, so that the reader can see how one thought leads to the other but also how each period?s way of thinking is influnced by its context.

This study looks at the uses of the temple metaphor in 1 Cor 3:16-17 and 6:19 inlight of the so-called New Perspective on Paul. The aim of the study is to determine if one's interpretation may be dependent on whether the background material for the temple is taken from the Jewish or Greek-Roman world. The study looks at how the terms temple and holiness were generally understood in those contexts, and if the textual context related to the temple metaphor is dependent on a Jewish or Greek-Roman temple. The results of the study shows that while the terms temple and holiness were more or less equivalent in both contexts, a rhetorical analyze of the textual context of the temple metaphor in 3:16-17 is dependent on Greek-Roman temples, such as those in Corinth..

The purpose of the study is to analyse the representations of Jewish festivals and how they affect the teaching in three textbooks for Religious Education 1 in Secondary Upper Education. The textbooks are Religion och livet (2007) written by Börge Ring, Religionskunskap för gymnasiet (2009) written by Lars-Göran Alm and Religion 1 för gymnasiet (2012) written by Lennart Göth, Katarina Lycken Rüter and Veronica Wirström. The basis for the study is the phenomenological perspective as described by Émile Durkheim and in particular Carl-Henrik Grenholm and Karl-Johan Illman. It tells that religion cannot purely be understood as a religious belief without its rituals. This phenomenological perspective on religion both the curriculum and syllabus encourages.

The state of Israel is known as the only democracy in the Middle East. The purpose of this study was to examine if there is aspects in the Israelis society that can be questioned in terms of liberal democracy.Areas of concerns in the study are the Israeli official policy's concerning inclusion and exclusion of their citizens in areas of property owning, personal status and the duty of military service.The results show that the Israeli society distinguishes their citizens in these areas by their ethnic origin, in favour for the Jewish population. The law prohibits changes in the states Jewish character. One clear example how this is presented is that a Jew is prohibited to marry a non-Jew. The results show also that this official policy by the Israeli state violates important principles of liberal democracy.

According to old european tradition the ideal national state has a unified people, but in reality practically all states has one of several minorities that to a smaller or greater degree differs from the majority. One such minority that have been present in many countries and managed to avoid becoming completly assimilated are the Jewish people. Their dream of a state of their own eventually lead to the founding of the state of Israel where they themselves are now in majority. The purpose of this report is to study how the jews historic experiances has affected the political parties in Israel, how they choose to meet the ?challenge? of their own minorities och whatever they treat different minorites differently.

SammanfattningStudien utredde orsaken till partnerval inom den egna etniska gruppen. Judiska universitetsstuderande (n=42) jämfördes med icke-judiska svenska universitetsstuderande (n=42) och deltagarna jämfördes på variablerna ingruppsidentitet, likhet, stöd från socialt nätverk, partnerval och kollektivism. Dessutom attraktivitetsskattades personer med och utan davidsstjärna. Bäst prediktor för svenskarnas preferens för partnerval inom gruppen var stöd från socialt nätverk medan likhet var bäst prediktor för judarnas ingruppspreferens. Ingruppsidentitet predicerade partnerval inom gruppen för judarna, men inte för svenskarna.

This thesis has the purpose that through a text analysis examine how four schoolbooks for high school treats the religions Judaism and Hinduism. The schoolbooks are from the years 2000, 2001, 2003 and 2009. The perspectives are from a religious viewing point, that means that the women are religious, Jewish feminists and Hindu feminists. The theories used are written by these women and are academic litterature.  The questions are how are women represented in the schoolbooks, is the feminist critique present or are the two religions represented and described in an invariable way, and is the description of Judaism and Hinduism consistent with the curriculum?The text analysis used in this examination means that reality is organized through and by the language used by the actors in that reality.

This thesis has the purpose that through a text analysis examine how four schoolbooks for high school treats the religions Judaism and Hinduism. The schoolbooks are from the years 2000, 2001, 2003 and 2009. The perspectives are from a religious viewing point, that means that the women are religious, Jewish feminists and Hindu feminists. The theories used are written by these women and are academic litterature.  The questions are how are women represented in the schoolbooks, is the feminist critique present or are the two religions represented and described in an invariable way, and is the description of Judaism and Hinduism consistent with the curriculum?The text analysis used in this examination means that reality is organized through and by the language used by the actors in that reality.

German-Jewish Nobel Prize laureate Nelly Sachs is remembered for her poetry written while in exile in Sweden. In this essay I have tried to examine how the exile situation shaped her poetry and what different kinds of stages the poetry went through. For example - how it went from being dark and painful when concerning the holocaust, into light and hopeful with reconciliation during the last years of her life.The exile turned out to be a catalyst to her poetry..

In this textual analysis I have examined the book Att följa Jesus by Ulf Ekman and information from Word of Life's official website. The aim of this study is to see how a religious leader is shaping the identity of the groups members after a certain pattern that differs from the surrounding, secular society. The research focus  of this essay includes several aspects:  how a culture is formed in a religious minority in contrast to the prevailing cultural context; how the material can be explained by Paul Pruyser?s theory on the psychological worlds; how what Ulf Ekman writes about distinguishing themselves from the environment differs from how other religious minority groups distinguish their identity;  and,  how the psychological world, expected behavior, and context of Word of Life can be structured by Valerie DeMarinis? model of assessment. I have placed Word of Life in a realistic illusionistic world developed from Paul Pruyser?s theory of psychological worlds.