Disease is a social issue, not just a medical issue. Using examples of specific legends and rumors, The Kiss of Death explores the beliefs and practices that permeate notions of contagion and contamination. Author Andrea Kitta offers new insight into the nature of vernacular conceptions of health and sickness and how medical and scientific institutions can use cultural literacy to better meet their communities’ needs. Using ethnographic, media, and narrative analysis, this book explores the vernacular explanatory models used in decisions concerning contagion to better understand the real fears, risks, concerns, and doubts of the public. Kitta explores immigration and patient zero, zombies and vampires, Slender Man, HPV, and the kiss of death legend, as well as systematic racism, homophobia, and misogyny in North American culture, to examine the nature of contagion and contamination. Conversations about health and risk cannot take place without considering positionality and intersectionality. In The Kiss of Death, Kitta isolates areas that require better communication and greater cultural sensitivity in the handling of infectious disease, public health, and other health-related disciplines and industries.

The story begins with the exciting story of the discovery of the Gospel in Egypt in 1978, and its subsequent movements from one antiquities dealer to another. We discover how this precious document eventually finds a home in a New York safety deposit box, where is languishes for years with a $3 million price tag, before it is finally published to huge public attention and fanfare. More than just the story of The Gospel of Judas since it had been found, Churton also discusses how it relates to the historical place of the Judas: how he has been maligned and misrepresented across the centuries. This fascinating book sheds new light on the real nature of Jesus, and presents a daring speculation on the endeavours he planned with his disciples in Jerusalem, Judea and Galilee. The Kiss of Death is an explosive book that explains the text of The Gospel of Judas, its context in modern Christianity, as well as the importance of its discovery and subsequent publication.

Alistair Fury is out for revenge. No more running errands. No more being called 'Alice'! It's payback time for his embarrassing mum, his bone-idle dad, and his constantly teasing older brother and sister. Only Alistair's two best friends - and this, his private diary - share his secrets. Culminating in a scene involving a snake, a toupee and a live TV broadcast, Alistair tries to wreak spectacular revenge but it doesn't exactly go according to plan . . . In lively and accessible diary form, this is a story of family life at its funniest, packed with schoolboy humour .

An illustrated historical study of gendered personifications of death in Western art, literature, and culture.

The lines of Michael Fishbane’s book trace the spiritual face of Judaism in one of its many appearances. Fishbane explores the quest for spiritual perfection in early rabbinic sources and in Jewish philosophy and mysticism. The "kiss of God," a symbol for union with God, and the ritual practices—meditation and performance—connected with it are presented. The book identifies a persistent passion for religious perfection, expressed as the love of God unto death itself. The masters of the tradition cultivated this ideal in all periods, in diverse genres, and in different modes. Rabbinic law and midrash, medieval philosophy and mysticism, public and private ritual all contributed to its development. Rooted in the understanding that the spiritual life requires discipline, the sages set up different ladders of ascension. For some, the Law itself was the means of spiritual growth; for others, more private practices were built upon its foundation. But all agreed that the purification of desire and the perfection of the soul offered the hope of personal salvation. None denied the historical redemption of the nation.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1969.

This first verse-by-verse commentary on the Greek text of the Testament of Abraham places the work within the history of both Jewish and Christian literature. It emphasizes the literary artistry and comedic nature of the Testament, brings to the task of interpretation a mass of comparative material, and establishes that, although the Testament goes back to a Jewish tale of the first or second century CE, the Christian elements are much more extensive than has previously been realized. The commentary further highlights the dependence of the Testament upon both Greco-Roman mythology and the Jewish Bible. This should be the standard commentary for years to come.

Explores the way poetry can combine social awareness and lyric vision