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Background Sources
Food, Feasts, and Faith: An Encyclopedia of Food Culture in World Religions
An indispensable resource for exploring food and faith, this two-volume set offers information on food-related religious beliefs, customs, and practices from around the world.
The Oxford Handbook of Food Ethics
This Handbook provides a sample of recent philosophical work in food ethics. This philosophical work addresses ethical issues with agricultural production, the structure of the global food system, the ethics of personal food consumption, the ethics of food policy, and cultural understandings of food and eating, among other issues.
The Routledge Handbook of Religion and Animal Ethics
The ethical treatment of non-human animals is an increasingly significant issue, directly affecting how people share the planet with other creatures and visualize themselves within the natural world. The Routledge Handbook of Religion and Animal Ethics looks specifically at the role religion plays in the formation of ethics around these concerns.
"Food and Food Preparation," in Oxford Bibliographies: Biblical Studies
Food and food production form the settings for a plethora of Old and New Testament texts as well as the metaphorical material used by texts for a variety of purposes. The basic “Mediterranean diet” of olive oil, grains, and grapes and their production are the everyday staples, often supplemented by festive meals. Meals display important theological, anthropological, and political events, highlighting both the materiality of the biblical discourses and the use of material images for broader arguments. Uses of food in the Hebrew Bible are deeply influenced by the political and religious traditions of the ancient Near East, such as Assyria, Egypt, Babylon, and Ugarit. New Testament texts interact with both the Greco-Roman and earlier Israelite traditions.
"Food and Religion," in The Oxford Handbook of Food History
This chapter examines the relationship between food and religion, focusing on Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.
Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics
This Encyclopedia offers a definitive source on issues pertaining to the full range of topics in the important new area of food and agricultural ethics. It includes summaries of historical approaches, current scholarship, social movements, and new trends from the standpoint of the ethical notions that have shaped them.
Digital Dictionary of Buddhism
The Digital Dictionary of Buddhism [DDB] is a compilation of Chinese ideograph-based terms, texts, temple, schools, persons, etc. found in Buddhist canonical sources. The Chinese-Japanese-Korean-Vietnamese/English Dictionary [CJKV-E] is a compilation of Chinese ideographs, as well as ideograph-comprised compound words, text names, person names, etc., found primarily in the Confucian and Daoist classics. It also includes vocabulary from Neo-Confucian texts, as well as other philosophical and historical sources. Its information on individual ideographs is intended to be comprehensive, containing pronunciations and meanings from ancient and modern sources from the Sinitic cultural sphere including China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. Modern-day compound words are included incidentally, but the coverage of modern materials is not intended to be comprehensive.
Encyclopaedia Iranica This link opens in a new window
A multi-disciplinary reference work and research tool designed to record the facts of Iranian history and civilization. A precisely documented reference work on the lands, life, culture and history of all Iranian peoples and their interaction with other societies.
Encyclopaedia of Islam This link opens in a new window
Includes "articles on distinguished Muslims of every era and origin, on tribes and dynasties, on crafts and sciences, on political and religious institutions, on the geography, ethnography, flora and fauna of the various countries and on the history, topography and monuments of the major towns and cities" of the Islamic world.
Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures This link opens in a new window
Focuses on women and the civilizations and societies in which Islam has played a historic role. Surveys all facets of life (society, economy, politics, religion, the arts, popular culture, sports, health, science, medicine, environment, etc.) of women in these societies.
"Food Waste, Religion, and Spirituality: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim approaches," in Routledge Handbook of Food Waste
In this chapter, we address some of the ways in which Judaism, Christianity, and Islam approach the issue of food waste.
"Food," in The Bloomsbury Handbook to Studying Christians"
Christians are unique among the followers of the world's major religions for not following a formal dietary code.
The Oxford Companion to Food
Over 3,000 entries on every possible food, its history, cultural significance, and culinary usage.
"Vegetarianism in Seventh-day Adventism," in Religion as a Social Determinant of Public Health
This chapter describes Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) religious practice of vegetarianism, a feature of daily life in this Christian community. The SDA Church is global, and a vegetarian or at least semi-vegetarian diet is a central part of its doctrine. At the same time, the inclusion of many cultures in this faith tradition brings great variety to the diet