Download or read book Judaism and Hellenism written by Martin Hengel and published by SCM Press. This book was released on 2012-02 with total page 666 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the fascinating story of a group of reformers who tried to go too fast, bungled their reform, and so changed the course of history. Hengel's thesis is that Hellenistic influences were, and had been for centuries, smoothly penetrating Judaism even in Jerusalem; there was respect on both sides between Jew and Greek. Then the Greek party tried to go too fast, make Hellenization obligatory and outlaw the Law. This occasioned a furious defensive reaction; Judaism clammed up, became xenophobic and rigoristic, producing the attitude which in its turn created the defensive reaction of anti-Semitism which has stained so many centuries. The defensive rigidity set up in Judaism made it unable to respond to Jesus' creative reinterpretation of the Law, and so led to the rejection of Christianity. This is a truly important scholarly work. The exhaustive collection of evidence will make it a fundamental textbook for the period' (The Tablet). `A foundation book and essential as a source book and as a guide to trends in present research' (The Expository Times). Martin Hengel was Professor of New Testament and Early Judaism in the University of Tubingen.
Download or read book The Laws of the Damascus Document written by Charlotte Hempel and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-11-26 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Damascus Document is one of the key texts to have been discovered in both spectacular Jewish manuscript discoveries of the 20 th century: the Cairo Genizah and the Dead Sea Scrolls. The legal part of this document has until recently received little scholarly attention. With the recent publication of eight manuscripts of the Damascus Document from cave 4, which provide a substantial amount of additional legal material, the legal part of this document is set to be the focus of research in coming years. This volume provides a detailed analysis of the Laws of the Damascus Document which fully incorporates the new cave 4 evidence. The author offers a close reading of the text and identifies a number of literary strata as well as a considerable amount of redactional activity.
Download or read book Reading the Human Body written by Mladen Popović and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2007 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offering new reconstructions and interpretations of physiognomic and astrological texts from Qumran in comparison with Babylonian and Greco-Roman texts, this book gives a fresh view of their sense, function, and status within both the Qumran community and Second Temple Judaism.
Download or read book The Aramaic Levi Document written by Jonas C. Greenfield and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-10-11 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fragments of Aramaic Levi Document are presented for the first time as a single coherent whole. This book, which will move the study of this pivotal document to a new level, includes original texts, translation, introduction and extensive and detailed commentary.
Download or read book Astral Sciences in Mesopotamia written by Hermann Hunger and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-11-02 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Astronomy and astrology, or the astral sciences, played an enormous, if not a key role in the political and religious life of the Ancient Near East, and, later, of the Greek and Roman world. This is the first comprehensive and up-to-date account of the origins of the astral sciences in the Ancient Near East. Every type of Sumerian or Akkadian text dealing with descriptive or mathematical astronomy, including many individual tablets are thoroughly dealt with. All aspects, such as the history of discovery, reconstruction, and interpretation come to the fore, accompanied by a full bibliography. At that the reader will find descriptions of astronomical contents, an explanation of their scientific meaning and the place a given genre or tablet has in the development of astronomy both within the Mesopotamian culture and outside of it. Because celestial omens are intimately related to astronomy in Mesopotamian science, these are also discussed extensively. The material is arranged both chronologically and thematically, so as to help make Astral Sciences in Mesopotamia a reference work on the subject in its truest sense.
Download or read book Babylonian Planetary Omens without special title written by Erica Reiner and published by BRILL. This book was released on 1998-01-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This third fascicle of Babylonian Planetary Omens contains the edition of all cuneiform texts dealing with the planet Venus known to us. Most of these tablets are kept in the British Museum; the large number of unpublished texts were transliterated and the previously published texts were checked and collated from the originals. The texts are accompanied by translations, and each group of texts is commented upon by David Pingree from the point of view of the text history and astronomical significance. A general introduction, also by David Pingree, analyzes the descriptions of Venus that occur in the texts in terms of astronomical phenomena. Indices are included to facilitate the study of this large corpus.
Download or read book Testament of Abraham written by Dale C. Allison and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-08-26 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Ascent to Heaven in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses written by Martha Himmelfarb and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1993 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a comparative study of the ancient Jewish and Christian views of the ascent into heaven. It places the ascent narratives in their cultural and historical context, and explores their relationship to the canonical apocalypses and to other Graeco-Roman literature of ascent and divinization.
Download or read book Qumran Cave 4 written by Philip S. Alexander and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents the long-awaited edition of the Cave 4 manuscripts of Serekh Ha-Yahad or The Rule of the Community, in which the Essenes detailed the guidelines for membership in their community. Also known as the Manual of Discipline, a complete scroll was found in Cave 1 at Qumran and this edition illuminates the textual and redactional history of Dead Sea literature. The document is extremely important for understanding the nature, practice, and ideology of the Qumran covenanters.
Download or read book Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism written by Gruenwald and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-11-26 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Preliminary Material /Ithamar Gruenwald -- Two Essential Qualities of Jewish Apocalyptic /Ithamar Gruenwald -- The Mystical Elements in Apocalyptic /Ithamar Gruenwald -- The Attitude Towards the Merkavah Speculations in the Literature of the Tannaim and Amoraim /Ithamar Gruenwald -- The Hekhalot Literature /Ithamar Gruenwald -- Introduction /Ithamar Gruenwald -- Reʾuyot Yeḥezkel /Ithamar Gruenwald -- Hekhalot Zutreti /Ithamar Gruenwald -- Hekhalot Rabbati /Ithamar Gruenwald -- Merkavah Rabbah /Ithamar Gruenwald -- Maʻaseh Merkavah /Ithamar Gruenwald -- 'Hekhalot ' Fragments /Ithamar Gruenwald -- Seper Hekhalot (3 Enoch) /Ithamar Gruenwald -- Masekhet Hekhalot /Ithamar Gruenwald -- Shjʻur Qomah /Ithamar Gruenwald -- Physiognomy, Chiromancy and Metoposcopy /Ithamar Gruenwald -- Seper Ha-Razim /Ithamar Gruenwald -- Appendices /Saul Lieberman -- Indices /Ithamar Gruenwald.
Download or read book Babylonian Horoscopes written by Francesca Rochberg and published by American Philosophical Society. This book was released on 1998 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Emerging for the first time in the 5th cent. B.C., horoscopes reflect the application of the idea and practice of celestial divination to the life of the individual. Whereas an omen focuses on a single astronomical phenomenon, the horoscope takes into account the positions of the moon, sun, and five planets at the moment of a birth. As such, Babylonian horoscopes presuppose the concept of the ecliptic and a methodology for obtaining the positions of heavenly bodies when they are not observable. This is the first complete edition of the extant cuneiform horoscopes -- with transcription and philological and astronomical commentary. This study offers a systematic description of the documents as a definable class of Babylonian astronomical/astrological texts.
Download or read book On the Creation of the Cosmos According to Moses written by Philo (of Alexandria.) and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study is the first volume in the new Philo of Alexandria Commentary Series. It contains a new English translation of Philo's famous treatise "On the creation of the cosmos" (the first for seventy years), and the first ever commentary in English. In this work the Jewish exegete and philosopher gives a selective exegesis of the Mosaic creation account and the events in Paradise as recorded in Genesis 1-3. It is the first preserved example of Hexaemeral literature, and had a profound influence on early Christian thought. The commentary aims to make Philo's thought accessible to readers such as graduate students who are just beginning to read him, but also contains much material that will be of interest to specialists in Hellenistic Judaism, ancient philosophy and patristic literature.
Download or read book Ancient Astronomy and Celestial Divination written by Noel M. Swerdlow and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents recent work on Babylonian celestialdivination and on the Greek inheritors of the Babyloniantradition.In the ancient world, the collection and study of celestial phenomena and the intepretation of their prophetic significance, especially as applied to kings and nations, were closely related sciences carried out by the same scholars. Both ancient sources and modern research agree that astronomy and celestial divination arose in Babylon. Only in the late nineteenth century, however, did scholars begin to identify and decipher the original Babylonian sources, and the process of understanding those sources has been long and difficult. This volume presents recent work on Babylonian celestial divination and on the Greek inheritors of the Babylonian tradition. Both philological and mathematical work are included. The essays shed new light on all of the known textual sources, including the omen series Enuma Anu Enlil, which contains omens from as far back as the early second or even third millennium, and the earliest personal horoscopes, from about 400 B.C., as well as the Astronomical Diaries, ephemerides, and other observational and mathematical texts. One essay concerns astronomical papyri that confirm the extensive transmission of Babylonian methods into Greek; a study of Ptolemy's lunar theory suggests that Ptolemy relied more on his own observations than previously thought; and an analysis of Theon's commentary on Ptolemy's Handy Tables shows that Theon explicated their meaning both conscientiously and competently.ContributorsAsger Aaboe, Alan C. Bowen, Lis Brack-Bernsen, John P. Britton, Bernard R. Goldstein, Gerd Graßhoff, Hermann Hunger, Alexander Jones, Erica Reiner, F. Rochberg, N. M. Swerdlow, Anne Tihon, C. B. F. Walker
Download or read book Astral Magic in Babylonia written by Erica Reiner and published by American Philosophical Society. This book was released on 1995 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Erica Reiner offers a connection between Near Eastern material and their echoes in the West. a foundation for comparisons between the oriental cultures and gtheir echoes in the West. To provide a foundation for comparisons the Near Eastern material needs to be resented in reliable form. Reiner's sources are culled from such scientific texts as medicine, divination, and rituals, which are not usually included in anthologies of Mesopotamian texts and rarely available in translation..
Download or read book Secrecy and Concealment written by Hans Kippenberg and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-11-13 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume deals with secrecy and concealment in the history of mediterranean religions as pattern of social interaction. Secrecy is a powerful means in establishing identity and interaction as G. Simmel has demonstrated. Using his approach the scholars of this volume describe and explain the practical meaning of concealment in two different religious systems: in Egyptian and Greek polytheism and in Jewish, Christian, Gnostic and Shi'i monotheisms. This point of view reveals that all these religions shaped social norms concerning public and private aspects of the human self.
Download or read book Daniel written by John Joseph Collins and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most comprehensive English-language commentary on Daniel in 65 years. Collins situates the Old Testament in its historical context and offers a full explanation of the text, especially its religious imagery.
Download or read book Birth in Babylonia and the Bible written by Stol and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-11-15 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Utilising material spanning 3000 years, this book examines childbirth in the Biblical and Babylonian world. Stol's scholarship has an extraordinary range. He follows the mother and child from conception to weaning, analyzing a variety of different texts and topics. He deals, for example, with the vicissitudes and procedures of labor and delivery, delivery with magical plants and amulets, and with legal issues relating to abortion or to the liability of the wet-nurse. Many of the texts are rich and distinctive. Babylonian incantations to facilitate birth describe the child moving "over the dark sea" and, like a ship, reaching "the quay of life". His discussions are supplemented with relevant examples drawn from Greek and Roman sources, Rabbinic literature, and modern ethnographic material from traditional Middle Eastern societies. The last chapter, written by F.A.M. Wiggermann, deals with the horrible baby-snatching demon, Lamastum. This book is a fully re-worked edition of a volume originally written in Dutch (1983). Both authors teach at the Free University (Amsterdam).
