Download or read book The Dragon the Mountain and the Nations written by Robert D. Miller II and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines myths concerning dragons and dragon-slaying throughout proto-Indo-European cultures, ancient Near Eastern and Mesopotamian traditions, Indian mythology, and the Bible.
Download or read book Baal St George and Khidr written by Robert D. Miller II and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2020-05-11 with total page 105 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Western tradition, St. George is known as the dragon slayer. In the Middle East, he is called Khidr (“Green One”), and in addition to being a dragon slayer, he is also somehow the prophet Elijah. In this book, Robert D. Miller II untangles these complicated connections and reveals how, especially in his Middle Eastern guise, St. George is a reincarnation of the Canaanite storm god Baal, another “Green One” who in Ugaritic texts slays dragons. Combining art history, theology, and archeology, this multidisciplinary study demystifies the identity of St. George in his various incarnations, laying bare the processes by which these identifications merged and diverged. Miller traces the origins of this figure in Arabic and Latin texts and explores the possibility that Middle Eastern shrines to St. George lie on top of ancient shrines of the Canaanite storm god Baal. Miller examines these holy places, particularly in modern Israel and around Mount Hermon on the Syrian-Lebanese-Israeli border, and makes the convincing case that direct continuity exists from the Baal of antiquity to the St. George/Khidr of Christian lore. Convincingly argued and thoroughly researched, this study makes a unique contribution to such diverse areas as ancient Near Eastern studies, Roman history and religion, Christian hagiography and iconography, Quranic studies, and Arab folk religion.
Download or read book Revelation written by and published by Canongate Books. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The final book of the Bible, Revelation prophesies the ultimate judgement of mankind in a series of allegorical visions, grisly images and numerological predictions. According to these, empires will fall, the "Beast" will be destroyed and Christ will rule a new Jerusalem. With an introduction by Will Self.
Download or read book God s Conflict with the Dragon and the Sea written by John Day and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2020-04-20 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Old Testament contains a number of interesting poetic references to God's conflict with a dragon, called by names such as Leviathan, Rahab or the twisting serpent, and with the sea. In this original contribution to the background and understanding of the Old Testament Dr Day undertakes a detailed and thorough examination of these allusions. Building on the discovery of the Ugaritic texts, he demonstrates a source for these references within Canaanite mythology. His study further explores the associations of the imagery. Sometimes in the Old Testament the dragon is associated with the creation of the world, or it becomes a symbol of a foreign nation, and in some references it is associated with divine conflict at the end of time.
Download or read book Dragon Mountain written by Katie Tsang and published by Union Square & Co.. This book was released on 2021-07-27 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the authors behind the critically acclaimed Sam Wu books, a thrilling new fantasy series about friendship, courage, adventure, and dragon magic. When 12-year-old Billy Chan finds out his parents are sending him to a language and culture camp in the middle-of-nowhere China, he can’t imagine anything worse. He’s not expecting to become friends with fellow campers Dylan O’Donnell, Charlotte Bell, and Liu Ling-Fei. And he’s definitely not planning to meet any dragons. But when the four kids accidentally open a crack in an ancient mountain, they become involved in an ages-old struggle of good versus evil. Now it’s up to them to save the Dragon Realm—if they don’t, the world as they know it might disappear forever.
Download or read book Creation and Chaos in the Primeval Era and the Eschaton written by Hermann Gunkel and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2006-10-10 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Foreword by Peter Machinist Hermann Gunkel's groundbreaking Schöpfung und Chaos, originally published in German in 1895, is here translated in its entirety into English for the first time. Even though available only in German, this work by Gunkel has had a profound influence on modern biblical scholarship. Discovering a number of parallels between the biblical creation accounts and a Babylonian creation account, the Enuma Elish, Gunkel argues that ancient Babylonian traditions shaped the Hebrew people's perceptions both of God's creative activity at the beginning of time and of God's re-creative activity at the end of time. Including illuminating introductory pieces by eminent scholar Peter Machinist and by translator K. William Whitney, Gunkel's Creation and Chaos will appeal to serious students and scholars in the area of biblical studies.
Download or read book In the Hall of the Dragon King written by Stephen Lawhead and published by Thomas Nelson. This book was released on 2011-05-30 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A kingdom hangs in the balance as a young acolyte shoulders a knight’s errand to rescue the King. Tested in more ways than one, Quentin must face life outside of the temple as he is swept up in the political uncertainty of the court and ventures out on an Arthurian quest across the lands in hopes of reaching the King before it’s too late. This crossover YA political fantasy features religious undertones. Quentin had always thought his calling was to be an acolyte at the temple and live a simple life far from adventure or service to the crown – until a waylaid knight with a mortal wound implores the priests to finish his errand to the castle. Unsure but convicted, Quentin offers to finish the quest not knowing the fate of the kingdom rest on his shoulders. In Arthurian fashion, Quentin is thrown headfirst into the political scheming of the court where Prince Jaspin is trying to usurp the throne for himself while the King has mysteriously disappeared. As Quentin sets out to find the King, he learns that the balance of good and evil are weighing on the scales and time is running out. Tangle in a new destiny, Quentin must rely on his friends and companions as they journey towards an uncertain future filled with ancient secrets and unimaginable obstacles. In The Hall of the Dragon King readers will find: Christian allegory and themes A sweeping Arthurian styled epic fantasy about hope, destiny, and purpose Crossover appeal for young adult and adult readers A coming of age story with religious undertones In this first book of the Dragon King Trilogy, Stephen R. Lawhead has deftly woven a timeless epic of war, adventure, fantasy, and political intrigue perfect for fans of Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series, Megan Whalen Turner’s The Queen’s Thief series, and Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance Cycle.
Download or read book Slaying the Dragon written by Ben Riggs and published by Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.. This book was released on 2022-07-19 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dungeons & Dragons. It’s the fantasy role-playing game first conceived over fifty years ago by the now-legendary company TSR ,which has enthralled millions of devoted gamers around the world for generations. It’s a test of skill, intelligence, audacity, and survival. But no D&D game ever played could compare to the stunning behind-the-scenes melee for power and dominance that was the true story of TSR. Slaying the Dragon chronicles the rise and fall of TSR (Tactical Studies Rules), how the brilliant and wild minds of the legendary Gary Gygax and his co-creator Dave Arneson gave birth to a game that would capture the imagination of outsiders and underdogs throughout the world. From its humble beginnings in the small town of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin to its emergence as a cultural phenomenon, TSR soon spawned an unlikely empire of games and geekdom—with Dungeons & Dragons leading the way—that was decades ahead of its time, inviting both hyper-devoted fans as well as hysteria surrounding the game’s supposed corrupting influence on America’s youth. TSR was in the news, in the money, and on top of the world. But success soon took its toll, with creative control and rivalries within the firm threatening the stability of TSR. Former allies grew apart personally and professionally, and the formerly fun, freewheeling firm founded by a band of misfits collapsed into a desperate struggle for survival. Despite attempts to grow in a changing market, setbacks and management decisions put TSR in a downward spiral in the 1990s which resulted in the company's death and then resurrection by the most unlikely of saviors. With author access to previously unreleased documents and insider stories, and interviews with former TSR employees and associates who witnessed the high-stakes machinations and maneuvering that would eventually seal the company’s fate, Slaying the Dragon is a fascinating, revealing tale of friends turned enemies, success and failure, and loyalty and betrayal that no roll of the die could predict... "Riggs has written a fascinating and dishy account of the business hits and whistling misses of a band of dreamers, writers, artists, and geeks... A must-read for fighters, magic-users, and even bards -- and everyone else, too." — Brad Ricca, Edgar-nominated author of Mrs. Sherlock Holmes and True Raiders"Far from a fluff piece on a beloved hobby, this book goes behind the GM's screen to take a hard-nosed look at the people and circumstances that first gave rise to D&D, then nearly killed it -- twice. Riggs takes you on a roller-coaster from boom to near bankruptcy, but never loses sight of the individuals involved, the good, the bad, and the geeky." — Marie Brennan, Hugo-Award nominated author of the Memoirs of Lady Trent series
Download or read book The Penguin Book of Dragons written by Scott G. Bruce and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two thousand years of legend and lore about the menace and majesty of dragons, which have breathed fire into our imaginations from ancient Rome to Game of Thrones A Penguin Classic The most popular mythological creature in the human imagination, dragons have provoked fear and fascination for their lethal venom and crushing coils, and as avatars of the Antichrist, servants of Satan, couriers of the damned to Hell, portents of disaster, and harbingers of the last days. Here are accounts spanning millennia and continents of these monsters that mark the boundary between the known and the unknown, including: their origins in the deserts of Africa; their struggles with their mortal enemies, elephants, in the jungles of South Asia; their fear of lightning; the world’s first dragon slayer, in an ancient collection of Sanskrit hymns; the colossal sea monster Leviathan; the seven-headed “great red dragon” of the Book of Revelation; the Loch Ness monster; the dragon in Beowulf, who inspired Smaug in Tolkien’s The Hobbit; the dragons in the prophecies of the wizard Merlin; a dragon saved from a centipede in Japan who gifts his human savior a magical bag of rice; the supernatural feathered serpent of ancient Mesoamerica; and a flatulent dragon the size of the Trojan Horse. From the dark halls of the Lonely Mountain to the blue skies of Westeros, we expect dragons to be gigantic, reptilian predators with massive, bat-like wings, who wreak havoc defending the gold they have hoarded in the deep places of the earth. But dragons are full of surprises, as is this book.
Download or read book Land of the Ascending Dragon written by Paul Martin and published by Hastings House Book Publishers. This book was released on 1997 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two decades after the end of the Indochina War, three celebrated journalists with firsthand knowledge of Vietnam's troubled past remember its rich history, survey its remarkable present and future as Asia's newest economic tiger, and reveal its captivating beauty. 140 color photos. 30 b&w photos.
Download or read book Yahweh Origin of a Desert God written by Robert D. Miller II and published by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. This book was released on 2021-03-08 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recognizing the absence of a God named Yahweh outside of ancient Israel, this study addresses the related questions of Yahweh's origins and the biblical claim that there were Yahweh-worshipers other than the Israelite people. Beginning with the Hebrew Bible, with an exhaustive survey of ancient Near Eastern literature and inscriptions discovered by archaeology, and using anthropology to reconstruct religious practices and beliefs of ancient Edom and Midian, this study proposes an answer. Yahweh-worshiping Midianites of the Early Iron Age brought their deity along with metallurgy into ancient Palestine and the Israelite people.
Download or read book Reading the Bible with Horror written by Brandon R. Grafius and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-10-25 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Reading the Bible with Horror, Brandon R. Grafius takes the reader on a whirlwind tour through the dark corners of the Hebrew Bible. Along the way, he stops to place the monstrous Leviathan in conversation with contemporary monster theory, uses Derrida to help explore the ghosts that haunt the biblical landscape, and reads the House of David as a haunted house. Conversations arise between unexpected sources, such as the Pentateuch legal texts dealing with female sexuality and Carrie. Throughout the book, Grafius asks how the Hebrew Bible can be both sacred text and tome of fright, and he explores the numerous ways in which the worlds of religion and horror share uncomfortable spaces.
Download or read book Geography Religion Gods and Saints in the Eastern Mediterranean written by Erica Ferg and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-01-16 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Geography, Religion, Gods, and Saints in the Eastern Mediterranean explores the influence of geography on religion and highlights a largely unknown story of religious history in the Eastern Mediterranean. In the Levant, agricultural communities of Jews, Christians, and Muslims jointly venerated and largely shared three important saints or holy figures: Jewish Elijah, Christian St. George, and Muslim al-Khiḍr. These figures share ‘peculiar’ characteristics, such as associations with rain, greenness, fertility, and storms. Only in the Eastern Mediterranean are Elijah, St. George, and al-Khiḍr shared between religious communities, or characterized by these same agricultural attributes – attributes that also were shared by regional religious figures from earlier time periods, such as the ancient Near Eastern Storm-god Baal-Hadad, and Levantine Zeus. This book tells the story of how that came to be, and suggests that the figures share specific characteristics, over a very long period of time, because these motifs were shaped by the geography of the region. Ultimately, this book suggests that regional geography has influenced regional religion; that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are not, historically or textually speaking, separate religious traditions (even if Jews, Christians, and Muslims are members of distinct religious communities); and that shared religious practices between members of these and other local religious communities are not unusual. Instead, shared practices arose out of a common geographical environment and an interconnected religious heritage, and are a natural historical feature of religion in the Eastern Mediterranean. This volume will be of interest to students of ancient Near Eastern religions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, sainthood, agricultural communities in the ancient Near East, Middle Eastern religious and cultural history, and the relationships between geography and religion.
Download or read book The Dragon S Beasts written by Fred A. Wilson and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2017-06-14 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book of Daniel 2 reveals by symbols the successive empires/kingdoms of the world with a statue of a human figure of a head of gold, chest of silver, thighs of bronze, legs of iron, and feet of a mixture of clay and iron. Daniel 7, which describes four beasts (a lion, a bear, a leopard, and a terrible beast with ten horns), covers the same period in world history as in chapter 2. While the king of Babylon saw the majestic power and grandeur of the Gentile empire/kingdoms, Prophet Daniel saw their real character, beastly conduct, wicked rule, and profligate government. All the beasts (empire/kingdoms) were destroyed by the Messiah, Immanuel (the Stone), who the builders of the nations of man rejected and who is the cornerstone of the holy nation of believers. Revelation 12 describes the great dragon thrown down, the age-old serpent that is called the devil and Satan, he who continually deceives and seduces the entire inhabited world. He was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. This usurping dragon would form successive compacts with mankind for the dominion of the earth. Revelation 13 shows the final compact between the nations of man and the man of sin, Satan (the dragons beasts), engulfing even the holy people (Israel, the churchthe woman on the beast in Revelation 17). When the stone finally destroyed the lawless kings of the nations/kingdoms, their rule was dispersed to the lots of nation-states created by the common peoplethe rule of commoners. These are the nation-states of democratically elected commoners. Revelation 13 (and 17) shows the rebellion and apostasy of our Christendom/Queendom of Babylon, the great nation-states of man setting themselves up against the son of man, Immanuel. Why the stone is about to crush Christendom of Babylon the great! And the stone that smote the image became a great mountain or rock and filled the whole earth (Daniel 2:3435). Yes, he is the rock of ages!
Download or read book God s Conflict with the Dragon and the Sea written by John Day and published by CUP Archive. This book was released on 1985-01-24 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dr Day examines God's conflict with a dragon and the sea in the Old Testament.
Download or read book Covenant and Grace in the Old Testament written by Robert D. Miller, 2nd and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the Old Testament language about Israel's relationship with God in the light of Assyrian royal propaganda. Unpacking this language's meaning in both Assyrian and biblical contexts, it shows Israel borrowed language from Assyrian vassal treaties to describe its covenant with God, and this book reveals what "covenant" meant, and that it is not "covenant" at all, but "grace." The broader theological implications of this discovery are explored in dialogue with contemporary theologians. The book takes seriously the study of text in its ancient context in order to highlight the theological content and its modern relevance.
Download or read book Oral Tradition in Ancient Israel written by Robert D. Miller and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2011-09-08 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Providing a comprehensive study of "oral tradition" in Israel, this volume unpacks the nature of oral tradition, the form it would have taken in ancient Israel, and the remains of it in the narrative books of the Hebrew Bible. The author presents cases of oral/written interaction that provide the best ethnographic analogies for ancient Israel and insights from these suggest a model of transmission in oral-written societies valid for ancient Israel. Miller reconstructs what ancient Israelite oral literature would have been and considers criteria for identifying orally derived material in the narrative books of the Old Testament, marking several passages as highly probable oral derivations. Using ethnographic data and ancient Near Eastern examples, he proposes performance settings for this material. The epilogue treats the contentious topic of historicity and shows that orally derived texts are not more historically reliable than other texts in the Bible.
