Download or read book Traditions of the Magi written by Albert F. de Jong and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-08-27 with total page 510 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first full treatment of the Greek and Latin references to Zoroastrianism since the pioneering works of Benveniste, Bidez & Cumont, and Clemen. It focuses on the possibilities offered by the classical reports on Zoroastrianism to reconstruct the history of that faith. The book is divided into three sections. The first section deals with introductory problems concerning ancient religious ethnography and current views of the history of Zoroastrianism. The second section consists of commentaries on five selected passages. The third section offers a thematical overview of the materials and their relevance for the history of Iranian religions. Apart from offering introductions to a wide range of debates and topics in Classics and Iranian studies, the book aims to illustrate the diversity of beliefs and practices in ancient Zoroastrianism.
Download or read book Pentadic Redaction in the Manichaean Kephalaia written by Timothy Pettipiece and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2009 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discovered in 1929, the Manichaean "Kephalaia" have opened up an important window on the early development of Manichaean doctrine. This study identifies a significant redactional tendency whereby the compilers of the text sought to clarify ambiguities in canonical Manichaean tradition by means of five-part numerical series. This discovery challenges the conventional wisdom of Manichaean scholarship, which has long maintained that, since Mani recorded his own teachings in a series of what later became canonical writings, Manichaean doctrines were transmitted relatively unchanged from the master to successive generations of disciples. Since this assumption is now called into question, it now becomes necessary to re-evaluate received notions about the shape of both the Manichaean canon and tradition.
Download or read book The Spirit World in the Letters of Paul the Apostle written by Guy Williams and published by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. This book was released on 2009-09-16 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Guy Williams beleuchtet die Rolle der Geistwesen in den echten paulinischen Briefen. Entgegen der weit verbreiteten Ansicht, Geister und spirituelle Wesen seien für Paulus unbedeutend und trivial gewesen, vertritt Williams die These, dass diese inhärente Merkmale der Briefe darstellten. Die Berücksichtigung ihres historischen und kulturellen Hintergrundes zeigt, dass die Vorstellung von den »Einwohnern der paulinischen Geistwelt«, den Engeln, Dämonen, Kräften und Satan, denen des allgemeinen Gedankenguts entspricht.Schließlich bezieht Williams die Ergebnisse seiner Untersuchung auf drei Bereiche: Paulus Christologie, seine Soteriologie und seine Vorstellung von Gemeinschaft. Sein Ansatz erlaubt einen frischen Blick auf Ort und Bedeutung von spirituellen Wesen bei Paulus, nicht im Sinne einer neuen Doktrin, aber als allgemeines und kulturelles Idiom der paulinischen Texte.
Download or read book The Roman Near East 31 B C A D 337 written by Fergus Millar and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 630 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Augustus to Constantine, the Roman Empire in the Near East expanded step by step, southward to the Red Sea and eastward across the Euphrates to the Tigris. In a remarkable work of interpretive history, Fergus Millar shows us this world as it was forged into the Roman provinces of Syria, Judaea, Arabia, and Mesopotamia. His book conveys the magnificent sweep of history as well as the rich diversity of peoples, religions, and languages that intermingle in the Roman Near East. Against this complex backdrop, Millar explores questions of cultural and religious identity and ethnicity--as aspects of daily life in the classical world and as part of the larger issues they raise. As Millar traces the advance of Roman control, he gives a lucid picture of Rome's policies and governance over its far-flung empire. He introduces us to major regions of the area and their contrasting communities, bringing out the different strands of culture, communal identity, language, and religious belief in each. The Roman Near East makes it possible to see rabbinic Judaism, early Christianity, and eventually the origins of Islam against the matrix of societies in which they were formed. Millar's evidence permits us to assess whether the Near East is best seen as a regional variant of Graeco-Roman culture or as in some true sense oriental. A masterful treatment of a complex period and world, distilling a vast amount of literary, documentary, artistic, and archaeological evidence--always reflecting new findings--this book is sure to become the standard source for anyone interested in the Roman Empire or the history of the Near East.
Download or read book Reading the Human Body written by Mladen Popović and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2007-07-30 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study deals with physiognomic and astrological texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls that represent one of the earliest examples of ancient Jewish science. For the first time the Hebrew physiognomic-astrological list 4Q186 (4QZodiacal Physiognomy) and the Aramaic physiognomic list 4Q561 (4QPhysiognomy ar) are comprehensively studied in relation to both physiognomic and astrological writings from Babylonian and Greco-Roman traditions. New reconstructions and interpretations of these learned lists are offered that result in a fresh view of their sense, function, and status within both the Qumran community and Second Temple Judaism at large, showing that Jewish culture in Palestine participated in the cultural exchange of learned knowledge between Babylonian and Greco-Roman cultures.
Download or read book Demonstrative Proof in Defence of God written by Nils Arne Pedersen and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-10-26 with total page 591 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first extensive study of a major Patristic work, showing its importance for the history of Church and theology, Manichaean studies and the use of ancient philosophy. It includes a critical text and translation of central passages.
Download or read book Jewish Law and Early Christian Identity written by Yifat Monnickendam and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-09 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ephrem, one of the earliest Syriac Christian writers, lived on the eastern outskirts of the Roman Empire during the fourth century. Although he wrote polemical works against Jews and pagans, and identified with post-Nicene Christianity, his writings are also replete with parallels with Jewish traditions and he is the leading figure in an ongoing debate about the Jewish character of Syriac Christianity. This book focuses on early ideas about betrothal, marriage, and sexual relations, including their theological and legal implications, and positions Ephrem at a precise intersection between his Semitic origin and his Christian commitment. Alongside his adoption of customs and legal stances drawn from his Greco-Roman and Christian surroundings, Ephrem sometimes reveals unique legal concepts which are closer to early Palestinian, sectarian positions than to the Roman or Jewish worlds. The book therefore explains naturalistic legal thought in Christian literature and sheds light on the rise of Syriac Christianity.
Download or read book Bardai an of Edessa written by Jan Willem Drijvers and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-07-17 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Social Justice and the Legitimacy of Slavery written by Ilaria Ramelli and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Were slavery and social injustice leading to dire poverty in antiquity and late antiquity only regarded as normal, "natural" (Aristotle), or at best something morally "indifferent" (the Stoics), or, in the Christian milieu, a sad but inevitable consequence of the Fall, or even an expression of God's unquestionable will? Social Justice and the Legitimacy of Slavery shows that there were also definitive condemnations of slavery and social injustice as iniquitous and even impious, and that these came especially from ascetics, both in Judaism and in Christianity, and occasionally also in Greco-Roman ("pagan") philosophy. Ilaria L. E. Ramelli argues that this depends on a link not only between asceticism and renunciation, but also between asceticism and justice, at least in ancient and late antique philosophical asceticism. Ramelli provides a careful investigation through all of Ancient Philosophy (not only Aristotle and the Stoics, but also the Sophists, Socrates, Plato, the Neoplatonists, and much more), Ancient to Rabbinic Judaism, Hellenistic Jewish ascetic groups such as the Essenes and the Therapeutae, all of the New Testament, with special focus on Paul and Jesus, and Greek, Latin, and Syriac Patristic, from Clement and Origen to the Cappadocians, from John Chrysostom to Theodoret to Byzantine monastics, from Ambrose to Augustine, from Bardaisan to Aphrahat, without neglecting the Christianized Sentences of Sextus. In particular, Ramelli considers Gregory of Nyssa and the interrelation between theory and practice in all of these ancient and patristic philosophers, as well as to the parallels that emerge in their arguments against slavery and against social injustice.
Download or read book Bardaisan of Edessa written by H. J. W. Drijvers and published by Gorgias Press. This book was released on 2012-11-03 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume, a reprint of his 1966 monograph, H. J. W. Drijvers investigates the life and teachings of Bardaisan of Edessa, determining his place in the religious and cultural life of Edessa in the second half of the second century of the common era.
Download or read book Gender and Purity in the Protevangelium of James written by Lily C. Vuong and published by Mohr Siebeck. This book was released on 2013-11-19 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Protevangelium of James is arguably the earliest surviving source that exhibits profound interest in Mary, the mother of Jesus. Although frequently cited for later Christian reflections about Mary, gender, and virginity and its influence on popular Christian art, music, and literature, it is not well known outside academic circles and is rarely studied for its own sake. Lily C. Vuong offers a sustained analysis of the text's narrative and literary features in order to explore the portrayal and characterization of Mary through a focus on the theme of purity. By tracing the various ways purity is described and presented in the text, the author contributes to discussions on early Jewish and Christian ideas about purity, representations of women in the ancient world, the early history of Mariology, and the place of non-canonical writings in the history of biblical interpretation.
Download or read book Between Medieval Men written by David Clark and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-02-26 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between Medieval Men is a radical new study of same-sex relations (both erotic and non-erotic) in the Anglo-Saxon period. David Clark's nuanced approach to gender and sexuality seeks to step outside modern cultural assumptions in order to explore the diversity and complexity that he shows to be characteristic of the period.
Download or read book The Founder of Manichaeism written by Iain Gardner and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-05 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new critical look at Mani's life to establish a proper historical foundation for the study of this fascinating thinker.
Download or read book Roman Edessa written by Steven K. Ross and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2000-10-26 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Roman Edessa offers a comprehensive and erudite analysis of the ancient city of Edessa (modern day Urfa, Turkey), which constituted a remarkable amalgam of the East and the West. Among the areas explored are: * the cultural life and antecedents of Edessa * Edessene religion * the extent of the Hellenization at Edessa before the advent of Christianity * the myth of an exchange of letters between a King Abgar and Jesus.
Download or read book Edessa the Blessed City written by J. B. Segal and published by Oxford : Clarendon Press. This book was released on 1970 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Exploring Gregory of Nyssa written by Anna Marmodoro and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-10 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring Gregory of Nyssa: Philosophical, Theological, and Historical Studies brings together an interdisciplinary team of historians, classicists, philosophers, and theologians to offer a holistic exploration of the thought of Gregory of Nyssa. The volume considers Gregory's role in the main philosophical and religious controversies of his era, such as his ecclesiastical involvement in the Neo-Nicene apologetical movement. It looks at his complex relationships-for example with his brother Basil of Caesarea and with Gregory of Nazianzus. Contributors highlight Gregory's debt to Origen, but also the divergence between the two thinkers, and their relationships to Platonism. They also examine Gregory of Nyssa's wider philosophy and metaphysics; deep questions in philosophy of language such as the nature of predication and singular terms that inform our understanding of Gregory's thought; and the role of metaphysical concepts such as the nature of powers and identity. The study paints a picture of Gregory as a ground-breaking philosopher-theologian. It analyses the nature of the soul, and connection to theological issues such as resurrection; questions that are still of interest in the philosophy of religion today, such as divine impassibility and the nature of the Trinity; and returning to more immediately humane concerns, Gregory also has profound thoughts on topics such as vulnerability and self-direction. The volume will be of primary interest to researchers, lecturers, and postgraduate students in philosophy, classics, history, and theology, and can be recommended as secondary reading for undergraduates, especially those studying classics and theology.
Download or read book The Chronicle of Matthew of Edessa written by Matthew (of Edessa) and published by . This book was released on 1975 with total page 818 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
