Download or read book Hittite Texts and Greek Religion written by Ian Rutherford and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-23 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our knowledge of ancient Greece has been transformed in the last century by an increased understanding of the cultures of the Ancient Near East. This is particularly true of ancient religion. This book looks at the relationship between the religious systems of Ancient Greece and the Hittites, who controlled Turkey in the Late Bronze Age (1400-1200 BC). The cuneiform texts preserved in the Hittite archives provide a particularly rich source for religious practice, detailing festivals, purification rituals, oracle-consultations, prayers, and myths of the Hittite state, as well as documenting the religious practice of neighbouring Anatolian states in which the Hittites took an interest. Hittite religion is thus more comprehensively documented than any other ancient religious tradition in the Near East, even Egypt. The Hittites are also known to have been in contact with Mycenaean Greece, known to them as Ahhiyawa. The book first sets out the evidence and provides a methodological paradigm for using comparative data. It then explores cases where there may have been contact or influence, such as in the case of scapegoat rituals or the Kumarbi-Cycle. Finally, it considers key aspects of religious practices shared by both systems, such as the pantheon, rituals of war, festivals, and animal sacrifice. The aim of such a comparison is to discover clues that may further our understanding of the deep history of religious practices and, when used in conjunction with historical data, illuminate the differences between cultures and reveal what is distinctive about each of them.
Download or read book Panth e Religious Transformations in the Graeco Roman Empire written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2013-09-12 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Panthée presents a collective reflection relating to the changes that affected the Graeco-Roman Empire and over the long term altered its religious landscapes. Fifty years after the foundation of the series EPRO, the volume aims to avoid the division between the supposedly "Roman" or "Graeco-Roman" and the "Oriental" by linking the available information relating the different major areas, such as the relation between local and global, the place of emotions in relation to soteriological and initiatory aspects, strategies of integration and negotiation of identities. For the first time the leading specialists in every field bring their approaches into contact with one another, and jointly construct a picture of practices and conceptual frames, which, in their diversity and inter-action, model a religious universe whose complexity will help to understand our modern globalising world. Panthée propose une réflexion collective sur les mutations qui ont affecté l'Empire gréco-romain et ont progressivement remodelé ses paysages religieux. Cinquante ans après la création de la collection des EPRO, ce livre ambitionne de dépasser le clivage entre ce qui serait "romain", ou "gréco-romain", et ce qui serait "oriental" en articulant les données disponibles autour de quelques thèmes majeurs, comme les jeux d'échelle entre local et universel, la place du registre des émotions en relation avec les dimensions sotériologiques et mystériques, les stratégies d'intégration et de négociation des identités. Pour la première fois, les meilleurs spécialistes venus de tous les horizons croisent leurs approches et construisent ensemble un tableau des pratiques et des cadres de pensée qui, dans leur diversité et dans leur interaction, dessinent les contours d'un univers religieux dont la complexité aide à penser le monde moderne de la globalisation.
Download or read book Religion and Colonization in Ancient Greece written by Irad Malkin and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-09-01 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally presented as the author's thesis (Ph. D.-- University of Pennsylvania)
Download or read book Rabbinisme et Paganisme en Palestine romaine written by E. Friedheim and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2006-07-01 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study deals essentially with the knowledge of the Palestinian Rabbis concerning paganism in the days of Mishna and Talmud. The Late Professor Saul Lieberman wrote that “Many isolated items on idolatry and idol worshippers are scattered all over rabbinic literature. It would require a large volume to treat this topic”. This valuable and exhaustive study proves methodically that the Rabbis had deeper knowledge about Syrian, Arabian, Anatolian and Graeco-Roman Pagan cults than is commonly believed. Clear, accessible and displaying considerable scholarship this work will undoubtedly provide an important challenge to both historians, archaeologists, and scholars of Rabbinic texts. *** Cette étude traite essentiellement du niveau de connaissances des Rabbins de Judée et de Galilée concernant les cultes païens dans le sens le plus large du terme. Le Professeur Saul Lieberman affirmait : “Many isolated items on idolatry and idol worshippers are scattered all over rabbinic literature. It would require a large volume to treat this topic” Ce travail exhaustif, à travers l’ensemble du corpus talmudique et au regard de la réalité historique propre à la Palestine romaine, montre méthodiquement que les connaissances des Sages, tant sur les divinités du paganisme que sur des rites syriens, arabes, anatoliens voire gréco-romains, étaient bien plus vastes et approfondies, que ce qu’il est communément admis aujourd’hui par la recherche historique. De part sa clareté et son accessibilité, ce livre intéressera aussi bien les historiens du peuple juif, que ceux des religions antiques. Les archéologues, les historiens du Levant à l’époque romaine, ainsi que les spécialistes de la littérature talmudique y trouveront également un vif intérêt en vertu de son aspect extrêmement novateur.
Download or read book The Transformation of Greek Amulets in Roman Imperial Times written by Christopher A. Faraone and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2018-04-20 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Featuring more than 120 illustrations, The Transformation of Greek Amulets in Roman Imperial Times is an essential reference for those interested in the religion, culture, and history of the ancient Mediterranean.
Download or read book Colonial Religion and Indigenous Society in the Archaic Western Mediterranean C 750 400 BCE written by Lela Manning Urquhart and published by Stanford University. This book was released on 2010 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This project examines the long-term responses of indigenous societies in Sicily and Sardinia to colonial religion in the ancient western Mediterranean. It conducts a comparative analysis of religious developments among indigenous, Greek, and Phoenician communities between the 8th and 5th centuries BC. It shows that while indigenous communities near Greek colonies in Sicily integrated Greek-style material culture and practices into their religious lives, those near Phoenician colonies in Sardinia and Sicily showed much less interest in Phoenician material culture and religion. This contrast is then explained in terms of the greater social accessibility and more communal features of Greek polis religion, which made its practices and material culture broadly attractive across cultural divides in a time of rapid social change.
Download or read book Syncr tismes Et H r sies Dans L Orient Seljoukide Et Ottoman XIVe XVIIIe Si cles written by Gilles Veinstein and published by Peeters Publishers. This book was released on 2005 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Proceedings of an international conference held at the College de France in 2001, the book is a set of 27 contributions in English and in French of wellknown experts both in Turkish and Middle Eastern history (11th-18the c.) and in the history of Religions. The aim was to draw a large picture of the religious richness and complexity of the Seljuk and Ottoman worlds and to comment on the consequences in terms of heresies and syncretisms, two concepts which are currently revisited by the same token. The influence of the dualistic doctrinal legacy is particularly put in light. Simultaneously the effects of the religious context upon Ottoman society and politics are discussed extensively.
Download or read book Nile Into Tiber written by Laurent Bricault and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2007 with total page 591 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Egypt in the Roman world" --- Studies on the meaning of Aegyptiaca Romana and the understanding of the cults of Isis in their local context.
Download or read book Egyptian Solar Religion in the New Kingdom written by Jan Assmann and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-11-12 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revised and expanded, this volume deals with the religious traditions of ancient Egypt, which have come down to us in a state which is both extremely fragmentary and complex. New material - especially hymns collected in Theban tombs - now allows a much more precise allocation of religious texts and ideas in terms of time, place and social context. Within the field of solar religion, no less than five different traditions have to be distinguished: 1) the liturgical traditions of the royal solar cult, which for their secrecy and exclusivity are labelled the "mysteries" of the sun cult; 2) the traditional mythology of the solar course expressed in hymns and pictorial representations; 3) the revolutionary process culminating in the Amarna period, which discards the mythic images and gives a monotheistic construction of the solar course, a process which starts before Akhenaten's revolution; 4) the theology of Amun-Re, the God of Thebes, before the Amarna Period, a theology of primacy where one god acts as chief of a pantheon; and 5) the quite different theology of this same Amun-Re after Amarna, a theology which answers the monotheistic experience by developing a kind of pantheism - the concept of the hidden god - who is both cosmic god and personal saviour.
Download or read book The Roman Empire written by Peter Garnsey and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1987-06-12 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the first, stable period of the Principate (roughly from 27 BC to AD 235), when the empire reached its maximum extent, Roman society and culture were radically transformed. But how was the vast territory of the empire controlled? Did the demands of central government stimulate economic growth, or endanger survival? What forces of cohesion operated to balance the social and economic inequalities and high mortality rates? Why did Roman governments freeze the official religion while allowing the diffusion of alien, especially oriental, cults? Are we to see in their attitude to Christianity a policy of toleration—or simply confusion and a failure of nerve? These are some of the many questions posed in this book, which offers the first overall account of the society, economy and culture of the Roman empire. Addressed to non-specialist readers no less than to scholars, it breaks with the traditional historian's preoccupation with narrative and politics. As an integrated study of the life and outlook of the ordinary inhabitants of the Roman world, it deepens our understanding of the underlying factors in this important formative period of world history.
Download or read book The Emergence of Islam in Late Antiquity written by Aziz Al-Azmeh and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 659 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive and innovative reconstruction of the emergence of early Muslim religion and polity in their historical, religious and ethnological contexts. Intended principally for scholars of late antiquity, Islamic studies and the history of religions, the book opens up many novel directions for future research.
Download or read book Ptolemy I written by Ian Worthington and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-03 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Rome defeated the forces of Antony and Cleopatra and annexed Egypt, the rule of the longest-lived of the Hellenistic dynasties and one of the most illustrious in Egyptian history came to an end. For nearly three hundred years, the Macedonian dynasty known as the Ptolemaic had controlled Egypt and its mixed population of Egyptians, Greeks, Macedonians, and Jews. The founder of this dynasty, Ptolemy I (367-283/2 BC), was a boyhood friend and eventually personal bodyguard of Alexander the Great, who fought alongside Alexander in the epic battles that toppled the Persian Empire, and brought about a Macedonian Empire stretching from Greece to India. After Alexander's death, his senior staff carved up his vast empire, with Ptolemy gaining control of Egypt. There he built up his power base in Egypt, introduced administrative and economic reforms that made his family fabulously wealthy, and by extending Egypt's possessions overseas founded an Egyptian Empire. In addition to his political and military prowess, Ptolemy was an intellectual, who patronized the mathematician Euclid, wrote an important account of Alexander's campaign in Asia, and established the famous Library and Museum at Alexandria, which were the cultural heart of the entire Hellenistic Age. Ptolemy ruled Egypt until he died of natural causes in his early eighties. Ian Worthington's Ptolemy I--the first full-length biography of its kind in English--traces the life of Ptolemy from his boyhood to his reign as king and pharaoh of Egypt. Throughout, he highlights the achievements that profoundly shaped both Egypt's history and that of the early Hellenistic world. He argues that Ptolemy was by far the greatest of Alexander's Successors, and that he was a conscious imperialist who even boldly attempted to seize Greece and Macedonia, and be a second Alexander.
Download or read book Paul Politics and New Creation written by Najeeb T. Haddad and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-12-10 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paul, Politics, and New Creation: Reconsidering Paul and Empire nuances Paul’s relationship with the Roman Empire. Using rhetorical, sociohistorical, and theological methods, Najeeb T. Haddad reevaluates claims of Paul’s anti-imperialism by situating him in his proper Hellenistic Jewish and Greco-Roman contexts.
Download or read book Religious Diversity in Late Antiquity written by David Morton Gwynn and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2010 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume in the ongoing Late Antique Archaeology series draws on material and textual evidence to explore the diverse religious world of Late Antiquity. Subjects include Jews and Samaritans, orthodoxy and heresy, pilgrimage, stylites, magic, the sacred and the secular.
Download or read book Toward the Origins of Christmas written by Susan K. Roll and published by Peeters Publishers. This book was released on 1995 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christmas exerts an enormous attraction today even apart from its Christian character as a celebration of the incarnation of God in the Person of Jesus. Even marginal or indifferent Christians crowd the churches on Christmas Eve and in highly commercialized and technologized Western societies the Christmas season is celebrated with enthousiasm. Yet Christmas entered the calendar of feasts relatively late, by 336 C.E., and the reason for its introduction and quick spread remain speculative and based on fragmentary evidence. Towards the Origins of Christmas addresses both the contemporary Western celebration of Christmas, and its deep historical roots in the church of the fourth century. The book presents a thorough investigation of the patristic texts and evidence cited by liturgical scholars in the late 19th and 20th centuries to support two main theories: the Calculation theory and the History of Religions theory. This historical research is set in the framework of the contemporary experience of Christmas; the dynamics of time and the liturgical year; the inculturation of liturgy; and underlying elements of dualism and patriarchal power paradigms which linger beneath the often commercial and sentimental character of Christmas today. Suzan K. Roll was born in Clarence Center, New York (USA) in 1952. She holds degrees in classical languages and pastoral theology, and in 1993 received a Ph. D. from the Faculty of Theology of the Catholic University of Louvain (Leuven), Belgium, summa cum laude with the gratulations of the jury. She has thaught and published in the field of liturgy, sacraments, pastoral theology, and presently teaches at Christ the King Seminary, Buffalo, New York (USA).
Download or read book Moses the Egyptian written by Jan Assmann and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1998-10-15 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Standing at the very foundation of monotheism, and so of Western culture, Moses is a figure not of history, but of memory. As such, he is the quintessential subject for the innovative historiography Jan Assmann both defines and practices in this work, the study of historical memory--a study, in this case, of the ways in which factual and fictional events and characters are stored in religious beliefs and transformed in their philosophical justification, literary reinterpretation, philological restitution (or falsification), and psychoanalytic demystification. To account for the complexities of the foundational event through which monotheism was established, Moses the Egyptian goes back to the short-lived monotheistic revolution of the Egyptian king Akhenaten (1360-1340 B.C.E.). Assmann traces the monotheism of Moses to this source, then shows how his followers denied the Egyptians any part in the origin of their beliefs and condemned them as polytheistic idolaters. Thus began the cycle in which every "counter-religion," by establishing itself as truth, denounced all others as false. Assmann reconstructs this cycle as a pattern of historical abuse, and tracks its permutations from ancient sources, including the Bible, through Renaissance debates over the basis of religion to Sigmund Freud's Moses and Monotheism. One of the great Egyptologists of our time, and an exceptional scholar of history and literature, Assmann is uniquely equipped for this undertaking--an exemplary case study of the vicissitudes of historical memory that is also a compelling lesson in the fluidity of cultural identity and beliefs.
Download or read book A History of Religious Ideas Volume 2 written by Mircea Eliade and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-12-16 with total page 581 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In volume 2 of this monumental work, Mircea Eliade continues his magisterial progress through the history of religious ideas. The religions of ancient China, Brahmanism and Hinduism, Buddha and his contemporaries, Roman religion, Celtic and German religions, Judaism, the Hellenistic period, the Iranian syntheses, and the birth of Christianity—all are encompassed in this volume.
