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This book is intended for biblical scholars, scholars of ancient Judaism and Christianity. With a contribution by: Baker, H. W.;

This fifth extract from Sayce's Origin and Growth of Religion, the topic turns to the "sacred books" of the Babylonians. Beginning with the "Chaldean Rig-Veda," collections of hymns identified from the earliest days of Assyriology, Sayce also considers the earlier, less developed magical texts. Future considerations - sin, the status of heaven and Hades, and cosmology finish out the essay.

In this long awaited edition Baumgarten presents all the known Qumran Cave 4 manuscripts of the Damascus Document on the basis of J. T. Milik's original transcriptions. These eight manuscripts antedate the two medieval Cairo Geniza texts (CD) by more than a millennium and are indispensable for all future literary and historical studies on one of the major foundational works of the Qumran community. For the first time we have the paraenetic beginning and ending of the work, as well as major addi...

"In the extensive literature relating to ancient Greece, there is no work that serves the purposes of this volume. A Swedish proverb speaks of placing the church in the middle of the village, and that is precisely what Nilsson has here done. Homer and Hesiod formed the basis of the traditional education of the Greeks in general, and the great gods and goddesses as they appear in art show at all times the formative influence of the epic tradition. Nevertheless, the hard core of Greek religion is...

"British Museum expert Dr Irving Finkel reveals how decoding the symbols on a 4,000 year old piece of clay enable a radical new interpretation of the Noah's Ark myth. A world authority on the period, Dr Finkel's enthralling real-life detective story began with a most remarkable event at the British Museum - the arrival one day in 2008 of a single, modest-sized Babylonian cuneiform tablet - the palm-sized clay rectangles on which our ancestors created the first documents. It had been brought in b...

During the archaic and classical periods, Greek ideas about the dead evolved in response to changing social and cultural conditions--most notably changes associated with the development of the polis, such as funerary legislation, and changes due to increased contacts with cultures of the ancient Near East. In Restless Dead, Sarah Iles Johnston presents and interprets these changes, using them to build a complex picture of the way in which the society of the dead reflected that of the living, exp...

Die erste wissenschaftliche deutsche Gesamtübersetzung der ca. 50 Schriften des Handschriftenfundes von Nag Hammadi sowie der Texte des Codex Berolinensis 8502 wird nun in einer handlichen Studienausgabe zugänglich gemacht. Ebenso wie die gebundene Ausgabe (GCS Neue Folge 8 u. 12, erschienen 2001 und 2003) wird die Studienausgabe die vollständige Übersetzung der Texte bieten, während Einleitungen und Anmerkungen in gekürzter Form bzw. in Auswahl präsentiert sind. Die mehrheitlich im 2. und 3. Ja...

Before and after writing Invisible Man , novelist and essayist Ralph Ellison fought to secure a place as a black intellectual in a white-dominated society. In this sophisticated analysis of Ellison's cultural politics, Jerry Watts examines the ways in which black artists and thinkers attempt to establish creative intellectual spaces for themselves. Using Ellison as a case study, Watts makes important observations about the role of black intellectuals in America today. Watts argues that black int...

Das Speculum Virginum, als Handbuch fur die Seelsorge an Frauenklostern unverzichtbare Quelle zur Erforschung der Anthropologie des Mittelalters, entstand 1140 in lateinischer Sprache. Im 15. Jahrhundert begann eine rege Ubersetzer- und Abschreibertatigkeit in den Klostern des Niederrheins. Somit vollzieht sich durch Rezeption und Ubersetzung eines Textes der scholastischen Tradition 300 Jahre spater im Umkreis der Devotio moderna eine ausserst interessante geistige -Horizontverschmelzung-. Eine...

In a chapel in the old crenellated church of Mary of Zion in Aksum, Ethiopia, is kept an object that emperors, patriarchs and priests have assured the world is the most important religious relic of all time: the Ark of the Covenant. Are the legends true? Or is this story a monumental deception? In a triumph of historical detective work the acclaimed Ethiopia expert Stuart Munro-Hay traces the extraordinary legend of Ethiopia's Ark through ancient texts, local stories, from the Bible and from the...

In this short, accessible and readable book, Professor Soggin gives an account of all the features of Israelite and Jewish religion in the biblical period. After a radical assessment of the nature of the sources and the problems of using them historically, he discusses the origin of monotheism and Israel's belief in its one God Yahweh. Then follow accounts of the three most important features in Israelite religion: the Jerusalem temple and its worship, the covenant, and sacrifices. The main fes...

Scholars have long emphasized the importance of scripture in religion, tacitly separating a few privileged "religions of the Book" from faiths lacking sacred texts, including ancient Roman religion. Looking beyond this distinction, Duncan MacRae delves into Roman religious culture to grapple with a central question: what was the significance of books in a religion without scripture? In the last two centuries BCE, Varro and other Roman authors wrote treatises on the nature of the Roman gods and...

Die im 2. Weltkrieg dezimierte Handschriftensammlung der OEffentlichen Bibliothek Aachen reicht von einem St. Galler Evangeliar (um 900) bis zu Buchhandschriften des 19. Jahrhunderts. Nachdem die Sakularisation im Rheinland die alten Bibliotheken vernichtet hatte, bewiesen einzelne Aachener Burger historisches Verantwortungsbewusstsein. Sie stifteten ihre uber ihr ganzes Leben zusammengetragenen Bucherschatze der neuen stadtischen Bibliothek und sicherten sie so fur das historische Erbe. Mit dem...

Situated in a period that witnessed the genesis of institutions fundamental to this day, this study offers a comprehensive look at how ancient Christian women initiated ascetic ways of living, and how these practices were then institutionalized. Using the organization of female asceticism in Asia Minor and Egypt as a lever, the author demonstrates that - in direct contrast to later conceptions - asceticism began primarily as an urban movement. Crucially, it also originated with men and women liv...