A cultural history of Aramaic : from the beginnings to the advent of Islam /
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Aramaic is a constant thread running through the various civilizations of the Near East, ancient and modern, from 1000 BCE to the present, and has been the language of small principalities, world empires, and a fair share of the Jewish-Christian tradition. Holger Gzella describes its cultural and linguistic history as a continuous evolution from its beginnings to the advent of Islam. For the first time the individual phases of the language, their socio-historical underpinnings, and the textual sources are discussed comprehensively in light of the latest linguistic and historical research and with ample attention to scribal traditions, multilingualism, and language as a marker of cultural self-awareness. Many new observations on Aramaic are thereby integrated into a coherent historical framework.
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1 online resource (466 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004285101 :
0169-9423 ;
0169-9423 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Scorsese and Religion /
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Scorsese and Religion concerns the religious vision of the great American filmmaker Martin Scorsese. Not only will this volume explore the foundation of Scorsese's interest in religion-namely, his relation to the Catholic Church-but it will also highlight the religious breadth of Scorsese's corpus. Ultimately, this book demonstrates that Scorsese's cinematic "re-presentation" of reality brings together various religious influences (Catholicism, existentialism, Buddhism, etc.) and topics such as violence, morality, nihilism, and so on. The overarching claim is that Scorsese, who indeed once claimed that his "whole life" had been "movies and religion," cannot be properly understood without reflecting on the ways in which his religious interests are expressed in and through his art.
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1 online resource :
9789004411401
The buried foundation of the Gilgamesh epic : the Akkadian Huwawa narrative /
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The Akkadian Gilgamesh Epic, perhaps the most famous of Mesopotamian literature, has been considered the artistry of one author inspired by Sumerian tales. Specialists have assumed that all the earliest evidence (ca. 1800-1700 BCE) reflects this creative unity. Deep contrasts in characterization and narrative logic, however, distinguish the central adventure to defeat the monster Huwawa from what precedes and follows it. The Huwawa narrative stands on its own, so that the epic must have been composed from this prior Akkadian composition. Recognition of the tale embedded in the epic allows each block of material to be understood on its own terms. Such literary-historical investigation from contemporary texts is new to Assyriology and may produce important results when applied to other Mesopotamian writing. \'The book is well written and tightly argued...This makes it a first point of reference for anyone interested in the OB evidence for the Gilgamesh Epic.\' Scott C. Jones, Covenant College
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789047440833 :
0929-0052 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Primeval histor y Babylonian, biblical, and Enochic : an intertextual reading /
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Most cultures have myths of origin. The Babylonians were the first to combine blocks of traditions about primeval time into primeval histories where humans had a central role. In the first millennium there were different versions that influenced the concepts of primeval history within Jewish religion, both in the Bible and in the parallel Enochic tradition. Atrahasis and the traditions of primeval dynasties had crucial impact on Genesis; the traditions of the primeval apkallus as cosmic guardians were lying behind the Enochic Watcher Story. The book offers a comprehensive analytic comparison between the images of primeval time in these three traditions. It presents new interpretations of each of these traditions and how they relate to each other.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004196124 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Ve-eileh divrei David : essays in semitics, Hebrew Bible and history of biblical scholarship /
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Ve-Eileh Divrei David: Essays in Semitics, Hebrew Bible and History of Biblical Scholarship , covers the career of S. David Sperling, a well-known and respected Biblical scholar. It is divided into three sections representing the three foci of the author's work namely, Semitic philology, Bible, and the history of biblical scholarship. The chapters represent a remarkable 40 years of scholarship and convey deep knowledge of a range of topics that is rarely paralleled in today's scholarship.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004340879 :
1566-2055 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Morphological and syntactical irregularities in the Book of Revelation : a Greek hypothesis /
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Morphological and Syntactical Irregularities in the Book of Revelation by Laurențiu Florentin Moț is an approach to the solecisms of Johannine Apocalypse from a Greek perspective. The work aims at demonstrating that, in accord with Second Language Acquisition studies, Semitic transfer in Revelation is extremely rare. Most of its linguistic peculiarities can be explained within the context of the Greek language. Morphological and Syntactical Irregularities in the Book of Revelation is unique in several ways. First, it deals with the most comprehensive list of solecisms. Second, it treats grammatical irregularities in their own right, looking at their cause, explanation, and contribution to the interpretation of the text. Third, it is interdisciplinary, bringing together textual criticism, Greek linguistics, and NT exegesis.
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1 online resource (xii, 289 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 247-279) and indexes. :
9789004290822 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Homer and the Bible in the eyes of ancient interpreters /
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Thus far intepretations of Homer and the Bible have largely been studied in isolation even though both texts became foundational for Western civilisation and were often commented upon in the same cultural context. The present collection of articles redresses this imbalance by bringing together scholars from different fields and offering prioneering essays, which cross traditional boundaries and interpret Biblical and Homeric interpreters in light of each other. The picture which emerges from these studies in highly complex: Greek, Jewish and Christian readers were concerned with similar literary and religious questions, often defining their own position in dialogue with others. Special attention is given to three central corpora: the Alexandrian scholia, Philo, Platonic writers of the Imperial Age, rabbinic exegesis.
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1 online resource (x, 372 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004226111 :
1570-078X ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The debate between a man and his soul : a masterpiece of ancient Egyptian literature /
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This book is a new study of the ancient Egyptian poem known in English as The Man Who Was Tired of Life or The Dialogue of a Man and His Ba (or Soul ). The composition is universally regarded as one of the masterpieces of ancient Egyptian literature. It is also one of the most difficult and continually debated, as well as being the subject of more than one hundred books and articles. The present study offers new readings and translations, along with an analysis of the text's grammar and versification, and a complete philological apparatus.
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Includes a transliteration of the original text with English translation. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004193062 :
1566-2055 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The gender challenge of Hebrew /
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The Gender Challenge of Hebrew is the first book to delve in depth into the problem of gender representation over the 3,000-year history of the Hebrew language. By analyzing and illustrating the grammatical characteristics of gender in Biblical, Mishnaic, Medieval and Modern Hebrew, Malka Muchnik reveals the social and cultural issues that they reflect. Gender discrimination in all periods of Hebrew is shown in sacred, liturgical and literary texts, as well as in the popular language spoken today. All of them testify to the problematic status of women, who were traditionally excluded from religious studies and public activities, and in recent decades have been struggling to change this practice. Malka Muchnik shows that linguistic change remains a challenging goal.
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1 online resource (x, 258 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004282711 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Historical and archaeological aspects of Egyptian funerary culture : religious ideas and ritual practice in Middle Kingdom elite cemeteries /
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Historical and Archaeological Aspects of Egyptian Funerary Culture , a thoroughly reworked translation of Les textes des sarcophages et la démocratie published in 2008, challenges the widespread idea that the "royal" Pyramid Texts of the Old Kingdom after a process of "democratisation" became, in the Middle Kingdom, accessible even to the average Egyptian in the form of the Coffin Texts. Rather they remained an element of elite funerary culture, and particularly so in the Upper Egyptian nomes. The author traces the emergence here of the so-called "nomarchs" and their survival in the Middle Kingdom. The site of Dayr al-Barshā, currently under excavation, shows how nomarch cemeteries could even develop into large-scale processional landscapes intended for the cult of the local ruler. This book also provides an updated list of the hundreds of (mostly unpublished) Middle Kingdom coffins and proposes a new reference system for these.
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1 online resource (pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004274990 :
1566-2055 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Jewish Aramaic curse texts from late-antique Mesopotamia : "may these curses go out and flee" /
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The corpus of Aramaic incantation bowls from Sasanian Mesopotamia is perhaps the most important source we have for studying the everyday beliefs and practices of the Jewish, Christian, Mandaean, Manichaean, Zoroastrian and Pagan communities on the eve of the Islamic conquests. In Jewish Aramaic Curse Texts from Late-Antique Mesopotamia , Dan Levene collects and analyses a selection of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic incantation bowls. While such texts are usually apotropaic or healing in purpose, those collected here are distinctive in that their purpose was to curse or return curses against human adversaries. This book presents new editions of thirty texts, of which fourteen are edited here for the first time, with an introduction, commentary, analysis and glossaries, as well as photographs. "In this valuable addition to the literature on the role of bowls with aggressive texts in magic practices in this period, Levene (Jewish history and culture, U. of Southampton, UK) presents a summary of newly edited and already published bowls with Aramaic transcription; English translation; its type (e.g., invocation of demons to attack a named person, counter-charm); publication source; formulaic parallels in other texts; and notes.\' Reference andamp; Research Book News, 2013.
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1 online resource (xiv, 164 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references. :
9789004257269 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Weather omens of Enūma Anu Enlil : thunderstorms, wind and rain (tablets 44-49) /
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The Assyro-Babylonian omen series Enūma Anu Enlil , written on seventy cuneiform tablets, bears witness to the early understanding of the mutual interactions of heaven and earth on both the physical and the religious levels. To facilitate accessibility, technical and linguistic commentaries as well as an excerpt series were compiled by the scholars of old. This ancient knowledge, which was still largely characterized by mythological concepts, was never completely abandoned, not even when the 'calculating' astronomy became prevalent in the first millennium B.C. The series deals in four parts with the moon, the sun, weather phenomena, and fixed stars and planets. This book offers an edition of the texts of the second half of the weather section with the accompanying material.
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1 online resource (x, 286 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004225992 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Hrozný and Hittite : the first hundred years : proceedings of the International Conference held at Charles University, Prague, 11-14 November 2015 /
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This volume collects 33 papers that were presented at the international conference held at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in November 2015 to celebrate the centenary of Bedřich Hrozný's identification of Hittite as an Indo-European language. Contributions are grouped into three sections, "Hrozný and His Discoveries," "Hittite and Indo-European," and "The Hittites and Their Neighbors," and span the full range of Hittite studies and related disciplines, from Anatolian and Indo-European linguistics and cuneiform philology to Ancient Near Eastern archaeology, history, and religion. The authors hail from 15 countries and include leading figures as well as emerging scholars in the fields of Hittitology, Indo-European, and Ancient Near Eastern studies.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004413122
Dostoevsky and Kant : dialogues on ethics /
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"In this book, Evgenia Cherkasova brings the philosopher Kant and the novelist Dostoevsky together in conversations that probe why duty is central to our moral life. She shows that just as Dostoevsky is indebted to Kant, so Kant would profit from the deeply philosophical narratives of Dostoevsky, which engage the problem of evil and the claims of human community. She not only produces a novel reading of Dostoevsky, but also guides us to later, often neglected Kantian texts. This study is written with scholarly care, penetrating analysis, elegance of style, and moral urgency: Cherkasova writes with both mind and heart."--Emily Grosholz, Professor of Philosophy, The Pennsylvania State University.
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1 online resource (xiv, 128 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789042026117 :
0929-8436 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Orality and literacy in the Demotic tales /
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In Orality and Literacy in the Demotic Tales , Jacqueline E. Jay extrapolates from the surviving ancient Egyptian written record hints of the oral tradition that must have run alongside it. The monograph's main focus is the intersection of orality and literacy in the extremely rich corpus of Demotic narrative literature surviving from the Greco-Roman Period. The many texts discussed include the tales of the Inaros and Setna Cycles, the Myth of the Sun's Eye , and the Dream of Nectanebo . Jacqueline Jay examines these Demotic tales not only in conjunction with earlier Egyptian literature, but also with the worldwide tradition of orally composed and performed discourse.
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Includes index. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004323070 :
1566-2055 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
In praise of folly. A critical edition of the Spanish translation of Erasmus' Morias Enkomion /
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The existence of a early Spanish translation of Erasmus's Encomium Moriae has been matter of speculation and unsuccessful research for over a century. This volume offers for the first time the edition of a seventeenth-century manuscript discovered at Ets Haim/Livraria Montezinos (Amsterdam) by its editors. They demonstrate that it is not only the first known early modern Spanish translation of Erasmus's chef-d'œuvre, but a copy of a much earlier version, composed in mid-sixteenth century. This scholarly edition has been arranged for an easy textual collation with the canonical edition (ASD IV: 3) and translation (CWE 27) of Erasmus's Praise of Folly and includes an extensive apparatus of footnotes devoted both to this version and to Erasmus's Moriae Encomium itself.
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1 online resource (300 pages ) :
9789004269040 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Early Biblical Hebrew, late Biblical Hebrew, and linguistic variability : a sociolinguistic evaluation of the linguistic dating of Biblical texts /
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In Early Biblical Hebrew, Late Biblical Hebrew, and Linguistic Variability , Dong-Hyuk Kim attempts to adjudicate between the two seemingly irreconcilable views over the linguistic dating of biblical texts. Whereas the traditional opinion, represented by Avi Hurvitz, believes that Late Biblical Hebrew was distinct from Early Biblical Hebrew and thus one can date biblical texts on linguistic grounds, the more recent view argues that Early and Late Biblical Hebrew were merely stylistic choices through the entire biblical period. Using the variationist approach of (historical) sociolinguistics and on the basis of the sociolinguistic concepts of linguistic variation and different types of language change, Kim convincingly argues that there is a third way of looking at the issue.
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1 online resource (xvii, 184 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [163]-173) and indexes. :
9789004235618 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Early Christian poetry : a collection of essays /
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This collection of essays deals with the rise and development of early Christian poetry, discussing its techniques and its theoretical foundation. The individual papers concern specimina of Hebrew, Syriac, Greek and Latin poetry and study the various and partly conflicting traditions from which it originated. The biblical examples, e.g. of the Psalms, held great authority, but on the other hand it was impossible to break away from the models of classical Greco-Roman poetry, although these were deemed dangerous because of the pagan content and excessive cult of literary art. The book shows how the problems involved were solved in different ways, which justified the use of pagan literary accomplishments for singing the praises of the Lord.
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1 online resource (xi, 318 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004312890 :
0902-623X ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Proverbs : A Commentary based on Paroimiai in Codex Vaticanus /
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In the Proverbs volume in the Septuagint Commentary Series Al Wolters gives a meticulous philological commentary on the text of Proverbs as found in the important fourth-century Codex Vaticanus, together with a careful transcription of the Vaticanus Greek text and a fresh English translation thereof. The focus of the commentary is on the semantic and grammatical aspects of the Greek, relying primarily on general Greek usage rather than on the underlying Hebrew, and drawing on a broad array of lexicographical and grammatical resources, as well as a detailed examination of twelve previous translations of LXX Proverbs. In the process, many new interpretations of the often difficult Greek are proposed.
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1 online resource. :
9789004425590
9789004425583
The medieval presence in the modernist aesthetic : unattended moments /
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In The Medieval Presence in the Modernist Aesthetic: Unattended Moments , editors Simone Celine Marshall and Carole M. Cusack have brought together essays on literary Modernism that uncover medieval themes and tropes that have previously been "unattended", that is, neglected or ignored. A historical span of a century is covered, from musical modernist Richard Wagner's final opera Parsifal (1882) to Russell Hoban's speculative fiction Riddley Walker (1980), and themes of Arthurian literature, scholastic philosophy, Irish legends, classical philology, dream theory, Orthodox theology and textual exegesis are brought into conversation with key Modernist writers, including T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Samuel Beckett, Marcel Proust, W. B. Yeats, Evelyn Waugh and Eugene Ionesco. These scholarly investigations are original, illuminating, and often delightful.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004357020 :
1877-3192 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.