The language of literature : linguistic approaches to classical texts /
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This volume is a collection of papers revealing the largely unexplored boundary between linguistic and literary approaches to classical texts. Eleven contributions by various scholars discuss a wide range of linguistic and literary apects of classical texts: the narratee in the prologues of Sophocles' Trachiniae and of Euripides, the chronology in Pindar's Odes, the relation between tense-aspect and Discourse Modes in Thucydides, Xenophon, Vergil and Ovid, the use of aspect in the Law Code of Gortyn, expressions of futurity and the word order of adjectives in Herodotus, and, finally, ancient and modern views on word order. Following an interdisciplinary approach, all contributions aim at bridging the gap between linguistic and literary study of classical texts.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [233]-241) and index. :
9789047421801 :
1380-6068 ; :
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Die Übersetzungen der Elementatio Theologica des Proklos und ihre Bedeutung für den Proklostext /
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The present book presents for the first time a detailed study of selected passages of the most important Georgian translation of a text of Greek philosophy: the translation of Proklos' Elementatio Theologica by the most eminent philosopher of the Georgian middle ages, Ioane Petrizi, who not only translated Proklos' text, but also provided it with an extensive commentary. The book discusses the paragraphs which are also extant in an Arabic translation of the early 9th century. The main scope of the book is to establish the relevance of the Georgian and Arabic translations for the history of the constitution of the text, but it provides also important insights in Petrizi's method of translation and the philosophical significance of his commentary.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047430506 :
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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 ; :
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The mystery of God : early Jewish mysticism and the New Testament /
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This book brings together the perspectives of apocalypticism and early Jewish mysticism to illuminate aspects of New Testament theology. The first part begins with a consideration of the mystical character of apocalypticism and then uses the Book of Revelation and the development of views about the heavenly mediator figure of Enoch to explore the importance of apocalypticism in the Gospels and Acts, the Pauline Letters and finally the key theological themes in the later books of the New Testament. The second and third parts explore the character of early Jewish mysticism by taking important themes in the early Jewish mystical texts such as the Temple and the Divine Body to demonstrate the relevance of this material to New Testament interpretation.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [611]-645) and indexes. :
9789047428763 :
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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 :
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Sacred tropes : Tanakh, New Testament, and Qur'an as literature and culture /
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Contemporary sacred text scholarship has been stimulated by a number of intersecting trends: a surging interest in religion, sacred texts, and inspirational issues; burgeoning developments in and applications of literary theories; intensifying academic focus on diverse cultures whether for education or scholarship. Although much has been written individually about Tanakh, New Testament, and Qur'an, no collection combines an examination of all three. Sacred Tropes interweaves Tanakh, New Testament, and Qur'an essays. Contributors collectively and also often individually use mixed literary approaches instead of the older single theory strategy. Appropriate for classroom or research, the essays utilize a variety of literary theoretical lenses including environmental, cultural studies, gender, psychoanalytic, ideological, economic, historicism, law, and rhetorical criticisms through which to examine these sacred works.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789047430964 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Expectations of the end : a comparative traditio-historical study of eschatological, apocalyptic, and messianic ideas in the Dead Sea scrolls and the New Testament /
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Since a fuller range of Qumran sectarian and not clearly sectarian texts and recensions has recently become available to us, its implications for the comparative study of eschatological, apocalyptic and messianic ideas in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the New Testament need to be explored anew. This book situates eschatological ideas in Qumran literature between biblical tradition and developments in late Second Temple Judaism and examines how the Qumran evidence on eschatology, resurrection, apocalypticism, and messianism illuminates Palestinian Jewish settings of emerging Christianity. The present study challenges previous dichotomies between realized and futuristic eschatology, wisdom and apocalypticism and provides many new insights into intra-Jewish dimensions to eschatological ideas in Palestinian Judaism and in the early Jesus-movement.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [473]-509) and index. :
9789047425090 :
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Frontiers of faith : the Christian encounter with Manichaeism in the Acts of Archelaus /
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Taking as their common subject the key early Christian anti-Manichaean work, the Acts of Archelaus ( Acta Archelai ), the contributors to this volume offer a systematic exploration of what the text has to tell us about inter-religious contact, conflict, and comprehension at a crucial moment in religious history: the encounter between Christianity and Manichaeism along the political and cultural frontier zone of West Asia in the early fourth century CE. The contributions examine the text's structure, apologetic and polemical strategies, and possible sources, and through these analyses challenge received notions of 'orthodoxy' and 'heresy' in the mutual construction of identity that took place between these two claimants to the Christian heritage.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [167]-171) and indexes. :
9789047421535 :
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L'apocalypse des animaux (1 Hen 85-90) : une propagande militaire? : approches narrative, historico-critique, perspectives théologiques /
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For the majority of scholars, the Animal Apocalypse is a militant text, a piece of pro-Maccabean propaganda. This text, however, develops theological reflections that are distinctly different from a justification of an armed struggle. Its themes are even incompatible with the Maccabean movement. It is impossible to condemn the Second Temple and, at the same time, mobilise people for a fight in order to purify that very Temple. After dealing with text-critical issues, this work challenges the thesis that the text is military propaganda through the use of narrative and historical approaches. The analyses, besides proposing a new way of a studying an apocalypse, spell out the peculiarity and the significance of the theology of the Animal Apocalypse in connection with the biblical history of Israel and the theology of the Qumran community.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [335]-348) and indexes. :
9789047421900 :
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Paul and the ancient letter form /
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Throughout the last century, there has been continuous study of Paul as a writer of letters. Although this fact was acknowledged by previous generations of scholars, it was during the twentieth century that the study of ancient letter-writing practices came to the fore and began to be applied to the study of the letters of the New Testament. This volume seeks to advance the discussion of Paul's relationship to Greek epistolary traditions by evaluating the nature of ancient letters as well as the individual letter components. These features are evaluated alongside Paul's letters to better understand Paul's use and adaptations of these traditions in order to meet his communicative needs.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004190672 :
1572-4913 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The challenge of the silver screen : an analysis of the cinematic portraits of Jesus, Rama, Buddha and Muhammad /
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In 1897 - only two years after the invention of film - the first feature film about Jesus appeared. This and other films about Jesus became examples for and an inspiration for films on other important religious figures like Rama, Buddha and Muhammad. Although religious leaders did not always approve of these films, they did find a ready audience among believers. This book explores these films and looks at how these films dealt with the fundamental question of portraying an individual thought to have either divine status or a very special and unique status among human beings. This book will thus benefit not only students of religious film but also those studying the portrayal of central religious figures in the contemporary world.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Includes filmography and videography. :
9789004194045 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The new Damascus document : the midrash on the eschatological Torah of the Dead Sea Scrolls : reconstruction, translation and commentary /
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This volume examines twelve ancient and medieval manuscripts, ten from the caves at Qumran and the two so called Damascus Documents from the Cairo Geniza, presenting a new organization and understanding of these texts. The twelve manuscripts are in a composite form under the title Midrash haTorah haAcharon (MTA), the Midrash of the Eschatological Torah, a title which opens a new window into the understanding of the Jewish literary tradition during the period of the Second Temple, prior to the development of the Talmud and Christianity. Following the composite Hebrew text are a full translation, notes and commentary elucidating the MTA in light of the new evidence provided by these texts and retranslation.
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Includes the text of a document reconstructed from manuscripts found in the Cairo Genizah and from fragments of the Dead Sea scrolls and given the presumed title "Midrash on the eschatological Torah," taken from the final words of the text. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [379]-391) and indexes. :
9789047406419 :
0169-9962 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The world's oldest literature : studies in Sumerian belles-lettres /
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Literature begins at Sumer, we may say. Given that this ancient crossroads of tin and copper produced not only bronze and the entire Bronze Age, but also by neccesity, the first system of record-keeping and the technique of writing. Scribal schools served to propogate the new technique and their curriculum grew to create, preserve and transmit all manner of creative poetry. In a lifetime of research, the author has studied multiple aspects of this most ancient literary oeuvre, including such questions as chronology and bilingualism, as well as contributing fundamental insights into specific genres such as proverbs, letter-prayers and lamentations. In addition, he has drawn conclusions for the comparative or contextual approach to biblical literature. His studies, widely scattered in diverse publications for nearly fifty years, are here assembled in convenient one-volume format, made more user-friendly by extensive cross-references and indices. \'Well-informed and sober, these essays offer rewarding reading for every area of biblical scholarship.\' A.R. Millard
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Collection of essays published elsewhere previously between 1962 and 2006. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789047427278 :
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Images of rebirt h cognitive poetics and transformational soteriology in the Gospel of Philip and the Exegesis on the Soul /
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This book offers fresh readings of the Gospel of Philip (NHC II.3) and the Exegesis on the Soul (NHC II.6) from new theoretical and historical perspectives. Eschewing the category of "Gnosticism" and challenging common categorisations, the book analyses the preserved Coptic texts as coherent Christian compositions contemporary with the production and use of the Nag Hammadi Codices. A methodological framework based on Cognitive Poetics is outlined and applied to illuminate how the texts present a soteriology of transformation through religious rituals and practices using complex conceptual and intertextual blends with important polemical and paraenetic functions. The analysis highlights the use of metaphors and allusions in (re-)interpretations of authoritative Scripture, ritual and dogma. Complete Coptic texts and translations are included.
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Appendix contains the texts of the Exegesis on the Soul and the Gospel of Philip in Coptic, with English translations on facing pages.
Revised version of the author's thesis (doctoral)--University of Bergen, 2007. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (pages 541-576) and index. :
9789004216501 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Sustain me with raisin-cakes : Pesikta deRav Kahana and the popularization of rabbinic Judaism /
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History and literature come together in a new way in this study of the midrashic collection Pesikta deRav Kahana. The book combines the findings of rabbinic historians and early Christianity scholars with a close reading of this midrashic text on its own and in relation to the tannaitic midrashim which preceded it. The rich picture that emerges suggests that PRK, in its new homiletical and aggadic stance, develops a religious language more appealing and accessible to the masses, an outreach language meant to win rabbinic popularity. Exploring issues of power and rhetoric, the book also places PRK's outreach language into the cultural context of the imperialism of Roman Christian homily.
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Revision of author's thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Pennsylvania, 2004 under title: Rabbinic preachers and their audiences in the Amoraic midrashim Pesikta derav Kahana and Leviticus rabbah. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [209]-214) and indexes. :
9789047442288 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Wisdom in transition : act and consequence in Second Temple instructions /
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This volume considers a major shift among Jewish sages during the Second Temple period, as certain authors moved from an earthly focus to a belief in individual immortality. Egyptian instructions and the book of Proverbs are examined for necessary background. The colorful responses of Qoheleth and Ben Sira to an emergent belief in the afterlife are also discussed. 4QInstruction, the largest Wisdom text from the Dead Sea Scrolls corpus, demonstrates this shift to an eschatological understanding. This book considers the diverse reasons for the changes that one finds in 4QInstruction, especially the issue of social context. It will prove useful to those interested in Wisdom literature, the Dead Sea Scrolls, apocalypticism, and the development of beliefs in the afterlife.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [279]-293) and indexes. :
9789047433149 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Moses und der Mytho s die Auseinandersetzung mit der griechischen Mythologie bei jüdisch-hellenistischen Autoren /
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In the Hellenistic period Jews regularly encountered Greek mythology in one form or another: in literature, in art, or through language. This book is the first comprehensive study of the different strategies pursued by Jewish-Hellenistic authors as they engaged with Greek myth. The principal focus of this study is on the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, but a large range of other authors from the Third century BCE to the 1st century CE are also discussed. Far from limiting themselves to outright rejection, these authors often show a striking familiarity with Greek myth, which they sometimes even incorporated into Jewish myth. Ancient Jewish discourse on Greek myth was not primarily driven by apologetics, but constituted an important aspect of Jewish Hellenism. Juden trafen in der hellenistischen Zeit regelmässig auf griechische Mythen: in der Literatur, in der Kunst oder im allgemeinen Sprachgebrauch. Dieses Buch ist die erste weitgespannte Untersuchung der unterschiedlichen Strategien, die jüdisch-hellenistische Autoren in ihrem Umgang mit griechischen Mythen anwandten. Das Hauptgewicht der Untersuchung liegt auf dem jüdischen Historiker Flavius Josephus, aber eine grosse Zahl weiterer Autoren vom 3. Jh. volumeChr. bis zum 1. Jh. n.Chr. wird auch einbezogen. Diese Autoren haben griechische Mythen nicht einfach nur verworfen. Häufig zeigen sie eine bemerkenswerte Vertrautheit mit ihnen und gelegentlich gar die Bereitschaft, sie mit jüdischen Mythen zu verbinden. Der antike jüdische Diskurs über die griechischen Mythen war nicht in erster Linie von Apologetik bestimmt, sondern bildete einen wichtigen Aspekt des jüdischen Hellenismus.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004191136 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
From apocalypticism to Merkabah mysticism : studies in the Slavonic Pseudepigrapha /
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The present volume contains essays dealing with the Second Temple Jewish traditions and documents preserved solely in their Slavonic translations. It examines these Slavonic pseudepigraphical materials in the context of their mediating role in the development of early Jewish mystical traditions from Second Temple apocalypticism to Merkabah mysticism attested in rabbinic and Hekhalot materials. The book represents the first attempt to study Slavonic pseudepigrapha collectively as a unique group of texts that share common theophanic and mediatorial imagery crucial for the development of early Jewish mysticism. The study demonstrates that mediatorial traditions of the exalted patriarchs and prophets played an important role in facilitating the transition from apocalypticism to early Jewish mysticism.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [441]-464) and indexes. :
9789047411246 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The significance of Sinai : traditions about Sinai and divine revelation in Judaism and Christianity /
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This volume of essays is concerned with ancient and modern Jewish and Christian views of the revelation at Sinai. The theme is highlighted in studies on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Paul, Josephus, rabbinic literature, art and philosophy. The contributions demonstrate that Sinai, as the location of the revelation, soon became less significant than the narratives that developed about what happened there. Those narratives were themselves transformed, not least to explain problems regarding the text's plain sense. Miraculous theophany, anthropomorphisms, the role of Moses, and the response of Israel were all handled with exegetical skills mustered by each new generation of readers. Furthermore, the content of the revelation, especially the covenant, was rethought in philosophical, political, and theological ways. This collection of studies is especially useful in showing something of the complexity of how scriptural traditions remain authoritative and lively for those who appeal to them from very different contexts.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789047443476 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Incubation as a type-scene in the Aqhatu, Kirta, and Hannah storie s a form-critical and narratological study of KTU 1.14 I-1.15 III, 1.17 I-II, and 1 Samuel 1:1-2:11 /
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Prior studies of incubation have approached it from a history of religions perspective, with a view to historically reconstruct the actual practice of incubation in ancient Near East. However, this approach has proven unfruitful, not due to the dearth of relevant data, but because of the confusion with regard to the definition of the term incubation. Suggesting a way out of this impasse in previous scholarship, this book proposes to read the so-called "incubation" texts from the perspective of incubation as a literary device, namely, as a type-scene. It applies Nagler's definition of a type-scene to a literary analysis of two Ugaritic mythical texts, the Aqhatu and Kirta stories, and one biblical story, the Hannah story.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [347]-365) and indexes. :
9789004207516 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.