The Star of Bethlehem and the Magi : interdisciplinary perspectives from experts on the ancient Near East, the Greco-Roman world, and modern astronomy /
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This book is the fruit of the first ever interdisciplinary international scientific conference on Matthew's story of the Star of Bethlehem and the Magi, held in 2014 at the University of Groningen, and attended by world-leading specialists in all relevant fields: modern astronomy, the ancient near-eastern and Greco-Roman worlds, the history of science, and religion. The scholarly discussions and the exchange of the interdisciplinary views proved to be immensely fruitful and resulted in the present book. Its twenty chapters describe the various aspects of The Star: the history of its interpretation, ancient near-eastern astronomy and astrology and the Magi, astrology in the Greco-Roman and the Jewish worlds, and the early Christian world - at a generally accessible level. An epilogue summarizes the fact-fiction balance of the most famous star which has ever shone.
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Papers edited from a colloquium The Star of Bethlehem: Historical and Astronomical Perspectives held October 22-24, 2014 in Groningen, Netherlands. :
1 online resource (xxii, 695 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004308473 :
1388-3909 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Dilemmas of attachment : identity and belonging among Palestinian Christians /
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This book offers an ethnographic account of contemporary Christian Palestinian lives in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Through individual life stories, Bård Kårtveit shows how Christians in the District of Bethlehem strive to live meaningful lives. Lives which are shaped by Christian-Muslim relations within the national community, the impact of Israeli presence in the Palestinian Territories, migration and homeland-diaspora relationships, and which are heavily influenced by changes in their local community and traditional family structures. By situating these stories in the changing political contexts of Palestine, from late Ottoman to Israeli/Palestinian Authority rule, the author engages with these general processes of patriarchal resistance to social change; the role of minorities in nation-building processes; the impact of Western interventions in the region; the rise of political Islam; and the impact of emigration in the Arab World.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004276390 :
1385-3376 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Christianity under Islam in Jerusalem : The Question of the Holy Sites in Early Ottoman Times /
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A major issue in nineteenth-century world politics, the question of Christianity's holiest shrines in Jerusalem is covered by a large body of literature. Most of this scholarship, however, concentrates on the period when the question of the Holy Sites has already evolved from a domestic Ottoman problem into an all-European issue. Much less is known about this problem in earlier times, when the Ottoman Empire was still a dominant power able to propose solutions free of foreign interference and outside pressures. Based on official Ottoman records found in the registers of the kadi's court in Jerusalem as well as the Prime Ministry's Archives in Istanbul, the present study offers a thorough treatment of Ottoman policy with respect to the Holy Sites during the first two centuries of Ottoman rule in Jerusalem. It focuses on three principal issues: (a) The legal status of the Holy Sites under Ottoman rule; (b) The Ottoman state and the inter-church struggle over the Holy Sites; (c) The Holy Sites as a source of income to the Ottoman state. The discussion of these issues sheds new light on one of the most obscure and controversial chapters in the history of Christianity under Islam in Jerusalem.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047400806
9789004120426
Die Heilige Familie in Ägypten /
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Translation of: In the steps of the Holy Family from Bethlehem to Upper Egypt.
"First published as Auf den Spuren der Heiligen Familie von Bethlehem nach Oberägypten : Erzählungen und Erlebnisse aus dem Morgenland. Koblenz : Buchh. Reuffel, 1978. With new illustrations"--Title page verso. :
67 pages : illustrations, map ; 23 cm. :
Includes bibliographical references (pages 65-67). :
9774241932
9789774241932
From a virgin womb : the Apocalypse of Adam and the virgin birth /
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Scholarly researches on the virgin birth have often focussed rather narrowly on the theological and historical difficulties it tends to raise. The Nag Hammadi Apocalypse of Adam, however, provides for the first time a glimpse into the wider background of ideas and myths to which it belonged. Prophecies there concerning a universal 'Illuminator' mention his birth 'from a virgin womb'. Several of the stories, drawn from Iranian and other sources , also appear in apocalyptic and testamental literature contemporary with Christian origins. The book centrally analyses a body of extraordinarily detailed narrative parallels between a cluster of stories in the Apocalypse and the infancy narratives of Mt. 1-2, concluding that these stories serve to identify Jesus as the True Prophet who is the fulfilment of history - though not as Son of God. The question of Mt.'s special tradition and its relation to Lk. is also cast in a new light.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [211]-217) and index. :
9789047423577 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Sanctity of time and space in tradition and modernity /
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Time and space can take on a sacred nature in both Judaism and Christianity accompanied by a permanent critical attitude towards the sacred. Conceptions of sacredness imply a conception of community and of society at large. This study investigates the different attitudes toward sacred time and space from an interdisciplinary perspective, ranging from the Biblical period through Qumran, Patristics, Rabbinics, archaeology and theology to modern and even to post-modern rituals. This approach offers a fascinating insight into both the common heritage of Judaism and Christianity and their mutual differences.
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1 online resource :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004421387
9789004112339
Religious stories in transformation : conflict, revision and reception /
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In Religious Stories in Transformation: Conflict, Revision and Reception , the editors present a collection of essays that reveal both the many similarities and the poignant differences between ancient myths in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and modern secular culture and how these stories were incorporated and adapted over time. This rich multidisciplinary research demonstrates not only how stories in different religions and cultures are interesting in their own right, but also that the process of transformation in particular deserves scholarly interest. It is through the changes in the stories that the particular identity of each religion comes to the fore most strikingly.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004334816 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Escaping Shame: Mary's Dilemma and the Birthplace of Jesus /
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The only narratives of Jesus' birth locate the event in Bethlehem, but the adult Jesus is consistently associated with Nazareth. How do we reconcile these two indisputable facts? Some dismiss Bethlehem as a theologoumenon , a theological fabrication. Others insist on Bethlehem based on the census of Quirinius. In the present volume, N. Clayton Croy argues that both are wrong. Instead Jesus' birthplace was determined by the scandalous nature of Mary's pregnancy, with it being necessary for Mary and Joseph to escape the inevitable shame of an ill-timed conception and decamp to a less hostile environment. In this light, a Bethlehem-born Jesus who grew up in Nazareth should never have been considered problematic.
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1 online resource :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004370906
9789004517011
Escaping Shame: Mary's Dilemma and the Birthplace of Jesus /
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The only narratives of Jesus' birth locate the event in Bethlehem, but the adult Jesus is consistently associated with Nazareth. How do we reconcile these two indisputable facts? Some dismiss Bethlehem as a theologoumenon , a theological fabrication. Others insist on Bethlehem based on the census of Quirinius. In the present volume, N. Clayton Croy argues that both are wrong. Instead Jesus' birthplace was determined by the scandalous nature of Mary's pregnancy, with it being necessary for Mary and Joseph to escape the inevitable shame of an ill-timed conception and decamp to a less hostile environment. In this light, a Bethlehem-born Jesus who grew up in Nazareth should never have been considered problematic.
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1 online resource :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004370906
9789004517011
Distant views of the Holy Land /
: "This book offers a selection of over 350 early photographs, paintings, and drawings of the length and breadth of the Holy Land from the rich repository of images in the archives of the Palestine Exploration Fund. As these images were produced before modern development impacted on these landscapes they are an invaluable resource. The pictures are accompanied by 7 maps and plans showing the locations depicted and a commentary describing the biblical context, informed by up-to-date scholarship. The book is divided into five chapters; an introduction which includes a brief account of pilgrimage to the Holy Land through the ages, followed by a series of geographical 'tours' through Galilee, Samaria, and Judea and Philistia, before culminating with a focus on the two main sites of interest for the traveller: Bethlehem and Jerusalem. While often very beautiful in their own right, the pictures also reflect the interest and sensibilities of the photographers and those who collected them, and capture the opposing undercurrents of scientific enquiry and piety characteristic of 19th Century European society. In the case of the photographers engaged by the PEF, a striving for objectivity is strikingly evident in their work"--Provided by publishrer. : vi, 321 pages ; 29 cm. : 9781781790618
L'apologie de Jérôme contre Rufin : un commentaire /
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In the three books of his Contra Rufinum , a work dating back to his mature period (401-402), Jerome (ca 347-420) fought against his erstwhile friend turned rival, Rufinus: the two Latin monks, one settled in Bethlehem, the other in Jerusalem, had come to confront each other on such issues as the timeliness and ways (translation, commentary...) of transmitting an Oriental heritage to the West, Greek (in particular the works of Origen [ca. 185-ca. 253], whose Peri Archôn they both translated in competition) as well as Jewish (the biblical hebraica veritas which Jerome championed). They were also at variance on the appreciation of profane culture (the Latin classics). Jerome's Contra Rufinum is a masterpiece by a brilliant polemist and an important document as to a knowledge of the actors and the vicissitudes of a controversy which mobilised many Christians, Eastern and Western alike, on the eve of the sacking of Rome by the Barbarians. This commentary seeks to analyse the treatise in all its facets (historical and theological, philological and rhetorical), and to elucidate its connections with the different traditions (classical, biblical, patristic) to which it belongs. The Contra Rufinum thus turns out to be a remarkable vantage point from which to illuminate the entire corpus of an author whose work, spread over nearly half a century, was immensely influential during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
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1 online resource (xxxii, 564 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004312814 :
0920-623X ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.