"historian of religion" » "historians of religion" (Expand Search), "historical of religion" (Expand Search), "historic of religion" (Expand Search)
Mystery and secrecy in the Nag Hammadi collection and other ancient literature : ideas and practices : studies for Einar Thomassen at sixty /
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Mystery and secrecy were central concepts in the ritual, rhetoric, and sociological stratification of antique Mediterranean religions. That the ultimate nature and workings of the divine were secret, and either could not or should not be revealed except as a mystery for the initiated, was widely accepted among Pagans, Jews, and then Christians, both Gnostic and otherwise. The similarities and differences in the language of mystery and secrecy across religious and cultural borders are thus crucial for understanding this important period of the history of religions. The present anthology aims to present and analyze a wide selection of sources elucidating this theme, reflecting the correspondingly wide scholarly interests of Professor Einar Thomassen in honor of his 60th birthday.
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1 online resource (xx, 540 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004215122 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Porphyry Against the Christians /
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This volume is a translation of fragments and testimonia of Porphyry's lost work Against the Christians. The first part of the work examines Author, Title, date of composition, and sources. The second part discusses the structure of Against the Christians. The third part focuses on the religious, philosophical, and cultural background of this text. The fourth section constitutes the translation of the fragments and testimonia of Against the Christians. This work is especially important for historians of religion, philosophy, and Biblical Studies for it is an excellent example of a pagan tradition of scriptural interpretation and criticism of Christianity.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047415725
9789004148116
Explaining Christian origins and early Judaism : contributions from cognitive and social science /
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Cognitive science of religion is a radically new paradigm in the study of religion. Apart from psychology and anthropology of religion, also historians of religion have shown increasing interest in this approach. This volume is groundbreaking in combining cognitive analysis with historical and social-scientific approaches to biblical materials, Christian origins, and early Judaism. The book is in four parts: an introduction to cognitive and social-scientific approaches, applications of cognitive science, applications of conceptual blending theory, and applications of socio-cognitive analyses. The book will be of interest for historians of religion, biblical scholars, and those working in the cognitive science of religion.
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Proceedings of a symposium held Aug.-Sept. 2005 at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789047431961 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Morton Smith and Gershom Scholem, correspondence 1945-1982 /
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The American historian of ancient religions, Morton Smith (1915-1991), studied with the great scholar of Jewish mysticism, Gershom Scholem (1897-1982), when he was in Jerusalem during the Second World War. After the war, the two started a long, fascinating and at times intense correspondence that ended only with Scholem's death. These letters, found in the Scholem archive in the National Library in Jerusalem, provide a rare perspective on the world and the approach of two leading historians of religion in the twentieth century. They also shed important new light upon Smith's discovery of a letter attributed to Clement of Alexandria referring to a secret Gospel of Mark.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [197]-200) and index. :
9789047433767 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis.
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Epiphanius, monastic founder and bishop of Salamis on Cyprus for almost 40 years of the fourth century, threw heart and soul into the controversies of the time and produced the \'Panarion\' or \'Medicine Chest\', an historical encyclopedia of sects and heresies and their refutations. Book I, concerned chiefly with Gnostic and Jewish Christian groups, deals with material which is also found in Nag Hammadi and other Gnostic writings and in such patristic authors as Irenaeus, Hippolytus et al, and reproduces documents not available elsewhere. Its translation has been found useful by students of Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism, patrologists, historians of religion, church historians, students of Judaism, and the theologically minded public.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047441984 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Friedrich Max Müller, A Life Devoted to the Humanities.
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Friedrich Max Müller was one of the great scholars of the nineteenth century. His studies on the history and nature of religion were of great interest to both scholarly and more popular circles, and he was for a long time an influential figure in the cultural life of Victorian Britain. Therefore, a new study of his life and especially of his works needs no apology. The book gives a survey of Müller's life and his main ideas on language, mythology, religion, Christianity and the missions, as well as his philosophy of religion. The last chapter deals with the legacy of Müller's ideas in the twentieth century. The book is particularly useful for historians of religion interested in the origin of the science of religion and for historians specialized in the history of ideas.
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1 online resource. :
9789004379176
Raffaele Pettazzoni and Herbert Jennings Rose, correspondence 1927-1958 : the long friendship between the author and the translator of The all-knowing God, with an appendix of docu...
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Raffaele Pettazzoni (1883-1959), Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Rome and one of the leading historians of religions in the twentieth century, maintained a long correspondence with Herbert Jennings Rose (1883-1961), the gifted Canadian scholar who was Professor of Greek at St Andrews and is best known for his work in the field of ancient religion and folklore. These letters, spanning the years 1927 to 1958, bear witness to the close relationship between the two scholars and focus on two of Pettazzoni's books, both translated by Rose: Essays on the History of Religions (1954) and The All-Knowing God (1956). They also shed light on Pettazzoni's initiative to the foundation of the journal NVMEN (1954), and reveal Rose's brilliant personality.
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1 online resource (pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004272248 :
0169-8834 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The religion of the Nabataeans : a conspectus /
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The history of the Nabataean Kingdom of Hellenistic-Roman times, centred on Petra, is now well known, but until the publication of this book, no monograph has been devoted to Nabataean religion, known to us principally from inscriptions in Nabataean Aramaic, iconography, archaeology and Greek literary texts. After a critical survey of the sources, the author analyses systematically the information on the individual gods worshipped by the Nabataeans, including a detailed illustrated account of temples and iconography. A further major section discusses religious themes: aniconism, henotheism, death-cult and the divinisation of kings. In a final chapter, Nabataean religion is considered in relation to Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The book will be of particular interest to historians of religion in the Graeco-Roman Near East and to Semitic epigraphists.
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1 online resource (xvi, 242 pages) : illustrations, maps. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 211-234) and indexes. :
9789004301481 :
0927-7633 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Rêves hittites : contribution à une histoire et une anthropologie du rêve en Anatolie ancienne /
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This volume deals with the ancient Anatolian textual evidence on dreams. The book starts with a study of the evidence from different perspectives. The second and third parts are of special interest for anthropologists and historians of religion, as they focus on the various shapes and functions allotted to dreams in Hittite Anatolia. The fourth part assembles the Hittite cuneiform texts in which a dream is either described or mentioned. The texts are given in transliteration and translation, with relevant bibliography. This study makes a significant contribution to our understanding of dream conception in the ancient Near East by providing a systematic edition and analysis of the Hittite testimonies.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [319]-331) and indexes. :
9789047421566 :
1566-2055 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Reappraising Durkheim for the Study and Teaching of Religion Today.
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Reappraising Durkheim for the Study and Teaching of Religion Today is an occasion to critically analyze and reassess the work of this intellectual pioneer. It is also an effort to signal the continuing importance of Durkheim for today's graduate and advanced undergraduate classrooms. Reappraising Durkheim brings together ten new critical essays in which noted sociologists, psychologists, phenomenologists, philosophers, and historians of religion grapple with the questions Durkheim raised and the solutions he proposed. Taken together, the volume is a careful historical and multi-disciplinary study of Durkheim that will lead students to a better understanding of how to study religion. Reappraising Durkheim will be an excellent text for courses focusing on theory and method in the academic study of religion at both the graduate and advanced undergraduate level. It would therefore be appropriate for use in departments of religious studies, philosophy, sociology, and anthropology.
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1 online resource. :
9789004379152
Philo of Alexandria and Greek myth : narratives, allegories, and arguments /
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In Philo of Alexandria and Greek Myth: Narratives, Allegories, and Arguments, a fresh and more complete image of Philo of Alexandria as a careful reader, interpreter, and critic of Greek literature is offered. Greek mythology plays a significant role in Philo of Alexandria's exegetical oeuvre. Philo explicitly adopts or subtly evokes narratives, episodes and figures from Greek mythology as symbols whose didactic function we need to unravel, exactly as the hidden teaching of Moses' narration has to be revealed by interpreters of Bible. By analyzing specific mythologems and narrative cycles, the contributions to this volume pave the way to a better understanding of Philo's different attitudes towards literary and philosophical mythology.
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Includes index. :
1 online resource. :
9789004411616
Tafsīr-i Shahristānī al-Musammā bi-Mafātīḥ al-asrār wa-maṣābīḥ al-abrār. Volume 1 /
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Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Shahristānī (d. 548/1153) was a prominent historian of religions who was well-versed in Islamic theology and the sciences of the Qurʾān. He is mostly known for his Kitāb al-milal wal-niḥal , a ground-breaking history of religions, his Kitāb muṣāraʿat al-falāsifa , a critical exposition of the philosophy of Avicenna (d. 428/1037)-later refuted by Naṣīr al-Dīn Tūsī (d. 672/1274) in his Maṣāriʿ al-muṣāriʿ -and the Mafātīḥ al-asrār wa-maṣābīḥ al-abrār , his partial Qurʾān commentary contained in the present two volumes. The Mafātīḥ al-asrār was written in the final years of Shahristānī's life and clearly bears the stamp of Ismailism, a branch of Shīʿism to which he had been introduced as a young man by his teacher in Qurʾānic studies in Nishapur, Abu ʼl-Qāsim al-Anṣārī (d. 512/1118). Even if the Mafātīḥ al-asrār is a work that remained unfinished, it is a fine and rare specimen of the richness of Ismaili taʾwīl . 2 vols; volume 1.
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1 online resource. :
9789004401556
9789648700596
Tafsīr-i Shahristānī al-Musammā bi-Mafātīḥ al-asrār wa-maṣābīḥ al-abrār. Volume 2 /
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Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Shahristānī (d. 548/1153) was a prominent historian of religions who was well-versed in Islamic theology and the sciences of the Qurʾān. He is mostly known for his Kitāb al-milal wal-niḥal , a ground-breaking history of religions, his Kitāb muṣāraʿat al-falāsifa , a critical exposition of the philosophy of Avicenna (d. 428/1037)-later refuted by Naṣīr al-Dīn Tūsī (d. 672/1274) in his Maṣāriʿ al-muṣāriʿ -and the Mafātīḥ al-asrār wa-maṣābīḥ al-abrār , his partial Qurʾān commentary contained in the present two volumes. The Mafātīḥ al-asrār was written in the final years of Shahristānī's life and clearly bears the stamp of Ismailism, a branch of Shīʿism to which he had been introduced as a young man by his teacher in Qurʾānic studies in Nishapur, Abu ʼl-Qāsim al-Anṣārī (d. 512/1118). Even if the Mafātīḥ al-asrār is a work that remained unfinished, it is a fine and rare specimen of the richness of Ismaili taʾwīl . 2 vols; volume 2.
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1 online resource. :
9789004402300
9789648700435
Secularization in contemporary religious radicalism : an introduction /
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The concept of secularization has grown to become one of the most important features of contemporary religious thought. This book introduces and examines the thinking of sixteen key theologions, philosophers and historians of religion to explain (a) why by the late nineteenth century the traditional concept of God as an ontologically real being came to be considered no longer necessary and (b) how the new perspective on God, which accepts him only as an idea, turned into the preferred approach of today's religion and philosophy, namely "religious radicalism".
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [187]-201) and index. :
9789004397385 :
1566-2098 ;
Religious practices and Christianization of the late antique city (4th-7th century) /
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In Religious Practices and Christianization of the Late Antique City , historians, archaeologists and historians of religion provide studies of the phenomenon of the Christianization of the Roman Empire within the context of the transformations and eventual decline of the Greco-Roman city. The eleven papers brought together here aim to describe the possible links between religious, but also political, economic and social mutations engendered by Christianity and the evolution of the antique city. Combining a multiplicity of sources and analytical approaches, this book seeks to measure the impact on the city of the progressive abandonment of traditional cults to the advantage of new Christian religious practices.
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1 online resource (vii, 243 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004299047 :
0927-7633 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
From temple to church : destruction and renewal of local cultic topography in late antiquity /
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Destruction of temples and their transformation into churches are central symbols of late antique change in religious environment, socio-political system, and public perception. Contemporaries were aware of these events' far-reaching symbolic significance and of their immediate impact as demonstrations of political power and religious conviction. Joined in any "temple-destruction" are the meaning of the monument, actions taken, and subsequent literary discourse. Paradigms of perception, specific interests, and forms of expression of quite various protagonists clashed. Archaeologists, historians, and historians of religion illuminate "temple-destruction" from different perspectives, analysing local configurations within larger contexts, both regional and imperial, in order to find an appropriate larger perspective on this phenomenon within the late antique movement "from temple to church".
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1 online resource (xi, 378 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789047443735 :
0927-7633 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
La voie d'Hermès : pratiques rituelles et traités hermétiques /
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The Hermetic writings transmitted in Greek, Latin and Coptic ( Corpus hermeticum , Asclepius and the three Hermetic texts in Codex VI of Nag Hammadi) are evidences of different religious trends within the Hermetic tradition, between the 2nd and the 4th centuries. These currents belong to Egyptian wisdom, while mixing Egyptian and Greek traditions, and they propose a way to salvation, the way of Hermes. This volume is the first monograph which explores the ritual practices and their place on this way to salvation. Sacrifices, prayers, the baptism in the crater, regeneration and visions are successively analyzed in Greek, Latin and Coptic literature. A large place is reserved for didactic practice, which participates in the spiritual formation of the disciple, especially through spiritual exercises. This book studies also how at least some authors participate in philosophical and religious debates of their time. It will be of interest to both historians of the end of Antiquity and historians of religion and philosophy. Les écrits hermétiques transmis en grec, latin et copte ( Corpus hermeticum , Asclepius et les trois textes hermétiques du Codex VI de Nag Hammadi) sont les témoins de différents courants religieux qui relèvent de la tradition hermétique, entre le IIe et le IVe siècle. Ces courants appartiennent à un milieu de sagesse égyptien, tout en mêlant tradition égyptienne et tradition grecque, et proposent une voie de salut, la voie d'Hermès. Ce volume est la première monographie qui étudie les pratiques rituelles et leur place dans la voie de salut. À partir de la documentation grecque, latine et copte, sont tour à tour analysées les sacrifices, les prières, le baptême dans le cratère, la régénération et les visions. Une place importante est accordée à la pratique didactique, qui participe à la formation spirituelle du disciple, notamment par le biais d'exercices spirituels. Ce livre étudie aussi la manière dont au moins certains auteurs s'intègrent dans les débats philosophico-religieux de leur époque. Il intéressera aussi bien les historiens de la fin de l'Antiquité, les historiens des religions que ceux de la philosophie.
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IV. La mise en corpus de textes hermetiques. :
1 online resource (466 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004223653 :
0929-2470 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Quelques aspects du platonisme de Plutarque : philosopher en commun, tourner sa pensée vers dieu /
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Françoise Frazier's Quelques aspects du platonisme de Plutarque: Philosopher en commun, Tourner sa pensée vers Dieu includes 20 essays on several philosophical tractates in Plutarch's Moralia . Interesting both for Classists and Historians of Religion alike, the chapters provide an in-depth interpretation of several essential aspects of Plutarch's philosophical dialogues that pays special heed both to the divine and the communication between God and humans. The book includes three sections. While the first is mainly concerned with Plutarch's Amatorius, the second focuses on Plutarch's relationship to Plato, especially in his myths of the afterlife. The third part, finally, deals with an important investigation that occupied Professor Frazier lately, namely the concept of pistis in the religious context of the first centuries CE.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004415980
Interprétations de Möise : Égypte, Judée, Grèce et Rome /
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The present volume is the result of a team research which gathered biblical scholars, philologists, and historians of religions, on the issue of the multiple \'Interpretations of Moses\' inherited from the ancient mediterranean cultures. The concrete outcome of this comparative inquiry is the common translation and commentary of the fragments from the works of the mysterious Artapanus. The comparative perspective suggested here is not so much methodological, or thematic. It is first of all an invitation to cross disciplinary boundaries and to take account of the contributions of diverse cultures to the formation of a single mythology, in the case, a Moses mythology. With respect to Judea, Greece, Egypt or Rome, and further more an emerging christianity and its \'gnostic\' counterpart, the figure of Moses is at the heart of a cross-cultural dialogue the pieces of which, if they can be seperated for the confort of their specific study, mostly gain by being put together. Ce volume est le fruit d'un travail d'équipe, qui a réuni des biblistes, des philologues, et des historiens des religions autour des multiples « Interprétations de Moïse » que nous ont léguées les cultures de la Méditerranée antique. Le résultat pratique de cette enquête comparatiste culmine dans la traduction et le commentaire à « douze mains » des fragments du mystérieux Artapan, qui ouvrent le volume. Le comparatisme proposé dans le présent volume ne se veut ni méthodologique ni thématique, mais vise d'abord à franchir les frontières disciplinaires, tout en envisageant les apports culturels respectifs contribuant à la formation d'une mythologie, en l'occurrence celle de Moïse. Entre la Judée, l'Egypte, la Grèce, Rome, et bien-sûr le christianisme naissant et l'univers « gnostique » qui l'accompagne, la figure de Moïse est au cœur d'un dialogue, dont les pièces, si elles peuvent être disjointes pour la commodité de l'étude, gagnent surtout à être rapprochées.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [269]-293) and indexes. :
9789047443834 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The study of religion under the impact of fascism /
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The study of religion under the spell of fascism has not received due attention. One reason for the noticeable lack of interest was the political involvement of many historians of religions. Among those who had good reason to leave the era of fascism untouched, we find prominent figures in the field. Another obstacle to examining the past impartially has been the connection with religious and other worldviews which render historical accounts in the study of religion an intricate matter. The articles in this volume provide evidence of the great complexity of the problems involved. Laying the groundwork in many cases, they shed new light on a dark and poorly-lit era of the academic study of religion in Europe.
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Includes index.
Papers presented at an international symposium on "The Study of religion under the Impact of National Socialist and Fascist Ideologies in Europe" held 16-18 July 2004 at the University of Tübingen--Pref. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047423065 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.