Scribal culture in Ben Sira /
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In Scribal Culture in Ben Sira Lindsey A. Askin examines scribal culture as a framework for analysing features of textual referencing throughout the Book of Ben Sira (c.198-175 BCE), revealing new insights into how Ben Sira wrote his book of wisdom. Although the title of "scribe" is regularly applied to Ben Sira, this designation presents certain interpretive challenges. Through comparative analysis, Askin contextualizes the sage's compositional style across historical, literary, and socio-cultural spheres of operation. New light is shed on Ben Sira's text and early Jewish textual reuse. Drawing upon physical and material evidence of reading and writing, Askin reveals the dexterity and complexity of Ben Sira's sustained textual reuse. Ben Sira's achievement thus demonstrates exemplary, "excellent" writing to a receptive audience.
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1 online resource (x, 311 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004372863 :
1384-2161 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Byblos in the late bronze age : interactions between the Levantine and Egyptian worlds /
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"In Byblos in the Late Bronze Age, Marwan Kilani reconstructs the "biography" of the city of Byblos during the Late Bronze Age. Commonly described simply as a centre for the trade of wood, the city appears here as a dynamic actor involved in multiple aspects of the regional geopolitical reality. By combining the information provided by written sources and by a fresh reanalysis of the archaeological evidence, the author explores the development of the city during the Late Bronze Age, showing how the evolution of a wide range of geopolitical, economic and ideological factors resulted in periods of prosperity and decline. .
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (pages 280-312) and index. :
9789004416604
Writing and communication in early Egyptian monasticism /
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As senders of letters, copyists of literary texts, compilers of accounts, readers, and teachers, the monks of late antique Egypt articulated their interactions with their ascetic and secular environments via their role as authors, scribes, and owners of written text. This volume edited by Malcolm Choat and Maria Chiara Giorda examines the presence and practice of writing, modes of written communication, and the symbolic and spiritual value of the written word in monastic communities. Contributions cover evidence from papyri and inscriptions to literature transmitted in manuscripts, positioned within the shift in recent scholarship away from literature such as hagiography as a source of positivistic history, towards evidence that derives more directly from the monk or period in focus.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004336506 :
2213-0039 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Manichaeism and Early Christianity : Selected Papers from the 2019 Pretoria Congress and Consultation /
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"Manichaeism and Early Christianity comprises the selected papers from the 2019 Pretoria Congress and Consultation. The sixteen chapters focus on where and how Gnostic Manichaeism interfered not only with other forms of Gnosticism, but above all with the writings and representatives of mainstream Christianity during the early centuries of our era. Key texts dealt with are a number of Nag Hammadi writings (including the Gospel of Thomas) as well as figures such as Marcion, Tatian, Ephrem the Syrian, Chrysostom, Pelagius and-not least-Augustine and his pupil Evodius"--
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004445468
9789004445451
Philo of Alexandria: On the Life of Abraham : Introduction, Translation, and Commentary /
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On the Life of Abraham displays Philo's philosophical, exegetical, and literary genius at its best. Philo begins by introducing the biblical figures Enos, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as unwritten laws. Then, interweaving literal, ethical, and allegorical interpretations, Philo presents the life and achievements of Abraham, founder of the Jewish nation, in the form of a Greco-Roman bios, or biography. Ellen Birnbaum and John Dillon explain why and how this work is important within the context of Philo's own oeuvre, early Jewish and Christian exegesis, and ancient philosophy. They also offer a new English translation and detailed analyses, in which they elucidate the meaning of Philo's thought, including his perplexing notion that Israel's ancestors were laws in themselves.
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1 online resource. :
9789004423640
9789004423633
Philo of Alexandria: On the Contemplative Life : Introduction, Translation and Commentary /
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"On the Contemplative Life is known for its depiction of a philosophical group of Jewish men and women known as the 'Therapeutae'. Yet the reasons for their depiction have been little understood. In the first commentary on the treatise in English for over 100 years, the social, cultural and political background of the times in which Philo lived are shown to be crucial in understanding Philo's purposes. As Alexandrian Jews were vilified and attacked, Philo went to Rome to present the case for his community, faced with intense opposition. Side-stepping direct confrontation, Philo here cleverly presents the Therapeutae as the pinnacle of excellence, most especially in their communal meal, while ridiculing his accusers in a stinging parody of a festive banquet"--
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004439238
9789004438149
Poetics of the Gnostic universe : narrative and cosmology in the Apocryphon of John /
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This volume is both an essay in Gnostic poetics and a study in the history of early Christian appropriation of ancient philosophy. The object of study is the cosmological model of the Apocryphon of John , a first-hand and fully narrated version of the Gnostic myth. The author examines his target text against a complex background of religious and philosophical systems, literary theories, and rhetorical techniques of the period, and argues that the world model of the Apocryphon of John is inseparable from the epistemological, theological, and aesthetic debates within contemporary Platonism. Poetics of the Gnostic Universe also discusses the composition and narrative logic of the Apocryphon of John , explores its revisionist attitude towards various literary models (Plato's Timaeus , Wisdom literature, Genesis), and analyzes its peculiar discursive strategy of conjoining seemingly disconnected symbolic 'codes' while describing the derivation of a multi-layered universe from a single transcendent source.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [276]-302) and indexes. :
9789047404026 :
0929-2470 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The Panoplia dogmatike by Euthymios Zygadenos : a study on the first edition published in Greek in 1710 /
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Created in the twelfth century, the Panoplia Dogmatike is one of the Byzantine anthologies that became a key source for Orthodox theology. The anthology is known in more than 140 Greek manuscripts. In the fourteenth century it was translated into Old Church Slavonic. The Latin translation, prepared by the Italian humanist Pietro Francesco Zini, was published in Venice in 1555 during the years of the Council of Trent. The first printed edition of the Greek text came relatively late - in 1710 in the Romanian Principality of Wallachia. By examining the reasons for this publication, the book gives snapshots of the history of this authoritative anthology in the early modern period and uses sources until now not related to the Panoplia.
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1 online resource (pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004277816 :
2213-0039 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
International Review of Biblical Studies, 2007-2008 / Internationale Zeitschriftenschau Fur Bibelwissenschaft Und Grenzgebiete .
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Formerly known by its subtitle "Internationale Zeitschriftenschau für Bibelwissenschaft und Grenzgebiete", the International Review of Biblical Studies has served the scholarly community ever since its inception in the early 1950's. Each annual volume includes approximately 2,000 abstracts and summaries of articles and books that deal with the Bible and related literature, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, Pseudepigrapha, Non-canonical gospels, and ancient Near Eastern writings. The abstracts - which may be in English, German, or French - are arranged thematically under headings such as e.g. "Genesis", "Matthew", "Greek language", "text and textual criticism", "exegetical methods and approaches", "biblical theology", "social and religious institutions", "biblical personalities", "history of Israel and early Judaism", and so on. The articles and books that are abstracted and reviewed are collected annually by an international team of collaborators from over 300 of the most important periodicals and book series in the fields covered.
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1 online resource. :
9789047426011 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Mani and Augustine : collected essays on Mani, Manichaeism and Augustine /
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"Mani and Augustine: collected essays on Mani, Manichaeism and Augustine gathers in one volume contributions on Manichaean scholarship made by the internationally renowned scholar Johannes van Oort. The first part of the book focuses on the Babylonian prophet Mani (216-277) who styled himself an 'apostle of Jesus Christ', on Jewish elements in Manichaeism and on 'human semen eucharist', eschatology and imagery of Christ as 'God's Right Hand'. The second part of the book concentrates on the question to what extent the former 'auditor' Augustine became acquainted with Mani's gnostic world religion and his canonical writings, and explores to what extent Manichaeism had a lasting impact on the most influential church father of the West".
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Includes index. :
1 online resource. :
9789004417595
Jewish and Christian liturgy and worship : new insights into its history and interaction /
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Presenting new insights into the history and interaction between Jewish and Christian liturgy and worship, the various contributions offer a deeper understanding of the identity of Judaism and Christianity. It addresses issues such as: - Is the Eucharistic Prayer a 'Berakha' and what information is available for the reconstruction of the history of the Jewish 'Grace after Meals'? - How does Jewish liturgy rework the Bible, and are Christians and Jews using similar methods when they create liturgical poetry on the basis of a biblical text? - Which texts of the Cairo Genizah are of direct importance for the history of Christian liturgies, and are Christian creeds in fact Prayers or Hymns? - What does it mean that both Jews and Christians recite Isaiah's \'Holy, Holy, Holy\' at important points in their respective liturgies? Questions like these brought together scholars and specialists from different disciplines to share their recent insights at a conference in Aachen, Germany, and to offer the reader a fascinating discourse on a broad range of aspects of Jewish and Christian liturgies.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789047422419 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
New light on Manichaeism : papers from the Sixth International Congress on Manichaeism, organized by the International Association of Manichaean Studies /
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New Light on Manichaeism provides the latest discoveries and insights into the Manichaean religion throughout its more than one thousand year history, ranging from glimpses into the life and thought of Mani himself, to developments in doctrine and practice in the religion's North African, Iranian, Central Asian, and Chinese settings. The volume includes contributions from the leading scholars in the field, offering new reconstructions of Manichaean literary and artistic productions, and innovative analyses of the religious, social, and political dynamics that shaped the rise and fall of this world religion.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047426325 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Scripture in transition : essays on Septuagint, Hebrew Bible, and Dead Sea scrolls in honour of Raija Sollamo /
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Altogether 46 essays in honour of Professor Raija Sollamo contribute to explore various aspects of the rich textual material around the turn of the era. At that time Scripture was not yet fixed; various writings and collections of writings were considered authoritative but their form was more or less in transition. The appearance of the first biblical translations are part of this transitional process. The Septuagint in particular provides us evidence and concrete examples of those textual traditions and interpretations that were in use in various communities. Furthermore, several biblical concepts, themes and writings were reinterpreted and actualised in the Dead Sea Scrolls, illuminating the transitions that took place in one faction of Judaism. The topics of the contributions are divided into five parts: Translation and Interpretation; Textual History; Hebrew and Greek Linguistics; Dead Sea Scrolls; Present-Day.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789047442479 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Images of cosmology in Jewish and Byzantine art : God's blueprint of creation /
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Does the design of the Tabernacle in the wilderness correspond to God's blueprint of Creation? The Christian Topography, a sixth-century Byzantine Christian work, presents such a cosmology. Its theory is based on the "pattern" revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai when he was told to build the Tabernacle and its implements "after their pattern, which is being shown thee on the Mount." (Exod. 25: 40). The book demonstrates, through texts and images, the motifs that link the Tabernacle and Creation. It traces the long chain of transmission that connects the Jewish and Christian traditions from Syria and ancient Israel to France and Spain from the first through the fourteenth century, revealing new models of interaction between Judaism and Christianity.
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1 online resource (xxi, 318 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004252196 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Talmudic transgressions : engaging the work of Daniel Boyarin /
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Talmudic Transgressions is a collection of essays on rabbinic literature and related fields in response to the boundary-pushing scholarship of Daniel Boyarin. This work is an attempt to transgress boundaries in various ways, since boundaries differentiate social identities, literary genres, legal practices, or diasporas and homelands. These essays locate the transgressive not outside the classical traditions but in these traditions themselves, having learned from Boyarin that it is often within the tradition and in its terms that we can find challenges to accepted notions of knowledge, text, and ethnic or gender identity. The sections of this volume attempt to mirror this diverse set of topics. Contributors include Julia Watts Belser, Jonathan Boyarin, Shamma Boyarin, Virginia Burrus, Sergey Dolgopolski, Charlotte E. Fonrobert, Simon Goldhill, Erich S. Gruen, Galit Hasan-Rokem, Christine Hayes, Adi Ophir, James Redfield, Elchanan Reiner, Ishay Rosen-Zvi, Lena Salaymeh, Zvi Septimus, Aharon Shemesh, Dina Stein, Eliyahu Stern, Moulie Vidas, Barry Scott Wimpfheimer, Elliot R. Wolfson, Azzan Yadin-Israel, Israel Yuval, and Froma Zeitlin.
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"Originated in a conference held at the University of California, Berkeley, in April 2014"--From the editors. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004345331 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Dimitrie Cantemir, salvation of the sage and ruin of the sinful world /
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This is a thoroughly revised and expanded version of the first edition of the Arabic version of Dimitrie Cantemir's The Divan or the Sage's Dispute with the World (Ṣalāḥ al-ḥakīm wa-fasād al-ʿālam al-ḏamīm) (Iaşi, 1698), his first printed book, the earliest ethical treatise in Romanian literature and a testimony to his wide knowledge, reading, and proficiency in foreign languages. Completed in 1705 by Athanasius III Dabbās, Patriarch of the Antiochian Church (1684-1694, 1720-1724), the Arabic text is accompanied by the first translation into a modern language, English. Book III contains Cantemir's version of the Latin work Stimuli virtutum, fraena peccatorum (Amsterdam, 1682) by the Unitarian Andzrej Wiszowaty (Andreas Wissovatius) of Raków (Poland), a chief representative of the Polish Brethren. Thus, in the space of twenty-three years Central-European Protestant ideas reached the Arab Christians of Ottoman Syria, by way of Greek and Arabic.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004311022 :
2213-0039 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Mani's pictures : the didactic images of the Manichaeans from Sasanian Mesopotamia to Uygur Central Asia and Tang-Ming China /
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The founder of Manichaeism, Mani (216-274/277 CE), not only wrote down his teachings to prevent their adulteration, but also created a set of paintings-the Book of Pictures -to be used in the context of oral instruction. That pictorial handscroll and its later editions became canonical art for Mani's followers for a millennium afterwards. This richly illustrated study systematically explores the artistic culture of religious instruction of the Manichaeans based on textual and artistic evidence. It discusses the doctrinal themes (soteriology, prophetology, theology, and cosmology) depicted in Mani's canonical pictures. Moreover, it identifies 10th-century fragments of canonical picture books, as well as select didactic images adapted to other, non-canonical art objects (murals, hanging scrolls, mortuary banners, and illuminated liturgical manuscripts) in Uygur Central Asia and Tang-Ming China.
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1 online resource (xix, 535 pages) :
9789004308947 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The institution of the Hasmonean high priesthood /
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In The Institution of the Hasmonean High Priesthood , Vasile Babota offers an interdisciplinary study of the establishment of the Hasmonean priests as high priests in Jerusalem, from their revolt in 167 down to 140. The Hasmonean high priests exercised both religious and civil powers until 37 B.C.E. and some acted also as kings. Previous studies looked at them mainly from a biblical /Jewish perspective. Vasile Babota persuasively argues that the first high priests Jonathan and Simon acted as Hellenistic high priestly rulers. This conclusion is based on an analysis of the activity of the high priests Jonathan and Simon on internal and external levels, a comparison with earlier Jewish high priests, and a comparison with Hellenistic (Seleucid and Ptolemaic) high priests.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004252042 :
1384-2161 ;
The Books of Jeu and the Pistis Sophia as handbooks to eternity : exploring the gnostic mysteries of the ineffable /
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Despite the surge of interest in Gnostic texts following the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library, the Coptic Books of Jeu and Pistis Sophia remain understudied. Often dismissed as convoluted, confused, and repetitious, Erin Evans convincingly shows that these texts represent the writings of a distinct religious group with a consistent system of theology, cosmology, and ritual practice. This book offers an in-depth examination of these texts, their relationship to other contemporary Gnostic ideas, and their use in the context of a practicing religious group. Three thematic sections demonstrate how the collection of texts functions as a whole, covering baptisms and mystical ascent procedures, guides to moral living, and introductory texts and myths.
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1 online resource (vii, 284 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 271-281) and index. :
9789004301191 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The chapters of the wisdom of my Lord Mani.
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The Chapters of the Wisdom of My Lord Mani , a Coptic papyrus codex preserved at the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin, describes Mani's mission, teachings and debates with sages in the courts of the Sasanian empire during the reign of Shapur I; with an extended account of his last days and death under Bahram I. The text offers an unprecedented new source for the history of religions in Late Antiquity, including interactions of Manichaean, Zoroastrian, Christian, Jewish, and Buddhist traditions in Iran, remarkably transmitted into the Mediterranean world as part of Manichaean missionary literature. This is the first of four fascicles constituting the editio princeps , based on enhanced digital and multispectral imaging and extended autoptic study of the manuscript.
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1 online resource (viii, 216 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004363403 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.