Conceptualising Divine Unions in the Greek and Near Eastern Worlds

Conceptualising Divine Unions in the Greek and Near Eastern Worlds PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004502521
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
This volume is an interdisciplinary investigation and contextualization of the various concepts of divine union in the private and public sphere of the Greek and Near Eastern worlds.

Conceptualising Divine Unions in the Greek and Near Eastern Worlds

Conceptualising Divine Unions in the Greek and Near Eastern Worlds PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004502521
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
This volume is an interdisciplinary investigation and contextualization of the various concepts of divine union in the private and public sphere of the Greek and Near Eastern worlds.

Mystery Cults in the Ancient World

Mystery Cults in the Ancient World PDF Author: Hugh Bowden
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
ISBN: 0500778639
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
A landmark study of ancient Greek and Roman cults, from the nocturnal mysteries at Eleusis to the cults of Dionysus and Mithras. Mystery cults are one of the most intriguing areas of Greek and Roman religion. In the nocturnal mysteries at Eleusis, participants dramatically reenacted the story of Demeter’s loss and recovery of her daughter Persephone; in the Bacchic cult, bands of women ran wild in the Greek countryside to honor Dionysus; in the mysteries of Mithras, men came to understand the nature of the universe and their place within it through frightening initiation ceremonies and astrological teachings. These cults were an important part of life in the ancient Mediterranean world, but their actual practices were shrouded in secrecy. Mystery Cults in the Ancient World makes plentiful use of artistic and archaeological evidence, as well as ancient literature and epigraphy, to reconstruct the sacred rituals and explore their origins. Greek painted pottery, Roman frescoes, inscribed gold tablets from Greek and Southern Italian tombs, and the excavated sites of religious sanctuaries all contribute to our understanding of ancient mystery cults. Not only is this clearly written book a significant contribution to the study of these cults, it is also accessible to a general readership. More than any other book on ancient religion, it allows the reader to understand what it was like to participate in these life-altering religious events.

Aršāma and his World: The Bodleian Letters in Context

Aršāma and his World: The Bodleian Letters in Context PDF Author: Christopher J. Tuplin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192652575
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 568

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Book Description
During the Second World War the Bodleian Library in Oxford acquired a set of Aramaic letters, eight sealings, and the two leather bags in which the sealed letters were once stored. The letters concern the affairs of Aršāma, satrap of Egypt in the later fifth century. Taken with other material associated with him (mostly in Aramaic, Demotic Egyptian, and Akkadian), they illuminate the Achaemenid world of which Aršāama was a privileged member and evoke a wide range of social, economic, cultural, organizational, and political perspectives, from multi-lingual communication, storage and disbursement of resources, and satrapal remuneration, to cross-regional ethnic movement, long-distance travel, religious practice, and iconographic projection of ideological messages. Particular highlights include a travel authorization (the only example of something implicit in numerous Persepolis documents), texts about the religious life of the Judaean garrison at Elephantine, Aršāma's magnificent seal (a masterpiece of Achaemenid glyptic, inherited from a son of Darius I), and echoes of temporary disturbances to Persian management of Egypt. But what is also impressive is the underlying sense of systematic coherence founded on and expressed in the use of formal, even formalized, written communication as a means of control. The Aršāma dossier is not alone in evoking that sense, but its size, variety, and focus upon a single individual give it a unique quality. Though this material has not been hidden from view, it has been insufficiently explored: it is the purpose of the three volumes of Aršāma and his World: The Bodleian Letters in Context to provide the fullest presentation and historical contextualization of this extraordinary cache yet attempted. Volume I presents and translates the letters alongside a detailed line-by-line commentary, while Volume II reconstructs the two seals that made the clay bullae that sealed the letters, with special attention to Aršāma's magnificent heirloom seal. Volume III comprises a series of thematic essays which further explore the administrative, economic, military, ideological, religious, and artistic environment to which Aršāma and the letters belonged.

Proclus' On the Hieratic Art according to the Greeks

Proclus' On the Hieratic Art according to the Greeks PDF Author: Eleni Pachoumi
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004697551
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
The book is a critical edition of the text with an English translation and commentary of Proclus’ On the Hieratic Art according to the Greeks. The Hieratic Art is the Theurgic Art, theurgy, the theurgic union with the divine. Proclus describes the theurgic union, putting an emphasis on a conceptual blending of ritual actions (teletai, e.g. the role of statues, incenses, synthêmata, symbols, purifications, invocations and epiphanies) and philosophical concepts (e.g. union of many powers, ‘one and many’, symphathy, natural sympathies, attraction, mixing and division).

The Oxford Handbook of Deification

The Oxford Handbook of Deification PDF Author:
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192634461
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 1307

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Book Description
Modern theological engagements on deification have undergone two major paradigm shifts. First, the study of deification shifted from the periphery of theological discourse to its center. For Adolf von Harnack, deification was a pagan import that fatally corrupted and distorted the Gospel message of salvation. In response, the positive retrieval of the concept of deification belongs to the early years of the twentieth century. By the 1910s in Russian religious thought and by the 1930s in much Roman Catholic theology, deification had become a magnet concept attracting attention from many different viewpoints. The second important shift relates to how deification is characterized. Recent studies question the exclusively 'Eastern' character of deification and draw attention to the engagements of this theme in Latin patristic and later Western Christian sources. Reassessing the evidence for these two major shifts, The Oxford Handbook of Deification comprehensively explores the points of convergence and difference on the constitutive elements of deification in different traditions, and offers a foundation for ecumenical and interreligious dialogues. The Handbook's first part analyzes the cultural and scriptural roots of deification; the second part explores the most significant historical contributions to the understanding of deification in the early, medieval, and modern periods; the third part develops systematic connections. Readers will discover a surprizing breadth, depth, and diversity of theologies of deification in Christian traditions. Throughout the Handbook, leading scholars in the field of Deification Studies propose vital new insights from a variety of perspectives for this central mystery at the heart of the Christian faith.

Ancient Fiction

Ancient Fiction PDF Author: Jo-Ann A. Brant
Publisher: Society of Biblical Lit
ISBN: 1589831667
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
The essays in this volume examine the relationship between ancient fiction in the Greco-Roman world and early Jewish and Christian narratives. They consider how those narratives imitated or exploited conventions of fiction to produce forms of literature that expressed new ideas or shaped community identity within the shifting social and political climates of their own societies. Major authors and texts surveyed include Chariton, Shakespeare, Homer, Vergil, Plato, Matthew, Mark, Luke, Daniel, 3 Maccabees, the Testament of Abraham, rabbinic midrash, the Apocryphal Acts, Ezekiel the Tragedian, and the Sophist Aelian. This diverse collection reveals and examines prevalent issues and syntheses in the making: the pervasive use and subversive power of imitation, the distinction between fiction and history, and the use of history in the expression of identity.

The Concepts of the Divine in the Greek Magical Papyri

The Concepts of the Divine in the Greek Magical Papyri PDF Author: Eleni Pachoumi
Publisher: Mohr Siebeck
ISBN: 9783161540189
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Eleni Pachoumi looks at the concepts of the divine in the Greek magical papyri by way of a careful and detailed analysis of ritual practices and spells. Her aim is to uncover the underlying religious, philosophical and mystical parallelisms and influences on the Greek magical papyri. She starts by examining the religious and philosophical concept of the personal daimon and the union of the individual with his personal daimon through the magico-theurgic ritual of systasis. She then goes on to analyze the religious concept of paredros as the divine "assistant" and the various relationships between paredros, the divine and the individual. To round off, she studies the concept of the divine through the manifold religious and philosophical assimilations mainly between Greek, Egyptian, Hellenized gods and divine abstract concepts of Jewish origins.

Out-heroding Herod

Out-heroding Herod PDF Author: Tamar Landau
Publisher: Ancient Judaism and Early Chri
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
This book discusses the Herod narratives of Josephus in the light of narratology and rhetoric. It offers an innovative interpretation of the rhetorical and dramatic makeup of the parallel accounts of Herod's history and suggests new ways of understanding Josephus' complexity as a historian between two cultures.

Instructions for the Netherworld

Instructions for the Netherworld PDF Author: Alberto Bernabé
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047423747
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 391

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Book Description
The book presents a complete edition of the texts, their translation and some fundamental keys for their interpretation, in an attempt at updating our current knowledge on Orphic ideas about the soul and the Afterlife stated in those texts

The Idea of Europe

The Idea of Europe PDF Author: Anthony Pagden
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521795524
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
Discusses how a distinctive 'European' identity has grown over the centuries, especially with the EU.