This volume advances our understanding of early Christianity as a lived religion by approaching it through its rites, the emotions and affects surrounding those rites, and the material setting for the practice of them.
Between ancient Greece and modern psyche lies a divide of not only three thousand years, but two cultures that are worlds apart in art, technology, economics and the accelerating flood of historical events.
This book explores how philosophical and religious communities in the Roman Empire of the first and second centuries CE engaged with, and were shaped by, their relationship to texts and tradition in their quest for true religious knowledge or ultimate truth.
This book moves beyond the debate on 'wisdom literature', ongoing in biblical studies, to demonstrate the productivity of 'wisdom' as a literary category.
Bringing together international scholars from across a range of linked disciplines to examine the concept of the person in the Greek Christian East, Personhood in the Byzantine Christian Tradition stretches in its scope from the New Testament to contemporary debates surrounding personhood in Eastern Orthodoxy.
The present volume was made possible by the Norwegian Research Council's generous funding of the Human Sacrifice and Value project (FRIPROHUMSAM 275947).
Exploring Greek Myth offers an extensive discussion of variant forms of myths and lesser-known stories, including important local myths and local versions of PanHellenic myths.
The Rig Veda, written in India about 1500BC, praises a holy plant called Soma, which is sacrificed and consumed, granting the drinker an experience of enlightenment and ecstasy.
This book challenges the popular use of 'Valentinian' to describe a Christian school of thought in the second century CE by analysing documents ascribed to 'Valentinians' by early Christian Apologists, and more recently by modern scholars after the discovery of codices near Nag Hammadi in Egypt.
Ginnungagap, the Gaping Abyss, was once what separated the realms of Ice and Fire, keeping them in balance and sparing the other realms from their ravages.
This new edition introduces the reader to the philosophy of early Christianity in the second to fourth centuries AD, and contextualizes the philosophical contributions of early Christians in the framework of the ancient philosophical debates.
This is the study of an anonymous ancient work, usually called Joseph and Aseneth, which narrates the transformation of the daughter of an Egyptian priest into an acceptable spouse for the biblical Joseph, whose marriage to Aseneth is given brief notice in Genesis.
The emergence of Islam in the seventh century AD still polarises scholars who seek to separate religious truth from the historical reality with which it is associated.
This study is the first to assemble the evidence for the existence of sorcerors in the ancient world; it also addresses the question of their identity and social origins.
Artemis is a literary, iconographic, and archaeological study of the ancient Greek goddess of the hunt, who presided over the transitions and mediations between the wild and the civilized, youth and maturity, life and death.
First published in 1921, this title examines the relationship between what the author labels the 'rationalist' element in Western culture on the one hand, derived from the ancient Greeks, and Christianity, on the other.
This volume offers the most comprehensive survey available of the philosophical background to the works of early Christian writers and the development of early Christian doctrine.
With a focus on Asian traditions, this book examines varieties of thought and self-transformative practice that do not fit neatly on one side or another of the standard Western division between philosophy and religion.
Said to contain the words of the earliest of the biblical prophets (8th century BCE), the book of Amos is reinterpreted by the author in light of new and sometimes controversial historical approaches to the Bible.
THE INSTANT TIMES BESTSELLERAward-winning classicist and historian Emily Hauser takes readers on an epic journey to uncover the astonishing true story of the real women behind ancient Greece s greatest legends, and the real heroes of those ancient epics, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey .
In books lauded as brilliant, exhilarating and profound, Roberto Calasso has revealed the unexpected intersections of ancient and modern through topics ranging from Greek and Indian mythology to what a legendary African kingdom can tell us about the French Revolution.
This book offers a historical-materialist reading of the opening chapters of the book of Genesis in an attempt to revive their potential to engage people in truthful discussions about power and pleasure.
Conflicting claims to authority in relation to the translation and interpretation of the Bible have been a recurrent source of tension within the Christian church, and were a key issue in the Reformation debate.
This final book published in the Ashgate SOTS monograph series collects together for the first time in English translation a selection of important essays on central themes and texts in Old Testament criticism and exegesis by Rudolf Smend, one of the world's most eminent senior scholars in the field.
*; Contains hardcover editions of Dictionary of Ancient Magic Words and Spells, Traditional Magic Spells for Protection and Healing, and The High Magic of Talismans and Amulets in a collector's slipcase*; Analyzes more than 7,000 spells from the magical traditions of Europe and provides a comprehensive history of the use of talismans and amulets from the Middle Ages to todayThrough meticulous study of his private collection of medieval manuscripts as well as his privileged access to the rare book archives of major European universities, Claude Lecouteux has become renowned in esoteric academic circles for his in-depth examinations of the myths and magical practices of the Middle Ages.
The Routledge Encyclopedia of Ancient Mediterranean Religions is the first comprehensive single-volume reference work offering authoritative coverage of ancient religions in the Mediterranean world.