Heralds of That Good Realm

Heralds of That Good Realm
Author: John Reeves
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2020-10-26
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004439706

This volume examines the transmission of biblical pseudepigraphic literature and motifs from their largely Jewish cultural contexts in Palestine to developing gnostic milieux of Syria and Mesopotamia, particularly that one lying behind the birth and growth of Manichaeism. It surveys biblical pseudepigraphic literary activity in the late antique Near East, devoting special attention to revelatory works attributed to the five biblical forefathers who are cited in the Cologne Mani Codex: Adam, Seth, Enosh, Shem, and Enoch. The author provides a philological, literary, and religio-historical analysis of each of the five pseudepigraphic citations contained in the Codex, and offers hypotheses regarding the original provenance of each citation and the means by which these traditions have been adapted to their present context. This study is an important contribution to the scholarly reassessment of the roles played by Second Temple Judaism, Jewish Christian sectarianism, and classical gnosis in the formulation and development of Syro-Mesopotamian religious currents.

Manichaeism

Manichaeism
Author: Michel Tardieu
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 134
Release: 2008
Genre: Manichaeism
ISBN: 0252032780

Good and evil, light and darkness; for the first time in English, a potent survey of Manichaeism

The Apostolic Age in Patristic Thought

The Apostolic Age in Patristic Thought
Author: A. Hilhorst
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2004
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004126112

This collection of essays explores the way early Christians looked back on the apostolic age. It shows the unique authority which that period enjoyed in matters of doctrine, institutions, rites and morality, even in dissident circles.

Cultures of Eschatology

Cultures of Eschatology
Author: Veronika Wieser
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 1181
Release: 2020-07-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 3110593580

In all religions, in the medieval West as in the East, ideas about the past, the present and the future were shaped by expectations related to the End. The volumes Cultures of Eschatology explore the many ways apocalyptic thought and visions of the end intersected with the development of pre-modern religio-political communities, with social changes and with the emergence of new intellectual and literary traditions. The two volumes present a wide variety of case studies from the early Christian communities of Antiquity, through the times of the Islamic invasion and the Crusades and up to modern receptions, from the Latin West to the Byzantine Empire, from South Yemen to the Hidden Lands of Tibetan Buddhism. Examining apocalypticism, messianism and eschatology in medieval Christian, Islamic, Hindu and Buddhist communities, the contributions paint a multi-faceted picture of End-Time scenarios and provide their readers with a broad array of source material from different historical contexts. The first volume, Empires and Scriptural Authorities, examines the formation of literary and visual apocalyptic traditions, and the role they played as vehicles for defining a community’s religious and political enemies. The second volume, Time, Death and Afterlife, focuses on key topics of eschatology: death, judgment, afterlife and the perception of time and its end. It also analyses modern readings and interpretations of eschatological concepts.

Enoch from Antiquity to the Middle Ages, Volume I

Enoch from Antiquity to the Middle Ages, Volume I
Author: John C. Reeves
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 410
Release: 2018-02-22
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0192540203

Across the ancient and medieval literature of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, one finds references to the antediluvian sage Enoch. Both the Book of the Watchers and the Astronomical Book were long known from their Ethiopic versions, which are preserved as part of Mashafa Henok Nabiy ('Book of Enoch the Prophet')--an Enochic compendium known in the West as 1 Enoch. Since the discovery of Aramaic fragments among the Dead Sea Scrolls, these books have attracted renewed attention as important sources for ancient Judaism. Among the results has been the recognition of the surprisingly long and varied tradition surrounding Enoch. Within 1 Enoch alone, for instance, we find evidence for intensive literary creativity. This volume provides a comprehensive set of core references for easy and accessible consultation. It shows that the rich afterlives of Enochic texts and traditions can be studied more thoroughly by scholars of Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity as well as by scholars of late antique and medieval religions. Specialists in the Second Temple period-the era in which Enochic literature first appears-will be able to trace (or discount) the survival of Enochic motifs and mythemes within Jewish literary circles from late antiquity into the Middle Ages, thereby shedding light on the trajectories of Jewish apocalypticism and its possible intersections with Jewish mysticism. Students of Near Eastern esotericism and Hellenistic philosophies will have further data for exploring the origins of 'gnosticism' and its possible impact upon sectarian currents in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Those interested in the intellectual symbiosis among Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the Middle Ages-and especially in the transmission of the ancient sciences associated with Hermeticism (e.g., astrology, theurgy, divinatory techniques, alchemy, angelology, demonology)-will be able to view a chain of tradition reconstructed in its entirety for the first time in textual form. In the process, we hope to provide historians of religion with a new tool for assessing the intertextual relationships between different religious corpora and for understanding the intertwined histories of the major religious communities of the ancient and medieval Near East.

Sexuality in the Babylonian Talmud

Sexuality in the Babylonian Talmud
Author: Yishai Kiel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2016-10-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107155517

This book explores sex and sexuality in the Babylonian Talmud within the context of competing cultural discourses, for students of comparative religion.

Orthodox and Wesleyan Spirituality

Orthodox and Wesleyan Spirituality
Author: S. T. Kimbrough
Publisher: St Vladimir's Seminary Press
Total Pages: 580
Release: 2002
Genre: Methodist Church
ISBN: 9780881412352

In 1999, on the campus of St. Vladimir's Seminary, leading Orthodox and Methodist scholars, clergy, and laity met to explore the roots of spirituality in both traditions. This volume explores the primary themes addressed at that consultation: holiness and perfection, the impact and influence of the Eastern Church upon John and Charles Wesley- the founders of Methodism- and the common foundational ground upon which the Wesleys and many of the Eastern Fathers stood. While there is much to be done toward establishing the direct channels of influence, the discourses of this volume will serve well the cause of discovering commonalities, as well as differences, in their theology and practice. One will find here foundation stones for building bridges of understanding and the deepening of spirituality.

Prophets and Prophecy in the Late Antique Near East

Prophets and Prophecy in the Late Antique Near East
Author: Jae Hee Han
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2023-09-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1009297740

Offers an interdisciplinary account of prophecy as a topic of discourse among various late antique Near Eastern communities. Against assumptions that prophecy ceased in the past, this book argues that it remained a topic of discourse among various Near Eastern communities.

A Guide to Early Jewish Texts and Traditions in Christian Transmission

A Guide to Early Jewish Texts and Traditions in Christian Transmission
Author: Gabriele Boccaccini
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 640
Release: 2019-10-14
Genre: Bibles
ISBN: 0190863080

The Jewish culture of the Hellenistic and early Roman periods established a basis for all monotheistic religions, but its main sources have been preserved to a great degree through Christian transmission. This Guide is devoted to problems of preservation, reception, and transformation of Jewish texts and traditions of the Second Temple period in the many Christian milieus from the ancient world to the late medieval era. It approaches this corpus not as an artificial collection of reconstructed texts--a body of hypothetical originals--but rather from the perspective of the preserved materials, examined in their religious, social, and political contexts. It also considers the other, non-Christian, channels of the survival of early Jewish materials, including Rabbinic, Gnostic, Manichaean, and Islamic. This unique project brings together scholars from many different fields in order to map the trajectories of early Jewish texts and traditions among diverse later cultures. It also provides a comprehensive and comparative introduction to this new field of study while bridging the gap between scholars of early Judaism and of medieval Christianity.

The Entangled Enoch: 2 Enoch and the Cultures of Late Antiquity

The Entangled Enoch: 2 Enoch and the Cultures of Late Antiquity
Author: Grant Macaskill
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2024-05-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004695095

This study reframes and reorients the study of 2 Enoch, moving beyond debates about Christian or Jewish authorship and considering the work in the context of eclectic and erudite cultures in late antiquity, particularly Syria. The study compares the work with the Parables of Enoch and then with a variety of writings associated with late antique Syrian theology, demonstrating the distinctively eclectic character of 2 Enoch. It offers new paradigms for research into the pseudepigrapha.