The Secret of Time

The Secret of Time
Author: Arjen F. Bakker
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2023
Genre: Dead Sea scrolls
ISBN: 9789004529748

This book explores how Jewish traditions of wisdom are being reshaped in the Greco-Roman period and demonstrates that reflection on time as an organizing principle is formative for emerging wisdom concepts, which are expressed by the enigmatic phrase rāz nihyeh.

The Secret of Time: Reconfiguring Wisdom in the Dead Sea Scrolls

The Secret of Time: Reconfiguring Wisdom in the Dead Sea Scrolls
Author: Arjen F. Bakker
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2023-02-13
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004537791

This book contributes to the rethinking of the Dead Sea Scrolls as an essential and integral part of Judaism in the Greco-Roman period. The Qumran manuscripts attest to the reconfiguration of Jewish wisdom concepts in this period. Strikingly, reflection on time as the organizing principle behind all of reality is formative for these emerging concepts, which are expressed by the enigmatic phrase rāz nihyeh. The secret of time invites us to venture beyond existing categorizations and explore a rich conceptual framework that is manifested across a wide range of texts, beyond generic categories, and overcoming the sectarian divide.

The Oxford Handbook of Wisdom and the Bible

The Oxford Handbook of Wisdom and the Bible
Author: Will Kynes
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 713
Release: 2021
Genre: Bibles
ISBN: 0190661267

"This volume both reflects on the contested nature of the Wisdom Literature category and takes advantage of the opportunities it presents for reconsidering the concept of wisdom more independently from it. The first half explores wisdom as a concept, with essays on its relationship to skill, epistemology, virtue, theology, and order in the Hebrew Bible, its meaning in related cultures, from Egypt and Mesopotamia to Patristic and Rabbinic interpretation, and, finally, its continuing relevance the modern world, including in Islamic, Jewish, and Christian thought, and from feminist, environmental, and other contextual perspectives. The latter half considers "Wisdom Literature" as a category. Scholars address its relation to the Solomonic Collection, its social setting, literary genres, chronological development, and theology. Wisdom Literature's relation to other biblical literature (law, history, prophecy, apocalyptic, and the broad question of "Wisdom influence") is then discussed before separate chapters on the texts commonly associated with the category. Contributors take a variety of approaches to the current debates surrounding the viability and value of the Wisdom Literature category and its proper relationship to the concept of wisdom in the Hebrew Bible. Though the organization of the volume highlights the independence of wisdom as concept from "Wisdom Literature" as category, seeking to counter the lack of attention given to this question in the traditional approach, the inclusion of both topics together in the same volume reflects their continued interconnection. As such, this handbook both represents the current state of Wisdom scholarship and sets the stage for future developments"--

The Religious Poetry of El'azar ben Ya'aqov ha-Bavli

The Religious Poetry of El'azar ben Ya'aqov ha-Bavli
Author: Wout J. van Bekkum
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 347
Release: 2022-10-24
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004527001

This is a comprehensive edition of Hebrew hymns composed by Eleazar the Babylonian, a prolific composer and scholar who lived in 13th-century Baghdad. His poetic language and style show much affinity with contemporary Sufism.

Zodiac Calendars in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Their Reception

Zodiac Calendars in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Their Reception
Author: Helen R. Jacobus
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 555
Release: 2014-10-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004284060

The ancient mathematical basis of the Aramaic calendars in the Dead Sea Scrolls is analysed in this investigation. Helen R. Jacobus re-examines an Aramaic zodiac calendar with a thunder divination text (4Q318) and the calendar from the Aramaic Astronomical Book (4Q208 - 4Q209), all from Qumran. Jacobus demonstrates that 4Q318 is an ancestor of the Jewish calendar today and that it helps us to understand 4Q208 - 4Q209. She argues that these calendars were taught in antiquity as angelic knowledge described in 1 Enoch and the Book of Jubilees. The study also encompasses Babylonian, Hellenistic, Byzantine astronomy and astrology, and classical and Jewish writings. Finally, a medieval Hebrew zodiac calendar related to 4Q318 with an astrological text is published here for the first time.

Demons, Angels, and Writing in Ancient Judaism

Demons, Angels, and Writing in Ancient Judaism
Author: Annette Yoshiko Reed
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2020-01-16
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 052111943X

A new explanation of the beginnings of Jewish angelology and demonology, drawing on non-canonical writings and Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Spirit Within Me

The Spirit Within Me
Author: Carol Ann Newsom
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2021-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0300208685

The first full-length study of the evolution of self and agency in ancient Israelite anthropology Conceptions of "the self" have received significant recent attention in philosophy, anthropology, and cultural history. Scholars argue that the introspective self of the modern West is a distinctive phenomenon that cannot be projected back onto the cultures of antiquity. While acknowledging such difference is vital, it can lead to an inaccurate flattening of the ancient self. In this study, Carol A. Newsom explores the assumptions that govern ancient Israelite views of the self and its moral agency before the fall of Judah, as well as striking developments during the Second Temple period. She demonstrates how the collective trauma of the destruction of the Temple catalyzed changes in the experience of the self in Israelite literature, including first-person singular prayers, notions of self-alienation, and emerging understandings of a defective heart and will. Examining novel forms of spirituality as well as sectarian texts, Newsom chronicles the evolving inward gaze in ancient Israelite literature, unveiling how introspection in Second Temple Judaism both parallels and differs from forms of introspective selfhood in Greco-Roman cultures.

Book of Anonymity

Book of Anonymity
Author: Anon Collective
Publisher: punctum books
Total Pages: 490
Release: 2021-03-04
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 1953035310

Hebrew in the Second Temple Period

Hebrew in the Second Temple Period
Author: Steven Fassberg
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2013-08-05
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 900425479X

The Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the book of Ben Sira can be properly understood only in the light of all contemporary Second Temple period sources. With this in mind, 20 experts from Israel, Europe, and the United States convened in Jerusalem in December 2008. These proceedings of the Twelfth Orion Symposium and Fifth International Symposium on the Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Ben Sira examine the Hebrew of the Second Temple period as reflected primarily in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the book of Ben Sira, Late Biblical Hebrew, and Mishnaic Hebrew. Additional contemporaneous sources—inscriptions, Greek and Latin transcriptions, and the Samaritan oral and reading traditions of the Pentateuch—are also noted.

On Their Own Terms

On Their Own Terms
Author: Benjamin A. Elman
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 606
Release: 2009-07-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674036476

In On Their Own Terms, Benjamin A. Elman offers a much-needed synthesis of early Chinese science during the Jesuit period (1600-1800) and the modern sciences as they evolved in China under Protestant influence (1840s-1900). By 1600 Europe was ahead of Asia in producing basic machines, such as clocks, levers, and pulleys, that would be necessary for the mechanization of agriculture and industry. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Elman shows, Europeans still sought from the Chinese their secrets of producing silk, fine textiles, and porcelain, as well as large-scale tea cultivation. Chinese literati borrowed in turn new algebraic notations of Hindu-Arabic origin, Tychonic cosmology, Euclidian geometry, and various computational advances. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, imperial reformers, early Republicans, Guomindang party cadres, and Chinese Communists have all prioritized science and technology. In this book, Elman gives a nuanced account of the ways in which native Chinese science evolved over four centuries, under the influence of both Jesuit and Protestant missionaries. In the end, he argues, the Chinese produced modern science on their own terms.