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The present volume is based on lectures delivered at a symposium organized by the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities on the occasion of the eightieth birthday of Professor Shaul Shaked.
The book deals with some major aspects of Zoroastrianism in Iran during the Sasanian period, including the important distinctions between the spritual and the material modes of existence, the idea that Ahreman, the Evil Spirit, does not belong in the material world, and the widely current myth of Zurvan. The volume also deals with the impact of some Zoroastrian themes on Islam, such as the twin relationship between state and religion, throwing light on both the Iranian themes and their borrowing into Islamic literature.
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The Achaemenid period (550-330 BCE) is rightly seen as one of the most formative periods in Judaism. It is the period in which large portions of the Bible were edited and redacted and others were authored--yet no dedicated interdisciplinary study has been undertaken to present a consistent picture of this decisive time period. This book is dedicated to the study of the touchpoints between Yahwistic communities throughout the Achaemenid empire and the Iranian attributes of the empire that ruled over them for about two centuries. Its approach is fundamentally interdisciplinary. It brings together scholars of Achaemenid history, literature and religion, Iranian linguistics, historians of the Ancient Near East, archeologists, biblical scholars and Semiticists. The goal is to better understand the interchange of ideas, expressions and concepts as well as the experience of historical events between Yahwists and the empire that ruled over them for over two centuries. The book will open up a holisitic perspective on this important era to scholars of a wide variety of fields in the study of Judaism in the Ancient Near East.
In the midst of academic debates about the utility of the term “magic” and the cultural meaning of ancient words like mageia or khesheph, this Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic seeks to advance the discussion by separating out three topics essential to the very idea of magic. The three major sections of this volume address (1) indigenous terminologies for ambiguous or illicit ritual in antiquity; (2) the ancient texts, manuals, and artifacts commonly designated “magical” or used to represent ancient magic; and (3) a series of contexts, from the written word to materiality itself, to which the term “magic” might usefully pertain. The individual essays in this volume cover most o...
Laws of Ritual Purity: Zand ī Fragard ī Jud-Dēw-Dād (A Commentary on the Chapters of the Widēwdād) describes the various ways in which Zoroastrian authorities in the fifth-sixth centuries CE reinterpreted the purity laws of their community. Its redactor(s), conversant with the notions and practices of purity and impurity as developed by their predecessors, attempt(s) to determine the parameters of the various categories of pollution, the minimum measures of polluted substances, and the effect of the interaction of pollution with other substances that are important to humans. It is therefore in essence a technical legal corpus designed to provide a comprehensive picture of a central aspect of Zoroastrian ritual life: the extent of one’s liability contracting pollution and how atonement/purification can be achieved.
The Bundahisn, meaning primal or foundational creation, is the central Zoroastrian account of creation, cosmology, and eschatology. Redacted sometime in the ninth century CE, it is one of the most important of the surviving testaments to Middle Persian Zoroastrian literature and pre-Islamic Iranian culture. Well known in the field as an essential primary source for scholars of ancient Iran's history, religions, literatures, and languages, the Bundahisn is also a great work of literature itself, which ranks alongside the creation myths of other ancient traditions: Genesis, the Babylonian Emunah Elish, Hesiod's Theogony, and others.
The Prince and the Sufi is the literary composition of the seventeenth-century Judeo-Persian poet Elisha ben Shmūel. In The Prince and the Sufi: The Judeo-Persian Rendition of the Buddha Biographies, Dalia Yasharpour provides a thorough analysis of this popular work to show how the Buddha's life story has undergone substantial transformation with the use of Jewish, Judeo-Persian and Persian-Islamic sources. The annotated edition of the text and the corresponding English translation are meticulous and insightful. This scholarly study makes available to readers an important branch in the genealogical tree of the Buddha Biographies.
Biblical Psalms are a common heritage of Jewish and Christian cultures. Serving for the common liturgy of the Jerusalem Temple and individual prayers since biblical times they inspired Hebrew poetical language. The Qumran community, as well as Jewish and Christian communities of Late Antiquity attributed to them a special authority and apotropaic function. Quoted and interpreted in various ways in the New Testament and Rabbinic tradition they had a fundamental role in regular liturgies since the Middle Ages. Referred to in medical texts, recited on pilgrimages and at funeral vigils they represented an important aspect of folk religion and the formation of religious identity. The present volume is intended to show the many ways the Psalms were used and enjoyed a lasting popularity in regular and folk religion, collectively and individually, from antiquity until today.