Mladen Popović

The notion of authoritative Scriptures plays an important part in the new paradigm of canonical process. This volume focuses on specific texts or corpora of texts, and approaches the notion of authoritative Scriptures from sociological, cultural and literary perspectives.

Authoritative Scriptures in Ancient Judaism

Myles Schoonover

Marijn Vandenberghe

Taking the flexible concept of “cultural encounter” as a starting point, this volume presents a variety of studies which focus on the impact of encounters between cultures, groups, and individuals as it relates to ancient Jewish religion, culture, and society.

Jewish Cultural Encounters in the Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern World

Florentino García Martínez

This selection of papers read at the 5th meeting of the IOQS offers the explorations of the forming and defining of the identities of the group or groups behind the Dead Sea Scrolls by the foremost specialists in the field.

Proceedings of the Fifth Meeting of the IOQS in Groningen

Defining Identities: We, You, and the Other in the Dead Sea Scrolls

Offering new reconstructions and interpretations of physiognomic and astrological texts from Qumran in comparison with Babylonian and Greco-Roman texts, this book gives a fresh view of their sense, function, and status within both the Qumran community and Second Temple Judaism.

Physiognomics and Astrology in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Hellenistic-Early Roman Period Judaism

Reading the Human Body

Lautaro Roig Lanzillotta

Clare Wilde

Few studies focus on the modes of knowledge transmission (or concealment), or the trends of continuity or change from the Ancient to the Late Antique worlds. In Antiquity, knowledge was cherished as a scarce good, cultivated through the close teacher-student relationship and often preserved in the closed circle of the initated. From Assyrian and Babylonian cuneiform texts to a Shi'ite Islamic tradition, this volume explores how and why knowledge was shared or concealed by diverse communities in a range of Ancient and Late Antique cultural contexts. From caves by the Dead Sea to Alexandria, both normative and heterodox approaches to knowledge in Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities are explored. Biblical and qur'anic passages, as well as gnostic, rabbinic and esoteric Islamic approaches are discussed. In this volume, a range of scholars from Assyrian studies to Jewish, Christian and Islamic studies examine diverse approaches to, and modes of, knowledge transmission and concealment, shedding new light on both the interconnectedness, as well as the unique aspects, of the monotheistic faiths, and their relationship to the ancient civilisations of the Fertile Crescent.

Mladen Popović

Books

Your next favorite book is out there