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In the fictional book Gods and Guardians Journey to the Plains of Amar. R.W. Dove weaves a tale of a young man named Authur. Authur learns on his eighteenth birthday that he is not who he thought he was. After his mother is attacked by a ruthless government official, the family and Authur's best friends are forced to flee the only home Authur has ever known. Authur and his friends must follow the guidance of an old begger who is not what he appears to be. They are thrust into a world filled with magic and strange creatures and danger is always just a footstep behind. They must reach the top of a mountain known as the Plains of Amar. Only there can they reach the portal that will help Authur fulfill his destiny.
Explores the paradoxical symmetry between the divine and demonic in early Jewish mystical texts. Divine Scapegoats is a wide-ranging exploration of the parallels between the heavenly and the demonic in early Jewish apocalyptical accounts. In these materials, antagonists often mirror features of angelic figures, and even those of the Deity himself, an inverse correspondence that implies a belief that the demonic realm is maintained by imitating divine reality. Andrei A. Orlov examines the sacerdotal, messianic, and creational aspects of this mimetic imagery, focusing primarily on two texts from the Slavonic pseudepigrapha: 2 Enoch and the Apocalypse of Abraham. These two works are part of a very special cluster of Jewish apocalyptic texts that exhibit features not only of the apocalyptic worldview but also of the symbolic universe of early Jewish mysticism. The Yom Kippur ritual in the Apocalypse of Abraham, the divine light and darkness of 2 Enoch, and the similarity of mimetic motifs to later developments in the Zohar are of particular importance in Orlov’s consideration.
The current investigation has been divided into three main chapters. In the first two chapters, the primary focus is the relationship between Ninurta and kingship. The first chapter gives a diachronic overview of the cult of Ninurta during all historical periods of ancient Mesopotamia. This chapter shows that the conception of Ninurta's identity with the king was present in Mesopotamian religion already in the third millennium BC. Ninurta was the god of Nippur, the religious centre of Sumerian cities, and his most important attribute was his sonship to Enlil. While the mortal gods were frequently called the sons of Enlil, the status of the king converged with that of Ninurta at his coronation, through the determination of the royal fate, carried out by the divine council of gods in Nippur. The fate of Ninurta parallels the fate of the king after the investiture. Religious syncretism is studied in the second chapter. The configuration of Nippur cults left a legacy for the religious life of Babylonia and Assyria. The Nippur trinity of the father Enlil, the mother Ninlil, and the son Ninurta had direct descendants in the Babylonian and Assyrian pantheon, realized in Babylonia as Marduk, Zarpanitu, and Nabu, and as Assur, Mullissu, and Ninurta in Assyria. While the names changed, the configuration of the cult survived, even when, from the eighth century BC onwards, Ninurta's name was to a large extent replaced by that of Nabu. In the third chapter various manifestations or hypostases of Ninurta are discussed. Besides the monster slayer, Ninurta was envisaged as farmer, star and arrow, healer, and tree. All these manifestations confirm the strong ties between the cult of Ninurta and kingship. By slaying Asakku, Ninurta eliminated evil from the world, and accordingly he was considered the god of healing. The healing, helping, and saving of a believer who was in misery was thus a natural result of Ninurta's victorious battles. The theologoumenon of Ninurta's mission and return was used as the mythological basis for quite a few royal rituals, and this fact explains the extreme longevity of the Sumerian literary compositions Angim and Lugale, from the third until the first millennium BC. Ninurta also protected legitimate ownership of land and granted protection for refugees in a special temple of the land. The "faithful farmer" is an epithet for both Ninurta and the king. Kingship myths similar to the battles of Ninurta are attested in an area far extending the bounds of the ancient Near East. The conflict myth on which the Ninurta mythology was based is probably of prehistoric origin, and various forms of the kingship myths continued to carry the ideas of usurpation, conflict, and dominion until late Antiquity.
The authors examine from different perspectives some of the most challenging themes in Mesopotamian religion such as gender switch of deities and changes of the status, roles and functions of goddesses. Julia M. Asher-Greve and Goodnick Westenholz incorporate recent scholarship from various disciplines into their analysis of textual and visual sources, representations in diverse media, theological strategies, typologies, and the place of image in religion and cult over a span of three millennia. Different types of syncretism (fusion, fission, mutation) resulted in transformation and homogenization of goddesses' roles and functions. The processes of syncretism (a useful heuristic tool for studying the evolution of religions and the attendant political and social changes) and gender switch were facilitated by the fluidity of personality due to multiple or similar divine roles and functions. Few goddesses kept their identity throughout the millennia. Individuality is rare in the iconography of goddesses while visual emphasis is on repetition of generic divine figures (hieros typos) in order to retain recognizability of divinity, where femininity is of secondary significance. This richly illustrated book demonstrates that goddesses were never marginalized or extrinsic and that their continuous presence in texts, cult images, rituals, and worship throughout Mesopotamian history is testimony to their powerful numinous impact. This richly illustrated book is the first in-depth analysis of goddesses and the changes they underwent from the earliest visual and textual evidence around 3000 BCE to the end of ancient Mesopotamian civilization in the Seleucid period. Goddesses in Context is a compelling contribution to Mesopotamian religion and history as well as to history, art history, history of religion and gender studies.
This is the first translation with commentary of selections from The Zohar, the major text of the Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition. This work was written in 13th-century Spain by Moses de Leon, a Spanish scholar.