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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.
Good and evil, light and darkness; for the first time in English, a potent survey of Manichaeism
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.
Papers presented at the Fifteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 2007 (see also Studia Patristica 44, 46, 47, 48 and 49). The successive sets of Studia Patristica contain papers delivered at the International Conferences on Patristic Studies, which meet for a week once every four years in Oxford; they are held under the aegis of the Theology Faculty of the University. Members of these conferences come from all over the world and most offer papers. These range over the whole field, both East and West, from the second century to a section on the Nachleben of the Fathers. The majority are short papers dealing with some small and manageable point; they raise and sometimes resolve questions about the authenticity of documents, dates of events, and such like, and some unveil new texts. The smaller number of longer papers put such matters into context and indicate wider trends. The whole reflects the state of Patristic scholarship and demonstrates the vigour and popularity of the subject.
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.
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.
One of America's foremost scholars of religion examines the tumultuous era that gave birth to the modern Judeo-Christian tradition In The Crucible of Faith, Philip Jenkins argues that much of the Judeo-Christian tradition we know today was born between 250-50 BCE, during a turbulent "Crucible Era." It was during these years that Judaism grappled with Hellenizing forces and produced new religious ideas that reflected and responded to their changing world. By the time of the fall of the Temple in 70 CE, concepts that might once have seemed bizarre became normalized-and thus passed on to Christianity and later Islam. Drawing widely on contemporary sources from outside the canonical Old and New Testaments, Jenkins reveals an era of political violence and social upheaval that ultimately gave birth to entirely new ideas about religion, the afterlife, Creation and the Fall, and the nature of God and Satan.
This volume presents in new English translations the scattered fragments and testimonies regarding Hermes Thrice Great that complete Brian Copenhaver's translation of the Hermetica (Cambridge, 1992). It contains the twenty-nine fragments from Stobaeus (including the famous Kore Kosmou), the Oxford and Vienna fragments (never before translated), an expanded selection of fragments from various authors (including Zosimus of Panopolis, Augustine, and Albert the Great), and testimonies about Hermes from thirty-eight authors (including Cicero, Pseudo-Manetho, the Emperor Julian, Al-Kindī, Michael Psellus, the Emerald Tablet, and Nicholas of Cusa). All translations are accompanied by introductions and notes which cite sources for further reading. These Hermetic texts will appeal to a broad array of readers interested in western esotericism including scholars of Egyptology, the New Testament, the classical world, Byzantium, medieval Islam, the Latin Middle Ages, and the Renaissance.
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.
One “apocalyptic” reading of Paul’s letter to the Galatians has been attempted before and is now widely accepted, but that reading is not based on a thorough engagement with Jewish apocalyptic traditions of the Second Temple period. In this book, James M. Scott argues that there is an essential continuity between Galatians and Paul’s Jewish past, and that Paul uses the apocalyptic Epistle of Enoch (1 Enoch 92–105) as a literary model for his own letter. Scott first contextualizes the Epistle of Enoch using the entire Enochic corpus and explores the extensive similarities (and some significant differences) between the Enochic tradition and early Stoicism. Then he turns to deal specifically with Paul’s letter to the Galatians, showing that, despite their obvious differences, the two apocalyptic letters have some remarkable features in common as well. This approach to the interpretation of Galatians fundamentally stands to change the way biblical scholars understand Paul’s letter and the gospel that he preached. Paul is “within Judaism,” if the net for what is included in “Judaism” is wide enough to encompass the Enochic tradition.