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This is the first ever comprehensive English-language survey of Zoroastrianism, one of the oldest living religions Evenly divided into five thematic sections beginning with an introduction to Zoroaster/Zarathustra and concluding with the intersections of Zoroastrianism and other religions Reflects the global nature of Zoroastrian studies with contributions from 34 international authorities from 10 countries Presents Zoroastrianism as a cluster of dynamic historical and contextualized phenomena, reflecting the current trend to move away from textual essentialism in the study of religion
In his Debt: The First 5000 Years, the anthropologist David Graeber put forward a new grand narrative of world history. In Debt in the Ancient Mediterranean and the Near East, John Weisweiler explores the implications of this theory for historians of the ancient Mediterranean and Near East. On the one hand, it assesses how well the interpretations advanced in Debt fit current understandings of ancient economies. On the other hand, it sketches a history of ancient credit systems which takes seriously the dual nature of debt as both quantifiable economic reality and immeasurable social obligation.
This book explores sex and sexuality in the Babylonian Talmud within the context of competing cultural discourses, for students of comparative religion.
From the image offered by the Babylonian Talmud, Jewish elites were deeply embedded within the Sasanian Empire (224-651 CE). The Talmud is replete with stories and discussions that feature Sasanian kings, Zoroastrian magi, fire temples, imperial administrators, Sasanian laws, Persian customs, and more quotidian details of Jewish life. Yet, in the scholarly literature on the Babylonian Talmud and the Jews of Babylonia , the Sasanian Empire has served as a backdrop to a decidedly parochial Jewish story, having little if any direct impact on Babylonian Jewish life and especially the rabbis. Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity advances a radically different understanding of Babylonian Jewish history and Sasanian rule. Building upon recent scholarship, Simcha Gross portrays a more immanent model of Sasanian rule, within and against which Jews invariably positioned and defined themselves. Babylonian Jews realized their traditions, teachings, and social position within the political, social, religious, and cultural conditions generated by Sasanian rule.
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.
Describes and contrasts how two major religions approached the problem of writing down the traditions of the ages. Just before 700 A. D., Judaic sages compiled the Talmud of Babylonia; just after 800 A. D., Zoroastrian priests compiled the Pahlavi books. In both cases, the projects codified thought and became authorities for the later development o
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The encyclopaedia for the Horn of Africa treats all important terms of the history of ideas of this central region between Orient and Africa. After its completion the set will comprise five volumes - four text and one index volume with altogether more than 4000 articles. The topics range from basic data over archaeology, ethnology and anthropology, history, the languages and literatures up to the art, religion and culture. This second volume combines about 1170 articles in English language, written by approximately 250 authors with extents varying from a few lines to several pages. Approximately 250 maps and about the same number of illustrations round off this unique reference book.
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