Description
Book SynopsisIn "Prayer, Magic, and the Stars in the Ancient and Late Antique World", a distinguished array of scholars explores the many ways in which people in the ancient world sought to gain access to-or, in some cases, to bind or escape from-the divine powers of heaven and earth.
Trade Review“This book is as professionally and indeed attractively produced as are the other volumes in the worthy Pennsylvania State Magic in History series.”
—Daniel Ogden International Journal of the Classical Tradition
Table of Contents Contents
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
List of Figures
Introduction
Scott Noegel, Joel Walker, and Brannon Wheeler
Part I Locating Magic
1. Here, There, and Anywhere
Jonathan Z. Smith
Part II Prayer, Magic, and Ritual
2. Thessalos of Tralles and Cultural Exchange
Ian Moyer
3. The Prayer of Mary in the Magical Book of Mary and the Angels
Marvin Meyer
4. Hebrew, Hebrew Everywhere? Notes on the Interpretation of Voces Magicae
Gideon Bohak
5. Magic and Society in Late Sasanian Iraq
Michael G. Morony
Part III Dreams and Divination
6. The Open Portal: Dreams and Divine Power in Pharaonic Egypt
Kasia Szpakowska
7. Viscera and the Divine: Dreams as a Divinatory Bridge Between the Corporeal and the Incorporeal
Peter Struck
8. Stars and the Egyptian Priesthood in the Graeco-Roman Period
Jacco Dieleman
9. Divination and Its Discontents: Finding and Questioning Meaning in Ancient and Medieval Judaism
Michael D. Schwartz
Part IV The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars
10. Heaven and Earth: Divine-Human Relations in Mesopotamian Celestial Divination
Francesca Rochberg
11. Astral Religion and the Representation of Divinity: The Cases of Ugarit and Judah
Mark S. Smith
12. A New Star on the Horizon: Astral Christologies and Stellar Debates in Early Christian Discourse
Nicola Denzey
13. At the Seizure of the Moon: The Absence of the Moon in the Mithras Liturgy
Radcliffe Edmonds
Contributors
Index
