Search results for ""Peeters Publishers""

This book is concerned with the exceptional history and unprecedented thought of Jacob Frank (1726-1791), a Messianic antinomistic Jewish-Moslem-Christian leader, active in the second half of the 18th Century in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Othman empire, Moravia and Germany. Frank grew up in the Dönme circles in Salonika (Dönme was the Turkish name of the Moslem-Jews who were followers of the messianic leader Sabbatai Zevi (1626-1676), who was forced to become a Moslem. His followers decided to convert to Islam in 1683 in order to live separate Jewish messianic life). Frank defined himself in his mythical autobiography, known as The Words of the Lord as a chosen messianic Leader and as an anarchist visionary who decided to cross every border and to destroy every book, law and order. His anarchistic behavior as well as his broad social influence caused a persistent rabbinic persecution and excommunication that brought Jacob Frank and his thousands followers to undertake a mess conversion to Christianity in 1759-1760.

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This book is the second in a series on the mystagogy of the Church Fathers produced by the Netherlands Centre for Patristic Research. The first volume, Seeing through the Eyes of Faith: New Approaches to the Mystagogy of the Church Fathers (LAHR, 11), initiated the study of the Church Fathers as mystagogues, since this approach does more justice to the Fathers' own intention in writing a work or a sermon than does regarding them as theologians avant la lettre. Early Christian writers did not primarily seek to offer rational reflection on the faith as an objective in its own right, but their works were rather aimed at an existential transformation in their audience. The present volume focuses on how the Church Fathers conceived prayer as an aspect of such a process of progressive transformation, and as a means to achieve an awareness of God as Mystery, with whom one could, paradoxically, communicate in prayer. In the essays collected here many aspects and dimensions of the mystagogy of early Christian prayer are examined: different kinds of prayer, their antecedents and their development over time; their historical, theoretical, and ritual contexts and meanings; and their noetic, imaginative, and physical strategies.

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This book contains the edition of texts from the archive of Kleon and Theodoros, the engineers who were responsible for the upkeep of the large scale irrigation system in the Fayum during the reigns of Ptolemy II and III between 260 and 237 BC. The Kleon archive is contemporaneous with the famous Zenon archive and offers a window on the same society from a different angle. The edition contains the texts with translation and commentary of 124 Greek papyri, of which 37 are published here for the first time; for the others there are numerous new readings and interpretations. The former edition in the Petrie papyri was over a hundred years old, difficult to consult and in need of revision. In the new edition papyrological studies of the last century are incorporated, and the persons are situated in their historical context, including a royal visit to the province in 253 BC.

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Between the two wars fought in Judaea against the Roman government - the 'Great War' and that of Bar Kochba - the uprisings of Diaspora Jews toward the end of Trajan's reign constitute a unique event in the history of the Second Jewish Commonwealth. It marks the first and only episode of Jewish violence on a grand scale to take place outside Judaea, and at the same time the only instance of simultaneous outbursts in different geographical places - Libya, Egypt, Cyprus and Mesopotamia, and apparently Judaea as well. What happened exactly? Where did the Jews get their arms from and for how long did they succeed in resisting the impact of the Roman legions? Generations of scholars accepted the statement of Eusebius that the uprisings started in 115 CE, but the possibility has been recently put forward that the revolt broke out, instead, only in 116. Moreover, what was the order in which the upheavals took place: the traditional one - Libya, Egypt, Cyprus and Mesopotamia - as most scholars believe following the testimony of Eusebius, or, rather, is the correct order the opposite? If, in fact, the Jews of Mesopotamia were the first to take up arms, the events that took place in the East would have been determinant in fomenting the uprisings in the western Mediterranean region. An assessment of the new theories is a must and involves a reconsideration both of the literary accounts and their own sources and of other kinds of information available, including the ostraca found in Egypt and a number of papyri either recently discovered or only now ascribed to the events of these upheavals. The first part of this work presents here, for the first time, a full collection of the epigraphical, papyrological, and historical sources of pagan, Christian and Jewish origin dealing with these events, in their original language and in English translation. In the second part, a fresh reading, both of the sources and of scholarly views, leads Miriam Pucci Ben Zeev to new interpretations of events in Egypt, Mesopotamia and Judaea and to a new chronology, which enables her to reach surprising conclusions concerning a possible interrelationship between the upheavals in the different countries.

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The table of contents of this volume is available on our Peeters Online Journals website.

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A fifth-sixth century clergyman-cum-theologian, Jacob of Serugh (also spelled Sarug), was an extremely prolific writer. Not counting a number of works in prose, he is said to have written nearly 800 homilies, mostly on themes of theological import or biblical stories and personalities. These homilies are composed in metre: each line has twelve vowels. So far less than 150 such homilies have been edited and/or translated. Hexaemeron is an exposition of the first six days of the universe. Jacob dedicated an extra homily to the sabbath, making a total of seven homilies. This genre was known earlier in Greek. Jacob's is the first of the kind in Syriac. Currently the only complete text of Jacob's Hexaemeron is available in an edition by Bedjan (1905-10), but with no translation. This is the first time that this highly interesting work is made available in its entirety, accompanied by an English translation. The editor studies six complete manuscripts and one containing only two homilies. None of these seven manuscrips was available to Bedjan, and one of them is presumably as old as the principal manuscript used by Bedjan.

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“Why does the Old Testament reject idolatry?” is a question that might be asked by both academics and others. Although many people may be satisfied with a simple answer, the scholarly community continues to grapple with this question. Scholarly works have looked at Israelite aniconism (the rejection of idolatry) using evolutionary, sociological and theological approaches, but they have not paid much attention to explaining its rationale in the Old Testament (OT). The present work fills this gap by examining selected OT texts. The thesis of this work is that the OT rejects idolatry because of the incompatibility between the aniconic deity (Yahweh) and “idol” on the one hand and between the status of Israel and “idol” on the other hand. Here the word “idol” is used for something that is intended to represent Yahweh and/or other gods in the religions of Ancient West Asia (AWA).

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Over the past few years, scholarship has taken a new interest in the study of Marcion and particularly in his Gospel. Most recently several attempts have been made at reconstructing this Gospel, and its role in the Synoptic question is being discussed. One of the most detailed and crucial information that we possess derives from Tertullian’s preface to Marcion’s Gospel and his Antitheses with which Marcion himself introduced and defended his Gospel against earlier misuses. The present monograph first looks at Tertullian’s ways of prefacing his works to then move to his preface of his antimarcionite writings, especially Adversus Marcionem, to then give the text, translation and a close reading and interpretation of his introduction to the Antitheses and Marcion’s Gospel in the extended preface to book IV of Adversus Marcionem. As a result, the reader will get a better understanding of both Tertullian’s literary response to Marcion and Marcion’s Antitheses and his Gospel, but also gain glimpses of what despite all the rhetoric historically might have provoked Tertullian’s response, namely more intellectual proximity between the two interlocutors than the battle on the surface would intimate.

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"What is this 'principle' (principium) in which God is said to have created heaven and earth?" This is the first question Eckhart poses at the very beginning of his Commentary on Genesis. In the course of this book a space is opened up in order to speak about the relationship between God and creation in a 'principial' way. Tracing the concept as it is used throughout his Latin (and, on occasion, German) works, the panoply and resonance of its use establish the necessary place of principium within the vocabulary of Eckhart's metaphysics of creation and generation. Ranging from the nature of being to the question of what constitutes human personhood, the 'principle' serves to identify Eckhart's teaching on the mutual compenetration between God and man. This book has been awarded the FIIT Manfred Lautenschlaeger Prize for Theological Promise by the University of Heidelberg.

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Old Testament Pseudepigrapha and the Scriptures contains the papers of the Colloquium Biblicum Lovaniense 2012, which focused on a series of contemporary questions in Pseudepigrapha research. The papers discuss the relationship of Old Testament Pseudepigrapha to scriptures, both in a technical sense (how did authors rewrite or interpret Scripture) and in a literary sense (how and why did authors expand or extend earlier scriptures). Many papers cover the phenomenon of pseudepigraphy, giving explanations ranging from pious forgery through various kinds of literary devices to authorial self-effacement. Some contributions discuss the historically fluid boundaries between canonical and pseudepigraphic texts, and the production and use of Old Testament pseudepigrapha in early Christianity. The volume contains papers on texts like Jubilees, the Genesis Apocryphon, other Dead Sea Scrolls texts, the Sibylline Oracles, Baruch, the Testament of Abraham, 4 Ezra, Jannes and Jambres, the Latin Vision of Ezra, the Life of Adam and Eve, the Story of Melchizedek, and the Story of Zosimus, as well as detailed studies on aspects of other texts like, e.g., 2 Baruch and the Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum.

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In this commentary an attempt is made to prove that the book of Nahum was written in Jerusalem, ca. 660 BCE, by a talented, faithful royal scribe. He used the pseudonym Nahum as an indication of his purpose: to encourage the people of Judah groaning under the tyranny of the Assyrians. He took his inspiration from the earlier prophetics of Isaiah and from Psalms, which he probably regularly heard or sang in the temple. He also used his familiarity with the Assyrian literature, especialy with the texts of vassal treaties and royal annals, to express in fitting words the announcement of the downfall of the Assyrian empire symbolized by its capital Niniveh. After the fulfilment of this prediction in 612 BCE the book of Nahum must have become very popular, as it proved clear example of true prophecy. It had much influence upon Habakuk and exilic prophets like the Second Isaiah and Jeremiah, who interpreted its message in the new situation of the Babylonian opprression. Traces of this influence are also found in the literature of the community of Qumran and in the NT.

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In May 2009 the Leuven Institute of Early Christian and Byzantine Studies organized an international congress, with the title: Encyclopedic Trends in Byzantium? Some 40 scholars discussed the concept of Byzantine "encyclopedism", a notion coined definitively in 1971 by the French scholar Paul Lemerle as a characterization of Byzantine culture for the period 800-1000: the emphasis was not on creativity, but on collecting and copying; until very recent times the term "encyclopedism" has been repeated rather rashly in all kind of publications. Many problems have been dealt with during our congress: e.g. what are the definition and characteristics of Byzantine "encyclopedism"? Does the Byzantine understanding of this notion differ from ours? Has this really been the main feature of the period studied by Lemerle? Do these compilations mirror the broader cultural atmosphere in Byzantium? Which are the strategies (theological, literary, political) playing a part in the Byzantine art of compiling? The proceedings, containing more than 20 articles, pave the way for a prudent assessment of the so-called Byzantine "encyclopedism".

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This book is the first complete analysis of and comment on a unique Etruscan document, the Liber linteus zagrabiensis, the linen book of Zagreb, better known as the Mummy Wrappings of Zagreb, dated to the first half of the second century BC, containing the longest Etruscan text (c. 1330 words). It was made in Etruria and later on reused in Egypt. There the book was cut into eight strips, five of which were partly preserved. The book contains twelve columns or 'pages'. C. 60% of the original text has been preserved.

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Athenes est la premiere cite du monde grec dont l'economie fut veritablement monetarisee. Les riches gisements argentiferes du Laurion lui permettaient, en effet, d'emettre un monnayage abondant qui, de proche en proche, essaima dans tous les pays mediterraneens et contribua a populariser l'instrument monetaire. Les celebres " chouettes ", toutefois, ne se pretent guere aux methodes d'investigation traditionnelles en numismatique. Il est illusoire, par exemple, avec les moyens mis en ?uvre actuellement, d'aboutir a un denombrement des coins utilises a la production des abondantes series du Ve siecle. Cette difficulte bien connue est relevee ici comme un defi. Dans cet ouvrage, l'auteur s'essaye a reconstituer le cadre socio-economique dans lequel s'inscrit la production monetaire, depuis l'extraction du minerai jusqu'a la fabrication ultime des petits lingots d'argent que sont les tetradrachmes, en tirant notamment parti de la riche documentation epigraphique. Il etudie aussi les conditions particulieres de l'exploitation miniere, tente d'evaluer ses couts et, partant, le benefice des producteurs et ses modalites. Il s'efforce aussi de reconstituer les circuits de diffusion en Mer Egee et d'evaluer la place reelle prise par la monnaie dans le developpement de l'Empire athenien, de determiner ainsi les parametres qui dictaient le rythme et l'ampleur des frappes en Grece ancienne.

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The postmodern turn in theology reminds us that religion is imaginative before it becomes prosaic or propositional. Theologians are now joining literary critics, novelists and poets in asking the question, "How Do Stories Save Us?" Claiming that the truth of religion, like the truth of its nearest analogue, art, is primordially a truth of manifestation, this book explores the question in constructive conversation with the hermeneutics of David Tracy. With Tracy's analogical imagination as a guide, Scott Holland takes the reader on an intellectual adventure through narrative theology, literary criticism, poetics, ritual studies and aesthetics in the composition of a theology of culture.

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Cette etude est consacree au dictionnaire des racines hebraiques Sarsot ha-Kesef du Juif provencal Joseph Caspi (ca. 1280-ca. 1340). La premiere partie traite des gloses judeo-provencales dont sont parsemees les quelques 800 feuillets du ms. Paris B.N. Hebr. 1244. Les informations inedites contenues dans ce corpus de gloses qui n'ont jamais fait l'objet d'un inventaire complet sont susceptibles d'interesser les occitanistes, les romanistes et les specialistes de judeo-langues. Elles permettent de completer nos connaissances sur le provencal rhodanien du Moyen Age. Quant a la seconde partie, elle decrit la methode lexicographique et la pensee sematique de ce grammairien-philosophe qui reconsidere la description des racines hebraiques entreprise par ses predecesseurs Ibn Janah et Davis Qimhi a la lumiere de la logique et de l'ontologie aristoteliciennes de la fin du Moyen Age. De ce point de vue, ce livre s'adresse egalement aux historiens des idees linguistiques et aux specialistes de philosophie medievale.

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The articles collected in this book were read as papers during a symposium held in Leiden in December 2008. This symposium focused on Theory and Practice of Knowledge Transfer and the papers discuss many aspects of this subject. Most articles deal with ancient Mesopotamia, but two of them look at Europe (classical antiquity and the Middle Ages) and one discusses a case from Mali. Most papers center around past and present relationships between orality and literacy in the societies discussed. An important aspect is the way knowledge was conveyed from master to student and the supposed transition from an oral tradition to a tradition that was predominantly based on writing. For this, much attention is paid to the many school texts that have been discovered in Mesopotamia and the peripheral areas to the west. Also, not every society made use of writing and at times special conditions seem to have fostered its adoption. Classical antiquity and medieval Europe provide valuable parallels for the data collected for Mesopotamia, as does a modern case from Africa. Finally, other aspects, such as scribal conventions and what we can learn from mistakes made by scribes, give us a better insight in how the scribes accomplished their task and how students acquired their knowledge.

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This book focuses on Etruscan private and public ritual behaviour in the last millennium BC. It is based on archaeological, epigraphical and historical sources. Topics are context, form, origins, agency, dynamics (homeostasis or change), meaning, function and the survival of rites in the Roman imperial and later periods. After an introduction to recent theories and definitions, first private rituals are traced, rites de passage like marriage, birth, perinatal burial, transition to adulthood, immersion, healing, adoption, divination and consecration. Mortuary rituals are dealt with separately in view of their private and public dimensions. Pre-burial, burial, and post-burial rites, are primarily analysed by paying attention to sets of grave-goods, and to artefacts and bones found in or near a tomb, as written sources are almost absent. Grave sets reflect, from c. 800 until c. 40 BC, the core activity first of the elite and later of the rich middle class, namely eating and wine drinking. Not only the deceased were supposed to continue this ritual in the netherworld, eating and drinking also took place in pre- and post-burial phases of funerals. This practice was important for reasons of self-repesentation, consolidation of power, and social reproduction. Finally, fragments of or quotations from sacred books, especially lost libri rituales, transmitted by Greek and Roman authors, are confronted with the evidence of recent archaeological excavations, especially in newly founded cities. Though ancient authors were biased, it will appear that their information, especially on cosmological orientation, orthogonality, mundus, sulcus primigenius, and pomerium, often has a core of truth. Most Etruscan rituals disappeared in the fourth century AD. A few, however, survived until the present day, be it in a changed way, and in different contexts.

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This volume presents the royal letters and treaties excavated in 1987 at Tell Leilan (Syria) by archaeologists from Yale University. The ca. 200 letters and a handful of political treaties, all written in cuneiform on clay tablets fomed part of the archives of kings Mutija and Till-Abnû, who ruled at Tell Leilan, ancient Shehna/Shubat-Enlil, ca. 1750-40 BC. Comprehensive introductory sections review the evidence in its archaeological and historical contexts, and are followed by the complete scholarly edition of the texts. Facsimile drawings and photos of the original tablets are presented both in print and on cd-rom. NINO is proud to publish this important work in cooperation with the Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums of the Syrian Arab Republic.

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This book consists in a commentary and translation of Plotinus's Ennead II 9 [33], entitled by Porphyry Against the Gnostics. The commentary has tried to go beyond the traditional approach, based on the idea that Plotinus's Ennead II 9 is the theatre of the clash of two antithetical worldviews: the first, championed by Plotinus; the second, by his Gnostic disciples; on the contrary, the Ennead II 9 [33] represents a dialogue between a master of philosophy and his own disciples. Plotinus's disciples do not regard Gnosticism as distant from Plato. In contrast, Plotinus does not think that Plato is a precursor of Gnosticism, even if he is aware that his doctrines can be interpreted in a dualistic and Gnostic fashion. He agrees with his disciples that for Plato sensible and intelligible reality, as well as Soul and body, are different; however, Plotinus thinks that their different nature can be ultimately traced back to the same principle, namely being, which contains in itself all possibilities of existence. This is the true gnosis that Plotinus has tried to make his disciples obtain by writing the Ennead II 9 [33].

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In rabbinic parlance, A"Japheth in the tents of ShemA" (Genesis 9:27) has become a proverbial expression for the interaction between Greek and Jewish cultures. The present volume contains 15 studies exploring a wide variety of aspects of the meeting of these cultures in antiquity. In the past 30 years the manifold manifestations of 'Jewish Hellenism' have become the focus of intensive research. The author of this book has played an active part in this field and the essays presented here are the fruits of his most recent research. He investigates, among other things, the extent to which Greek had become the daily language of the Jews (and the Samaritans) in Hellenistic and Roman Palestine; the knowledge of Greek medical lore and science among the rabbis; the development of Greek forms of the synagogal Eighteen Benedictions; the Jewish participation in the Hellenistic-Roman debate about antediluvian knowledge ('wisdom from before the flood'); the background of the surprising phenomenon of voluntary celibacy among ancient Jews; the role of the veneration of the tombs of biblical prophets in Jewish popular religion; the work of the Judaeo-Greek alchemist Maria, who happens to be the first female Jewish author we know of; the life and works of the most notorious anti-Semite from pagan antiquity, Apion, and Josephus' response to him; the Samaritan diaspora in Rome; the attractiveness of Judaism for Christians; et multa cetera. Pieter W. van der Horst (1946) is professor of New Testament and of the Jewish and Hellenistic world of early Christianity at the Faculty of Theology of Utrecht University. He published some 250 articles and books in the fields of early Judaism, ancient Christianity, and Graeco-Roman culture, with a special emphasis on their interactions. He is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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Le tahitien, langue des iles de la Societe, est parle par 70% des 220 000 habitants de la Polynesie francaise. Il est, conjointement avec le francais, langue commune du pays. Cet ouvrage en est la premiere description conforme aux exigences de la linguistique moderne. Il a pour objet la langue moderne, telle qu'elle est aujourd'hui parlee et ecrite. Elle est d'autant plus instructive qu'elle differe profondement des langues europeennes. Comme la distinction traditionnelle entre nom et verbe y est inoperante, l'analyse est ici fondee sur la definition de courtes sequences appelees "unites syntaxiques de base", elements de toutes les structures grammaticales. Une premiere partie decrit celles de la phrase, une seconde les differents types de syntagmes, une troisieme recapitule les instruments grammaticaux et indique les procedes de formation des mots. Ce livre offre aux linguistes, oceanistes ou non, des informations sur une langue trop peu connue, un point de depart pour des recherches ulterieures, des donnees pour la comparaison genetique et typologique et aussi des principes et un schema de description utilement applicables a d'autres langues de la famille polynesienne. Gilbert Lazard est professeur honoraire a la Sorbonne, directeur d'etudes a l'Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes et membre de l'Institut. Il est l'auteur de travaux de linguistique generale et typologique. Louise Peltzer est docteur en linguistique, professeur de langues et civilisation polynesiennes a l'Universite de Polynesie Francaise et membre de l'Academie tahitienne. Elle a publie des etudes sur le tahitien, sa langue maternelle, et des ouvrages litteraires. Depuis 1998 elle exerce les fonctions de ministre de la Culture et de l'Enseignement superieur, chargee de la promotion des langues polynesiennes, dans le gouvernement de Polynesie Francaise.

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l During the last two decades virtue ethics has become the focal point of renewed ethical and theological interest. To lead a good life, it proves useful to watch those who have mastered the art of living. The conviction that living is an art is at the heart of virtue ethics. Living a good life requires exercise, and is a question of acquiring a virtuous character rather than of complying with external ethical and legal rules. This renaissance partly builds on Thomas Aquinas. He in turn recovered Aristotelian, Ciceronian and Augustinian thought on virtue ethics. The interpretation and development of virtues and vices form the core of his authorship, as the secunda pars of his Summa Theologiae readily displays. And yet, the most important virtues for him are not the moral ones, such as Justice, Temperance, Prudence and Fortitude, but those virtues that are both infused by and aimed at God: Faith, Hope and Love. These are virtues that the philosophers of antiquity were not aware of. To account for them, Aquinas had to adapt the classical understanding of virtues. For Aquinas, the moral virtues come to full fruition only when they are embedded in a life before God, a life lived exercising the God given theological virtues. By ignoring Faith, Hope and Love, the present discussion of virtue ethics not only ignores those virtues that were for Aquinas of utmost importance, but also fails to arrive at a complete understanding of his view of the moral virtues. The papers contained in this volume address this theme, and were originally presented at the fourth international conference of the Thomas Instituut te Utrecht (Tilburg University), at Utrecht in December 2013.

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This book contains the proceedings of a conference on Deaf Liberation Theology that took place at the Catholic University of Leuven. Four Deaf persons, rooted in the Deaf community and professionally involved in Deaf pastoral ministry, Thomas Coughlin (USA), Cyril Axelrod (South Africa), Peter McDonough (UK), and Beth Lockard (USA), relate their views on and experiences with shepherding Deaf communities as social-cultural minority groups within the hearing Church, and their efforts to enculturate the Christian message, which often looks so typically hearing in Deaf eyes, in Deaf cultures. Marcel Broesterhuizen, hearing, puts their reports against the background of the paradigm shifts that have taken place in the field of deafness and Catholic views on the relationship between Church and culture. Jacques Haers, hearing, discusses the presentations in the light of liberation theologies. The book contains a verbatim transcript of the forum discussion led by Helga Stevens, Deaf, who is actually a member of the Flemish Parliament.

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