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Prayer in the Ancient World (PAW) is an innovative resource on prayer in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean. The over 350 entries in PAW showcase a robust selection of the range of different types of prayers attested from Mesopotamia, Egypt, Anatolia, the Levant, early Judaism and Christianity, Greece, Rome, Arabia, and Iran, enhanced by critical commentary.
The project illustrates the variety of ways human beings have sought to communicate with or influence beings with extraordinary superhuman power for millennia. By including diverse examples such as vows and oaths, blessings, curses, incantations, graffiti, iconography, and more, PAW casts a wide net. In so doing, PAW privileges no particular tradition or conception of how to interact with the divine; for example, the project refuses to perpetuate a value distinction between “prayer,” “magic,” and “cursing.”

Detailed overviews introduce each area and address key issues such as language and terminology, geographical distribution, materiality, orality, phenomenology of prayer, prayer and magic, blessings and curses, and ritual settings and ritual actors. In order to be as comprehensive as practically possible, the volume includes a representative prayer of every attested type from each tradition.

Individual entries include a wealth of information. Each begins with a list of essential details, including the source, region, date, occasion, type and function, performers, and materiality of the prayer. Next, after a concise summary and a brief synopsis of the main textual witnesses, a formal description calls attention to the exemplar’s literary and stylistic features, rhetorical structure, important motifs, and terminology. The occasions when the prayer was used and its function are analyzed, followed by a discussion of how this exemplar fits within the range of variation of this type of prayer practice, both synchronically and diachronically. Important features of the prayer relevant for cross-cultural comparison are foregrounded in the subsequent section. Following an up-to-date translation, a concise yet detailed commentary provides explanations necessary for understanding the prayer and its function. Finally, each entry concludes with a bibliography of essential primary and secondary resources for further study.
Brill's Biblical Studies, Ancient Near East and Early Christianity E-Books Online, Collection 2024 is the electronic version of the book publication program of Brill in the field of Biblical Studies, Ancient Near East and Early Christianity in 2024.

Coverage:
Biblical Studies, Ancient Judaism, Ancient Near East, Egyptology, Dead Sea Scrolls, Gnosticism & Manichaeism, Early Church & Patristics

This E-Book Collection is part of Brill's Biblical Studies, Ancient Near East and Early Christianity E-Books Online Collection.

The title list and free MARC records are available for download here.

For other pricing options, consortium arrangements and free 30-day trials contact us at sales-us@brill.com (the Americas) or sales-nl@brill.com (Europe, Middle East, Africa & Asia-Pacific).
Hermeneutic Foundations of aš-Šāṭibī's Ethical Philosophy
Virtue and the Common Good: Hermeneutic Foundations of aš-Šāṭibī's Ethical Philosophy arose as a response to the urgent need for epistemological research on the hermeneutic foundations of Islamic ethical and moral theory that has resulted from the current period of upheaval in Islamic theology. Choosing a late-medieval work of legal theory, namely, Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm ibn Mūsā aš-Šāṭibī's (d. 790/1388) al-Muwāfaqāt, as the point of departure, locates this study's discussion methodologically and theoretically in the genealogical process of re-reading and reconstructing Islamic thinking in modernity from the perspectives of contemporary philosophy of ethics. Thus, profoundly reflecting on modern understanding and interpretation of fundamental theological concepts in the Islamic legal- and moral theory becomes unavoidable.
Author:
With this analysis of Sol images, Steven E. Hijmans paints a new picture of the solar cult in ancient Rome. The paucity of literary evidence led Hijmans to prioritize visual sources, and he opens this study with a thorough discussion of the theoretical and methodological issues involved. Emphasizing the danger of facile equivalencies between visual and verbal meanings, his primary focus is Roman praxis, manifest in, for instance, the strict patterning of Sol imagery. These patterns encode core concepts that Sol imagery evoked when deployed, and in those concepts we recognize the bedrock of Rome’s understandings of the sun and his cult. Case studies illustrate these concepts in action and the final chapter analyzes the historical context in which previous, now discredited views on Sol could arise.
With this analysis of Sol images, Steven E. Hijmans paints a new picture of the solar cult in ancient Rome. The paucity of literary evidence led Hijmans to prioritize visual sources, and he opens this study with a thorough discussion of the theoretical and methodological issues involved. Emphasizing the danger of facile equivalencies between visual and verbal meanings, his primary focus is Roman praxis, manifest in, for instance, the strict patterning of Sol imagery. These patterns encode core concepts that Sol imagery evoked when deployed, and in those concepts we recognize the bedrock of Rome’s understandings of the sun and his cult. Case studies illustrate these concepts in action and the final chapter analyzes the historical context in which previous, now discredited views on Sol could arise.

This is part I of a two-part set.
With this analysis of Sol images, Steven E. Hijmans paints a new picture of the solar cult in ancient Rome. The paucity of literary evidence led Hijmans to prioritize visual sources, and he opens this study with a thorough discussion of the theoretical and methodological issues involved. Emphasizing the danger of facile equivalencies between visual and verbal meanings, his primary focus is Roman praxis, manifest in, for instance, the strict patterning of Sol imagery. These patterns encode core concepts that Sol imagery evoked when deployed, and in those concepts we recognize the bedrock of Rome’s understandings of the sun and his cult. Case studies illustrate these concepts in action and the final chapter analyzes the historical context in which previous, now discredited views on Sol could arise.

This is volume II of a two-volume set.
Scholarly monographs on the religious iconography of ancient Greece and Rome.
Integration is a buzzword in the 21st century. However, academics still do not agree on its meaning and, above all, on its consequences. This book offers numerous examples showing that the inhabitants of the Roman Mediterranean were “integrated”, i.e. were aware of the existence of a common framework of coexistence, without this necessarily resulting in a process of cultural convergence. For instance, the Spanish poet Martial explicitly refused to be considered the brother of the Greek Charmenion (10.65): paradoxically, while reaffirming their differences, his satirical epigram confirms the existence of a common frame of reference that encompassed them both. Understanding integration in the Roman world requires paying attention to the complex and varied responses to diversity in Roman times.
In: Virtue and the Common Good
In: Virtue and the Common Good