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The Prayer in the Ancient World will also be available online.
Preview of the 'Prayer in the Ancient World’, 2022
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.
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.
Josephus was an historian with a Jewish identity and a Hellenistic consciousness. He created his work on a classical basis and thus consciously moved between Judaism and Hellenism. He tried to find his own way through the Jewish-Hellenistic labyrinth. To what extent did Josephus respect his own ethnic identity as a Jew? To what extent does a protégé of the emperor deserve to be labelled a critical historian? The long shadow of Thucydides falls heavily on his work, therefore many stylistic and thematic parallels can be discovered. The reception of Thucydides by Josephus constitutes an important source for the history of the dissemination of Thucydidean work in the first century AD.
Josephus was an historian with a Jewish identity and a Hellenistic consciousness. He created his work on a classical basis and thus consciously moved between Judaism and Hellenism. He tried to find his own way through the Jewish-Hellenistic labyrinth. To what extent did Josephus respect his own ethnic identity as a Jew? To what extent does a protégé of the emperor deserve to be labelled a critical historian? The long shadow of Thucydides falls heavily on his work, therefore many stylistic and thematic parallels can be discovered. The reception of Thucydides by Josephus constitutes an important source for the history of the dissemination of Thucydidean work in the first century AD.