Environs of the Bible

Antiquity: The Civilization of the Ancient World

Antiquity: The Civilization of the Ancient World
$24.95

Norman Cantor delivers this compact but magisterial survey of the ancient world, from the birth of Sumerian civilization around 3500B.C. in the Tigris-Euphrates valley (what is now present-day Iraq) to the fall of the Roman Empirein A.D. 453. In Antiquity, Cantor covers such subjects as Classical Greece, Judaism, the founding of Christianity, and the triumph and decline of Rome.

In this fascinating and comprehensive analysis, the author explores social and cultural history, as well as the political and economic aspects of hisnarrative. He explains leading themes in religionand philosophy and discusses the environment, population, and public health. With his signature authority and insight, Cantor highlights the great books and ideas of antiquity that continue to influence culture today.

ISBN/SKU: 
9780060174095
Publication Date: 
2003-09-16
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Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, vol 2: The Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persi

Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, vol 2: The Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persi
$60.00
Every year thousands of enthusiasts, both amateur and professional, spend the summer months digging in the sands of Israel hoping to find items that relate in some way to the places or events depicted in the Bible. Thousands more view artifacts in museums and long to know the full stories behind them. Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, Volume II, is the essential book for all of them.

In Ephraim Stern's sequel to Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, Volume I, by Amihai Mazar, this world-renowned archaeologist who has directed excavations in the Holy Land for many years offers a dramatic look at how archaeological research contributes to our understanding of the connections between history and the stories recounted in the Bible. Stern writes about various artifacts unearthed in recent years and relates them to the Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian periods in the Bible. Accompanied by photographs and illustrations of rare ancient relics ranging from household pottery to beautifully crafted jewelry and sculpture. His discussions bring the biblical world to life.

ISBN/SKU: 
9780300140576
Publication Date: 
2001-02-01
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Cosmos, Chaos, and the World to Come

Cosmos, Chaos, and the World to Come
$16.95
All over the world people look forward to a perfect future, when the forces of good will be finally victorious over the forces of evil. Once this was a radically new way of imagining the destiny of the world and of mankind. How did it originate, and what kind of world-view preceded it? In this engrossing book, the author of the classic work The Pursuit of the Millennium takes us on a journey of exploration, through the world-views of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and India, through the innovations of Iranian and Jewish prophets and sages, to the earliest Christian imaginings of heaven on earth.

Until around 1500 B.C., it was generally believed that once the world had been set in order by the gods, it was in essence immutable. However, it was always a troubled world. By means of flood and drought, famine and plague, defeat in war, and death itself, demonic forces threatened and impaired it. Various combat myths told how a divine warrior kept the forces of chaos at bay and enabled the world to survive. Sometime between 1500 and 1200 B.C., the Iranian prophet Zoroaster broke from that static yet anxious world-view, reinterpreting the Iranian version of the combat myth. For Zoroaster, the world was moving, through incessant conflict, toward a conflictless state--"cosmos without chaos." The time would come when, in a prodigious battle, the supreme god would utterly defeat the forces of chaos and their human allies and eliminate them forever, and so bring an absolutely good world into being. Cohn reveals how this vision of the future was taken over by certain Jewish groups, notably the Jesus sect, with incalculable consequences.

Deeply informed yet highly readable, this magisterial book illumines a major turning-point in the history of human consciousness. It will be mandatory reading for all who appreciated The Pursuit of the Millennium.

ISBN/SKU: 
9780300090888
Publication Date: 
2001-08-11
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Development of Greek Biography

Development of Greek Biography
$17.50
Tracing the growth of ancient biography from the fifth century to the first century B.C., Arnaldo Momigliano asks fruitful questions about the origins and development of Greek biography. By clarifying the social and intellectual implications of the fact that the Greeks kept biography and autobiography distinct from historiography, he contributes to an understanding of a basic dichotomy in the Western tradition of historical writing. This classic study is now reissued with the addition of Momigliano's essay "Second Thoughts on Greek Biography."
ISBN/SKU: 
9780674200418
Publication Date: 
1993-03-01
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Golden Ass (Revised)

Golden Ass (Revised)
$14.00
An enchanting story that has inspired generations of writers, including Boccaccio, Shakespeare, Cervantes and Keats

Written towards the end of the second century AD, The Golden Ass tells the story of the many adventures of a young man whose fascination with witchcraft leads him to be transformed into a donkey. The bewitched Lucius passes from owner to owner - encountering a desperate gang of robbers and being forced to perform lewd 'human' tricks on stage - until the Goddess Isis finally breaks the spell and initiates Lucius into her cult. It has long been disputed whether Apuleius meant this last-minute conversion seriously or as a final comic surprise, and the challenge of interpretation continues to keep readers fascinated. Apuleius' enchanting story has inspired generations of writers such as Boccaccio, Shakespeare, Cervantes and Keats with its dazzling combination of allegory, satire, bawdiness and sheer exuberance, and The Golden Ass remains the most continuously and accessibly amusing book to have survived from Classical antiquity.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

ISBN/SKU: 
9780140435900
Publication Date: 
1999-01-01
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Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius in a New English Translation, with Notes and Introduction

Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius in a New English Translation, with Notes and Introduction
$55.00
The Hermetica are a body of mystical texts written in late antiquity, but believed during the Renaissance (when they became well known) to be much older. Their supposed author, a mythical figure named Hermes Trismegistus, was thought to be a contemporary of Moses. The Hermetic philosophy was regarded as an ancient theology, parallel to the revealed wisdom of the Bible, supporting Biblical revelation and culminating in the Platonic philosophical tradition. This new translation is the only English version based on reliable texts, and Professor Copenhaver's introduction and notes make this accessible and up-to-date edition an indispensable resource to scholars.
ISBN/SKU: 
9780521425438
Publication Date: 
1995-12-10
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IAMBLICHUS: ON THE PYTHAGOREAN WAY OF LI FE

IAMBLICHUS: ON THE PYTHAGOREAN WAY OF LI FE
$23.96
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Book by Iamblicus, John M. Dillon, Jackson P. Hershbell
ISBN/SKU: 
9781555405236
Publication Date: 
1991-01-01
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Myth and Thought among the Greeks

Myth and Thought among the Greeks
$25.95

"Myth and Thought among the Greeks is Jean-Pierre Vernant's magisterial first entry upon the scene of classical studies. As fresh and challenging as it was when first published in 1965, this new edition of his eighteen essays, which includes two previously untranslated chapters, will provide the English-speaking world with a long-overdue edition. As the very words of the title announce, two major themes run throughout this pathbreaking study. On the one hand, 'myth' and 'thought' suggest a certain transition from the mythic to the rational, from the fabulous to the philosophical, as an intellectual sea change that occurred within the social and political context of the Greek city-state. On the other hand, 'myth' and 'thought' also gesture to Vernant's insistence on the legibility of mythic thinking and ritual practices as revealing categories of thought that yield their own logic. Hence, to understand mental categories we take for granted as our own, such as time, space, memory, work, craft, art, and even the idea of the person, requires acts of decipherment through the language, the 'codes, ' of myth. The excitement of these essays lies in a virtuoso handling of data of every sort -- archaeology, history, literature, and iconography -- and the complex web of associations that emerge from these interdisciplinary investigations, all presented in lucid, readable prose. Myth and Thought has much to offer the specialist and nonspecialist alike, and to those not already familiar with Vernant's work, the promise of much more in store."
-- Froma Zeitlin, Charles Ewing Professor of Greek Language and Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University

ISBN/SKU: 
9781890951603
Publication Date: 
2006-06-13
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203.432.6101