Beholders of Divine Secrets

Beholders of Divine Secrets PDF Author: Vita Daphna Arbel
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791486850
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
Beholders of Divine Secrets provides a fascinating exploration of the enigmatic Hekhalot and Merkavah literature, the Jewish mystical writings of late antiquity. Vita Daphna Arbel delves into the unique nature of the mystical teachings, experiences, revelations, and spiritual exegesis presented in this literature. While previous scholarship has demonstrated the connection between Hekhalot and Merkavah mysticism and parallel traditions in Rabbinical writings, the Dead Sea Scrolls, apocalyptic, early Christian, and Gnostic sources, this work points out additional mythological traditions that resonate in this literature. Arbel suggests that mythological patterns of expression, as well as themes and models rooted in Near Eastern mythological traditions are employed, in a spiritualized fashion, to communicate mystical content. The possible cultural and social context of the Hekhalot and Merkavah mysticism and its composers is discussed.

Beholders of Divine Secrets

Beholders of Divine Secrets PDF Author: Vita Daphna Arbel
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791486850
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 263

Get Book Here

Book Description
Beholders of Divine Secrets provides a fascinating exploration of the enigmatic Hekhalot and Merkavah literature, the Jewish mystical writings of late antiquity. Vita Daphna Arbel delves into the unique nature of the mystical teachings, experiences, revelations, and spiritual exegesis presented in this literature. While previous scholarship has demonstrated the connection between Hekhalot and Merkavah mysticism and parallel traditions in Rabbinical writings, the Dead Sea Scrolls, apocalyptic, early Christian, and Gnostic sources, this work points out additional mythological traditions that resonate in this literature. Arbel suggests that mythological patterns of expression, as well as themes and models rooted in Near Eastern mythological traditions are employed, in a spiritualized fashion, to communicate mystical content. The possible cultural and social context of the Hekhalot and Merkavah mysticism and its composers is discussed.

Beholders of Divine Secrets

Beholders of Divine Secrets PDF Author: Vita Daphna Arbel
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791457238
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
A wide-ranging exploration of the Hekhalot and Merkavah literature, a mystical Jewish tradition from late antiquity, including a discussion of the possible cultural context of this material's creators.

Experientia

Experientia PDF Author: Frances Flannery
Publisher: Society of Biblical Lit
ISBN: 1589833686
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
An investigation of religious experience in early Judaism and early Christianity.

Enoch from Antiquity to the Middle Ages

Enoch from Antiquity to the Middle Ages PDF Author: John C. Reeves
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198718411
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 412

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Book Description
Across the ancient and medieval literature of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, one finds references to the antediluvian sage Enoch. Both the Book of the Watchers and the Astronomical Book were long known from their Ethiopic versions, which are preserved as part of Mashafa Henok Nabiy ('Book of Enoch the Prophet')--an Enochic compendium known in the West as 1 Enoch. Since the discovery of Aramaic fragments among the Dead Sea Scrolls, these books have attracted renewed attention as important sources for ancient Judaism. Among the results has been the recognition of the surprisingly long and varied tradition surrounding Enoch. Within 1 Enoch alone, for instance, we find evidence for intensive literary creativity. This volume provides a comprehensive set of core references for easy and accessible consultation. It shows that the rich afterlives of Enochic texts and traditions can be studied more thoroughly by scholars of Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity as well as by scholars of late antique and medieval religions. Specialists in the Second Temple period-the era in which Enochic literature first appears-will be able to trace (or discount) the survival of Enochic motifs and mythemes within Jewish literary circles from late antiquity into the Middle Ages, thereby shedding light on the trajectories of Jewish apocalypticism and its possible intersections with Jewish mysticism. Students of Near Eastern esotericism and Hellenistic philosophies will have further data for exploring the origins of 'gnosticism' and its possible impact upon sectarian currents in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Those interested in the intellectual symbiosis among Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the Middle Ages-and especially in the transmission of the ancient sciences associated with Hermeticism (e.g., astrology, theurgy, divinatory techniques, alchemy, angelology, demonology)-will be able to view a chain of tradition reconstructed in its entirety for the first time in textual form. In the process, we hope to provide historians of religion with a new tool for assessing the intertextual relationships between different religious corpora and for understanding the intertwined histories of the major religious communities of the ancient and medieval Near East.

Teaching Mysticism

Teaching Mysticism PDF Author: William B. Parsons
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190208635
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
The term ''mysticism'' has never been consistently defined or employed, either in religious traditions or in academic discourse. The essays in this volume offer ways of defining what mysticism is, as well as methods for grappling with its complexity in a classroom. This volume addresses the diverse literature surrounding mysticism in four interrelated parts. The first part includes essays on the tradition and context of mysticism, devoted to drawing out and examining the mystical element in many religious traditions. The second part engages traditions and religio-cultural strands in which ''mysticism'' is linked to other terms, such as shamanism, esotericism, and Gnosticism. The volume's third part focuses on methodological strategies for defining ''mysticism,'' with respect to varying social spaces. The final essays show how contemporary social issues and movements have impacted the meaning, study, and pedagogy of mysticism. Teaching Mysticism presents pedagogical reflections on how best to communicate mysticism from a variety of institutional spaces. It surveys the broad range of meanings of mysticism, its utilization in the traditions, the theories and methods that have been used to understand it, and provides critical insight into the resulting controversies.

The Christian Moses

The Christian Moses PDF Author: Jared C. Calaway
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773559809
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
Two verses about Moses in the Bible have been the subject of debate since the first century. In Exodus 33:20, God tells Moses that no one can see God and live, but Numbers 12:8 says that Moses sees the form of the Lord. How does one reconcile these two opposing statements? Did Moses see God, and who gets to decide? The Christian Moses investigates how ancient Christians from the New Testament to Augustine of Hippo resolved questions of who can see God, how one can see God, and what precisely one sees. Jaeda Calaway explains that the decision about whether and how Moses saw God was not a neutral exercise for an early Christian. Rather, it established the interpreter's authority to determine what was possible in divine-human relations and set the parameters for the nature of humanity. As a result, Calaway argues, interpretations of Moses' visions became a means for Jews and Christians to jockey for power, allowing them to justify particular social arrangements, relations, and identities, to assert the limits of humans in the face of divinity, and to create an Other. Seeing early Christians with new eyes, The Christian Moses reassesses how debates on Moses' visions from the first through the fifth centuries were, in reality, debates on the boundaries of humanity.

Interaction Between Judaism and Christianity in History, Religion, Art, and Literature

Interaction Between Judaism and Christianity in History, Religion, Art, and Literature PDF Author: Marcel Poorthuis
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004171509
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 641

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Book Description
This volume contains essays dealing with complex relationships between Judaism and Christianity, taking a bold step, assuming that no historical period can be excluded from the interactive process between Judaism and Christianity, conscious or unconscious, as either rejection or appropriation

The Fate of the Dead in Early Third Century North African Christianity

The Fate of the Dead in Early Third Century North African Christianity PDF Author: Eliezer Gonzalez
Publisher: Mohr Siebeck
ISBN: 9783161529443
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
The ideology and imagery in the Passion of Perpetua are mediated heavily by traditional Graeco-Roman culture; in particular, by traditional notions of the afterlife and of the ascent of the soul. This context for understanding the Passion of Perpetua aligns well with the available material evidence, and with the writings of Tertullian, with whose ideology the text of Perpetua is in an implicit polemical dialogue.Eliezer Gonzalez analyzes how the Passion of Perpetua provides us with early literary evidence of an environment in which the Graeco-Roman and Christian cults of the dead, including the cults of the martyrs and saints, appear to be very much aligned. He also shows that the text of the Passion of Perpetua and the writings of Tertullian provide insights into an early stage in the polemic between these two conceptualisations of the afterlife of the righteous.

Christ the Logos of Creation: An Essay in Analogical Metaphysics

Christ the Logos of Creation: An Essay in Analogical Metaphysics PDF Author: John R. Betz
Publisher: Emmaus Academic
ISBN: 1949013871
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 671

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Book Description
The Prologue of the Gospel of John identifies Jesus Christ as the eternal Word or Logos of the Father, who became flesh for the salvation of the world. Yet the world that Christ saves is his world from the beginning, for he is also the Logos of creation, the one “through whom all things were made” (John 1:3). This divinely revealed claim has profound implications not only for theology but also for metaphysics, whose relation to Christian doctrine was undermined over the course of the twentieth century, such that the Christian faith has become an increasingly private affair rather than a credible account of reality and an invitation to participate more fully in it. With Christ, the Logos of Creation, John Betz seeks to recover a Christ-centered, analogical metaphysics and to establish the indispensability of such metaphysics for Christian theology and the Christian vision of reality. In Part I, he dispels the fog of confusion about analogical metaphysics and addresses the ecumenical issues posed by Karl Barth’s famous rejection of the analogia entis. Part II demonstrates how analogical metaphysics helps to explain Christian doctrine and sheds new light on the interrelationship between individual doctrines, including Trinitarian theology, Christology and soteriology, and theological anthropology. In Part III, Betz explores how this analogical perspective can aid in resolving a number of theological disputes, including the metaphysical relationship between nature and grace and the issue of divine humility. Finally, Part IV outlines further directions toward a fully Christological metaphysics that is proportionate both to the challenges of modern theology and the reality of our life in Christ the Logos.

Heavenly Priesthood in the Apocalypse of Abraham

Heavenly Priesthood in the Apocalypse of Abraham PDF Author: Andrei A. Orlov
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110703907X
Category : Bibles
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
Sheds light on the complex Jewish debates about the nature of priesthood in the early centuries of the Common Era.