Author: Markham J. Geller
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 1614513090
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 736
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Book Description
This book brings together ancient manuscripts of the large compendium of Mesopotamian exorcistic incantations known as Udug.hul (Utukku Lemnutu), directed against evil demons, ghosts, gods, and other demonic malefactors within the Mesopotamian view of the world. It allows for a more accurate appraisal of variants arising from a text tradition spread over more than two millennia and from many ancient libraries.
Author: Markham J. Geller
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 352
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Book Description
Everyone knows that all the ills of life, from headaches to athlete's foot and from minor annoyances (like a broken shoelace) to major catastrophes (like a fallen soufflé) are the result of evil demons at work. Call them what you will--gremlins, goblins, imps, afrit, rakshasas, poltergeists, whatever--these supernatural creatures together account for all the world's misfortunes. The ancient Sumerians and their cultural heirs, the Assyrians and Babylonians, knew this as well as anyone, and so they made an extensive collection of incantations to ward off or counteract the effects of evil demons. These incantations were recited by the exorcist (a-sipu), doubtless accompanied by the appropriate ritual, to cast out the demon causing the problem. Indeed, the miraculous cures of Jesus were attributed to casting out demons and he passed this ability on to his disciples (Mark 16:17). So the casting out of demons has a lengthy history in the ancient Near East and continues to this day. There are many demons mentioned in the incantations, but prominent among them is Lilith, who, in her guise as Ardat Lilî or the Maiden Lilith, was the essential Mesopotamian temptress who copulated with men when they were asleep and bore demon children. According to some stories, Lilith was the first wife of Adam, who ran off when she refused to be sugjugated to her husband. The tradition of Lilith continues today with most first wives being considered demons by their ex-husbands. This work of scholarship contains 88 pages of cuneiform text, most of it bilingual Sumerian-Akkadian. It also includes a transliteration and a translation of the text and a glossary to the Sumerian text. The Sumerian glossary gives the Sumerian word or phrase, the Akkadian equivalent used in the text, and the English meaning. A separate index to the Akkadian words in the glossary is provided.
Author: Gerrit C. Vreugdenhil
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004427899
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 507
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Book Description
In Psalm 91 and Demonic Menace Gerrit Vreugdenhil offers a thorough analysis of the text, structure and genre of Psalm 91. Already in its earliest interpretations, Psalm 91 has been associated with the demonic realm. The use of this psalm on ancient amulets and in magic texts calls for an explanation. Examining the psalms images of threat from a cognitive science perspective, Vreugdenhil shows that many of these terms carry associations with sorcery and magic, incantations and curses, diseases and demonic threat. The psalm takes demonic threat seriously, but also draws attention to the protection offered by JHWH. Finally, the author proposes an outline of the situational context in which Psalm 91 might have functioned.
Author: Francis MacNutt
Publisher: Hodder Faith
ISBN: 9780340661406
Category : Healing
Languages : en
Pages : 333
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Book Description
The million-copy bestselling introduction to the healing ministry, re-issued with a beautiful new cover. Does healing happen today? Why is there prejudice against the healing ministry? Why are some people not healed? These topical and vital questions are just some of the issues addressed by Francis MacNutt in Healing. A wideranging and broad-based overview, it is essential reading for all involved in the healing ministry. 'Prayer for healing is so central to the gospel, ' writes MacNutt, 'that it should be an integral part of the life of every community of believers. My heart cries out to see it restored to the place it had in the early Christian church.
Author: Claude Lecouteux
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1620556227
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 377
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Book Description
An in-depth collection of ancient spells and magic practices drawn from rare and newly discovered texts • Presents more than 600 magical prescriptions for healing and protection from both pagan and Christian sources • Examines the practice of diagnosing illness through magic and explores ancient beliefs about curses and other evil spells and about devils, demons, and ghosts • Includes spells from the heavily guarded gypsy tradition of magic and healing, drawn from newly discovered materials Since the beginning of history, people have sought remedies for the many ills that have beset them, from illnesses afflicting the body to threats posed by evil and hostile individuals. In many folk healing and pagan traditions, it was believed that one must gain the assistance of the guardian spirit of a healing plant or substance through prayers or offerings before its chemical properties would be effective. The Church decried these spells and practices as pagan superstition but did not seek to exterminate these beliefs, instead transferring the responsibility for their healing powers to the apostles and saints. Drawing on his extensive knowledge of ancient texts, Claude Lecouteux presents more than 600 magical prescriptions from both pagan and Christian sources from the last 2,000 years, covering everything from abscesses and shingles to curses and healing animals. He examines the practice of diagnosing illness through magic and looks at the origins of disease according to the evolving beliefs of magic practitioners over the centuries. He explores ancient beliefs about curses and about devils, demons, and ghosts and provides an in-depth look at protection magic, including protection of health, animals, and cultivated land, protection against curses, witchcraft, bad weather, and beasts, protection of a home, and protection while traveling. He includes spells from the heavily guarded gypsy tradition of magic and healing, drawn from newly discovered materials collected by two Romanian ethnologists who lived and traveled with gypsies in Transylvania in the mid-19th century. The author also reproduces rare texts on magic healing from the 14th and 15th centuries. Revealing the vitality of these practices in the remoter areas of Eastern Europe, Lecouteux shows how the influence of this pagan worldview is still detectable in the work of modern folk healers in France and Scandinavia. He also shows how the condemnation of unorthodox methods of healing has not vanished from the contemporary world: the medieval legislation against healing by wizards and bonesetters is echoed in modern health codes that challenge the authority of naturopaths and faith healers.
Author: Jean La Fontaine
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1785330861
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 156
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Book Description
Devil worship, black magic, and witchcraft have long captivated anthropologists as well as the general public. In this volume, Jean La Fontaine explores the intersection of expert and lay understandings of evil and the cultural forms that evil assumes. The chapters touch on public scares about devil-worship, misconceptions about human sacrifice and the use of body parts in healing practices, and mistaken accusations of children practicing witchcraft. Together, these cases demonstrate that comparison is a powerful method of cultural understanding, but warns of the dangers and mistaken conclusions that untrained ideas about other ways of life can lead to.
Author: Alhena Gadotti
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350301892
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 351
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Book Description
Exploring life, death, and the afterlife in Mesopotamia, Alhena Gadotti and Alexandra Kleinerman examine how life and death experiences continually developed over the course of nearly three millennia of Mesopotamian history. To achieve this, the book follows the life cycle of the people of the Tigris and Euphrates River valleys from 3000 BCE to 300 BCE, from birth, through death, and beyond. This book is the first to interrogate the relationships between living and dying through case studies and primary evidence. Including letters written by both women and men, the book allows readers to enter the minds of the ancients. First, the authors focus on life through topics such as the rituals surrounding birth, marriage, and religion. The authors then examine the common causes of death, the rituals associated with death, and the Mesopotamian views of the netherworld, its gods, and inhabitants. Concepts of gender fluidity, both in life and death, are considered alongside evidence from epigraphic data. Illustrating daily life as a multifaceted subject affected by time, space, location, socioeconomics, and gender, this book creates a window into the conditions and concerns of the Mesopotamian people.
Author: Francesca Rochberg
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022675958X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 380
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Book Description
In the modern West, we take for granted that what we call the “natural world” confronts us all and always has—but Before Nature explores that almost unimaginable time when there was no such conception of “nature”—no word, reference, or sense for it. Before the concept of nature formed over the long history of European philosophy and science, our ancestors in ancient Assyria and Babylonia developed an inquiry into the world in a way that is kindred to our modern science. With Before Nature, Francesca Rochberg explores that Assyro-Babylonian knowledge tradition and shows how it relates to the entire history of science. From a modern, Western perspective, a world not conceived somehow within the framework of physical nature is difficult—if not impossible—to imagine. Yet, as Rochberg lays out, ancient investigations of regularity and irregularity, norms and anomalies clearly established an axis of knowledge between the knower and an intelligible, ordered world. Rochberg is the first scholar to make a case for how exactly we can understand cuneiform knowledge, observation, prediction, and explanation in relation to science—without recourse to later ideas of nature. Systematically examining the whole of Mesopotamian science with a distinctive historical and methodological approach, Before Nature will open up surprising new pathways for studying the history of science.
Author: John Z Wee
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004417567
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 513
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Book Description
Mesopotamian Commentaries on the Diagnostic Handbook Sa-gig is intended for specialists in cuneiform studies, and includes a cuneiform edition, English translation, and notes on medical lexicography for thirty Sa-gig commentary tablets and fragments, as well as a study on technical notations recurring in these commentaries. Within the Cuneiform Monographs series, this book represents a companion volume to Knowledge and Rhetoric in Medical Commentary (Brill, 2019).
Author: Samuel E. Balentine
Publisher:
ISBN: 0190222115
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 589
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Book Description
"The conceit in the title of this volume is that ritual, however expansively it may be defined, is ineluctably tethered to religion and worship. It has a primal connection to the idea that a transcendent order - numinous and mysterious, supranatural and elusive, divine and wholly other - gives meaning and purpose to life. The construction of rites and rituals enables humans to conceive and apprehend this transcendent order, to symbolize it and interact with it, to postulate its truths in the face of contradicting realities and to repair them when they have been breached or diminished. The focus of this Handbook is on ritual and worship from the perspective of biblical studies, particularly on the Hebrew Bible and its ancient Near Eastern antecedents. Within this context, attention will be given to the development of ideas in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim thinking, but only insofar as they connect with or extend the trajectory of biblical precedents. The volume reflects a wide range of analytical approaches to ancient texts, inscriptions, iconography, and ritual artifacts. It examines the social history and cultural knowledge encoded in rituals, and explores the way rituals shape and are shaped by politics, economics, ethical imperatives, and religion itself. Toward this end, the volume is organized into six major sections: Historical Contexts, Interpretive Approaches, Ritual Elements (participants, places, times, objects, practices), Underlying Cultural and Theological Perspectives, History of Interpretation, Social-Cultural Functions, and Theology and Theological Heritage"--
