The overarching theme of the book is the historical meaning of the Axial Age, commonly defined as a period of several centuries around the middle of the last millennium BCE, and its cultural innovations. The civilizational patterns that grew out of this exceptionally creative phase are a particularly rewarding theme for comparative analysis.
The book contains essays on cultural transformations in Ancient Greece, Ancient Israel, Iran, India and China, as well as background developments in the core civilizations of the Ancient Near East. An introductory section deals with the history of the...

This book examines the seemingly universal notion of a grammatical cosmos. Individual essays discuss how many of the great civilizations provide cognitive maps that emerge from a metaphysical linguistics in which sounds, syllables and other signs form the constructive elements of reality. The essays address cross-cultural issues such as: Why does grammar serve as a template in these cultures? How are such templates culturally contoured? To what end are they applied -- i.e., what can one do with grammar --, and how does it work upon the world? The book is divided into three sections that deal...

In the last decades there has been an increasing interest in the relationship between Greek religion & culture and the Ancient Near East. This challenging book contributes greatly to this interest by studying the Near Eastern background of important Greek myths, such as those of the creation of the world and the first woman, the Flood, the Golden Fleece, the Titans and travelling seers, but also of the births of Attis and Asclepius as well as the origins of the terms 'paradise' and 'magic'. It also shows that, in turn, Greek literature influenced Jewish stories of divine epiphanies and that...

A study of religious thought and practice across a broad social spectrum, but within a well-defined historical context, this book is an interdisciplinary endeavor that incorporates the tools of philology, social-history and historical-anthropology.

The present volume is the result of a team research which gathered biblical scholars, philologists, and historians of religions, on the issue of the multiple "Interpretations of Moses" inherited from the ancient mediterranean cultures. The concrete outcome of this comparative inquiry is the common translation and commentary of the fragments from the works of the mysterious Artapanus. The comparative perspective suggested here is not so much methodological, or thematic. It is first of all an invitation to cross disciplinary boundaries and to take account of the contributions of diverse...

The study of early Syriac Christianity has for decades been steadily expanding, yet its scope still lags way behind that of research relating to Greek and Latin Christianity. One of the intriguing and understudied topics here is the nature of Syriac Christianity's autonomous identity in late antiquity. This question is intrinsically connected to its genesis from an indigenous Christian Aramaic background as well as its interaction with the neighboring Jewish milieu. This volume unearthes some of the idiosyncracies -- mainly pertaining to trinitarian theology, christology and hermeneutics --...

Recent scholarship on Śaivism has significantly expanded our knowledge of the religious dimensions of Medieval Śaiva movements. However, the philosophical aspects displayed by some of the texts produced in these milieux remain largely unrecognized. The present study helps fill this lacuna by exploring the sophisticated and original philosophical system elaborated by the Kashmiri Śaiva nondualists Utpaladeva (fl. c. 925-975) and Abhinavagupta (fl. c. 975-1025). The book shows that this system cannot be reduced to a mere scriptural exegesis and examines the genesis of the main...

Thus far intepretations of Homer and the Bible have largely been studied in isolation even though both texts became foundational for Western civilisation and were often commented upon in the same cultural context. The present collection of articles redresses this imbalance by bringing together scholars from different fields and offering prioneering essays, which cross traditional boundaries and interpret Biblical and Homeric interpreters in light of each other. The picture which emerges from these studies in highly complex: Greek, Jewish and Christian readers were concerned with similar...

The book is an introduction to key concepts of Indian Philosophy, seen from the perspective of one of its most influential schools, the Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā, which flourished from the 7th until the 20th c. AD. The book includes the critical edition and translation of Rāmānujācārya's Śāstraprameyapariccheda, which is part of his Tantrarahasya (written in South India, after the 14th c.). This text has never been translated before and it is one of the clearest elaboration of the Prābhākara thought. The book particularly aims at...

One, God, Two Goddesses presents three studies, one of Tamil myths of the god Murugan and two of goddess rituals: Gangamma in Tirupati and Paiditalli in Vizianagaram, both in Andhra Pradesh. All three essays search for lineaments of the cosmos that these deities inhabit and shape. These cosmoi are characterised by the dynamism of their incessant interior movement. Should they become still, they would die. Deities activate and regenerate such a cosmos. The dynamism of Murugan's cosmos eliminates the chaotic. Through ritual, Gangamma regenerates her cosmos through feminising it. Through...