Founded in 1956, Penn State University Press publishes rigorously reviewed, high-quality works of scholarship and books of regional and contemporary interest, with a focus on the humanities and social sciences. The publishing arm of the Pennsylvania State University and a division of the Penn State University Libraries, the Press promotes the advance of scholarship by disseminating knowledge—new information, interpretations, methods of analysis—widely in books, journals, and digital publications.
Scholarly publishing has faced monumental challenges over the past few decades. The Press takes its place among those institutions moving the enterprise forward. Its innovative projects continue to identify and embrace the technological advances and business models that ensure scholarly publishing will remain feasible, and widely accessible, well into the future.
Biblical Theologies in the Context of the Ancient Near East
Othmar Keel has become well known as the author of masterly studies on the iconography and texts of the ANE and their relationship to the text of the Hebrew Bible. In this volume, he partners with Silvia Schroer to assemble ANE texts and art that bears on the idea of creation. The result is a convenient assemblage of texts and iconographical ......
Pious Motives, Illicit Interests, and Occult Approaches to the Medieval Universe
Utilizes the collection of magic texts from the late Middle Ages at St. Augustine's, Canterbury, to examine the orthodoxy of magical approaches to the medieval universe and to show how it was possible to combine magical studies with a monastic vocation.
Contesting Knowledge and Practice in West African Sufi Texts
Examines the works of two Sufi Muslim scholars, Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Kunti (d. 1811) and his son Sidi Muhammad (d. 1826), focusing on their cosmology and metaphysics of the realm of the unseen, in relation to the history of magical discourses within the Hellenistic and Arabo-Islamic worlds.
Examines the life of Catherine of Aragon, focusing on her personal possessions and the items she bequeathed to those she left behind, to better understand her as a daughter, wife, widow, mother, and friend; a collector of art and books; a devout Catholic; and a patron of writers and universities.
The Inventory and Gift Giving of Queen Clemence de Hongrie
In this visually rich volume, Mariah Proctor-Tiffany reconstructs the art collection and material culture of the fourteenth-century French queen Clémence de Hongrie, illuminating the way the royal widow gave objects as part of a deliberate strategy to create a lasting legacy for herself and her family in medieval ......
Genesis 1–11 is a text that may well have received more attention than any other in the history of literature. Nevertheless, what do we know about the personal names that occur in these chapters and whose influence has permeated all of Western literature? Hess provides a thorough investigation of the ancient Near Eastern background of ......
A History of the Southern Levant and the People who Populated It
Ancient Israel is widely regarded as having been set apart from the nations, representing a unique sociopolitical entity in the ancient world. United by a common tribal identity and a commitment to worshiping the God who delivered them from Egypt exclusively, the Israelites established an egalitarian community that stood in contrast to the ......
Assyrian Archival Texts in the Schoyen Collection and Other Documents from North Mesopotamia and Syria
Texts: Old Assyrian (Hertel), Middle Assyrian (Llop-Raduà ), Neo-Assyrian (Radner), N. Babylonian (George), Ugaritic (van Soldt). Photograph, transliteration, translation and commentary on economic documents and letters from ancient Assyria, Babylonia, and Ugarit.
Among the many religious acts condemned in the Hebrew Bible, child sacrifice stands out as particularly horrifying. The idea that any group of people would willingly sacrifice their own children to their god(s) is so contrary to modern moral sensibilities that it is difficult to imagine that such a practice could have ever existed. ......