A Theology of Deception and YHWH's Fidelity to the Ancestral Promise in the Jacob Cycle
The book of Genesis portrays the character Jacob as a brazen trickster who deceives members of his own family: his father Isaac, brother Esau, and uncle Laban. At the same time, Genesis depicts Jacob as YHWH’s chosen, from whom the entire people Israel derive and for whom they are named. These two notices produce a latent tension in the ......
Son of a mortal king and an immortal Muse, Orpheus possessed a gift for music unmatched among humans; with his lyre he could turn the course of rivers, drown the fatal song of the Sirens, and charm the denizens of the underworld.
In a magisterial work, Jaan Puhvel unravels the prehistoric Indo-Euopean origins of the traditions of India and Iran, Greece and Rome, of the Celts, Germans, Balts, and Slavs. Utilizing the methodologies of historical linguistics and archaeology, he reconstructs a shared religious, mytholoigcal, and cultural heritage. Separate chapters on ......
In Travels with Plotinus, Moin Mir follows Plotinus's 1,780-year-old journey of personal discovery across India, Egypt, Italy, Greece and Turkey as he tries to understand the core concept of Plotinian thought, derived from studying the Upanishads - 'Unity and Oneness'. He uses Plotinus's philosophy to observe how the free will of intellect uses ......
Tel Miqne-Ekron Excavations 1994-1996, Field IV Upper and Field V, The Elite Zone Part 1: Iron Age IIC Temple Complex 650
Presents the cultic evidence of the last days of one of the five Philistine capital cities, Ekron, as it reached the zenith of its growth in the seventh century BCE.
The Evolution of Intermarriage Law in the Hebrew Bible
The Torah Unabridged is a detailed examination of legal reasoning in the Hebrew Bible. Focusing on the exegetical operations by which biblical laws related to intermarriage were applied to circumstances and persons that lie outside the sphere of their explicit content, this book reconstructs the ways in which laws regarding intermarriage evolved, ......
Peril was everywhere in ancient Rome, but the Great Fire of 64 CE was unlike anything the city had ever experienced. No building, no neighborhood, no person was safe from conflagration. When the fire finally subsided'after burning for nine days straight'vast swaths of Rome were in ruins. The greatest city of the ancient world had endured its ......
The Story of Rome's Colosseum and the Emperors Who Built It
Early one morning in 80 CE, the Colosseum roared to life with the deafening cheers of tens of thousands of spectators as the emperor, Titus, inaugurated the new amphitheater with one hundred days of bloody spectacles. These games were much-anticipated, for the new amphitheater had been under construction for a decade. Home to spectacles ......