Prayer, magic, and the stars in the ancient and late antique world
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Bibliographic Information
Prayer, magic, and the stars in the ancient and late antique world
（Magic in history）
Pennsylvania State University Press, c2003
- : cloth
- : pbk
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Note
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
In the religious systems of ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Mediterranean, gods and demigods were neither abstract nor distant, but communicated with mankind through signs and active intervention. Men and women were thus eager to interpret, appeal to, and even control the gods and their agents. In Prayer, Magic, and the Stars in the Ancient and Late Antique World, a distinguished array of scholars explores the many ways in which people in the ancient world sought to gain access to-or, in some cases, to bind or escape from-the divine powers of heaven and earth.
Grounded in a variety of disciplines, including Assyriology, Classics, and early Islamic history, the fifteen essays in this volume cover a broad geographic area: Greece, Egypt, Syria-Palestine, Mesopotamia, and Persia. Topics include celestial divination in early Mesopotamia, the civic festivals of classical Athens, and Christian magical papyri from Coptic Egypt. Moving forward to Late Antiquity, we see how Judaism, Christianity, and Islam each incorporated many aspects of ancient Near Eastern and Graeco-Roman religion into their own prayers, rituals, and conceptions. Even if they no longer conceived of the sun, moon, and the stars as eternal or divine, Christians, Jews, and Muslims often continued to study the movements of the heavens as a map on which divine power could be read.
The reader already familiar with studies of ancient religion will find in Prayer, Magic, and the Stars both old friends and new faces. Contributors include Gideon Bohak, Nicola Denzey, Jacco Dieleman, Radcliffe Edmonds, Marvin Meyer, Michael G. Morony, Ian Moyer, Francesca Rochberg, Jonathan Z. Smith, Mark S. Smith, Peter Struck, Michael Swartz, and Kasia Szpakowska.
Published as part of Penn State's Magic in History series, Prayer, Magic, and the Stars appears at a time of renewed interest in divination and occult practices in the ancient world. It will interest a wide audience in the field of comparative religion as well as students of the ancient world and late antiquity.
Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
List of Figures
Introduction
Scott Noegel, Joel Walker, and Brannon Wheeler
Part I Locating Magic
1. Here, There, and Anywhere
Jonathan Z. Smith
Part II Prayer, Magic, and Ritual
2. Thessalos of Tralles and Cultural Exchange
Ian Moyer
3. The Prayer of Mary in the Magical Book of Mary and the Angels
Marvin Meyer
4. Hebrew, Hebrew Everywhere? Notes on the Interpretation of Voces Magicae
Gideon Bohak
5. Magic and Society in Late Sasanian Iraq
Michael G. Morony
Part III Dreams and Divination
6. The Open Portal: Dreams and Divine Power in Pharaonic Egypt
Kasia Szpakowska
7. Viscera and the Divine: Dreams as a Divinatory Bridge Between the Corporeal and the Incorporeal
Peter Struck
8. Stars and the Egyptian Priesthood in the Graeco-Roman Period
Jacco Dieleman
9. Divination and Its Discontents: Finding and Questioning Meaning in Ancient and Medieval Judaism
Michael D. Schwartz
Part IV The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars
10. Heaven and Earth: Divine-Human Relations in Mesopotamian Celestial Divination
Francesca Rochberg
11. Astral Religion and the Representation of Divinity: The Cases of Ugarit and Judah
Mark S. Smith
12. A New Star on the Horizon: Astral Christologies and Stellar Debates in Early Christian Discourse
Nicola Denzey
13. At the Seizure of the Moon: The Absence of the Moon in the Mithras Liturgy
Radcliffe Edmonds
Contributors
Index
by "Nielsen BookData"
