Product Description: This book presents how ancient Christianity must be understood from the viewpoint of the history of religions in late antiquity. The continuation of biblical prophecy runs like a thread from Jesus through Mani to Muhammad. And yet this thread, arguably the single most important characteristic of the Abrahamic movement, often remains outside the mainstream, hidden, as it were, since it generates heresy...read more

Product Description: The social and intellectual vitality of Judaism and Christianity in antiquity was in large part a function of their ability to articulate a viably transcendent hope for the human condition. Narratives of Paradise - based on the concrete symbol of the Garden of Delights - came to play a central role for Jews, Christians, and eventually Muslims too...read more

The essays in this book consider issues of tolerance and intolerance faced by Jews and Christians between 200 BCE and 200 CE. Several essays are concerned with aspects of early Jewish-Christian relationships, several discuss ways Jews and Christians defined themselves against the pagan world, and several consider issues of tolerance that arose in rival groups within early Judaism and within early Christianity. The book derives from the first symposium in this field in which scholars from Israel and the UK shared, and is distinctive in its theme of perennial concern for humanity.

Product Description: The long and rich correspondence between the two leading historians of religions Gershom Scholem (1897-1982) and Morton Smith (1915-1991) provides important insights on their world and approach. In particular, it sheds new light upon Smith's discovery of Clement of Alexandria's letter on the Secret Gospel of Mark...read more

Product Description: This volume fills a major desideratum in historical scholarship on the religious history of the Holy Land. It presents a synthesis of our knowledge of the history of Christianity and the various churches that coexisted there from the beginnings of Christianity to the fall of the Crusader Kingdoms...read more

Product Description: This public lecture is staged annually in memory of the ecclesiastic historian Hans Lietzmann (1875 1942), Adolf von Harnacks s successor as director of the Academy project The Greek Christian Authors of the First Centuries (GDS)...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: This collection of papers from two workshops - held in Heidelberg, Germany, in July 1996 and Jerusalem, Israel, in October 1997 - is concerned with anthropological rather than theological aspects of the Near Eastern and Mediterranean religions, ranging from the 'primary' religions of the archaic period and their complex developments in Egypt and Mesopotamia to the 'soteriological' movements and 'secondary' religions that emerged in Late Antiquity...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: This volume offers a comparative, cross-cultural history of dreams. The essays examine a wide range of texts concerning dreams, as culled from a rich variety of religious contexts: China, India, the Americas, classical Greek and Roman antiquity, early Christianity, and medieval Judaism and Islam...read more