Archaeology and Religion (31)

• Archaeology and Religion
• Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures
• History
• Literature

The Intertwined World of the Oral and Written Transmission of Sacred Traditions in the Middle East

• Alba Fedeli
• Geoffrey Khan
• Johan Lundberg

In the medieval Middle East, the scriptures of Christianity, Judaism and Islam were transmitted in written and oral form. The means of written transmission and the textualisation of the oral reading of these scriptures exhibit many parallels, which reflect cultural contact and convergence across the various religious communities. This volume is the outcome of a project, funded jointly by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the Arts and Humanities Research Council, that aimed to bring together strands of research related to various aspects of the transmission of these sacred texts in order to reach a deeper understanding of the intertwined world of the three major religions of the Middle East at their formative periods of development during the early Islamic centuries.

• Archaeology and Religion
• Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures
• Linguistics

Jerome’s Sources in His Translation of the Hebrew Bible

• Paul Rodrigue

At the close of the fourth century CE, Jerome of Stridon—renowned Latin scholar, theologian, and priest—undertook the monumental task of translating the Hebrew-Aramaic Bible into Latin. The result of this effort, now known as the Vulgate, has long been regarded as a foundational text of Western Christianity. In this volume, Paul Rodrigue investigates the sources that Jerome may have drawn upon in the process of translation.

• Archaeology and Religion
• Linguistics

Qur’an Translations in the Eastern Bloc and Beyond

• Elvira Kulieva
• Johanna Pink
• Mykhaylo Yakubovych

This book offers the first comprehensive exploration of Qur’an translations across the diverse landscapes of the former Eastern Bloc, from Uzbekistan to the German Democratic Republic. With a focus on how Islamic texts have been shaped by state policies, ideological shifts, and religious identities, it traces connections between these regions and the wider world, including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and China. This volume draws on perspectives from both Sunni and Shia traditions, as well as contributions by non-Muslim scholars. Through archival research and close textual analysis, the contributors demonstrate how translations of the Qur’an have served not only as religious texts but also as reflections of profound transformations in national and religious identities in communist and post-communist societies.

• Archaeology and Religion
• History
• Music

Music, Religion and Politics at Worcester Cathedral, 680-1950

• Richard Newsholme

This book provides a comprehensive history of music and liturgy at Worcester Cathedral, from its foundation in the seventh century to the mid-20th century. The author delves into how political shifts, public opinion, and national trends have influenced changes in the cathedral's practices over time, while also highlighting the distinct local dynamics at play.

• Archaeology and Religion
• Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures
• Linguistics

Two Early Byzantine Bible Manuscripts in Christian Palestinian Aramaic: Codex Climaci Rescriptus II & XI

• Kim Phillips

Despite the ubiquitous use of Greek by the Christian church of the late antique Southern Levant, many Christians in the region also—or only—spoke Aramaic. Today, this dialect, known as Christian Palestinian Aramaic (CPA), is relatively sparsely attested in the form of regional inscriptions and, particularly, in the form of vernacular translations of Greek biblical, liturgical and theological texts. These translations survive predominantly as undertexts within palimpsest manuscripts. Codex Climaci Rescriptus (CCR) is one of the most important palimpsest manuscript sources for the recovery of CPA texts.

• Archaeology and Religion
• Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures

The Samaritan Pentateuch: An English Translation with a Parallel Annotated Hebrew Text

• Moshe Florentin
• Abraham Tal

This new translation into English seeks to introduce the reader to the character of the Samaritan version of the Pentateuch, while emphasising the fundamental differences between it and the Masoretic version. The translation is based on a grammatical analysis of each and every word in the text according to its oral pronunciation, informed by examination of the Samaritan translations into Aramaic and Arabic as well as other Samaritan and non-Samaritan sources.

• Archaeology and Religion
• Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures
• Linguistics

Diachronic Diversity in Classical Biblical Hebrew

• Aaron D. Hornkohl

According to the standard periodisation of ancient Hebrew, the division of Biblical Hebrew as reflected in the Masoretic tradition is basically dichotomous: pre-exilic Classical Biblical Hebrew (CBH) versus post-Restoration Late Biblical Hebrew (LBH). Within this paradigm, the chronolectal unity of CBH is rarely questioned—this despite the reasonable expectation that the language of a corpus encompassing traditions of various ages and comprising works composed, edited, and transmitted over the course of centuries would show signs of diachronic development. From the perspective of historical evolution, CBH is remarkably homogenous. Within this apparent uniformity, however, there are indeed signs of historical development, sets of alternant features whose respective concentrations seem to divide CBH into two sub-chronolects. The most conspicuous typological division that emerges is between the CBH of the Pentateuch and that of the relevant Prophets and Writings. The present volume investigates a series of features that distinguish the two ostensible CBH sub-chronolects, weighs alternative explanations for distribution patterns that appear to have chronological significance, and considers broader implications for Hebrew diachrony and periodisation and for the composition of the Torah.

• Archaeology and Religion
• Music

Music and Spirituality: Theological Approaches, Empirical Methods, and Christian Worship

• George Corbett
• Sarah Moerman

The composer Sir James MacMillan has often referred to music as ‘the most spiritual of the arts’, and for many people, regardless of religious affiliation, this rings true. In listening to music, we are drawn to dimensions of human experience beyond the material. This collection brings together leading scholars from various disciplines – including Christian theology, musicology, and psychology and neuroscience – to interrogate the intimate relationship between music and spirituality.

• Archaeology and Religion
• European Studies
• European Studies: German Studies
• History
• Women and Gender Studies

The Life of Nuns: Love, Politics, and Religion in Medieval German Convents

• Henrike Lähnemann
• Eva Schlotheuber
• Anne Simon

In the Middle Ages half of those who chose the religious life were women, yet historians have overlooked entire generations of educated, feisty, capable and enterprising nuns, condemning them to the dusty silence of the archives. What, though, were their motives for entering a convent and what was their daily routine behind its walls like? How did they think, live and worship, both as individuals and as a community? How did they maintain contact with the families and communities they had left behind? Henrike Lähnemann and Eva Schlotheuber offer readers a vivid insight into the largely unknown lives and work of religious women in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

• Archaeology and Religion
• Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures
• Law

Roles and Relations in Biblical Law: A Study of Participant Tracking, Semantic Roles, and Social Networks in Leviticus 17-26

• Christian Canu Højgaard

Leviticus 17–26, an ancient law text known as the Holiness Code, prescribes how particular persons are to behave in concrete, everyday situations. The addressees of the law text must revere their parents, respect the elderly, fear God, take care of their fellow, provide for the sojourner, and so on. The sojourner has his own obligations, as do the priests. Even God is said to behave in various ways towards various persons. Thus, the law text forms an intricate web of persons and interactions.

• Archaeology and Religion
• History

Jesus and the Making of the Modern Mind, 1380-1520

• Luke Clossey

For his fifteenth-century followers, Jesus was everywhere – from baptism to bloodcults to bowling. This sweeping and unconventional investigation looks at Jesus across one hundred forty years of social, cultural, and intellectual history. Mystics married him, Renaissance artists painted him in three dimensions, Muslim poets praised his life-giving breath, and Christopher (“Christ-bearing”) Columbus brought the symbol of his cross to the Americas. Beyond the European periphery, this global study follows Jesus across – and sometimes between – religious boundaries, from Greenland to Kongo to China.

• Archaeology and Religion
• European Studies: Eastern European Studies
• Visual Arts

How Divine Images Became Art: Essays on the Rediscovery, Study and Collecting of Medieval Icons in the Belle Époque

• Oleg Tarasov
• Stella Rock

How Divine Images Became Art tells the story of the parallel ‘discovery’ of Russian medieval art and of the Italian ‘primitives’ at the beginning of the twentieth century. While these two developments are well-known, they are usually studied in isolation. Tarasov’s study has the great merit of showing the connection between the art world in Russia and the West, and its impact in the cultural history of the continent in the pre-war period.

• Archaeology and Religion
• History
• Linguistics

The Kingdom and the Qur’an: Translating the Holy Book of Islam in Saudi Arabia

• Mykhaylo Yakubovych

This book presents a detailed analysis of the translation of the Qur’an in Saudi Arabia, the most important global actor in the promotion, production and dissemination of Qur’an translations. Mykhaylo Yakubovych provides a comprehensive historical overview of the debates surrounding the translatability of the Qur'an, as well as exploring the impact of the burgeoning translation and dissemination of the holy book upon Wahhabi and Salafi interpretations of Islam. Backed by meticulous research and drawing on a wealth of sources, this work illuminates an essential facet of global Islamic culture and scholarly discourse.

• Archaeology and Religion
• Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures
• Linguistics

Linguistic Theory and the Biblical Text

• William A. Ross
• Elizabeth Robar

This volume is the result of the 2021 session of the Linguistics and the Biblical Text research group of the Institute for Biblical Research, which addresses the history, relevance, and prospects of broad theoretical linguistic frameworks in the field of biblical studies. Cognitive Linguistics, Functional Grammar, generative linguistics, historical linguistics, complexity theory, and computational analysis are each allotted a chapter, outlining the key theoretical commitments of each approach, their major concepts and/or methods, and their important contributions to contemporary study of the biblical text.

• Archaeology and Religion
• Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures
• Linguistics

The Linguistic Classification of the Reading Traditions of Biblical Hebrew: A Phyla-and-Waves Model

• Benjamin Paul Kantor

In recent decades, the field of Biblical Hebrew philology and linguistics has been witness to a growing interest in the diverse traditions of Biblical Hebrew. Indeed, while there is a tendency for many students and scholars to conceive of Biblical Hebrew as equivalent with the Tiberian pointing of the Leningrad Codex as it appears in Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS), there are many other important reading traditions attested throughout history.

• Archaeology and Religion
• Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures
• Linguistics
• Literature

The Historical Depth of the Tiberian Reading Tradition of Biblical Hebrew

• Aaron D. Hornkohl

This volume explores an underappreciated feature of the standard Tiberian Masoretic tradition of Biblical Hebrew, namely its composite nature. Focusing on cases of dissonance between the tradition’s written (consonantal) and reading (vocalic) components, the study shows that the Tiberian spelling and pronunciation traditions, though related, interdependent, and largely in harmony, at numerous points reflect distinct oral realisations of the biblical text.

• Archaeology and Religion
• Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures
• Linguistics

The Bible in the Bowls: A Catalogue of Biblical Quotations in Published Jewish Babylonian Aramaic Magic Bowls

• Daniel James Waller

The Bible in the Bowls represents a complete catalogue of Hebrew Bible quotations found in the published corpus of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic magic bowls. As our only direct epigraphic witnesses to the Hebrew Bible from late antique Babylonia, the bowls are uniquely placed to contribute to research on the (oral) transmission of the biblical text in late antiquity; the pre-Masoretic Babylonian vocalisation tradition; the formation of the liturgy and the early development of the Jewish prayer book; the social locations of biblical knowledge in late antique Babylonia and socio-religious typologies of the bowls; and the dynamics of scriptural citation in ancient Jewish magic.

• Archaeology and Religion
• Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures
• Linguistics

Studies in the Masoretic Tradition of the Hebrew Bible

• Daniel J. Crowther
• Aaron D. Hornkohl
• Geoffrey Khan

This volume brings together papers on topics relating to the transmission of the Hebrew Bible from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern period. We refer to this broadly in the title of the volume as the ‘Masoretic Tradition’. The papers are innovative studies of a range of aspects of this Masoretic tradition at various periods, many of them presenting hitherto unstudied primary sources.

• Archaeology and Religion

The Official Indonesian Qurʾān Translation: The History and Politics of Al-Qur’an dan Terjemahnya

• Fadhli Lukman

This book studies the political and institutional project of Al-Qur’an dan Terjemahnya, the official translation of the Qurʾān into Indonesian by the Indonesian government. It investigates how the translation was produced and presented, and how it is read, as well as considering the implications of the state’s involvement in such a work.

• Archaeology and Religion
• History

The Classical Parthenon: Recovering the Strangeness of the Ancient World

• William St Clair

Complementing Who Saved the Parthenon? this companion volume sets aside more recent narratives surrounding the Athenian Acropolis, supposedly ‘the very symbol of democracy itself’, instead asking if we can truly access an ancient past imputed with modern meaning. And, if so, how?

• Archaeology and Religion
• History
• History: International Relations

Who Saved the Parthenon?: A New History of the Acropolis Before, During and After the Greek Revolution

• William St Clair

In this magisterial book, William St Clair unfolds the history of the Parthenon throughout the modern era to the present day, with special emphasis on the period before, during, and after the Greek War of Independence of 1821–32.

• Archaeology and Religion
• Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures
• History

Diversity and Rabbinization: Jewish Texts and Societies between 400 and 1000 CE

• Gavin McDowell
• Ron Naiweld
• Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra

This volume is dedicated to the cultural and religious diversity in Jewish communities from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Age and the growing influence of the rabbis within these communities during the same period.

• Archaeology and Religion
• Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures
• Linguistics

New Perspectives in Biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew

• Aaron D. Hornkohl
• Geoffrey Khan

This volume contains peer-reviewed papers in the fields of Biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew that advance the field by the philological investigation of primary sources and the application of cutting-edge linguistic theory. These include contributions by established scholars and by students and early career researchers.

• Archaeology and Religion
• Classics
• European Studies
• History

Sailing from Polis to Empire: Ships in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Hellenistic Period

• Emmanuel Nantet

What can the architecture of ancient ships tell us about their capacity to carry cargo or to navigate certain trade routes? How do such insights inform our knowledge of the ancient economies that depended on maritime trade across the Mediterranean? These and similar questions lie behind Sailing from Polis to Empire, a fascinating insight into the practicalities of trading by boat in the ancient world. Allying modern scientific knowledge with Hellenistic sources, this interdisciplinary collection brings together experts in various fields of ship archaeology to shed new light on the role played by ships and sailing in the exchange networks of the Mediterranean.

• Archaeology and Religion
• Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures
• Linguistics

Studies in Rabbinic Hebrew

• Shai Heijmans

This volume presents a collection of articles centring on the language of the Mishnah and the Talmud – the most important Jewish texts (after the Bible), which were compiled in Palestine and Babylonia in the latter centuries of Late Antiquity. Despite the fact that Rabbinic Hebrew has been the subject of growing academic interest across the past century, very little scholarship has been written on it in English.

• Archaeology and Religion
• Music

Annunciations: Sacred Music for the Twenty-First Century

• George Corbett

Through the theme of ‘annunciations’, this volume interrogates how, when, why, through and to whom God communicates in the Old and New Testaments. In doing so, it tackles the intimate relationship between Scriptural reflection and musical practice in the past, its present condition, and what the future might hold.

• Archaeology and Religion
• Digital Humanities
• Material Culture

From Dust to Digital: Ten Years of the Endangered Archives Programme

• Maja Kominko

Much of world’s documentary heritage rests in vulnerable, little-known and often inaccessible archives. Many of these archives preserve information that may cast new light on historical phenomena and lead to their reinterpretation. But such rich collections are often at risk of being lost before the history they capture is recorded. This volume celebrates the tenth anniversary of the Endangered Archives Programme at the British Library, established to document and publish online formerly inaccessible and neglected archives from across the globe.

• American and Latin American Studies
• Anthropology
• Archaeology and Religion

God's Babies: Natalism and Bible Interpretation in Modern America

• John McKeown

The human population's annual total consumption is not sustainable by one planet. Many observers assume that Christianity is inevitably part of this problem because it promotes "family values" and statistically, in America and elsewhere, has a higher birthrate than nonreligious people. Challenging the assumption that religion normally promotes fecundity, the book finds surprising exceptions among early Christians (with a special focus on Saint Augustine) since they advocated spiritual fecundity in preference to biological fecundity. Finally the book uses a hermeneutic lens derived from Genesis 1, and prioritising the modern problem of biodiversity, to provide ecological interpretations of the Bible's "fruitful" verses.

• Archaeology and Religion
• Philosophy
• Visual Arts

Cultural Heritage Ethics: Between Theory and Practice

• Sandis Constantine

Cultural Heritage Ethics provides cutting-edge arguments built on case studies of cultural heritage and its management in a range of geographical and cultural contexts. Moreover, the volume feels the pulse of the debate on heritage ethics by discussing timely issues such as access, acquisition, archaeological practice, curatorship, education, ethnology, historiography, integrity, legislation, memory, museum management, ownership, preservation, protection, public trust, restitution, human rights, stewardship, and tourism.

• Archaeology and Religion
• European Studies
• European Studies: Eastern European Studies
• History
• History: International Relations
• Literature

Beyond Holy Russia: The Life and Times of Stephen Graham

• Michael Hughes

This biography examines the long life of the traveller and author Stephen Graham. Graham walked across much of the Tsarist Empire in the years before 1917, and his writings about his adventures helped to shape attitudes towards Russia in Britain and the US. In later years he travelled widely in Europe and America, meeting some of the best known writers of his day. Tracing Graham’s career as a world traveller, this book explores Graham’s heterodox and convoluted spiritual quest, while also providing a rich portrait of English, Russian and American literary life in the first half of the twentieth century.

• Archaeology and Religion
• Literature
• Literature: Comparative Literature
• Theatre
• Visual Arts
• Women and Gender Studies

The Sword of Judith: Judith Studies Across the Disciplines

• Kevin R. Brine
• Elena Ciletti
• Henrike Lähnemann

The Book of Judith has fascinated artists and authors for centuries, and is becoming a major field of research in its own right. This book is the first multidisciplinary collection to discuss representations of Judith through the centuries. Bringing together scholars from around the world, it transforms our understanding of Judith’s enduring story across a wide range of disciplines. The book includes sections on Judith in Christian, Jewish and secular textual traditions, and representations of Judith in art, music and theatre. It also includes new archival source studies, and translations of unpublished manuscripts and texts previously unavailable in English.