Nine short essays exploring the K'iche' Maya story of creation, the Popol Vuh. Written during the lockdown in Chicago in the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic, these essays consider the Popol Vuh as a work that was also written during a time of feverish social, political, and epidemiological crisis as Spanish missionaries and colonial military deepened their conquest of indigenous peoples and cultures in Mesoamerica. What separates the Popol Vuh from many other creation texts is the disposition of the gods engaged in creation. Whereas the book of Genesis is declarative in telling the story of the world's creation, the Popol Vuh is interrogative and analytical: the gods, for example, question whether people actually need to be created, given the many perfect animals they have already placed on earth. Emergency uses the historical emergency of the Popol Vuh to frame the ongoing emergencies of colonialism that have surfaced all too clearly in the global health crisis of COVID-19. In doing so, these essays reveal how the authors of the Popol Vuh-while implicated in deep social crisis-nonetheless insisted on transforming emergency into scenes of social, political, and intellectual emergence, translating crisis into creativity and world creation.

Where did the idea of sin arise from? In this meticulously argued book, David Konstan takes a close look at classical Greek and Roman texts, as well as the Bible and early Judaic and Christian writings, and argues that the fundamental idea of "sin" arose in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, although this original meaning was obscured in later Jewish and Christian interpretations. Through close philological examination of the words for "sin," in particular the Hebrew hata' and the Greek hamartia, he traces their uses over the centuries in four chapters, and concludes that the common modern definition of sin as a violation of divine law indeed has antecedents in classical Greco-Roman conceptions, but acquired a wholly different sense in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament.

Ancestors are part of our shared humanity, we all have them. Ancestry in the guise of race, has been used as a tool to divide. Even so, it might yet help us move in greater harmony. Are we playing out the motifs of our family history, or making our own lives? Are we held back by the past, or empowered by it? And why does any of this matter? Druidry and the Ancestors will take you on a journey into how you imagine yourself, and how you can take control of your identity and future. Druid, author, bard and dreamer. Nimue Brown is OBOD trained, a founding member of Bards of The Lost Forest and Druid Network member.

Theme park studies is a growing field in social and cultural studies. Nonetheless, until now little attention has been dedicated to the choice of the themes represented in the parks and the strategies of their representation. This is particularly interesting when the theme is a historical one, for example ancient Greece. Which elements of classical Greece find their way into a theme park and how are they chosen and represented? What is the "entertainment" element in ancient Greek history, culture and myth, which allows its presence in commercial structures aiming to people's fun? How does the representation of Greece change against different cultural backgrounds, e.g. in different European countries, in the USA, in China? This book frames a discussion of these representations within the current debates about immersive spaces, uses of history and postmodern aesthetics, and analyses how ancient Greece has been represented and made "enjoyable" in seven different theme parks across the world, providing an original and ground-breaking contribution to theme park studies and classical reception.

The tales told of Orpheus are legion. He is said to have been an Argonaut--and to have saved Jason's life. Rivers are reported to have stopped their flow to listen to the sounds of his lyre and his voice. Plato cites his poetry and Herodotus refers to "practices that are called Orphic." Did Orpheus, in fact, exist? His influence on Greek thought is undeniable, but his disciples left little of substance behind them. Indeed, their Orphic precepts have been lost to time.

W.K.C. Guthrie attempts to uncover and define Orphism by following its circuitous path through ancient history. He tackles this daunting task with the determination of a detective and the analytical rigor of a classical scholar. He ferries his readers with him on a singular voyage of discovery.