Joseph's Dream News represents ancient stories in a modern newspaper or popular magazine style of reporting for the modern reader who may have little knowledge of ancient past, or of epistemology, psychology, cosmology, theology, astronomy, science, psycholinguistics, politics and religion. Presenting these ancient stories using modern idioms and formats the author makes them come alive in dealing with real life problems, challenges and circumstances in the world today. In ancient characters we can learn something about life and ourselves. Is it possible to see the repeat of history as you read through these headlines? History will show you the future if you understand and gain perspectives from studying narratives of the past. Our story of Joseph's heroic adventures is the timeless tale of a young person who faces many challenges while growing up and how he responds and reacts to these challenges. Core principles enabled Joseph to be a servant of God and to follow his dreams. Tossed into a hole in the ground by his own brothers and then later sold into slavery did not alter Joseph's firm belief that God was with him. Joseph was a possibility thinker, no matter what was happening in the circumstances or changing events of the moment around him he stayed true to his God and his beliefs. Often held in slavery or captivity, Joseph served his fellow man confident that God was with him as he hustled to make his dreams a reality. Joseph's faith in God engendered his high ethical standards early in life and shaped his passion to serve humanity to the best of his ability. He was proactive and took responsibility for acquiring learned lessons from his experiences and by always choosing a positive, life affirming response to dire circumstances. Early in life, Joseph learned time tested sound principles while working on his father's farm. Joseph's principled thinking empowered his honesty, duty, service and problem solving skills. Joseph believed his life purpose was service to God. He believed that in serving others he was serving God. His life of service to others helped to mold his character and shape his choices and options in life. This humble personality is what made him a great leader. However, this did not necessarily mean he always made the right choices in what was best for the people.

Bhagavad gita: the Global Dharma for the Third Millennium Bhagavad gita is one of the prasthana traya required to study Vedic knowledge - the other 2 being the Upanishads and Vedanta sutra or Brahma sutra. This series, composed by 19 volumes (one for each of the 18 chapters, plus one Appendix) presents elaborate translations and commentaries, as well as the original Sanskrit text with transliteration.

"Primitive Man as Philosopher" is influential anthropologist and ethnologist Paul Radin's enduringly relevant survey of an array of aboriginal cultures and belief systems, including those of the Winnebago, Oglala Sioux, Maori, Banda, the Buin of Melanesia, Tahitian, Hawaiian, Zuni, and Ewe. Radin examines the conditioning of thought and religion practiced among the members of each society and the freedom of individuals to deviate from the group and to affect change. Written in a straightforward, almost conversational style, Radin's discourse is rooted in firsthand accounts. He allows his subjects to speak for themselves by quoting extensively from interviews (many of which he conducted in the course of his own fieldwork), and includes a veritable anthology of poems and songs from the varied traditions. Radin, known in his field for his honesty and integrity, offers brilliant interpretations of myth and symbolism in his exploration of their deeper meanings in each culture. Readers both in and out of the field will appreciate the rich and varied insights of this classic of anthropology. Celebrated anthropologist Neni Panourgiá provides a new introduction to this landmark and pioneering work.

Making a foundational contribution to Mesoamerican studies, this book explores Aztec painted manuscripts and sculptures, as well as indigenous and colonial Spanish texts, to offer the first integrated study of food and ritual in Aztec art. Aztec painted manuscripts and sculptural works, as well as indigenous and Spanish sixteenth-century texts, were filled with images of foodstuffs and food processing and consumption. Both gods and humans were depicted feasting, and food and eating clearly played a pervasive, integral role in Aztec rituals. Basic foods were transformed into sacred elements within particular rituals, while food in turn gave meaning to the ritual performance. This pioneering book offers the first integrated study of food and ritual in Aztec art. Elizabeth Moran asserts that while feasting and consumption are often seen as a secondary aspect of ritual performance, a close examination of images of food rites in Aztec ceremonies demonstrates that the presence-or, in some cases, the absence-of food in the rituals gave them significance. She traces the ritual use of food from the beginning of Aztec mythic history through contact with Europeans, demonstrating how food and ritual activity, the everyday and the sacred, blended in ceremonies that ranged from observances of births, marriages, and deaths to sacrificial offerings of human hearts and blood to feed the gods and maintain the cosmic order. Moran also briefly considers continuities in the use of pre-Hispanic foods in the daily life and ritual practices of contemporary Mexico. Bringing together two domains that have previously been studied in isolation, Sacred Consumption promises to be a foundational work in Mesoamerican studies.

In Maya theology, everything from humans and crops to gods and the world itself passes through endless cycles of birth, maturation, dissolution, death, and rebirth. Traditional Maya believe that human beings perpetuate this cycle through ritual offerings and ceremonies that have the power to rebirth the world at critical points during the calendar year. The most elaborate ceremonies take place during Semana Santa (Holy Week), the days preceding Easter on the Christian calendar, during which traditionalist Maya replicate many of the most important world-renewing rituals that their ancient ancestors practiced at the end of the calendar year in anticipation of the New Year's rites. Marshaling a wealth of evidence from Pre-Columbian texts, early colonial Spanish writings, and decades of fieldwork with present-day Maya, The Burden of the Ancients presents a masterfully detailed account of world-renewing ceremonies that spans the Pre-Columbian era through the crisis of the Conquest period and the subsequent colonial occupation all the way to the present. Allen J. Christenson focuses on Santiago Atitlan, a Tz'utujil Maya community in highland Guatemala, and offers the first systematic analysis of how the Maya preserved important elements of their ancient world renewal ceremonies by adopting similar elements of Roman Catholic observances and infusing them with traditional Maya meanings. His extensive description of Holy Week in Santiago Atitlan demonstrates that the community's contemporary ritual practices and mythic stories bear a remarkable resemblance to similar cultural entities from its Pre-Columbian past.

Epiphanius, Bishop of Constantia on Cyprus from 367 to 403 C.E., was incredibly influential in the last decades of the fourth century. Whereas his major surviving text (the Panarion, an encyclopedia of heresies) is studied for lost sources, Epiphanius himself is often dismissed as an anti-intellectual eccentric, a marginal figure of late antiquity. In this book, Andrew Jacobs moves Epiphanius from the margin back toward the center and proposes we view major cultural themes of late antiquity in a new light altogether. Through an examination of the key cultural concepts of celebrity, conversion, discipline, scripture, and salvation, Jacobs shifts our understanding of "late antiquity" from a transformational period open to new ideas and peoples toward a Christian Empire that posited a troubling, but ever-present, "otherness" at the center of its cultural production.

The role of human sacrifice in the ancient Mediterranean world and its implications continue to be topics that fire the popular imagination and engender scholarly discussion and controversy. This volume provides balanced and judicious treatments of the various facets of these topics from a cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural perspective. It provides nuanced examinations of ancient ritual, exploring the various meanings that human sacrifice held for antiquity, and examines its varied repercussions up into the modern world. The book explores evidence to shed new light on the origins of the rite, to whom these sacrifices were offered, and by whom they were performed. It presents fresh insights into the social and religious meanings of this practice in its varied biblical landscape and ancient contexts, and demonstrates how human sacrifice has captured the imagination of later writers who have employed it in diverse cultural and theological discourses to convey their own views and ideologies. It provides valuable perspectives for understanding key cultural, theological and ideological dimensions, such as the sacrifice of Christ, scapegoating,self-sacrifice and martyrdom in post-biblical and modern times.