|
Books > Religion & Spirituality > Non-Christian sacred works & liturgy > Sacred texts > General
Since their discovery in 1947, the Dead Sea Scrolls have become an
icon in popular culture that transcends their status as ancient
Jewish manuscripts. Everyone has heard of the Scrolls, but amidst
the conspiracies, the politics, and the sensational claims, it can
be difficult to separate the myths from the reality. In this Very
Short introductions, Timothy Lim discusses the cultural
significance of the finds, and the religious, political and legal
controversies during the seventy years of study since the
discovery. He also looks at the contribution the Scrolls have made
to our understanding of the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible, and the
origins of early Christianity. Exploring the most recent scholarly
discussions on the archaeology of Khirbet Qumran, and the study of
the biblical texts, the canon, and the history of the Second Temple
Period, he considers what the scrolls reveal about sectarianism in
early Judaism. Was the archaeological site of Qumran a centre of
monastic life, a fortress, a villa, or a pottery factory? Why were
some of their biblical texts so different from the ones that we
read today? Did they have 'a Bible'? Who were the Essenes and why
did they think that humanity is to be divided between 'the sons of
light' and those in darkness? And, finally, do the Scrolls reflect
the teachings of the earliest followers of Jesus? ABOUT THE SERIES:
The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press
contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These
pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new
subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis,
perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and
challenging topics highly readable.
The Vessantara Jataka tells the story of Prince Vessantara, who
attained the Perfection of Generosity by giving away his fortune,
his children, and his wife. Vessantara was the penultimate rebirth
as a human of the future Gotama Buddha, and his extreme charity has
been represented and reinterpreted in texts, sermons, rituals, and
art throughout South and Southeast Asia and beyond. This anthology
features well-respected anthropologists, textual scholars in
religious and Buddhist studies, and art historians, who engage in
sophisticated readings of the text and its ethics of giving,
understanding of attachment and nonattachment, depiction of the
trickster, and unique performative qualities. They reveal the story
to be as brilliantly layered as a Homeric epic or Shakespearean
play, with aspects of tragedy, comedy, melodrama, and utopian
fantasy intertwined to problematize and scrutinize Theravada
Buddhism's cherished virtues.
The Hebrew Torah was translated into Greek in Alexandria by Jewish
scholars in the third century BCE, and other 'biblical' books
followed to form the so-called Septuagint. Since the Septuagint
contains a number of books and passages that are not part of the
Hebrew Bible, the study of the Septuagint is essential to any
account of the canon of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. However,
the situation is complex because the Greek text of the Old
Testament quoted in the New Testament and in the Church Fathers
does not always match the Septuagint text as given by the earliest
codices. Furthermore, it must be asked to what extent these texts
of the Septuagint may have been Christianized. Up until the fifth
century, the Old Testament of the Church Fathers was exclusively
the Septuagint-except in the Syriac area-either in its Greek form
or in a language translated from this Greek form. The Septuagint
thus formed a much more important role in the building of Christian
identity than it is usually recognised. After Jerome's Vulgate
prevailed in the West, the Septuagint remained the reference text
of the catenae. These Byzantine compilations of extracts of
Patristic biblical commentary were produced first in Palestine,
then in Constantinople and its dependancies between the sixth and
fifteenth centuries and became the most important media for the
transmission of patristic commentary in these centuries. The
patristic extracts in the catenae provide a remarkable witness to
the text of the Greek Old Testament as it was known and used by the
Church Fathers.
|
|