During the past three decades Jaap Mansfeld, Professor of Ancient Philosophy in Utrecht, has built up a formidable reputation as a leading scholar in his field. His work has concentrated on the Presocratics, Hellenistic Philosophy, the sources of our knowledge of ancient philosophy (esp. doxography) and the history of scholarship. In honour of his sixtieth birthday, colleagues and friends have contributed a collection of articles which represent the state of the art in the study of the history of ancient philosophy and frequently concentrate on subjects in which the honorand has made important discoveries. The 22 contributors include M. Baltes, J. Barnes, J. Brunschwig, W.M. Calder III, J. Dillon, P.L. Donini, J. Glucker, A.A. Long, L.M. de Rijk, D. Sedley, P. Schrijvers, and M. Vegetti. The volume concludes with a complete bibliography of Jaap Mansfeld's scholarly work so far.

Over the past 45 years Professor Pieter W. van der Horst contributed extensively to the study of ancient Judaism and early Christianity. The 24 papers in this volume, written since his early retirement in 2006, cover a wide range of topics, all of them concerning the religious world of Judaism and Christianity in the Hellenistic, Roman, and early Byzantine era. They reflect his research interests in Jewish epigraphy, Jewish interpretation of the Bible, Jewish prayer culture, the diaspora in Asia Minor, exegetical problems in the writings of Philo and Josephus, Samaritan history, texts from ancient Christianity which have received little attention (the poems of Cyrus of Panopolis, the Doctrina Jacobi nuper baptizati, the Letter of Mara bar Sarapion), and miscellanea such as the pagan myth of Jewish cannibalism, the meaning of the Greek expression 'without God,' the religious significance of sneezing in pagan antiquity, and the variety of stories about pious long-sleepers in the ancient world (pagan, Jewish, Christian).

"The Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible is the single major work of reference on the gods, angels, demons, spirits and semi-divine heroes whose names occur in the biblical books. First published in 1995 and chosen by "Choice as Best Reference Work of 1996, it is now republished in a new extensively revised edition.
30 entries appear for the first time in the new edition, while more than 100 others have been brought up to date with the latest state of research. Arranged in the order of the Latin alphabet, the more than four-hundred names are those found in the books of the Hebrew and the Greek Bible, Old and New Testament, including the Apocrypha. There are entries on divine names recognized as such by the biblical authors; divine names in theophoric toponyms and anthroponyms; secular terms which occur as divine names in neighbouring civilizations, conjectural divine names, at times based on textual emendation, proposed by modern scholarship; and humans who acquired a semi-divine status in tradition.
A typical entry contains a discussion of the pertinent name, its meaning, the religio-historical background, relevant biblical passages and an up-to-date bibliography. Owing to the comprehensive coverage of names and its religio-historical emphasis, the "Dictionary of Deities and Demons provides crucial information concerning the spiritual world in which the Peoples of the Book have lived. Extensive indices and cross-references provide easy access to the rich information of the dictionary.
The "Dictionary of Deities and Demons is the fruit of a common effort of a group of more than a hundred international scholars from a variety of traditions. Chosen for their specialcompetence, the contributors write about those deities or demons for which their research makes them eminently qualified. Acting as advisors are Hans Dieter Betz (Chicago), Andri Caquot (Paris), Jonas C. Greenfield (Jerusalem), Erik Hornung (Basel), Michael Stone (Jerusalem), and Manfred Weipert (Heidelberg).
A Brill-Eerdmans co-publication
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