The only detailed work for the English reader on the astronomical/calendar aspect of the Book of Enoch, which determines when Easter will be celebrated by the by the Ethiopian Tewahido Orthodox Church.
Covering a wide array of sources from ancient Mesopotamia to the Dead Sea Scrolls, the present volume offers an innovative perspective on Jewish apocalyptic time-reckoning during the Second Temple period, based on a unique calendar year of 364 days.
The Catalogue of the Ethiopic Manuscript Imaging Project (EMIP), volume 7, provides a full catalog for the collection of fifty-four manuscripts in the Meseret Sebhat Le-Ab collection at Mekane Yesus Seminary in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. These include one late fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century manuscript of Jubilees and the Minor Prophets. Each catalog entry provides a full physical description, a listing of contents (with incipits), illuminations, varia (known works added later), notes on codicology and scribal practice, as well as a full quire map. Opening articles provide an introduction to the collection, a biography of Alaqa Meseret's life and work, an introduction to the Ethiopian musical tradition of Saint Yared, and a study on the textual character of the manuscript of Jubilees. Four indices (works, names, miniatures, and scribal practice) provide quick access for the researcher.
The system of numbering the years AD (Anni Domini, Years of the Lord) originated with Dionysius Exiguus. Dionysius drafted a 95-year table of dates for Easter beginning with the year 532 AD. Why Dionysius chose the year that he did to number as '1' has been a source of controversy and speculation for almost 1500 years. According to the Gospel of Luke (3.1; 3.23), Jesus was baptized in the 15th year of the emperor Tiberius and was about 30 years old at the time. The 15th year of Tiberius was AD 29. If Jesus was 30 years old in AD 29, then he was born in the year that we call 2 BC. Most ancient authorities dated the Nativity accordingly. Alden Mosshammer provides the first comprehensive study of early Christian methods for calculating the date of Easter to have appeared in English in more than one hundred years. He offers an entirely new history of those methods, both Latin and Greek, from the earliest such calculations in the late second century until the emergence of the Byzantine era in the seventh century. From this history, Mosshammer draws the fresh hypothesis that Dionysius did not calculate or otherwise invent a new date for the birth of Jesus, instead adopting a date that was already well established in the Greek church. Mosshammer offers compelling new conclusions on the origins of the Christian era drawing upon evidence found in the fragments of Julius Africanus, of Panodorus of Alexandria, and in the traditions of the Armenian church.
"The Catalog of the Ethiopic Manuscript Imaging Project (EMIP), volume 2, provides a full catalog for EMIP codex numbers 106 through 200, and magic scrolls 135 through 284. Each catalog entry for the codices provides a full physical description, a listing of contents (with incipits), illuminations, varia (known works added later), notes on codicology and scribal practice, as well as a full quire map. Opening articles provide an introduction to the collection and its codicology, and an introduction to this set of Ethiopian scrolls of spiritual healing. Seven indices (general, works in the codices, names in the codices, miniatures in the codices, scribal practices, works in the scrolls, and names in the scrolls) provide quick access for researchers."
The Catalogue of the Ethiopic Manuscript Imaging Project (EMIP), volume 7, provides a full catalog for the collection of fifty-four manuscripts in the Meseret Sebhat Le-Ab collection at Mekane Yesus Seminary in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. These include one late fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century manuscript of Jubilees and the Minor Prophets. Each catalog entry provides a full physical description, a listing of contents (with incipits), illuminations, varia (known works added later), notes on codicology andscribal practice, as well as a full quire map. Opening articles provide an introduction to the collection, a biography of Alaqa Meseret's life and work, an introduction to the Ethiopian musical tradition of Saint Yared, and a study on the textual character of the manuscript of Jubilees. Four indices (works, names, miniatures, and scribal practice) provide quick access for the researcher.
The collection of papers assembled here on a variety of topics in ancient and medieval astronomy was originally suggested by Noel Swerdlow of the University of Chicago. He was also instrumental in making a selection* which would, in general, be on the same level as my book The Exact Sciences in Antiquity. It may also provide a general background for my more technical History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy and for my edition of Astronomi cal Cuneiform Texts. Several of these republished articles were written because I wanted to put to rest well-entrenched historical myths which could not withstand close scrutiny of the sources. Examples are the supposed astronomical origin of the Egyptian calendar (see [9]), the discovery of precession by the Babylonians [16], and the "simplification" of the Ptolemaic system in Copernicus' De Revolutionibus [40]. In all of my work I have striven to present as accurately as I could what the original sources reveal (which is often very different from the received view). Thus, in [32] discussion of the technical terminology illuminates the meaning of an ancient passage which has been frequently misused to support modern theories about ancient heliocentrism; in [33] an almost isolated instance reveals how Greek world-maps really looked; and in [43] the Alexandrian Easter computus, held in awe by many historians, is shown from Ethiopic sources to be based on very simple procedures.
This is the first full-length study of Demetrius of Alexandria (189–232 ce), who generated a neglected, yet remarkable hagiographic program that secured him a positive legacy throughout the Middle Ages and the modern era. Drawing upon Patristic, Coptic, and Arabic sources spanning a millennium, the analysis contextualizes the Demetrian corpus at its various stages of composition and presents the totality of his hagiographic corpus in translation. This volume constitutes a definitive study of Demetrius, but more broadly, it provides a clearly delineated hagiographic program and charts its evolution against a backdrop of political developments and intercommunal interactions. This fascinating study is a useful resource for students of Demetrius and the Church in Egypt in this period, but also for anyone working on Early Christianity and hagiography more generally.