Jean Bottero, one of the world's leading figures in Ancient Near Eastern Studies, approaches the Bible as an astounding variety of documents that reveal much of their time of origin, historical events, and climates of thought.
"With admirable erudition, Lopez-Ruiz brings to life intimacies and exchanges between the ancient Greeks and their Northwest Semitic neighbors, portraying the ancient Mediterranean as a fluid, dynamic contact zone. She explains networks of circulation, shows creative uses of traditional material by peoples in motion, and radically transforms our understanding of ancient cosmogonies."---Page duBois, author of Out of Athens: The New Ancient Greeks --
Hesiod Theogony 800-700 B.C. is a highly engaging book that provides a practical methodology for studying the ancient Greek language. The longest of the three surviving works of Hesiod, Theogony is a story consisting of 1022 verses that describe the creation of the cosmos and the birth of the Gods. The work is divided into five sections and begins when Hesiod is authorized by Mousai to hear the story of the universal creation. Inspired by these tales, he composes Theogony. Theogony depicts the story of the creation of the universe from Khaos and the elements of the first deities. Being the creator and the leader of the universal civilization, the God Zeus plays a major role in the story. It is his weddings to Metis, Themis, Mnemosyne, and Eurynome, who represent law, institutions, and justice, that enable him to form the basis for serenity and prosperity among the cosmos. Dimitrios Kiriakopoulos grew up in a small village in central Greece, near Mt. Olympus. Although he moved to Toronto, Canada at 17, he maintained an affinity for the Gods of Olympus who were said to live on the mountain. A restaurant owner by profession, he still resides in Toronto with his wife and two children.In his free time he enjoys reading and writing. Hesiod Theogony 800-700 B.C. is his first published effort. Publisher's website: http: //sbpra.com/Metaphrasis-DimitriosKiriakopoulo
Meisner offers a new interpretation of four Orphic theogonies: Derveni, Eudemian, Hieronyman, and Rhapsodic. The fragments of these poems, thought to be written by Orpheus, contained narratives of the creation of the cosmos and the births of the gods, but differed from the mainstream account of Hesiod's Theogony.
Hesiod, who lived in Boetia in the late eighth century BC, is one of the oldest known, and possibly the oldest of Greek poets. His Theogony contains a systematic genealogy of the gods from the beginning of the world and an account of the struggles of the Titans. In contrast, Works and Days is a compendium of moral and practical advice on husbandry, and throws unique and fascinating light on archaic Greek society. As well as offering the earliest known sources for the myths of Pandora, Prometheus and the Golden Age, Hesiod's poetry provides a valuable account of the ethics and superstitions of the society in which he lived. Unlike Homer, Hesiod writes about himself and his family, and he stands out as the first personality in European literature. This new translation, by a leading expert on the Hesiodic poems combines accuracy with readability. It is accompanied by an introduction and explanatory notes. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
The Birth of the Gods is dedicated to Durkheim's effort to understand the basis of social integration. Unlike most social scientists, then and now, Durkheim concluded that humans are naturally more individualistic than collectivistic, that the primal social unit for humans is the macro-level unit ('the horde'), rather than the family, and that social cohesion is easily disrupted by human self-interest. Hence, for Durkheim, one of the "gravest" problems facing sociology is how to mold these human proclivities to serve the collective good. The analysis of elementary religions, Durkheim believed, would allow social scientists to see the fundamental basis of solidarity in human societies, built around collective representations, totems marking sacred forces, and emotion-arousing rituals directed at these totems. The first half of the book traces the key influences and events that led Durkheim to embrace such novel generalizations. The second part makes a significant contribution to sociological theory with an analysis that essentially "tests" Durkheim's core assumptions using cladistic analysis, social network tools and theory, and data on humans closest living relatives—the great apes. Maryanski marshals hard data from primatology, paleontology, archaeology, genetics, and neuroscience that enlightens and, surprisingly, confirms many of Durkheim’s speculations. These data show that integration among both humans and great apes is not so much group or kin oriented, per se, but orientation to a community standing outside each individual that includes a sense of self, but also encompassing a cognitive awareness of a "sense of community" or a connectedness that transcends sensory reality and concrete social relations. This "community complex," as Maryanski terms it, is what Durkheim was beginning to see, although he did not have the data to buttress his arguments as Maryanski is able to do.
This book traces the image of the pregnant male as it evolves in classical Greek literature. Originating as a representation of paternity and, by extension, "authorship" of creative works, the image later comes to function also as a means to explore the boundary between the sexes.