Jewish and Christian Cosmogony in Late Antiquity

Description

The authors of this collection of essays explore different ways that ancient Jews and Christians understood the world's creation and how this understanding shaped their world. In this volume, discussions of cosmogony are not only placed within the contexts of biblical hermeneutics and the politics of interpretation, but more broadly within the diverse realms of ancient life. The authors demonstrate how beliefs about Creation played an important role in constructing rituals, pedagogy, ethics, geography, and anthropology. A biblically-based tradition shared by Jews and Christians, the Creation story serves as a fruitful point of departure for this collection of studies about these communities, their interactions, and their overlapping and competing conceptions of the world. Preface Table of Contents Abbreviations In the Beginning: Cosmogony in Late Antiquity • LANCE JENOTT AND SARIT KATTAN GRIBETZ Part I: Scripture and Interpretation Made to Order: Creation in Jubilees • JAMES C. VANDERKAM The Rabbinic Ban on Ma 'aseh Bereshit: Sources, Contexts and Concerns • YAIR FURSTENBERG Constructing a Christian Universe: Mythological Exegesis of Ben Sira 24 and John's Prologue in the Gospel of Truth • GEOFFREY S. SMITH Part II: Theology and Anthropology The Emergence of Monotheistic Creation Theology in Hellenistic Judaism • MAREN R. NIEHOFF The Archangel Michael in Ophite Creation Mythology • TUOMAS RASIMUS Constant Creation: (Pro)creation in Palestinian Rabbinic Midrashim • GWYNN KESSLER Corpus Hermeticum, Tractate III: The Genesis of a Genesis • CHRISTIAN WILDBERG Part III: Pedagogy and Ethics Moses the Pedagogue: Procopius, Philo, and Didymus on the Pedagogy of the Creation Account • RICHARD A. LAYTON “Humanity came to be according to three essential types”: Anthropogony and Ethical Responsibility in the Tripartite Tractate • ALEXANDER KOCAR Recovering Adam's Lost Glory: Nag Hammadi Codex II in its Egyptian Monastic Environment • LANCE JENOTT Part IV: Space and Ritual Rock Over Water: Pre-Historic Rocks and Primordial Waters from Creation to Salvation in Jerusalem • NAOMI KOLTUN-FROMM Darkness Upon the Abyss: Depicting Cosmogony in Late Antiquity • MIKA AHUVIA The Ritualization of Creation in Jewish and Christian Liturgical Texts from Late Antiquity • OPHIR MUNZ MANOR Bibliography Contributors Reference Index Subject Index