Encountering Ancient Voices


Book Description

Designed to get students to read the Bible for themselves, this introduction to and overview of the Old Testament draws on the most recent research on the Hebrew scriptures to outline the historical, social, and cultural contexts out of which the biblical texts were produced.--From publisher description.




The Persian War in Herodotus and Other Ancient Voices


Book Description

'An exciting, highly informative and also enjoyable read: Shepherd writes with clarity and verve... this book should find its way into the hands of all schools, universities and lovers of Herodotus.' - Peter Jones, Classics for All Weaving together the accounts of the ancient historian Herodotus with other ancient sources, this is the engrossing story of the triumph of Greece over the mighty Persian Empire. The Persian War is the name generally given to the first two decades of the period of conflict between the Greeks and the Persians that began in 499 BC and ended around 450. The pivotal moment came in 479, when a massive Persian invasion force was defeated and driven out of mainland Greece and Europe, never to return. The victory of a few Greek city-states over the world's first superpower was an extraordinary military feat that secured the future of Western civilization. All modern accounts of the war as a whole, and of the best-known battles of Marathon, Thermopylae and Salamis, depend on the ancient sources, foremost amongst them Herodotus. Yet although these modern narratives generally include numerous references to the ancient authors, they quote little directly from them. This is the first book to bring together Herodotus' entire narrative and interweave it with other ancient voices alongside detailed commentary to present and clarify the original texts. The extracts from other ancient writers add value to Herodotus' narrative in various ways: some offer fresh analysis and credible extra detail; some contradict him interestingly; some provide background illumination; and some add drama and colour. All are woven into a compelling narrative tapestry that brings this immense clash of arms vividly to life. 'Distinguished military historian of the Persian Wars William Shepherd [...] shows himself to be also a most sensitive interpreter of those Wars' original historian Herodotus. With Shepherd as our guide and Herodotus by our side this key moment in West-East relations is given its full cultural and strategic due.' Paul Cartledge, A.G. Leventis Senior Research Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge




Voices of Ancient Egypt


Book Description

History.




Introduction to "Gnosticism"


Book Description

Introduction to "Gnosticism": Ancient Voices, Christian Worlds is the first textbook on Gnosticism, guiding students through the most significant of the Nag Hammadi texts, grouping them by theme and genre, and revealing to the uninitiated their most inscrutable mysteries.




Ancient Voices


Book Description

The ancient world was not ancient to its inhabitants - it was a vibrant world full of ideas. Studying people from the outside affords knowledge and insight, but to transform that knowledge and insight into wisdom and discernment, we must open ourselves to seeing the world through the eyes of the people of the past. In Ancient Voices, Louis Markos helps readers hear the unique voices of Hesiod and Herodotus, Solon and Socrates, Pericles and Parmenides, and a host of other ancient Greeks who lived their lives and dreamed their dreams in a world that may seem foreign to us but which helped to shape the world in which we live.




Voices at Work


Book Description

The songs of working women are reflected in Greek poetry and poetics. In ancient Greece, women's daily lives were occupied by various forms of labor. These experiences of work have largely been forgotten. Andromache Karanika has examined Greek poetry for depictions of women working and has discovered evidence of their lamentations and work songs. Voices at Work explores the complex relationships between ancient Greek poetry, the female poetic voice, and the practices and rituals surrounding women’s labor in the ancient world. The poetic voice is closely tied to women’s domestic and agricultural labor. Weaving, for example, was both a common form of female labor and a practice referred to for understanding the craft of poetry. Textile and agricultural production involved storytelling, singing, and poetry. Everyday labor employed—beyond its socioeconomic function—the power of poetic creation. Karanika starts with the assumption that there are certain forms of poetic expression and performance in the ancient world which are distinctively female. She considers these to be markers of a female “voice” in ancient Greek poetry and presents a number of case studies: Calypso and Circe sing while they weave; in Odyssey 6 a washing scene captures female performances. Both of these instances are examples of the female voice filtered into the fabric of the epic. Karanika brings to the surface the words of women who informed the oral tradition from which Greek epic poetry emerged. In other words, she gives a voice to silence.




Twelve Voices from Greece and Rome


Book Description

Introduction to twelve authors from classical antiquity, whose works still address some of our most fundamental concerns in the world today.




Voices of the Rocks


Book Description

Could the Egyptian Sphinx have been built many centuries earlier than conventional history would have us believe? Could the great natural disasters that propelled the evolution of life on Earth have played a dominant role as well in the rise and fall of civilizations? Could Earth have been home to civilizations far greater in number -- and far older -- than orthodox researchers have suspected? In Voices of the Rocks, Dr. Robert M. Schoch examines these and other crucial questions about our past and shows how the answers can guide us in the future. In 1990, Robert Schoch, a scientist and tenured university professor, traveled to Egypt and conducted geological testing to evaluate the accepted date for the construction of the Great Sphinx of Giza. His research revealed that the Sphinx is actually thousands of years older than previously supposed, a discovery that upended the standard history of ancient Egypt. Following the intellectual trail uncovered by his redating of the Sphinx, Schoch became convinced that we are in the midst of a profound scientific paradigm shift. The predominant notion that our species inhabits a slow-changing, steady-state planet is falling by the wayside. Instead, we are coming to see that the history of Earth, all living beings, and human civilizations comprises a series of stops and starts, in which equilibrium abruptly ends during a sudden severe catastrophe, like the extraterrestrial impact that initiated the extinction of the dinosaurs. Meteors, asteroids, and comets are potential sources of such disasters, as are shifts in Earth's axis, movements of the continents, volcanic eruptions, and earthquakes. According to Dr. Schoch, Earth'slong, catastrophic history has obscured and obliterated evidence of lost civilizations. But the traces remain for those who know where to look and what to look for. At its core, Voices of the Rocks is the story of Schoch's own search, his fascinating discoveries, and the warnings we must heed if we wish to survive whatever catastrophes the future has in store for us.




Ancestral Voices


Book Description

Recounts the work of leading nineteenth- and twentieth-century literary archaeologists in searching out, studying, and deciphering ancient writings and thereby retrieving the histories and literatures of ancient cultures.




Ancient Voices, Current Affairs


Book Description