The Haran Gawaitha


Book Description

The Haran Gawaita (Mandaic "Inner Haran" or "Inner Hauran") is a Mandaean text which purports to tell the history of the Mandaeans and their arrival in Media as "Nasoraeans" from Jerusalem




Guardians of the Holy Grail


Book Description

Presenting the ancient Holy Grail lineage from Asia and how the Knights Templar were initiated into it, this book reveals how ancient Asian wisdom became the foundation for the Holy Grail legend.




The City of the Moon God


Book Description

This study treats the religious and intellectual history of the city of Harran (Eastern Turkey) from biblical times down to the establishment of Islam. The author starts from the well-known reference in the Qur'an and the early Islamic histories to the people of Harran as Sabians, one of the 'peoples of the book.' The author unravels strands of religious tradition in Harran that run from the old Semitic planetary cults through Hellenistic hermeticism, gnosticism, and Neo-Pythagoreanism and Christian cults to esoteric Islamic sects such as the Sufis and Shiites.




Rescuing the Bible


Book Description

What is the future for the Bible, one of the most important books in the world? In this manifesto, Roland Boer explores the idea that the Bible is an unruly and uncontrollable text that has been colonized by church, synagogue, and state. Powerfully argues that the Bible needs to be rescued from its abuse by the religious and political right Considers the history of revolutionary readings of the Bible, from Gerrard Winstanley to the present Urges a role for the Bible in a new "worldly left": an alliance between the religious and secular left that can promote more progressive readings of the text Concludes by offering a "political myth" from the Bible that condemns oppression, imagines a better society and celebrates the biblical themes of opposition and chaos.




Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran


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India and the Greek World


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Lady E. S. Drower's Scholarly Correspondence


Book Description

An edition of the scholarly letters of the English Lady E. S. Drower, famous for her novels, travel accounts, and studies in the Middle East, especially on the Mandaeans. Drower (1879?1972) kept up a lively correspodence with scholars, and the letters here span the years 1938 to the mid?1960s.




Der Paraklet


Book Description




Wings and Roots


Book Description

It seems to me that with the development of the critical spirit we shall be able to realize, not merely our own selves, but the collective life of the race, and so to make ourselves absolutely modern, in the true meaning of the word modernity. For he to whom the present is the only thing that is present knows nothing of the age in which he lives. . . . To know anything about oneself, one must know all about others. There must be no mood with which one cannot sympathize, no dead mode of life that one cannot make alive.




Buddha and Christ


Book Description

The infancy narratives of the gospels of Matthew and Luke appear as a magnificent mosaic of allusions not only to the Hebrew Bible but also to Buddhist and Hindu religious traditions. Professor Thundy argues that many details of the infancy gospels as well as the rest of the gospels can be clarified by the Buddhist and Hindu scriptures. In this sense, the gospels are Eastern religious texts. Buddha and Christ covers the following topics in order: methodology of study, priority of Indian texts vis-à-vis Christian gospels, parallels of the birth narratives of Buddha and Jesus, uniqueness of Indian parallels, the Gnostic context of the Christian gospels, and contacts between India and the West in antiquity. Multicultural studies such as this encourage ecumenism and mutual understanding in East-West dialogues as well as reinforcing the view that the gospels should be taken seriously as Eastern religious texts.