Aramaic Proverbs of Ahikar

This paper offers a critical analysis of Rabbinic sources concerning the the history of Loshon HaQodesh. The paper first attempts to define the language known as "Loshon HaQodesh" and then trace its origins through Midrashic and Talmudic sources. The paper also follows the rise and decline of this language.
A more complete version of this paper was printed in Nov. 2014 under the name Lashon HaKodesh: History, Holiness, & Hebrew (Mosaica Press, 2014).

Many of the world's first written records have been found in the area of the ancient Near East, in what is today known as the Middle East. While many people are familiar with the ancient Israelite literature recorded in the Hebrew Bible, most Near Eastern literature remains a mystery. From an Antique Land lifts the veil from these fascinating writings, explaining the ancient stories in the context of their cultures.
From the invention of writing through the conquest of Alexander the Great, expert scholars examine literature originally written in Egyptian, Sumerian, Akkadian, Hittite, Ugaritic, Canaanite, Hebrew, and Aramaic. Each chapter includes an overview of the culture, a discussion of literary genres, and descriptions and short analyses of the major literary works. Photos of archaeological remains further illustrate these people and their writings.
Contributors: Gary Beckman, Carl S. Ehrlich, Benjamin R. Foster, Susan Tower Hollis, Ingo Kottsieper, Wayne T. Pitard, Gonzalo Rubio.

"In this note the author proposes a comparative analysis of two of the myths of destruction the mankind: the myth of Atrahasis, and the Egyptian Myth, extending the analysis also to the Old Testament. With regard to the Egyptian world of Egyptian the author suggests an analysis about the concept of ethno- extinction of Egyptian culture: the choice between anthropological and mythological response, starting from the study of myths and compare them with the social choice of the holders of Egyptian culture in the face of foreign domination of the country.

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Throughout Rabbinic literature—the Talmud and the Midrash—a mysterious creature known as the Salamandra is mentioned. This creature is also mentioned by various early philosophers and scientists. It is reported to have been created in fire and therefore have fire-resistant capabilities. Other sources attribute the origins of the Salamandra to witchcraft. This discrepancy is elaborated upon and several methods of resolution are presented. Nonetheless, all these mythological stories seem to contradict the reality where no such creature is found. This paper explores and reconciles the differences between various descriptions of the Salamandra’s origin and its role in rabbinic literature. Many Classic Rabbinic sources (from Medieval to contemporary) have been used throughout this work to illustrate the Salamandra’s significance in Jewish theology and laws of purity.

Readers have long wondered what is the meaning of the dog that briefly appears in the Jewish fairy tale known as the Book of Tobit. This article considers common answers such as influence from Ahikar, the Odyssey, influence of Persian culture and influence of folktale and goes into depth of the dog's significance in human culture, especially in connection with healing and defeating dragons and evil spirits and raises questions about the dog's possible connection to the archangel Raphael.

Bulgakov’s psychological and spiritual evolution can be reckoned as representative for his entire generation. Moving from Marxism to Idealism and finally conceiving his best known theory, namely Sophiology, he was considered by many one of the most influential and sometimes controversial Orthodox thinkers of the 20th century. The theory of Sophiology, his most disputed premise which lies at the center of his theological vision, is considered “a systematic attempt to work out the basis on which political action and policy could be seen as philosophically – and, eventual, theologically - legitimate” . If we reflect on our present cultural and political context we will find a renewed relevance in studying the evolution of Bulgakov’s theological and politic thought, due to the similarities of both periods. Just like in the last turn of the century, we also face issues of legitimacy of the political action, a new cultural paradigm and an economical crisis.

Intellectual puzzles have a tendency to intermix and accumulate in miscellaneous collections, as happens in present-day puzzle magazines. This phenomenon may already be observed in old compilations (cf. Palatine Anthology, book 14, which draws on earlier sources) and theoretical treatises of antiquity (Clearchus’ "On riddles", Athenaeus’ "Deipnosophistae" book 10). Long before such works, fictional and legendary narratives provided a framework for stringing together multifarious types of mental games. The Near-Eastern "Story of Ahiqar" and the Greek "Contest of Homer and Hesiod" use the old theme of the competition between two great sages as a plot structure to accommodate a veritable anthology of genres of riddles. The Greek legend of Homer and Hesiod may have influenced Aristophanic comedies such as the "Frogs" and the "Wasps". But while in the East the narrative form of the miscellaneous riddle contest was a fantastic outgrowth of the mixed compilations of wisdom literature, the corresponding Greek narratives were fictionalizations of the multifaceted entertainments of the symposion.

The narrative form of the miscellaneous riddle contest –that is, the earliest antecedent of the "puzzle magazine model" with its mixture of various puzzles– was invented in ancient Greece and West Asia more or less simultaneously and independently, on the basis of different local traditions. In the Near East the narrative anthology of Ahiqar’s griphoi was a fantastic offshoot of the miscellaneous collections of didactic literature; the bookish medley of wisdom genres was transplanted to the old legend of the confrontation between two masters of wisdom. The Greek stories, on the other hand, were fictionalizations of the multifaceted entertainments of the symposion. The Mesopotamian narrator pored over his learned written scrolls; the Greek one recounted, in the guise of a parable, the live delights of the convivial feast. The two cultures arrived at the same literary creation from different ways; but both of them are connected by the pure pleasure of intellectual play.

It is the same pleasure that also connects us with those remote ancestors, every time we pick up a rivista di enigmistica in order to fill in a crossword, answer a quiz, disentangle a labyrinth, or solve another one of its multifarious mental puzzles.

The Judean community at Elephantine has long fascinated historians of the Persian period. This book, with its stellar assemblage of important scholarly voices, provides substantive new insights and approaches that will advance the study of this well-known but not entirely understood community from fifth-century BCE Egypt.

La persona e l’insegnamento di Gesù Cristo e l’idea veterotestamentaria della sapienza

Siamo abituati ad osservare la persona e l’insegnamento di Gesù dal punto di vista profetico: in Gesù, vale a dire, si realizzarono tutte la profezie veterote-stamentarie. È plausibile affermare che in Lui si siano compiuti anche gli scritti sapienziali dell’Antico Testamento? La Bibbia ebraica usa diversi termini per esprimere l’idea della sapienza, tra questi, i più usati sono quelli con radice ḥkm, che si riferiscono tanto alla sapienza e alle capacità umane quanto alla sapienza che proviene da Dio. Nel corso della storia del pensiero veterotestamentario l’idea della sapienza fu personificata e immaginata come un essere di sesso femminile: una donna giovane che attira l’attenzione dei giovani, una donna vecchia che conosce bene la vita, una sorella, una moglie o una fidanzata. Nei testi biblici si possono notare delle tensioni nell’immagine della sapienza personificata: infatti Essa è contempora-neamente umana e divina, creata ed eterna. Queste
tensioni sono l’evidente te-stimonianza di come gli giografiintuissero che nella Sapienza Divina c’era mol-to più di quanto la loro fede monoteistica permettesse loro di esprimere e cioè il mistero della Sapienza Divina che sarà poi rivelato nel Nuovo Testamento: Gesù Cristo che col suo insegnamento, portò alla perfezione la sapienza umana, e nel contempo rivelò se stesso quale vera Sapienza di Dio personificata.

Volume 3 book 1 features the writingsof the Proverbs to the writings of the Prophet Jeremiah.  Arranged chronogically and renumbered into the hundreds. 
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Featuring the book of King Soomon and the Queen of Sheba, and the Book of Rolls from the records kept in Jerusalem. 
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Really interesting stuff

I propose that Comparative Cultural Studies, a hybrid field of scholarship grounded in critical humanities and social sciences which seeeks to make explicit connections between culture and society, is an appropriate theoretical frame in which to study paremiology, as I shall illustrate through a case study of the fourteenth-century Libro de Buen Amor.  The Libro, which contains some 400 proverbs, is an excellent source for studying the oral-textual dynamic between canonized works and oral discourses. Specifically, the Libro’s parodic use of proverbs also serves as an anti-discourse that humorously distorts both the trite oral authority of traditional proverbs and simultaneously the hackneyed textual authority of the cuaderna vía verse in which it is written.  I shall analyze a variety of proverbs in the work to illustrate how lost meanings can be recuperated through comparative cultural studies, in particular in relation to gender ideologies. Unusual features of my study will include comparative study of proverbs collected from twentieth-century Hungarian speakers, as well as the theoretical retrieval of several “silent” proverbs in the Libro, which do not actually appear in the surface text but clearly contribute to its deep structure.

Vol 3, book 1,  The Books of Elijah,  The writings of King Solomon to the writings of the Prophet Jeremiah. 
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Featuring the lost books of the Queen of Sheba, and the genealogical records of Jerusalem.  These two books are versions of Genesis that provide lots of grand data.

“Šlomo Surayt – An Introductory Course to Surayt-Aramaic (Turoyo)” has been developed within the framework of the Aramaic-Online Project (2014–2017), realised by a consortium consisting of four European universities – Free University of Berlin (Coordinator), University of Bergen (Applicant), University of Cambridge, Leipzig University – and the St Ephrem Syriac Orthodox Monastery in the Netherlands.
Šlomo Surayt is an introductory course, equivalent to A1-A2 level of CEFR. The course consists of 16 learning units, including texts and dialogues of everyday encounters and situations, structured grammatical explanations, and exercises related to the vocabulary and grammar. The online version of the course and all audio/video files can be found at www.surayt.com