Grounded in a variety of disciplines, including Assyriology, Classics, and early Islamic history, the 15 essays in this volume cover a broad geographic area: Greece, Egypt, Syria-Palestine, Mesopotamia, and Persia. Topics include celestial divination in early Mesopotamia, the civic festivals of classical Athens, and Christian magical papyri from Coptic Egypt. Moving forward to Late Antiquity, we see how Judaism, Christianity, and Islam each incorporated many aspects of ancient Near Eastern and Graeco-Roman religion into their own prayers, rituals, and conceptions. Even if they no longer conceived of the sun, moon, and the stars as eternal or divine, Christians, Jews, and Muslims often continued to study the movements of the heavens as a map on which divine power could be read.

Table of Contents:

Contents

Acknowledgments

List of Abbreviations

List of Figures

Introduction

Scott Noegel, Joel Walker, and Brannon Wheeler

Part I Locating Magic

1. Here, There, and Anywhere

Jonathan Z. Smith

Part II Prayer, Magic, and Ritual

2. Thessalos of Tralles and Cultural Exchange

Ian Moyer

3. The Prayer of Mary in the Magical Book of Mary and the Angels

Marvin Meyer

4. Hebrew, Hebrew Everywhere? Notes on the Interpretation of Voces Magicae

Gideon Bohak

5. Magic and Society in Late Sasanian Iraq

Michael G. Morony

Part III Dreams and Divination

6. The Open Portal: Dreams and Divine Power in Pharaonic Egypt

Kasia Szpakowska

7. Viscera and the Divine: Dreams as a Divinatory Bridge Between the Corporeal and the Incorporeal

Peter Struck

8. Stars and the Egyptian Priesthood in the Graeco-Roman Period

Jacco Dieleman

9. Divination and Its Discontents: Finding and Questioning Meaning in Ancient and Medieval Judaism

Michael D. Schwartz

Part IV The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars

10. Heaven and Earth: Divine-Human Relations in Mesopotamian Celestial Divination

Francesca Rochberg

11. Astral Religion and the Representation of Divinity: The Cases of Ugarit and Judah

Mark S. Smith

12. A New Star on the Horizon: Astral Christologies and Stellar Debates in Early Christian Discourse

Nicola Denzey

13. At the Seizure of the Moon: The Absence of the Moon in the Mithras Liturgy

Radcliffe Edmonds

Contributors

Index