When people prayed, they expected their gods to come, wrote Robin Lane Fox, providing the impetus for this volume of collected essays exploring the concept of how the ancients “envisioned” the deities within various ancient religious traditions. The perspectives of Judaism, Gnosticism, Syriac Christianity, Byzantium, and Classical Greco-Roman religion and philosophy are considered. Specific emphasis is given to phenomena such as dreams, visions, and initiatory rites mediating the divine encounter.

The early Christians were not of one mind when it came to war, violence and military service. There was a bewildering variety of opinion as to how they understood their place in the world. It seems however that generally they did not stand apart from society. On the contrary, they were happy to integrate and conform and they often accepted war and service in the army as activities which did not raise specific ethical problems.

Ritual and historical perspectives each provide only a partial view of early Jewish weddings. Combining these approaches allows for a new look at practices rejected or highlighted by early rabbis and their successors, and First Came Marriage: The Rabbinic Appropriation of Early Jewish Wedding Ritual investigates the process by which early Jews married and the various moves they used to minimize, elaborate or codify these practices.

This volume provides an analysis of a late fifteenth century document, a hitherto unpublished narration of the life and accomplishments of Yūḥanun Bar Šay Allāh, a fifteenth-century Syriac Orthodox Patriarch. It includes considerable unique historical information, shedding light on the history of the Syriac community in relation to other communities. It also supplies descriptions of events that brought important changes to the Syriac Church in Mesopotamia, Syria and Egypt.

The fame of the martyr St. Phokas, first bishop of Sinope (on the Black Sea) and patron of seafarers, had spread to many parts of the Christian world by the fifth and sixth centuries. Although the Acts of his martyrdom under Trajan were composed in Greek, the earliest witness to them is the Syriac translation which is edited and translated here from two early manuscripts.

A series of exegetical studies on the Septuagint psalter, focusing particularly on the extent to which the religious ideas and practice of the translators have influenced the translation and distinguished it from the Hebrew original.

This paper provides an Arabic text and English introduction on the holy works and literature of the Yezidi faith.

This book is full of useful and creative ideas for spiritual practice with children. It seeks to encourage youngsters to reflect on growing up and on making a positive contribution to the world. It takes deep themes and presents them in accessible, interesting and sometimes quirky ways, making a number of relevant, thought-provoking and challenging points for both children and adults to consider in relation to their place in the world and their dealings with one another. The practices in this book have been tried and tested over the past five years through the author’s contact with primary school children in a number of schools.

This volume constitutes a documentary history of the Maronites and their relationship to Rome from the 6th to the 16th century. The author provides texts in Latin, Arabic, Syriac, and French to illustrate this history.

A fascinating study of the underlying reasons for the disagreement over the clause “and the Son” in the Western version of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan creed, which contributed to the schism between Eastern and Western Christians. Coetzee argues that there has been a great deal of misunderstanding of the positions of each tradition by the other, partly due to the fact that East and West imbue certain key words, such as ‘person’ and ‘unity’, with different meanings which Coetzee believes come from different understandings of Hellenic philosophy. Against this backdrop, Coetzee sets about clearing up some of the misunderstandings.

This volume takes its cue from the theme of the International Eucharistic Congress to be held in Dublin in June 2012, ‘Communion with Christ and with one another’. In almost eighty short articles, a host of leading scholars from the worlds of history, liturgy, theology, philosophy, art history and Celtic Studies reflect upon aspects of the history of the Christian tradition in Ireland from the fifth to the twenty-first century, with a special emphasis on the relationship between the Irish people and the Eucharist. This is a wide-ranging illustrated collection which draws from the major Christian denominations in Ireland and includes entries on significant people, texts, images and events that have shaped the Irish Christian experience.

In this set of homilies Ephrem (306-373) invites the reader into a world of symbolic interpretation filled with imagination brimming beneath the surface of word-plays, alliteration, and typological comparisons. These hymns thrust the reader into the middle of a context in which Christians and Jews maintain competing practices of a Passover service to the extent that Ephrem feels the need to distinguish between the symbol and the reality. These homilies are presented in their Syriac original alongside an annotated English translation.

These are two unique Syriac texts from the same manuscript.

George Washburn’s memoir describes characters and events during his presidency of Robert College (1877–1903), the first American missionary college in the Ottoman Empire and the Near East, and the first American college founded outside the United States, as well as the rivalry between the declining Ottoman Empire and the rapidly growing United States.

As the year 2000 approached, Blessed John Paul II, who had himself participated in the Second Vatican Council, referred to it as ‘this great gift of the Spirit to the Church at the end of the second millennium’. Looking towards the coming millennium he asked to what extent the fruits of the Council could be seen in the Church. This year, 2012, fifty years after the Council opened, is a good opportunity to reflect again on that question. A complete examination of all the rich teaching of the Council and how it has been implemented is beyond the scope of this book – or perhaps of any book. What is written here is one person’s reflection on five themes of the Council and their implications for today’s world.

In this book, Fr Gabriel Harty tells his story in relation to the Rosary, the cultivation of his lifelong devotion to it, and the healing and grace it holds for all who partake in it. After serving as a chaplain and parish curate for some years, Gabriel M. Harty OP made the decision to devote his life to the service of the Mother of God in whatever way she wished. His search led him to the Dominican Order, and he was professed a friar of the Order of Preachers in 1950. Since then, Fr Gabriel has directed all his energies to the apostolate of the Rosary. This work is a wonderful testament to that apostolate