About the Authors

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter 1
2. CONTENT 5
3. Preface and Acknowledgements 9
4. The Construction and Transfer of Knowledge in the Pre-Modern Era 13
5. SECTION 1: METHODOLOGICAL AND THEORETICAL ASPECTS
6. Transmitting Symbolic Concepts from the Perspective of Cultural Cognition – The Acquisition and Transfer of Folk-biological Knowledge 41
7. The Transfer of Knowledge from Mesopotamia to Egypt 71
8. Epistemology in the Biblical Tradition – Judean Knowledge-Building, Scribal Craftsmanship, and Scribal Culture 99
9. Bodies of Texts, Bodies of Tradition – Medical Expertise and Knowledge of the Body among Rabbinic Jews in Late Antiquity 123
10. The Reception and Rejection of “Foreign” Astronomical Knowledge in Byzantium 167
11. SECTION 2: OF MAN AND MOON – KNOWLEDGE AND CULTURAL MEANING OF THE MOON
12. “He assigned Him as the Jewel of the night” – The Knowledge of the Moon in Mesopotamian Texts of the Late Second and First Millennia BCE 187
13. Shapeshifter – Knowledge of the Moon in Graeco-Roman Egypt 213
14. Concepts Concerning the Moon in Plutarch’s De facie in orbe lunae – Found, Inherited, or Borrowed Ideas 253
15. Conclusion – Of Moon and Men: Observations about the Knowledge of the Moon in Antiquity 279
16. SECTION 3: THE END OF THE WORLD IN FIRE – IMAGINATIONS FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE MIDDLE AGES
17. Know Your Sources Before You Argue – Minucius Felix and Augustine of Hippo on the Conflagration 289
18. The Idea of an Apocalyptic Fire According to the Old and Middle Iranian Sources 313
19. Poets, Prophets, and Philosophers – The End of the World According to Otto von Freising 343
20. The Ragnarǫk Myth in Scandinavia – Finding, Inheriting, and Borrowing 365
21. Conclusion – The End of the World in Fire 385
22. About the Authors 391
23. Authors and Texts Cited 395
24. General index 403