Bibliographia Iranica

A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies

Category: Books

  • Manichaeism and Church History

    Manichaeism and Church History

    Toft, Lasse Løvlund, Mattias Sommer Bostrup & René Falkenberg (eds.). 2025. On the Matter. Studies on Manichaeism and Church History Presented to Nils Arne Pedersen at Sixty-Five (Corpus Fontium Manichaeorum – Analecta Manichaica 4). Turnhout: Brepols Publishers.

    The anthology consists of twenty-nine studies on Manichaean texts in Coptic, Syriac, Chinese, and Iranian languages, as well as on broader Church History including texts from the Nag Hammadi Codices, Coptic and Syriac heresiology and Early Modern religious polemics. Of interest to all scholars of Manichaeism and Late Antique and Medieval Eastern Christianity, and to scholars working on the phenomenon of heresiology and doctrinal polemics within the churches at large. The anthology is a Festschrift for Nils Arne Pedersen at Aarhus University.

    TABLE OF CONTENTS

    Manichaean Texts, Imagery, and Terminology

    • Jean-Daniel Dubois, About the Use of the Term Pistos in Coptic Manichaean Writings
    • Iain Gardner, Who Was Salmaios and What Was His Lament?
    • Jason BeDuhn, Rethinking Manichaean Asceticism
    • Samuel N.C. Lieu, Database of Manichaean Texts – Past, Present, and Future
    • Claudia Leurini, Secret Messages: Traces of Cryptography in the Middle Persian Manichaean Hymns to the Church
    • Iris Colditz, Eine Parabel in einer Homilie Manis in parthischer Sprache
    • Yutaka Yoshida, Middle Iranian Fragments in Sogdian Script from the St. Petersburg Collection – The Fourth Section of the Manichaean Daily Prayers in Parthian and Some Other Middle Iranian Texts
    • Nicholas Sims-Williams, On the Sources of the Manichaean Sogdian Religious Terminology
    • Enrico Morano, A Manichaean Middle Persian Text on the Descent of the Holy Spirit and the Beginning of Mani’s Church (M788)
    • Gunner Mikkelsen, Pearl Imagery in a Chinese Manichaean Hymn
    • John Møller Larsen, Ligatures in the Syriac Manichaean Texts from Kellis
    • Erica C.D. Hunter, Hunting Manichaean Syriac Incantation Bowls
    • Sebastian P. Brock, Imagery Shared and Imagery Avoided: The Manichaean Psalms and Syriac Religious Poetry

    Nag Hammadi, the Bible, and Early Heterodoxy

    • Einar Thomassen, Manichaeans and Gnostics on the Creation of Humanity
    • Hugo Lundhaug, A Luminous Soul in the Likeness of God: Dispensing with the Psychic God in Paul’s Prayer for Revelation in Nag Hammadi Codex I
    • Anders Klostergaard Petersen, The Gospel of Truth as Fully-Fledged Christ Religion
    • Peter Nagel (†), Das Gleichnis vom viererlei Acker in den synoptischen Evangelien und im Thomasevangelium (Logion 9)
    • Mogens Müller, Traces of Marcion in the New Testament?

    Eastern Orthodoxies in Formation

    • Jan Dochhorn, Acherusischer See und Paradies im Zauberpapyrus London, Brit. Libr. Or. 5987, l. 13–24
    • Lasse Løvlund Toft, Virgin Mary as a Heavenly Power in Egypt: Doctrinal Polemics and Theological Diversity in Coptic and Copto-Arabic Homiletic Apocrypha on the God-bearer
    • David G.K. Taylor, Eschatological Rivers of Fire and Purgatorial Purification in Sixth-Century Syriac Texts
    • Flavia Ruani, Le catalogue d’hérésies de Jacques bar Šakko (XIIIe s.) :Livre des trésors II. De l’Incarnation du Verbe, ch. 1
    • Paul-Hubert Poirier (†), Une traduction latine inédite du Contra Manichaeos de Titus de Bostra
    • Henning Lehmann, Eusebius of Emesa Interpreting Exod. 3:14f: Some Remarks on Recent Eusebius Studies

    Churches, and Theologies in Early Modern and Modern Northern Europe

    • Per Ingesman, ‘In Principio Erat Error, Et Error Erat Apud Lutherum’: Paulus Helie on Luther and His Adherents in the Danish Reformation
    • Rasmus H.C. Dreyer, Between Danish and German: A First-Generation Danish Reformer as Lutheran Superintendent (1541–1561)
    • Carsten Bach-Nielsen, Theme and Variations: Lazarus and the Rich Man. Iconography of a New Testament narrative in an age of Reform, c. 1500–1640
    • Kim Arne Pedersen, Grundtvig, the Greeks, and Heresy
    • Mattias Sommer Bostrup, The Life and Afterlives of Bishop Fredrik Nielsen (1846–1907): Social Functions of Church History at the Fin de Siècle
  • Chotano-Sogdica. Linguistic Studies on Sogdian and Khotanese

    Chotano-Sogdica. Linguistic Studies on Sogdian and Khotanese

    Sims-Williams, Nicholas. 2025. Chotano-Sogdica. Linguistic Studies on Sogdian and Khotanese (Grammatica Iranica, 4). Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press.

    Über ein halbes Jahrhundert lang, seit 1972, hat Nicholas Sims-Williams viele wichtige Artikel über die älteren iranischen Sprachen veröffentlicht, insbesondere über das östliche Mitteliranisch (Sogdisch, Baktrisch und Khotanisch). Nahezu alle seine Artikel über Sogdisch und Khotanisch sind im vorliegenden Band zusammengefasst, zusammen mit drei völlig neuen Artikeln mit den Titeln „Is there a ‘predicative instrumental’ in Sogdian?“, „Yaghnobi and the Sogdian ‘Rhythmic Law’“ und „The locative singular in Old Khotanese“. Die Ergänzungen und Korrekturen, die aufgrund der fünfzigjährigen Fortschritte im Verständnis dieser Sprachen notwendig geworden sind, werden durchgehend hinzugefügt, jedoch sorgfältig vom Originaltext getrennt, um das Auffinden von Verweisen auf frühere Versionen zu erleichtern. Das Buch wird durch detaillierte Register ergänzt und ist ein unverzichtbares Nachschlagewerk für Studierende und Wissenschaftler, die sich für zentralasiatische Geschichte und Literatur sowie für iranische und indogermanische Linguistik interessieren.

  • Zoroastrianism and contemporary philosophy

    Zoroastrianism and contemporary philosophy

    Nolan, Daniel. 2025. Zoroastrianism and contemporary philosophy (Elements in Global Philosophy of Religion). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Zoroastrianism is a religion with a long history, but it has been comparatively neglected by contemporary philosophers. This Element aims to bring aspects of its long intellectual history into conversation with contemporary Anglo-American philosophy. Section 1 provides an introduction to Zoroastrianism and its history, some of the important texts, and some contemporary philosophy engaged with Zoroastrian themes. Section 2 discusses distinctive contributions Zoroastrian thought can make to the problems of evil and suffering. And Section 3 discusses a ‘quasi-universalist’ approach to puzzles about heaven and salvation, inspired by Zoroastrian theological texts.

    Summary

    For those with access,this title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

  • The Achaemenid Dynastic Myth and Jewish Scribes in the Late Persian Period

    The Achaemenid Dynastic Myth and Jewish Scribes in the Late Persian Period

    Leuchter, Mark A. 2025. An Empire Far and Wide: The Achaemenid Dynastic Myth and Jewish Scribes in the Late Persian Period. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    This book offers a new approach to evidence to examine Persian imperial ideology and surveys literary products of ancient Jewish scribes to analyze the influence of Persian imperialism on the development of Yehudite scribal ideology and presents an argument for the existence of Judaism in the Persian period.

  • Man, Landscape, and Society in Arsacid and Sasanian Iran

    Man, Landscape, and Society in Arsacid and Sasanian Iran

    Cereti, Carlo Giovanni, Pierfrancesco Callieri & Vito Messina (eds.). 2025. Eranshahr. Man, Landscape, and Society in Arsacid and Sasanian Iran (Collana Convegni 75). Rome: Sapienza Università Editrice.

    This fourth volume of the Atlas of the Ancient Near East (OCAVOA) collects 15 contributions by members of the three Units composing the PRIN 2017 ‘Eranshahr: Man Landscape and Society in Arsacid and Sasanian Iran. Texts, material culture, and society from Arsaces to Yazdegard III. Three case studies: Pars, Pahlaw and Khuzestan’ (2017PR34CS). These papers were presented during the conclusive workshop of the project, held in Ravenna on February 22-23, 2024. The project was conceived in 2017 and launched in 2018, representing a collaborative effort by a multidisciplinary team of scholars from Sapienza University of Rome, Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna, and Turin University, as well as several international partners. The project aimed to study the long millennium bridging two important transition periods in the history of western Asia, the first marking the passage from the Seleucid to the Arsacid era, the second being the fall of the Sasanian Empire and the rise of the Islamic Caliphate. In this framework, the book contains a set of archaeological, historical-geographical, and cultural studies on three ancient regions of western Iran during the Arsacid, Sasanian, and early Islamic periods, which combine into a coherent and innovative narration, shedding new light on the Iranian world in Antiquity, Late-Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages and opening the way for future investigations.

  • From Alexander to Kanishka

    From Alexander to Kanishka

    Bousdroukis, Apostolos. 2025. D’Alexandre à Kanishka : Interactions culturelles dans les fondations des successeurs d’Alexandre, du Proche-Orient à la vallée de l’Indus, aux époques hellénistique, romaine et arsacide : Volume I & Volume II (MDAFA 35). Athens: École française d’Athènes.

    From the Eastern Mediterranean to the Indus Valley, the successors of Alexander the Great founded, as early as the 4th century BCE, an impressive network of cities inspired by Macedonian urban models. Who were their inhabitants? How did these cities function and evolve within such diverse cultural contexts as the Near East, Mesopotamia, or Bactria? In this two-volume work, Apostolos Bousdroukis invites us to rediscover these foundations through a scholarly investigation grounded in the most recent archaeological evidence. Civic institutions, public monuments, sanctuaries, domestic architecture, and religious practices are all examined, not only in their local particularities but also in their capacity to absorb, transform, or blend Greek and indigenous traditions. Far from offering a simple urban history, this study sheds light on the complex interactions between Greek settlers and local populations — encompassing processes of adoption, adaptation, and cultural hybridization. It reveals how these cities became dynamic centers of exchange and cultural innovation, contributing to the shaping of new identities in a world undergoing profound transformation.

  • Dura-Europos: Past, Present, Future

    Dura-Europos: Past, Present, Future

    Brody, Lisa & Anne H. Chen (eds.). 2025. Dura-Europos: Past, Present, Future. Turnhout. Brepols.

    This volume brings together an international and interdisciplinary host of scholars to reflect on the complicated legacies of exploration at the archaeological site of Dura-Europos, situated on the western bank of the Euphrates River near modern Salihiyeh (Syria). A chance discovery after World War I kicked off a series of excavations that would span the next century and whose finds are today housed in collections worldwide, including the Yale University Art Gallery, the Louvre, and the National Museum in Damascus. Dura-Europos exemplifies a multiethnic frontier town at the crossroads of major trade routes. Its textual remains and remarkably-preserved Christian, Jewish, and polytheist religious sanctuaries provide key resources for the study of antiquity and attest to the cross-cultural interconnectivity that was demonstrably central to the ancient world but which has been too often obscured by Eurocentric historiographic traditions and siloed disciplinary divisions.

    Foreign-run, large-scale archaeological campaigns of the early twentieth century, like those at Dura-Europos, have created narratives of power and privilege that often exclude local communities. The significance of these imbalances is entangled with the destruction the site has experienced since the 2011 outbreak of conflict in Syria. As a step toward making knowledge descendant of early excavations more accessible, this volume includes Arabic summaries of each paper, following up on the simultaneous Arabic interpretation provided at the 2022 hybrid conference whose proceedings form the core of this publication. The papers address topics connected to essential themes in relation to Dura-Europos: long-distance trade relations and cross-border interactions in antiquity, including the exchange of technologies, people, and materials; Christianity, Judaism, and other religious practices, and their relations to one another; contemporary trafficking of looted artifacts; cultural heritage and the Islamic State; and the evolving role of museum collections, technologies, and archival materials for research.

  • Ahreman’s Ascent

    Ahreman’s Ascent

    Panaino, Antonio. 2025. Ahreman’s ascent and the direction of his primordial aggression. With an excursus about the cosmic egg (Publications d’Études Indo-Iraniennes 4). Strasbourg: Université de Strasbourg.

    This study analyses the problem of the trajectory taken by Ahreman during his aggression against the Good Creation. In the Pahlavi texts, this attack moves from the bottom of the universe to the top, passing throughout the intermediate void. This means that the heaven of the stars, pierced by the demonic army in the circumpolar area, was not spherical at that moment, and that the cosmos did not follow a homocentric model, or Ahreman, coming from the outer space, would have aggressed directly Ohrmazd, whose paradisiacal sphere would have been the most external one. Actually, the cosmos assumed a homocentric shape only after the aggression, and this shows that the Sasanian theologians mixed an earlier non spherical model with a later spherical one with contradictory results. Parallel problems emerge with reference to certain narrations concerning Ahreman’s expulsion from the lowest heaven, whose effects would have produced the transfer of the antagonist not out of the universe, but in a superior sphere. The present book discusses this and other uranographic problems in connection with the complex evolution of Zoroastrian cosmology since the Avestan period till the later phases, when the Mazdeans were living within a dominating Islamic cultural framework.

    Summary
  • An Old Khotanese Reader

    An Old Khotanese Reader

    Sims-Williams, Nicholas, with contributions by Jonathan A. Silk. 2025. An Old Khotanese Reader: The Tale of Bhadra (Beiträge zur Iranistik 53). Wiesbaden: Reichert.

    This reader contains the complete text of the Buddhist ‘Tale of Bhadra’, the second chapter of the Old Khotanese Book of Zambasta, accompanied by a translation, commentary and glossary. All morphological forms occurring in the text are identified in the glossary and in the introduction, which also includes a survey by Jonathan A. Silk of sources and parallels in other languages. The volume thus provides everything required to make this text accessible either to a student who has already worked through the ‘Introduction to Khotanese’ which forms the first part of R. E. Emmerick’s Handbook of Khotanese (BzI 51, 2024) or even to a complete beginner. It also contains substantial original material, particularly in the commentary and the etymological notes in the glossary, which will be of interest to specialists in Khotanese and in Iranian and Indo-European languages in general.

  • Zoroastrian Women

    Zoroastrian Women

    Niechciał, Paulina. 2025. Zoroastrian Women in the United States of America: Practicing Lived Zoroastrianism in a Diaspora (The Vastness of Culture). Kraków: Jagiellonian University Press.

    This book examines how ancient Zoroastrianism is practiced in the US diaspora and how it has evolved dynamically. As it developed in the patriarchal cultures of Iran and India, to move beyond the dominant male perspective, this book focuses on women. The lived religion approach demonstrates that Zoroastrianism in their everyday experiences is more than just a religion, but is a spiritual path, an ethnic tradition, and a cultural identity. Some women challenge old patterns, and Zoroastrianism in the diaspora turns out to be multifaceted and vibrant, despite the fear held by some community members that it may become extinct.

    Richly illustrated with the narratives of subsequent generations of Iranian and Parsi immigrants as well as photos, the book gives a taste of the diverse Zoroastrian life across the US. It not only broadens the picture of the ethnoreligious landscape in the country and expands interest in Zoroastrian studies, but also highlights the role of social practice theory in the study of religion, demonstrating how it may apply to qualitative field research, stimulating further discussion.