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Books

The Star of Bethlehem and the Magi

Barthel, Peter & George van Kooten (eds.). 2015. The star of Bethlehem and the Magi. Interdisciplinary perspectives from experts on the ancient Near East, the Greco-Roman world, and modern astronomy (Themes in Biblical Narrative 19). Leiden: Brill.

This book is the fruit of the first ever interdisciplinary international scientific conference on Matthew’s story of the Star of Bethlehem and the Magi, held in 2014 at the University of Groningen, and attended by world-leading specialists in all relevant fields: modern astronomy, the ancient near-eastern and Greco-Roman worlds, the history of science, and religion. The scholarly discussions and the exchange of the interdisciplinary views proved to be immensely fruitful and resulted in the present book. Its twenty chapters describe the various aspects of The Star: the history of its interpretation, ancient near-eastern astronomy and astrology and the Magi, astrology in the Greco-Roman and the Jewish worlds, and the early Christian world – at a generally accessible level. An epilogue summarizes the fact-fiction balance of the most famous star which has ever shone.

Table of contents

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Events

Conference Program | societyforiranianstudies.org

The eleventh biennal conference of the International Society for Iranian Studies will take place in Vienna from 2 to 5 August 2016.

For more information on the conference, see this link. And here is the conference programme.

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Articles

Vermin and poison in Zoroastrian thought

Lincoln, Bruce. 2015. Toward a more materialistic ethics: Vermin and poison in Zoroastrian thought. Studia Iranica 44(1). 83–98.

Absent from the Older Avesta, vermin and poison first appear in a few verses of the Younger Avesta, whose authors misinterpreted Yasna 34.5c (where they mistook adjectival xrafstra- for a substantive) and Yasna 49.11c (whose ‘evil foods’ [akāiš xvarəθāiš] they took to be poison [viša-]). The Pahlavi texts take the argument further, developing a narrative in which these creatures and substances become prime weapons of Ahriman in his assault on Ohrmazd’s Good Creation. Speculation along these lines introduced novel understandings of evil as a lethal substance, rather than a destructive disposition or spirit, moving questions of morality from metaphysics to physics.

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Books

Achaemenids and Greeks

omslagDahlén, Ashk (ed.). 2016. Antikens Persien. Umeå: H:ström Text & Kultur.

The  Achaemenian Empire was the first of the Persian Empires to become an important political and economic power in the ancient world for more than two hundred years. It transformed the entire area from the Greek islands in the west to Central Asia in the east to a continuous trading with efficient infrastructure and monetary economics. However Greco-Persian Wars, also often called the Persian Wars were a series of conflicts between the Achaemenid Empire of Persia and Greek city-states that started in 499 BC and lasted until 449 BC. , and as long overshadowed the western image of the Ancient Persia.

This volume is the first introduction to the Achaemenid Empire in Swedish. It is dedicated to Swedish archeologist, professor Carl Nylander and is a tribute to his pioneering work in the field of early Achaemenid archeology.

“Antikens Persien” covers a range of interrelated topics such as political history, multiculturalism, architecture, language, and literature. Its aim is provide a general introduction to ancient Persia for Swedish readers and also to highlight the diverse and flourishing interactions between Persians and Greeks in various fields.

Table of Contents:

  • Förord
  • Lennart Lind: “Persien och Grekland”
  • Johan Mårtelius: “Arkitektur och konst”
  • Bo Utas: “Språk och litteratur”
  • Ashk Dahlén: “Kosmopolitism och mångkultur”
  • Vidare läsning
  • Appendix: Bilder

About the Editor:

Ashk Dahlén (PhD 2002) is Associate Professor in Iranian Languages at Uppsala University and founding president of the Scandinavian Society for Iranian Studies. Among his research interests are classical Persian literature, Iranian cultural history, mythology, religions, and historical continuities between ancient and medieval Iran.

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Articles

Repetitions or Omissions? Different Versions of Widēwdād 22

Ferrer-Losilla, Juanjo. 2015. Repetitions or omissions? Different versions of Widēwdād 22. Studia Iranica 44 (2).  207–225.

The present paper analyses two versions that appear in the 22nd chapter of an intercalated text of the Zoroastrian Long Liturgy, the Widēwdād: a longer version in the Iranian manuscripts and a shorter in the Indian ones. It is shown that we stand before two different real versions in the ritual praxis of this ceremony, though it is difficult to evaluate the date in which each version appeared or whether one version could arise from the other after the beginning of the written transmission. Other passages of the Widēwdād containing similar problems are analysed in a brief appendix.

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Articles Journal

DABIR – Vol. 1, Issue 2

The latest issue of DABIR has been published and is available here: Issue 02 – Dabir Journal.

The Digital Archive of Brief notes & Iran Review (DABIR) is an open access, peer-reviewed online journal published by the Dr. Samuel M. Jordan Center for Persian Studies and Culture at the University of California, Irvine.

Table of Contents

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Books

Avestica

Humbach, Helmut & Klaus Faiss. 2016. Avestica. (Münchener Studien Zur Sprachwissenschaft. Beiheft NF 25). Dettelbach: Verlag J.H. Röll.

This volume presents a collection of academic papers (mostly have been presented in the context of academic conferences) on different aspects of the Avestan and Zoroastrian studies, based on a very detailed philological and linguistic examination of various texts and concepts and  in all its phonological, morphological, syntactical, semantic, and etymological aspects.

 Table of Contents
  • Preface 7
  • Publications Helmut Humbach
  • Herz – Feuer – Seele. Bekehrung im vorgeschichtlichen Iran
  • The Avestan world with particular reference to the Mihr Yašt (Yt. 10,14-15)
  • The first chapter of the Avestan Vidēvdād
  • ‘Wind’ an Old Iranian Deity
  • Haoma Dūraoša and Grass in Zarathushtra’s Gāthās
  • Zarathushtra, Gāthic Poetry, and the Two Spirits
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Articles

Middle Persian abāz-handāxtan

Saadat, Yusef. 2014. “Middle Persian abāz-handāxtan,” Journal of persianate studies 7, 137-148.

The verb abāz-handāxtan is used in Dēnkard IV. Different definitions of the verb caused two divergent interpretations of the history of the Zoroastrians scriptures during Sasanian era. This article does not attempt to provide a third category of meaning, but tries to suggest a kind of modification to the traditionally accepted meaning of ‘to collate’. The new proposed meaning is derived from New Persian texts, which include similar usage of the verb and were written not much later than Middle Persian ones. The suggested meaning is ‘to (re-)measure’.

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Articles

Assyrianizing Contexts at Hasanlu Tepe IVb

Danti, M. D. and M. Cifarelli. 2016. “Assyrianizing Contexts at Hasanlu Tepe IVb?: Materiality and Identity in Northwest Iran,” In J. MacGinnis, D. Wicke & T. Greenfield (eds.), The Provincial Archaeology of the Assyrian Empire. (Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research), 357-370, The Provincial Archaeology of the Assyrian Empire.

In this paper, the author briefly surveys and reappraises some of the evidence for Neo-Assyrian contact at the Iron II (1050–800 BC) settlement of Hasanlu Tepe in the southern Lake Urmia Basin, located east of Assyria in the western Zagros Mountains of Iran

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Books

Dadabhai Naoroji’s correspondence

Mehrotra, Sri Ram & Dinyar Patel (eds.). 2016. Dadabhai Naoroji. Oxford University Press.

Dadabhai Naoroji (1825-1917), popularly known as the ‘Grand Old Man of India, was a Parsi intellectual, educator, and early Indian political thinker. The first Indian to publicly demand ‘Swaraj’ for India from the Congress platform in 1906, he was thrice president of the Indian National Congress and the first Indian to be elected to the British House of Commons. This volume brings together for the first time a substantial collection of private papers, including handwritten notes and personal letters, of Dadabhai Naoroji from the National Archives of India. Divided into twenty-two sections, the volume chronicles Naoroji’s interactions with political leaders, scholars, friends, and acquaintances from A.O. Hume, one of the founders of the Indian National Congress, to the well-known historian R.C. Dutt to Gopal Krishna Gokhale, the famous Indian political leader whom Naoroji mentored. The volume includes a detailed Introduction which sets the context for Dadabhai Naoroji’s life and work.

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