أسـرار الصابئـة مذهب عبادة الكواكب في حرّان القديمة بقلم العلاّمة الكبير ج.ب. سيغال
جورج سيغال جورج سيغال
Read MoreAhiqar’s Proverbs / Dr. Arthur Brown
-What is stronger than a braying ass? The load. -The son who is trained and taught and on whose feet the fetter is put shall prosper. -Withhold not thy son from the rod, else thou wilt not be able to save him from wickedness. -If I smite thee, my son, thou wilt not die, but if I leave thee to thine own heart thou wilt not live. -A blow for a bondman, a rebuke for a bondwoman, and for all thy slaves discipline. -One who buys a runaway slave or a thievish handmaid squanders his fortune and disgraces the name of his father and his offspring with the reputation of his wantonness. -The scorpion...
Read MoreTHE WORDS OF AHIQAR “ Aramaic Proverbs and Precepts “ – Translator: H. L. Ginsberg
The text is preserved as the more recent writing on eleven sheets of palimpsest papyrus of the late fifth century B.C. recovered by German excavators from the debris of Elephantine, Upper Egypt, in the years 1906-7. The first four papyri, with a total of five columns, contain the story of Ahiqar, which is in the first person; the remaining seven, with a total of nine columns, contain Ahiqar’s sayings. The composition of the work may antedate the preserved copy by as much as a century. The action of the narrative centers about the court of the Assyrian kings Sennacherib ( 704-681) and...
Read MoreStorytelling, the Meaning of Life, and The Epic of Gilgamesh / Arthur A. Brown
Stories do not need to inform us of anything. They do inform us of things. From The Epic of Gilgamesh, for example, we know something of the people who lived in the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the second and third millenniums BCE. We know they celebrated a king named Gilgamesh; we know they believed in many gods; we know they were self-conscious of their own cultivation of the natural world; and we know they were literate. These things we can fix — or establish definitely. But stories also remind us of things we cannot fix — of what it means to be human. They...
Read MoreTHE SENTENCES OF THE SYRIAC MENANDER The Epitome of the Sentences of the Syriac ‘Menander / by T. BAARDA
The Epitome of the Sentences of the Syriac ‘Menander’ 1 Menander, the Sage, (1) 2 Before everything, fear God, 3 and honor the one that is older than you, 4 for thus you shall be honored by God. (2) 5 Flee from everything that is hateful. (3) 6 There is no one who follows his stomach or his lust, 7 who immediately shall not be dishonored and despised. (4) 8 Blessed is the man who has mastered his stomach and his lust. (5) 9 The main source of all good things is the fear of God: 10 it delivers us from all evil things, 11 and in your distresses you will call upon him, 12 and he will...
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