Skip to main content

Reference Books

Old book bindings
Disclaimer: Some links on this pager are Amazon Affiliate links and as such, I earn from qualifying purchases.  The books here are books that I can personally recommend and have either referenced in blog posts or used in the past for coursework.

General

The historian Lecouteux has put together what amounts to a dictionary of stones and gems. It is extensively researched and pulls from a number of ancient sources, though the names used often aren't the colloquial names for the stones.

Christianity

Ehrman and Plese have put together a collection of the apocryphal Gospels, including the fragments, in a single volume set 

Renowned scholar Bruce Metzger's work examining the development of New Testament canon

Malleus Maleficarum

By the same editor who created the two-volume set below, this is an English translation of the Malleus Maleficarum

This is a two volume set of a heavily annotated and thoroughly researched version of the Malleus Maleficarum. Volume 1 is the Latin text and volume 2 is the English

Malleus Maleficarum is a weird book that didn't necessarily reflect any common views of its time period and as such can be hard to understand. This book examines the Malleus Maleficarum in its medieval context and explains the twisted perspective it's working from.







Popular posts from this blog

Nyx, the goddess of night

Not being one of the 12 Olympians, Nyx is a relatively unknown goddess with little lore or legends about her. Most of what we have are descriptions of her from other deities, though what we do know is fascinating. Even for a goddess, she was ancient, being among the first children of Chaos and the mother of many who unfortunately ended up more well known than her. That is perhaps why she was such a powerful goddess. Her age and her legacy made her fearsome. While we don't know much, what we do know is that she was strong. Strong enough to terrify Zeus, who was himself obviously exceedingly powerful and feared. In Homer's Illiad 8.15-20 it explicitly states about Zeus' strength: ἐξάπτεσθε θεοὶ πᾶσαί τε θέαιναι: ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἂν ἐρύσαιτ᾽ ἐξ οὐρανόθεν πεδίον δὲ Ζῆν᾽ ὕπατον μήστωρ᾽, οὐδ᾽ εἰ μάλα πολλὰ κάμοιτε. ἀλλ᾽ ὅτε δὴ καὶ ἐγὼ πρόφρων ἐθέλοιμι ἐρύσσαι, αὐτῇ κεν γαίῃ ἐρύσαιμ᾽ αὐτῇ τε θαλάσσῃ: σειρὴν μέν κεν ἔπειτα περὶ ῥίον Οὐλύμποιο δησαίμην, τὰ δέ κ᾽ αὖτε μετήορα πάντα γένοι...
Read more

Not an Apple

Genesis 3 is probably one of the most famous parts of the Old Testament. It's where the devil convinced Eve to eat an apple from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Except not. The Hebrew is pretty clear. The נָחָשׁ mentioned in the first verse is just the Hebrew word for "serpent". It has nothing to do with the figure who would later become identified as the Christian Satan. And it wasn't an apple.          Again, the Hebrew text is reasonably clear. The word used is פְּרִי which literally just means "fruit". Like in English, this can be an actual fruit or metaphorical for the "fruit of ___". Hebrew has a separate word for "apple" תַּפּוּחַ which does not show up (as far as I'm aware) in Genesis. So how did we get the whole "Apple" thing? Because languages are fun! The "apple" translation comes from people working with and getting confused by the Latin translation of the Old Testament. In Latin, the word...
Post a Comment
Read more