Wisdom In The Ancient World

This book brings the different aspects of the study of ancient wisdom together and presents it as a subject in its own right, looking at wise deities, wise figures from myth and legend, wise characters from ancient history, practices associated with wisdom (including divination and healing), and wisdom as it appears in ancient literature.

John Anthony West's revolutionary reinterpretation of the civilization of Egypt challenges all that has been accepted as dogma concerning Ancient Egypt. In this pioneering study West documents that: Hieroglyphs carry hermetic messages that convey the subtler realities of the Sacred Science of the Pharaohs. Egyptian science, medicine, mathematics, and astronomy were more sophisticated than most modern Egyptologists acknowledge. Egyptian knowledge of the universe was a legacy from a highly sophisticated civilization that flourished thousands of years ago. The great Sphinx represents geological proof that such a civilization existed. This revised edition includes a new introduction linking Egyptian spiritual science with the perennial wisdom tradition and an appendix updating West's work in redating the Sphinx. Illustrated with over 140 photographs and line drawings.

The wisdom tradition of ancient Israel, represented in the Hebrew Bible by Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes and in the Apocrypha by Ben Sira and the Wisdom of Solomon, is also well-attested in the texts from Qumran. 4QInstruction (1Q26, 4Q415–418, 4Q423), the largest wisdom text of the Dead Sea Scrolls, is considered a sapiential text primarily because of its explicit and insistent pedagogical nature. To make this significant wisdom text more widely available, this volume offers a critical edition, translation, and commentary on the main fragments of 4QInstruction. It examines particular texts of 4QInstruction as well as broader issues, including its date, genre, main themes, and place in Second Temple Judaism. Finally, in order to contextualize this pivotal work, 4QInstruction’s relationship to the sapiential and apocalyptic traditions is also explored.

THE PERFECT READ FOR TROUBLED TIMES From the bestselling author of The Story of the British Isles in 100 Places comes this inspiring and beautifully written meditation on the wisdom inherited from our ancestors. For all we have gained in the modern world, simple peace of mind is hard to find. In a time that is increasingly fraught with complexity and conflict, we are told that our wellbeing relies on remaining as present as possible. But what if the key to being present lies in the past? In Wisdom of the Ancients, Neil Oliver takes us back in time, to grab hold of the ideas buried in forgotten cultures and early civilizations. From Laetoli footprints in Tanzania to Keralan rituals, stone circles and cave paintings, Oliver takes us on a global journey through antiquity. A master storyteller, drawing on immense knowledge of our ancient past, he distils this wisdom into twelve messages that have endured the test of time, and invites us to consider how these might apply to our lives today. The result is powerful and inspirational, moving and profound.

Craig G. Bartholomew and Ryan P. O'Dowd provide an informed introduction to the Old Testament wisdom books Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Job. More than an introduction, however, this is a thoughtful consideration of the hermeneutical implications of this literature.

Many of us are alarmed by the accelerating rates of extinction of plants and animals. But how many of us know that human cultures are going extinct at an even more shocking rate? While biologists estimate that 18 percent of mammals and 11 percent of birds are threatened, and botanists anticipate the loss of 8 percent of flora, anthropologists predict that fully 50 percent of the 7,000 languages spoken around the world today will disappear within our lifetimes. And languages are merely the canaries in the coal mine: what of the knowledge, stories, songs, and ways of seeing encoded in these voices? In The Wayfinders, Wade Davis offers a gripping and enlightening account of this urgent crisis. He leads us on a fascinating tour through a handful of indigenous cultures, describing the worldviews they represent and reminding us of the encroaching danger to humankind's survival should they vanish.

What is wisdom and how is it cultivated? These are among the most important questions we can ask, but questions that have been routinely ignored in modern times. In the twentieth century, the search for wisdom was replaced by a search for knowledge as science and technology promised answers to life's ills. However, along with scientific achievements came disasters, particularly the devastation of the planet through the accelerating use of modern technology. In an era drenched in data, a desire for wisdom has been reborn. Where can we go to learn about wisdom? The answer is clear: to the world's great religions and their accompanying philosophies and psychologies. The World's Great Wisdom makes these treasuries available. Practitioners from each of the great religions—as well as from Western philosophy and contemporary research—provide summaries of their traditions' understandings of wisdom, the means for cultivating it, and its implications for the modern world. This book offers distillations of the world's accumulated wisdom—ancient and modern, religious and scientific, philosophical and psychological. It is a unique resource that for the first time in history brings together our collective understanding of wisdom and the ways to develop it.

A critical revaluation of ancient spiritual systems long ignored or rejected because of their assumed incompatibility with science. Here are Swami Muktananda on the mind, Swami Prajnananda on Karma, Swami Kripananda on the Kundalini, Joseph Chilton Pearce on spiritual development, Jack Kornfield on Buddhism for Americans, Claudio Naranjo on meditation, and much more.