Papers by John Møller Larsen
Digital Applications in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage, 2021
Abstract This article revisits a complexly folded silver scroll excavated in Jerash, Jordan in 20... more Abstract This article revisits a complexly folded silver scroll excavated in Jerash, Jordan in 2014 that was digitally examined in 2015. In this article we apply, examine and discuss a new virtual unfolding technique that results in a clearer image of the scroll’s 17 lines of writing. We also compare it to the earlier unfolding and discuss progress in general analytical tools. We publish the original and the new images as well as the unfolded volume data open access in order to make these available to researchers interested in optimising unfolding processes of various complexly folded materials.
Numen, 2013
John C. Reeves, who is Blumenthal Professor of Judaic Studies at the University of North Carolina... more John C. Reeves, who is Blumenthal Professor of Judaic Studies at the University of North Carolina, has since the 1990s through a number of important articles and two monographs become one of the leading scholars on the origins of Manichaeism in its Aramaic and Jewish contexts. His Jewish Lore in Manichaean Cosmogony: Studies in the Book of Giants Traditions (1992) was dedicated to a thorough study of the late Józef Milik's fascinating discovery that Mani's Book of Giants (of which fragments from the Turfan Oasis are preserved, mainly in Middle Persian and Turkish) was in fact based on a Jewish para-Biblical text, fragments of which are among the Qumran texts. The Qumran and Manichaean "books of giants" dealt with the fate of those giant sons of the Watchers and "daughters of man" that were important in the "Enochic" interpretations of Genesis 6:1-4. Reeves' Heralds of That Good Realm: Syro-Mesopotamian Gnosis and Jewish Traditions (1996) was a commentary in detail on the citations of Jewish apocalypses that are contained in the Cologne Mani Codex. Besides these books, Reeves is also the author of Trajectories in Near Eastern Apocalyptic: A Postrabbinic Jewish Apocalypse Reader (2005), an anthology and study of a number of Jewish apocalyptic texts. Most welcome is now his new Prolegomena to a History of Islamicate Manichaeism, which is an annotated collection of sources on Manichaeism in English translation. All these sources are excerpted from ancient texts dealing with other issues but also containing passages about the Manichaeans; the passages reach from very short notes to long accounts. He states his intention with the book as "to supply scholars with a roughly sorted mass of raw data for producing more nuanced histories and studies of Manichaeism in the Arabophonic cultural sphere." Instead of referring to an Arabophonic cultural sphere Reeves has, however, borrowed the adjective "Islamicate" from Marshall Hodgson, whose defijinition of it he quotes with approval: it refers "not directly to the religion, Islam, itself, but to the social and cultural complex historically associated with Islam and the Muslims, both among Muslims themselves and even when found among non-Muslims." Hence Reeves' book contains not only translations of Muslim Arabic accounts of Manichaeism, but also Pahlavi, New Persian, Judaeo-Arabic, Syriac, and Mandaean accounts. Even though, e.g., Zoroastrian and Christian texts are written after the Arab conquest, it may, however, often be disputed whether they are not rather part of pre-Islamicate traditions than influenced by an Islamicate cultural milieu. We are not,
Mani in Dublin, 2015
According to al-Nadīm's Fihrist, "Mānī wrote seven books, one of them in Persian and six in Syria... more According to al-Nadīm's Fihrist, "Mānī wrote seven books, one of them in Persian and six in Syriac, the language of Syria".1 Also Titus of Bostra and a number of other authors testify that Mani wrote in Syriac,2 which could signify a somewhat different form of East Aramaic than the classical Syriac.3 So the first and original language of Manichaeism was Syriac. It therefore seems paradoxical that almost no texts in Syriac are preserved-except, of course, Manichaean quotations in authors like Ephrem or Theodore bar Kōnai.4 Otherwise, the agenda for the study of Manichaeism has constantly since the end of the nineteenth century been set by new finds and editions of manuscripts in a number of different languages.5 Small remnants of the lost * The edition of the Syriac-Manichaean fragments have been edited after the completion of this article, cf.
Fundamentalism in The Modern World. Vol. 1. Fundamentalism, Politics and History: The State, Globalisation and Political Ideologies, 2011
Biblia Manichaica is a reference work citing all biblical quotations and allusions in edited Mani... more Biblia Manichaica is a reference work citing all biblical quotations and allusions in edited Manichaean and anti-Manichaean sources. This first volume in the series covers the texts of Manichaeism in the Greek, Coptic, Semitic, and Iranian languages in relation to the Old Testament.
Book Reviews by John Møller Larsen
Books by John Møller Larsen
Biblia Manichaica is a reference work citing all biblical quotations and allusions in edited Mani... more Biblia Manichaica is a reference work citing all biblical quotations and allusions in edited Manichaean and anti-Manichaean sources. This second volume of the series covers the New Testament gospels, the Gospel of Thomas, and Diatessaron in Manichaean texts in Greek, Coptic, Semitic, and Iranian languages.
Journal articles by John Møller Larsen
Digital Applications in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage 21, 2021
This article revisits a complexly folded silver scroll excavated in Jerash, Jordan, in 2014 that ... more This article revisits a complexly folded silver scroll excavated in Jerash, Jordan, in 2014 that was digitally examined in 2015. In this article we apply, examine and discuss a new virtual unfolding technique that results in a clearer image of the scroll's 17 lines of writing. We also compare it to the earlier unfolding and discuss progress in general analytical tools. We publish the original and the new images as well as the unfolded volume data open access in order to make these available to researchers interested in optimising unfolding processes of various complexly folded materials.
Uploads
Papers by John Møller Larsen
Book Reviews by John Møller Larsen
Books by John Møller Larsen
Journal articles by John Møller Larsen