Hidden Scrolls, Buried Bibles

How We Discover the Sacred Past

Inbunden, Engelska, 2026

293 kr

Kommande

Beskrivning

From the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Zohar, this is the untold story behind our enduring fascination with lost and found religious textsThe Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest biblical manuscripts ever found, were discovered in a cave by a shepherd and his goat. This story is mostly true, and it is not the first such tale about long-lost books. Legend has it that the Zohar—the foundational text of Jewish Kabbalah—was lost for centuries before being discovered in a cave by a farmer, who sold it to spice merchants as packing material. It was only when a scholar picked through a trash heap and joined the fragments together that the world recovered its mystical secrets. These are just two of many tales recounting the discovery of ancient religious manuscripts.Tracing a time-honored pattern of storytelling about lost and recovered sacred texts, Eva Mroczek reveals a surprising feature of Jewish and Christian thought: the idea that scripture is not complete—that it is partly lost, destroyed, or hidden—is not only the stuff of fantasy novels and conspiracy theories. Mroczek shows that modern scholarly mythmaking is more tightly bound with Jewish and Christian legends than we may think. Through the lens of discovery tales, this innovative book explores how traditions live in tension with the possibility of unknown pasts and surprising discoveries.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2026-10-13
Mått:140 x 216 x undefined mm
Format:Inbunden
Språk:Engelska
Antal sidor:224
Förlag:Yale University Press
ISBN:9780300250213

Utforska kategorier

Arkeologi inom Historia och arkeologi
Religion: allmänt inom Filosofi och religion

Mer om författaren

Eva Mroczek is the Simon and Riva Spatz Chair in Jewish Studies and professor in the Department of Classics and Religious Studies at Dalhousie University in Canada. She is the award-winning author of The Literary Imagination in Jewish Antiquity.

Recensioner i media

“Reading this book is an encounter with a brilliant mind. Eva Mroczek’s work is startling in its fresh thinking about history and texts—indeed, about thinking itself. She is an extraordinary scholar, immensely creative and deeply knowledgeable.”—Susannah Heschel, Dartmouth College“Eva Mroczek’s Hidden Scrolls, Buried Bibles is a captivating and sobering tour through tales of the loss and recovery of ancient texts as an authorizing strategy within myth and history.”—Dan McClellan, author of The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues“Leading us on a literary journey from the earliest Bibles to Mary Shelley, Mroczek unfolds the intimate relationship between the search for hidden sacred texts and true crime. A brilliant book on why we cling to book discovery tales despite their unreliability.”—Roberta Mazza, author of Stolen Fragments: Black Markets, Bad Faith, and the Illicit Trade in Ancient Artefacts“An indispensable read for anyone interested in manuscript discovery lore, written by one of the most creative thinkers and gifted narrators in Jewish studies.”—Liv Ingeborg Lied, coauthor of Working with Manuscripts: A Guide for Textual Scholars“What makes an origin story ‘true’? With vivid examples from across space and time, Mroczek reveals the longstanding practice of authenticating and laundering sacred sources by means of a discovery myth. Elegantly written and deeply researched, this book invites an honest appraisal of scripture-making as a human response to a world of endless change and inevitable decay.”—Jennifer Wright Knust, author of Unprotected Texts: The Bible’s Surprising Contradictions About Sex and Desire