The Sword Of Moses
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The Sword Of Moses
''The Sword of Moses'' is the title of an apocryphal Jewish book of magic edited by Moses Gaster in Israel, in 1896 from a 13th- or 14th-century manuscript from his own collection, formerly MS Gaster 78, now London, British Library MS Or. 10678. Gaster assumed that the text predates the 11th century, based on a letter by Rav Hai Gaon (939-1038) which mentions the book alongside the Sefer ha-Yashar, described as another book of formulas, and that it may even date to as early as the first four centuries CE. Besides the medieval manuscript used by Gaster, a short fragment of the text survives in Cod. Oxford 1531. A new critical edition was printed in 1997 by the Israeli scholar Yuval Harari based on a variant text found in another manuscript. An English translation of the same was published in 2012. Contents The largest manuscript of the ''Sword of Moses'' begins with a description of the heavenly realms and angels, and soon moves onto describing various prayers, invocations, a ...
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Apocryphal
Apocrypha are works, usually written, of unknown authorship or of doubtful origin. The word ''apocryphal'' (ἀπόκρυφος) was first applied to writings which were kept secret because they were the vehicles of esoteric knowledge considered too profound or too sacred to be disclosed to anyone other than the initiated. ''Apocrypha'' was later applied to writings that were hidden not because of their divinity but because of their questionable value to the church. In general use, the word ''apocrypha'' has come to mean "false, spurious, bad, or heretical". Biblical apocrypha are a set of texts included in the Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate, but not in the Hebrew Bible. While Catholic Church, Catholic tradition considers some of these texts to be deuterocanonical books, deuterocanonical, and the Orthodox Churches consider them all to be canonical, Protestants consider them apocryphal, that is, non-canonical books that are useful for instruction. Luther's Bible placed them in a ...
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Hebrew Language
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved throughout history as the main liturgical language of Judaism (since the Second Temple period) and Samaritanism. Hebrew is the only Canaanite language still spoken today, and serves as the only truly successful example of a dead language that has been revived. It is also one of only two Northwest Semitic languages still in use, with the other being Aramaic. The earliest examples of written Paleo-Hebrew date back to the 10th century BCE. Nearly all of the Hebrew Bible is written in Biblical Hebrew, with much of its present form in the dialect that scholars believe flourished around the 6th century BCE, during the time of the Babylonian captivity. For this reason, Hebrew has been referred to by Jews as '' Lashon Hakodesh'' (, ) since an ...
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Magic (paranormal)
Magic, sometimes spelled magick, is an ancient praxis rooted in sacred rituals, spiritual divinations, and/or cultural lineage—with an intention to invoke, manipulate, or otherwise manifest supernatural forces, beings, or entities in the natural, incarnate world. It is a categorical yet often ambiguous term which has been used to refer to a wide variety of beliefs and practices, frequently considered separate from both religion and science. Although connotations have varied from positive to negative at times throughout history, magic continues to have an important religious and medicinal role in many cultures today. Within Western culture, magic has been linked to ideas of the Other, foreignness, and primitivism; indicating that it is "a powerful marker of cultural difference" and likewise, a non-modern phenomenon. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Western intellectuals perceived the practice of magic to be a sign of a primitive mentality and also commo ...
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Moses Gaster
Moses Gaster (17 September 1856 – 5 March 1939) was a Romanian, later British scholar, the ''Hakham'' of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish congregation, London, and a Hebrew and Romanian linguist. Moses Gaster was an active Zionist in Romania as well as in England, where in 1899 he helped establish the English Zionist Federation. He was the father of Jack and Theodor Gaster and the grandfather of Marghanita Laski. He was also son-in-law to Michael Friedländer and father-in-law to Neville Laski. Biography Life in Romania Gaster was born in Bucharest into a renowned Jewish Austrian family which had settled in Wallachia at the beginning of the 19th century. He was the eldest son of Chevalier Abraham Emanuel Gaster, who was the consul of the Netherlands in Bucharest and the grandson of Asriel Gaster, a prosperous merchant and community leader. His mother, Pnina Judith Rubinstein, came from a rabbinical dynasty which included Rabbi Levi Isaac ben Meir. After having taken a degre ...
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Rav Hai Gaon
''Rav'' (or ''Rab,'' Modern Hebrew: ) is the Hebrew generic term for a person who teaches Torah; a Jewish spiritual guide; or a rabbi. For example, Pirkei Avot (1:6) states that: The term ''rav'' is also Hebrew for ''rabbi''. (For a more nuanced discussion, see semicha.) The term is frequently used by Orthodox Jews to refer to their own rabbi. In contemporary Judaism, as the term ''rabbi'' has become commonplace, the term ''rav'' has come to apply to rabbis with levels of knowledge, experience, and wisdom in excess of those found among the majority of rabbis who serve Jewish congregations as a career. In some cases, ''rav'' thus refers to full-time scholars of Torah who do not receive compensation. Overview In the Talmud, the title ''Rav'' generally precedes the names of Babylonian Amoraim; ''Rabbi'' generally precedes the names of ordained scholars in the Land of Israel whether Tannaim or Amoraim. In the Talmud, ''Rav'' or ''Rab'' (used alone) is a common name for the firs ...
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Common Era
Common Era (CE) and Before the Common Era (BCE) are year notations for the Gregorian calendar (and its predecessor, the Julian calendar), the world's most widely used calendar era. Common Era and Before the Common Era are alternatives to the original Anno Domini (AD) and Before Christ (BC) notations used for the same calendar era. The two notation systems are numerically equivalent: " CE" and "AD " each describe the current year; "400 BCE" and "400 BC" are the same year. The expression traces back to 1615, when it first appeared in a book by Johannes Kepler as the la, annus aerae nostrae vulgaris (), and to 1635 in English as " Vulgar Era". The term "Common Era" can be found in English as early as 1708, and became more widely used in the mid-19th century by Jewish religious scholars. Since the later 20th century, BCE and CE have become popular in academic and scientific publications because BCE and CE are religiously neutral terms. They are used by others who wish to be sensit ...
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Yuval Harari
Yuval Noah Harari ( he, יובל נח הררי ; born 1976) is an Israeli historian and professor in the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of the popular science bestsellers '' Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind'' (2014), '' Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow'' (2016), and '' 21 Lessons for the 21st Century'' (2018). His writings examine free will, consciousness, intelligence, happiness, and suffering. Harari writes about the "cognitive revolution" occurring roughly 70,000 years ago when ''Homo sapiens'' supplanted the rival Neanderthals and other species of the genus ''Homo'', developed language skills and structured societies, and ascended as apex predators, aided by the agricultural revolution and accelerated by the scientific revolution, which have allowed humans to approach near mastery over their environment. His books also examine the possible consequences of a futuristic biotechnological world in which intelligent biologi ...
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Dominic Selwood
Dominic Selwood (born 1970) is an English historian, author, journalist and barrister. He has written several works of history, historical fiction and historical thrillers, most notably ''The Sword of Moses''. and '' Anatomy of a Nation. A History of British Identity in 50 Documents''. His background is in medieval history. Early life and career Selwood was born on 19 December 1970 in England, and grew up in Salisbury, Cyprus, and Germany. He went to school at Edge Grove School and Winchester College, and studied law and French law at the University of Wales. He was awarded a scholarship to the University of Poitiers, where a chance meeting in a local café with the publisher (and early sponsor of '' Private Eye'') Anthony Blond led to a collaboration on ''Blond's Roman Emperors''. His doctoral research on medieval religious and military life, specialising in the Knights Templar and Knights Hospitaller, the two leading military orders of the Crusades, was undertaken as a ...
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The Sword Of Moses (novel)
''The Sword of Moses'' is a 2013 mystery detective thriller novel by the English historian and journalist Dominic Selwood. It is part one of the Ava Curzon trilogy. The novel's premise involves the infamous ancient Hebrew magical text, ''The Sword of Moses'', and features Dr Ava Curzon, an archaeologist working in the National Museum of Iraq The Iraq Museum ( ar, المتحف العراقي) is the national museum of Iraq, located in Baghdad. It is sometimes informally called the National Museum of Iraq, a recent phenomenon influenced by other nations' naming of their national museum ... in Baghdad reassembling the collections looted during the 2003 invasion. Plot summary When former MI6 agent turned archaeologist Dr Ava Curzon is engaged by American intelligence to track down an African militia claiming to hold the Ark of the Covenant, she is plunged into a world where nothing is what it seems. Her breakneck descent into the shadowy realm of dark biblical texts hurls ...
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Old Testament Pseudepigrapha
Pseudepigrapha are falsely attributed works, texts whose claimed author is not the true author, or a work whose real author attributed it to a figure of the past.Bauckham, Richard; "Pseudo-Apostolic Letters", ''Journal of Biblical Literature'', Vo. 107, No. 3, September 1988, pp.469–494. Some of these works may have originated among Jewish Hellenizers, others may have Christian authorship in character and origin. Apocalyptic and related works * 1 (Ethiopic Apocalypse of) Enoch (Jewish, c. 200 BCE–50 BCE) * 2 (Slavonic Apocalypse of) Enoch (Jewish, c. 30 BCE–70 CE) * 3 (Hebrew Apocalypse of) Enoch (Jewish, in present form from c. 108 CE-135 CE) * Sibylline Oracles (both Jewish and Christian, c. 2nd cent. BCE–7th cent. CE) * Treatise of Shem (c. near end of first cent. BCE) *Apocryphon of Ezekiel (mostly lost, original form c. late 1st cent. BCE) *Apocalypse of Zephaniah (mostly lost, original form c. late 1st cent. BCE) * 4 Ezra (original Jewish form after 70 CE, fin ...
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Texts Attributed To Moses
Text may refer to: Written word * Text (literary theory), any object that can be read, including: **Religious text, a writing that a religious tradition considers to be sacred **Text, a verse or passage from scripture used in expository preaching **Textbook, a book of instruction in any branch of study Computing and telecommunications *Plain text, unformatted text *Text file, a type of computer file opened by most text software *Text string, a sequence of characters manipulated by software *Text message, a short electronic message designed for communication between mobile phone users *Text (Chrome app), a text editor for the Google Chrome web browser Arts and media *TEXT, a Swedish band *''Text & Talk ''Text & Talk: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Language, Discourse & Communication Studies'' is an academic journal An academic journal or scholarly journal is a periodical publication in which scholarship relating to a particular academic ...'' (formerly ''Text''), an ac ...
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