Classics

How did one of many biblical law collections become the Decalogue - and a standard of universal ethics? Maren R. Niehoff shows the force of the Roman legal discourses in which Jewish, Christian, and Greek authors anchored their own traditions through the Decalogue.

Roxanne Bélanger Sarrazin examines a group of Coptic prayer texts known in modern scholarship as »magical liturgies.« Drawing on the sociological concept of »multiple identities,« she explores how these prayers can, from an etic perspective, be described as »apocryphal,« »magical,« and »liturgical.«

The work provides an overview of debates in political philosophy, ethics, and legal philosophy, highlighting their connections with law and legal policy. It is aimed at students and scholars who wish to learn about fundamental debates and new developments in related disciplines.

In antiquity, emotions were not mere inner states but drivers of action. The contributors to this volume follow them through literature, law, politics, and religion, through the military and social order - and show what fear, grief, and sorrow accomplished in each.