For believers in a resurrection of the body, there arises the question of what happens after death but before the Last Day: the intermediate state. For most Muslims, the intermediate state is the barzakh. It is a fantastical and frightening time in the grave. The present study will examine where the belief in the barzakh comes from through a study of the Qur'an.

Sarah Fielding (1710-1768), the younger sister of Henry Fielding, and the close friend of his literary rival Samuel Richardson, was one of the very few English women to master ancient languages like Latin and Greek. With the help of Shaftesbury's nephew, James Harris, a distinguished writer, scholar and grammarian, she embarked on the ambitious project of translating Xenophon's Memorabilia and the Apology of Socrates from the Greek. This work, titled Memoirs of Socrates, with the Defence of Socrates before his Judges, was finally released in 1762. She proved a discreet editor and a talented Hellenist, whose elegant style garnered praise from Tobias Smollett in his Critical Review. This superb translation is re-published in its entirety for the first time since the 18th century.

In this third part of Homily 71, On the Fashioning of Creation, Jacob treats the God's separation of the waters from the earth, and the bringing forth of vegetation on the newly-revealed dry land.

As part of the Gorgias Handbook Series, this book provides a political and military history of the Sasanian Empire in Late Antiquity (220s to 651 CE). The book takes the form of a narrative, which situates Sasanian Iran as a continental power between Rome and the world of the steppe nomad.

This in-depth study examines the relation between legal theory (uṣūl al-fiqh) and speculative theology (ʿīlm al-kalām). It compares the legal theory of four classical jurists who belonged to the same school of law, the Shāfiʿī school, yet followed three different theological traditions. The aim of this comparison is to understand to what extent, and in what way, the theology of each jurist shaped his choices in legal theory.

Is monastic profession in the West-Syriac tradition a “second baptism”? A relationship clearly exists between the two rites of initiation in the West-Syriac tradition: the monastic profession and baptism. Aydin examines these two rites of initiation, comparing their external structures, common imagery and theological themes, and reveals that the monastic rite closely parallels, or even is modeled upon, that of baptism. Mor Polycarpus Edip Aydin explores the idea of monastic profession as a “second baptism,” or rather, the realization of what the gift of the Spirit at baptism really implies. An extensive Appendix contains Syriac texts with English translations pertaining to the Syriac rite of monastic profession, with relevant commentaries by Syriac Fathers from the 6th to the 10th centuries.