Jewish and Christian Cosmogony in Late Antiquity

The authors of this collection of essays explore different ways that ancient Jews and Christians understood the world’s creation and how this understanding shaped their world. In this volume discussions of cosmogony are not only placed within the contexts of biblical hermeneutics and the politics of interpretation, but more broadly within the diverse realms of ancient life. The authors demonstrate how beliefs about Creation played an important role in constructing rituals, pedagogy, ethics, geography, and anthropology. A biblically-based tradition shared by Jews and Christians, the Creation story serves as a fruitful point of departure for this collection of studies about these communities, their interactions, and their overlapping and competing conceptions of the world.