Dreams and Divination from Byzantium to Baghdad, 400-1000 CE

by Bronwen Neil

Overview

Why did dreams matter to Jews, Byzantine Christians, and Muslims in the first millennium? Dreams and Divination from Byzantium to Baghdad, 400 - 1000 CE shows how the ability to interpret dreams universally attracted power and influence in the first millennium. In a time when prophetic dreams were viewed as God's intervention in human history, male and female prophets wielded was unparalleled power in imperial courts, military camps, and religious gatherings. The three faiths drew on the ancient Near Eastern tradition of dream key manuals, which offer an insight into the hopes and fears of ordinary people. They melded pagan dream divination with their own scriptural traditions to produce a novel and rich culture of dream interpretation. Prophetic dreams enabled communities to understand their past and present circumstances as divinely ordained and helped to bolster the spiritual authority of dreamers and those who had the gift of interpreting their dreams. Bronwen Neil takes a gendered approach to the analysis of the common culture of dream interpretation across late antique Jewish, Byzantine, and Islamic sources to 1000 CE, in order to expose the ways in which dreams offered women a unique opportunity to exercise influence. The epilogue to the volume reveals why dreams still matter today to many men and women of the monotheist traditions.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780192644534
Publisher:	OUP Oxford
Publication date:	01/14/2021
Series:	Oxford Studies in the Abrahamic Religions
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	851 KB

About the Author

Bronwen Neil is Professor of Ancient and Byzantine History at Macquarie University, and foundation director of the Macquarie University Centre for Ancient Cultural Heritage and Environment (CACHE). She works on Greek and Latin literature of the first millennium CE, and the history of religious ideas and their influence on culture in this period.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations
1. Why Dreams Mattered in Late Antiquity
2. Scriptural Models of Dream Interpretation
3. Dreambooks: A Rival Tradition of Authority
4. Channeling the Divine: From Paganism to Monotheism
5. The Trouble with Dreams: Sayings of Monks, Rabbis, and the Prophet
6. Dreams and the Material World: New Developments
7. In the Footsteps of the Prophets: Dreams of War
Epilogue: Why Dreams Still Matter
Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

"By connecting these cultures, their worldviews and practices, Neil's book makes for an excellent piece of interdisciplinary and intercultural research whose impact exceeds the academia, providing deep insights into the world we live in. By unveiling the roots of these worldviews and practices, her monograph, therefore, does more than fill a gap in the literature; it advances our grasp of the things we see happening in the world. I wholeheartedly recommend this monograph to scholars and students of the Abrahamic religions, of dream and divination, and to whoever seeks to understand the world in which we live." — Doru Costache, Journal for the Academic Study of Religion

From the Publisher