The cosmography of paradise: the other world from ancient Mesopotamia to medieval Europe

Contents

The birth of paradise : to early Christianity via Greece, Persia and Israel / Jan N. Bremmer -- Sumerian paradise lost / Markham J. Geller -- Around, inside and beyond the walls : names, ideas and images of Paradise in pre-Islamic Iran / Antonio C.D. Panaino / Enoch, Eden, and the beginnings of Jewish cosmography / Annette Yoshiko Reed -- Gnostic paradises / Einar Thomassen -- Diabolizing the Garden of Eden : re-interpretations of Jewish pseudepigraphy in medieval Christian dualism / Yuri Stoyanov -- Seeking paradise in the Egyptian desert / Dimitris J. Kyrtatas -- Gazing at the holy mountain : images of paradise in Syriac Christian tradition / Sergey Minov -- Food and the senses, and one very special taste of paradise / Danuta Shanzer -- "The heavens declare the glory of God" : mapping cosmos and activating heaven through holy icons / Veronica della Dora -- Paradise in western medieval tradition / Rudolf Simek -- Paradise in the Islamic religious imagination / Christian Lange -- In medieval Islamic cosmography, where is paradise? / Emilie Savage-Smith / Valhalla and heaven : Scandinavian images of paradise in a period of religious change / Anders Hultegård.