Resheph, a fallen seraph and divine throne guardian, is identified in this volume as a hidden face of Leviathan. It is connected with flames and fire, fever, financial distress, mental illness, drought and scorching heat as well as the underworld.

On the threshold into your unique calling in life a dark spiritual sentinel waits. Scripture names it 'Python'--it has a God-given right to be there and test your significant choices. Trying to cast it out of a situation is useless. Paul encountered it just as the Gospel was transitioning across a major threshold: the watershed moment when Christianity moved from Asia to Europe. This long-awaited book explores the tactics of Python as well as its agenda. It offers insight into what this spirit hopes to get from you and how you can rectify past mistakes involving this constricting cunning enemy.

Resheph was quite a popular god in the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC - especially in Syria - but during the 1st millennium his cult became extinct. Finally it was only maintained in several peripheral and isolated sites, such as in the Palmyra desert and in Cyprus. Maciej M. Munnich presents the written sources which mentioned Resheph and analyzes the features of Resheph's cult. He emphasizes that there is no confirmation for the theory that Resheph was a lord of the netherworld. Resheph was a belligerent, aggressive god who used diseases to attack people, but who could also heal. Because of the long period of the cult and the geographical range, one can notice some local features: In Egypt, for instance, Resheph originally was venerated as the deity supporting the Pharaoh in battles, but then he was summoned mainly because of illness and everyday needs.

Samuel Iwry has enjoyed a long and distinguished career as professor in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the Johns Hopkins University, and professor and dean of the Baltimore Hebrew College. It is an altogether fitting tribute to Prof. Iwry's achievements, as both scholar and teacher, that his many colleagues and friends have joined together to produce this festschrift in his honor.

The excavations of the last eighty years, especially at Ugarit, Ebla, and Emar, have accumulated an exceptional amount of source material referring to the Syro-Canaanite god Resheph, whose history can now be followed during three thousand years. Chapter I deals with Resheph in the Ebla texts, already witnessing his assimilation to the Mesopotamian god Nergal, while Chapter II is dedicated to his consort Adamma. Western Asiatic sources of the second millennium B.C., in particular those from Mari, Ugarit, Ras Ibn Hani, and Emar, are presented in Chapter III, while Chapter IV concerns the Syro-Canaanite iconography of Resheph. His cult in Egypt during the second millennium B.C. is examined in Chapter V, while Chapters VI and VII deal with the first millennium B.C. and the later references to Resheph in midrashic literature. Aramaic, Phoenician, Hebrew, Egyptian, and Greek sources are surveyed in detail with a particular attention to biblical texts. Several indices help using the extensive onomastic and cultic data collected in the book, always with references to the original or most recent publications of the pertinent epigraphic, literary, and iconographic material.

The most lively issue in Habakkuk studies is the meaning of Chapter 3 and its relationship to the prophetic corpus as a whole. The vivid and, in its canonical context, unusual imagery of this theophanic hymn has intrigued and puzzled exegetes. The study which follows is an effort to address this issue in a synthetic fashion, employing insights from textual, poetic, linguistic, historical, archaeological, and theological investigations based on the most recent data available in these areas. The intention is to clarify, as far as possible, the source of this poem in Israelite life and the reason for its position in the canon in order to contribute to the developing understanding of this brief but complex prophetic book. - Preface.