By Mary K. Farag.

Legal and Ritual Perspectives from Late Antiquity. “The making of churches into res sacrae occurred, legally and canonically, from Constantine to Justinian. But even though church property in many ways was already treated as a res sacra by Constantine and his successors, it was not until the time of Justinian that church buildings and their properties explicitly became res sacrae. Part I tells the story of how a definition of “the sacred” conceived for traditional Greco-Roman temples was applied to ecclesial property and expanded in scope in the process. I craft this story on the basis of two kinds of rules: the laws of emperors and the canons of bishops.”

UC Press. (2021) 348 pages.

By S. Giora Shoham.

This tantalizing book is based on the pioneering work of Claude Levi-Strauss, who postulated that myths are links between nature and culture. Shoham enlarges this concept and claims that myth in the form of a mythogene, the structural longings and experiences of the individual as projected onto mythology, links history and transcendence, the individual and society, and consciousness and energy-matter. The mythogenes are related to Shoham's personality theory, which, in essence, postulates that personality types can be taxonomized along a continuum with one pole having the Tantalic type, which aims to melt into the object, and the other pole having the Sisyphean type, which aims to overpower and control the object. This incredible tour-de-force that spans the great works of science, literature, philosophy, sociology and religion will shake you to the roots of your being. It is hard to come away from this book without asking, who am I, and have I really came that far? And what future is there?

NY. Harrow and Heston Publishers. 2012.