Few studies focus on the modes of knowledge transmission (or concealment) or the trends of
continuity or change from the Ancient to the Late Antique worlds. In Antiquity knowledge was
cherished as a scarce good cultivated through the close teacher-student relationship and often
preserved in the closed circle of the initated. From Assyrian and Babylonian cuneiform texts to
a Shi'ite Islamic tradition this volume explores how and why knowledge was shared or concealed
by diverse communities in a range of Ancient and Late Antique cultural contexts. From caves by
the Dead Sea to Alexandria both normative and heterodox approaches to knowledge in Jewish
Christian and Muslim communities are explored. Biblical and qur'anic passages as well as
gnostic rabbinic and esoteric Islamic approaches are discussed. In this volume a range of
scholars from Assyrian studies to Jewish Christian and Islamic studies examine diverse
approaches to and modes of knowledge transmission and concealment shedding new light on both
the interconnectedness as well as the unique aspects of the monotheistic faiths and their
relationship to the ancient civilisations of the Fertile Crescent.
