The essays collected herein investigate conceptions presented within some of the major cultures of antiquity and of the early modern world regarding the beginnings of the world, of humanity, and of social organization. The discussion of origins, not surprisingly, reveals itself as a statement of identity and purpose. Through discourse concerning questions such as where things come from, or whence we originate, groups define their borders, point out those excluded from them, and formulate how they wish to interpret, for example, their mode of linguistic expression, their social structure, or the seemingly objective fact of their being human.

Contents: Shaul Shaked, ‘Introduction’; Nathan Wasserman, ‘The Rhetoric of Time Inversion: Hysteron-Proteron and the “Back to Creation” Theme in Old Babylonian Literary Texts’; Peter Machinist, ‘Order and Disorder: Some Mesopotamian Reflections’; Margalit Finkelberg, ‘Greece in the Eighth Century BCE and the “Renaissance” Phenomenon’; Sabine MacCormack, ‘Visions of the Roman Past in Late Medieval and Early Modern Spain’; Guy G. Stroumsa, ‘In Illo Loco : Paradise Lost in Early Christian Mythology’; Yuri Pines and Gideon Shelach, ‘“Using the Past to Serve the Present”: Comparative Theories on Chinese and Western Theories of the Origins of the State’; Andrew Plaks, ‘Creation and Non-Creation in Early Chinese Texts’; Albert de Jong, ‘The First Sin: Zoroastrian Ideas about the Time before Zarathustra’; Shaul Shaked, ‘Cosmic Origins and Human Origins in the Iranian Cultural Milieu’; David Shulman, ‘First Grammarian, First Poet: A South Indian Vision of Cultural Origins’.