La Revelation D'Hermes Trismegiste: Edition Definitive, Revue Et Corrigee

This new and entirely rearranged edition includes André-Jean Festugière’s handwritten corrections, reinserted with the help of Concetta Luna. It is supplemented by a precursory text by Father Henri Dominique Saffrey and numerous indexes compiled by Nicolas Roudet.Subject Index (3,000 topics) • Index Locorum (10,000 cited excerpts) • Personal Names Index • Index of Greek, Latin and Arabic words • Geographic Location Index • Ancient and Modern Authors’ Index • Index of André-Jean Festugière’s Published Works Cited in RHT • Index of Manuscripts (biblical texts, inscriptions and papyri) • Updated Bibliography.Towards the end of the Hellenistic Period, under the Roman Empire, certain revealed wisdoms spread throughout the Greco-Roman world which were attributed either to Persian sages (Zoroaster, Ostanes, Hystaspes), an Egyptian god (Thoth-Hermes), oracles of Chaldean origin (Chaldean Oracles), or even to some Greek prophets or philosophers who had come closer to approaching the divine, since this occurred at the same time as a resurgence of Pythagorism and Orphism.Among those revealed wisdoms, the one bearing the name of Hermes Trismegistus is one of the most important, both in terms of the prolific writings which it inspired and the breadth of the field which this literature covered. Of the latter, the best known and most often studied relates to philosophy or theology. The Egyptian Hermes, however, was interested in many other matters: he dabbled with astrology, alchemy, magic and – contrary to the belief that this Hermeticism which some might call “popular” could represent only a secondary and late branch of the Hermetic revelation, it is actually the oldest form of it – that which gave it its form and served (at least to a large extent) as a model for scholarly Hermeticism.