id	author	title	date	pages	extension	mime	words	sentence	flesch	summary	cache	txt
ajiss-1335	Rizvi, Sajjad H.	The Arabic Hermes: From Pagan Sage to Prophet of Science by Kevin van Bladel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. 278 pages.)	2010.0	3	.pdf	application/pdf	1081	34	35	The publication of Kevin van Bladel’s revised Yale doctoral dissertation is a wonderfully solid historical masterpiece that greatly contributes to our understanding of certain strands of intellectual transmission in the late antique Near East, as well as disabuses us of many a myth about the pres- ence of Hermes and hermeticism in classical Islamic learned culture. Van Bladel’s study is divided into two parts: (1) the background and intellectual formation of the Arabic Hermes located in the tripartite history of Islamic learned culture located in Hellenic late antiquity, Sasanian Iran, and those elusive Sabeans of Harran and (2) an examination of the shift from the concept of Hermes Trismegistus, the thrice-Hermes of the doxographies, to the notion of Hermes-Idris as the prophetic sage and teacher and the proliferation of wisdom sayings associated with him, some of which are extracted and adapted (though not many) from the Greek Hermetica, which in itself survives due to its existence with Gnostic cor- pora in late antique Egypt, not least the Nag Hammadi codices.	cache/ajiss-1335.pdf	txt/ajiss-1335.txt