JUSTICE RETOLD: THE SEMINAL NARRATIONS OF THE TRIAL OF THE JUDEAN KING

2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-35
Author(s):  
David C. Flatto
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Legal Institution ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Political Actor ◽  
Narrative History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Lasting Impression ◽  
Normative Order ◽  
Daunting Challenge ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractMany legal systems have foundational stories about their provenance, serving to heighten the stature and authority of the normative order. Yet, these primary myths are often complicated by secondary ones that describe later climactic moments. A prevalent plot of this latter kind involves a defiant political actor who contests the jurisdiction of the courts and relates the legal order's response to this daunting challenge. The crucible of struggle forges a formidable legal institution that can withstand assault or a weaker one that limply survives.Such stories captivate the collective legal imagination of a paideic community, a process first analyzed by the late Robert Cover. Hence they are preserved, told, and retold. However, the morals of secondary stories are more variable. Precisely because they examine moments of disturbance and conflict their implications are frequently in dispute. Thus, the very act of narration aims to amplify core truths implicit in these tales and announce their essential lessons.The narrative history of the epic “trial of the Judean king” among Jews in antiquity and late antiquity affords a striking instance of this phenomenon. Making a lasting impression on the Jewish legal imagination of this period, the trial's impact and perpetual legacy are nevertheless highly contested. While the enduring lesson of the trial revolves around the relationship between law and power, what that legacy is depends entirely on the way the tale of the trial is told and, perhaps more importantly, retold.

Disqualified Witnesses between Tannaitic Halakha and Roman Law: The Archeology of a Legal Institution

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 903-936 ◽  
Author(s):  
Orit Malka
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Jewish Law ◽  
Legal Institution ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Global History ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
History Of ◽  
Roman Palestine

Contemporary Western legal systems allow any individual to serve as a witness and to testify in court. However, in legal regimes from late antiquity we find strict limitations on the eligibility of certain types of people to serve as witnesses. Some of the lists of disqualified witnesses are very particular, thus inviting explanation of the reasons for the specific rules of disqualification. Such is the case regarding both Jewish and Roman rules of disqualification, which are the topic of this paper. Tannaitic halakha, composed in Roman Palestine between the first and third centuries CE, includes a list of four characters disqualified from giving testimony, which has long defied interpretation: “a dice player, a usurer, pigeon flyers, and traders in Seventh Year produce”. This paper offers a novel approach to the study of this list, suggesting that the rabbis drew on the Roman legal institution of infamia when constructing their own laws regarding disqualified witnesses. Beyond solving a puzzle relating to Jewish law, the paper also sheds light on the inner logic of Roman law, maintaining that Jewish and Roman rules of disqualified witnesses are commonly grounded in an ethics of self-control. By drawing attention to this previously unnoted theoretical subtext, the paper contributes to a missing chapter in the global history of evidence admissibility rules.

AI Narratives

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Historical Overview ◽  
Intelligent Machines ◽  
Narrative History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Imaginative Thinking ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

This book is the first to examine the history of imaginative thinking about intelligent machines. As real artificial intelligence (AI) begins to touch on all aspects of our lives, this long narrative history shapes how the technology is developed, deployed, and regulated. It is therefore a crucial social and ethical issue. Part I of this book provides a historical overview from ancient Greece to the start of modernity. These chapters explore the revealing prehistory of key concerns of contemporary AI discourse, from the nature of mind and creativity to issues of power and rights, from the tension between fascination and ambivalence to investigations into artificial voices and technophobia. Part II focuses on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in which a greater density of narratives emerged alongside rapid developments in AI technology. These chapters reveal not only how AI narratives have consistently been entangled with the emergence of real robotics and AI, but also how they offer a rich source of insight into how we might live with these revolutionary machines. Through their close textual engagements, these chapters explore the relationship between imaginative narratives and contemporary debates about AI’s social, ethical, and philosophical consequences, including questions of dehumanization, automation, anthropomorphization, cybernetics, cyberpunk, immortality, slavery, and governance. The contributions, from leading humanities and social science scholars, show that narratives about AI offer a crucial epistemic site for exploring contemporary debates about these powerful new technologies.

The Date and Circumstances of Olympiodorus of Thebes

Traditio ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 1-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Gillett
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Imperial Court ◽  
Political Narrative ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Western Half

Olympiodorus of Thebes is an important figure for the history of late antiquity. The few details of his life preserved as anecdotes in hisHistorygive glimpses of a career which embraced the skills of poet, philosopher, and diplomat. A native of Egypt, he had influence at the imperial court of Constantinople, among the sophists of Athens, and even outside the borders of the empire. HisHistory(more correctly, his “materials for history”) is lost, surviving only as fragments in the narratives of Zosimus, Sozomen, and Philostorgius, and in the rich summary given by the ninth-century Byzantine patriarch Photius. These remains comprise the most substantial narrative sources for events in the western Roman Empire in the early fifth century. Besides its value as a source, theHistoryis important as a monument to the vitality of the belief in the unity of the Roman Empire under the Theodosian dynasty. Olympiodorus wrote in Greek, and knowledge of his work is attested only in Constantinople, yet his political narrative, from 407 to 425, concerns only events in the western half of the empire. To understand the significance of these facts, it is necessary to set the composition of Olympiodorus's work in its proper context. Clarifying the date of publication is the first step toward this goal. Internal and external evidence suggests that the work was written in 440 or soon after, more than a decade later than the date of composition usually accepted. Taken with thematic emphases evident in the structure of theHistory, this revised dating explains why an eastern writer should have written a detailed account of western events in the early part of the century. Olympiodorus's account is a characteristic product of the highly literate class of eastern imperial civil servants, and of their genuine preoccupation with the relationship between the eastern and western halves of the Roman Empire at a time when both were threatened by the rise of the new Carthaginian power of the Vandals.

Qur'an and History – a Disputed Relationship. Some Reflections on Qur'anic History and History in the Qur'an

2003 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angelika Neuwirth
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Transmission Of Knowledge ◽  
Critical Scholarship ◽  
Textual History ◽  
Circular Argument ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship between Qur'an and history is disputed in more than one respect. The Qur'an as a canonical scripture locates itself beyond history. In most current critical scholarship the pre-canonical Qur'an – regarded as no longer reconstructable – is equally discarded. There have been some attempts, however, to restore to the Qur'an a textual history. 28 years after Günter Lüling, Cristoph Luxenberg has renewed the hypothesis of a linguistically and spiritually Syriac–Christian imprinted pre-canonical text. Luxenberg's reading with its far-reaching conclusions has – though in itself little convincing since largely relying on circular argument – revived the debate about the role of Syriac, as the most vigorous linguistic medium in the transmission of knowledge in Near Eastern late Antiquity, in the emergence of the Qur'an. The present paper advocates a search for historical evidence in the text itself trying to show that the complex relationship between Qur'an and history cannot be tackled appropriately without a micro-structural reading of the Qur'an itself. The history of the Qur'an does not start with canonisation but is inherent in the text itself, where not only contents but also form and structure can be read as traces of a historical process.

Time and Difference in Rabbinic Judaism

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kattan Gribetz Sarit
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Imperial Rome ◽  
Rabbinic Judaism ◽  
Roman Imperialism ◽  
Use Of Time ◽  
Roman Time ◽  
Unique Aspect ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

The rabbinic corpus begins with a question — “when?” — and is brimming with discussions about time and the relationship between people, God, and the hour. This book explores the rhythms of time that animated the rabbinic world of late antiquity, revealing how rabbis conceptualized time as a way of constructing difference between themselves and imperial Rome, Jews and Christians, men and women, and human and divine. Each chapter explores a unique aspect of rabbinic discourse on time. The book shows how the ancient rabbinic texts artfully subvert Roman imperialism by offering “rabbinic time” as an alternative to “Roman time.” It examines rabbinic discourse about the Sabbath, demonstrating how the weekly day of rest marked “Jewish time” from “Christian time.” The book looks at gendered daily rituals, showing how rabbis created “men's time” and “women's time” by mandating certain rituals for men and others for women. The book delves into rabbinic writings that reflect on how God spends time and how God's use of time relates to human beings, merging “divine time” with “human time.” Finally, it traces the legacies of rabbinic constructions of time in the medieval and modern periods. In doing so, the book sheds new light on the central role that time played in the construction of Jewish identity, subjectivity, and theology during this transformative period in the history of Judaism.

Approaches to Teaching the History of Medicine in Late Antiquity

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 475-507
Author(s):  
Jared Secord ◽  
Jessica Wright
Keyword(s):  
Medical Anthropology ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Medical Humanities ◽  
Healthcare Professionals ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Approaches To Teaching ◽  
Teaching Resources ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

In this article, the authors propose that late antique medicine is a rich and versatile subject to teach in undergraduate courses, despite a seeming lack of sources and teaching resources. Following an introduction, authors Crislip, Langford, Llewellyn Ihssen, and Marx offer contributions describing their experiences teaching courses that offer some coverage of medicine in Late Antiquity. The contributions show that late antique medicine fits in easily as part of courses on magic and science, and that it lends itself to comparative or world-historical approaches. Late antique medicine likewise provides opportunities to explore the relationship of religion to science and of medicine to the humanities. The authors show that a range of approaches to late antique medicine, including disability studies and medical anthropology, can inspire productive and thoughtful responses from students, and serve as a helpful introduction to the medical humanities for aspiring healthcare professionals.

scholarly journals “I Long For My Mother’s Bread”: Poetry as Integrative, Historical Practice in the Palestinian Context

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron Frederick Eldridge
Keyword(s):  
Poetic Form ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Narrative History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Traumatic History ◽  
Cognitive Faculties ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Historical Practice

This paper is an adaption of a longer investigation of the relationship between politics and poetry in the Palestinian context, focusing on the work of Mahmoud Darwish. For this selection, I have adapted the sections pertaining to the efficacy of poetry in the context of historical events–specifically the traumatic history of the Palestinians. It is my argument that artistic practices like poetry act primarily as a means of narrative creation that skillfully integrate the experiences of the poet and thus negotiate the experiences of the listeners in order to create new meaning. This dialogue between audience and poet creates a persuasive and novel movement within the conceptual field; thinking about something in terms of something else (metaphor). This has the effect of making the poet an intractable source of historical meaning. The questions of the past, a dizzying array of dissonant occurrences, fractured experiences, and selected memory, find cogency within the poetic form. This artistic formation only gains this cogency through a precise system of cognitive faculties, which are shared by both poet and audience. The poetry of Mahmoud Darwish acts as a means of understanding history in the context of the present; creating an integrated narrative-history, which has important implications on experience, implicating present action through a ‘reading’ of the past.

scholarly journals Biskupi i mnisi w Kościele Wschodu pod panowaniem Sasanidów = Bishops and monks in the Church of the East in the Sassanian period

2020 ◽  
pp. 171-196
Author(s):  
Adam Izdebski
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Church Reform ◽  
Church Hierarchy ◽  
Church Of The East ◽  
History Of ◽  
Monastic Communities ◽  
Dynamic Growth ◽  
Church Structures ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

This paper studies the relationship between Church hierarchy and monastic groups in the Syriac Church of the East in late antiquity (during the period of the Sassanian rule). Previous scholarship on this subject assumed the existence of a ‘natural’ conflict between the bishops and the monks in the East Syriac world of late antiquity. In this respect, it followed the early medieval eastern Syriac sources, which were created by monks themselves – and in all probability, these authors significantly rewrote the earlier history of their own Church. In this study, instead of relying on later sources, I propose to focus on the evidence that actually survives from late antiquity, that is the normative sources. These are collections of canons produced by the synods of the Church of the East that took place between ad 410 and ad 605. A detailed analysis of these sources leads to the conclusion that the relationship between the bishops and the monks in this particular Church was not characterized by a permanent, ‘natural’ conflict. Rather, subsequent policies that the bishops pursued vis-à-vis the monks were part of larger projects of church reform, that occurred almost one generation after another. These reforms had to do with the dynamic growth of the Church of the East, its integration into the Sassanian society, but also with the increasing challenge posed by the eastward expansion of the Monophysite West-Syriac Church structures and monastic communities, which in many places in Iraq and Iran seemed to threaten the very existence of the Church of the East.

The Context and Contents of Priscianus of Lydia’s Solutionum ad Chosroem

1998 ◽  
pp. 21-26
Author(s):  
Victoria Erhart
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
The Body ◽  
Byzantine Empire ◽  
Philosophical Debate ◽  
Sasanian Empire ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

Priscianus of Lydia’s Solutionum ad Chosroem is a series of answers to questions asked at a philosophical debate held at the Sasanian court c. 530 CE. Priscianus of Lydia was one of seven non-Christian philosophers from the Byzantine Empire who journeyed to the Sasanian Empire to take part in the debate. Long overlooked in the history of philosophy, Priscianus of Lydia’s text represents a branch of Neoplatonism that survived for centuries uninfluenced by the official Christianization of the Roman Empire. Priscianus of Lydia was one of the last remaining representatives of non-Christian Neoplatonism in Late Antiquity. Solutionum ad Chosroem provides a record of the world of Neoplatonism shortly before it disappeared under a tide of officially Christian philosophy and theology. I discusses the context of Priscianus’ work and its relation to activities in the Byzantine Empire, such as Emperor Justinian’s suppression of paganism and the closing of the Academy in Athens in 529 CE. I also discuss the specific contents of the Solutionum ad Chosroem, including questions on first principles, generation, natural history, and the relationship between the soul and the body.

Die Erhaltung der Sicherheit

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Conrad Tyrichter
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Political System ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Law ◽  
Political Crime ◽  
Normative Order ◽  
Proper Subject ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Relationship

The so-called "Restoration Policy" of the German Confederation (Deutscher Bund) in the Vormärz is a well-known topic which has, however, hardly been dealt with by the history of law. In this work, it is not only comprehensively reconstructed for the first time, but also analyzed from the perspective of more far-reaching questions. These include, in particular, questions about the formation of transnational security regimes against political crime in the 19th century, the emergence of a normative order of transnational criminal law or the relationship between "restoration" and "internal nation building". By transcending its proper subject, the book thus contributes to the study of the history of transnational reactions to political crime and opens up new perspectives on the complex political system of the German Confederation.

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