Schismata and ʾAgudot: The Prohibition against Creating Factions in Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians and Rabbinic Literature

AJS Review ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 228-245
Author(s):  
Aaron Amit
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Rabbinic Literature ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
Normative Principle ◽  
Oral Form ◽  
Brothers And Sisters

AbstractPaul opens his First Epistle to the Corinthians with the exhortation “Now I appeal to you, brothers [and sisters], … that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose” (1:10). This plea is strikingly similar to a passage in Sifre Deuteronomy 96, where the words lo titgodedu are interpreted as “Do not be made into gatherings/factions [ʾagudot]; rather, be all of you one gathering [ʾagudah].” Analyzing these sources in depth, this article argues that Paul was familiar with this early rabbinic midrash in an oral form. It also explores the possibility that Paul used another early rabbinic tradition on unity, which is found in the Mekhilta de-miluʾim section of the Sifra. If Paul indeed knew certain rabbinic oral traditions, then he was an independent interpreter of Scripture, who read Scripture in the original Hebrew. Further, even if Paul's audience consisted primarily of gentiles, the legal norms he sought to institute among them were based on Jewish traditions. Finally, Paul follows his exhortation against schismata with the names of specific groups in Corinth, which demonstrates that he understood the tannaitic tradition as a normative principle, meant to be applied to specific disagreements. If so, other first-century Jews also likely understood lo titgodedu as a concrete halakhic prohibition.

‘I Have Heard from Some Teachers’: the Second-Century Struggle for Forgiveness and Reconciliation

2004 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 5-28
Author(s):  
Christine Trevett
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Second Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
South Wales ◽  
Fictive Kinship ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Brothers And Sisters ◽  
Forgiveness And Reconciliation

In the close-knit valleys communities of South Wales where I was brought up, some fingers are still pointed at ‘the scab’, the miner who, for whatever reason, did not show solidarity in the strike of 1984-5, cement the definition between ‘them’ and ‘us’. In trouble-torn Palestine of the twenty-first century, or among the paramilitary groups of Northern Ireland today, suspected informers are summarily assassinated. In South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation Committee continues its work in the post-apartheid era. In second-century Rome and elsewhere, the ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ who made up the fictive kinship groups – the churches – in the growing but illicit cult of the Christians were conscious both of their own vulnerability to outside opinion and of their failures in relation to their co-religionists. The questions which they asked, too, were questions about reconciliation and/or (spiritual) death.

At the Time of Creation

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Van De Mieroop
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Western Philosophy ◽  
Writing System ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Creation Myth ◽  
The Future ◽  
True Knowledge

This book examines how the ancient Babylonians approached the question of what true knowledge was. The ancient Babylonians left behind a monumental textual record that stretches in time from before 3000 BC to the first century AD. The system of reasoning the Babylonians followed was very unlike the Greek one, and thus that of western philosophy built upon the Greek achievements. It was rooted in the cuneiform writing system. The book focuses on one area and explores it in three structurally related corpora: epistemology as displayed in writings on language, the future, and law. This chapter considers the poem entitled Babylonian Creation Myth, which belongs “before philosophy,” the importance of the Sumerian and Akkadian languages to Babylonian hermeneutics, the Babylonian cosmopolis, the written and oral traditions of ancient Mesopotamian culture, and intertextuality of Babylonian texts.

Beyond Judaisms: Metatron and the Divine Polymorphy of Ancient Judaism

2010 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 323-365 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Boyarin
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Rabbinic Literature ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
Son Of Man ◽  
Ancient Judaism ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Specific Project

AbstractMy specific project in this paper is to combine several related and notorious questions in the history of Judaism into one: What is the nexus among the semi-divine (or high angel) figure known in the Talmud as Metatron, the figure of the exalted Enoch in the Enoch books (1-3 Enoch!), "The One Like a Son of Man" of Daniel, Jesus, the Son of Man, and the rabbinically named heresy of "Two Powers/Sovereignties in Heaven?" I believe that in order to move towards some kind of an answer to this question, we need to develop a somewhat different approach to the study of ancient Judaism, as I hope to show here. I claim that late-ancient rabbinic literature when read in the context of all contemporary and earlier texts of Judaism—those defined as rabbinic as well as those defined as non-, para-, or even anti-rabbinic—affords us a fair amount of evidence for and information about a belief in (and perhaps cult of) a second divine person within, or very close to, so-called "orthodox" rabbinic circles long after the advent of Christianity. Part of the evidence for this very cult will come from efforts at its suppression on the part of rabbinic texts. I believe, moreover, that a reasonable chain of inference links this late cult figure back through the late-antique Book of 3 Enoch to the Enoch of the first-century Parables of Enoch—also known in the scholarly literature as the Similitudes of Enoch—and thus to the Son of Man of that text and further back to the One Like a Son of Man of Daniel 7.

scholarly journals Technological neutrality: recalibrating copyright in the information age

2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carys J Craig
Keyword(s):  
Social Values ◽  
Information Age ◽  
Copyright Law ◽  
Information Resources ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
Relational Understanding ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
The Social ◽  
Normative Principle ◽  
Rights And Interests

AbstractThis Article aims to draw the connection between how we conceptualize legal rights over information resources and our capacity to develop technologically neutral legal norms in the information age. More specifically, it identifies and critically examines three competing approaches to the idea of technological neutrality apparent in copyright jurisprudence. Ultimately, it is argued that true technological neutrality requires not simply the seamless expansion of legal rights into new technological contexts, but the careful, contextual recalibration of rights and interests in light of shifting values and changing circumstances. As a normative principle, technological neutrality in copyright law thus demands a nuanced and relational understanding of the rights at play, and the social values that they seek to foster as technologies evolve.

Writing Appalachia

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Prescription Drug Abuse ◽  
White People ◽  
Local Color ◽  
Mountaintop Removal ◽  
Appalachian Literature ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Selection Of

From the earliest oral traditions to print accounts of frontier exploration, from local color to modernism and postmodernism, from an exuberant flowering in the 1970s to its high popular and critical profile in the twenty-first century, Appalachian literature can boast a long tradition of delighting and provoking readers. Yet, locating an anthology that offers a representative selection of authors and texts from the earliest days to the present can be difficult. Katherine Ledford and Theresa Lloyd have produced an anthology to meet this need. Simultaneously representing, complicating, and furthering the discourse on the Appalachian region and its cultures, this anthology works to provides the historical depth and range of Appalachian literature that contemporary readers and scholars seek, from Cherokee oral narratives to fiction and drama about mountaintop removal and prescription drug abuse. It also aims to challenge the common stereotypes of Appalachian life and values by including stories of multiple, often less heard, viewpoints of Appalachian life: mountain and valley, rural and urban, folkloric and postmodern, traditional and contemporary, Northern and Southern, white people and people of color, straight and gay, insiders and outsiders—though, on some level, these dualisms are less concrete than previously imagined.

scholarly journals The Vocal Music of Ana Sokolović: Love Songs for the Twenty-First Century

2013 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 19-35
Author(s):  
Tamara Bernstein
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Vocal Music ◽  
First Century ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Human Soul ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Poetic Voice ◽  
Cultural Roots ◽  
Extended Vocal Techniques

Enchanted by the vocal music of Serbian-born Canadian composer Ana Sokolović, Tamara Bernstein visited the composer at her home in Montreal. Sokolović’s music draws on several sources, including the theatrical world and the culture of the Balkans. The extended vocal techniques in Sokolović’s music are rooted not in the avant-garde music of the twentieth century, but in the oral traditions and poetic voice of Serbia. It seems that the more the composer returns to her cultural roots, the more she embraces the universality of the human soul.

Re-Representing African Pasts through Historical Archaeology

2007 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter R. Schmidt ◽  
Jonathan R. Walz
Keyword(s):  
Historical Archaeology ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Archaeological Remains ◽  
Historical Representation ◽  
Swahili Coast ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
Great Zimbabwe ◽  
Vital Interest ◽  
Oral Form ◽  
The Impact

Historical archaeology in Africa has long privileged issues framed in terms of European sources and the impact of imperialism and colonialism on African peoples. With its emphasis on modernity, historical archaeology of this persuasion overlooks historical archaeologies concerned with revising metanarratives that misrepresent African pasts. We argue that historical archaeologists need to listen to local histories, often held in oral form, and that the appropriate task of historical archaeology is making histories that include, not exclude, local historicities. A critical historical archaeology in Africa is illustrated by cases in which oral traditions play a central role in unveiling the historical significance of archaeological remains as well as circumstances in which careful readings of archaeology and local histories subvert standard histories based on outsiders' interpretations and observations. We draw case studies from the Swahili Coast, Great Zimbabwe, the Kalahari, and the Cwezi period of the Great Lakes. Our approach accepts that if archaeologists employ materiality—regardless of its chronological age—to transform historical representation, then such historical revision creates a more comprehensive practice for historical archaeology, a matter of vital interest for both history and anthropology.

Jesus in Context

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Wenham
Keyword(s):  
Dead Sea Scrolls ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
First Century ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Sermon On The Mount ◽  
John The Baptist ◽  
Accessible Volume ◽  
The Future ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Qumran Community

Jesus changed our world forever. But who was he and what do we know about him? David Wenham's accessible volume is a concise and wide-ranging engagement with that enduring and elusive subject. Exploring the sources for Jesus and his scholarly reception, he surveys information from Roman, Jewish, and Christian texts, and also examines the origins of the gospels, as well as the evidence of Paul, who had access to the earliest oral traditions about Jesus. Wenham demonstrates that the Jesus of the New Testament makes sense within the first century CE context in which he lived and preached. He offers a contextualized portrait of Jesus and his teaching; his relationship with John the Baptist and the Qumran community (and the Dead Sea Scrolls); his ethics and the Sermon on the Mount, his successes and disappointments. Wenham also brings insights into Jesus' vision of the future and his understanding of his own death and calling.

Telling Tales with Words

2020 ◽  
pp. 37-58
Author(s):  
Fiona Macintosh ◽  
Justine McConnell
Keyword(s):  
Spoken Word ◽  
First Century ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Oral Poetry ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Roman Epic ◽  
Do So

Chapter 3 explores the twenty-first-century turn to orality exemplified in the works of poets such as Kate Tempest, Titilope Sonuga, and Alice Oswald. Engaging with Graeco-Roman epic in their work, these poets do so via a mode of performance that bears similarities with that of the Homeric bard. But this is not the composition-in-performance that Milman Parry and Albert Lord posited as the mode of Homeric performance; rather, these poets compose what John Miles Foley termed ‘Voiced Texts’. Such works hold the written and the spoken word in tension, denying primacy to the written even in our literacy-obsessed age, and making space for a new kind of orality that meets the demands of the contemporary era, while retaining the composite role of composer/performer that is a hallmark of oral traditions. Key to the popularity of this approach is the capacity of oral poetry to merge myth and history (as Jack Goody and Ian Watt argued), and to constantly rewrite its stories, even those that have been staunchly canonized, as the Graeco-Roman epics have been. The chapter concludes by exploring the ways that narrative podcasts, such as Serial and S-Town, evoke epic and mark another route along which the performance of epic is now being developed.

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