Defying Religion and Deifying Nationhood

Revivalistics ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 112-149
Author(s):  
Ghil'ad Zuckermann
Keyword(s):  
English Word ◽  
Orthodox Jews ◽  
The Body ◽  
Prickly Pear ◽  
Religious Values ◽  
Franz Rosenzweig ◽  
Widespread Phenomenon ◽  
Semantic Value ◽  
As If ◽  
New Jew

This chapter explores the widespread phenomenon of semantic secularization. An example of an ideologically-neutral semantic secularization is visible in the transition of the meaning for the English word cell from ‘monk’s living place’ to become instead ‘autonomous self-replicating unit from which tissues of the body are formed’. The main focus of this chapter, however, is on secularizations involving ideological what I call ‘lexical engineering’, as exemplified by deliberate, subversive processes of extreme semantic shifting, pejoration, amelioration, trivialization, and allusion. An example of such transvaluation, the transition of semantic value, is [bəloˈri:t]. In Mishnaic Hebrew this term means ‘Mohawk, an upright strip of hair that runs across the crown of the head from the forehead to the nape of the neck’, a distinctive of the abominable pagan and not to be touched by the Jewish barber. But, defying religious values as well as negating the Diaspora (where Jews by and large had tidy hair), secular Socialist Zionists use blorít with the meaning ‘forelock, hair above the forehead’, which becomes one of the defining characteristics of the ‘Sabra’ (‘prickly pear’ a metaphor for a native Israeli)—as if proposing that the ‘new Jew’ is a pagan. In line with the prediction made by Gershom Scholem in his famous letter to Franz Rosenzweig (Bekenntnis über unsere Sprache, 1926), some ultra-orthodox Jews have tried to launch a ‘lexical vendetta’: using secularized terms as dormant agents, as a shortcut to religious concepts, thus trying to convince secular Jews to go back to their religious roots.

SERPENTINE CONSTRUCTIONS: LUCRETIUS, DE RERVM NATVRA 3.657–63

2014 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 197-206
Author(s):  
D. Mark Possanza
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Compelling Evidence ◽  
Essential Point ◽  
Body Form ◽  
Equal Importance ◽  
Normal Expectation ◽  
Semantic Value ◽  
Small Point ◽  
As If

The mutilation of the snake provides compelling evidence that the soul and the body form an interconnected structural complex. The verbal complex, however, in which this serpens is articulated, has long been a problematic one. At the heart of the problem is the meaning of serpentis utrumque, a phrase which has been treated with considerable indulgence and is printed in the majority of twentieth-century editions, though it does not yield a satisfactory sense. It is usually interpreted to mean ‘both parts of a snake’, as if utrumque serpentis were equivalent in meaning to utramque partem serpentis. The word ‘parts,’ however, is an evasion of the semantic value of utrumque because it eliminates the ambiguity, in this context, of the pronoun ‘each of two,’ the reference of which should be made clear by the context, and supplies instead the very thing that is in question here, a clearly defined object, ‘both parts,’ for discidere. This may seem a small point but ‘both parts’ greatly obscures the nature of the problem. If we take a more literal approach to utrumque, we will get a better sense of the frustrated linguistic expectation caused by the pronoun: ‘of a snake with a darting tongue, quivering tail, long body, to cut up each of the two’. The question immediately arises: to what does ‘each of the two’ refer? According to the normal usage of uterque the answer should be apparent. In 3.658 it is not. It has long been assumed that utrumque refers to cauda and corpore but such a reference is not at all clear from the syntax. In the description of the snake we do not find, and this is the essential point, two clearly defined components of the snake to which utrumque (‘each of the two’) can refer in accordance with its meaning and the syntax of the sentence. Instead, we find three components, expressed in three parallel ablative phrases, uibrante lingua, micanti cauda and procero corpore, all of equal importance in delineating the snake. And since the whole construction is dependent on one verb, discidere, the normal expectation would be that, whatever words are the antecedent of utrumque, those words would be in the accusative as well; the shift from cauda and corpore in the ablative to utrumque in the accusative, in what is essentially an appositional relationship, is syntactically jarring.

The Shroud of Turin

1997 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-140
Author(s):  
Thaddeus J. Trenn ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Body Image ◽  
Scientific Evidence ◽  
The Body ◽  
Religious Art ◽  
Satisfactory Explanation ◽  
Marshall Mcluhan ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Shroud Of Turin ◽  
High Degree ◽  
As If

The Shroud of Turin, a linen cloth with but a faint image, continues to capture the interest of many people of diverse beliefs. Although the measured age of the cloth is relatively recent, other scientific findings indicate an earlier provenance. Any firm conclusions regarding the cloth's history remain premature. No satisfactory explanation has been found as yet for how the image on the cloth was produced structurally or stylistically. Iconographic evidence suggests that the image was the source of facial peculiarities found in early works of religious art. The body image bears a striking yet preternatural correlation with Scriptural accounts of wounds. Curiously, the image on the cloth functions as a photographic negative, exhibiting a high degree of resolution, as if the original were produced in pixels. Despite serious efforts to discover some artistic origin md medium, scientific evidence points in the direction that it was not produced by hands. If it is tme that the medium is the message, as Marshall McLuhan wrote, then the Turin Shroud may be a parable for the modern age.

XXIV. Observations on the Chariots of the antient Britains. By the Rev. Mr. Pegge. In a Letter to the Rev. Mr. Norris

Archaeologia ◽  
1785 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 211-213
Author(s):  
Pegge
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Common Mistake ◽  
Proper Name ◽  
The Common ◽  
As If

Besides the common mistake of the annalists and historians in regard to this passage in Juvenal,Regem aliquem capies, aut de temone BritannoExcidet Arviragus—Juvenal IV. 126.By taking Arviragus for the proper name of a person, and not of an officer; the words of the satyrist are memorable in another respect, as serving to inform us, by the word temone, of a singular mode of fighting amongst the Britons; as if by leaving his carriage, and running upon the pole, the combatant from thence, or from the yoke, engaged the enemy, as long as he thought prudent and convenient, and then retreated back into the body of the vehicle.

scholarly journals Magnetic behaviour of supraconducting tin spheres

1935 ◽  
Vol 151 (873) ◽  
pp. 316-333 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Mendelssohn ◽  
J. D. Babbitt ◽  
Frederick Alexander Lindemann
Keyword(s):  
Magnetic Field ◽  
External Magnetic Field ◽  
Magnetic Force ◽  
Magnetic Behaviour ◽  
The Body ◽  
Whole Body ◽  
Measured Field ◽  
Lines Of Force ◽  
As If ◽  
Field Strengths

Until a year ago it was generally accepted that if a body is made supraconducting while in a magnetic field the lines of magnetic force were "frozen in," i. e ., whatever lines of force passed through the body at the time when it became supraconducting remained there afterwards, unaffected by any change in the external field, so long as the body was supraconducting. Meissner and Ochsenfeld, however, showed that this supposition was not true. They measured field strengths in the immediate neighbourhood of cylinders which had been cooled to supraconductivity in an external magnetic field, and found that the field of force was then of the same nature as that to be expected in the neighbourhood of perfectly diamagnetic bodies. Thus it appeared that when a body becomes supraconducting in a magnetic field the lines of force are all pressed out of the body, and the induction inside the body falls to zero. At the same time, however, these authors report on another experiment, the result of which appears to us not entirely in accordance with the assumption that the induction in the whole body became zero. They measured the field strengths inside and outside a hollow cylinder, after it had become supraconducting in a field perpendicular to its axis, and found again that the field strength outside was as if the cylinder were almost perfectly diamagnetic, but the field inside was appreciably the same as if the cylinder were non-supraconducting. We therefore made a number of experiments, hoping to find out more exactly the nature of the phenomenon.

scholarly journals PREWEDDING PHOTO PROCESSION AND THE ROLE OF THE FAMILY IN THEM

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 246
Author(s):  
Aulil Amri
Keyword(s):  
Islamic Law ◽  
Religious Values ◽  
Religious Knowledge ◽  
The Family ◽  
Marriage Contract ◽  
The Law ◽  
Husband And Wife ◽  
As If

In Islamic law, pre-wedding photos have not been regulated in detail. However, pre-wedding photo activities have become commonplace by the community. It becomes a problem when pre-wedding is currently done with an intimate scene, usually the prospective bride uses sexy clothes and is also not accompanied by her mahram when doing pre-wedding photos. Even though there have been many fatwas and studies on the limits of permissibility and prohibition in the pre-wedding procession.The results show that the pre-wedding procession that is carried out by the community in terms of poses, clothes, and also assistance in accordance with Islamic law, the law is permissible. However, it often happens in the community to take photos before the marriage contract with scenes as if they are legally husband and wife and the bride's family knows without prohibiting, directing, and guiding them according to Islamic teachings. In this case the role of the family is very important, we as parents must understand the basis of religious knowledge and how to instill religious values in our children since childhood is the key to this problem dilemma.

Traditional Aesthetics

2020 ◽  
pp. 65-75
Author(s):  
Julianne Newmark
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New Mexico ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
The Body ◽  
Southwestern United States ◽  
Community History ◽  
As If

D. H. Lawrence’s essays ‘The Spinner and the Monks’ of 1913 and ‘The Hopi Snake Dance’ of 1924 offer evocative textual considerations of aesthetic mediation through acts of the body. In these essays, readers can understand ‘traditional’ aesthetic acts to be those that are not contrivances of modernity; through such acts, history is invoked in the now, as if unchanged. This chapter identifies Lawrence’s engagements with traditional aesthetics as unique experiences of the human sensorium. The examples this chapter examines – the first from Lawrence’s earliest trip outside England (Italy), and the second from New Mexico (in the Southwestern United States) – show how Lawrence progressively experienced and then wrote about ‘traditional’ aesthetic acts as having a unique capacity to engage with community, history and truth. They thus have broad implications concerning Lawrence’s movement toward a refined articulation of aesthetic difference and viscerally mediated relationships. Lawrence’s accounts of Hopi dance and Italian handiwork reveal an openness to the viscerally-mediating capacity of aesthetic experience. As a result of his multi-sensorial engagements, Lawrence experiences and textually records ‘traditional’ aesthetic performances or outputs as both meditating and transformational.

scholarly journals Visualizing Law and Justice at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 114 ◽  
pp. 128-132
Author(s):  
Maria Elander
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
The Body ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Individual Identity ◽  
Personal Testimony ◽  
Law And Justice ◽  
As If

The body is falling backwards, facing the sky. The hands are clasped together in a sampeah, as if in greeting, as if in prayer. For the artist of the Cambodian Tragedy Memorial, also called A ceux qui ne sont plus là (For those who are no longer here), the body “speak[s] both to and beyond individual identity.” By standing both as personal testimony of loss and “in memory of the Cambodian genocide and its impossible representation,” the memorial raises longstanding questions on the authority and limits of testimony, on representation, and, importantly for this symposium, on the relation between art and international criminal law.

Art and Archaeology

2016 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 140-143
Author(s):  
Nigel Spivey
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Freed Slaves ◽  
Mr Safe ◽  
As If

In 1830 a hoard of Roman silver weighing some 25 kilograms was recovered from farmland near Berthouville, between Rouen and Caen. The silver was mostly worked into drinking vessels and associated items such as jugs, ladles, and bowls. Two statuettes of the god Mercury confirmed this as a votive deposit, as indicated by various dedications from Romano-Gallic pilgrims, notably on nine pieces left by Quintus Domitius Tutus (‘Mr Safe’) in the mid-first century ad. Restored by conservation experts at the Getty Museum, the cache – along with several other treasures from Gaul – has served as witness to ‘Roman luxury’ in an exhibition on tour in the USA. The exhibition's catalogue is a volume that earns its place in any classical library. The Berthouville Silver Treasure and Roman Luxury may not add very much to our understanding of luxuria in Roman discourse: it is left unclear what happens when a ‘luxury object’ is put out of circulation, or at least transferred into the enclosed economy of a sanctuary; and if Mercury was a deity of fortune favoured particularly by freed slaves, perhaps a set of silver spoons was not such an ‘elite’ attribute as supposed? Beyond such factors of value, however, the figurative elaboration on display is striking. At the centre of a libation bowl we find the Lydian queen Omphale in a drunken slumber, exposing her derrière – as if to say ‘Beware how you imbibe’. One wine pitcher shows Achilles leaping aboard his chariot, with the body of Hector trussed in tow; turn the jug round, and there is Achilles again, now himself stricken in battle. On another pitcher, Achilles is among Greeks mourning the death of Patroclus; and there is Hector's corpse in a pair of scales, as the price of his ransom is assessed. We would be impressed to find such ‘sophisticated’ iconography upon objects in use at some stately villa at Rome or around the Bay of Naples. What does its appearance in the moist pastures of Normandy signify – at least for our preconceptions of ‘provincial taste’?

Masterpieces of Oriental Art. 7

1946 ◽  
Vol 78 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 123-123
Author(s):  
Dora Gordine
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Slight Variation ◽  
Prominent Feature ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Modern Sense ◽  
As If

The border of this stone is composed of several rows of ornament. The outermost rim is carved in low relief that not only confines but gives width to the row of animals next to it. Those animals chase one another with the vigour of beasts in a circus ring, their exuberance apparent not only in the general rhythm but in the individual shape of every one of them. Each elephant is modelled with extreme sensitiveness in spite of his monumental form. The horses trot briskly with an air of concentration. The lions are alert and aggressive as if in. the presence of danger, while the cows are tame and placid. In every animal the massiveness of the body is a prominent feature, while sculptural stability is retained by the exaggerated shortness of the legs. The animals tread a row of foliated pattern, which gives the feeling of ground for their support and by its elaboration brings out the simplicity of the animals above and the geese beneath. The geese at first glance look symmetrical, yet they are not only pattern but alive, and the reason is that though they are subdued to an architectural purpose, there is individuality in every goose, and a slight variation in the gesture of every head. The lowest part of the border consists of two rows of lotus petals, delicate and faintly traced, the larger row climbing a swelling curve in the stone. The plain centre underlines the smallest modulation in the carving. This stone, which at first sight might be taken for decoration in the modern sense of a trade piece, proves on examination to be particularly rich and beautiful. How very different, for example, from Mestrovic's “Canadian War Memorial” illustrated in Some Modern Sculptors, by Stanley Casson.

scholarly journals A short history of bodily sensation

1990 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Starobinski
Keyword(s):  
Body Image ◽  
Body Language ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Consciousness ◽  
Short History ◽  
Bodily Sensation ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
History Of ◽  
Paul Valéry ◽  
As If

In one of his Cahiers, Paul Valéry has the note. Somatism (heresy of the end of time),Adoration, cult of the machine for living.† Have we come to the end of time? The heresy anticipated by Valéry has almost become the official religion. Everything is related to the body, as if it had just been rediscovered after being long forgotten; body image, body language, body consciousness, liberation of the body are the passwords. Historians, prey to the same infection, have begun inquiring into what previous cultures have done with the body, in way of tattooing, mutilation, celebration all the rituals related to the various bodily functions.2 Past writers from Rabelais to Flaubert are ransacked for evidence, and immediately it becomes apparent that we are far from being the first discoverers of bodily reality. That reality was the first knowledge to enter human understanding: ‘They knew that they were naked’ (Genesis 3.7). From then on, it has impossible to ignore the body.

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