Theological Developments in the Non-European World, 1500–1800

Author(s):  
Ronnie Po-chia Hsia

Theological developments in the non-European early modern world, including Mesoamerica, India, China, and Japan, are examined in four sections. First, this paper analyzes the theme of overseas missions in the confessional polemics between Protestants and Catholics, and the disagreements between Pietists and orthodox within the Lutheran Church on the sending of missionaries. It then examines the problem of language and conversion, including the Chinese Rites controversy, and surveys the ways in which theological terms and the Bible were translated in different missionary territories. Finally, it focuses on the impact of non-European missions on developments in sacramental theology and ecclesiology, which would eventually challenge the Eurocentric and sacerdotal visions of global Catholicism.

This interdisciplinary volume explores core emerging themes in the study of early modern literary-diplomatic relations, developing essential methods of analysis and theoretical approaches that will shape future research in the field. Contributions focus on three intimately related areas: the impact of diplomatic protocol on literary production; the role of texts in diplomatic practice, particularly those that operated as ‘textual ambassadors’; and the impact of changes in the literary sphere on diplomatic culture. The literary sphere held such a central place because it gave diplomats the tools to negotiate the pervasive ambiguities of diplomacy; simultaneously literary depictions of diplomacy and international law provided genre-shaped places for cultural reflection on the rapidly changing and expanding diplomatic sphere. Translations exemplify the potential of literary texts both to provoke competition and to promote cultural convergence between political communities, revealing the existence of diplomatic third spaces in which ritual, symbolic, or written conventions and semantics converged despite particular oppositions and differences. The increasing public consumption of diplomatic material in Europe illuminates diplomatic and literary communities, and exposes the translocal, as well as the transnational, geographies of literary-diplomatic exchanges. Diplomatic texts possessed symbolic capital. They were produced, archived, and even redeployed in creative tension with the social and ceremonial worlds that produced them. Appreciating the generic conventions of specific types of diplomatic texts can radically reshape our interpretation of diplomatic encounters, just as exploring the afterlives of diplomatic records can transform our appreciation of the histories and literatures they inspired.


Author(s):  
Henk Nellen ◽  
Piet Steenbakkers

Textual criticism and historical research played a pivotal role in the controversies about the divine status of the Bible. This introductory chapter attempts to sketch the main context of the debates, historical as well as historiographical, for the single chapters that follow. The chapter gives an explanation of the nature of early modern biblical philology, addresses the conservatism in the practice of biblical philology that arose from psychological, socio-cultural, and theological impediments, highlights the impact of inter-confessional strife on the status of the Bible, and pays special attention to intellectual eccentrics, Thomas Hobbes, Lodewijk Meyer, and Benedict Spinoza in particular, who availed themselves of innovative exegesis for the dismantling of the divine status of the Bible.


Author(s):  
Victoria Brownlee

This book provides an account of the how the Bible was read and applied in early modern England, and maps the connection between these readings and various forms of writing. The Bible had a profound impact on early modern culture, and Bible-reading shaped the period’s drama, poetry, and life writings, as well as sermons and biblical commentaries. This book argues that literary writings bear the hallmarks of the period’s dominant exegetical practices, and do interpretative work. Tracing the impact of biblical reading across a range of genres and writers, the discussion demonstrates that literary reimaginings of, and allusions to, the Bible were common, varied, and ideologically evocative. The book explores how a series of popularly interpreted biblical narratives were recapitulated in the work of a diverse selection of writers, some of whom remain relatively unknown. In early modern England, the figures of Solomon, Job, and Christ’s mother, Mary, and the books of Song of Songs and Revelation, are enmeshed in different ways with contemporary concerns, and their usage illustrates how the Bible’s narratives could be turned to a fascinating array of debates. Showing the multifarious contexts in which biblical narratives were deployed, this book argues that Protestant interpretative practices both contribute to, and problematize, literary constructions of a range of theological, political, and social debates.


2018 ◽  
pp. 125-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. M. Drobyshevsky ◽  
P. V. Trunin ◽  
A. V. Bozhechkova

The paper studies the factors of secular stagnation. Key factors of long-term slowdown in economic growth include the slowdown of technological development, aging population, human capital accumulation limits, high public debt, creative destruction process violation etc. The authors analyze key theoretical aspects of long-term stagnation and study the impact of these factors on Japanies economy. The authors conclude that most of the factors have significant influence on the Japanese economy for recent decades, but they cannot explain all dynamics. For Russia, on the contrary, we do not see any grounds for considering the decline in the economy since 2013 as an episode of secular stagnation.


Author(s):  
Dzhyhil Yu. ◽  

Residential architecture has one of the most conservative styles based on its specifics. However, today this type of architecture seeks to actively respond to changes in the modern world. These changes are caused by multiple factors, among them are: technological and information progress; lack of resources and environmental pollution; military conflicts and population migration etc. The purpose of this article is to summarize the experience of the Department of Architectural Environment of Lviv Polytechnic National University over housing issues and outline the methodological principles of innovation in designing both individual houses and the architectural environment of residential formations. While writing this article, we analyzed the 15-year experience of Architectural Environment's Department diploma projects. The unique feature of these projects is the priority on the design of the environment. The evolution of diploma project topics is revealed on multiple distinctive examples such as the reconstruction of old buildings in Lviv and the construction of prefabricated homes and container-type housing. Futuristic settlements are represented in projects such as “The Ocean Settlements” and “Prykarpatsk - the City of Future”. Research projects were developed to study current trends in housing design and the impact of innovative technologies on planning decisions. These projects discoursed the protection of housing from traffic noise and issues related to environmental preservation. Innovative architectural ideas of future housing, developed by students in these projects, are based on a combination of aesthetic, technical, and social components of architecture. The conclusion indicates that when educating future architects, it is important to teach them the basics of the craft, as well as the ability to defend their innovative ideas. The emphasis is placed on the importance of educating the architect's personal responsibility for their own design solutions. It is stated that professional motivation and the ability to constantly renew previously acquired knowledge and skills will be among the main tasks in training future architects.


Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 252-254
Author(s):  
Albrecht Classen

Throughout times, magic and magicians have exerted a tremendous influence, and this even in our (post)modern world (see now the contributions to Magic and Magicians in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Time, ed. Albrecht Classen, 2017; here not mentioned). Allegra Iafrate here presents a fourth monograph dedicated to magical objects, primarily those associated with the biblical King Solomon, especially the ring, the bottle which holds a demon, knots, and the flying carpet. She is especially interested in the reception history of those symbolic objects, both in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, both in western and in eastern culture, that is, above all, in the Arabic world, and also pursues the afterlife of those objects in the early modern age. Iafrate pursues not only the actual history of King Solomon and those religious objects associated with him, but the metaphorical objects as they made their presence felt throughout time, and this especially in literary texts and in art-historical objects.


1998 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 63-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel L. Jose ◽  
Charles K. Moore

This paper traces the development of five taxation types in the Bible — income taxes, property taxes, special assessment taxes, poll taxes (all direct taxes), and indirect taxes. The development of these taxes is discussed within the context of Israel's historical development. The impact of counting, measurement, and computation on the development of taxation is also considered.


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