The Story of the Samaritan and the Innkeeper (Luke 10:30-35): A Study in Character Rehabilitation

2009 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 422-447 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Longenecker

AbstractThe aphorism 'context is everything' has been a guiding principle in many studies of Jesus' parabolic sayings. This is true, for instance, of studies attempting to recover a parable's significance in relation to the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, or in relation to its literary placement and function, or in relation to its polyvalent potential. It is also true of this study, which examines Jesus' narrative of the Samaritan—usually referred to as the 'parable of the good Samaritan'. It suggests that, when the Samaritan story is placed within a certain contextual configuration, its narrative features align themselves in ways that have either been conspicuously neglected or consciously avoided in the history of the story's interpretation. Rather than neglecting or avoiding the significance of these narrative features, this essay seeks to exploit their interpretative significance in a fresh manner, entertaining possibilities of meaning beyond the Lukan interpretative framework. In particular, consideration is given to the relationship between the Samaritan and the innkeeper as representing an exceptional partnership that testifies to the reign of God in making each party vulnerable to loss while promoting goodness towards others.

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 189-202

The article advances a hypothesis about the composition of Michel de Montaigne’s Essays. Specialists in the intellectual history of the Renaissance have long considered the relationship among Montaigne’s thematically heterogeneous thoughts, which unfold unpredictably and often seen to contradict each other. The waywardness of those reflections over the years was a way for Montaigne to construct a self-portrait. Spontaneity of thought is the essence of the person depicted and an experimental literary technique that was unprecedented in its time and has still not been surpassed. Montaigne often writes about freedom of reflection and regards it as an extremely important topic. There have been many attempts to interpret the haphazardness of the Essays as the guiding principle in their composition. According to one such interpretation, the spontaneous digressions and readiness to take up very different philosophical notions is a form of of varietas and distinguo, which Montaigne understood in the context of Renaissance philosophy. Another interpretation argues that the Essays employ the rhetorical techniques of Renaissance legal commentary. A third opinion regards the Essays as an example of sprezzatura, a calculated negligence that calls attention to the aesthetic character of Montaigne’s writing. The author of the article argues for a different interpretation that is based on the concept of idleness to which Montaigne assigned great significance. He had a keen appreciation of the role of otium in the culture of ancient Rome and regarded leisure as an inner spiritual quest for self-knowledge. According to Montaigne, idleness permits self-directedness, and it is an ideal form in which to practice the freedom of thought that brings about consistency in writing, living and reality, in all of which Montaigne finds one general property - complete inconstancy. Socratic self-knowledge, a skepticism derived from Pyrrho of Elis and Sextus Empiricus, and a rejection of the conventions of traditional rhetoric that was similar to Seneca’s critique of it were all brought to bear on the concept of idleness and made Montaigne’s intellectual and literary experimentation in the Essays possible.


Author(s):  
Peter Coss

Part I of this book is an in-depth examination of the characteristics of the Tuscan aristocracy across the first two and a half centuries of the second millennium, as studied by Italian historians and others working within the Italian tradition: their origins, interests, strategies for survival and exercise of power; the structure and the several levels of aristocracy and how these interrelated; the internal dynamics and perceptions that governed aristocratic life; and the relationship to non-aristocratic sectors of society. It will look at how aristocratic society changed across this period and how far changes were internally generated as opposed to responses from external stimuli. The relationship between the aristocracy and public authority will also be examined. Part II of the book deals with England. The aim here is not a comparative study but to bring insights drawn from Tuscan history and Tuscan historiography into play in understanding the evolution of English society from around the year 1000 to around 1250. This part of the book draws on the breadth of English historiography but is also guided by the Italian experience. The book challenges the interpretative framework within which much English history of this period tends to be written—that is to say the grand narrative which revolves around Magna Carta and English exceptionalism—and seeks to avoid dangers of teleology, of idealism, and of essentialism. By offering a study of the aristocracy across a wide time-frame and with themes drawn from Italian historiography, I hope to obviate these tendencies and to appreciate the aristocracy firmly within its own contexts.


2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 142-153
Author(s):  
Anna Triayudha ◽  
Rateh Ninik Pramitasary ◽  
Hermansyah Akbar Anas ◽  
Choirul Mahfud

The growth and development of Islamic Education is inseparable from the growth of institutions. The Prophet made it happen by establishing institutions that had a role in developing and advancing Islamic education, one of which was a mosque. Research on the relationship of mosques with the social history of Islamic education is discussed by using descriptive qualitative methods that are oriented to literature review. This paper shows that in the early period of Islamic education, the Prophet provided exemplary by building and empowering mosques. The example of the Prophet continued with the Caliphs afterwards until the present era. The mosque was built by the Prophet from the Al Haram mosque located in Makkah, Quba Mosque located in Quba, Nabawi mosque located in Medina and so on. The role and function of the mosque at that time was as a place of prayer, a place of prayer, a place for discussion or deliberation, a meeting place to develop a war strategy and others related to the problems and needs of Muslims. From time to time, the role or function of the mosque has changed slightly. In essence, mosques are currently influencing the development of the social history of Islamic education in Indonesia.


2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (7) ◽  
pp. e2019789118
Author(s):  
Gianluca Ursini ◽  
Giovanna Punzi ◽  
Benjamin W. Langworthy ◽  
Qiang Chen ◽  
Kai Xia ◽  
...  

Tracing the early paths leading to developmental disorders is critical for prevention. In previous work, we detected an interaction between genomic risk scores for schizophrenia (GRSs) and early-life complications (ELCs), so that the liability of the disorder explained by genomic risk was higher in the presence of a history of ELCs, compared with its absence. This interaction was specifically driven by loci harboring genes highly expressed in placentae from normal and complicated pregnancies [G. Ursini et al., Nat. Med. 24, 792–801 (2018)]. Here, we analyze whether fractionated genomic risk scores for schizophrenia and other developmental disorders and traits, based on placental gene-expression loci (PlacGRSs), are linked with early neurodevelopmental outcomes in individuals with a history of ELCs. We found that schizophrenia’s PlacGRSs are negatively associated with neonatal brain volume in singletons and offspring of multiple pregnancies and, in singletons, with cognitive development at 1 y and, less strongly, at 2 y, when cognitive scores become more sensitive to other factors. These negative associations are stronger in males, found only with GRSs fractionated by placental gene expression, and not found in PlacGRSs for other developmental disorders and traits. The relationship of PlacGRSs with brain volume persists as an anlage of placenta biology in adults with schizophrenia, again selectively in males. Higher placental genomic risk for schizophrenia, in the presence of ELCs and particularly in males, alters early brain growth and function, defining a potentially reversible neurodevelopmental path of risk that may be unique to schizophrenia.


Circulation ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 143 (Suppl_1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Adebamike A Oshunbade ◽  
Seth Lirette ◽  
Daisuke Kamimura ◽  
Arsalan Hamid ◽  
Lena Mathews ◽  
...  

Background: Hypertensive diseases in pregnancy have been associated with cardiovascular diseases later in life. However, less is known about the relationship between hypertensive diseases in pregnancy and hemodynamic stress later in life. We evaluated the relationship between hypertensive diseases in pregnancy and plasma levels of biomarkers of hemodynamic stress later in life in the Genetic Epidemiology Network of Arteriopathy (GENOA) study. Methods and Results: We investigated 1605 women from the GENOA study (mean age 61±10 years, 57.1% African American).Women were classified as self-reported as nulliparous women (n=140), a history of normotensive pregnancies (n=1,195), a history of a hypertensive pregnancy (n= 229), or a history of preeclampsia (n= 41). We compared adjusted associations among this groups with 4 biomarkers of hemodynamic stress using generalized estimating equations to account for familial clustering. After adjusting for age, race, level of education, smoking history, hypertension, body mass index (BMI), history of coronary artery disease, and diabetes, women with a history of preeclampsia had higher levels of C-terminal proendothelin (CT-proET) compared to women with a history of normotensive pregnancies (Table, p=0.01). There were no significant differences in the levels of midregional proatrial natriuretic peptide (MR-proANP), midregional proadrenomedullin (MR-proADM), and C-Terminal proarginine vasopressin (CT-proAVP) in this groups. Conclusions: Elevated levels of CT-proET (a precursor to the potent vasoconstrictor Endothelin 1) demonstrates a strong relationship among those with a history of preeclampsia. Future studies are warranted to further explore the relationship between CT-proET in the pathogenesis of preeclampsia as well as subsequent changes in cardiovascular structure and function associated with a history of preeclampsia later in life.


2018 ◽  
Vol 150 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clara Franzini-Armstrong

The concept of excitation–contraction coupling is almost as old as Journal of General Physiology. It was understood as early as the 1940s that a series of stereotyped events is responsible for the rapid contraction response of muscle fibers to an initial electrical event at the surface. These early developments, now lost in what seems to be the far past for most young investigators, have provided an endless source of experimental approaches. In this Milestone in Physiology, I describe in detail the experiments and concepts that introduced and established the field of excitation–contraction coupling in skeletal muscle. More recent advances are presented in an abbreviated form, as readers are likely to be familiar with recent work in the field.


Author(s):  
Laura Quick

This study considers the relationship of Deuteronomy 28 to the curse traditions of the ancient Near East. It focuses on the linguistic and cultural means of the transmission of these traditions to the book of Deuteronomy. The author considers a broad range of materials, including Old Aramaic inscriptions, attempting to show the value of these Northwest Semitic texts as primary sources to reorient our view of an ancient world usually seen through a biblical or Mesopotamian lens. By studying these inscriptions alongside the biblical text, this study aims to increase our knowledge of the early history and function of the curses in Deuteronomy 28. This has implications for our understanding of the date of the composition of the book of Deuteronomy, and the reasons behind its production. The ritual realm which stands behind the use of curses and the formation of covenants in the biblical world is also explored, arguing that the interplay between orality and literacy is essential to understanding the function and form of the curses in Deuteronomy. Ultimately, this book contributes to our understanding of the book of Deuteronomy and its place within the literary history of ancient Israel and Judah, with implications for the composition of the Pentateuch or Torah as a whole.


2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 19-46
Author(s):  
Adam Flowers

The Qur'an's employment of diverse modes of discourse is, perhaps, the text's defining literary feature. These discourses, ranging from apocalyptic, to narrative, to legal, have long been observed by Western scholars. Genre studies of the Qur'an, however, have largely stagnated, and little progress has been made beyond cursory classifications. This stagnation is particularly stunting to the study of the textual history of the Qur'an, as vital questions concerning the development of individual genres and the relationship between Qur'anic genre and the unit of the sura remain unanswered. This article marks a first attempt at formulating a literary framework for approaching Qur'anic genre. It will synthesise existing conceptions of Qur'anic genre into a common interpretative framework: individual Qur'anic genres exist as thematically and syntactically demarcated literary units. The article will then propose a novel, literary approach that utilises a comparative thematic and syntactic structural analysis of the Qur'an text to uncover the original, communicated pieces of Qur'anic revelation from the Prophet to an audience in time, or ‘Qur'anic utterances'. This literary analysis is applied to Sūrat Āl ʿImrān and will demonstrate that it is constructed of 34 individual utterances and nine distinct literary genres.


Author(s):  
Felicity Chaplin

While there have been significant contributions on la Parisienne in the fields of art history, fashion theory and culture, and cultural history, little is written on her appearance and function in cinema. This book is an attempt to address this gap in scholarship by examining the figure of la Parisienne in cinema. The approach of this book is threefold: textual (the films), contextual (the history of the representations of the Parisienne type), and intertextual (the relationship between the films and other texts such as novels and paintings, extending to the star persona of the actress). However the overarching methodology of this book is iconographical, tracing the historical prefigurations of la Parisienne in the art, literature, and mass culture of nineteenth-century France. The findings of this book are both general (la Parisienne as a cultural type) and specific (la Parisienne as a she appears in different films). La Parisienne can be defined as a figure of French modernity, understood both in its technological and cultural sense, and is recognisable in terms of six interconnected categories: art, cosmopolitanism, fashion, danger, prostitution, and stardom. These categories reveal the way the Parisienne type is constantly evolving while at the same time possessing a set of recognisable motifs. By connecting the films discussed in this book to a cultural tradition to which they may not at first appear to belong, this book not only enriches our understanding of these films, it also offers new analytical and interpretative perspectives.


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