scholarly journals Communicating Across Communities

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 589-606 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clarinda E. Calma
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Religious Tolerance ◽  
Target Readership

In the sixteenth century, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was a multicultural and multidenominational country, where religious freedom was guaranteed by the General Warsaw Confederation Act of 1573. This climate of religious tolerance allowed a culture of public theological dispute to flourish within the realm. Printed in Vilnius in 1584, Gaspar Wilkowski’s Dziesięc mocnych dowodów [Ten Strong Reasons]—a translation of Edmund Campion’s Rationes decem—captured this culture of controversy and polemical dispute. To understand the significance of Wilkowski’s book this essay will situate it in its wider historical context of cross-confessional debates between Catholics and the Polish Brethren. Three other books will be discussed to demonstrate that Wilkowski’s translation was clearly written as an instrument of polemical dispute. A textual analysis of the work shows a change of emphasis from Campion’s book, consequently affecting the reader’s reception of the translated work. Understanding how the translator, in this case Wilkowski, made conscious changes in the original text to accommodate the particular needs of his target readership helps explain the purpose and structure of the Polish translation. In short, Wilkowski wanted to make his translation as relevant to his readers as possible.

Beyond Religious Freedom

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Shakman Hurd
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Religious Tolerance ◽  
Religious Minorities ◽  
Religious Difference ◽  
Power Difference ◽  
Ways Of Being

In recent years, North American and European nations have sought to legally remake religion in other countries through an unprecedented array of international initiatives. Policymakers have rallied around the notion that the fostering of religious freedom, interfaith dialogue, religious tolerance, and protections for religious minorities are the keys to combating persecution and discrimination. This book argues that these initiatives create the very social tensions and divisions they are meant to overcome. It looks at three critical channels of state-sponsored intervention: international religious freedom advocacy, development assistance and nation building, and international law. It shows how these initiatives make religious difference a matter of law, resulting in a divide that favors forms of religion authorized by those in power and excludes other ways of being and belonging. In exploring the dizzying power dynamics and blurred boundaries that characterize relations between “expert religion,” “governed religion,” and “lived religion,” the book charts new territory in the study of religion in global politics. The book provides new insights into today's most pressing dilemmas of power, difference, and governance.

Domestic Violence and the Islamic Tradition

2015 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 130-133
Author(s):  
Hamid Mavani
Keyword(s):  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Minority Rights ◽  
Gender Issues ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
Legal Provisions ◽  
Novel Reading ◽  
Analytic Skills ◽  
Do So

The polyvalent Qur’anic text lends itself to multiple interpretations, dependingupon one’s presuppositions and premises. In fact, Q. 3:7 distinguishesbetween muḥkam (explicit, categorical) and mutashābih (metaphorical, allegorical,symbolic) verses. As such, this device provides a way for reinterpretingverses that outwardly appear to be problematic – be it in the area ofgender equality, minority rights, religious freedom, or war. However, manyof the verses dealing with legal provisions in such areas as devotional matters,marriage, divorce, child custody, inheritance and bequest, and specific punishmentsappear to be unequivocal, categorical, and explicit. As such, scholarshave devised certain hermeneutical strategies to situate and contextualizethese verses in a particular socio-historical context, as well as to emphasizethat they were in conversation with the society to which the Qur’an was revealedand thereby underlining the “performative” (p.15) nature of the relationshipbetween the Qur’an and the society.No verse is more problematic, in the sense that it offends contemporarysensibilities and is quite difficult to reconcile with an egalitarian worldviewwhen dealing with gender issues, than Q. 4:34, which allows the husband todiscipline his wife if he deems her guilty of nushūz (e.g., disobedience, intransigence,sexual lewdness, aloofness, dislike or hatred of himself). AyeshaChaudhry undertakes a study of this challenging verse by engaging the corpusof literature in Arabic from the classical period to the seventeenth century; shealso includes Urdu and English sources for the post-colonial period.She starts off by relating her personal journey from a state of discomfortand puzzlement when she first came across this verse in middle school to adefensive posture in trying to convince herself by invoking the Prophet’scompassion toward his wives and in cherishing the idea that the Qur’an gavemore rights to women than either the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament.She began a more rigorous and nuanced study of this verse after equippingherself with the necessary academic tools and analytic skills during her universitystudies. Frustrated with the shallow responses and the scholars’ circumspectionas regards any creative and novel reading of the verse for fearof losing their status in the community, she decided to do so herself with thehope of discovering views that would promote an egalitarian reading ...

scholarly journals Metodologi Penafsiran Kontekstual; Analisis Gagasan dan Prinsip Kunci Penafsiran Kontekstual Abdullah Saeed

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
M.K. Ridwan
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Central Position ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Dominance Model ◽  
Textual Interpretation ◽  
The World ◽  
The Times ◽  
Qur'anic Exegesis ◽  
Methodological Aspects

Qur’anic exegesis occupies a central position in the development of the intellectual traditions of Muslims. As a primary source, the Qur’an for centuries have beenexplored and understood using a variety of approaches and methods to satisfy every need of the times. The dominance model of textual interpretation in the tradition of interpretation of the Qur’an throughout the history of Islam, has been moving Abdullah Saeed a Professor of Islamic Studies University of Melbourne, to offer an alternative model of “contextual interpretation” as a model approach in interpreting the Qur’an that more sensitive to context. Because textual interpretation models tend to ignore the socio-historical context period of revelation as well as the context of the interpretation of the period. This paper specifically focused to analyze methodological aspects of thought’s Abdullah Saeed in conducting the contextualize interpretation of the Qur’an. In General, Saeed offers four contextual interpretation of operational steps, that is: 1) identify initial considerations by understanding the interpreter subjectivity, language and construct meaning, and the world of the Qur’an (encounter with the world of the text); 2) start the task of interpretation by means of identifying the meaning of the original text and convinced of the authenticity and reliability of the text (critical analysis of texts independently); 3) identify the meaning of the text by exploring each context (meaning for the first recipient); 4) hooking the interpretation of the text with the current context (process ofcontextualize, meaning for the present).

scholarly journals From Maimonides to Microsoft: The Jewish Law of Copyright Since the Birth of Print, Introduction

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil Netanel
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Copyright Law ◽  
Property Right ◽  
Jewish Law ◽  
Fair Compensation ◽  
Jewish Learning ◽  
To Receive ◽  
Key Questions

In this book, Neil Netanel traces the historical development of Jewish copyright law. In so doing, he compares rabbinic reprinting bans with secular and papal book privileges and relays the stories of dramatic disputes among publishers of books of Jewish learning and liturgy, beginning with the early sixteenth century and continuing until today. He describes each dispute in its historical context and examines the rabbinic rulings that sought to resolve it. Remarkably, the rabbinic reprinting bans and copyright rulings address some of the same issues that animate copyright jurisprudence today: Is copyright a property right or just a right to receive fair compensation? How long should copyrights last? What purposes does copyright serve? While Jewish copyright law has borrowed from its secular counterpart at key junctures, it fashions strikingly different answers to those key questions.

Nasty resurrections

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johnny Walker
Keyword(s):  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Horror Film ◽  
Critical Response ◽  
Cultural Specificity ◽  
The Social ◽  
British Culture ◽  
English Heritage

Chapter 3, in light of the broader international concerns outlined in the previous chapter, works towards locating cultural specificities within British horror at a time when it has drifted from its better known ‘English’ heritage. By considering the social and historical context during which many contemporary filmmakers grew up (namely, the late 1970s and 1980s), I reassess how recent British horror’s ‘heritage’ may be more immediate than we initially presume. To do this, I argue that several films responded to the typically negative British critical response to horror cinema (Petley 2002a), and, through textual analysis, argue that such films are products inspired by nostalgia for the video nasties panic of the 1980s. Through doing so, I consider how cultural specificity can be extracted from films by directors who not only have a passion for the horror film (that is, are self-confessed fans of the genre), but are also aware of how British horror (and horror in Britain) has been figured and derided within British culture.

From Imago Dei to Mutual Recognition: The Evolution of the Concept of Human Dignity in the Light of the Defence of Religious Freedom

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergio Dellavalle
Keyword(s):  
Human Dignity ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Mutual Recognition ◽  
Essential Element ◽  
The Self ◽  
Religious Tolerance ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Negative Freedom ◽  
Alternative Proposal

Within the Western tradition the concept of human dignity is related to the idea of human beings as ‘imagines Dei’. Yet this connection does not guarantee any suitable basis for the principle of the defence of religious freedom. Therefore, modern rationalism developed an alternative proposal, centred on the notion of religious tolerance. This approach, however, proves to be as inadequate as the belief-based vision in order to provide for a convincing foundation of a concept of religious freedom understood not only as a ‘negative freedom’ but as an essential element of the self-realization of humans. To overcome the deficits of both approaches, a third understanding is explored in which the experience of faith is recognized as an essential enrichment of social life and ‘tolerance’ is substituted by ‘mutual recognition’, paving the way to a positive acknowledgement of difference.

Willing Evil

2020 ◽  
Vol 94 (2) ◽  
pp. 305-322
Author(s):  
Henrik Lagerlund ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
The Other ◽  
Natural Context ◽  
History Of ◽  
William Ockham ◽  
The One ◽  
Do So

In this article, I present two virtually unknown sixteenth-century views of human freedom, that is, the views of Bartolomaeus de Usingen (1465–1532) and Jodocus Trutfetter (1460–1519) on the one hand and John Mair (1470–1550) on the other. Their views serve as a natural context and partial background to the more famous debate on human freedom between Martin Luther (1483–1556) and Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466–1536) from 1524–1526. Usingen and Trutfetter were Luther’s philosophy teachers in Erfurt. In a passage from Book III of John Mair’s commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics from 1530, he seems to defend a view of human freedom by which we can will evil for the sake of evil. Very few thinkers in the history of philosophy have defended such a view. The most famous medieval thinker to do so is William Ockham (1288–1347). To illustrate how radical this view is, I place him in the historical context of such thinkers as Plato, Augustine, Buridan, and Descartes.

scholarly journals What’s Modern in Chinese Translation Theory? Lu Xun and the Debates on Literalism and Foreignization in the May Fourth Period

2003 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leo Tak-hung Chan
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Chinese Language ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The Other ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Translation Theory ◽  
Lu Xun ◽  
Chinese Translation ◽  
The One ◽  
Classical Language

Abstract This article attempts to assess the contribution of Chinese translators and theorists of the twenties and thirties, in particular the famous writer Lu Xun, whom I consider the first modern translation theorist in China. It is with him that China entered its modern phase in translation. Not only did he advocate retaining the foreignness of the original text, in a way reminiscent of the entire tradition of German Romantic translation theorists from Schleiermacher to von Humboldt to Goethe; he also explored in his own translations the possibilities for enriching the Chinese language through the importation of Europeanized structures and expressions. It is these foreignizing impulses that set Lu Xun apart most clearly from pre-modern Chinese theorists. At the same time, these impulses connect him with leading giants of translation theory like Nabokov and Benjamin (who emphasized the importance of the literal method in translation) on the one hand, and Venuti and Holmes (who highlighted processes of indigenization and exoticization in translation) on the other. Lu Xun’s ideas had a particular place in the wider cultural and historical context. Views similar to his had been advocated by his predecessors at the beginning of the century, whose attempt to Europeanize the classical language did not, unfortunately, find a large following. In his own time, Lu found ardent supporters among friends and colleagues who either (a) suggested thorough Europeanization, or (b) preferred limited Europeanization. Dissenting views, however, were clearly voiced by some of the other leading writers of the day. So there were (a) those who favored the use of a language based on the actual words spoken by the populace and (b) those who queried why one should not learn a foreign language and read the original instead. My article deals at length with the debates among these theorists and seeks to understand them from the perspective of contemporary Western translation theory.

scholarly journals “To Be or to Be Thought to Be”

2017 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-94
Author(s):  
John Curran
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
Early History ◽  
First Century ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Textual Tradition ◽  
Community Of Christ ◽  
History Of ◽  
Christ Followers ◽  
The City

Recent research on the textual tradition of Latin versions of the Testimonium Flavianum prompts another enquiry into the original text and the transmission of the famous passage. It is suggested here that the Greek/Latin versions highlight a western/eastern early history of the Testimonium and that in turn directs our attention back to the original circumstances of its composition and publication in the city of Rome in the later years of the first century. Restored to its original historical context, the Testimonium emerges as a carefully crafted attack upon the post-Pauline community of Christ-followers in the city.

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