The Social Milieu of 4QJera (4Q70) in a Second Temple Jewish Manuscript Culture: Fragments, Manuscripts, Variance, and Meaning


2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Khatija Bibi Khan ◽  
Owen Seda

Feminist critics have identified the social constructedness of masculinity and have explored how male characters often find themselves caught up in a ceaseless quest to propagate and live up to an acceptable image of manliness. These critics have also explored how the effort to live up to the dictates of this social construct has often come at great cost to male protagonists. In this paper, we argue that August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone present the reader with a coterie of male characters who face the dual crisis of living up to a performed masculinity and the pitfalls that come with it, and what Mazrui has referred to as the phenomenon of “transclass man.” Mazrui uses the term transclass man to refer to characters whose socio-economic and socio-cultural experience displays a fluid degree of transitionality. We argue that the phenomenon of transclass man works together with the challenges of performed masculinity to create characters who, in an effort to adjust to and fit in with a new and patriarchal urban social milieu in America’s newly industrialised north, end up destroying themselves or failing to realise other possibilities that may be available to them. Using these two plays as illustrative examples, we further argue that staged masculinity and the crisis of transclass man in August Wilson’s plays create male protagonists who break ranks with the social values of a collectively shared destiny to pursue an individualistic personal trajectory, which only exacerbates their loss of social identity and a true sense of who they are.



1969 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 353-366 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jules M Kluger


2013 ◽  
pp. 49-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bryan Gillingham

One of the difficulties in creating an adequate picture of the contextual situation for music, other than that clearly associated with the liturgy, in the Middle Ages, is the paucity of accounts describing performance circumstances. We know little about the social milieu and purposes attending genres marginal to the liturgy such as the conductus and thirteenth-century motet. A manuscript which seems to redress this problem, albeit for one very specific instance, is Vat. lat. 2854 in the Vatican library in Rome. This manuscript is unusual in that it contains not only music but a detailed account of why the music was written. The author, Bonaiutus de Casentino, active in the circle of Pope Boniface VIII, prepared the manuscript in the last decade of the thirteenth century at Rome. The document includes various poems, sacred and secular, as well as two Latin songs written in late Franconian notation. One of the pieces is a two-voice conductus (Hec medela corporalis) which was written, according to the account of Bonaiutus himself, in order to cure the maladies of an ailing pontif. The pontifical complaints seemed to be both psychological and intestinal in nature. It was the hope of Bonaiutus not only to provoke laughter (always a curative), but also to cleanse the papal bowels through his composition. Although one cannot generalize on the basis of this single incident, it does yield a fascinating glimpse into a possible venue for the conductus.



Penned by internationally recognized scholars and leaders in the study of the Pentateuch, this volume offers to students and academics a comprehensive survey of key topics and issues in contemporary pentateuchal scholarship. The volume gives due attention to recent debates about the formation of the Pentateuch and their implications for biblical scholarship. At the same time, it addresses a number of issues that relate more broadly to the social and intellectual worlds of the Pentateuch. This includes engagements with questions of archaeology and history, the Pentateuch and the Samaritans, the relation between the Pentateuch and other Moses traditions in the Second Temple period, the Pentateuch and social memory, and more. Crucially, the volume situates its discussions of current developments in pentateuchal studies in relation to the field’s long history, one that in its modern, critical phase is now more than two centuries old. By showcasing both this rich history and the leading edges of the field, this volume provides a clear account of pentateuchal studies and a fresh sense of its vitality and relevance within biblical studies, religious studies, and the broader humanities.



Author(s):  
John M. Carroll ◽  
Mary Beth Rosson

The authors present a socio-technical design that illustrates how a community network health intervention can mobilize human resources across social boundaries and enhance health and well-being for people on both sides of the boundary. They specifically address how to reduce the barriers to social engagement experienced by autistic individuals who want more supportive life opportunities. The authors focus on the social milieu of an American college town, on traditional town-gown boundaries, and on possibilities for integrating social resources within this context. Their design adopts community networking to not only connect autistic persons living within an existing social milieu (university undergraduates; local autistic children and their families), but also to integrate individuals across milieus. The key design idea is that facilitating cross-milieu interactions can initiate and sustain a virtuous cycle of being helped by helping others.



Author(s):  
Stephen Breck Reid ◽  
Rebecca Poe Hays

The location of a book in the canon gives the reader clues to the genre and interpretation of the book. The Jewish canon places the poetry of the book of Psalms as the introduction to the division of the bible known as the Ketubim (writings). The Christian canon(s) place the Psalter between Job and Proverbs, accenting the Psalms’ place among the wisdom texts. Scholarly consensus understands the Psalter as a collection of collections of sung poetic prayers that range over a wide period of authorship, provenance, and redaction. Associated with ongoing worship in Israel, most psalms were continually reapplied to new situations. The earliest psalms antedate the period when Israel and Judah were ruled by an indigenous king, the monarchy (1030–583 bce), and the latest are from the period defined by the cultural and political hegemony of Greece, the Hellenistic period (323–63 bce). The book of Psalms functioned as the prayer book of the second temple period (521 bce–66 ce) and the repository of poetic instruction. The first audience of the completed book is the emerging population of what was then the Persian province of Yehud during this period. Prior to the rise of form criticism in the early 20th century, scholarship focused on the Psalms as expressions of individual religious poets, much as Keats, Dickinson, or Countee Cullen. Form criticism, shaped by the work of Herman Gunkel, focused on the social location of the various literary genres in the cult, but this approach still viewed the Psalter as assemblage or medley without structure or order. During the mid-20th century a focus emerged with an interest in the “shape and shaping” of the Psalter. The rise of postmodernity has led some to pursue post-Gunkel approaches to the book of Psalms that attend to matters such as the poetic language and the relationship to other ancient Near Eastern poetry and imagery. While many scholars still utilize form-critical language to discuss the Psalter, they tend to examine each psalm as a distinct literary composition and product of Israel’s religious tradition rather than forcing them into specific genres and corresponding life settings.



1988 ◽  
Vol 63 (7) ◽  
pp. 729-731 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas E. Novotny
Keyword(s):  


2009 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 423-451 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Currid ◽  
S. Williams




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