Looking for Textual Evidence

2021 ◽  
pp. 239-268
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Robert R. Cargill

This book argues that the biblical figure Melchizedek mentioned in Gen. 14 as the king of Shalem originally appeared in the text as the king of Sodom. Textual evidence is presented to demonstrate that the word סדם‎ (Sodom) was changed to שׁלם‎ (Shalem) in order to avoid depicting the patriarch Abram as receiving a blessing and goods from the king of Sodom, whose city was soon thereafter destroyed for its sinfulness according to the biblical tradition. This change from Sodom to Shalem caused a disjointed narrative in Gen. 14:18–20, which many scholars have wrongly attributed to a later interpolation. This book also provides textual evidence of minor, strategic redactional changes to the Hebrew Bible and the Samaritan Pentateuch that demonstrate the evolving, polemical, sectarian discourse between Jews and Samaritans as they were competing for the superiority of their respective temples and holy mountains. These minor strategic changes to the HB were used as the ideological motivation in the Second Temple Jewish literary tradition for the relocation of Shalem away from the Samaritan religious center at Mt. Gerizim to the Levitical priestly center in Jerusalem. This book also examines how the possible reference to Melchizedek in Ps. 110 may have influenced later Judaism’s understanding of Melchizedek.


Author(s):  
Elizabeth S. Radcliffe

This discussion first considers why Hume highlights the argument that reason alone is not a motive, given that few, if any, of his predecessors actually professed that reason could motivate without passion. Second, it ponders, but rejects, the idea that Hume’s “Inertness of Reason” argument equivocates. Third, it rebuts the view that Hume allows that beliefs, products of reason, can motivate, even if reason cannot. If Hume thinks beliefs can motivate, then: (1) his thesis that reason contributes to motivation without originating motives, will depend on the equivocation earlier dismissed; (2) we have no explanation how actions result from competing motives; and (3) he undermines his dictum that an active principle cannot be founded on an inactive one. There is textual evidence for an alternative reading of Hume, on which beliefs, even about sources of pleasure and pain, trace their force to sentiments that depend upon taste.


Author(s):  
Lawrence H. Schiffman

This chapter argues that the Writings was an evolving collection of scripture used in a wide variety of ways by the Dead Sea Scrolls community at Qumran (second century bce to first century ce). Though the Hebrew word Ketuvim (Writings) does not occur in the Scroll material, all but one (Esther) of the books contained therein are found. The plentiful and varied textual evidence at Qumran, and occasionally other Judean desert sites, is presented with special attention to the number of biblical and other manuscripts and place found; textual comparisons with the biblical Masoretic text and others (e.g., Septuagint); citations; and other interpretive uses in sectarian documents. The importance of the books in the Writings for the life of the late postexilic community of Qumran and the nature of the Dead Sea Scrolls biblical collection are, together, a constant focus of the study.


2020 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-99
Author(s):  
Lukas Hermann

AbstractIn its peritext, Thomas Mann’s Entstehung des Doktor Faustus is described as a “Roman eines Romans”. The essay reasons that this description of its genre as well as structural aspects of its composition mark it as an autobiographical text. Instead of following most studies on the Doktor Faustus, which regard the Entstehung simply as a documentary source for exposing autobiographical intricacies of Mann’s novel, textual evidence for the Entstehung’s autonomy is given. The analysis focuses first on the structural frame of the Entstehung in order to show Mann’s central techniques of autobiographical self-stylization. In this context auto-fictional elements can also be identified. Exemplary passages from two longer sections are taken into account based on these findings. While the Doktor Faustus is a recurrent topic in these passages, it is not, by any means, the only one. Combined with varying autobiographical writing techniques, the Entstehung is thus displaying continuous independence from the Faustus. Based on these insights, future Mann studies on both works may reevaluate the role of the Entstehung for the reception of the Faustus and the status of autobiographical literature in the works of Thomas Mann.


Apeiron ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Maximilian Robitzsch

Abstract This paper examines the classification of desires that the Epicureans offer in their writings. It surveys the extant textual evidence for the classification and discusses the relationship between natural and necessary, natural and unnecessary, and unnatural and unnecessary desires. It argues that while the practical significance of the Epicurean classification is clear, which desires fall into which class is not. The paper suggests the reason for this may be that the Epicureans acknowledge some variability in their concept of human nature, arguing for a functional reading of the Epicurean classification of desires.


Author(s):  
Christopher Woznicki

Summary Central to evangelical piety is the theme of “conversionism”. Among historical figures who embody this characteristic of evangelical piety one finds that Jonathan Edwards plays an important role, in part, because of his 1740 “Personal Narrative”. In this essay I examine the metaphysics underlying Edwards’s view of conversion in his “Personal Narrative”. Special attention is given to Edwards’s doctrine of continuous creation and to a feature that underlies his understanding of spiritual development, namely the One-Subject Criterion. I weigh two options for how Edwards may coherently hold to continuous creation and the One-Subject Criterion: Mark Hamilton’s relative realism/endurance account and Edwardsean Anti-Criterialism. I conclude that given the textual evidence Edwardsean Anti-Criterialism is to be preferred over Hamilton’s view.


Numen ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arvind Sharma

AbstractThe paper is conceptually divided into four parts. In the first part the widely held view that ancient Hinduism was not a missionary religion is presented. (The term ancient is employed to characterize the period in the history of Hinduism extending from fifth century B.C.E. to the tenth century. The term 'missionary religion' is used to designate a religion which places its followers under an obligation to missionize.) In the second part the conception of conversion in the context of ancient Hinduism is clarified and it is explained how this conception differs from the notion of conversion as found in Christianity. In the third part the view that ancient Hinduism was not a missionary religion is challenged by presenting textual evidence that ancient Hinduism was in fact a missionary religion, inasmuch as it placed a well-defined segment of its members under an obligation to undertake missionary activity. Such historical material as serves to confirm the textual evidence is then presented in the fourth part.


2009 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
ELVIRA WAKELNIG

Textual evidence preserved in two still unpublished manuscripts strongly suggests that there once existed an alternative version of Miskawayh’s Fawz al-aṣghar, the Minor Book of Triumph. The article discusses possible explanations for why Miskawayh may have composed two recensions of his Fawz and compares structure and content of the alternative version with the edited standard version. The one passage which is contained in the alternative Fawz only is presented in Arabic with an English translation. Part of this additional material is parallel to al-Fārābī’s Iḥṣā’ al-‘ulūm, namely its division of natural sciences, and may ultimately derive from a no longer extant treatise by Paul the Persian. An appendix provides the Arabic text and English translation of a hitherto unknown fragment of al-Balkhī in which he discusses Plato’s saying that the world has a causative, but no temporal beginning.


Author(s):  
Martín Díaz-Rodríguez ◽  
Oscar Lithgow-Serrano ◽  
Francisco Guadarrama-García ◽  
Víctor H. Tierrafría ◽  
Socorro Gama-Castro ◽  
...  

2006 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 263-272
Author(s):  
Laura Delbrugge

Andrés de Li, an Aragonese converso, authored three extensive works from 1492 to 1494. This essay explores issues of authorial motivation in Li’s Thesoro de la passion (1494), in particular practical considerations of marketability and product niche in the early devotional market. Textual evidence reveals a dynamic working relationship between Li and his Humanist printer, Pablo Hurus, offering a glimpse of the early Iberian printing industry. The essay also explores issues of authorial motivation in light of Li’s religious identity, and how his desire to be accepted as a true Christian may have been a factor in both topic selection and in his inclusion of all typical Passion text elements, including anti-Semitic assumptions and conclusions. The nature of Li’s “converso voice” within the Thesoro is also explored within the larger framework of the converso studies critical apparatus.


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