scholarly journals Southcottians and Shiloh: Genesis 49:10 and the Morphology of a Messianic Hope

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Downing
Keyword(s):  
Reading Strategies ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
The Self ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Biblical Texts ◽  
Alternative Identities ◽  
Over Time

AbstractThis article examines how a prophetic religious tradition can exploit the gaps of indeterminacy within a biblical text, in order to develop new readings in response to changing circumstances. Using Brennan Breed’s ideas about biblical texts as “objectiles,” which are prone to change throughout their life, this article traces the interpretation of Genesis 49:10 in the history of a modern prophetic movement. The article proceeds to examine how members of the so-called Southcottian visitation – a British prophetic movement started in the early nineteenth century by the self-proclaimed prophet Joanna Southcott – have used this text to shape their identity and beliefs. By examining how Southcottian prophets of different generations have handled this text – ranging from Southcott herself to a female-led organisation called the Panacea Society established in the early twentieth century – we can see how prophetic readers have used their authority to guide interpretation of the text, and have shaped how it ought to be read within their respective communities. The article shows how Southcottian readers generate a range of different readings of Genesis 49:10, exploring a series of alternative identities and genders for “Shiloh,” and developing new reading strategies for ascertaining the meaning of the term. The article concludes by reflecting on how the text is affected by the Southcottians’ treatment, and how prophetic readers can exert their authority to even change the text itself. Examining how such idiosyncratic readers receive – and change – biblical texts is an important area for investigation by reception-historians keen to understand what texts can do when handled by their diverse readers. Looking at the reception of biblical texts within heterodox religious traditions also raises methodological challenges: it underscores how readings within a religious tradition are processual, develop over time, and can be generated through private, archival correspondence as well as in published media.

scholarly journals Empty Selves and Multiple Belonging: Gadamer and Nāgārjuna on Religious Identity’s Hidden Plurality

Open Theology ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
J. R. Hustwit
Keyword(s):  
Religious Identity ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Second Century ◽  
The Self ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Careful Examination ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Per Se

AbstractThe reaction to multiple religious belonging has been fraught with anxiety in the monotheistic traditions. Nevertheless, increasing numbers of people report belonging to multiple religions. I propose that it is most useful to think of multiple religious belonging not so much as an expression of choice, but just the opposite. Multiple religious belonging is best explained as the ontological condition of two or more religious traditions constituting the self, so that the self’s possibilities are constrained by those religions. Furthermore, I argue that multiple religious belonging per se does not threaten traditional religious communities. Threats are by definition future possibilities, and ontologically speaking, we always already belong to multiple religions. We belong to multiple religions because every religious tradition is an amalgam of earlier distinct traditions. There is nothing new about multiple religious belonging. It is nearly unremarkable. Two philosophers in particular-one a twentieth-century German phenomenologist, the other a second-century Indian Buddhist-have given particularly careful examination of the phenomenon of belonging. Hans-Georg Gadamer’s concept of Wirkungsgeschichte [history of effects] and Nāgārjuna’s teaching of śūnyatā [emptiness] both imply that multiple religious belonging is the ontological condition of all human beings, and that producing any monolithic religious identity requires significant mental gymnastics.

Reception History and the Interpretation of Revelation

2020 ◽  
pp. 375-393
Author(s):  
Ian Boxall
Keyword(s):  
Visual Art ◽  
Textual Criticism ◽  
Reception History ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
Music Drama ◽  
History Of Interpretation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Biblical Texts

The chapter describes the discipline of reception history as the study of the ongoing use, interpretation, and impact of a biblical text. If the history of interpretation has often focused on the ways biblical texts are understood in commentaries and theological writings, reception history also considers how a book was received in spirituality and worship, in music, drama, literature, visual art, and textual criticism. Criteria for selecting and organizing materials useful for reception history are discussed, and there is a review of recent attempts to provide broad overviews of Revelation’s reception history, along with specific examples of the value of the discipline for interpreting Revelation.

Exploring Metaphors for the Reception History of the Lord’s Prayer

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-65
Author(s):  
David Clark
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Reception History ◽  
Historical Consciousness ◽  
Original Form ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
Lord's Prayer ◽  
History Of ◽  
Entire History ◽  
Biblical Texts

AbstractIn his work Nomadic Text: A Theory of Biblical Reception History, Brennan Breed argues that texts are nomads which – existing without original form and without original context – have no homeland to claim as their own. Their entire history has been marked by unpredictable movement and variation. He therefore proposes that the study of reception history should primarily be an exploration of the potentiality of textual meanings. The suggestion that meaning progresses without relationship to hermeneutical antecedents, however, runs contrary to Gadamer’s assertion that the contemporary effect (Wirkung) of a text always exists in unity with its historical effects. Following Gadamer, the reception historian may still explore hermeneutical potentiality – but does so with a sense of historical consciousness. In this light, the nature of a biblical text may be more suitably characterized by the metaphor of an emigrant rather than that of a nomad. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the usefulness of these divergent metaphors in our attempt to define both the nature of biblical texts and the task of the reception historian. Our test case will be the early interpretation history of the Lord’s Prayer. Given that the original form and context of this prayer are irretrievable, Breed’s theory is applicable in many respects. Yet it will also be seen that in the early reception history of the Lord’s Prayer there are also patterns of synchronic continuity. Amidst diverse agendas of theology and praxis, we find that interpretations of the Lord’s Prayer were consistently rooted in an inherited conceptualization of Jesus Christ – what we will call a canonical remembrance of his life and proclamation.

scholarly journals RELASI MITOS, DAN AGAMA SEBAGAI MEDIA PENINGKATAN EKONOMI PRODUKTIF DALAM TRADISI “TEBOKAN” DI DESA KALIPUTU KOTA KUDUS

INFERENSI ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 451
Author(s):  
Saifuddin Saifuddin
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Method ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Local Society ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Religious Behaviors ◽  
Clifford Geertz ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

“Tebokan” was the history of jenang production processes that was visualizedon cultural carnival. It was one of the place where the relationship of religious traditions and the myth of local society became a new spirit to increase the economy of the community. This research was based on interpretative perspective to religious behaviors such as done by Clifford Geertz. Therefore this research used qualitative method. This study found the cultural illustrations where the relationship of myth, religious tradition, and the social structure was able to activate spirit of productivity in the Kaliputu Society as a central of jenang Production in Kudus. Both of these systems of meaning were able to present three important spirits, those areinnovative, identity affirmation, and work ethic. 

The Study of Yoruba Religious Tradition in Historical Perspective

Numen ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 240-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob K. Olupona
Keyword(s):  
Belief Systems ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of Religions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Conducting Research

AbstractThis essay presents an overview of past and recent scholarship in Yoruba religion. The earliest studies of Yoruba religious traditions were carried out by missionaries, travellers and explorers who were concerned with writing about the so called "pagan" practices and "animist" beliefs of the African peoples. In the first quarter of the 20th century professional ethnologists committed to documenting the Yoruba religion and culture were, among other things, concerned with theories about cosmology, belief-systems, and organizations of Orisà cults. Indigenous authors, especially the Reverend gentlemen of the Church Missionary Society, responded to these early works by proposing the Egyptian origin of Yoruba religion and by conducting research into Ifá divination system as a preparatio evangelica. The paper also examines the contributions of scholars in the arts and the social sciences to the interpretation and analysis of Yoruba religion, especially those areas neglected in previous scholarship. This essay further explores the study of Yoruba religion in the Americas, as a way of providing useful comparison with the Nigerian situation. It demonstrates the strong influence of Yoruba religion and culture on world religions among African diaspora. In the past ten years, significant works on the phenomenology and history of religions have been produced by indigenous scholars trained in philosophy and Religionswissenschaft in Europe and America and more recently in Nigeria. Lastly, the essay examines some neglected aspects of Yoruba religious studies and suggests that future research should focus on developing new theories and uncovering existing ones in indigenous Yoruba discourses.

Unforgetting Chaitanya

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Varuni Bhatia
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Sacred Spaces ◽  
Cultural Complex ◽  
Historical Figures ◽  
History Of

What role do premodern religious traditions play in the formation of modern secular identities? What relationship exists between regional devotional cultures, key bhakti figures, and anticolonial nationalism in South Asia? What are some of the multiple sites of forgetting and unforgetting that determine how we receive iconic historical figures in the present? Unforgetting Chaitanya addresses these questions by examining late nineteenth-century transformations of Vaishnavism in Bengal—a religious tradition emanating from the figure of Krishna Chaitanya (1486–1533), and articulated in this region through various bodily and artistic practices. Building upon the concept of viraha as longing for the absent one within the Vaishnava worldview, this book argues that educated and middle-class Hindu Bengalis, the bhadralok, (re)turned to Chaitanyite Vaishnavism as a unique expression of excavating their authentic selves. It argues that by searching for literary and historical pasts, discovering long lost sacred spaces, recovering manuscripts, and disciplining Vaishnava practices across sects and castes, the Bengali Hindu middle-class successfully forged a respectable, bhadralok Vaishnavism. The book engages with questions around memory and history, poetics and praxis, and sacred space and print culture in the making of modern Vaishnavism as a devotional and cultural complex, simultaneously. Thus, Unforgetting Chaitanya argues for the methodological relevance of relocating the study of Bengali or Gaudiya Vaishnavism within the historical, intellectual, and cultural context of colonial Bengal, where it assumed its modern form. In doing so, this interdisciplinary book contributes to the fields of both Religion and History of South Asia.

Autobiography, Biography, and Theological Questioning

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
John D. Barbour
Keyword(s):  
Nature Writing ◽  
Life Writing ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Religious Language ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Normative Issues ◽  
Traditional Norms

Autobiography and biography (which together will be called “life writing”) raise theological questions in ways different from systematic or constructive theology. These forms of life writing tell a story that may or may not be correlated with traditional doctrines. They integrate the first order discourse of symbol and narrative with secondary hermeneutical reflections that interpret and analyze the meaning and truth of religious language. The probing and disturbing questioning in a profound autobiography such as Augustine’s contrasts with the assurances and settled answers expected of theology by religious institutions and communities. Particular religious questions shape specific genres of life writing such as Puritan discourses, nature writing, or African American autobiographies. The theology in autobiography may be either explicit or implicit and involves both questioning and affirmation, as may be seen in works as different as Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua and Edmund Gosse’s Father and Son. Conversion has been a central theme and shaping influence on Christian texts, even when authors challenge this focus and create alternative forms. A central theological question posed by autobiography concerns the authority of individual experience when it contrasts or conflicts with traditional norms asserted by orthodox believers and ecclesiastical hierarchy. In spiritual autobiographies by contemporary writers, we see serious attention given to communal norms for life stories and a search for a distinctive personal apprehension of what is sacred. Autobiographical writing has been stronger in the history of some religious traditions than in others. Yet in the modern world, almost every culture has produced life writing that questions or challenges established patterns of thought and practice. In contrast with autobiography, sacred biography has been an important part of every religious tradition, usually describing an exemplar to be revered and imitated. Its strong didactic interests often curb theological questioning of established norms. While modern scholarly biographies often mute theological questions, some writers raise normative issues and argue for why the subject’s life should be valued. As well as the theology explored within life writing, many works reveal a theology of life writing, that is, beliefs about how this kind of writing may bring the author or readers better understanding of God or deeper faith.

Sexuality and Parrhesia in the Phenomenology of Psychological Development: The Flesh of Human Communicative Embodiment and the Game of Intimacy

2007 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-180
Author(s):  
Frank J. Macke
Keyword(s):  
Human Development ◽  
Social Economy ◽  
Self Care ◽  
Pastoral Ministry ◽  
Psychological Development ◽  
The Self ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
History Of ◽  
Developmental Experience ◽  
Over Time

AbstractIn the three published volumes of his History of Sexuality Foucault reflects on themes of anxiety situated in the Christian doctrine of the flesh that led to a pastoral ministry establishing the rules of a general social economy—rules that enabled, over time, a discourse on the flesh that took thrift, prudence, modesty, and suspicion as essential ethical premises in the emerging “art of the self.” Rather than sensing flesh as a charged, motile potentiality of attachment and intimacy, it came to be seen as skin—as the limit of a sovereign body, embedding guilt and shame into the texture of its expression. This essay pursues the psychological and communication problematic of intimacy as a critical and developmental experience of the flesh. Foucault's concept of self-care and parrhesia, Merleau-Ponty's concept of flesh and embodiment, and Bataille's concept of glory and eroticism contribute to a phenomenology of human development that seeks to articulate an idea of a self diffierentiated from the unspoken binds of familial anxiety and emotionality.

scholarly journals ‘The Days of Brilliancy are Past’: Skill, Styles and the Changing Rules of Surgical Performance, ca. 1820–1920

2015 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Schlich
Keyword(s):  
Modern Medicine ◽  
German Language ◽  
Surgical Skill ◽  
University Hospitals ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Surgical Performance ◽  
Cultural Expectations ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Over Time

This paper examines how, over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the appreciation of skill in surgery shifted in characteristic ways. Skill is a problematic category in surgery. Its evaluation is embedded into wider cultural expectations and evaluations, which changed over time. The paper examines the discussions about surgical skill in a variety of contexts: the highly competitive environment of celebrity practitioners in the amphitheatres of early nineteenth-century Britain; the science-oriented, technocratic German-language university hospitals later in the century; and the elitist surgeons of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century United States with their concerns about distancing themselves from commercialism and cheap showmanship. For analysing the interaction of surgical practices with their various contexts the paper makes use of the concept of ‘performance’ and examines how the rules of surgical performance varied according to the prevailing technical, social, and moral conditions. Over the course of the century, surgical performance looked more and more recognisably modern, increasingly following the ideals of replicability, universality and standardisation. The changing ideals of surgical skill are a crucial element of the complex history of the emergence of modern surgery, but also an illuminating example of the history of skill in modern medicine.

Self Work

2019 ◽  
pp. 55-81
Author(s):  
Thomas B. Lawrence ◽  
Nelson Phillips
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Self Focusing ◽  
Collective Actors ◽  
History Of ◽  
Over Time

Self work represents the purposeful, reflexive efforts of individuals, collective actors, and networks of individual and collective actors to shape their own selves and those of others. This chapter begins by examining the history of the self as a social-symbolic object, and how that history has shaped self work. The availability and meaning of a self as a social-symbolic object has changed dramatically over time, and so the chapter explores the history of the self, focusing on its transformation in modernity, and then its reformulation in postmodernity. It then conceptualizes self work: it begins by exploring its discursive, relational, and material dimensions, and then discusses the kinds actors who might engage in self work.

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