“Channeling” the powers of God’s Word

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorothea E. Schulz
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Border Zone ◽  
Focus Attention ◽  
Spiritual Power ◽  
New Materials ◽  
God's Word ◽  
Audio Recordings ◽  
Heated Debate ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One

Starting with the controversial esoteric employment of audio recordings by followers of the charismatic Muslim preacher Sharif Haidara in Mali, the article explores the dynamics emerging at the interface of different technologies and techniques employed by those engaging the realm of the Divine. I focus attention on the “border zone” between, on the one hand, techniques for appropriating scriptures based on long-standing religious conventions, and, on the other, audio recording technologies, whose adoption not yet established authoritative and standardized forms of practice, thereby generating insecurities and becoming the subject of heated debate. I argue that “recyclage” aptly describes the dynamics of this “border zone” because it captures the ways conventional techniques of accessing the Divine are reassessed and reemployed, by integrating new materials and rituals. Historically, appropriations of the Qur’an for esoteric purposes have been widespread in Muslim West Africa. These esoteric appropriations are at the basis of the considerable continuities, overlaps and crossovers, between scripture-related esoteric practices on one side, and the treatment by Sharif Haidara’s followers of audio taped sermons as vessels of his spiritual power, on the other.

scholarly journals Incurably Religious? Consensus Gentium and the Cultural Universality of Religion

Numen ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jakob De Roover
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
The Other ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Human Species ◽  
Heated Debate ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Western Scholarship ◽  
The One

Abstract For centuries, the question whether there were peoples without religion was the subject of heated debate among European thinkers. At the turn of the twentieth century, this concern vanished from the radar of Western scholarship: all known peoples and societies, it was concluded, had some form of religion. This essay examines the relevant debates from the sixteenth to the twentieth century: Why was this issue so important? How did European thinkers determine whether or not some people had religion? What allowed them to close this debate? It will be shown that European descriptions of the “religions” of non-Western cultures counted as evidence for or against theoretical claims made within a particular framework, namely that of generic Christian theology. The issue of the universality of religion was settled not by scientific research but by making ad hoc modifications to this theological framework whenever it faced empirical anomalies. This is important today, because the debate concerning the cultural universality of religion has been reopened. On the one hand, evolutionary-biological explanations of religion claim that religion must be a cultural universal, since its origin lies in the evolution of the human species; on the other hand, authors suggest that religion is not a cultural universal, because many of the “religions” of humanity are fictitious entities created within an underlying theological framework.

The Occasional Conformity Controversy: Ideology and Party Politics, 1697-1711

1977 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Flaningam
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ideological Debate ◽  
Heated Debate ◽  
Distinct Existence ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One

The occasional conformity controversy has been the subject of considerable study by historians, both contemporary and modern. However, recent research has tended to concentrate on the parliamentary and electoral aspects of the issue, with somewhat less attention given to its importance as an ideological question. Nevertheless, the latter aspect of the controversy is well worth examining, for aside from its impact upon the struggle for office and power, occasional conformity was also the subject of heated debate on the theoretical and philosophical level. And although this debate often degenerated into partisan diatribes and rhetoric, it also raised questions that transcended the political ploy on the one hand, and the theologian's quibble and the propagandist's stalking horse on the other. The arguments used by both sides during the controversy revealed the basic philosophical differences that lay at the heart of the rivalry between the Whig and Tory parties. Occasional conformity's role as an expression of, and its relation to, this struggle is the subject of this article.The ideological debate over occasional conformity was necessarily stimulated by the parliamentary struggles during the first decade of the eighteenth century over the various bills which were designed to discourage the practice, and many of the tracts on the subject were written in response to these and other political maneuvers. But the pamphlet war had its own distinct existence, and the writers involved fought with their pens a battle that was parallel to the one that the politicians were fighting with votes and influence.

The problem of woman’s emansipation in the feuilleton “Amazonia: a very inept story” by Mykola Chirsky

2020 ◽  
pp. 71-76
Author(s):  
Iryna Rusnak
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Understanding ◽  
The Other ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Ethical Guidelines ◽  
Compositional Structure ◽  
Urgent Task ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
Artistic Heritage

The author of the article analyses the problem of the female emancipation in the little-known feuilleton “Amazonia: A Very Inept Story” (1924) by Mykola Chirsky. The author determines the genre affiliation of the work and examines its compositional structure. Three parts are distinguished in the architectonics of associative feuilleton: associative conception; deployment of a “small” topic; conclusion. The author of the article clarifies the role of intertextual elements and the method of constantly switching the tone from serious to comic to reveal the thematic direction of the work. Mykola Chirsky’s interest in the problem of female emancipation is corresponded to the general mood of the era. The subject of ridicule in provocative feuilleton is the woman’s radical metamorphoses, since repulsive manifestations of emancipation becomes commonplace. At the same time, the writer shows respect for the woman, appreciates her femininity, internal and external beauty, personality. He associates the positive in women with the functions of a faithful wife, a caring mother, and a skilled housewife. In feuilleton, the writer does not bypass the problem of the modern man role in a family, but analyses the value and moral and ethical guidelines of his character. The husband’s bad habits receive a caricatured interpretation in the strange behaviour of relatives. On the one hand, the writer does not perceive the extremes brought by female emancipation, and on the other, he mercilessly criticises the male “virtues” of contemporaries far from the standard. The artistic heritage of Mykola Chirsky remains little studied. The urgent task of modern literary studies is the introduction of Mykola Chirsky’s unknown works into the scientific circulation and their thorough scientific understanding.

TARP DVIEJŲ KOLONŲ: XVIII A. PABAIGOS – XIX A. PRADŽIOS VILNIAUS MASONŲ KASDIENYBĖ SIMBOLIKOJE

2018 ◽  
pp. 144-163
Author(s):  
Daiva Milinkevičiūtė
Keyword(s):  
Daily Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
Daily Routine ◽  
The Past ◽  
Secular World ◽  
National Characteristics ◽  
Conservative Christian ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
Craft Guilds

The Age of Enlightenment is defined as the period when the universal ideas of progress, deism, humanism, naturalism and others were materialized and became a golden age for freemasons. It is wrong to assume that old and conservative Christian ideas were rejected. Conversely, freemasons put them into new general shapes and expressed them with the help of symbols in their daily routine. Symbols of freemasons had close ties with the past and gave them, on the one hand, a visible instrument, such as rituals and ideas to sense the transcendental, and on the other, intense gnostic aspirations. Freemasons put in a great amount of effort to improve themselves and to create their identity with the help of myths and symbols. It traces its origins to the biblical builders of King Solomon’s Temple, the posterity of the Templar Knights, and associations of the medieval craft guilds, which were also symbolical and became their link not only to each other but also to the secular world. In this work we analysed codified masonic symbols used in their rituals. The subject of our research is the universal Masonic idea and its aspects through the symbols in the daily life of the freemasons in Vilnius. Thanks to freemasons’ signets, we could find continuity, reception, and transformation of universal masonic ideas in the Lithuanian freemasonry and national characteristics of lodges. Taking everything into account, our article shows how the universal idea of freemasonry spread among Lithuanian freemasonry, and which forms and meanings it incorporated in its symbols. The objective of this research is to find a universal Masonic idea throughout their visual and oral symbols and see its impact on the daily life of the masons in Vilnius. Keywords: Freemasonry, Bible, lodge, symbols, rituals, freemasons’ signets.

Middle constructions in Romanian

2018 ◽  
Vol 134 (4) ◽  
pp. 1154-1176
Author(s):  
Alice Bodoc ◽  
Mihaela Gheorghe
Keyword(s):  
Corpus Analysis ◽  
The Other ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Implicit Argument ◽  
Adverbial Modification ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
Formal Properties ◽  
Middle Constructions ◽  
Heterogeneous Class

Abstract The present paper aims to present an inventory of Romanian middle contructions (se‑verbal constructions), and to extend the analysis to other structures (with or without se) that were not previously investigated, but exhibit the same characteristics, and seem to allow middle reading (adjunct middles). Since Jespersen (1927), middles were attested cross-linguistically, and the focus on middles is justified if we consider the fact that this is an interesting testing ground for theories of syntax, semantics and their interaction (Fagan 1992). Starting from Grahek’s definition (2008, 44), in this paper, middles are a heterogeneous class of constructions that share formal properties of both active and passive structures: on the one hand, they have active verb forms, but, on the other hand, like passives, they have understood subjects and normally display promoted objects. The corpus analysis will focus on the particular contexts in which the middle reading is triggered: i) the adverbial modification; ii) the modal/procedural interpretation of the event; iii) the responsibility of the subject; iv) the arbitrary interpretation of the implicit argument which follows from the generic interpretation (Steinbach 2002).

The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century in Renaissance Italy

1981 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 149-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip M. J. McNair
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Modern World ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Giordano Bruno ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Renaissance Italy ◽  
The One

Between the execution of Gerolamo Savonarola at Florence in May 1498 and the execution of Giordano Bruno at Rome in February 1600, western Christendom was convulsed by the protestant reformation, and the subject of this paper is the effect that that revolution had on the Italy that nourished and martyred those two unique yet representative men: unique in the power and complexity of their personalities, representative because the one sums up the medieval world with all its strengths and weaknesses while the other heralds the questing and questioning modern world in which we live.

Albert Schweitzer and the Jews

2014 ◽  
Vol 107 (3) ◽  
pp. 363-398
Author(s):  
James Carleton Paget
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Community ◽  
Academic Career ◽  
Significant Degree ◽  
The Other ◽  
Personal Contact ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Long Life ◽  
The One

Albert Schweitzer's engagement with Judaism, and with the Jewish community more generally, has never been the subject of substantive discussion. On the one hand this is not surprising—Schweitzer wrote little about Judaism or the Jews during his long life, or at least very little that was devoted principally to those subjects. On the other hand, the lack of a study might be thought odd—Schweitzer's work as a New Testament scholar in particular is taken up to a significant degree with presenting a picture of Jesus, of the earliest Christian communities, and of Paul, and his scholarship emphasizes the need to see these topics against the background of a specific set of Jewish assumptions. It is also noteworthy because Schweitzer married a baptized Jew, whose father's academic career had been disadvantaged because he was a Jew. Moreover, Schweitzer lived at a catastrophic time in the history of the Jews, a time that directly affected his wife's family and others known to him. The extent to which this personal contact with Jews and with Judaism influenced Schweitzer either in his writings on Judaism or in his life will in part be the subject of this article.

XXVII.—The Inheritance of Long and Short Wings in the Weevil, Sitona hispidula, with a Discussion of Wing Reduction among Beetles

1928 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 665-735 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorothy J. Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Work ◽  
Adult Stage ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Other ◽  
Wing Dimorphism ◽  
Wing Reduction ◽  
Hereditary Factors ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
Evolutionary Point

It is well known that in many orders of typically winged insects species occur which in the adult stage are apterous or have the wings so reduced in size that flight is impossible. Sometimes the reduction of wings affects one sex only, as in the case of the females of certain moths, but in the majority of cases it is exhibited by both sexes. In many instances wing dimorphism occurs irrespective of sex, one form of the species having fully developed wings and the other greatly reduced wings. In some species the wings are polymorphic. The problem of the origin of reduced wings and of other functionless organs is one of great interest from the evolutionary point of view. Various theories have been advanced in explanation, but in the majority of cases the various aspects of the subject are too little known to warrant discussion. More experimental work is required to show how far environmental conditions on the one hand, and hereditary factors on the other, are responsible for this phenomenon. Those species which exhibit alary dimorphism afford material for the study of the inheritance of the two types of wings, but only in a few cases has this method of research been utilized.

Productivity of French and Dutch (semi-)copular constructions and the adverse impact of high token frequency

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niek Van Wettere
Keyword(s):  
Frequency Distribution ◽  
The Other ◽  
Adverse Impact ◽  
Frequent Type ◽  
Token Frequency ◽  
Semantic Classes ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One

Abstract This paper examines the productivity of the subject complement slot in a set of French and Dutch (semi-)copular micro-constructions. The presumed counterpart of productivity, conventionalization in the form of high token frequency, will also be taken into account in the analysis of the productivity complex. On the one hand, it will be shown that prototypical copulas generally have a higher productivity than semi-copulas, although there are some semi-copulas that can rival the productivity of prototypical copulas. On the other hand, it will be demonstrated that high token frequency is in general detrimental to productivity, on the level of the entire subject complement slot and on the level of the different semantic classes. However, the shape of the frequency distribution also seems to play a role: multiple highly frequent types are in my data more detrimental to productivity than one extremely frequent type, although the semantic connectedness of the types in the distribution might also be an explanatory factor.

On the Hourly Distribution of Mortality

1875 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 110-118
Author(s):  
Robert Lawson
Keyword(s):  
Medical Journal ◽  
Physiological Function ◽  
Physiological Activity ◽  
Meteorological Conditions ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cumulative Mortality ◽  
The Hours ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
Hourly Distribution

Several interesting observations have recently been made regarding the existence of maximum hours of mortality and the allied subject of recurrent variations in the activity of physiological function. During the present year an important contribution to the literature of the subject has been made by Dr. James Finlayson, of Glasgow, who in a couple of papers published, the one in the Transactions of the Philosophical Society of Glasgow for 1873-4, and the other in the Glasgow Medical Journal for April 1874, has supplemented and summarized Schneider's searching examination into the statistics bearing on the subject, tabulated the results of Mr. West Watson, a Glasgow predecessor in the study of vital problems, and collected the scattered statistics contained in the important contributions to the literature of this interesting enquiry. In an independent summary, showing the hours at which the greatest number of deaths occur in several Glasgow institutions, Dr. Finlayson determines the comparative cumulative mortality during successive hours of the same day, and during groups of hours collocated on account of some marked contrasts in meteorological conditions and physiological activity. As far as regards deaths from chronic diseases, the results obtained by Dr. Finlayson are confirmatory of those of Caspar and the summarized statistics of Schneider. They show a notably increased mortality during ante-meridian hours, as compared with those of the afternoon and evening, and especially a determinate maximum between 4 A.M. and noon. With regard to acute diseases, the figures of Dr. Finlayson show that in them the morning rise is nearly if not altogether equalled by a second rise in the extent of hourly mortality occurring in the afternoon. He accounts for this divergence from the general results, by referring to the influences exerted by the post-meridian rise in temperature which characterizes that group of diseases, as a means of determining in them the modification of their hours of maximum mortality.

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