Josephus: Noble Sicarii Suicide or Mass Slaughter at Mount Masada?

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Peter Allen
Keyword(s):  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Track Record

An attempt is made to ratiocinate historical events at Mount Masada in circa 74 C.E. as related by Josephus Flavius. Cohen (1982, 393) clearly sees Josephus as a mostly dishonest historian, one who happily exaggerates and embellishes his accounts. As a consequence of this rhetorical straitjacket that he places Josephus in, Cohen (for one) cannot accept Josephus’s Masada account as being an “unalloyed version of the truth.” The author analyses Josephus’s track record apropos his recording of other historical events and submits that, rhetorical strategies aside, the historian can largely trust Josephus’s accounts.    

Self-sacrifice for in-group's history: A diachronic perspective

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Babińska ◽  
Michal Bilewicz
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Psychology ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Emotional Events ◽  
Reciprocal Process ◽  
The Way

AbstractThe problem of extended fusion and identification can be approached from a diachronic perspective. Based on our own research, as well as findings from the fields of social, political, and clinical psychology, we argue that the way contemporary emotional events shape local fusion is similar to the way in which historical experiences shape extended fusion. We propose a reciprocal process in which historical events shape contemporary identities, whereas contemporary identities shape interpretations of past traumas.

Appropriation des Savoirs et Mémoire Collective

2013 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 71-78
Author(s):  
Sophie Richardot
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Factorial Analysis ◽  
Experimental Results ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Memoire Collective ◽  
Obedience To Authority

The aim of this study is to understand to what extent soliciting collective memory facilitates the appropriation of knowledge. After being informed about Milgram’s experiment on obedience to authority, students were asked to mention historical or contemporary events that came to mind while thinking about submission to authority. Main results of the factorial analysis show that the students who do not believe in the reproducibility of the experimental results oppose dramatic past events to a peaceful present, whereas those who do believe in the reproducibility of the results also mention dramatic contemporary events, thus linking past and present. Moreover, the students who do not accept the results for today personify historical events, whereas those who fully accept them generalize their impact. Therefore, according to their attitude toward this objet of knowledge, the students refer to two kinds of memory: a “closed memory,” which tends to relegate Milgram’s results to ancient history; and an “open memory,” which, on the contrary, transforms past events into a concept that helps them understand the present. Soliciting collective memory may contribute to the appropriation of knowledge provided the memory activated is an “open” one, linking past to present and going beyond the singularity of the event.

Archibald Menzies (1754–1842), an early botanist on the northwestern seaboard of North America, 1792–1794, with further notes on his life and work

2001 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
ERIC W. GROVES
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Pacific Coast ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Northwest Pacific ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Short Biography

ABSTRACT: This paper includes a short biography of Menzies and an outline of the historical events on the northwest Pacific coast leading up to Vancouver's voyage. A table listing the botanical visitors to that area prior to 1792 is given followed by a résumé of the evolution of Menzies's journal. Sources used in compiling the chronology of his movements during Vancouver's voyage are then set down, ending the section with an account of Menzies's own visit, 1792–1794. His method of plant collecting is discussed along with an account of his collections and their subsequent disposal. The paper concludes with details of Menzies's later life, his connection with other botanists of the day, and an assessment of his achievements.

Staging the World: The Devils as Theatrum Mundi

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 496-514
Author(s):  
Christophe Van Eecke
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Tidal Wave ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Mise En Abyme ◽  
Political Allegory ◽  
The World

When Ken Russell's film The Devils was released in 1971 it generated a tidal wave of adverse criticism. The film tells the story of a libertine priest, Grandier, who was burnt at the stake for witchcraft in the French city of Loudun in the early seventeenth century. Because of its extended scenes of sexual hysteria among cloistered nuns, the film soon acquired a reputation for scandal and outrage. This has obscured the very serious political issues that the film addresses. This article argues that The Devils should be read primarily as a political allegory. It shows that the film is structured as a theatrum mundi, which is the allegorical trope of the world as a stage. Rather than as a conventional recreation of historical events (in the tradition of the costume film), Russell treats the trial against Grandier as a comment on the nature of power and politics in general. This is not only reflected in the overall allegorical structure of the theatrum mundi, but also in the use of the film's highly modernist (and therefore timeless) sets, in Russell's use of the mise-en-abyme (a self-reflexive embedded play) and in the introduction of a number of burlesque sequences, all of which are geared towards achieving the film's allegorical import.

The Qur'an, Faith and the Impact of the Feminist Interpretative Movement on the Arabic Text and its Legacy

2004 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 170-183
Author(s):  
Hassan al-Shafīe
Keyword(s):  
Arabic Text ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Religious Texts ◽  
Islamic World ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Intellectual Movement ◽  
Qur'anic Interpretation

The present study discusses the cultural and intellectual movement, now on the point of prevalence in the contemporary Islamic world, which adopts the Western ‘hermeneutical method’ and applies it to the Qur'an in particular, and Islamic religious texts in general. The author shows this movement's complete disregard for the established principles of tafsīr, the traditional Arab-Islamic rules of Qur'anic interpretation and the related Prophetic aḥādīth as preserved in the authenticated Sunna. The author argues that the ‘hermeneutical method’ starts from the preconceived notion that the Islamic heritage is male-centred and biased against women, both theoretically and practically, and, on this basis, proposes that the time has come for an intellectual break with this premise and the re-interpretation of the Qur'an and faith in the light of Western Christian hermeneutics. This paper proposes that this method fails to take historical events and the civilisational Islamic experience into account.

“The Truth of Reliable Tradition”: Saadya Gaon, Arabic Rhetoric, and the Challenge to Rhetorical Historiography

2017 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-188
Author(s):  
Brandon Katzir
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Arabic Language ◽  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
Medieval Rhetoric ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Latin Language ◽  
Arabic Rhetoric ◽  
Rhetorical Traditions ◽  
The Middle Ages

This article explores the rhetoric of medieval rabbi and philosopher Saadya Gaon, arguing that Saadya typifies what LuMing Mao calls the “interconnectivity” of rhetorical cultures (Mao 46). Suggesting that Saadya makes use of argumentative techniques from Greek-inspired, rationalist Islamic theologians, I show how his rhetoric challenges dominant works of rhetorical historiography by participating in three interconnected cultures: Greek, Jewish, and Islamic. Taking into account recent scholarship on Jewish rhetoric, I argue that Saadya's amalgamation of Jewish rhetorical genres alongside Greco-Islamic genres demonstrates how Jewish and Islamic rhetoric were closely connected in the Middle Ages. Specifically, the article analyzes the rhetorical significance of Saadya's most famous treatise on Jewish philosophy, The Book of Doctrines and Beliefs, which I argue utilizes Greco-Islamic rhetorical strategies in a polemical defense of rabbinical authority. As a tenth-century writer who worked across multiple rhetorical traditions and genres, Saadya challenges the monocultural, Latin-language histories of medieval rhetoric, demonstrating the importance of investigating Arabic-language and Jewish rhetorics of the Middle Ages.

Ethical criteria of civilization choice

2019 ◽  
pp. 92-113
Author(s):  
Mykhaylo Loshchinin ◽  
Yurii Privalov ◽  
Yuriy Sapelkin
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Social Risks ◽  
Social Actions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ethical Criteria

The article discusses the understanding of civilizational choice as a sequence of political, social, cultural and other historical events. An assessment is made of the scale of social actions aimed at the civilizational reversal of society. The authors attempted to assess the risks of civilizational choice along the social vertical, using previously developed theoretical models of social risks for a socially heterogeneous society. In the course of the study, different phenomena related to the solution of the problem of ethics of civilizational choice were considered.

The Evolutionary Dynamics of Decision Rule Selection

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Laver ◽  
Ernest Sergenti
Keyword(s):  
Decision Rule ◽  
Positive Feedback ◽  
Party System ◽  
Evolutionary Dynamics ◽  
Decision Rules ◽  
Past Performance ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Track Record ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Survival Of The Fittest

This chapter extends the survival-of-the-fittest evolutionary environment to consider the possibility that new political parties, when they first come into existence, do not pick decision rules at random but instead choose rules that have a track record of past success. This is done by adding replicator-mutator dynamics to the model, according to which the probability that each rule is selected by a new party is an evolving but noisy function of that rule's past performance. Estimating characteristic outputs when this type of positive feedback enters the dynamic model creates new methodological challenges. The simulation results show that it is very rare for one decision rule to drive out all others over the long run. While the diversity of decision rules used by party leaders is drastically reduced with such positive feedback in the party system, and while some particular decision rule is typically prominent over a certain period of time, party systems in which party leaders use different decision rules are sustained over substantial periods.

Getting Tough

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julilly Kohler-Hausmann
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
African American ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Penal System ◽  
Social Programs ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
Welfare Programs ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Social Upheaval ◽  
The U.S

In 1970s America, politicians began “getting tough” on drugs, crime, and welfare. These campaigns helped expand the nation's penal system, discredit welfare programs, and cast blame for the era's social upheaval on racialized deviants that the state was not accountable to serve or represent. This book sheds light on how this unprecedented growth of the penal system and the evisceration of the nation's welfare programs developed hand in hand. The book shows that these historical events were animated by struggles over how to interpret and respond to the inequality and disorder that crested during this period. When social movements and the slowing economy destabilized the U.S. welfare state, politicians reacted by repudiating the commitment to individual rehabilitation that had governed penal and social programs for decades. In its place, they championed strategies of punishment, surveillance, and containment. The architects of these tough strategies insisted they were necessary, given the failure of liberal social programs and the supposed pathological culture within poor African American and Latino communities. This book rejects this explanation and describes how the spectacle of enacting punitive policies convinced many Americans that social investment was counterproductive and the “underclass” could be managed only through coercion and force. Spanning diverse institutions and weaving together the perspectives of opponents, supporters, and targets of punitive policies, the book offers new interpretations of dramatic transformations in the modern American state.

The dimensions of the Moroccan position on the Gulf crisis 1990-1991

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (11) ◽  
pp. 179
Author(s):  
Nazhan Hammoud Nassif Al Obeidi ◽  
Abdul Wahab Abdul Aziz Abu Khamra
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
New World ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
New World Order ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Gulf Crisis ◽  
The Subject

The Gulf crisis 1990-1991 is one of the important historical events of the 1990s, which gave rise to the new world order by the sovereignty of the United States of America on this system. The Gulf crisis was an embodiment to clarify the features of this system. .     The crisis in the Gulf was an opportunity for the Moroccans to manage this complex event and to use it for the benefit of the Moroccan situation. Therefore, the bilateral position of the crisis came out as a rejection, a contradiction and a supporter of political and economic dimensions at the external and internal levels. On the Moroccan situation, and from these points came the choice of the subject of the study (the dimensions of the Moroccan position from the Gulf crisis 1990-1991), which shows the ingenuity of Moroccans in managing an external crisis and benefiting from it internally.

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