Psalms of Solomon as Resistance Poetry

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 366-385
Author(s):  
Matthew E. Gordley
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Dominant Discourse ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Poetry Of Witness ◽  
Psalms Of Solomon ◽  
The One

Two trends in recent scholarship provide a new set of lenses that enable contemporary readers to appreciate more fully the contents and genre of Psalms of Solomon. On the one hand, scholars such as Richard Horsley, Anathea Portier-Young, and Adela Yarbro Collins have now explored the ways in which early Jewish writers engaged in a kind of compositional resistance as they grappled with their traditions in light of the realities of oppressive empires. These approaches enable us to consider the extent to which Psalms of Solomon also may embody a kind of resistant counterdiscourse for the community in which it was edited and preserved. On the other hand, scholars within biblical studies (e. g., Hugh Page) and beyond have examined the dynamics of the poetry of resistance. Such poetry has existed in many times, places, and cultures, giving a voice to the oppressed, protecting the memory of victims, and creating a compelling vision of a possible future in which the oppression is overcome. In this article the poetry of Guatemalan poet Julia Esquivel is interwoven with Psalms of Solomon to illustrate these dynamics and to illuminate the kinds of concerns that scholars like Barbara Harlow and Caolyn Forché have highlighted within the poetry of witness. Since Psalms of Solomon has yet to be explored through these dual lenses of resistance and resistance poetry, this article examines these early Jewish psalms in light of these scholarly trends. I argue that Psalms of Solomon can be understood as a kind of resistance poetry that enabled a community of Jews in the first century B. C. E. to resist the dominant discourse of both the Roman Empire and its client king, Herod the Great. The themes of history, identity, and possibility that pervade resistance poetry in other times and places are central features of Psalms of Solomon.

scholarly journals DANTES LITTERÆRE ATMOSFÆROLOGI

1970 ◽  
Vol 41 (116) ◽  
pp. 33-48
Author(s):  
Dennis Meyhoff Brink
Keyword(s):  
Divine Comedy ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Peter Sloterdijk ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The One ◽  
Atmospheric Phenomena ◽  
Lauren Berlant

DANTE’S LITERARY ATMOSPHEROLOGY | The article argues that recent theories on affect and atmosphere by, for instance, Teresa Brennan, Lauren Berlant, and Peter Sloterdijk, can enter into an extraordinarily fruitful interchange with Dante’s Divine Comedy. On the one hand, these theories can direct our attention to the hitherto overlooked atmospheric phenomena that occur ubiquitously in Dante’s Comedy and provide us with concepts that render them legible as products of human emissions. On the other hand, the numerous descriptions of different atmospheres in Dante’s Comedy can contribute to overcoming the lack of linguistic specifications and distinctions which – according to theorists such as Brian Massumi and Peter Sloterdijk – characterizes today’s Western understanding of affective atmospheres and impedes its ongoing theorization. Based on readings of a selected number of atmospheres in Dante’s Comedy, the article argues that the Comedy not only anticipated insights that were not articulated theoretically until the twentieth and twenty-first century, butalso makes up an exceptional encyclopedia of affective atmospheres that have not yet been examined, neither by Dante researchers, nor by theorists of affects and atmospheres. Therefore, both camps have much to learn from Dante’s literary atmospherology, which the article aims to make explicit.

The Standard of Taste Debate

Food Fights ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 100-123
Author(s):  
Charles C. Ludington
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Tribal Identity ◽  
Political Beliefs ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Class Status ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Standard Of Taste ◽  
The One

On the one hand people like to say that “there is no accounting for taste.” On the other hand, people constantly make judgments about their own and other people’s taste (gustatory and aesthetic). Charles Ludington examines the taste for wine in eighteenth-century England and Scotland, and the taste for beer in twenty-first century America, to argue that taste can in fact be accounted for because it is a reflection of custom, “tribal” identity, gender, political beliefs, and conceptions of authenticity, which are mostly but not entirely conditioned by class status and aspirations. And rightly or wrongly, we judge other people’s taste because taste positions us in society.

The Digital Humanities, Inc.: Literary Criticism and the Fate of a Profession

PMLA ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 131 (2) ◽  
pp. 324-339 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Kopec
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Digital Humanities ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Critical Practice ◽  
New Formalism ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
New Critics ◽  
The One ◽  
Data Reading

The popularization of the digital humanities and the return to formalism are overdetermined by the perceived crises in the humanities. On the one hand, the new formalism harks back to a professionalizing strategy begun by the New Critics with John Crowe Ransom's “Criticism, Inc.,” drawing strength from close reading's original polemic against industrialism. On the other hand, the digital humanities reimagine professional labor in ways that seemingly approximate postindustrial norms. These contradictory but inextricably related visions of professional futures restage a conflict between literature and data, reading and making, that has been misrecognized as a conflict between literature and history. Approaching these tensions by way of historicist critique can illuminate the extent to which the debate between literature and data will define critical practice in the twenty-first century.

Dating theOdes of Solomon

Antichthon ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 45-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Lattke
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
History Of ◽  
Psalms Of Solomon ◽  
The One

41 verse texts are extant of the original 42 poems (also described as hymns, psalms or songs) which comprise the so-calledOdes of Solomon—a corpus not to be confused with the 18 so-calledPsalms of Solomon.As can be seen from the Appendix, the history of the discovery and publication of these poems began with C.G. Woide at the end of the eighteenth century.1 Up to that time the only evidence for theOdes of Solomonwas twofold. On the one hand, there was an enigmatic Latin quotation of three lines (i.e. 19:6-7a) in theDivinae Institutionesof Lactantius (c.240-c.320). On the other hand, the mere titlewas listed together with the better knownin the so-calledof Ps.-Athanasios and theascribed to Nikephoros Patriarch of Konstantinopolis (c.750-828). In these two canon-listsPsalmsandOdesappear in this order among the Old Testament's ‘antilegomena’ which is a category between ‘canonical’ and ‘apocryphal’.

The Rabbinic God and Mediaeval Judaism

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 369-390
Author(s):  
Dov Weiss
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Jewish Mysticism ◽  
Rabbinic Judaism ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
History Of ◽  
Essential Unity ◽  
Jewish Philosophy ◽  
The One ◽  
Modern Judaism

From the earliest stages of Wissenschaft des Judentums, scholars of Judaism typically read statements about God in the classical sources of Judaism with a mediaeval philosophical lens. By doing so, they sought to demonstrate the essential unity and continuity between rabbinic Judaism, later mediaeval Jewish philosophy and modern Judaism. In the late 1980s, the Maimonidean hold on rabbinic scholarship began to crack when the ‘revisionist school’ sought to drive a wedge between rabbinic Judaism, on the one hand, and Maimonidean Judaism, on the other hand, by highlighting the deep continuities and links between rabbinic Judaism and mediaeval Jewish mysticism (Kabbalah). The revisionist scholars regarded rabbinic Judaism as a pre-cursor to mediaeval Kabbalah rather than mediaeval Jewish philosophy. This article provides the history of scholarship on these two methods of reading rabbinic texts and then proposes that scholars adopt a third method. That is, building on the work of recent scholarship, we should confront theological rabbinic texts on their own terms, without the guiding hand of either mediaeval Jewish framework.

Time, Memory, and Images

2018 ◽  
pp. 95-150
Author(s):  
Tonio Hölscher
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Precise Understanding ◽  
Republican Rome ◽  
Identity Based ◽  
Hellenistic Greece ◽  
The One

Greek and Roman societies were strongly rooted in and intentionally based on their authoritative pasts, made visible in monuments and “lieux de mémoire.” For a precise understanding of these phenomena, a theoretical distinction is introduced between the knowledge of tradition and the memory of a paradigmatic past, exemplifying both categories by testimonies of the age of Augustus. Specific commemorative capacities are explored, on the one hand, in places of mythical and historical memory in Athens and Rome and, on the other hand, in political monuments from classical and Hellenistic Greece to republican Rome and the Roman Empire. The distinction serves to underline the potentially aggressive character of collective identity based on public memory.

scholarly journals The Monetary Reforms of the Romans and the Finds of Roman Denarii in Eastern and Northern Europe

1993 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-144
Author(s):  
Lennart Lind
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
The Other ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
Monetary Reform ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Roman Coins ◽  
Central Eastern ◽  
The One

Monetary measures undertaken inside the Roman Empire might be responsible for the composition of finds of Roman coins made ontside the Empire. A possible link between the composition of the denarius finds in Barbarian Europe, on the one hand, and the monetary reforms of Nero (54—68) and Septimius Severus (193—211), on the other hand, has long been recognised. There is however a third Roman monetary reform which has put its imprint on the denorius finds in Central, Eastern and Northern Europe, the one of Domitian (81—96).

scholarly journals The Appropriation of Innocence: from Shelley’s Frankenstein to Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 126-138
Author(s):  
Karzan Aziz Mahmood
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycles ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ethical Responsibility ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Dead Body ◽  
Science Student ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Post War ◽  
The One

This paper demonstrates the appropriation of innocence in Shelley’s Frankenstein, Or the Modern Prometheus (1818) and Frankenstein in Baghdad (2013) by Ahmed Saadawi. These novels are selected because the latter appropriates the creator and creature characters and contextualizes them into the American-Iraq 2005 post-war period. In Shelley’s Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein, scientifically, gives life to a dead body amalgamated from other body parts, which start murdering and revenging upon his creator. Whereas, in Saadawi’s twenty-first century Frankenstein, a person who is formed from others’ dead bodies by merely a junk dealer, starts murdering and revenging upon other people. On the one hand, Frankenstein, a science student, sought to answer the question of human revival theoretically and practically. Therefore, after he resurrects the dead, it becomes monstrous due to its negligence and physical hideousness by its creator. On the other hand, the Iraqi Frankenstein’s creator, Hadi, celebrates collecting old materials in a non-scientific manner, including humans’ dead body parts, in order to give value to them by offering them worthy of proper burials. The resurrected creatures transform into more powerful beings than their creators as reactions against isolation and injustice. For that, both Frankenstein and Hadi lose control over their creations, who instigate new life cycles. Hence, the ethical responsibility of invention underlies the concept of innocence which this paper intends to analyze vis-à-vis the creators and their creations.

Are Christians Obliged not to Forgive? A Response to Martin (1997)

2000 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth A. Gassin
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Studies ◽  
The Other ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One ◽  
Christian Relationships

In contrast to the prevailing wisdom of many Christian and secular psychologists, biblical studies scholar T. Martin (1997) claims that a Christian has an obligation not to forgive an unrepentant offender. In this article, I analyze each of his points, offer more evidence from the writings of the early Church, and reach the following conclusion: Although we must always remember that reconciliation between victim and offender is the goal in Christian relationships, subtle distinctions between God's forgiveness of humans or the Church's reconciliation with offenders (on the one hand) and forgiveness between two individual Christians (on the other hand) allow us to maintain that Christians can and should forgive unrepentant offenders, at least as forgiveness is defined in the psychological tradition. I end with a series of forgiveness-related challenges and questions for scholars in biblical studies, theology, and psychology.

Biblical Feminisms: Knowledge, Theory and Politics in the Study of Women in the Hebrew Bible

2008 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 205-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Esther Fuchs
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Feminist Epistemology ◽  
The Other ◽  
Evolutionary Trajectory ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Culturally Different ◽  
Knowledge Theory ◽  
The One

AbstractThe proliferation of biblical feminist interpretations and readings in the last two decades suggests that we may witness the emergence of an autonomous field of studies. In this essay I suggest that in order for such a field to emerge as an autonomous and thriving area of academic inquiry we must begin to think theoretically and critically about the work that has been done, the objectives of this work and the relationships between and among various approaches to the field. In this essay I call for a rigorous and critical biblical feminist epistemology that seeks to address on every turn the question of knowledge production as power; on the other hand I call for a radical democratization of the field and the questioning of any and all orthodoxies and hierarchies that may have already emerged in the field. The first "centripetal" approach insists on clarifying the foundations of the field, establishing genealogies of knowledge and an evolutionary trajectory, crediting and acknowledging theoretical points of origination. Respect for precedence and antecedence is required so as to avoid repetition, imitation and dilution. The second "centrifugal" approach emphasizes the need for interrogating, displacing and destabilizing foundational paradigms in Biblical Studies at large and for the continued questioning of stable identities of "women" as subjects and objects of inquiry. A vigorous field of Feminist Biblical Studies ought to deploy both approaches opening the way to both debate and contestation between various feminist approaches to the Bible on the one hand and to dialogue and alliance between methodologically, theoretically, politically and culturally different approaches on the other.

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