scholarly journals Isaac multiplex: Genesis 22 in a new historical representation

2008 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christo Lombaard
Keyword(s):  
Historical Representation ◽  
Genesis 22 ◽  
History Of ◽  
Compositional History ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
New View

In this paper, a new interpretation of the Genesis 22:1-19 account is offered. Based on the new view of biblical historiography as anecdotal (Frykenberg), and drawing on the author’s own recent studies on the historical problems related to, and historicallysensitive narratological interpretative possibilities of, this Genesis text, a new meaning and a new dating for Genesis 22:1-19 are concluded to. This text, namely, reflects the end of a struggle for dominance between the different tradents of the patriarchal traditions, in which the Abraham tradents finally subjugate, with this Genesis 22*-text, the Isaac tradents. This occurs late in the compositional history of the Pentateuch, namely between 400 and 250 BCE.

Esotericism and the “Coded Word” in Mormonism

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-54
Author(s):  
Clyde Forsberg Jr.
Keyword(s):  
Popular Religion ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Social Commentary ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
Playing Field ◽  
Book Of Mormon ◽  
Divine Inspiration ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
New Religion

In the history of American popular religion, the Latter-day Saints, or Mormons, have undergone a series of paradigmatic shifts in order to join the Christian mainstream, abandoning such controversial core doctrines and institutions as polygamy and the political kingdom of God. Mormon historians have played an important role in this metamorphosis, employing a version (if not perversion) of the Church-Sect Dichotomy to change the past in order to control the future, arguing, in effect, that founder Joseph Smith Jr’s erstwhile magical beliefs and practices gave way to a more “mature” and bible-based self-understanding which is then said to best describe the religion that he founded in 1830. However, an “esoteric approach” as Faivre and Hanegraaff understand the term has much to offer the study of Mormonism as an old, new religion and the basis for a more even methodological playing field and new interpretation of Mormonism as equally magical (Masonic) and biblical (Evangelical) despite appearances. This article will focus on early Mormonism’s fascination with and employment of ciphers, or “the coded word,” essential to such foundation texts as the Book of Mormon and “Book of Abraham,” as well as the somewhat contradictory, albeit colonial understanding of African character and destiny in these two hermetic works of divine inspiration and social commentary in the Latter-day Saint canonical tradition.

Performing the Mass in B Minor in an Age of Choices

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel R. Melamed
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Johann Sebastian Bach ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Performance History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Compositional History

Every performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’'s Mass in B Minor makes choices. The work’s compositional history and the nature of the sources that transmit it require performers to make decisions about its musical text and about the performing forces used in its realization. The Mass’s editorial history reflects deeply ideological views about Bach’s composition and how it should sound, not just objective reporting on the piece, with consequences for performances that follow specific editions. Things left unspecified by the composer need to be filled in, and every decision—including the choice to add nothing to Bach’s text—represents an interpretation. And the long performance history of the Mass offers a range of possibilities, reflecting a tension between the performance of a work like the Mass in Bach’s time and the tradition inherited from the nineteenth century. Every performance thus represents a point of view about the piece; —there are no neutral performances.

Brahms, Beethoven, and a Reassessment of the Famous Footsteps

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Styra Avins
Keyword(s):  
Alternative View ◽  
Great Success ◽  
Substantial Evidence ◽  
Specific Instance ◽  
Powerful Effect ◽  
History Of ◽  
Compositional History ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
The Way ◽  
Musical Forces

To speak of Brahms and Beethoven in the same breath is almost a cliché: Brahms was intimately conscious of Beethoven's music from early youth. This article describes the details of his youthful involvement, the compositions he had in his repertoire as well as those other works which had a powerful effect on his development. By age 20, Brahms was frequently compared to Beethoven by people who met him or heard him play. My interest is in the way he was influenced by Beethoven and the manner in which he eventually found his own voice. The compositional history of his First Symphony provides the primary focus: its long gestation, and the alleged quote by Brahms given in Max Kalbeck's massive biography: ‘I'll never write a symphony, you have no idea what it feels like … to hear the footsteps of a giant behind one’. The reference is presumably to Beethoven, but there exists no corroborating evidence that Brahms ever said those words. They gained credence as one writer after another simply accepted Kalbeck's word. Yet substantial evidence exists that in writing his biography, Kalbeck distorted and even invented ‘facts’ when it suited his purposes, including a specific instance dealing with writing a symphony. An alternative view of the symphony's long gestation is based on a view of Brahms's compositional history. He wrote for musical forces he knew at first hand, and only from 1872 to 1875 did he have command of an orchestra. Intriguingly, while fulfilling the contemporary accepted demands of a symphony after Beethoven, Brahms devised an unusual strategy for the final movement, the basis of its great success.

scholarly journals «Военные рассказы» М. Кузмина: Попытка реинтерпретации [Toward the Reinterpretation of Mikhail Kuzmin’s _War Stories_]

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Pakhomova
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Short Fiction ◽  
Russian Literature ◽  
Unsuccessful Attempt ◽  
Literary Reputation ◽  
Mikhail Kuzmin ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
History Of Literature ◽  
War Stories

The article analyzes War Stories (Voennye rasskazy, 1915) by Mikhail Kuzmin and offers a new interpretation of the book’s pragmatics. Most students of War Stories have not treated this collection in much detail, mainly seeing it as Kuzmin’s unsuccessful attempt to become a part of the mainstream patriotic movement during WWI. Contrary to her predecessors, Alexandra Pakhomova argues this particular book has a definite and consciously motivated authorial strategy. What Kuzmin did in War Stories was an attempt to establish his new literary reputation, and also to create an entirely new genre of short fiction in Russian literature. KEYWORDS: 20th-Century Russian Literature, Mikhail Kuzmin (1972—1936), Voennye rasskazy (1915), Literary Reputation, History of Literature.

Positions on Redaction

2021 ◽  
pp. 236-254
Author(s):  
Reinhard Müller
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Half Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Compositional History ◽  
Past Half

This essay examines the nature of pentateuchal redaction, the various positions that scholars have taken on it across the history of modern biblical studies, and the ways that these theories contribute to larger theories of compositional history. It highlights the manner in which redactional theories have been especially productive among continental European scholars over the past half-century. The essay concludes with a consideration of external, empirical evidence for redaction, especially among the Persian and Hellenistic period witnesses to the Pentateuch.

Conclusion

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Hingley
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Roman History ◽  
King Arthur ◽  
State Control ◽  
Scottish Highlands ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
Extension Of State ◽  
The Devil

The works examined above have been explored through a chronological study based upon the four overlapping themes of civility/ Romanization, the walling out of humanity, Roman incomers, and ruination, emphasized through a reading of the sources to explore how the discovery of objects and sites has helped to inform a number of contrasting interpretations that went in and out of fashion. A number of more local and fragmented tales have also been addressed in passing and it is evident that a very different account could have been articulated if I had drawn more directly upon such ideas. Tales, such as those of Onion the Silchester Giant, Graham’s creation of a breach in the Antonine Wall, King Arthur and his ‘O’on’ at Camelon in central Scotland and the activities of the devil at Rodmarton, provide information about how local people interpreted the physical remains of the Romans in Britain. The focus on elite tales in this book should not detract from the potential of local myths, but a thorough study of such material remains to be undertaken. Instead, this book has emphasized stories that have been told about the pre- Roman and Roman history of Britain that served to develop relevant national and imperial tales. The significance of the civilizing of the ancient Britons drove a particular approach to the ancient sources during the early seventeenth century that emphasized the passing on of Roman civility to people of England (or Lowland Britain). From this point of view, the ruined Roman Walls projected the territorial limit of civility, beyond which were the lands of barbarians. Towards the end of the century, a new interpretation arose that placed emphasis on the Roman settlers, their ‘stations’, and roads, reflecting the contemporary military aspect of society while envisaging England (or Lowland Britain) as the inheritor of Roman civility. This military conception was redefined and updated during the succeeding centuries as an analogy for the extension of state control over the Scottish Highlands and later for the exploration, documentation, and domination of territories in India and elsewhere.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 294-308
Author(s):  
Anna Stoll Knecht
Keyword(s):  
Compositional Process ◽  
Complex Picture ◽  
History Of ◽  
Compositional History ◽  
The Relationship

The conclusion returns to the question of the relationship between genesis and interpretation raised in Chapter 2. Besides informing the chronology of the compositional process, the sketches enlighten the perception of the two “problematic” issues at stake in the reception of the Seventh: its relationship to the Sixth Symphony and to Wagner’s Meistersinger. These connections emerge with greater clarity in the “discarded” material, thus encouraging us to consider it as an integral part of the compositional history of a work and as part of its identity. Genetic and analytical perspectives should be treated separately, but then examined in dialogue with each other, to offer a more complex picture of the work. If tragedy wins in the Sixth Symphony, the Seventh shows that the collapsing pattern does not always end with destruction. Death may laugh at us, but we can laugh back, louder, and just keep dancing.

Early Kongo-Portuguese Relations: A New Interpretation

1981 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 183-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Thornton
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
Military Assistance ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Interpretation

One of the most durable myths of the history of central Africa is that of the early subversion and domination of the kingdom of Kongo by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century. Its original statement was made by James Duffy in 1959 and was amplified by Basil Davidson two years later. According to this argument the Portuguese had found a well-developed kingdom of Kongo when they reached the mouth of the Zaire River in 1483, and had entered into an alliance with the ruler. The alliance, first made with king Nzinga a Nkuwu (baptized as João I in 1491) and strengthened and continued with his son Mvemba a Nzinga (better known under his baptized name of Afonso I, 1506-1543) involved a partnership in which Portuguese settled in Kongo and provided technological and military assistance to Kongo in exchange for trade, mostly in slaves. As a result of this exchange Kongo adopted Christianity, and for a time the two kings addressed each other as “Brother.” But the alliance, despite its good beginning, was rapidly upset by the greed of the Portuguese settlers, who saw the situation merely as an opening for quick riches through the slave trade. As a result the higher aims of the Portuguese court were subverted--first because the Portuguese, with a higher level of development, were able to benefit from their position more than Kongo; secondly because Lisbon was unable to control its settlers in Kongo or São Tomé. In the end there was a massive involvement of Portuguese in Kongolese affairs and a breakdown of authority in Kongo.

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