scholarly journals Exchange of wife for social and food security: A famine refugee’s strategy for survival (Gn 12:10–13:2)

2018 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cephas T.A. Tushima

This essay studies Genesis 12:10–13:2 with a literary close reading approach that takes seriously the text’s literary, historical and theological constituent elements. After a brief history of interpretation, it situates the narrative in its historical context, which is followed with a narrative critical reading of the text. The analysis of the text unveils the dissimulations of Abram, who manipulated his wife, Sarai, into thinking her beauty posed a threat to him, while his primary motive rested with the pursuit of economic gain in the face of the severe famine that had impoverished him in Canaan. Abram also succeeded in making Pharaoh believe that Sarai was his sister, on which account he exchanged her for material again. This analysis affords insight into the insecurity, anxiety, feelings of alterity of immigrant populations in their liminal conditions, the mistrust of immigrants by the state and host communities, and the ensuing power play (including sexual politics and/or commerce) with its concomitant perils. Through these, the passage speaks anew to contemporary communities of faith in view of the prevalent and ever-increasing migratory trends of the 21st century.

Author(s):  
Stephen D. Bowd

Renaissance Mass Murder explores the devastating impact of war on the men and women of the Renaissance. In contrast to the picture of balance and harmony usually associated with the Renaissance, it uncovers in forensic detail a world in which sacks of Italian cities and massacres of civilians at the hands of French, German, Spanish, Swiss, and Italian troops were regular occurrences. The arguments presented are based on a wealth of evidence—histories and chronicles, poetry and paintings, sculpture and other objects—which together provide a new and startling history of sixteenth-century Italy and a social history of the Italian Wars. It outlines how massacres happened, how princes, soldiers, lawyers, and writers, justified and explained such events, and how they were represented in contemporary culture. On this basis the book reconstructs the terrifying individual experiences of civilians in the face of war and in doing so offers a story of human tragedy which redresses the balance of the history of the Italian Wars, and of Renaissance warfare, in favour of the civilian and away from the din of the battlefield. This book also places mass murder in a broader historical context and challenges claims that such violence was unusual or in decline in early modern Europe. Finally, it shows that women often suffered disproportionately from this violence and that immunity for them, as for their children, was often partially developed or poorly respected.


2019 ◽  
Vol 64 (256) ◽  
pp. 903
Author(s):  
Paulo Suess

A história da cidade de São Paulo e do Brasil é uma história de desaparecimentos e esquecimentos, de resistências e lutas pela sobrevivência física e cultural, de transformações e adaptações. Arar a memória dos destinatários e dos agentes da primeira evangelização, por ocasião dos 450 anos da “conversão do Brasil”, é uma tarefa instigante, sobretudo no contexto histórico de hoje, onde a pergunta sobre a possibilidade de um outro mundo é ao mesmo tempo uma pergunta sobre a relevância da evangelização. A comemoração da fundação da “Casa de Piratininga”, um pobre colégio que se tornou megalópole, tem a tarefa de religar o conhecimento histórico ao reconhecimento contemporâneo do outro. O Autor, missiólogo e historiador, por muitos anos ligado à causa indígena no país e no continente latino-americano, conduz o leitor pela cristandade do Brasil e pela diversidade étnica da Província de São Vicente. Dois eixos da evangelização ganham destaque: a questão da comunicação num contexto lingüístico plural e a questão da violência e da força diante da proposta evangélica de gratuidade e paz.Abstract: The history of the city of São Paulo and Brazilian history, in general, are full of disappearances and omissions, of resistance and struggles for physical and cultural survival, of transformations and adaptations. On the occasion of the 450th anniversary of the “conversion of Brazil”, to trace the memories of both addressees and agents of the first evangelization is a stimulating task, particularly in today’s historical context, where the question about the possibility of another world is, at the same time, a question about the relevance of evangelization. The celebration of the foundation of the “Casa de Piratininga”, an ordinary school that became a megalopolis, seeks to reconnect historical knowledge to the contemporary recognition of the Other. The Author – a missiologist and historian that, for many years, has been connected with the Indian cause in this country and in the Latin-American continent – guides the reader through the Christendom in Brazil and through the ethnical diversity in the Province of São Vicente. He focuses, in particular, on two axles of the evangelization: the issue of communication in a plural linguistic context and the issue of violence and coercion in the face of the evangelical proposal of graciousness and peace.


Author(s):  
Samuel E. Balentine

The conceit in the title of this volume is that ritual, however expansively it may be defined, is ineluctably tethered to religion and worship. It has a primal connection to the idea that a transcendent order—numinous and mysterious, supranatural and elusive, divine and wholly other—gives meaning and purpose to life. The construction of rites and rituals enables humans to conceive and apprehend this transcendent order, to symbolize it and interact with it, to postulate its truths in the face of contradicting realities and to repair them when they have been breached or diminished. The focus of this Handbook is on ritual and worship from the perspective of biblical studies, particularly on the Hebrew Bible and its ancient Near Eastern antecedents. Within this context, attention will be given to the development of ideas in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim thinking, but only insofar as they connect with or extend the trajectory of biblical precedents. The volume reflects a wide range of analytical approaches to ancient texts, inscriptions, iconography, and ritual artifacts. It examines the social history and cultural knowledge encoded in rituals and explores the way rituals shape and are shaped by politics, economics, ethical imperatives, and religion itself. Toward this end, the volume is organized into six major sections: Historical Contexts, Interpretive Approaches, Ritual Elements (participants, places, times, objects, practices), Cultural and Theological Perspectives, History of Interpretation, Social-Cultural Functions, and Theology and Theological Heritage.


Author(s):  
Julianne Lindberg

The History of a Heel chronicles the genesis, influence, and significance of Rodgers and Hart’s classic musical comedy Pal Joey (1940). When Pal Joey opened at the Barrymore on Christmas day, 1940, it flew in the face of musical comedy convention. The characters and situation were depraved. The setting was caustically realistic. Its female lead was frankly sexual and yet not purely comic. A narratively-driven dream ballet closed the first act, begging audiences to take seriously the inner life and desires of a confirmed heel. Although the show appears on many top-ten lists surveying the so-called “Golden Age,” it is a controversial classic; its legacy is tied both to the fashionable scandal that it provoked, and, retrospectively, to the uncommon attention it paid to characterization and narrative cohesion. Through an archive-driven investigation of the show and its music, History of a Heel offers insight into the historical moment during which Joey was born, and to the process of genre classification, canon formation, and the ensuing critical debates related to musical and theatrical maturity. More broadly, I argue that the critique and commentary on class and gender conventions in Pal Joey reveals a uniquely American concern over status, class mobility, and progressive gender roles in the pre-war era.


2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 414-429 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer L. Koosed

Moses is the only prophet in the tradition to see God “face-to-face,” and this intimate contact transforms his very body – when he comes down from the mountain, his face is altered, and he must veil (Exod. 34:29–35). Both the altered face and the veiled face have strange interpretive histories. What may have begun in Hebrew as rays of light streaming from Moses’ visage become in Greek and Latin horns sticking out of his head; thus a history of interpretation begins which first avers the horns as symbols of power and divinity but later shifts to associate the horns with animals and demons. The veil may have also begun as a powerful symbol of prophecy, but its meaning also shifts, and it later becomes associated with passivity and femininity. These multivalent images reveal deeper realities and resonances. Moses is something other than, something beyond, the human and its gendered bifurcation. He is at the nexus where the human, the animal, and the divine meet and converge. And between the glowing face/horns and the veil lies fear, the fear of the Israelites when they behold their leader, and the fear of the Bible’s readers when they are faced with Moses’ ambiguities. Using affect theory, especially Sara Ahmed’s critical work on emotion, this paper will explore the meanings of Moses’ face, covered and uncovered, as it moves through time and community.



Author(s):  
Н.Г. ОЧИРОВА ◽  
Б. МЕНГКАЙ

Статья посвящена деятельности выдающегося религиозного, общественно-политического деятеля, просветителя и гуманиста, внесшего бесценный вклад в историю и духовную культуру ойрат-калмыцкого народа Зая-пандиты Окторгуйн Далай. Цель исследования – проанализировать и осветить его многогранную деятельность как реформатора в распространении новой религии – буддизма среди монгольских народов, создателя старокалмыцкой письменности и литературы ойрат-калмыков. Показать миротворческую роль Зая-пандиты в сохранении и укреплении ойратских государств – Джунгарского, Калмыцкого и Хошеутовского ханств в середине XVII в. Актуальность данной работы определяется попыткой объективного освещения одной из важнейших сторон истории и культуры Калмыкии – истории создания национальной письменности и литературы, распространения и развития буддизма среди монгольских народов, прежде всего у ойрат-калмыков. В современных условиях развития Российского государства несомненно, актуальным становится необходимость осмысления культуры калмыков, как кочевой евразийской культуры номадов. Без изучения веками наработанного опыта духовного наследия, опыта межэтнического взаимодействия с различными народами, переосмысления всего того, что было наработано ранее, без критического анализа невозможно дальнейшее успешное культурно-историческое развитие. Основными методологическими принципами исследования стали научная объективность, выразившаяся в привлечении максимально возможного количества источников и системном подходе к анализируемому материалу, рассматриваемому во взаимосвязи всех составляющих элементов, а также принцип историзма, когда объект рассматривается в определенном историческом контексте. В работе применялись проблемно-хронологический, цивилизационный, историко-генетический, историографический анализ. Именно эти принципы и методы дают возможность решать поставленные в статье задачи. Эмпирическую основу работы составила достаточно широкая источниковая база, включающая в себя опубликованные и неопубликованные материалы. The article is devoted to the activities of Zaya-pandita Oktorguyin Dalai, an outstanding religious, social and political figure, educator and humanist who made an invaluable contribution to the history and spiritual culture of the Oirat-Kalmyk people. The purpose of the study is to analyze and highlight his multifaceted activity as a reformer in the spread of a new religion - Buddhism among the Mongolian peoples, the creator of the Old Kalmyk writing system and literature of the Oirat-Kalmyks, show the peacekeeping role of Zai-pandits in the preservation and strengthening of the Oirat states – the Dzungarian, Kalmyk and Khoshut khanates in the middle of the 17th century. The relevance of this work is determined by an attempt to objectively illuminate one of the most important aspects of the history and culture of Kalmykia – the history of the creation of national writing and literature, the spread and development of Buddhism among the Mongolian peoples, primarily among the Oirat-Kalmyks. In modern conditions of the development of the Russian state, undoubtedly, the need to comprehend the culture of the Kalmyks as Eurasian culture of nomads becomes urgent. Successful cultural and historical advance and development are impossible without studying the experience of the centuries long spiritual heritage, the experience of interethnic interaction with various peoples, reviewing everything that has been accumulated earlier, without a critical analysis. The main methodological principles of the study were scientific objectivity, expressed in attracting the maximum possible number of sources and a systematic approach to the analyzed material, considered in the interconnection of all constituent elements, as well as the principle of historicism, when an object is viewed in a certain historical context. The problem-chronological, civilizational, historical-genetic, historiographic analysis are applied in the research. These principles and methods enable to solve the tasks set in the article. The empirical basis of the work was formed by a fairly wide source base, which includes published and unpublished materials.


Author(s):  
Ilaria Moschini

 The blog site of the Oxford Dictionaries features a post dated November 16 2015, which announces that, “for the first time ever”, their “Word of the Year” is not a word, but a pictograph: the “Face with Tears of Joy” emoji. The term emoji, which is a loanword from Japanese, identifies “a small digital image or icon used to express an idea or emotion in electronic communication” (OED 2015). The sign was chosen since it is the item that “best reflected the ethos, mood, and preoccupations of 2015”. Indeed, the Oxford Dictionaries’ President, Caspar Grathwohl declared that emojis are “an increasingly rich form of communication that transcends linguistic borders” and reflects the “playfulness and intimacy” of global digital culture. Adopting a socio-semiotic multimodal approach, the present paper aims at decoding the many semantic and semiotic layers of the 2015 “Word of the Year”, with a special focus on the context of cultures out of which it originates. More in detail, the author will focus on the concept of translation as “transduction”, that is the movement of meaning across sign systems (Kress 1997), in order to map the history of this ‘pictographic word’ from language to language, from culture to culture, from niche discursive communities to the global scenario. Indeed, the author maintains that this ‘pictographic word’ is to be seen as a marker of the mashing up of Japanese and American cultures in the discursive practices of geek communities, now gone mainstream thanks to the spreading of digital discourse.  


Author(s):  
Ayhan Ozer

Although format, purpose and method of art which is in the same age with the history of humanity showed significant changes from past to present and still is continuing to show changes, the main three elements which generated it have never changed. These ones are; artist, artwork and receiver. It is necessary to mention that these three constituent elements show significant changes just like art itself. Artist is the most effective one between them.As it would be wrong to say that artist is a tradesman by looking only business functions and value of the works; it will not resolve the subject to say not tradesman by just looking through the philosophy of art, either. Artistry is a high concept including being tradesman. It is not expected from a carpenter to react to social events or it cannot be criticized butcher's not to react to social events.  An airplane pilot in the face of social events is not condemned for his opinions about the event and a jockey will not face with a reaction for not referring social events, either.         Keywords: art, ethics, fine arts.


Author(s):  
Jørgen Riber Christensen

The hypothesis of this article is that the authentic and auratic exhibited objects in museums enter into a dialogue with surrounding paratexts. The paratexts anchor and change the meaning of the exhibited object in the museum context. Recent years have indicated a tendency for museum paratexts to grow increasingly allographic, i.e., visitors generate them both in situ and online as a part of Web 2.0 participation. The verification and documentation of this hypothesis are partly empirical, partly historical. The empirical research consists of an examination of the exhibition and display technologies used today in three different museums and galleries: the Bode Museum in Berlin, the Victoria and Albert Museum and Dr. Johnson's House in London.<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The historical verification and documentation in this article describe four steps in the development of exhibition technologies: the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery (1789-1805), the post-photographic museum (the 1850s), audio guides, as well as a special focus on how museum paratexts have become independent today in its digital and participatory form. In this way, the article sketches the historical development of curating towards the digital and paratextual participation of visitors and audience. Here the argumentation is based on how the displayed object creates signification in its position between its autonomy and its contexts. The following display technologies are described and analysed: stipple engraving, photography, the audio guide, and the interactive, digital Anota pen and its Internet server.<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In conclusion, the article asks where the place of signification or meaning of the exhibited object has moved to in the face of the increased degree of visitor participation. The tentative answer is that the signification generating process has moved away from the historical context of the object and towards the contemporary world of the visitor. The article connects this change in cultural discourse with Karin Sander's archaeological imagination and in a wider sense with the concept of negotiation from new historicism.<br /><br />


Author(s):  
Bárbara Cruz ◽  
◽  

This article has as main objective to discuss the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic on the Brazilian Amazon, its consequences and conflicts not only in the forest but also in the people living in the region, especially the situation of indigenous peoples and how COVID-19 has been impacting the tribes directly and indirectly, through the exposure of opinions, facts and historical context, factors of paramount importance that help to build the current panorama of the Amazon within the pandemic. In addition, this article aims to analyse the political crisis that Brazil is facing at the moment and how it influences the impacts suffered by the Amazon macro-region, in order to highlight the need for discussion — now more than ever —, to protect and preserve Amazonian diversity in the face of a government that omits responsibility for the prevention of Amazonian identity. The concern with the Amazon rainforest is not something recent, however the current moment is decisive in the history of the largest tropical forest in the world.


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