Epilogue

2020 ◽  
pp. 165-167
Author(s):  
Dava Guerin ◽  
Terry Bivens
Keyword(s):  
Sitting Bull ◽  
Holy Man

SITTING BULL, THE Hunkpapa Lakota leader and holy man, once said: “It is through … mysterious power that we too have our being, and we therefore yield to our neighbors, even to our animal neighbors, the same right as ourselves to inhabit this vast land.” Very few people live their lives according to Sitting Bull’s belief that we must respect and protect our animal family’s right to live and thrive on planet Earth....

Queering Delilah with Critical Theory and Gendered Bible Hermeneutics

2020 ◽  
pp. 493-507
Author(s):  
Caroline Blyth
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Femme Fatale ◽  
Reading Habits ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
Queer Spaces ◽  
Holy Man

Close your eyes and think of Delilah. Whom do you see? What does she look like? More often than not, this biblical character is visualized in both interpretive traditions and cultural retellings of Judges 16 as a femme fatale par excellence—a fatal woman whose exotic feminine allure and lethal sexuality ultimately destroyed Samson, that most heroic Hebrew holy man. In this chapter, I use gender-queer theory to interrogate the very “straight” ways in which these retellings make sense of the multiple ambiguities surrounding Delilah’s character within the biblical narrative. I take an intersectional approach, interpreting Delilah’s sexuality, gender, and ethnicity through a queer lens to conjuring up a myriad of alternative performances that her persona may inhabit. By so doing, I invite readers into delightfully queer spaces in the text that challenge essentialist reading habits and bring to light critical theoretical insights about Delilah’s interpretive and cultural afterlives.

scholarly journals A Note on Balaam’s Chimaera

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-45
Author(s):  
James R. Russell
Keyword(s):  
Babylonian Talmud ◽  
Holy Man

The Biblical tale of Balaam and his taking donkey was elaborated in the Babylonian Talmud: Balaam commits bestiality with the animal and this is accounted one of his failings as a pagan prophet, which accumulate as he tries and fails to curse the Children of Israel. This aspect of testing, probably transmitted by Jews of Iran and Sasanian Mesopotamia, probably becomes the source of an Iranian folk myth about a demonic ass called "mantrier". The myth enters Armenia from there and becomes a legend about the trial that a Christian holy man successfully overcomes.

scholarly journals The papacy, Inquisition and Saint Guinefort the Holy Greyhound

Reinardus ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 190-211
Author(s):  
Rebecca Rist
Keyword(s):  
Popular Piety ◽  
Ritual Murder ◽  
South Eastern ◽  
Medieval Church ◽  
Healing Cult ◽  
Holy Man

Abstract Just before 1261 the Dominican inquisitor Stephen of Bourbon (d.1261) visited an area of south-eastern France known as the Dombes, in the diocese of Lyons and there found that women were venerating a certain St Guinefort as a healer of children. He was extremely pleased to hear this, until he discovered that St Guinefort was not a holy man, but a greyhound. Furthermore, he discovered that the women of the Dombes were involved in a rite which allowed for the death of sickly babies. The medieval Church was unwavering in its condemnation of infanticide. Yet Stephen of Bourbon chose to shut down the rite, rather than impose more severe penalties, suggesting that he did not suspect ritual murder. The Church’s censure was not just a ban on a non-orthodox cult, or a theological statement that animals could not be saints, or a crackdown on magical and heretical practices – although it was all these things. It was also the condemnation of a healing cult that had got badly out of hand. The legend of St Guinefort the Holy Greyhound reveals the medieval Church engaged in a familiar struggle: to balance popular piety with orthodox teaching.

The Miracles of an Eschatological Prophet

2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 131-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Eve
Keyword(s):  
New Age ◽  
Historical Jesus ◽  
Minimal Impact ◽  
Central Aspect ◽  
Historical Figure ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
The Temple ◽  
Holy Man

While it has not been a central aspect of his work on the historical Jesus, E.P. Sanders has contributed to the understanding of Jesus’ miracles. In Jesus and Judaism, Sanders argued that Jesus was an eschatological prophet and maintains that he certainly healed people in ways that his contemporaries regarded as miraculous, but that his miracles were not signs of the end, and cannot be used to determine what type of figure he was. The fuller treatment of miracles in the later The Historical Figure of Jesus emphasizes the exorcisms and dismisses the nature miracles as having made minimal impact, leading Sanders to conclude that Jesus’ miracles were not as spectacular as the Gospels suggest, and that they probably led his contemporaries to view Jesus as a holy man like Honi the Circle-Drawer, although Jesus himself probably understood his miracles as signs of the imminent arrival of the new age, and his disciples may have come to see them as a defeat of evil powers and as a legitimation of Jesus’ claims. After summarizing Sanders’s arguments this article goes on to suggest how some of their foundations may be secured while also suggesting that the case for associating Jesus’ miracles with his role as an eschatological prophet may be stronger than Sanders allowed. It then concludes by indicating how Sanders’s account of the role of Jesus’ miracles might be further rounded out first by exploring their possible symbolism (as Sanders does with the Temple incident) and second through various social-scientific approaches.

A Priestly Nation

2018 ◽  
pp. 86-100
Author(s):  
Ari Finkelstein
Keyword(s):  
The Right ◽  
Dietary Laws ◽  
Holy Man

chapter 5 demonstrates that Julian partially draws on Jews to model his highly innovative priestly program. Jewish priests exemplify the priestly life Julian lays out for his Hellenic priests in ep. 89b, and they execute laws laden with theurgic wisdom. Specifically, their observance of the dietary laws and consumption of consecrated food exemplify characteristics of the pagan holy man upon whom Julian models his priesthood. In the Letter to the Community of the Jews, Julian hints that he plans to restore Jewish priests to positions of leadership. The supreme standing of Jewish priests in a restored temple model Julian’s conception of ideal Hellenic leadership. Further, Jews offer Hellenes a model for the financing of priests, as Jewish priests receive the right shoulder of every sacrifice.

Anti-Inquisitorialism to Antimendicantism

2019 ◽  
pp. 146-168
Author(s):  
Janine Larmon Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Local Communities ◽  
Spiritual Authority ◽  
Secular Clergy ◽  
Holy Man ◽  
Mendicant Orders

This chapter addresses inquisitors and the rise of anti-inquisitorial and antimendicant sentiments. Inquisitors were the ones who had the power to destroy the cult of a regional holy man or woman through an official condemnation of heresy. Since all inquisitors were friars, at times lay observers viewed the mainstream members of the wealthy and powerful mendicant orders as less spiritually worthy than those they prosecuted. Inquisitorial activity in local communities therefore consistently fueled the flames of acrimony. In addition, mendicant inquisitors often clashed with other members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, in particular the secular clergy and the traditional monastic orders. Some of these other clerics viewed the mendicants as upstarts who interfered with their spiritual authority and received seemingly excessive and unwarranted papal favors. The chapter then details the process by which laypeople's anti-inquisitorial attitudes became antimendicant ones, as well as how other clerics' antimendicant views led them to support anti-inquisitorial actions.

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