THE CUNEIFORM ORIGIN OF GENESIS AND A DATE FOR GENESIS 1

PART 1 argues for a paradigm shift to the conclusion that Genesis 1 to 37 was originally written in cuneiform; that Genesis 1–4 was written c. 2850 BC and Chapters 5 to 37 at about the time of the events recorded.PART 2 proposes a systematic transcription error due to misreading of the cuneiform signs, that reduces the ages of the patriarchs in Genesis 5 to a more likely range; if validated, confirming the thesis of PART 1. The proposed early dating is based on archaeological evidence without religious presuppositions; places the origin of the Judaeo-Christian world-view at the dawn of civilisation; and does not conflict with any scientific discovery or any Christian doctrine.PART 3 introduces a second paradigm shift, to the interpretation that Genesis 1 recounts Six Days not of Creation but of Revelation, signposting a path connecting Genesis 1 with current scientific knowledge, and with the origin of science.

On Sin, Penance, and Purgation

This chapter evaluates R. Judah the Pious's position on posthumous punishment as compared with rabbinic tradition and tosafist commentary. It assess his views on the matter in light of the changes that occurred within the Christian doctrine of penance and the rise of Purgatory in the high medieval period. The sabbath rest of souls — a belief commonly held by Jews of the time — has no place in R. Judah's vision of Gehenna. Besides increasing the duration of posthumous punishment, the Pietists also heighten its severity. Such punishment is punitive rather than purgative, and is to be avoided as much as possible through the performance of harsh acts of penance in this world. Several important themes of the early medieval penitential literature have been transferred onto the pages of Sefer ḥasidim. Having substituted the doctrine of Inevitable Sin for Original Sin, and depicted the Pietist master as a Christ-like figure of atonement, R. Judah has unwittingly adopted a thoroughly Christian world-view. Moreover, R. Judah's advocacy of voluntary corporeal suffering, as well as his definition of the hasid as one who lives in constant daily battle with sin and in ascetic withdrawal from the pleasures of this world, demonstrate the Pietists' identification with several fundamental monastic ideals.

COMMUNICATIVE ACTS IN THE TEXTS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT GOSPELS: MENTAL AND AXIOLOGICAL, MORAL AND ETHICAL FACTORS

The key issue of the article is the typology of communicative acts in the texts of the New Testament; the communicative acts are discussed from mental and axiological, moral and ethical perspectives. The goal of the article is to establish, discuss and interpret the main parameters of communication between Christ, His followers and opponents. The accent is made on the components of Christian world view as a discourse factor in the New Testament’s texts. The analysis results are extrapolated to the sphere of discourse creation, its linguistic, philosophical, ethical and communicative aspects. The principles of human existence and the existence of information space in the early 21st century are discussed.

Pseudo-Dionysius (fl. c. AD 500)

‘Pseudo-Dionysius’ was a Christian Neoplatonist who wrote in the late fifth or early sixth century and who presented himself as Dionysius the Areopagite, an Athenian converted by St Paul. This pretence – or literary device – was so convincing that Pseudo-Dionysius acquired something close to apostolic authority, giving his writings tremendous influence throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance. The extant four treatises and ten letters articulate a metaphysical view of the cosmos, as well as a religious path of purification and perfection, that are grounded in the Neoplatonism developed in the Platonic Academy in Athens. Although this strand of Neoplatonist thought, in contrast to that developed at the school in Alexandria, was deliberately pagan in its religious orientation, Pseudo-Dionysius used its conceptual resources (drawing especially on Proclus) to give precision and depth to the philosophical principles of a Christian world view. Cardinal points of Pseudo-Dionysius’ thought are the transcendence of a first cause of the universe, the immediacy of divine causality in the world and a hierarchically ordered cosmos.

The Transformation of Metaphysics

This chapter charts the transformation of metaphysics across the nineteenth century as a series of prodigious swerves: first, it maps the move away from Christian dogmatics in the rationalist theology of Kant and his followers; second, it tracks the professed but problematic return to Christianity’s symbolic universe in the Idealism of Schelling and Hegel; third, it describes a veer ‘back to Kant’ in the attempts to disentangle Christian theology from metaphysics by such theologians as Ritschl and Herrmann; and finally, it addresses the recognition by some prominent Christian thinkers (e.g., Green in Britain, and Peirce in America) that some kind of metaphysical articulation of the Christian world-view is not only inevitable but also vital. The chapter concludes with a chastened reconceptualization of theological metaphysics as the hermeneutical explication, critique, and open-ended reassessment of the philosophical contours of Christian claims about ultimate reality.