From Jewish Apocrypha to Christian Tradition: Citations ofJubileesin Epiphanius'sPanarion

In the growing canon consciousness of the fourth century, Christians debated what should constitute the official reading list for the church. Epiphanius of Salamis was part of this conversation. His massivePanariondescribed eighty heresies, and, for Epiphanius, wrong books were a marker of wrong belief. However, although Epiphanius was a stringent supporter of Nicene orthodoxy, he, too, referred to books outside the canon. In thePanarion, he frequently referencedJubilees, an expanded, rewritten Genesis found among the Dead Sea Scrolls and which also circulated among early Christian readers. TheDecree of Gelasiuslater declared the text anathema. This paper explores the significance of a vocal heresiographer readingJubilees, particularly when he defined heretics based on similar reading practices. It suggests that Epiphanius saw close kinship betweenJubileesand his ownPanarion. The citations ofJubileesin thePanarionalso indicate that Epiphanius defined the text as a part of a larger Christian tradition. In doing so, Epiphanius transformedJubileesfrom Jewish apocrypha to Christian tradition. Thus, the citations ofJubileesin Epiphanius'sPanarionshow the complicated dynamics of canon consciousness in the shaping of Christian Orthodoxy.

Platonismo e aristotelismo a confronto sulla dialettica nel prologo degli «Scolî» di Proclo al «Cratilo»: riprese plotiniane e punti di convergenza con Siriano ed Ermia alla scuola platonica di Atene nel V sec. d. C.

In his commentary on Plato’sCratylus, Proclus (5th centuryad) interprets the dialogue not as a mere work on logic or linguistics, but as having a full psychological and theological import.Late ancient Platonists had already proposed a similar reading for another Platonic dialogue,i.e.theParmenides. In that case too they rejected the logical interpretation, and aimed to find in the text the description of the hierarchy of reality, particularly of the highest beings. As a result, theParmenideswas seen as the accomplished expression of Plato’s theology.Proclus too draws a comparison between theCratylusand theParmenidesin order to stress their theological significance. He also contrasts Plato’s dialectic (which he considers as a synthesis of logic and ontology/theology) with Aristotle’s dialectic (which he sees as mere logic). Proclus’ interpretation of dialectic is best understood if it is compared to the doctrines of his master Syrianus and of one of his co-disciples,i.e.Hermeias, at the Platonic school of Athens in the 5th centuryad.Contrary to what is sometimes assumed, in this milieu Platonists were not always committed to the task of reconciling the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle. As it happens, they could (following Plotinus’ example) strongly disagree with and even attack Aristotle, and side with Plato. In particular, they greatly valued Plato’s dialectic, which they viewed as the correct form of reasoning and at the same time as a theory of the utmost theological significance. On the other hand, Aristotle’s dialectic was considered as “bare” logic,i.e.as a mere set of logical rules and arguments with no specific contents.On the basis of a problematicCratylus’passage Proclus defends a theory of truth according to which not only propositions, but also names can be true or false. This allows him to view names as substitutes of propositions. This is particularly the case in the application of the four dialectical methods of definition, division, demonstration and analysis. Proclus’ approach arguably provides a basis—to pagan as well as Christian tradition—for the study of divine names as a part of theology, for the name of a god is held to reveal its attributes.

Leseleistung und Rezeptionsstrategien bei Mädchen und Jungen in der Sekundarstufe I

Do girls read texts differently from boys? This contribution presents a study from empirical teaching research in secondary education ("Sekundarstufe 1") by Grütz/Belgrad/Pfaff (2005). 4500 pupils, male and female, from the 7th form of primary and secondary school were examined to determine which of the reading strategies usually adopted lead to a more successful text understanding with girls and which with boys. This study follows up a previous study done in 4th form primary school by Belgrad/Grütz/Pfaff (2003). The research design is based on the psychological cognition model of text understanding following van Dijk/Kintsch (1983), which sees the process of reading comprehension as interactional and constructive. Cognitive reading strategies were tested which are usually adopted during lessons. Major results of the study are that boys prefer similar reading strategies both in primary and secondary schools. Good results are achieved when a text is read quietly and discussed afterwards. The worst results are obtained by all boys when words have to be copied from the text. With girls a notable difference can be seen in the usage of reading strategies depending on the type of the school and the level of reading competence. Girls from primary schools achieve the best results when they can activate knowledge prior to confronting the text, girls from secondary schools achieve the best results when they quietly read through a text.

Nasometric Values for Normal Spanish-Speaking Females: A Preliminary Report

Most normative data available for assessing resonance through instrumentation have been collected with English-speaking individuals. The present study aimed at providing initial data on Spanish for use with the nasometer. Mean nasalance scores were obtained from 40 normal Puerto Rican Spanish-speaking females while they read three types of stimuli: (1) sentences containing nasal consonants, (2) a reading passage with both oral and nasal consonants, and (3) a reading passage with oral consonants. Results indicated significant differences In mean nasalance scores across the nasal sentences, as well as the two paragraph stimuli. In addition, a high degree of intersubject variability in the production of the target stimuli was evidenced. Comparisons with previous English normative data with similar reading stimuli are made and possible avenues for further research on the use of the nasometer with Spanish-speaking populations are discussed.

Developmental Dyslexia: Contrasting Patterns of Performance on a Diagnostic Psycholinguistic Assessment

Models of the stages by which the acquisition of reading skills normally proceeds have been proposed by Frith (1985) and Seymour (1987). Based on these developmental models, a battery of psycholinguistic tests appropriate for English-speaking South African children was devised to identify the processing strategies which a child has and has not acquired. The procedure yields both qualitative and quantitative information and allows comparison of dyslexic children with average readers of similar Reading Age. Two cases of developmental dyslexia are discussed to illustrate different patterns of performance on the assessment. These patterns of performance are interpreted in the context of current models of the development of reading skills.

On the Acquisition of Reading Fluency

The acquisition of reading fluency crucially involves the beginning reader's tacit recognition that s/he must learn to compensate for the absence of graphic signals corresponding to certain prosodie cues by making better use of the morphological and syntactic cues that are preserved. It is argued that the success of the method of repeated readings and similar reading instruction techniques results from the fact that these methods facilitate discovery of the appropriate syntactic phrasing in the written signal. It is suggested that the crucial step comes with the beginning reader's recognition that parsing strategies other than those which rely on prosody or its somewhat haphazard graphic analogues are required in order to read with sense.

Ability of Deaf Children to Use Different Word Classes

A completion test based on 90 sentences sampled from second-grade readers was devised. One word was omitted from each sentence, the omitted word being chosen so that four lexical classes and six function word groups were each sampled nine times. Restorations of these omissions by 30 deaf children and 30 hearing children with similar reading ability were compared. Although the hearing children were generally more successful in restoring the omitted words, the patterns of difficulty of the different form classes were remarkably similar for the two groups.