The Divine Eye in Ancient Egypt and in the Midrash Interpretation of Formative Judaism.

This paper studies the “eye” as a religious phenomenon from the multiple traditions of ancient Egypt compared with rabbinic Judaism in late antiquity using a semiotic approach based upon the theories of Umberto Eco. This method was chosen because the eye is a graphic as well as a linguistic sign which both express religious concepts. Generally, the eye represented an all-seeing and omnipresent divinity. In other words, the god was reduced to an eye, whereby the form of the symbol suggests a meaning to the viewer or religious practitioner. In this manner the eye represented the whole body of a deity in Egyptian and the power of a discerning God in rabbinic texts. By focusing upon the semantic aspect of the eye metaphor in both Egyptian and rabbinic texts two religious traditions of the visually perceivable are analyzed from a semiotic perspective.

Córdoban Discourses: A Drama of Interreligious Dialogue

SETTING: Cordoba, Spain, 1135 CE, 29th year of the reign of ‘Ali “amir al-muslimin,” second king of the Berber Almoravid dynasty, rulers of Moorish Spain from 1071 to 1147. Cordoba, the capital of Andalus and the center of the Almoravid holdings in Spain, is a bustling cosmopolitan center, a crossroads for Europe and the Middle East, and the meeting-point of three religious traditions. Most significantly, Cordoba at this time is the hub of European intellectual activity. From the square—itself impressively large and surrounded by a massive collonade, the regularity and ordered beauty of which typifies the Moorish taste for symmetry (so beloved of M.C. Escher)—can be seen the huge Cordoban mosque, erected in the 8th-century by Khalif Abd-er-Rahman I to the glory of Allah, oft forgiving, most merciful. It is the second largest building in Islam, and the bastion of the still entrenched but soon to fade Muslim presence in western Europe. SCENE: Three figures sit upon stone benches beneath the westernmost colonnade of the Cordoban mosque, involved in an animated, though friendly discussion on matters of faith and reason, knowledge and God, language and logic. The host is none other than Jehudah Halevi, and his esteemed guests Master Peter Abelard and the venerable Råmånuja, whose obviously advanced age belies his youthful voice, gleaming eye, quick hands, and general exuberance. It is autumn, early evening…

The Turkish Drawbridge: European Integration and the Cultural Economics of National Planning

This article examines the relations between the Turkish State Planning Organisation (SPO) and the Western economic system during the first two decades of national planning in Turkey (1960–1980). It traces how the SPO, established with the guidance and full endorsement of international economic institutions came to vehemently oppose Turkish participation in one of their pillars: the European Economic Community (EEC), the predecessor of the European Union. It argues that the shift in the SPO's world-view was founded upon two distinct understandings of the Turkish nation and its development, situates these understandings within the intellectual history of Turkey's past ambivalence towards the West, and, in doing so, provides a historical case-study of the ideological clash between modernisation and dependency theories of development.