'Vocabuli d'autori e di scienze e di libri' (Conv. II xii 5): ercorsi sapienziali di Dante

Discusses the trasmission of biblical sapiential sources in a variery medieval contexts and discourses, to ultimately focus on Dante's works

‘Scripture its own interpreter’: Mary Martha Sherwood, the Bible and female autobiography

This is a reading of the work of Mary Martha Sherwood, the Victorian Evangelist and Children’s Author (and pupil at the Abbey School, Reading). Based upon research on Sherwood’s private correspondences and diary conducted at UCLA with the aid of a Mitzi Myers (this before my arrival at Reading), the essay offers a radical reinterpretation of her work. Previously understood in terms of a rigid, if self-contradictory and ‘anxious’, Evangelism, the essay reads the diary through Sherwood’s little known Biblical scholarship. Through this I argue that Sherwood grants her own writing the status of Biblical truth precisely because of its contradictions and ‘anxiety’.

Has Jesus’ Nazareth house been found?

Summary and discussion of the work of the Nazareth Archaeological Project between 2004-2010, focussing on the discovery of a first-century AD house below the 'lost' Byzantine 'Church of the Nutrition', said to have been built over the house where Jesus Christ was brought up.

Al-Mahdi - Gestalt och budskap : En litteraturstudie jämförande sudanesisk Mahdi och indisk Mahdi inom islam

Followers of three world religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam are waiting for the Messiah. Muslims are even waiting for aspiritual leader al-Mahdi. Two different persons claimed the title of al-Mahdi, at the end of the nineteenth century. Theyappeared almost at the same time, at the totally different places of the earth, with a completely different message and underthe rule of the British colonial power. The aim of the study is to compare the both religious figures, Mirza Ghulam Ahmadfrom India and Muhammad Ahmad from Sudan regarding their different messages, to illustrate the social, political andreligious factors that lead to the entirely different profile and image of these two men and how their organizations havedeveloped after their death up till today. The result shows that the Sudanese Mahdi Muhammad Ahmad claimed hisMahdiship in the year 1881. He became a political leader in a time when Sudan was under the rule of a colonial power. Hetook advantage of the religion for personal purposes and tried to liberate his native country Sudan. The contemporaryMuslim clergy criticized him for his claim because the content of the Hadith traditions did not support his claim ofMahdiship. He maintained his sole right for the interpretation of religion and of the laws of Sharia. He made changes even inthe chief pillars of Islam by asserting that Jehad with sword was more imperative than the pilgrimage journey to Mecca. Heasserted that the Prophet Muhammad himself had entrusted him to launch the holy war against the non-believers. He hadimmense ambitions which were never fulfilled since he suddenly died four years after his claim for Mahdiship, in June 1885.This day his followers are organized as a political party in Sudan with a modest roll in the Sudanese politics. The IndianMahdi Mirza Ghulam Ahmad claimed in 1889 to be Mahdi, Mujaddid, Muhaddas, Messiah and a Prophet at a time of socialand political peace, though Islam as a religion was firmly pushed by the Hindu and Christian missionaries. He had no politicalambitions at all and was utterly loyal to the British colonial power. His mission was to crush the Cross and to demonstrateIslam’s excellence over all the religions of the world through overwhelming arguments. He proclaimed that Jesus was humanand a Prophet and not the son of God. Jesus survived from the cross and died a natural death after he had lived for manyyears. Ahmad claimed that God had commanded him to put stop to the religious wars. The contemporary Muslim clergyblamed him for being an imposter, melancholic and hypochondriac who had self invented the divine revelations. He died year1908, nineteen years after his claim and the communion he found is established today in more than hundred countries of theworld. Reasons for the breakdown of mission of the Sudanese Mahdi were that his objectives were political and he challengedthe colonial power with the sword. Another decisive factor was his sudden death merely four years after the beginning of hismission. Reasons for the success of Indian Mahdi were that his objectives were purely religious and he was wholly loyal to theforeign government. He survived nineteen years after the beginning of his mission which made it possible for him to create acommunion based on solid grounds. His followers continued on the same path and never engaged in local politics where everthey lived. For further studies it will be of great interest to study the life of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad and objectively examine thearguments he presented in support of his divine appointment. Furthermore it is enriching to study the organization andactivities of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community to explore if they are in accordance with the basic principles of Ahmad.

Nutidens Änglar : En studie av änglar och hur de framställs i vår tid

This bachelor’s thesis examines contemporary views on Angels and how two modern writerson the subject introduce these beings. Presenting a comparison between the two modernwriters, and also, as a context, contrasting them to some more traditional biblical as well assome modern Christian material, some of the beliefs surrounding Angels are discussed. Thecontemporary views and beliefs are analyzed through a model on how globalization affectspopular religion of today.

New Meanings to Old Rituals : The Emergence of Mourning Rituals in Shiʿite Islam

This paper will discuss the emergence of Shiʿite mourning rituals around the grave of Husayn b. ʿAli. After the killing of Husayn at Karbala’ in 61/680, a number of men in Kufa feel deep regret for their neglect to come to the help of the grand­son of the Prophet. They gather and discuss how they can best make penitence for this crime. Eventually, they decide to take to arms and go against the Umayyad army – to kill those that killed Husayn, or be killed them­selves in the attempt to find revenge for him. Thus, they are called the Penitents (Ar. Tawwābūn). On their way to the battlefield they stop at Husayn’s tomb at Karbala’, dedicat­ing themselves to remorseful prayer, crying and wailing over the fate of Husayn and their own sin. When the Penitents perform certain ritual acts, such as weeping and wailing over the death of Husayn, visiting his grave, asking for God’s mercy upon him on the Day of Judgment, demand blood revenge for him etc., they enter into already existing rituals in the pre-Islamic Arab and early Muslim context. That is, they enter into rituals that were traditionally performed at the death of a person. What is new is that the rituals that the Penitents perform have partially received a new content. As described, the rituals are performed out of loyalty towards Husayn and the family of the Prophet. The lack of loyalty in connection with the death of Husayn is conceived of as a sin that has to be atoned. Blood revenge thus be­comes not only a pure action of revenge to restore honor, but equally an expression for true religious conversion and penitence. Humphrey and Laidlaw argue that ritual actions in themselves are not bearers of meaning, but that they are filled with mean­ing by the performer. Accord­ing to them, ritual actions are apprehensible, i.e. they can be, and should be filled with meaning, and the people who perform them try to do so within the context where the ritual is performed. The story of the Penitents is a clear example of mourning rituals as actions that survive from earlier times, but that are now filled with new meaning when they are performed in a new and developing move­ment with a different ideology. In later Shiʿism, these rituals are elaborated and become a main tenet of this form of Islam.

The hand of God is over their hands (Q. 48:10) : on the notion of covenant in al-Ṭabarī’s account of Karbalāʾ

This article is an analysis of the story of the killing of Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī at Karbalāʾ in 61/680, as it is presented by Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad b. Jarīr al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923). The main argument is that the notion of the divine covenant, which permeates the Qur’an, constitutes a framework through which al-Ṭabarī views this event. The Qur’anic idea of the covenant is read in structural/thematic continuity with the Hebrew Bible account of the covenant between Yahweh and the Hebrew people, which has, in turn, been traced back in its basic form to Late Bronze Era treaties between rulers and their vassals.   The present study focusses on four speeches ascribed to Ḥusayn during the encounter he and his group had with the vanguard of the Kūfan army led by al-Ḥurr. These are analysed in accordance with their use of Qur’anic covenant vocabulary. They are also categorised within the broader framework of the eight standard characteristics of Ancient West Asian and Biblical covenants, as presented by George Mendenhall and Gary Herion, which have recently been developed in a Qur’anic context by Rosalind Ward Gwynne. This article argues that al-Ṭabarī’s Karbalāʾ narrative presents the pact of loyalty to Ḥusayn as a clear extension of the divine covenant.

The rhetorics of violence in Joshua: Foucauldian Power, Israelite Identity, and the Ethics of Interpretation

The goals of this project are manifold. First, I will attempt to discover evidence in the book of Joshua that will lend support to the theory of a Josianic influence enacted in the 7th century BCE. I will do this through an analysis of the rhetoric in selected stories in Joshua using the ideas of Foucault. Second, I will address the significance of this kind of analysis as having potential for the emancipation of oppressed peoples. The first section delineates scholarly discussion on the literary and historical context of the book of Joshua. These scholarly works are foundational to this study because they situate the text within a particular period in history and within certain ideologies. Chapter 2 discusses the work of Foucault and how his ideas will be applied to particular texts of the book of Joshua. The focused analysis of these texts occurs within chapters 3 to 6. Chapter 7 presents an integration of the observations made through the analyses performed in the previous chapters and expands on the ethical significance of this study.

Scriptural Archeology: Excavating the Presence of Women in the Torah

Women's roles in religious history have been traditionally described in terms of their relation and value to men. The normative religious texts provide an androcentric perspective on the gender relationships within the early community, the growth of Judaism in "Jacob's House" and the monotheistic worship of God. Yet these literary representations omit an entire half of the experience of the Jewish community: the perspective and participation of women. As Judith Plaskow argues extensively in Standing Again at Sinai, women are defined not in her own terms or in her own voice, but by her relationship and value to men through the androcentric vocabulary of the Torah. This statement is textually illustrated by the authorial and editorial presentation of women and their place in ancient Israelite society in the Torah. As Judaism grew increasingly androcentric in its leadership, women were increasingly reduced to marginal figures in the community by authorial and editorial revisions. Yet the participation of women of ancient Israel is not lost. Instead, the presence of women is buried beneath the androcentric presentation of the early Judaic community, waiting to be excavated by historical and scriptural examination. The retelling of the past is influenced by the present; memory is not static but takes on different shapes depending on the focus of concentration. However, tradition greatly influences the interpretation of religious history as well. In the book of Genesis, the literature emphasizes the divine appointment of male figures such as Abraham the father of the covenant and Jacob who is renamed and claimed by God as "Israel," placing them at the center of Jewish history. As a result, the other figures in these biblical narratives are described in relation to the patriarchs, those male bearers of the covenant, by their service or their value to him. Women are at the bottom of this hierarchy. Although female figures of exceptional quality are noted in later chronicles, such as Ruth, Deborah and Miriam, it is the very nature of their exception that highlights the androcentric editorial focus of the Torah. I agree with Peggy Day, whose own scriptural examination in Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel, makes the important distinction between the literary representation and the reality of ancient Israelite culture: they are not coextensive nor equivalent. Although the text represents the culture of ancient Israel as male dominated from the time of Abraham, this presentation omits the perspective of half of the population-the women. By beginning at the point of realization that women did exist and were active in their culture, and placing aside the androcentric perspective of the text and its editors, the reality of women's place in ancient Israel may be determined. Through this new perspective, the women of the Torah will emerge as the archetypes of strength, leadership and spiritual insight to provide Jewish women of the present with female, ancestral role models and a foundation for their gender's heritage, a more complete understanding of the partial record of Jewish history recorded in the Torah. Those stories that appear as the exception of women's presence will unveil an exceptional presence. As Tamar Frankiel eloquently states in The Voice of Sarah, "the women we call our 'Mothers'-Sarah, Rivkah (Rebekah), Rachel, and Leah-are not merely mothers, any more than the 'Fathers'-Abraham, Isaac and Jacob-are merely fathers "(Frankiel 5).

Em cantos de reis: a tradição discursiva em Autos de Natal

This study incorporates many areas of knowledge to the Linguistics field, as it centers the social historicity of Brazilian and autos potiguares on two analytical proposes: the presence of linguistic formulas - in its macrostructure - into the paradigm of discursive traditions, following Kabatek (2006), Koch and Oesterreicher (2007), besides the theory of Speech Acts, in its microstructure, proposed by Austin (1990) and Searle (1995). Under Zumthor (1993; 1997; 2000; 2005; 2010), the idea of textual variability (mouvance) was alluded, highlighting that the text is always modifying, according to the performance and reception of the language uses. Considering this theoretical framework, we focus on the trinomial linguistic formulas, orality and performance, in order to describe the dynamics of stability, variation and change, emphasizing yet how extra-linguistic social-historic cultural relations influence its composition. Such discuss is inherent more precisely to Textual Analysis in enhancing the orality tradition as a linguistic support. The text, in its turn, becomes effective as an evocation, motivated by the transmission, reception and variability from its conservation and reiteration. Naturally, a methodological support based on quali-quantitative research was chosen, based on Flick (2009), who justifies the corpus composed by Brazilian Folias de Reis chants and Bois de Reis potiguares . Thereby Language dynamics, subjacent to tradition which takes effect by the use of a common social memory, are observed from two dimensions: on the first, it evocates the sacralization (religious) in which they stand their devotion to biblical History; secondly, a dissacralization with identified and ideological values, inherent to a people culture. The chant shows, in this ludic impulse, a contextualized activity which results in the following conclusion: the changing and stability processes in textual macro and microstructures occur, at the same time, by the adjustment to the use of the text accomplishing a social-political function and an ethical-pedagogic one; supposedly, social relationships arise the tradition and it, on its turn, evocates the variability and the nomadism in the text

As origens históricas do Zaratustra nietzcheano: o espelho de Zaratustra, a correção do mais fatal dos erros e a superação da morte de Deus

Through a careful examination of the relationship between Zoroastrianism and the Western tradition, and a detailed and critical reading of the writings of Nietzsche, this work aims at showing to what extent the character Zarathustra , his discourses and poetical-philosophical thoughts, and related passages from many distinct Nietzschean works, directly or undirectly reflect a philosophy that harvests contributions from the Zoroastrian tradition or its headways (in the Judeo-Greco-Christian tradition, and furthermore in the whole Western philosophical tradition). Supplied with this provisions, and with the interpretation cast upon them, Nietzschean philosophy questions the entire Western tradition of thought, and proposes its replacement by a new attitude towards life. This work also intends to show the way the Nietzschean Zarathustra was built up, in the writings of the German philosopher, together with the idea of making, out of the namesake character of the ancient Iranian prophet (Zarathushtra or Zoroaster, the founder of Zoroastrianism), the herald of that important text that intended to bring the German language to its highest perfection , clumping together, and leading to a prophetic-poetic climax consonant with the meaning of the Earth , Nietzsche s key ideas about the rectification of the most fatal of errors and about the death of God . An elaborate investigation has been pursued after the reasons and manners of the building up of Nietzsche s Zarathustra mirroring its Iranian namesake (sections 1.1 to 1.6), and a survey of the works of Nietzsche has suggested unquestionable relations with the Zoroastrian tradition, mostly through the Jewish, Greek or Christian repercussions of this tradition. These relations have been put in context, in many framings (sections 2.1 to 2.3.2), in the ambit of the most fatal of errors - the - creation of morals in the very occasion of its transposition to metaphysics (Ecce Homo, Why I am a destiny , 3). Through an evaluation of the possible circumstances and repercussions of the death of God , the relations between Nietzsche s writings and Zoroastrian tradition have been investigated (sections 3.1 to 3.7), allowing the understanding of this event as an essential component, and tragic outcome, of the rectification of the most fatal of errors

Clarissimo speculo bonitatis Dei : o mundo de Tomás de Celano e a sua leitura de mundus

The aim of this study is to understand the version of St. Francis of Assisi created by Friar Thomas of Celano in his hagiographic works. That study also it examines how the Order of Friars Minor and the Papacy have understood the relationship between Christians and the world and turned thisunderstanding in a version of the Saint. Factors such as the replacement of Neoplatonism byAristotelianism as philosophical paradigm and economic and social changes have contributed to change the interpretation of the biblical mandate to not love the world , no longer interpreted as materiality, but as an order for Christians to flee sin. The rejection of the world was replaced by a greater appreciation of nature and society. Moreover, increasingly, the body went from enemy to friend, becoming the brotherbody. Such analysis is important to review the idea, so common in the historiography of what MaxWeber called Worldly Asceticism, the Christian life lived in society, only emerged in Protestantism in opposition to monasticism. The mendicant orders, especially the minority tried during the thirteenth century, the period of analysis of this work, experience the loving nature of Christianity and acting,through preaching and charity in the cities.To make this work, were analyzed the hagiographic discourse (on San Francisco) made by Thomas of Celano, Vita beati Francisci (called Vita Prima) and Memorial in desideiro anime (named Vita Secunda) and, from this, understand the Celano´s interpretation on how it should be the Christian's relationship with the world. The world ceased to be adistorted reflection of a perfect reality, becoming the perfect reflection of God's goodness.

Santo de casa faz milagre: Luíz da Câmara Cascudo, o padroeiro literário da cidade de Natal

Assuming that the subject is a draft work in permanent invention, the biographical texts, memories written by Luís da Câmara Cascudo, between 1967 and 1969 were read as part of a discursive strategy created by the potiguar memorialist regarding the construction of a self-image profoundly connected to the space of his house, which decisively collaborated so that the province teacher and researcher after announcing his official retirement in 1968 was revered in the city where he had been born, grown up and lived throughout his whole life and considered as the prophet of his own country (or rather, as the literary patron of Natal). Our work begins with some reading about the manner as the potiguar memorialist selected, ordered and spatialized his childhood memories. In the following chapter, we problematized the meanings assigned by Câmara Cascudo to his house in Tirol - where the young prince Cascudinho (little Cascudo) used to live - transformed into the neighborhood principality. It finishes with memories from the retired old man with the purpose of making us think about the sacredness process master Cascudo s house has gone through. The space where he had lived for almost forty years of his life and produced a great part of his works, was elected as a monument in his memory, as his own incarnation, as guarantee of his eternity and perenniality, as a sanctuary and place of worship and have been kept by the actions that, still nowadays, institutionalize it as his sacred space