The Church and Its Boundaries : A Study of the Special Commission on Orthodox Participation in the WCC

The relationship between the Orthodox Churches and the World Council of Churches (WCC) became a crisis just before the 8th Assembly of the WCC in Harare, Zimbabwe in 1998. The Special Commission on Orthodox Participation in the WCC (SC), inaugurated in Harare, worked during the period 1999 2002 to solve the crisis and to secure the Orthodox participation in the WCC. The purpose of this study is: 1) to clarify the theological motives for the inauguration of the SC and the theological argumentation of the Orthodox criticism; 2) to write a reliable history and analysis of the SC; 3) to outline the theological argumentation, which structures the debate, and 4) to investigate the ecclesiological questions that arise from the SC material. The study spans the years 1998 to 2006, from the WCC Harare Assembly to the Porto Alegre Assembly. Hence, the initiation and immediate reception of the Special Commission are included in the study. The sources of this study are all the material produced by and for the SC. The method employed is systematic analysis. The focus of the study is on theological argumentation; the historical context and political motives that played a part in the Orthodox-WCC relations are not discussed in detail. The study shows how the initial, specific and individual Orthodox concerns developed into a profound ecclesiological discussion and also led to concrete changes in WCC practices, the best known of which is the change to decision-making by consensus. The Final Report of the SC contains five main themes, namely, ecclesiology, decision-making, worship/common prayer, membership and representation, and social and ethical issues. The main achievement of the SC was that it secured the Orthodox membership in the WCC. The ecclesiological conclusions made in the Final Report are twofold. On the one hand, it confirms that the very act of belonging to the WCC means the commitment to discuss the relationship between a church and churches. The SC recommended that baptism should be added as a criterion for membership in the WCC, and the member churches should continue to work towards the mutual recognition of each other s baptism. These elements strengthen the ecclesiological character of the WCC. On the other hand, when the Final Report discusses common prayer, the ecclesiological conclusions are much more cautious, and the ecclesiological neutrality of the WCC is emphasized several times. The SC repeatedly emphasized that the WCC is a fellowship of churches. The concept of koinonia, which has otherwise been important in recent ecclesiological questions, was not much applied by the SC. The comparison of the results of the SC to parallel ecclesiological documents of the WCC (Nature and Mission of the Church, Called to Be the One Church) shows that they all acknowledge the different ecclesiological starting points of the member churches, and, following that, a variety of legitimate views on the relation of the Church to the churches. Despite the change from preserving the koinonia to promises of eschatological koinonia, all the documents affirm that the goal of the ecumenical movement is still full, visible unity.

Recently discovered Iron Age lion figurines from Jerusalem

Abstract: More than 500 Iron Age figurines were discovered in the 2005–2010 Western Wall Plaza excavations in Jerusalem.1 The excavations revealed a large building, probably of the four-room type. Many figurines were discovered in this building, others in fills below and above it, dating in general to the eighth-sixth centuries BCE. Here we focus on two heads most likely depicting lions, one of them exceptional—holding another animal in its mouth. We discuss the identification of these figurines as lions, the lion motif in a variety of media in the Southern Levant, and finally recent theories concerning lions in the Hebrew Bible and their relation to Yahweh. We suggest that the two Western Wall Plaza figurines represent lions as wild animals, in similarity to other figurines of wild animals made on occasion by Judean coroplasts.

How far from Jerusalem? Tropical customs and the question of race in the Book of John Mandeville

The Book of John Mandeville, while ostensibly a pilgrimage guide documenting an English knight’s journey into the East, is an ideal text in which to study the developing concept of race in the European Middle Ages. The Mandeville-author’s sense of place and morality are inextricably linked to each other: Jerusalem is the center of his world, which necessarily forces Africa and Asia to occupy the spiritual periphery. Most inhabitants of Mandeville’s landscapes are not monsters in the physical sense, but at once startlingly human and irreconcilably alien in their customs. Their religious heresies, disordered sexual appetites, and monstrous acts of cannibalism label them as fallen state of the European Christian self. Mandeville’s monstrosities lie not in the fantastical, but the disturbingly familiar, coupling recognizable humans with a miscarriage of natural law. In using real people to illustrate the moral degeneracy of the tropics, Mandeville’s ethnography helps shed light on the missing link between medieval monsters and modern race theory.

[Book Review] Vardah Shiloh, Millon 'Ivri-'Arami-'Aššuri bs-Lahag Yihude Zaxo (A New Neo-Aramaic Dictionary: Jewish Dialect of Zakho). Volume I: 'alef—nun\ Volume II: samex-tav. V. Shilo (16 Ben-Gamla Street), Jerusalem 1995. Pp. xiv + 488 (Vol. I); 489-963 (Vol. II). (Modern Hebrew, Zakho Jewish Neo-Aramaic).

Review of: Vardah Shiloh, Millon 'Ivri-'Arami-'Aššuri bs-Lahag Yihude Zaxo (A New Neo-Aramaic Dictionary: Jewish Dialect of Zakho). Volume I: 'alef—nun\ Volume II: samex-tav. V. Shilo (16 Ben-Gamla Street), Jerusalem 1995. Pp. xiv + 488 (Vol. I); 489-963 (Vol. II). (Modern Hebrew, Zakho Jewish Neo-Aramaic). Hbk.

On the Border of Indeterminacy: The Separation Wall in East Jerusalem

Drawing on a perspective which takes into account the convergences of sovereign and biopolitical ruling apparatuses, the aim of this article is to provide a comprehensive view of the Separation Wall constructed by Israel in East Jerusalem, and, through it, of Israeli control of Palestinian East Jerusalem. Neither a comprehensive border, nor a mere barrier, the Separation Wall which is being constructed in Jerusalem operates to reinstates sovereign power in arrays of governmentality for the purpose of drawing on the ability of sovereignty to appropriate legitimacy for the territorialisation of governmentality. This article claims that these territorialised arrays of governmentality give rise to processes of racialisation, by maintaining a grip on the communities of Palestinians in East Jerusalem and sustaining them in an intermediate position, standing in the way of their full integration into the Israeli population while severing their existing connections with the Palestinians in the West Bank. © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Green Political Economy: beyond orthodox undifferentiated economic growth as a permanent feature of the economy

This chapter outlines the main features of green political economy and the principal ways in which it differs from dominant mainstream or orthodox neoclassical economics. Neoclassical economics is critiqued on the grounds of denying its normative and ideological commitments in its false presentation of itself as ‘objective’ and ‘value neutral’. It is also critiqued for its ecologically irrational commitment to the imperative of orthodox economic growth as a permanent feature of the economy, compromising its ability to offer realistic or normatively compelling guides to how we might make the transition to a sustainable economy. Green political economy is presented as an alternative or heterodox form of economic thinking but one which explicitly expresses its normative/ideological value bases (hence it represents a return to ‘political economy’, the origins of modern economics). Green political economy also challenges the commitment to undifferentiated economic growth as a permanent objective of the human economy. In its place, green political economy promotes ‘economic security’ as a better objective for a sustainable, post-growth economy. The latter includes the transition to a low-carbon energy economy, and is also one which maximises quality of life (as oppose to formal employment, income and wealth), and actively seeks to lower socio-economic inequality. Green political economy views orthodox economic growth as having passed the threshold in most ‘advanced’ capitalist societies beyond which it has undermined quality of life and at best manages rather than reduces socially and ecologically damaging inequalities.

L'ordre du croissant « institué par René, roy de Naples et de Jerusalem, duc de Lorraine et d'Anjou, dans la ville d'Angers, l'an de N. S. MCDXLVIII... par CLAUDE MENARD, conseiller du roy, maistre des requestes ordinaires de la reyne regente... 1644 ».

Contient : En tête sont les armoiries gravées du fondateur de l'ordre, suivies (fol. 3-4) du portrait gravé de Cl. Menard, à l'âge de 71 ans. Au pied de ce portrait sont 6 vers latins ; Les généalogies des chevaliers de l'ordre sont précédées de leurs armes gravées ; « René, roy de Jerusalem, de Sicile, d'Arragon, de Valence, Majorque, Sardaigne et Corsique, duc d'Anjou, de Lorraine et de Bar, » etc., « surnommé le Bon». A la suite (fol. 53 bis) : « Paroles d'Enée à son fils, luy donnant l'acolade de chevalier » (Virgile, Aenéide, chant XII, vers 432-440) ; « Jehan d'Anjou, duc de Calabre et de Lorraine, aîné du roy René » ; « Antoine de Lorraine, comte de Vaudemont, et Ferry, monseigneur de Lorraine, aisné dud. comte de Vaudemont » ; « Charles d'Anjou, premier du nom » ; « Mre Guy de Laval, seigneur de Loué » ; « Messire Francisco Sphortia, duc de Milan » ; « Messire Louis de Beauvau, seneschal d'Anjou » ; « Messire Bertran de Beauvau, seigneur de Precigné » ; « Jehan de Monlon Ribière ». L'écu seul sans notice ; « Galeas de Milan, chevalier du Croissant », nom sans notice et sans écu ; « Jehan Coxa, comte de Troye, seigneur baron de Grimaud et de Marignane, lieutenant general et grand senechal de Provence », et « Gaspard Coxa ou Cossa, filz de Johan » ; « Hélion de Glandesve, seigneur de Faucon », et « Pierre de Glandesve » ; « Aymeri de Bournan » ; « Messire Louis de Clermont de Gallerande » ; « Messire Tanneguy Du Chastel, senechal de Provence » ; « Messire Gilles de Maillé, seigneur de Brezé, grand maistre de la venerie du roy René » ; « Messire Raymond d'Agoust, seigneur de Sault » ; « Messire Antoine de Clerambauld, seigneur Du Plessis » ; « Messire Jehan Du Bellay, seigneur dud. lieu » ; « Messire Guillaume de La Jumelière, seigneur de Martigné » ; « Messire Simon d'Anglure, vicomte d'Estanges, seigneur de Nogent, et messire Saladin d'Anglure, sieur d'Estanges, son fils » ; Messire Phelippe de Lenoncour, escuyer d'escurie du roy de Sicile, seigneur de Gondrecourt, et Mr Thierry de Lenoncourt, bailly de Vitry, seigneur de Lenoncourt » ; « Messire Jacques Antoine Marcel de Venize » ; « Messire Jehan de La Haye, seigneur de Passavant » ; Ecus sans notices des Haraucourt et des Fenestranges ; « Messire Jehan Amenard, sieur de Chanzay, Bouillé et de Daon » ; « Messire Jehan, comte de Nanssau et de Sarrebruche » ; « Messire Jehan, sire de Bellevile et de Montagu » ; « Messire Pierre de Champaigne, seigneur dudict lieu ». Au fol. 125 bis est la transcription de l'épitaphe dudit Pierre de Champaigne, dont la « tumbe de bronze » était « dans l'eglise de St-Martin de Paris, dans le coeur ». Au fol. 127 r° est le portrait du même ; « Messire Guischard de Monberon, seigneur de Montaigne » ; « Messire Jehan Du Plessis, dit le Begue, seigneur de Parnay » ; « Messire Jehan, comte de Salmes » ; « Messire Bermond de Levis, baron de La Voute, de Rochemaure et de S. Martin » ; « Messire Jacques de Brezé, comte de Maulevrier, grand sénéchal de Normandie, seigneur de Tomberville », etc ; « Messire Jacques de Pazzi » ; « Messire Guy d'Avaugour, sieur Des Loges » ; « Messire Robert, comte de Marsico, prince de Salerne et de S. Severin » ; « Messire Hardouin de La Jaille, chevalier, seigneur de La Roche Tallebot » ; « Messire René de Maz, seigneur de La Vayzouziers » ; « Messire Pierre Le Poulchre, chevalier, sieur de La Benestaye, ecuier trenchant de René » ; Ecu d'« Argençon ». Notice de la maison « Asse Riboulle », à laquelle cet écu avait été attribué par erreur ; Écu de la maison de Valory, sans notice ; Est une « table des ecus » gravés dans le présent ms

La « Regle » de « l'Hospital de Saint Johan de Jerusalem ».

Commençant par : « A tous ceaus qui sont et qui à venir sont, faisons assavoir que la maison de Saint Johan Baptiste et des povres de Jerusalem... » et finissant par : «... fu fet le mol et cloze la marine dou bourc de Rodes » . Le texte, accompagné d'une glose marginale et de notes en langue catalane, se termine par une liste des grands maîtres de l'ordrejusqu'à Daude de Goson. Les dernières lignes sont d'une écriture postérieure. A la fin du volume, des tables et calculs d'astrologie.

Itinerario de París a Jerusalem

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Histoire chronologique et dogmatique des conciles de la chrétiente depuis le concile de Jerusalem, tenu par les apotres l'an 50, jus qu'audernier concile Tenu de nos jous

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La Tierra Santa, el Monte Libano, el Egipto y Monte Sinai o sea relación del estado presente de estos paises, extractada de los viages a Jerusalem y al Monte Sinai

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