Isaiah b. Amoz’s Attitude towards the Faith of the Gentile Nations

This article discusses the pilgrimage of the nations to Zion described in Isa 2,2-5, focusing on Isaiah’s attitude to their future faith in the God of Israel. A number of ways of understanding Isaiah’s view are proposed on the basis of a series of ever-widening interpretive circles. These are determined by their linguistic and/or substantive and/or cognitive affinities with the vision, influencing the exegesis of the vision either through their content or the worldview they reflect. None of the circles entails a reading of the vision as a closed unit isolated from its context.     

‘It’s a different time. It’s a different era. It’s a different place’: the Legacy of Vietnam and Contemporary Memoirs of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

Abstract

This article examines censorship of US journalists in World Wars I and II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and Persian Gulf War, and from war to war, trends in types of censored information. This article also answers whether any censorship has avoided bloodshed or been legitimate, and concludes by examining how, in any future US wars, the government or military could most legitimately ensure safe reporting.     

America’s ‘Religion of Civility’ and the Calvinization of the World

This article examines the importance of Calvinism in producing the public/political “mind-set” of the United States, and how, after the Second World War, the export of this mind-set was as significant as the export of democracy, rock-’n’-roll, jeans, and Coca-Cola. It discusses the historical legacy and evolution of Calvinism from a civil religion to a religion of civility, and how the form and manner of Calvinist thinking—more specifically its ethic and aesthetic—has persisted in a secular manner so that much that Calvin would have found damnable is now intrinsic to the “religion of civility.” It then concludes that the central principles and practices of this religion of civility have had success within nations already “Christianized” but, perhaps understandably, not outside of that sphere.     

Dressed ‘as if for a Carnival’: Solving the Mystery of the Origins of Children’s Fashion. A New Perspective on the History and Historiography of Children’s Dress

The article has a double focus: explaining the so-far obscure origins of children’s fashion in the later eighteenth century and putting its emergence in the context of the ‘grand narrative’ concerning the ‘discovery of childhood’ during this pivotal period. Contrary to Rousseau’s famous dismissal of the hussar suit, the role of ‘fancy dress’ inspiration in the development of children’s fashions for the first time purposefully meant to distinguish the (male) child from the grown-ups and, concurrent with the Enlightenment’s ideas on childhood, emerges as central rather than marginal. The repertory of styles adopted for boys’ wear is shown to have been inspired by various ethnic and historical dress traditions rooted in the fascination with masquerade characteristic of the Rococo culture but harnessed to express the emerging new attitudes. Among them, special attention is given to inspirations by Polish national dress.

Second, the article takes on the argument presented by Daniel Thomas Cook in his inspiring article in Textile History, 42, no. 1 (2011). Having acknowledged the foundational role of fashion history in the emergence of childhood studies, Cook regards its present status as peripheral. He dismisses the underlying premise of its principal ‘grand narrative’ as based on a fruitless distinction between utility (and functionality) and fashion rather than the invention or discovery of the ‘child’ and ‘childhood’. While partially accepting Cook’s criticism, the article argues that the ‘grand narrative’, thus modified and expanded, retains its usefulness. In the nineteenth century, the ‘fancy dress’ and ‘playfulness’ theme continued, reflected in the most popular children’s styles (sailor suit, Little Lord Fauntleroy suit) and a range of others, temporarily or locally prominent, and intertwining with multifarious cultural, artistic, social and commercial developments.     

Gladstone’s Land: the changing face of Edinburgh’s Royal Mile

SUMMARY: This paper presents the results of recent archaeological research into the building known as Gladstone’s Land on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile. The aim of the research was to examine to what extent historical fabric had survived in light of extensive historical intervention. The building is a surviving example of Edinburgh’s Old Town urban architecture, which is characterized by tall structures with a shop front and densely occupied residential spaces. The paper presents evidence of the development of the building from the 16th century to its conservation in the 20th century. This development involved the replacement of formerly timber elements in stone and the creation of ornate painted interiors. The history of the building and the archaeological evidence embedded within it offer evidence of the life and changing architectural trends of Scotland’s capital. It also adds to our current understanding of heritage practice in the 20th century, raising issues of authenticity and the social construction of visitor-oriented heritage.     

A Reevaluation of the Kesil’s Image in the Book of Qohelet

Abstract

During the early stages of its evolution, the book of Kings was a history narrative uninfluenced by Deuteronomy. Later, as the scroll ceased to express an interpretation of the past—that is to say, ceased to be a history narrative—it began to reflect a literary dialogue with Deuteronomy. At no point in time was Kings both Deuteronomistic and a history, and it was not, therefore, a component of Martin Noth’s hypothetical Deuteronomistic History. Rather, the pre-canonical scroll is best defined as an anthology, or “reader,” of fanciful stories about fallible nebi’im (prophets and kings) who find themselves in relationship with a fallible patron god. Ironically, because Kings was preserved as sacred literature, its god has been reconceptualized, against the plain sense of the text, as a reliable, just, and compassionate patron god.     

‘Germany’s salvation’: Carl Schmitt’s teleological history of the Second Reich

Although Schmitt’s enthusiastic conversion to National Socialism is well known, his short history of the German Kaiserreich, published in 1934, remains neglected in Anglophone scholarship. This article contextualizes Schmitt’s narrative through the National Socialist conception of history and its accompanying teleology leading to the formation of the Third Reich. By placing Schmitt’s historical text in conversation with his earlier Staat, Bewegung, Volk, this article argues that Schmitt appropriated the history of the Kaiserreich to construct liberalism as a social pathology which could only be cured through the ‘concrete state theory’ he outlined in Staat, Bewegung, Volk. Furthermore, this article argues that Schmitt’s history relied heavily on propagandistic clichés of the Third Reich and thereby functioned as a rhetorical legitimation of Hitler’s rise to power.     

Milton’s Euripides and the superior rationality of the heathen

ABSTRACT

If arguments have always been made either that Milton maintains the primacy of the Bible over classical literature, or that he often presents classical sentiments as congruent with the biblical, one claim that has rarely been made is that Milton is willing to assert the truth of classical literature over that of the Bible. This article argues that there are moments in the canon that show him capable of doing precisely this, with particular reference to the invocation of his favourite Greek dramatist, Euripides. The article considers Milton’s reading and interpretation of Euripides in his early poetry and prose, before examining more closely the citation of Euripides in two of the prose works which bear heavily on the question of how politically and religiously radical Milton was: The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates and De Doctrina Christiana. The turn to Euripidean authority over the biblical reveals Milton’s willingness to subject Scripture to the test of pagan wisdom, if he judges that wisdom to have superior claims to rationality. This willingness derives from the development of his ethical thought in the 1630s and early 1640s, and from his understanding of classical, patristic and contemporary authorities, including John Selden.     

Mr. Ely’s amendment: Massachusetts Federalists and the politicization of slave representation

Responding to state electoral losses in 1804, Massachusetts Federalists vehemently pursued an antislavery measure called the Ely amendment, which sought to end the three-fifths clause. Despite failure to pass the Ely amendment, opposition to the three-fifths compromise became central to Federalist politics through the Missouri crisis in 1820. Federalists participating in the Missouri debates chose to let Republican politicians lead the opposition to slavery’s expansion after putting forth their critique of the three-fifths clause. Yet Federalists’ repeated attempts to pass the Ely amendment ensured that a generation of Massachusetts citizens connected the three-fifths clause with southern domination.     

Busman’s stomach and the embodiment of modernity

This paper examines the relationship between the gastric illness, ‘busman’s stomach’ and the Coronation bus strike of May 1937 in which 27,000 London busworkers walked out for better working conditions and a seven-and-half-hour day. It explores the way in which new patterns of somatisation, gastroenterological techniques, psychological theories and competing understandings of time worked together to create new political institutions and new forms of political action in inter-war Britain.