Abstracts

ABSTRACT

The celestial universe and the mode of action of YHWH are sometimes depicted by metallurgy. This figuration is generally understood as a picturesque representation devoid of theological significance, introduced only for describing the infinite powers of the god of Israel using the extreme physical conditions characterizing metallurgy. This explanation is however contested by: (i) the many allusions to metallurgy encountered in Biblical theology, (ii) the detailed mention, in the divine context, of all the stages of metal production: mining, ore roasting, smelting, metal purification and even of furnace re-melting, (iii) the representation of the firmament and the earth as two giant pieces of metal, (iv) the vision of the holy domain of YHWH as a giant celestial furnace. These features attest the existence of a substantial metallurgical component in Biblical theology. Furthermore, the strong bias towards copper metallurgy suggests that these representations were anchored in Bronze Age metallurgical traditions. It is concluded that Israelite theology encompasses an important metallurgical component inherited from the pre-Israelite cult of YHWH.     

POSSIBILITIES IN “A THOROUGHLY HISTORICAL WORLD”: MISSING HAYDEN WHITE'S MISSED CONNECTIONS

This article assesses Herman Paul's intellectual biography of Hayden White, the most important figure in the philosophy of history of the past half century. Offering a clear overview of White's career and contribution, Paul's account proceeds chronologically from the 1950s to the present, distinguishing the phases of White's career, but convincingly pinpointing an abiding core of concerns around an existentialist and liberationist humanism. In that light, White sought to show the way beyond historiographical realism to more innovative approaches—ideally to serve progressive politics. Paul notes, however, that White failed to connect with most mainstream historians, and Paul's account is not sufficiently probing and critical to explore the gulf. Indeed, following White, Paul is too prone to take White's particular liberationist agenda as the only alternative to a conservative, passive realism—and thereby to gloss over alternative ways of conceiving the postrealist cultural space. Moreover, Paul fails to note White's tendency sometimes to imply that mainstream history claims more than it does, and sometimes to denigrate prejudicially what it in fact does, or could do. Although much of White's challenge could have been especially salutary, he tended toward mischaracterizations that fostered polarization in the historical discipline and reinforced prejudicial understandings of historiography in the wider culture. Paul's overview provides a useful, and in many ways exemplary, introduction to White's legacy, but it is too deferential to provide a convincing overall critical assessment.     

Citizen Paul

In the Acts of the Apostles, Paul twice evokes his rights as a Roman citizen. When he crosses from the jurisdiction of the Jewish to that of the Roman court, Paul in effect completes his definitive mapping of Jewish law as a local affair whose peculiar practices must be subsumed and refigured by the universal order promised by the Messiah to all nations. Paul's real and epistolary journeys to Rome effect a symbolic translation westward of Jewish civic themes, linking the destiny of the Jews to the European political tradition. Yet Paul does so by evacuating the central mark of membership in Israel, namely the covenant of circumcision, of its continued validity. Rather than either salvaging Paul's universalism as the basis of modern democracy or critiquing his cultural politics, I use the concept of citizenship to begin calculating the consequences of Paul's multiple memberships in three distinct juridical orders: the Hellenistic city‐state, the nation of Israel, and the Roman Empire. My goal is not to re‐localize or de‐legitimate Paul's universalism in the name of individual cultures, but rather to recall the integral dream of universalism to its dialogue with diverse citizenship protocols, including Jewish ones, as well as to disclose the universal dimension of seemingly local civic rituals and routines.     

THE LETTER KILLS: ON SOME IMPLICATIONS OF 2 CORINTHIANS 3:62

The paper focuses on an argument put forward by Augustine in his De doctrina Christiana: there are passages in the Bible that need to be read in a literal, contextual, and ultimately rhetorical perspective. This approach to the Bible (usually overshadowed by Augustine's own parallel emphasis on the importance of allegory) was needed to deal with customs—for instance the patriarchs' polygamy—that had to be evaluated, Augustine argued, according to standards different from those prevailing in the present day. This need inspired Augustine to utter some sharp remarks on the need to avoid (as we would say today) ethnocentric, anachronistic projections into the Biblical text. The long‐term impact of Augustine's argument was profound. The emphasis on the letter played a significant role in the exchanges between Christian and Jewish medieval readings of the Bible, which affected Nicholas of Lyra's influential commentary (Postilla). The same tradition may have contributed to Valla's and Karlstadt's audacious hermeneutic remarks on the Biblical canon, which covertly or openly focused on contradictions in the Biblical text, questioning the role of Moses as author of Deuteronomy. Traces of those discussions can be detected in Spinoza's Tractatus theologico‐politicus. The paper suggests that the emphasis on a literal, contextual reading of the Bible provided a model for secular reading in general. The possible role of this model in the aggressive encounter between Europe and alien cultures is a matter of speculation.     

R.I.P. Paul the Octopus http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

During the 2010 football World Cup, Paul the Octopus became a global celebrity. From his aquarium tank in Oberhausen, Germany, he predicted with 100% accuracy the outcome of eight World Cup matches in a row. In acknowledgement of his striking achievement, German aquarium authorities built Paul the first‐ever octopus memorial after his death. Curiously, Paul's popularity crossed over into countries that are not known footballing nations. One possible explanation for this is that his uncanny knowledge of the outcome of future events resonated with an audience sensitive to the uncertainties and risks of high modernity. Another explanation draws on Michael Jackson's work among diviners in Sierra Leone. I argue that Paul's prophecies created ‘fields of relationship’ that transcended national as well as ethnic divides, both within Germany and globally.     

Scolding aesthetics in biblical literature

Abstract

The leading purpose of this study is to critically introduce a textual layer in the Bible which is both ideologically intriguing and aestethically appealing. The textual, Biblical layer in focus may be entitled “Scolding Aesthetics”, Accordingly, the Biblical narrator dexterously utilizes an intricate literary mechanism while harnessing it to a morel rebuke which he aims at a certain Biblical character (usually of high fame and reputation). Hence, scolding aesthetics may also be considered an intersection where Biblical literary artistry and moral values cross, interact and mutually produce a complex textual system.

The current study demonstrate the practice of that Biblical‐literary‐moral strategy through a close reading of three Biblical texts: Genesis, 12 (Abraham descends to Egypt) 2 Samuel, 11 (King David who does not participate in the war against the Ammonites) and Genesis, 3 (Eve's Fall). All three illustrations effectively surrender and display the aesthetic‐moral mechanism under consideration while plausibly proving as well how the “epidemic” textual layer of the Bible may deliberately lead astray. Accordingly, under the seemingly simple and “innocent” narrative one may excavate underlying currents of remarkably aesthetic intricacy which operates impressively as rhetorical tool of moral lesson.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 27, Number 4. August 2011

Front and back cover caption, volume 27 issue 4 Front cover R.I.P. Paul the Octopus During the 2010 football World Cup, Paul the Octopus became a global celebrity on the back of his ability to correctly predict the outcome of upcoming matches eight times in a row. Paul's fans queued in long lines outside the Sea Life Aquarium in Oberhausen, Germany, hoping to catch a glimpse of the brainy cephalopod who knew the World Cup champions ahead of anyone else. Upon his death, they demanded that Paul be immortalized. And indeed, in January 2011, the first‐ever octopus memorial, a larger‐than‐life‐sized octopus sitting on top of a football which doubles as shrine for his ashes, was unveiled at the aquarium. Paul's worldwide fan following transcended the borders of footballing nations. Paul made appearances on devotional altars in cricket‐obsessed India, and in existentialist plays in the United States, a country where football that is actually played with the foot still cannot compete with the local ball‐throwing game of the same name. An American documentary* detailing Paul's meteoric rise to psychic stardom is to be released in the autumn. How do we explain the extraordinary enthusiasm for an octopus vulgaris named Paul? What was it about his uncanny knowledge of the outcome of upcoming matches that enthralled so many, whether they cared about football or not? And what was it that made Germans, proud inheritors of the so‐called Enlightenment, build a memorial to a divining cephalopod? Clearly the answers have to go beyond the love for the game and to the heart of the human condition. In this issue, Lucia Volk asks if a cephalopod really can show us what it is that makes us truly human. * The life and times of Paul the psychic octopus. Cinema Vertige, Merlin Entertainments Group & Smiley World Media. Director Alexandre O. Philippe, Producer/DoP Robert Muratore ( https://www.facebook.com/seerofseers ). Back cover In this issue, Michań, Murawski approaches the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw as a medium through which to track Poland's shifting attitude towards Russia, especially in the wake of the 2010 Smolensk plane crash that took the lives of the Polish president, his wife and top‐ranking state and military officials. The crash took place just a few kilometres from the site of the 1940 Katyń massacre, in which Stalin's NKVD shot dead thousands of Polish army officers. Pointing the finger at Russia, many Poles refer to the crash as ‘Katyń II’. The Palace itself has, as a symbol of Russian dominance in the region, always provoked a mixed reaction in Warsaw. Gifted to Poland by the USSR in 1955, it remains the tallest building in Poland and towers over the Warsaw skyline. Although now largely disassociated from its difficult past in the everyday, the Smolensk crash brought the building's traumatic provenance to the fore again. Poland's tense relations with Russia will figure prominently over the next six months as Poland awaits the outcome of a Polish report into the Smolensk air disaster, takes up the leadership of the EU, and holds its own national elections. How will Warsaw's inhabitants reconcile themselves to this large building so symbolic of a foreign occupation, as long as it is tarnished by its association with Russia and that country's role in Katyń and, by extension, Smolensk?     

THE VIRTUE OF A HISTORIAN: A DIALOGUE BETWEEN HERMAN PAUL AND CHINESE THEORISTS OF HISTORY

This article reflects on the role of scholarly virtues in the Chinese theory of history and compares it with the recent approach proposed by Herman Paul. The first three parts reconstruct what might be called a “Chinese virtue epistemology of history,” starting from Confucian views on sincerity in writing history and then turns to concepts of an “unbiased mind” and the “responsibility of a historian.” The latter ideas were developed by Zhang Xuecheng (1738–1801), who introduced the concept of “the virtue of a historian (shide),” treating it as a sympathetic understanding toward the narrated characters. Interpretations of shide changed along with modern Chinese theorists of history, some of whom elaborated on it in the positivist manner. Thereafter, the article outlines Paul's view on the function of epistemic virtues in the formation of “historical persona.” In the summary, I will draw upon the main similarities and differences between Paul's position and the traditional Chinese view in order to point out the main directions for further research on this topic.     

Bradley Holt,Thirsty for God: A Brief History of Christian Spirituality

Abstract

In this essay, I consider the relationship between more radically open conceptions of democracy and the recent "return of religion" as the return of distinct, particular religions. The radical democracy of figures such as Derrida, Badiou, and Hardt and Negri is found to be not radical enough to be open to the particular religious other. Derrida's "religion without religion" does violence to the particularity of concrete religious traditions, Badiou appropriates Paul's universalism while abandoning the particularity and difference in his conception of collective identity, and Hardt and Negri advocate a "politics of love" while severing that love from its ground— namely, God. I then show a way of rethinking both society and Christianity so that Christianity finds a place in society and society makes room for Christianity. A radical Christianity devoid of self-privilege and triumphalism provides a model for an intersubjectivity of love in which the other really comes first. Paul's radical conception of membership in the body of Christ accomplishes precisely what radical democracy fails to do: it allows for heterophony as well as polyphony, and incoherence as well as commonality. It is only when church and society allow the possibility of incoherence and heterophony that they are truly open to the other, and it is only when they are truly open to the other that they satisfy the demands of a truly radical democracy and radical Christianity.     

Samson: The Only Nazarite in the Hebrew Bible and His Women!

Abstract

Since the publication of Eißfeldt's study in 1935, it has been doubted by some scholars that a Hebrew god named Moloch or Molekh has ever existed. Recently, however, two studies have been published, one by George Heider (1985) and the other by John Day (1989), in which the existence of the god Molekh is defended once again. Especially Day's arguments seem convincing. Nevertheless, considering the Carthaginian archaeological evidence (in 1991 gathered by Shelby Brown), and also considering the ideological bias of the biblical passages concerned, the existence of a separate god of human sacrifice in Israel remains uncertain. By a new analysis of the biblical passages, arguments are given that the god Molekh is an invention from the Persian period in an attempt to conceal that Judahite worship of YHWH in the eighth and seventh century B.C.E. also included child sacrifice.     

Early? Late? A reply to F.H. Cryer

Abstract

The article clarifies the position taken in the author's 1990 doctoral dissertation vis‐'a‐vis the distinction between Early and Late Biblical Hebrew. This distinction functions as a frame of reference for what is essentially an effort to detect linguistic similarities and differences between the books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles.     

Working at the ambivalence of race: ethnomimesis and the cancellation of St Paul's Carnival

The ambivalence of race is taken as a starting point in exploring the cancellation of the 2012 St Paul's Carnival, an African-Caribbean arts event in Bristol, England. That race is unstable, that it can be done and undone, has long been a focus of scholarship in social and cultural geography and beyond. This article asks instead how such a fragile state is maintained and with what implications. This necessitates regarding racial ambivalence as an activity; a condition that has to be worked at to be sustained. Ethnomimesis is used to frame these operations of racial ambivalence. Ethnomimesis is the way in which we encounter, stereotype and recognise cultural practices for ourselves and manifest them to others. It demonstrates how different configurations of race are precariously held between the creative possibilities and contingencies of situated cultural practices. Three moments of cancellation are narrated to show how ethnomimetic processes work through multiple formulations of race. This racial ambivalence is central to Carnival's failure. The organisers attempted to produce a performance of African-Caribbean culture that simultaneously denied the histories of racism that motivated the event. Ethnomimesis exposes how the racial ambivalence emergent in these cultural practices both opens and closes the possibilities to belong.     

Competing Traditions and the Birth of Texts

Doctor Ingrid Hjelm's new book, Jerusalem's Rise to Sovereignty: Zion and Gerizim in Competition. Ingrid Hjelm . T&T Clark International, New York: 2004, raises a number of interesting issues concerning the relationship between the Samaritans and the inhabitants of Judea during the Hasmonean period. Though her intention is to demonstrate the conflict origins of the literature treasured by those respective communities, and the divergent paths taken by those tradents, her ideas have further reaching implications for interpretation of the Hebrew Bible and the dates to be assigned to those materials. This essay probes Hjelm's new book, enquiring after its wider implications, especially for those interested in the rise of Biblical texts.     

God and the illegal alien: United States immigration law and a theology of politics

This essay considers the marks of authentic Christian prophecy in Fra Anton Montesino's 1511 sermon in Hispaniola, in its political and cultural context, arguing that these marks are witness, courage, discernment and a concrete, contextual focus. It then reflects on the ways in which these marks of authentic prophecy might be displayed in our own very different context, drawing a characterization of that context from Charles Taylor's A Secular Age. It concludes with reflections on the foundation of prophecy in prayer and hope, and with critical discussion of Luke Bretherton's use of the motif of “exile in Babylon” (Jeremiah 29) as a Biblical image for Christian prophetic presence in liberal, secular societies.     

Contested Representations: Black women and the St Paul's Carnival

This research focuses on black women's experiences of the annual African-Caribbean carnival in St Paul's, Bristol, as a potential site of resistance. I have chosen to look at how black women challenge conceptions of space on three levels: nationally, locally and within the street. These three spatial levels are permeated by notions of resistance: resistance to dominant notions of Englishness, to representations of place, and to gender roles. I aim to focus on carnival's potential to contest hegemonic discourses, to denaturalise them and to expose them as partial. It is my overall contention that black women challenge the use of space as it is designated on a number of these levels, but that carnival does not enable them to contest their regular gender roles. Through this I hope to develop a 'cultural politics of place', but one which takes account of the intersecting dynamics of 'race' and gender, moving away from a binary model of difference.     

河西的水神崇拜意识

河西走廊自古土地肥沃、水草丰美 ,极具农牧之利。但由于气候等原因 ,干旱长期威胁着人的生存和农牧业的发展。人们渴盼水的滋润 ,把希望深深地寄托予水神。从河西人民许多讴歌水的作品以及一系列与水有关的河西地名 ,我们能够体味出河西人相当浓厚的水神崇拜意识     

Existential nationalism: Russia's war against Ukraine

‘If Russia stops fighting, there will be no war. If Ukraine stops fighting, there will be no Ukraine’ is the sentiment used by Ukrainian protesters mobilising against Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Such a sentiment signifies the stakes of a war where Ukraine is a democratic nation-state fighting for its right to exist against a Russian invasion. Meanwhile, Russia is fighting for a version of Ukraine that is subservient to Russia's idea of what Ukraine should be as a nation-state: under a Russian hegemon geopolitically, where Ukraine's national idea and interpretation of history can be vetted and vetoed by the Russian state. While nationalism scholarship equips us to study Russia's war against Ukraine through the lens of Russian ethnic nationalism and Ukrainian civic nationalism, the ethnic/civic dichotomy falls short of unpacking the more pernicious logics that pervade Russia's intentions and actions towards Ukraine (demilitarisation and de-Nazification). Instead, this article explores the logics of Russia's war and Ukraine's resistance through the concept of existential nationalism where existential nationalism is Russia's motivation to pursue war, whatever the costs, and Ukraine's motivation to fight with everything it has.     

Lamentations 3,1-6: An anti-psalm 23

This essay addresses two different Biblical bulks of text. On the one hand, the essay approaches Psalm 23. On the other hand, however, does the essay equally approach Genesis 4 that documents the chronicles of Cain, Abel, Lemech and the descendents of Adam and Eve after the slay of Abel by Cain. The rationale for addressing simultaneously these two bodies of Biblical text that seem to be divorced from each other, is the following. In the case of both texts, the first encounter with them appears to surrender the impression that two textual components had been glued to each other while lacking any common denominator whatsoever. Nevertheless, in both cases an analytical scrutiny does unveil a cluster of links between the two texts that are seemingly devoid of any reciprocal bond. In the case of Psalm 23, the common denominator between the Psalm's two seemingly detached parts does consist on a tight, detailed analogy between the metaphors utilized to portray the Lord and His pious believer. In the case of Genesis 4, however, the unearthed link between the text's ensemble of components is found to be among the characters that perform along two leading parameters, death and life. Hence in both cases what was initially considered a text that is devoid of a plausible connection between its parts, is found out as a text that its parts are united in the most cogent and equally tight fashion.     

The reluctant sovereign: New adventures of the US presidential Thanksgiving turkey

This article revisits the annual US presidential ritual of pardoning a Thanksgiving turkey, and explores the changes made to the procedures since 2003, when the author's Prickly Paradigm pamphlet on the issue was published. This includes such curious developments as the turkey being retired to Disneyland in Florida instead of a nearby petting zoo; the presidential contender Sarah Palin's attempt at pardoning her own turkey, a PR disaster with a twist; the new Virginia‐based movement to pardon a pig instead of a turkey; and President Obama's apparent reluctance in face of the ceremony — by now a spectacle so firmly implanted in US political life that it can no longer be dislodged. An extended interpretation is offered for just how all these developments relate to the deep‐seated American ambivalence towards the place of Native Americans in the nation's history, as well as towards the position of the US as a military superpower.