The Material Nature of the Radiance of YHWH and its Theological Implications

Abstract

Kābôd-YHWH is a technical term designating the radiance of the god of Israel. Such a phenomenon is specifically identified in the Bible with three physical realities: volcanic lava, solar activity and molten metal. The antique representation of the sun as molten metal, and the volcanic symbolism of the furnace reveal that these three expressions of kābôd-YHWH are interrelated. Among them, it appears here that kābôd-YHWH refers first of all to molten metal. This introduces a fundamental difference between radiance, specifically related to YHWH through molten metal, and brilliance (and by extension glory, wealth, strength and vitality) of gods and mortals derived from properties of solid state metals. Beyond the status and powers of supreme deity conferred by this metallurgical radiance, identification of kābôd-YHWH as shapeless molten metal also clarifies the origin of one of the most singular characteristic of ancient Yahwism: the strict interdiction of figuration of the god.     

'With a strong hand and an outstretched arm' the meaning of the expression byd hzqh wbzrw' ntwyh

The expression ''with a strong hand and an outstretched arm'' is usually understood as being an expression of the power of God. There are various suggestions as to which aspect of his power is indicated: The power of inflicting plague and sickness or his power as a warrior - or whether the expression is used as a counterpart to Egyptian royal terminology. It is suggested here that the expression does refer to the power of inflicting plague and sickness, for the following reasons: ''With a strong hand and an outstretched arm'' is a parallelism between two collocations of words, ''strong hand'' and ''outstretched hand'' (''arm'' + the verb ''stretch out''). When the two collocations, both containing the word ''hand'', were made to form a parallelism, the element ''arm'' was the added to one of them to achieve variation between the units of the parallelism. The element ''arm'', which often has a military connotation, is then an extraneous component to the expression. The outcome of ''stretching out the hand'' in the Pentateuch and the historical books is miraculous events, some of these being a number of the plagues. The expression does not seem to have any military connotation in the account of the Exodus. A comparison with the literatures of other Semitic languages shows that in the ancient Near East not only ''the hand'' of a deity inflicting plague and sickness can be found, but actually ''a strong hand''. In most of the occurrences of the expression in the Pentateuch apparently the entire experience of Israel in Egypt is signified. Only in Exod 3,19; 6,1; (where we cannot be sure whether the arm belongs to YHWH or to Pharaoh) and 6,6 the expression is connected to specific traditions in the account of the Exodus, and these are exactly the plague traditions.     

炉渣分析揭示古代炼铜技术

对古代炼铜工艺、熔炼过程及其炉渣进行了分类,建立了以铜和硫的赋存状态与相对含量（Cu／S）鉴别炉渣种类,进而结合其它遗迹遗物来揭示古代炼铜技术的研究方法。     

Archaeometallurgical Investigations in Nakhchivan,Azerbaijan: What Does the Evidence from Late Chalcolithic Ovçular Tepesi Tell Us about the Beginning of Extractive Metallurgy?

The Late Chalcolithic (4400–3950 b.c.) occupation levels from Ovçular Tepesi have yielded a significant assemblage of copper objects and remains of copper production. Together with ore finds, two fragments of nozzle, crucible remains, and a number of small metal artifacts, this assemblage includes the unexpected discovery of three copper axes in an infant burial jar. These axes are the earliest examples of large copper tools known to date in southwestern Asia, whether it is in the Caucasus, Iran, or the Anatolian highlands. More importantly, the fact that these objects were locally produced suggests that significant metallurgical activities were being carried out at Ovçular as early as the second half of the 5th millennium b.c. After presenting the evidence from Ovçular Tepesi, this paper will proceed to a reassessment of the available archaeological and geochemical data concerning the emergence of extractive metallurgy in the southern Caucasus.     

Metallurgical remains from regional surveys of “non-industrial” landscapes: The case of the Kythera Island Project

Abstract

This paper explores the potential of studying metallurgical remains recovered during regional surveys in the reconstruction of past metallurgical practices across a given landscape, using as a case study the relevant finds from the Kythera Island Project. The methodology developed includes macroscopic examination of all finds, evaluation of spatial distribution patterns, an assessment of local and regional ore resources, and microscopic and chemical analyses of selected samples. The study suggests that during the Classical period both small scale iron smelting and smithing were taking place in the surveyed Kythera landscape. The picture is less clear for other historical periods. Prehistoric metallurgical finds on the other hand are meager to nonexistent; a picture partly attributable to the scarcity of finds left behind by secondary non-ferrous metalworking.     

Archaeomagnetic Dating of Pyrotechnological Contexts: a Case Study for Copper Smelting Sites in the Central Timna Valley,Israel

This study is focused on establishing age constraints for several copper slag deposits at the centre of the Timna Valley (Israel) via reconstruction of their ancient geomagnetic intensities as recorded by the individual slag samples at the time of their formation. The results show a correlation between the location of the slag deposits (labelled as individual ‘mounds’ in our survey) and their inferred ages, reflecting varying socio‐economic and political dynamics in the region. While the slag mounds found at the unprotected foothills represent a variety of dates (mostly Early Islamic), the slag mounds on the hilltops are chronologically constrained to the early Iron Age (late 11th to 10th centuries bce ), supporting the idea for a need for protection during this period. Furthermore, in comparing the new data with previous archaeomagnetic studies from Timna, we can assert the existence of simultaneous copper production at the archaeological Sites 30, 30a and 34. This gives further support to the claim of intense smelting in the central Timna Valley during the early Iron Age. Finally, this project demonstrates the potential of archaeomagnetic experiments to provide chronological insights, and their particular advantage in addressing pyrotechnology‐related cases.     

Lead isotopic analyses of copper ores in the Early Bronze Age central Hexi Corridor,north-west China

This paper explores the possible provenance of ores employed for metallurgical production during the Early Bronze Age in the central Hexi Corridor of north-west China. In total, 78 pieces of copper (Cu) ore samples were collected from five Early Bronze Age sites and one Cu deposit site (the Beishantang Cu deposit) in the Heihe River region of the central corridor. These sites were dated to the late Machang (4100–4000 bp ), Xichengyi (4000–3700 bp ), Qijia (4000–3600 bp ) and Siba (3700–3400 bp ) cultures. After comparing with published lead (Pb) isotopic data from other possible Cu deposits in north-west China, the results show that the Cu ores collected from the Early Bronze Age sites were most likely derived from the adjacent Beishan Cu deposit. More intriguingly, for the first time in Hexi Corridor, a dozen Cu ores were discovered containing highly radiogenic Pb. Though fundamentally different from those in the Central Plains, they illustrate a possible new type of Cu used in Bronze Age western China, and the first-hand materials are significant for further understanding the provenance of raw metals for metallurgical production in the prehistoric Hexi Corridor.     

Reconstruction of smelting conditions during 16th- to 18th-century copper ore processing in the Kielce region (Old Polish Industrial District) based on slags from Miedziana Góra,Poland

This study presents the first reconstruction of the smelting conditions in 16th- to 18th-century smelters from Miedziana Góra (Holy Cross Mountains, Poland). Based on geochemical (inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry/emission spectrometry, X-ray fluorescence) and mineralogical analysis (X-ray diffractometry, scanning electron microscopy, electron probe micro-analysis) of historical slags, their chemical/phase composition and the basic smelting parameters (temperature, melt viscosity, and oxygen fugacity) were determined. Due to the differences in chemical and phase composition, slags from different smelting stages have been distinguished: hypocrystalline slags (MG6) from speiss/matte production and glassy (MG1–MG5) from matte conversion. In glassy slags, pyroxenes, quartz/cristobalite grains, and aggregates composed of metallic Cu and PbO are dispersed in the glass. Hypocrystalline slags are composed of wollastonites, anorthites, and metallic Cu. The temperature range at which the slags were formed was from ~1100°C (solidus temperature) to 1150–1200°C (liquidus temperature). The silicate melt's viscosity was from log η = 1.19 to 4.42 Pa s (at 1100–1200°C). The higher viscosity of MG1–MG5 slags indicates that, unlike MG6 slags, they were not formed during gravity separation. Information about the phase composition made it possible to determine the oxygen fugacity in the range of log fO₂ = −4 to −12 atm. High oxygen fugacity indicates the oxidizing nature of the smelting process.     

Late Bronze Age Copper Smelting Slags from Luserna (Trentino,Italy): Interpretation of the Metallurgical Process

In the Late Bronze Age, the extractive metallurgy of copper in north‐eastern Italy achieved a peak of technological efficiency and mass production, as evidenced by the substantial number of metallurgical sites and the large volume of slags resulting from smelting activities. In order to define the technological features of the Late Bronze Age metallurgical process, more than 20 slags from the smelting site of Luserna (Trentino, Italy) were fully analysed by means of optical microscopy, X‐ray powder diffraction, X‐ray fluorescence spectrometry and scanning electron microscopy. Three different slag types were identified based on mineralogical and chemico‐physical parameters, each being interpreted as the product of distinct metallurgical steps. A Cu‐smelting model is proposed accordingly.     

The analysis of copper artifacts of the copper inuit

Metallography and neutron activation analysis have been used to investigate copper artifacts from 19th century archaeological sites associated with the “Copper Inuit” of the west-central Canadian Arctic. A knowledge of the source of the copper from which the artifacts were manufactured - native (local) copper or European (exotic) copper - is important, for example, to studies of the effects of European contact on utilization of native copper and on the general lifestyle of the Copper Inuit. Trace element analysis by neutron activation using the SLOWPOKE reactor has allowed local native copper, from the Coppermine River and Victoria Island, NW Territories, to be clearly distinguished from 19th century European smelted copper, which was found to contain higher concentrations of arsenic, antimony, nickel and selenium. Moreover, optical and scanning electron metallography revealed significant microstructural differences between native copper and the 19th century smelted copper. As a consequence it was possible to differentiate between native copper archaeological artifacts and those produced from smelted copper.     

Naked wax and necessary existence: modal voluntarism and Descartes’s motives

ABSTRACT

Descartes’s commitment to modal voluntarism was one of his most notorious and controversial doctrines. The reaction of contemporaries was hostility and incredulity; the reaction of modern scholars has been little different. Yet, though the issue has fomented considerable discussion and disagreement in the literature, the overwhelming majority of scholarly output has focused on questions of whether Descartes actually upheld the doctrine, or what he was committed too if he indeed did. Surprisingly, the underlying question of why Descartes would have upheld such a doctrine in the first place has gone almost entirely unnoticed and unasked. This paper proposes several possible answers to this question, each of which provides at least a partial explanation for Descartes’s attraction to modal voluntarism. The ultimate motive, however, was likely not one of positive attraction, but driven by Descartes’s anxieties over the thorny and deeply heretical implications of his conception of matter.     

Settlement and social change in central Europe, 3500–1500 BC

The chronology of the period is briefly considered in the light of the dendrochronological results which have appeared in recent years. Patterns of settlement history in different parts of the area are then examined, and it is suggested that in some of them the late fourth millennium was a period of population decline which was not reversed until the Early Bronze Age, 1000 years later. Detailed information about specific local occupation patterns is provided by recent work on the circum-Alpine lake villages. Changes in cultural patterns during the period, especially the appearance of the Corded Ware, are discussed and explanations of them reviewed. It is argued that changing patterns of gender relations were a major feature of the period, linked to processes which eventually led to the development of small-scale chiefdoms. The development of copper and bronze metallurgy and its connection to these processes are discussed.     

Abstracts

René Descartes is at the root of the modern world. Stephen Gaukroger explains why. Descartes sought to found philosophy on an investigation of the natural world rather than on theology and ethics. His task was complicated by the trial and condemnation of Galileo. He wished, as he says, to do nothing of which the Church could disapprove. In spite of this caveat he constructed over his lifetime an account of the world, from cosmology to psychology, which was fundamentally naturalistic, replacing the teleological thought of previous centuries with an unremitting mechanism. At the heart of his thought is mathematical physics. This determined his treatment of psychophysiology and the mind-body problem. In spite of 350 years of subsequent research the general idea of his neuropsychology remains surprisingly modern. He was one of the first to see humans as part of nature and his account of the relation of mind to brain is remarkably comprehensive and clear. Gaukroger’s book, although in this reviewer’s opinion open to criticism in some respects, provides a fascinating and in-depth account of the structure of Descartes’ thought.     

古玉人兽合体造型研考

周代人兽合体造型玉器,加进了人的参与和主导,这就突出体现了当时社会观念形态中人格意识的进一步提升,显示了人兽结合造型的艺术成果.在西周时,龙神已被人格化,并被尊为人间与神界相依相合、互相沟通的神.玉雨师像即是龙神文化品格被提升的产物.     

The political sermons of Lancelot Andrewes

The political sermons of Lancelot Andrewes, delivered between 1607 and 1622 on the anniversaries of the Gowrie and Gunpowder Plots, deserve more attention than they have hitherto received. Although he has often been called a Jacobean absolutist, Andrewes is better described as a political Elizabethan. The key to his intellectual originality resides not in his fundamental theoretical positions but rather in his method of exegesis. Andrewes was the first theologian or theorist to have worked out a coherent exposition of the doctrines of divine right and non-resistance which was founded on the formalist analysis of the Bible, for which achievement he deserves a place in the history of political thought. In his emphasis on providentialism, moreover, he reinforced the idea that monarchy was divinely ordained. By analysing these sermon sequences, we can see how he dismantled and interpreted Biblical texts in order to confirm commonplace political propositions.     

Khirbat al‐Mana‘iyya: an early Islamic‐period copper‐smelting site in south‐eastern Wadi ‘Araba,Jordan

Recent excavations in south‐eastern Wadi ‘Araba in Jordan have revealed the first early Islamic‐period copper‐smelting site known in the eastern side of the valley, which extends south of the Dead Sea to the Gulf of ‘Aqaba. Five test pits were excavated in 2012 at Khirbat al–Mana‘iyya, a prominent copper‐smelting camp in south‐eastern Wadi ‘Araba, Jordan. The results of these excavations demonstrate that the site was primarily active in the seventh–ninth century AD. Its distance from the copper sources of south‐west ‘Araba suggests that its location was chosen based on proximity to wood and water resources, rather than copper ore deposits. The discovery that the site dates to the early Islamic period has implications for previous and future work in south‐east ‘Araba. In particular, it challenges the common—until now—view of the region as virtually devoid of settlement during this period.     

Embracing Asylum Seekers and Refugees: Jeremiah 29 as Foundation for a Christian Theology of Migration and Integration

ABSTRACT

This article argues that Jer. 29 offers three principles for a constructive theological approach to migration and integration in which both hosts and migrants have obligations to embrace others across enduring lines of difference. This view supports and extends earlier work by Luke Bretherton. In sum, it contends that Jer. 29 and its reception in Christian thought outlines an obligation for Christians to advocate for and actively support strategies that enable migrants to live in integrated social contexts where positive engagement across enduring lines of difference can replace a climate likely to produce neo-national movements and exclusionary migration policies with one that has the potential to foster cohesion, wellbeing, and mutual flourishing.     

Abstracts of Articles

ANDREW BREEZE, ‘Arthur’s Battles and the Volcanic Winter of 536–37’. A mega-eruption of 535 in the Americas produced a volcanic winter in 536-37, with crop failure throughout the Northern Hemisphere. It thus reveals a Welsh annal for 537 on 'mortality in Britain and in Ireland’ as referring to famine, not plague. Mention in the same annal of Arthur’s final battle at Camlan, located at Castlesteads on Hadrian’s Wall, will further point to a campaign by starving North Britons under Arthur's leadership to seize food-supplies from their neighbours. The extreme weather phenomena of 536-37 also suggest that Gildas wrote his De Excidio in the summer of 536 (as implied by David Woods of Cork), because in chapter 93 of that work he alludes to a ‘thick mist and black night’ sitting ‘upon the whole island’ of Britain, but says nothing on the harvest failure which it led to. We may infer as well that the Britons defeated the Saxons at ‘Mount Badon’ in north Wiltshire in early 493, because Gildas declares that the battle was won at the time of his birth, forty-three years and a month before he was writing.’

DAVID M. YORATH, ‘Sir Christopher Moresby of Scaleby and Windemere, c. 1441–99’. To date, researchers have little cared for Sir Christopher Moresby of Scaleby and Windermere (c. 1441–99), Member of Parliament for Westmorland, conservator of the peace with Scotland, escheator of Cumberland and Westmorland and steward of Penrith. There exists no ODNB article or source-based examination of his career — only a brief, error-strewn note in J. B. Wedgwood’s ‘Biographies of the Members of the Commons House 1439-1509’. This is unfitting, for it is clear there was a mastery of technique about Moresby — something that not only ensured his survival during one of the most turbulent periods in English history, but also made him an indispensable political figure, regardless of regime. What follows is an examination of his hitherto unstudied career, with some remarks on wider developments pertinent to the history of the North West.

VICTORIA SPENCE, ‘Adapting to the Elizabethan Settlement: Religious Faith and the Drive towards Conformity in Craven, 1559 to 1579’. This article explores the reception in Craven to Elizabethan religious reform. Until the 1569 Rebellion the interpretation of the Elizabethan Settlement was broad, pragmatic and accommodating. Following Elizabeth’s excommunication and the stringent enforcement of conformity, Catholics, supported by Marian and seminary priests, resorted to recusancy and a separate Catholic identity. Archbishops Grindal and Sandys installed university-educated preaching clerics to establish and promote conformity in the northern diocese. Many were Puritan nonconformists who felt reform was incomplete, and opposed a hierarchical Church with surviving Catholic rituals. Increasingly confessional identities diverged, although eventually the majority of the Craven laity adapted and conformed.

IMOGEN PECK, ‘The Great Unknown: The Negotiation and Narration of Death by English War Widows, 1647–60’. The truism that death is life’s only certainty may have seemed far from obvious to the women of mid seventeenth-century England. For the conditions of the British Civil Wars, in addition to causing significant physical destruction, also brought much uncertainty to the lives of the civilian population, who could struggle to ascertain whether men serving in the wars were alive or dead. Drawing on the relief petitions of war widows and court depositions from the northern counties of England, this article explores the impact this uncertainty had on the wives of Civil War soldiers. In particular, it focuses on the strategies women used when navigating the problem of how they could know, or prove, that their husbands were dead, the ways they narrated and interpreted the loss of a spouse, and the predicaments faced by ‘phantom widows’: those women who believed their husbands to have been killed in the wars, only for them to return home alive sometime later. In doing so, it illuminates a little-studied dimension of female experience during the revolutionary period, while also contributing to our understanding of early modern mentalities more broadly, and, in particular, attitudes to death and civil war.

CONOR O’BRIEN, ‘Attitudes to St Cuthbert’s Body during the Nineteenth Century’.

St Cuthbert’s tomb in Durham Cathedral was opened in 1827, occasioning the start of a cycle of polemic and counter-polemic between Protestant and Roman Catholic writers throughout the rest of the century. The excavation of 1827 aimed to disprove the medieval legends about the incorruption of Cuthbert’s body, but it (and the many texts which debated its findings throughout the course of the nineteenth century) must be understood in the light of local religious controversy as much as of Victorian antiquarianism. The texts which addressed the issue of Cuthbert’s body in the years which followed were concerned with religious, as well as historical, truth and reveal shifting attitudes in both the Anglican and Catholic communities to the role of saints, miracles and relics within their own forms of Christianity. While this paper mainly concerns a comparatively small element of Victorian religious debate, one focused upon issues of local interest and identity, it problematises some of the traditional paradigms used to understand nineteenth-century scholarship. Not the increasing secularisation of historical practice and antiquarianism, but the continuing, albeit changing, importance of Durham’s patron saint, is the most striking feature of the dispute.

EDWARD M. SPIERS, ‘Yorkshire and the First Day of the Somme’. Given the prominence of the First Day on the Somme in the UK’s collective memory of the First World War, it is timely to reconsider the impact of that disastrous battle upon Yorkshire, a county that contributed more fighting units (c. 20 per cent), and suffered more casualties, than any other county in the United Kingdom. The fighting experiences of Yorkshire units ranged from utter disaster (not even reaching their own front line), and suffering the largest proportion of casualties of any unit in the British army, to making the largest gains of ground on the day. The spread of bereavement, however, was far from uniform, and so partly on account of the units engaged, and their recruiting whether pre-war (where regular) or wartime (in the case of Kitchener’s Service battalions), losses were concentrated within the West Riding. Moreover, despite the heavy losses within the “Pals” battalions, the legendary burden of bereavement within local communities did not apply uniformly because some units in 1916 were nothing like the “Pals” of 1914. The process of releasing details about deaths over days and weeks, with a huge ‘missing’ sub-group, robbed the First Day of anything like the significance it now holds. The dominant Press narrative, supported by letters from the front, remained overwhelmingly positive about the battle, the role of Yorkshire units and the prospects for the war itself. Political, military and religious elites reinforced this narrative at the two-year anniversary of the outbreak of the war, which coupled with the reception of the film, ‘Battle of the Somme’, assisted in sustaining the coping mechanisms within the country.