The history of head injuries: an overview

The history of cerebral trauma is a large subject and this overview is an attempt to summarise the main trends of understanding and management over the millenia. Although beginning with anthropological evidence, papyrology and Homeric times, the main impetus for its scientific study began with Hippocrates, but little progress was made until the Salernitan period. Because the ancients believed it was the fractured bone and not the underlying neurological status that mattered, and determined whether an operation was to be performed, the classification of head injuries was based on the types of skull fracture and not the underlying neurological damage. Only in recent centuries was it realised that it was not skull fractures that were important but the brain lesion. Further improvement in management occurred during warring periods but the lessons learned were not passed on, although mortality from military wounds has steadily declined. Since only a small percentage of head injuries require surgery, consideration should be given to reserve the time and skills of the neurosurgeon to those cases requiring his expertise; this would require that the preliminary care should be undertaken by physicians with a specific interest in this field.     

Post-Enlightenment sources of political authority: Biblical atheism, political theology and the Schmitt-Strauss exchange

This essay reevaluates the Weimar writings of Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss, specifically, their intellectual efforts to replace the political authority of Kantian liberalism with, respectively, a ‘political theology’ and ‘Biblical atheism’ derived from the thought of early-modern state theorists like Hobbes and Spinoza. Schmitt and Strauss each insisted that post-Kantian Enlightenment rationality was unraveling into a way of thinking that violently rejected ‘form’ of any kind, fixated myopically on material things and lacked any conception of the external constraints that invariably condition the possibilities of philosophy, morality and politics. They considered Kantian reason and liberal politics to pose serious threats to ‘genuine’ expressions of rationality and as dangerous obfuscations of the necessity of political order—of the brute fact that human beings stand in need of ‘being ruled,’ as such.     

Recent Biblical Research in Palestine,Syria, and Asia Minor

Abstract

In the Neolithic Period seven sites were established in the delta area ot the rivers cl-Bire, el-Ish-sha and Jalud in the Valley of Beth-Shan. Four of them are concentrated in the Jalud area. Two sites (9, 21) were abandoned during subsequent Periods.

In the Chalcolithic Period, agricultural settlement was enlarged threefold. During this Period some settlements (sites 27, 34) were established in the hill country. Some sites were abandoned later (six—numbers 3, 9, 11, 14, 16 and 27—out of 12 sites were established in the Gesher-Beit Yosef area, two sites, numbers 64 and 100, out of four in the Tirat Tzevi area, one site, number 235, out of three in the Beth-Shan area).

It seems that the water-supply to the sites numbers 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 27, 30 and 31 came from Wadi el Bire and to the sites numbers 11, 12, 14., 16 from Wadi cl-lsh-sha and number 18 from Wadi Jalud as in the recent period. It seems likely that the Chalcolithic farmers irrigated the fields by means of canals from the above mentioned rivers rather than from the Jordan. The density of occupation and the prosperity of the early agriculture is due to the water resources in the Valley of Beth-Shan.

It seems likely that by archaeological work on the 130 sites at the Valley of Beth-Shan the picture might be changed, and some more Neolithic and Chalcolithic sites be revealed, especially underneath the mass of buildings at the fortified towns like Tell es-Sarim, Tell el-Manshiye etc., but our short survey throws new light on the first steps of the agricultural life in the Valley of Beth-Shan in the fifth and fourth millennium B.C.     

Determination of the noun in Biblical Hebrew

The two comprehensive reference grammars for Biblical Hebrew, Gesenius/Kautzsch and Joüon/Muraoka, in addition to the more or less generally accepted categories of use of the definite article, make use of a category which they describe as not having to do with definiteness in the sense that we know it. In this category they group the instances of use of the article that do not seem to fit into the generally accepted categories, instances where the Hebrew definite article, in German and English respectively, is said to be expressed by an indefinite article. In the present article, I analyse the 67 examples given to substantiate the existence of the proposed category. I argue that this category probably does not exist and I contend that most of the examples, when carefully analysed, are examples of regular article usage. When the nouns in question are perceived as nondetermined and translated as such, it is because we are not sufficiently familiar with ancient Hebrew language and culture and hence do not possess the contextual information the articles refer to.     

On the Values of Biblical Law and their Contemporary Application

Abstract

In God, Justice, and Society: Aspects of Law and Legality in the Bible (Oxford University Press, 2011), Jonathan Burnside sets himself a dual task: on the one hand (and primarily), to examine historically many biblical texts whose subject-matter has counterparts in modern law, and to identify their values; on the other to argue for the relevance of these texts to public debate on such issues in modern law. His semiotic methodology has much in common with my own (as he has graciously acknowledged). In this paper, stimulated by his work, I seek to sketch the academic context from which it arises, and pose some further questions prompted by reflection on his work.     

Biblical beliefs in the shaping of modern nations

The ideology and culture of modern nations and nationalism have been profoundly influenced by two traditions that reach back into the ancient world, the biblical and the classical. Here, the focus is on the particular contribution of the Hebrew Bible to the political ideals of modern nationhood. Modern Western nations, unlike non‐Western and ancient nations, are distinguished by their quest for territorial integrity and sovereignty, citizenship, legal standardisation, cultural homogeneity and secular education, while modern nationalism is a pro‐active, ideological movement that seeks to ‘build’ autonomous, unified, distinctive and ‘authentic’ nations out of ethnic populations deemed by some members to constitute actual or potential ‘nations’. While modern European nations emerged out of the matrix of Christianity, as Adrian Hastings argued, it was the political model and ideals of community found in the Hebrew Bible, which Christianity adopted (while rejecting the Jews) and which the New Testament lacked, that so often provided the dynamic of modern nationalism and the values of modern Western nations. Chief among these were the Pentateuchal and prophetic narratives of Exodus, Covenant, Community of Law (Torah), the holiness of a ‘chosen people’, the messianic role of sacred kingship and the dream of fulfilment in the Promised Land. These ideals did not fully come into their own until the Reformation. In this period, state elites expressed growing national sentiments and biblical texts were being rendered into the vernacular, while a more rigorous biblical form of ‘covenantal nationalism’ emerged in early modern Netherlands, Scotland and England, taking the narrative of the deliverance of the Israelites as its starting point. In the eighteenth‐century Enlightenment, the novel cults of ‘Nature’, ‘Authenticity’ and ‘Human Perfectibility’ secured an opening for neo‐classical political ideas in the formation of nations. But it was the biblical ideals of liberation, Covenant, election and promised land that provided the basic model of the modern nation and nationalism in Europe, from the French Revolution, and German and East European nationalisms to the Hebraic Protestant nationalism of Victorian Britain. To a large extent, the modern age owes to the Jewish Bible its fundamental vision of a world divided into distinctive and sovereign territorial nations.     

Of Sceptres and Censors: Biblical Interpretation and Censorship in Seventeenth-Century France

In 1676 Pierre-Daniel Huet, scholar and tutor to the Dauphin,encountered difficulties with state censorship. Bishop Bossuetwas blocking the publication of his Demonstratio evangelica,a recasting of an ancient Christian apologetic. The Sorbonnetheologian and censor, Edme Pirot, was caught in the middle.An analysis of the interaction between these three men revealsAncien Régime censorship as a series of negotiationsshaped by the different stakes, personalities, ambitions andstatus of the participants. Huet and Bossuet’s quarrelalso echoed the confessional debates of the sixteenth centuryand reflected disagreements within the Catholic Church thereafter.It raised such important questions as whether the Bible shouldbe subjected to the same types of analysis as secular textsand anticipated concerns about the relationship between biblicalcriticism and the rise of irreligion. Throughout, Bossuet skilfullymanipulated the mechanisms of state censorship to defend hisvision of Church Tradition by delaying the publication of Huet’sDemonstratio and suppressing Richard Simon’s L’histoirecritique du Vieux Testament.     

Biblical anthropology and the idea of human prehistory in late antiquity

Late Antiquity is an important period in the history of anthropology because it marks a divide between the naturalistic and rationalistic anthropological ideas of Greco-Roman philosophers and the "biblical anthropology" that was formulated by Medieval Christian writers. The biblical anthropology that emerged in Late Antiquity addressed the question of the origin of the first humans, our relationship to the natural world, and the original state of mankind. While early Christian philosophers based much of this biblical anthropology on the Genesis account of early human history, they also utilized a great deal of Greco-Roman philosophy in order to expound a vision of human prehistory that profoundly influenced anthropological thought well into the modern era.     

The Location of Medieval/Pre-Modern and Biblical Ziklag

Abstract

Most modern attempts to identify biblical Ziklag build on the pioneering work of Edward Robinson. Analysis of the medieval and pre-modern observations made by Father Felix Fabri, in Evagatorium in Terræ Sanctæ, Arabiæ et Egypti Peregrinationem and Sionpilger, and Eugène Roger, in La Terre Sainte, provide support for the identification of biblical Ziklag with Tell esh-Shari'ah (Tel Sera') during these periods. Such a medieval and pre-modern identification provides support for this same modern identification of biblical Ziklag and militates against competing identifications with Tell el-Hesi (Tel Hasi), Khirbet Meshash (Tel Masos), Tell es-Seba' (Tel Beer-Sheva), and Tell Khuweilifeh (Tel Halif).     

TB: the leading infectious killer of adults and the single biggest killer of young women. Three million deaths; seven million new cases in 1997

This is an article on tuberculosis (TB) incidence among women in the reproductive age group and its therapeutic management. TB has become the leading cause of death among women of reproductive age, as reported by the WHO. This disease incidence counters perceptions in wealthy countries where the disease is most commonly found in elderly men. Women of reproductive age are more susceptible to other diseases once infected with TB than are men of the same age. Studies are being conducted on the biological, epidemiological, social, and cultural differences in TB occurrence among men and women and their access to the TB treatment strategy referred to as "directly observed treatment short-course" (DOTS). The WHO recommends DOTS, by which patients are observed and monitored while taking their medication. DOTS combines five elements: 1) political commitment, 2) case detection through sputum smear microscopy, 3) directly observed short-course treatment, 4) regular drugs and supplies, and 5) monitoring systems with evaluation treatment outcome for each and every patient. The WHO recognizes three factors which compound the problem of the TB epidemic: multi-drug resistant TB, HIV, and the economic crisis in Asia. To date, over 100 countries have been using DOTS. In at least one Asian country, Thailand, the government has committed to a 5-year plan to ensure DOTS accessibility.     

The many deaths of Manuel: Illness and fate in the Andes

In a village of the Equatorial Andes, a woman tells of the sudden death of her epileptic husband in disturbing circumstances. The study of the Manuel case through his wife's account shows the essential role of the aetiology of a morbid phenomenon in understanding its fatal outcome, as well as the subordination of nosology — shared by all the members of the collectivity — to a personal interpretation by the victim — or his spokesman. Finally, when the victim can no longer describe his illness following the loss of the vernacular language — in this case Quechua — the language of the body can fill this silence.