NAḤAL ZERED IN THE BIBLE AND THE BARAITA DE-TEḤUMIN

Abstract

As a result of a mistaken interpretation of the Madaba map, biblical Na?al Zered is often identified in the scholarship as Wādi al-?sā, which marks the boundary between Moab and Edom southeast of the Dead Sea. In reality, the brook of Zered does not appear on the Madaba map and the sole documentary evidence available for its identification is the Bible, which situates Na?al Zered near Na?al Arnon. The author proposes Wādi Nkheile, which spills into the Arnon from the southeast, as the most likely candidate for the biblical Zered. This identification perhaps also sheds light on the conflicting biblical sources regarding the question of whether or not the Moabites allowed the Israelites to pass through their territory en route to Canaan. In the postbiblical era Na?al Zered appears in the boundaries baraita (baraita de-te?umin) as part of the eastern border of the land of Israel and the article demonstrates that the identification of Na?al Zered as Wādi Nkheile is consistent with the geographical logic of the baraita.     

已佚1590年单幅中国大地图研究

透过法国制图家桑松1656年绘制的中国地图,揭示已佚的由耶稣会士罗明坚与意大利制图家内罗尼合作的1590年单幅中国大地图面貌,指出此图主体部分是由罗明坚依据《大明一统文武诸司衙门官制》所载中文舆图摹绘的抄摹型分省图稿拼合而成的,拼合主要基于对分省图稿省际河道比较随意的连接,造成水系、诸省轮廓及方位等重大错误。部分图示还借鉴1584年刻印的巴尔布达"中国新图"。此图是已知最早的单幅西文中国详图,虽有缺陷,但对中国地理面貌的展现较此前西文地图有所推进。     

Draft town maps for John speed's theatre of the empire of great Britaine

ABSTRACT

A unique Hebrew map of the Exodus and the Holy Land was printed in Mantua, Italy, in the mid-sixteenth century. This map is graphically and artistically different from all other Hebrew maps, both earlier and later. The aim here is to analyze the map and the text that is printed on it, explore the reasons for, and the context of, its printing, and identify its sources within contemporary Jewish scholarship and Christian cartography. The only known exemplar of this map is in the Zentralbibliothek in Zürich, Switzerland.     

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.     

Can Lost Maps Speak? Toward a Cultural History of Map Reading in Medieval China

Despite the fact that virtually no Chinese maps have survived from the first millennium, it is nonetheless possible to reconstruct a rich context associated with their production, use and perception from a variety of written sources. Three cases from the Tang dynasty (618–907 ce) are presented in this article in which the characteristics of the missing maps emerge through their associated texts, which have outlasted them. These examples include two documents that once accompanied maps presented to the emperor and an anecdote that refers to a map of the remote southern frontier. They demonstrate that the maps were designed not only to encapsulate imperial territory but also to serve as guideposts for aspirational travel. They were also perceived by their users as invitations to experiences both desirable and undesirable.     

Chronicle for 1993

Abstract

Theory is not a goal in itself but a means of enriching the history of cartography by stimulating new research questions and objectives. In this paper the concept of ‘transparent maps’ (carriers of an image of the external reality of the world) and ‘opaque maps’ is introduced. The notion is approached structurally (standards of graphical representation, drawing, geometry, text); through the sociology of the map (map makers, institutions, the public); and through seeing maps in their cultural and historical context (an approach which raises issues of the definitional boundaries of the history of cartography and which is arguably one of the most stimulating perspectives today as fostered by, in particular, contributors to the History of Cartography). Finally, attention is drawn to three important topics for the research agenda: the links between maps and culture; maps as a language of communication and as instruments of power; and the links between perception, logic and mnemonics.     

Cordiform Maps since the Sixteenth Century: The Legacy of Nineteenth‐Century Classificatory Systems

The heart‐shaped, or cordiform, maps of the sixteenth century, including those by Oronce Fine, Peter Apian and Gerard Mercator, have long intrigued historians. Most writers have considered the heart shape a product only of mathematics, but some have recently offered other interpretations for the use of the heart. A classificatory system devised by d'Avezac in 1863, however, has impeded our understanding of the cordiform map, particularly in the matter of what is considered to be such a map. The nature of his classification and its reception by other writers since the late nineteenth century are examined in order to elucidate new directions for the study of the use of the heart shape in sixteenth‐century cartography.     

A Manchu itinerary

Abstract

Eighty‐nine business letters from European map sellers to the London firm of Thomas Jefferys and William Faden are preserved in the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan. Dating from the decade 1773–1783, the letters reveal through the invoices, accounts payable, bills of lading, and orders many detailed aspects of the map trade in the eighteenth century at the time of the War of American Independence. Special attention is drawn to the exchange of maps between England and France during this period of war.     

In vino veritas? Indigenous wine and indigenization in Israeli settlements

In recent years, wineries have proliferated in Israel’s West Bank settlements, some of which are now producing world-class wine. However, growing grapes and making wine in this context represents more than simply commercial viticulture. These wineries are part of a trend to re-establish ancient Jewish winemaking practices, which fosters the imagination of returning and reconnecting to biblical sites. Moreover, high-tech grape science is now being employed to engineer wines from so-called indigenous varietals to create a wine identity for Israel. Some religious settlers regard these developments as the fulfilment of a messianic biblical prophecy. This pursuit of indigenous wine thus bolsters a religiously inflected historical imagination of indigeneity that naturalizes the Jewish presence in this contested territory. This article shows that claims to authentic indigeneity emerging from viticulture entangle high-tech grape science, biblical prophecy and an aesthetic connection to the land so that indigenous wine and an indigenous identity are co-produced in a mutually constitutive process.     

Traditions of learning around the English Battle of the Books

This article calls for a reassessment of the Battle of the Books by arguing that the dispute did not simply oppose imitators of the ancients and supporters of modern critical scholarship, but that many scholars and critics were also attempting to support the authority of the ancients through their philological methods. A deep undercurrent of concern about the methods of philology can be traced in the development of biblical and patristic scholarship in the late seventeenth century. The article further emphasizes how the satirists (Swift especially) were aware of this strand of criticism, and yet how they hid their debt to it in order to portray textual criticism as a whole as a pedantic exercise. The Battle of the Books should therefore not be seen as a straightforward opposition between “supporters of the ancients” and “supporters of the moderns,” but as contention between doctrine and reason.     

New Light on the Medieval Gough Map of Britain

Remarkably little is known about the earliest surviving separate-sheet medieval map of Britain that takes its name from its former owner, Richard Gough (1735–1809), and that has been variously dated to between 1300 and 1400, and later. It presents a sophisticated cartographical image at a time when detailed maps of individual regions were almost unknown in Europe, yet nothing is agreed about its possible origins, context (ecclesiastical or secular), or why and how it was compiled. In the belief that historical interpretation has to stem from an intimate knowledge of the map as artefact—the state of the parchment, nature of the inks, palaeography—as well as image, an informal study group of historians and scientists (the Gough Map Panel) was convened in 2012 to examine the map through high resolution digital reproduction, hyperspectral analysis, three-dimensional analysis and Raman pigment analysis. Although the study is still ongoing, much that is new has been discovered, notably about the way features were marked on the map, Gough’s application to the map of a damaging reagent to render place-names readable, and the extent to which the original map (now dated to c.1400), although never completed, was nonetheless reworked on two different occasions in the fifteenth century, effectively creating two further maps. These and other findings are summarized here to encourage the further study of the map’s features that is needed before it can be fully understood.     

Caspar Vopel's Ventures in Sixteenth-Century Celestial Cartography

ABSTRACT

This paper concerns the undertakings in celestial cartography of the sixteenth-century Cologne cartographer Caspar Vopel. Copies of his printed celestial globe and of the celestial maps included on his world map are also described. Vopel's celestial mappings display his extraordinary interest in astronomical myths through a series of conspicuous iconographic features. In particular, Vopel's introduction of the images of Antinous and Coma Berenices is revealed to have been inspired by a humanist edition of the Ptolemaic star catalogue. Finally, a study of the celestial maps on the copies of Vopel's world map by Valvassore (1558) and by Van den Putte (1570) shows that these represent different editions of Vopel's world map and that the celestial maps on the world map of Matteo Pagano were in turn copied from those on the world map of Valvassore.     

Jewish conditions,theories of nationalism: cartographical notes

Thinkers with Jewish backgrounds contributed powerfully to our understanding of nationalism. We examine the different Jewish conditions in East Central Europe and Russia at the end of the nineteenth and at the start of the twentieth century so as to map the theories of nationalism that resulted. Four such theories are identified, each illustrated with reference to particular thinkers.     

Editorial

Abstract

The history and cult of the tomb of Habakkuk are discussed from the earliest references to the sacred site in Jewish sources of the 13th century to the present. The tomb is located near the biblical and Mishnaic-Talmudic village of Hukkok and the Arab village of Yaquq. After a survey of the site's early history, the sources that mention the venerated tomb are analyzed in detail. Since the 13th century, the place has been part of an itinerary of sacred sites visited by Jewish pilgrims, who performed prescribed rites at set times of the year, or paid homage as individuals. Side by side with these pilgrims was the local Muslim community, which participated both in the cult and in the upkeep of the sacred place — a participation that is not mentioned in the sources and may be deduced only from very late sources. In 1948, the village of Yaquq was abandoned, and the outcome of its abandonment and the history of the sacred site from the founding of the State of Israel to the present day are discussed in detail.     

Saxton's Maps of England and Wales: The Accuracy of Anglia and Britannia and Their Relationship to Each Other and to the County Maps

ABSTRACT

From measurements of the graticules on Saxton's two general maps of England and Wales—the atlas map Anglia and the wall map Britannia—together with other evidence, it is argued that neither map was drawn according to any specific projection, but that both were effectively produced as ‘flat-earth’ maps with the graticules superimposed afterwards. Digital versions of Saxton's maps and of a modern map, the 1:1 million Ordnance Survey transport map, are used in a number of comparisons by means of the computer program MapAnalyst. These comparisons allow the scales of the two Saxton maps to be determined. They also show that the maps are of almost the same accuracy in terms of the positioning of settlements, typically within about 4.6 kilometres, in spite of a difference in scale of a factor of about 3.6. This fact and the direct comparison of the two Saxton maps in MapAnalyst show that they are basically the same map, and it is concluded that a version of the wall map was the first to be drawn and that Anglia is a reduced copy prepared for the atlas. The lengths of Saxton's miles as used on the two maps are calculated and compared with other determinations. The relationship between the two general maps and the county maps is briefly considered, and it is provisionally concluded that the relationship is a close one.     

城市人口地图编制指导思想、原则及指标体系

城市人口地图是以城市为基本制图单元的人口地图。编制城市人口地图应遵循以下指导思想:城市是国家经济力量的主体.是独特的经济地域;城市是国家高知识密集地区和精神文明的重要载体;城市对提高人口文化素质具有重要战略意义。城市人口地图的编制原则为以下几方面:科学性、实用性与艺术性相结合;提高地图容量,增加载负量,突出差别;疏密适中,取舍有度;图面的配置合理,色彩协调;精益求精、一丝不苟。城市人口地图编制中应建立科学的指标体系。     

A Paper City: On History,Maps, and Map Collections in 18th and 19th Century Paris

ABSTRACT

This essay considers how maps became implicated in historical inquiry, with particular reference to the city of Paris. Three interrelated episodes are discussed, from the early eighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century, each associated with specific mapmakers and collectors whose activities shaped the early development of map history. These episodes reveal how maps were historicized in different ways in this period, initially as images created in the present to reveal the past and eventually as objects of historical interest in their own right. It is further argued that this intellectual shift was associated with a growing awareness, especially among state officials, that the study and collection of historic maps had important geopolitical implications. In tracing this story across three episodes in a single urban setting, the essay seeks to make larger observations about the relationship between the map as a visual representation, the map collection as an urban ‘assemblage’ of geographical information, and the city as a physical environment.