Is there any interest in Nehemiah 5?

Abstract

It is generally held that the issue addressed by Nehemiah in Neh 5, 6–11 was that the wealthy of the restored community were charging interest or usury from their poorer fellow Jews. This article contends that a better sense is gained by understanding the Hebrew roots na?a and nasah as meaning “to have (or “press") a claim on” instead of “to lend”. It can then be seen that the situation facing Nehemiah was one of the wealthy making inappropriate demands for repayment of loans in a time of financial stringency, demands which were causing severe hardship to the less fortunate members of the community.     

Detecting Paris: The character of the city in Eugène Sue's Les Mystères de Paris (1842-1843)

Paris has been described as the central character of Eugène Sue's best-seller, Les Mystères de Paris. However, the opening image of la Cité, which evoked the slums as a dark continent for the intrepid bourgeois explorer to discover, has perpetuated the idea that Sue's Paris is limited to a stylised gothic underworld. This article investigates both these perceptions by examining the nature and contrasts of the capital as Sue presents it, and by suggesting some of the ways in which the city facilitates melodrama, intrigue and social comment. It argues that, despite focusing on isolated parts of the capital rather than the city as a whole, Sue's representation of Paris offers wider insights into the workings of the modern city which are often overlooked.     

Excavations at Lismahon,Co. Down

Abstract

There is a Growing recognition that introduced species are direct records of cultural activity and that studies of their biogeography have the potential to tell us about patterns of human migration, trade and even ideology. In England the fallow deer (Dama dama dama) is one of the earliest and most successful animal introductions, whose establishment has traditionally been attributed to the Normans. However, recent investigations of Old English place names have raised the possibility that the term *pohha/pocca relates to fallow deer, suggesting that the species was widely established in the Anglo-Saxon landscape. This suggestion deserves serious consideration as it has implications for our understanding both of AngloSaxon society and the impact of the Norman Conquest. This paper therefore presents a critical review of the literary, iconographic, place-name and zooarchaeological evidence for fallow deer in early medieval England and beyond.     

New Methods on Old Castles: Generating New Ways of Seeing

THE USE of new methods on old castles generates new ways of seeing and leads to new interpretations. Three types of analyses are demonstrated on four late 13th-century castles from North Wales. Feature Analysis invokes the use of a decision-tree to help in the determination of room function. Access Analysis via access diagrams is used to understand the functional organization of rooms within each castle. Finally, a Comparative Analysis employing access diagrams, plans, a table and a cumulative graph is performed to note developmental trends in the castle designs, to detect differences between the castles, and to lead to new interpretations or new working hypotheses.     

Excavations in the Church of St Augustine's Abbey,Canterbury 1955–58

THE EXCAVATION of Anglo-Saxon structures below the W. end of the 11th to 12th-century nave of the church of St Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury, occupied three seasons between and 1957. Further, small-scale, excavation took place subsequently on the site of the pre-Conquest church of Sts Peter and Paul to test particular points. The need for the excavations in 1955 arose unexpectedly out of routine consolidation of the upstanding remains (which are in the care of what is now the Department of the Environment), when there were discovered by chance the voussoirs of an arch a few inches below ground level in the ill-defined mass of masonry at the extreme SW. corner of the Norman church.     

A Pre-Norman Field-System at Hen Domen,Montgomery

SURVEY of a field, immediately north of the early Norman motte-and-bailey castle of Hen Domen, Montgomery, revealed ridge-and-furrow, averaging 4 m. in width, cut by the outer ditch of the bailey. Excavation demonstrated that the ridge-and-furrow extended under the inner rampart of the bailey. Pollen analysis of the buried soil showed the former presence of cereals and the weeds of cultivation. A Carbon-14 date from charcoal in the buried soil reinforced the view that this field-system was in use before the Norman conquest.