“AND DAVID PERCEIVED” (2 SAMUEL 5,2)

Abstract

2 Samuel 5,12 is shown to be important. It does not merely repeat verse 10 and is not an addendum that is poorly integrated into the literary unit.

Its importance is that it presents David's inner world: he ascribes his success to the Lord, Who acts for the benefit of His people. This alludes to two aspects of the monarchical covenant in Israel: king-the Lord and king-people. In both realms David is perceived as embodying the book's criteria for the ideal leader.

In addition, the language of the verse is examined against the background of the entire book of Samuel. The verse suggests that David is Saul's successor (whereas verse 10 suggests that he is Samuel's heir).     

Transatlantic Trade and the Coastal Area of Pre-Liberia

Transatlantic trade affected the coastal area of West Africa that became Liberia in 1822. The impact of that trade has confused historians of the region, particularly the social and economic effects the trade had on the Vai, Kru, Glebo, and other ethnic groups. Before the arrival of Europeans in the fifteenth century, coastal pre-Liberia had been affected by internal and external social dynamics. The Mande, Mel, and Kwa were the first linguistic groups to reside in the region. The earliest home of the Mande has been traced to the area north of the Niger River, but there is disagreement as to the origins of the Mel and Kwa. All three linguistic groups contributed to population growth. Indeed, such Mel-speaking ethnic groups as the Kissi and Gola, and such Kwa-speakers as the Dei, Bassa, Kran, Kru, and Glebo came to pre-Liberia in about 988 A.D. The Mande-speaking groups, including the Mende, Bandi, Loma, and Vai, settled long after the other two linguistic groups had moved there. The Vai, isolated from other Mande-speakers for over two thousand years, reached the coastal area in the sixteenth century.¹     

Tomorrow’s Country: Practice-oriented principles for Indigenous cultural fire research in south-east Australia

First Nations peoples are revitalising diverse cultural fire practices and knowledge. Institutional and societal recognition of these practices is growing. Yet there has been little academic research on these fire practices in south-east Australia, let alone research led by Aboriginal people. We are a group of Indigenous and settler academics, practitioners, and experts focused on cultural fire management in the Victorian Loddon Mallee region. Using interviews and workshops, we facilitated knowledge sharing and discussion. In this paper, we describe three practice-oriented principles to develop and maintain collaborations across Aboriginal groups, researchers, and government in the Indigenous-led revitalisation of fire on Country: relationships (creating reciprocity and trust), Country (working with place and people), and power (acknowledging structures and values). Collaborations based on these principles will be unique to each temporal, social, cultural, and geographic context. Considering our findings, we acknowledge the challenges that exist and the opportunities that emerge to constructively hold space to grow genuinely collaborative research that creates change. We suggest that the principles we identify can be applied by anyone wanting to form genuine collaborations around the world as the need for social–ecological justice grows.     

Tunnel engineering in the Iron Age: geoarchaeology of the Siloam Tunnel,Jerusalem

The Siloam Tunnel (ST) is the best-identified biblical structure that can be entered today. We use geological, structural, and chemical features of ST and its internal deposits to show that it is an authentic engineering project, without any pre-existing natural conduit that could have guided its excavators. Radiometrically and historically dated to ∼700 BCE, ST pinpoints the technological advance in leveling techniques that was essential for the construction of such a long tunnel without intermediate shafts. A combination of geological and archaeological evidence demonstrates that the circuitous route of ST and the final meeting of the two excavating teams are associated with continuous modifications of the plan to allow acoustic communication between hewers and the surface teams. Hydraulic plaster was applied throughout the tunnel in order to seal voids of dissolution and tectonic origin. Organic material accidentally entrapped in the plaster was carbon 14 dated, and speleothems were dated by U–Th, both corroborating the historic and epigraphic evidence ascribing the engineering advance in tunneling techniques to the Judahite King Hezekiah.     

Deliberating the Holocaust and the Nakba: disruptive empathy and binationalism in Israel/Palestine

This article develops a theoretical framework for shared and inclusive Jewish and Palestinian deliberation on the memories of the Holocaust and the Nakba. It argues that a joint Arab-Jewish public deliberation on the traumatic memories of these two events is not only possible, however challenging and disruptive it may be, but also fundamental for producing an egalitarian and inclusive ethics of binationalism in Israel/Palestine. In order to develop this conceptual framework, we first present some examples, most notably Elias Khoury's epic novel Gate of the sun (Bab al-Shams), which bring the memories of the Holocaust and the Nakba together in a fashion that disrupts the dominant, antagonistic and exclusionary Israeli and Palestinian national narratives. We then interpret Dominick LaCapra's notion of ‘empathic unsettlement’, which transforms ‘otherness’ from a problem to be disposed of into a moral and emotional challenge, as a political concept that best captures and explains the disruptive potential of a joint deliberation on these traumatic events. The figure of the refugee, constitutive of Palestinian and Jewish histories and identities, we suggest, serves as a herald of this binational and disruptive ethics. We conclude that ‘empathic unsettlement’ also has a productive and transformative potential which gives further (however partial and initial) meaning, shape and content to the ethics and democratic politics of binationalism heralded by the refugee.     

Nahua Patterns of Colonization in Maya Towns of Guatemala, 1524 to 1582: The Indigenous Records

This article seeks to further contribute to our understanding of the outcomes of earlier Nahua-Spanish alliances after Guatemala was pacified. The richly documented struggles of the Maya-Pok'omam communities around Lake Amatitlan in Guatemala between 1524 and 1580 reveal - in microcosm - the larger processes some of them stretching back into the pre-contact period that Mesoamerican scholars call ‘conquest-after-conquest.’ As this essay highlights, fifteen years after the initial phase of the Spanish conquest of Guatemala had ended, Nahua conquistadors from Central Mexico initiated their own colonization of Maya-Pok'omam towns, mobilizing both Nahua and Kaqchikel migrant groups to settle there. Within these Maya towns, the Nahua conquistadors impinged upon Maya economic assets, sharing them with their Dominican allies while maintaining political and social control over their local Maya subjects. Nahua economic and political encroachment of Maya assets finally brought about distinct and recognizable currents of Maya dissent against their foreign overlords, in parallel to the revival of local historical legacies of self-rule.     

Notes,Documents, and Bibliographies

Documenting the Great Game: ‘World Policy’ and the ‘Turbulent Frontier’ in the 1890s; Gordon Martel

Recent Work on the Great Game in Asia; Philip Amos     

Contrasting Resistance and Alliances in the Ethnic State of Napiniaca,Chiapas (Mexico) (1521–1590): The Anthropological and Historical Aspects

The present article aims to re-evaluate the gamut of ostensible alliances forged between colonial subordinates and those who subordinated them in the ethnic state of Napiniaca, Mexico, as well as identify the social spaces and contexts in which such alliances were formed and ultimately fell apart. It will do so by attempting to “unwrap” indigenous strategies and forms of resistance based on the admittedly limited texts we currently possess, in light of modern research and theory in both (ethno) history and anthropology.