The Epilogue in the Book of Qohelet

Abstract

Various objective reasons have led to the development of a vast and elaborate literature on the Epilogue in the Book of Qohelet. This study presents a Sitz im Leben based approach to the Epilogue, which capitalizes on the known historical reality during the Hellenistic period in which Qohelet lived. It views the Epilogue as an expression of Qohelet’s deep apprehensions of the challenges that faced his people. From this perspective it is natural to consider Qohelet as being the author of the Epilogue. The Epilogue is not about what he says in the book but what he has to say to his people. As a wise man concerned with the welfare of his people he urges them: keep records, though it is wearisome; be aware that secrets would be leaked; fear God; and, obey His commandments. These are his essentials for survival.     

浅析瑞士银行业发展的原因

瑞士银行运用传统的诚信体制,使用高级的保密制度,利用优秀的服务质量,采用完备的管理技术,应用先进的金融设备,通过几代人的不断努力创新后,创造了无与伦比的银行文化。目前在银行这个重要的服务领域内,很少有一个国家能够像瑞士那样称霸长达上百年的。     

Security and the shaping of identity for nuclear specialists

Atomic energy developed from 1940 as a subject shrouded in secrecy. Identified successively as a crucial element in military strategy, national status and export aspirations, the research and development of atomic piles (nuclear chain-reactors) were nurtured at isolated installations. Like monastic orders, new national laboratories managed their specialist workers in occupational environments that were simultaneously cosseted and constrained, defining regional variants of a new state-managed discipline: reactor technology. This paper discusses the significance of security in defining the new subject in the USA, UK and Canada – wartime allies with similar political traditions distinct but trajectories in this field during the Cold War. The intellectual borders and content of the subject developed differently in each country, shaped under the umbrella of secrecy by disparate clusters of expertise, industrial traditions, and national goals. The nascent cadre was contained until the mid 1950s by classified publications and state-sponsored specialist courses. The early context of high security filtered its members and capped enduringly both their professional aspirations and public engagement.     

Returned to Sender: Some Predicaments of Re‐indigenisation

ABSTRACT It is some 40 years since Australia officially re‐indigenised its Aborigines, at the same time giving rise to cultures of indigenism in the community at large. For those who lived in the closely settled areas, re‐indigenisation entails a new positioning vis‐à‐vis what can be recovered of traditional practices and places, but also vis‐a‐vis non‐indigenous people involved in indigenism. The paper recounts the response of one such indigenous group to the possibility of learning secrets that had long been known to white people, but not to them.     

‘Operation Legacy’: Britain’s Destruction and Concealment of Colonial Records Worldwide

The end of the British Empire in the mid-twentieth century was accompanied by a large-scale rearrangement of sensitive colonial records worldwide. A great number of these records were destroyed and a sizeable portion sent to Britain to be kept secret. This article advances studies of this policy, eventually code-named ‘Operation Legacy’, by reading the ‘migrated archives’ that have been newly discovered and declassified in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) 141 series. It asks where the policy was decided, for what reason and how it was carried out. Sources suggest that the policy was not planned in the Colonial Office in London and delivered to the colonies in a hierarchical fashion, but, rather, significant elements of the policy were developed in the colonial governments overseas in response to each local context. The general idea was to save Britain’s honour and to protect its collaborators. However, the limitations in terms of time and manpower often prevented the officers from putting sufficient thought into the actual screening of the documents. At the same time, some officers demonstrated a level of historical awareness regarding their actions. The episode reminds us that the official mind as it relates to decolonisation is to be understood not only by reference to the highest levels of strategic planning but also in terms of how it worked at the lower levels, in the colonial administrations on the ground.     

The Last Assignment: David Atlee Phillips and the Birth of CIA Public Relations

In recent years, scholars of international history and intelligence have argued that, since the 1990s, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been engaged in public-relations campaigns to promote its image. As evidence of this, they point to the CIA's willingness to provide more briefings to the media, its greater engagement with Hollywood, and the appearance of CIA staff historians at academic conferences. Drawing on recently declassified documents and unpublished correspondence from the private papers of CIA officers, this article will argue that efforts by the CIA in the realm of opinion-forming began much earlier than the existing historiography dictates. In the 1970s, embarrassing revelations about CIA domestic operations prompted a host of loyal veterans, most notably David Atlee Phillips, to speak out in favour of the intelligence community as an indispensible, effective, and honourable arm of government. They did this by speaking at universities and by writing memoirs. It will be suggested that the Agency itself was initially reluctant to support the veterans, mindful of the need for secrecy, meaning that the frustrated veterans were required to operate in a strictly private capacity. By the end of the decade, however, attitudes at Langley had changed and perception management was finally put on a formal institutional footing. In charting the birth of CIA public relations, this article provides a fresh vista on the Agency's broader attitudes and policies towards secrecy and openness during the cold war and into the twenty-first century.     

‘Rushworth Shall Not Take Any Notes Here’: Journals,Debates and the Public, 1640–60

This article focuses on, and rethinks, the issue of parliamentary ‘secrecy’ during the mid 17th century, by comparing the official journals of the house of commons with the kinds of information that emerged in the public domain in the 1640s and 1650s, not least in printed newsbooks. It suggests that scholars have too readily assumed that MPs sought rigorously to uphold the principle that parliamentary proceedings were not fit matters for public consumption, and the idea that their activities at Westminster should be protected from the public gaze. It argues that this has involved paying excessive attention to occasional comments and orders which suggest that MPs resented public scrutiny of their activity, as well as a failure to distinguish between different motives for achieving ‘secrecy’, between attitudes to the availability of different kinds of information, and between principles and political practice. The aim of the article, in short, is to offer a more nuanced appreciation of the ways in which MPs sought to professionalise and formalise public access, even to the extent of rethinking ideas about political accountability.     

The ultimate return: Dissent,apostolic succession,and the renewed ministry of roman catholic women priests

ABSTRACT

Significant numbers of practising Roman Catholics dissent from the Church’s orthodox teachings, especially those relating to sex, gender and contraception. Many such dissenters even occupy positions of ecclesiastical authority themselves. This raises interesting questions about how dissent manifests differently in various Christian traditions; how disagreement about fundamental principles only become legible if expressed in particular ways. This paper draws on research on Roman Catholic Woman priests whose claim to sacerdotal legitimacy rests on their having been ordained in apostolic succession by bishops within the Roman Catholic Church. It asks how do women priests negotiate both difference and repetition at the very same time. The ethnography prompts deeper reflection on Christianity’s long history of dissent which I argue has been written from a predominantly male and Protestant perspective. One in which dissent that leads to institutional differentiation is prioritized over dissent borne quietly that seeks to contain itself.