Myths of Labor: Elements of an Economical Zoology

2014 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Iris Därmann
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
The Other ◽  
Reproductive Labor ◽  
Divine Power ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Penal Labor ◽  
The One

Labor is both punishment and curse.At least this is what the mythical scenes of division and exclusion in Hesiod and in the Old Testament dramatise.At the same time they can be regarded as symptoms of misogyny.Without doubt, those two mythical scenes and the divine power to curse and sentence have held their spell over the economic tractates from antiquity to the modern period. How do the ancient writings of economic theory—and specifically Aristotle’s Politics and Ethics—regulate female Pleonexia on the one hand, and the limitless penal labor imposed on men on the other? How in turn do the economic tractates of the modern period—and here specifically John Locke’s famous essays on the economy of labor—respond to the problem of female hybris on the one hand and the characteristical burden and suffering associated with labor on the other? What role does the differentiation and separation between free and unfree, productive and reproductive labor and, not least, the economic marginalisation of reproductive labor, play in this? And finally: In what way do »King Bee« and Queen Bee, Nurse Bee and Drone appear in this context as figures of an at once mythical and economic zoology, whose emblematic efficacy extends up to Bernard Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees?

Monotheism in Isaiah

2020 ◽  
pp. 218-248
Author(s):  
Matthias Albani
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
The Other ◽  
Divine Power ◽  
Crisis Situation ◽  
Catalytic Function ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Future ◽  
The One ◽  
Religious Crisis

The monotheistic confession in Isa 40–48 is best understood against the historical context of Israel’s political and religious crisis situation in the final years of Neo-Babylonian rule. According to Deutero-Isaiah, Yhwh is unique and incomparable because he alone truly predicts the “future” (Isa 41:22–29)—currently the triumph of Cyrus—which will lead to Israel’s liberation from Babylonian captivity (Isa 45). This prediction is directed against the Babylonian deities’ claim to possess the power of destiny and the future, predominantly against Bel-Marduk, to whom both Nabonidus and his opponents appeal in their various political assertions regarding Cyrus. According to the Babylonian conviction, Bel-Marduk has the universal divine power, who, on the one hand, directs the course of the stars and thus determines the astral omens and, on the other hand, directs the course of history (cf. Cyrus Cylinder). As an antithesis, however, Deutero-Isaiah proclaims Yhwh as the sovereign divine creator and leader of the courses of the stars in heaven as well as the course of history on earth (Isa 45:12–13). Moreover, the conflict between Nabonidus and the Marduk priesthood over the question of the highest divine power (Sîn versus Marduk) may have had a kind of “catalytic” function in Deutero-Isaiah’s formulation of the monotheistic confession.

Reformation and Judaism

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 20-30
Author(s):  
Gerbern S. Oegema
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
The Other ◽  
Christian Zionism ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Ambivalent Relationship ◽  
The One ◽  
State Of Israel ◽  
Initial Focus

The topic of this paper is the complex and ambivalent relationship between the Reformed Churches and Judaism, moving from a kind of Philo-Semitism to Christian Zionism and support for the State of Israel on the one hand, to missionary movements among Jews to anti-Judaism, and the contribution to the horrors of the Holocaust on the other hand. In between the two extremes stands the respect for the Old Testament and the neglect of the Apocrypha and other early Jewish writings. The initial focus of this article will be on what Martin Luther and Jean Calvin wrote about Judaism at the beginning of the Reformation over 500 years ago. Secondly, the article will deal with the influence of mission activity toward Jews and the emergence of Liberal Judaism as both scholarship and theology in the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. Lastly, the article will address the question of how the Holocaust and subsequent Jewish-Christian dialogue have changed the course of this relationship.

scholarly journals Mysticism and/in the Old Testament: Methodological orientation and a textual example

2015 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christo Lombaard
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Specific Aspect ◽  
The Other ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Mission History ◽  
The One ◽  
Interpretative Framework

This contribution is the second in a series on methodology and Biblical Spirituality. In the first article, ‘Biblical spirituality and interdisciplinarity: The discipline at cross-methodological intersection’, the matter was explored in relationship to the broader academic discipline of Spirituality. In this contribution, the focus is narrowed to the more specific aspect of mysticism within Spirituality Studies. It is not rare for Old Testament texts to be understood in relationship to mystical contexts. One the one hand, when Old Testament texts are interpreted from a mystical perspective, the methods with which such interpretations are studied are familiar. The same holds true, on the other hand, if texts in the Old Testament, dating from the Hellenistic period, are identified as mystic. However, African mission history has taught us that the Western interpretative framework, based on ancient Greek philosophical suppositions (most directly the concepts rendered by Plato and Aristotle) and rhetorical orientations, is so strong that it transposes that which it encounters in other cultures into its terms, thus rendering the initial cultural understandings inaccessible. This is precisely the case too with Old Testament texts dating from pre-Hellenistic times, identified as mystic. What are the methodological parameters required to understand such texts on their own terms? In fact, is such an understanding even possible?

scholarly journals Antonio Rosmini’s Social Ethics and his Relationship to German Thought

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-50
Author(s):  
Markus Krienke
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Market Economy ◽  
Cultural Distance ◽  
Social Ethics ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Market Economy ◽  
Ethical Thought ◽  
The One ◽  
Social Market

Abstract Putting the economic and social–ethical thought of Rosmini in relationship to the German tradition of social market economy, either a pertinent collocation of the liberal catholic thinker Rosmini or new perspectives for the concept of social market economy, which is in search for a new identity, have been made. The justification of this paper lies in the fact that Rosmini introduced the idea of social justice right in the sense of social market economy, on the one hand, and in the way in which the late 19th-centrury economic theory in Italy received his economic thought, on the other hand. Hence, despite his theoretical and cultural distance from Röpke, both have many interesting economic reflections in common.

scholarly journals Psalms and Liturgy: Their reception and contextualisation

2003 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 309-332
Author(s):  
G.P. Braulik
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Focus Of Attention ◽  
The Other ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Lord's Prayer ◽  
Historical View ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Canonical Text ◽  
The One ◽  
Old Testament Studies

In the interpretation of texts in modern Old Testament studies, a double change in perspective, which has important consequences for the liturgical use of the Psalms, is currently taking place. In the first reorientation, the movement is “from the hypothetically reconstructed ‘original’ text to the text written down in bookform and then to the canonical text”; in the second, the attention moves “from the text to the recipient”. On the one hand, the whole Psalter and its connec-tions with the totality of Holy Scripture are thus increasingly becoming the focus of attention. On the other hand, reception aesthetical, reader-oriented exegesis is overcoming the cleft caused by a purely historical view, in favour of a situational perspective. The article delineates this change and applies especially the first approach to the Psalms. The Psalter then appears neither as a mere lectionary nor primarily as a prayer text, but as a text for meditation. Its technique of the juxtaposition of certain Psalms (iuxtapositio) and of the chainage or concatenation of keywords (concatenatio) opens up new and diverse dimensions of meaning.This is illustrated according to Psalm 103. Its connections to its immediate context are first explained, upon which a few lines of canonical intertextuality within the whole Bible are traced. We are thus lead to recognise a certain multi-perspectivity, reaching from the Sinai pericope to the Lord’s prayer.

scholarly journals Van wie zegt de profeet dit? Een een-voudige vraag en een meervoudig antwoord

2005 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rein Bos
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
The Other ◽  
Biblical Criticism ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Christian Perspective ◽  
Practical Theological ◽  
The One ◽  
Christian Congregations ◽  
Single Question

Of whom does the prophet say this? A single question and a multifaceted answerTheologians seeking to preach Old Testament texts meaningful way in Christian congregations face a great challenge. On the one hand, very little has been written in homiletical textbooks about hermeneutical problems facing those who wish to read the Old Testament from the perspective of Christ’s life and death. On the other hand, advances in biblical criticism seemed to have made any such attempt problematic to begin with. In this article, the author attempts to provide a practical-theological contribution to this hermeneutical challenge by reconsidering the heuristic value of mediaeval fourfold interpretation of scriptural passages. By focussing on the servant song of deutero-Isaiah (53) in light of its reinterpretation in Acts 8, this paper aims to provide some suggestions on how Christological interpretation of the Old Testament can be done in a way that takes the original context seriously and is able to read the text from a Christian perspective without the one reading infringing on the other.

Travel Writing/Writing Travel to Report: Matthew Flinders to Evan Nepean from Coepang Bay Timor

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Polina Shvanyukova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Travel Writing ◽  
Travel Literature ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Professional Status ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The One ◽  
Textual Strategies

Texts authored by maritime explorers occupy a special place in the body of travel literature in English dealing with the exploration of the Pacific in the modern period. This article focuses on a specimen of scientific travel writing in epistolary form authored by Commander Matthew Flinders, the officer under whose command HMS Investigator completed the first circumnavigation of Australia in 1803. I analyse Matthew Flinders’s official despatch to Evan Nepean, Secretary of the Admiralty at the time, as an example of early nineteenth-century epistolary travel writing, paying special attention to the textual strategies employed by Flinders in order to produce a coherent and accurate travel account, on the one hand, and to negotiate his professional status and persona with his interlocutor(s), on the other.

Prediction and economic theory

1986 ◽  
Vol 407 (1832) ◽  
pp. 3-23 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
The Other ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
The Cross ◽  
The One ◽  
Fundamental Tension ◽  
Theory Use

The role of prediction in economics involves a fundamental tension. On the one hand, much of economics is concerned with prediction. On the other, economic predictions are notoriously unreliable. It is, in fact, tempting to see the economist as the trapeze-performer who tends to miss the cross-bar, or as the jockey who keeps falling off his horse. Whether or not such characterization is fair, there can be no doubt that the nature and genesis of this fundamental tension, and its implications, do call for systematic analysis and assessment. The aim of this paper is to attempt a brief examination of these issues. There is a sequence of questions to be faced. How central is prediction to economics ? Why are economic predictions so difficult ? What techni­ques does economic theory use to cope with these difficulties ? Are these techniques sound ? How does economic theory relate to practice ? I shall take up these questions in turn.

From Esther to Kwezi

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 471-487 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Juliana Claassens ◽  
Amanda Gouws
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Patriarchal Society ◽  
Collaborative Engagement ◽  
Multiple Levels ◽  
The One

This article seeks to reflect on the issue of sexual violence in the context of the twenty year anniversary of democracy in South Africa bringing together views from the authors’ respective disciplines of Gender and the Bible on the one hand and Political Science on the other. We will employ the Old Testament Book of Esther, which offers a remarkable glimpse into the way a patriarchal society is responsible for multiple levels of victimization, in order to take a closer look at our own country’s serious problem of sexual violence. With this collaborative engagement the authors contribute to the conversation on understanding and resisting the scourge of sexual violence in South Africa that has rendered a large proportion of its citizens voiceless.

‘Knowledge’ in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Matthew 11:25–30

1953 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 113-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. D. Davies
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Dead Sea Scrolls ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
The Other ◽  
Common Pattern ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The One

Interpreters of Matthew 11:25–30 have fallen roughly into two classes. On the one hand, there are those who have been content to explain the passage solely in the light of the Old Testament, and, on the other, those who have traced in it a common pattern, ultimately deriving from Eastern theosophy, which emerges in Ecclesiasticus 51, and elsewhere, and reappears in Matthew 11:25–30, through the agency of certain primitive Christian thiasoi of a ‘mystical’ type. Not far removed from this is the view that, both on account of style and content, the passage is to be understood in the light of Hellenistic Gnosticism.

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