scholarly journals 'Deep is the well of the past': Reconsidering the origins of the Exodus motif in its cultural context

2013 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Raik Heckl

The article shows, that the stories of the Patriarchs as well as the Exodus-story are allochthonous traditions of origin. We find comparable stories in the neighboring cultures of Israel. Egypt as origin of human culture was of utmost importance in the Levant. Herodotus reports a myth of origin of the Phoenicians which is of particular interest in this respect. As far as it can be seen there are affinities between this tradition and the Exodus motif from the Hebrew Bible. This raises the question if we should read the Biblical traditions as part of the comprehensive cultural context of the Levant.

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 459-490
Author(s):  
Jason M. Silverman

Recurring themes and traditions within the biblical corpus have attracted much scholarship. This article uses P. T. Anderson’s Magnolia (1999) as a test case for the ways traditions may or may not interact, and what that means for ‘tradition history.’ While the film has many features which strike many viewers as biblical, the author-director denies prior knowledge of these connections. The film is analyzed in terms of structure, Anderson’s claimed sources, the American cultural context of the 1990s, and its biblical resonances. After assessing the import of these observations, the tradition history of Magnolia is compared to the tradition history of the exodus in the Hebrew Bible. Within the framework of attention to media contexts, the article concludes by noting the importance of authority, canon, and multiple lines of transmission. In so doing, our understanding of the transmission of traditions is problematized, and a broader, less text-centric paradigm is called for.


Author(s):  
Telesca Giuseppe

The ambition of this book is to combine different bodies of scholarship that in the past have been interested in (1) providing social/structural analysis of financial elites, (2) measuring their influence, or (3) exploring their degree of persistence/circulation. The final goal of the volume is to investigate the adjustment of financial elites to institutional change, and to assess financial elites’ contribution to institutional change. To reach this goal, the nine chapters of the book introduced here look at financial elites’ role in different European societies and markets over time, and provide historical comparisons and country and cross-country analysis of their adaptation and contribution to the transformation of the national and international regulatory/cultural context in the wake of a crisis or in a longer term perspective.


Sexualities ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 136346072199338
Author(s):  
Tiina Vares

Although theorizing and research about asexuality have increased in the past decade, there has been minimal attention given to the emotional impact that living in a hetero- and amato-normative cultural context has on those who identify as asexual. In this paper, I address this research gap through an exploration of the ‘work that emotions do’ (Sara Ahmed) in the everyday lives of asexuals. The study is based on 15 individual interviews with self-identified asexuals living in Aotearoa New Zealand. One participant in the study used the phrase, ‘the onslaught of the heteronormative’ to describe how he experienced living as an aromantic identified asexual in a hetero- and amato-normative society. In this paper I consider what it means and feels like to experience aspects of everyday life as an ‘onslaught’. In particular, I look at some participants’ talk about experiencing sadness, loss, anger and/or shame as responses to/effects of hetero- and amato-normativity. However, I suggest that these are not only ‘negative’ emotional responses but that they might also be productive in terms of rethinking and disrupting hetero- and amato-normativity.


Author(s):  
Jakub Sadowski

AbstractIn the renewed Russian Fundamental Law, in addition to a number of provisions introducing changes to the political system, there are also statements of programmatic importance, as well as several provisions with symbolic and identity function. In this article these provisions are subject to functional and semiotic-cultural analysis. Particular emphasis has been placed on legally irrelevant content transmitted by the new regulations, on their semantic connections with the content of the preamble and on their cultural context. The research procedure carried out allows us to state that, compared with the 1993 text, the Russian Constitution in its current version participates to a much greater extent in the complex system of transmission of symbolic content, as well as the narratives that contribute to social memory, cultural and historical identity. In doing so, it goes beyond its genre limitations, opening the basic text to the functions assigned to the preamble. In the fragments I have analysed in the paper there are undoubtedly functional and genre disturbances, and with them changes the mode of semiosis of the legal text, both in its normative and programmatic form. Renewed Constitution is the case in which a legal text, by its very nature designing the possible future world, does so through ideas about the past.


2010 ◽  
Vol 30 (6) ◽  
pp. 1055-1072 ◽  
Author(s):  
SHANNON MCDERMOTT

ABSTRACTOver the past 50 years, self-neglect among older people has been conceptualised in both social policy and the academy as a social problem which is defined in relation to medical illness and requires professional intervention. Few authors, however, have analysed the concept of self-neglect in relation to critical sociological theory. This is problematic because professional judgements, which provide the impetus for intervention, are inherently influenced by the social and cultural context. The purpose of this article is to use critical theory as a framework for interpreting the findings from a qualitative study which explored judgements in relation to older people in situations of self-neglect made by professionals. Two types of data were collected. There were 125 hours of observations at meetings and home assessments conducted by professionals associated with the Community Options Programme in Sydney, Australia, and 18 professionals who worked with self-neglecting older people in the community gave in-depth qualitative interviews. The findings show that professional judgements of self-neglect focus on risk and capacity, and that these perceptions influence when and how interventions occur. The assumptions upon which professional judgements are based are then further analysed in relation to critical theory.


2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 38-55
Author(s):  
Riikka Korppi-Tommola

Abstract The reception of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and John Cage’s visit to Helsinki in 1964 revealed local, Finnish aesthetic priorities. In the dance critics’ texts, Cunningham’s style seemed to create confusion, for example, with its mixture of styles visà-vis avant-garde music. Music critics, mainly avant-garde and jazz musicians, had high expectations for this theatrical event. In their reviews, comparisons were made between Cunningham’s style and the productions of Anna Halprin. In this paper, I analyse the cultural perspectives of this encounter and utilize the theoretical framework of Thomas Postlewait’s pattern of cultural contexts. Additionally, I follow David M. Levin’s argumentation about changes in aesthetics. Local and foreign conventions become emphasized in this kind of a transnational, intercultural encounter. Time and place are involved in the interpretations of the past as well as later in the processes of forming periods.


Author(s):  
Mochammad Arief Wicaksono ◽  

Islamic diaspora throughout the world has its own characteristics depending on cultural context in each region. Observing the characteristics of the entry process and the rise of Islam in Java in the past, Indonesia can be viewed significantly through a linguistic perspective. By focusing on the narratives of how Islam was constructed in Java by kiai, we will be able to understand that the pattern of the entry process and the rise of Islam in Java emerged through“language diplomacy.” There are various symbols which later became the symbol system in Islamic languages that were contextualized to Javanese language and knowledge systems. In other words, I see that language in this context is a symbol system. These symbols are a strategy of how Islam was “planted” and developed in Java. I will compare the symbol system of the language in the Quran as the Great Tradition of Islam with a symbol system on the narratives that a kiai expressed in Javanese society as the Little Tradition. By taking some narratives that the kiai gave to the Javanese Moslems in East Java region, this paper argues that the linguistic aspect in some narratives and Quran recitation which has the symbolic system of the language have an important role in planting and developing Islam in Java. This paper is based on ethnographic research-participant observation among Nahdlatul Ulama Muslim society in East Java, Indonesia and reviews Islamic narratives in society as an important unit of analysis.


2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-27
Author(s):  
Daniel Pioske

Over the past twenty years our understanding of Philistine Gath's history (Tell es-Safl) has been transformed by what has been revealed through the site's early Iron Age remains. But what has received much less attention is the effect these ruins have on how we read references to the location within the Hebrew Bible. The intent of this study is to draw on the archaeological evidence produced from Tell es-Safl as an interpretive lens by which to consider the biblical portrayal of the site rendered in the book of Samuel, where the material traces of more amicable associations between Gath and highland populations invite us to reconsider the city's depiction in this ancient literary work.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jude Ezimakor

How do faith and culture interact? Using the example of the Igbo tribe in Nigeria, Jude Ezimakor explains their interplay and shows how the Christian faith can connect with human culture to give an authentic testimony of faith in concrete everyday experience. In particular, he explores the question of who Jesus Christ is for a particular community of believers and what meaning he can convey in their contemporary lives and their particular cultural life situations. In this way, Christology begins to merge Orthodoxy and Orthopraxis with the question: How does faith come alive in a particular social-cultural context in order to develop it?


Author(s):  
Fons J. R. van de Vijver

Adaptations refer to the process of translating and adjusting an instrument to a new cultural context, which usually goes beyond close translations and involves various changes to the instrument in order to increase its cultural and linguistic adequacy. A brief historical overview of approaches is presented that have been used in the past 75 years, illustrating how the traditional emphasis on linguistic aspects has shifted to multidisciplinary efforts; modern test adaptations are often made by teams. A taxonomy of adaptations is then presented, distinguishing between conceptual, cultural, linguistic, and measurement reasons for adjusting an instrument. A good adaptation integrates these four types. Various guidelines for adapting instruments are described, such as the ITC Guidelines. The authors conclude that test adaptations have largely replaced the concept of test translations and that test adaptations can be used in large-scale surveys and can accommodate instruments that cover both general (universal) and local components.


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