The known unknown: Revelation and the unconscious

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nora Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Special Form ◽  
Wide Field ◽  
Mental Images ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Depth Psychological ◽  
The Bible ◽  
12Th Century ◽  
Generic Term ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Epistemic Function

With this essay, the author attempts a depth-psychological interpretation of knowledge of religious revelation by examining two narrative parables (amṯāl) from the Koran on the ›subject level‹, which in Sura 36 and Sura 18 belong to the oldest Koranic examples listed under the generic term maṯal. Following in the footsteps of Eugen Drewermann, who with his work Tiefenpsychologie und Exegese opened the doors wide for a depth-psychological interpretation of the Bible and at the same time rejected the promise of salvation of historical-critical interpretations, the author also goes into the wide field of the unconscious to uncover mental images of individuation processes hidden behind the often allegorical Koranic ›experiences of revelation‹. In the context of psychoanalysis and with a view to the genre of the maṯal, she discusses the epistemic function of parables, as they also appear in the Old and New Testaments, and describes them as a special form of teaching that, due to its pictorial nature, always reveal an »abyss to not-knowing«. The aim of the parable is therefore not to convey a predetermined and teachable knowledge; rather the intended act of understanding lies in not knowing or the unconscious, so that psychological developments can be set in motion on the basis of subjective human experiences and inner processes can be made recognizable. Using the example of the parable from Sura 36, she also shows that a depth-psychological interpretation is likewise a part of the Islamic exegesis tradition, especially if one takes into account the Sufi commentaries, which also contain interpretations on the subject level, as can be seen in the Tafsīr of Pseudo-Ibn ʿArabī from the 12th century.

The first century of English protestantism and the growth of national identity

1982 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 309-317 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Fletcher
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
First Century ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
John Foxe ◽  
Religious Attitudes ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Religious Zeal

Their sense of national identity is not something that men have been in the habit of directly recording. Its strength or weakness, in relation to commitment to international causes or to localist sentiment, can often only be inferred by examining political and religious attitudes and personal behaviour. So far as the early modern period is concerned, the subject is hazardous because groups and individuals must have varied enormously in the extent to which national identity meant something to them or influenced their lives. The temptation to generalise must be resisted. It is all too easy to suppose that national identity became well established in England in the Tudor century, when a national culture, based on widespread literacy among gentry, yeomen and townsmen, flowered as it had never done before, when the bible was first generally available in English, when John Foxe produced his celebrated Acts and Monuments, better known as the Book of Martyrs. Recent work reassessing the significance of Foxe’s account of the English reformation and other Elizabethan polemical writings provdes a convenient starting point for this brief investigation of some of the connections between religious zeal and national consciousness between 1558 and 1642.

Terms of Scriptural Interpretation: A Study in Hebrew Semantics

1962 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Gertner
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Behaviour ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Scriptural Interpretation ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Religious Doctrine ◽  
Divine Wisdom ◽  
The Subject

In the last centuries before the current era and in the early centuries after its beginning the major intellectual and literary activity in the realms (first) of the Jewish and (later) of the Christian communities was wholly centred in the field of interpretation. The OT, as the mainspring and foundation of all religious thought and teaching in those days and in those spheres, was the subject of this interpretation activity. In both the Jewish and the Christian world the Bible was considered to be not only holy and authoritative, but also, and this is in our context more important, the only and exclusive source of divine religious doctrine and of good ethical behaviour. Also historical events, political or religious, were seen, even foreseen, and evaluated from the aspect of this holy source of divine wisdom and planning.

Ruth

1975 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward F. Campbell , Jr.
Keyword(s):  
Generation Gap ◽  
Sensitive Analysis ◽  
King David ◽  
Moving Force ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Times ◽  
The City ◽  
And Linguistics

Ruth, a tale of human kindness and just dealing far beyond the norm, contains elements that for centuries have been the subject of debate. With a sprightly translation and a commentary rich in informed speculation, Professor Campbell considers the questions of layman and scholar alike. Finding no overt mighty acts, the layman asks, “Why was Ruth included in the Bible at all? Where is God?” Professor Campbell shows that God is not only present throughout but is indeed the moving force behind all the developments of the story. Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz each act as God to each other, by taking extraordinary responsibility and performing extraordinary acts of kindness. And it is God who is responsible for the series of coincidences on which the plot hinges. The scholar’s questions deal with such matters as purpose, date, and genre. Professor Campbell’s research into ancient customs and linguistics suggests to him that Ruth is a historical novelette, entertaining and instructive, composed not long after the reign of King David, during the time of Solomon or within the subsequent century. Professor Campbell demonstrates the storyteller’s skill with sensitive analysis of form, pacing, and wordplay. By delving into word origins and nuances he shows how convincingly the characters are developed. One instance: Naomi and Boaz use obsolescent language, emphasizing the generation gap between them and Ruth. In addition, the illustrations help the reader understand unfamiliar elements of the story—the setting, the agricultural seasons and harvesting, the clothing of the times, the city gate where elders and interested villagers gather to make sure that all is done in a just and godly way.

Mutando mutanda: Notes on Anomalies

2021 ◽  
Vol 80 (5) ◽  
pp. 5
Author(s):  
Vadim Krysko
Keyword(s):  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
Old Russian ◽  
Plural Form ◽  
12Th Century ◽  
The Subject

The article analyzes some examples of ancient Slavic (Old Russian and Old Bulgarian) writing which in the scholarly literature are considered as unique exceptions or early innovations: the reduplication of pronoun tъ and the vocative form of the subject in the Tale of Bygone Years, the use of the verb techi (teshhi) ‘run’ in a causative meaning, the use of the accusative of time in an Old Bulgarian inscription, the *o-stem nominative plural form of the *ā-stem noun ubiitsa in an Old Russian inscription of the 12th century. Attention to a wider range of sources and to the written tradition to which these texts belong reveals that the alleged anomalous forms either represent regular formations or demonstrate a distortion of the text.

Global Thefts of Biblical Narrative

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald West
Keyword(s):  
Third World ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
Biblical Story ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Narratives ◽  
African Experience ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Family Resemblances ◽  
African Perspective ◽  
The Subject

This chapter takes its starting point from the African experience, across a range of African contexts, of Africa as both the subject and object of biblical narrative. When the Bible came to Africa, it came with well-established colonial metanarratives, constructed in part from biblical narratives. These colonial metanarratives were in turn partly reconstructed by the engagement with African others, from both a European and an African perspective along two diverging trajectories, with biblical narrative making a contribution to both. This chapter focuses on the capacity of biblical narrative, biblical story, to be both incorporated into “local” metanarratives and to shape these metanarratives. The contexts that are the focus of this chapter are largely “third world” contexts, across which there are significant family resemblances and important contextual differences.

The Politics of Sacred Lineages in 19th-Century Central Asia: Descent Groups Linked to Khwaja Ahmad Yasavi in Shrine Documents and Genealogical Charters

1999 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 507-530 ◽  
Author(s):  
Devin DeWeese
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Religious History ◽  
The West ◽  
14Th Century ◽  
12Th Century ◽  
Scant Attention ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Town

Khwaja Ahmad Yasavi, the celebrated saint of Central Asia who lived most likely in the late 12th century, is perhaps best known as a Sufi shaykh and (no doubt erroneously) as a mystical poet; his shrine in the town now known as Turkistan, in southern Kazakhstan, has been an important religious center in Central Asia at least since the monumental mausoleum that still stands was built, by order of Timur, at the end of the 14th century. While Yasavi's shrine, owing to the predilections of Soviet scholarship, was extensively studied by architectural historians and archeologists, its role in social and religious history has received scant attention; at the same time, Ahmad Yasavi's legacy as a Sufi shaykh has itself been the subject of considerable misunderstanding, resulting from two related tendencies in past scholarship: to approach the Yasavi tradition as little more than a sideline to the historically dominant Naqshbandiyya, and to regard it as a phenomenon definable in “ethnic” terms, as limited to an exclusively Turkic environment. Even less well known in the West, however, is one aspect of Ahmad Yasavi's legacy that is of increasing significance in contemporary Central Asia, as the region's religious heritage is recovered and redefined in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse—namely, the distinctive familial communities that define themselves in terms of descent from Yasavi's family, and have historically claimed specific prerogatives associated with Yasavi's shrine.

scholarly journals ABUSE OF LAW AS A SPECIAL FORM OF IMPLEMENTATION OF LEGAL NORMS

2020 ◽  
pp. 191-198
Author(s):  
Н.И. Полищук
Keyword(s):  
Special Form ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Abuse Of Law

Аннотация. Статья посвящена теоретико-прикладному анализу злоупотребления правом, как особой формы его реализации, которая характеризуется тем, что наделенный правовыми полномочиями субъект, создавая видимость своего правомерного поведения, недозволенным способом нарушает границы действия правовых норм. Annotation. The article is devoted to the theoretical and applied analysis of abuse of law as a special form of its implementation, which is characterized by the fact that the subject endowed with legal powers, creating the appearance of its lawful behavior, violates the boundaries of legal norms in an unauthorized way.

scholarly journals Celestial Spheres

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 168-186
Author(s):  
Austin M. Freeman
Keyword(s):  
Dimensional Space ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Good Evidence ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Higher Dimensional ◽  
Spatial Dimensions ◽  
Modern Physics ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Three Dimensional Space

Angels probably have bodies. There is no good evidence (biblical, philosophical, or historical) to argue against their bodiliness; there is an abundance of evidence (biblical, philosophical, historical) that makes the case for angelic bodies. After surveying biblical texts alleged to demonstrate angelic incorporeality, the discussion moves to examine patristic, medieval, and some modern figures on the subject. In short, before the High Medieval period belief in angelic bodies was the norm, and afterwards it is the exception. A brief foray into modern physics and higher spatial dimensions (termed “hyperspace”), coupled with an analogical use of Edwin Abbott’s Flatland, serves to explain the way in which appealing to higher-dimensional angelic bodies matches the record of angelic activity in the Bible remarkably well. This position also cuts through a historical equivocation on the question of angelic embodiment. Angels do have bodies, but they are bodies very unlike our own. They do not have bodies in any three-dimensional space we can observe, but are nevertheless embodied beings.

scholarly journals Mikołaj Rej jako wzorzec dla pisarza Józefa Wereszczyńskiego (syna podsędka chełmskiego)

2008 ◽  
pp. 223-240
Author(s):  
Halina Wiśniewska ◽  
Keyword(s):  
16Th Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Subject

The subject of the article is the political-moral treatise by Józef Wereszczyński entitled “Reguła to jest nauka abo postępek dobrego życia króla każdego chrześcijańskiego” from 1587 as the imitation of ”Żywot człowieka poćciwego” by Mikołaj Rej. In the 16th century, imitation (following a model) was valued art of writing. That is why J. Wereszczyński repeats M. Rej’s “Żywot” on 40 out of the 86 pages of “Reguły”. Both works are juxtaposed and compared by the author in philological terms to show how J. Wereszczyński, writing his treatise, imitated M. Rej’s work. Such issues as, inter alia, those referring to the titles and contents of the chapters, text composition, the names of the characters – exempla from the “Bible” and ancient history, have been analyzed therein. What is more, the article also presents the chapter on justice from “Reguły” and “Żywot” to show J. Wereszczyński’s imitation in a better way.

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