"Let's Take the Text Seriously Young, Stephen L.
Method & theory in the study of religion,
2020, Letnik:
32, Številka:
4/5
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Mainstream New Testament Studies is often a space of repeating, elaborating on, identifying with, or valorizing the voices of NT writings. These common features of NT Studies resemble what scholars ...in Religious Studies refer to as protectionism: the privileging of a source's own claims to such an extent that interpreters let them dictate academic analysis. Through examining debates about NT sources and both Greco-Roman ethnic rhetorics and Hellenistic philosophy, this article argues that protectionism structures the doxa of mainstream NT Studies—the commonsense that shapes what is thinkable and what questions / categories feel the most obvious. The field's protectionism often manifests itself in confused rhetoric about "taking the text seriously" and in the invalidating of scholarship that does something other than describe (i.e., "exegesis") or elaborate upon NT writings. Protectionism thus helps explain the gendered hierarchies of knowledge in NT Studies: "exegesis" and supposedly "objective Historical-Criticism" are dominant norms that reproduce the field as a masculine dominated space. As a result, critical and redescriptive research—especially by or about women—gets passed over since it seems "niche" or "political / agenda" driven by comparison. Interrogating the protectionism of NT Studies thus permits rethinking the politics of what kinds of scholarship seem the most obvious.
As Henri Peyre had remarked since 1932, “Hellenism” in French is a vague notion; so we shall give ourselves in the limited scope of this article to a few observations on the changes which affect the ...term “Hellenism” until the moment when it has finally covered a complex complex which combines science of antiquity, philhellenism, history origins of Christianity, aesthetics and nationalist “Great Idea”.
The late Platonist philosopher Damascius both resumed and rejuvenated the long Greek thinking about time. In distinguishing between different takes on time, he offered novel perspectives, which can ...be seen as anticipating modern and contemporary theories about time. The greatest merit of his philosophy of time, however, is his deep reflection on what it is for a living being to have its being in becoming and how this relates to temporality.
The educational content of the Greek language education in Egypt is drawn from the metropolitan centre (Greece) with the aim of developing a national consciousness based on a single ethno-cultural ...identity (see Greek). Such a choice is debatable as to its feasibility and results in the sense that it contrasts with the conditions of Greek children socialization in the host country (Egypt), which are bilingual, coming from two different cultures, while their education is ethnocentric or oriented around Greece. In our research we examine the reasons that led to an education cut off from the sociocultural reality of the Greeks of the Diaspora, as well as its consequences, given that the Greek community has lost its past dynamics and it is on a declining path.
Accomplishments of Hellenistic science and technology in some fields, such as mathematics, physical cosmology and engineering, has recently been re-evaluated and can be considered as of the same ...level that the scientific revolution in Western Europe reached at the beginning of the XVII century CE. Information on the level of chemical science is scanty; however, independent ancient sources such as the Jewish Talmud can yield significant clues. The still existing dietary laws include a practice to assess the acceptability of food mixtures with two complementary assessment techniques. One enforces a specific minimum mixing ratio (1:60) of unacceptable-to-acceptable ingredients, the other uses a sensory assessment to exclude the presence of a tasty unacceptable ingredient. This practice is likely the first historical example of quantitative analytical chemistry. This article collects clues that this approach is rooted in the implicit acceptance by Hellenistic chemical science of an atomic paradigm and on the awareness that interaction of different matter yields product that are different from the starting ones. Quantitative assessment of the presence of unacceptable ingredients by sensorial assessment or by mixing ratio likely points to a forgotten practice of Hellenistic experimental pharmacology and physiology to test the efficacy of drugs and poisons, that was performed in animals, with the use of a control group, and on human subjects.
During the reign of the first Ptolemaic kings in Egypt, mainly in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE, the Egyptian cults related to the divine couple of Isis and Sarapis (i.e. the Isiac cults) spread ...successfully from Egypt to ports and coastal cities of the ancient Mediterranean. The discussion on the topic of the factors involved in the process of the early spread of these cults outside Egypt is still open and, so far, the research in this area has been conducted mainly by using established historiographical methods. However, these methods are limited when dealing with the interplay among different variables involved in complex historical processes. This article aims to overcome these limits by using a quantitative spatial network analysis. The results of our previous published research, which focused on a quantitative evaluation of the impact of individual factors on the early spread of the Isiac cults across the ancient Aegean Islands, suggest that the process was promoted by military and commercial activities of the Ptolemaic dynasty, and that the Ptolemaic military operations were the most influential factor. Following these results, this article focuses on the early spread of the Isiac cults on the west coast of Hellenistic Asia Minor, i.e. the region which the Ptolemies attempted to control in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE. The statistically significant results presented in this article support the hypothesis that the Ptolemaic political engagement in Asia Minor had a positive impact on the early spread of the Isiac cults. The results also suggest that the activities of the Seleucid dynasty, a political rival of the Ptolemies, in the area of interest could have constituted an immunological factor limiting the spread of the Isiac cults further to the eastern parts of Asia Minor.
PDF
