This book is an introduction to the laws of oaths and vows of various types as they appear in biblical, Second Temple, and rabbinic sources. These institutions developed over time, and the oaths and ...vows mentioned in Second Temple literature should not be understood in light of subsequent rabbinic development. On the contrary: it is precisely the Second Temple texts, however obscure they may be, that provide the clues toward understanding the evolution of these institutions in rabbinic literature.
Oaths of allegiance date back to feudal in Europe. Oaths, or pledges, were an essential part of the contracts between land-holding nobles and lower class persons benefitting from the use of land. In ...the 17th century it became common for the monarchs of European countries to require subjects to pledge loyalty through an oath of allegiance in return for certain protections and rights. This was particularly important to monarchs in times of political turmoil, rebellion, and civil war, when royal authority could be challenged and sovereigns overthrown. The oath of allegiance played an important role in the political life of the Acadians of Acadie, or Nova Scotia, from 1670 until 1755, and for some years beyond, but most notably from 1710 until 1755. Indeed, in the latter year it played a pivotal role. Their refusal to take an unqualified oath of allegiance in 1755 was the principal justification cited by Nova Scotia Lieutenant-Governor Charles Lawrence and his council for their decision to deport all of the Acadians to the American colonies.
This article explores fourth‐ to seventh‐century narratives about oaths of collective secrecy, which our sources typically frame negatively. By examining the terminology used in reference to these ...promises, the dynamics inherent in the practice and its relationship to oath‐taking customs in other contexts, and the influence of Christianity on the discourses around such pledges, we can see that late antique authors routinely frame the swearing of these pacts as a transition to a liminal state of existence. Through this rhetoric, church and state authorities constructed conceptual boundaries between those who agreed and disagreed with their definitions of acceptable behaviours.
In this paper, we argue that closer engagement with the field of new institutional economics (NIE) has the potential to provide researchers with a new theoretical toolbox that can be used to study ...economic and social practices that are not readily traceable in material culture. NIE assumes that individual actions are based on bounded rationality and that the existence of rules (institutions) and their enforcement – the institutional framework – influences agents’ actions by providing different incentives and probabilities for different choices. Within this theoretical framework, we identify a number of concepts, such as collective identity and mobile jurisdictions, that seem to fit what we know of Viking age economic systems. In applying these models to the available archaeological and textual data, we outline the ways in which further research could provide a new understanding of economic interaction within a rapidly evolving context of diaspora and change.
Recently, six elected pro-democracy legislators in Hong Kong were stripped of their office for not having sworn their oath of office 'properly'. In this paper I examine the incident through a law and ...humanities perspective, being concerned not only with the legality of the disqualification, but also with the people who experience the violence of the law - including the lawmakers who have been ousted and the wider Hong Kong society as a whole. Robert Cover has famously said that legal interpretation takes place in a field of pain and death. Through a close reading of the legal texts produced in the oath-taking controversy, I dissect the interpretive moves made by Hong Kong courts as well as by the legislative body of the central Chinese government, which issued an interpretation of the Hong Kong Basic Law (Article 104). I tease out the layers of violence that were exercised in these moves, with respect to the current political situation in Hong Kong. I argue that the most violent aspect of these interpretative moves is that they were made within legal bounds, and are legitimated by the constitutional structure of Hong Kong. The pain that is felt comes from just one cut of a larger operation of 'nationalizing' the common law legal system in Hong Kong, not through legal reforms but through legal interpretation. The study sheds light on discourse-based strategies that China uses in managing and controlling its regional governments that enjoy some devolved powers.
This study examines the effects of McCarthyism and anti-communist investigations at the local level. The author uses the case of Mary Knowles--a librarian who was investigated in the 1950s for ...alleged communist sympathies--to analyze how communities, local officials, and ordinary people were impacted by the politics surrounding the Cold War.
The Canadian Department of Citizenship and Immigration has recently proposed to make in-person citizenship ceremonies optional. These ceremonies are oaths of allegiances: naturalizing citizens swear ...loyalty to King Charles and obedience to the laws of Canada. The Department of Citizenship and Immigration proposes to allow naturalizing citizens to take these oaths by checking a box online rather than by taking part in an in-person ceremony. In this commentary, I argue that Canada should go much further. It should stop forcing naturalizing immigrants to swear oaths of allegiance altogether. Such oaths create an unjust inequality between naturalized and natural-born citizens: they mean the former have much weightier political obligations than the latter.
The conflict between the clergy and the earliest Quakers can be better understood in the context of the ‘mainstream’ Puritan tradition. Analysis of the pamphlets interchanged is used to investigate ...what the participants in the confrontation were hoping to achieve, what background they were were drawing on and what theological issues arose. Analysis of the pamphlets interchanged shows that the Quakers gave priority to the abolition of the paid professional ministry, while the clergy argued that the Quaker movement should be suppressed. The Quakers claimed to be guided by the inward light of Christ, but they supported their arguments with biblical references. Neither group were willing to admit to a source for their methods of biblical interpretation, but the clergy were clearly drawing on the patristic tradition, to which Jean Calvin and William Perkins were indebted; the Quakers may have learned from earlier radical groups. Each group used theological arguments to support very different codes of conduct. The clergy claimed to be entitled to the support of the magistracy in suppressing Quakers, but in the confused circumstances of the Interregnum the extent to which such support was forthcoming varied from place to place. This article focuses on different approaches to practice arising from these theological differences.
This article examines the practices and discourses surrounding the ikrar oaths by which some Alevis in Turkey and the Turkish diaspora are initiated into their spiritual path. I examine a ...contemporary revival of this Alevi oath complex, which is a historical product of the same messianic trends in post-Mongol Sufism that shaped the Mughal imperial idea of sulh-i kull, or ‘Peace with All’ religions. I argue that the ikrar oaths are paradigmatic examples of ‘post-Islam’ or Islam after the messianic suspension of its scriptural law. I show how Alevis seek to maintain their suspension of monotheism through ritual practices of animal sacrifice and music as well as the replacement of standard monotheistic oaths with post-Islamic oaths. Focusing on a recent liturgical reform movement led by the shrine of Hacı Bektaş in central Turkey, I demonstrate how the shrine works to maintain Alevis’ suspension of monotheism within the constraints of modern secularism, in part by reinterpreting secular constraints in terms of post-Islamic Alevi values, thereby highlighting elective affinities between post-Islam and secularism.
This article examines how the divine epithet ‘Rahman’ was invoked in public inscriptions and oaths in pre-Islamic Yemen. Between the first and the sixth centuries ce, with the spread of Christianity ...across the Roman empire and Abyssinia, and the subsequent rise of Jewish and Christian kingdoms in southern Arabia, the use of ‘Rahman’ was gradually biblicized. By tracing this history, this article opens a window into the use of this theonym in the Quran and the controversy surrounding its use in the first formal treaty in Islam, the Peace Treaty (Sulh) of Hudaybiyya.
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