Biblical Name Research Articles

Семантика антропонимов в романе C. Снегова «Люди как боги»

The article analyzes the central work of fiction by the famous Soviet science fiction writer of the second half of the 20th century, whose work was almost not considered in scientific works, and the problem of anthroponymy was not considered at all. The science fiction novel by S. Snegov “People as gods” served as the material for the study. Using contextual, mythological, structural-semantic and intertextual methods, an analysis was made of the proper names of the key characters in this work in order to better understand the author's intention. The protagonist's name, Eli, has an obvious connection with the biblical name El, which is found as a common and generic designation for God in various languages ​​and dialects of the Middle East. In addition, it is a direct reference to the title of the work, which contains the central question in the artistic system of the novel about man as a god-like being. The name of the protagonist's wife – Mary – is the English form of the Russian name Maria, which contains a high meaning, well understood by the Christian consciousness. In the complete absence of any external or internal similarity between the heroine of Snegov and the Virgin Mary, there is an associative connection between them: as a biologist, Mary is looking for ways to spread life on uninhabited planets. In addition, she is the mother of a boy named Astre, who in the novel is associated with the Person of the Gospel Savior. The semantics of the names of other characters also connects the ideological space of the work with the foundations of the Christian worldview. Thus, consideration of the names of the central characters gives the author the opportunity to show that the onomastic field in terms of anthroponyms is semantically connected with biblical motifs and plots. System analysis leads the author to the conclusion that anthroponyms in the novel create a special semantic space that contributes to a deep understanding of the author's intentions.

James E. Talmage and the Selenite Crystals

James E. Talmage and the Selenite Crystals

Marguerite Duras, le judaïsme et l’interdit du N/nom dans Le camion et La pluie d’été

In the script and film, Le camion (1977) by Marguerite Duras, a single biblical name – “Abraham” – emerges from a backdrop of indistinct characters and places. During the film, the name becomes taboo. Thirteen years later, a similar phenomenon occurs in La pluie d’été (1990) when the verse “I, son of David, King of Jerusalem” from Ecclesiastes repeats regularly throughout the text and generates a feeling of discomfort and embarrassment. Furthermore, in this novel, characters are “polynymous”, shifting from one identity to another, one name to another. Here, the act of naming is entirely unique and provokes a deep sense of fear that manifests in the text through the characters’ paroxysmal reactions: cries, screams, howls, and silence. The main focus of this article will be to study the source of this malaise and to determine the prohibitions and taboos that lead to this incredible loss of speech. Thus, in the first part of the article, I examine how and why Duras populates Le camion and La pluie d’été with biblical, Jewish names and the way in which “Abraham” and the “the son of David” in these works become concentrated into a single word and identity: “Jew” or Juden”. In the second part of the article, I explore how the characters’ paroxysmal reactions relate to the difficulty and importance of assigning a name, both in terms of individual identity, but also in terms of the prohibitions and interdictions against divine representation and verbalization in the Hebrew Bible.

Kaino kaltės pavyzdžiai kunigo Jurgio Pabrėžos pamoksluose

Overcoming guilt and feeling spiritual peace is a fundamental human endeavour. The church calls for reconciliation with oneself, others and God and it calls to seek salvation – eternal happiness and peace. One of the most active preachers of the teaching of the Church was priest Jurgis Pabrėža (1771–1849), whose 250th birth anniversary has been commemorated in 2021. He was the man with an ambition to serve others wholeheartedly so that we “receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thessalonians 5: 9). Speaking of human guilt and liberation from the oppressive feeling of guilt in his sermons, Fr. J. Pabrėža provided the example of Cain’s story. J. Pabrėža mentions the biblical name of Cain in his sermon collection “Sermons on Various Matters” 22 times. Of 48 sermons in this collection Cain is mentioned in 5 of them. Examples of Cain’s experience of sin and guilt are provided when discussing the spiritual well-being of a person: who has no hope of being saved; who does not commit sin by killing another man; why is it bad to desire what belongs to another; what evil is there in a jealous sneer towards others; what is wrong with a blasphemous confession? In the biblical story of Cain and examples of this narrative in the sermons of Fr. J. Pabrėža we see that a person experiences a disturbing feeling of guilt as a subconscious state of insecurity, helplessness and spiritual suffering, and as a lack of meaning in life. This sense of guilt has its own cause – sin, i.e. acting in the world against the laws of nature.

Образність біблійних елементів у складі слов’янських фразеологічних одиниць

The article considers the specifics of the semantics of the meaning of biblical elements in the composition of Slavic phraseological units, the etymology of which is based on the ideas of the Old and New Testaments is reflected in the symbolism, which is embedded in the knowledge of Christianity, in the plots of biblical texts, oral folklore and it is a precedent for a particular linguistic culture. In associative onims-components of phraseological units, motivation is expressed indirectly, with the help of different types (axiological, symbolic) associations without direct naming of the motivational feature. Symbolism can be said if a certain biblical name has the same connotation in at least several phraseological contexts. The study of language units with biblical components in the linguistic and cultural aspect involves solving a primary task – a comparative analysis of precedent information of Slavic biblical phraseology and the study of their anthropocentric and anthropometric imagery.

The Idiot as Artist:The Fantasy Boats of James Henry Pullen

The Idiot as Artist:The Fantasy Boats of James Henry Pullen

Name of God and the doctrine of Jehovah’s Witnesses (critical review of the problematic)

The subject of this research is the question of the name of God in biblical texts. From the linguistic perspective, the author reviews the religious doctrine of the banned in the Russian Federation pseudo-Christian organization Jehovah’s Witnesses, which speculative teaching has a destructive impact upon the society. This community endows a biblical name with exclusive meaning that is implicitly presented in Tetragrammaton (YHWH), and explicitly – in the medieval Masoretic version of vowel marking Jehovah (in fact, erroneous). Beyond the sectarian doctrine hides the polemical rhetoric, aimed at the names of Jesus Christ in the New Testament, since the proclamation of Jesus as Good (ὁ Κύριος)in the Greek Language, according to sectarian logic, is merely a titular nomination, relegating Christ Himself to the level of most venerated righteous men and prophets. The scientific novelty consists in the thesis that the principles of nomination of God in biblical texts are studied from the linguoculturological perspective. The conclusion is made that speculative teaching of pseudo-Christian religious organization is structured on the wittingly distorted and inaccurate interpretations of translation of the name of God. Philological research of the principles of nomination of God in biblical texts not only exacerbates the understanding of the religious doctrines belonging to the traditional Christian confessions, but also allows to critically assess the speculative teachings of pseudo-Christian organizations.

Migrants and trade spiced up Canaanite metropolis.

Looming over a strategic spot on Israel9s northern coastal plain, the ancient city of Megiddo was often a battleground, befitting its biblical name Armageddon. But in two Bronze Age tombs, archaeologists are finding signs that, nearly 3500 years ago, Megiddo was also a surprisingly cosmopolitan place. It drew immigrants from the area of what is now Armenia and apparently imported exotic spices like vanilla from tropical climes. The tombs also revealed insight into state-of-the-art medical practices and care in the era.

Elimination by substitution: the travesty of changing cultural names to biblical names by pentecostals in southwestern Nigeria

One of the reasons put forward by Yoruba Pentecostals who engage in the phenomenon of changing cultural names to biblical names is the evil connotation which the meanings of such names exude. This might have been informed by the Yoruba belief that a person’s name exerts great influence on the attitudinal and behavioural life-pattern of the person, coupled with what the person becomes in life. However, looking at the meanings of some of the biblical names that the protesting Pentecostals eventually take up, one wonders whether there is any need for such action, when the biblical names to which they change also have negative meanings themselves. This paper raises the question whether the attitude of the Yoruba Pentecostals engaged in name-changing is desirable, or can it be described as a travesty? The paper makes use of literature review on names among the Yoruba and the Hebrew, and unstructured interview with some Pentecostals who have changed their Yoruba cultural names to biblical names. The results are subjected to content analysis and critical evaluation. The study found that many of the biblical names adopted in place of the cultural names also have negative connotations, but the Pentecostals prefer the latter, first because they do not even consider their meanings, and secondly because they often focus on the character and the significant roles those biblical personages played in the biblical narratives. The paper concluded that the action of the Pentecostals could best be described as a travesty of name changing which does not worth its sort. Keywords: Cultural Name, Biblical Name, Name Changing, Pentecostals, Southwestern Nigeria

Aspects of rendering the sacred Tetragrammaton in Greek

AbstractThis article recounts the persistent use of the sacred Tetragrammaton through the centuries as an „effable,“ utterable name at least in some circles, despite the religious inhibitions against its pronunciation. A more systematic investigation of the various Greek renderings of the biblical name of God is provided. These renderings are found in amulets, inscriptions, literary works, etc., dating from the last few centuries B.C.E. until today. It will be illustrated that some forms of the Tetragrammaton were actually accepted and used more widely within the Greek religious and secular literature since the Renaissance and especially since the Modern Greek Enlightenment. Furthermore, it is asserted that for various reasons there is no unique or universally “correct” rendering of the Hebrew term in Greek. Of special note are two Greek transcriptions of the Tetragrammaton, one as it was audible and written down by a Greek-speaking author of a

The Lost Gospel: Decoding the Ancient Text That Reveals Jesus’ Marriage to Mary the Magdalene by Simcha Jacobovici and Barrie Wilson (review)

Reviewed by: The Lost Gospel: Decoding the Ancient Text That Reveals Jesus’ Marriage to Mary the Magdalene by Simcha Jacobovici and Barrie Wilson Richard A. Freund Simcha Jacobovici and Barrie Wilson. The Lost Gospel: Decoding the Ancient Text That Reveals Jesus’ Marriage to Mary the Magdalene. New York: Pegasus Books, 2014. 544 pp. $21.30. ISBN-13: 978-1605986104. Pseudepigrapha is a well-known Jewish form of writing in which an ancient Jewish author used a “front” for writing about a very sensitive topic in his own time, by using a biblical name or setting the story in a different period, in order to obscure the real issue and yet explore the topic or tradition more fully. Many biblical scholars, for example, think that the book of Ruth, which was set in the time of the Judges in approximately the eleventh century BCE and dealt with the conversion of the Moabitess Ruth (who we are told in the end of the book is the ancestor of King David), was really written down in the time of Ezra (fifth century BCE), as a counterbalance to the edicts against intermarriage in that latter period. The use of this literary device is a well-known form of writing both in antiquity and throughout the Middle Ages that allowed Jews to write about difficult topics (both within Judaism and from without) without running the risk of being censured from within Judaism or from the local non-Jewish authorities. “Stand-ins” included biblical characters or small changes of letters in names or “nicknames” that would be hard to identify exactly. The most famous example of this phenomenon is in the Dead Sea Scrolls in which the authors went out of their way to conceal the time period and the names of the people who they were criticizing; titles like “the man of Belial,” “the Lion of Wrath,” “the Wicked Priest,” and the “the Man of Lies” were Hasmonean and Herodian period leaders in Jerusalem and enemies of the Qumranites who were already persecuting them. The latest book, The Lost Gospel by Simcha Jacobovici, an orthodox Jewish filmmaker and investigative documentarian, and Barrie Wilson, a Christian religious studies professor at York University, exposes one of the most explosive “secrets” of Jewish history, which was hidden in plain sight, in an unusual manuscript that sat on a shelf at the British Library for the last 150 years. It was assumed by most scholars to be an obscure Jewish story of the biblical Joseph and his marriage to Aseneth, the daughter of an Egyptian priest that is based upon a few fleeting lines in the book of Genesis. This book is important for scholars interested in historical Jewish identities because it points out that ancient literatures that appear to write about one issue are often really writing about something completely different. Jacobovici and Wilson’s book also shows that while Jews used this literary device to conceal major controversial issues, it was used by ancient Christians who apparently also needed to use this literary device to disguise controversial internal theological discussions in the first centuries of Christianity. Joseph and Aseneth were stand-ins for what the authors contend was an ancient Christian tradition (which was preserved in the Nag Hammadi Gnostic Gospels) in which a very human (and very much alive) Jesus is married to Mary the Magdalene, and they have two children. The ancient “Joseph and Aseneth” story is the “Lost Gospel” and the 4th century CE author uses the biblical narrative story of Joseph and Aseneth from the book of Genesis as a cover to write to those who accepted this ancient tradition about the details of their marriage and family life. Needless to say, [End Page 221] the book has created an enormous worldwide stir amongst traditional Christians. Jacobovici is no stranger to this type of controversy. He has produced two major films (and accompanying volumes) that have championed a similar line of interpretation based upon discoveries in the Talpiyot, the Jerusalem tombs that he dubbed the “Jesus Family and sympathizers Tombs (sic).” The films include archaeological evidence of a married Jesus, Mary the Magdalene, and even a possible heir to the mantle of Jesus...

The God of Philosophy and of the Bible: Theological Reflections on Regensburg

THERE HAS BEEN AMPLE Commentary on Pope Benedict XVI's remarks about Islam in his Regensburg Address of September 12, 2006. But there has been very little sustained comment on the other major story that emerged from that lecture: the relationship between Christian faith and human rationality. For the Pope not only derided the kind of reason that proceeds without faith, he also took to task those who failed to grasp that faith is inextricably bound up with reason, even with a certain kind of philosophical thinking. This was the major story that went largely unreported and yet is of enduring importance for understanding Christian life and thought. conjunctive coherence of faith and reason is a position that has a long and venerable heritage extending through many of the earliest Fathers of the Church. They recognized that reason, logos, already said something important about God, even if this needed to be amplified, corrected, and transformed by revelation. Second-and third-century Christians such as Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen all had something to contribute on this question. On the other hand, the third-century theologian Tertullian famously asked, What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem, the Academy with the Church? Precious little, Tertullian thundered: Away with all attempts to produce a mottled Christianity of Stoic, Platonic and dialectic composition! We want no curious disputation after possessing Christ Jesus, no inquisition after enjoying the Gospel! (1) For the North African thinker, philosophy represented, at least often enough, an attempt to deform and mutilate transparent biblical truth. While many remember Tertullian's pointed remarks, fewer are likely to be familiar with a Tertullian redivivus, the medieval friar Jacopone da Todi, long considered the author of the beautiful Latin hymn about Mary, the Stabat Mater. In the middle of the thirteenth century, Jacopone was irritated with the growing number of Franciscan friars leaving Assisi for the allurements of learning available at the University of Paris, inspiring his mocking couplet The frati flock to Paris schools / And all Assisi's ardor cools. Philosophical reasoning, for Jacopone, deadens and defaces the fiery spirit of Christian piety. poet could not resist expanding on his sentiments: Plato and Socrates may contend And all the breath in their bodies spend Arguing with an end What's it all to me? Only a pure and simple mind Straight to heaven its way does find Greets the King ... while far behind Lags the world's philosophy ... (2) Church warmly embraced Jacopone's graceful Marian hymn but stayed at arm's length from his dyslogistic view of philosophy and reason. In fact, just as the Franciscan poet was railing against philosophical exposition, St. Thomas Aquinas was further developing the consensual tradition of the early Church: there exists a deep convergence between the best of philosophy and the Christian faith; grace perfects nature and reason, it does not destroy them. (3) Ever aware of St. Paul's assertion, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, Aquinas says that the apostle is not rejecting philosophy per se, but warning against trusting in one's personal erudition. (4) In his recent Regensburg lecture, Benedict's concern for a proper balancing of faith and reason reprised several of these significant issues. (5) encounter between the biblical message and Greek thought was providential, he argues, as witnessed by the vision of St. Paul in Acts 16 wherein his path to Asia is blocked while a Macedonian pleads for his aid. Paul's vision, in fact, may be interpreted as indicating a necessary and fruitful rapprochement between biblical faith and Greek inquiry. Pope recounts that the name of God revealed in Exodus 3:13 suggested to the Fathers of the Church a unity of belief and thought, of philosophy and faith. biblical name for God, I am, is here unified with a philosophical idea, the notion of existence and being. …

The Gilded Age, Dakota and “Phocion” of the Chicago Times

Published in 1873, Mark Twain's and Charles Dudley Warner's The Gilded Age went on stage two years later. By the book and the play, Colonel Mulberry Sellers became, at least to some, a dramatic illustration of what was afoot in that era. In March, 1875, the Chicago Times carried an entertainment notice for the opening of that play in that city. This account told that the author of the book and the playwright had envisioned Lawrence Barrett for a role in the play; but it dawned on them that someone with more of a comedic inclination would do better. Perhaps an intimation of that change of tone can be seen in a change of name. The colonel of the novel had a biblical first name, Beriah (Genesis 46–17). That colonel now became Mulberry Sellers, and a humorous actor, John T. Raymond, entered the scene for which Lawrence Barrett had been considered. As this Chicago Times writer put it, the play, with Raymond, had created a “sensation” in New York City, in a run of 120 days. Now Chicago would share the excitement.

Exposing a Killer: Pathologists Angle for Anthrax

Exposing a Killer: Pathologists Angle for Anthrax

Colonial Violence and Psychological Defenses in Ferdinand Oyono'sUne vie de boy

hile suggesting parallels between ancient and modern tales of captivity and grief, Ferdinand Oyono's Une vie de boy anticipates postcolonial abuses so passionately denounced by Wole Soy- inka in The Open Sore of a Continent. A masterpiece of psychological acuity and ironic narration, novel traces short sorrowful life of Toundi, an African boy who leaves his native village to live at French mission in a fi ctional town called Dangan. The tale is told by protagonist, who changes his name from Toundi to Joseph when he goes to live among colonizers. Unknowingly launched upon a journey that will lead to his own destruction, Toundi recounts his dreadful story in a naively optimistic voice that suggests situation of a lamb thrown in among wolves dressed up in sheep's clothing. An early indication of his inclination to embrace role of a victim is evident in Toundi's complacent acceptance of Christian name Joseph. This propensity of victim to identify with aggressor is, indeed, crucial element in Oyono's brilliant articulation of cor- respondence between a brutally corrupt colonial administration and ruinously compromised psychology of colonized subject. Like his biblical namesake, who was falsely accused of raping his employer's wife, Toundi falls into orbit of a powerful woman whose illicit desires make her vulnerable to punitive wrath of a patriarchal authority. Though Toundi/Joseph is not object of his mistress's desire, and though he never testifi es against her, his role as incidental observer of her indiscretions leads to his eventual arrest and torture by colonial agents who are just as adept as Potiphar's wife in projecting blame for their own faults onto an innocent subordinate. In fact, there is an ironic dispar- ity between ominous implications of biblical name and naive optimism of Toundi's characteristic perspective. Toundi's curious compla- cency is defensive in nature, and entirely consistent with psychology of an individual reacting to a context of unrelenting abuse. The critical importance of Toundi/Joseph's name has been under- scored by Anne M. Menke, who suggests that signifi cance of bibli- cal allusion may have to do with quality of protagonist. Noting that both Joseph of Old Testament and Joseph, the titular husband of Virgin Mary were exemplary asexual men, she speculates that the loss of sexuality may be price colonized has to pay to be a hero in a Western story/structure (21-22). Though this analysis makes essential connection between Toundi's French name and his status as inno- cent victim, it is ultimately an oversimplifi cation of Oyono's procedure in several ways. In fi rst place, it is worth noting that Toundi is only asex- ual if sexuality is defi ned as actively engaging in sexual relations with

Revisiting Madeleine and "The Outing": James Baldwin's Revision of Gide's Sexual Politics

In 1954, James Baldwin wrote a short essay, initially entitled as Husband and Homosexual, that was published New Leader and later reprinted as Male Prison Nobody Knows My Name (1961). At time of 1954 essay, Baldwin had just written critically-acclaimed Go Tell It on Mountain; and two years after his essay on Gide, he would publish Giovanni's Room, first novel American literature to deal successfully with issue of homosexuality (if one discounts Gore Vidal's failed attempt 1948 The City and Pillar.) In this essay, I will analyze place occupied by discussion of sexual identity Baldwin's early essays and fiction, primarily Male Prison and an early story, Outing, as well as a recently rediscovered essay, Preservation of Innocence (initially published Zero, Tangiers, 1949). Baldwin left New York for France Fall of 1948 and admitted later on that he had literally run off to Europe to save his life. In those years of post-World War II exhilaration Europe, black writer felt--as he put it introduction to Nobody Knows My Name--that whereas in America, colour of my skin had stood between myself and me, Europe, that barrier was down (11). It is remarkable however, that until very recently at least--including at official 1987 Baldwin memorial at New York's Cathedral of St. John Divine--very little attention has been paid to equally crucial sexual nature of American author's self-imposed exile. As a writer, Baldwin saw himself as literary heir--and sometimes artistic parricide--of other famous American expatriates, most notably Henry James and Richard Wright. In parallel, Harlem-born Baldwin located himself within another tradition, albeit a more discrete, camouflaged one: tradition of male authors of homosexual or bisexual persuasion, who have contributed to American literature and have often been expatriates at one point or another their artistic careers--Walt Whitman, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Langston Hughes and, closer to our time, Gore Vidal, Edmund White and Melvin Dixon. It is also noteworthy that within this homo /bisexual tradition, there has been, from early on, an important African American presence.(1) The premise of this essay is that Baldwin's French exile was as much concerned with issues of critical and racial affirmation and identity as with more private aspects of his emerging sense of sexual emancipation, as a black man and a gay male. Remarkably, Baldwin's rhetorical articulation of an idiosyncratic discourse on sexuality began at time that he read Andre Gide and wrote his essay. The text by Gide that Baldwin focused on, Madeleine, Et Nunc Manet Te, is often overlooked Gidean canon. At first glance, it appears to be Gide's posthumous homage to his wife Madeleine. Just as Baldwin never adopted a publicly homosexual persona or stance of a gay activist during his lifetime--reserving this for last interviews and his indirectly autobiographical fiction--Gide chose not to discuss his matrimonial affairs until after his wife's death 1938, at a time when the most enlightened commentators [on his work] did not even know her real given (Madeleine vi). It must be noted that Madeleine Gide maintained a deliberately self-effacing role throughout her married life; there is only one known picture of her, and she left no writings that might provide her own account of years that she spent with famous writer. What we know about her is therefore through Gide's necessarily skewed perspective; very few instances that he mentions her at all his Journal, her husband refers to her by Biblical name Emmanuele. Furthermore, purely platonic nature of Gide's union with Madeleine contributed to her total obfuscation. In confessional, guilt-ridden tone that characterizes Madeleine, French writer admits that he is amazed at aberration which led [him] to think that more ethereal [his] was, more worthy it was of her--for [he] was so naive as never to wonder whether or not she would be satisfied with an utterly disincarnate love (16). …

A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature ed. by David Lyle Jeffrey

David Lyle Jeffrey, ed., A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Litera­ ture (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1992). xxxii, 960. $79.99 (U.S.) As General Editor of the A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Liter­ ature (henceforth DBTEL), David Jeffrey has worked with a managing editor (his wife Katherine B. Jeffrey), an active editorial board of ten, contributors numbering more than 150, and with over 200 people who “contributed in one way or another” to this massive undertaking. And massive it is, with over 900 entries from Aaron to Zilpah spanning 856 double-columned pages, with an additional 101 pages of bibliographies. The dust jacket informs us that the work was sixteen years in the making, and Professor Jeffrey notes in his “Acknowledgments” that ten of the people involved did not live to see the volume in print. The size of this achievement would be impressive in any context; it is even more so when one considers that the only similar volume available to provide a springboard is Biblical Allusions in English Literature, written in 1965 by Walter B. Fulgham, Jr., which treats about a third fewer topics in about one third of the total pages, and with nothing like the concern for either the early conceptions of the biblical text or the later uses of it in English literature. Perhaps the most significant difference between DBTEL and its general predecessors, not to mention between it and the great majority of the many works available on biblical allusions in a single author, is the editorial con­ cern to provide a firm contextual and exegetical biblical anchor for each entry before turning to the chronological tracing of the entry’s appearance throughout English Literature. An entry can be a biblical name, concept, quotation, parable, or familiar term in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. For each substantial entry there are three parts. The first establishes how the word or phrase was understood and used in the Bible; the second traces impor­ tant lines of exegesis through the Fathers, medieval, and later commentators such as Luther and Calvin (not omitting the Jewish tradition); only then does the entry turn to English literary history. While the editors could have saved considerable space in the text and innumerable hours of labour by the contributors by letting the biblical text attempt to speak for itself, they wisely forbore to do so. Wisely, because of all available sources to writers in English the Bible is the one treated most variously, while some of that variety arises from the problematic nature of the text itself. Some illustrations will help show how useful this background is. Take, for example, the entry for the deceptively simple “Abraham’s Bosom.” After lo­ cating the image as the place of repose for Lazarus after his death in the story of Dives and Lazarus in the gospel of Luke, the entry notes the “Jewish char­ acter of the image” arising from “the custom in which an honoured guest at a 363 feast might recline against the chest of his neighbour, as John reclined on the breast of Jesus at the Last Supper (John 21:20).” Interestingly, “Abraham’s Bosom” is thus distinguished from the Jewish Sheol, which had realms of the righteous and the wicked both. To subsequent commentators, the image was regularly seen as a kind of paradise where the faithful are received. Thus Shakespeare could use the image straightforwardly, as he does in Richard III or play upon the idea as when the Hostess says of Falstaff in Henry V, “Nay, sure, he’s not in hell: he’s in Arthur’s bosom, if ever man went to Arthur’s bosom.” In DBTEL the next occurrence is the parodic reference to “Shadwell’s bosom” in Pope’s Dunciad, which is followed by a discussion of the image’s importance in Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible. There is a careful but succinct treatment of it in Wordsworth’s “It is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free,” and a brief analysis of the image in Hardy, which alludes back to Wordsworth. The entry closes with a look at Shaw. Whether or not any of the...

Extending the American Range: Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping

N trying to reinvent the American myth to fit female consciousness, the woman writer faces double task: her work must respond to both the mainstream of native patriarchal literature and to the swelling current of writing-British and American-by and about women.1 This dual artistic legacy creates double richness and double bind for the contemporary woman writer that few have negotiated with the confidence of Marilynne Robinson in her I980 novel Housekeeping. Just two decades before, Leslie Fiedler had warned that our classic literature is a literature of horror for boys.2 In forging bildungsroman about female protagonist, Robinson brings new perspective to bear on the dominant American myth about the developing individual freed from social constraints. Her female adventurer emphasizes the motivations and imperatives of the classic quest and offers fresh testimony about the implications of its outcome-a survival strategy often taken for granted. Repudiation of the domestic sphere by her female quester enlarges the central tradition to include women but leaves them still at the crossroads in materialistic, patriarchal society. Robinson consciously sets her novel against the great texts of the American tradition. She opens Housekeeping, her first book, with brief sentence that echoes the famous beginning of Moby-Dick-that prime American text about castaway and survivor with significant Biblical name: My name is Ruth. I grew up with my younger sister, Lucille, under the care of my grandmother, Mrs. Sylvia Foster, and when she died, of her

The name leprosy.

I. Introduction A problem that is unique in modern medicine results from the application of the Biblical name “leprosy” to an ailment which has been defined only during the lifetime of many physicians still vigorously at work. In no other disease is nomenclature a major hazard for public health. In no other disease is nomenclature a more serious barrier to sound medical care than any difficulty in diagnosis or treatment. An analogy might be imagined if Addison's Disease, with its characteristic dark pigmentation of the skin, had by some caprice of medical history been named “the Black Death.” Even this analogy is extremely feeble: the Bible carries vastly more authority than Boccaccio! My first realization of the horror associated with this word came in the year 1934. At a large medical center, I saw a woman who came for diagnosis of a nodular skin eruption.