Christian Audience Research Articles

Allegories of the Iliad

In the early 1140s, the Bavarian princess Bertha von Sulzbach arrived in Constantinople to marry the Byzantine emperor Manuel Komnenos. Wanting to learn more about her new homeland, the future empress Eirene commissioned the grammarian Ioannes Tzetzes to compose a version of the Iliad as an introduction to Greek literature and culture. He drafted a lengthy dodecasyllable poem in twenty-four books, reflecting the divisions of the Iliad, that combined summaries of the events of the siege of Troy with allegorical interpretations. To make the Iliad relevant to his Christian audience, Tzetzes reinterpreted the pagan gods from various allegorical perspectives. As historical allegory (or euhemerism), the gods are simply ancient kings erroneously deified by the pagan poet; as astrological allegory, they become planets whose position and movement affect human life; as moral allegory Athena represents wisdom, Aphrodite desire.As a didactic explanation of pagan ancient Greek culture to Orthodox Christians, the work is deeply rooted in the mid-twelfth-century circumstances of the cosmopolitan Comnenian court. As a critical reworking of the Iliad, it must also be seen as part of the millennia-long and increasingly global tradition of Homeric adaptation.

The Earliest Yoruba Translation of the Qur'an: Missionary Engagement with Islam in Yorubaland

This study analyses the first translation of the meaning of the Qur'an into Yoruba, a language spoken mainly in south-western Nigeria in West Africa. Yorubaland in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was a theatre of serious engagement between Muslims and Christian missionaries, during which a proliferation of translations of religious texts played a major role. Long before the translation of the Qur'an was accepted by most Muslims in Africa, Christian missionaries had taken the initiative in rendering the Qur'an into local African languages. The first known translation of the Qur'an into any African language was Reverend M.S. Cole's Yoruba translation, which was first published in 1906, and republished in 1924 in Lagos, Nigeria. This ground breaking work, written primarily for a Christian audience, was not widely circulated among Yoruba scholarly circles and thus did not generate significant scholarly discourse, either at the time or since. This study, which is primarily based on the 1924 edition of Reverend Cole's translation, but also takes into account other materials dealing with the Muslim-Christian engagement in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Yorubaland, examines the historical background, motives, and semantic structure of the earliest Christian missionary-translated Yoruba Qur'an.

Paralysis and Sexuality in Medical Literature and the Acts of Peter

This paper focuses on the story of Peter’s daughter that is found in the Berlin Coptic papyrus BG 8502.4, and is associated with the apocryphal Acts of Peter. Research on the story of Peter’s daughter has primarily focused on its interpretation of the theme of chastity, or whether the story was originally included in the Acts of Peter. In the course of these investigations, scholars have taken for granted the curious assumption of the text that paralysis renders Peter’s daughter unfit for marriage, and thus safe from Ptolemy’s unwanted advances. This paper explores the underlying understandings of paralysis and sexuality that would have enabled ancient Christian audiences to make this leap from paralysis to sexual inviolability. Using data from ancient medical texts, this work demonstrates that both paralysis and infertility were understood as symptoms of excessive cooling and insufficient blood flow. Thus, for the ancient audience a paralyzed female body was incapable of bearing children, and an undesirable candidate for marriage. When read in light of these findings, Peter’s daughter is not only a model of early Christian chastity, but of early Christian story telling—using common cultural assumptions about disability to redefine normativity.

Early Translations of English Fiction into Arabic: The Pilgrim's Progress and Robinson Crusoe

This essay examines the translations into Arabic of The Pilgrim's Progress and Robinson Crusoe, two of the first works of modern prose fiction to be translated into Arabic in the nineteenth century. Both are didactic and allegorical narratives that belong to the prehistory of the European realist novel; they were originally written in the late seventeenth to early eighteenth centuries, and by the early nineteenth century had become among the most popular fictional works in Europe, both in their original languages and in translation. They were translated into Arabic at various stages of the nineteenth-century revival (nahḍa). The translations of each work are dealt with separately, but demonstrate certain shared issues and problems of translation in this period. These include the negotiation of different levels of language within Arabic, as suitable local equivalents for the translated work are found; the vital role of individual effort, and the placing of this within a wider educational and patriotic project; the awareness of European and local structures of power; and most importantly of all, perhaps, a shared didactic impulse. The two translations of The Pilgrim's Progress provide evidence of a shift of approach towards translation within the missionary project. The first translation (1834) belongs largely to an Evangelical mode of universal translatability, which tends to ignore distinctions between languages and between levels and registers within a language, in an attempt to proselytize as many people as possible. The second translation was made only ten years later for the American missionaries by the Protestant convert Buṭrus al-Bustānī. It belongs to a more sensitive mode of free translation into a literary idiom influenced by adab norms, and aimed at an educated readership. The two translations also — despite evidence of their appeal to at least fairly wide Christian audiences — seem to have been especially relevant to Syrian Protestant converts, for whom the radically solitary experience of Bunyan's protagonist Christian corresponded to their own experiences of personal conversion. Robinson Crusoe was also translated twice — by missionaries in an abridged version in 1835, and in a full version, outside the missionary framework, in 1861. This second translation was made by Buṭrus al-Bustānī, after his period of close collaboration with the missionaries had ended and he had moved to more ecumenical educational and patriotic projects. His translation demonstrates both continuity with and breaks away from the earlier missionary translations of both The Pilgrim's Progress and Robinson Crusoe. His version of Robinson Crusoe is still presented as a didactic and exemplary narrative, more than a realist novel; an emphasis on the individual struggle and suffering of the protagonist is preserved, as are markers of the work's Christian and Puritan provenance. This personal effort is now, however, placed within a larger, patriotic and educational, framework.

The Tragicomic Moment: Republicanism in Beaumont and Fletcher’s Philaster

Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher inaugurated their collaboration on a series of popular tragicomedies their play, Philaster, Or Love Lies a-Bleeding, a success soon followed by A King and No King. (1) While their tragicomedies were remarkably popular audiences and influential on other playwrights throughout seventeenth century, burgeoning genre of tragicomedy was also maligned as an aesthetically impure form of drama for its mingling of comedy and tragedy, seemingly against decorum of neoclassical poetics. This prejudice against Fletcherian tragicomedy is visible in modern critical history as well, though for different reasons: notion that genre supports politics has been a commonplace at least since Coleridge's lectures and notes on Shakespeare, in which he indicts Beaumont and Fletcher for their presumed ultra-royalism, describing them as the most servile jure divino royalist in their political opinions, and as high-flying, passive-obedience, Tories whose ideology contrasts badly Shakespeare's serene adherence to permanent politics of nature. (2) Coleridge's judgment on Beaumont and Fletcher is characteristic of critical discourse on tragicomedy, and Fletcherian drama in particular, that takes conciliatory endings of genre as support for its claims, since these endings seem to affirm, rather than to trouble, monarchical and absolutist authority. (3) Such critics as Franco Moretti have argued that early modern tragedy tends to subvert absolutist monarchy by staging deaths of kings. (4) But can we find a similarly subversive undercurrent in tragicomedy and in Beaumont and Fletcher? Specifically, can we identify a republican politics in a genre and among authors typically considered antithetical to republican concerns? If we look at theoretical formulations of Giovanni Battista Guarini in his 1601 Compendium of Tragicomic Poetry, which Fletcher almost certainly had read and taken as a model for his 1609 preface to The Faithful Shepherdess (itself indebted to Guarini's II Pastor Fido), we can locate surprising political possibilities for tragicomedy. In defending his own dramatic practice against critics who upheld generic purity of tragedy and comedy as defined by Aristotle, Guarini argues for superior modernity of tragicomedy. The norms of classical tragedy could no longer be binding, Guarini claims, for the precepts of our most holy religion, which teaches us word of gospel had rendered horrible and savage spectacles of tragedy superfluous for contemporary Christian audiences; meanwhile, comedy had been rendered tedious by mediocrity of mercenary and sordid persons, requiring tragicomic playwrights, following steps of Menander and Terence, to restore seriousness to comedy by combining with pleasing parts of comedy those parts of tragedy that can suitably accompany comic scenes to such an extent that they strive for purgation of sadness. (5) To show that such a mingling of tragic and comic elements could produce a new form superior to either tragedy or comedy in their pure forms, Guarini cites examples of biological and chemical mixtures in nature and, more importantly, political example of republic in human relations: (6) Does not Aristotle say that tragedy is made up of persons of high rank and comedy of men of people? Let us give an example of men of rank and men of people. The republic is such a thing. I do not say this in respect to its material, for every city is of necessity composed of nobles and those who are not noble, of rich and poor, ... but I speak of forms that spring from diversity of these two, that is, power of few and power of masses. Are not these two Species of government very different among themselves? If we believe Aristotle, or even pure reason, there is no doubt of it; yet Philosopher puts them together and makes of them mixture of republic. …

Baptism, Conversion, and Selfhood in the Old English Andreas

The passions and baptisms of the Old English Andreas signal the poem’s numerous conversions. Although Andreas clearly narrates the conversion of others (by the poem’s end, Andrew has converted and baptized the pagan cannibals of Mermedonia), it simultaneously narrates a conversion of the self : Andrew is depicted as a saint in doubt, whose ‘education’ over the course of the poem models for the generic Christian audience the need for perpetual reform of the self. Even the already baptized Christian, even the saint, must be continually ‘turning’ himself toward God, a process that is repeatedly performed in the poem’s cyclical deaths and resurrections. As Andrew’s mission implies, however, the conversion of the Christian self is not an exclusively interior process, but instead must manifest itself in action that serves the spiritual benefit of other selves and of the community to which each individual belongs.

La circulación de noticias del extranjero y la construcción de los ideales imperiales: los traductores españoles de Aḥmad al-Manṣūr

During the reign of Aḥmad al-Manṣūr (1578-1603), a good deal of news and information about European political and religious affairs circulated in Morocco and was used in official discourses generated in the Moroccan court. This information was transmitted in part by a range of European agents from Spain, Portugal, England, France, and the Netherlands, but the key figure in its reception and use in the Moroccan court was the Spanish translator, who worked alongside al-Manṣūr’s secretaries and other chancellery officials. Foreign news, as relayed by the Spanish translator, was adapted into different royal discourses and was used along with other strategies of representation to reinforce al-Manṣūr’s claims to sovereign and imperial legitimacy before Muslim and Christian audiences

Whose Buddhism? Whose Identity? Presenting and/or Misrepresenting Shin Buddhism for a Christian Audience: AAR Panel on Multiple Religious Belonging and Buddhist Identity November, 2013

Whose Buddhism? Whose Identity? Presenting and/or Misrepresenting Shin Buddhism for a Christian Audience: AAR Panel on Multiple Religious Belonging and Buddhist Identity November, 2013

Marketing miracles: the modern intersection of Hollywood and Christian film cultures

This article examines Hollywood's contemporary marketing methods towards Christian audiences since the late 1990s. Specifically, Hollywood markets certain studio films using a two-pronged methodology: first, developing an overt, conventional marketing campaign that pursues the widest audience possible; and second, creating a more hidden but still highly concentrated campaign that specifically targets Christian audiences. This second approach explicitly markets mainstream, non-religious films as spiritual causes in order to obligate the support of church audiences. This type of promotion attempts to transform narrative entertainment into spiritual ministry for both inner-church growth and outer church evangelism. Marketing these films as ministries also allows studios to utilize alternative exhibition models, such as encouraging churches to purchase blocks of tickets or even buy out theaters for the purposes of proselytizing. These strategies also reveal the highly concentrated and dependent relationship Hollywood has developed with Christian filmmaking, as most of these marketing methods were actually developed by Christian filmmakers promoting overtly religious films to overtly religious audiences. While Hollywood has generally shied away from producing overtly Christian movies, they have fully adopted Christian marketing methodologies.

A Picture of Piety: The Remaking of Mary Dyer as a True Woman in Arthur’s Home Magazine

A Picture of Piety:The Remaking of Mary Dyer as a True Woman in Arthur’s Home Magazine Stella Setka (bio) As feminist critics Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and Barbara Welter have noted, there was a significant shift from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth century regarding the way in which women’s social and domestic roles were defined.1 In Good Wives, a study of seventeenth-century role definition, Ulrich suggests that while early New England women were certainly subservient to men, they could exercise agency within the framework of several distinct roles: housewife, deputy husband, consort, mother, mistress, neighbor, Christian, and, when circumstances demanded, heroine.2 These duties, however “discrete,” still allowed women a certain degree of agency and independence that was challenged significantly in the nineteenth century.3 By that time, feminine agency operated almost exclusively within the confines of the private sphere, and the roles associated with seventeenth-century women were distilled into what Barbara Welter identifies in her seminal essay “The Cult of True Womanhood” as “four cardinal virtues—piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity.”4 As a result, nineteenth-century historians and writers who sought to resurrect seventeenth-century women as archetypes of American womanhood—and to do so in a way that aroused reader sympathy—had to mythologize these women in terms of the ideal nineteenth-century American woman.5 The most popular outlet for such mythmaking was the women’s journal. Just as magazines like Cosmopolitan and Vogue today inform women of the latest trends in fashion, literature, and social mores, so too did popular women’s periodicals of the nineteenth century prescribe for their readers the parameters of femininity and womanhood. Immensely successful women’s magazines such as Godey’s Lady’s Book, Arthur’s Home Magazine, and Peterson’s Magazine were committed to defining the nature and role of women, both in society and in the home.6 Further, although men tended to own and manage these journals, [End Page 61] women actively shaped the conservative content of the magazines by writing editorials, short stories, and poems.7 As Amy Aronson notes, “the effort to define and realize ‘the women’s sphere’ was a consistent topic in the popular women’s magazines of the 1850s.”8 Indeed, such journals sought to provide their readers with models of wifely comportment and motherhood and offered melodramatic examples of the consequences of failing in these endeavors. Although most women’s periodicals of the day appealed to a mainstream Christian audience, Arthur’s Home Magazine—owned by the prolific writer and temperance activist Timothy Shay Arthur—aligned its advocacy of mainstream conceptions of the True Woman with Quaker and Swedenborgian sensibilities, beliefs that, as Natasha Kraus argues, “further consolidated the web of social meanings embedding True Womanhood.”9 This article analyzes the ways in which Martha Allen, a Quaker and regular contributor to Arthur’s Home Magazine, worked to resuscitate, through a series of articles, the seventeenth-century Quaker martyr Mary Dyer as a prototype for the True Woman. Although generally overlooked by scholars of early American history and overshadowed in American letters by her more infamous contemporary Anne Hutchinson, Mary Dyer nonetheless emerged in one of the leading women’s periodicals of the nineteenth century as a model of the pious True Woman. Turning our attention to the representation of Mary Dyer in the nineteenth century is long overdue, not only because it sheds light on the long-lasting impact of the Antinomian and Quaker controversies of the seventeenth century, but also because it reflects the efforts of nineteenth-century periodicals to locate in America’s early history the roots of True Womanhood. By focusing specifically on the writings of Martha Allen as a case study, I trace the process by which a seventeenth-century Quaker martyr was refashioned as an arbiter of nineteenth-century American womanhood.10 Mary Dyer, Quaker Martyr The project of myth-making with which writers like Martha Allen were involved was not unusual for its time. As America entered the nineteenth century, it was a fledging state struggling to form its own identity, based on the principles of democracy and freedom upon which it was founded. To some degree, America...

Main Features of Mark of Toledo's Latin Qurʾān Translation

This article sets out to be a concise account of Mark of Toledo's Qurʾān translation. It will be structured as follows: first, it will provide information about when and in what circumstances it was realised. Second, it will present some examples, which will show Mark's way of translating and transferring form and content of the Qurʾān for his Latin-speaking Christian audience. Mark mostly translates words consistently throughout the text, and also tries to translate words derived from the same Arabic root with root-related Latin words. Moreover, he does not usually try to convey the semantic nuances a word may have, seemingly not paying attention to the context, but translating with a standard, basic meaning of the word. (This observation should be taken as a tendency and not as a rule, as the excursus at the end will illustrate.) Nevertheless, Mark does not violate the grammar of the Latin language. Despite his fidelity to the text, Mark's Christian cultural background sometimes influences the translation. In the conclusion, the features of Mark's translation will be set out in relation to the cultural and political activity of its commissioner, the Archbishop of Toledo Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada.

Stichtelijke steekspelen Literaire programma’s op de vooroorlogse NCRV-radio (1925-1940)

Pre-war radio programmes concerning literature are often described in terms of book promotion, either in the sense of cultural mediation or commercial publicity. This article, however, shows that book programmes also functioned as cultural platforms that allowed literary debates and critical issues to be extended from their printed origins into the realm of new media. By exploring the literary programmes of the Protestant broadcasting organisation NCRV, I will argue that, in practice, literary features did not always conform to a broadcaster’s professed ideals of disseminating culture to the listening masses. Although the NCRV’s book programmes intended to inform a broad Christian audience about (recent) works of literature, the oral reviews were occasionally aimed more specifically at the rank and file of the literary institutions that collaborated with the Protestant broadcasting organisation. In addition, a case study of Piet Risseeuw’s activities at the NCRV reveals that personal issues could also affect the practice of radio criticism.

Performance as Exchange: Taxation and Jewish Theatre in Early Modern Italy

In early modern Italy, an unusual form of exchange between Jewish and Christian communities materialized in Mantua: Jews in Mantua were required to perform an annual play as a tribute to their Gonzaga rulers. Elsewhere in the Italian peninsula, far more onerous “performances” were extorted from the Jews during carnival, but in the Mantuan performances, several communities—the ruling Gonzaga family, the Jewish community, and Christian audience members—interacted. I consider these performances a form of taxation because the full cost, which was extensive, was borne by the Jewish community. However, the performances were more than mere payment; they also gave the Jewish community a degree of autonomy and expression and enabled performers to develop their artistic skills, albeit always as the members of the company of “the Jews,” a group that was set apart from the rest of society in early modern Mantua. These theatrical performances can be seen as a public reification of the Jewish community as a distinctively marked but legitimate component of Mantua's economy and social landscape. This dynamic continued in Mantua even as Jews in other parts of Italy were subjected to extremely harsh conditions during the Counter-Reformation and the Catholic Inquisition.

Reciprocity as Salvation: Christ as Salvific Patron and the Corresponding ‘Payback’ Expected of Christ's Earthly Clients according to theSecond Letter of Clement

This article analyzes the widely misunderstood concept of ‘payback’ or ‘repayment’ (ἀντιμισθία) that, according to the so-calledSecond Letter of Clement, believers owe to Christ. Much of the secondary literature is laden with theological polemics (e.g. the author perverts Paul's gospel of grace), rather than an attempt to understand this concept relative to social relationships in antiquity. I argue thatSecond Clementpresents Christ as salvific benefactor and patron. Christ offers salvation to those who accept the terms of his patronage, terms that include the obligation to render ‘payback’—for example, in the form of praise, witness, loyalty, and almsgiving. A failure to accept these terms would jeopardize the relationship between Christ and his earthly clients and thus call their salvation into question. As a corollary, I propose that a likely purpose forSecond Clementwas to convince a Christian audience that the benefits of salvation come with recurring obligations to Christ, their salvific patron.

The Quest for the Historical Satan (Miguel A. De La Torre and Albert Hernandez)

<i>The Quest for the Historical Satan</i> (Miguel A. De La Torre and Albert Hernandez)

The Ephesian elders come to Miletus: An Annaliste reading of Acts 20:15�18a

In his recent study on Ionia, A. Greaves adopts an Annaliste approach following the pioneering work of Fernand Braudel. Greaves attempts to move beyond a text-based understanding of sites and events by also considering the related landscape and geographical data. This study adopts Greaves� methodology in examining a text in Acts related to the Ionian cities of Ephesus and Miletus. Acts 20:15�18a records that Paul bypassed Ephesus, but later summoned the Ephesian elders to meet him in Miletus. This summons sets up one of Paul�s most important speeches and the only one in Acts delivered to a Christian audience. This study will examine the landscape and geography related to this stage of Paul�s third journey as well as the journey of the Ephesian elders to Miletus. It will also look at how recently published Bible atlases have incorrectly illustrated this segment of Paul�s journeys. An Annaliste reading will bring fresh insights into Paul�s travel habits and his decision making related to ministry as depicted in this pericope in Acts.

Holy Child or Holy Terror? Understanding Jesus’ Anger in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas

Although scholars regularly take note of Jesus’ anger and violence in some scenes of theInfancy Gospel of Thomas, most attempt to explain them away. Since the text was copied by and circulated among early Christians, they reason, ancient readers must not have found them as shocking and offensive as modern readers. Based on contemporaneous discussions of anger, I argue instead that early Christian audiences would have been equally uncomfortable with stories of a short-tempered and vengeful young Jesus. In fact, I suggest that these stories were likely composed by opponents of Christianity who wished to undermine Jesus’ character and authority by presenting a compromised portrait of his youth. By absorbing critiques of Jesus into their own literature, however, Christian redactors were able to manage embarrassing stories about the boy Jesus and ultimately regain control of his image.

Michaud, Montrond, Mazloum and the First History of the Crusades in Arabic

This short notice provides a novel and preliminary analysis of the source for the first Arabic history of the crusades, and contributes to the understanding of the penetration of the crusades as a distinct phenomenon into the Islamic world. The Arabic history, Min Taʾrīkh al-ḥurūb al-muqaddasa fī l-mashriq al-madʿūwa ḥarb al-ṣalīb was published in Jerusalem in 1865 under the authorship of the (late) Melkite patriarch, Maximos III Mazloum (d. 1855). The book was a modified translation of the French Les Guerres saintes d’Outre-Mer, ou tableau des croisades, retracé d’après les chroniques contemporaines, published in 1840 by Maxime de Montrond, who was heavily inspired by Michaud's Histoire des croisades. Though created in a Christian Francophile milieu, it seems clear that the Arabic translation was intended not only for a Christian audience, but also for a Muslim readership, as evidenced by examples, provided here, of the modifications of the French original.

Mediating Jewish Knowledge: Menasseh ben Israel and the Christian Respublica litteraria

Cooperation between Christian and Jewish scholars was common in the world of Early Modern Christian Hebraica. Ever since Christians decided to study the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud, the Kabbala and the commentaries and treaties of the Medieval Jewish philosophers there were rabbis to teach them or to help them edit the Hebrew books they needed. Still, outside of grammars, only a few rabbis went as far as authoring books for Christian audiences. Menasseh ben Israel (1604–1657), the famous Amsterdam rabbi known above all for his negotiations with Oliver Cromwell and the London parliament about the renaturalization of the Jews to England, was one of the first systematically to publish Latin books for a Christian audience and to “translate” Judaism into Christian contexts. In my essay I explain how Menasseh proceeded, how he merged Jewish knowledge into the knowledge of the Christian Respublica litteraria, and how he finally interconnected his scholarly and his political activities. Of special interest is Menasseh’s idea of an Abramite theology, a common subset of shared Jewish and Christian teachings which could be used as something like a “third space” in intercultural translation processes. Finally, I discuss some aspects of the failure of Menasseh’s project, reflected in the ambivalent reactions of the Christian world, and reconsidered with regard to the conditions early modern cultural mediators generally had to meet, but which Menasseh didn’t.

The Warning against Idolatry: An Intertextual Examination of Septuagintal Warnings in Hebrews

The Letter to ‘the Hebrews’ is concerned with the ultimate allegiance of its Christian audience. Scholarship on Hebrews, however, is not unanimous regarding the nature of the pressures and temptations which endangered that allegiance. An intertextual examination of many of the septuagintal quotations and allusions used in the warnings against infidelity in Hebrews can provide a fresh perspective on this debate. These quotations and images from the Septuagint draw upon texts that warn against idolatry. Jewish and Christian polemic against idolatry was typically employed to resist compromise with the pagan milieu. This article will argue that by employing these septuagintal texts against idolatry, the author of Hebrews is fortifying his audience against assimilating to its pagan context.