Divine Inspiration Research Articles

Changing Hands: Industry, Evolution, and the Reconfiguration of the Victorian Body by Peter J. Capuano

Reviewed by: Changing Hands: Industry, Evolution, and the Reconfiguration of the Victorian Body by Peter J. Capuano John Hay (bio) Peter J. Capuano, Changing Hands: Industry, Evolution, and the Reconfiguration of the Victorian Body. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015, 340 pp. $80.00 cloth, $39.95 paper or ebook. Peter Capuano begins Changing Hands with a simple question: “Why are hands the most described body part in the nineteenth-century novel?” (p. 12). The question stems from an empirical investigation conducted using databases of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century fiction. By employing newly available digital humanities techniques, Capuano traces a perceptible shift in textual preoccupation: while eighteenth-century novels are filled with descriptions of facial features (especially eyes, but also hair, noses, mouths, etc.), their Victorian successors display a decided preference for hands. This macro-textual observation in turn allows him to see that Mary Shelley devoted more attention to the clutches than to the glares of Frankenstein’s creature and that William Thackeray focused more on Becky Sharp’s flirtatious fingers than on her coquettish glances. But why? Capuano argues that the chief factors contributing to this authorial move “from gaze to grasp” were industrial mechanization and the development of evolutionary theory (p. 19). These twin forces, he maintains, created a host of anxieties about the relevance of the human body—and in particular of the human hand. Manual labor was increasingly displaced by machine technology, and the exceptional nature of a divinely modeled human form was challenged by a shared history with the anatomy of other apes. Whereas faces, and especially eyes, were important gateways to the soul for earlier writers, Victorians tended to view the proof of divine inspiration in wrists, palms, and fingers. The hand thus became “the most generative but also the most heavily contested site in the British cultural imaginary” (p. 42). Capuano examines this widespread concern through the popular fiction of the time and contends that novelists were better able to convey such cultural anxieties than were other writers. One of the strengths of Changing Hands is its careful articulation of its position relative to a host of extant criticism on Victorian literature. Capuano enters the fray via a broad scholarly conversation regarding the new materialism and the corporeal turn. For too long, he insists, modern literary critics have been reading allusions to hands as metaphors or metonyms—as mere indicators for labor or socioeconomic status—and [End Page 558] have thus overlooked the significance of actual hands.2 He corrects this tendency by embracing new practices of “surface reading” in order to appreciate Victorian hands as material appendages.3 By doing so, he both reveals the “manual crisis” of the nineteenth century and returns to a model of what he calls “our embodied handedness” (p. 3). The Victorian period is a crucial literary era in which so many common related terms (maneuver, manners, manuscripts) and phrases (gaining the upper hand) were transitioning from literal references to metaphorical expressions; from our own twenty-first-century perspective, it can be difficult to perceive the explicit gestures to physical hands. In fact, one could characterize Capuano’s primary move as an exploration of the process by which handmade and manufactured transform from etymological equivalences to obvious opposites. Changing Hands begins with a data-driven observation culled from digital humanities methodologies, but its eight chapters are structured by close readings of canonical novels, spanning from Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886). The examinations of these novels are often accompanied by excerpts from contemporary guidebooks and pamphlets on topics such as handshake etiquette and handwriting analysis. Capuano’s recovered trove of manuals on all things manual includes texts such as Richard Beamish’s Psychonomy of the Hand (1843), which explained how the qualities of a subject’s hands could reveal personality traits. While his individual chapters each focus on hand-related themes, Capuano also addresses a wide variety of critical topics regarding race, class, and gender. He is generally interested in both “embodied handedness” and “manual discourse” (p. 107); he primarily attends to the materiality of hands, but he does not ignore the metaphorical and metonymical implications...

From Inspiration to Imagination: The Physiology of Poetry in Early Modernity

From the classical theory of divine inspiration as the explanation of how poetry is composed, to the widespread emphasis upon the work of the imagination in the production of literature within Romanticism, the inner sense of the imagination appears in the discourse of physicians and natural philosophers of the early modern period as ultimately responsible for the writing of poetry. The imaginative faculty, together with the humour of melancholy (at the time, simultaneously classified as a disease), are key in the works that ponder the physiological origins of poetry and the mental structure that makes the mind of the poet distinctive.

Omnibus Omnia: the reception of Socrates in ante-Nicene Christian literature

The figure of Socrates features prominently in the works of earliest Christian authors and their attempts to negotiate a viable relation between pagan intellectual tradition and the exigencies of a newly founded religion. The analysis of all relevant ante-Nicene Greek and Latin texts shows that early Christian writers reconstruct “Socrates” with a striking degree of interpretative freedom. Although it is impossible to establish a unified perspective on Socrates in these texts – let alone a positive one, as many previous commentators thought –, the interpretations of the Athenian sage are not entirely haphazard. I argue that they are heavily constrained by apologetic aims of early Christian authors and closely connected to epistemic justification of faith by means of miracles, superior moral behaviour, divine inspiration and prophecy, and, finally, the emphasis that is placed on the limitations of human, all too human, wisdom.

O natchnieniu, Bożym objawieniu i prawdzie Biblii w duszpasterstwie

Artykuł koncentruje się na dokumencie opublikowanym w 2014 roku przez Papieską Komisję Biblijną zatytułowanym Natchnienie i prawda Pisma świętego. Słowo, które od Boga pochodzi i mówi o Bogu, aby zbawić świat. Celem tej publikacji było dotarcie do kapłanów, ludzi studiujących Biblię, a także do wiernych świeckich. Odkrywając prawdę biblijną, każdy może lepiej zrozumieć siebie, stworzenie i Boga. Każdy może solidnie wzrastać w swojej wierze. Według dokumentu Boże natchnienie objawia się nam, gdy czytamy Pismo Święte. Na kartach Biblii możemy spotkać samego Boga. Przesłanie płynące w Biblii wyjaśnia prawdę o Bogu, człowieku, naszym zbawieniu i o świecie. Chociaż zawiera ona pewne elementy nauki czy historii, nie jest źródłem poznania naukowego ani kroniką historycznych faktów. Poza tym musimy zawsze uwzględniać gatunek i styl starożytnych autorów. Dokument może mieć znaczący wpływ na pracę duszpasterską, pomagając ludziom zainteresować się Biblią i znaleźć odpowiedzi na wiele pytań.

Between Ethnography and Hagiography: Allegorical Truths and Representational Dilemmas in Narratives of South Asian Muslim Saints

The paper compares my anthropological monograph about a Pakistani Sufi cult founded by a living saint, known as Zindapir, with a translated hagiography written about the same saint by a devoted poet-khalifa. It aims to compare two representational strategies of an historical figure—on the one hand, that of an anthropologist writing for a wider audience of expert social scientists and Islamic scholars and, on the other hand, an indigenous devotee who knew the saint well, claiming divine inspiration in his writings intended to honour his departed saint and to sacralize his name. The paper interrogates the fuzzy boundary between hagiography and ethnography, literary and descriptive text, fact and fiction, truth and myth, history and archeology in order to raise questions about the limits of dialogical anthropology.

The rise of pure economics under a new form of scholasticism in view of the present socio-economic system

The mainstream of economics still stands on the elements of pure economics. On the contrary, new analytical tools outside the field of economics are thriving by focusing on the socio-economics system. We need examinations of new analytical tools and the ideas of equilibria. In modern times, socio-economic factors changing the economic system should no longer be regarded as negligible. The idea of reciprocity will urge to reconsider the traditional rationalism. In the depth of these objections against the mainstream, however, the so-called theological rationalism will be revealed. The bounded rationality principle then is not deviating from the track set by the traditional rationalism, but is rather an extended form of it. In this article, we will identify the mainstream of economics with a new form of scholasticism originated from Neo-Thomism based on the School of Salamanca rising during 16–18th century. Realities in general are distorted from the ideal state. Given such a distortion, in the scholastic view, human free will can be exerted in conformity with God’s will. The bigger the distortion, the more human free will can be justified. However, it requires a lengthier sufficiency proof with additional assumptions and conditions. The proof of ideal states may then require a more complicated modeling. The resulting fact that the degree of complication may be much greater in modeling is very welcome in the sense that this kind of work, occasionally involving mathematical refinements, could a fortiori provide economics with the ideal goal grounded by divine inspiration. The distortion should thus be spiritually purified. Moreover, we also provide a historical note on the formation of the mental sources of capitalism. Prior to the Austrian theory, the Salamanca school definitely took into account the harmony between reality and scholasticus. Here, an interesting pragmatic compatibility between the purity of God and the chaos fabricated by secular human greed arises, but it is well known that Weber (The Protestant ethic and the “Spirit” of capitalism and other writings. Penguin, Westminster, 1905) found the source of capitalism in Protestantism. In this context, however, we learned that another moral source of capitalism was found in Catholicism in the form of scholasticism, although it must be strictly suppressed the idea to summarize scholastic arguments as the main principle of Catholicism. Readers in advance must carefully keep from identify the modern Catholic School’s Charter of bonus commune (the common good) and the personalism with capitalistic individualism. Finally, we notice that bounded rationality is regarded as a sophisticated demonstration to vindicate rationalism in conformity with a traditional scholastic manner.

In caelesti gaudio. Hildegard of Bingen’s Auditory Contemplation of the Universe

Hildegard of Bingen’s mystical and cognitive experience uniquely combines the visual and auditory dimensions of the knowledge, in her own account, revealed to her by divine wisdom. According to Hildegard, the hidden meaning of her visions was communicated to her by a voice from the sky; thus the auditio allows her to understand the uisio, while the uisio allows her to remember the message of the auditio. Moreover, as we shall see, the Rhenish magistra apparently finds pleasure in the knowledge of the natural world, an intellectual pleasure about which she does not speak directly but which is clearly shown in her works. In this paper, on the basis of Hildegard’s definition of scientia, I will try to determine what she understands by ‘knowledge’ and use her notion of praescientia Dei as a measure for the analysis of the distinct visions of the universe set out in two of her works, the Sciuias and the Liber diuinorum operum. There we can see that, despite the divine inspiration to which she attributes her wo...

Manifestations of mana: political power and divine inspiration in Polynesia

Manifestations of mana: political power and divine inspiration in Polynesia

Guest Editors’ Introduction: Pushing the Limits of the Anthropos

Guest Editors’ Introduction: Pushing the Limits of the <i>Anthropos</i>

Parmenides, Ontological Enaction, and the Prehistory of Rhetoric

AbstractThe Presocratic thinker Parmenides is portrayed in philosophy and rhetoric as a philosopher of static monism anticipating reason's triumph over myth. Such a portrayal is narrow and ill fits the evidence. Parmenides was associated with a cult of priest-healers (iatromantis) of Apollo who practiced incubation, usually in caves, in order to receive wisdom and truth. Parmenides's famous poem “On Being” (“Peri Phuseōs”) reflects these practices. The poem directly invokes altered states of consciousness, revelations from the gods, and an underworld descent (katabasis). Further, the poem is of strong rhetorical interest because it directly discusses rhetorical themes of persuasion, truth, and knowledge. Additionally, the poem suggests that rationality alone cannot suffice to liberate human beings from worldly illusions; rather, reason must be accompanied by a combination of divine inspiration and mêtis (cunning wisdom).

Adam. Příběh prvního člověka v knize Genesis a v Koránu

In both books Adam is presented as a prototypical man created from physical elements and endowed with divine inspiration that makes him capable of rational actions. While Genesis narrates the story of Adam from his creation to his death, stressing chronology and future development in history, the Qur’an’s rendering is fragmentary. Of vast underlying popular traditions on Adam and Eve, Genesis previews the history of God’s covenant and salvific action towards humankind while the Qur’an persists on the theme of human disobedience and God’s absolute governance. Despite common themes as the createdness of man, his superiority over the rest of the creation, the complementary nature of human being as man and woman, the loss of happiness through disobedience to God’s law, the two stories differ in interpretation. While the acceptance of evil into human heart is reflected as voluntary in Genesis, the Qur’an finds excuse in the revolt of Satan who is shown in a more active role than man. Eliminating the notions of man as the image of God, and the final abolishment of evil, the Qur’an uses Adam’s story to demonstrate the principal axioms of Islamic doctrine: God must be obeyed and Satan’s lures avoided else man will not attain the Garden; Adam is a prototypal prophet, informing of these truths. Adam and Eve, according to the narration of the Book of Genesis, represent human existence in the drama of knowing evil and distress, hiding from God, and hearing his promise of future salvation that begins to unroll in their progeny. V biblicke knize Genesis i v Koranu je Adam představen jako prototyp člověka stvořeneho z fyzickych prvků a „Božiho vdechnuti“ racionality. Biblicke vypravěni je chronologicky přiběh, Koran zmiňuje pouze některe časti sparsatim v deseti různych surach. Genesis jakožto prolog k biblickemu celku vybira tradični latky k dokumentaci Božich dějin spasy, zatimco Koran eliminuje všechno, co nesouvisi s centralni zvěsti o poslušnosti Bohu, pokani a modelu proroka jako zvěstovatele Boži jedinosti. Temata Adamova přiběhu se namnoze shoduji, avšak interpretace se liši, napřiklad v otazce Božiho obrazu, přijeti zla, aktivni či pasivni role Evy, genealogie a vyustěni dějin.

Religious Values Left Outside the Scope of Penal Protection

The history of mankind under the influence of divine inspiration of accumulated experience has decanted values that are viewed as the foundation of the functioning of society. Such values have been passed on from one generation to another and have been protected by religious, moral or legal means. However, while religious values remain the same over time, as they are perennial, the same does not happen with those values protected by criminal law. Accordingly, over time, some offences may be criminalised while others are decriminalised. In the present paper, I seek to analyse the offences that have been decriminalised through penal legislation in Italy, France and Romania in the modern and post-modern period. Offences that have been decriminalised in Romania recently include adultery and prostitution, two acts which have been denounced constantly by the Church. Lawmakers have invoked several grounds for decriminalising these offences. In the case of adultery, for instance, it was considered that the lack of trial cases for this offence type indicates a sharp decline in the number of offences perpetrated, which would justify decriminalisation. I intend to analyse in the present paper whether the reasons underlying the decriminalisation of these offences are consistent in the face of the arguments of the Church.

At the Limits of Art: A Literary Study of Aelius Aristides’ Hieroi Logoi by Janet Downie (review)

Reviewed by: At the Limits of Art: A Literary Study of Aelius Aristides’ Hieroi Logoi by Janet Downie Dana Fields Janet Downie. At the Limits of Art: A Literary Study of Aelius Aristides’ Hieroi Logoi. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. x, 223. $74.00 (hb.) ISBN 978–0-19–992487–5. Could we be witnessing an Aelius Aristides revival? Downie’s new book comes on the heels of several other monographs and an edited collection, all devoted to the author once called “suffering and insufferable.”1 The possibility of such a revival would likely please Aristides himself, especially as Downie presents him [End Page 135] in this study, which emphasizes the orator’s preoccupation with his posthumous legacy. Downie treats the unusual form of the Hieroi Logoi as a deliberate literary innovation by Aristides (rather than some failing on his part, as is so often assumed), and argues that the very strangeness of the text speaks in important ways about Aristides’ literary ambitions and sense of his place in the world. In fact, one of the greatest contributions of this book is the thoughtful way in which it approaches the jumbled impression created by the Hieroi Logoi as a whole, arguing that Aristides aimed to make the work an “open text” (one that reveals its process of composition) in order to call attention to problems of memory and memorialization, and “to capture more adequately the hybrid voice that he sees as characteristic of human-divine collaboration” (39; see also 128–29). Downie takes this argument even further when she suggests that the work does not aim to be sequential or complete, but rather “atemporal, comprehending the divine perspective of eternity” (51). Thus Aristides uses the surface disorder of the Hieroi Logoi to convey his closeness to the god Asclepius, who can be seen as both the dedicatee and the coauthor of Aristides’ works. In discussing Aristides’ dream narratives, Downie argues that we should understand as his aim the rhetorical effect of enargeia or “vividness.” Downie sees this as a sign of the author’s literary ambition because dreams provide “the ultimate test of enargeia in language,” in that “their status as objects of perception is ambiguous” (67). Dreams provide opportunities for self-promotion in other ways as well; by having interpretation occur within the dream itself, Aristides “turns his dreams into a free narrative space backed by divine endorsement, which allows him to dwell on the social and professional implications of his dreams” (79). Likewise, in his therapeutic stunt-bathing, “Aristides is engaged in the production of thaumata” (102), a term that encompasses not just divine miracle, but also personal heroism and the spectacles of contemporary agonistic elite culture. While Downie’s focus is largely on Aristides’ professional ambitions, it would be wrong to read her approach as cynical; she points out that “his healing narrative is concerned with describing not a return to health precisely . . . but rather the attainment of a state that exceeds any human conception of health: a feeling of perfect wholeness in communion with the god” (104). Yet this intimacy with the god also makes it possible for Aristides to return to his rhetorical career, as well as bestowing upon him the glamor of divine favor. Ultimately, Downie argues that rhetoric and religion are closely intertwined throughout Aristides’ work, and that the orator seeks to claim for prose the divine inspiration usually seen as belonging only to poetry. We see this not only when Aristides’ dreams place him among the great Greek writers of the past, but also when he seeks immunity from local and provincial offices on the basis of his special oratorical gifts and with the backing of Asclepius. This book reveals Downie’s profound engagement not just with the Hieroi Logoi but also with Aristides’ entire (and extensive) oeuvre. Her discussion of the text also includes comparisons with the presentation of divinity in earlier Greek poetry and with other ancient works on dreams, as well as addressing Aristides’ reception in later antiquity and making many brief references to Aristides’ contemporaries. Yet this is a book very much centered on Aristides himself, and the scope of the study will inevitably limit its...

Christian deism in eighteenth century England

In eighteenth century England, there were thinkers who said they were Christian deists and claimed pure, original Christianity was deism. Most scholars do not believe these thinkers were sincere about their religious beliefs, but there are many good reasons to believe they were. Three English deists have the best claim to be considered Christian deists because they alone called themselves Christian deists or called their ideas those of a Christian deist. These three thinkers, Matthew Tindal, Thomas Morgan, and Thomas Amory, developed a theology in which Christianity was deism and natural religion. The important point, though, was that their version of natural religion included supernatural elements as well as true religious piety. When read closely, these three thinkers believed in miracles, revelation, prayer, and continuing direct divine inspiration. The Christian deists were neither conventional deists nor traditional Christians. Nevertheless, it is not legitimate to exclude them from either category as some scholars do. They cannot be excluded from the category of ‘Christian’ on the basis their contemporaries all saw them as non-Christian. They also cannot be excluded from the category of ‘deists’ because they were pious and believed in an active God.

Inspiration and Discernment in Pentecostal Aesthetics

This article attempts to define what an artist’s ‘interior promptings’ or inspirations are and to understand the role of the Holy Spirit in artistic inspiration and discernment. In so doing, divine inspiration is defined broadly so as to make room for artistic inspiration. This article also considers how the Holy Spirit influences human imaginations through experience and how inspirations are derived from these experiences. Different ways to understand religious and cultural worldviews are also examined. The concept of ‘seeing’ is considered to understand the Pentecostal agenda as attempting to cause a transformative paradigm shift in a person’s worldview. Finally, this article engages in dialogue with Pentecostal theologian Amos Yong in order to look at spiritual discernment and answer the question, ‘Does the Holy Spirit inspire art in other religious or secular traditions?’

Introduction:

Introduction:

From the Museum: the Art of Thinking. Part One: Thinking

The School of Athens is a grand summary of the roots of western philosophy and thinking in one all encompassing eyeful. Striding side by side in centre stage are Plato and his student Aristotle on his right. Plato's mentor Socrates is on the left providing another focal point. In keeping with his philosophy of ideal forms, Plato is pointing towards the heavens with his right hand whilst Aristotle is symbolically arguing the merits of a more earthbound empirical approach to knowledge by pointing downwards. The Timaeus and Nicomachean Ethics are tucked under the left hand of each philosopher, respectively. Socrates is depicted facing away from the centre busily questioning and examining life’s riddles. Under the statue of Apollo (god of the Arts and divine inspiration) and grouped on the left are the ancient thinkers who, along with Plato, emphasised the intuitive aspect of thinking (including Pythagoras, Epicurus, Hypatia and Averroes). The Aristotelean aligned, empirically focused philosophers are grouped on the right (including Theophrastus, Ptolemy, Euclid and Strabo) under the watchful eye of Athena's statue – the goddess of reason and wisdom. Sprouting from Socratic method/dialogue – which elevated the status of “the right question” to at least the level of “the answer”.

Isaac’s Blindness: A Case of Narrative Deficiency

Isaac’s Blindness: A Case of Narrative Deficiency Bruce Herzberg (bio) In the stories of Isaac’s deception by Jacob and of Samson’s betrayal by Delilah, the central character makes a decision that seems unaccountable. Isaac is immediately and persistently suspicious of the son who presents himself as Esau, so much so that we may be surprised that he gives him Esau’s blessing anyway. Samson, even more clearly, knows that Delilah is going to betray him, but nonetheless tells her his secret. In both cases, an interpretive comment by the narrator attempts to explain the odd behavior—but in both cases, the explanation is, I will argue, incomplete or unsatisfactory. Isaac, we are told, was fooled. This is no help, since the problem is that his suspicions seem to suggest that he was not fooled. Samson, the narrator explains, was worn down by nagging, but this is simply unconvincing given his story to that point and in any case seems a very weak reason for him to effectively throw away his life. If the reasons given for the unexpected action are not satisfactory, what reasons might be? And if there are better reasons, why would the narrator give us weaker ones? These questions raise the possibility that the biblical narrator could be mistaken about the motives of a story’s protagonist. Traditional interpretation of the Bible holds that the ultimate source of the text is God, that the human author has been provided with the stories by God, and thus that the narrator should be regarded as omniscient. It would therefore make no sense to suggest that the narrator could be mistaken about anything. The belief in divine inspiration is very old, but has little support in the text itself. Moses is traditionally regarded as the author—or as God’s amanuensis—of the [End Page 94] Pentateuch, based on a half-dozen lines in the text in which God tells Moses to write down what God has told him. In each case, the bit to be written down seems clearly enough to be something that God is explaining at the moment.1 Ancient interpreters, however, argued that the commands refer to the entire Pentateuch or Torah—the five books of Moses. More recently (in the nineteenth century), the Documentary Hypothesis posited multiple authors along with a redactor who brought various versions of the stories together, dropping Moses out of the role of author entirely. For the rest of the Bible as well, the assumption that the human writers were directed by God guides traditional interpretation, while more recent “higher critical” exegesis recognizes ordinary human authorship. Any analysis of the biblical narrator will have to take both traditional and modern views of authorship into account.2 In the stories of Isaac and Samson, then, the problem that I wish to point to is the intrusion of a narrator who provides an unsatisfactory account of the protagonists’ motives and actions, either out of a desire to constrain the interpretation of the passage or due to a failure to understand the protagonist of the story. This is not, however, a deliberately unreliable narrator, one who is withholding information or distorting the narrative in ways that the audience is supposed to understand as part of the narrative or authorial plan. Such an idea, which relies on the self-conscious separation of the author and narrator, is antithetical to the traditional view in which God is, in effect, both author and narrator. Instead, as I hope to show, the narrator in these stories is the agent of a redactor who is trying to smooth over a difficulty in the story without changing the received narrative details. In other words, this narrator arises from the re-telling of tales and inadvertently reveals the gap created when different parts of a story or different versions of a story have been pieced together. The gaps are not so great as to disturb most readers, but as we shall see, they are large enough to have engendered a great deal of commentary over time and to call for some rethinking of our assumptions about biblical narration. Is Isaac Deceived? The story of Jacob’s deception of...

To Conform or Deviate? Situational Dynamics of the Norm-Behavior Relationship

Decades of research have established social norms as a powerful construct that guides individuals’ cognition and behavior. The extant literature has made great strides in understanding the consequences of norm conformity and deviance. However, we know relatively little about the cognitive and motivational processes as well as contextual factors that drive individuals’ decision to conform or deviate. This symposium showcases five papers that demonstrate that the effect of norms on behavior is highly malleable and situationally-contingent. Drawing on data from a diverse set of methodologies such as archival data analyses and laboratory experiments, this symposium illustrates the situational dynamics of the norm-behavior relationship across several important domains of organizational life, including creativity, self-regulation, power and hierarchy, negotiations, and affective expressions. By integrating theories in organizational behavior and social psychology that collectively shed light on norm-behavior contingencies, we broaden management scholars’ perspective on norms and understanding of when individuals choose to conform or deviate, with wide-ranging organizational implications. Divine Inspiration? How Thoughts of God Stifle Creativity Presenter: Jack Anthony Goncalo; Cornell U. Presenter: Sebastian Deri; Cornell U. Presenter: Verena Krause; Cornell U. Presenter: Carmit T. Tadmor; Tel Aviv U. The Moderating Effect of Legitimacy on Power and Conformity Presenter: Nicholas A Hays; Michigan State U. Presenter: Noah J. Goldstein; U. of California, Los Angeles Pushing In the Dark: Causes and Consequences of Self-awareness for Interpersonal Assertiveness Presenter: Daniel Ames; Columbia U. Presenter: Abbie Wazlawek; Columbia Business School Situational Strength and Aggression: The Mediating Role of Self-Regulatory Resources Presenter: Christy Zhou Koval; Duke U. Presenter: Michele J. Gelfand; U. of Maryland The Creative Person Stands Out: Incongruent Affect and Inferences about Creativity Presenter: Melanie Milovac; U. of Cambridge

Biblical Coordinates of the Fiscal and Budgetary Systems

The present study intends to express if and on what degree the biblical text covers, conceptually speaking, the terms on which the economic disciplines named fiscality and budget are based on. The study's normative character - given by the understanding that the source of any science is Christ, where all the treasures of wisdom and science are hidden (Colossians 2:3), is intertwined with the exploring one - defined by the multitude of notions and concepts of the fiscal and budgetary spheres that find a correspondent in the Bible's text. We assess that the Bible offers sufficient documentary material to say that the basis of the fiscal and budgetary systems (regarding principles, peculiarities, functions, components and instruments) was subjected to divine inspiration, by the commandments given to Moses by God for the children of Israel on the Mountain of Sinai (Leviticus 27:34) and through the writings of other authors of Scripture.