Divine Interventions Research Articles

Divine Intervention and the Unity of the Greeks during the Persian Invasion

Herodotus’ Histories shows that the Persian invasion of Greece of 480-479 BCE revealed divisions among Greek city-states. Despite these divisions, this article argues that the work also relates how Greek gods and heroes remained united in repelling the Persians, providing a lesson to Herodotus’ Panhellenic audience. To this end, the paper examines the sacred topography related to divine interventions in four narratives in the Histories: the Sepias shipwreck, the Persian siege of Delphi, the burning of the AthenianAcropolis’ olive tree, and the battle of Plataiai. Through an analysis of these narratives and their topography, the article explores how the Histories emphasizes the unified force of Greek divinities in the conflict.

Does God Intervene in Our Lives? Special Divine Action in Aquinas

Does God intervene in our lives? In this paper, I respond “yes” and work out a Thomistic account of special divine action in human life. I argue that God intensifies His action in moments that are particularly significant for our salvation. In such moments, God intervenes in a contingent mode and reorients our lives for the sake of our final good. First, I present Aquinas’ terminological choice of specialis and intervenire and address concerns expressed in the contemporary divine action debate against the term “intervention”. Second, I discuss the special divine action as a subtype of the special providence that rules over human beings. The special providence mirrors the special place of humans in the created order on account of their reason and freedom. Third, I show that divine interventions occur through irregular contingency. I refer to several interventions: test, habitual grace, God’s moving of the will, God’s enlightenment of the intellect, and punishment. Since it occurs contingently, the special divine action can be known through interpreting signs (a kind of conjectural knowledge). Fourth, I show that not all contingencies are divine interventions. To differentiate between them, I introduce an orientational criterion of interpretation: the transfiguration of a person’s life toward her final good.

PRE-SCIENTIFIC AND SCIENTIFIC THEORIES OF HUMAN DREAM: AN AFRICAN PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVE

The concept and attitude towards human dream and what it means, mutates between the prescientific and scientific views. The pre-scientific view, basically, believes that dreams are possible channels by which God talks to humans. On the other hand, the scientific view, in general, holds that dreams are purely human psychic activity with no relation whatsoever to divine messages. The question is; what about African philosophical perspectives? This paper hypothesizes that while most African traditional societies embrace the pre-scientific view of dreams, African philosophy is much more complex in regards to the concept of dreams. This is because; African philosophy embraces some elements of the pre-scientific as well as the scientific views. Centrally, African philosophical perspective is based on African ontology, which underscores the ontological relationship between beings. In this ontology, humans are related to God, ancestors, nature, and fellow humans. Dreams can only be understood from this perspective. Thus, African philosophy does not insulate divine interventions from human dreams and as well incorporates human mental consciousness.

The Cacophony of Emotional Spiritualism

Spirituality has been a major part of human development. However, before spirituality got the strand of religiosity, both spirituality and emotion were relatable. As human development has grown, the concern now is that spirituality has been consumed by religiosity. The missing link, however, is that humanity is no longer the prevailing factor between humans. Tradition and religion have taken over the place of human emotions such that human beings are no longer exhibiting pure humanity. Here are the key questions that this paper will seek to answer: 1) Are traditions proportionate to true humanity? 2) Is religion greater than humanity? 3) Could there be true humanity without emotions—positive or negative? 4) Can religion be blamed for certain human manipulations? 5) Is it possible that religion and tradition actually diminish the human ability to continue to grow in wisdom? This paper makes a case for humanity being superior to tradition and religion. Even God (whom I believe the world’s greatest Data Protection Officer) has given man the free will to choose between right and wrong. Case studies that reflect the contradictions between religion and several aspects of human engagements like politics, commerce, etcetera, will be talking points in this paper. Likewise, anti-Semitism will be a strong talking point in this paper. Part of my argument is that tradition seemingly provides a cover that permits hypocrisy. Likewise, I am opposed to the act of prophecy. It seems the human race is more ruled by our emotions which dictate our traditions and religions. But behind every tradition is a die-hard emotional connection that forms the belief that certain religions and traditions are superior to others. Another focus of this paper is “Humanity in Pretense”, brought about by cowardly manipulations of religion and tradition. Some case studies here will be the story of the great philosopher—Socrates who was condemned by religion and tradition after he was found guilty of “impiety” and “corrupting the young”, sentenced to death, and then required to carry out his own execution by consuming a deadly potion. Furthermore, the possibility that religion and tradition actually diminish the human ability to continue to grow in wisdom has raised much concern. I am of a strong belief that divinity enhances humanity and that, “It is spirituality that gives vitality to physicality”. This is proven by evidence that divinity inspires humanity, but “divinity finds expressions through spirituality”. However, this process takes us to spirituality rather than religion; occurrences of dreams, telepathy, trance, prophecies provide case studies of divinity coming to the assistance of humankind. Unfortunately, these divine interventions in the human adventure can also be manipulated and commercialized, where it is possible for there not to be divinity but people try to replicate or manipulate encounters by faking prophecies or misinterpreting as eschatology. Hence, this paper argues that these divine interventions are real, but not all of their deployment is.

The Sidney Sperry/Heber Snell Debates: Critical Biblical Scholarship and Mormon Tradition

The Sidney Sperry/Heber Snell Debates: Critical Biblical Scholarship and Mormon Tradition

Religious fervour in the Cyclades (1823–1842): seers, discoveries of holy objects, and Protestant missionaries

This article examines a wave of divine interventions on four Cycladic Islands (Tinos, Naxos, Syros, and Santorini) in the 1820s and 1830s. The aim is to understand the social dynamics that created a specific atmosphere of religious fervour in the Aegean during that period and to build an idea of lay practice and lay reaction to the arrival of a Catholic sovereign and Protestant missionaries. Missionaries provided islanders with a new lens for looking at and questioning their own traditional religious practices. However, instead of rejection, their intervention brought about renewed commitment and zeal. In an attempt to prove the superiority of their own religion, Orthodox from the Cyclades started to unearth icons, crosses, and bones at the very moment that they were accused by Protestants of superstition.

A Retinal Twitch, A Misfired Nerve Cell: The Neuroscience of The Crying of Lot 49

ABSTRACT This paper builds upon previous cybernetics scholarship to explore the neuroscience in The Crying of Lot 49, focusing on the neuronal action potential. In 1952, the cybernetics-influenced action potential was elucidated, a process which decreases entropy through feedback loops to transmit information. Lot 49 exemplifies what happens when the action potential stops properly communicating. This communication failure occurs because the clues that the protagonist Oedipa associates with the Tristero organization increase information entropy, which breaks her neuronal feedback loops and subsequently increases the thermodynamic and informatic entropy of her nervous system. Oedipa drinks alcohol in an attempt to combat the Tristero’s entropic effects on herself, but the attempt backfires as the entropy of her nervous system continues to increase and culminates in seizures. Oedipa believes her seizures are divine interventions that provide energy despite the fact that they derive from all the Tristero information saturating her. This misguided belief overtakes Oedipa because the type of epilepsy she suffers from is temporal lobe epilepsy, whose seizures symptomatically impart consciousness loss, amnesia, and religious hallucinations to mask their entropy. Consequently, Lot 49 captures the blossoming of modern neuroscience from cybernetics in the mid-20th century by intertwining neuroscience with its themes of entropy.

Old-Earth or Evolutionary Creation? Discussing Origins with Reasons to Believe and BioLogos

Old-Earth or Evolutionary Creation? Discussing Origins with Reasons to Believe and BioLogos

Is 59,15b-21: a vinda de um redentor

Nos estudos sobre a raiz G’L, que pode ser traduzida por “resgatar” ou “manchar”, “contaminar”, mormente é aprofundada no Dêutero-Isaías, porém ocorre também no Trito-Isaías. Este artigo tem a intenção de analisar exegeticamente Is 59,15b-21, por meio do Método Histórico-Crítico-Literário, por ser um texto do Trito-Isaías, por descrever Deus como o “resgatador do sangue” do seu povo, como um guerreiro, cujo braço poderoso trará a justiça, e pela promessa de enviar um redentor para resgatar o povo e estabelecer uma nova Aliança, porém antes haverá destruição e calamidade. Essas intervenções divinas são consequência da falta de uma mediação que possa exercer o direito e a justiça (cf. Is 59,1-15a).

Seeking Divine Intervention to Manage the Advanced Stages of Breast Cancer in Southwestern Nigeria.

The World Health Organization records indicate that breast cancer is the most common cancer in women both in developed and developing regions of the world. In developed countries, breast cancer is the second cause of cancer-related deaths, whereas in developing countries, breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related mortality in women. The empirical literature on Nigeria indicates that women present with advanced stages of the illness. To explore the health-seeking behaviors of Southwestern Nigerian women with advanced breast cancer from the time they noticed a breast abnormality to their eventual presentation at the hospital for the management of the illness. Thirty women with advanced stages of breast cancer in a large tertiary, referral, teaching, and university-affiliated Southwestern Nigeria Hospital were purposively selected for study participation. Participants completed a demographic information form and an in-depth face-to-face, one-on-one, semistructured interview guided by open-ended questions. Data analysis was inductive. Findings revealed that women sought divine interventions for the management of breast cancer. Prayer and spirituality were associated with high levels of optimism among the study participants. Nurses should provide information and counseling to women and the general public on the etiology and appropriate management of breast abnormalities and include the importance of a spiritual dimension of care. Findings indicate the need to introduce a spiritual dimension to the care of women with advanced breast cancer. Findings also indicate the need for a comprehensive population-based breast health education.

Biblical Theology

Biblical Theology Christopher T. Begg and Thomas Hieke ________ 824. [Paul] Bryan Blazosky, The Law’s Universal Condemning and Enslaving Power. Reading Paul, the Old Testament, and Second Temple Jewish Literature (BBRSup 24; University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns, 2019). Pp. xiv + 227. $74.95. ISBN 978-1-57506-979-1. My first and second chapters are a biblical theological study of the OT presentation of the plight of the nations and their relationship to the Mosaic law. Selections from the Torah, Prophets, and Writings are examined in regard to why the nations experience God’s wrath and how the Mosaic law relates to these nations. The third chapter surveys the diverse body of Second Temple Jewish literature in regard to the same issues. Since it is fairly common within Second Temple Judaism to view some or all of the nations as subject to God’s wrath, I examine the reasons given in these writings for why the nations deserve judgment. What is the basis for their condemnation, and specifically, are nations held accountable for breaking the law of Moses? . . . The fourth through sixth chapters are the heart of this monograph. As with any Paul and the law monograph, Romans and Galatians form the backbone of this study. The fourth chapter is, thus, an analysis and synthesis of Galatians on Paul’s view of the human plight, especially with reference to the Mosaic law. The fifth chapter, on Romans, mirrors the chapter on Galatians. In the sixth chapter, five related passages, i.e. 1 Cor 9:19–23; 15:56; Eph 2:13–15; Col 2:8–23; and 1 Tim 1:8–10 are examined and compared with the findings from Galatians and Romans. . . . In my final chapter, my conclusions are drawn together from the Pauline section about what Paul’s view about the question at issue was as well as the logic that holds his view together. Next, I compare Paul’s view with my findings from the OT and Second [End Page 265] Temple Jewish literature. Furthermore, I discuss how my proposal fits within current scholarship. Finally, my work concludes with reflections on the relevance of this study of Gentiles and the Mosaic law for biblical theology, Pauline studies, and the church [pp. 11–12, adapted] Through a comparison of the above texts, B. finds that Paul—in line with the OT and other Second Temple Jewish texts—interprets the Mosaic law as having the power to universally condemn. Despite being gifted to Israel, the law’s ability to curse, condemn, and enslave reaches beyond the covenantal boundaries of Israel. [Adapted from published abstract—C.T.B.]. 825. [OT Theology] Konrad Schmid, Theologie des Alten Testaments (Neue Theologische Grundrisse; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019). Pp. xviii + 415. Paper €39. ISBN 978-3-160150763-2. S.’s “Old Testament Theology” follows a decidedly historical approach in its seven chapters: (1) Introduction: the relationship between “Old Testament” and “theology”; (2) Reflections on the term “theology” from Plato via Philo, the Church Fathers, and the Reformation to the twentieth century, including Jewish theology; (3) Relevance and relativity of the canon (“Old Testament” vs. “Hebrew Bible” vs. “Tanakh”); (4) Methodology, especially what a theology of the Old Testament does not address; (5) Canonical hermeneutics of existing “Hebrew Bibles” and “Old Testaments” (different selections and arrangements of books and parts); (6) Theologies of the three parts of the Hebrew Bible: Torah, Nevi’im, Ketuvim; (7) A history of theology vis-à-vis the history of the Old Testament literature (from the late eighth cent. to the era of the Maccabees); (8) Topics of Old Testament Theology (literary genres, ideas about God and God’s name, creation, divine interventions in history, political theology, law and order, cult and sacrifices, state and people, kingdom and theocracy, Zion and Sinai, anthropology, pluralism of theologies vs. “center” of the OT); (9) Jewish theology of the Tanakh (Talmud, halakhah) vs. Christian theology of the OT (reception in the NT, the two-part Christian Bible). The book comes with an index of references and Hebrew and Greek words as well as with a very detailed index of subjects and topics.—T.H. Christopher T. Begg Catholic University...

Protestant Missionaries in Literature

Protestant cross-cultural missionaries have appeared as characters in literary narratives for some two hundred years. These narratives use three patterns. The first, showing godly missionaries supported by divine interventions, includes nonfiction accounts of missionaries like Hudson Taylor, Jim Elliot, and Don Richardson. The second pattern, showing missionaries as orthodox fanatics, includes Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Maugham’s “Rain,” and Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible. The third pattern, common in postcolonial novels, portrays missionaries with ambivalence and humor and includes elements of Bakhtin’s “carnivalesque”: comic-grotesque imagery, obscenities, and feasts. This postcolonial missionary character represents not oppression but freedom and appears in such novels as Anand’s Untouchable, Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, and Vargas Llosa’s The Storyteller.

Resurrection, Remediation, and Religious Fundamentalism in Contemporary Indian Sci-Fi/Fantasy Films

Resurrection, Remediation, and Religious Fundamentalism in Contemporary Indian Sci-Fi/Fantasy Films Anu Thapa (bio) In recent decades, as Indian society’s digital modernization has continued apace and Indian cinema has completed its transition to digital, Hindu fundamentalist nationalism has been resurrected in the mainstream socio-political arena. This fundamentalist political ideology, also known as “Hindutva 2.0,” has found a happy and dangerous convergence in the narrative and aesthetics of contemporary Indian sci-fi/fantasy films. This essay traces the contours of this convergence by juxtaposing the ideological resurrection of Hindutva alongside the popular Krrish and Baahubali franchise films in contemporary India. These franchise films, I argue, harness the entanglements between religion and cinema technology to produce a speculative and spectacular Hindu cosmology that resonates with Hindu fundamentalist ideology. The expansive visuals and excessive spectacle of these films encompass the theological and technological all within themselves, serving the technophilic avatar of Hindutva 2.0. Remediated by digital technology and abetted by the photorealist effects of digital cinema, this fundamentalist ideology has become inextricable from the aesthetics of contemporary sci-fi/fantasy films. As contemporary cinema gets embroiled in the process of sensing and sense-making of this iteration of religious fundamentalism, that has suffused India’s socio-political arena, Walter Benjamin’s warnings about the “aestheticizing of politics” has become ever more relevant.1 [End Page 289] Religion and Hindi popular cinema That there exists a connection between religion and Hindi popular cinema is not a novel proposition. Even a cursory survey of Indian cinema scholarship will show that religious ideology, religiosity, and notions of faith are crucial to the composition and the consumption of Hindi popular cinema. Indeed, the catch-all term “religion” has been variously deployed to make claims about the aesthetic distinctions of this cinema. Scholars like Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Geeta Kapur, among others, have underscored the religious symbolisms of early Indian mythological films to typify the aesthetics of Indian popular cinema as vernacular.2 Similarly, film critic, Andre Bazin, argued that the success of Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali (1955) can be attributed to its aesthetic, which is markedly different from the “religious, social, and melodramatic music hall” of Indian popular cinema.3 Hindi popular cinema revels in inexplicable miracles and divine interventions rendered through over technological manipulations. The oft-referenced sequence in Manmohan Desai’s Amar Akbar Anthony (1975), depicting the miraculous restoration of vision represented through superimposition, exemplifies the fact that elements of deus ex machina have prevailed in this cinema. Over the years, Hindi popular cinema’s relationship with religion has changed alongside the socio-cultural and political impetus of the Indian nation. Its predilection for Hinduism and Hindu culture has remained a constant throughout, even as this cinema has incorporated Islamicate culture and Urdu language into its folds. In the early 1900s, Hindu mythologicals and devotionals provided the stories and the spectacles for the first films made in the Indian subcontinent. Hindu mythologicals, thus, became the formative genre of Indian cinema. Even during the Nehruvian era, arguably the most secular phase in the history of post-independence India, mainstream Hindi films retained their alignment with Hinduism. Mehboob Khan’s Mother India (1957) is perhaps the most widely and bestknown example from this period. During the 1970s Emergency Era, amidst communal strife and sectarian violence, films like Amar Akbar Anthony engaged with notions of religious harmony albeit under the auspices of a Hindu nation. Following economic liberalization in the 1990s, overt engagement with religion seemed to disappeared from Hindi popular cinema. Instead, films like Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (Aditya Chopra, 1995) [End Page 290] relied on Hindu overtures to establish the NRI protagonist’s sociocultural affiliation with the Indian nation-state. Post-2000, Hindu fundamentalist ideology and popular cinema have collided in spectacular and, often, violent fashion, both on and off-screen. Emboldened by the political ascendency of Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), right-wing Hindu extremist groups moved into the center, appointing themselves the cultural and moral overseers. Against the exacting standards of Hindu fundamentalist ideals, popular cinema and its role in imaging and imagining the Indian nation has come into stark focus. On the one hand...

The Infiniscience of the hospitable God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob: Re-interpreting Trinity in the light of the Rublev icon

Because of the impact of church doctrine and many documents explaining the official confession of many denominations in Christianity, Trinity was mostly defined in terms of static and substantial categories (the impassibility of God). The undergirding research assumption is that the latter reflects, in most cases, more abstract and rather positivistic metaphysical speculation than representing the vividness of God’s compassionate being-with as explained and revealed in the narratives of the biblical account on God’s graceful intervention with the frailty of human life. The relational dynamics between the Father, the Son and the Spirit should be revisited. In this respect, the Rublev icon on Trinity could help establish the circular and spiral thinking of divine perichoresis as modes of God’s unpredictable, but faithful, covenantal and redemptive encounter with human misery. Trinitarian thinking should be directed by hospice-categories rather than by personhood-categories representing ‘substance’. It is argued that the trinitarian interplay should be re-interpreted in terms of compassionate categories stemming from the passio Dei in theopaschitic theology. This approach should be supplemented by the bowel categories of ta splanchna in order to qualify the infiniscience of the JHWH-Godhead: the being of divine interventions in terms of verbing terminology.

A Remembrance of His Wonders: Nature and the Supernatural in Medieval Ashkenaz by David I. Shyovitz

Reviewed by: A Remembrance of His Wonders: Nature and the Supernatural in Medieval Ashkenaz by David I. Shyovitz Nina Caputo A Remembrance of His Wonders: Nature and the Supernatural in Medieval Ashkenaz. By David I. Shyovitz. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2017. It has long been held that the Jewish Pietists in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Germany—the Hasidei Ashkenaz—were self-consciously and resolutely uninterested in the shape and character of the natural world in which they lived. Unlike the Jewish communities in Iberia and North Africa, who viewed the natural world through the lens of Greek science (this argument holds), the Jews of northern Europe turned their gaze inward, away from the wider culture in which they lived and away from the mechanics and meaning of natural phenomena. This allowed them to devote themselves instead to working to perfect their service to God through hypermorality and self-abnegation, values that also inspired a deep suspicion of the physical world. In A Remembrance of His Wonders: Nature and the Supernatural in Medieval Ashkenaz, David I. Shyovitz digs into the texts and traditions of Hasidei Ashkenaz to challenge the widely held assumption that the physical world in which human beings live or God's role in it held no significance for them. Shyovitz casts this project as a bold revisionist take on the German Pietists' theology. And he is right to do so. From the opening pages of the book through the epilogue, he engages and challenges assertions offered by several towering figures in medieval Jewish history and thought—including Yoseph Dan, Gershom Scholem, Haim Soloveichik, Joseph Trachtenberg, and Elliot Wolfson—that the Pietists demonstrated no interest in theorizing or interpreting natural or physical phenomena of any kind. On the contrary, Shyovitz argues that the Pietists were intensely concerned with their physical environment and interpreted the natural world as an expression or reflection of God's divine essence. In addition, he links their preoccupation with the physical world to Christian debates about transubstantiation. Shyovitz frames this part of his argument as a response to Ephraim Urbach's 1955 call to historians of medieval Jewish thought to consider the Hasidei Ashkenaz as an [End Page 240] intellectual and theological movement shaped in part by the emerging schools of Christian scholasticism. Each of the book's five chapters delves into a specific thematic concern presented by leaders of the Hasidei Ashkenaz, and each includes a section exploring a parallel philosophical or theological turn in the Christian world. The book's title alludes to Psalm 111:4: "He has created a remembrance of His wonders." Chapter 1 argues that the Pietists subjected this verse to intense scrutiny because they believed that it was an invitation to explore events and attributes of the physical world as an expression of divine interventions in the world that human beings inhabit and experience. In their meditations on the structure of nature and the assumption that God communicates through it, the Pietists advanced a hermeneutic method that fixed nature in reliable, predictable patterns precisely because nature reflects God's actions and attributes. Building on this claim, Shyovitz argues that as a result of the German Pietists' deep fascination with the form, function, and meaning of nature, this psalm was widely applied as a hermeneutical devise to provide an orderly theological explanation and interpretation of ordinary natural events, such as a sunset, as well as extraordinary, wondrous events that challenged the limits of human intellect, such as the process of creation. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 each deal with questions related to different layers of human embodiment or disembodiment. Here again, the book's approach offers a significant revision of previous scholarship. The brand of extreme pietism laid out in various texts by leaders among the Hasidei Ashkenaz, according to Shyovitz, demonstrates their preoccupation with the functions, mechanics, and significance of the human body. Viewing the human body as a microcosm of the physical universe (an olam katan, or miniature version of the world), the Pietists built on rabbinic models for understanding how the human body works and how it represents an expression of divine intention. According to Shyovitz, the German Pietists' writings show that "far from bemoaning human embodiment...

Komunikativní obraz bitvy u Záblatí

Immediately after the Battle of Zablati a vast range of printed flyers and leaflets on the event was published. The key element for the communicative image of the battle was based on the conflict between two propagandistic concepts. As the cause for the outbreak of the war was connected to the will of God, it was therefore logical and common that the matter of religion, in a strongly confessionalised society at the end of the 16th century, and at the beginning of the 17th century gained more importance in other contemporary documents than any other issues. Besides divine interventions, human cupidity and greed, usually on the part of the enemy, were considered the next reason for the war.On both sides, the authors followed up the real course of the events that provided them with the platform where they could share their own perspective and observations. Whereas the Catholic author showed the tendency to praise the flawless tactical command and leadership style of Charles Bonaventure de Longueval, Count of Buquoy, the author of the Protestant flyer informed about the predominant position of the Imperial Army. In his description of the war, he tried to campaign for the commander of the Imperial Army Peter Ernst von Mansfeld. Moreover, within the scope of the printed flyers and leaflets about the Battle of Zablati, some curious life stories came alive. In the case of the heroes, on both the Protestant and Catholic, the authors were biased by topoi and themes typical for the journalism of the 16th and 17th century. However, the perspective of how the locals in the towns and villages of South Bohemia perceived the Battle of Zablati was based on another factual basis than the contemporary journalist focused on. The undisciplined corps of the Bohemian Estates' army, which moved across the country, plundering it, tormented the town residents. A daunting problem for the town residents as well as for the village inhabitants were the dead soldiers who had been left on the battlefield at the mercy of wild animals and decay. The coexistence of the ordinary people at the beginning of the 17th century with the military element seemed to be very explosive. During the time of the uprising of the Bohemian Estates, the Bohemian Estates's army posed, in particular cases, the same threat as the Imperial Army did to village inhabitants or town residents.

War and epidemics: A chronicle of infectious diseases

Disease transmission occurs with a perfect balance of the epidemiological triad consisting of an external agent, a susceptible host, and an environment that brings the agent and host together. Conflict situation is an ideal platform that creates this confluence of agent and host in perfect environmental conditions, for pathogens to tear through soldiers and refugees alike. Classically during armed conflicts, soldiers and displaced population get exposed to unsanitary and overcrowded barracks, trenches, refugee shelters, and concentration camps with disruptive health-care services. Many get susceptible to diseases prevalent in the relocated region and some may introduce pathogens in the native population. The earlier wartime epidemics were considered as divine interventions and wrath of God. As medicinal knowledge advanced, prevention strategies evolved from isolation and quarantine to sanitary measures against miasma and further to chemoprophylaxis and immunization against the pathogen. The advent of antivector chemicals and antibiotics revolutionized the control of epidemics during the World War II. Although not infectious in origin, modern-day outbreaks are mostly health events such as posttraumatic stress disorders in postwar or war-like scenario. This article chronicles the epidemiology of the better-known wartime epidemics.

Eustathius over de Homerische goden, de plausibiliteit van de Ilias en de deskundigheid van Homerus

Summary This article Dit artikel is geschreven als onderdeel van een project gefinancierd door het National Science Center, Polen (UMO-2013/10/E/HS2/00170). Ik dank Niels Koopman voor zijn commentaar. explores the role of the gods in the Iliad as analysed by Eustathius of Thessaloniki in his Commentary on the Iliad. Eustathius aims to identify the principles and techniques that underlie Homer’s successful composition and to reconstruct, as it were, Homer’s composition process. In this way, he intends to familiarise his target audience, twelfth-century authors of rhetorical prose, with Homer’s admirable methods so that they can imitate them in their own writings. Eustathius interprets the gods as devices in the hands of the poet to steer his composition in the desired direction, to imbue it with rhetorical plausibility, and to foreground his skilfulness. Homer uses the gods in four ways: 1) by means of divine interventions, Homer maintains plausibility whenever he takes risks for the sake of rhetorical virtuosity; 2) the poet employs divine plans to motivate the course of events; 3) as allegories of the poet’s intellectual capacities the gods reveal authorial deliberations about the course of the Iliad; 4) the composition of the Iliad is partly determined by the meaning of the gods in terms of natural and ethical allegory. Eustathius thus presents Homer as a self-conscious author and shapes him, we may assume, in the image of the ideal Byzantine author, or perhaps that of himself.

Autos-da-fé: The Roles of a Saint in Spanish Sicily

Autos-da-fé: The Roles of a Saint in Spanish Sicily

Guest Editors' Introduction: Palimpsests in the Life and Work of Octavia E. Butler

Guest Editors' IntroductionPalimpsests in the Life and Work of Octavia E. Butler Moya Bailey (bio) and Ayana A. H. Jamieson (bio) Award winning author Octavia E. Butler crafted a life as unique as any of her stories. Regarded as the grand dame of Afrofuturism, Butler is also the first science fiction writer to be awarded a MacArthur "Genius" Grant for her fiction and nonfiction writing.1 Born in 1947 in Pasadena, California, June 22, 2017 would have been her seventieth birthday. As one of the first recognizable black feminist science fiction writers to date, Butler had an illustrious career despite lackluster grades in primary school. She set her intention to become a writer at an early age and worked diligently to propel herself forward. She developed a process that she called "positive obsession" and wrote every day to advance her craft.2 She wrote at least sixteen novels (including a few that have never been published), short stories, and essays, and is heralded as one of the most influential black speculative fiction writers in the world. This special issue of Palimpsest celebrates her life and legacy by introducing and bringing to the fore scholarly work that is inspired by her science fiction. Palimpsest was the obvious choice for this special issue as the palimpsest is an implicit theme in Butler's work. Palimpsest describes the traces of previously erased writing that show through in the newest versions of the work. We see this practice in Butler's writing with historical texts, concepts, and conventions bleeding through to the present and into the future through time travel, genetic ancestry, and muscle memory. Stranger Than Fiction: Palimpsestic Memorialization in the Life and Writing of Octavia E. Butler We examine the threads and traces from Butler's real life to their expression on the pages of her novels and other writings. Moya has called this palimpsestic memorialization, a process of reconstituting personal history into a fantastic [End Page v] multivalent narrative that can be abstracted and safely shared. We utilize our shared explorations into Butler's self-curated archive at the Huntington Library and the way it reveals her talent for weaving real life into fiction and memory into archetype. Likewise, the physical circumambulation of geopolitical locations in Pasadena, Los Angeles, and Southern California in Butler's life and writing also constitute the necessity for a palimpsestuous investigation of her life and work as inextricable from one another. To that end, Ayana has employed the term palimpsestuous to signify ways that Butler's life and work are palimpsestic and incestuous in relationship to and with one another and with collective history.3 In this current iteration of our overlapping collaboration, we use both terms to mirror, support, and amplify one another and palimpsestuous memorialization emerges. Her stories are strange and sometimes do have the requisite aliens and other worlds one might expect from speculative fiction or fantasy. But more often than not, her work concerns itself with the human problem, with the ways that humans' dual nature as both intelligent and hierarchical beings dooms them/us to destruction in an infinite number of ways. She explores biological, epidemiological, divine, alien, and human interventions into our most harmful and persistent patterns of behavior. It is, however, through Butler's own life that we see the author herself as very much embroiled in these questions of humanity. How does she navigate the differences between herself, her classmates, and family? How does she negotiate the very real impact of hierarchies of race and gender that inform how she is treated in society on a daily basis? We've explored the ways that Octavia Butler, as a theorist in praxis, struggles with these concerns as we make connections between her written work and her lived experiences. In the eight thousand-plus items in the Octavia E. Butler Collection of manuscripts housed at the Huntington Library, it appears that Butler kept everything.4 Not only are her own notes, journals, diaries, letters, and other ephemera catalogued therein, but also the photocopies of greeting cards, letters and other correspondence she typed out or handwrote to other...