Divine Protection Research Articles

Approaches to the “Chosen Place”: Accessing a Biblical Concept.By Rannfrid I. Thelle.

T he theory of a Deuteronomistic History has come under sustained criticism in recent years, and Thelle’s book is a further attempt to consign Noth’s theory to history. Rather than proposing an alternative diachronic theory, Thelle seeks to read the history’s constituent books on their own terms with a synchronic reading stategy. This attempt to look with ‘fresh eyes’ requires disentangling the concept of the chosen place from three other issues: dating biblical books, Josiah’s reform, and the idea of a deuteronomistic school and editing. Thelle’s key observation is that Deuteronomy’s idea of the chosen place should not be harmonized with Kings’ idea of the chosen city. In Deuteronomy the chosen place is the centralized location where cultic activity takes place, whilst in Kings the chosen city is associated with privileged divine protection and the unique position of David. These key observations lead Thelle to develop two lines of argument. First, she argues that Deuteronomy’s legislation on cultic matters, such as sacrifice, Sabbath, and the festivals, brings it closer to the rest of the Tetrateuch than is usually recognized. Since Deuteronomy says very little about crucial cultic issues, such as a sanctuary and an altar, these can justly be assumed from the previous books, which say far more about these matters. Secondly, Thelle argues that Deuteronomy’s relationship to the Former Prophets is rather more tangential than a theory of a Deuteronomistic History would suggest. An analysis of 2 Kings 22–3 does not support the view that Josiah undertook a reform inspired by Deuteronomy, and an examination of the presentation of kingship in the Former Prophets highlights a number of differences from Deuteronomy’s law of the king.

Ensuring Fair and Stable Prices: The Torah View

More than 100 of the 613 precepts of the Torah (the Five Books of Moses) deal with business ethics. This paper focuses on an overlooked precept: ensuring price stability. There is a tendency to trivialize the law mandating that prices be kept low and affordable. Indeed, very few people are aware that the ninth blessing of the ancient Amida (also known as shemoneh esrei) prayer, established by the 120 members of the Great Assembly in the 5th century BCE, is a prayer for divine protection against individuals who would raise prices unjustly. This paper illustrates the importance of this law and provides interesting stories and examples of individuals who protected the public against hoarders.

Why Does Imagery of Disability Include Healing in Isaiah?

The restoration of the exilic community ranks among the most dominant themes in prophetic literature. Imagery of physical disability serves as a standard element within prophetic oracles concerning exilic restoration throughout the Hebrew Bible. Yet, outside of Isaiah, oracles concerning exilic restoration that involve disability imagery do not usually include physical healings. This article argues that the handful of healings of disability in oracles involving restoration in Isaiah does not invalidate this general rule, even though they are often depicted as representative of the use of disability imagery in prophetic literature. Instead, these seemingly anomalous Isaianic healings may be explained as an element within a larger rhetorical agenda that grows out of Isaianic depictions of the divine protection and restoration of Zion and its inhabitants with physical idealization.

Anticipating Divine Protection? Reminders of God Can Increase Nonmoral Risk Taking

Religiosity and participation in religious activities have been linked with decreased risky behavior. In the current research, we hypothesized that exposure to the concept of God can actually increase people’s willingness to engage in certain types of risks. Across seven studies, reminders of God increased risk taking in nonmoral domains. This effect was mediated by the perceived danger of a risky option and emerged more strongly among individuals who perceive God as a reliable source of safety and protection than among those who do not. Moreover, in an eighth study, when participants were first reminded of God and then took a risk that produced negative consequences (i.e., when divine protection failed to materialize), participants reported feeling more negatively toward God than did participants in the same situation who were not first reminded of God. This research contributes to an understanding of the divergent effects that distinct components of religion can exert on behavior.

THE ISSUE OF SOVEREIGN POWER IN HENRY V AND KING LEAR

Shakespeare was quite conscious of the working of power “apparatus” due to his presence in Queen Elizabeth’s court and being aware of power relations and constant struggles in it, and he drew on that awareness to give life to the characters portrayed in his drama, namely the two plays discussed here, Henry V and King Lear. To elaborate on his depiction of power relations in those plays, I would resort to Foucault’s theory of power, especially his ideas about “sovereign” power. He contends that sovereignty was issued from the top of a hierarchical pyramid set up by the “monarchical institution” that was founded on the possession of a great amount of land and the assumption of the divine protection. In the light of Foucauldian notion of sovereignty, I would discuss Shakespeare’s depiction of Henry V’s irrefutable power and Lear’s devastated power. Shakespeare portrays Henry V as a ruler who is conscious of the operation of power “apparatus” and consequently strengthens his monarchy, whereas he presents the old Lear as a king who is ignorant of the foundations of “monarchical institution” and as a result loses his power because of his reckless decision of dividing his territory among his daughters.

Healing images. Gems and medicine

SummaryThe main purpose of magical gems was to secure divine protection, avert evil influences and heal various diseases. Some body parts are especially addressed, such as the stomach and the uterus. This concern seems to relate to ‘societal diseases’ also found in contemporary literature. How do these ‘healing pictures’ function? The analysis of the pictorial elements reveals different levels of therapeutic efficacy. Some images use visual plays upon words, others combineEgyptian andGraeco‐Roman elements, allowing ‘bilingual’ readings. The mnemonic function of images,charakteresandvoces magicaealso requires further investigations. Objects could transmit the memory of oral rituals and knowledge. The transfer of magical figures on other media is very rare, but when it occurs, as on a few medical devices, it may help us to understand the mechanism of medico‐magical performance, combining formalism and inventiveness.

THE ‘LORD OF THE STONEMASONS’: PART I. THE ‘SWORD DEITY’ AT PETRA

During the 2000 Season of the Brown University excavations of the so-called Great Temple at Petra, an elusive rock-cut figure (termed the ‘Sword Deity’) was discovered in the southern perimeter wall. Since then, the current authors have identified other such figures as belonging to this previously unknown type, which has similarities with the Greek herm. Based on a contextual analysis of these figures, it is proposed that the type may depict a protective deity or ‘lord’ of the Nabataean stonemasons, most likely Dushara. According to this interpretation, the stonemasons sought divine protection during their work by carving the image of the deity high in the rock faces. This paper sheds new light not only on the representation of Nabataean deities, but also on the role of religion in the daily life of the inhabitants of Petra and their relationship with the natural environment.

Zu den religiösen Aspekten tugendhafter Politik (tokusei) zum Schutz von Herrscher und Volk im frühen Mittelalter

This article focuses on administrative efforts through acts of benevolent or virtuous governance (tokusei) as means to secure divine protection from the Buddhas and kami in early medieval Japan. This aspect of tokusei has hitherto been neglected in this regard mainly because the term came to be associated primarily with economical regulations, especially debt relief. This narrow understanding originated most notably with the “Regulations of the Einin era”, Einin no tokuseirei 永仁の徳政令, issued in 1297, and has continued through the following centuries until the present day. However, tokusei – as will be argued – was part of the symbolic politics and religious justification of power, especially for the Tennō and his court in Kyōto, and later for the warrior governments and Shōgun in Kamakura. These acts of virtuous rule, manifesting in several ways, served along with religious rituals as emergency measures for divine protection against natural disasters like earthquakes, floods, crop failure or even astronomical phenomena such as comets. At the turn of the 12th century, tokusei began to be used for general political reforms as well, and with the dual government between Kyōto and Kamakura taking shape, the focus shifted to hardships of the rural population. In this context benevolent measures taken for the people came to be deeply connected with divine protection for the powerful.

Isaiah 16: A Forgotten Chapter in the History of Messianism

ABSTRACTWithin the Isaianic oracle against Moab (15,1-16,14) is found what might be described as a neglected royal prophecy (16,4b-5). Evidence for its messianic character is found in a number of clear thematic similarities with other Isaianic passages of a decidedly messianic character, notably Isa 9,1-7 (Heb. 8,23-9.6) and 11,1-9. In each case, the text is futuristic in orienta-tion, the anticipated enthronement (or arrival) of a Davidic ruler follows the overthrow of the foreign oppressor, God is credited as producing this new sit-uation, and the promised ruler shows a devotion to “justice” and “righteous-ness”, which in Isaiah 16 takes the form of giving consideration to a Moabite appeal for amnesty. A similar pattern is found in Isaiah 32, with its picture of human kings with a limited judicial role within a kingdom set up by God. The phrase “the tent of David” (16,5) is shown to signify the sanctuary-city of Zi-on, with Isa 16,4b-5 providing an eschatological picture of divine protection mediated by a messianic ruler.

“As liuing now, equald theyr vertues then”: Early Modern Allusions, Boudicca, and the Failure of Monologic Historiographies

Introduction While I rarely encouraged explicit comparisons between herself and martial women of the literary or historical past, (1) brief allusions to and more extended treatments of leaders such as Boudicca are relatively common in popular early modern historiographical texts with encomiastic and nationalist passions. Indeed, as Julia M. Walker notes, To represent as a woman warrior while she was alive was a delicate proposition (Elizabeth 40). Certainly, Elizabeth's own self-presentation did not regularly suggest martial impulsivity or ferocity so much as divine protection and favour in times of turmoil. As early as her letters to Queen Mary I in the 1550s, Princess presented herself as accountable to God first and foremost (Princess Elizabeth 41). A sense of closeness to and favour from God was strengthened in a speech given the day before her coronation, as she compared herself to Daniel, spared by God because of loyalty and faith (Richard Mulcaster's Account 55). also was obviously comfortable presenting herself as both virginal and as a mother to her nation. Court advancement was often predicated on young men maintaining courtly love relationships that followed the patterns of Petrarchan romances--hopeless suitors promising service to Elizabeth, the beautiful, but untouchable and prevaricating mistress. Official visual representations of the queen include George Gower's series of Siena portraits (circa 1579), which portray as Tuccia, the Vestal virgin who, as a testament to her virginity, carried water in a sieve without spilling a drop. In her first speech to Parliament, as she addressed petitions that she marry, the queen stressed that, while she would find it acceptable to live and die a virgin, she was also already married to the nation (Parliament 58-59), and she returned to this familial relationship in a 1563 speech, claiming that her subjects would never enjoy a more devoted mother than her (Queen Elizabeth's Answer 72). Thomas Bentley similarly praises in the opening Epistle for Monument of Matrones (1582), describing her as the naturall mother and noble nurse who watches over the Church of England, and James Aske continues this presentation of the queen as mother to England in his 1588 poem Elizabetha Triumphans, as he describes the queen's laws as both breast milk and a crib (12). When was connected to martial women during her lifetime, other associative values were usually stressed: Diana, goddess of the hunt, was often used in court literature, but authors would link to her chastity and beauty rather than any explicitly violent tendencies--The Faerie Queene's virginal huntress Belphoebe, for example (Spenser 1590 and 1596). (2) Instead, Elizabeth's self-presentations and sanctioned courtly representations stressed Petrarchan beauty, chastity, personal faith, divine favour, princely virtues, and, occasionally, maternal devotion to the nation (see also Berry; Walker, Elizabeth). Despite the queen's apparent distaste for monarchical representations that might suggest violence in her kingdom or unnatural female qualities in her person, early modern authors did regularly connect to martial figures from mythology, history, and the Bible, particularly after her death as the queen's leadership during the Spanish Armada became mythologized in and of itself. Martial valour was, of course, only one of several monarchical traits that were taken up by writers producing nationalist texts that placed Elizabeth's reign within larger Brittonic histories. Indeed, when given the chance to praise the queen, early modern authors frequently relied on a well-established set of allusions aimed at lauding various combinations of the queen's chastity, beauty, intelligence, militancy, fortitude, peaceful disposition, and generosity. The allusions are perhaps only intended to serve as brief references, as signals for whichever of Elizabeth's qualities the author will praise in more detail in the larger work. …

Keeping the Faith: Divine Protection and Flood Prevention in Modern Buddhist Ladakh

In August 2010 the Himalayan Region of Ladakh, Northwest India, experienced severe flash-flooding and mudslides, causing widespread death and destruction. The causes cited were climate change, karmic retribution, and the wrath of an agentive sentient landscape. Ladakhis construct, order and maintain the physical and moral universe through religious engagement with this landscape. The Buddhist monastic incumbents—the traditional mediators between the human world and the sentient landscape—explain supernatural retribution as the result of karmic demerit that requires ritual intervention. Social, economic, and material transformations have distorted the proper order, generating a physically and morally unfamiliar landscape. As a result, the mountain deities that act as guardians and protectors of the land below are confused and angry, sending destructive water to show their displeasure. Thus, the locally-contextualized response demonstrates the agency of the mountain gods in establishing a moral universe whereby water can give life and destroy it.

Daytripper by Gabriel Bá

reviews The title of Engel des Vergessens (Angels of forgetting) refers to pictures of two guardian angels that the Catholic mother of the childnarrator had hung up over her bed for divine protection. The narrator’s visits to concentration camps and former Nazi prisons reinforce her insight into experiences that traumatized her people. The tragic stories of neighbors and relatives are embedded into the seasonal flow of village life. Haderlap chooses the German language to create a protective distance from her material, a “Schutzschild” (protective shield) and a “Denksprache” (a language of thinking). She is often brutal when dealing with Nazi persecution, which she contrasts with lyrical passages describing dreams, fantasy, and nature, having a mystical quality. She notes that the pace of the novel reproduces the rhythm of remembered walks with her father. The family history, interwoven with the destiny of an ethnic group exposed to war, fanaticism, brutality , and discrimination, reverberates strongly in our world. It mirrors on a small scale our global problems. Maria Luise Caputo-Mayr Temple University Alexis Jenni. L’Art français de la guerre. Paris. Gallimard. 2011. isbn 9782070134588 Alexis Jenni won the 2011 Prix Goncourt for the epic narrative L’Art fran- çais de la guerre (The French art of war), his first novel. Some sections are told in the first person by an unnamed narrator, a young man who looks at the news on television, tries to avoid work, and whose life has nothing to do with the military. In other sections, the narrator relates the life of Victorien Salagnon, an artist from whom he takes lessons. As an adolescent, Salagnon fought with the maquis during World War II, where he met Eurydice, a nurse who arrives with North African troops during the liberation of France. He married her years later, after fighting in Indochina and serving as a parachutist during the Algerian war of independence. The novel is partly an adventure story, written as an explanation of French wars for a younger generation that lacks respect for soldiers. The fighting in both Indochina and Algeria is described graphically and with attention to the psychological tensions of the soldiers, who justify torture to gain information, but whose bravery is real. Salagnon retains a measure of humanity during the horrors of war by continuing to draw pictures of his comrades and of the landscape, even on scraps of paper from ammunition boxes. Years later, in France, Salagnon cannot reject a man whose racist political views he disapproves of because that man had carried him, risking his own life, when he was wounded by the Viet Minh. The novel is also an analysis of how France’s colonial history has shaped contemporary social and political movements, the use of armed columns of police in the suburbs , the country’s obsession with race, and its refusal to accept the Muslim population as French. The division between “us” and “them” continues in the contemporary debates about who has a right to a French identity card. When the narrator asks Salagnon if he ever tortured his opponents, he replies that the army did worse: “We created a world where, according to the shape of a face or a way of pronouncing a name, one was considered a subject or a citizen.” If there is any way of truly being “French,” the narrator decides, it is in the ability to speak the language: “the word is the true blood of the French nation. The language is our blood.” Moral issues, however, are never clear-cut. The Viet Minh and the Algerian Arabs, like the French, resort to torture. Salagnon takes Eurydice away from a violent hell as the French withdraw from Algiers. In an allusion to a famous comment by Albert Camus, her father says, “I prefer the life of my daughter to justice.” Adele King Paris Fábio Moon & Gabriel Bá. Daytripper . New York. Vertigo. 2011. isbn 9781401229696 Daytripper is the rarest of graphic novels—a work meeting all the expectations of great literature that somehow emerged from the grinding gears of the American mainstream comics industry. Written and drawn 68 | World Literature Today Imagine Africa Pirogue Collective Island Position The search for humanity through imagination...

Engel des Vergessens by Maja Haderlap

Willis Barnstone Café de l’aube à Paris / Dawn Café in Paris Sheep Meadow Press This bilingual poetry collection captures the nostalgic feelings of love and everyday life. First written in French, Barnstone then translated his compilation into English. He has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry four times. Akira Arai A Caring Man Vertical A striking debut and winner of the prestigious Golden Elephant Award, this riveting novel weaves a tale of mystery, intrigue, and misplaced devotion. Arai explores the political tensions of world terrorism and investigative journalism in this thriller centered on modern Japanese society. Nota Bene hires an inexpensive contractor to paint a few rooms in his house. Luke, the head contractor, is strict with his two illegal Mexican employees, constantly berating them and allowing them to take their lunch break only when he’s on-site. The narrator , already feeling self-conscious about being a successful Latino who hires Mexican painters because they’re cheap, sees this treatment as demeaning. Why should there be a social hierarchy, the narrator thinks, based on which side of a border you were born on? In the collection’s opening story, “please, thank you,” a father of two grown children is in the hospital after having a stroke. As he goes through the arduous process of physical and speech therapy, the narrator begins to feel discouraged about how the simplest of tasks—showering, bending your leg—has become a difficult chore. While resting in his bed, the narrator is asked for advice by one of the janitors, a Mexican immigrant who was verbally attacked by a white woman while shopping. The narrator , uncertain as to what to say, suggests that she move on. “Why dwell on that ugliness?” he says, in many ways reflecting how he feels about his rehab. For Gilb, the personal and the political are intertwined—there is no aspect of Latino life that doesn’t involve politics. Armando Celayo Norwich, United Kingdom Maja Haderlap. Engel des Vergessens . Göttingen. Wallstein. 2011. isbn 9783835309531 Engel des Vergessens is a first novel by a Slovenian-Austrian author from the southeastern corner of Carinthia, bordering on Slovenia. This bilingual and bicultural area rarely appears in current Austrian literature, despite having been in the limelight of political-ethnic controversy. Maja Haderlap, a native of this region, registers through her first-person narrator, beginning as a child and then as a maturing young woman, what happened during the Third Reich. Known as a Slovenian poet and translator, she studied theater at Vienna University and worked for fifteen years as chief literary manager (Dramaturgin) at the city theater Klagenfurt (Celovec); she also teaches at the Alpen-Adria University. The book (winner of both the 2011 Austrian Ingeborg Bachmann Prize and the German Ravensburger Bookprize) is both a biography and a political/cultural history of the author’s people in the valleys around the village Lepena; it is a gripping document of unresolved issues confronting this minority. It presents above all a long overdue account of the historic and heroic role of the Slovenian partisans during the Nazi period in Austria, who were regarded as enemies of the state and fiercely persecuted together with their families and friends. The book can be considered a memorial to their “forgotten” sacrifices: the torture, beatings, hangings, deportation to concentration camps, devastation of their homes, farms, and lives. The author’s grandmother was a survivor of Ravensbrück and remembered as a strong matriarch and a sort of family historian through her letters and memorabilia, her Lagerbuch (camp diary), and documents from her life, which were preserved by a neighbor. Haderlap felt compelled to write to reach clarity for herself and to connect the fragmentary information into a coherent picture. march–april 2012 | 67 reviews The title of Engel des Vergessens (Angels of forgetting) refers to pictures of two guardian angels that the Catholic mother of the childnarrator had hung up over her bed for divine protection. The narrator’s visits to concentration camps and former Nazi prisons reinforce her insight into experiences that traumatized her people. The tragic stories of neighbors and relatives are embedded into the seasonal flow of village life. Haderlap chooses the...

Kwestia bogactwa i ubóstwa w Kościele imperialnym na zachodzie w IV i V wieku. Próba syntezy zagadnienia

I considered the different views regarding the issues of possession, wealth and poverty in the fourth and fifth century. I focused on the concepts of the fifth-century theologian (St. Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan, St. Augustine the Bishop of Hippo), pioneers of the western monastic theology and also the earliest monastic theologians and the heterodox pelagianist writers. They regarded soteriological perspective of Christianity. In that early period the socio-economic view did not constitute a doctrine. We can distinguish two essential approaches to the issue of possession in the teaching of the Church Fathers in the fourth and fifth century: a realistic and a pessimistic attitude. (The optimistic version regarded the possession of wealth as the result of Divine Protection and as a reward for pious Christian life. Both those models presumed that all the earthly goods were created by God and that people are only the temporary stewards of the goods given them for use. The realistic approach emphasized that everything which God has made was good and there was nothing wrong with owning possessions but it denounced the unjust means by which it is sometimes achieved or used. The pessimistic approach of Anchorites (monas­ticism, orthodox and heterodox ascetics) accepted the possession of goods which were made with one’s own hands. Everything which was not necessary should be given as alms. Coenobitic monks didn’t have anything of their own because everything belonged to the monastery. Their superior decided how everything could be used. The heterodox followers of Pelagius condemned shared of private property at all, and shared the view that voluntarily poverty was the only possible way for Christian.

Religion and Spirituality: the Perspective of Health Professionals

This study examined how health professionals signify the religiosity and faith of patients under cancer treatment and how they themselves experience such phenomena. This is a qualitative-descriptive study, using the phenomenological framework as set out by Stein and Ales Bello, as a way of understanding the human being in its totality - physical, mental and spiritual. Most professionals report they are spiritualists, two are Catholics, one physician is a Buddhist and another is a Spiritist. They believe that religion is inherent to all human beings. Professionals convicted of their religion (less than half) believe in divine protection and recognize religiosity as a support and comfort for patients and their families in coping with illness. They expect patients to live their faith with prudence, never losing sight of reality.

The Sea and Souls: Maritime Votive Practices in Counter-Reformation Brittany, 1500–1750

If God had not given a natural inclination to some with regard to things of the sea, I do not believe that anyone would ever dare to go upon it. … Barely has a long voyage begun when fresh water becomes so short that one is reduced to drinking so little that thirst is provoked rather than quenched … Food shortages are so frequent that one is often forced to eat rats and ship’s leather … One has difficulty in deciding which is the more insupportable, the heat of the torrid zone or the cold of the north. Scurvy and the maladies of Guinea and the tropics are so painful and grievous that you would not believe the human body could suffer so greatly. The horror of maritime warfare and of storms cannot be explained to those who have not experienced them. I know of voyages where a third or a half of the crew have been lost.Few human communities are as exposed to risk as those who make a living from the sea. More prone to the unpredictability of the natural world than those who Live on land, sailors, fisherman and their families have always been gready conscious of the fragility of life and of human powerlessness before the elements. Because the capriciousness of the sea is beyond the normal control of seafarers, during the historic past and no doubt long before, recourse was made to supernatural methods of management. By the later Middle Ages in Christian Europe, the most important form was invocation of divine protection through the intercession of the saints of the Church, by a process of vow and exchange.

Hachikazuki: Revealing Kannon’s Crowning Compassion in Muromachi Fiction

The corpus of late-medieval Japanese fiction contains various stories about the benefits and favors obtained through devotion to the bodhisattva Kannon. One of these stories is Hachikazuki, which features a young heroine who, following her parents' prayers, is conceived through the divine intervention of Kannon. The girl loses her mother at an early age, is stigmatized by a bowl that her mother has placed inverted upon her head, and undergoes a series of hardships and sufferings. Eventually, the bowl miraculously falls off, and the story culminates in the heroine's happy marriage and the universal recognition of her virtues. I discuss the significance of the bowl as a narrative trope in Hachikazuki in order to illuminate its function as a physical symbol of Kannon's active compassion and divine protection. Kannon seems to be largely absent throughout the narrative, especially in the episodes where the heroine overcomes her suffering thanks to the saving power of the bowl. I argue that the bowl indicates Kannon's benevolent presence throughout the entire story. Therefore, the bowl not only serves as a regenerative space where Hachikazuki can overcome the trauma of her early childhood loss, but it also bridges the gap between orthodox doctrinal and popular vernacular representations of Kannon. KEYWORDS: otogizoshi-Hachikazuki-mamako mono-setsuwa-Kannon-bowl- compassion-divine protection (ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.) The story Hachikazuki ... (The bowl bearer) is the tale of a young girl who suffers various hardships because she is stigmatized by a bowl that has become firmly attached to her head.1 In the end, however, it is through the bowl that she achieves fame, fortune, and aristocratic status. Hachikazuki is one of some four hundred works of short Muromachi fiction that together constitute the literary genre known today as otogizoshi ..., or companion booklets.2 According to Ichiko Teiji's classification of otogizoshi by subject matter and theme, Hachikazuki falls into the category of kuge mono ... (aristocratic tales) under the subdivision of mamako mono ... (step-child tales), because the narrative deals with the ill fortune, suffering, and happy ending in the life of a stepchild (Ichiko 1968, 17). This subject has a long tradition which dates back to thirteenth-century collections of setsuwa ... such as Uji shui monogatari ... (Collection of tales of Uji), and to late tenthcentury romances such as Ochikubo monogatari ... (Tale of the sunken room), Utsuho monogatari ... (Tale of the hollow tree), and Sumiyoshi monogatari ... (Tale of Sumiyoshi). In these stories, a stepmother torments the stepdaughter out of jealousy and expels her from home. As a result, the stepdaughter experiences hardship and suffering, but in the end, through the divine intervention of a deity, she marries a noble suitor and lives happily ever after. In addition, Hachikazuki is also classified under shomin mono ... (tales of commoners) because it resembles many of the success stories in volume sixteen of the twelfth-century setsuwa collection Konjaku monogatari shu ... (Collection of tales of times now past), particularly those associated with the mercy of the bodhisattva Kannon (Kanda and Nishizawa 2002, 865).3 Konjaku monogatari shu is believed to have been compiled by a Buddhist lay monk of aristocratic rank who was familiar with the classic literary tradition and the life of commoners. Although we do not know much about the size, type, or location of the audience for these tales, the reappearance of themes from Konjaku monogatari shu in collections from subsequent eras- such as the miracle tales of the Hasedera Kannon'in. Muromachi-period otogizoshi like Hachikazuki-attests to their popularity and transmission to later generations (Shimura 1974, 42). Hachikazuki begins by introducing the heroine's parents,who, after ardent prayers to the Hasedera Kannon, miraculously conceive a daughter. …

Augustinus en de Joden: een inleidend overzicht

The article explores how Augustine of Hippo (354-430) deals with the Jews and Judaism. First it investigates the occurrence and meaning of the word �Iudaeus� in Augustine�s works. It turns out that Augustine, unlike many a predecessor, does not make a sharp distinction between �Hebrew�, �Israelite�, and �Jew�. Mainly on the basis of The City of God the role of the Jews in history is discussed. According to Augustine, all true believers (even those living before the time of Jesus) are �Christ believers� and are considered to belong to Christ�s body, the Church. The diaspora of the Jews is evaluated both negatively and positively: negatively as a consequence of �their putting Christ to death�; positively since through the dispersion of the Jews their Scriptures have been dispersed as well and so provide �testimony to the truth taught by the Church�. The so-called �mark of Cain� can not be interpreted as a predominantly positive sign: it provides protection indeed, but this divine protection is, once again, �for the benefit of the Church�. Contrary to some current opinion, it is stressed that Augustine knew contemporary Jews in Roman North Africa quite well.

Escape from Paradox: Perceval’s Upbringing in the Conte du Graal

Perceval's mother's withdrawal from the community and her flawed education of her son suggest a spiritual crisis and doubt about God's presence in human life. (ES) In the seclusion of the Waste Forest, a widowed mother raises her youngest son outside of the life of the Church. This woman, Perceval's mother, seeks safety away from Arthurian society, where she experienced injustice and violence. But after fleeing to the Welsh woods, she ceases to attend Mass, receive communion, or teach her son the truths of faith. She no longer sees herself as part of the Christian community. Told in around 500 verses in the expansive romance of the Conte du Graal, this story narrates Perceval's upbringing without community or religious practice.1 For medieval Christians, the link between liturgy and life was so close that the woman's withdrawal from the Church has to be understood as signifying a profound crisis. It denotes a loss of faith in traditional knowledge and religious life. In abstaining from the sacraments and refusing communion with God and the Church, the mother separates herself and her son from the most important source of grace and hope for salvation. Although her escape is motivated by fear for the safety of her family, it involves a spiritually inept choice of human over divine protection. Her decision never to return to society also indicates doubt about the good of humanity and the possibility of reconciliation with others. Here I explore the spiritual experience of this character to demonstrate that a deep uncertainty about God's presence in the world underlies her solitary life in the Waste Forest. Her anxiety centers on a principal act of traditional Christian belief: the sacramental union of the human with God. This concern about the union of humans and God, and of sign and thing, is intimately relevant to twelfth-century thought.2 It shaped much of the intellectual activity of the period that gave rise to Christian rationalism.3 In the background of Perceval's childhood in the Waste Forest we can recognize the devotional and semiotic crisis of the twelfth century that led to the breakdown of the patristic tradition. This crisis involved a loss of the old view of humans as participating in the life of God. Expressed in an elision of paradox, it deeply affected literature by transforming radically the conception of language and meaning. At this time of intense anxiety about knowledge of the divine, the Conte du Graal ultimately recalls the traditional belief in our ability to relate to God through the sacraments and to understand truth through symbols. The stirring tale of misfortunes suffered by Perceval's family opens the Conte du Graal. It compels us to consider carefully the events that constitute the narrative. The romance chronicles this tragedy with attention to social reality not seen in Chretien's earlier works.4 But it is unfair to conclude from this prominence of history, as does Brigitte Cazelles, that Chretien's art is antisymbolic.5 Critics of the Conte have largely assumed an inherent opposition between Christian and historical meanings. I suggest that the personal story of Perceval's family neither contradicts nor competes with Christian meanings, but instead transmits and mediates them. The language of the romance presumes no dichotomy between the letter and the symbol.6 The merging of romance and religious narratives in the Conte du Graal can be accounted for by reading the story symbolically. The fate of Perceval's kin reveals the dire condition of Arthurian society after the death of Utherpendragon, but it also manifests and interprets a timeless problem: the human struggle with mortality. Perceval's parents were exposed to a particularly devastating gust of violence. Their tragedy began when the father was wounded parmi les jambes (436) [through/between his legs] and mehaigna del cors (437) [became infi rm/ impotent]. The mother, who relates this story to her son after many years, does not explain exactly why or how this happened, but the man's great fortune was lost as a result of his injury. …

The Tale of a City Saved by Gout and a Letter From Jesus

In the 6th century a Persian invasion of the eastern provinces of the Roman empire resulted in the devastation of several cities. Edessa alone was spared, and it was widely believed that this city had divine protection because of postal communication over 5 centuries earlier between its gouty ruler and Jesus Christ. These events are reviewed in detail herein. Some appear to have a well-documented historic basis but others, including the letter from Jesus, have been considered highly questionable by various authorities. The story provides an interesting connection between gout and historic events in the ancient world.