Early North Research Articles

Cyprian, Paul, and Care for the Poor and Captive: Offering Sacrifices and Ransoming Temples

Abstract:The ways in which Cyprian appropriates Scripture to address the challenges facing his flock give us an insight into how theology, text, and context are interwoven in his biblical interpretation. As a contribution to studies in the reception of Paul and early North African exegesis, I examine all the quotations of and allusions to the canonical Paul in Cyprian’s exhortations to care for the poor and captive. This reveals him to be a creative interpreter of Scripture, employing reading strategies of model, image, direct application, and qualification, as well as tailoring them to serve his aims in particular works. Also evident is that, here at least, Cyprian’s promotion of almsgiving is not linked to patronage; rather, he uses Paul to promote a counter-cultural attitude—pleasing God rather than cultivating clients.

Refreshment and Reunion in Paradise: Near-Death Experiences in Early North African Christianity

Article discussing the near-death experiences of Perpetua and Saturus, martyrs of early Christianity.

Brackney's "Baptists in early North America: Swansea, Massachusetts (Vol. 1)" (Book Review)

Brackney's "Baptists in early North America: Swansea, Massachusetts (Vol. 1)" (Book Review)

Missionary Medicine of Canadian Presbytery and Korean Doctors under Japanese Occupation--focusing Sung-jin and Ham-heung

In East Asia during the second half of the 19th century, overseas mission work by Protestant churches thrived. Missionaries built schools and hospitals and effectively used them for evangelism. In the 20th century when Social Gospel Movement was expanding, medical work has been recognized as a significant mission service in and by itself. This article reviewed the construction and characteristics of missions work conducted by Canadian Presbytery; missionary doctors and Korean doctors who worked at the mission hospitals; why the missionary medical work had to stop; and career paths taken by Korean doctors upon liberation from Japanese occupation. The Canadian Presbytery missionaries, unlike other denomination missionaries, were rather critical of Imperial Japan, but supportive towards Koreans. This could have stemmed from the reflection of their own experience of once a colony of British Empire and also their value system that promotes egalitarian, democratic and progressive theology. The Sung-jin and Ham-heung Mission Bases were a community, interacting organically as a 'Triangle of Church, School and Hospital.' The missionaries mobilized the graduates from Christian schools and organized a Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA). Some of the graduates were trained to become medical doctors or assistants and worked at mission hospitals. Missionary doctors' approaches to balancing evangelism and medical practice varied. For example, Robert Grieson went through confusion and struggled to balance conflicting roles as a pastor for evangelism and also as a physician. Kate McMillan, on the other hand, had less burden for evangelism than Grieson, and focused on medical work by taking advantage of the opportunity that, as a woman, she can easily approach Korean women. Still another case was Florence Murray who practised evangelism within the hospital setting, and successfully carried out the role as a hospital administrator, going beyond 'women's work' as McMillan did. Korean doctors and assistants who worked at the mission hospitals had seen the spread of Protestantism in their youth; had received modern education; had experienced the fall of own country in 1910 and nationwide protest against Japan in 1919. The majority of them were graduates of Severance Medical College, the hub of missionary medicine at the time. After the resignation from the mission hospitals, 80 percent of them became self-employed general practitioners. The operations of the mission hospitals began to contract in 1930 due to tightened control by Imperial Japan. Shrine worship imposed on Christians caused internal conflict and division among missionaries and brought about changes in the form and contents of the mission organization. The incidence of the assault of Dr. Grieson brought about the dissolution of Sung-jin mission base and the interruption of the operation of Je-dong Hospital. As the Pacific War expanded, missionaries were driven out of Korea and returned home. In conclusion, the missions work by Canadian Presbytery missionaries had greatly impacted Protestantism in Korea. The characteristics of Canadian Presbytery were manifested in their support of Korean nationalism movement, openness for Social Gospel, and maintaining equal footing with Korean Christians. Specifically we note the influence of these characteristics in Chosun doctors who had worked in the mission hospitals. They operated their own hospitals or clinics in a manner similar to the mission hospitals by providing treatment for poor patients free of charge or for a nominal fee and treating the patients in a kind and humanistic way. After the 1945 Liberation, Korean doctors'career paths split into two directions. most of them defected to South Korea and chose the path to work as general practitioners. A few of them remained in North Korea and became educator of new doctors. It is meaningful that former doctors of Canadian missionary hosptal became dean of 2 medical colleges among 3 of all in early North Korea. This article does not cover the comparative analysis of the medical work by the missionaries of Canadian Presbytery and other denominations. It is desirable to include this analysis of the contents and the comparison in a future study of Korean doctors who participated in the mission hospitals, by denomination and by geographical region.

Reading Abdallāh b. Abdallāh al-Tarjumān’s Tuḥfa (1420) in the Ottoman Empire: Muslim-Christian Polemics and Intertextuality in the Age of “Confessionalization”

In 1604, a charismatic Sufi sheikh from Tunis commissioned the translation into Ottoman Turkish of Abdallāh b. Abdallāh al-Tarjumān’s polemical text entitled Tuḥfat al-Adīb fī alradd ʿalā ahl al-ṣalīb (1420), with the intention of presenting it to Ottoman Sultan Ahmed I. Soon after, this text became one of the most widely known and disseminated anti-Christian polemical texts in the Islamic world, and by the late ninteenth century, in Europe as well. The article examines the circumstances of Tuḥfa’s translation from Arabic into Ottoman Turkish, the actors involved, the narrative’s trajectory from Tunis to Istanbul, its reception by the Ottoman reading public, as well as impact on the development of an Ottoman polemical genre of self-narrative of conversion to Islam. Transcription and translation of such an Ottoman narrative, which appears to have been directly influenced by Tuḥfa, is featured in the article’s appendix. By focusing on the trajectory of a single text belonging to the genre of religious polemics, the article bridges the traditionally disconnected academic discussions pertaining to the early modern Iberian, North African and Ottoman history and demonstrates their inherent connectivity in the age of confessional polarization (16th-17th centuries).

Early Navigation in the North Sea – The Use of the Lead and Line and other Navigation Methods

Every sailor, at the back of his or her mind, is aware that the nearest land is likely to be directly beneath the ship's keel and he or she is interested to know just how near. For over two thousand years, mariners measured depth of water by using a sounding rod in shallow areas and the lead and line in deeper water. This paper considers how, during the “Dark Ages”, sailors in the North Sea might have navigated, including the use of sounding rods and lead lines for way-finding during a time when no other navigational instruments were available. Because of the lack of contemporary records the authors firstly consider the use of depth finding in earlier and later times to shed light on how the early North Sea sailors might have operated. The latter part of this paper takes account of the earlier discussion, together with some records of North Sea voyaging, to suggest how “Dark Age” sailors might have used sounding rods, the lead and line, and other techniques to navigate around and across the North Sea.

A Reception and an Influence of USSR films in the early North Korea, 1945~1953

A Reception and an Influence of USSR films in the early North Korea, 1945~1953

Book Review: Hope for Better Spouses: Protestant Marriage and Church Renewal in Early Modern Europe, India, and North America. Emory Studies in Law and Religion

Book Review: <i>Hope for Better Spouses: Protestant Marriage and Church Renewal in Early Modern Europe, India, and North America</i>. <i>Emory Studies in Law and Religion</i>

Moreau de Saint-Méry: Itinerant Bibliophile

This article examines the bookselling, printing, and editorial work of the French colonial lawyer Moreau de Saint-Méry. While residing in Philadelphia from 1794 to 1798, Moreau opened a bookstore and print shop that served as a publishing house and social community hub for his fellow refugees from the French and Haitian Revolutions. After examining the logistics of his involvement with the early North American book trade, I undertake a close reading of one of his imprints. The material history of this expertly crafted, multi-volume account of a Dutch trade mission to China highlights collaboration between European, Caribbean, American, and Chinese technicians and artists who lived migratory lives during the imperial conflicts of the late eighteenth century. The article considers Moreau’s professional book activities in light of his work as a collector whose personal collection of books, manuscripts, and maps became a cornerstone of the French colonial archives.

Native Acts: Indian Performance, 1603-1832 ed. by Joshua David Bellin, Laura L. Mielke, and: Ceremony, Spirituality, and Ritual in Native American Performance: A Creative Notebook by Hanay Geiogamah (review)

Reviewed by: Native Acts: Indian Performance, 1603-1832 ed. by Joshua David Bellin, Laura L. Mielke, and: Ceremony, Spirituality, and Ritual in Native American Performance: A Creative Notebook by Hanay Geiogamah Teresa Stankiewicz Native Acts: Indian Performance, 1603–1832. Edited by Joshua David Bellin and Laura L. Mielke. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2011. pp. 333. $35.00 paper. Ceremony, Spirituality, and Ritual in Native American Performance: A Creative Notebook. By Hanay Geiogamah. Los Angeles: UCLA American Indian Studies Center, 2011. pp. 144. $16.00 paper. Given the disappointing lack of books published each year on Native American drama, these two new works are prime considerations not only for literary review but also for use in cultural and performance studies. Both of these works speak to the “Indianness” of Native American performance and, perhaps more importantly, are written from a distinctly Native American perspective. Editor Laura L. Mielke’s explication of the terms “Indianness” and “performance” in her introduction to Native Acts, is relevant to both works: “When we refer to Indianness in this volume, we mean the acknowledged attribute of direct association with American Indian peoples and cultures; who identifies American Indian attributes determines the substance of Indianness at specific moments” (5). Mielke defines performance in three ways: to present to an audience, to carry out a command or particular action, and to participate in a formal public function or ritual (2). Native Acts: Indian Performance, 1603–1832 includes ten insightful essays on the performance of being “Indian” that explore said performance from the perspective of the indigenous peoples. Mielke’s introduction is a superlative beginning that not only defines terms and explains the selection of essays but also [End Page 159] raises some pertinent questions about the performance of Indianness for the indigenous peoples of North America. She begins with an example of her own, the legend of Pocahontas, dissecting the various interpretations of the story and calling for an examination of the intent behind those who reported what has now become an American legend that perpetuates a romantic myth of indigenous peoples in North America. The chronologically organized essays first explore the essentialist attitudes of the Europeans who colonized America and the impact of those attitudes on the native people, concluding with the performance of Indianness in the early formation of the United States. As Mielke asserts, “In early North America, Europeans’ conceptions of Indianness were inextricable from the moral, religious, teleological, political, and economic justifications for their [European] presence” (5). The significance of this collection of essays lies in the deliberate intent to recognize the proprietorship of Native Americans, characterized by Mielke as “a critical intervention in the scholarship treating the performance of Indianness” that restores “Indian peoples to the intercultural matrix from which such performances arose” (10). The first four essays, by scholars Matt Cohen, Nan Goodman, John H. Pol-lack, and Olivia Bloechl, expose essentialist interpretations that pervade historical representations of Indians. All four scholars argue that specific essential-ist assumptions led to misrepresentations of the Native American peoples and the subsequent public attitudes that defined native and Euroamerican relationships during the colonial era. Each author also provides a brief historical background of the text or events that are being examined. In “Lying Inventions: Native Dissimulation in Early Colonial New England,” Cohen analyzes Native American acts of strategic simulation and dissimulation as challenges to perceptions of stable national identities. Goodman’s essay, “The Deer Island Indians and Common Law Performance,” examines the European attitudes that deprived Indians of legal status in common law. Bloechl’s essay, “Wendat Song and Carnival Noise in the Jesuit Relations,” reveals the Jesuits’ assessment of Wendat healing ceremonies as superstitious, a grave charge at the time. Pollack’s essay, “Native Performances of Diplomacy and Religion in Early New France,” focuses on the misinterpretation of native ritual of the Innu, Algonquin, and Maliseet as a negotiated treaty, documented by François Gravé Du Pont and Samuel de Champlain in Des Sauvages, ou, Voyage de Samuel Champlain in 1603. The French understood the oration of Anadabijou as a chief or king commanding his people to accept French settlement and military aid. Pollack explains, however, that allied tribes were not interested...

Custom-Made Ceramics, Trans-Atlantic Business Partnerships and Entrepreneurial Spirit in Early Modern Newfoundland: An Examination of the SK Vessels from Ferryland

Demonstrating ceramic ownership can be a challenging archaeological endeavor, particularly if one seeks to understand the movement and meaning of such vessels over space and time. A small collection of Portuguese faience plates and bowls bearing the initials SK, found during the excavation of a seventeenth-century English settlement at Ferryland, Newfoundland, is an exceptional case in this regard. The SK stands for Lady Sara Kirke, wife of Newfoundland governor Sir David Kirke and matriarch of the Ferryland plantation following her husband’s death in 1654. Historical and archaeological records demonstrate Lady Sara’s important role in guiding the family’s plantation to economic prosperity for close to three decades but her personalized ceramics provide avenues for further exploration. They are indicative of longstanding international trading relationships and associated mechanisms of gift giving, and a window into the use life of personalized ceramics in the context of early modern North America.

Becoming medical doctors in colonial Korea: focusing on the faculty of medical colleges in early north Korea

This paper traces how Koreans of north area became medical doctors in colonial Korea. Most of the past research have focused only on the well-known medical doctors, or even when they discussed a great number of doctors, many research tended to only pay attention to the explicit final results of those doctors. This research, on the other hand, includes ordinary medical doctors as well as the renowed ones, and adjusts the focus to the lifetime period of their growth and activities. As a result, the misunderstanding and obscurity about the Korean medical doctors of north area during this period have been cleared. The new characteristics of the Korean medical doctors of this period have been found, along with their embodiment of historical significance. At the time, Koreans had to get through a number of qualifications in order to become doctors. First is the unique background of origin in which the family held interest in the modern education and was capable of supporting it financially. Second is the long-term status of education that the education from elementary to high school was completed without interruption. Third is the academic qualification that among various institutions of higher education, medical science was chosen as a major. Fourth is the condition of career in which as the career as a doctor had consistently continued. Thus, in oder to become a modern medical doctor, Koreans had to properly complete these multiple steps of process. The group of Korean medical doctors in north area, which was formed after getting through these series of process, possessed a number of characteristics. Firstly, as the upper-middle classes constituted the majority of medical doctors in Korea, the societal status of doctors rose and the foundation for the career as a doctor to be persisted as the family occupation settled. Secondly, the research career and academic degree became the principal method to escape from the discrimination and hierarchy existed between doctors. A PhD degree, especially, was the significant mark for clearly displaying the abilities and outcomes of the doctors. Lastly, the research career, education experience, clinical training and such that the Korean doctors of the period had built up were weak at the time, however, they were important sources for the future medical science development. Indeed, after Liberation, the rapid settlement and growth of Korea's medical science field were largely beholden to thus. Therefore, the growth of the Koreans as doctors did not cease in colonial Korea, but instead continued onto the history of future generations. In spite of the fact that the Korean doctors's growth and activities were greatly limited under the forceful policy of colonial domination of the era, the efforts the Korean doctors had put were not in vain. Likewise, if we do not fix our attention at the dominating policy and system, but rather put together the actors' correspondence and struggles of the period, then the Korean doctors will be a part of the living history. Hereby, the clue to the paradox between the suppression of medical science in colonial Korea and its leap after Liberation can be untied.

‘Aung San event’ occurrence and impact : Situation in the early 1980s, North Korea and Northeast Asia

‘Aung San event’ occurrence and impact : Situation in the early 1980s, North Korea and Northeast Asia

Romila Thapar. The Past before Us: Historical Traditions of Early North India.

Romila Thapar. The Past before Us: Historical Traditions of Early North India.

The oldest Cretaceous North American sauropod dinosaur

Sauropod dinosaurs have been found in sediments dating to most of the Cretaceous Period on all major Mesozoic landmasses, but this record is spatiotemporally uneven, even in relatively well-explored North American sediments. Within the 80 million-year-span of the Cretaceous, no definitive sauropod occurrences are known in North America from two ca. 20–25 million-year-long gaps, one from approximately the Berriasian–Barremian and the other from the mid-Cenomanian–late Campanian. Herein, we present an undescribed specimen that was collected in the middle part of the twentieth century that expands the known spatiotemporal distribution of Early Cretaceous North American sauropods, partially filling the earlier gap. The material is from the Berriasian–Valanginian-aged (ca. 139 Ma) Chilson Member of the Lakota Formation of South Dakota and appears to represent the only non-titanosauriform from the Cretaceous of North America or Asia. It closely resembles Camarasaurus and may represent a form closely related to that genus that persisted across the Jurassic–Cretaceous boundary.

A. G. Roeber. Hopes for Better Spouses: Protestant Marriage and Church Renewal in Early Modern Europe, India, and North America.

A. G. Roeber. Hopes for Better Spouses: Protestant Marriage and Church Renewal in Early Modern Europe, India, and North America.

Race, gender, and the exotic in Ann-Marie MacDonald’s Fall on Your Knees

Focusing on Canadian author Ann-Marie MacDonald’s critically acclaimed Fall on Your Knees (1996), this essay argues that the figure of the Arab in the novel represents an ethnic otherness whose strategic exoticization exposes a highly racialized and gendered early twentieth-century North American culture, one that has historically been informed by a latent, economically motivated exoticism. It is in fact this underlying exoticism that has persistently structured the experiences of several generations of racial and sexual minorities in North America and relegated those minorities to the margins of social life. MacDonald’s novel thus deserves renewed attention precisely because it traces critically the historical continuum along which exoticist constructions of race and gender have shaped the experiences of many immigrants in North America. Only by attending to the cultural politics of the exotic, I want to suggest, can we open up discourses of race and gender to productive and transformative cultural critique.

Endoscopic third ventriculostomy and choroid plexus cauterization in infants with hydrocephalus: a retrospective Hydrocephalus Clinical Research Network study

The use of endoscopic third ventriculostomy (ETV) with choroid plexus cauterization (CPC) has been advocated as an alternative to CSF shunting in infants with hydrocephalus. There are limited reports of this procedure in the North American population, however. The authors provide a retrospective review of the experience with combined ETV + CPC within the North American Hydrocephalus Clinical Research Network (HCRN). All children (< 2 years old) who underwent an ETV + CPC at one of 7 HCRN centers before November 2012 were included. Data were collected retrospectively through review of hospital records and the HCRN registry. Comparisons were made to a contemporaneous cohort of 758 children who received their first shunt at < 2 years of age within the HCRN. Thirty-six patients with ETV + CPC were included (13 with previous shunt). The etiologies of hydrocephalus were as follows: intraventricular hemorrhage of prematurity (9 patients), aqueductal stenosis (8), myelomeningocele (4), and other (15). There were no major intraoperative or early postoperative complications. There were 2 postoperative CSF infections. There were 2 deaths unrelated to hydrocephalus and 1 death from seizure. In 18 patients ETV + CPC failed at a median time of 30 days after surgery (range 4-484 days). The actuarial 3-, 6-, and 12-month success for ETV + CPC was 58%, 52%, and 52%. Time to treatment failure was slightly worse for the 36 patients with ETV + CPC compared with the 758 infants treated with shunts (p = 0.012). Near-complete CPC (≥ 90%) was achieved in 11 cases (31%) overall, but in 50% (10 of 20 cases) in 2012 versus 6% (1 of 16 cases) before 2012 (p = 0.009). Failure was higher in children with < 90% CPC (HR 4.39, 95% CI 0.999-19.2, p = 0.0501). The early North American multicenter experience with ETV + CPC in infants demonstrates that the procedure has reasonable safety in selected cases. The degree of CPC achieved might be associated with a surgeon's learning curve and appears to affect success, suggesting that surgeon training might improve results.

"Patient Zero": the absence of a patient's view of the early North American AIDS epidemic.

This article contextualizes the production and reception of And the Band Played On, Randy Shilts's popular history of the initial recognition of the American AIDS epidemic. Published over twenty-five years ago, the book and its most notorious character, "Patient Zero," are in particular need of a critical historical treatment. The article presents a more balanced consideration-a "patient's view"-of Gaétan Dugas's experience of the early years of AIDS. I oppose the assertion that Dugas, the so-called Patient Zero, ignored incontrovertible information about the condition and was intent on spreading his infection. Instead I argue that scientific ideas in 1982 and 1983 about AIDS and the transmissibility of a causative agent were later portrayed to be more self-evident than they were at the time. The article also traces how Shilts's highly selective-and highly readable-characterization of Dugas rapidly became embedded in discussions about the need to criminalize the reckless transmission of HIV.

A Study on the Early North Sung Period Buddhist Literatures Found in the Pagoda of Suzhou Ruiguangsi

A Study on the Early North Sung Period Buddhist Literatures Found in the Pagoda of Suzhou Ruiguangsi