Exegesis Of Texts Research Articles

Zhuangzi and ideological state apparatuses

Louis Althusser is perhaps most well-known for his concept of ‘Ideological State Apparatuses’ (ISAs). However, Althusser is not clear about what role, if any, ISAs play in a post-capitalist society. At times, Althusser talks about ISAs (and the state) withering; at other times, they are merely reformed. Sometimes, ISAs are described as having an inescapable repressive dimension; on other occasions, they are a perfectly acceptable tool for the reproduction of socialism. In this paper, I offer a way of thinking through this confusion that draws on the thought of the Daoist philosopher, Zhuangzi. I argue that Zhuangzian friendship represents a kind of radical equality that is reproducible without the traditional kind of ideological interpellation of ISAs, thereby allowing Althusser explain post-capitalist ideological reproduction. It is worth noting that in this paper, I am not engaging in a textual exegesis of the Zhuangzi. My primary interest is in using the contemporary literature on the Zhuangzi to think through a problem in Althusser’s philosophical system.

“Small machines of words”: poetics, phonetics, and mechanisms of narrative realism in late twentieth-century Hip Hop

Abstract This work begins with an exploration of various analytical techniques for discerning and describing details of vocal performance in the song “Episodes,” from Philadelphia Hip Hop group The Roots’ 1996 album, Illadelph Halflife. I pair this musical analysis with textual exegesis drawing on narratology and speech act theory. Reconciling the two analytical approaches, I conclude by suggesting a refreshed notion of affective realism in late twentieth-century Hip Hop, characterized by consistency between poetic, phonetic, illocutionary, and performative dynamics in rap verse.

Who Are “The Least?” Ἐλάχιστος (Mt 25:31-46) – a Hermeneutical Reconsideration

The present paper deals with the interpretation of one of the Matthean texts that still raises problems to modern exegesis, namely the one relating to the Last Judgment (Mt 25:31-46), and this because of a term – ἐλάχιστος (v. 40) – translated with “the least”. The question to which the author tries an answer is: “Who are the little ones?” The approach of the work is not so much one of an exegetical nature, but it is of a hermeneutical nature. Beyond the difficulties that modern exegesis seems to have failed to overcome, the real challenge is the spiritual interpretation of this text, an interpretation which depends very much on identifying those who are “the least”. This work attempts to harmonize the textual exegesis with the patristic interpretation, having the stated purpose of applying this text to the spiritual life, both relating to the person and community. Keywords: ἐλάχιστος, the little ones, the least, the Gentiles, reversed pyramid.

Engaging with the unknown: How Judaism enabled Freud's psychological discoveries.

A large literature has formed around the question of how Freud's Jewishness and/or Judaism influenced his psychological discoveries and development of psychoanalytic theory and methods. The article organizes the literature into several core theses but brings new clarity and insight by applying two essential criteria to demonstrate an impact of Judaism on Freud's thinking: direct content and historical timing. First, there should be evidence that Freud incorporated actual content from Jewish sources, and second, this incorporation must have occurred during the most crucial period of Freud's early discovery, conceptualization, and development of psychoanalysis, roughly 1893-1910. Thus, for example, Bakan's well-known theory that Freud studied Kabbala is completely negated by the absence of any evidence in the required time period. Part I reviews the literature on the influence of Freud's ethnic/cultural Jewish identity. Part II introduces the Judaic sacred literature, explores Freud's education in Judaism and Hebrew, and presents evidence that Freud had the motive, means, and resources to discover and draw from the "Dream Segment" of the Talmud-along with the traditional Judaic methods and techniques of textual exegesis. Freud then applied these same Judaic word-centered interpretive methods-used for revealing an invisible God-to revealing an invisible Unconscious in four successive books in 1900, 1901, and 1905.

A Hermeneutic Analysis of Selected Yorùbá Pentecostal Songs

The Christianity that reached Africa, especially the sub-Saharan region, had undergone several stages of inculturation and re-organization. The changing social, political, and cultural situation of the people had a tremendous impact on the Christian religion. As Christianity moved through the intellectual and political worlds, especially among the Yorùbá people of southwestern Nigeria, it acquired new categories of thought. Yorùbá philosophical language began to be applied in expressing some of the mysteries of the Christian faith. This was particularly evident in the articulation of the theological language expressed through various Christian songs. Different types of songs collected during the worship among the selected African Indigenous Churches and those produced by some artists were analyzed through the lens of textual exegesis. This paper considered the impact of the emerging trend of diffusion of African philosophy, worldviews, and Christian theology in the selected Christian songs. This in turn revealed the dynamism or the emerging trends in African Christianity that authenticate the pluricultural nature of contemporary world Christianity. The work demonstrated that Christianity is an essential part of the identity of the Yorùbá people, which is best demonstrated in the folkloric expressions, especially songs.

Methodological Approaches in Qur’anic Studies: A Critique of Michael Cook’s Approach

This critical study scrutinizes methods that scholars of the Qur'an apply to their research, with a specific emphasis on the major contributions of Michael Cook. The first part of this study starts with a survey of the historiography of Qur'an Studies particularly with the methodological approaches that have significantly contributed to the study of the Qur'an. The narration of prominent works in Qur'anic Studies covers the development of methodologies through the ages by analyzing the crucial contributions of various scholars in the field. Moreover, the study investigates the intellectual achievements of Michael Cook, looking into his conceptual framework and landmark discoveries. Through the application of highly evolved techniques such as text-linguistic analysis, textual exegesis, and comparative religious studies, it evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of Cook's method. It contrasts these with the strengths and weaknesses of alternative methodologies. With this inquiry, we advance the field of Qur'anic Studies by examining Cook's method and also pave the path for further research. This paper seeks to launch discourses on the methodology within the field. This study will encourage researchers to engage in profound and multidisciplinary studies exploring the Qur'an from varied approaches.

Standing Firm in the Flux: On Whitehead's Eternal Objects

Abstract Alfred North Whitehead's first book as a professor of philosophy at Harvard University, Science and the Modern World, is not only a historical treatment of the rise and fall of scientific materialism. It also marks his turn to metaphysics in search of an alternative cosmological scheme that would replace matter in motion with organic process as that which is generic in Nature. Among the metaphysical innovations introduced in this book are the somewhat enigmatic “eternal objects.” The publication of the first and second volumes of Whitehead's Harvard Lectures on the philosophical presuppositions (HL1) and general metaphysical problems (HL2) of science provides students of his corpus with an opportunity to catch the thinker in the act of creating his concepts. In searching through student notes for glimpses of what Whitehead really meant, I have kept in mind his admonition that “no thinker thinks twice” (PR 29). Whitehead never ceased philosophizing, and surely he intended for us to continue thinking with but beyond the letter of his ideas. In this spirit and in light of HL1 and HL2, this article seeks to elucidate the role of eternal objects as a category of existence in Whitehead's Philosophy of Organism, with the goal not simply of textual exegesis, but of showing how the meaning of the fifth category of existence (as he refers to eternal objects in PR) is exemplified in the gradual ingression of the idea in Whitehead's imagination. My aim is to sustain the effort at constructive thought he began, making his speculative hypothesis as explicit as possible so as to better prepare it for critical improvement (PR xiv).

A Hermeneutical Survey of the Book of Daniel: A Recipe for an Egalitarian Nigerian

The fourth prophetic writing in the Old Testament, known as the Book of Daniel, has recently undergone an English translation. The primary focus of this text is centred on an individual by the name of Daniel. This individual is an ancient figure who is also mentioned in Ezekiel 14:14 and 28:3. Further examples of the aforementioned designation refer to a male progeny of David (1 Chronicle 3:1) and an individual belonging to the sacerdotal ancestry of Ithamar (Ezra 8; 2; Nehemiah 10:6). The afore-mentioned references provide substantiation that this particular terminology was widespread among the Jewish community in the period following the exile. Given the aforementioned, this paper examines the historical context of the individual known as Daniel, the authorship of the text, the discerned symbolic messages and their interpretation, criticism levelled against the book. The examination of the book through a hermeneutical lens is considered appropriate as a blueprint for the establishment of an egalitarian Nigerian society. The methodology adopted in this research is purely qualitative involving content analysis, critical evaluation of biblical text on the subject matter and a hermeneutical survey of scholastic views and analogy on the book of Daniel. The research objective was accomplished through a comprehensive utilisation of textual exegesis. Despite the criticisms levelled by certain scholars, the paper ultimately concludes that the book effectively justifies its relevance to the process of nation building.

Subtle, hidden, and far-off: The intertextuality of the Yogasūtras

Abstract Modern scholarship discusses ‘Buddhist influences’ on the Patañjali’s Yogasūtras (YS). Indeed, Patañjali borrowed key Buddhist concepts, particularly from Yogācāra. But this borrowing does not evince that the YS is just ‘crypto-Buddhism’. In fact, during the first millennium CE, the YS was equally influential on Buddhist thinkers. I make this argument by focusing on YS 3.25, which discusses the yogic ability to see subtle (sūkṣma), hidden (vyavahita), and far-off (viprakṛṣṭa) objects. Tracing textual occurrences of these three words, I use this stable mimetic trope to demonstrate the influence of YS on Buddhist, Nyāya, and Vaiśeṣika writings. This influence is all the more interesting given that Buddhists explicitly disagree with many of the theoretical suppositions latent in YS 3.25. I demonstrate that despite this theoretical disagreement, Buddhists make ample use of YS 3.25. This paper thus complicates any clear direction of influence between Buddhist and Hindu traditions, and further questions the cogency of strict delineations between different philosophical schools. I also offer the method used in this paper as a novel approach to textual exegesis. By focusing on stable textual memes and tracing their occurrences across sources, we gain a powerful method to more deeply plumb India's rich intertextual intellectual history.

The Claim of Reason in a Planetary Age

This essay is a creative inheritance destined for a volume celebrating the ongoing relevance of Thomas Kuhn and Stanley Cavell. But if it is inspired by, and converses with them, it is neither a reconstruction of their conversations nor a textual exegesis, but an attempt to reflect critically on the rationality of Earthlings in the Anthropocene while drawing orientation from Kuhn and Cavell. Arguably, such philosophical modernism is in spirit intensely Cavellian. Pursuing Emersonian self-reliance, this paper aims to make “philosophy yet another kind of problem for itself.” Therefore, this text is not Kuhnian. It couldn’t be — Kuhn claimed that his “vocation” was to be a “historian of science,” a member of the “American Historical, not the American Philosophical, Association.” But in its concern with science and history, and above all in its acceptance that our current historical context, the Anthropocene, cannot be thought outside of paradigmatic shifts within the history of science, notably the development of planetary science as a comparative and thus inter- planetary model for understanding our own terrestrial condition, what follows is Kuhnian.

"ПЛОТСКИЙ ПОВОРОТ" В ДИСКУССИИ О СВЯЩЕННОМ

The paper is concerned with the carnal turn in contemporary philosophical theology. In the theological studies religion is often interpreted as primarily belonging to the sphere of the spiritual. While it is true that for most religious traditions (Christian as well as non-Christian) God is a spiritual and disembodied being, even the presence of God is always a mediated presence, and it may well be argued that this mediation is always material in character. We analyze theological aspects of the project carnal hermeneutics (Richard Kearney, Brian Treanor, John Panteleimon Manoussakis). Carnal hermeneutics shows the new philosophical turn away from the overly abstract, relativist and limited emphasis on structural linguistics and deconstruction in favor of a new emphasis on the on the fundamental act of incarnation. From that new point of view, linguistics and textual exegesis may continue to be a necessary aspect of hermeneutics – but they are not sufficient in themselves. It is a way of thinking which might help us recover the body as text and the text as body: to restore hermeneutics to phenomenology and vice versa and to remind us that interpretation is never a dis-embodied act. Carnal hermeneutics declares the living presence of the body as the inescapable foundation of our very being – inclusive of any act of interpretation. The carnal hermeneutics insists upon the crisscrossing of text and flesh, which both denies the collapsing of flesh into text (and vice versa) and also reveals the utter inextricability of the two.

Göbekli Tepe’s Pillars and Architecture Reveal the Foundation of Religion, Metaphysics, and Science

Once the Luwian hieroglyphics for God “” and Gate “” were discovered at Göbekli Tepe, this author was able to directly link the site’s carved pillars and pillar enclosures to the Abrahamic/Mosaic “Word of God”, . Archaeologists and anthropologists have long viewed the Bible as mankind’s best guide to prehistoric religion, however, archaeologist Klaus Schmidt had no reason to believe that the site he spent years excavating at Göbekli Tepe might be the legendary “Pillars of Enoch”, carved by the first Biblical holy man and scribe. To make this connection, the author first had to decipher Judaism’s Razah D’Oraytah (Secret of Knowledge) from the Sefer Yetzirah (Book of Creation). The Book of Creation is the only text to explain the Secret of Knowledge, and the only text attributed to the prophet Abraham within the rabbinical community. The Zohar, Judaism’s most accessible Kabbalistic text, admits that it lacks knowledge of “deep and hidden things which issue from God’s thought and are taken up by the Voice [of God] which are not disclosed till the Word [] reveals them”. Abrahamic/Mosaic “Word of God” encrypts the mathematics of sound that emanates from God’s “Voice” in terms of ancient string theory. Just as modern string theory defines a Theory of Everything (ToE) within theoretical physics, so too does this ancient string theory define the Theory of Everything that Abraham named the “Living God”. The author’s previous paper ties Jewish sources to Göbekli Tepe, while the current paper applies this sonic “God Table” to the textual exegesis and hermeneutics structuring all religious creation allegories, including the writings of Sumer, Assyria, Babylonia, Vedic India, pre-Dynastic Egypt, Ugarit, and Israel. This paper will apply Göbekli Tepe’s structural template to archaeology’s oldest legible cuneiform tablets, including the Kesh Temple Hymn, Sumerian King List, and the Akkadian Ark Tablet. It will also be demonstrated that Göbekli Tepe holds the key to the Rig Veda, Hinduism’s oldest text, and defines the essence of Plato’s metaphysics.

Der Erbvertrag der Römer und der Erbvertrag heute

Summary Pacta successoria in Roman and contemporary law: observations in the margin of M.F. Merotto’s recent book. – The work I patti successori dispositivi nel diritto romano is the most recent publication tackling the problem of contractual succession according to Roman law. In the book’s introduction, Maria Federica Merotto responds to the voices calling for a more nuanced study of this phenomenon. Despite numerous exciting thoughts, the study displays shortcommings. The vast discrepancy between the declared methodological attitude and the actual course of the textual exegesis serves as a starting point for a more profound reflection on the shadow that modern legal concepts cast onto the ancient texts and the narrowness of traditional corpus of sources in conventional Roman law research.

“Heirs to What Had Been Accomplished”: D. N. Aidit, the PKI, and Maoism, 1950–1965

AbstractWhy did the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) pursue a nonviolent, collaborative, and parliamentary path to power? How did it secure major electoral successes? The answers to both queries have much to do with the PKI's adaptation of Maoism. Although scholars recognize that Maoism was influential on PKI theory and praxis, they have hitherto underevaluated the extent to which PKI leaders, notably Dipa Nusantara Aidit and Muhammad Hatta Lukman, engaged with Mao's ideas and how such ideas informed policy. Through textual exegesis of PKI leaders’ writings and speeches, our article argues that the PKI's “Indonesianization” of Marxism–Leninism drew from several Maoist texts, but differed in its composition in a number of important ways. “Indonesianization” entailed cross-class alliances, the political agency of the peasantry, willingness to cooperate with parties across the political spectrum, and, most innovatively, a nonviolent agenda. The PKI also demonstrated an adaptive willingness to learn from all, while remaining beholden to none. Our goal is to show how PKI leaders spoke back in their dialectical engagement with Maoism, as Maoism, for them, did not constitute a static, orthodox, or monolithic “thing.” Instead, Maoism was for Aidit and Lukman an ideological system within which lay an ideological discourse, critical interpretive paradigm, historical revolutionary experience, military strategy, and blueprint to socialist development against which to juxtapose their ideas and grand visions.

Against Irrealism

Jan Westerhoff's The Non-Existence of the Real World is a beautifully written, rich and stimulating book. Its aim is to defend an ambitious form of non-foundationalism. Foundationalism is the conjunction of two claims: the claim that the world is a certain way fundamentally and objectively and the claim that the aim of philosophy is to capture the way the world is fundamentally and objectively. The version of non-foundationalism that Westerhoff endorses involves denying both these claims. He denies that there are foundational truths about the world and that philosophy can give us theories that capture such foundational truths. In this respect, arguably, he has as his allies Mādhyamika Buddhists, like Nāgārjuna (150-250 CE), who endorse a similar strain of non-foundationalism. For people like me (who are interested in contemporary metaphysics and epistemology as well as the history of Sanskrit philosophy), Westerhoff's book is especially instructive. On the one hand, it is a great example of how creatively engaging with the ideas and the arguments of ancient South Asian philosophers can open up new avenues of thought. On the other hand, it shows that, for such creative engagement to occur, the philosophical work does not always have to be preceded by textual exegesis.

Studi Teologis Makna Menghujat Roh Kudus Menurut Injil Sinoptik Sebagai Dosa Yang Tidak Diampuni

Sin is an attitude that destroys human life (Ps. 32: 3-4; 51: 4, 7). Since the fall of the first man in the garden of Eden, all humans have been under the bondage of sin (Gen. 3; Rom. 5:12-14). Over time, all attempts at repair fail and one error leads to another (Isa. 64:6; Rom. 3:10-12). Various issues regarding the sin of blaspheming the Holy Spirit as an unpardonable sin have caused anxiety in the hearts of believers because they think they have committed the sin without realizing it. This study uses the descriptive method of literature as the method used to describe or present the results based on a literature review as well as by extracting hermeneutics and exegesis of texts in the synoptic gospels. The purpose of this study is, first, to describe the notion of blaspheming the Holy Spirit as an unpardonable sin, using appropriate and biblical principles. Second, compare the results of the interpretation with several interpretations that contrast with the statements of the Bible in other parts that take all sin seriously (Rom. 6:23). Third, every believer has a complete understanding of the meanings of sin, so that they can seriously live in Christ.

Review: Post-Horror: Art, Genre and Cultural Elevation, by David Church

Review: <i>Post-Horror: Art, Genre and Cultural Elevation</i>, by David Church

Review: The Florentine Codex: An Encyclopedia of the Nahua World in Sixteenth-Century Mexico, edited by Jeanette Favrot Peterson and Kevin Terraciano

Review: <i>The Florentine Codex: An Encyclopedia of the Nahua World in Sixteenth-Century Mexico</i>, edited by Jeanette Favrot Peterson and Kevin Terraciano

The Role of Commentaries in the Canonization of Literary Values – With Special Reference to the Commentaries of Poetry of Bosnian Authors in Oriental Languages

The writing of commentaries in the Oriental-Islamic tradition was originally focused on the text of the Qur’an and Hadith. The extremely strong religious tradition of hermeneutics and textual exegesis significantly influenced overall literacy, so that commentary appears as one of the most significant prose forms in classical Oriental-Islamic literature. In the unity and intertwining of different cultural identities in the Islamic civilization circle, searching for the literary works of Bosnians in Oriental languages, as an important component of the historical continuity of national literature, we find a significant number of commentaries from different fields, written in Arabic, Persian and Turkish. In this paper, some of the most significant commentaries on the poetry of Bosnian authors are presented.

On the Rational Basis of Revelation in Rosenzweig’s &amp;lt;i&amp;gt;Star of Redemption&amp;lt;/i&amp;gt;

The present study focuses on ‘revelation,’ one of the three constitutive concepts, and possibly the most central such concept, in Rosenzweig’s philosophy. As opposed to its ostensibly religious meaning, the article offers a view of the rational element enfolded within this concept in Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption. By employing a textual exegesis based on a close reading of Rosenzweig’s language, the article seeks to show that Rosenzweig’s conception of revelation does not refer to an intuitive, Kabbalistic-mystical or esoteric concept. As a central pillar of Rosenzweig’s star-shaped method, revelation is the mediator between God’s love of people to a person’s love of others – which, in turn, is the basis for global redemption. The exposure of the rational-intellectual aspect of revelation thus advances the desired objective of Rosenzweig’s method, and accords with Rosenzweig’s own words when he suggested that neither does it make the claim to be a philosophy of religion – how could it do that when the word ‘religion’ does not occur in it at all! Rather, it is merely a system of philosophy. The study seeks to explore the dialectical thicket of descriptions and arguments in The Star of Redemption in order to expose the logical kernel of Rosenzweig’s philosophical method. Indeed, a close reading which isolates the mechanical concepts of Rosenzweig’s thought reveals The Star of Redemption’s philosophical motivation when Rosenzweig denudes the text from the complex of religious concepts that are the proverbial flesh that surrounds the proverbial bones of the system Rosenzweig attacks. Insofar as The Star of Redemption is concerned, we are not dealing with systematicism in the sense of a rigid consistency of rationality as a concept, but rather with a methodical outline where Rosenzweig describes religion’s sociological ‘skeleton’ and weaves his method around it using such concepts as “orientation” = “revelation” = “sharing” = “redemption.” Furthermore, the affinity between God and human passes through the affinity between one human and another. It therefore follows that the ‘warm welcome’ of revelation, is not a mystical experience, but rather a person’s conscious, rational, and reflexive orientation in her or his human environment.