Extant Texts Research Articles

Understanding Adaptive Competencies of a Woman in Her 80s: Toward the Development of Therapeutic Guidelines

This article describes the adaptive competencies of an older woman who lived well into her 80s in deprived environments, to serve as a basis for developing therapeutic guidelines for older individuals in contexts of adversities. This retrospective, instrumental case study draws on the theoretical lens offered by the person-environment-fit (PEF) framework in the context of adaptive aging. Multiple data sources (Mmogo-method 1 —a visual projective technique—interviews and extant texts) yielded textual and visual data which were analyzed to present a case record and relevant themes. Personal competencies that enabled this woman’s adaptation were industriousness, courageous and generous caring, and agency. Four types of relationships and associated competencies emerged: ancestral heritage (being rooted), peer group (mobilizing resources), intergenerational (being concerned for continuity), and spiritual (having a commitment script). Therapeutic guidelines for older women include: using a life story approach to identify the nature (flexible/rigid) of the environments and older women’s adaptive competencies; assessing the different environments (e.g. physical, relational) to determine the focus of intervention; challenging unfair social practices; and supporting older women’s agency and active participation to adapt to ‘unfit’ environments while also being aware of what additional complementary support/protection older women would need to embrace adaptive aging.

Ibn Ḥabīb’s Book of Scrupulosity

ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Ḥabīb (d. Cordova, 238/853?), Kitāb al-Waraʿ, is a series of about 350 quotations, topically organized. Most section headings name things to avoid, waraʿ referring to scrupulosity, meaning to keep away from the forbidden by avoiding even the doubtful. Quotations go back to persons of all generations, from earlier prophets to Ibn Ḥabīb himself. Particularly notable is a section on trade, in which the Prophet calls traders and cultivators the worst of his community. It presumably reflects local, Andalusian concern with assimilation to the subject population. Ibn Ḥabīb, al-Waraʿ, cites the Prophet much more often than other collections on waraʿ. Altogether, scarcely one item in six in Ibn Ḥabīb’s collection lacks a parallel in other extant collections of pious sayings. Relatively numerous quotations of Asad b. Mūsā (d. 212/827) not found in his Kitāb al-Zuhd tend to confirm that the extant text is only a fragment of the original. However, the chief significance of Ibn Ḥabīb, al-Waraʿ, may be to confirm that other works at our disposal reliably represent the larger literature of piety in the ninth century CE.

Inspiracje i trudności w rzeczywistości szkolnej w kontekście pedagogiki personalistycznej

Aim: The article concerns the issue of inspirations and difficulties in school reality. The aim of this paper is to present the results of own research and to draw attention to the assumptions of personalistic pedagogy. This article is empirical and theoretical in nature. The research was aimed at knowing the inspirations and difficulties in school reality indicated by students after completing the practice in classes I-III elementary school documenting themselves in their practice logs. Methods: The research was conducted using the methodology of grounded theory. The qualitative research approach was supported by quantitative data analysis. Extant texts were used as a data collection method. Results: Inspirations and difficulties in school reality were presented in five categories: the person of the teacher, the person of the student, the relationship between the teacher and the student, the atmosphere in a class, approach to a student. The results of research document the most indications in terms of inspirations for the category the person of the teacher and the most indications in terms of difficulties for the category the person of the student. Consclusion: In the conclusion, an attempt was made to determine a solution for the presented difficulties in the school reality. Practical implications resulting from the presented research results, assumptions of personalistic pedagogy and the pedagogical thought of Karol Wojtyła - John Paul II were indicated. Originality: The paper is the original work in empirical and theoretical aspect. An original categories have been presented to indicate inspirations and difficulties in school reality. The practical implications contained in the article may be an inspiration for educators and future teachers. Keywords: early-school education, upbringing, school reality, personalistic pedagogy, pedagogical thought of John Paul II

«Alfurkan tatarski» (Wilno, 1616/1617) Петра Чижевского: авторство текста

The article focuses on the textual characteristics of the Polish anti-Ta- tar pamphlet “Alfurkan tatarski” written by Piotr Czyżewski (Wilno, 1616/1617) and reveals its text being a compilation. There are at least four different indica- tions for this. They were a result of borrowing certain textual fragments from Matiasz Czyżewski’s earlier edition “Alkoran” (1616), which is considered lost. However, its long title describing the contents survives and can be safely com- pared to the extant text of Piotr Czyżewski’s “Alfurkan tatarski”. This comparison reveals thematic similarities between the two editions accompanied by identical wording which must be viewed as result of textual borrowing from the earlier edition into the later one. This collaborates well with A. Brückner’s comparison of the two editions (both were available to him in the early 20th century) which were reported to contain partially the same textual material.
 Traditionally the names of both authors are treated as pseudonyms of an un- known person who was recently identified with Józef Karcan (the printer of Piotr Czyżewski’s first edition of “Alfurkan tatarski”) or, alternatively, with Tomasz Pawłowski (the abbot of the Benedictine monastery in Old Trakai in ca 1597 – ca 1617). Nevertheless, the very nature of the revealed textual bor- rowings, accompanied by a significant rearrangement of the general struc
 ture, suggests that both editions have different authors. Since Matiasz and Piotr Czyżewski in their publications call themselves brothers and mention each other’s editions, they, contrary to the established tradition, must be con- sidered the actual authors of the respective printed books, and not fictitious pseudonyms.

Canonical Indian Literature and Bhasa: a Study in Texts and Their Aesthetics

Indian Knowledge System, the repository of the entire literary and aesthetic corpus of the sub-continent, has a rich repertoire comprising texts like The Ramayana and The Mahabharata and critical texts like The Natyasastra. The former belong to the canon of Epics, they stand representatives of a tradition comprising texts like Chandrabati’s Ramayana, Jaini Ramayana, Asura: Tale of the Vanquished by Neelakantan, Draupadi by Pattanaik, etc. The genres that the tradition comprises vary from poetry to novel and a long oral tradition, as Nabneeta Dev Sen opines, of songs from these epics. In the list, however, is another writer, belonging to the canon of Sanskrit Dramaturgy, whose works are the oldest surviving extant texts in Sanskrit drama: Bhasa, the father of Sanskrit Drama. Chronologically, Bhasa is placed between the composition of Natyasastra and Malvikagnimitram and his plays are dramatic representations of the events of The Ramayana and The Mahabharata. The research paper attempts to delve into two primary questions: that of aesthetic fidelity of the father of Sanskrit drama, to a tradition of writing that precedes him; and secondly, his literary fidelity to the foundational narratives in the Indian Literary Traditions. Through an interrogation of Bhasa’s works on these two parameters, and applying the terminologies of Adoption, Adaptation and Abrogation, the paper shall strive to place him in the canon of Indian Literature and the implications of his positionality, on Indian Literature, especially in relation to contemporaneity.

George Kiraz and Sabine Schmidtke, eds. Scribal Habits in Near Eastern Manuscript Traditions

George Kiraz and Sabine Schmidtke, eds. <i>Scribal Habits in Near Eastern Manuscript Traditions</i>

The Codex Visionum and the Uses of Greek Christian Poetry

A systematic socio-cultural study of the uses of Christian poetry in the late antique Greek-speaking Mediterranean is still lacking. Most literary overviews restrict themselves to an overview of the extant texts and some programmatic reflections in the poetry by Gregory of Nazianzus. This paper seeks to address this matter by a combined reading of the best-known poetic forms (including the programmatic reflections by Gregory) and the poems copied in the Codex Visionum (now in the Bodmer Collection). Since the edition of the latter was completed in 1999, they have often featured in studies on the origin of monasticism and are well known in papyrological circles, but have received insufficient attention from literature and cultural historians.

A New (Double Palimpsest) Witness to the Old Syriac Gospels (Vat. iber. 4, ff. 1 &amp; 5)

AbstractVat. iber. 4, a membrum disjectum of the manuscript Sin. geo. 49, contains on two of its folios the Syriac Gospel text as the lowest layer (scriptio ima) within a double palimpsest. Comparison with known Syriac versions of the extant text – Matt 11.30–12.26 – shows that the text represents the Old Syriac version, and is particularly akin to the Curetonianus (Syc). On palaeographic grounds, the original Gospel manuscript can be dated to the first half of the sixth century. The fragment is so far the only known vestige of the fourth manuscript witness to the Old Syriac version.

Art and Archaeology

This review again reflects the exciting chronological and geographical range within which Classicists operate and the diverse approaches and disciplinary knowledge that illuminate the ancient world for us. Alexa Piqueux's monograph, The Comic Body in Ancient Greek Theatre and Art, 440–320BCE, explores how costume and gesture entwine with speech to bring alive the comedy body, drawing equally on images painted on vases and extant texts of Old and Middle Comedy. One of the greatest difficulties of working with these two data sets is that the texts originate in Athens while the majority of vases that depict comedy were actually made in southern Italy and Sicily. This necessitates a first chapter that investigates the ‘Italianness’ of these vases, the extent to which they might be directly reflective of Attic comedy, drawing on that comedy more generally for thematic inspiration, or showing adaptation of Greek comedy and its performance in Italian contexts. This might involve looking for clues in the images of the construction of temporary stages on which travelling troupes might have been performing in Italy (57) or considering the way in which particular comic themes, that seem so peculiar to Athens, might have played to different audiences in Italy by appealing to contentions within local societies, for example generational divides in Paestan society (66).

Cistercian Stories for Nuns and Monks: The Sacramental Imagination of Engelhard of Langheim. By Martha Newman

Engelhard of Langheim, the Cistercian monk, may not be a household name—all the more reason then to welcome Martha Newman’s monograph on what she calls Engelhard’s ‘sacramental imagination’, as vividly displayed in the collection of stories he wrote in the late twelfth century for the community of Franconian nuns of Wechterswinkel (a community formally recognized as Cistercian in the early thirteenth century). These are stories which remind us that, strident and powerful though it was, St Bernard’s was but one of the many Cistercian voices to be heard within twelfth-century cloisters. The collection is notable not only for being ‘the earliest extant text that a Cistercian monk dedicated to Cistercian nuns’ (p. 2) but also for the particularities of Engelhard’s imagination. Engelhard confines himself to stories of events he has himself seen or of which he had first-hand knowledge (‘I wrote nothing for which I either did not give or could not give witnesses’, p. 65), but this hardly proves a limitation; Cistercian chapters provided plentiful times when stories could be collected, swapped, and passed on, and it is clear Engelhard knew how to keep his ear to the ground. It is also clear that there were times when, despite his protestations, he could not resist the odd embellishment, since, as he himself admits, ‘this is allowed to writers’ (p. 62).

THE ROLE OF GIVING BACK IN THE PERSISTENCE OF WOMEN OF COLOR GRADUATE STUDENTS IN ENGINEERING AND COMPUTER SCIENCE

This article examines the role of giving back in the persistence of women of color (WOC) students in engineering and computer science graduate education. Using the theoretical frame of community cultural wealth (CCW), which facilitated exploring our topic from a strengths-based perspective, we analyzed 16 interviews and four extant texts from two recent projects. This study's research question is: How does engaging in giving-back activities support the persistence of women of color in engineering and computing graduate education? We identified three giving-back activities that motivated WOC to persist: serving as a role model, mentoring others, and creating counterspaces. Activities connect to multiple types of CCW. We also recommend that institutions of higher education interested in retaining WOC in their engineering and computer science graduate programs should integrate giving-back activities into their curriculum offerings.

Saint Paisios the Great (Pshōi or Bishoi) cult and representation in the middle ages

The paper presents extant texts narrating about St. Paisios the Great, that is, Psh?i or Bishoi (ca. 320-ca. 417), a monk who lived in a lavra in Scetis in the Nitrian Desert in Egypt. It brings the basic information about the monastery of St. Paisios in Scetis and his relics, which were transferred there between 830 and 849 from Antinoe, where he had found refuge. His preserved medieval depictions are listed. Conclusions about his cult and representation follow.

Un poema inédito de Joan Sist en honor de Blanca de Sicilia

This article introduces and edits a previously unpublished poem by Joan Sist &ndash;a priest from Val&egrave;ncia&ndash; copied in a 16th-century manuscript by the Majorcan humanist Joan Binimelis. The extant text is incomplete and rather corrupted, but it has great interest from the point of view of literary history for several reasons: firstly, it is the only witness to Sist's literary activity, which was known despite the fact that no piece seemed to have survived. Secondly, it is the first composition dedicated to Blanca, queen consort of Sicily and later queen of Navarre. The author's identification and the rubric allows me to propose a specific event as the ocasion that originated this song: the royal entry into the city of Val&egrave;ncia of the monarch Mart&iacute; I of Aragon, queen Maria de Luna and their new daughter-in-law, Blanca of Navarre, on 30 th March 1402. For this evento, the first public presentation of the queen of Sicily, second wife of Mart&iacute; el Jove, Joan Sist composed a conventional song of praise, borrowing from the song also intended for the queen of Sicily, probably her predecessor on the trone Maria, by Andreu Febrer.

AUTOPSY AND DIDACTIC AUTHORITY: RETHINKING THE PROLOGUE OF THE PERIODOS TO NICOMEDES

AbstractAll modern critics have read verses 128–36 of Pseudo-Scymnus’ iambic Periodos to Nicomedes (c.133–110/109 b.c.e.) as a description of the personal autopsies of the author. However, close analysis of both the literary dynamics of the poem and the syntax of the lacunose text that precedes this passage shows that this cannot be the case. This article proposes that Timaeus of Tauromenium (c.350–260 b.c.e.) is a superior candidate for the referent of these lines, and offers a coherent approach to emending the manifestly corrupt text. This reinterpretation makes better sense of the extant text of the Periodos, and allows these verses to be read as a second-century witness to Timaeus’ autoptic prowess.

When the Intellectuals of ‘Ḥarrān Contributed to Falsafa’

Abstract In this essay, I attend to an under-analyzed topic in the history of Kalām and Falsafa studies, the contribution of Theodore Abū Qurrah, a Melkite-Chalcedonian Arab-Speaking mutakallim of the early Abbasid era, to the Greek-Arabic translation movement and to Falsafa and Kalām, via the translations he made or through the philosophical ideas that underpin his own Kalām discourses. I will pay specific attention to a possible transmission of the Neoplatonic-Aristotelian heritage of Proclus through Abū Qurrah’s use of Proclean ideas in his own Christian Kalām. I will argue that some of Abū Qurrah’s literary output is expressive of his endeavor to develop an independent reading of Proclus and offer a fresh implementation of Proclean legacy in a Kalām-form that exceeds the boundaries of the traditional reading of Proclus. I will begin with insights on Kalām and the translation movement. I will move then to discuss the place of Ḥarrān (the city which Abū Qurrah belonged to and was the Melkite bishop in) on the map of the transmission of Greek sciences to Arabic, before paying attention to the role of the Bishop of Ḥarrān in this transmission activity. After setting the contextual framework, I will focus in the ensuing sections on some traces of Proclus’s legacy in Theodore Abū Qurrah’s extant texts.

The Cosmos in Your Hand: A Note on Regiomontanus's Astrological Interests

Johannes Müller von Königsberg (1436-1476), better known as Regiomontanus, is widely considered as the most influential astronomer and mathematician of 15th-century Europe. He was active as an astrologer and deemed astrology to be the queen of mathematical sciences. Despite this, Regiomontanus's astrological activity has yet to be fully explored. A brief examination of Regiomontanus's manuscripts shows that his astrological interests were accompanied by interests in the arts and in methods of prognostication. This article studies an unconventional astrological-chiromantical text, whose relevance is threefold: a) it sheds new light on Regiomontanus's astrological interests; b) it enriches our knowledge of Regiomontanus's efforts to learn and understand Greek-Regiomontanus transcribed it into his own manuscript during his sojourn in Italy from 1460-1467; and c) it is the sole extant text in the Greek tradition that provides a system for prognostication from the study of a person's hand, the parts of which are considered as being under the domain of planets. The article provides an English translation of Regiomontanus's transcription, alongside a brief commentary, and studies the intellectual and historical context of that production through manuscript analysis.

Angela Costley. Creation and Christ: An Exploration of the Topic of Creation in the Epistle to the Hebrews

Angela Costley. <i>Creation and Christ: An Exploration of the Topic of Creation in the Epistle to the Hebrews</i>

The Identification of the Rhyme in the Muʿğam fī maʿāyīr ašʿār al-ʿağam by Šams al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Qays al-Rāzī

The chapter on the ravī (the last ‘letter’ of the rhyme), from the work al-Muʿğam fī maʿāyīr ašʿār al-ʿağam by Šams-i Qays (13th century), is deemed the earliest and more prestigious extant text describing the rules concerning the rhyme (qāfiya) in Persian verses. It focuses on the identification of the pivotal rhyming letter (ravī), that is the last segment of the rhyming word, around which the rhyme of a poem is built. In discussing this topic, Šams-i Qays touches on linguistic issues and gives a list of Persian suffixed morphemes for the first time. The present paper offers a new annotated translation of the section on the ravī from al-Muʿğam; it aims to clarify difficult passages and examples, highlight text inconsistencies, and identify several lines of poetry occurring in the text.

COMIC SEX AND ‘FRAGMENTARY THINKING’: DAMOXENUS, FR. 3PCG

AbstractOur extant texts never give a fully comprehensive or representative impression of classical literature. Fragments are valuable because they tell—or hint at—a different story. They represent vestigial traces of a counterfactual alternative version of literary history, and they offer tantalizing glimpses of voices or varieties of human experience that were (accidentally or deliberately) excluded from the classical canon. To ‘think fragmentarily’ is to think beyond the canon and to question traditionally dominant modes of thought. This article uses a neglected fragment of Damoxenus (fr. 3 PCG) as a case study for ‘fragmentary thinking’. This extraordinary fragment reveals that Damoxenus’ comedy dramatized a homosexual love story, in sharp contrast to the familiar heteronormative marriage plots of Menander and other Greek and Roman comic playwrights. Careful examination of a single fragment can prompt us to re-examine conventional scholarly narratives of sexuality in New Comedy.

Ibn Fadlan’s Report on the Rus, Gog and Magog in Light of Recent Work on the Mashhad Miscellany

The fullest extant text of Ibn Fadlan’s Risala, kept at Mashhad in Iran, is well-known in facsimile although the manuscript awaits full codicological investigation. Recent work on the manuscript’s other texts has reappraised the ‘Mashhad Miscellany’ as a whole, notably the role of the poet and traveller Abu Dulaf, and suggested that that Ibn Fadlan’s text was written in less formal Middle Arabic. This prompts five general observations. Firstly, given the turbulence in the Caliphate’s central lands, Ibn Fadlan can have had little expectation of returning to Baghdad from his mission to the Volga. Secondly, his text is essentially an apologia for failure – and a kind of ‘job application’. Thirdly, he offers firsthand information about the peoples of Gog and Magog and the Rus, both of concern to Muslim scholars and leaderships: the former for their liability to break out and herald the End Time; the latter for their recent, devastating raids on the Southern and Eastern Caspian. Fourthly, he may well offer reassurance that, for all their barbarism, the Rus should not be identified with Gog and Magog, while indirectly advocating peaceful coexistence with the Khazars, despite rivalries and religious differences. And fifthly, eyewitness descriptions of a giant from Gog and Magog and of the Rus would have been of particular interest to emirs in the Caspian region – the front line for potential breakouts or raids – as also to those in the Samanid dominions. Ibn Fadlan’s may have composed his ‘job application’ with an eye to these potential employers.