False Prophets Research Articles

Corrections for Criterion Reliability in Validity Generalization: A False Prophet in a Land of Suspended Judgment

AbstractThe results of meta-analytic (MA) and validity generalization (VG) studies continue to be impressive. In contrast to earlier findings that capped the variance accounted for in job performance at roughly 16%, many recent studies suggest that a single predictor variable can account for between 16 and 36% of the variance in some aspect of job performance. This article argues that this “enhancement” in variance accounted for is often attributable not to improvements in science but to a dumbing down of the standards for the values of statistics used in correction equations. With rare exceptions, applied researchers have suspended judgment about what is and is not an acceptable threshold for criterion reliability in their quest for higher validities. We demonstrate a statistical dysfunction that is a direct result of using low criterion reliabilities in corrections for attenuation. Corrections typically applied to a single predictor in a VG study are instead applied to multiple predictors. A multiple correlation analysis is then conducted on corrected validity coefficients. It is shown that the corrections often used in single predictor studies yield a squared multiple correlation that appears suspect. Basically, the multiple predictor study exposes the tenuous statistical foundation of using abjectly low criterion reliabilities in single predictor VG studies. Recommendations for restoring scientific integrity to the meta-analyses that permeate industrial–organizational (I–O) psychology are offered.

Smok, Bestia, Fałszywy Prorok, Gog i Magog jako antagoniści Boga w Apokalipsie

The symbolism of Revelation is not easy to decipher. Also in the case of the Dragon, the Beast and the False Prophet there are many possibilities for interpretation. In our article this characters were presented as having an anti-Trinitarian dimension. We skipped aspects of understending them in the context on the imperialist Rome. The Dragon is the antithesis of God the Father, the Beast is the antithesis of the Son of God and the False Prophet is the antithesis of the Holy Spirit. Their work involves gathering his followers. We can identify Gog and Magog as enemies of God. The fight with them will take place in the end times. Every beliver fights each day with Gog and Magog of obedience to the Trinity and not to the diabolical triad.

Czas kresu czasów w literaturze apokaliptycznej

Czas kresu czasów w literaturze apokaliptycznej

False Prophets and Ravening Wolves: Biblical Exegesis as a Tool against Heretics in Jacques Fournier'sPostillaon Matthew

Biblical exegesis played a central role in the theoretical construction of “orthodoxy” throughout the Middle Ages, even as it was progressively formalized into an independent genre separate from theology. Medieval interpreters of Sacred Scripture legitimized their own contributions by linking them to the tradition of early Christian writing, building upon the authoritative legacy of the church fathers and gaining for themselves a place as authorities. While reinforcing Catholic doctrine, exegetes also provided complementary reflections on erroneous, distorted, and deceptive interpretations of the divine word. They sought in Scripture prefigurations of the church's enemies, gleaning from the Bible and the patristic tradition the characteristics of a dangerous population of sinners, dissidents, infidels, and heretics. Alongside polemical, canonical, homiletic, judicial, and hagiographic writings, biblical commentaries made a key contribution to the shaping of the antiheretical discourse of the central and later Middle Ages.

Invisible Hebrews: Jews in Early America

Invisible Hebrews:Jews in Early America Jennifer Glaser (bio) New Israel/New England: Jews and Puritans in Early America. Michael Hoberman. Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2011. 296 pp. Messianism, Secrecy and Mysticism: A New Interpretation of Early American Jewish Life. Laura Leibman. London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2012. 416 pp. Black Jews in Africa and the Americas. Tudor Parfitt. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013. 240 pp. Early in Black Jews in Africa and the Americas, Tudor Parfitt relates an anecdote about the false prophet Richard Brothers, a British man who "was convinced initially that the Second Coming would be in 1795, when he would be revealed as Prince of the Hebrews and would lead the Jews back to Palestine along with the 'invisible Hebrews,' the descendants of the Lost Tribes, many of whom lived in England and other (Protestant) parts of northern Europe" (41). Parfitt shares this episode in order to support his argument—one of many in Black Jews in Africa and the Americas—that some "British Protestants [thought they] themselves were descended from the Lost Tribes of Israel" (41). The so-called "British Israel" theory, he contends, had a vast effect on colonial projects in Africa and the Americas. While Parfitt and Brothers use the term to allude to the secret Jews (metaphorical kin to the conversos) in their midst, I borrow the suggestive and multivalent idea of "invisible Hebrews" for a related, but slightly different [End Page 201] purpose: to mark the many ways in which Jews were both invisible in and fundamental to early American culture. Like the "invisible Hebrews" in Parfitt's anecdote, Jews in the Americas were not always easy to find, their numbers remaining small throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Yet they managed to be omnipresent—in Puritan theology and legal theory, transatlantic trade, and in the discourses surrounding otherness, estrangement, and indigeneity in the Atlantic world. This dialectic of Jewish visibility and invisibility haunts the narratives of three recent books that treat the complex world of Jews in early America: Parfitt's aforementioned comparative work on blacks and Jews in Africa and the Americas; Michael Hoberman's New Israel/New England: Jews and Puritans in Early America; and Laura Arnold Leibman's Messianism, Secrecy and Mysticism: A New Interpretation of Early American Jewish Life, recent winner of the National Jewish Book Award. Each of these scholars employs a distinct methodology and a different definition of "America"; however, all three benefit greatly from renewed interest in the figuration of difference and otherness in an early American context, as well as from recent theorizations of what some scholars have called "the Jewish Atlantic." The Jewish presence has always had a spectral role in Atlantic studies. Paul Gilroy opens his germinal work on the black Atlantic by invoking the history of the Jewish diaspora as an always already transnational one with structural parallels to the global history of African dispossession. Nonetheless, despite (or perhaps because of) this inherently transnational character, many scholars have cleaved to national paradigms. As Adam Sutcliffe points out in his important essay on "Jewish History in an Age of Atlanticism," the Jewish encounter with modernity "was marked by a widespread concern among Jews, in response to the implicit quid pro quo of Emancipation, to demonstrate that they saw themselves above all not as a part of a transnational ethno-religious body but as loyal citizens of the states in which they lived" (18). The impetus to demonstrate fealty to the state "has left deep historiographical traces: a nation-by-nation approach has dominated the study of the Jewish past, with a tendency, in comparative work, to posit a hierarchy of advancement in different national communities, with German Jewry generally blazing the trail followed later and more hesitantly by others" (18). Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in moving beyond this nation-centered approach. The study of early modern Jewry, in particular, has begun to complicate [End Page 202] the field's formerly largely Ashkenazic, nation-based emphasis, especially as scholars who focus on the Mediterranean gain a voice in Jewish literary and cultural studies. Scholars of "the Jewish Atlantic" have borrowed a number of terms from studies of the early...

Rethinking Prophecy

Rethinking Prophecy

Luciano e a experimentação biográfica: filosofia e religião

The purpose of this work is based on the following issues: how the religious aspect is focused on biographical works and what constitutes its function; how religious discourse interferes with conception of the genre of biographical and literary prose from the perspective of Lucian of Samosata. For that we will use as a benchmark for our analysis some conceptions about the religious phenomenon in works with biographical tone of Isocrates, Plato and Xenophon, in order to check how Lucian resumes and refigure issues there proposed. In a kind of biographical account and in epistolary form, Lucian somehow promotes a mimesis (here in the sense of a critical refiguring) of reports of Bios, in which he enacts a moral action figure, syncretizes or juxtaposes philosophical adhesion and religious belief. In the biographical works of Lucian: <em>The passing of Peregrinus</em>, <em>Alexander the false prophet</em>, <em>Demonax </em>and somehow <em>Nigrinus</em>, ‘conversion to a current philosophical’ concerns a pathos in the discourse, which is staged so explicitly dramatized and therefore undergo a treatment critical. Thus, we treat this work in order to delineate the constitution of pathos of biographical discourse and status of a distinctive literary biographical prose linked to religious and philosophical questions.

Luciano e a experimentação biográfica: filosofia e religião

The purpose of this work is based on the following issues: how the religious aspect is focused on biographical works and what constitutes its function; how religious discourse interferes with conception of the genre of biographical and literary prose from the perspective of Lucian of Samosata. For that we will use as a benchmark for our analysis some conceptions about the religious phenomenon in works with biographical tone of Isocrates, Plato and Xenophon, in order to check how Lucian resumes and refigure issues there proposed. In a kind of biographical account and in epistolary form, Lucian somehow promotes a mimesis (here in the sense of a critical refiguring) of reports of Bios, in which he enacts a moral action figure, syncretizes or juxtaposes philosophical adhesion and religious belief. In the biographical works of Lucian: The passing of Peregrinus, Alexander the false prophet, Demonax and somehow Nigrinus, ‘conversion to a current philosophical’ concerns a pathos in the discourse, which is staged so explicitly dramatized and therefore undergo a treatment critical. Thus, we treat this work in order to delineate the constitution of pathos of biographical discourse and status of a distinctive literary biographical prose linked to religious and philosophical questions.

Literary Barbed Wire

Literary Barbed Wire

Small Bowel Motility from Videocapsule Endoscopy: Beware of False Prophets!

We read with interest the recent article by Ciaccio et al. in Digestive Diseases and Sciences [1] in which the authors reported the results of their study on using videocapsule endoscopy (VCE) in celiac disease (CD) patients. In this article, the authors stated that this method can be used to assess intestinal motility and to improve CD patient identifcation versus controls. Although these data are interesting, we wish to express some words in favour of a more cautious approach, since some things may not be what they seem. Although abnormal intestinal motility is actually present quite often in CD patients [2], it may revert to normal following a gluten-free diet [3, 4]. However, similar or identical dysmotility findings may also be present in patients with other pathological conditions, such as Whipple’s disease [5], irritable bowel syndrome [6], food hypersensitivity [7], enteric neuropathies [8], and chronic intestinal pseudo-obstruction [9], suggesting that the small bowel, from a motility point of view, responds in a monotonous or similar manner to different pathogenic noxae. Interestingly, in recent years a unifying hypothesis linking enteric dysmotilities and sensation has emerged which relies on the role of low-grade inflammations and disturbances of neuro-immune interactions [10]. Therefore, the fact that Ciaccio and colleagues did observe abnormalities by VCE in their CD patients is not surprising. Rather, these findings should only be considered as aspecific, since the authors did not recruit and compare their findings with those obtained in other patients’ group (such as food allergy, enteric neuropathies, etc.). In addition, it must certainly be kept in mind that for the development of the similar motor abnormalities found in CD and the other conditions described above, the presence of villous atrophy is not essential; in fact, these abnormalities may be found in patients with macroscopically normal intestinal mucosa [6–10]. For the above reasons, we strongly disagree with the authors’ conclusions that ‘‘...the classification of celiac patients versus controls can be based upon dynamic estimates of wall motility,’’ in that had the authors investigated patients with some of the conditions described above, they would have likely found similar or identical findings in these patients. Thus, while we have no doubts on the authors’ enthusiasm and ingenuity regarding their interesting results obtained with a new technique, we once again caution readers to assess these results in a critical manner in order to avoid misinterpretations and false hopes.

„Bestiariusz niewiary”. Ludzie oddaleni od Boga w nauczaniu św. Hilarego z Poitiers

Bishop of Poitiers, referring to the allegorical interpretation of Scripture, makes the characteristics of people away from God through unbelief. Comparing them to beasts, Hilary creates an unique „bestiary of disbelief”. Bishop of Poitiers shows the catalogue of beasts and gives them a symbolic significance which re­veals the nature of opponents of the Church. In the allegorical world of beasts many animals can be found: foxes mean false prophets, ravens – sinners and cattle as a symbol of heathen. In general Bishop of Poitiers indicates symbol of serpent as heretics who reject the gift of faith in Christ and contempt the doctrine of the Church. In Hilary’s works a lot of helpful directions for believers are given. Bishop focuses on gaining spiritual knowledge and proclamation of the Gospel.

The מתנבאות in Ezekiel 13 Reconsidered

In this paper I suggest a new interpretation for the background of Ezek 13:17–23. Until recently, most interpreters have viewed the women in this pericope as witches and therefore evil; more recently a number of interpreters have stressed that it is only Ezekiel who regards these women as bad and that they should really be understood as female prophets who competed with Ezekiel. In contrast, I point out that the history of growth of the pericope has to be taken into account. As the text stands, the women are accused of being false prophets, like their male counterparts in vv. 1–16. But in an earlier layer of the text we find the women connected with some form of communication with the dead; this, in turn, fits with the munabbiātu found in the Emar texts. Because of the biblical prophets, they had been interpreted as female prophets as well, but the use of the verb nubbu in the context of caring/communicating with the dead suggests that they are religious specialists either communicating with or caring for the dead. This and the openness with which they are addressed in the Emar texts suggest that they were highly skilled specialists held in considerable regard. It is likely that the Hebrew [inline-graphic 01] originally had a similar function and therefore high social status. The textual history of the book of Ezekiel turns them into female prophets at odds with Ezekiel; reception history turned these women into witches. In their own lifetimes they were probably well-respected religious specialists.

BOOK REVIEWS

BOOK REVIEWS

Reassessing the Origins of Deuteronomic Prophecy: Early Moses Traditions in Deuteronomy 18:15–22

Abstract The prophet like Moses in Deut 18:15–18 and the test of the false prophet in Deut 18:21–22 are often judged to be exilic (or postexilic) insertions that retrospectively redefine prophecy in response to a crisis in prophecy that arose during the final years of the Judean monarchy. Against this standard critical reconstruction, this article argues that the ideas recorded in Deut 18:15–22 are rooted in earlier traditions about Moses and prophecy, and therefore, that the passage is better characterized as a compilation and formalization of early traditions than as a late innovation or redefinition of prophecy. Arguments for a preexilic date of composition are also proposed.

Rethinking Prophecy

This essay demonstrates that Argula von Grumbach’s understanding of prophecy and interpretation of Old Testament prophecy show direct alignment with Martin Luther’s views as they appear in his early 1520s German works. We recall that it is too restrictive to view ‘prophecy’ in the sixteenth century in merely apocalyptic terms. Rather, the author points to the wider view of prophecy of a contemporary male Protestant in which ‘prophecy’ is specifically aligned with the call to interpret and apply Scripture. The author sets illustrated several ways in which this new definition of prophecy played out in the writings, self-conception, and ministry of the aristocrat, Argula von Grumbach. She and Luther both emphasized the call of Christians to interpret Scripture, speak out against unbiblical teaching, distinguish between true and false prophets, and read contemporary situations in the light of Old Testament prophecy. Argula is, therefore, a prime example of one kind of early Luther reception in informed, lay circles.

Authenticity and Authentication: Mike Seeger, the New Lost City Ramblers, and the Old-Time Music Revival

Authenticity and Authentication:Mike Seeger, the New Lost City Ramblers, and the Old-Time Music Revival Jeff Todd Titon (bio) Allen, Ray . 2010. Gone to the Country: The New Lost City Ramblers and the Folk Music Revival. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Malone, Bill . 2011. Music from the True Vine: Mike Seeger's Life and Musical Journey. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. While interviewing a preacher as I conducted research on religious folklife in Virginia's Blue Ridge some thirty years ago, I was told the story of an evangelist who had held an emotional, week-long revival service in a local church. Under the evangelist's preaching a number of people had fallen under conviction for their sins, confessed at the altar, and felt that the Lord had lifted their burdens and saved them. Some time later, it came to light that the evangelist had not been living for the Lord even as he had been preaching revivals. In disgrace, he retired from his ministry. But then a question arose: were the conversions that had taken place real? That is, was it possible to be truly converted in response to the preaching of a false prophet? No one charged Mike Seeger and the New Lost City Ramblers with being false prophets when, from the late 1950s through the 1960s, they introduced Depression-era, old-time string band music to the folk music revival—but many of the entertainment critics who wrote about their performances and recordings raised the issue [End Page 227] of authenticity.2 Basing their concerts and recordings of old-time southern string band music on 78 rpm recordings from the 1920s and 1930s, the Ramblers usually were considered faithful interpreters of tradition, but not authentic tradition bearers themselves. They were regarded as actors or models, revivalists but not the 'real thing.'3 The authentic thing, in the minds of many folklorists of Mike Seeger's generation, was the Ramblers' source musicians—those 'old originals' who presumably had internalized their family and community musical traditions and expressed this cultural inheritance as inevitably and inescapably as their given names.4 The two books under discussion in this essay, Ray Allen's Gone to the Country (2010) and Bill Malone's biography of Mike Seeger, Music from the True Vine (2011), revisit this question of authenticity, one that was critically important to the folk revival generation—and to folklore studies. Historically, authenticity has had at least two meanings. They are related, but not the same. In one, the authentic is the original, not the copy. Sometimes the copy carries a negative value: false, rather than true. One speaks of the authentic painting as opposed to the forgery; the authentic currency as opposed to the counterfeit; the real, as opposed to the imitation tricked out to look like the real thing. At other times the copy does not carry such negative value: the historically informed performance of a piece of music, for example, is said to be true to the original composer's or score's intent. Or the copy proclaims itself as such, as when in a furniture store one may come upon 'authentic reproductions' of period pieces. The A-word's second historical meaning relates to people, not things. It means being true to oneself. An authentic utterance, gesture, or action comes from a person's deep and natural well of truth, what Emerson called the "aboriginal self," uncorrupted by artifice ([1841] 1944, 38). As such, it is powerful, exacting from an observer immediate recognition and assent. In American thought, this notion is synonymous with Emersonian self-reliance. Expanded, it is the idea of living an authentic life—Thoreau's central quest. In modern European thought, it is often related to existentialist philosophy. For Mike Seeger, the Ramblers, and the folk revival generation—roughly, those who came of age between the end of World War II and the end of the Vietnam War—both meanings of authenticity were very much in play. The same could be said of the folklorists of that generation. One needs only to think of scholarly quests for the genuine [End Page 228] ('folklore' as opposed to 'fakelore') as an application of...

Prophets at loggerheads. Accusations of adultery in Jeremiah 23:9-15

The focus of this article is on one aspect of the raging conflict between the prophetic parties addressed in Jeremiah 23:9-15. In this section the aspect of disloyalty to Yahweh is raised as hampering factor for being a true prophet. The research investigates the relationship between doing evil (cf. words such as adultery and ungodly/profane conduct) and the effect on the land (cf curse on the land, the land mourns, pastures drying up – 23:10-11). The research also entertains the relation with the next set of verses (23:13-15) which explicitly mentions the worship of Baal, the vegetation god, as reason for the disloyalty. The false prophets, with their adulterous way of living, are part of a leadership that failed the people of Judah and Yahweh.

Final Jeopardy: man vs. machine and the quest to know everything

Final Jeopardy: man vs. machine and the quest to know everything

Biblical Theories of the History of Prophetism in Old Testament: An Ethical Monotheistic Approach

This paper presents biblical theories of the history of prophetism in Israel asregards its ethical-monotheism. As apostasy reared its head, both in the kings and among the nation-Israel, the relationship between the kings and prophets was strained. Prophets and kings stood over against each other. The keynote of prophecy having become the message of overthrow, the kings, who naturally believed in the consideration of what existed, could not fail toregard the prophets with suspicion and antagonism. The prophets were fromtheir standpoint lacking in patriotism, in fact traitors. The contrast betweentrue and false prophets begins to play a role. Ethical-monotheism is anethical conception of Jehovah giving rise to monotheism. The properexamination of these problems engages the aim of this paper. The method of approach is historical with the review of relevant literature or literaryanalyses.

The emperor of all maladies

For A Biography of Cancer: An Evening with Siddharta Mukherjee, at the New York Academy of Sciences, April 14, 2011, see http://www.nyas.org/ events/Detail.aspx?cid=aac8a0aa698b-4dfe-864c-bb482fd2f510 Appreciation of the history of science is important, says Siddhartha Mukherjee, a medical oncologist at Columbia University, New York, USA, because our interpretation of concepts depends on our understanding of the past. A diagnosis of cancer, as for any illness, is of course still unwelcome; yet, in the second decade of the 21st century, the hopelessness and despair that such a diagnosis meant only 50 years ago is hard to imagine. Why is it that modern medicine off ers justifi ed hope and respite to many patients with cancer and, in fact, an absolute cure for some? Mukherjee off ers an eminently readable history. Although cancer has been known to man from antiquity, as evidenced in mention of breast tumours in the Edwin Smith papyrus of 2500 BC, it was the advent of anaesthesia and asepsis that emboldened surgeons in the late 1800s to go where no surgeon had gone before and perform heroic surgeries in an attempt to cure. The heady days after World War 2 saw bolder physicians—including Sidney Farber, Emil Frei, and Emil Freireich—who with the right mix of serendipity, educated guesswork, insight, obstinacy, guts, passion, optimism, and compassion for their patients made a cure for cancer their mantra. Mary Lasker, with indomi table zeal and charm, opened political and other doors for research funds. But the real heroes of cancer, says Mukherjee, are the patients who have stoically borne the terrors of untried therapies in their attempt to vanquish cancer and fi ght death. Mukherjee ties up seemingly diff erent aspects of the history of cancer, from cause to cure, with apparent ease. The tobacco menace, randomised trials, the race to fi nd tumour viruses, oncogenes, and magic bullets—and false prophets—make their presence felt. That scientifi c interpretation and progress is done in a particular social frame of reference is clear when you realise that the ancient Greeks, who contributed greatly to fl uid mechanics, saw health and illness as a balance between the four fl uids, the humours. In recent times, patient advocacy groups have guided the course of disease management. Medical thinking is often nonlinear and, often, advances in diverse fi elds aff ect our approach to cancer. Mukherjee intersperses history with touching stories of patients in his clinic to illustrate that although progress has indeed been made, the war on cancer has just begun.