Healing Miracles Research Articles

The differences between the healing stories from Epidaurus and from the Gospels

In Epidaurus, the main ancient sanctuary of Asclepius, important inscriptions from the fourth century B.C. were found. Their texts were based primarily on earlier traditions on healings. They tend to exaggerate and to promote the sanctuary. Their main feature is incubation followed by vision and healing, usually in a dream. It is assumed that there are some similarities and some differences between the healing stories from Epidaurus and from the Gospels. However, the similarity consists only in generic features: they are both healing stories and can be labeled miracle stories (but “miracle” is a notion we have constructed). Similarities in details between single stories are secondary and only few. Some health problems in the stories, as blindness, are the same, but it is rather banal, because they were both frequent and difficult to treat. Laying on hands and touching in the Gospel stories are perhaps inspired by Greek worldview, but they do not occur in Epidaurus. Other features are different. The healings are named differently. Stories are build In a different manner. Epidaurus stories stem mostly from votive inscriptions and reliefs (adorned with fantasy), the Gospel stories stem from oral traditions. Epidaurus stories concentrate on the sick persons, the Gospel stories on the healer. Jesus in these stories appears as a powerful human being. Epidaurus healings result from a theophany or sometimes occur through sacred animals, serpents and dogs. Epidaurus stories are most often related to oracular dreams, what never occurs in Jesus stories. Visions from Epidaurus involve chirurgical operations and many medicaments, both absent in the Gospels. The Gospel miracles had no sacral context. Epidaurus stories were transmitted in the context of a particular sanctuary, the Gospel stories in the context of a community. These descriptions of healing miracles seem quite dissimilar.

Externalizing religious health beliefs and health and well-being outcomes.

Certain religious beliefs related to perceptions of internal or external health control (including belief in the existence of miraculous healing, and beliefs deferring responsibility for health outcomes from the self and onto God) may be related to health behaviors and in turn to health outcomes. Using data from a nationally representative US survey of religion and health (N=2948) this study evaluates a series of two structural equation models of the relationships between religious activity, externalizing religious health beliefs (belief in healing miracles and divine health deferral), health outcomes, and life satisfaction. Believing in healing miracles was related to greater divine health deferral. Greater divine health deferral was associated with poorer symptoms of physical health. Belief in miracles was related to greater life satisfaction. Comparison of coefficients across models indicated that externalizing beliefs had a significant suppressor effect on the relationship between religious activity and physical symptoms, but did not significantly mediate its relationship with life satisfaction. Religious beliefs emphasizing divine control over health outcomes may have negative consequences for health outcomes, although the same beliefs may contribute to a better sense of life satisfaction.

"Ostraca et saxa loqvvntvr": El uso de grafitos y textos epigráficos sencillos en el aula de iniciación al griego

This paper offers the use of graffiti and inscriptions in Elementary Classical Greek. The experience was developed in Greek II in San Tome de Freixeiro High School. After the study of graffiti and inscriptions based of photographs the students recreate them in various materials such as ostrakon, mud or playdough. The selected graffiti and inscriptions touches these topics: daily life, miracle healings, magic, sport, war and funerary epigraphy.

“No One Who Has a Blemish Shall Draw Near”: Pentecostals Rising Above a Disabling Hermeneutics

The article examines the challenges faced by the Pentecostal churches in practically and sensitively interpreting Biblical texts that relate to disabilities. It challenges the perception of Pentecostals regarding disability, especially in the context of their doctrines, teaching and general practices and beliefs. It shows how the Pentecostals have long struggled with those Biblical texts that portray disabilities negatively. It also appreciates that Pentecostals have at times positively used the healing narratives and miracles of Jesus and his disciples to emphasize the importance of physical healing, without marginalizing people with disabilities in the church and society. The article particularly uses Pentecostal churches in Botswana as examples of how Pentecostals worldwide have handled the issue of disability.

We are Addicted to Vitamins C and E-A Review

A Canadian researchers team led by dr. GC Willis, found that heart diseases are caused by hidden forms of scurvy and chronic and can be cured with high doses of vitamin C without heart surgery and drug treatments costly and with effects devastating side in organic plan. But the process of healing cardiovascular disease with vitamin C is not approved by the medical institutions and the pharmaceutical industry, which earns billions of dollars in surgeries and drugs that are used in allopathic therapies for various cardiac diseases. Canadian scientist discovery was confirmed in the late 80 s by Dr. Linus Pauling, Nobel laureate, the most noted human of his time. The medical care developed by Dr. Pauling include vitamin C with added lysine (amino acid nutritional qualities, existing in most plant and animal proteins) and it works cleanly, healing cardiopathy once thought were incurable. Dr. Pauling medical care records healing miracles coronary diseases. It had been identified back then that vitamin C deficiency within the body weakens human arteries by forming induration of the arteries plaques (infiltration of the walls of the artery and arteries with fat), that blocks blood circulation. This paper aims to spotlight the importance of vitamin C for the treatment and prevention of circulatory diseases especially. The daily minimum demand of vitamin C at tissues and cells level for a healthy person is: 75 mg/day women, 90 mg/day for men, 100 mg/day smokers. But always need a bigger tank because these amounts could reach all tissues and cells of a healthy organism: about 500-1000 mg/day. When the body is disturbed or ill, quantities required to repair cells, are much higher 5000-10000 mg/day.

The Healing Shrines of St. Phoibammon: Evidence of Cult Activity in Coptic Legal Documents

Abstract:A group of 8th century Coptic child donation documents addressed to the monastery of Apa Phoibammon on the mountain of Jeme in Upper Egypt has been the subject of much discussion. The exclusively male children donated by their parents have always been understood as gifts to the monastery itself, a place where they were, however, not intended to grow up as monks, but to remain as lifelong servants. The reason stated for these donations were miracle healings granted by Apa Phoibammon, the patron saint of that monastery, in his local healing shrine. Such donations of cured former patients are a common feature especially to shrines of healing saints as demonstrated by their frequent descriptions in miracle stories circulating widely in the early Arab period. Juxtaposing phrases used in these Coptic legal texts with those from miracle stories of famous Egyptian healing saints, such as Coluthus, Menas, and Phoibammon himself, can demonstrate the impact hagiography had on daily experience and vice versa. The documentary evidence from Jeme thus forms the missing link between hagiography and reality as it emphasizes the practicalities involved when people were donated as living testimonies of a saint’s miraculous healing power. Due to the desire to legalize such donations, a written contract could only have been drawn up with the saint’s legal representative, in this case the abbot of the monastery at Jeme, who ran the healing shrine of Apa Phoibammon where the donated children would serve.

Religious Healing and the Asclepius Cult: A Case of Placebo Effects

Abstract This paper suggests a cognitive approach to the Asclepius cult which may throw light on the supplicants’ personal experiences of healing during the ritual of incubation. In particular, the possibility of healing at the Asclepius sanctuaries is presented as a potential result of the patients’ placebo responses. The prerequisites of placebo effect as determined by Nicholas Humphrey are traced in the wider social and conceptual contexts of Greek antiquity and the specific religious context of the Asclepius cult. In this framework, it is argued that personal experiences of people, social information about the Asclepius’ healing powers and the confirmation of this information by human doctors would have influenced how people “lived” an illness or a disease infliction, “appropriated” the religious beliefs in Asclepius, and experienced cures at the asclepieia. These cures could have derived from patients’ self-healing mechanisms, but would have been perceived and conceptualized as “healing miracles” performed by the god. This preliminary study intends to show how cognitive approaches can enrich historical knowledge on the Asclepius cult and on supplicants’ healing experiences, suggesting that such approaches may contribute to a better understanding of “lived religion” and of multiple religious experiences in various religious contexts.

Jesus Did Not Start Religious Life; Why Did It Appear in the Church? Biblical Foundation of Consecrated Life

This paper examines the biblical foundation of religious life in the context of the history of salvation. It briefly presents the God’s plan of salvation. As historical Israel failed their mission exile was the consequence of this failure. A consequence of the restoration of Israel will be the pilgrimage of the nations to Jerusalem. Jesus’ healing miracles point out that God is restoring his people and that is why he takes away all kind of sickness. The ancient Church knew that it had to be a sign of the truth of the Gospel in its entire existence however, when, after the “Milan edict” of Constantine (312/313 AD), the masses enter the Church, its early structure of “house Churches” was broken. Soon after the monastic movement began. With the monastic communities coming to existence, there was a chance that at least these religious house churches would preserve the community dimension of the Church and that they would continue to be a sign for the pagan society of how God wants his people to live.

Wounds in the Middle Ages ed. by Cordelia Warr and Anne Kirkham (review)

Reviewed by: Wounds in the Middle Ages ed. by Cordelia Warr and Anne Kirkham Peter Murray Jones Cordelia Warr and Anne Kirkham, eds. Wounds in the Middle Ages. Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2014. xiv + 254 pp. Ill. $124.95 (978-1-4094-6569-0). As the editors point out in the introduction, wounds were potent signifiers reaching across all aspects of life as it was experienced in Europe in the Middle Ages. This collection is at its most innovatory and persuasive when the authors are exploring these significations, less so when they are talking about wound treatment as surgical intervention. Cordelia Warr’s chapter on “Changing Stigmata” explores interpretations of the wounds visited on the body of St. Francis in the form of stigmata. She concentrates on texts from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century, which stress the miraculousness of the continuously flowing blood of the wounds, in order to head off the suggestion that Francis’s stigmata could be the “natural” result of bloodletting or scarring. Louise Wilson’s chapter, “Miracle and Medicine: Conceptions of Medical Knowledge and Practice in Thirteenth-Century Miracle Accounts,” makes a good companion to Warr’s, as it explores the impact of the scholastic medicine of the thirteenth century on the authentication of miracles of healing, including that of wounds, by purported saints. Her case study focuses on the miracles of St. Edmund of Abingdon, and she shows that his miracle stories relied on humoral theory as an explanation for illness, and on the diagnostic and prognostic judgment of physicians. As much as anything this reflected the participation of physicians themselves in the canonization process, where they were called on as experts to draw the line between natural and miraculous healing. Surgeons were not likely to be consulted, and their expertise was not so highly valued as that of the physicians. M. K. K. Yearl’s chapter on “Medicine for the Wounded Soul” also makes fruitful use of the interaction of medicine and religion, but at an earlier period, the twelfth century, before scholastic medicine was fully developed. She shows how the De medicina animae (On the medicine of the soul) of Hugh of Fouilloy and the De natura corporis et animae (On the nature of body and soul) of William of Saint-Thierry both applied the methods and [End Page 803] language of medicine to the care of the wounded soul. Both works are allegorical and moralizing, yet they apply medical theory, methods, and language in a way that is surprisingly systematic. Romance and law are two other areas of discourse where wounds and wounding had great resonance. Hannah Priest’s chapter on “Christ’s Wounds and the Birth of Romance” claims that the extraordinary emphasis on the wounded body in the early romance Erec et Enide by Chretien de Troyes set the stage for subsequent chivalric romances. The knight Erec is wounded again and again, a sign not of powerless victimization but of parallels between the wounding of Christ himself and that of the knight errant, thus establishing a new paradigm of suffering and redeeming masculinity. In language strikingly less high flown than romance, legal codes and court records in Scandinavia and England devoted attention to the appropriate penalties and compensation for wounding of all kinds. Jenny Benham’s “Wounding in the High Middle Ages: Law and Practice” compares the legal context of wounds in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries for both regions, with plenty of fascinating particular examples. She points out that much work still has to be done in the legal archives to bring historical attention to wounding up to the level of that afforded to murder and rape. Lila Yawn’s “The Bright Side of the Knife: Dismemberment in Medieval Europe and the Modern Imagination” offers a spirited rebuttal of modern assumptions that the Middle Ages were uniquely obsessed with cruel dismemberment. The episode of King Arthur’s duel with the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail is emblematic of the too-easy equation of medieval and mutilation. Other chapters in the book deal with the management of military wounds, the dissolution of continuity as a framework for learned medicine’s understanding of wounds, fourteenth...

Film-as-Maturion: Faith, Healing and “The Body” in Evangelical Orientalism

Christianity has a long tradition of miracle healings, and in recent years this has been mobilized in interesting ways by digital technology and global communications. The result is somewhat paradoxical: on the one hand healings depend very much on the physical evidence of the body, first presented as damaged (sick, marred, impotent, in torment) and then after prayer and spiritual intervention, presented as manifestly whole and well. On the other hand, this immediate (palpable and physical) evidence is mediated in Christian evangelical film, television and web videos into an electronic format that can be rapidly transmitted to far-off audiences, creating a massed virtual congregation united by common articles of faith. This massed virtual congregation, theoretically global, is nevertheless structured as a form of evangelical orientalism, in which terms such as the “New Asia,” the “1040 Window,” and the “Global South” are used to designate a space of faith and the supernatural which is consumed by a Western evangelical gaze.

Médecine et religion: Collaborations, compétitions, conflits (XII e –XX e siècle) ed. by Maria Pia Donato etal. (review)

Reviewed by: Médecine et religion: Collaborations, compétitions, conflits (XIIe–XXe siècle) ed. by Maria Pia Donato etal. Peregrine Horden Médecine et religion: Collaborations, compétitions, conflits (XIIe–XXe siècle). Edited by Maria Pia Donato, Luc Berlivet, Sara Cabibbo, Raimondo Michetti, and Marilyn Nicoud. [Collection de l’École Française de Rome, Vol. 476.] (Rome: École Française de Rome. 2013. Pp. 400. €40,00 paperback. ISBN 978-2-7283-0967-2.) Medicine has rarely been separable from religion. Only in parts of the developed world, and only in the last century or so, have religious considerations not impinged much on health-seeking behavior. At the extreme, medicine may become a religion in itself. In some parts of the United States, it is said, health and medicine have attained quasi-cultic status, and the British now find their established church in the tax-funded National Health Service. For most of human history, however, medicine has been not only deeply entangled with, but in some way subordinate to, religious imperatives: questions of health could never be seen in entirely secular terms. Over many years Darrel W. Amundsen and Gary B. Ferngren (often in tandem), among numerous other scholars, have provided an overall typology of how medicine and religion may interrelate and a broad sketch of historical developments, especially in classical antiquity and Christian Europe. Yet to read Ferngren’s recent Medicine and Religion: A Historical Introduction (Baltimore, 2014) is to be reminded how much remains to be done, particularly with respect to modern times as a counter to any simplistic narrative of progressive secularization. [End Page 898] Arguably no major or world religion has had a more fraught or variable relationship to medicine than has Christianity. It is to addressing that complexity over the longue durée in the Catholic Christian world and décloisonner (the editors’ felicitous verb) the various approaches to it that have been tried (medical, religious, social, or cultural history) that the present collection is dedicated. Some of the fruits of two research projects converge, one based in Rome (under editors Cabibbo and Michetti) on sanctity and healing; the second (under Berlivet, Donato, and Nicoud) on the medical professions and medical practice. Both span the Middle Ages and the contemporary world, mainly focused on Europe but with sideways glances at the Middle East and Latin America. The thirteen main contributions are presented in two groups of very unequal size. First come ten “hypotheses” about the main possible relations between medicine and religion given in the collection’s subtitle—collaboration, competition, conflict. Second, there are three interdisciplinary studies involving medicine, anthropology, and sociology. The first group is perhaps too large and its heading too capacious to be helpful. Important and absorbing themes, in fact, traverse both parts. One of them has to do with saints: canonization, the saint’s incorruptible body, and healing miracles. Another involves the Holy See, the Holy Office, medicine, and “biopolitics,” reacting variously to Mesmerism, artificial fertilization, and reproductive rights. A third embraces the religious orders and medicine (including astrology and the prolongation of life), from the Cistercians to the Jesuits and Oratorians. A fourth locates medicine within interfaith dealings, in the crusader states and the Spanish New World. That leaves only two contributions and even these loosely belong together: on demonology in Italian Renaissance medicine and the ending of the witch craze; and on the nineteenth-century Catholic psychologist Agostino Gemelli reacting to experimental psychology and psychoanalysis in reframing the origins of mental illness. A helpful editorial introduction and a historiographical scene-setting by Maria Pia Donato preface this fascinating array of studies. Although medicine and medicalization are mostly left undefined, this volume is an essential contribution to continuing debates about their definition and cultural setting. The emphasis on pursuing what might seem like medieval or earlymodern topics into the nineteenth century and indeed through the pontificate of Pope John Paul II is also extremely welcome. Peregrine Horden Royal Holloway, University of London Copyright © 2015 The Catholic University of America Press

Orthodoxy and etherodoxy in graziani's thought

This contribution attempts to evaluate Augusto Graziani’s legacy. His thinking, shaped by the neoclassical orthodoxy, and by Keynes’ work, has structured an original, heterodox framework. His heterodoxy, was marked by the progressive overcoming of the concept of looking for a possible equilibrium, which did not legitimize the concept of naturalness or, even less, that of classical full employment of the General Equilibrium approach. Dynamics is the core of his analysis which considers relevant to deal with development, as opposed to the static approach of growth. In this perspective, banks-firms nexus in a monetary theory of production is crucial to reach an unqualified equilibrium. Coming to real world, the need to govern the economy through a process of development brings back to our dualism. His lucid analysis of the Italian experience reveals his profound reformist commitment and his well grounded distrust of the healing miracle entrusted to market mechanisms.

Vie et miracles de Bérard, évêque de Marses (1080–1130) by Jacques Dalarun (review)

Reviewed by: Vie et miracles de Bérard, évêque de Marses (1080–1130) by Jacques Dalarun Ruth Harwood Cline Vie et miracles de Bérard, évêque de Marses (1080–1130). Introduction, critical edition of the Latin text, and French translation by Jacques Dalarun. [Subsidia hagiographica 93] (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes. 2013. €65,00. ISBN 978-2-87365-028-5.) Bishop Bérard was of the ruling family of Marche, a region in central Italy north of Abruzzo and east of Rome. Nominally within the Papal States, Marche was controlled by strong local rulers who accrued landed wealth and power by alliances [End Page 612] created by kinship, clientage, and patronage. Bérard’s career was part of the reform movement initiated by Pope Gregory VII (r. 1073–85). Gregory VII endeavored to expand the authority and autonomy of the Church by imposing clerical celibacy, abolishing lay investiture and simony, and prohibiting “incestuous” marriage. Over a century of struggle was required to achieve its objectives, and the papacy frequently compromised with annulments, dispensations, and settlements. The Church’s weapon of excommunication dissolved oaths of fealty and precipitated leadership struggles. King Henry IV of Germany (r. 1070–1108) retaliated for his humiliation at Canossa by exiling Gregory VII in 1085. Later reformers like Bernard, abbot of Tiron (c. 1050–1116), and Peter II, bishop of Poitiers (r. 1087–1115), fell victim to violence and imprisonment. The hagiography of Bérard sheds further light on the difficult process of imposing the reform on religious and secular leaders. Writing in the 1130s, John, bishop of Segni, shares his reminisces at Bérard’s tomb with his colleague John Furatus, prior of the chapter of the cathedral of Santa Sabina in modern San Benedetto dei Marsi. Bérard was a member of the comital family of Marche, educated at the cathedral of Saint-Sabina and at Monte-Cassino, and was made subdeacon and count of the province of Campania or southern Latium by Paschal II (r. 1109–18). Bérard was captured, thrown into a cistern, and rescued. He became deacon of Sant’Angelo in Pescheria and cardinal priest of San Crisogono in Rome before becoming bishop of Marche. His posthumous healing miracles reflect devotion to the poor and afflicted. Perhaps because of Bérard’s closeness to the papacy, he fought simony with exceptional rigor and suffered severe reprisals. He survived attempted poisoning and was repeatedly expelled from and recalled to his see. Dalarun’s work is based on manuscripts of Vita beati Berardi episcopi Marsorium et miracles by John, bishop of Segni (Jean de Segni), and his continuators, which can be found in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, the Biblioteca nazionale Vittorio Emanuele III in Naples, and the Biblioteca apostolica Vaticana in Vatican City. They are the basis for the F. Ughelli editions in Italia sacra, published in Rome in 1644 and in Venice in 1717, and the J. De Backer edition published in Acta Sanctorum Novembris, II/1, in Brussels in 1894. In the comprehensive introduction Dalarun establishes a meticulous stemma of manuscripts, skillfully resolves their variants, and presents the life and miracles of Bérard of Marche, introduced by a letter of dedication and concluded by a hymn. Dalarun has prepared a well-annotated and faithful French translation of John of Segni’s rough and unbridled Latin text, with its exceptionally lengthy sentences with numerous subordinate clauses disrupted by parenthetical discourse. This life of Bérard of Marche is an important contribution to a corpus of contemporary saints’ lives that deepens our understanding of the turbulent process of the twelfth-century reform. [End Page 613] Ruth Harwood Cline Georgetown University Copyright © 2015 The Catholic University of America Press

The Power of Deceased in Panel Paintings from Central Europe (c. 1474-1507)

The belief in the extraordinary power of a deceased saint was reflected by many late medieval images. The narratives about posthumous miracles were associated with rituals and other practices, important for the order of the society in the given period. One important group of images supported the cults of the relics (e.g. their miraculous finding or ritualized translatio) and of the grave (mostly healing miracles on this place). Nevertheless, the mediating rôle of saints in performing miracles did not require the actual presence of the relics. Some narratives about posthumous miracles supported the church rituals such as the Eucharistic cult or the sacrament of confession. The apparitions of saint could strengthen their authority in confrontation with secular rulers.

Interplanetary Present: On a Spectacle of Mass Healing and Gifting in Bosnia

This essay contemplates public healing spectacles in post-socialist Bosnia when tens of thousands of people walked through the hands of a Moroccan healer, Mekki Torabi, who worked free of charge. In the public discourse, the credibility of a healing miracle was closely tied to the possibility of generosity, and the critics energetically investigated the hidden financial schemes that would expose Torabi's magic for the trick of making money. Departing from the local critics' preoccupations with the gullibility of the masses, I examine the ritual transactions in the intangibles—healer's energy and people's attention and affection—via the problem of the gift, asking what could have been given and how was it to be taken? Placing the spectacle in the broader context of local medical economies, the essay attends to the political energies of this public health event while reading the classic anthropological theme of gifting alongside some recent theoretical imaginations of alternative, non-capitalist relations.

누가 성령론 이해와 평가 －서구 신약학자를 중심으로

This article has critically reviewed the major Western New Testament scholars’ opinions on the Holy Spirit in Luke-Acts since 1970s. I have presented three representative scholars’ understandings of Lukan pneumatology, particularly on the meaning of receiving the Spirit along with other related issues: (1) J. D. G. Dunn, (2) R. P. Menzies, and (3) M. M. B. Turner. According to Dunn, the reception of the Holy Spirit in Luke-Acts is the matrix of Christian life in a manner similar to that found in John and Paul. In contrast, examining both Luke-Acts and the Jewish intertestamental literature, Menzies argued that Jesus and his disciples received the Spirit not as the Spirit of sonship or of new age or covenant, but as a prophetic donum superadditum (i.e., additional gift after being saved) which enables them to accomplish successfully their appointed tasks. In other words, the Spirit in Luke-Acts can be considered the typical Jewish ‘Spirit of prophecy.’ Interestingly enough (but not convincing to me at least) Menzies distinguished three developments of the concept of the Spirit in the early Church to persuade his position. First, Pauline ‘soteriological pneumatology’ possibly influenced by 1QH and Wisdom literature. Second, ‘charismatic pneumatology’ found in the primitive community as for Mark, Matthew, and Q, which took up the Jewish concept of the ‘Spirit of prophecy,’ yet including miracles of healing and exorcism. Third, ‘prophetic pneumatology’ as the typical Jewish concept of the ‘Spirit of prophecy’ irrespective of miracle function, which was found in the Urgemeinde of the non-Pauline early Church inclusive of Luke-Acts. In many respects, Menzies’ basic thesis reminds me of E. Schweizer’s interpretations. Menzies’ sharp analysis of the typical Jewish concept of the Spirit and its development in early Christianity, however, has been severly questioned by Turner. Turner unlike both Schweizer and Menzies maintained that the Jewish ‘Spirit of prophecy’ was associated with miracles, yet was not related to the power of preaching, a perception later developed in Hellenistic-Jewish Christian circles. Thus, Luke, according to Turner, not only adopted the Jewish Spirit of prophecy, but also modified it. As a result, Luke in light of Turner’s perspective understood that receiving the gift of the Spirit was not a donum superadditum in Christian life. Rather it was the sine qua non (i.e., essential condition) of Christian existence. While agreeing that previous scholarship has meaningfully contributed to Lukan pneumatology, I have also noted that their interpretative methodologies were limited to historical criticism, especially redaction criticism. From this point onwards, critical and responsible readers are called to re-visit this ongoing Lukan subject matter for more nuanced and dynamic understanding. By the way, I as a Korean researcher have provided some major contemporary Korean NT scholars’ viewpoints on Lukanpneumatology in footnotes of this paper.

Synoptic, redactional, stylistic and narratological observations on the retelling of Mark 7:30 in Matthew 15:28

The Matthean redaction of Mark 7:30 in Matthew 15:28 often receives scant attention in scholarship in terms of its narrative quality. At most, it is regarded as a truncation of the full Marcan version, while all attention is given to Matthew’s introduction of the notion of ‘faith’ in this verse. This article argues, by contrast, and on the basis of a synoptic comparison and narratological analysis of both texts, that more justice is done to both versions of the conclusion of this healing miracle when understanding them as achieving different narrative effects, with Matthew focusing on the immediacy of the healing, while Mark creates suspense, thus focusing on the veracity of Jesus’ statement that the girl in question is healed.

THE ROLE OF PROPHECY IN THE GROWTH AND EXPANSION OF THE SYNAGOGUE CHURCH OF ALL NATIONS

This article examines the role of prophecy in the growth and expansion of the Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN) in Nigeria. The article argues that the Church in Africa is growing in leaps and bounds – unprecedented in the history of Christianity since its introduction in the 19 th century. This growth and development, however, is taking place mainly in the New Religious Movements particularly the Pentecostal-charismatic Churches because of their emphasis on the prophetic ministry of the Church characterised by performance of healing miracles and predicting the future. A good example is the Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN) of Prophet TB Joshua. Taking this as a case study, the article argues that Prophet Joshua’s success and that of his church is found in the fact that they have taken the message of the prophets very seriously and that the modus operandi and modus vivendi of Joshua and SCOAN are reminiscent of the prophetic traditions of Elijah and Elisha in ancient Israel.

Zaglavlje Dekaloga u Hvalovom zborniku: prilog semantici srednjovjekovne iluminacije

Predmet članka je zastavica naslikana u zaglavlju Dekaloga u rukopisu Hvala krstjanina, pisana za Hrvoja Vukčića Hrvatinića, velikog vojvodu bosanskog i hercega splitskog. U fokusu pažnje je bilješka ispisana na margini, s lijeve strane zastavice, koja u dosadašnjim istraživanjima nije uočena. U pitanju je abrevijatura koja se razrješava kao nomen sacrum, uobičajen u slavenskim jezicima. Autor analizira semantiku zaglavlja u kontekstu judeokršćanske simbolike i u sklopu rezultata novijih ispitivanja ornamenta u medievistici. S obzirom na analogije u građi, romboidna mreža s upisanim zlatnim ljiljanima, nadvišena trima križevima i označena s nomen sacrum, simbolično prikazuje Riječ, izvor Dekaloga.

Readers of Joshua Loth Liebman's Peace of Mind

Readers of Joshua Loth Liebman's <i>Peace of Mind</i>