Modern Scholars Research Articles

End of Jesus’ Life on Earth in the Qur’an

Muslim scholars have always accepted that Jesus escaped the attempt to crucify him, was raised to heaven, continues to live there, and will return at the end of time. The Qur’an is usually cited as the source of the first two beliefs, whereas the latter two have their main support in Ḥadīth, although both sources are also cited in support of all of these views. This paper focuses on what the Qur’an says about Jesus’ fate after the failed attempt to crucify him. It reviews the majority view before discussing how it started to be questioned in the late-nineteenth century by scholars who offered alternatives. The article then focuses on the terms tawaffī and rafʿ, which the Qur’an uses in describing God’s intervention to save Jesus. Our analysis confirms the centuries-long understanding of the Qur’anic text that Jesus was raised alive to heaven. But it disagrees with the traditional view that he is still alive, finding instead support for the alternative view of the minority of modern scholars that Jesus did not live a supernaturally long life, hence he is dead. The relevant Qur’anic verses indicate that Jesus was raised alive to heaven and died there.

Tafsīr or Taʾwīl? The Shaykhī Contribution to the Qurʾānīc Tradition of Nineteenth Century Iran

AbstractThe study of Qurʾānīc exegesis in the Shaykhī school has been widely, albeit surprisingly, neglected in modern scholarship. It is surprising because there is hardly any aspect of Shaykhīsm that has remained intact after scholars have touched upon different dimensions of the school. Considering the Qurʾān, its centrality in Islamic tradition and the different methods of reading it, what is commonly understood and accepted by the mainstream as exegesis (tafsīr) might not necessarily be a suitable label for what the Shaykhī leaders did in their very ‘distinguished’ reading and interpretation of the Book. I call it ‘distinguished’, because Shaykhī elitism remains far from any compromising effort that might reduce the complexity and convolution of an all‐celestial text into a literal interpretation. From a Shaykhī perspective, any such simplified challenge would not do justice to the deep and multiple levels (buṭūn) of meaning in the Qurʾān, which need an esoteric, and at times lettrist methodology to unveil divine revelation (tanzīl). Furthermore, every word needs to be understood in consideration of the akhbār of the imāms as well. Given this, the present paper will examine a number of key writings, delving into how the Shaykhī ʿulemā have interpreted the Qurʾān from an esoteric perspective, and by so doing have left a legacy which has culminated in what I call ‘the exegetical school of Kerman’. Pertinent to this is the language of the school.1 As the paper argues, the choice of Arabic as the language of tafsīr in a Persophone context was deliberate, and in fact should be understood in the light of the Shaykhī approach that assigns understanding the Qurʾān to only a skilled few.

Death of the Desert: Monastic Memory and the Loss of Egypt's Golden Age by Christine Luckritz Marquis (review)

Reviewed by: Death of the Desert: Monastic Memory and the Loss of Egypt's Golden Age by Christine Luckritz Marquis Dana Robinson Christine Luckritz Marquis Death of the Desert: Monastic Memory and the Loss of Egypt's Golden Age Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022 Pp. 212. $65.00. Death of the Desert begins and ends with a single incident: Theophilus of Alexandria's raid on the monks of Nitria and the expulsion of the Tall Brothers in 401 c.e. In the pages between, we are guided through an exploration of multiple modes of violence: prayer and psalmody as weapons against demonic powers, memory sanctions as violent erasures toward others and toward the self, and the Roman discourse of "barbarians" and the boundaries of empire as real and rhetorical violence toward the imagined Other. All these modes coincide in Theophilus's raid and in the ways it was later remembered; in Luckritz Marquis's reading, this moment was the real end of any monastic Golden Age and the beginning of a selective rehabilitation of memory that in itself did violence to the monastic past. Luckritz Marquis frames the project by arguing that the Sayings of the Desert Fathers cannot be taken as straightforward historical witnesses for events of the late fourth and early fifth centuries and, perhaps more controversially, that fourth-century witnesses such as Palladius, Cassian, Rufinus, and Theophilus himself are more valuable despite (or because of) their political, personal, and theological entanglements. Most pointed of all is her claim that many modern scholars of this period have been so formed by colonialism that they are uncritically ready to accept fifth- and sixth-century claims that the monastic Golden Age was violently brought to an end by outsider, "barbarian" attack. Instead, she suggests, the built-in violence of Christian asceticism and Roman imperialism created the conditions under which Theophilus's violent raid served as flashpoint. The individual chapters strike out into a varied landscape of theoretical discourses while attempting to keep the overall trajectory in view—an organizational challenge, especially given current expectations that book chapters should [End Page 259] function as reasonably free-standing units. Luckritz Marquis provides summaries of the argument at the beginning and end of each chapter, which is helpful for the reader to keep track of the multiple layers of analysis as they unfold, but can also produce a repetitive feel for a reader of the whole book. But this is a complaint about how current publishing conventions push authors in unfortunate formulaic directions, not about Luckritz Marquis's argumentative coherence, which is strong throughout. Chapter One treads some familiar ground regarding the desert as a locus of ascetic imagination, but raises the stakes by casting the relationship between monk-settlers and demon-inhabitants as one of violent colonization. This violence extends to the ascetic body, as monks attempt to transform both self and desert. Despite the usual contextualization of Theophilus's raid as part of the Origenist controversy (and the book blurb highlighting this context), the immediate theological stakes of this dispute remain subordinate to the political and rhetorical. Origen's thinking itself surfaces only in this chapter's discussion of demonic bodies (although his influence through Evagrius is also clearly present). Chapter Two takes up the subject of prayer and psalmody, again through the lens of violence and materiality. Prayers are weapons against the demons, but they are also instruments of divine violence against the self. Luckritz Marquis turns to Evagrius and Cassian on pure prayer and angelic bodies, portrayed with images of fiery transformation in the later retrospective of the Sayings. The monk in states of true prayer becomes fire, with all its purifying and destructive potentialities. Thus "divinized embodiment was understood as inherently violent" (72). Chapters Three and Four turn to the relationship between ascetic training and modes of violence against human others. The mapping of internal and external violence becomes even sharper in Chapter Three, which identifies parallels between the Roman practice of damnatio memoriae, the violent Christian destruction of the Serapeum in Alexandria (instigated by Theophilus), and monastic memory training. Chapter Four turns to the Roman discourse of the "barbarian" Other and...

The Many Endings of Malory's Morte : The Experience of an Early Audience

Abstract: Imagining an oral performance of Malory's work in the late fifteenth century offers a perspective on the professional work of modern scholars. In particular, the idea of endings must be radically different for an audience listening to the Morte read aloud.

Taking a Concubine and Repenting Afterwards:Reading the Christian Scholar-Official Wang Zheng’s Daily Jottings in the Chongyi Hall against the Flourishing of Qing in Late Ming Culture

<p>長期以來，學界在討論明清之際天主教來華對士大夫階層的衝擊時，都傾向於把焦點集中在論述以儒家為代表的中國傳統文化和天主教教義之間的衝突或調和，以及辨別個別士大夫思想中的儒家和天主教成分。近來雖然因為受到新的學術思潮的啟發，已有新的研究視角出現，但上述範式仍主導著學者的寫作。因此，學界多從儒耶衝突的角度，解讀入教士大夫王徵（1571-1644）因膝下無子而受家人逼迫娶妾一事。以往論者認為，自小受儒家以無後為不孝的觀念熏陶的王徵，入教以後，因為天主教以納妾為違反一夫一妻原則的淫行而面對兩難的局面，其內心的矛盾與掙扎，彰顯了天主教在中國傳播過程中遭遇儒家倫理時所面對的阻力。本文則試圖證明，圍繞著王徵納妾一事而產生的一系列文本，其中的複雜性和多層次的意義，不是利用「儒」、「耶」這類經過高度化約的概念可以揭示的。因此，本文將緊隨文本自身的脈絡和語境，在晚明重情文化的背景下，還原王徵對納妾行為及相關問題的反思，並說明王徵如何通過書寫情欲，把信仰、傳教、親情、生理的欲望、身體的規訓與救贖等多方面的因素結合起來，展現了明清之際情欲觀一些甚少獲得關注、但值得重視的面向。</p> <p> </p><p>For a very long time, studies on Chinese-Christian encounters during the late Ming tend to focus on how the two value systems went through a process of conflict or accommodation. Historians are particularly interested in trying to identify and distinguish the Christian or Confucian components in the thought of individual scholar-official who were engaged in such interactions. For this reason, when the Christian scholar-official Wang Zheng (1571-1644) produced a collection of texts to recount how he was forced by his family to take a concubine because he had no son and how he felt ashamed of himself for failing to observe the Christian precept concerning adultery, modern scholars tend to interpret Wang’s distress as a manifestation of the dilemma of an individual who were caught between two incompatible value systems: the Confucian tradition that criticizes the inability to produce an heir as unfilial and the Christian tradition that forbids sexual intercourse with another woman who is not your legal wife. Wang’s struggle, according to these scholars, is indicative of the difficulty that Christianity faced when it was trying to gain a foothold in Confucian China.</p> <p> This article will show that we cannot do justice to the complexity of the texts produced in relation to the incident by simply analysing them using a pair of highly essentialized concepts as in Confucianism and Christianity. Instead, we should follow the logic of the narrative closely to try to understand Wang Zheng’s reflection within the context of the rise of the notion of qing in the late Ming. Only then could we fully appreciate Wang’s unique take on the connections between religious belief, missionary work, family affection and obligation, bodily desire and discipline, and salvation. Wang’s view might be idiosyncratic, but it is also a product of its time.</p> <p> </p>

Marianne Sághy and Robert G. Ousterhout, eds. Piroska and the Pantokrator: Dynastic Memory, Healing, and Salvation in Komnenian Constantinople

Marianne Sághy and Robert G. Ousterhout, eds. <i>Piroska and the Pantokrator: Dynastic Memory, Healing, and Salvation in Komnenian Constantinople</i>

Why Were So Few Christians Crucified?

Despite the presumed prominence of crucifixions of Christians in early Christianity, we have a surprising lack of sources on crucified Christians. While recent research collected a mere six sources—but not all are agreed upon—one would expect many more instances: after all, to be crucified like Jesus Christ would be the summum of the Imitatio Christi. Curiously, the reason why we have so few sources on crucified Christians has not previously been addressed. In this short Research Note, I suggest two possible answers that need to be explored further: (1) perhaps crucifixion was not as common as modern scholars tend to assume, and (2) because crucifixion was reserved for enslaved people, rebels and peregrini, the great spread of Roman citizenship in the third century likely reduced the chance of crucifixion.

The Poetics of the Artistic Imagery in the Speeches of Abu Hamza Al-Shari Al-Kharji

This study seeks to focus on the poetics of the artistic imagery of "Abu Hamza Al-Shari Al-Kharji", and to show what his speeches included in terms of artistic images. It concluded that his artistic images relied on a variety of methods, such as: metaphor, personification, embodiment, as well as analogy. It is noticeable that the images are derived from the surrounding environment and from ancient Arab life.The study consisted of an introduction and a preface which deals with the concept of poetics, linguistically and idiomatically, as well as poetics in ancient and modern times. The most important opinions of the ancients and modern scholars about it were presented. It also consisted of four chapters, the first dealt with imagery and the views of the ancients and modernists towards it, the second talked about the artistic imagery and imagination, the third was about rhetoric in the Umayyad era, and the fourth dealt with the artistic imagery of Abu Hamza Al-Shari. It ended with a conclusion in which the most important findings of the study were summarized. Finally, sources and references that were used in the study were listed.

Transcendental Time and Empirical Time: Two Types of Time and Their Internal Connection in the Laozi

The concept of time in Laozi’s philosophy is more complicated than it appears. Its complexity stems from the fact that there are two distinct concepts of time: the temporality of empirical things, which is constructed as a finitely continuous temporal succession that is perceptible, and the temporality of the shapeless dao 道, which is conceived of as a transcendental and infinitely continuous temporal succession that is imperceptible. Referring to the excavated Laozi texts, we find that most of the heng 恆 characters were replaced by the character chang 常 in the transmitted versions of the text. In addition, inspired by the excavated text Hengxian 恆先, the concept of heng in Spring and Autumn period philosophy has become an important subject of study. These two factors collectively lay a thought-provoking foundation for understanding Laozi’s ideas about the continuous, large-scale temporal eternality of dao. This article argues that both the daoheng 道恆 and hengdao 恆道 are used in the Laozi to describe the temporality of dao but that the latter has long been forgotten and overlooked by modern scholars. In the compound word hengdao, the character heng is a noun that acts as an attribute; whereas in the compound word hengdao, the character heng is a noun that acts as the predicate. This article argues that Laozi introduced the theory of “dao is eternal” (dao yongheng 道永恆) as evidenced by the use of heng and several time concepts such as “it seems to have even preceded the first ancestors” (xiangdi zhi xian 象帝之先), “the spirit of the valley never dies” (gushen busi谷神不死), “he who lives out his days has had a long life” (si er buwang 死而不亡), “the way … by which one lives to see many days” (changsheng jiushi 長生久視). The temporality of material things originates from the temporality of dao. Moreover, things can possess and expand their own time if they act in accordance with the universal law of dao.

Criticism of Metathesis in Al-Ubab Alzakhir by Al-Saghani

This paper aims to reveal and study one of the phenomena of Arabic that occupied linguistic thought in the past and present, which is the phenomenon of metathesis in which the ancient linguists wrote many books and the modern scholars made it their concern and wrote researches and studies through a heritage dictionary which is called Al-Ubab Alzakhir by Alsaghani. This dictionary involves words Alsaghani dealt with in criticism which manifest metathesis. This led the researcher to conduct a critical study that reveals the depth of linguistic thought in general and the lexical thought in particular of Al-Saghani in his dictionary.

The Dream of Absolutism by Hall Bjørnstad

Reviewed by: The Dream of Absolutism by Hall Bjørnstad Kate M. Bonin Bjørnstad, Hall The Dream of Absolutism. UP of Chicago, 2021. ISBN 978-0-226-80383-8. Pp. xii + 230. Much of the art, architecture, poetry, and prose of seventeenth-century France had a specific relationship to Louis XIV. Modern scholarship tends to judge such works as either unapologetically subservient to the Sun King—mere propaganda—or as mobilizing sly elements of satire and subversion. Through his analysis of an eclectic selection of artifacts of absolutism (which include the Hall of Mirrors of Versailles; Louis's Mémoires, written for the edification of a readership of one, the Dauphin; and an obscure 1698 fairy tale, "Sans Parangon," an allegory of Louis's life and exploits, by Jean de Préchac), Hall Bjørnstad proposes another, third way of understanding the role of these artifacts of absolutism within the context of the period in which they were produced. Absolutism, Bjørnstad argues, must be understood through contemporary concepts of "royal glory" and "royal exemplarity" (21). "Royal glory," for Bjørnstad, entails the shared "dream" or collective belief that the king participates in an invisible, superior (read: divine) power (35). This top-down ontology is underpinned, perhaps surprisingly, by a "bottom-up surge," which Bjørnstad figures as many hands collaborating (while simultaneously effacing their own role) in the "cultural production of sovereign singlehandedness" (206). For one example, secretaries (what we might today call ghost writers) aided Louis le Grand to compose his supposedly autobiographical Mémoires. On a larger scale, the fundamentally paradoxical nature of absolutism may be measured in the strange coexistence of a system of government which relied on a more centralized, rationalist bureaucracy, together with a collective belief in the "exceptional decision of an absolute will" (79). "Royal exemplarity" emerges in the 1680s, well into Louis's long reign. Bjørnstad demonstrates how early comparisons between Louis "le Grand" and others such as Alexander the Great began to fall out of fashion, as evidenced in the strange Parallèle de Louis le Grand avec les princes qui ont été surnommés grands (Claude-Charles Guyonnet de Vertron, 1685). This text evokes the conventional genre of the "parallèle," only to conclude that the incomparable Louis has no peer or parallel, resembling only himself. The Dream of Absolutism brings the reader to a number of exciting "aha" moments: most notably, in Bjørnstad's analysis of Charles Le Brun's ceiling paintings which decorate the Hall of Mirrors—while subtly incorporating mirroring within the painting itself. In the figure that represents Louis at the beginning of his personal reign, the king's face is clearly reflected in the shield of the allegorical Minerva who hovers near. It is a moment of mirroring inscribed in an image of "royal self-creation" (140): Louis, who has no example or model other than himself. For those of us who have visited the Hall of Mirrors without ever once noticing this subtle delight, there is a high-resolution iconographic catalog online at <www.galeriedesglaces-versailles.fr.>, well worth visiting. And, of course, [End Page 205] there is Bjørnstad's thought-provoking, inductive study of absolutism, which invites readers to set aside our post-Romantic aesthetic sensibilities and our post-Enlightenment political culture. This smart book will inform how I teach seventeenth-century literature and culture; I highly recommend it. [End Page 206] Kate M. Bonin Arcadia University (PA) Copyright © 2023 American Association of Teachers of French

The Qur’an on Muslim Women’s Marriage to Non-Muslims: Premodern Exegetical Strategies, Contradictions, and Assumptions

This article interrogates the claim that Islam prohibits Muslim women’s marriage to kitābīs (a derivative of the Qur’anic term ahl al-kitāb that is commonly used to refer to Christians and Jews), an argument that has practical and theological implications for Muslims today. By analysing the three Qur’anic verses on interreligious marriage (Q. 2:211, Q. 60:10, and Q: 5:5) and the ways they have been interpreted by several premodern and modern scholars, I show that two of the three verses invoked commonly to explain the prohibition can be read as applying equally to women and men, and the third does not prohibit such marriages. Premodern exegetes justified the prohibition using traditional hermeneutical tools such as qiyās (‘analogical reasoning’), ijmāʿ (‘scholarly consensus’), and takhṣīṣ (‘particularising a general statement’) to collectively interpret the verses as prohibiting women’s marriage to kitābīs. The application of these tools in the context of their specific milieux resulted in interpretations and conclusions that emerged from entrenched social systems which privileged a Muslim religio-patriarchal elite while normalising endogamy and slavery. Each exegete surveyed here has highlighted different elements of the relevant verses that reinforced their own personal assumptions, biases, and priorities, all of which confirm their interpretive power and authority. However, by applying the very same methods, contemporary readers of the Qur’an can arrive at different conclusions, given their own, different, priorities, biases, and contexts. I argue that applying the very same hermeneutical tools that exegetes have historically used can also lead to the conclusion that the Qur’an permits women’s marriage to kitābīs.

JULIAN THE APOSTATE AND THE ΠΙΣΤΙΣ OF ABRAHAM

AbstractIn his brief comments on the Abraham-episodes of Genesis 15:1–11, Emperor Julian the Apostate indirectly attacks the apostle Paul's interpretation that Abraham exhibited πίστις as a justifying ‘faith’. Through a close reading of the biblical text, he interprets Abraham as, rather, receiving a divine πίστις—a ‘pledge’ or ‘confirming sign’—during two theurgical rituals. Although modern scholars have overlooked Julian's subtle argument, Cyril of Alexandria recognized Julian's strategy and responded directly. Attention to Julian's and Cyril's competing accounts shows that different conceptual grammars, tied to rival traditional narratives, lay behind their incompatible claims to Abraham and his πίστις.

Marginal Geography: Pedagogical Design in Medieval Commentaries on Classical Poems

This article explores the nature and significance of geographical diagrams in medieval commentaries on classical Roman poems. It situates these diagrams within larger conversations about cartographic traditions and the pedagogical contexts for which these diagrams were originally designed. Modern scholars have only begun to address these geographical diagrams in histories of cartography, but not in textual studies. In surveying a range of ninth- to fifteenth-century manuscripts especially of Lucan's poetry, the article uncovers the sources of geographical diagrams that recur in cartography, encyclopedias, and other pedagogical tools, illustrating how medieval academics developed paratexts to shape an extensive program of geographical explication. Geographical diagrams and other textual annotations accompanying classical poems established a distinct pedagogical strand of cartography that served medieval students’ training in Latin composition and understanding of the ancient world.

“We Gave Them Thunder”: Marmaduke’s Raid and the Civil War in Missouri and Arkansas by William Garrett Piston and John C. Rutherford

Reviewed by: “We Gave Them Thunder”: Marmaduke’s Raid and the Civil War in Missouri and Arkansas by William Garrett Piston and John C. Rutherford Andrew Fialka “We Gave Them Thunder”: Marmaduke’s Raid and the Civil War in Missouri and Arkansas. By William Garrett Piston and John C. Rutherford. (Springfield: Ozarks Studies Institute of Missouri State University, 2021. Pp. xiv, 343. Paper, $29.95, ISBN 978-1-7346290-1-9; cloth, $39.95, ISBN 978-1-7321222-3-9.) “We Gave Them Thunder”: Marmaduke’s Raid and the Civil War in Missouri and Arkansas is a refreshing take on traditional military history. Grounded in up-to-date secondary literature and straightforward about slavery’s role in causing the Civil War, this monograph brings modern scholarship to its intended audience—“descendants” in Missouri and Arkansas to whom Marmaduke’s Raid still matters (p. 2). William Garrett Piston and John C. Rutherford note how simultaneous events in the western theater, such as the battle of Stones River, overshadowed the raid’s importance and how the larger and better-preserved site of the battle of Wilson’s Creek still dominates Civil War memory in southwest Missouri. The raid has not fared much better in academia—no other monograph-length treatment exists, and the raid receives scant coverage in applicable syntheses, including James M. McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York, 1988), Herman Hattaway and Archer Jones’s How the North Won: A Military History of the Civil War (Urbana, 1983), and Jay Monaghan’s Civil War on the Western Border, 1854–1865 (Boston, 1955). In addition to bringing the raid’s larger story to light, Piston and Rutherford illustrate the logistical chess game played by Union and Confederate commanders attempting to control the St. Louis–Fort Smith corridor—a possible “back door” for Confederates to capture St. Louis and turn the tide in the trans-Mississippi theater—while constantly having their troops siphoned off to larger battlefields in the East (p. 22). Military matters take up the bulk of the book. Piston and Rutherford expertly summarize Missouri’s unique, and often confusing, position both on the American frontier and as a border state. Chapters 1–2 explain Missouri’s multiple governors—the ousted secessionist Claiborne Fox Jackson and provisional Unionist Hamilton Rowan Gamble. They also detail the state’s many fighting forces, including volunteer regiments, which focused on opening the Missouri River to the Union navy and controlling the aforementioned St. Louis–Fort Smith corridor; the Missouri State Militia, a homegrown state security and counterguerrilla force; and the Enrolled Missouri Militia, which called all able-bodied and loyal men into emergency service (without making a particularly good distinction between those who were loyal and disloyal). The narrative peaks in chapters 6 and 8, which offer blow-by-blow accounts of the battles of Springfield and Hartville, complete with corresponding battle maps. Union forces held off fierce attacks in Springfield thanks to hastily constructed fort defenses and a clever use of cavalry units to buy additional time for preparation. In Hartville, outnumbered Union forces again held off Confederate raiders, this time thanks to securing the high ground northwest of the town and utilizing brush to hide their lack of strength. The attention to detail in this book’s presentation makes it particularly enjoyable to read. The maps, created by Jim Coombs, a maps and GIS librarian at Missouri State University, are very helpful. The numerous color images [End Page 367] are vivid and will be appreciated by anyone enthusiastic about material culture. The lack of academic jargon in the prose makes even lengthy tactical passages easy to follow. This is accessible scholarship. “We Gave Them Thunder” has few shortcomings. I took issue with how Piston and Rutherford justify not including more stories of women and children, white or Black. The authors assert that “very few sources detail their experiences” (p. 2). Yet there are nearly three thousand records from Missouri’s Union Provost Marshal Papers for Greene, Webster, and Wright Counties alone (an area that includes Springfield, Hartville, and their connecting road). Civil War historians focused on Missouri have utilized the Provost Marshal Papers to uncover the histories...

Did Platon (Politeia 571d) Believe That Every One of Us Is a Repressed Cannibal?

Abstract At the beginning of Book 9 of the Politeia (571cd), Platon suggests that all people bear in themselves unlawful desires like the desire to have sex with their own mother or with any other human, god, or beast, the desire to murder anyone, or the desire to eat anything. Modern scholars take it for granted that by the desire to eat anything, Platon means cannibalism. This view is based on the fact that Platon discusses unlawful desires in connection with the tyrannical man and that the tyrant is, elsewhere in the Politeia, twice connected with anthropophagy (at 8.565d–566a and 10.619c). This paper challenges this communis opinio and argues that we have no reason to assume that at Politeia 9.571d Platon claims that every one of us has the hidden desire to consume human flesh. Also, the alleged cannibalism of the Platonic tyrant is questioned. A close reading of the passages 8.565d–566a and 10.619c reveals that in the depiction of the tyrant Platon makes use of mythological motifs and literary topoi but never literally claims that the tyrant has cannibalistic desires.

Tribes of Romulus and the Priesthoods of Rome

The early Roman state is widely held to have been organised on the basis of three tribes, the Tities, Ramnes and Luceres. According to some (ancient writers and modern scholars alike), it was from these tribes that various priests were originally recruited. This view, however, is not really supported by the evidence. It is quite clearly an antiquarian reconstruction, and is most likely the work of M. Terentius Varro. Not only is this conclusion in keeping with the argument—sometimes spurned, but largely just ignored—that the Romulean tribes may themselves be an antiquarian reconstruction, but it may also shed some light on Varro’s handling of Rome’s priesthoods in his lost work, the Human and Divine Antiquities. An impartial assessment of the evidence also reveals just how little the Romans actually knew about the early history of even their most important priesthoods.

HELL IN IBN ʿARABĪ ACCORDING TO AL-SHAʿRĀNĪ

Ibn ʿArabī and his teachings were enormously influential and controversial in post-classical Islamic thought and Sufism. Attitudes towards his ideas ranged from sympathy and admiration to outrage and denunciation as disbelief. One major champion and interpreter of Ibn ʿArabī was the Egyptian Sufi ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʿrānī, who believed that the Andalusian mystic was divinely inspired and an outstanding source for many religious sciences. Al-Shaʿrānī ‘s contribution to the Akbarian tradition has been largely neglected by modern scholars, who have tended to consider him a simplifier of Ibn ʿArabī’s teachings. This article aims to advance our knowledge of al-Shaʿrānī’s engagement with Ibn ʿArabī by examining his treatment of Ibn ʿArabī’s controversial belief that the heat and chastisement of hell will eventually terminate, even for Iblīs. It shows that al-Shaʿrānī’s tendency to stress Ibn ʿArabī’s orthodoxy while criticizing or avoiding some of his views and dissociating the Greatest Master from them, which he shared in part with the Shādhiliyya, is reflected in his engagement of this issue.

Elven-Latin and Semitic Adûnaic: Linguistic, Religious, and Political Strife in Tolkien's Island of Númenor

Tolkien's island of Númenor is a window on the classical tradition and its depiction of ancient civilizations such as Egypt, Persia, and Carthage. It connects Tolkien with two nineteenth-century trends: the attempt, fashionable among British intellectuals, to search for the ‘Semitic’ roots of their culture, and the negative association, established by hostile European countries, between the British empire and Carthage. Like Carthage, Númenor is a thalassocracy, engaging in the reviled practice of human sacrifice in honour of Melkor (a name strongly reminiscent of the Phoenician god Melkart), and its language, Adûnaic, has a ‘Semitic colouring’. But this language coexists with another, Quenya, described by Tolkien himself as ‘Elven-Latin’, used for ‘ceremony, and for high matters of lore and song’. Those two languages create a symbolic divide that harkens back to something that affected Tolkien personally: the centuries-long strife between Anglican Protestantism and Catholicism in his own country. This creates an interesting parallel with the original fable used by Tolkien as point of departure: Plato's story of the rise and fall of Atlantis, interpreted by modern scholars as a tale of Athens and its gradual slide into what the philosopher believed to be the wrong path.

Analogical Perspectives on the Comparison between Vǫlundr and Daedalus

Analogical Perspectives on the Comparison between Vǫlundr and Daedalus