Pious Men Research Articles

SCHLEIERMACHERIAN TRANSCENDENTAL SPIRITUALITY AND THE BOOK OF JOB

The Book of Job is certainly one of the most enigmatic and attractive books in all of the Hebrew Scriptures. As a masterfully written poem, Job utilizes imagery and metaphor in such a way as to leave even the secular reader in awe. It tells the story of a pious man who, through many sufferings, is tested by the Divine and sent on a spiritual journey which culminates in a face to face meeting with God. As a poem and as Scripture, Job has been the subject many interpretations over thousands of years. Often read as an insight into the mysteries of evil, innocent suffering, human nature, and the Divine, this piece of poetic Scripture has been the source of much debate and frustration among scholars and the faithful alike. It is not the purpose of this essay to attempt an overview of these various interpretations with the intention of settling upon one superior interpretation. Also, it is not the purpose of this essay to refute any previous interpretations. What I will offer is merely one interpretation among many – an interpretation which I hope might further, if only to the smallest degree, the significance of this great text for even one reader.This essay will take the theology of Friedrich Schleiermacher and, relying on an interpretation of Job given by Gustavo Gutierrez, offer a way of reading Job which leads to a transcendental spirituality. I will accomplish this in three parts: first, I will lay out certain Schleiermacherian concepts which advocate a form of transcendental spirituality; next, relying on Gutierrez's interpretation, I will draw parallels between Schleiermacher's concepts and the spiritual journey of Job; finally, I will show how the book of Job itself can be read as a tool for developing a transcendental spirituality within the reader. In the end, it will be clear that, without fear of ‘misinterpretation,’ the Book of Job can guide the reader to a transcendental spirituality.

Da eroe a dio: la concezione teocratica del potere in Giuliano

This paper examines the respective value of literary, epigraphic, numismatic sources relating to a central theme of emperor Julian’s propaganda: his theocratic conception of power. He makes use of all available means of communication to propagate the idea that his empire had been wanted by the gods and that he himself had accepted the throne as a mission to fulfil for everyone’s good. The emperor shows himself as a righteous and pious man who totally places his trust in the destiny that has been traced for him: he wants to make people think that he had never desired power, but he had to obey superior will. From Julian’s propaganda comes also the identification with a series of heroes (Heracles, Achilles, Empedocles) who in the late antiquity had assumed a pagan and philosophic role, alternative to that of Jesus: during his life and even more after his death and apotheosis, Julian becomes a kind of pagan god in contraposition to the Christian God.

Crescentia’s Oriental Relatives: The “Tale of the Pious Man and His Chaste Wife” in the Arabian Nights and the Sources of Crescentia in Near Eastern Narrative Tradition

Crescentia’s Oriental Relatives: The “Tale of the Pious Man and His Chaste Wife” in the Arabian Nights and the Sources of Crescentia in Near Eastern Narrative Tradition

"May a Freethinker Help a Pious Man?": The Shared World of the "Religious" and the "Secular" Among Eastern European Jewish Immigrants to America

"May a Freethinker Help a Pious Man?": The Shared World of the "Religious" and the "Secular" Among Eastern European Jewish Immigrants to America

Beyond the Victim/Empowerment Paradigm: The Gendered Cosmology of Mormon Women

Women's participation in traditional religions is often explained in terms of their victimization and/or their opportunities for empowerment. This paper seeks to use Mormon women as a framework in order to explore some of the consequences of this phenomenon and to advocate for the creation of multiple, complex spaces where traditional religious women may be understood beyond the paradigm of victim/empowerment. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, otherwise known as the LDS or Mormons, maintains a cosmology that is based upon highly differentiated gendered practices. A belief in a female deity, Mother in Heaven, and a related belief that all pious Mormon men and women have the ability to become gods and goddesses in a post-mortal existence are central to the Mormon gendered cosmology. Despite these beliefs, Mormon women generally resist feminism because they perceive feminism to be at odds with motherhood and family. Ironically, their belief in a female divine and their potential divinity strengthens their commitment to interdependence through maternal practices and kinship.

The Medieval Blood Sanction and the Divine Beneficence of Pain: 1100-1450

Here the worldling now all bound in fetters liesstarts to fear his God, his tears flow from his eyesJustice comes along, with gallows, wheel and sword:God tells the pious man to enter Heaven's door.Across medieval Western Europe, those who committed serious wrongs, such as homicide, arson, treason, and rape were subject to a wide range of capital punishments that were seemingly brutal, frequently bloody, and at times spectacular. Grisly images of an executioner dismembering a condemned's limbs from his torso, smashing his chest cavity, gouging his eyes, or piercing his body with hot pokers are the common stuff of scaffold art in the high Middle Ages. Such images attest to the critical role of pain in medieval capital punishment. Whereas in our day all attempts are made to render penal death painless, in the high and late Middle Ages, the tie between pain and death is not only tolerated but, at times, purposefully exacerbated.

Al-Kindi and Nietzsche on the Stoic Art of Banishing Sorrow

The world is deep, deeper than the day knows. Deep is its sorrow; joy—deeper still than grief can be. Sorrow implores: Go! But all joy wants eternity—wants deep, deep eternity! —Nietzsche, Z III, "The Other Dancing Song" 3.1 Now just give me the worst throw of your dice, fate. Today I am turning everything into gold. —Nietzsche, KSA 10:5[1] #130 The "Philosopher of the Arabs" and the "good European": two unlikely figures, perhaps, for a comparative engagement.2 What could serve as the basis of a dialogue between Abū Yūsuf Ya'qūb ibn Ishaq al-Kindī, the first major figure in the Islamicate philosophical tradition,3 and Friedrich Nietzsche, the figure in whom the Western philosophical tradition arguably culminates and overcomes itself? Al-Kindī lived and wrote in ninth-century Baghdad, the heart of the cosmopolitan 'Abbāsid caliphate. His home was a world shaped by Islam, whose newly emergent culture was still just beginning to feel and exercise its own profound creative-intellectual powers. By most accounts he was a pious man, but also a learned polymath, dedicated to demonstrating the harmony of Greek philosophy and the divine truths of the Qur'amn.4 Nietzsche inhabited a different world altogether: the twilight of late European modernity. It is a time indelibly marked by the "death of God"—an event that Nietzsche will diagnose, interpret with great sensitivity and insight, and, ultimately, celebrate. Two thinkers; two radically different worlds. What could al-Kindī and Nietzsche possibly have to say to each other, separated as they are by such an enormous cultural, historical, and philosophical chasm? As it turns out, they have quite a lot to say to each other. For each thinker in his own way was committed to the recovery of classical Greek and Hellenistic thought, in order to put its resources to work in a new, unprecedented historical moment. Thus, in spite of their many disparities, al-Kindī and Nietzsche draw from a common philosophical heritage and share some of its most fundamental concerns. In this essay, I shall focus specifically on their appropriation of the Stoic tradition. I hope to show that by provisionally situating al-Kindī and [End Page 139] Nietzsche within the lineage of Stoicism, we can recognize the ironic affinities of their thinking, while at the same time see the distinctiveness and peculiarity of their philosophical projects. By characterizing al-Kindī and Nietzsche as "Stoics," I mean several things. First, they both conceive of philosophy not simply as the theoretical project of knowing the real (to the extent possible for a human being), but also, more importantly, as offering a practical "way of life" or an "art of living."5 That is to say, they recognize the intimate connection between physics, epistemology, and ethics: the fact that knowledge is not an end in itself, and that what we take to be most real can have a profound effect upon what kind of lives we choose to live and what kind of people we become. This leads to the second point: their similar approach to physics gives rise to a remarkable structural similarity in their practical philosophy. For both are concerned with the sadness and resentment that they see as the common—albeit not inevitable—product of generation, destruction, and contingency in nature. In short, al-Kindī and Nietzsche are committed to the task of banishing or overcoming sorrow, and I shall make the case that they appropriate many of the Stoics' therapeutic techniques toward this end. Finally, in pursuing this project, they take up two interrelated themes that are central to the Stoic tradition in particular. The first is that of "fatalism," by which I mean that (a) there are a whole host of facts that appear to condition our lives in potentially painful and frustrating ways, (b) these things are not ultimately up to us, and (c...

POSEIDONIOS D'APAMÉE ET LES JUIFS

AbstractIn this article I have tried to show that both Strabo's text (16.2.34-46) and Diodorus' text (34-35.1.1-5) about the Jews can be attributed to Posidonius of Apamea and that they do not contradict each other; nor do they contradict Josephus' testimony in the Against Apion (2.79), where it is very difficult anyway to determine what exactly goes back to Posidonius. His vision of the Jews can be summarized as follows: although he considered Moses as a wise and pious man who founded an admirable political and religious community, for political and philosophical reasons Posidonius greatly despised and disliked the Judaism of his time, which he regarded as a degenerate version of the Mosaic project.

The Autobiography of a Yankee Mariner: Christopher Prince and the American Revolution (review)

Book Critics Circle Award, contains "Mutilated World" and numerous other examples of Zagajewski's more recent work. Gone is the angry edge of Zagajewski's early activist days, when his poems gamed fame for a kind of naked honesty, an uncanny abUity to expose poUtical and social subterfuge and the falsity of "official language." Most of the poems in this coUection instead demonstrate a continuing growth in Zagajewski toward the meditative lyric, the constant questioning of the biographical-existential role of the protagonist of lyric poetry, and a praise for Ufe viewed in its changeabiUty, its pulsation, its ambiguity. Indeed, though perhaps not surprisingly considering his long exUe from Poland, Zagajewski's most successful poems here are told in the voice of a traveler-protagonist, a social outsider writing invariably from within a tram or plane, hurriedly, observing the world outside as best he can. Poems such as "The Churches of France," "To Go to Lvov," "Over America," and the exceUent "Watching Shoah in a Hotel Room in America" work as poetic snapshots, capturing perfectly (as strangers have a tendency to do) both the unexplored hypocrisy and the forgotten beauty of the society surrounding him. Less successful, to my ears at least, are "That Force" and "The World's Prose," poems in which the writing of poetry becomes a sometimesforced metaphor for a larger, indescribable something. Lines such as "The force that grows/in Napoleon's dreams/and teUs him to conquer Russia and snow/is also in poems," or "The prose of Ufe spreads out around us,/whUe poetry crouches in the heart's chambers," seem too seU-referentiaUy easy, too much Uke cheerleading for the art form instead of an embodiment of its best points. Furthermore, in this tense poUtical climate, poems such as "Europe Goes to Sleep," which ends with an image of a benevolent America keeping "watch/over the poor mute world," seem almost naively patriotic, dangerous in aU the wrong ways. StiU, the vast majority of these poems are very successful. Readmg this coUection is equivalent to encountering a photo album put together by a skUled photographer at the height of his or her powers. One has the feeling of transcending the mere mimetic, of experiencing subtle yet profound truths. (BM) Reviewsby:JeffStayton, Scott Kaukonen, Walter Bargen, Michael Piafsky, Tom Bligh, Elicia Parkinson, Leslie Wootten, Evelyn Somers, Steve Yates, Brad Summerhill , Bern Mulvey MR Lost Classic The Autobiography of a Yankee Mariner: Christopher Prince and the American Revolution Edited by Michael J. Crawford Brassey's, Inc., 2002, 263 pp., $26.95 One of the rarest manuscripts of its kind, Christopher Prince's The Autobiography of a Yankee Mariner provides a new historical perspective on both a country coming of age and—perhaps as importantly—the day-in, day-out struggle of the man 188 · The Missouri Review of the sea in colonial America. Ably assembled and edited by Michael J. Crawford, the memoti was written as a kind of famUy keepsake, something for Prince's descendants through the years to ponder in order to gain a sense of the man and of his time. Prince (1751-1832) began his autobiography in 1806: by then he had been captured and served in the British navy; met and brought food to a manacled Ethan AUen; been infected with and survived "the pox"; fought for his own country; had a successful, albeit tumultuous, run in privateering; and found his reUgious calling, becoming a pious man of God in the Protestant faith, even whUe continuing to Uve and work against a backdrop of violent deeds and violent oaths. It is Prince's constant seesawing between vice and virtue that lends what is probably an unintended theme to these writings —a theme that becomes, finaUy, the dominant one of the book. Prince frequently rebukes himself, and his knowledge that he is doing wrong, even as he does it, is enough to shame aU of us with any awareness in this age of reaUty TV shows and sex at aU costs. "I felt very lonesome, and had to go to Taverns, and spend evenings improperly," Prince writes after he is separated from the woman he loves. Such ignominy. When later contemplating...

John Chrysostom as Pastoral Counsellor

John Chrysostom is known for his work as preacher and dogmatist, and as a pious man who was forced against his will into church politics and church leadership. This essay profiles John Chrysostom as a pastoral counsellor and focuses on his counselling to women. His contribution to pastoral counselling is established in three areas. In the first place John Chyrsostom offers the relanguaging of destructive discourses and the renaming of disempowering stereotypes as a powerful means of healing. Secondly, John Chrysostom's counselling is not prescriptive but encourages the counsellee to make choices within her preferred way of being. In the last place John Chrysostom guides the counsellee to retell her story as a resistance narrative, which provides a novel insight into pastoral care in the fourth century.

Un dévot à l'écoute des prédicateurs : Africain Senault, apothicaire langrois

A Devout Man's Reactions to Preachers' Speeches : The Example of Africain Senault, Apothecary in Langres Does the religious behaviour of a devout man differ from that of ordinary believers at the dawn of the 17th century ? The unpublished "Journal" by the apothecary of Langres Africain Senault, who died in 1624, can help the researcher get an insight into the zeal with which a pious man who violently opposed Protestantism could respond to appeals by missionary clergymen. For Africain Senault, the best orator was the one who voiced his own convictions. These convictions were deeply rooted in the aftermath of the wars of religion, and were shared by a large part of the population - thus enabling the researcher to better understand the lack of support for any compromise policy.

Aihwa Ong and Michael G. Peletz (eds), Bewitching Women, Pious Men: Gender and Body Politics in Southeast Asia (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1995), x, 309 pp. Cloth $45.00. Paper $16.00.

Aihwa Ong and Michael G. Peletz (eds), Bewitching Women, Pious Men: Gender and Body Politics in Southeast Asia (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1995), x, 309 pp. Cloth $45.00. Paper $16.00.

Richard Lionheart and English Episcopal Elections

While Henry II and John's bitter quarrels with the Church have inspired much comment from both contemporaries and modern scholars, Richard Lionheart's relations with the English Church have attracted little notice. The lack of theatrical clashes with the pope or the archbishop of Canterbury has led modern scholars to assume that Richard I enjoyed fortunate relations with his clergy. Richard's most recent biographer has viewed him as “a conventionally pious man,” and contemporary chroniclers depicted him as fitting the Church's definition of the perfect knight whose financial exactions and other faults could be overlooked because of his crusader status.Almost continuously absent from England, the Lionheart is assumed to have had little opportunity to assert his will in ecclesiastical matters. Yet, Richard I was as determined as his father and brother to defend English monarchs' traditional rights over the Church, because their mastery over such a powerful institution conferred many advantages. Their bishops were also barons who advised the king at great councils, who often held posts in the royal administration, and who owed feudal obligations, even quotas of knights. The royal right of regalia gave Richard custody of church lands during an episcopal vacancy and the right to authorize new elections and to approve bishops-elect.Sir Christopher Cheney, a leading authority on the twelfth-century Church, observed that Richard I was “forever busy with the English Church.” An examination of the Lionheart's ecclesiastical policy proves him correct, revealing a monarch who had little respect for the Church's freedom and worked to preserve his royal predecessors's authority over it. Richard took care to oversee closely English episcopal elections.

Cultural Citizenship as Subject-Making: Immigrants Negotiate Racial and Cultural Boundaries in the United States [and Comments and Reply

Cultural Citizenship as Subject-Making: Immigrants Negotiate Racial and Cultural Boundaries in the United States [and Comments and Reply

Bewitching Women, Pious Men: Gender and Body Politics in Southeast Asia.

Bewitching Women, Pious Men: Gender and Body Politics in Southeast Asia.

Bewitching Women, Pious Men: Gender and Body Politics in Southeast Asia. Edited by Aihwa Ong and Michael G. Peletz. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. 309 pp. $16.00.

Bewitching Women, Pious Men: Gender and Body Politics in Southeast Asia. Edited by Aihwa Ong and Michael G. Peletz. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. 309 pp. $16.00.

Bewitching Women, Pious Men: Gender and Body Politics in Southeast Asia.

Contributors: Evelyn Blackwood Suzanne A. Brenner Janadas Devan Geraldine Heng Jennifer Krier Jane A. Margold Mary Beth Mills Aihwa Ong Michael G. Peletz Jacqueline Siapno

Islam and the West

When discussing this most important and timely issue, before anythingelse and beyond all current passions and prejudices, one must pause and askwhat we mean by the two terms Islam and the West. Which Islam andwhich West are we considering? Is it traditional Islam as practiced by themajority of Muslims, the Islam of pious men and women who seek to livein the light of God‘s teachings as revealed in the Qur’an and in surrender toHis will? Or is it modernist interpretations that seek to interpret the Islamictradition in view of currently prevalent Western ideas and fashions ofthought? Or yet, is it the extreme forms of politically active Islam that, inexasperation, before dominance by non-Islamic forces both outside andinside the borders of most Islamic countries, takes recourse in ideas andmethods of certain strands of recent Western political history, including, insome cases, terrorism, which is against Islamic law and which was notinvented by them?Nor is the reality of the West in any way homogeneous. In fact, practicallythe only political unity observed in the West these days appears inits hatred of Islam, as shown in the case of Bosnia and Chechnya, whereone has observed, with very few exceptions, the uniformity of silence,indifference, and inaction by various voices in the West in the face of theworst kind of human atrocities. Otherwise, the opposition of forces anddiversity of what is usually called the West is so blatant as to hardly needmention. But since it is ignored in many quarters that speak of global orderbased on what they call Western values, it must be asked if the West ischaracterized by Trappist and Carthusian monks or European andAmerican agnostic or atheistic “intellectuals” on university campuses or inthe media. One wonders if the Westerners are those who still make pilgrimageto hurdes in the thousands, or those who journey, also in thethousands, to Las Vegas or the birthplace of Elvis Presley. This diversityand even confrontation within the West is of the greatest importance notonly for those in Europe and the United States who speak of confrontationwith the Islamic world on the basis of the idea that there is an at least relativelyunified West, but also for the Muslims, at least some of whom arein general fully aware of deep divisions not likely to be integrated intounity soon but which are in fact on the verge of creating disorder and chaoswithin the very fabric of Western societies ...

Muslim slaves and captives in Western Europe during the late middle ages

Abstract The earliest Muslims of medieval Western European societies consisted mainly of captives and slaves. The present article, which is mainly based on Islamic sources, deals with the vicissitudes of the lives of these captives during the late medieval period and is divided into three parts. First of all, there is a discussion of the Islamic view of the juridical status of the Muslim captive in Christian territories and of the Islamic institutions of redemption and redeemer. The role attributed to pious men and saints in the miraculous liberation of Muslim captives is also highlighted. Secondly, the threefold role of learned Muslim captives in Christian territories is explained, viz. as (1) transmitters of Arabic secular sciences, (2) as scribes of Arabic scientific manuscripts, mainly in the service of Jewish scholars, and (3) as teachers of Arabic and Islam to Christian, especially missionary circles, who were employed, among others as participants in Christian‐Islamic theological disputations. In t...

Traditions and Redaction in Acts 2.1-13

(1) Echoes of Jewish traditions concerning the giving of the Law and covenant at Sinai are too clear in Acts 2.1-13 to be coincidental, but the author of Acts betrays no awareness of the parallels. Yet those responsible for the traditions he used could have been aware of them and could have sought to contrast the giving of the Law and the giving of the Spirit. (2) These traditions may simply have spoken of the presence of 'pious men' in Jerusalem, to which the author has added 'Jews' (v. 5). (3) In vv. 9- 11 the author has taken over a list, perhaps originating in Syria, and to which he may have added the reference to Rome. (4) An account of ecstatic 'tongues' has been interpreted as a speaking in foreign languages, which the author has then in turn interpreted as prophecy.