Prophetic Figure Research Articles

“Prophetic Historiography”: Understanding the Role of Jeremiah 52 in the Book of Jeremiah

ABSTRACT The uniqueness of Jer 52, its distance from the prophetic figure, and our understanding of the nature of prophetic books have resulted in Jeremiah’s concluding chapter being labeled a historical appendix that merely affirms the prophet’s predictions. In this article, I propose that Jer 52 is more than a mere appendix and instead presents a Jeremianic account of Jerusalem’s fall that is distinct from 2 Kgs 25 and informed by the words of the prophet and patterns of the book in chs. 1-51. This is demonstrated by the chapter’s significant differences from 2 Kgs 25 that echo Jeremiah’s message. Such a reading is affirmed by later biblical authors, namely the Chronicler, who view Jerusalem’s fall through the lens of Jeremiah’s words.

“Une pièce d’étoffe que nous aurons à faire”: Louis Riel's Utopia: Between Prophecy and Politics

AbstractThis article offers a re-evaluation of Louis Riel's political, philosophical and religious writings by reconstructing these writings along utopian lines. In so doing, it supplements the existing literature on Riel's writings that tends to see Riel as either a prophetic figure or a practical man of action, but rarely, if ever, both. In its reconstruction of Riel's utopian vision, this article focuses on three aspects of his writings. First, it addresses his critical conception of Métis self-government before Confederation. Second, it examines his proposals for the overthrow of what he perceived as Anglo-Canadian tyranny in the North-West. Third, it considers his visions of an ideal—that is, utopian—society in the North-West. The article concludes by examining the implications of this reading of Riel's utopian vision for his legacy in Canadian political science.

Orientalism’s Hinduism, Orientalism’s Islam, and the Twilight of the Subcontinental Imagination

Using the figure of the ethnic Pathan/Pashtun as a trope in South Asian culture, this essay provides a genealogical account of the modern emergence of Hindu–Muslim “religious” conflicts played along the lines of nation-thinking in the Indian subcontinent. This modern phenomenon begins in the late 18th century, with the orientalist transcriptions of a vast conglomerate of diverse Indic faiths into a Brahminical–Sanskritic Hinduism and a similar telescoping of complex Islamic intellectual traditions into what we can call a “Mohammedanism” overdetermined by Islamic law. As such, both these transcriptions had to fulfill certain Christological expectations of western anthropology in order to emerge as “religions” and “world religions”, that is, when, as Talal Asad has shown, “religion” was constructed as an anthropological category within the parameters of European secular introspection and the modern expansion of empire. Both Hinduism and Islam therefore had to have a book, a prophetic figure, a doctrinal core, and a singular compendium of laws. Upper caste Sanskritic traditions therefore dominated Hinduism, and a legal supremacist position dominated the modern reckoning of Islam at the expense of philosophy, metaphysics, poesis, and varieties of artistic self-making. Together, the two phenomena also created the historical illusion (now industrialized) that Brahminism always defined Hindu societies and the Sharia was always a total fact of Islam.

«У последней черты…»: апокалиптические мотивы в теоретическом и музыкальном наследии Николая Метнера

The paper is devoted to the consideration of apocalyptic motifs in the theoretical and musical heritage of Nikolai Karlovich Medtner, one of the greatest Russian composers and pianists of the early XX century. The aim of the study is to shed light on the features of N. K. Medtner’s reception of the musical art of the late XIX – early XX century. The scientific novelty of the study lies in revealing the aesthetic position of the composer in the context of the surrounding musical space. As a result of the study, it has been found that the topic of the present and future of music was a source of serious concern for N. K. Medtner, who was aware of the sharp edge between musical epochs, the shifting of huge artistic plates, the change of values and language. Searching for the main pressure points of the new art, he remained faithful to the ethical essence of music, warning composers against artistic madness, flush of novelty and lack of faith, which made Nikolai Medtner a unique and even prophetic figure in the history of global musical culture.

Features of Dystopia in P. Christen and S. Verdier’s Graphic Novel Orwell

This article analyses the graphic novel Orwell (2019) by French authors Pierre Christin and Sebastian Verdier from the point of view of its genre affiliation, i.e. a dystopia. The author aims to reveal the dystopian characteristics of the texts of this genre in the twentieth century and their transformation in the texts of the early twenty-first century. The author of the article presents an analysis of the graphic novel which examines the history, life, and conditionality of the life position of the writer George Orwell in relation to the reality of his most famous novel, 1984 (1948). In accordance with the aim, the author uses the analysis and synthesis of theoretical information regarding dystopia as a genre, as well as structural-typological and comparative methods as research methods. As a result of the analysis, the author reveals the following characteristics of dystopia in the biographical graphic novel about the life of the English writer: the image of the anti-humanistic society which Orwell lived in, his loneliness and detachment as a confrontation with the imperfect surrounding world filled with fear and despair, the writer’s fight with a totalitarian world order, and the opposition of violence and love. A distinctive characteristic of the graphic novel was the combination of Orwell’s image with the images of rebels from his dystopias which allowed the authors, P. Christen and S. Verdier, to present the English writer as a person struggling with an unacceptable world order with the help of literature. The authors of the early twenty-first century consider Orwell a prophetic figure and bring the writer to the foreground of their graphic novel, thus emphasising the continuity of his views in modern literature which also often shows dystopian features that characterise the instability of the present which we exist in.

In die gees van die Dionisiese: Marlene van Niekerk se aanhangersbrief aan Freddy Mercury

Drawing on Nietzsche’s dichotomy between the Apollonian and Dionysian principles pertaining to classic tragedy, in this article, I consider the poem “Fan mail Freddy Mercury” by Marlene van Niekerk, from Kaar (2013) from that perspective. The poem deals with the rock musician Freddy Mercury and from my reading is shown to be exemplifying the Dionysian spirit through Mercury’s movements, his performance and his vocal range. From my reading of the text it is evident that there was a strong fusion of the Apollonian and Dionysian in the life and work of Freddy Mercury. Despite his rebellious spirit and his negation of the faith of his childhood, culture dictated that he be buried in his faith. Van Niekerk, with her insight into the philosophy of Nietzsche, adds another dimension to the poem when she invokes Zarathustra, Nietzsche’s prophetic figure, to be distinguished from the historical god of the Zoroaster faith. The metaphorical language used by the poet suggests her Dionysian playfulness.

The Voice and Person of the Prophet in Joel (and the Twelve)

In this article, I argue that the presentation of the prophetic voice as belonging to an authoritative prophetic figure is an integral feature of the various books within the Twelve Minor Prophets and creates a situational context that simultaneously ties the prophetic book to an authority in the past and allows for the possibility of continued reuse of the prophetic books. By speaking with the prophetic voice, later readers and rereaders are able to take on, in some way, the mantle of the prophetic figure, as the text is reappropriated in new situations and times.

Self-insertion as discursive and core-identity of Gibran's Al Mustafa

This paper studies the core identity of Al Mustafa (the chosen) in Gibran's book The Prophet (1923) as an individual property by investigating its discursive features as revealed in the words and deeds of the participants in the discourse. The study deals with how Gibran refers to the protagonist and how this portrayal reflects on the identity of the writer. It examines how the prophet refers to himself, his worries and needs, how the interlocutors address him in the discourse, and finally how the telling of the ongoing actions leads to the perception of Al-Mustafa as a prophetic figure. The results show that the source of the power of such a discursive identity is neither nature, nor certain established institutions, but the people of Orphalese themselves (the participants in the discourse), plus those readers of Gibran's book who discern a prophetic figure in his words. The process through which these power works is that of “recognition”, in that rational individuals recognize Al-Mustafa as a Prophet in the discourse. Such recognition is realized as an active “self-achievement” arising as a deserved property of how the prophet's words and deeds are recognized by his followers.

Joseph Blenkinsopp. Essays on the Book of Isaiah. FAT 128.

Joseph Blenkinsopp. Essays on the Book of Isaiah. FAT 128.

Ironia e Visão na Narrativa de Balaão

Toda ironia relacionada ao ofício profético na Bíblia Hebraica brota do contraste entre a percepção do profeta e aquela da audiência. Favorecido por um olhar privilegiado, o profeta, com destreza artística, expõe a visão limitada, portanto inferior, de sua audiência. Como agente de ironia, o profeta desestabiliza sua audiência e lhe dá a capacidade de uma recomposição de visão. Contudo, em porções narrativas da Bíblia Hebraica encontramos uma quebra de expectativa em relação a essa perspectiva diferenciada. Nem sempre o profeta é retratado como agente de ironia. Em algumas ocasiões ele também é vítima. O primeiro exemplo desse fenômeno é encontrado na narrativa de Balaão. A ruptura do padrão se dá na história de Balaão através da íntima relação entre ironia e visão. Através da análise literária da história de Balaão em sua forma final, o presente artigo visa explorar a importância da relação entre ironia e visão na crítica a essa figura profética.

Darren Dochuk, Anointed With Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America

American Religion 2, no. 2 (Spring 2021), pp. 139–141 Copyright © 2021, The Trustees of Indiana University • doi: 10.2979/amerreli.2.2.09 Book Review Darren Dochuk, Anointed With Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America (New York: Basic Books, 2019) Chad E. Seales University of Texas, Austin, USA The story of crude oil is the story of American Christianity. This is the main argument and major contribution of one of the more significant works in American religious history in the last decade. To begin, this is a heavy book, with the literal feel and allegorical mood of a biblical epic. It opens with the prophetic figure Patillo Higgins, riding into Beaumont, Texas, on horseback in the early twentieth century to learn that another oilman, Anthony Lucas, already had struck black gold on the same hill, Spindletop, that Higgins had believed for many years was the place to drill. Rather than concede this rich territory and move on down the trail, Higgins stuck around and finally was able to drill nearby, on another part of Spindletop, thus fulfilling his own prophecy. A bible believer who converted to evangelical Protestantism in 1885 and later joined First Baptist Church of Beaumont in 1891, Higgins viewed his success as evidence of God’s blessing and considered crude oil to be imbued with a sacred power that if harnessed properly could fuel the Christian enterprise of American supremacy. With its Christian faith in the sacred power of crude oil, the story of Patillo Higgins captures the premise of the book, which is that American oilmen shared a basic set of tenets regarding religion and crude. They all believed oil to be a source of God’s power on earth, and that if they struck it rich, it was because American Religion 2:2 140 they were following God’s lead and thus owed him something in return. That something in return was a promise to use the power of oil, both as an extracted resource and capitalized wealth, to promote and fund Christian missions in the name of the Lord. In this way, the upstart Higgins had much in common with his fellow Baptist John D. Rockefeller, the well-established oil baron of the northeast who refused to invest in Higgins’s dreams to discover crude in Texas. What they shared, what pretty much all the oilmen who make an appearance in the book share, is a religious conviction to dig and drill and extract with a self-assurance that such a violent enterprise was part of God’s plan. They all agreed that one should drill for oil because it was divinely sanctioned, a source of power to promote God’s Kingdom. What they disagreed on, however, was how to organize that pursuit. The majority of the book parses the theological and sectarian differences between two strands of oil religion in the US, differences that distinguished the establishment from the upstarts. The major oil companies, like Standard Oil, institutionalized the established religion of oil, with big men like Rockefeller using the material power of oil to fund ecumenical visions of global missions that comprised a “civil religion of crude.” This civil religion aligned with humanitarian capitalism, or noblesse oblige, where really, really, really rich white men, like Rockefeller, funded civil society, from public libraries to art galleries, an approach that Dochuk associates with the social gospel. By contrast, the upstarts like Higgins practiced a “wildcat Christianity.” Their religion was built on the “rule of capture,” an unofficial doctrine, or unwritten rule of the game, that maintained every man had access to the oil under the ground, provided he could drill it out, regardless of who owned the land above it. This was, of course, anathema to a monopolistic model of empire of the Rockefeller kind. The book’s twelve chapters work out such key tensions in the narrative of American oil, of how to build a corporation, how to institutionalize power, how to maintain global reach. The strength of the book is in the scope and details of this story, of how it begins in early twentieth-century turf wars and regional variations and continues forward, restructured, into the next century...

Intertestamental, Apocrypha, NT Use

Intertestamental, Apocrypha, NT Use Christopher T. Begg, Thomas Hieke, and Fred W. Guyette 891. [Sibylline Oracles 3] Ashley L. Bacchi, Uncovering Jewish Creativity in Book III of the Sibylline Oracles: Gender, Intertextuality, and Politics (JSJSup 194; Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2020). Pp. xi + 240. $126, €105. ISBN 978-90-0442434-0. In this volume, a revision of her 2015 GTU dissertation (E. S. Gruen, director, who provides a foreword to the volume), B. reclaims the importance of the Sibyl as a female [End Page 322] voice of prophecy and reveals new layers of intertextual references that address political, cultural, and religious dialogues in 2nd cent. b.c.e. Ptolemaic Egypt. Her investigation stands apart from prior studies of the topic due to its re-orienting the discussion about the desirability of the Sibyl pseudonym into an issue of gender. B.'s study also raises questions about the impact of identifying the author's message with a female prophetic figure and challenges previous identifications of paraphrased Greek oracles and their function within the text. Verses that have been seen as anomalous within the document are reinterpreted by her, not as instances of Greek subterfuge of Jewish identity, but rather as sources of nuanced support of monotheistic themes. [Adapted from published abstract] After an introduction, B.'s volume continues with five chapters entitled respectively: (1) Hellenistic Complexities and Cultural Hybridity; (2) Why the Sibyl: Reclaiming a Female Voice of Prophecy; (3) Establishing Prophetic Authority and Challenging Gender Norms; (4) The Sibyl in the Muses' Bird Cage; and (5) The Sibylline Titan Account as Multi-Layered Commentary, followed by a conclusion. The volume's end-matter consists of two appendixes (Content Overview of Book III and Apotheosis of Homer Marble Relief), a bibliography, and indexes of primary sources and people, places, and subjects.—C.T.B. 892. [Philo De Abrahamo] Daniel Lanziger (ed.), Das Leben des Weisen: Philo von Alexandria, De Abrahamo (SAPERE 36; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020). Pp. xii + 334. €84. ISBN 978-16-157537-2. This volume appears in a series (Scripta Antiquitatis Posterioris ad Ethicam Religionemque pertinentia [SAPERE]) that features texts and translations of writings of the first through fourth centuries a.d. of an ethical and religious content. The volume opens with editor L.'s Introduction to the Philonic allegorical treatise De Abrahamo that addresses the following nine points about the work: (1) preliminary remarks; (2) the place of De Abrahamo in Philo's corpus as a whole; (3) time, place, and circumstances of composition; (4) literary form; (5) structure; (7) central themes (acquisition of virtue by learning, Jewish law and universal law; piety and love of others); (8) Philo's allegorical interpretation of Scripture; and (9) overview of the divergences of this edition vis-à-vis the 1902 edition of L. Cohn. The volume continues with the Greek text and its German translation of the treatise on facing pages, followed by endnotes to the text and translation (these are the joint work of L. and Heinz-Günther Nesselrath). The volume's third main section consists of six essays concerning various aspects of Philo's corpus: Maren R. Niehoff, "Philon als Biograph"; Maximilian Forschner, "Philo philosophicus?"; Simone Seibert, "Der Weg des Weisen. Der Dreischnitt Hoffnung—Umkehr—Gerechtigkeit in Philons De Abrahamo, mit Vergleichen zur Tabula Cebetis, Joseph und Aseneth und der Psychomachie von Prudentius"; Friederike Oertelt, "Philons Frauenbild. Die Darstellung Saras und Hagars in De Abrahamo"; Matthias Adrian, "Schrift—Orakel—Prophetie"; and Nicolai Sinai, "Von Philon zu Ibn ʿArabi. Abraham im islamischen Kontext." The volume's "Appendix" comprises a bibliography, two indices (passages cited and names and topics, both selective) and information concerning the contributors.—C.T.B. 893. Hanna Liss, Jüdische Bibelauslegung (utb 5153; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020). Pp. xxvii + 538. €40. ISBN 978-3-8252-5135-2. This textbook provides an overview of the history and hermeneutics of Jewish interpretation and exegesis of the Hebrew Bible from the Middle Ages to contemporary [End Page 323] approaches. In her introduction, L. reflects on the scholarly treatment of exegetical traditions as well as on the role of Jewish exegesis as part of a Jewish theology. The first chapter summarizes the transmission...

Was John the Baptist Raised from the Dead?

In the vox populi of Mark 6:14-16 (cf. 8:28), we find the puzzling claim that some believed Jesus was John the Baptist raised from the dead. The presentation of John in the Gospel is similar to Jesus: Mark depicts John as a prophetic figure who is arrested, executed, buried by his disciples, and—according to some—raised from the dead. This paper reviews scholarship on the question of whether the tradition concerning John's resurrection—as well as the tradition concerning his death to which it is prefixed (6:17-29)—originated outside of the early Christian community. We examine the possibility that sects or individuals in the ancient world believed John had indeed been raised from the dead—as well as figures supposedly connected to John (Dositheus, Simon Magus). We conclude on the basis of internal evidence from the Gospel that the report in 6:14-16 likely originated in a Christian context. At the same time, it may also provide a glimpse into first-century CE attitudes concerning the resurrection from the dead.

Poverty, Law, and Divine Justice in Persian and Hellenistic Judah by Johannes Unsok Ro

Reviewed by: Poverty, Law, and Divine Justice in Persian and Hellenistic Judah by Johannes Unsok Ro Michael S. Moore johannes unsok ro, Poverty, Law, and Divine Justice in Persian and Hellenistic Judah (AIL 32; Atlanta: SBL Press, 2018). Pp. xv + 300. $53.95. Carefully structured and well written, this volume contains (except for the chapter on "Jeremiah") a revised collection of Ro's previously published articles and book chapters on (a) the relationship between the shaping of the canon and literacy in the Hebrew community; (b) the attitude toward "strangers" in the Torah's law codes; (c) the development of the theological concept of divine punitive justice; (d) the concept of the "piety of the poor" (Armenfrömmigkeit), widely claimed to characterize portions of the Psalter; and (e) the notion of "poverty" in the Dead Sea Scrolls. In the author's words, the intention of this book is not "to develop a single thesis, but to highlight some major issues in Persian- and Hellenistic-era Palestine" (p. 1). Chapter 1, "Challenges and Responses of the Second Temple Period," introduces the collection with a pithy, thoughtful critique of the sociological models put forward by Roland Boer (The Sacred Economy of Ancient Israel [Library of Ancient Israel; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2015]) and Gerhard Lenski (Power and Privilege: A Theory of Social Stratification [New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966]). R. finds Boer's work attractive because it appears to refrain from examining ancient economies through anachronistic lenses segregating economics from religion. Yet, when Boer keeps segregating homo religiosus from homo economicus, R. interprets this to reflect an unwillingness/inability to extricate himself from the simplistic dichotomies of Karl Marx. Lenski's work is more helpful because, like Max Weber, Lenski promotes a much more nuanced understanding of how economic distribution systems actually work in the real world. Lenski's notion of "status inconsistency," for example, goes a long way toward helping R. explain the uneven relational dynamics often [End Page 355] characterizing postexilic Hebrew groups struggling to work together in the fragile Second Temple economy. This application of Lenski's notion of "status inconsistency" to a specific time and place is one of the book's most helpful insights. Chapter 2, "Literacy and the Socioeconomic Context of the Judean Postexilic Communities" (originally published in ZAW 120 [2008] 597-611), takes issue with the popular thesis of Rainer Albertz (Religionsgeschichte Israels in alttestamentlicher Zeit [GAT 8.1; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1992] 543-75) that impoverished Hebrew shepherds, farmers, and laborers must be the "authors" responsible for writing the psalms and prophetic passages critiquing the wealthy. Relying on Lenski's understanding of advanced agrarian societies, R. summarily rejects any attempt to hold illiterate people responsible for writing anything, much less the carefully constructed texts in Mal 2:17; 3:5, 13-21; Isa 29:17-24; 56:9–57:21; Psalms 9–10, 12, 14, 35, 40, 69, 70, 75, 82, 109, and 140. Chapter 3, "The Portrayal of Judean Communities in Persian-Era Palestine: Through the Lens of the Covenant Code" (originally published in Sem 56 [2014] 249-89), unfortunately presumes, with many others, that everything of significance in the Torah—every character, every event, every description, every warning—must originate from the minds of postexilic returnees. The belief underlying this approach (and it is a "belief") is that diachronic analysis is inapplicable to this material because none of it is historically "verifiable," not to mention "reliable" or (gasp!) "inspired." All laws in the Torah about the גר ("stranger"), for example, should therefore be understood as reflecting "an urgent problem for the Judean communities in Persian-era Palestine because of the massive number of returnees from the Babylonian Exile" (p. 42). This presumptuous methodology frequently structures studies like this one—studies that refuse, for whatever reason, to read Hebrew legal material from any perspective other than that which might be called, for lack of a better term, "rigid postexilism." Thus, it is no coincidence that this volume does not even mention the possibility of learning about Hebrew law from intertextual analysis alongside Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian, and/or Hittite law. Chapter 4, "The Postexilic Construction of the Prophetic Figure of Jeremiah," begins by considering whether...

Ní Shíocháin, Tríona (2018). Singing Ideas: Performance, Politics and Oral Poetry. New York and Oxford: Berghahn

Singing Ideas: Performance, Politics and Oral Poetry is a fascinating insight into the Irish tradition of singing and its potency to fuel political thought and identity, in the context of eighteenth-century Ireland. To that purpose, Tríona Ní Shíocháin takes us through an informed analysis of the lived-experience of one historical figure, the magnetic Máire Bhuí Ní Laeire (Yellow Mary O’Leary). One of the greatest Irish song poets of her time, Máire Bhuí Ní Laeire was born in 1774 and died during the Great Irish Famine in 1848. She is depicted as a charismatic woman who composed and sang anti-colonial ideas, mocking nobility and denouncing social exploitation in Ireland. During her life, her craft gained her the reputation of a prophetic figure, a truth-teller or parrhesiast – a Greek notion that, as Foucault (2011) holds, refers to those with the courage to address urgent political issues, in public, even if running the risk of putting their lives in danger. Parrhesia, Foucault argues, can set social and historical change in motion – and that is precisely what seems to have happened through Máire Bhuí Ní Laeire’s subversive singing. Through the unique lens of this fascinating character, Ní Shíocháin is able to paint ...

Garden-Variety Holiness: Bessie Head's "reverence for ordinary people" in A Question of Power

To unfold the “reverence for ordinary people” that Bessie Head says animates her writings, the present study considers A Question of Power in light of Njabulo S. Ndebele’s theories of the spectacular and the ordinary. By aligning Ndebele’s religious ideal of redemptive transformation with Head’s use of reverence, this essay argues that A Question of Power deploys at once spectacle—particularly in its guise of madness—and ordinariness. This combination of the spectacular and the ordinary manifests itself in the prophetic figure of the holy fool, the garden of Motabeng village, and the people whom the garden gathers together. A Question of Power thus displays Head’s ludic energy as she creates a garden variety holiness that emerges in virtually all of the novel’s aesthetic elements.

A Royal Isaianic Servant of YHWH?

ABSTRACTIn this article I argue that the Isaianic Servant of YHWH is a non-royal figure. The main arguments are as follows. The form of Isa 42,1-4, the motifs of 42,1 and the projected role of the servant in relation to justice do not support the idea that the servant is a royal figure. Likewise, in Isa 61,1-3, the portrait drawn is that of a prophetic figure with a speaking ministry. The servant of Isaiah 40-55 and the Davidic ruler of Isaiah 9, 11 and 16 cannot be equated, for the servant’s proclamatory role precedes the founding of God’s kingdom, whereas the role of the Davidic ruler is as enforcer of justice within the consummated kingdom. The focus in Isaiah 40-66 is on God as the King who liberates his people and redeems Zion and this leaves to the servant the prophetic roles of speaking and suffering as agent of the Divine King.

Victorian Women Writers, Radical Grandmothers, and the Gendering of God by Gail Turley HOUSTON (review)

HOUSTON, Gail Turley. Victorian Women Writers, Radical Grandmothers, and the Gendering of God. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2012. 181 pp. $55.95. In Victorian Women Writers, Radical Grandmothers, and the Gendering of God, Gail Turley Houston presents a fascinating but neglected piece of feminist history. In chapter one, Houston introduces readers to a group of women who were active in millenarian and socialist feminist movements of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This group included outspoken prophets like Joanna Southcott, Eliza Sharpies, Ann Lee, and Frances Wright. By imagining feminine manifestations of the divine and reconfiguring Eve as a deity or tragic heroine, these women ministered to what Houston calls the mother-god-want experienced by their followers, who felt alienated by the male-dominated Protestantism of their era (I). These Romantic-era radical grandmothers also paved the way for later feminist authors such as Charlotte Bronte, Anna Jameson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Florence Nightingale, and George Eliot, whose works expand[ed] the divine metaphor to include women as omnipotent beings (14). In so doing, these Victorian women writers not only legitimated their own authorial voices within a patriarchal culture, but also paved the way for extraordinary paradigm shift in which women's rights gradually became normalized (14). This last claim is not entirely substantiated by the chapters that follow, which deal primarily with literary manifestations of worship rather than tracing the effects of this practice on nineteenth-century culture more broadly. Nor does Houston concern herself with the modern goddess movement, although the history she uncovers is surely an important precursor to this trend (2). Instead, chapters two through six demonstrate the connections between prophets like Southcott and Lee and a range of Victorian women writers who internalized their messages and adapted them for new audiences. These mid-nineteenth-century authors were careful to disguise their sources, knowing as they did that Sharpies, Southcott, and other Romantic-era feminists were ridiculed by the popular press of their day. Thus, each author had to revise the subversive messages of her forebears in order to find a receptive audience. Bronte, for instance, heavily edited passages in Shirley (1849) dealing with the heroine's visions of a titanic Eve, a prophetic figure foreshadowed both in Sharples's utopian feminist writings and in Bronte's juvenilia (45). …

With Patriarchs and Prophets: Herbert in Vaughan’s Mount of Olives

With Patriarchs and Prophets:Herbert in Vaughan’s Mount of Olives Jonathan Nauman Much has been said of George Herbert’s unusually intense literary presence in Silex Scintillans. “There is no example in English literature of one poet adopting another poet’s words so extensively,” Canon Hutchinson memorably observed; and “a reader who knows well both The Temple and Silex Scintillans never comes to the end of the verbal parallels.”1 “Vaughan seems to have read Herbert so much that his borrowings were often unconscious,” Joseph Summers adds.2 Indeed, the words of The Temple flash through Vaughan’s poetry in a manner that seems to imply an ecstatic channeling of a sacred text, analogous with Vaughan’s use of the Bible.3 Sociopolitical commentary generally comes quick on the heels of such observations: Vaughan was among those inclined to portray Herbert as “a prophetic figure,” one “who, as the chief example of pre-revolutionary piety, had somehow anticipated” the mid-century struggle between King and Parliament and “firmly and unhesitatingly declared for Charles and Laud.”4 Many have sought carefully to modify the image of Herbert constructed by Vaughan and by his episcopal Anglican contemporaries Barnabas Oley and Izaak Walton. My own examinations here, which focus on Herbert’s presence in Vaughan’s prose devotional manual The Mount of Olives (1652), will be concerned rather to show in some detail how Vaughan experienced Herbert’s influence, helping to clarify what sort of person Vaughan – however improbably – believed Herbert to be. The exploration will I hope be useful for understanding the poetry of Silex Scintillans, so intentionally Herbertian and yet so remarkably different from The Temple. Both Vaughan’s epistle dedicatory to The Mount of Olives and his reader’s introduction sharply contest the new ecclesiastical regime in Commonwealth south Wales. Vaughan praises his wife’s uncle Sir [End Page 178] Charles Egerton, a former Long Parliament member evidently becoming disillusioned with the movement he supported,5 thanking him for being one of the few men “left who dares look upon, and commiserate distressed Religion,”6 and he offers dry Laudian ripostes that anticipate negative Puritan responses to his publication.7 The final words of his reader’s introduction show his classicist penchant for multiple quotation in a bracing synthesis of St. Paul, St. John the Divine, St. Jerome, and George Herbert: Onely I shall adde this short Exhortation: That thou wouldest not be discouraged in this way, because very many are gone out of it. Think not that thou art alone upon this Hill, there is an innumerable company both before and behinde thee. Those with their palms in their hands, and these expecting them. If therefore the dust of this world chance to prick thine eyes, suffer it not to blinde them; but running thy race with patience, look to JESUS the Authour and finisher of thy faith, who when he was reviled, reviled not againe. Presse thou towards the mark, and let the people and their Seducers rage; be faithful unto the death, and he will give thee a Crowne of life. Look not upon transitorie, visible things, but upon him that is eternal, and invisible. Choose the better part, yea, that part with Saint Hierome, who preferred the poore Coate of Paul the Hermite to the purple and pride of the world. (p. 141) Vaughan’s borrowing here from Herbert’s “Frailtie” effectively places Herbert in the company of early Church Fathers and Scriptural authors, and the image of “the dust of this world” rising to “prick thine eyes” has just as deep a relevance to Herbert’s plea for divine assistance against temptations toward worldly glamour as “running thy race with patience” has to the enheartening exhortations of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Vaughan’s devotional manual gets underway with a sequence of prayers to be used upon arising in the morning, preparing for the day, and leaving home for working duties. As Donald Dickson has observed, Vaughan is providing his dissident episcopal Anglican readers with their own version of a lay Primer or book of private devotion; but here the Primer’s generic focus on sanctifying the [End Page 179] necessary cycles of human...

Phinehas Murdered Moses’ Wife: An Analysis of Numbers 25

This article suggests that Numbers 25 is a chapter composed of two separate stories (the Baal Peor affair and the Phinehas narrative) and one supplement. The return of these passages to their original contexts enables the reader to recover their full meaning and to explain the tensions in the existing form of the chapter. Of the many findings the analysis makes, the most significant is the identification of the Midianite woman killed by Phinehas with Zipporah, the wife of Moses. However, it appears that the priestly redactor was not pleased with having a prophetic figure such as Moses in this predicament. Therefore, he added supplementary material to the original text, making it quite diffcult to link the Midianite woman to Moses.