Sacrificial Death Research Articles

‘Living Water’ and Sanguinary Witness: John 19:34 and Martyrs of the Second and Early Third Century

In the Fourth Gospel the death of Jesus is an eschatological fulfilment of the hopes associated with the festivals of Tabernacles, Passover, Hanukkah, and daily worship (Tamid) at the temple. When the evangelist underscores the testimony of blood and water issuing from the body of the crucified Jesus he expresses a correlation with the water and wine libations that flow onto the temple altar during the festival of Tabernacles (water libation) and the offering of Tamid (wine libation). This testimony witnesses to the Johannine gospel: in Jesus’ sacrificial death (blood) the power of death is overcome and the life of the Holy Spirit (‘living water’) is present for anyone who believes in Jesus. A comparison of the Johannine understanding of Jesus’ death with that of the martyrs of Judaism in 4 Maccabees shows both traditions employing the same sacrificial images (purification, consecration, and propitiation through blood) which express the redemptive power of a martyr’s death. In the Fourth Gospel, ‘living water’ is an image for the life-giving and cleansing power of Jesus’ death as a sanguinary witness (martyrdom). The indwelling of his Spirit in a believer is linked to the image of the ‘living water’ of Jesus given in his sacrificial act of agape; and martyrdoms of the second and early third century (Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp of Smyrna, Sanctus of Lugdunum/Vienna, and Perpetua of Carthage) confirm this conclusion.

Jesus, Girard, and Twentieth-Century Fantasy for Young Adults

In the first half of the twentieth century, fantasy stories for children and adolescents were often domestically oriented romps such as P. L. Travers's Mary Poppins (first published in 1934), or amusing but safe adventures such as L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (first published in 1900). In these early fantasies, the child protagonists were more or less safe under the watchful eyes of careful adults. After the Second World War, however, children's fantasy in the West underwent a decided shift in focus. The child protagonists could no longer rely on well-meaning adults, but had to confront danger themselves and resolve it. (1) These young protagonists faced battles, undertook quests, and struggled with concepts of heroism in a way that, while not completely new to the genre, had not been witnessed since the fantasies of George MacDonald in the Victorian era. (2) One particular motif that returned to the genre in full force after having been long absent was the idea of sacrificial death, or death that pays the price of something that cannot be bought in any other way. This motif first (re)appeared in the post-World War II fantasy by C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Many scholars have explored the religious significance of this text in relation to the author's own Christian belief, which distinguishes the use of this motif from those of earlier narratives in that its occurrence also marks the end of a sacrificial system due to the innocence of the and victim. Undoubtedly, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a good example of post-war twentieth-century fantasy that proffers, through the motif, precisely such an ideological position as its theme, but it is not the only such work. During this period, fantasy stories with a comparable narrative trajectory, while not plentiful, were surprisingly popular, but were arguably eclipsed by the popularity of Lewis's work, at least within critical scholarship. Two such stories, which serve as substantial prototypical examples of the way the motif of sacrificial death is deployed according to this trend, are Lloyd Alexander's The Black Cauldron and Elizabeth Marie Pope's The Perilous Gard. (3) Intriguingly, the sacrificial deaths in both these stories seem to follow a pattern that the philosopher, historian, and literary critic Rene Girard has discussed in his various studies, most completely in The Scapegoat. This pattern, which begins with what Girard calls the scapegoat function, has ostensibly shaped various ancient cultures and formed their mythological systems; its influence, moreover, remains felt up until the present day, if only in terms of how it continues to structure human relationships in an array of social situations. Since my reading of the motif and the theme of sacrifice in these two fantasy writings for adolescent readers is heavily dependent on Girard's formulation, a quick explanation of his theory at this juncture is imperative. According to Girard, any conflict that leads to the sacrifice of a scapegoat, who is ultimately an innocent victim, always begins with desire. At the heart of desire is the motivation toward imitation, or mimesis: that is, an individual learns to want what another person wants, and as a result, tension ensues. The pursuit of a desire by two persons inevitably compels rivalry, and, as Girard explains in Violence and the Sacred, such a mimetic rivalry will subsequently spread quickly to the rest of the community that may only have a vague idea of the cause of argument. In fact, the original object of desire becomes completely forgotten as the rivalry escalates, since the opposing parties have now shifted their focus to the discord itself. As the mimetic rivalry soon reaches a crisis point, a violent altercation becomes unavoidable, unless something is done to allay the communal stress. To this end, a ritual is enacted whereby the community chooses a to whom it will direct its anxieties in order to deflect . …

A Dialog between Patristic Christology and the Yin-Yang Perspective on the Relationship of Christ’s Nature with his Person

Abstract Although Christian theologians find the yin-yang perspective in Taoism relevant to Christology, the yin-yang’s movement of “harmony with conflict as complementary beings for each other” is not accord with complexities of the diverse realities of Christ’s two natures. Nonetheless, the yin-yang perspective based on its cosmo-anthropology sheds new light on the controversies over the relationship between Christ’s nature and his person. While patristic Christology was conceptualized by the Greek dualism in understanding the relationship between Christ’s nature and his person, the yin-yang perspective connects the ultimate root of all things (根本) to humans. With both continuity and distinctiveness between nature and person understood, we may find a clue that Christ’s divinity, without losing its distinctive nature from humanity, has continuity with Christ’s sacrificial death and that his humanity participates in Christ’s person as he shares and bears all things on the cross.

The Sense of Games and Undeserved Suffering Some Comments on Book V of Vergil’s Aeneid

Many scholars believe that literary and artistic level of Book V of Vergils' Aeneid is much lower than in the neighbouring books four and six. Nonetheless a detailed analysis of the contents and composition allows, in my opinion, to treat Book V as interesting and valuable. Vergil concentrated primarily on the sense of suffering which often befalls innocent people. The most vivid is the example of Palinurus whose undeserved and sacrificial death permits Aeneas to continue with his mission. The death of Palinurus and Dido is, I think, a symbolic farewell of Aeneas with the Trojan past and the wandering on the sea. The participants in the games are all secondary characters. By introducing them Vergil, I believe, wished to stress the importance of every man of Aeneas' crew in the fulfilling of the task set by destiny. The importance of fatum and fortuna increases exponentially in the instances where human strength and abilities fail.

Writing, Remembering and Embodiment: Australian Literary Responses to the First World War

This paper is part of a larger project exploring Australian literary responses to the Great War of 1914-1918. It draws on theories of embodiment, mourning, ritual and the recuperative potential of writing, together with a brief discussion of selected exemplars, to suggest that literary works of the period contain and lay bare a suite of creative, corporeal and social impulses, including resurrection, placation or stilling of ghosts, and formation of an empathic and duty-bound community.

Human Conflict: Pacifists at Heart

The breadth and depth of the Human Conflict issue (18 May, p. [818][1]) brings to mind Otto Rank's observation in Psychology and the Soul ([ 1 ][2]) that we still have primitive beliefs about death—for example, that heroic, spectacular, or sacrificial death conveys immortality, and that killing an enemy is killing death itself. After centuries of analyzing war, with its heroics and pathos, we have recently learned that most humans are like other social animals, which fight but instinctively stop short of intraspecies killing ([ 2 ][3]). Cited in 3 of the 11 special section Reviews and Perspectives, D. Grossman ([ 2 ][3]) found that most people, including soldiers, would sooner die than kill a person at close range. About 2% lack such inhibition ([ 2 ][3]); that characteristic is often expressed in military heroics. In civilian circumstances, the same characteristic is associated with tendencies toward antisocial behavior, including violent crime. This atypical group receives disproportionate attention in history and fiction, news and entertainment. Those in the pacifist majority can be disinhibited if ordered by an authority and supervised, confirming Stanley Milgram's findings that most of us will comply with orders that violate some of our principles ([ 3 ][4]). Modern psychological conditioning of U.S. troops has contributed to an increased shoot-to-kill percentage, from only 20% in World War II to 90% in Vietnam ([ 2 ][3]), but evidently at high cost. As S. Maguen reports (p. [843][5]), soldiers who have killed suffer post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) at higher rates. Veterans Administration psychologists recently coined the term “moral injury” ([ 4 ][6]), which relates to Maguen's point. The optimistic essay on PTSD by R. J. McNally (p. [872][7]) omits mention of suicide, which has reached alarming levels among U.S. troops and veterans ([ 5 ][8]). 1. [↵][9]1. O. Rank , Psychology and the Soul (Franz Deuticke, Lepzig, Germany, 1930); translated by G. C. Richter (Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, Baltimore, MD, 1998). 2. [↵][10] , On Killing (Hachette Book Group, New York, 1995; revised and updated, 2009). 3. [↵][11]1. S. Milgram , The Perils of Obedience (Harpers, New York, 1973). 4. [↵][12]1. K. D. Drescher , Traumatology 17, 8 (2011). [OpenUrl][13][CrossRef][14] 5. [↵][15]1. T. Williams , “Suicides outpacing war deaths for troops,” The New York Times (9 June 2012), p. A10; [www.nytimes.com/2012/06/09/us/suicides-eclipse-war-deaths-for-us-troops.html][16]. [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.336.6083.818 [2]: #ref-1 [3]: #ref-2 [4]: #ref-3 [5]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.336.6083.842 [6]: #ref-4 [7]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.1222069 [8]: #ref-5 [9]: #xref-ref-1-1 View reference 1 in text [10]: #xref-ref-2-1 View reference 2 in text [11]: #xref-ref-3-1 View reference 3 in text [12]: #xref-ref-4-1 View reference 4 in text [13]: {openurl}?query=rft.jtitle%253DTraumatology%26rft.volume%253D17%26rft.spage%253D8%26rft_id%253Dinfo%253Adoi%252F10.1177%252F1534765610395615%26rft.genre%253Darticle%26rft_val_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Ajournal%26ctx_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ctx_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Actx [14]: /lookup/external-ref?access_num=10.1177/1534765610395615&link_type=DOI [15]: #xref-ref-5-1 View reference 5 in text [16]: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/09/us/suicides-eclipse-war-deaths-for-us-troops.html

Discipleship after the Resurrection: Scribal Hermeneutics in the Longer Ending of Mark

Scholars typically maintain that the Longer Ending (LE) of Mark subverts Mark's somber message about Jesus' sacrificial death with a triumphant, concluding vision of the risen Lord seated at the right hand of God (Mark 16:19). This study takes a different tack, promoting a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between Mark and the LE by detecting important thematic elements-especially concerning discipleship—that the later passage both adopts and adapts from its host gospel. For the writer(s) of the LE, the resurrection serves less as a dividing-line between Jesus' disciples and Mark's community and more as the bridge that confirms emphatically the new age of God's reign, evident both before and after the passion through those who trust the message of that good news.

Masaccio’s Skeleton and the Petrarchan Concept of Time

Masaccio’s famous fresco in Santa Maria Novella consists of two parts; the upper zone focuses on the three persons of the Trinity and the lower depicts a fictive tomb and a skeleton. The interpretation of the skeleton as an image of Death has been strengthened by the finding of 15th century tombs under the floor next to the painting. The presence of the Crucified among the persons of the Trinity in the upper part must refer to Salvation. Seen as a whole, it is natural, therefore, to see Masaccio’s fresco as a representation of the Christian concept of Salvation through the sacrificial death of Christ. However, the words uttered by the skeleton (“I was once what you are ....”) introduces a temporal aspect that adds new meaning to the figures of the Trinity in the upper half. In fact, ancient philosophy saw time as tripartite and the Fathers of the Church considered the modalities of time to be united in an Eternal, triune God. This idea must have been familiar to Late Medieval and Renaissance visual culture since illustrators of Petrarch’s Trionfi always visualized the final triumph, that of Eternity, in the shape of the Trinity. In light of this, Masaccio’s Trinity fresco is just as much an image of Time and Eternity as Death and Salvation.

Mitemas do drama agro-lunar em Comedia sin titulo de Lorca

Este trabalho investiga, por meio da hermenêutica simbólica, o único ato de Comedia sin título, texto deixado incompleto por Federico García Lorca. Pretende-se pesquisar o processo de remitologização na dramaturgia lorquiana, apontar algumas das relações entre mitos primitivos, como o do labirinto e o da morte sacrifical, ambos ligados às constelações simbólicas do drama agro-lunar, e a mitologia pessoal do dramaturgo espanhol, verificando em que medida a rede de significações é tecida nesse texto, especialmente no que diz respeito às representações da morte.

Becoming-woman by Breaking the Waves

To believe in realities, distinct from that which is perceived, is above all to recognize that the order of our perceptions depends on them, and not on us. H. Bergson How is an essay on the Lars Von Trier's film Breaking the Waves (1996) related to an Issue on Deleuzean politics? If the phrase 'Deleuzean politics' sounds for many like an oxymoron, then the political character of a film like Breaking the Waves sounds even more problematic, and the whole story becomes even worse (or absurd?) with the claim that the film has indeed a political significance for feminist thinking and feminist politics. How can a film depicting woman as a victim, an object to be sacrificed, as the absolute idiot being stripped of any capacity for rationality, free determination and free will be a 'feminist' film, a film enhancing feminist politics? And how is it linked to Deleuzean politics? Rather than starting by attempting a general evaluation of the political significance of Deleuze's work, as well as an overview of what constitutes a Deleuzean feminist politics (this is what this issue of new formations on the whole aims at demonstrating anyway), I will rather start by focusing on some specific links as they emerge from the cinematic event of Breaking the Waves --links which, as it will be argued later, challenge feminist thinking and bring into the fore some (often neglected) aspects of Deleuze's philosophy and thinking (a more 'mystical' Deleuze). What are these links then? Breaking the Waves tells the story of Bess McNeill, who marries an outsider, a foreigner, who does not belong to the closed community of the small village Bess lives in; a community with deeply rooted fundamentalist Christian beliefs ruled by the elder men of the village, who determine the values of the social and personal lives of its members: according to these rules, life isn't for enjoyment; it is for serving God. Sex isn't for pleasure; it is for procreation. Outsiders aren't welcome. So Bess's decision to marry an outsider causes irritation to the community. But Bess is determined to marry Jan (an oil-rig worker), and the post-wedding scenes express the sexual awakening that signals also her happiness (personal sexual liberation is depicted as being positive for the subject's development). Nevertheless, Bess is somewhat simple and childlike, and has difficulty living without Jan when he is away on the oil platform. She prays for his return, and when he returns paralysed from the neck down after an accident in his workplace, she believes it is her fault. Being no longer able to make love, and mentally affected by the accident, Jan urges her to find and have sex with other men, and then tell him the details; a demand that becomes slowly in Bess's mind God's wish, and which leads her finally to her own death (a sacrificial death). The theme of love is at the core of the film Breaking the Waves; however, love in Lars Von Trier's film escapes the cliches of an emotionality within a couple, and becomes instead a multifaceted event, a metamorphosising force that gives the film's narrative a multilayered, deep and complex character. Breaking the Waves is a film that brings together themes of love, religion (or better belief), spirituality, and difference, in a unique way that makes an urgent demand on us to rethink ethics outside the secularism-religion divide: It is highly spiritual yet anti-religious, triumphant yet tragic, and personal yet universal. Love forms the film's core, but rather than approaching the subject from a cliched perspective, Breaking the Waves examines no less than six facets of the emotion: transformative love, sacrificial love, redemptive love, destructive love, romantic love, and sexual love. (1) The film's plot is enacted by two main conceptual figures: that of the idiot (identified with a naive believer, a faithful subject, the ignoratnia amans) and the sacrificial subject/object. …

MURDER AND THE DEATH OF CHRIST

Some people believe that God made it a condition for His forgiveness even of repentant sinners that Jesus died a sacrificial death at human hands. Often, in the New Testament, this doctrine of Objective Atonement seems to be implied, as when Jesus spoke of his blood as ‘shed for many for the remission of sins’ (Matth. 26:28), or when St Paul said that ‘Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures’ (1 Cor. 3:15). And for many centuries the doctrine was indeed accepted by most if not all Christian theologians. It seems in fact to be an essential part of Christianity, which adherents of that religion cannot reject without undermining the authority both of their scriptures and of a very long tradition. It looks then as if objections to the doctrine are objections to the Christian scheme itself. Here is one of them. As the Gospels present it Jesus was murdered, by one or more of Pilate, the Sanhedrin and the Jewish mob. Given Objective Atonement, God ordained the sacrificial death of Jesus, and so, as it seems, this murder. Murder requires freedom on the killer's part. And many have doubted that an action can be both free and ordained by God. Leave that aside. A good God would in any case not make it a condition for our forgiveness that someone acquired the guilt of murder.

“MAKING THE GHOST WALK ABOUT AGAIN AND AGAIN”: History as Séance in the Work of Susan Howe

“MAKING THE GHOST WALK ABOUT AGAIN AND AGAIN”: History as Séance in the Work of Susan Howe

Poetry and Apocalypse: Theological Disclosures of Poetic Language (review)

Reviewed by: Poetry and Apocalypse: Theological Disclosures of Poetic Language Dorothy Z. Baker (bio) Poetry and Apocalypse: Theological Disclosures of Poetic Language. By William Franke. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009. 232 pp. Cloth $60.00. Poetry and Apocalypse: Theological Disclosures of Poetic Language is a profound and radical study that holds many surprises. The first surprise is that it takes up the important relationship between literature and theology, a relationship that is studiously avoided in contemporary scholarship. Despite obvious religious meditation in the work of such diverse authors as Louise Glück, Seamus Heaney, Geoffrey Hill, and Fanny Howe, scholars seem to be uncomfortable with the religious arguments in their poetry. Likewise, when reviewers and critics read John Berryman's "Eleven Addresses to the Lord," Anne Sexton's "O Ye Tongues," and Allen Grossman's "How to Do Things with Tears," they broach each poem's metaphysics, transcendence, spirituality, and myth making but shy away from engaging in any discussion of theology or religious practice per se. At the foundation of William Franke's book is the assertion that poetry and theology were inseparable during the earliest stages of culture and that this unity of language and religious experience is fully in evidence in modern and contemporary literature. The second surprise is that Poetry and Apocalypse does not treat lyric poetry closely defined. Rather it broadens its focus to take up the enduring vitality of poetic language in a variety of genres. Paying special attention to Dante's Divine Comedy and, most particularly and extensively, James Joyce's Finnegans Wake as examples of Christian epic, the book argues that the literary modes and themes of Christian scripture provide a structure and a telos for poetic articulation. That is, contemporary literature relies [End Page 674] on the repetitive structure of scripture and enacts typological strategies of scriptural hermeneutics. It does so to articulate the origins of the self and human culture and to give voice to the human sense of divinity and to the ways human beings imagine divinity. The fact that literature continues to evoke and rework scriptural types asserts its investment in religious thought and its goal of rendering the unity of human experience. Franke does not examine the scriptural passages in which Job repeatedly questions God, biblical assertions of power in the figures of Miriam or Judith, statements of the desire of Lot's wife, or New Testament revelations of the simultaneous humanity and divinity in the person of Jesus, all of which appear and reappear in modern and postmodern texts as evidence of the bond of theology and poetic expression. Rather, he identifies rituals of blood sacrifice and death as the center of Christian theology, this being yet another surprising turn within the book. Looking to the studies of Gian Balsamo and J. J. Altizer, the book asserts, then, that the typological pattern of sacrificial death that engenders life is repeated throughout literature as the ecstatic and liberating transformation of death into understanding, self-sacrifice into love, and pain into the full experience of the body. Literature preserves and manifests the sensual immediacy of blood sacrifice and the human experience of terror of violence to a human being and the simultaneous awe of the gift of life. Consistent with his theoretical understanding of the form and function of the literary text, Franke understands Joyce's fragmented, inventive, and frequently irreverent language ("God becomes man becomes fish") as a literary means of resurrecting otherwise dead religious types or metaphors as visceral and potent assertions of a new community. His language arrests and appalls the reader in his attempt to enact the experience of the Crucifixion. Ultimately, Poetry and Apocalypse is a book about radical Christian thought, and this, too, is an interesting surprise. The death and resurrection of Christ establishes a pattern of apocalyptic experience for the Christian church that demands that the believer be open to devastating events and horrific ideas within history in anticipation of a transformative and illuminating aftermath. Despair is always attached to the hope of transcendence; death is always attached to the affirmation of life. In this way, the openness to apocalypse becomes a condition of Christian life, a characteristic of the...

A feminist reading of gender and national memory at the Yasukuni Shrine

This article is a feminist examination of gender and national memory at the Yasukuni Shrine. It argues that the spaces and practices of Yasukuni and the adjoining Yūshūkan War Memorial Museum idealize a militarized masculinity, which is constructed through enshrinement to produce nationalist bereavement and a celebration of sacrificial death for the nation. An examination of female enshrinement and presentations of femininity at the shrine raises questions concerning the appropriate roles for women under the nation-state. The analysis then focuses on female military nurses, specifically the Himeyuri Student Nursing Corps, who form the majority of the few women enshrined at the Yasukuni Shrine. Their depiction as ‘sacrificial daughters’ is problematized through the concepts of gender, sexuality and otherness to understand the context that enables their enshrinement. Finally, the article assesses the possibilities for resistance to the dominant narrative of national memory in both mainland Japan and Okinawa, with special attention to the recollection of experience in survivor testimonies of the Himeyuri, understood as a discursive negotiation of national memory.

The being-with of being-there

In Being and Time, Heidegger affirms that being-with or Mitsein is an essential constitution of Dasein but he does not submit this existential to the same rigorous analyses as other existentials. In this essay, Jean-Luc Nancy points to the different places where Heidegger erased the possibility of thinking an essential with that he himself opened. This erasure is due, according to Nancy, to the subordination of Mitsein to a thinking of the proper and the improper. The polarization of Being-with between an improper face, the Anyone, and a proper one, the people, which is also, as Nancy shows, a polarization between everydayness and historicity, between a being-together in exteriority (indifference and anonymity) and a being-together in interiority (union through destiny), between a solitary dying and the sacrificial death in combat, leaves the essential with unthought. This essay shows not only the tensions that arise out of Heidegger’s own analyses of Mitsein and affect the whole of Being and Time but also underlines in the end a “shortfall in thinking” inherent not only to Heidegger’s work but, as Nancy claims, to our Western tradition, a shortfall which Nancy has attempted to remedy in his Being Singular Plural.

Rereading the Death of Turnus: Ritual, Time and Poetics in the Aeneid

The death of Turnus, which is depicted in terms evocative of sacrificial rite, evinces a close interconnection between ritual and poetics in Vergil’s Aeneid. By reincorporating Juturna into the economy of sacrificial imagery at the epic’s close, I argue that Turnus’ sacrificial death should be seen as a metapoetic act. Indeed, as suggested by an examination of how time operates in the epic and especially in its final scenes, time in the poem is structured like time in ritual practice. The Aeneid thus engages the reader in a process of ritually renewing the past.

The Meaning of Jesus' Death: The Letter to the Hebrews and Luke's Gospel Compared

In this contribution some resemblances and differences (regarding Jesus' death) that exist between the Lucan writings and the letter to the Hebrews are noted and interpreted within the historical contexts of the authors and their addressees. Hebrews has a multiple view on the meaning of Jesus' death, with the main emphasis on its vicarious nature as a sacrificial death. Luke on the other hand does not emphasise the expiatory character of Jesus' death but interprets it as 'a humble service to his followers'. It is concluded that recognising the existence of different interpretations of Jesus' death in early Christianity, needs not jeopardise, but can contribute to unity and tolerance amongst (post-)modern Christians.

Terrorism, suicide bombing, fear and mental health

This paper is based on the Bruce Burns Memorial Trust Lecture, Terrorism and Mental Health, presented in October 2005, in Birmingham. In addition to written sources, it is informed by the author's experience and contact with military and police experts in this arena over 28 years as a member of the British Army. The diagnosis and treatment of post traumatic mental disorders are not addressed in this paper. The author explores the general phenomenon of terrorism, in an endeavour to inform understanding of terrorist acts. He stresses the need for contextualisation of acts of terror, their perpetrators, their effects on populations and individuals, and attention to the psychology of groups. The author aims to invite and inform further thought and debate on the subject by raising a wide range of issues which do not sit comfortably within a strict psychiatric, research-based paradigm. The author covers a brief history of terrorism; organisational requirements of terror groups and the process of recruiting personnel to them; the means, motives and opportunities terrorists exploit in their work; the need for communication with terror groups; sacrificial death; governmental responses to terrorist acts and fear and mental health. The author proposes that terrorist organisations perform some of the functions of a family; that acts of terror are ‘propaganda by deed’; that terrorism, or more precisely the media's treatment of it, breeds ‘formless fears’ which may directly lead to the development of fear-based symptoms and illness within societies. He notes that terrorism is an enterprise from which many players (‘experts’, media, politicians, etc.) benefit; that terrorism has its shadow in counter-terrorism, which may range from benign to malignant and that psychiatry could, in this context, acknowledge its bias towards individual psychologies and rectify its lack of understanding of groups and the behaviours of individuals within them.

From the Holy to the Most Holy Place: The Period of Hebrews 9:6-10 and the Day of Atonement as a Metaphor of Transition

(ProQuest Information and Learning: ... denotes formulae omitted.) (ProQuest Information and Learning: ... denotes non-USASCII text omitted.) The Day of Atonement is one of most conspicuous OT rituals to be referenced in central section of Letter to Hebrews (8:1-10:18) and plays, certainly, an important role in it.1 Almost scholars agree that imagery of Day of Atonement is used in typological fashion to explain Jesus's death on cross as a sacrifice that provides forgiveness. Paul Ellingworth, for example, comments that Hebrews' author concentrates in Day of Atonement all his thinking about sin and forgiveness under old covenant.2 Nevertheless, Harold W. Attridge has warned that the application of model of Kippur ritual to death of Christ in Hebrews is a complex and subtle hermeneutical effort.3 The difficulties include, in first place, an incomplete typology. For example, Azazel is not mentioned.4 Affliction of soul, an important element of celebration of Kippur, is also absent; instead, atmosphere that surrounds Jesus's entrance is that of feasting and rejoicing.5 It is argued that this absence is because Hebrews focuses on ritual of Day of Atonement and not whole feast. However, Jesus's sacrifice is also described in terms inconsistent with that ritual. First, author departs from language of LXX to describe manipulation of by high priest on Day of Atonement: is not sprinkled on sanctuary but (9:7).6 Second, when sprinkling of is mentioned, it has to do not with Day of Atonement but with inauguration of (9:15-23).7 Third, sacrifices of ... (male goats) were not offered on Day of Atonement.8 Fourth, purification of sins is effected before Christ's entrance into most holy place (e.g., Heb 1:3; 9:7), which turns upside down Leviticus 16, where entry is precondition for purification sprinkling.9 Fifth, when Jesus's death is described as a purification offering (Heb 9:11-23), author of Hebrews follows a typology that conflates Yom Kippur (Leviticus 16), Red Heifer (Numbers 19), institution of (Exodus 24), and ordination of priests (Leviticus 8).10 Finally, in this and subsequent sections, author of Hebrews does not use Day of Atonement as primary typology for Jesus's death; instead, it is ratification of that plays that role (Heb 9:15-23).n In fact, Jesus is described mainly as mediator of a new (7:22; 8:6; 9:15), and his sacrifice is referred to primarily as blood of covenant (10:29; 12:24; 13:20). The question is, then, how do we explain, on one hand, pervasive nature of imagery of Day of Atonement in this central section of Hebrews but, on other hand, account for inconsistencies in Day of Atonement typology for Jesus's death on cross? I suggest that in Heb 9:6-10, by means of a period as a rhetorical device, author of Hebrews defines role that imagery of Day of Atonement will play in his argument. In other words, this passage functions as a programmatic statement. The exegetical difficulties of this passage have distracted scholars from giving due weight to rhetorical function of this long period for rest of argument.12 It is concluded that Hebrews' author primarily intended Day of Atonement not as a typology of Jesus's death but as a parable or illustration of transition from current and its old into age to come and its new covenant. This, I hope, will make possible a new assessment of imagery of Day of Atonement and Jesus's sacrificial death in Hebrews 8-10. I. THE DAY OF ATONEMENT AND THE PERIOD OF HEBREWS 9:6-10 The Period as a Rhetorical Device The first unambiguous reference to ritual of Day of Atonement in Hebrews is found in 9:7. …

Firstborn Shor and Rem

1 Enoch 90.37-38 feature a messianic white bull and a nagar. Following a discussion of interpretational cruces, this article concludes that the latter represents the aurochs. A comparison is made with Deut. 33.17 in which the same two oxen represent an anticipated Joseph-Joshua deliverer, who is on the one hand servile and destined to sacrificial death and on the other regnant and free. The coincidence of imagery in the two passages suggests that 1 En. 90.37-38 is dependent on Deut. 33.17, leading to the conclusion that the oxen of 1 En. 90.37.38 depict a Joseph-Joshua Messiah destined to sacrificial death then resurgence in power. This has implications for the dating of beliefs about the Josephite Messiah, for the integrity of other second-century BCE texts, and for Christian origins.