Hermeneutical Studies Research Articles

Prophecy and Hermeneutics: Toward a New Introduction. Studies in Theological Interpretation

Book Review| January 01 2011 Prophecy and Hermeneutics: Toward a New Introduction. Studies in Theological Interpretation Prophecy and Hermeneutics: Toward a New Introduction. Studies in Theological InterpretationSeitz, Christopher R. Michael D. Matlock Michael D. Matlock Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Bulletin for Biblical Research (2011) 21 (2): 254–255. https://doi.org/10.2307/26424648 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Michael D. Matlock; Prophecy and Hermeneutics: Toward a New Introduction. Studies in Theological Interpretation. Bulletin for Biblical Research 1 January 2011; 21 (2): 254–255. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/26424648 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All Scholarly Publishing CollectivePenn State University PressBulletin for Biblical Research Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 2011 by The Pennsylvania State University. All rights reserved.2011The Pennsylvania State University Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

<i>Anthropology and Sexual Morality: A Theoretical Investigation</i> (review)

Reviewed by: Anthropology and Sexual Morality: A Theoretical Investigation Harriet Lyons Anthropology and Sexual Morality: A Theoretical Investigation. By Carles Salazar. New York: Berghahn Books, 2006. Pp. 208. $70.00 (cloth); $22.50 (paper). According to its author, this book is not really about sexuality, though it does provide some interesting information about historical trends in Ireland concerning marriage, fertility, and attitudes toward sexual behavior and the attempts of social scientists to explain them. The central subject of the book is the nature of anthropological understanding, with a discussion of Irish sexuality employed as an illustrative example. There is also a brief comparative discussion of some of Gilbert Herdt's conclusions about Sambia sexuality. The central argument of the book is that economic, political, or psychodynamic factors do not satisfactorily explain sexuality but that sexuality must be considered as a set of cultural meanings. The role of the anthropologist is to make those meanings intelligible across cultural boundaries. None of this argument is really new to anthropologists, though the book does offer some interesting critiques of the ways in which anthropologists have deployed hermeneutic studies as well as some provocative remarks about anthropologists' assumptions about culture in general and sexuality both in Ireland and among the Sambia of New Guinea in particular. [End Page 429] Salazar's overall argument is based upon the premise that anthropologists have traditionally concerned themselves with explaining behaviors and attitudes that they or others regarded as irrational, either explicitly or implicitly, since the reasons for "rational" attitudes and behaviors would be obvious and would not require relegation to the loosely defined domain of "culture" in order to be rendered intelligible. Indeed, he gives the impression that "culture" could almost be defined as the residue of human thought and activity that remains after the biologists, economists, psychologists, political scientists, and sociologists have skimmed off their layers of explanation. Even historians seem to get their pickings before anthropologists, in Salazar's ordering of things, since he suggests that historians document "objective" happenings, while anthropologists deal with the ways in which the subjects of history construct changing interpretations of their own pasts. Moreover, he insists that "culture" is only visible from the outside; from within it is simply lived experience, albeit experience with meanings. The anthropologist's role is to understand those meanings and communicate them to other scholars. How does all of this relate to sex in Ireland? Anthropologists have long been fascinated by an apparently sex-negative culture in Ireland, particularly in rural areas. John Messenger and Nancy Scheper-Hughes, among other sociologists, demographers, and historians, have commented upon the low marriage rates, low incidence of births out of wedlock, lack of available information concerning sex and reproduction, and negative attitudes toward sex for the sake of pleasure that are said to have characterized Irish society from the mid-nineteenth to the late twentieth century. Explanations for Irish sexuality have ranged from the political and economic to the psychoanalytic. Scholars have claimed, for example, that farmers needed to restrict marriage because they could not profitably subdivide their farms after the potato famine, that Irish mothers employed child-rearing methods that produced extreme examples of Freudian repression, and that the Catholic Church took advantage of demographic necessity to enforce its own power over the populace by strict enforcement of church teachings on sexual morality and birth control. Salazar finds the economic and demographic explanations for Irish sexuality interesting but insufficient, insofar as one can imagine other arrangements that would have preserved farms intact. He points out that low fertility in marriage and high fertility out of wedlock, the opposite of what actually occurred, would have restricted pressure on inheritance while providing a supply of cheap labor. Moreover, he notes that many Irish-born people dealt with the lack of heritable land and restrictions on marriage by emigrating and that among these emigrant populations fertility rates inside and outside of wedlock changed in ways that indicated that both premarital sex and birth control became more common while people maintained their [End Page 430] allegiance to the Catholic Church. Further, he notes that the entire set of behaviors changed rapidly in Ireland after the 1960s in ways that seemed...

The New Visibility of Religion: Studies in Religion and Cultural Hermeneutics – Edited by Graham Ward and Michael Hoelzl

Journal of Religious HistoryVolume 34, Issue 4 p. 500-500 The New Visibility of Religion: Studies in Religion and Cultural Hermeneutics – Edited by Graham Ward and Michael Hoelzl Matthew Del Nevo, Matthew Del Nevo The Broken Bay Institute, NSWSearch for more papers by this author Matthew Del Nevo, Matthew Del Nevo The Broken Bay Institute, NSWSearch for more papers by this author First published: 15 November 2010 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9809.2010.00950.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL No abstract is available for this article. Volume34, Issue4December 2010Pages 500-500 RelatedInformation

The New Visibility of Religion: Studies in Religion and Cultural Hermeneutics – Edited by Graham Ward and Michael Hoelzl

The New Visibility of Religion: Studies in Religion and Cultural Hermeneutics – Edited by Graham Ward and Michael Hoelzl

Günter Figal’s Hermeneutics

AbstractThis article offers a survey of some main ideas in Günter Figal’s hermeneutics as he presents them in his recent Gegenständlichkeit: Das Hermeneutische und die Philosophie [Objectivity: The Hermeneutical and Philosophy]. Figal promises a new approach to the philosophical study of hermeneutics in this work that would advance beyond Gadamer, Heidegger, and others in significant respects. His project opens out from the belief that hermeneutical experience is guided by exteriority; such experience is directed toward and sustained by what stands outside the subject and its sphere, or, as he develops this idea, by what is objective (das Gegenständliche). His orientation toward this sense of objectivity leads him to establish a notion of hermeneutical philosophy based on novel views of interpretation and understanding. This discussion reveals that hermeneutical philosophy belongs in the world, taken as hermeneutical space organized by the dimensions of freedom, language, and time. His hermeneutics culminates in an elucidation of human life as it is lived in this space.

Contemporary hermeneutics and the role of the self in translation

Hermeneutic investigations, which gained momentum by Schleiermacher in the early nineteenth century, seem to have led, by the close of the twentieth century, to a much deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the role of the translator. Various scientific and philosophical forces and moves have merged, reinforced each other, and ended in a confluence of theories which address the translator’s concerns for the subjectivity of translation. This confluence is informed both by mainstream schools of thought such as Heidegger’s and Gadamer’s hermeneutic studies, Derrida’s deconstructionism, Wittgenstein’s adventures with language games, Michel Foucault’s attention to reflexivity, and by more recent and less recognized works such as Gregory Bateson’s systems and cybernetics thinking, Kenneth Burke’s rhetoric and communication studies, Ervin Goffman’s sociological studies, and finally Alton Lewis Becker’s direct attempt in understanding the process of translation. This article synthesizes contemporary thought leading to such a hermeneutics understanding. It weaves together divergent approaches from different disciplines and draws an integrated perspective on the role of the translator. The author demonstrates that the long lived tension between traditional philology with its concern for the translator’s fidelity to the original text and the contemporary hermeneutics view with its emphasis on the unique role of the translator as the co-creator of the text seems to have arrived at a relative reconciliation and ease through studies in self reflexivity.

Home, Capital of the Region

Home, Capital of the Region

Heuristic, Methodology or Logic of Discovery? Lakatos on Patterns of Thinking

Heuristic is a central concept of Lakatos' philosophy both in his early works and in his later work, the methodology of scientific research programs (MSRP). The term itself, however, went through significant change of meaning. In this paper I study this change and the ‘metaphysical’ commitments behind it. In order to do so, I turn to his mathematical heuristic elaborated in Proofs and Refutations. I aim to show the dialogical character of mathematical knowledge in his account, which can open a door to hermeneutic studies of mathematical practice.

With Reverence for the Word: Medieval Scriptural Exegesis in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (review)

Reviewed by: With Reverence for the Word: Medieval Scriptural Exegesis in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam Eitan P. Fishbane Jane Dammen McAuliffe, Barry D. Walfish, and Joseph W. Goering, eds. With Reverence for the Word: Medieval Scriptural Exegesis in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xvii + 488. As a receiver and conduit of tradition, the religious exegete ever stands in relation to the sacred foundation-document of a particular culture. For the believer, this encounter makes the divine Word audible and present; the speech of revelation emerges thereby from the otherwise "majestic silence" of the text. Whether in regard to the Hebrew Bible in Judaism, the unified Old and New Testaments in Christianity, or the Qur'an in Islam, medieval religious thought revolved on the axes of holy Words, and diverse imaginaires functioned, first and foremost, as exegetical processes for the discernment of ultimate meaning. These sacred texts functioned as both anchor and compass for the different cultures; modalities of hermeneutical attitude formed the great lines of connection between them. In the book presently under review, an outstanding group of scholars have collaborated to research the varieties of religious exegesis in the Middle Ages, and the result is a major contribution to the comparative study of religion and hermeneutics. Produced under the combined editorship of Jane Dammen McAuliffe, Barry Walfish, and Joseph Goering, With Reverence for the Word grew into a published volume from its origins as an international conference on the subject at the University of Toronto (see pp. vi–vii). Assembling the work of a wide array of leading researchers, the finished product is impressive in scope, depth of individual analyses, and thematic correlations. The book is divided into three parts of unequal length (190 pages are dedicated to Judaism, 111 pages to Christianity, and 150 pages to Islam)—each devoted to medieval exegesis in one of the three Abrahamic religions, and each begun with an introductory essay by one of the three editors (Walfish on Judaism, Goering on Christianity, and McAuliffe on Islam). These overview pieces are a significant asset to the symmetry and coherence of the volume as a whole—they set the stage for what the reader can expect in the ensuing articles, offer lines of connection between the various studies, and provide a very helpful starting point both for the general academic reader and for the specialist in one of the volume's subfields. In addition to their scholarly value, these introductory essays (along with selected other chapters from [End Page 268] the book) would also be valuable for university courses on religious interpretation and comparative religion. Each article in the volume is followed by endnotes and useful bibliographies; the volume as a whole is followed by a detailed subject index, as well as an index to citations from the Hebrew and Christian bibles, rabbinic literature, and the Qur'an. From a cosmetic perspective, the book is only marred by its diminutive and dense page print. One of the great strengths of this book is the ease with which the reader is able to discern the commonalities in concept and exegetical method that exist among the three traditions. It is this quality that illuminates the larger (cross-cultural) phenomenon of a belief in the sacrality of certain texts, and the ongoing process of interpreting those texts within a specific theological and social system. Through a long series of articles (most of which are, by necessity, deeply particularistic and relatively self-contained), this volume opens up issues of broader human concern and cultural attitude. It is in this sense that the best results of comparative study may be obtained: the interaction of diverse particularities (each grounded in the texture and symbology of an individual tradition) in quest of understanding the common human impulse to imagine and create religiously, to live a life saturated by a sacred text and its well of meanings, to think and theologize exegetically. Following the introductory essay by Barry Walfish (chapter 1), the section on Jewish exegesis proceeds through consideration of the following hermeneutical issues and thinkers: a comparative assessment of Jewish and Christian attitudes toward interpretive authority and the validity of received tradition (Benin...

:John Calvin on the Visions of Ezekiel: Historical and Hermeneutical Studies in John Calvin's Sermons Inédits, especially on Ezek. 36-48

:<i>John Calvin on the Visions of Ezekiel: Historical and Hermeneutical Studies in John Calvin's Sermons Inédits, especially on Ezek. 36-48</i>

Contemporary Chinese study of Confucian hermeneutics

Contemporary Chinese study of Confucian hermeneutics

Wittgenstein e a Hermenêutica

Abstract The article attempts to articulate Wittgensteinian and hermeneutic views of knowledge, language and understanding. Wittgenstein is not a member of the so-called hermeneutic tradition, but his late work has important affinities with the work of hermeneutic thinkers like Heidegger and Gadamer. Firstly, Wittgenstein and hermeneutics share a basic philosophical altitude that can be termed as “phenomenology of everydayness”. An important result of such an approach is the acknowledgement of the pragmatic and social dimension of knowledge. Secondly, Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Gadamer reject formal or systematic theories of meaning and claim that language is the universal medium of human experience. Thirdly, they conceive of understanding as a practical ability. Wittgenstein helps us to clarify some hermeneutic themes and develops them from an antimetaphysical standpoint. On the other hand, hermeneutics can refine some aspects of Wittgenstein’s thought; a case in point is the Gadamerian doctrine of the fusion of horizons, which avoids the danger of relativism that lurks in Wittgenstein’s late work. A comparative study of Wittgenstein and hermeneutics contributes therefore to effective philosophical progress.

The endless kingdom: Milton's scriptural society

David Gay, The Endless Kingdom: Milton 's Scriptural Society. Newark: University of Delaware Press; London: Associated University Presses, 2002. $47.50, £34.00.In The Endless Kingdom: Milton 's Scriptural Society, David Gay examines the importance of the Bible in Milton's late poems, especially the Wisdom literature of the Old Testament and its parallels in the 'sayings' and Gospels of the New Testament. This is not a study of Milton's hermeneutics or biblical sources, however; rather, developing insights from James Williams's studies of Proverbs and Northrop Frye's readings of Blake and the typological structure of biblical symbolism, Gay focuses on the condition of the Bible as a 'cultural, political, and textual entity' in Milton's works. Unlike Christopher Hill, who argued in The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution (1993) that the Bible was of limited use for truly radical reform because it was 'a huge bran tub from which anything might be drawn' by radicals and conservatives alike, Gay argues that the Bible's discontinuous, aphoristic textuality and the contrasting, dialectical perspectives that it evokes - qualities found most clearly in Wisdom literature - encourage the prophetic vision and critical perspective necessary to imagine a truly liberated society. Like Hill, however, Gay considers the political significance of the Bible mainly as a site of strenuous opposition, and this has several consequences. The broad agreement among early modern Protestants on the continuity of the Bible and on 'things necessary for salvation' is underplayed, even though this agreement underwrites the debate about 'things indifferent' and Christian liberty that characterizes the dynamic society imagined in Areopagitica. If seventeenth-century readers like Milton turned to the Bible for political wisdom and vision, it was because they were already committed to it as God's book, and this complicates the Bible's textual condition enormously.Milton first explores his view of the Bible as a model for political renewal in Areopagitica, where readers are active in piecing together fragments of truth in the process of forming the scriptural society; in fact, as Gay makes clear, 'the Bible is the real subject of Areopagitica. It is also the subject of the three major poems as Milton develops the typological analogy between the central, sacred text and the society it could project and reform' (p. 101). In the late poems Milton revises his view so that poetry, like the Bible, becomes the inward possession of each reader, creating a critical perspective and 'paradise within' detached from the cycles of revolution that dominate human history, and liberating the subjects of scriptural society in the textual space of reading. In the late poems, Milton 'did not merely insist on his own version of political truth', but recreated the biblical condition of tension and opposition of which his views formed a part (pp. 1 1, 31). While it isn't clear how Milton transcends the contrasting perspectives and binary opposites of his biblical culture, especially if we compare the political use of the Bible to form Royalist textual communities during their period of exile, The Endless Kingdom offers a profound explication of the tensions arising from Milton's understanding of the Bible and biblical poetry as the material conditions of a spiritual of readers gathered together during the dark times of the Restoration.Gay begins by carefully explaining how the aphoristic texts of Proverbs were used by Restoration apologists like John Spencer, George Morley, and Matthew Griffin to argue that political wisdom inheres in the king alone through God's authority, thus conflating earthly and heavenly kings. Milton, on the other hand, in the Christian Doctrine, The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth, and A Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes locates the source of wisdom in the double scripture, the individual conscience, and spiritual perception, the cornerstones of 'an endless kingdom conceived and sustained in the elementary community formed in the textual and critical space of reading' (p. …

Interpretation as a Spiritual Practice: Buddhism and Cross-Cultural Hermeneutics

The article deals with a problem of relation between textual interpretation and methodology of enlightenment in the Buddhist tradition. According to traditional exegesis, works of Buddhist philosophy are something like a samādhi, a sustained and penetrating contemplation of certain pathways of thought and insight. The author reveals that the Buddhist hermeneutical tradition is a tradition of realization, and devoid of any dichotomy between intellect and experience, the rational and the mystical. A principal role of the tradition is to supply the intertextual context of prejudices that makes the reading and talking possible and the background in which the revelation of meaning and the composition of a meaningful text become possible. Finally, it is pointed out that it is impossible to separate the study of Buddhist hermeneutics from the question of hermeneutics of the modern scholar who having his prejudices and preunderstandings determined by time and culture interpretes traditional Buddhist texts.

Context for Preaching Resources in the Roman Catholic Church

ABSTRACT The homily or liturgical preaching is a genre still under negotiation in the Roman Catholic Church. The bishops of the United States advanced conciliar thinking about the homily by outlining a theology and method in Fulfilled in Your Hearing. This document remains visionary and has been complemented by recent works in the theology of preaching. Because the Lectionary for Mass is the scriptural basis of the Sunday homily, hermeneutical studies of the lectionary shed light on the task of liturgical preaching. Newer resources engage a literary-liturgical hermeneutic that comments on the readings in the context of the lectionary and liturgical year. Recent revisions of the lectionary mean that older resources have to be used carefully. New challenges include lay and cross-cultural preaching.

Studies in a Rabbinic Family: The de Botons (review)

THE JEWISHQUARTERLYREVIEW,XCII, Nos. 1-2 (July-October, 2001) 185-187 M. BEN-SASSON,W. Z. HARVEY,Y. BEN-NAEH,and Z. ZOHAR,eds. Studies in a Rabbinic Family: Thede Botons. Jerusalem:Misgav Yerushalayim, The HebrewUniversity of Jerusalem,1998. Pp. xii + 201, 47 facsimiles, genealogical tables. Studies in a RabbinicFamilyis a volume of essays treatingthe de Boton family, exiles from Spain who settled in Salonika in the mid-16th century. An interdisciplinaryeffort,it is also the firstvolume to be publishedby Misgav Yerushalayim,the Centerfor Researchand Study of SephardiandOriental Jewish Heritageat the HebrewUniversity of Jerusalem.The readeris here treatedto studies thatexamine genealogical, hermeneutical,historical, halakhic,andpoetic dimensions of this family'sleading members.Focusing as it does on relatively unknown figures, Studies in a Rabbinic Family affords theEnglish-languagereaderanopportunityto get pastthebrightlights of better-knownrabbis (Karo, Abarbanel,etc.) to encounter men both intrinsically fascinating and significantly representativeof their time. After providing a carefully researchedfamily tree by Yaron Ben-Naeh, the volume opens with a well-crafted historical introductionby Abraham Socher, which provides a helpful backgroundto the specialized studies that follow. Socher surveysthehistoryof theJewish communityof 16th-century Salonika,andprovidesgeneralintellectual,biographical,andbibliographical informationon the de Botons andtheir culturalmilieu. Socher'sessay is followed by a two-part,70-page studyby Daniel Boyarin, which examinesthehermeneuticalstrategiesdeployedby Abrahamde Boton in his LehemMishneh, a well-known commentaryto the Mishneh Torahof Moses Maimonides.Boyarinuses the LehemMishnehto exemplify the type of analysischaracteristicof the school of Sephardi'iyyun.His contributions serve, as he suggests, "as a fine introductionto rabbinic hermeneutics in general, and to the distinctive methodology of one of the most important schools of the early modernperiod in particular"(p. 19). This contribution will prove especially useful to those who lack the Hebrew skills to negotiate Boyarin'sHa-'Iyyun ha-Sepharadi(1989). In a numberof interesting examples (rangingfrom treatmentsof sex to saintliness), Boyarin takes the readerthroughde Boton'sdialecticalmazes, thicklyillustratingthemannerin which de Boton'sexposureof (apparent)contradictionswithin the Mishneh Torahcould, in the process of resolution,yield significanthalakhicconclusions and ultimately more profound understandingsof the talmudic passages that underlie them. In the second partof the study,Boyarin exposes aspects of de Boton'smethodology throughfurtherclose readings.Here we see de Boton'sown methodof close readingat work, keeping him attentive 186 THEJEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW "to the linguistic and logical form of the text that was being interpreted" (p. 60). This deep unpackingof the text was farremovedfrom othermodes of pilpul thattendedto violatetheinternallogic of textsunderscrutiny;itwas not de Boton'smethodto resolve contradictionsthroughsophistic comparisons withothertexts in the canon.Oneof de Boton'smost significantvirtues, accordingto Boyarin,was his willingness to conclude his inquirieswith the admissionthat"the matterrequiresfurtherstudy." Hayyim Sabbato'sshortcontributionfollowing Boyarin'sessays addsyet another fascinating dimension to the study of de Boton's hermeneutics. Sabbato demonstratesa unique insight of de Boton: whenever there is a contradiction between halakhic methodology and the conclusion of the sugya in the Talmud,Maimonidessystematicallycodifies the law according to halakhic methodology, and ignores the conclusion of the Gemara.This insightis significantnot only for an appreciationof de Boton'smethodology, but for ourunderstandingof Maimonides'shalakhicmethodology as well. The second section of the volume, "Responsa and History"consists of two brief essays by Renee Levine Melammed.The aim of the firstessay is primarilyto bring Abrahamde Boton explicitly into the orbit of his more famouscontemporary,JosephKaro,by establishingvariousactualandplausible lines of affiliationbetween the two men. The second is somethingof a case-study in the use of responsafor historicalpurposes.The volume concludes with annotatedtranslationsand Hebrew originals of an epistle and poem of anotherde Boton, Meirben Moses (transcribedfromuniquemanuscripts ), and a eulogy for Moses de Boton recordedby its author,Moses Almosnino. Hebrew indices to Abrahamde Boton'scollection of responsa, LehemRav, are also included. Intendedto reflectthe cultureandthe literarysensibilities of Jewish Salonikain those days, the primarysourcesin the volume areof uneven quality. The minor works of Meir ben Moses are charmingin themselves. I especially enjoyedhis amusingdialoguebetweenthe Good andEvil Inclinations, designed to providecomic relief on the Day of Atonement!The inclusionin bilingualform-of a lengthy eulogy by Moses Almosnino was, however, ratherforced.This eulogy sheds little light on the de Boton whose deathwas the occasion of its delivery, andis, on the whole, an unremarkableexample of its genre.Indeed,Almosnino preservedthe eulogy forits exegetical qualities ; its actualSitz-im-Lebenis only summarilynoted.Moreover,unlikethe short works by R. Meir, the eulogy may...

The Historiography of the Reformation, or the reformation of historiography

ONE of the most effective ways of evaluating the achievements of 20oth-century musicology is to read a late 19th-century history of Western music. Much of our knowledge has been so thoroughly assimilated that the century's scholarly legacy can only be appreciated fully in its absence. This is especially true of archival and palaeographical research into music of the relatively distant past, without which we would have inadequate access to source materials, and equally true of critical and hermeneutic studies, without which we might accept the ideological biases of past approaches or forget to be sufficiently self-conscious about our own interpretative choices.

IMAGINARY GEOGRAPHY AND THE LAND OF (VIRTUAL) REALITY Reflections on the Cosmology of Cyberspace

"The Practice of Architecture today, like all else, is enframed within the structurings of technological rationality. Architects seem to be faced with a choice between an uncritical acceptance of technology, taking for granted that it inevitably leads to a better world; or else a partial or total rejection of technology, involving a turning back from the present to the past. Either way they are caught in a dualistic way of thinking, trapped in the oppositions that inhere within the logic of technological rationality." Adrian Snodgrass2 In contrast to other scholars whose authority and renown are established in narrowly defined areas of research, Adrian Snodgrass's scholarship reveals a remarkable breadth and depth of knowledge. His earlier work focuses on medieval Hindu and Buddhist cosmology and metaphysics, whereas his later work deals with hermeneutical philosophy and cross-cultural studies. The move between the two worlds involves a profound shift, conceptually and methodologically, from mythology and symbolism to dialogue and metaphor, from Guenon's trancendental Being to Heidegger's being-in-the-world,from an essentialist, perennialist and, to some extent, orientalist approach to a post-orientalist, post-modern, hermeneutical perspective. Although Adrian has shown, in some of his work, the relevance of hermeneutical philosophy to pre-modern modes of thinking he has, to my knowledge, not reflected publicly on the conceptual and methodological contrast between his earlier and later writings. As a postgraduate student I was inspired by Adrian's work on architectural symbolism and worked under his supervision to extend his approach to the Islamic tradition. At that time Adrian had already moved away from traditional symbolism into post-modern hermeneutics, a move I came to realise only later. Later, I also began to discern lines of continuity in his thought that reveal a sustained interest in peoples' non-theorised, non-self-conscious understanding of, and engagement with, the world whether through myths, symbols and rituals or metaphors, praxis and the hermeneutical circle. So just as his penetrating insights into traditional symbolism had inspired me to dig deep into medieval Islamic cosmology and mysticism, spending countless hours in dusty Damascene libraries reading decayed manuscripts in desperate attempts to unravel the secrets of the universe, his move has prompted me to look beyond my immediate focus and to ponder what I had taken to be true. His earlier work, being reflective in nature, might not have the same criticality of his later work, but his break was, for me at least, profoundly critical. When the approach of traditional metaphysics was turning into a dogma with a religious zeal, and architectural symbolism becoming a pursuit of truth that saw in the modern intellectual developments since the Renaissance nothing but a series of declines, Adrian's break has shown that the truth has other contrasting facets that are just as, if not more, exciting vibrant and profound. Thus even after completing my doctoral study and moving on to Adelaide to become an academic, I have continued to feel Adrian's inspirational presence through his work, a feeling probably only those who worked closely with him can fully appreciate. As a fellow traveller, I present this humble piece as a tribute to Adrian's much revered mentorship and friendship over the years, to the many hours he spent reading my boring manuscripts and correcting my alien English, and even to those uncompromising comments in red which I used to ponder endlessly in many sleepless nights. This paper is an excursion into the world of digital technology and virtual reality, a world so remote to my main area of expertise yet so close to our everyday life experiences. It touches upon areas of shared interest with Adrian: the nature of space and the role of technology in our life. It presents some critical reflections on the cosmology of so-called ‘cyberspace’, that is, ‘space’ in its latest digital manifestation within the realm of virtual reality. In broad terms, my focus is on the dichotomy of the real versus the virtual that underlies current conceptions and further compounds the problems associated with the accept-reject duality Adrian has already discussed. Specifically, my focus is on the relationship between virtuality and spirituality, which projects cyberspace as another space of disembodied entities that lies outside the natural world or beyond the laws of physics. My aim is to locate the concept of cyberspace in a wider philosophical and cosmological context, and to bring pre-modern Islamic cosmology to bear on the current conceptions of its possibilities. My main argument is that cyberspace cannot be anything but a particular possibility of physical space, and that the much-hyped tension between the real and the virtual is creating much confusion and bewilderment with regard to the new technology, particularly in the architectural context wherein space is a primary medium of thought and work.

Judah and Tamar (Genesis 38) in Ancient Jewish Exegesis: Studies in Literary Form and HermeneuticsMennEsther Marie Judah and Tamar (Genesis 38) in Ancient Jewish Exegesis:Studies in Literary Form and Hermeneutics Supplements to the Journal for the Studyof Judaism, 51BrillLeiden, 1997, Nlg244.00/$143.50

Judah and Tamar (Genesis 38) in Ancient Jewish Exegesis: Studies in Literary Form and HermeneuticsMennEsther Marie <i>Judah and Tamar (Genesis 38) in Ancient Jewish Exegesis:Studies in Literary Form and Hermeneutics</i> Supplements to the Journal for the Studyof Judaism, 51BrillLeiden, 1997, Nlg244.00/$143.50

The Bible and the Modern Mentality - Paul Ricoeur and André LaCocque: Thinking Biblically: Exegetical and Hermeneutical Studies. Translated by David Pellauer. (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Pp. xix, 441. $30.00.)

The Bible and the Modern Mentality - Paul Ricoeur and André LaCocque: Thinking Biblically: Exegetical and Hermeneutical Studies. Translated by David Pellauer. (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Pp. xix, 441. $30.00.)