bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Re-membering Jesus: Women, Prophecy, and Resistance in the Memory of the Early Churches
Authors: D'Angelo Mary Rose
Published: August 2016

In the search for a feminist christology, Rosemary R. Ruether has proposed the vision of Jesus as prophet and the tradition of spirit christologies as sources. This essay proposes combining prophetic and spirit christologies, re-membering Jesus as a prophet within a prophetic movement, as a sharer in the spirit with its women and men prophets. It asks the reader to make two major shifts in envisaging Jesus' career: first, to shift the locus of the spirit from the person of Jesus to the reign-of-God movement within which he acted; second, to see the preaching of God's reign as alternative not to the teaching of the “scribes and Pharisees” but to the imperial rule. These two shifts can help us to revise the question, “Can a male savior save women?” asking instead whether, in the spirit, [we who are] women can liberate ourselves from but also with our memories of Jesus.
“Reproducing the World”: Mary O'Brien's Theory of Reproductive Consciousness and Implications for Feminist Incarnational Theology
Authors: Kaminski Phyllis H.
Published: August 2016

Mary O'Brien has inspired a vigorous reexamination of the concept and practices of reproduction. Her philosophy of birth reclaims this central female experience from the existentialist category of unconscious immanence. This article sketches O'Brien's theory and suggests how her reappraisal of reproductive process sheds light on the contradictions in traditional messages about biological difference, the nature of women, and the meaning of motherhood. It illustrates its claim by reading one such message, John Paul II'sMulieris Dignitatem, in light of O'Brien's work, and argues that using the bio-social process of reproduction as an analytic tool helps overcome dualisms and can further feminist insights into incarnation as a dynamic principle of creation. It invites further reflection on embodiment, birth, and motherhood as theological concepts.
Interpreting Moral Doctrine: Newman on Conscience and Law
Authors: Magill Gerard
Published: August 2016

The religious epistemology of John Henry Newman offers an avenue, unexplored by scholars, for interpreting moral doctrine today. Although he did not write any work on moral theology, a systematic account of the interaction between conscience and moral law in his writings can illumine foundational concerns about personal morality and episcopal authority in the Roman Catholic Church. In reaction to the rationalism of the Enlightenment Newman had remarkable confidence in the capabilities and trustworthiness of the personal, historical reasoning of individuals and ecclesial communities alike—a type of reasoning that he recognized as the driving force for the genesis and the application of moral law. Not surprisingly, his concern for historical moral consciousness, with its emphasis upon subjectivity, generated a significant shift from abstractness to concreteness in theological method, a shift that would later influence the thought of Bernard Lonergan. To illustrate the contemporary relevance of Newman's commitment to personal reasoning in theology, his explanation of the legitimate authority of conscience and doctrine provides the basis for an instructive critique of the document On the Interpretation of Dogmas (1989) from the International Theological Commission.
Catholic Higher Education and the Enlightenment: on Borderlines and Roots
Authors: Shea William M.
Published: August 2016

The task of the scholar and the university is the creative appropriation of a tradition in a new context. The documents of the church and recent commentators use the image of “borderline” to indicate the place and role of Catholic higher education. That image indicates well enough that the task of Catholic higher education is the mediation of the Catholic tradition. But let me turn to another aspect of the image of the borderline. Modern culture, or, in its broadest sense, the Enlightenment, is not only to be pictured on the other side of a borderline, but as a “root.” Catholic higher education has two roots, both of which are its own, one the church and one the culture. The Enlightenment is also its heritage.
Roman Catholics at Non-Catholic, University-Related Divinity Schools and Theologates
Authors: Charles Henry J.
Published: August 2016

An important dimension of the changing character of Roman Catholic theological education is the growing numbers of Catholic lay women and men in all degree programs at non-Catholic, university related divinity schools, theologates, and departments of religious studies. This year-long study focused on Roman Catholic students and graduates of five schools across the country, in a first attempt to analyze the phenomenon and to suggest implications of the trend both for “ecumenical” theological education and for ministry in the Roman Catholic Church.
The Evolution of the Soul from Matter and the Role of Science in Karl Rahner's Theology
Authors: Barnes Michael
Published: August 2016

The relation between science and religion can be difficult for Christian theologians. Some like Whitehead and Teilhard seek full integration of the two; others prefer to keep them at arm's length. Karl Rahner recommends separating them into distinct spheres, yet in practice the general conclusions of science have had a significant influence on his thought. This appears explicitly on the topic of the evolution of the soul from matter. The human soul is part of the order of creation. That order is part of the proper area of study of the natural sciences, according to Rahner. So he listens carefully to what evolutionary scientists say, and maintains an openness to the conclusions of evolutionary and cognitive sciences, in forming his ideas about the origin of the human soul. In doing this he is also implicitly relying on other conclusions developed by science over the last 400 years.
Emptiness as Transparency in the Late Poetry of Thomas Merton
Authors: Doud Robert E.
Published: August 2016

This article examines chiefly Buddhist influences in Thomas Merton. Cables to the Ace is a book based on the Buddhist idea of pratitya-samutpada, or dependent co-origination. Beneath everything there is a blissful emptiness, or shunyata. The ace is the poet's selfhood at the point vierge, here interpreted as a Buddhist no-self. Heidegger's Gelassenheit also defines the point vierge. In The Geography of Lograire, a supreme karuna, or compassion, is poured out for all the countries and peoples of the world. Footprints of the Buddha figure in, and so does the transparency which is also emptiness.
Theory-Making, Transference, and Anthropology: on D. Z. Phillips’ Rejection of Nonfoundationalist Theorizing
Authors: Allik Tiina
Published: August 2016

The article argues that the motivations for Phillips' construal of all theory-making as necessarily foundationalist go beyond the epistemological debate about foundationalism vs. nonfoundationalism and that his construal is rooted in the anthropological assumption that the subjectivity of human persons is inevitably violated by analyses in terms of objective categories that are not derived from the self-understanding of the subjects under study. The article uses the distinction between etics and emics in linguistics and cultural anthropology and a psychoanalytic understanding of the inevitability of transference and countertransference in order to argue that an appreciation of human finitude and contingency should lead Phillips and others to anthropological views in which the inevitability of theory, transference, and the experience of the otherness of oneself and others is construed as not only inevitable but as pleasurable, i.e., as part of the goodness of created human nature.
A New Conceptual Context for the Sacramentality of Marriage
Authors: Martos Joseph
Published: August 2016

The traditional understanding of the sacramentality of marriage, introduced by Augustine, systematized by the medieval scholastics, and still central to Catholic institutional thought, has in recent years been criticized as being internally incoherent and externally counterfactual. These difficulties may be perceived within the frame of reference provided by Thomas Kuhn to be anomalies such as those that can be expected to appear during a transition from normal science to a new paradigm for explaining the data once satisfactorily accounted for by that science. A new paradigm or conceptual frame of reference is proposed for the sacramentality of marriage, and evidence is presented that this new paradigm is in fact emerging in the theological literature on marriage. The reader is cautioned, however, that the emerging paradigm of marriage's sacrmentality is not what it is usually thought to be.
Trinity: Economic and Immanent
Authors: Bracken Joseph A.
Published: August 2016

Theologians have recently been criticizing the notion of an immanent Trinity as idle speculation and focusing their attention exclusively on the economic Trinity. The change thus proposed is at once too radical and not radical enough. It is too radical in that it seems to set aside almost two thousand years of careful theological reflection on the reality of God as derived from Scripture and Tradition. It is not radical enough in that it does not grasp the deeper issues involved here. For, what is really needed is not a move away from ontology toward phenomenology, but rather a conscious shift in ontologies, a move, in other words, from a metaphysics of being to a metaphysics of becoming as the appropriate conceptuality for an understanding both of the doctrine of the Trinity and of the God-world relationship.
Spirituality: Experiencing the Everyday World as Grace
Authors: Sabatino Charles J.
Published: August 2016

This essay discusses spirituality as opening toward the experience of interconnectedness which forms the world. It interprets God as an empowering presence within the gracious quality of being reaching toward us through the connectedness. The essay draws upon Masao Abe's notion of sunyata and Heidegger's description of the everyday world to discuss the interdependency which finds us within one another's care, though this is generally taken for granted and lies hidden. Spirituality experiences this connectedness as gift and opens the possibility of care. By associating care with the empowering presence of God, we move beyond the dualism which otherwise sets apart God and world, God and humans.
Implications of Bracken's Process Model of the Trinity for a Contemporary Feminist Theology
Authors: Stupar Lisa
Published: August 2016

One of the primary concerns of feminist theology is to promote the full humanity of women and men by questioning forms of thought that demean human persons. The Christian doctrine of a triune God is open to such critique, because it has traditionally been presented in terms that are exclusive and even oppressive to some. Joseph A. Bracken, S.J. proposes a process model of the Trinity that is significant for contemporary feminist theology, because it potentially promotes human flourishing. It does this in at least two ways. First, because this model does not rely on relationships of origin to distinguish the divine persons, it invites the development of inclusive metaphors that embrace human diversity. Secondly, it proposes a nonhierarchical, interrelational view of the Trinity that is arguably compatible with the faith experience of persons who are subject to any sort of oppression. Further, this model illustrates the participation of human persons in the dynamic interrelationship shared by the divine persons.
Popular Ethical Subjectivism: Four Preludes to Objectivity
Authors: S.J. Edward Vacek
Published: August 2016

Both inside and outside the classroom, many discussions of ethical topics reach an impass because of an underlying ethical subjectivism. This essay examines the limitations, discoveries, and contributions of four forms of this subjectivism: (1) liminal egoism, (2) emotivism, (3) privatism, and (4) relativism. The essay critiques popular expressions of the assumption that one cannot make arguments about the objective rightness or wrongness of human action. It argues that the positive emphases of each form can be included in an objective ethic. Such an ethic is stimulated by subjectivism to affirm (1) the uniqueness of the self, (2) the character-forming and cognitive nature of the emotions, (3) the proper place of subsidiarity, and (4) the legitimacy of certain types of pluralism.
Recovering Women's History: Early Christianity
Authors: Rader Rosemary
Published: August 2016

As I was about to begin my teaching career at Arizona State University in 1977, I shared with one of my colleagues at another university that I was going to teach a course on women in the Christian tradition. He jokingly responded, “Well, that should take about ten minutes. What are you going to do the rest of the semester?” Accepting what I perceived as a well-intentioned challenge, I have occasionally sent him a syllabus for one of the two courses on women and religion which I regularly teach in alternate semesters. Although continuing research, new publications, and insights gleaned from previous classes demand that I change the courses slightly each semester, a perennial frustration remains: the sixteen-week semester is barely adequate for an in-depth study of relevant reading materials, pertinent issues raised, and questions demanding response.

The two courses I alternately teach are “Women in the Christian Tradition” and “Women, Religion, and Social Change” (World Religions). The first I have taught regularly since my arrival at Arizona State (my area is History of Christianity). The second developed as a consequence of a stimulating and provocative team-teaching effort with Diana Paul at Stanford University where I was invited to teach for Winter and Spring quarters, 1980-81. We team-taught the course, “Women, Religion, and Social Change.”
The Praxis of the Kingdom of God: Ethics in Schillebeeckx'JesusandChrist
Authors: George William P.
Published: August 2016

Edward Schillebeeckx' two-volume christological study,JesusandChrist, offers a rich theological foundation for ethics. Three aspects of this foundation emerge. (1) Ethics is grounded in faith in Jesus the eschatological prophet, where faith means living as he did: “going about doing good” while trusting in God to grant final salvation. Central to this “praxis of the Kingdom” is suffering, a “contrast experience with critical-cum-practical force.” (2) Ethics expresses grace mediated historically in Jesus Christ. The New Testament gives the most reliable access to this mediation and presents ethical models as its expression. Grace and religion are related to ethics, especially through suffering, in a unity-in-tension. Analysis of this relationship helps to clarify Schillebeeckx' position on a specifically Christian ethic. (3) Ethical activity is sacramental, complementary to sacramental liturgy.
Tutoring the Religious Imagination: Art and Theology as Pedagogues
Authors: Studzinski Raymond
Published: August 2016

This essay presents a psychological approach to understanding the creative functioning of imagination in art and religion. This approach drawn from psychoanalytic object relations theory further illuminates how the classics of art and theology engage the imagination and how distortions of the products of the creative imagination occur. Discussion of a particular innovative theme found in an artwork and related theological reflection in early Christianity exemplifies how both art and theology guide the religious imagination. Finally, various influences on the formation of personal God-imagery are assessed in the light of a case illustration, and the ongoing need for art and theology as tutors to the religious imagination is underscored.
The Morality of Nuclear Deterrence: Obstacles on the Road to Coherence
Authors: Miller Richard B. ,   United Methodist Council of Bishops,   United Methodist Council of Bishops,   U.S. Catholic Bishops,   U.S. Catholic Bishops
Published: August 2016

This essay critically assays four recent attempts to furnish a moral justification for nuclear deterrence: the success thesis, the just war thesis, the argument from the “supreme emergency,” and the exceptionalist thesis. By entering into critical dialogue with representatives of these arguments I hope to show that the current confidence in the morality of nuclear deterrence is ill-conceived. Chief among the logical and practical difficulties plaguing these arguments are the following. (1) The success thesis rests on the fallacy of post hoc, ergo propter hoc reasoning. Nor does the assertion of the past success of deterrence furnish guarantees of future effectiveness. (2) Representatives of the just war thesis either establish conditions for accepting deterrence that are incoherent with their judgments about use (e.g., U.S. Catholic bishops) or develop a theory of deterrence that cannot be morally institutionalized (e.g., David Hollenbach). (3) The argument for the supreme emergency eclipses moral convention in the nuclear age. (4) The attempt to salvage the supreme emergency according to a classical theory of community rests on a fundamental disanalogy between the Aristotelian polis and modern nation-states. Moreover, it opens the door for a double standard to evaluate the methods of war.
Rahner and Hartshorne on Death and Eternal Life
Authors: King J. Norman , Whitney Barry L.
Published: August 2016

While the writings of Rahner and Hartshorne are based upon very different metaphysical foundations, the purpose of this article is to bring to light some of the important similarities (and to clarify some of the significant differences) with respect to their understandings of death and eternal life. We seek to contribute some new insights to the important ongoing dialogue between process theists and theologians rooted in the Thomistic tradition.
Careerism and the Ethics of Autonomy: A Theological Response
Authors: Donahue James A.
Published: August 2016

This essay analyzes the moral and theological significance of the preoccupation of today's college students with careers and preprofessional training and illustrates how the theology component of the undergraduate curriculum can respond to the moral dilemmas presented by careerism. It contends that careerism is but a symptom of a more fundamental malaise of the social ethos and that by engaging in a critical inquiry into the moral roots of the ethos of liberalism—the ethos that gives rise to careerism—students can be challenged to investigate their own personal career choices in the context of the society in which they live. This can be done successfully only if analytic categories are available that provide a “bridge” between the personal experience of the students and the social experience of the larger society. The Ethics component of the Theology curriculum can provide these categories of analysis. Ethos, narrative, character, and vocation—terms integral to the discourse of Christian Ethics—provide helpful ways of structuring this analysis in the classroom.
“Then Honor God in Your Body” (1 COR. 6:20): Feminist and Sacramental Theology on the Body
Authors: Ross Susan A.
Published: August 2016

Feminist theology and the Roman Catholic sacramental tradition share a common concern for the integrity of the body and the goodness of the natural world. Yet traditional sacramental theology has used its understanding of body and nature to define women as ontologically distinct from and inferior to men. This article argues that recent feminist theological writing on the body offers a corrective to the ahistorical and dualistic understanding of the body prevalent in Roman Catholic theology. By including women's interpretation of their own bodily experience, situating this experience in a social and historical context, and celebrating the variety of human embodiment, feminist theology offers a truly “sacramental” understanding of the body as it also criticizes the sexist assumptions of the tradition.
The Prudence of Religious Commitment
Authors: Tilley Terrence W.
Published: August 2016

This essay adopts Penelhum's analysis of parity arguments to show that Christian theistic faith and atheistic secular humanism are on an epistemic par with each other. It argues that Swinburne's attempt to show that theism is more probable than atheism fails because his ultimate canon of rationality is essentially contested and cannot render theism more probable than atheism. It proposes a way out of the epistemic stalemate by evaluating the prudence of religious commitment. It adapts some of Mavrodes' recent arguments and Swinburne's levels of rationality to analyze the dimensions of prudence. It finally extends this “prudential calculus” to indicate how a theologian could show a religious commitment prudent, and argues that if religious authorities silence theologians, the authorities may also show that commitment to and in their tradition cannot be comprehensively prudent.
Two Imageries of Peace: Popular Psychology and Charismatic Christianity
Authors: Bregman Lucy
Published: August 2016

This paper describes and compares two imageries for “peace” found in contemporary North America. Both arise within a context of “expressive individualism” as depicted by Bellah et al. and both attempt to ground values beyond subjective preferences. Popular psychology, especially represented by Maslow and self-help writings, relies primarily on the image of organic growth for a vision of peace and fulfillment. Language of unresolvable conflict and warfare is entirely avoided. In contrast, Charismatic Christianity, although it too employs the language of “health” and “growth” also advocates an imagery of peace focused on the triumphant Christ enthroned in heaven, after his defeat of spiritual enemies. The author suggests that the vigorous use of this language is best understood as a corrective and supplement to the “growth” themes more fully congruent with expressive individualism.
The Relationship between Spirituality and Theology
Authors: Callahan Annice
Published: August 2016

This essay considers the contribution which spirituality makes to theology and vice versa, using examples from Karl Rahner's work. His spirituality in the sense of lived religious experience is the point of departure for his theological anthropology. Conversely, his theology of devotion to the Sacred Heart critiques and informs a spirituality of the heart of Christ. After discussing the mutual benefits which spirituality and theology provide one another, this paper points out the contemporary relevance of a spirituality of Christ's heart.
The Development of Naturalist Thought in Ancient China: A Review of W. Allyn Rickett's Guanzi
Authors: McNeal Robin
Published: August 2016

With the publication of volume II of W Allyn Rickett's Guanzi: Political, Economic, and Philosophical Essays from Early China (Princeton University Press, 1998), a long-neglected and poorly understood text from China's classical period should now be much more accessible to a wider audience of students, teachers, and scholars in the West. The second volume completes the translation of the 76-chapter original, and, like volume I (Princeton University Press, 1985; 2nd, revised edition, Cheng and Tsui, Boston, 2001), includes brief chapter-by-chapter introductions addressing issues of dating and content. The Guanzi has much to offer, spanning as it does the entire classical period proper; the earliest portions of the text date to the fourth or even fifth century B.C., and the work as a whole was only fixed in its present form by Liu Xiang (97–8 b.c.) late in his life, after over three centuries of accretion. Rickett's translation is the fruit of a long career spent studying this text, and it is worthy of frequent and thoughtful consultation; many of the historical issues that this translation sets before us are crucial to a deeper understanding of social and intellectual history in the classical age. To judge from contemporary sources, Guan Zhong , namesake of the text, was a popular figure during this era, around whom formulations of political philosophy and conceptions of new institutions easily accumulated over time. Recognizing this process of accumulation is crucial to placing the text in its historical context, since the Guanzi, like so many of our texts from the classical period, is fraught with difficulties concerning authorship and dating.
Choosing Balance: Weighing (quan) as a Metaphor for Action in Early Chinese Texts
Authors: Vankeerberghen Griet
Published: August 2016

Texts from the Zhou and Han periods regularly use the termquan“to weigh” when describing or prescribing human action. This essay seeks to determine precisely which concrete acts of weighing underlie the metaphoric application of the term to human action. A survey of the available textual and archaeological evidence shows that even before the Eastern Han, when steelyards became the most common weighing device, the act of weighing might have been executed and conceptualized in multiple ways. A similar conclusion is drawn from a survey of pictorial and literary references to metaphoric weighing in non-Chinese traditions. More precisely, I suggest three distinct possibilities: matching the object to be weighed with a known standard, determining which of two objects weighs heaviest, and, lastly, seeking the point at which the balance beam will gain or recover balance.

Early Chinese texts provide examples of all three (quanA, B, and C).QuanB became prominent especially during the 3rd century B.C.E., when persuaders discussed how every choice had negative as well as positive consequences.QuanA and C are attested in texts usually dated to the 4th century B.C.E. or before. In this essay I argue that it isquanC that became the dominant metaphor in moral-political discourse, and that it had two competing interpretations: it could refer either to the multiple ways in which a sage adapts his actions to the circumstances, or to a temporary lifting of moral standards during an emergency. Whereas scholars in the Han and Qing dynasties generally accepted that moral rules were not absolute, Song scholars were scandalized by the notion that deviations from the rule were part and parcel of moral action.
Bodies, Lineages, Citizens, and Regions: A Review of Mark Edward Lewis'The Construction of Space in Early China
Authors: Pines Yuri
Published: August 2016

The Construction of Space in Early Chinais a monumental volume. Few studies can match its breathtaking breadth, its richness of detail, its perfection of organization or–most notably–its continual display of its author's awesome erudition. In five hundred closely printed pages, Mark Edward Lewis touches upon an extraordinary variety of topics, ranging freely from medicine to political philosophy and from popular customs to legal codes. He takes the reader down into the tombs and up into the heavens, visits the marketplace and ascends imperial towers and city walls, enters the human body and calls on the emperor's harem. Lewis incorporates in his study almost every imaginable kind of evidence, from military treatises to tomb wills, from odes and rhapsodies to administrative documents, and from philosophical texts to popular almanacs. His 120 pages of footnotes and 40 pages of “Works Cited” provide a useful overview of the secondary literature in Chinese, Japanese and Western European languages. All this makesThe Construction of Spacean indispensable volume for any student of early and, more broadly, traditional Chinese history.
9. On the Fu Hao Inscriptions
Authors: Ping-Ch'üan Chang
Published: August 2016

Both the paper and the author's presentation.

The paper deals with the oracle-bone inscriptions referring to Fu Hao (or Zi), indirectly addressing the question whether this Fu Hao is the same person as the one mentioned in the bronze inscriptions from M5 at Anyang. The combined researches of Shima Kunio and Yen I-p'ing have already established that all but one of the 262 Fu Zi oracle inscriptions so far known are from Tung Tso-pin's Period I. The only doubtful instance remaining is Jiabian 668, dated by Shima to Tung's Period IV. The main reason for this dating was the shape of the graph used for the character wu. On Jiabian 668, this graph is rendered as , whereas according to the received opinion it should, in Period I, have been 1, or 8. Chang Ping-Ch'üan, however, had also observed the graph in Period I oracle bones. Therefore he agreed with Hu Houxuan's opinion that Jiabian 668 ought to date from Period I. Among Tung Tso-pin's criteria for dating oracle bones, calligraphic style was decidedly the weakest, and it should not be made the basis for far-reaching arguments.

There is a logical flaw in dating Jiabian 668 to Period IV and at the same time assuming that Fu Hao was Wu Ding's consort. Neiteher Wu Yi nor Wenwu Ding could have referred to her as fu, but would have had to address her as mu, or bi, or gaobi. Yen-I-p'ing's hypothesis that Jiabian 668 was inscribed when Fu Hao had already long been dead did not take this into account.
31. Kingship and Kinship: The Royal Lineages of Late Shang
Authors: Keightley David N.
Published: August 2016

On the basis of inscriptional evidence, it is proposed that the following principles governed the system of succession and inheritance among the lineages forming the Shang dynasty:

(1) The great Royal Lineage consisted of certain kings (Great Ancestors) and their consorts, selected from a federation of ten patrilineages, named by the ten kan stems; these patrilineages were linked by ties of marriage and consanguinity.

(2) Kan names were inherited through the male line; sons and daughters both inherited the kan name of their biological father.

(3) Marriage was exogamous; a male could not marry a female bearing the same kan name as his own; nor could he, in general, marry a female who bore the same kan name as his mother.

(4) When kingship remained in the same generation it passed from one classificatory “brother” to another. When kingship descended a generation, it passed not from the king to his son, but from the king to his consort's sister's son. Only a king who was the son of a king's consort's sister and whose consort's sister was the mother of a king was eligible for Great Ancestor status.

(5) Kings of the same generation had to be of different kan; when a kan lineage had occupied the kingship in one generation, it could not do so again in the generation immediately succeeding.
Ancient Reproductions and Calligraphic Variations: Studies of Western Zhou Bronzes with “Identical” Inscriptions
Authors: Feng Li
Published: August 2016

Traditional studies of Western Zhou bronze inscriptions have long centered on the issue of dating, but have ignored technical aspects regarding the creation of the inscriptions. In these studies, scholars generally considered bronzes with “identical” inscriptions to have been produced simultaneously. This article demonstrates, with the example of the newly excavated Ke lei and Ke he, that an inscription could be reproduced during the Western Zhou. The Ke lei was cast at the outset of the Zhou dynasty to celebrate the granting of the state of Yan, while the Ke he was probably cast somewhat later, with inscriptions imitating the original inscriptions. This article also demonstrates that “identical” inscriptions can display different calligraphy, the calligraphic styles corresponding to sets in the original composition of bronzes. For example, the thirteen “identical” inscriptions on the extant eight Ci gui and three Ci ding vessels were inscribed in three different calligraphic styles; the ornamentation and size or weight of these eleven bronzes show them to have belonged originally to three different sets, corresponding to the three calligraphic styles. These cases of “identical” inscriptions not only provide solid evidence for the contemporary co-existence of different calligraphic styles within the Western Zhou period, but also provide critical information on the organization of technology and labor in the creation of Western Zhou bronzes.
The Yin-Yang Texts from Yinqueshan: An Introduction and Partial Reconstruction, with Notes on their Significance in Relation to Huang-Lao Daoism
Authors: Yates Robin D.S.
Published: August 2016

The 1970's was a decade of extraordinary discoveries of texts that transformed scholarly understanding of late Warring States, Qin, and early Han philosophy, society, and culture. This article is devoted to the least well-known of these finds, made in 1972 at Yinqueshan, Linyi, Shandong. Specifically, it provides for the first time in a Western language an introduction to the Yin-Yang texts recovered from this Western Han tomb, probably dated to the early years of the reign of Han Wudi (r. 140-87 B.C.). Based on the only transcription yet published (in 1985 by Wu Jiulong), the article provides a transcription, reorganization, and full translation of three of the texts, and fragments of a fourth, together with supplementary notes on the approximately seventeen other essays and a discussion of their significance within the context of late pre-imperial and early imperial thought. The essays are found to be of immense importance in understanding the various dimensions of Yin-Yang theorizing prior to Dong Zhongshu's development of new text Confucianism. Of special interest is the author's conclusion that the texts throw considerable light on those of the Mawangdui silk manuscripts that have been categorized by most scholars as belonging to the Huang-Lao school, the so-calledHuangdi sijing(Four Classics of the Yellow Emperor). The author concludes, on the basis of his analysis of the form, language, and philosophical content of the Yinqueshan Yin-Yang texts, that many of the Mawangdui silk manuscripts are products of Yin-Yang specialists and may well not belong to the Huang-Lao tradition.
Erlitou and the Search for the Xia
Authors: Thorp Robert L.
Published: August 2016

This article places the recent literature on archaeological manifestations of the Xia in context, describes and analyzes the published data for the Erlitou typesite in some detail, and examines broader issues implicit in the debate on this contentious topic. The positivism that animates so much recent literature is linked to the Anyang excavations and the promise of scientific archaeology more generally. Particular attention is given to certain of the data from the Erlitou site—its layout, architectural features, burials, and prestige craft products (ritual bronze vessels and jades)—because these have figured prominently in most discussion of the nature and identity of the site and its eponymous culture. Broader issues are addressed, albeit more briefly, as a series of nested concepts: culture and subculture, periodization, cultural succession, developmental stage, ethnicity, and dynasty. Until the formal report of the Erlitou typesite reaches print, this article proposes a “minimal” definition of the current archaeological data, one that does not assume the historicity of the Xia.
A Textual Approach to “Zhanguo Zonghengjia Shu”: Methods of Determining the Proximate Original Word Among Variants
Authors: Blanford Yumiko F.
Published: August 2016

When several versions of a text display variations, it is necessary, for a correct understanding of the text, to determine which variant best reflects the original. These variations can be categorized into graphic, lexical, vacant, and transpositional variations.

The graphic variants display different graphs but represent a single word which is the proximate or most likely original. The variation is not significant since the word is known.

To handle the other types of variation, one powerful method is to discover the transmission lineage for three or more versions of the text and detect alterations that were made in later versions. When the lineage method does not determine the proximate original, each variation must be approached independently. For lexical variation, the lectio difficilior is more often the proximate original than the lectio faciliior. A taboo character that was later avoided may also represent the proximate original, or the proximate original may be disguised as a dialectal word. For vacant variations, trends toward adding, deleting or altering certain words in a version of the text help to determine the proximate original. When transpositional variation creates differences in the meaning of the text and the lineage method is not of help, judgment must be applied through a careful examination of the context.These methods provide systematic solutions to textual problems that would otherwise require independent analysis.
The “Current”Bamboo Annalsand the Date of the Zhou Conquest of Shang
Authors: Shaughnessy Edward L.
Published: August 2016

Having demonstrated in a previous article entitled “On the Authenticity of theBamboo Annals” that the “Current”Bamboo Annalscan be a surprisingly reliable source for the history of early China and particularly for the Western Zhou period, in this article the author again examines a brief series of entries from this text, in this case dealing with the death of King Wen and the succession of King Wu. The analysis is divided into three sections, historical, philological, and chronological, all of which show that although this section of the “Current”Bamboo Annalshas been revised, apparently just after the text's exhumation in the late-third century, and is no longer accurateper se, it is still possible to use it to reconstruct the original tomb text, which can be shown to be historically reliable. In addition to demonstrating once again the reliability of theBamboo Annals, the discussion also verifies that the date of the Zhou conquest of Shang was 1045 B.C.
Some Ancient Roots of Modern Chinese Thought: This-Worldliness, Epistemological Optimism, Doctrinality, and the Emergence of Reflexivity in the Eastern Chou
Authors: Metzger Thomas A.
Published: August 2016

Dealing with China's oldest and second oldest intellectual documents (Lun-yüand the genuine parts ofMo-tzu), this paper views them as “laying” the intellectual foundations of China's axial civilization” and sharing a distinctive concept of knowledge, “epistemological optimism.” Epistemological optimism, in turn, was a necessary corollary of “this-worldliness,” the preoccupation, especially intense in the case ofLun-yü, with evaluating people and distributing sanctions in a morally perfect way during this life, as opposed to depending on a bar of judgment in the afterlife. The combination of “this-worldliness” with epistemological optimism has dominated Chinese thought to this day, in striking contrast to the major role of “epistemological pessimism” in the intellectual world of the modern West. Mo-tzu was more reflexive than Confucius. Yet instead of leading to “epistemological pessimism,” his reflexivity was combined with not only epistemological optimism but also his assumption that the development of doctrine can resolve all moral questions and bring about moral action. This paper also explores other ways in which Mo-tzu was a seminal thinker, one introducing words and ideas that are missing inLun-yü, and that came to be commonplaces of Chinese thought. It also argues that the emphasis on evaluation found in the thought of Confucius and Mo-tzu must be considered when we describe how these two thinkers envisaged the relation between self and group, and its methodology differs somewhat from the approaches used in previous studies of Chou thought.
Are They Shang Inscriptions or Zhou Inscriptions?
Authors: Xueqin Li
Published: August 2016

I believe that Professor Edward L. Shaughnessy's review of Professor Wang Yuxin's book XiZhou jiagu tanlun is an important essay, pointing out several problems in the study of the Zhouyuan oracle bones worthy of attention. I intend here to discuss only one of these, the question of whether there are any Shang inscriptions among the Zhouyuan oracle bones.

I should first explain that, based on my understanding, this question pertains to only a very small portion of the Zhouyuan oracle bones, actually only four pieces, all of which come from pit H11 at Fengchu in Qishan County. In a conference paper entitled “Once Again on the Western Zhou Oracle Bones” presented to the “International Chinese Paleography Conference” in Hong Kong in 1983, I already pointed out that these four pieces are H11:112, H11:82, H11:84, and H11:1, and also attempted an interpretation of them (see Li 1985).
Mass Nouns and Count Nouns in Classical Chinese
Authors: Robins Dan
Published: August 2016

This article defends three theses concerning the semantics of nouns in classical Chinese. First, they are all free to function as mass nouns. Second, though many of them can also function as count nouns, they do not do so as frequently as do corresponding English nouns. Third, unlike English nouns, nouns in classical Chinese do not need to be classified as count nouns and mass nouns in order to explain their behavior in particular contexts. I argue that classical Chinese nouns function as count nouns only when specific elements of the syntactic context force them to do so, including numbers, some quantifiers, and some adjectives. Because classical Chinese nouns usually occur without such elements, they function more often as mass nouns. I develop this argument in opposition to an alternative analysis defended by Christoph Harbsmeier, according to which classical Chinese nouns divide into three classes: count nouns, mass nouns, and generic nouns. I show that the syntactic and semantic distinctions Harbsmeier draws in support of his analysis do not illuminate the behavior of classical Chinese nouns. The article also briefly addresses the ontological issues that have seemed to some linguists and philosophers to be related to the count/mass distinction.
Qijia and Erlitou: The Question of Contacts with Distant Cultures
Authors: Fitzgerald-Huber Louisa G.
Published: August 2016

This paper investigates the relationships between the Early Metal Age cultures of the Inner Mongolia and Gansu-Qinghai area with the Erlitou culture of the Central Plains region, and addresses the issue whether specific metal objects characteristic of these cultures may have their source of inspiration in areas as remote as southern Siberia and present-day Afghanistan and southern Turkmenistan. The proposal that China at the very beginning of its Bronze Age may have been affected by long-distance cultural transmissions depends upon recent reevaluations of the early history of the Eurasian steppe, in particular the advent of nomadic pastoralism and horse riding, and upon newly recalibrated carbon dates ascertained for specific Siberian sites and for the Bactrian-Margiana complex.
An Interpretation of the “Shao Gao”
Authors: Nivison David S.
Published: August 2016

This article presents a new translation of the “Shao gao” chapter of the Shang shu. Contrary to the views of Edward Shaughnessy in Early China 18, the author argues 1) that the main speaker is the Duke of Zhou, not the Duke of Shao; 2) that the political philosophy expressed is consistent with other texts ascribed to the Duke of Zhou; and 3) that the Duke of Zhou did not die in disgrace or in exile. The author dates the Duke of Zhou's death to the twenty-first year of King Cheng's reign, either 1017 or 1015 B.C.
The Bellows Analogy in Laozi V and Warring States Macrobiotic Hygiene
Authors: Harper Donald
Published: August 2016

The bamboo-slip medical manuscript entitled Yinshu (Pulling Book) from Zhangjiashan tomb 247, Hubei (burial dated ca. mid-second cen¬tury B.C.), includes a passage that uses the analogy of the bellows attested in received literature in Laozi V. In Yinshu the analogy is placed at the head of a macrobiotic technique. This article discusses the technique and argues that the bellows analogy most likely developed as part of the Warring States medical tradition of macrobiotic hygiene; that is, the bellows analogy in Laozi V was borrowed from medicine.
Wise Man of The Wilds: Fatherlessness, Fertility, and the Mythic Exemplar, Kongzi
Authors: Jensen Lionel M.
Published: August 2016

There is no more salient figure in early Chinese literature than Kongzi and yet he remains a figure about whose beginnings we know very little. The present essay explores this paradox of bibliographic salience and biographic silence through an in-depth examination of the principal narratives of the Kongzi legend from theShijiand theKongzi jiayu, paying particular attention to the language of their respective accounts of the birth of the sage. Finding a distinct lack of fit between the form and content of these these stories, I propose a narrative alternative drawn from the early Hanweishuaccounts of Kongzi's beginnings. Finding in this alternative a more coherent fit between language and narrative structure as well as recurrent themes such as divine visitation, infertility,jiaomeisacrifice, and cranial disfigurement, vestiges of which are also found in the accounts of Wang Su and Sima Qian, the essay suggests that theweishutexts preserve a fuller popular legend of fertility sacrifice by the childless coordinated with the winter solstice also present in the very name Kongzi and resonating with the charter myth of the Zhou, “Sheng min.” The evident implication of this finding is that the historicity of Kongzi is arguable. The name is more like a mythic literary fiction and probably began, as did that of Hou Qi, as a symbolic deity that was made historical in one of its many Warring States incarnations, that one transmitted to us exclusively through the normative biographical tradition.
The Term K'an-yü and the Choice of the Moment
Authors: Loewe Michael
Published: August 2016

The term k'an-yü, which is seen in various texts from the Huai-nan-tzu (completed by 139 B.C.) onwards, has been subject to various attempts at explanation, and it is possible that its original meaning may have become forgotten at a comparatively early stage. It will be noted below that fromnthe third or fourth century commentators were explaining k'an-yü as referring to heaven and earth, but apparently without a clear comprehension of the term. In much more recent times, k'an-yü-chia has been used as a synonym for feng-shui-chia, meaning, specifically, experts in geomancy whose aim lay in ensuring that a site on earth would be auspicious, either for occupation or for burial.
Towards Canons of Philological Method for Analyzing Classical Chinese Texts
Authors: Cikoski John S.
Published: August 2016

By Classical Chinese (CC) I mean the language of the texts such as the Tzuoo Juann, the Mencius, the Shyuntzyy and others that we believe to have been written in Northern and Central China during the period 500 - 200 B.C.

In this article I am going to take up the banner of the late George Kennedy and, at the risk of appearing somewhat peevish, try to make the case that CC textual analysis needs to be done with much greater rigor than it generally is. Kennedy said in 1953,

“Sinologists need to recognize that languages are not private cathedrals of mystery adapted for special revelations and pontifical decrees. The materials of language are as wide open as the rocks and the trees, and people have been looking at them for a long time with varying reactions. From the animistic recognition of each tree or rock as the special abode of a particular spirit we have moved to a classification of the features common to all trees, and to a scientific statement of the features that make a tree different from a rock. There has been a progressive increase in our perceptiveness towards these things, and constant improvement in our methods of analysis and description.” (George A. Kennedy, “Another note on yen,” HJAS 16, 1-2[1953], p. 236)