bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
A Saucer Model of Southeast Asian Identity
Authors: Reid Anthony 
Published: April 2008

AbstractThis essay argues for an indigenous origin of the Southeast Asian idea. Two inherently Southeast Asian factors determined that the region would be seen as one: (i) a positive view from what we now call Malaysia/Singapore, that it sits in the centre of a meaningful region called by a diversity of names. This self-conscious centrality is based, however, on communications, not on civilization or empire like the cores of many other historic regions. The Malacca Straits area has always been a meeting place of ports and portages, not a centre of agriculturally-based population, large armies, architectural or literary monuments; (ii) a negative decision by the peripheries of this region that they did not want to be appendages of their larger and more threatening neighbours, so that Southeast Asia became a kind of default option.
Cultural Politics and the Reading of Job
Authors: Newsom Carol A. 
Published: April 2008

AbstractThroughout the book of Job there is a rivalry between different ways of talking. As important as it is to pay attention to what everybody is talking about, there are also important issues to be uncovered in attending to how these ways of using language differ and what is at stake in setting them over against one another. Since every way of talking implies a moral and social world, the book of Job presents readers with alternative models of character and community. The rival discourses within the book can be compared with contemporary discourses of neo-traditionalism, critical modernism, and post-modernism. Although arguments can be made for a neo-traditionalist and a post-modernist reading of the book as a whole, neither argument decisively triumphs over the other. The book may be likened to a Gestalt drawing that can be seen in two irreconcilable ways.
The Evil Eye and the Sermon On the Mount
Authors: Elliott John H. 
Published: April 2008

AbstractBelief in the malignant force of the Evil Eye and strategies to ward off its destructive power pervaded the cultures of the ancient Near East and Circum-Mediterranean basin. This belief was shared by the biblical communities who in their writings refer frequently to the Evil Eye, its associated dispositions, and means of protection from its injurious effects. This paper situates one such biblical Evil Eye text within its cultural context. Following a summary of salient features of Evil Eye belief and practices and a review of biblical Evil Eye texts, the focus is on one reference to this belief in the teaching of Jesus: Matt: 6:22-23 in the Sermon on the Mount. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how reference to the Evil Eye was culturally and conceptually appropriate in this segment of teaching, how the Evil Eye here and generally was associated with the vice of envy, and how this Evil Eye allusion functions in both its literary and cultural contexts. A related aim is to use this topic to demonstrate the utility and procedure of social scientific criticism as a necessary supplementation of conventional historical-critical exegesis.
Great Trek and Long Walk: Readings of a Biblical Symbol
Authors: Green Barbara 
Published: April 2008

AbstractDiverse South African readings of "the exodus" offer convenient access to the complex processes of "meaning-making" which are currently under scrutiny in many disciplines. This essay investigates several diverse appropriations of the biblical text in order to read the classic journey story-particularly the moment of encountering the Canaanites-and to sort some of the methodological issues. First, a pair of opposite versions: white South African (Boer) and black South African (represented by Archbishop Desmond Tutu); second, a triad of critical approaches, but with different emphases (historical-critical, text-centered, reader-focused); and third, my own construal of Nelson Mandela's autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, as yet another appropriation of liberation texts. In each case, the valuable questions to ask are how the interpreter has proceded and what has been the result, both for the understanding of texts and for the methodological discussion. The allegorical approach (Boer and Tutu) seems totally inadequate. The scholarly critical readings, with their behind-, within-, and before-the-text emphases are illuminating. But Mandela's construal, or at least my version of it, offers additional and fresh insight into the dynamics of liberation.
The Different Versions of Esther
Authors: Lacocque ANDRÉ 
Published: April 2008

AbstractIn this article I contrast my reading of Esther as presented in The Feminine Unconventional with that proposed by David J.A. Clines in his book, The Esther Scroll: The Story of the Story. I particularly criticize his judgment on the literary genre, composition, and value of the so-called "A-Text," a Greek version of the Esther story extant in four late manuscripts, in which Clines sees an original core of the genuine story he calls the pre-Masoretic tale. The constant implication in his book is that this pre-Masoretic version is far superior in artistry and philosophical content to the later reworkings of the tale as we find them in the MT and in the LXX with its extensive Additions. To retrieve the alleged pristine meaning of the tale, Clines is led to emend all elements of the story that do not fit the conventional pattern of "the success story of the wise courtier." My reading and assessment of the A-Text are vastly different from Clines's. I explain why and present several samples of my divergent understanding. The A-Text is a most interesting piece, but, I believe, Clines has missed the real generic nature of the document and, in consequence, has drawn from it far-reaching but wrong conclusions.
On Cometary Theory and Typology From Nechepso-Petosiris Through Apuleius To Servius
Authors: Keyser Paul T. 
Published: April 2008

AbstractIn summary we have as follows, leaving aside here the complex and important cometary theories of the pre-socratics, Aristotle, and the Stoics. First, ca. 145-35 B.C.E. Nechepso-Petosiris wrote a book of astrology including a passage on cometary prognosis based on heavenly region of appearance. He (they?) assumed that comets were fiery (the standard theory of the era) without further ado. His view of comets seems to be that they appear in, move toward, or pause in, any quadrant of the sky. Their descriptions are irrelevant to their nature, serving only to identify them. Within the next century five further books were written. Epigenes refined the standard theory with details about whirl-winds and the like (Sen. QN 7.4-10), referred to the Chaldaians (sc. Nechepso-Petosiris?), was also an astrologer (cp. Pliny 7.160, 193), and has the simplest view of the planets (when they seem close together they are: Sen. QN 7.4.2)82). Although fundamentally Epigenes' theory is simple, it seems to have involved a detailed reworking of Aristotle's theory (Sen. QN 7.4.2-4, cp. Pliny 2.82 anonymous)83), perhaps making use of Hipparchos or of Hipparchos' Babylonian sources (note Pliny 7.193: Epigenes apud Babylonios ... obseruationes siderum coctilibus laterculis inscriptas docet). First, the three outer planets by their conjunctions generate thunder and lightning (fulgurationes being watery, fulmina containing the dry exhalation). Then the events called trabes and faces are formed from
A Pilgrimage to the Heart
Authors: Kearney Richard 
Published: April 2008

AbstractThe wager of this Introduction is that imagination serves as a special agent of inter-religious hospitality. It suggests that a spiritual imaginary operating at the level of metaphor, narrative, symbol and epiphany can traverse the closed borders of dogma and ideology and open genuine conversations between wisdom traditions. The editor charts a 'pilgrimage of the heart' from an international meeting in Bangalore in June 2008 through a series of visits to inter-religious ashrams in western India to a final encounter in the Buddhist-Hindu caves of Ajanta and Ellora. Following in the footsteps of such pioneers of Christian-Hindu dialogue as Abhishiktananda, Francis Acharya and Sara Grant, the itinerary mapped in this Introduction seeks to illustrate key features of the five wisdom traditions discussed in this volume. The paradox of immanent transcendence lies at the heart of this journey.
Empathy and Inter-religious Imagination
Authors: Cornille Catherine 
Published: April 2008

AbstractEven though empathy plays a central role in inter-religious imagination, the notion of empathy has become all but anathema in the study of religions, associated as it is with Romantic hermeneutics and with the early phenomenology of religion. This article revisits some of the early phenomenological approaches to the problem of empathy in order to explore their continuing import for the question of the possibility of entering imaginatively into the religious worldview and experience of another tradition and understanding it from within. Even though the religious experience of the other always remains beyond the purview of someone not belonging to that tradition, the notion of empathy continues to emphasize the epistemic priority of that experience in the process of inter-religious dialogue, thus stretching the imagination to resonate with new and possibly enriching forms of religious life.
A Monk's Journey in Search of God
Authors: Sleeman Simon 
Published: April 2008

AbstractThe author of this essay was raised on a largely rational and scientific diet of educational, religious, and personal formation; it hence took some time for him to recognize that most of the important realities of life required a different attitude and deportment. These he learned from providential introductions to psychotherapy, poetry, and alternative philosophies. A recent visit to India confirmed this adjustment and direction.
Arunachala
Authors: Boulay Shirley du 
Published: April 2008

Abstract"Arunachala" is a slightly edited version of chapter six of The Cave of the Heart, a Biography of Swami Abhishiktananda, published by Orbis Books in 2005. It tells of Abhishiktananda's heart being opened to the Vedic tradition by his encounter with Ramana Maharshi and how he subsequently realized that, just as Ramana had been drawn by the Mountain of Arunachala itself, so was he. In a curious sense he was, indeed, in love with a mountain. Abhishiktananda is an excellent subject for the discussion of the "inter-religious imagination" for three reasons: First, because he was a pioneer of extraordinary courage in exploring the boundaries of Hinduism and Christianity. Secondly, because despite having a good theological mind, he was more heart than head, and his determination to explore everything in the light of experience rather than theory give his conclusions an exceptional immediacy and value. Thirdly, because few people have ever experienced "double-belonging" so acutely: he was torn apart by the tension he felt between the two, a tension he only resolved towards the end of his life. The author refers to him initially as Henri in this essay, as he did not adopt the name of Abhishiktananda until 1950.
Narratives of a Dialogue Pilgrim
Authors: Nambiaparambil Albert 
Published: April 2008

AbstractThis piece is a collection of narrative reflections by a dialogue pilgrim who spent over forty years committed to a project of interfaith dialogue in India. Raising the question of whether religions divide or unite, I have discovered the need to highlight the boundaries of language-games typically used by dialogue partners from different religious traditions, through an experiential approach that understands dialogue as an experience of "openness eliciting openness." Participants in interfaith encounters are called upon to take note of the leaps often unwittingly made from "faith language" to "knowledge language," or to the self-sufficient possessive language that tends to prevail in interfaith exchanges. It is important to respect the discrepancies in world-time vision, as well as the different pictures of self-understanding that emerge from different religious traditions. Also examined here is the role of intra-religious dialogue and the recurring stereotypes that often come into play when believers meet. In this ongoing pilgrimage of love—this pilgrimage in tension, with the horizon set on experiential expressions of surrender before the Ineffable Mystery—dialogue becomes a celebration of communion.
Spiritual Improvisations: Ramakrishna, Aurobindo, and the Freedom of Tradition
Authors: Cohen Martin 
Published: April 2008

AbstractStage 1: My path leads to the true goal, yours does not, therefore I'll kill you if you do not adopt my religion.Stage 2: Your path unwittingly serves mine by leading part way to the goal, so I will refrain from killing you.Stage 3: All paths lead to the same goal, therefore I do not need to subordinate you for professing another way. We can be friends. This phase envisages a heaven composed of sages from different traditions directly sensing they all share the same realization as they behold one another in a state of ineffable communion.Stage 4: All paths ultimately lead to the same goal, but along the way there are significant human differences, and on this less than ultimate level, there can be reciprocal learning.Stage 5: Even at the deepest levels, reciprocal learning can happen. Differences as well as similarities can be discerned in individuals and traditions at the most underlying and super-vening reaches of attainment. This stage posits a fallible and unfolding utopia in which heaven and earth forever inform each other, and everyone keeps learning from everyone. "Spiritual Improvisations" begins to portray the countenance of the fifth stage. To achieve this, modes of apprehension, intuition, communion, ecstasy, and heart-realization that are often said to be ultimate must be reconceived.
Imaging Islam: Intellect and Imagination in Islamic Philosophy, Poetry, and Painting
Authors: Morris James 
Published: April 2008

AbstractThis essay introduces the pioneering approaches of four classical Muslim thinkers (Ghazali, Biruni, Farabi, and Ibn 'Arabi) to the understanding of Islam and of religion more broadly, together with the subsequent artistic mirroring of their perspectives in two later masterpieces of Islamic mystical poetry (a ghazal of Hafiz) and painting (an illustration of the same poem by the early Safavid artist Sultan Muhammad). The discussion begins with the ways each philosopher's distinctive emphases on the relative roles of intellect, inspiration, and imagination highlight different but complementary dimensions (social, political, ritual, intellectual, and spiritual) of religious life and experience. The concluding section then illustrates how, just as in Plato's Symposium, each of those archetypal philosophical outlooks are powerfully dramatized and memorably integrated in the most influential poetic and artistic traditions of the Islamic humanities.
India: A Laboratory of Inter-religious Experiment
Authors: Siraj Maqbool Ahmed 
Published: April 2008

AbstractThis piece provides an account of the fertile exchanges that took place among Arab-Muslim and Hindu populations, as well as Jews, Parsis, and Christians, since the early decades of the first millennium CE and during the medieval period of Muslim rule in India. Tracing the remarkable story of inter-religious experiments in this vital area of the globe, and the intense socio-political, intellectual, and cultural intercourse between Hindus and Muslims that pervaded all sectors of existence, the author makes a strong case against zealous historical interpretations that portray Islam and Hinduism as warring factions and ideologies. Of particular interest in this rich cross-fertilization process is the creative leadership of figures like Mughal Emperor Akbar, Sultan Nasir Shah, Shikism's Guru Nanak, and poets such as Kabir Das.
The Paradox of Proximity to the Infinite: An Exploration of sidrat al-muntaha, "the Lote Tree beyond Which None May Pass"
Authors: Merriman Hannah Bigelow 
Published: April 2008

AbstractThis paper explores the imagery and function of sidrat al-muntaha, the "lote tree of the boundary" encountered by the Prophet Mohammed at the peak of his mystical ascent or mi'raj. Based on descriptions in Qur'an, hadith, and Sufi commentary, the lote tree's symbolic meaning is interpreted as a state of intimacy with God. Epitomizing the themes of boundary-crossing, nearness, and luminous theophany, Mohammed's experience at the lote tree of the boundary recapitulates the Sufi process of fana' fillah—annihilation in God.
Following
Authors: Stelzer Steffen 
Published: April 2008

AbstractRecent studies of Islamic mysticism have unearthed and developed the central role of "imagination" in Sufism and mystical philosophy. This has been done in conscious contrast to the perceived "degradation of the image" in Western thought. Imagination is said to be both a cosmological and a noetic realm in the midst of a hierarchy of universes that mark, at the same time, different stations on the initiatory path of human beings on their way to God. Into these well laid-out plans of worlds and images, my paper introduces a component that is found very rarely in these studies and occurs, rather, in Islamic hagiographic texts about the lives of Saints or the "Friends of God" (awliya'). This component is the motive of "following," or obedience to the Prophet (sequela prophetae). In one particular account of a meeting of two "Friends of God," reference is made to the incapacity of imagination to contain—i.e. to imagine—one of them. The remedy for this incapacity is, strangely enough, expressed by a word (imtathala) which itself contains the element of imagination and means "obedience." The sequela prophetae appears, thus, not as an addition to imagination, something like its guide, but as a way of imagining that is unthought.
Promises of Advent: North and South
Authors: Rizo-Patron Eileen 
Published: April 2008

AbstractThe purpose of this essay is to set in motion a hermeneutics of divine posse through the exploration of religious, poetic, and artistic works on the promise of advent, spanning the North-South axis of our globe—from the European Renaissance to a present-day transcultural Andean Renaissance. It takes its point of departure from Richard Kearney's essay "Enabling God," with its proposed play of hermeneutic circles from sacred to secular contexts in our readings of "annunciation" and "advent." I see this methodological shift as a necessary step towards making further imaginative leaps between wisdom traditions in our search to understand the experiences and aspirations symbolized in religious and artistic expressions across cultures.
The Heart of the Matter: Animal Bodies, Ethics, and Species Boundaries
Authors: Birke Lynda , Michael Mike 
Published: April 2008

AbstractThis article addresses some of the ways in which the development of xenotransplantation, the use of nonhuman animals as organ donors, are presented in media accounts. Although xenotransplantation raises many ethical and philosophical questions, media coverage typically minimizes these. At issue are widespread public concerns about the transgression of species boundaries, particularly those between humans and other animals. We consider how these are constructed in media narratives, and how those narratives, in turn, rely on particular scientific discourses that posit species boundary crossing as unproblematic.
Victorian Natural History and the Discourses of Nature in Charles Kingsley's Glaucus
Authors: O'Gorman Francis 
Published: April 2008

AbstractThis essay argues that Victorian natural history, as a form of knowledge more accessible in the culture than the increasingly professionalised languages of empirical science, deserves more prominence in accounts of the formation and transmission of ideas about nature's value and human beings' relationship with it in Victorian England. The essay examines the constitutive discourses of a particular and popular example of such writing: Charles Kingsley's Glaucus (1854-55). It analyses the claims made by the text for the morally improving nature of natural history and the discourse of chivalry appropriated to express that claim. It discusses aspects of the text's construction of the natural world in theological, political and aesthetic terms, and looks particularly at its deployment of imperial discourses in configuring the naturalist's relationship with nature. The essay sites Glaucus's attitude to the morality of specimen collecting within the wider context of moral debate in Victorian natural history and concludes with some reflections on natural history's place in relation to the values of professionalised empirical science in the culture.
The Ethical Architecture of the 'Open Road'
Authors: Smith Mick 
Published: April 2008

AbstractThe motorcar is a mobile embodiment, expression and encapsulation of modernity's economic, environmental and ethical relations. The moral ambiguities of the automobile, as a vehicle of both individual freedom and environmental destruction, distil the equivocal costs and benefits of modernity itself. Any environmental critique of 'car culture' must recognise the automobile's role in expressing and constituting our individualistic and instrumental ethical Sittlichkeit - the ethical architecture that dominates the public and private lives of the modem citizen.
Monument and Memory: Landscape Imagery and the Articulation of Territory
Authors: Sörlin Sverker 
Published: April 2008

AbstractThe argument of this article is that perceived landscapes are the results of processes of articulation of territory. Landscape features, be they mountains or rivers, nature reserves, man made monuments, or technological artefacts (roads, bridges, lighthouses etc.), have been reproduced socially and culturally through a number of text genres, art forms, media, and through scientific description, particularly the field sciences and the historical and museum sciences. The results of these processes are perceived, 'inner', landscapes which are deeply embedded in the image and self understanding of nations and regions. Articulation of territory is in itself an important part of the historical emergence and growth of nationalism and regionalism.
Towards an Ecology of Australia: Land of the Spirit
Authors: Brady Veronica 
Published: April 2008

AbstractEcology has to do with the realisation of the relationships between human beings and the larger fabric of life. But the strangeness of the Australian environment as seen by the first European settlers, together with the exploitative ideology of colonisation, have posed particular problems for the development of ecological awareness. This paper argues, however, that writers, painters and musicians have kept the possibility of developing ecological awareness open from the beginnings of settlement. It also maintains that increasing sensitivity to the significance of Aboriginal culture, the oldest living culture on earth, will be perhaps the most crucial factor in this transformation.