bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The Traits of Deities
Authors: Smith Mark S. 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
This chapter asks what characteristics deities generally share, or, put differently, what terms do the texts use to express what deities are? It collects and analyzes labels and statements about deities to answer the fundamental question of what a deity was considered to be. Ancient Middle Eastern literatures generalize about the characteristics and actions of deities abstracted from religious tradition and experience (“second-order discourse”), and chapter 3 has already shown how the Ugaritic texts stress the idea of the deities as a divine royal family bound by social hierarchy and family ties. This chapter examines four other common features of deities: strength and size, body and gender, holiness, and immorality. Each of these traits is addressed in turn, first in Ugaritic literature and then in Israelite texts.
The Life and Death of Baal
Authors: Smith Mark S. 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
A particularly unusual case of divine death is examined in this chapter; this exception is the god Baal, who is considered to be a classic example of Sir James George Frazer’s category of “dying and rising gods.” The methodology and viability of Frazer’s claim is addressed as it has been applied to Baal of Ugarit. Here the author has been influenced by Jonathan Z. Smith’s massive critique of Frazer's category of dying and rising gods, as well as by recent studies on ritual and myth. The chapter also ventures a constructive step in the interpretation of Baal’s death: if Baal is not to be regarded as a dying and rising god, what is the significance of his death and return to life? Finally, it looks briefly at the mythology of death and the god of Israel.
Landscapes of the Soul
Authors: Porpora Douglas V. 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
This book is at once both a work of sociology and a work of ethical and religious philosophy. As a work of sociology, it contributes to the ongoing debate over secularization by documenting an alienation from the sacred at the level of emotion. Shows that even many religious Americans are emotionally estranged from the God they say they believe in, from any larger moral purpose, from the very meaning of life itself. As a work of moral and religious philosophy within a broad communitarian tradition, it calls our attention from moral procedure to moral purpose or moral idealism. Argues that moral purpose and coherent personal identity only return to us when we emotionally and defensibly reconnect with the cosmos at some sacred level. It accordingly makes an appeal for our reenchantment or resacralization of the world, for our self‐critical reorientation toward ultimate truth.
The Emotional Detachment from the Sacred
Authors: Porpora Douglas V. 
Published: October 2003

AbstractArgues that through a felt lack of religious experience, many Americans are emotionally detached from the sacred. Whereas religious ethics ought to be the inspired emulation of God's perceived goodness, religious ethics too often degenerate into divine command theory, where ethical rules are followed simply because they have been commanded by God. This emotional estrangement from the sacred has been an overlooked element in the secularization debate.
The Meaning of Life
Authors: Porpora Douglas V. 
Published: October 2003

AbstractVery religious people, it is found, are likely to feel that they know what the meaning of life is. While others generally believe firmly that life has meaning, they deny knowing what the meaning is. There is thus a pervasive sense of moral purposelessness. Among Christians, there is also a banality of goodness, which involves the routinization of Jesus’ ethic from a charismatic, supererogatory ideal to the less demanding, banal “golden rule.” The process involves a social flattening out of supererogation.
The Human Vocation
Authors: Porpora Douglas V. 
Published: October 2003

AbstractArgues that there is a human vocation, a human project to be pursued by humanity as a whole. Physical cosmology tells us that the universe has a history, a history that arguably seems to be a preparation for intelligent life. As we seem to have been expected by the universe, there must be something we are expected to do. If there is a collective purpose for humanity, it must involve a better world, the “reign of God” so to speak, the realization of utopia. We are each morally obliged to be part of this task.
The Genealogy of Violence
Authors: Bellinger Charles K. 
Published: October 2003

AbstractIn the twentieth century, many thinkers have put forward theories that purport to explain the motivations underlying the violent behavior of human beings. This book presents Kierkegaard's thought as offering a way of interpreting violent behavior that is superior to the alternatives. The basic elements of Kierkegaard's psychology are drawn out of his published and unpublished works, concentrating on The Concept of Anxiety, Works of Love, and The Sickness unto Death. Violence, most fundamentally, arises out of human resistance to the possibility of psychological change and growth into maturity. Violence toward others seeks to fend off that potential for otherness within oneself that is entailed by the incompleteness of creation. Kierkegaard's theory of violence is compared and contrasted with Rene Girard's theory, and both thinkers are brought into conversation with Karl Barth and Eric Voegelin. Anabaptism's approach to interpreting the history of Christian violence is taken into consideration. Hitler and Stalin, as key contemporary examples of demonic violence, are analyzed in connection with Kierkegaard's aesthetic and ethical spheres of existence. The book closes with reflections on the Christian doctrine of atonement in light of the preceding discussion of the roots of human evil.
Contemporary Perspectives on the Roots of Violence
Authors: Bellinger Charles K. 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
This chapter summarizes and offers critical responses to four psychological theories of violence. Alice Miller focuses on child abuse. Ervin Staub speaks of ”difficult life conditions” that lead to scapegoating. Carl Jung points to the projection of the ”shadow.” Ernest Becker argues that the mainspring of human behavior is fear of death. None of these theories are found to be fully convincing and satisfying.
Ego‐Protection in Kierkegaard
Authors: Bellinger Charles K. 
Published: October 2003

AbstractKierkegaard's psychological masterpiece, The Sickness unto Death, is summarized, focusing on his interpretation of despair and sin as not willing to become the mature self that one is called (by the Creator) to become. Friedrich Nietzsche is criticized as a proponent of despairing rebellion against the divine call. The psychological term ”ego‐protection” is one way of presenting Kierkegaard's understanding of the despair that leads ultimately to violence.
Kierkegaard and Girard
Authors: Bellinger Charles K. 
Published: October 2003

AbstractRene Girard's concept that human psychology begins with a sense of lack or personal deficiency is compared with Kierkegaard's notion of the incompleteness of the self. Mimetic desire, as it is described by Girard, is a phenomenon that Kierkegaard was keenly aware of. Both authors show that mimetic desire leads to a situation captured by the phrase ”the crowd is untruth.” Immature persons, in a state of spiritual cowardice, take offense at God and are scandalized by the possibility of self‐knowledge; they hide in the crowd. The synthesis of Kierkegaard and Girard produces a very powerful Christian interpretation of the psychology of violence.
Political Violence in the Twentieth Century
Authors: Bellinger Charles K. 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Adolf Hitler and Naziism are interpreted as an extreme example of Kierkegaard's aesthetic sphere of existence. Stalin and Russian Communism are interpreted as an extreme example of Kierkegaard's ethical sphere of existence. The varying forms of psychopathology they manifest make clear the consequences of human rejection of the divine call to spiritual growth. Naziism and Stalinism can also be interpreted as political religions, in other words, as modern forms of idolatry.
Conclusion: The Healing of the Soul
Authors: Bellinger Charles K. 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Four major theories of Atonement in the Christian tradition are summarized: the Orthodox ransom theory, Anselm's satisfaction theory, Calvin's penal substitution theory, and Abelard's subjective theory. Perspectives on Atonement found in Soren Kierkegaard, Karl Barth, Rene Girard, and Robert Jenson are also presented. It is argued that a medical metaphor (Christ as the Healer who submits to the violence of his patients) is more helpful than a legal metaphor. The incarnation is God the Father's action in sending the Son on a medical mission for the healing of humanity, and the crucifixion and resurrection complete the mission. We can always hope that human beings will use their freedom to accept divine healing rather than to reject it, thus growing toward a more peaceful future.
Surveying Mountain Landscapes
Authors: Heine Steven 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
This section contains koan cases that focus on the role of mountains and spirits encountered by Zen masters. It treats four topics, including the early Northern and Ox Head schools for which supernatural images are the most vivid; the Southern school, especially the role of Ta‐hsiung Peak, which was known for its hermits and hermitages; the mountains explored by Tung‐shan, one of the founders of the Ts’ao‐tung (J. Sōtō) school; and Mount Wu‐t’ai, a place for visionary experiences in northern China generally considered off‐limits to iconoclastic Zen practitioners.
Slavery in Early Christianity
Authors: Glancy Jennifer A. 
Published: October 2003

AbstractThis study focuses on the impact of the ubiquitous ancient institution on the emergence and early development of Christianity. Slaveholders as well as slaves were pivotal in early Christian circles. The centrality of slavery affects not only the reconstruction of the social histories of the emerging churches but also theological and ideological analyses of Christian rhetoric. Slaves were designated and treated as bodies. The bodies of slaves were the sexual property of their owners; the bodies of slaves were also vulnerable to regular abuse. Free persons were anxious to protect their bodies from the kinds of violations to which the bodies of slaves were regularly subjected. Christians who argued that true slavery was spiritual in nature often depended on somatic metaphors; in its reliance on metaphors of enslavement and liberation, Christian discourse encodes widespread cultural anxiety about preserving the integrity of the free body. In its generally uncritical acceptance of the institution of slavery, early Christianity transmits the ethical patterns of a slaveholder morality
Parabolic Bodies
Authors: Glancy Jennifer A. 
Published: October 2003

AbstractBecause so many of Jesus’ sayings, especially his parables, feature the figure of the slave, they create the impression that Jesus was as familiar with the everyday world of slaveholding and enslavement as with the worlds of farming and fishing. The parables represent slaves in managerial roles, as subject to corporal punishment and other kinds of physical abuse, and, on the basis of faithful or unfaithful service, as praiseworthy or blameworthy. Although parables in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew rely heavily on the figure of the slave, it is likely that that an emphasis on slavery featured in Jesus’ own discourse. The parables attributed to Jesus reinforce other evidence concerning the practice and ideology of slavery in the early Roman Empire.
Moral Bodies
Authors: Glancy Jennifer A. 
Published: October 2003

AbstractShaped by the slaveholding culture of the Roman Empire, early Christian ethics reflected the moral perspectives of ancient slaveholders, a slaveholder morality. The Christian body matured in a context in which the ubiquitous availability and vulnerabilities of slave bodies distorted the emotional and ethical development of freeborn persons. The household codes (haustafeln) of New Testament epistles (including Colossians, Ephesians, the Pastoral Epistles, and 1 Peter) and selected extracanonical sources provided a new and powerful ideological tool for slaveholders who sought to create compliant bodies. In a world in which slaves were designated and treated as bodies, perhaps it is not surprising that ascetic Christians came to discipline their bodies as slaves.
Precolonial India in Practice
Authors: Talbot Cynthia 
Published: October 2003

AbstractThe desire to have their charitable deeds documented in permanent form led thousands of Hindu temple donors in the Andhra Pradesh region of South India to get the details of their gifts inscribed on stone pillars, rock slabs, and temple walls. Using these records of what people actually did, Cynthia Talbot reconstructs the precolonial past as it existed in practice during the era when India's distinctive regional societies were taking shape. The medieval Andhra that emerges from the perspective of inscriptions is a vibrant and mobile world inhabited by a wide range of individuals including herders, merchants, and women, as well as landed peasants, kings, and Brahmans.Precolonial India in Practice begins with an examination of the historical processes that prompted Andhra's long age of inscriptions (c.1000–1650), a time when the religious patronage of temples both reflected and stimulated an expanding agrarian economy and a growing regional culture. It moves on to an in‐depth analysis of the society, temples, and polity of the Kakatiya era (1175–1325) – a formative period in which the Telugu‐speaking region was politically unified by the upland warriors who continued to dominate its society for centuries. The enduring cultural significance of the Kakatiya period for later Telugu society is demonstrated in a final section dealing with historical memories of the Kakatiyas.Talbot's interpretation of medieval Andhra as an era of dynamic change characterized by extensive social and physical mobility and a militaristic ethos offers a significant alternative to earlier depictions of the history and society of medieval India. In serving as a corrective to models of the Indian past derived only from Brahmanical literature, modern ethnography, and colonial observation, this case study of a neglected time period and region has important ramifications for our general understanding of precolonial India.
The Society of Kakatiya Andhra
Authors: Talbot Cynthia 
Published: October 2003

AbstractAlthough the caste system is thought to have dominated the society of traditional India, people who commissioned inscriptions in Kakatiya Andhra (a.d.1175–1324 ) mentioned their clan or lineage affiliation far more often than their varna. Status titles based on occupation were widely used and could vary from generation to generation within a family, demonstrating that social identities were linked to individual achievement. There were many opportunities for both travel and social mobility due to the prevalence of military activity, long distance trade, and herding. Inscriptions cast further doubt on the alleged rigidity of traditional Indian society by revealing the presence of collectives of people brought together by ties other than kinship or locality and of many women who were wealthy enough to make temple donations.
The Kakatiya Political Network
Authors: Talbot Cynthia 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
The expansion of Kakatiya power from the core area of central Telangana throughout much of Andhra Pradesh is traced through the mapping of inscriptions acknowledging their overlordship. Analysis of Kakatiya political subordinates reveals an early preponderance of local chiefs and princes who were later superseded by a more humble class of warrior officers. The titles (biruda) and eulogies (prasasti) in Kakatiya‐ era inscriptions emphasize martial heroism and the bonds created through military service, thus challenging the notion that ritual sovereignty and royal patronage of religion were central to the constitution of medieval South Indian states. Instead, the Kakatiya state is conceptualized as a network of personal ties between multiple strata of warriors and the rulers, based primarily on joint military activity. Its dependence on political intermediaries and its dynamic, socially inclusive, and militaristic character refutes the model of a segmentary state advanced by Burton Stein.
Varieties of Virtue and Vice
Authors: Hurka Thomas 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
This chapter shows how the recursive account can illuminate a large number of particular virtues and vices, identifying both, what they have in common that makes them virtues or vices and what distinguishes them from each other. It identifies three main categories of vice, made such by three different elements of the recursive account, and three main categories of virtue. Among the particular vices discussed are malice, callousness, cynicism, selfishness, and cowardice; among the virtues are benevolence, compassion, courage, modesty, and self‐control.
How Great a Good Is Virtue?
Authors: Hurka Thomas 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
If virtue is an intrinsic good, how does its value compare with those of other goods such as pleasure, knowledge, and achievement? Whereas many philosophers hold that virtue is the greatest good, this chapter argues that virtue is a lesser good in the following sense: the value of an attitude to an object is always less than the value of that object, so, for example, the goodness of compassion for another's pain is always less than the evil of that pain. After presenting a series of arguments for this view, the chapter considers several objections to it, including one about sadistic pleasure, and then applies it to specific issues about moral self‐indulgence, private charity, and the theological problem of evil.
What Did Jesus Mean?
Authors: Wierzbicka Anna 
Published: October 2003

AbstractThis book explores the meaning of Jesus’ key sayings and parables from a radically new perspective – that of simple and universal human concepts, found in all languages. Building on modern biblical criticism in general and the vast literature on the Sermon on the Mount and the parables in particular, the author also brings to the task a close knowledge of recent developments in linguistics, anthropology, and cultural psychology. Her explanations of “what Jesus meant” build on her work as the author of many books on cultural diversity and the universals of language and thought.Rejecting the fashionable view that it is impossible to know what Jesus meant, the book draws on modern linguistic semantics to show that the question both makes sense and can be plausibly answered. The picture of Jesus’ teaching which emerges from this book is traditional in some respects and radically new in others. The author's analysis brings into sharper focus the originality of Jesus’ ethical teaching, often obscured by superficial parallels drawn with other traditions.The book analyzes the meaning of Jesus’ metaphors, hyperboles, and paradoxes against the background of the traditions of Jewish prophetic speech, and it shows the universal scope and relevance of Jesus’ teaching.Jesus’ message is universal, but to understand it we need to understand Jesus’ Jewishness, and in particular, we need to understand that the New Testament world of discourse includes rhetorical conventions that are unfamiliar and even alien to the modern Western reader. This applies also to the prophetic Drohrede, which sometimes seems to announce God's final verdict but in fact expresses, to use the words of the Jewish scholar Pinchas Lapide, “a deep longing for the salvation and welfare of Israel” – Israel and the whole world.This book argues that if Jesus’ teaching is to be intelligible to people of all nations, it needs to be seen both in its cultural context and in a universal perspective. It also shows that this can be facilitated through the use of universal human concepts. The use of these tools opens an entirely new perspective on the study of the Gospels, and especially on the meaning of Jesus’ sayings.
Other Key Sayings
Authors: Wierzbicka Anna 
Published: October 2003

AbstractOffers new interpretations of many of Jesus’ most memorable sayings, bringing into sharper focus their originality, often obscured in the literature by various superficial parallels. For example, drawing on Clement of Alexandria and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the chapter argues for the following interpretation of the saying “Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing:” (1) Sometimes when a person is doing something good for other people this person thinks: “I am doing something good for other people”(2) It will not be good if you think like this when you are doing something good for other people.By using simple and universal human concepts, the chapter establishes the originality of Jesus’ “Golden Rule,” often mistakenly presented as something recurring in many different religious traditions. It also offers new interpretations of key sayings like, for example, “Do not judge . . . ,” “Ask and it will be given to you,” and “A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.”
The Lord's Prayer
Authors: Wierzbicka Anna 
Published: October 2003

AbstractAs the linguist and renowned expert in the field of Bible translation, Eugene Nida has pointed out, “almost no lay person understands the meaning of the first petition in the Lord's prayer (Hallowed be thy name). In fact, there are good reasons to think that the Lord's Prayer as a whole is often incomprehensible to lay people – not only in societies distant, geographically and culturally, from European culture but also in the traditionally Christian West. This chapter shows how the meaning of the metaphors of “Father,” “kingdom” and “bread,” and of all the petitions can be explained in simple and universal human concepts, in a way which would make it comprehensible to children as well as adults, and to Papuans or Zulus as well as Europeans or Americans. Above all, it shows how the meaning of the Lord's Prayer can be transferred into languages that have no words, or concepts, like “forgive” and how it can be explained to people who may not value fathers, kingdoms, or bread. It also shows that once the notion of “God” has been explained in universal human concepts, the idea of “Kingdom of God” can be explained, in all languages, in terms of “living with God, with other people.”
The Unforgiving Servant
Authors: Wierzbicka Anna 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Chapter 11 is focused on the question of forgiveness – God's forgiveness and human forgiveness. It argues that according to the Gospels, God's forgiveness is limitless and that the human forgiveness must be limitless, too. It discusses Jesus’ narrative strategy of comparing God to characters who are morally mixed – like the king, who is initially generous but later cruel and heartless; and it draws on the writings of the seventh‐century scholar and mystic, St. Isaac of Niniveh, to interpret the symbolic character of biblical images, often misunderstood in the “scientific,” rationalist climate of Western thinking and Western interpretations of the Gospels.
The Laborers in the Vineyard
Authors: Wierzbicka Anna 
Published: October 2003

AbstractDiscusses the meaning of the biblical concepts of “reward,” the traditional Christian concepts of “grace,” “judgment,” and “justice” and the modern Anglo concept of “fairness;” and the chapter proposes an interpretation of the parable that bypasses all those complex and culture‐specific concepts. The way of thinking that the parable discourages is portrayed (in part) as follows:I have done many good thingsbecause of this God will do many good things for mesome other people haven’t done many good thingsbecause of this God will not do many good things for these peopleThe main positive message of the parable is represented (in part) as follows:it will be good if you want God to do good things for all peopleas you want God to do good things for you