Spanish abstract: Una reflexión sobre la representación de la resistencia, la resiliencia, y las tácticas totalitarias para domeñar a los disidentes, tal y como se representan en la película polaca ‘El interrogatorio’ (‘Przesluchanie’, dir. Ryszard Bugajski, 1989). La construcción inconsistente de la personalidad de la heroína testifica las dificu…[Read more]

Was Swift correct that “reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired” (Letter to a Young Gentleman)? If so, what recourse is there to change attitudes especially among those who continue to fervently believe unjustified claims and act upon them in a way that affects other people? I will answer the…[Read more]

According to Manuel Davenport, “The best humorists–Mark Twain, Will Rogers, Bob Hope, and Mort Sahl–share [a] mixture of detachment and desire, eagerness to believe, and irreverence concerning the possibility of certainty. And when they become serious about their convictions–as Twain did about colonialism…they cease to be humorous”. I agree…[Read more]

The discovery of mirror neurons in both primates and humans has led to an enormous amount of research and speculation as to how conscious beings are able to interact so effortlessly among one another. Mirror neurons might provide an embodied basis for passive synthesis and the eventual process of further communalization through empathy, as…[Read more]

The majority of philosophers of religion, at least since Plantinga’s reply to Mackie’s logical problem of evil, agree that it is logically possible for an omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God to exist who permits some of the evils we see in the actual world. This is conceivable essentially because of the possible world known as heaven.…[Read more]

This essay explores the persistent scholarly desires and motivations that structure the historical study of conversion in religious studies. Most “conversion studies” take a phenomenological approach, which acknowledges the diverse processes, contexts, and meanings of conversion but nonetheless sees the phenomenon as a way to access the con…[Read more]

This is perhaps the world’s first book in which a philosopher himself illustrates his own philosophical investigation into hard problems on time, being, solipsism, and life, in the form of “Manga.” This book was originally published in Japanese in 2013 and translated into English by Robert Chapeskie in 2021.

Spanish abstract: Argumentamos contra la normativa española sobre el uso obligatorio y ubicuo de mascarillas en todos los espacios públicos, incluyendo el aire libre. Denunciamos estas normas y leyes como despóticas, arbitrarias y carentes de base científica, y mostramos cómo su razón de ser se halla tanto en la agenda globalista de los princ…[Read more]

Review of said book.

Kingship has been a political mainstay in human history, even when peoples have lacked monarchic rulers. This essay examines the book of Samuel as a source for the cultural history of ancient Judah, focusing on the question of how Samuel’s representations of monarchy would function for its readers in the early Second Temple era. In this era, w…[Read more]

This chapter focuses on Ezekiel as a text, i.e., a collection of writings meant to be read again and again. As a text, it presents a range of ideas in dialogue with one another—and sometimes in tension—thus providing ample space for continual discussion and reinterpretation of its ideas among its original communities of readers in antiquity. Eze…[Read more]

This article asks whether human history has any bearing on understanding and interpreting the Covid-19 pandemic. It seeks to examine the historical and present circumstance to identify possible causes, dangers, responses and solutions. It more importantly seeks to respond to the question, is there a possible conjuncture with an ontological…[Read more]

Since the discovery of the Laws of Hammurapi in December 1901–January 1902,1
the dependence of biblical law upon Mesopotamian law has been hotly debated. Among
the most contentious issues is the abjudication of homicide, and the discussion has focused
on particular odd cases in biblical law, such as an ox that gored or assault on a p…[Read more]

Ancient Near Eastern Law. The oldest documented law comes from the ancient Near East. The earliest legal texts come from about 2600 B.C.E., a few hundred years after the invention of writing, and they predate by millennia the documentation for law from the other early civilizations of China and India.

Amnesty and Reform Texts. Edicts of amnesty and reform decreed by a king intervened in economy and society, invalidating loans, pledges and sales, cancelling debts, and issuing behavioral instructions to government officials. They were dated to a specific time at which their provisions would come into effect.

Though the ritual of fasting is common to most of the known religious traditions, its practice and symbolic value may vary considerably. This paper aims at a comparative study into the meaning and significance of this ritual with special reference to the three Semitic religions namely Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Some interesting similarities…[Read more]

This paper deals with the Sufi shaykh Haji Imdad Allah Muhajir Makki’s (1817-1899) efforts for conciliation of different strands of Muslim religious thought in the late nineteenth century with particular reference to his main work on this theme-a short treatise titled Faisalah-i Haft Mas’alah (literally: A Resolution of the Seven Controversies).…[Read more]

The seventh-century apocalyptic dialogue text Doctrina Jacobi nuper baptizati (“Teaching of Jacob, Newly Baptized”) depicts forcibly baptized Jews coming to terms with their new situation in hidden meetings led by Jacob. At a key moment in the text, the last voices of Jewish resistance belong to the wife and mother-in-law of one of the dialogue…[Read more]

This study is a fresh analysis of a collection of scrolls and fragments grouped under the rubric, The Community Rule or Serekh ha-Yaḥad. As part of the manuscripts discovered in the Judean Desert, the Community Rule manuscripts are all fragmentary to various degrees, yet attest to important issues of legal dispute and community formation in the S…[Read more]

This essay was conceived as an ‘op-ed’ submission in response to the disturbing events in Washington D.C. this January. It is a practical application of the model of experience that was outlined in the paper ‘On Being Dimensional’. It offers a different perspective on the arguments that characterize a liberal and a conservative.