Scientific diagrams could and did appear in unexpected places. This essay discusses such an example: the diagrams that the thirteenth- to fourteenth-century scholar George-Gregory Chioniades added to a manuscript of John of Damascus’s Fountain of Knowledge as part of his commentary on the text. I argue that the diagrams were a very important, if…[Read more]

This paper responds to the question what is the origin and nature of apostolicity and how it is
demonstrated? The investigation examines the meaning of apostolicity found in the New
Testament, its significant transition through the post-apostolic period, and the consequence on
contemporary understanding. The dilemma of the first and second…[Read more]

This working paper presents a 16th- or 17th-century Ottoman translation-cum-commentary of the preface and introduction of one of the classics of Islamicate rhetoric, al-Qazwīnī’s Talkhīṣ al-Miftāḥ (The Key’s Digest), a 14th-century work on rhetoric based on al-Sakkākī’s 13th-century seminal Miftāḥ al-ʿUlūm (The Key of Sciences). This part…[Read more]

This working paper presents a 16th- or 17th-century Ottoman translation-cum-commentary of the preface and introduction of one of the classics of Islamicate rhetoric, al-Qazwīnī’s Talkhīṣ al-Miftāḥ (The Key’s Digest), a 14th-century work on rhetoric based on al-Sakkākī’s 13th-century seminal Miftāḥ al-ʿUlūm (The Key of Sciences). This part…[Read more]

The Cairo Genizah is well known as a repository for hundreds of thousands of manuscripts that the Jewish residents of Fustat (Old Cairo) produced and consumed in the premodern period. Foreign “collectors” acquired most of these manuscripts for European libraries in the second half of the nineteenth century, with the majority arriving at the Cam…[Read more]

The Cairo Genizah is well known as a repository for hundreds of thousands of manuscripts that the Jewish residents of Fustat (Old Cairo) produced and consumed in the premodern period. Foreign “collectors” acquired most of these manuscripts for European libraries in the second half of the nineteenth century, with the majority arriving at the Cam…[Read more]

The purpose of this essay is threefold. First we will attempt to define the problem of supersessionism (also known as ‘Replacement Theology’), both by responding to the calls of the Roman Catholic Church within Vatican II to change theologies of supersession, but likewise by addressing the current weaknesses in eschatological though within the Rom…[Read more]

[Chapter in The Art of Forgiveness, 2018] This paper considers the story of Jacob and Esau’s reconciliation (Gen 32-33) through the lens of my own experience in pastoral ministry and of Family Systems Theory. In one sense it is a psychological reading of the narrative of Gen 32-33. In another it is an attempt to explore the practical and…[Read more]

Entry on Hekhalot literature

Handbook entry on Medieval Jewish Prophecy as a form of prognostication

An entry for the Centre for the Study of Apocalyptic and Millenarian Movements’ (CenSAMM) Dictionary: https://www.cdamm.org/

This article will look at the ideology of veganism in the AHIJ. Since the early 1970s their diet has been a core part of their ideology and of their message to the world. Acknowledging that a black/Jewish meat-free diet is far from the exclusive property of the group, let alone a new development on their part, I will argue that it is an expression…[Read more]

An entry for the Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception on the topic of Name Theology, how this has evolved in different Abrahamic religions from the scriptural origins.

This essay is a précis (for which I take full responsibility) of Chapters One and Two of Leslie
Dewart’s seminal book consisting of Nine Chapters. The perspective he presented here, to my
mind, sets a fresh intellectual trajectory for philosophical contemplation. Written towards the
end of the 20th century the book is not an easy read, bu…[Read more]

In this short book, only an introductory and partial discussion can be undertaken respecting the issues distinguish between religious (philosophical) and secular (political) cultural values from a phenomenological point of view. Further, the ideas I consider here are not original. By and large they derive from a new interpretation of human…[Read more]

This is a book review of Stefanie Knauss, “Religion and Film: Representation, Experience, Meaning” (Brill, 2020).

The translation of a short treatise on paranomasia, simile, and metonymy, by the foremost Persian-Turkish lexicographer of the 15th century, Lütfu’llāh el–Ḥalīmī. The text combines a rather dense and elliptic prose style with a remarkably lucid and clear-cut typology of seven types of tajnīs, seven types of tashbīh, and nine types of majāz, ofte…[Read more]

The translation of a short treatise on paranomasia, simile, and metonymy, by the foremost Persian-Turkish lexicographer of the 15th century, Lütfu’llāh el–Ḥalīmī. The text combines a rather dense and elliptic prose style with a remarkably lucid and clear-cut typology of seven types of tajnīs, seven types of tashbīh, and nine types of majāz, ofte…[Read more]

This article concludes with the following observations. First, there is a demonstrable shift from monarchical government to democratic governance in the Church as a product of the evolution of ecclesial polity. But it must be acknowledged the secular polity is incompatible with divinely inspired government as is most evident from a…[Read more]