The American Religious Sounds Project (ARSP) Site Coordinator Manual was compiled in 2019 to assist researchers and their students in following the ARSP procedures for site selection, recording, and archiving sounds. The topics covered in the ARSP manual include: project summary and history; site selection and fieldwork, using recording equipment,…[Read more]

Freedom of or from religion. Freemasonry as an international testing ground for fundamental societal issues (c. 1850–1930)
In masonic internationalism, key framework parameters of masonic activity were negotiated. They concerned the fundamental societal issue of how religious freedom (freedom to practise religion) and liberty of conscience (…[Read more]

Based on a discussion of the theoretical contributions of Claude Lévi-Strauss and Pierre Clastres, this article explores social relationships as more than a human dimension. Though strongly analysed by both anthropologists, these relationships appear to involve indigenous societies’ whole ecological and cosmological system. In this sense, re…[Read more]

Review of Katell Berthelot, Jews and Their Roman Rivals: Pagan Rome’s Challenge to Israel. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021. Pp. 552. ISBN 9780691199290. $45.00.

It is my modest goal in this essay to trace how Nock uses conversion to produce religion(s) and then to explore its similarities to and differences from an analogous construction of religion-through-conversion in late antiquity.

Benjamin Porat’s Justice for the Poor differs from these books not only in that it is written in Hebrew (from the list above, only Wilfand’s 2014 book has been translated into Hebrew), but also because it envisions rabbinic charity as a branch of “law.” Porat is a law professor, and his book is jointly published by a law school, a think tank an…[Read more]

यह बुंदेलखंड स्थित महोबा का यात्रा संस्मरण है।
इसमें लेखक पौराणिक मिथक महिषासुर से संबंधित स्थलों की खोज में निकलता है।
वर्ष 2011 में जवाहर लाल नेहरू यूनिवर्सिटी के शोधार्थियों द्वारा महिषासुर को दलित, पिछड़े और आदिवासियों का पौरणिक नायक के रूप से प्रचारित किए जाने के बाद हंगामा खड़ा हो गया था। लेखक उस समय एक पत्रिका में प्रबंध-संपादक के रूप म…[Read more]

Freemasons often referred to an ideal of “humanité” (Humanität, umanità, humanity) in order to bridge all differences separating mankind. In doing so, they rendered these differences all the more visible, especially in the international arenas. This was definitely the case when freemasons tried to deduce from this ideal “universal” standards…[Read more]

The article outlines how comprehensive works on the history of Europe conceptually deal with religion – with regard to the relationship between religion, society and culture, the handling of the theory of secularisation and the significance of religion for the construction of Europe.

Der Beitrag skizziert, wie Gesamtdarstellungen zur Geschichte…[Read more]

GERMAN: Waren die Götter Astronauten? Davon ist Erich von Däniken überzeugt. Der erfolgreiche Autor ist seit Jahrzehnten der einflussreichste Protagonist auf dem Gebiet der Paläo-SETI bzw. Prä-Astronautik, einer grenzwissenschaftlichen Laienforschung, die die Position vertritt, dass Außerirdische vor Urzeiten die Erde besucht und die Entwi…[Read more]

In this article, I examine two recent memoirs of Zen students that speak openly about the aberrant behavior of their teachers. These memoirs are Natalie Goldberg’s The Great Failure (2004) and Shozan Jack Haubner’s Single White Monk (2017). Both of these authors consider the scandals surrounding their teachers as an opportunity for spiritual gro…[Read more]

Biblical Aramaic accounts for a small fraction within the two-testament Christian Bible. Studying it would seem therefore to present a modest value for biblical studies, and Egyptian Aramaic, a nonbiblical counterpart from the same historical era, even more so. The present article argues, however, that comparing Egyptian Aramaic with biblical…[Read more]

What was the significance of ancestors in the Hebrew Bible? The question is spurred by Kerry Sonia’s Caring for the Dead, which argues that the cult of dead kin was an accepted practice in the culture of the biblical writers. In building this thesis, Sonia resists an idea popular in scholarship that the Hebrew Bible promotes a negative view of r…[Read more]

Feeding the dead was an accepted cultural practice in the world of biblical writers. It is circumscribed by cultic considerations in passages such as Deut 26:14, but there are no texts that prohibit the placing of food inside tombs. Thus, the biblical writers tacitly acknowledged the practice, though feeding the dead is never explicitly prescribed…[Read more]

In gewissem Sinne ist der Befehl zur allgemeinen Zwangstaufe im Codex Justinianus Abschluss einer beinahe 200-jährigen Entwicklung. Im Folgenden werden einzelne Stränge der kaiserlichen Gesetzgebung zwischen Konstantin I. und Theodosius I. besprochen. Der Schwerpunkt liegt auf dem westlichen Reichsteil. Allein die schiere Menge kaiserlicher B…[Read more]

Psalms write and express revelation, relationship, and response on and through the body; corporeal vocabulary, awareness of embodiment and somatic metaphors abound. This rhetoric draws people in through reference to common experience and uses somatic language to express thoughts and emotions which often escape conceptualisation, such as confusion,…[Read more]

Throughout Daniel 8–10, Daniel is touched five times by human-like figures. By these touch interventions, he receives both physical and emotional strength which allow him to continue participating in the revelatory experience. This essay argues that embodied participation marked by the sense of touch not only legitimates an authentic revelation b…[Read more]

Using cognitive metaphor theory to examine the four NT nursing metaphors (1 Thess 2:5–9; 1 Cor 3:1–3; Heb 5:11–14; 1 Pet 2:1–3), this article demonstrates that the same nursing frame can be used quite differently. The work of separating the contributions of each input space and then running the blend demonstrates how each metaphor functio…[Read more]

The verb ba’ash (lit. “to stink”) is used repeatedly in the Hebrew Bible to describe unwanted groups or individuals (Gen 34:30; Exod 5:21; 1 Sam 13:4; 1 Sam 27:12; 2 Sam 10:6; 1 Chr 19:6). However, there is an overwhelming tendency in English translations and commentaries to translate bet-aleph-shin in a figurative sense as “obnoxious” (NIV, NKJ…[Read more]

The discipline of embodied cognitive science and associated concept of intercorporeality provide the theoretical framework of our analysis of Proverbs 31:10–31. This essay fleshes out the underlying cognitive and meaning-making processes and entailments inherent in the valiant woman’s use of her hands and body as depicted in the poem. The val…[Read more]