The Dictio 17 (= 239 Vogel) of Ennodius is a controuersia in which the declamator speaks against a son who did not provide for the care of his aged father and thus procured his death. The argument is reinforced by examples of animals – eagles and wolves – who, unlike the defendant, take care of their parents. In the example of the eagles, Enn…[Read more]

While the discipline of computational linguistics mostly deals with the modeling and the investigation of individual languages (often “big” languages such as English, German, Arabic, or Chinese), Multilingual Computational Linguistics focuses on the comparison of languages, trying to develop new methods and techniques by which languages can be com…[Read more]

Since H. Humbach’s Baktrische Sprachdenkmäler (Wiesbaden, 1966) the main etymological
proposal for Bactrian χϸονο ‘(calendar) year, (regnal) year’ has been A. Thierfelder’s suggestion of a loanword from Hellenistic Greek χρόνος ‘time’. In this article the plausibility of this etymology is re-examined, and it is further argued that it should b…[Read more]

Preámbulo del libro SACRIFRICIO Y DRAMA DEL REY SAGRADO, de Eliseo Ferrer. (Se añade índice y bibliografía).
Vaya por delante que ésta no es una obra de consenso académico; y tampoco una obra guiada por la fe religiosa, ni por los presupuestos decimonónicos del ateísmo antirreligioso y anticristiano. Decía el mitólogo Joseph Campbell que la hu…[Read more]

Toda la tesis de R. Panikkar estuvo dirigida, dada su tradición intelectual multicultural y multirreligiosa, a «un encuentro sincero» entre el cristianismo y el hinduismo; y quizá por eso subtituló este libro («El Cristo desconocido del hinduismo») con el ambicioso reclamo: «Para una cristofanía ecuménica». No obstante, y para no engañar a…[Read more]

Dodecalogue of errors and nonsense / I believe that the secular influence of the theology and dogmatics of the Church (inherited, to a large extent, by the Lutheran reformers), as well as the ideology generated over eighteen centuries on the substratum of the New Testament, have led and They continue to lead in the XXI century to great errors of…[Read more]

Como ya saben muchos de mis amigos y seguidores de Internet, suelo organizar casi todos los meses un foro-debate en Academia.edu sobre asuntos que normalmente giran en torno a la antropología social y cultural, pero también relativos a asuntos destacados de la historia antigua y de la crítica textual, campos en los que normalmente se de…[Read more]

The present article examines the Corpus Leidense, the group of eight Ciceronian treatises among which the De natura deorum was also transmitted, focusing on its archetype. The second and longer section contains the first complete list of the 174 identified manuscripts of De natura deorum, with 57 new items added to the 117 already listed by Pease…[Read more]

The formalization of sound changes as finite state transducers is implicit already in the Neogrammarians. For at least six decades scholars have recognized the potential of transducers for improving the speed and rigor of research in historical linguists, but almost no historical linguists actually use them. This article identifies the obstacles…[Read more]

Purpose: In this article, we discussed whether Imam Mahdi is an Antichrist or a Promised Saviour Besides Jesus Christ and other topics. This article attempts to deal with the concepts “Occultation”, “Imamat”, “Mahdaviat”, “Mahdism” and Who is Antichrist that prophesied both in Islam and Christianity. Also, this research was conducted to answer and…[Read more]

In the course, I give a basic introduction into some of the recent developments in the field of computational historical linguistics. While this field is predominantly represented by phylogenetic approaches with whom scholars try to infer phylogenetic trees from different kinds of language data, the approach taken here is much broader,…[Read more]

The weblog Computer-Assisted Language Comparison in Practice, published on the Hypotheses platform for scientific blogging (https://calc.hypotheses.org/), offers tutorials and discussion notes on computer-assisted approaches to the history and diversity of languages. A substantial part of its content is contributed as part of the ERC Starting…[Read more]

proofs, to be published in a volume 2023

Gotteshäuser en miniature? Architekturbezug, Funktion und Medialität der sogenannten Tempelmodelle der südlichen Levante, in: Jens Kamlah/Markus Witte (Hg.), Sacred Architecture in Ancient Palestine from the Bronze Age to Medieval Times (ADPV 49), Wiesbaden 2023, 153-234.

[Note: these are the slides for the second talk described in the abstract.]

Phylogenetics is an approach developed in evolutionary biology to reconstruct organisms’ relationships of descent based on observations of their trait similarities and differences. It finds a close analogue in textual criticism, where manuscripts correspond to o…[Read more]

[Note: these are the slides for the second talk described in the abstract.]

Phylogenetics is an approach developed in evolutionary biology to reconstruct organisms’ relationships of descent based on observations of their trait similarities and differences. It finds a close analogue in textual criticism, where manuscripts correspond to o…[Read more]

Lecture, given at the Fifth Pavia International Summer School for Indo-European Linguistics (Università di Pavia, 2022-09-05/09)

This chapter examines how historical and critical modalities of reading sacred scripture became central to modern biblical studies. It examines what “criticism” was, whence it came, what it did, and which critiques it sustained, before considering its prospects for future historical and literary analysis of the Bible.

Groups and individuals known as “elders” (Greek: presbyteros, gerousia; Hebrew: zaqan) are often found in ancient Jewish texts and inscriptions. Their ubiquity in such texts and inscriptions is accompanied by very little information about their actual function. Generally, this may be because we have some kind of impression that a group of old…[Read more]

Rufus’s mother features in Paul’s concluding list of church leaders such as Phoebe in Romans 16. Paul calls her his own mother. I argue that Rufus’s mother’s inclusion indicates higher status and influence within the Pauline house-churches, building on Elmer’s notion of corporate Pauline authorship.

The Woman clothed with the Sun makes a brief appearance in Revelation 12; however, her influence upon the imaginations of artists and interpreters is substantive. She is unnamed and yet multiple identities are ascribed to her including individual women (Eve, Mary), corporate institutions (Israel, the church), and ancient goddesses. In this…[Read more]