This article reads Genesis 18-19 in the light of the principal of exchange at work in ancient religious belief concerning divine justice. Genesis 18.1-15 and 19.1-29, as examples of the well-worn tale of the divine visitor, are narrative expressions of confidence in a divine justice that rewards the kind and punishes the inhospitable. In the…[Read more]

This article looks at the repeated gnomic phrase in the Book of Qoheleth, “All is vanity and a chasing after wind” (NRSV) and reads it as a disjunctive parallelism in which the terms lbh and jwr denote mortality and the divine spirit, respectively, thus showing the sense of the phrase to be, “All is mortal, but strives for immortality”. Using R…[Read more]

This article presents biblical exegesis and parallel synthetic thematic analysis comparing the transformative journeys of Saint Paul and doctoral researchers concluding the religious conversion of Saint Paul of Tarsus and the identity-transforming journey a student undergoes from burgeoning researcher to doctoral scholar represent parallel…[Read more]

जागतिकीकरण आणि डॉ.आंबेडकरांचे शेतीविषयक तत्वज्ञान

Parvin Iʿtisami (1907–1941), the first important twentieth-century woman poet of Iran, was well versed in classical Persian poetry. Her knowledge of English language and education at the American school for girls as well as her father’s translations from foreign literature contributed to her appreciation of modern ideas, including women’s rights…[Read more]

Bharat Ratna Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: an eminent socio-economic thinker and epoch-maker shaped the economic destiny of India by introducing many tenets of the State Socialism into the Constitution of free India. He was a post-graduate of Columbia University (U.S.) and obtained his doctoral degree in economics from there in 1917 and D.Sc. degree in…[Read more]

Through offering an ethnography of a group of educated, middle-class women who “had been attending weekly Qur’an and classical poetry classes for years” (xii), the volume shows that poetry and prayer are companions in the cultural history of Iran. It attempts to answer the question, “What does this companionship mean for forms of religio…[Read more]

The Abbey of St. Gallen was the foremost centre for the study of the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville in the Carolingian period. Not only can more than twenty early medieval manuscripts transmitting material from the Etymologiaebe associated with Carolingian St. Gallen, but its scriptorium also produced two scholarly redactions of Isidore’s e…[Read more]

This fragmentary text is a debate about the cause of a drought between a Phoenician magic crafter devoted to the motion power class of the Ancient Pagan Paradigm and an Israelite life priest devoted to the life-growth powers. Each side blames the drought on the ineffectiveness of the other. Because the stele fragments were used as fill for or in a…[Read more]

The representations of religious tension between the polytheistic humans and the monotheistic Cylons in the Sci Fi (now Syfy) channel’s hit series Battlestar Galactica (2003–2009) is nowhere more evident than in the human “convert” to monotheism, Gaius Baltar, who struggles to proselytize his minority beliefs to other humans. Ancient Jewish…[Read more]

Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents provide readers with often radical re- visions and critiques of biblical texts. This article asks how the principal characters’ affective engagements with Scripture vary, and considers the extent to which fiction may “play” with the Bible, despite its authoritative distanc…[Read more]

Modern science fiction writers often draw upon the biblical flood story as inspiration for their own narratives. It is not uncommon to find humans fleeing on space arks to escape some cosmic disaster. In the process of adapting the biblical narrative to contemporary circumstances, these writers also frequently transform the unnamed female…[Read more]

In the virtual world elaborated in Marvel’s movies (the “Marvel Cinematic Universe” or MCU), “science” is creatively, strategically confused with “magic” and/or “religion.” Key supernatural/magical elements of the franchise’s comic-book source material are “retconned” (retroactively granted new narrative coherence and continuity) as advanced…[Read more]

This article considers several instances of biblical reception in the science-fiction role-playing game Horizon Zero Dawn (Guerrilla Games/Sony, 2017). The game’s characterisation of technology, science, and religion has led some commentators to understand Horizon Zero Dawn as presenting a firm rejection of religious narratives in favour of s…[Read more]

Introduction, Greek text, and English translation of 3 Apocryphal Apocalypse of John, a Byzantine question-and-answer dialogue between Abraham and John set after Jesus’s ascension.

This Phoenician letter style text dating to 1170 BCE was written in the empire language of Alphabetic Akkadian which was used by traders and temples for cross-cultural communication. Phoenician, like all other alphabetic writing, derives from the commercial Minoan writing tradition but is a separate letter style lineage apart from the lineages of…[Read more]

This paper translates the inscriptions found on five bronze spearheads found near the village of el-Khadr located 2 miles (5 km) west of Bethlehem. Their underlying language is Alphabetic Akkadian and not Hebrew. These spearheads were part of a cache of 26 found near Bethlehem which were first published by Frank Moore Cross in 1954 and 1980. Four…[Read more]

This paper examines the collaborative project to preserve and interpret Har Hasetim, the Gladwyne Jewish Memorial Cemetery. In fall 2015, Villanova University professor Craig Bailey approached the Friends of the Cemetery, an organization affiliated with the local Beth David Reform Congregation, about jointly restoring Har Hasetim. The ensuing…[Read more]

A plaque on the wall indicates that this temple in Ekron (Tel Miqne) was devoted to enabling the powers of Yahu. The word “Yahu” is mentioned twice along with the full moon god Su and the image opener goddess, Utu, who is the feminine complement to Yahu. Ekron at this time was ruled by Assyria having been rebuilt over an older destroyed Phi…[Read more]