How do people make sense of works of art? And how do they write to make others see the same way? There are many guides to looking at art, histories of art history and art criticism, and accounts of various ‘theories’ and ‘methods’, but this book offers something very unlike the normal search for difference and division: it examines the general…[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]

The concept of return is an intoxicating analytic for scholars, for several reasons. The idea that migrants return home creates opportunities to reclaim them from the hegemony of the bordered nation-state. For diaspora theorists, return works as a rebuttal to the field’s preoccupations with exile and loss. Migrants return home all the time, t…[Read more]

मार्च, 2022 में एक अमेरिकी कॉलेज में 50 साल की सजा काट कर जेल से पेरोल पर छूटे ब्लैक पैंथर के सदस्य को भाषण देने के लिए बुलाया गया था। श्वेत-श्रेष्ठतावादियों ने कार्यक्रम का जोरदार विरोध किया, लेकिन कॉलेज ने कार्यक्रम रद्द करने से इंकार कर दिया। कालेज ने इस कार्यक्रम से कथित तौर अपनी भावनाएं आहत होने का आरोप लगाने वालों को मान…[Read more]

This chapter analyses Global Byzantium by situating the medieval empire of New Rome in the history of statehood’s generalisation worldwide. Arguing that statehood remains the implicit mental furniture of History at a macro-civilizational scale, and so more or less at the micro too, the chapter proposes the dual concepts of hegemony and c…[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]

The connection between warfare and an increased wolf presence or even wolf attacks is a recurrent theme in European narrative sources. Many historical studies have also commented on the widespread belief in this connection and suggested that armed conflicts instigated a breakdown of the standard wolf-human relationship. In peacetime, wolves…[Read more]

Using the ecosystem concept as his starting point, the author examines the complex relationship between premodern armed forces and their environment at three levels: landscapes, living beings, and diseases. The study focuses on Europe’s Meuse Region, well-known among historians of war as a battleground between France and Germany. By analyzing s…[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]

El presente libro pretende establecer unas premisas básicas en el conocimiento que, desde la perspectiva historiográfica, puede realizarse del Cancionero de Baena, basándose en la inserción de gran parte de sus poemas en el contexto histórico en que fueron compuestos, además de acotar —hasta donde su autor le ha sido posible llegar— las biografía…[Read more]

El presente libro pretende establecer unas premisas básicas en el conocimiento que, desde la perspectiva historiográfica, puede realizarse del Cancionero de Baena, basándose en la inserción de gran parte de sus poemas en el contexto histórico en que fueron compuestos, además de acotar —hasta donde su autor le ha sido posible llegar— las biografía…[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]