[NB. PDF is accepted copy, not published version – to cite, please use published version, JSNT 43:3, 2021, 370-388)] A number of scholars have recognized a verbal allusion to Jon. 4.9 in Mk 14.34. However, the Gethsemane account (Mk 14.32-42) may allude to the narrative of Jon. 4 in other ways not previously observed. Some modern interpreters have…[Read more]

[NB. PDF is accepted copy, not published version – to cite, please use published version, JSNT 43:3, 2021, 370-388)] A number of scholars have recognized a verbal allusion to Jon. 4.9 in Mk 14.34. However, the Gethsemane account (Mk 14.32-42) may allude to the narrative of Jon. 4 in other ways not previously observed. Some modern interpreters have…[Read more]

[NB. PDF is accepted copy, not published version – to cite, please use published version, JSNT 43:3, 2021, 370-388)] A number of scholars have recognized a verbal allusion to Jon. 4.9 in Mk 14.34. However, the Gethsemane account (Mk 14.32-42) may allude to the narrative of Jon. 4 in other ways not previously observed. Some modern interpreters have…[Read more]

My notes (taken c. 1990) on Geoffrey Leech’s ‘Principles of Pragmatics’ (London: Longman, 1983). Pagination on the left; my parenthetical comments in italics.

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 paper publishes a ceramic bowl in the Metropolitan Museum of Art depicting a Parthian shot. Although it lacks archaeological provenance, the bowl can be dated to the 4th to 2nd centuries BCE, and probably comes from northwestern Iran. It is, therefore, one of the few possible instances of a Parthian shot from the Arsacid Empire.

This chapter examines the rhetorical skills displayed by secondary (low–status)
characters in the extant tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. “Rhetorical
skills” are here broadly understood as the abilities required to have one’s voice heard and
one’s opinion taken into account. These speaking abilities contribute to the socio–pol…[Read more]

This book is a compendium of book reviews reflecting my “Creed of Life.” The fact is that my Creed of Life has been fashioned through these authors, as well as others not mentioned here, whose works were personally important to me and significant to my intellectual development. This list is continually being lengthened as authors, living or dea…[Read more]

In this book I contemplate the possibility of posthuman philosophy within the religious and theological schools of thought. In doing this, I do not focus on the traditional philosophical humanism which characterizes the scholastic and neo-scholastic approach within Western philosophy. Rather, I focus on a dehellenized philosophical way of thinking…[Read more]

This article presents a detailed examination of the benefits, challenges, and purpose of conducting a doctoral-level literature review. The article analyzes both the cognitive neurolinguistic processing challenges attending the assimilation and synthesis of large volumes of new information and the metacognitive knowledge strategies needed to…[Read more]

Demons and monsters are inherently moveable creatures: from the late second millennium BCE onwards a number of demons and monsters migrate from their native Mesopotamian contexts, moving westward. Of course, these figures do not remain static throughout their journey, instead acquiring the characteristics of the different cultural contexts wherein…[Read more]

A short essay on the different forms of money used in the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Translated into German by Julia Linke.

An overview of taxation in ancient states.

Focusing on the work of John McWhorter and, to a lesser extent, Peter Trudgill, this paper critically examines some common themes in language complexity research from the perspective of intellectual history. The present-day conception that increase in language complexity is somehow a “natural” process which is disturbed under the “ab…[Read more]

While it has been known for a long time that human languages can change in various ways, it was only in the early 19th century that scholars realized that certain aspects of language change proceed in a surprisingly regular manner, allowing us to reconstruct historical stages of languages which have never been documented in written sources. The…[Read more]

While it has been known for a long time that human languages can change in various ways, it was only in the early 19th century that scholars realized that certain aspects of language change proceed in a surprisingly regular manner, allowing us to reconstruct historical stages of languages which have never been documented in written sources. The…[Read more]

The paper proposes that the Egyptian-style design on a 5-6th century CE magical amulet discovered at Nea Paphos in Cyprus (Inv. no. PAP/FR 44/2011) draws upon an apotropaic design against the Evil Eye known as the “All-Suffering Eye,” which dates back to the time of the early Roman Empire and is common on Byzantine “Holy Rider” medallions. [No…[Read more]

Journal of Historical Linguistics, Volume 11, Issue 2, 357 – 366.

Kaluza’s law is a proposed restriction in the metre of Beowulf against the resolution of light-heavy sequences: words like cyning ‘king’ can only resolve and count as the equivalent of a single heavy syllable under more restricted circumstances than can words such as wudu ‘wood’. There has been debate about how to define these ‘restrict…[Read more]