Native speakers are often assumed to be efficient in identifying whether a word in their language has been borrowed, even when they do not have direct knowledge of the donor language from which it was taken. To detect borrowings, speakers make use of various strategies, often in combination, relying on clues such as semantics of the words in…[Read more]

e popular idea, especially among the young, is that religion and spirituality are things of the old age. We generally think that spirituality is a post-retirement plan; something which has to be enjoyed with the gratuity, provident fund, and pension that you get after retirement. This is not true. Spirituality is something we need when we are…[Read more]

THE ZUBER PATRIARCHY
Spring: Jean Zuber, fl.1790-1835; Summer: Jean Zuber-Karth, fl. 1836-1853; Autumn: Ivan (Jean) Zuber, fl. 1854-1907

This is the first of a multi-part series telling how the Zuber family made wallpaper over a 117-year period (1790-1907). It is closely based on the thesis “From the Workshop to the Wall” by Dr. Bernard Jac…[Read more]

A review of Karel van der Toorn’s Becoming Diaspora Jews: Behind the Story of Elephantine (Anchor Bible Reference Library). New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019. Pp xi, 270. Hardcover: $65. ISBN: 9780300243512.

Spanish abstract: En este retropost de 2010 hablamos de Miguel de Unamuno y de su doble escepticismo, escepticismo ante la fe y ante el ateísmo. Es un libro desilusionado, San Manuel Bueno, Mártir—desilusionado con las creencias religiosas, y desilusionado con el ateísmo. Una vez perdida la ilusión en redimir a la humanidad en este o en el otro…[Read more]

“Das Geld kam über Nacht”, sagten die Westdeutschen, als am 20. Juni 1948 die neue Deutsche Mark ausgegeben wurde. Über Nacht waren die Schaufenster der Läden mit Waren hübsch dekoriert worden und lockten die Kunden. Ganz so überraschend wie es klingt kam die Währungsreform allerdings nicht.
[…]
Uwe Fuhrmann erläutert die Absichten und Wirkun…[Read more]

Gustavo Doré is considered one of the great universal illustrators. Throughout his life he made a very extensive work highlighting especially the work done to illustrate the Bible, the Quixote and the Divine Comedy. In 1862 he embarked on a trip through Spain accompanied by hispanist Charles Davillier.…[Read more]

Since 2014 after the General Elections in Indonesia, the public information space has been decorated with a lot of hoax information, which is false information with malicious content that can cause readers to misread something. This phenomenon is increasingly rife every time it approaches political performances. There is a big suspicion that…[Read more]

While World War II was still raging in Europe and the Pacific, the onset of the Greek Civil War in December 1944 marked the beginning of the Cold War. For the people of Greece, the civil war would continue the devastation that the Italian, German, and Bulgarian occupations had initiated. The civil war’s catastrophic cleavages in Greek society are…[Read more]

This article examines interwar peace activism by focusing on the personal emotional process that provokes disillusionment. This study documents how peace aspirations collapsed for two activists during the Washington Naval Disarmament Conference and again at the start of the Second World War. The former destroyed their faith that peace could be…[Read more]

There must be be renewed efforts to increase respect by all political, religious, and social institutions for the modern view that political society’s primary interests are in fostering peace, justice, freedom and equality, not in advancing religion. This is the basic meaning of the separation of church and state. The obvious tension here, of c…[Read more]

These essays have been collected and adapted from my previously published
books. They have been slightly revised from the point of view of grammar, but
nothing substantial in their content has been changed. The book from which each
essay was taken is identified on the title page of the essay. The one exception is
my review of Beyond the Sea:…[Read more]

The notions I present here for consideration are, in fact, not new. In short, they are phenomenological notions. As ideas, expressed within the Western-Hellenic tradition, they have been discussed for a very long time in philosophy. They may appear “new to you” as a thinker exploring for the first time, or continuing to explore, the phi…[Read more]

In the course of my presentation of Dewart’s philosophy in this book, I shall note particular insights of two other thinkers, whose religious philosophy I accept as dehellenized in Dewart’s meaning of the term. Auguste Sabatier (1839-1901) and Paul Trudinger, (1930-) never employ the term as far as I can determine. Both Sabatier and Trudinger bas…[Read more]

This article asks the question how post-exilic readers would have read 1-2 Samuel in Yehud. It answers the question by looking at ancient Mediterranean models of textual authority and education.

This essay explores how and why three early Christian figures–Epiphanius, Romanos the Melode, and Ambrosiaster–have, at various times, been imagined as former Jews. By applying a hermeneutics of conversion, this essay argues that the significance of these three Christians’ ex-Jewishness lies not in its historicity (or falsity) but in the way…[Read more]

Review of a collection of papers on variation in historical writing systems. The review focuses particularly on chapters on Linear B, Anatolian alphabets, and Hittite cuneiform.

“Selling Science in the 20th Century” was a public talk delivered as part of the Chemical Heritage Foundation’s Saturday Speakers series. The presentation focused on Beckman Instruments, science advertising, the Beckman Historical Collection, and the digitization component of CHF’s Beckman Legacy Project. Audience members also had the opportunity…[Read more]

This paper analyzes the reception and influence of the Alliance for Progress in Venezuela during the 1960s (1961-1969). The US assistance program financed various social projects in Latin American countries, with the aim of promoting local development, and at the same time counteracting the impact of the Cuban Revolution (1959). Methodologically,…[Read more]