1,720,980 research outputs found
Herod or Alexander Janneus? A new approach to the testament of Moses
No full textIn recent years a consensus has emerged that the Testament of Moses is to be dated in the early first century c.e., at least in its final form, and the primary basis for that consensus is the apparently perfect match between the reference to a ruler ruling for 34 years and the years of the reign of Herod the Great. While acknowledging that much can be explained on that presupposition, I have sought to show that a fit equally as strong as with Herod may be found when chapter 6 is read as alluding to the reign of Alexander Janneus and Alexandra Salome. The figure 34 matches with as much accuracy as one could expect. But much else also matches, including the fact that his sons did reign for shorter periods than their father, unlike Herod’s sons, and that many of the details, including depictions of depravity and assumptions of religious conflict, better match what we know of the reign of Alexander, Alexandra, and their sons
What light does Matthew’s use of Mark in Matthew 1–4 throw on Matthew’s theological location?
Get PDFThis article approaches the issue of Matthew’s theological context by examining Matthew’s use of Mark, including through redaction and supplementation, in Matthew 1–4. This is undertaken in two parts: Matthew 1–2, which is largely additional material, and Matthew 3–4, followed by a concluding assessment. Issues addressed or alluded to in these chapters frequently find resonance in the remainder of Matthew’s gospel and so give important clues about Matthew’s concerns and their relevance for understanding its context. Such issues include the importance of messiahship; continuity with Israel, but also with John the Baptist and the Church; defence against slander; heightened christological claims; soteriology; Gentile mission; the status of Torah; and Jesus as judge to come. The article suggests a location within a Jewish religious context with a Jewish self-understanding, separate from the synagogue, but claiming to belong where its opponents would claim it did not; and a Christian tradition where the approach of ‘Q’ to Torah is upheld in contrast to Mark’s, while embracing and expanding Mark’s Christology and restoring the common understanding of Gentile mission as a post- Easter phenomenon
Did Adultery Mandate Divorce? A Reassessment of Jesus' Divorce Logia
Get PDFThis paper argues that Matthew's so-called exception clauses to the prohibition of divorce (5.32; 19.9) make explicit what was already implicit in versions without them: that adultery required divorce. While biblical law required death for adulterers or expected it as a result of the ordeal of the suspected wife, the issue of divorce arose where communities no longer had capital rights and where guilt was not in question. Matthew's nativity story, the norms of Greek and Roman culture, notions of the defiled wife (Deut 24.1-4) and the use of Gen 2.24 to indicate permanent joining give plausibility to the thesis
Reading Romans 1 on homosexuality in the light of Biblical/Jewish and Greco-Roman perspectives of its time
Get PDFIn seeking common ground with his readers Paul uses same sex relations to depict human depravity. In doing so he uses many of the arguments familiar from ethical discourse in the Greco-Roman world of his time, but employs them within a Jewish frame of reference. Thus the perverted mind, attitudes and actions are produced by perverted responses to God. The shame of making males passive is ultimately the shame of contravening what God created them to be. Exceptionally he relates the unnatural not to denying procreation, but to denying the created order of (only) male and female and implies the Leviticus prohibitions apply to both. Strong passion is problematic when wrongly directed. Paul’s argument is typically theological and psychological
Attitudes toward sexuality in the Book of Ben Sira
Get PDFThe fact that Ben Sira seemingly has a negative attitude towards women or femininity can easily lead to the assumption that the work has a negative attitude toward sexuality. However, this thesis will seek to demonstrate that the author's view on sexuality is complex, subtle, and depends on the context of the individual sayings. First of all we have to make a distinction between the attitudes of the writer of the original Hebrew text of the book and that of the Greek translator. The two texts, produced in different social settings, circumstances, times and places, differ substantially at times in regard to sexuality. Therefore it is essential to treat them separately and to compare them. In addition, the Book of Ben Sira, the longest Jewish wisdom book, is a complex combination of carefully composed wisdom poems that structure the whole work, and of teachings on everyday issues including marriage, family life, self-control, desires and passions, and sexual promiscuity. The openness about issues of eroticism that characterizes some of the poems concerning personified female wisdom is unprecedented in the wisdom writings of Second Temple Judaism. Similarly, the sage dedicates a greater number of passages than other wisdom books, to the discussion of social relations especially in regard to family. In so doing his regular point of departure seems to be what benefits or damages these relations mean, and whether they bring disgrace to a person, especially through sexuality. These all have bearings on the author’s and translator’s views of sexuality, including the position a person or situation under discussion might have in the sage’s social value system. Therefore the thesis examines the wisdom poems, and all sayings that concern sexuality found in discussions of passions, relations with parents, daughters and sons, wives and husbands, and warnings against sexual wrongdoing, including prostitution and adultery. All this is done with a special regard to the differences between the Hebrew original text and the Greek translation
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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