Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Ritual Legitimacy And Scriptural Authority, James W. Watts

Religion - All Scholarship

In this essay, James W. Watts explains the interdependence of texts and rituals with regard to ancient religions. Specifically, he outlines patterns of practice and developments in the ritual use of texts and the texual authorization of rituals in antiquity.

Watts also makes the case that beyond the interplay of texual authority and ritual legitimacy that most ancient cultures engaged in, Judaism was unique in elevating the Torah along with its other laws and stories to special "scriptural" status.

Biblical Psalms Outside The Psalter, James W. Watts

Religion - All Scholarship

Psalms appear irregularly in the narrative and prophetic literature of the Hebrew Bible, at Exod 15:1-21, Deut 32:1-43, Jdg 5, 1 Sam 2:1-20, 2 Samuel 22, Isa 38:9-20, Jon 2:3-10, Habakkuk 3, Dan 2:20-23, 1 Chron 16:8-36; in the Apocrypha/Deuterocanon at Daniel 3, Jdg 16:1-17, Tobit 13; and in the New Testament at Lk 1:46-5,67-79. More often, fragments of hymns and other poems are quoted as natural parts of story-lines (e.g. 2 Sam 1:17-27; 3:33-34) or are employed as elements in prophetic compositions (e.g. Am 4:13; 5:8; 9:5-6). Complete poetic compositions appear less frequently but more prominently. Many of these …

Jewish Cemetries, Synagogues, And Mass Grave Sites In Ukraine, Samuel D. Gruber

Religion - All Scholarship

2005 report from the United States Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad on Jewish cemeteries, synagogues, and mass graves in Ukraine. Includes information on the history, current conditions, and preservation efforts of Jewish heritage sites.

Jewish Cemeteries, Synagogues, And Monuments In Slovenia, Samuel D. Gruber

Religion - All Scholarship

2005 report from the United States Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad on historic Jewish sites in Slovenia. Includes information on the history and current conditions of synagogues, cemeteries, and holocaust memorials.

Jewish Cemeteries, Synagogues, And Monuments In Slovenia, Samuel D. Gruber

Religion - All Scholarship

2005 report from the United States Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad on historic Jewish sites in Slovenia. Includes information on the history and current conditions of synagogues, cemeteries, and holocaust memorials.

Yekhezkel Kotik. Journey To A Nineteenth-Century Shtetl: The Memoirs Of Yekhezkel Kotik, Ken Frieden

Religion - All Scholarship

Review of Yekhezkel Kotik's work Journey to a Nineteenth-Century Shtetl: The Memoirs of Yekhezkel. Edited by David Assaf and Translated by Margaret Birstein.

Mimicking Virgins: Colonial Ambivalence And The Ancient Romance, Virginia Burrus

Religion - All Scholarship

Burrus pursues juxtapositional readings of two sets of novelistic texts that cut across religious affiliations and the politics commonly associated therewith: the Acts of Paul and Thekla and Achilles Tatius's Kleitophon and Leukippe, on the one hand, and Heliodorus's Ethiopian Story and Joseph and Aseneth, on the other. Reading for resistance, she also reads for virginity, which functions as a site of articulated cultural ambivalence in each of the romances. That virginity is a characteristic and historically innovative preoccupation of ancient romances is scarcely a novel proposition.