Digital Commons Network^™

Taming The Wandering Mind: Where Buddhism & Polyvagal Theory Meet, Tamara Embrey

Mindfulness Studies Theses

The ability to tame the wandering mind is at the heart of the insights emerging from the places where Buddhism and the Polyvagal Theory (Porges, 2001, 2011) meet. A polyvagal understanding of how our nervous system functions opens the door to developing skills that can strengthen our ability to regulate ourselves and others during times of challenge. The Buddha’s meditation instructions, laid out in the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, the Establishment of Mindfulness Discourse offers a type of attentional training that allows us to become aware of our current neural state so that we can make intentional choices to tame our wandering …

Holy Impairment: The Body As The Nexus Of Apocalyptic Ekphrasis In Acts 2:1–13, Meghan Henning

Theology and Religious Studies Faculty Publications

This article reads Acts 2:1–13 as an example of apocalyptic ekphrasis, bringing together disparate imagery for rhetorical effect. In particular, the Septuagint imagery of theophany is combined with the imagery of divine healing that was associated with the god Asclepius. I explore the imagery of the divided tongue that rests on bodies and transforms them, an element of Acts 2:3 that many interpreters have given up trying to explain. The visual association of snakes and healing was prevalent not only at the shrines devoted to Asclepius but broadly in a variety of contexts outside the shrines. This complex of imagery …

Theoretical Frameworks And Christian Engineering, Douglas De Boer

Pro Rege

No abstract provided.

The Storytelling Cure: Medicine And Narrative From Galen To Shahrazad And Rousseau, Ryan A. Milov-Cordoba

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Are stories healing? This dissertation introduces and explores an idea that I call “the storytelling cure.” With this term I capture a set of related notions about the healing power of stories that span literary studies, intellectual history, philosophy, and medical practice. Through a comparative study I make the case for “the storytelling cure” as a cross-cultural, multiconfessional, and multilingual phenomenon of great age, complexity, and power, worthy of the most sustained attention by the contemporary field of Comparative Literature. Concretely, this dissertation presents three extended case studies of “storytelling cures” from three different kinds of texts (case history, frame …

Factors Influencing Australian Muslims’ Attitudes Toward Christian-Muslim Dialogue: The Case Of Sunni Muslims Of Adelaide And Uniting Church Christians, Gregory Macdonald, Mohamad Abdalla, Nahid Afrose Kabir

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Since the implementation of a multicultural policy in the 1970s, religious diversity in Australia has increased. Research has demonstrated that intergroup contact is essential for managing diverse multicultural societies. This is because, given the right conditions, intergroup contact will reduce prejudice and build trust between groups. Given the importance of intergroup contact, policy makers and researchers have identified interfaith dialogue’s importance to the success of multicultural societies. However, there is very limited research that explores interfaith dialogue from the perspectives of adherents, in this case Christians and Muslims in the Australian context. This paper focuses on interfaith dialogue between Christians …

Religion And Peace : Global Perspectives And Possibilities, Nukhet A. Sandal, Ingo Trauschweizer

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

Can religion help societies achieve peace and stability? What actions can religious leaders take to facilitate conflict resolution? This book addresses these critical questions in terms of numerous contemporary conflicts within and between countries.

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, public attention to religion shifted away from its relationship to politics and toward its connection to violence in civil conflicts, wars, and terrorism. Religion’s role in sowing discord became more prominent than its ability to unify. Only recently have discussions turned toward the positive impact of religion and spirituality in the public sphere and to the role of faith …

Introduction To Special Issue “Language Translation In Localizing Religious Musical Practice”, John Macinnis

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

The inspiration and starting place for this Special Issue was the book Making Congregational Music Local in Christian Communities Worldwide (Routledge 2018), edited by Monique Ingalls, Muriel Swijghuisen Reigersberg, and Zoe Sherinian.

A Christian Perspective On Islam's Origins: Its Religion, Founder, And Practices, German Matos

Masters Theses

The many years of exposure to Islamic believers in the five boroughs of New York State, but more specifically, the Bronx, set a precedent for this thesis to comprehensively analyze the religion of Islam by investigating the Abrahamic monotheistic connection to its historical origins and religious practices. The methods used in this thesis to prove Islam’s legitimacy as an Abrahamic monotheistic heir consisted of sources like the Qur’an, hadith, and tafsir texts translated from Arabic into English. The simultaneous usage of Jewish, Christian, Islamic, and authoritative secular sources was used to scrutinize Islam’s theological and historical claims to formulate a …

Going Deeper With New Testament Greek [Review]/ Merkle, Benjamin L., Robert L. Plummer, With Andreas J. Köstenberger., Stanislav Kondrat

Andrews University Seminary Studies (AUSS)

This is a book review by Stanislav Kondrat.

Table Of Contents

Andrews University Seminary Studies (AUSS)

Table of Contents Vol 59:2.

Editorial Vol 59:2, Martin Hanna, Oliver Glanz

Andrews University Seminary Studies (AUSS)

This is the Editorial by Co-Editors Dr. Martin Hanna and Dr. Oliver Glanz.

"The Oxford Hand Book Of The Book Of Revelation"[Review]/Koester, Craig R., Ed, Flavio Prestes Iii

Andrews University Seminary Studies (AUSS)

This is a book review by Flavio Prestes III.

"Four Kingdom Motifs Before And Beyond The Book Of Daniel" [Review]/Perrin, Andrew B., And Loren T. Stuckenbruck, Eds., Rodrigo Galiza

Andrews University Seminary Studies (AUSS)

This is a book review by Rodrigo Galiza.

To The Glory Of God Evaluating Origen’S Exposition Of The Scripture In His Leviticus Homilies, Andrew Johnson

Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation

Johnson, Andrew M. “To the Glory of God: Evaluating Origen’s Exposition of the Scripture in His Leviticus Homilies”. Ph.D. diss., Concordia Seminary, 2022. 237 pp.

Origen has been called “Adamantine,” an impossibly hard metal. Many have found his work to be strong and powerful and equal in its density. Origen’s preaching is almost impenetrable to the Evangelical preacher. This dissertation seeks to offer an entry for modern evangelical preachers to engage with the historic practice of figural exposition in Origen’s Leviticus homilies. The dissertation investigates the interpretative, homiletical and rhetorical histories which intersect in Origen’s homilies. It unpacks Origen’s use …

Mashiah: Messianism In Jewish Apocalyptic Literature Of The Second Temple Period, Fred R. De Leon

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This Thesis challenges notions that have dominated biblical scholarship for more than a hundred years. Up until the end of the twentieth century scholars uniformly believed that the concept of a suffering Messiah was not part of early first century CE Judaism. It was believed to a be a Christian creation. There is however startling evidence of messianic precursors to Jesus, including one who is introduced as the 'Prince of the Congregation' in recently published fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls. This is not surprising since the authors of the Tanakh lay the groundwork for an evolving and malleable concept …

Realising Contingent Religious Subjects Through Relational Spaces Of Missionary Encounter, Orlando Woods

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper explores the ways in which the religious subject can be a contingent position that is responsive to the broader socio-religious context within which it is expressed. These contingencies are acutely observed amongst short-term missionaries (STM), who seek out encounters with difference in pursuit of a more cosmopolitan subjectivity. Yet, whilst spaces of missionary encounter are inherently relational, the missions literature has tended to downplay the effects of relationality on the realisation of these subject positions. By focussing on the experiences of Singaporean missionaries working amongst Christian communities in Southeast Asia, I contribute a more nuanced and less predetermined …

Application Of The Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency Weighting Scheme To The Pauline Corpus, Brandon Van Der Ventel, Richard Newman

Andrews University Seminary Studies (AUSS)

The term frequency--inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) weighting scheme is applied to the text of the thirteen epistles traditionally associated with the Apostle Paul. The data for the analysis is the morphologically tagged text of the Society for Biblical Literature’s Greek New Testament. The TF-IDF scheme is then used to construct the Document Term Matrix (DTM) for a corpus under consideration. The DTM allows each document to be represented by a multi-dimensional document vector. A query document is then chosen and a vector representation of it is constructed. The cosine similarity between the query document and documents in the corpus is …

"The Antichrist Tradition In Antiquity: Antimessianism In Second Temple And Early Christian Literature" [Review]/Kusio, Mateusz, Rodrigo Galiza

Andrews University Seminary Studies (AUSS)

This is a book review by Rodrigo Galiza.

"Beginning With New Testament Greek" [Review]/Merkle, Benjamin L., And Robert L. Plummer, Stanislav Kondrat

Andrews University Seminary Studies (AUSS)

This is a book review by Stanislav Kondrat.

"God's Obedience": A Linguistic And Narrative Exploration Of The Hebrew Idiom In 1 Kings 17:22 And Its Theological Implications, Oliver Glanz, Jonatas Leal

Andrews University Seminary Studies (AUSS)

This article explores a particular sentence in the first resurrection narrative of the Bible: “And the LORD obeyed Elijah” (1 Kgs 17:22a). Before the widow’s son returns to life, the prophet calls YHWH to perform a miracle. Subsequently, and surprisingly the narration reports that the LORD obeyed. In contrast to the Hebrew of the source text, we argue that modern Bible translations do not render 1 Kgs 17:22a (וַיִּשְׁמַ֥ע יְהוָ֖ה בְּקֹ֣ול אֵלִיָּ֑הוּ) correctly. Instead of translating “The LORD listened to the voice of Elijah” (NRSV), “The LORD heard Elijah’s cry” (NIV), or “The LORD answered Elijah’s prayer” (GNB), one …

How To Help The Bi-Vocational Pastor At Sandy Grove Church To Have Balance In Ministry And Life Through Equipping & Teaching Of The Saints Along With A Structured Plan To Meet The Ministry Demands, Duran Kiley Odoms

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Burnout, a subject that was birthed in the 1970s was only associated with the private and public sectors of the workforce. It has transitioned into other avenues where personal interaction takes place. Ministry is a profession where people interaction happens weekly and sometimes daily. Ministry is repetitive work that must be done daily, weekly, and monthly. Many pastors have fallen prey to this awful and painful enemy. Burnout has caused many pastors to lose their church, family, and life. The lack of ministry assistance and the demand for the job have taken a toll on many pastors whether they are …

Higher Meanings: A Speaker Series Connecting Mathematics And Religion, Lawrence M. Lesser, Patricia S. Barrientos, Ben Zeidman

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

An innovative grant-funded general adult audiences international speaker series on connections between mathematics and religion yielded six 2021 (now archived) presentations. We share reflections and lessons learned, informed by two sets of surveys.

On Types Of Certainty: From Buddhism To Islam And Beyond, Michael Chase

Comparative Philosophy

Studies the threefold hierarchy of certainty, from its origins in Mahāyāna Buddhism, through Islam, to 17^th century China. This tripartite scheme may be traced back to the ancient Buddhist scheme of the threefold wisdom as systematized by Vasubandhu of Gandhāra in the 4th-5th centuries CE. Following the advent of Islam in the 8th century, it was combined with Qur'anic notions of certainty (al-yaqīn). Initially taken up by early Islamic mystics such as Sahl al-Tustarī and al-Ḥākim al-Tirmiḏī (late 9th-early 10th centuries), the notion of yaqīn was gradually systematized into the three-level hierarchy of “knowledge or science of …

Doing Philosophy Comparatively In Southern Europe: Western, Mediterranean, Islamic And Other Perspectives In Engagement, Nevad Kahteran

Comparative Philosophy

Aiming to become a part of transcultural discourses and debates, the author argues in this paper for the use of transcultural approaches overcoming the traditional ones in doing philosophy comparatively in the Southern Europe. Within this framework, new forms of cross-cultural philosophizing in the Mediterranean philosophy will arise in the triangle among the Western Balkans, Italy and Greece as a transcultural exchange of knowledge and ideas including more than twenty surrounding countries in the Mediterranean basin. In this regard, the author is trying to find a way for deepening and broadening transcultural approaches concerning the Southern Europe in general and …

Comparative Philosophy As A General Way Of Doing Philosophy Through Cross-Tradition Engagement Toward World Philosophy, Bo Mou

Comparative Philosophy

In this theme essay for the addressed special-theme section in this special issue of the journal Comparative Philosophy commemorating the first anniversary of the International Society for Comparative Philosophy toward World Philosophy (CPWP), I intend to give an elaboration of the theme “comparative philosophy as a general way of doing philosophy through cross-tradition engagement toward world philosophy” (‘comparative philosophy toward world philosophy’ for short), which has been explicitly presented and formally stated through its recent academic-organizational channel CPWP and focuses on via the Journal’s and CPWP’s jointly organized international conference. The theme “comparative philosophy toward world philosophy” as a whole …

Music: Seeking Pleasure, Emotional Language, Ritualized Communication, Jillian N. Gerlach

Interdivisional Studies Summer Fellows

The impetus for my project was how I view listening to music as a spiritual or religious experience. Listening to music, instead of practicing religion, satisfies my inclination toward spirituality. In the introduction to my paper, I outlined how music exists in my life. I thought it was valuable to provide my unique experience to give context to my research. I created a diagram that delineates how I interact with music and the benefits I derive from listening to music. During this self-reflection, I realized listening to music functions like a ritual for me. I noticed my individual ritualized listening …

Queer(Y)Ing The Hermeneutic Role Of Heteronormativity In Ecclesial Identity: The Pcc’S Human Sexuality Report As A Case Study, M. Beth Mccutcheon

Consensus

No abstract provided.

A Linguistical Analysis Of The Greek Perfect Tense: A Defense Of “Causative Aspect.”, Malcolm Goh

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Modern Greek studies have undergone intense debate over the past several decades regarding whether to and how grammarians and linguists should apply verbal aspect theory to Greek verbs. A significant portion of this debate has centered on the Greek perfect verb. Buist M. Fanning, Constantine R. Campbell, and Stanley E. Porter are three prominent voices in this ongoing debate. While traditional grammars have done well in describing the actions of the Greek perfect tense form, a consensus has proved challenging in describing the perfect tense form within an aspectual framework. Aspectual theorists agree that the perfect tense form concerns itself …

Deification Or Demonization: Jesus’ Post-Resurrection Body In Luke 24:36-40, Shannon Dugger

Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee

There has been much scholarly debate about the mythological category of Jesus, arguing that the Lucan portrayal of his post-resurrection body aligns either with Roman-period beliefs about ghosts or resurrected gods. This paper examines Greco-Roman ghost stories, apotheosis narratives, and academic work from both sides of the debate pertaining to Luke 24:36-401 in an attempt to better understand why the passage resists categorization. The paper also introduces theories of liminality and anomy to explain the possible ambiguity in the gospel’s portrayal of Jesus’ body. The paper concludes that Luke 24 is neither clearly a ghost story nor a deification story. …

Arcadia: A Student Journal For Faith And Culture

Arcadia: A Student Journal for Faith and Culture

No abstract provided.