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Articles 181 - 210 of 263

Full-Text Articles in Classics

The Canoe Curve, Thomas Nelson Winter Feb 2002

The Canoe Curve, Thomas Nelson Winter

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

y = n/x seemed a very useful curve. You could use it to guide any business decision whether to rent or buy any piece of equipment.

Every such equation is not only symmetrical, it is symmetrical about the square root of the cost! That's the big bend. The business decision comes to this: would you use the equipment the square root of the dollar cost and thus get round the big bend to the shallow end of the curve?
If not, rent. If yes, buy. How very practical a square root can be.
Since then, I've seen y = n/x …

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The Whole Scroll Story: Review Of The Meaning Of The Dead Sea Scrolls By James Vanderkam And Peter Flint, Sidnie White Crawford Jan 2002

The Whole Scroll Story: Review Of The Meaning Of The Dead Sea Scrolls By James Vanderkam And Peter Flint, Sidnie White Crawford

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

James VanderKam and Peter Flint set out to write, in their own words, “a new, comprehensive, and up-to-date introduction” to the Dead Sea Scrolls. They have accomplished that goal admirably, especially when it comes to comprehensiveness. The volume touches on every area of scroll scholarship, and presents a synthetic account of the history of the Dead Sea Scrolls, their importance as a collection of ancient primary texts, and their impact on our understanding of Second Temple Judaism and the roots of Christianity.

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Review Of The Bible At Qumran: Text, Shape, And Interpretation, Edited By Peter W. Flint, Sidnie White Crawford Jan 2002

Review Of The Bible At Qumran: Text, Shape, And Interpretation, Edited By Peter W. Flint, Sidnie White Crawford

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

Review of The Bible at Qumran: Text, Shape, and Interpretation, edited by Peter W. Flint. Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001. Pp. xv + 266. Price: $22.00. ISBN 0-8028-4630-0.

This volume is another contribution to the Eerdmans series Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature. The essays are loosely gathered around the topic "The Bible at Qumran," and the editor has divided the articles into two groups. Part 1, "The Scriptures, the Canon, and the Scrolls," includes articles by J.A. Sanders, B.W. Waltke, E. Ulrich, C.A. Evans, and the …

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Review Of Timothy S. Laniak, Shame And Honor In The Book Of Esther, Sidnie White Crawford Jan 2002

Review Of Timothy S. Laniak, Shame And Honor In The Book Of Esther, Sidnie White Crawford

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

This book, a study of the anthropological categories of “shame” and “honour” in the Book of Esther, represents an excellent new contribution to the field of Esther stud­ies. It is new because, as Laniak observes, the significance of the categories of “hon­our” and “shame” have diminished in the modern west (p. 1), and contemporary readers of the Book of Esther may be unaware of the operation of these categories on the plot and characters of the book. Laniak’s book, a basically unrevised form of his 1997 Harvard Divinity School dissertation, sheds important light on this ne­glected aspect of the Book …

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Esther Not Judith: Why One Made It And The Other Didn’T, Sidnie White Crawford Jan 2002

Esther Not Judith: Why One Made It And The Other Didn’T, Sidnie White Crawford

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

Brave, wise, and stunningly beautiful, Esther and Judith have much in common. Both Jewish heroines live under foreign domination. Both risk their lives to save their people from oppression. One of the few differences between the two women is that Judith is openly pious and Esther is not. Indeed, God is not even mentioned in the Hebrew version of the Book of Esther. So why was the story of Esther included in the Hebrew Bible while the Book of Judith was left out? Because Esther never threatened the status quo, but Judith was a dangerous woman who had the power …

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The Meaning Of The Phrase ציר המקרש In The Temple Scroll*, Sidnie White Crawford Sep 2001

The Meaning Of The Phrase ציר המקרש In The Temple Scroll*, Sidnie White Crawford

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

A minor point of contention in the interpretation of the Temple Scroll has been the meaning of the phrase ציר המקרש [city of the sanctuary] found in the laws concerning the purity of the ideal sanctuary envisioned by the Temple Scroll. This phrase is not a biblical phrase; therefore we cannot fall back on a biblical meaning to help us determine its meaning. The problem is compounded by the fact that the Temple Scroll uses avariety of terms to refer to the Temple building itself, the various buildings and courts which surround it, and the wider area around it; these …

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Review Of Miscellaneous Texts From The Judaean Desert, Edited By James Charlesworth, Et Al., Sidnie White Crawford Jun 2001

Review Of Miscellaneous Texts From The Judaean Desert, Edited By James Charlesworth, Et Al., Sidnie White Crawford

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

This volume is the thirty-eighth in the series Discoveries in the Judaean Desert, the vehicle for the publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Editor-in-chief Emanuel Tov and his able team of editors, including James VanderKam, the consulting editor for this volume, have produced another fine edition of these difficult texts, making them accessible in a predictable format to a scholarly audience. Each document is presented separately, with a physical description, a discussion of the contents, and a study of its paleography, orthography and morphology. Each fragment is transcribed, followed by notes, and photographic plates are supplied at the end of …

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Review Of Émile Puech, Qumrân Grotte 4, Xviii: Textes Hébreux (4q521–4q528, 4q576–4q579), Sidnie White Crawford Jan 2001

Review Of Émile Puech, Qumrân Grotte 4, Xviii: Textes Hébreux (4q521–4q528, 4q576–4q579), Sidnie White Crawford

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

This volume is the twenty-fi fth in the series Discoveries in the Judaean Desert (DJD), the vehicle for the publication of the entire Dead Sea scrolls corpus, begun in 1955 by Roland de Vaux of the École Biblique et Archéologique Française and continuing under the editorship of Emanuel Tov of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. This particular volume is edited by Émile Puech of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifi que in Paris, but also on the faculty of the École Biblique, thus continuing the connection of the École Biblique to the Dead Sea scrolls publication project to the …

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Agathon, Essentialism, And Gender Subversion In Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazusae, Anne Duncan Jan 2001

Agathon, Essentialism, And Gender Subversion In Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazusae, Anne Duncan

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

In Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazusae, the women of Athens, infuriated by Euripides' too-accurate portrayals of lustful and treacherous women, are plotting against him. Euripides and his kinsman come up with a plan to dress the kinsman in women's clothes and send him into the women's meeting as a spy. In order to dress the kinsman up, they stop at the house of Agathon, a notoriously effeminate tragic playwright, and ask to borrow some of his women's clothing and personal grooming items. The "robing scene” with Agathon has often been taken to be a straightforward, if devastating, mockery of a historical figure's peculiarities. …

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Wyclif And Lollardy, Stephen E. Lahey Jan 2001

Wyclif And Lollardy, Stephen E. Lahey

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

John Wyclif’s place in the history of Christian ideas varies according to the historian’s interest. As scholastic theology, Wyclif’s thought appears an heretical epilogue to the glories of the systematic innovations of the thirteenth century. Historians of the Protestantism, on the other hand, characterize him as a pioneer, the “Morning Star of the Reformation,” acknowledging his theology and the Lollard and Hussite movements associated with it as forerunners of sixteenth-century change. It has been difficult to understand Wyclif as a man of his age because the late fourteenth century itself is easily viewed as a period of transition from “Late …

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Spellbinding Performance: Poet As Witch In Theocritus' Second Idyll And Apollonius' Argonautica, Anne Duncan Jan 2001

Spellbinding Performance: Poet As Witch In Theocritus' Second Idyll And Apollonius' Argonautica, Anne Duncan

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

The connection between poetry and enchantment in Greek literature is by now a familiar subject. The poet enchants (θέλει) his audience as a magician chants a spell or administers a drug, causing pleasure and the forgetfulness of pain in the listener. As with most other poetic topoi, this one goes back to Homer, to figures like Circe, the Sirens, and even Helen. In this paper, I will argue that two witches from Hellenistic poems should be regarded as poet-figures: Simaetha in Theocritus' Idyll 2, and Medea in Apollonius' Argonautica. Theocritus and Apollonius use the performing female voice of the witch …

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Review Of Religion In The Dead Sea Scrolls, Edited By John J. Collins And Robert A. Kugler., Sidnie White Crawford Jan 2001

Review Of Religion In The Dead Sea Scrolls, Edited By John J. Collins And Robert A. Kugler., Sidnie White Crawford

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

This volume is part of a series entitled Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature, edited by P. Flint, M. Abegg, Jr., and F. García Martínez. The aim of the series is to make “available to readers at all levels the best of current Dead Sea Scrolls research.” The collection of essays gathered in this volume succeeds in that goal admirably.

The volume grew out of a conference at Trinity Western University on April 24, 1999 (the editors are thus to be congratulated on bringing the volume to publication rapidly). The introduction, written by John J. Collins, gives …

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Review Of Timothy K. Beal, The Book Of Hiding: Gender, Ethnicity, Annihilation And Esther, And Timothy S. Laniak, Shame And Honor In The Book Of Esther, Sidnie White Crawford Jul 2000

Review Of Timothy K. Beal, The Book Of Hiding: Gender, Ethnicity, Annihilation And Esther, And Timothy S. Laniak, Shame And Honor In The Book Of Esther, Sidnie White Crawford

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

These two recent books on the Book of Esther by young scholars illustrate the vitality of new methods of interpretation of the biblical text; at the same time, they raise questions about the limits of these new methods. Laniak, approaching the Book of Esther from an anthropological perspective, uses its categories of honor and shame. Beal uses postmodern critical theory to illuminate the shifting meanings of “self” and “other” in Esther. The two books have several things in common—rather surprisingly, given their very different orientations. Neither author gives much attention to the historical value of the Book of Esther; both …

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Hebraica Veritas? An Exhibition From The Collection Of The Center For Judaic Studies Library, Stephen G. Burnett, Seth Jerchower May 2000

Hebraica Veritas? An Exhibition From The Collection Of The Center For Judaic Studies Library, Stephen G. Burnett, Seth Jerchower

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

Christian Hebraism was an offshoot of Renaissance humanism whose devotees—biblical scholars, theologians, lawyers, physicians, scientists, philosophers, and teachers in Latin schools—borrowed and adapted texts, literary forms, and ideas from Jewish scholarship and tradition to meet Christian cultural and religious needs. Intellectual and cultural exchange did occur between Jew and Christian during the Middle Ages, but paled by comparison with what occurred between 1450 and 1750. Encounters between cultures can be fruitful, but also very painful. Certainly Christian Hebraism had such effects both upon European Jewry, and upon western tradition. One of the most tangible witnesses to the sudden and sustained …

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Additions To Esther, Sidnie White Crawford Jan 2000

Additions To Esther, Sidnie White Crawford

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

The book of Esther is unique in the Old Testament for having three distinct literary editions. Most familiar is that of the Masoretic text (MT), 10 chapters in Hebrew found in all Hebrew Bibles and most English translations. However, two Greek versions of Esther also exist, the Alpha (A) text, a Greek translation of a Hebrew version slightly different from the Masoretic text, and the Septuagint (LXX) Esther, a translation of the Masoretic text that has been altered and expanded enough that it should be considered a separate literary work from the Masoretic text Esther. The Septuagint version is canonical …

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Apocalyptic, Sidnie White Crawford Jan 2000

Apocalyptic, Sidnie White Crawford

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

"Apocalyptic" is an adjective used to describe a broad category of phenomena linked by a similar worldview. It is part of a constellation of terms (apocalypticism, apocalyptic eschatology) derived from the literary genre apocalypse. The genre name "apocalypse" derives from Gk. apokdiypsis ("revelation" or "disclosure"), which occurs in the opening line of the New Testament book of Revelation. This book, the parade example of an apocalypse in early Christian literature, gives its name to the entire genre. The genre itself may be defined as "a genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework, in which a revelation is mediated by …

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Christian Hebrew Printing In The Sixteenth Century: Printers, Humanism And The Impact Of The Reformation, Stephen G. Burnett Jan 2000

Christian Hebrew Printing In The Sixteenth Century: Printers, Humanism And The Impact Of The Reformation, Stephen G. Burnett

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

Christian printers of Hebrew books have long been recognized as a crucial factor in the spread of Christian Hebraism in early modern Europe. Their works have traditionally been listed together with Jewish books in bibliographies such as Moritz Steinschneider's catalogue of books on Hebrew language instruction, and the Bodleian library's collection Hebrew imprints since both contain Hebrew type, but grouping them together also blurs their distinctive features. Yet the business of Hebrew printing for Christians differed in character from Jewish printing in a variety of ways. In this essay I will analyze the geographic distribution of non-Jewish Hebrew printing firms …

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A Dialogue Of The Deaf: Hebrew Pedagogy And Anti-Jewish Polemic In Sebastian Münster's Messiahs Of The Christians And The Jews (1529/39), Stephen G. Burnett Jan 2000

A Dialogue Of The Deaf: Hebrew Pedagogy And Anti-Jewish Polemic In Sebastian Münster's Messiahs Of The Christians And The Jews (1529/39), Stephen G. Burnett

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

The majority of Christian Hebraists during the early years of the Reformation devoted their attention to studying the Hebrew text of the Old Testament and the Hebrew language itself. Heeding the humanist admonition to "return to the sources," Martin Bucer, Konrad Pellikan, and a number of other scholars used their new skills to create a plethora of new Bible translations, biblical commentaries, and linguistic helps. Greater knowledge of Hebrew and Jewish literature also made these scholars aware of Jewish anti-Christian polemics. Jewish biblical commentators such as David Kimhi and the authors of books such as Sefer Nizzahon and Toledot Yesu …

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It Takes A Woman To Play A Real Man: Clara As Hero(Ine) Of Beaumont And Fletcher’S Love’S Cure, Anne Duncan Jan 2000

It Takes A Woman To Play A Real Man: Clara As Hero(Ine) Of Beaumont And Fletcher’S Love’S Cure, Anne Duncan

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

My analysis of Love’s Cure follows Jonathan Dollimore’s distinction between two kinds of transgression to be found in literary artifacts: “humanist transgression” and “transgressive reinscription.” The goal of humanist transgression is to escape or transcend the social/ideological construct it opposes. It anticipates Romantic and idealistic notions of freedom and subjectivity. Modern critics often tend to view humanist transgression as the only “real” transgression; Dollimore cites as an example of this view Linda Woodbridge’s disappointment with the seemingly proto-feminist rhetoric of the Hic Mulier figure. In Woodbridge’s view, Hic Mulier’s assertion of gender equality is undermined by the fact that she …

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Review Of Masada Vi: Yigael Yadin Excavations 1963–1965. Final Reports: Hebrew Fragments From Masada, By Shemaryahu Talmon; And The Ben Sira Scroll From Masada, By Yigael Yadin., Sidnie White Crawford Jan 2000

Review Of Masada Vi: Yigael Yadin Excavations 1963–1965. Final Reports: Hebrew Fragments From Masada, By Shemaryahu Talmon; And The Ben Sira Scroll From Masada, By Yigael Yadin., Sidnie White Crawford

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

This is the sixth volume of the final report of the late Yigael Yadin’s excavations on Masada from 1963-1965. The trustees of Yadin’s literary legacy, the late N. Avigad, J. Amiran, and A. Ben-Tor, are publishing not only the final reports on Masada, but also on Hazor and Nahal Hever. They are to be commended for the fine quality of their work. The present volume includes the publication of the fragmentary Hebrew manuscripts found on Masada, which Yadin entrusted to Prof. Shemaryahu Talmon of the Hebrew University before his death in 1984. These documents include seven biblical manuscripts: one manuscript …

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Review Of: Esther: A Commentary, By Jon D. Levenson, Sidnie White Crawford Jan 1999

Review Of: Esther: A Commentary, By Jon D. Levenson, Sidnie White Crawford

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

Jon Levenson's new commentary on the book of Esther is an excellent addition to the Old Testament Library series. Highly erudite yet accessible, this commentary belongs on the shelves of students, clergy, and professional scholars as well as the serious layperson. Levenson's commentary should become one of the "must-haves" in the field of Esther scholarship, and I highly recommend it.

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The "Rewritten" Bible At Qumran: A Look At Three Texts, Sidnie White Crawford Jan 1999

The "Rewritten" Bible At Qumran: A Look At Three Texts, Sidnie White Crawford

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

Since the discovery of the Qumran scrolls in the late 1940s and 1950s, certain manuscripts of the collection have been described by the term “Rewritten Bible." This grouping has been rather loosely defined, but the criteria for membership in this category include a close attachment, either through narrative or themes, to some book contained in the present Jewish canon of Scripture, and some type of reworking, whether through rearrangement, conflation, or supplementation, of the present canonical biblical text. Thus, works such as Pseudo-Ezekiel or Pseudo-Daniel would be excluded from the category, since, although thematically related to a biblical text (Ezekiel, …

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Review Of Moses: A Life By Jonathan Kirsch, Sidnie White Crawford Jan 1999

Review Of Moses: A Life By Jonathan Kirsch, Sidnie White Crawford

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

Meek and arrogant, mild and unrelentingly harsh, merciful and cruel—Moses is one of the most difficult characters in the Bible. But Jonathan Kirsch, in this readable and well-researched account of Moses the lawgiver, does not shy away from those contradictions; instead, he emphasizes them. In so doing, Kirsch, a book columnist for the Los Angeles Times and also a lawyer, has made accessible one of the great figures of the Bible.

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Review Of The Jewish People In Classical Antiquity: From Alexander To Bar Kochba By John Hayes & Sara Mandell, Sidnie White Crawford Jan 1999

Review Of The Jewish People In Classical Antiquity: From Alexander To Bar Kochba By John Hayes & Sara Mandell, Sidnie White Crawford

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

In the last 50 years, our knowledge of the “classical” period in Judea has been growing by leaps and bounds. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and other archaeological treasures has provided fresh insight into this era of Greek and Roman domination. As a companion volume to A History of Ancient Israel by John Hayes and J. Maxwell Miller (Philadelphia/London: Westminster/SCM, 1986), this book begins where the former volume left off, with Alexander the Great’s conquest of the ancient Near East in 333/332 B.C.E. It concludes two hundred years later with the Jewish defeat in the Second Revolt against …

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The Fluid Bible: The Blurry Line Between Biblical And Nonbiblical Texts, Sidnie White Crawford Jan 1999

The Fluid Bible: The Blurry Line Between Biblical And Nonbiblical Texts, Sidnie White Crawford

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

When the Dead Sea Scrolls were written, no canonical Bible existed. That is, in the two or three centuries before the Roman destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D., there was no one list of sacred books that was considered authoritative. At the same time, there was no clear border between biblical books and nonbiblical books. Rather, different groups of Jews considered different books authoritative, even though all Jews accepted the Torah, or Pentateuch—that is, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The Torah was, after all, the source of the Law, which provided the underpinning of Jewish ritual and daily …

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Roberto Busa, S.J., And The Invention Of The Machine-Generated Concordance, Thomas Nelson Winter Jan 1999

Roberto Busa, S.J., And The Invention Of The Machine-Generated Concordance, Thomas Nelson Winter

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

This is a story from early in the technological revolution, when the application was out searching for the hardware, from a time before the Internet, a time before the PC, before the chip, before the mainframe. From a time even before programming itself.

Tasman's 1957 prophecy was no shot in the dark. His view of the future was a projection from his recent past. Thomas J. Watson, Sr. had assigned him in 1949 to be IBM liaison and support person for a young Jesuit's daring project to produce an index to the complete writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. First, Tasman's …

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Review Of The Dead Sea Scrolls And The Christian Faith, Ed. James H. Charlesworth And Walter P. Weaver, Sidnie White Crawford Dec 1998

Review Of The Dead Sea Scrolls And The Christian Faith, Ed. James H. Charlesworth And Walter P. Weaver, Sidnie White Crawford

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

"Do the Dead Sea Scrolls hinder or undermine Christian faith?" James Charlesworth asks in the preface of this volume. The four essays that follow all answer with a resounding "No!" The annual Faith and Scholarship Colloquy at Florida Southern College serves to bring together leading scholars to address the most challenging topics in contemporary biblical studies in a way that speaks to a Christian lay audience. This volume, the fifth in a series, admirably meets that goal.

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Lady Wisdom And Dame Folly At Qumran, Sidnie White Crawford Sep 1998

Lady Wisdom And Dame Folly At Qumran, Sidnie White Crawford

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

The female figures of Lady Wisdom and Dame Folly, found in the postexilic Wisdom literature, have always attracted much debate and speculation. The questions of who they are and what they stand for, particularly in the case of Lady Wisdom, have been hotly debated. Is she merely a literary creation, driven by the fact that the nouns for wisdom in Hebrew and Greek, חכמה and σοφία, are feminine in gender? Or is she an actual divine figure, a female hypostasis of Yahweh, the god of Israel, indicating a female divine presence in Israelite religion? These debates have yet to be …

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The Regulation Of Hebrew Printing In Germany, 1555-1630: Confessional Politics And The Limits Of Jewish Toleration, Stephen G. Burnett Jun 1998

The Regulation Of Hebrew Printing In Germany, 1555-1630: Confessional Politics And The Limits Of Jewish Toleration, Stephen G. Burnett

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

In the contentious religious and political climate of the German empire between 1555 and 1630, rulers of Lutheran, Reformed, and Catholic cities and territories all agreed that "Jewish blasphemies" were intolerable in a Christian state, yet Jewish printing came to be both legally and politically feasible during these years. This essay examines the German imperial laws that governed the book trade, the religious and political factors that rulers were obliged to weigh when considering whether to allow Jewish printing in their domains, and the policies and safeguards that they could adopt to attenuate these potential risks. In the end, Jewish …

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Review Of The Harlot By The Side Of The Road: Forbidden Tales Of The Bible, By Jonathan Kirsch, Sidnie White Crawford Jun 1998

Review Of The Harlot By The Side Of The Road: Forbidden Tales Of The Bible, By Jonathan Kirsch, Sidnie White Crawford

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

Many modern readers think of the Bible as a "dry and preachy" book, not having much sympathy for the all-too-human passions of sex, violence and greed. In this book, Jonathan Kirsch, author, book columnist for the Los Angeles Times and practicing lawyer, attempts to change that impression, to reveal the Bible's fullness in recounting human complexity. In the process, Kirsch hopes "to take back the Bible from the strict and censorious people who wave it in our faces and to restore it to the worldly man or woman who will appreciate the flesh-and-blood passions that are described in the Holy …

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