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Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

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William Ockham And Trope Nominalism, Stephen E. Lahey Jan 1998

William Ockham And Trope Nominalism, Stephen E. Lahey

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

Can we take a medieval metaphysician out of his scholastic robes and force him into a metaphysical apparatus as seemingly foreign to him as a tuxedo might be? I believe that the terminological and conceptual differences that appear to prevent this can be overcome in many cases, and that one case most amenable to this project is the medieval problem of universals. After all, the problem for the medieval is, at base, the same as it is for contemporary philosophers, as for Plato: How do we account, ontologically, for many tokens of the same type? If one object has the …


How Archaeology Affects The Study Of Texts: Reflections On The Category ''Rewritten Bible" At Qumran, Sidnie White Crawford Jan 1998

How Archaeology Affects The Study Of Texts: Reflections On The Category ''Rewritten Bible" At Qumran, Sidnie White Crawford

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

In recent years, as scholars have begun the long overdue reinvestigation of the archaeology of Khirbet Qumran, the complaint has often been heard that the existence of the texts from the eleven caves surrounding the site of Qumran has affected the archaeological interpretation of the ruins. Would Roland de Vaux, the excavator of Qumran, have identified the ruins as a communal settlement of a particular group of Jews, the Essenes, if he had not been aware of the contents of the scrolls, especially documents such as the Rule of the Community? The question is rhetorical; the answer, of course, is …


Review Of The Scepter And The Star: The Messiahs Of The Dead Sea Scrolls And Other Ancient Literature, Ed. John J. Collins, Sidnie White Crawford Aug 1997

Review Of The Scepter And The Star: The Messiahs Of The Dead Sea Scrolls And Other Ancient Literature, Ed. John J. Collins, Sidnie White Crawford

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

The popularity of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the controversy surrounding their publication have led to the appearance of a spate of books on the Qumran scrolls in recent years. With so many books on the shelves, it is difficult for the reader to differentiate the good from the bad, the wheat from the chaff. Among the books recently published concerning the scrolls, John Collins's book The Scepter and the Star represents a nugget of pure gold.


Wyclif On Rights, Stephen E. Lahey Jan 1997

Wyclif On Rights, Stephen E. Lahey

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

In the study of medieval political philosophy the tendency has been to pay attention to thinkers who appear to have contributed to the birth of the modem. While the value in coming to understand how modem political thought developed is undeniable, this tendency is accompanied by an implicit, perhaps unintentional, devaluation of the study of that which did not contribute as obviously to modernity. In the history of the idea of the natural right scholars have distinguished between the objective and the subjective right, characterizing the subjective right as what lies at the heart of the classically modem and liberal. …


Review Of The Truth About The Virgin: Sex And Ritual In The Dead Sea Scrolls By Ita Sheres And Anne Kohn Blau, Sidnie White Crawford Dec 1996

Review Of The Truth About The Virgin: Sex And Ritual In The Dead Sea Scrolls By Ita Sheres And Anne Kohn Blau, Sidnie White Crawford

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

A book about gender in the Dead Sea Scrolls is long overdue. For many years, the scholarly consensus that Qumran (where the scrolls were found) was inhabited by an isolated Jewish sect of celibate “monks” made the subject of gender, peripheral at best. With that consensus increasingly called into question, more writers are discovering material about women in the scrolls (see, for example, the excellent work of Eileen Schuller). A book that brings this material together is therefore very desirable. Unfortunately, this is not the book.


Has Every Book Of The Bible Been Found Among The Dead Sea Scrolls?, Sidnie White Crawford Oct 1996

Has Every Book Of The Bible Been Found Among The Dead Sea Scrolls?, Sidnie White Crawford

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

It is a commonplace that every book of the Hebrew Bible except Esther has been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Actually, this is true only if you count Ezra-Nehemiah as one book-as, indeed, it is so regarded in Jewish tradition- since only a fragment of Ezra, but not Nehemiah, has been identified. But why not Esther? Some have suggested theological reasons: Esther is not a particularly religious book; it lacks any interest in Judah and its cultic institutions; and it has a sympathetic view toward the gentile King Ahasuerus. Moreover, it is the only book of the Hebrew Bible …


Review Of Methods Of Investigation Of The Dead Sea Scrolls And The Khirbet Qumran Site: Present Realities And Future Prospects, Eds. Michael O. Wise, Norman Golb, John J. Collins, And Dennis G. Pardee., Sidnie White Crawford Jan 1996

Review Of Methods Of Investigation Of The Dead Sea Scrolls And The Khirbet Qumran Site: Present Realities And Future Prospects, Eds. Michael O. Wise, Norman Golb, John J. Collins, And Dennis G. Pardee., Sidnie White Crawford

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

This volume brings together the papers given at a conference on the Dead Sea Scrolls held under the sponsorship of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago and the New York Academy of Sciences in New York December 14–17, 1992. The conference was unusual for an American Dead Sea Scrolls conference, inasmuch as it brought together scholars from the United States and a dozen other countries. This and the fact that the papers cover an extremely broad range of Qumran topics make the volume a valuable addition for college and university libraries and for scholarly reference shelves.


Review Of The Dead Sea Scrolls Today. By James C. Vanderkam., Sidnie White Crawford Jan 1996

Review Of The Dead Sea Scrolls Today. By James C. Vanderkam., Sidnie White Crawford

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

The Dead Sea Scrolls Today is the best of the new “introductions” to the Dead Sea Scrolls which have been published in the last two or three years. The author, James VanderKam, is a senior member of the international publication team working to publish the Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts under the leadership of Emanuel Tov of the Hebrew University, Thus, he is at the forefront of Scroll research. In this volume, VanderKam has used his in timate knowledge of the Scrolls to present the reader with a thorough, scholarly, yet accessible treatment of the major issues surrounding Dead Sea Scroll …


Review Of: Solving The Mysteries Of The Dead Sea Scrolls: New Light On The Bible, By Edward M. Cook, Sidnie White Crawford Apr 1995

Review Of: Solving The Mysteries Of The Dead Sea Scrolls: New Light On The Bible, By Edward M. Cook, Sidnie White Crawford

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

Edward M. Cook's new book makes an excellent addition to the growing list of "introductions" to the Dead Sea Scrolls. Aimed primarily at a Christian lay and clerical audience, it succeeds admirably in leading its readers through the labyrinthine world of Scroll scholarship and controversy. The book divides itself into two uneven parts. In the first part, chapters 1-4, Cook deals with the discovery of the Scrolls in 1947 and the subsequent history of their decipherment and (often delayed) publication. Cook's treatment of this controversial topic is the most fair and evenhanded I have ever read; he has done meticulous …


When Quod Is “Which” And When Quod Is “Because”, Thomas Nelson Winter Mar 1995

When Quod Is “Which” And When Quod Is “Because”, Thomas Nelson Winter

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

“When is quod ‘which’ and when is quod ‘because’?” asked Betsy A. Beacom, intermediate Latin student. Good question, and once alerted to it, even the professor becomes conscious of starting the wrong way with the word sometimes. The obvious answer about relative pronouns and their antecedents has serious shortcomings. Frequently the entire preceding idea is the antecedent and we do not know if the quod will refer to it or tell the why of it; a neuter antecedent is no guarantee of a “which”: sometimes a preceding neuter noun—even immediately preceding—can still leave you with a “because,” as in items …


Three Fragments From Qumran Cave 4 And Their Relationship To The Temple Scroll, Sidnie White Crawford Jul 1994

Three Fragments From Qumran Cave 4 And Their Relationship To The Temple Scroll, Sidnie White Crawford

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

The three fragments presented in this article are part of the cache of manuscript fragments from Cave 4, discovered in 1952. John Strugnell, the original editor, placed these fragments with 4Q365, a manuscript which he named, along with 4Q364, 366, and 367, 4QPentateuchal Paraphrases (now called 4QReworked Pentateuch). The identification of these three fragments with 4Q365 is, however, problematic. Strugnell made his original identification on the basis of similarity between the handwriting of the fragments and 4Q365, and because the contents of the fragments is not incompatible with 4Q365. However, in his editio princeps of the Temple Scroll, Yigael Yadin …


Distorted Mirrors: Antonius Margaritha, Johann Buxtorf And Christian Ethnographies Of The Jews, Stephen G. Burnett Jun 1994

Distorted Mirrors: Antonius Margaritha, Johann Buxtorf And Christian Ethnographies Of The Jews, Stephen G. Burnett

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

Antonius Margaritha's Entire Jewish Faith (1530) and Johann Buxtorf's Jewish Synagogue (1603) were the two most influential Christian ethnographies of the Jews written during the early modern period. Margaritha and Buxtorf were not disinterested ethnographers who sought to provide a balanced and fair appraisal of Jewish life and religion, but were Christians who were violently opposed to Judaism, and their descriptions were to some degree skewed by their theological and social agendas. They criticized Judaism and the Jews from three different perspectives: Judaism as a biblical theology, the social interaction of ordinary Jews and Christians, and Jewry as an order …


Hebrew Censorship In Hanau: A Mirror Of Jewish-Christian Coexistence In Seventeenth-Century Germany, Stephen G. Burnett Jan 1994

Hebrew Censorship In Hanau: A Mirror Of Jewish-Christian Coexistence In Seventeenth-Century Germany, Stephen G. Burnett

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

Hebrew printing was an important channel of cultural and religious expression for the Jews of early modern Europe. Printed service books aided public worship, and works of popular piety, often written in Yiddish or Ladino, enabled “women and ignorant men” to learn the rudiments of halakhic practice. The printing press also made it possible for rabbis to own their own copies of talmudic tractates, responsa collections and books of sermons. Printing helped Sephardic refugees from Spain to maintain their distinctive intellectual and religious identity and some of their traditions in their lands of exile. While printing was a powerful means …


Review Of: The Redaction Of The Books Of Esther: On Reading Composite Texts, By Michael V. Fox., Sidnie White Crawford Jan 1993

Review Of: The Redaction Of The Books Of Esther: On Reading Composite Texts, By Michael V. Fox., Sidnie White Crawford

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

The Redaction of the Books of Esther: On Reading Composite Texts, by Michael V. Fox. SBLMS 40. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991. Pp. x + 195. $29.95118.95 (18.95112.95 member).

Michael Fox's excellent monograph is an exemplary redaction critical study of several witnesses to the book of Esther. The goal of the study, according to the author, is "to advance our understanding of the redactional process in general by studying the development of two particular representatives of the Esther tradition, the AT (Alpha text) and the MT (p. 6). Both of these texts, Fox argues, are redactions of previous works: the …


Calvin’S Jewish Interlocutor: Christian Hebraism And Anti-Jewish Polemics During The Reformation, Stephen G. Burnett Jan 1993

Calvin’S Jewish Interlocutor: Christian Hebraism And Anti-Jewish Polemics During The Reformation, Stephen G. Burnett

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

The nature of Calvin’s tractate Reponse to questions and objections of a certain Jew (Ad quaestiones et obiecta Judaei cuiusdam responsio) has long been a matter of some dispute among Calvin scholars. The nineteenth-century editors of Calvin’s works considered the book to be “meager and weak,” no doubt assuming that Calvin was responsible for composing both the questions and answers. In the twentieth century, scholars have been more inclined to see some evidence of an actual dispute between a Jew and a Christian in the book. Most notably Salo Baron suggested that the work reflects an exchange that Josel of …


Maimonides And Analogy, Stephen E. Lahey Jan 1993

Maimonides And Analogy, Stephen E. Lahey

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

Does the predication of a relation between two things imply that each of the relata have attributes predicable as well? In Volume I, Ch. 52 of The Guide of the Perplexed, Maimonides discusses this, and he seems to imply that it does. I will argue, using Aristotle’s discussion of relativity as a predicate in Bk. 5, Ch. 15 of Metaphysics, that it does not, and I shall use this to discuss the consequent improved utility of an analogy Maimonides constructs between God and creatures in I.53. To do this, I shall need to recount a logic of analogy for Maimonides …


Three Deuteronomy Manuscripts From Cave 4, Qumran, Sidnie White Crawford Jan 1993

Three Deuteronomy Manuscripts From Cave 4, Qumran, Sidnie White Crawford

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

The purpose of this article is to present three hitherto unpublished manuscripts (part of the twenty-one Deuteronomy manuscripts from Cave 4, Qumran): 4QDta, 4QDtd, and 4QDtg. These three manuscripts are placed together in this article because each has a particular feature of interest: 4QDta is the oldest of the Cave 4 Deuteronomy manuscripts; 4QDtd contains a very defective orthography; and 4QDtg presents a text identical to that of the Masoretic text. In the body of the article, each manuscript is presented separately, beginning with a description of the physical characteristics of each manuscript. This description is followed by a complete …


In The Steps Of Jael And Deborah: Judith As Heroine, Sidnie White Crawford May 1992

In The Steps Of Jael And Deborah: Judith As Heroine, Sidnie White Crawford

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

Judith is one of the most memorable characters in Hebrew literature. In a remarkable story of courage and resourcefulness, she saves her people by one single action that is both compelling and repugnant. Leading female characters are rare enough in Israelite literature to be constantly compared with one another, and Judith has often been likened to Miriam, Deborah, Jael, the wise women of Tekoa and Abelbeth-Maacah, and Esther. And this is not an exhaustive list! I would like to argue that the comparison to Jael and Deborah is neither superficial nor coincidental, but that the author of Judith had the …


4q364 & 365: A Preliminary Report, Sidnie White Crawford Jan 1992

4q364 & 365: A Preliminary Report, Sidnie White Crawford

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

4Q364 and 365, part of the group of compositions (4Q364, 365, 366 and 367) provisionally entitled 4Q Pentateuchal Paraphrases, are part of the lot of Qumran manuscripts originally assigned to John Strugnell for publication. Strugnell, in 1989, asked me to join my colleague, Professor Emanuel Tov of the Hebrew University, in preparing these manuscripts for publication. This paper serves as an introduction and first statement on these manuscripts.

4Q364 and 365 are preserved on 20 plates of material, which contain about 150 fragments of text. The fragments range in size from two columns, preserving 15 lines, to fragments containing no …


Response To "New Documents: Qumran And Gnostic Writings" By Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Jr., Sidnie White Crawford Jan 1991

Response To "New Documents: Qumran And Gnostic Writings" By Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Jr., Sidnie White Crawford

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

In my response, I will discuss three points raised by Professor Fitzmyer: the identification of the Qumran sect as the Essenes, Jerome Murphy-O’Connor’s hypothesis of the Babylonian origins of the Qumran sect, and the impact of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls on Old Testament textual criticism.

I would suggest that the group of Jews who inhabited Qumran may have evolved over time, from a group with deep roots in Palestinian Judaism, who split with other Jews over such disputed things as law and calendar, to a sect with highly developed doctrines of, for example, predestination and angelology, which …


The All Souls Deuteronomy And The Decalogue, Sidnie White Crawford Jun 1990

The All Souls Deuteronomy And The Decalogue, Sidnie White Crawford

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

4QDtn, the All Souls Deuteronomy, is the best-preserved of all the Deuteronomy manuscripts from Cave 4, Qumran. A photograph and partial translation of the manuscript were published by Frank Moore Cross in 1969 in the catalogue "Scrolls from the Wilderness of the Dead Sea." The manuscript consists of four complete columns and two partially damaged columns. Columns 2-6 are one continuous sheet of leather, with a sewn edge on col. 2. Column 1 has two sewn edges and was originally attached to the beginning of col. 2 (the columns were separated in the process of restoration). The manuscript was well …


The Place Of Archery In Greek Warfare, Thomas Nelson Winter Feb 1990

The Place Of Archery In Greek Warfare, Thomas Nelson Winter

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

Despite the ancient Greek equivalent of an Agincourt, the Greek military mind firmly retained the heavy infantry, rather than the archers, as the main force. Recognized uses of the archer in Greek warfare were to fend off heights of city walls, to perform commando raids, and to provide covering fire for commando-style operations. This essay, written after a fresh reading of the principle Greek historians, puts together all passages where one can see the ancient Greek archer at work and in his military setting.


The Roman Road To Reading Latin, Thomas Nelson Winter Oct 1983

The Roman Road To Reading Latin, Thomas Nelson Winter

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

Keynote address, Nebraska Junior Classical League convention, May 2, 1981.

Can you learn to read Latin better than a Roman? Well, if you study how the Romans learned to read, you can't but observe this: we do have advantages over them. One of them is exemplified by this convention: I didn't know these meetings were so much fun. This is ludus. Ludus was, of course, the Roman word for 'fun,' for 'game,' or 'play.' And it also meant school, and that was a puzzle the Romans could never figure out. They knew better: school was serious, school was earnest: 'discipline' …


The Heuristics Of Julius Caesar's Potentially Ambiguous Case-Endings, Thomas Nelson Winter Jan 1983

The Heuristics Of Julius Caesar's Potentially Ambiguous Case-Endings, Thomas Nelson Winter

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

If a computer is trying to translate Latin into English, what can it possibly do with the dative and ablative plurals, which are all identical? Or, if the text is prose and lacks the long marks, what is it to do with all those pesky first declension -a ’s?
            These are human problems, too, for we have all had the experience of having to slow down while we tried out the different possibilities on a final -a. So what’s good for the computer is also good for the human’s Latin reading speed, and the human’s appreciation of good …


Roman Concrete: The Ascent, Summit, And Decline Of An Art, Thomas Nelson Winter Sep 1979

Roman Concrete: The Ascent, Summit, And Decline Of An Art, Thomas Nelson Winter

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

The evidence of the surviving literature and structure provides this chronology for the development of concrete: Fronto dates for us, by naming consuls, two aqueducts utterly devoid of concrete at 312 and 272 B.C. From Cato, who died in 149 B.C., we can discern that (a) concrete has now become the normal foundation for building, (b) limeburning is now an established trade, and (c) his recipe for cement is primitive-—even medieval—-and non-hydraulic. The year 140 saw the opening of the Marcian Aqueduct, its water-channel lined in non-hydraulic cement. Vitruvius, ca. 25 B.C., describes different cement formulations for different purposes, even …


The Direction Of Vergil's Weather, Thomas Nelson Winter Jan 1979

The Direction Of Vergil's Weather, Thomas Nelson Winter

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

The first question one must ask of a work of literary art is purpose. Once the purpose is clear, the method of construction can be seen, and the workmanship better evaluated. There is no better shortcut to an author's purpose in construction than to see where he ends: He has total control over where his words go. Presuming a planning author rather than an automatic amanuensis, which school of writing has its adherents, one has as a corollary a literary law: if X is where the author arrived, X is where he intended to go, meditating all the while on …


Review. Ralph Marcellino, The Greek Anthology, Selected Epigrams, Thomas Nelson Winter Jun 1977

Review. Ralph Marcellino, The Greek Anthology, Selected Epigrams, Thomas Nelson Winter

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

Ralph Marcellino has hidden, for all but classicists, a long series of meticulously polished rhymed verse in the Classical Bulletin and the Classical Outlook. Bobbs Merrill published his Martial: Selected Epigrams (a ne plus ultra, in my judgment) in 1968. This winter, he has, on his own, published a chapbook of some sixty‐five poems from the Greek Anthology.


“Did The Romans Really Talk Like That ?”, Thomas Nelson Winter Mar 1977

“Did The Romans Really Talk Like That ?”, Thomas Nelson Winter

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

Each of the two high school Latin teachers working with me this past summer asked me how to handle such a question as I have used for the title. It gets around to the case-endings: did they really have to listen for them to understand conversational Latin, or weren’t they really talking much more simply than got written in the books? The answer is perhaps a bit disappointing for the student who wants to be reassured that the ancient Romans were really speaking English.

The evidence is architectural as well as literary. Surprisingly enough, the best and firmest answer lies …


Emetics Illustrated: A Review Of C. R. Beye, Ancient Greek Literature And Society, Thomas Nelson Winter Dec 1976

Emetics Illustrated: A Review Of C. R. Beye, Ancient Greek Literature And Society, Thomas Nelson Winter

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

C. R. Beye, Ancient Greek Literature and Society, Anchor, 1975.

The book attempts a synthesis of several areas: the Homeric (a recap of Beyeʹs earlier Iliad, Odyssey and Epic Tradition, with some other material), forty pages of good background material on fifth‐century Athens, Herodotus and Thucydides, Tragedy (including Euripides), Comedy (also including Euripides. Justly, I think), and, for the sake of the contrast, Professor Beye includes the Alexandrian literature, a good choice. Plato, though aptly fitted into the warp of the warp and woof of fifth‐century Athens, is otherwise deliberately omitted, another good choice. The Attic Orators are also consciously …


The Strategy That Gave Independence To The U.S., Thomas Nelson Winter Nov 1976

The Strategy That Gave Independence To The U.S., Thomas Nelson Winter

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

We celebrate this year our nation's "birthday," but 1976 is also the bicentennial of what General Washington, a master of understatement, as well as, as we shall see, a master of strategy, called an "unhappy predicament." The commander-in-chief's solution to the predicament was the strategy that won the war, and put the United States on the way towards being a real country. This solution was the thoroughgoing adoption of Fabian strategy. Looking into what this was, and how Washington made it work, permits a better appreciation of Washington's real stature in military history.