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Most academic study of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament in North America has been done from a White European or North American perspective. Post-graduate schools have predominantly required students to read works written by White authors, and the vast majority of professors are White. However, the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament also has a long history of interpretation by non-White and Majority World thinkers, and their contributions need to be more widely acknowledged and employed in studying the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. This article surveys the contributions of Black Hebrew Bible/Old Testament scholars on the book of Exodus. Black scholars employ a variety of methods and approaches as they engage with the biblical text. We consider these approaches by category, beginning with textual criticism and translation before exploring works that focus on Africa in the Bible, those that draw on African or African American context, and those that highlight issues of gender or the perspectives of liberation theology. We conclude with those employing multi-faceted or integrative approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to Leviticus 7:12–15, the sacrifice of thanksgiving involved three kinds of unleavened bread (Lev 7:12), and prohibited anyone from leaving any of its flesh until morning (Lev 7:15). This article proposes that this dual requirement was intended to provide a symbolic link to the Passover meal (Exod 12:8–10), which acknowledged God's salvation of his people from bondage and slavery. This symbolic significance is confirmed through an examination of the use of the term »the sacrifice of thanksgiving« in the Psalter, in which the thanksgiving offering usually serves as a response to God's rescue from distress and as an expression of praise for God's salvation. This comparison aids our understanding of the symbolic significance of the thanksgiving offering in relation to the remembrance of the Exodus event. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider the category of “paschality”, introduced into Russian literature studies by Ivan Esaulov, in Anton Chekhov’s tale “In the Ravine”. In Russia, Easter is celebrated more solemnly than Christmas. According to I. Esaulov, this makes people give greater importance to life in Heaven and makes them ready to suffer and die in order to receive it. We recognize that the category of “paschality” can be fruitful for literature studies and, in particular, for the interpretation of Chekhov’s tale. Yet, we propose to amend it. We disagree with I. Esaulov’s opinion that giving a key importance to Easter distinguishes Russian Orthodoxy from the Christian West. But, first and foremost, we think that the paschal spirituality of the New Testament should not be juxtaposed neither to the Pascha (Passover, Exodus) of the Hebrew Bible, nor to the crucial role the New Testament gives to the Christmas mystery of the Incarnation. Instead, the paschal mystery should rather be seen as the continuation and fulfillment of both. This kind of “paschality” complements the social criticism of the tale “In the Ravine” and gives it a deeper sense. The horror described in “In the Ravine”, which reaches its culmination in the little child’s murder, is both exacerbated and softened by allusions to Christ’s birth and to Our Lady. Besides, due to references to the salvation of little Moses and the newborn Jesus, even ex negativo the tale alludes to Lipa’s and her fellow workers’ future salvation and liberation.

The question of how God works is one which many struggle with. While this is especially true in the case of the issue of creation with respect to Genesis 1, it really is a broader issue relating to any intervention of God into the physical realm, especially with regard to human affairs. While readers of this journal generally assume that God can intervene in the space-time continuum, this study begins with a reminder of why the Christian view is that He can. It observes that these interventions are given a generic name of 'miracles,' and then reviews the nature of miracles focusing on examples of Biblical descriptions of events that are presented specifically as miracles by the Biblical author. This is followed by an evaluation of the terminology used in Genesis 1 to describe the original creation event and why Biblically speaking it must be viewed as miraculous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Ciencias Sociales (13159518) is the property of Revista de Ciencias Sociales de la Universidad del Zulia Venezuela and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This essay focuses on Eric Santner's psychoanalytic reinterpretation of the crucial symbol of Judaism – yetziat mitzrayim, the getting out of Egypt – as "the Exodus out of our own Egyptomania." Formulated in his book on Rosenzweig and Freud, On the Psychotheology of Everyday Life, it appears in all Santner's later works concerned with political theology, where "Egyptomania" stands for everything that overburdens human life with an excessive "signifying stress" or "ex-citation," weighing it down with the impossible demands of the ultimate metaphysical self-justification and the interpellating call to sublimity. Contrary to Hegel's definition of Judaism as "the religion of the sublime," Santner consequently champions the opposite view, according to which the Abrahamic revelation forms the first religion of radical desublimation that blocks the vertical transport into the extraordinary "beyond" and focuses instead on the immanent transcendence as the radical otherness of the neighbour/stranger in the world. The Exodus, therefore, is to be understood not as an exit out of the world, following the call of the otherworldly God, but precisely the other way round: as an exit of the Egyptomaniac metaphysical paralysis, where "Egypt" represents an impasse of the self-negating life which cannot tolerate its finite condition and invents a sublime alibi in a false promise of immortality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article deals with the way in which the "theological" as the question of the Biblical G-d's involvement in the world, as in the Talmuds, and in light of Heidegger's thought about forgetting and forgetfulness (Verborgenheit and Vergessenheit), becomes a political question about the attitude of the Jew and Israel toward the Heimat. In Heidegger, forgetting is about beings hiding from the view rather than about a psychological or "subjective" process to which forgetting has been reduced in modernity. The Heimat hides from the persons' life, no matter how strongly the persons strive for their Heimat "subjectively" or politically, Heidegger argues. The essay further detects a residual modernity and subjectivism in Heidegger's concession to forgetting as only a secondary operation, a loss, in comparison to the primary, "authentic" relationship to the Heimat, which, for him, one can and should hope for. That residual modern subjectivity in Heidegger enables and necessitates a comparison with the roles forgetting plays in relationships between G-d, Israel, and the Land in the two Talmuds as, similarly to Heidegger, dealing with and working against forgetting, if not Being, then the Law of the mutual obligations between G-d and Israel. The resulting analysis distills a conundrum in the Palestinian rabbis. Delivery on Israel's obligations towards G-d conditions Israel's arrival to the Land, that is to say Israel's fully successful exodus from Egypt. Yet, any clear memory of, and delivery on, these obligations, i.e., any humanly delivered testament to the law of G-d, constitutes an acute danger of forgetting masked as a would-be-certitude in the "memory" of the would-be-original law. Regaining the status of a full-fledged, never-tamed primordial power in relationships between G-d and Israel, forgetting, in the Palestinian rabbinic thought, undermines the deployment of logos as a way to formulate the Law fully. Letting the G-d in the world, logos however proves prone to reducing G-d to (a) theos, thus drawing the G-d into disappearance and forgetting. Such a counter-current to the copulation of theos with logos, the primordial power of forgetting operates even before any memory captured in words and images becomes possible. Arriving from antiquity to modernity, this counter-current continues to operate despite the currently prevalent demotion of forgetting to a subjective political act of a person or nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1 Thess 4:14 Paul has often been understood to teach that dead believers, who have been in heaven, will return to earth with Christ at the parousia. Others understand it of believers being transported to heaven. This article proposes a fresh understanding of the passage, informed by the OT and Second Temple background of God leading his people out of the realm of death and into life in his presence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ancient texts dedicating or commemorating temples that can be associated with archaeological remains such as architecture and inscriptions, along with identifiable kings who built or commemorated those temples and the specification of the elapsed number of years from a past event, are known from Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Levant over the span of several centuries. Although the texts originate from differing religious, cultural, and geographic contexts and were recorded on various mediums, the similarity in content, style, and objective indicates a shared tradition and allows the grouping of these texts into a distinctive category. These temple construction and dedication texts document a king or kings involved in the construction, reconstruction, or remembrance of a temple, a deity with whom the temple was connected, the location of the temple, and the specific number of years elapsed between construction or dedication and another significant cultural or religious event. Known examples come from Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Phoenicia, and Israel, spanning the 13th to the 2nd centuries BC, along with a text from ancient Rome that was likely influenced by this practice. Because the kings named are known from various historical documents and inscriptions, archaeological remains related to the temples have often been recovered; since the construction or dedication texts record elapsed years in reference to another event, these texts can be analyzed in regard to their viability as sources for the history and chronology of the ancient Near East in the context of religion and official records of the state. Investigation of these texts alongside king lists and temples reveals that temple construction and dedication texts of the ancient Near East that included mention of elapsed years provide valuable, detailed, and accurate information that can be used to identify the existence of ancient temples in time, corroborate periods of kingship or other important events, and contribute to understanding a method of historical chronology used by the ancients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A society is significantly shaped by the myths it perpetuates. These myths serve as lenses for how its people see and make sense of the world around them. Myths, particularly origin myths like Enuma Elish, offer a perspective on the world that legitimates the way a society structures itself and responds to crisis, as opposing forces threaten to undermine its conception of order. This essay proposes to read Psalm 46 against the backdrop of Israel's own origin myths which undergird and shape their own conceptions of order and in Psalm 46 are called to mind to bolster hope in the midst of crisis. This is argued on the basis of numerous literary parallels with the so-called 'Song of the Sea' in Exodus and the creation accounts in Genesis. In addition, parallels with First Isaiah suggest the likelihood of Sennacherib's siege of Jerusalem as the crisis to which the psalmist responds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will scrutinize the politics of border construction in Assam through the lens of Border Studies and Memory Studies. The unique geo-political location of Assam vis-à-vis its crisis of identity and belonging as a result of the 1947 Partition, makes it a complex site of study. My scrutiny of the literary and cultural memory of this region will be based on a comparative reading of a selection of short fiction entitled Barbed Wire Fence: Stories Of Displacement From The Barak Valley Of Assam (2012) by Nirmal Kanti Bhattacharjee and Dipendu Das, and Debendranath Acharya's Assamese novel Jangam on the 1942 Indo-Burmese exodus (Sahitya Akademi award, 1984). My intervention is driven by the persistent need to deconstruct the 1947 Partition as a monolithic history of violence and disruption, and to draw attention to the many instances where multiple borders and multiple forms of disenfranchisement took place. The texts that I am close-reading, focus on such similar histories of disjuncture that shaped the history of Assam vis-à-vis issues of bodies, citizenship, and gender. Using news articles and commentaries from 2019 to 2022, I will subsequently connect the traumatic events surrounding the 1942 exodus and the 1947 Partition to the current state apparatuses that are using biomarkers to discriminate against perceived others and eliminate them from the protection of the nation-state. I will connect the past trauma with the insecurities and (im)possibilities that have cropped up surrounding the implementation of a Citizenship Amendment Bill, and creation of a National Register of Citizens (NRC). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The architectural image of the Jewish portable sanctuary is the problem framework of the paper. The conviction that the sacred tabernacle, as a work of God, is a complete work of art leads to a search for starting points to discover the uniqueness of its in-depth structure. The research established two: the first is the preparation of an authentic architectural scheme of the Jewish portable sanctuary as a basis for compositional analyses. The second is dictated by the determination of the possible presence of a compositional tools which manifests itself mainly in the use of proportions. The perceptible richness of the presence of almost the entire range of harmonic proportions is revealed in the texts discussed. Their abundance and affinity dispel the suspicion of accidental presence in the underlying tissue of the architectural image of the portable sanctuary. They rather point to the enviable building skills of the priestly elite and their concern to protect this knowledge from the uninitiated.

This article explains 'the glory of God' in the context of two Biblical claims seemingly at odds with each other: God does not share divine glory with humans, and God does share divine glory with them. The article offers a resolution of the apparent conflict on the basis of a Biblical conception of divine glory as inexhaustible perfect goodness that could, in principle, be shared in two ways: with human controlling ownership over its nature and value, and without such ownership. It finds widely neglected importance of divine glory in relation to voluntary human cooperation with God in sharing in it, without controlling ownership. As a result, divine perfect (defect-free) goodness inhabits a context of imperfection in human moral defects. The article explains that this context does not preclude divine glory but can advance its value and salience. It also finds the Apostle Paul and the author of John's Gospel to agree on a voluntary human role in sharing in divine glory and on a central role of this sharing in God's salvific 'gospel of glory'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Japanese occupation in 1942 compelled Dutch scientists to depart from Indonesia or face imprisonment as prisoners of war. The Allied victory led to the liberation of captive scientists and encouraged Dutch scientists to return to Indonesia. This article aims to analyse and describe: (1) the process of Dutch scientists’ reentry to Indonesia in 1945 to 1949 and 1950 to 1959 and (2) the factors that caused the departure of Dutch scientists from Indonesia from 1949 to 1959. The archives at the National Archives of the Republic of Indonesia (ANRI) and the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) are used as sources for this article. Dutch scientists are discussed more extensively since they were the most impacted by the dynamics of Indonesian nationalism. In 1945 to 1949, Dutch scientists had more opportunities than their Indonesian counterparts. However, the Dutch, including their scientists, were obliged to leave Indonesia in 1949 following the Konferensi Meja Bundar agreement. The exodus of Dutch scientists prompted the government to recruit scientists from various countries to fill vacant positions from 1950 to 1959. Nevertheless, bureaucratic inefficiency, different regulations regarding the supervision of foreigners and the emergence of anti-foreign sentiment in an unstable social, political and economic situation encouraged foreign scientists to return to their homeland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Strategic Universe Journal / Univers Strategic is the property of Dimitrie Cantemir Christian University, Institute for Security Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Decalogue (2 Kings 20:1-17), even we may not be aware of it, points out to the rights of the Israelites and today Christians in relation to God and man in other words. Everyone has the right not to be subordinated to another god except for Jehovah, and they must not be forced to misuse His name. A person has a right to a day of rest, and aging parents have a right to respect and care from their adult son. A person has the right to the inviolability and protection of his life, as well as the inviolability of his marriage and the guarantee of the legitimacy of his offspring. A person has the right to the protection of private property and to the truthful testimony of others in court. A man has the right to protect his wife and his property. It is a very important, constantly valid biblical-historical direction, which contains basic rules, given to humanity for a quality and valuable life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between secularity and religion/religiosity is a main topic of practical theol­ogy and ecclesiastical pastoral care. However, several research papers on religious studies show that the thesis that with disappearing institutionalized religiosity, plural and differentiated forms of religiosity increase is not convincing. In fact, the development shows that where people do not experience religion, it becomes irrelevant to them. This fact is an urgent question for the Church: With and from which basic attitude can and will she be able to encounter religious and secular people in such ways that the Christian gospel of human emancipation and redemption can become a reality in their lives? The Church can real­ize such a fundamental attitude in reference to the biblical Exodus and by generating a pastoral exodus.

The article deals with the way in which the “theological” as the question of the Biblical G-d’s involvement in the world, as in the Talmuds, and in light of Heidegger’s thought about forgetting and forgetfulness (Verborgenheit and Vergessenheit), becomes a political question about the attitude of the Jew and Israel toward the Heimat. In Heidegger, forgetting is about beings hiding from the view rather than about a psychological or “subjective” process to which forgetting has been reduced in modernity. The Heimat hides from the persons’ life, no matter how strongly the persons strive for their Heimat “subjectively” or politically, Heidegger argues. The essay further detects a residual modernity and subjectivism in Heidegger’s concession to forgetting as only a secondary operation, a loss, in comparison to the primary, “authentic” relationship to the Heimat, which, for him, one can and should hope for. That residual modern subjectivity in Heidegger enables and necessitates a comparison with the roles forgetting plays in relationships between G-d, Israel, and the Land in the two Talmuds as, similarly to Heidegger, dealing with and working against forgetting, if not Being, then the Law of the mutual obligations between G-d and Israel. The resulting analysis distills a conundrum in the Palestinian rabbis. Delivery on Israel’s obligations towards G-d conditions Israel’s arrival to the Land, that is to say Israel’s fully successful exodus from Egypt. Yet, any clear memory of, and delivery on, these obligations, i.e., any humanly delivered testament to the law of G-d, constitutes an acute danger of forgetting masked as a would-be-certitude in the “memory” of the would-be-original law. Regaining the status of a full-fledged, never-tamed primordial power in relationships between G-d and Israel, forgetting, in the Palestinian rabbinic thought, undermines the deployment of logos as a way to formulate the Law fully. Letting the G-d in the world, logos however proves prone to reducing G-d to (a) theos, thus drawing the G-d into disappearance and forgetting. Such a counter-current to the copulation of theos with logos, the primordial power of forgetting operates even before any memory captured in words and images becomes possible. Arriving from antiquity to modernity, this counter-current continues to operate despite the currently prevalent demotion of forgetting to a subjective political act of a person or nation.

With nearly 800 references to ruaḥ and pneuma in Christian scripture, it is a consequential task to distil the scriptural uses of these words into themes that can unite them in a coherent summary. After a discussion of terminology, with particular attention to ruaḥ and pneuma in cosmology and anthropology, this article explores three key themes. The first – the spirit and the sanctity of life – demonstrates that ruaḥ is never mere breath or wind but rather God’s spirit-wind in the world and spirit-breath within human beings. The second – the spirit, wisdom, and the interpretation of scripture – explains that biblical authors attributed wisdom and, eventually, an inspired interpretation of scripture to the spirit. The third theme – the spirit and the origin of pneumatology – explains how the earliest understanding of the spirit as an agent is found in Hag 2:4–5 and Isa 63:7–14, both of which portray the spirit as an agent of the exodus; therefore, the origin of pneumatology – understanding the spirit as an agent rather than an impersonal power – lies within the literature of Israel.

The article presents the current state of knowledge about the creation of the Pentateuch. The oldest traditions contained in it are the covenant code (VIII B.C.), the core of the exodus traditions and the core of patriarchal traditions (specially the tradition of Jacob), dating back to the early period of the monarchy (IX/VIII B.C.). The next stage in the creation of this work is the Deuteronomistic school with the code of the covenant worked out by it (Deuteronomistic code, the second half of VII century B.C) and priestly school (late 6th century B.C.). The exodus tradition (+ Moses) and the patriarchal tradition developed independently at first. The first connection is attributed either to the priestly school (after the Babylonian exile) or the non-priestly/(post) Deuteronomistic (in the final period of the monarchy or during the exile). In the current debate considerable importance is attached to the so-called editors, who did not glue existing texts together, but broke them up and created them, presenting in them their own concepts and theological view.

In this article, I argue that Josiah's death in 2 Chronicles 35 offers a significant and intentional departure from its Vorlage (2 Kings 23) through an evocative presentation of Josiah's death redolent of other kings with dubious legacies. I consider methodologies for identifying allusion in late texts that demonstrate substantial awareness and engagement with pentateuchal materials. Those methodological reflections are then used to establish the allusions the Chronicler constructs to connect Josiah to the pharaoh of Exodus and other notorious monarchs from the Deuteronomistic History. These allusions, I contend, function as a form of memory work intended to (re)construct identity in the postexilic period. The Chronicler uses this technique to create a more thorough sense of narrative continuity at a relatively late point in the history--both in terms of textual composition and the history of the literary fabula--of the Chronicler's story. In this way, the Chronicler does not seek to replace or rewrite the Deuteronomistic Vorlage, but rather to refract--or contrafact--the Chronicler's self-reflexive rendering of previous events in order to create a more instructive reading of Israel's past for the Second Temple period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Miriam plays a disproportionate role in the literary design of Exodus because she strategically participates in both major rescue operations. She witnesses the rescue of her brother Moses as well as the rescue of the Israelite nation from Pharaoh's oppressive regime in Egypt. The stories about her in Exodus provide a frame for these acts of deliverance. Her song also functions prophetically; as the sister of Aaron, she, too, functions as Moses's spokesperson and calls upon Israel to respond faithfully. This article counters current scholarship (R. Burns and R. Hawkins) by providing a better explanation of Miriam's namelessness in chapter 2 and her prophetic activity in chapter 15. It engages with G. Janzen's assessment that the song of Miriam is analeptic, occurring before Moses's longer version of the song. Her rebellion story in Num 12 and the prophet Micah's recognition of her leadership role alongside Moses and Aaron both suggest that Miriam was highly revered and deeply loved. Literarily, she bears witness to God's saving work and calls upon readers to respond in celebration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding spirituality as "the sense or experience of God and the way one lives in response to that experience", Jesus' spirituality according to Mark may be described as relational and communal, with less attention given to the interior spiritual lives of individuals in favor of a way of relating to "all nations and all people" as beloved children of God which can renew all creation. Mark shows Jesus shaped by the experience of the God of the Exodus, Isaiah, and Daniel so that when he announced that "The Kingdom of God has drawn near", he was proclaiming the fulfillment of the promises of this God. Furthermore, Mark shows Jesus living into this fulfillment, not merely saying it. The result is his teaching and modeling a renewing way of living among his followers, which dismantles hierarchies in favor of welcome, service, justice, etc., and enables resistance to Roman oppression without violence and death. He called followers to see how powerful this renewal of God is. When Rome recognized its power and turned their violence against him, he continued on "the Way of the Lord", trusting in resurrection and God's life-giving power. Thus, Mark presents Jesus as demonstrating a life-filled, communal spirituality of renewal for his followers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite being one of the earliest Middle-earth texts and a central component of the legendarium, J.R.R. Tolkien's Fall of Gondolin has received far less attention than the tale deserves. Building upon the works of David Greenman, Bruce Alexander, and Austin Freeman and their studies comparing The Fall of Gondolin to Virgil's Aeneid as well as Tom Shippey's monograph, The Road to Middle-earth, this article seeks to expand current scholarship surrounding The Fall of Gondolin by the examination of Exodus, as both a Medieval and religious text, as a potential source for the narrative structure, characters, and themes found in Tolkien's Fall of Gondolin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The book of Exodus and the exodus event are reactualized and recontextualized in subsequent biblical books. Indeed, the Israelites developed a virtual ‘exodus grammar’ when talking about their liberation from the Egyptians. The New Testament literature appeals to the founding event as well; in fact, of the numerous references in the New Testament to Old, the exodus event is the third most frequently cited, trailing only behind the prophet Isaiah and the Psalms. This is no mere repetition, no base recapitulation. Rather, the exodus event is taken up, transformed, eschatologized, and ultimately repackaged.

This article examines Philo’s philosophical interpretation of the three theophanies in Exodus, which would, centuries later, continue to be considered by the great thinkers responsible for developing negative theology, such as Gregory of Nyssa and Dionysius the Areopagite. Although Exod 33:11 clearly states that the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as if someone were to speak to his own friend, according to Philo, the lawgiver neither saw the face of God, nor learned the proper name of God, nor was he able to comprehend the essence of God. These very statements became the inspiration for later apophaticism. The present article seeks to establish to what extent Philo’s theses were influenced by Plato’s philosophy or by later Middle Platonism, and to what extent Philo, by commenting allegorically on the Pentateuch, becomes the initiator of new ideas hitherto unknown in philosophical discourse. In the course of the analyses, three great questions of apophatic theology are discussed: 1. the unnameability of God; 2. the unknowability of God’s essence; and 3. the knowability of God’s nature by grace.

This study provides a conceptual and empirical explanation of how and why the leadership of Republika Srpska (RS), which is one of the entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, formed a specific discourse concerning the flight of Sarajevan Serbs after the 1992–1995 war. Undertaking an analysis of local media, it explores the 'defensive' and 'cohesive' strategies promulgated by the RS elite that have been pivotal in shaping the idea of Serbhood. The former accentuates victimhood through discursive dimensions of external enforcement, suffering and rupture. The latter channels a sense of collective identity and the notion of 'statehood' in RS through narratives of sacrifice and patriotism. These strategies help to advance the concept of Serbhood to counter the war's external near‐hegemonic understanding, fuelling denialism and promoting in‐group characteristics in the RS society. The legacy of the flight has contributed to moulding the political memory of RS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that in the three instances in Luke-Acts where the phrase 'And suddenly, two men...' occurs, Luke 9, Luke 24 and Acts 1, the author expects us to understand that these men are Moses and Elijah, who are named in the first occurrence at the Transfiguration. This interpretation makes literary, audience expectation, and theological sense, creating a deeper understanding of the significance of the two prophets for the proclamation of the resurrection and the mission of the Church. It is argued that the interpretation that the 'two men' are 'angels,' like Gabriel, does not pay sufficient attention to the details of the text and reads across an understanding that the 'men' are 'angels' from Luke 24 to Acts 1 without warrant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The giving of the Torah at Sinai is the cornerstone of Jewish faith in divine revelation. Yet the account in the book of Exodus (19–20) is riddled with questionable descriptions that have puzzled commentators and exegetes from early midrash onward. In the early twentieth century, Hermann Cohen (1842–1918) and Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929) attempted to reconcile the advent of modern philosophy with the bequeathal of Jewish tradition. From their viewpoint, Ex 19–20 raised epistemological difficulties and was fraught with questionable ontological assertions. Yet, since revelation, premised on its classic Jewish formulations, was central to the thought of Cohen and Rosenzweig alike, Sinai could neither be ignored nor silenced; it had to be accommodated. This essay traces the interpretive strategies Cohen and Rosenzweig employed to construct philosophical conceptions of revelation grounded in biblical prooftexts. A close reading of Cohen's The Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism and Rosenzweig's The Star of Redemption shows that by choosing alternative biblical prooftexts (Cohen: Deuteronomy; Rosenzweig: Song of Songs), they endorsed the historical impact of Sinai on the Jewish idea of revelation without accepting it as a historically verifiable event. The essay suggests that the reliance of the two philosophers on rabbinic literature to complete their interpretive strategies is the most subtle and illuminating aspect of their reception of Sinaitic revelation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historians have long demarcated between the public, political, and economic writings of revolutionary socialist Rosa Luxemburg and her personal affinity for plants and animals. This article, however, discovers and articulates a Luxemburgian ecosocialism across her work. This paper argues that Luxemburg interpreted nature as possessing its own order that resists the imposition of capitalist and imperialist (dis)orders. Luxemburgian ecosocialism, therefore, lies between the appreciation of beauty one finds in the Marxism of William Morris and the active participation of nature in the historic revolt against imperialism one finds in the Book of Exodus. According to Luxemburgian ecosocialism, that which unites Luxemburg's letters and Herbarium to her Die Akkumulation des Kapitels is a confidence that empires overextend themselves in their exploitation of human beings and nature, and that the natural order accordingly fights back. Beyond Luxemburg, this paper emphasizes the importance of fiction and illusion for ecosocialist storytelling, and argues for an ecosocialist vision that takes as its starting point not the elitism of aesthetic preference but radical forms of solidarity with suffering creation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Similarities and divergences between the Covenant Code (CC) and the Deuteronomic Code (DC) typically have been explored by focusing on content, leading to a proposed relationship of abrogation or revision and implementation. The communicative contexts, text pragmatics, and communicative intentionality of both the CC and DC have remained marginal to the debate. I shall argue that Deuteronomy takes up, expands, and improves communicative strategies already present in CC, with the underlying aim of transforming law into "preached law." The transfer of preached law from orality to a written medium builds and reinforces the authoritative status of those who transmit it. Thus, a transfer of authority occurs: from the object (law) to its preachers (interpreters). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The compilations of instructions now found in Exod 20,24-23,12* and Deut 12,13-26,11* once circulated independently of their canonical contexts. They shared characteristics with Hittite administrative instruments called "royal instructions" or Dienstanweisungen in terms of syntax and the range of their administrative interests. As with certain Hittite examples, these proto-biblical texts did not originally end with covenant blessings or curses, although there are indications that they were composed for use in oath ratification ceremonies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Exodus story is one of many migration stories in the Hebrew Bible, composed of various experiences of expulsion, deliverance, hospitality, and alienation. The current study relates the topic of migration to water and, more specifically, how rivers, streams, wells, springs, and seas are simultaneously life-enhancing, life-challenging, and life-threatening for people on the move. Reading Exodus with water as its lens shows how the story has an inherent ambiguity that gives rise to a plurality of interpretations related to composite experiences of threats and rescue, thirst and nourishment, death and survival. Decisive for the various interpretations of the story is a question of perspective. An option for the oppressed, drowning, rescued, thirsty or nourished is a matter of definition from, for instance, Egyptian, Midianite, Canaanite, and Israelite points of view, male or female, or from the perspective of the Nile, the fish or the sheep. In this contribution, I will show how the Exodus story can shed light on the current topic of migration and how recent migration studies might bring new perspectives to the ancient story. Both instances concern questions of belonging and alienation, in which bridges and barriers are involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The drowning of the Egyptians in the Red Sea is one of the most memorable scenes in the Old English Exodus. The Exodus-poet represents the Egyptians' deaths as a lean ("reward") for their dægweorces ("day's work"). That the Egyptians have apparently earned their treatment—and the Israelites their safety—is linked to the will of God. By representing the drowning in this way the poet constructs the Red Sea as God's agent, punishing those whom he wishes to see disciplined. This article argues that the sea in Exodus is not a mere instrument and highlights the complexity with which Old English biblical poetry engages with nature and the environment. The Red Sea in Exodus is compared with biblical and Latin sources to demonstrate how the poet presents a complex and unique version of the episode, one which points to the layered understanding of nature in early medieval England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More than movements across space, journeys in the Hebrew Scriptures are a reflection of spiritual journeys; they are stories of personal or community transformation, which involve a process of purification and conversion, and in which the travelers acquire greater wisdom and profound freedom by following the ways of the Lord. In their itineraries, biblical men and women come to know themselves, strengthen their vocation-mission and recognize their vulnerability, learning to distinguish the paths of the Lord and to grow in maturity to the extent that they accept and commit themselves to God’s liberating project for them as individuals, as well as for his people. These journeys are experiences of revelation in which God’s people discover his love, his continuous and faithful itinerancy with those he has chosen and fallen in love with, and his encouragement in moments of difficulty and crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exodus 7:8–15:21 contains a sequence of conflicts between YHWH and Pharaoh that can be divided into three parts: the Snake Confrontation, the Ten Plagues of Egypt, and the Parting of the Reed Sea. A careful reading of the entire narrative in conjunction with a New Kingdom Egyptian funerary text—the Book of Gates (BG)—reveals that both works share a number of similarities in terms of themes, terminologies, and structure. However, significant differences also occur at some crucial junctures as the respective stories unfold. These findings suggest that the Israelite author (or group of authors) might have made use of the tradition related to BG—with polemical changes—as one of his sources in framing the Exodus 7–15 narrative, in order to juxtapose the sequence of YHWH's miracles with the progression of Pharaoh's impending death. In this regard, Exodus 7:8–15:21 can be read as a polemical parody of the already well-established myth concerning the sun god's journey through the Netherworld. According to this parodic reading, YHWH is the deity par excellence who stands above the Egyptian pantheon and controls order in Egypt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is an attempt at presenting the Holocaust sermons of Rabbi Kalonimus Kalman Shapiro not only as a religious text, but also as a testimony of communal, and above all personal development, which the religious community of the Warsaw Ghetto gathered around the Rabbi and he himself underwent in the years 1939–1942. Therefore, in order to cut through the religious, historical, communal, and personal layers of the text, I use diverse tools, including literary analysis of motifs repeatedly used by the author, contextualizing them in his religious discourse, and treating the sermons as an EGO document, despite its formal genre being remote from a personal text. By those means I wish to present not only a great theologian and leader, whose theodicy has come to fill postwar commentators with awe, but also a deeply dedicated person, who stands up to the challenge laid before him, despite the crushing circumstances, despite the philosophically unprecedented complexity, and despite his personal fears and concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water scarcity is severe in Quetta, the capital city of Pakistan's largest province Balochistan. This scarcity of water if continued at this high rate can lead to a mass exodus from the province's only large metropolis and can create some gruesome social, political, and demographic issues. Considering these reasons, a study was carried out by adopting a qualitative research methodology using interviews with key officials related to water departments as a tool. The findings of the study suggest that water from the river Indus through the channel of Kachi canal should be pumped to Quetta in the shorter run to fill the gap of the water need. In the longer run, more dams need to be built. Moreover, the mismanagement and bad governance found within the water-related departments need to be taken highly into consideration to resolve the issue and a more balanced approach should be adopted to conserve and store water. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have understood the anonymity of the Egyptian kings in Exodus in various ways. Some argue that the Israelite author intentionally anonymized the foreign kings for possible rhetorical effects. Others believe that the anonymity was a simple case of inadvertent forgetting. Although these approaches have merit in contributing to a more robust understanding of the anonymity of Pharaohs, a different approach may also have something to offer in grasping a fuller understanding of the absence of the Pharaonic names. In this regard, this article seeks to examine the anonymity in conversation with the Egyptian practice of damnatio memoriae (i.e., damnation of memory). According to this method, the proto-Israelite transmitters of the Exodus traditions deliberately obliterated the names of the Egyptian kings for the purpose of terminating their existence and memory from the proto-Israelite community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jews living in Arab countries faced discrimination even before 1967, namely after the establishment of a territorial Jewish State in 1948. However, the Six-Day War brought them further suffering, which often had a serious impact on the existence of Israelite communities dating back to ancient times. The significant reduction in the size of some Jewish communities in the Arab world depended largely on the policies of their 'mother state'. Thus, Jewish emigration was less decisive in Maghreb countries, where governments sought to protect their Jewish citizens from atrocities fuelled by anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic sentiments.1 The situation was quite different in the Middle Eastern states, where governments themselves were often responsible for some incidents against Jews. The Hungarian Foreign Ministry also tried to follow all these events, but due to the political and interstate relations of the time, it did not always manage to form a realistic image of them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to Lev 2:11, leaven and honey were not to be burned as a part of a grain offering, although they could be offered to YHWH as an offering of firstfruits, as mentioned in Lev 2:12. This article proposes that the purpose of the omission of leaven and honey from grain offerings was to foster the production of a pleasing odor, because these substances lengthen the burning process (in the case of leaven) and create a burning smell (in the case of honey). This article also suggests that their omission acts as a reminder of God's mighty hand of salvation in the Exodus story. The lack of yeast and honey corresponds to the unleavened bread and bitter herbs in the Passover meal, providing a clear link to this meal and thus aiding our understanding of their omission in grain offerings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]