BRILL

Ji'an literati and the local in Song-Yuan-Ming China.

Gerritsen (history, Warwick U., England) examines changes in the elite literary portrayal and explanation of important sites in the landscape of the Jiangxi province of Ji'an, now called Jizhou, over the course of the four dynasties, 1127-1644. Her topics include sacred landscape in Southern Song and Yuan Jizhou, literati and the community, local temples in early Ming, and a new sacred landscape in late Ming Ji'an. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Kingship and state formation in Sweden, 1130-1290.

Line has enlarged and revised his Ph.D. dissertation on medieval Swedish kingship for the University of Leeds in 2003. In it, he examines the nature of the political conflicts and of kingship and administration in the 12th and 13th centuries, and traces the process by which a cohesive state developed. His period begins with the accession of King Sverker and the end of a particularly unstable and chaotic period, and ends with the death of King Magnus Ladulas, when a system of administration had been created that lasted for the rest of the medieval period and the Swedish nobility had adopted the culture of mainland Europe. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Le Rouleau de cuivre de la grotte 3 de Qumran (3Q15); expertise — restauration — epigraphie; 2v.

The Copper Scroll found in two pieces in the caves at Qumran in 1952 was chopped into 23 pieces shortly afterwards to facilitate its reading. In addition to this disgrace, the copper began to degrade. The conservation of the pieces, their documentation, and transformation into facsimile is documented in these two volumes. Publication in a lavish full-scale format (11.25x14.75 inches) allows for color reproductions of each piece after conservation, as well as a wealth of other images, including full-scale plates of X-rays taken before and drawings made after their conservation. Detailed scholarly material is included related to the Scroll, its study, contents, and conservation. A translation of the Scroll into French and English, with the original Hebrew is also included. Other than the translation of the Scroll text and an English version of the introduction, the volumes are in French. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Liberal modernity and its adversaries; freedom, liberalism and anti-liberalism in the 21st century.

Zafirovski (sociology, U. of North Texas) presents a defense of liberal modernity as "a free as well as equal and just social system and historical period" and the most appropriate Durkheimian societal type for contemporary civilization, preferable to illiberal conservative, fascist, and communist alternatives, which are systems of un-freedom, inequality, and injustice. He also has a second objective in the book, which is to demonstrate that contemporary civilization (by which he primarily means Western Europe and America) has, since at least the 18th century Enlightenment, essentially and inexorably moved in the direction of liberal modernity via societal liberalization, liberation, and human emancipation and that it is destined to triumph over its competitors. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The libraries of the neoplatonists; proceedings.

The quest of the gathering was to investigate the degree to which Arabic, Hebrew, Armenia, and Syriac ideas might have influenced the texts that Roman and Medieval neoplatonists used and — perhaps to varying degrees — took to be the ideas of ancient Greek philosophy. Eight of the 27 papers are in English. Among the topics are whether there was a Syriac intermediary for the Arabic Theology of Aristotle, the structure of philosophy in Arabic neoplatonism, and the Greek library of the Medieval Jewish philosophers. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Logic and ontology in the syllogistic of Robert Kilwardby.

Having in previous studies suggested that Kilwardby (1215-79) subscribed to a syllogistic system structured in a number of layers according to the forms of propositions that are taken as premises in his Prior Analytics, Thom (arts, Southern Cross U.) here favors an approach that more closely reflects the text. He agrees that it is possible to interpret him as putting forward syllogistic systems, but it is necessary to remember that this is interpretation and to remember the assumptions upon which the interpretation rests. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Martin Luther as comforter; writings on death.

In close readings of selected texts in the different genre of preaching and consolidations, Leroux (speech communications, U. of Minnesota-Morris) explores how Luther (1483-1546) sought to prepare his followers for death. The Protestant leader's views provide a reminder of what people thought and feared about death before the industrial age, he says. Among the texts are Fourteen Consolations, martyrological literature, 1532 funeral sermons, and On Whether One May Flee from a Deadly Plague. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Modern Judaism and historical consciousness; identities, encounters, perspectives.

Some of the decisive steps in the development of modern historical thinking about Jews and Judaism, are described by scholars of religion, the social sciences, and history. They also report on the current status of ongoing debates in Jewish historiography. Their topics include a vexed relationship in German-Jewish culture, sociology and Jewish studies, Jewish historians in Nazi Germany, dimensions and varieties of Orthodox Judaism, and historiography as cultural identity. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The modal system of earlier Egyptian complement clauses; a study in pragmatics in a dead language.

Uljas (Trinity College, Cambridge U.) considers how the three verbal "meaning domains" of tense, aspect and modality work within the grammatical organization of the language, focusing on modality. He proposes a new way of thinking about modality in Egyptological linguistics, analyzing it according to semantics and pragmatics and focusing on fully clausal complements. He begins his survey with complementary clauses after governing verbs and moves to other types, explaining how modality and mood made more difference and expressed more emotional range than we had assumed. This is fascinating even if you are not a specialist. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Montaigne and the Low Countries (1580-1700).

Contributing to the field of reception studies, and in particular to investigating the surprising independence and creativity of Early Modern readers and users of texts, scholars of literature in various European languages explore the reception of essays by French writer Michel de Montaigne (1533-92) in the Low Countries. They consider such topics as his early reception in Holland, Dutch author Jacob Cats, translator Maria Heyns, and Pieter van Veen's illustrations to Essais. The 15 studies — eight in French — were developed from papers delivered to an October 2005 conference in Leiden. Only names are indexed. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Money and violence; financial self-help groups in a South African township.

Bähre (U. of Amsterdam) presents findings from an ethnographic study of the way in which Xhosa migrants — particularly women — in the townships of Cape Town collectively manage their money in financial self-help groups known as financial mutuals in order to survive in the hostile city environment. Following an introductory overview of the study and its context, the author examines the impact that large scale economic and political processes had on the type of relations that are fundamental to financial mutuals — kin, neighborhood relations, and identification with fellow migrants — and the three core dimensions of financial mutuals: solidarity, trust, and how the money is spent. In examining the latter, Bähre discovers that consumption reveals a disharmonious world hidden behind the image of financial mutuals as warm, cozy, and sweet women's groups. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Negotiation and construction of national identities.

Analyzing national identity formation as a process of negotiations within and between elites, Mezran (political science, John Cabot U., Italy) examines the cases of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya in order to test the proposition that negotiated elite settlement on national identity leads to a more stable polity. Algeria is found to have attempted no negotiation between Islamists, leftist nationalist militants, and liberal moderates after independence and this is argued to have led to the identity crisis of the Algerians that emerged in the late 1980s. On the other end of the spectrum, the Berber and Arab elites of Morocco are found to have negotiated, partly through the charismatic figure of King Mohammed V, an outcome resulting in a stable synthesis of Islam, Arabism, and Moroccanism. Tunisia is more like Algeria as a case of non-negotiated national identity vision and Libya is, like Morocco, an example of national identity as negotiated outcome. Martinus-Nijhoff is an imprint of Brill. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Origen; philosophy of history & eschatology.

Tzamalikos (philosophy, Aristotle U., Greece) dispels the idea that Origen approached history entirely as an intellectual abstraction by drawing upon a wide range of data to place Origens' philosophy of history and eschatology in a greater context. When located among classical and late antique Greek philosophy, Gnosticism, Hebraism, and patristic thought, Origen has a unique vision of a history of occurrences, based upon scriptural interpretation. This and other findings by Tzamalikos support his contention that Origen's thought deeply influenced what we now know as orthodoxy. Tzamalikos covers Origen's views on the nature of human beings, history as it relates to the incarnation of the Christ, the relationship between prophecy and history, the concept of kairos, eternal life and the notion of the infinite, freedom, eternal death, the end of history, and questions about whether history can exist without a "body" and if all history is actually a parable. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Paradise now; essays on early Jewish and Christian mysticism.

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Society's Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism group, members present papers that they have delivered in one format or another over the decade but that have not been previously published. Among their topics are the construction of the transcendent self, the emergence of the mystical traditions of the Merkabah, the temple within, sexuality and the gender of angels, Jewish and Christian heavenly meal traditions, and divine secrets and divination. The clothbound edition is published by Brill; the paperbound edition is published by the Society of Biblical Literature. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The Peshitta; its use in literature and liturgy; papers read at the third Peshitta symposium; proceedings.

The third conference on the common Syriac version of the Bible considered the use made of it by the Syriac Fathers — an aspect that had been deferred during the first two. The keynote lectures cover the use of the Syriac version in the liturgy, the Syriac Old Testament commentary tradition, and problems in the Syriac New Testament and how Syrian exegetes solved them. Another 21 papers consider such topics as reworking the biblical text in the dramatic dialogue poems on the Old Testament patriarch Joseph, the text of the New Testament in the Acts of Judas Thomas, and the Psalm headings in the West Syrian tradition. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Philosopher, practitioner, politician; the many lives of Fazang (643-712).

Chen (U. of British Columbia) presents a biography of Fazang, a third-generation Sogdian immigrant to China who became one of the greatest Buddhist metaphysicians in medieval Asia and founder of the Avatamsaka tradition whose influence spread to Korea and Japan. Previous studies, he says, have focused so exclusively on his philosophical tracts that the biographical, political, religious, and political context of his work and life have been neglected. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Platonism; ancient, modern, and postmodern.

Scholars mostly of literature and occasionally of religion or philosophy, describe the various projections of Platonism that have been cast upon the walls of the passing centuries. Their topics include what Plato thought a god was, Proclus and the ancients, real atheism and Cambridge Platonism, W. B. Yeats and Platonic inspiration, and Derrida reads (Neo-)Platonism. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Prayer in Josephus.

Jonquiére examines how Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (37-100 CE) viewed prayer, how he used prayers in his narrative, and the ideas that emerge from his prayers. Her interest is elucidating not only the role of prayer in Second Temple Judaism, but also the historian's views of history and theology. He often changed prayers in his sources, or added new ones, she says, as a personal commentary on the narrative. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Rationalizing religion; religious conversion, revivalism, and competition in Singapore society.

In order to explore relations between the many religions in Singapore, Tong (sociology, National U. of Singapore) looks at the religious situation there from the 1920s, when data was first collected, to the present. Among the major trends he finds are a growing number of converts to Christianity, especially among the Chinese population at the expense of Taoism; and that Buddhism has not only maintained its numbers, but is now the fastest growing religion in Singapore. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Recognition, work, politics; new directions in French critical theory.

The editors (professors of philosophy and social theory at Australia's Macquarie U. and U. of Melbourne and Ireland's U. College Dublin) present these 12 essays as "both a continuity and reconfiguration in the tradition of French social and critical philosophy." Papers engage in interrogation of the relationship between recognitions of subjectivities and conflict, especially as related to work and class. They also more thoroughly engage with German social theoretical work on the nation-state, cosmopolitanism, and political parties than has previously been the case in French critical theory. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Red-light novels of the late Qing.

Starr (classical Chinese, U. of Oxford, UK) offers readings of six Chinese novels, written between 1840 and 1910, that each focus on relationships between clients and their courtesan lovers. Highlighting links between changes in textual forms and changes in narrative structures in the works, Starr explores how the novels constructed their narrators (typically the clients) and their narratives, how they treated the formation of character within relationships, and similar topics. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Religion inside and outside traditional institutions.

European and American scholars of theology explore the concept of religious praxis with an emphasis on religion outside contemporary religious institutions. Their topics include empirical theology and brain research, rethinking church in liquid modernity, religious development in a lifespan perspective, the narrative religious identity of young Catholic women, and predicting trust in the pastor as revealed by a German study. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Religion or Halakha; the philosophy of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik; v.1.

A scholar of philosophy now devoted to teaching Soloveitchik's thought, Schwartz begins his series with a literary and philosophical analysis of the essay Halakhic Man in particular, but also his early thinking during the period 1931-44. His topics include Homo religiosus, halakhic man as cognitive man, the negation of metaphysics and of the messianic idea, repentance as creativity, and providence and prophecy. No information is provided about an edition in some other language. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Religion past & present; encyclopedia of theology and religion; v.2: Bia-Chr.

The fourth German edition, published between 1998 and 2005 by Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, has been translated and adapted to provide English readers with a comprehensive theological reference grounded in the tradition of modern Protestantism. A few new biographical articles have also been added about people who have died since the German edition appeared. Entries discuss people, institutions, movements, concepts, places, events, and other aspects of religion around the world and down the centuries. Each includes a short bibliography emphasizing English-language works when possible. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Research in the social scientific study of religion; v.18.

Nine of the 13 papers are part of a special section on positive psychology and its relationships with religious and spiritual constructs. Among these topics are spirituality and god-attachment as predictors of subjective well-being for seminarians and nuns in India, and life satisfaction and spirituality in adolescents. Other papers consider such aspects as openness and spiritual development in adolescents, and Jung as a mentor for pastoral counselors. Until this issue, the annual journal has been published at the end of the calendar year, but from now on, will appear earlier in the year in order to capture more of the latest trends in the field. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Rewriting Roman history in the middle ages; the 'Historia Romana' and the Manuscript Bamber, Hist.3.

Proving that the results of the writing of history are subjective at best, pure lies at worst, and produced only to serve the patron in any case, representations of the Historia Romana were altered to serve the interests of those who ruled. Kretschmer (Latin, Norwegian U. of Science and Technology) uses as his text paraphrases of Bamberg Hist. 3, providing the first fully edited version as well as a wealth of commentary about the ways historical contexts and social forces changed throughout the Middle Ages. He classifies manuscripts containing abbreviations and/or paraphrases, places their use of language and content within their proper contexts, and closely explains textual variations. The result serves as a model for textual study, particularly of volatile and influential works. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)