Over the last 40 years, the study of word-order variation has become a prominent and fruitful field of research. Researchers of linguistic typology have found that every language permits a variety of word-order constructions, with subject, verb, and objects occupying varying positions relative to each other. It is frequently possible to ......
“Meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless.” The word “meaningless” (hebel) appears more than 40 times in the book of Ecclesiastes and raises the question why a book that appears to deny meaning or purpose is included in the Bible. Many questions of interpretation as well as relevance surround the book ......
In this bold work, Thomas Habinek offers an entirely new theoretical perspective on Roman cultural history. Although English words such as ''literature'' and ''religion'' have their origins in Latin, the Romans had no such specific concepts. Rather, much of the sense of these words was captured in the Latin word carmen, usually translated into ......
The prevalence of evil and violence in the world is a growing focus of scholarly attention, especially violence done in the name of religion and violence found within the pages of the Old Testament. Many atheists consider this reason enough to reject the notion of a supreme deity. Some Christians attempt to exonerate God by reinterpreting ......
Son of a mortal king and an immortal Muse, Orpheus possessed a gift for music unmatched among humans; with his lyre he could turn the course of rivers, drown the fatal song of the Sirens, and charm the denizens of the underworld.
In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the deity Yahweh is often portrayed as an old man. One of the epithets used of Yahweh in the Hebrew Bible, the Ancient of Days, is a source for this depiction of God as elderly. However, when we look closely at the early traditions of biblical Israel, we see a different picture: God is relatively youthful, a ......
This book on the Yahwist comes at the end of a long career of research on the Pentateuch in general and the Yahwist in particular. Van Seters’s interest in the Yahwist was stimulated by the 1964 presidential address of the Society of Biblical Literature, given by Professor Fredrick Winnett, “Rethinking the Foundations,” which ......
59 BC and the Transformation of the Roman Republic
The year 59 BC'when Gaius Julius Caesar and Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus served as joint consuls'marked a major turning point in the history of the Roman Republic. It was a dramatic and momentous time of political intrigue, bloodshed, and murder, one which boasted some of the most famous personalities ever to grace the Roman historical stage. ......
59 BC and the Transformation of the Roman Republic
The year 59 BC'when Gaius Julius Caesar and Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus served as joint consuls'marked a major turning point in the history of the Roman Republic. It was a dramatic and momentous time of political intrigue, bloodshed, and murder, one which boasted some of the most famous personalities ever to grace the Roman historical stage. ......