{"title":"Medical Metaphors in Byzantine Spiritual Direction","authors":"J. Zecher","doi":"10.1086/721356","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/721356","url":null,"abstract":"John of Sinai, better known as John Klimakos (sixth or seventh century), wrote two enormously popular works: the Ladder of Divine Ascent, and its short sequel, To the Shepherd. In these he frequently invoked medical, pedagogical, and judicial metaphors to articulate a synoptic view of monastic spiritual direction. While scholars have noted John’s medical language, they have not attended to the cultural and epistemic contexts of medical knowledge and practice in late antiquity that recent studies in early Christian medical metaphors have highlighted. This study engages Paul Ricoeur’s work on metaphor to analyze the lengthiest and most detailed medical metaphors in the Ladder and Shepherd and to demonstrate that an intimate familiarity with medical theories and clinical practice constrains, organizes, and constructs spiritual direction in his work. The conclusion develops the idea of Byzantine monasteries as textual communities, in which the Ladder plays an important formative role, and shows that medical metaphors were integral to the constitution of Byzantine monastic communities and subjectivities.","PeriodicalId":45199,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF RELIGION","volume":"102 1","pages":"529 - 554"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43760927","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Schermerhorn, Seth. Walking to Magdalena: Personhood and Place in Tohono O’odham Songs, Sticks, and Stories. New Visions in Native American Studies. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019. xix+231 pp. $60.00 (cloth).","authors":"Kathleen Holscher","doi":"10.1086/721249","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/721249","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45199,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF RELIGION","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47084680","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Bierma, Lyle. Font of Pardon and New Life: John Calvin and the Efficacy of Baptism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021. 288 pp. $99.00 (cloth).","authors":"J. Balserak","doi":"10.1086/721358","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/721358","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45199,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF RELIGION","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48272026","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Faust, Avraham. The Neo-Assyrian Empire in the Southwest: Imperial Domination and Its Consequences. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. xi+362 pp. $115.00 (cloth).","authors":"J. DeGrado","doi":"10.1086/721359","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/721359","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45199,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF RELIGION","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49337356","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ogunnaike, Oludamini. Poetry in Praise of Prophetic Perfection: A Study of West African Arabic Madīḥ Poetry and Its Precedents. Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 2020. x+166 pp. £19.99.","authors":"Amir Syed","doi":"10.1086/721296","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/721296","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45199,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF RELIGION","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47901965","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Stewart, Dustin D. Futures of Enlightenment Poetry. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. xvi+300 pp. £75.00.","authors":"E. Mason","doi":"10.1086/721248","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/721248","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45199,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF RELIGION","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43946162","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Application of the “Pragmatic Maxim” in Jewish Tradition: The Case of Rabbi Ḥayyim Hirschensohn","authors":"Nadav S. Berman","doi":"10.1086/721294","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/721294","url":null,"abstract":"This article suggests that certain interpretive trajectories within Jewish tradition—both halakhic (nomos) and aggadic (narrative)—can be illuminated vis-à-vis classical American pragmatism (CAP). Contrary to a prevalent belief, Peirce, James, and Dewey were neither antimetaphysical nor antitraditional. They contended, in different ways, that the “Pragmatic Maxim” (PM)—“truth is what works” in James’s phrasing—is not a narrowly instrumentalist truth test. The PM rather implies that ideas and beliefs (philosophical and religious alike) should be examined against their worldly consequences. After a clarification of this relational maxim in its pragmatist philosophical context, and an introductory sketch of the appearances of the PM in Jewish tradition, the article examines the PM within the thought of Rabbi Ḥayyim Hirschensohn (RḤH; 1857–1935). The article runs as follows: Section I presents CAP and clarifies what the PM is. Section II offers a bird’s-eye mapping of the application of the PM within Jewish tradition. Section III briefs RḤH’s intellectual biography and elaborates on his pragmatist premises and his application of the PM. Rather than conceiving divine commandments as an arbitrary dictate, RḤH viewed them as covenantal, namely, as purposive, relational, and constituted and reaffirmed by individual and collective human agreements. Finally, the article reflects on the theological-intellectual prerequisites for the application of the PM.","PeriodicalId":45199,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF RELIGION","volume":"31 5","pages":"441 - 481"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41305649","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Milstein, Sara. Making a Case: The Practical Roots of Biblical Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. xix+195 pp. $99.00 (cloth).","authors":"S. E. Holtz","doi":"10.1086/721246","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/721246","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45199,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF RELIGION","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48416448","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Khalifah and the Modern Sovereign: Revisiting a Qur’anic Ideal from within the Palestinian Condition","authors":"Khaled Furani","doi":"10.1086/721354","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/721354","url":null,"abstract":"The Palestinian political condition raises questions of the nation-state and, by extension, the sovereignty paradigm underpinning it. Propelled by these quandaries, this article revisits revelatory language to interrogate the conceptual grammar of modern politics. Mining the land’s religious patrimony, I evoke the Qur’anic notion of khalifah to join recent efforts at illuminating sovereignty’s delirium and deleterious consequences. Largely ignored in critiques of sovereignty, yet pivotal in the sovereignty paradigm as famously formulated by Hobbes and Rousseau, is the undergirding principle of indivisibility. Qur’anic articulations of khalifah help us see the ways this principle impedes an ethics of fragility attentive to life’s existential vulnerabilities. Aiming to recover these ethics, I explore khalifah’s implications for a renewed political imagination, one that untethers political (and personal) fulfillment from claims of sovereignty and safeguards human plurality. Perhaps, just such a sensibility may demarcate an exit from Israeli and Palestinian struggles for sovereignty, among other quagmires facing polities and the planet.","PeriodicalId":45199,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF RELIGION","volume":"102 1","pages":"482 - 506"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46941303","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Brown, Amanda. The Fellowship Church: Howard Thurman and the Twentieth-Century Religious Left. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021. i+236 pp. $74.38 (cloth).","authors":"Christopher Evans","doi":"10.1086/721355","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/721355","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45199,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF RELIGION","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44799325","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}