A comparative study of what the most influential writers of Ancient Greece and China thought it meant to have knowledge and whether they distinguished knowledge from other forms of wisdom. It surveys selected works of poetry, history and philosophy from the period of roughly the eighth through to the second century BCE, including Homer's "Odyssey", the ancient Chinese "Classic of Poetry", Thucydides' "History of the Peloponnesian War", Sima Qian's "Records of the Historian", Plato's "Symposium", and Laozi's "Dao de Jing and (...) the writings of Zhuangzi". The intention, through such juxtaposition, is to introduce the foundational texts of each tradition which continue to influence the majority of the world's population. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Xenophilia STEVEN SHANKMAN We often hear about xenophobia in today’s troubled Western world, about fear of the stranger, fear of the demonized other. But we rarely, if ever, encounter the term, or the inspiring idea of, xenophilia, love of the stranger, hospitality. Rarely, that is, unless we regularly consult the Bible and the two great Homeric epics. What do these foundational works of Western culture teach us (...) about the relation between xenophilia—the gesture of welcoming the potentially dangerous stranger—and what it means to be truly human? Let us begin with an explicit reference to the word xenophilia that appears in an essay by the great and radical 20th -century philosopher on the nature of ethical obligation, Emmanuel Levinas, written in 1959. Here Levinas remarks: “Monotheism [by which Levinas says he means Judaism, Christianity, and Islam] is not an arithmetic of the divine.... It is a school of xenophilia and anti-racism [Il est une école de xénophilie et d’antiracisme].”1 The relationship between monotheism, in the Abrahamic religious tradition, and xenophilia is suggested at the beginning of the eighteenth chapter of Genesis, when three strangers appear to Abraham, who runs towards them to offer them food and drink. Who are these three strangers? One of them, it turns out, is God, and the other two are angels, but their identity does not concern Abraham. What he sees are three men and he wants merely to be hospitable towards them, to serve them. At the conclusion of the previous chapter, Abraham, at the age of ninety-nine, was arion 28.2 fall 2020 74 xenophilia circumcised. He is, as you can imagine, now in great pain. The rabbis say that God, knowing that Abraham is such a hospitable person, purposely made the day very hot so as to discourage wayfarers from braving the heat and thus tempting Abraham to exert himself during his early recovery from the trauma of his belated and recent circumcision. I have indicated, in brackets, the verses in which Abraham addresses the stranger(s) in the singular and in the plural, which cannot be discerned in the translation into English: God [the ineffable Tetragrammaton ‫יהוה‬— most often pronounced Adonai today] appeared to him [Abraham] in the plains of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance of the tent in the heat of day. He lifted his eyes and saw: And behold! Three men were standing over him. He saw them and ran toward them from the entrance of the tent, and bowed toward the ground. And he said, “Adonai [meaning ‘My Lord’ or ‘My Lords’], if I find favor in Your [singular form in the Hebrew] eyes now, please pass not away [singular form of the verb] from Your [singular] servant. Let some water be brought and wash your [plural] feet, and recline [plural form of the verb] beneath the tree. I will fetch a morsel of bread that you [plural] may sustain yourselves, then go on [plural form of the verb]—inasmuch as you [plural] have passed your [plural form of the adjective] servant’s way.”2 “God appeared to him [Abraham] in the plains of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance of the tent in the heat of the day. He lifted his eyes and saw: And behold! Three men were standing over him.” Where, exactly, is God in this passage? The rabbis of the Talmud suggest that God did indeed visit Abraham, but that when the three strangers arrived, Abraham asked God to wait (can you believe such audacity?) while he, Abraham, could first meet the needs of the three wayfarers. First things first! From this the Talmud concludes that “Hospitality to wayfarers is greater than receiving the Divine Presence.”3 A beautiful thought! But the verses from Genesis are even more radical than that. We wonder whether the alternation, Steven Shankman 75 in Abraham’s address to the strangers, between his addressing them first in the plural then in the singular and then back to the plural again, does not suggest a response to our question of where God appears in this passage. Could this alternation be suggesting that the way God appears in these verses... (shrink)

Religion and Identity in South Asia and Beyond: Essays in Honor of Patrick Olivelle. Edited by Steven E. Lindquist. Cultural, Historical and Textual Studies of South Asian Religions. London.: Anthem Press, 2011. Pp. 392.

This information-packed volume, without doubt a landmark event in the developing neuroscientific study of consciousness, deserves the attention of anyone interested in this subject. It is a sequel and companion to an earlier collection, The Boundaries of Consciousness: Neurobiology and Neuropathology, also edited by Steven Laureys (2005), which contains the proceedings of a 2004 conference sponsored by the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (ASSC). Published initially as a special issue of Progress in Brain Research (volume 150), (...) Boundaries has been reissued in paperback and appears on the ASSC website as one of its official titles. Both volumes include many prominent figures in contemporary neuroscience, and the two volumes together constitute about as clear, comprehensive, and authoritative a picture as one can find anywhere of the current state of mainstream neuroscientific thinking about consciousness and the brain. Like classical physics of the late 19th century, it is a picture of great power and beauty; nevertheless, just as discordant phenomena such as black-body radiation and the photoelectric effect presaged the rise of quantum mechanics, this book, precisely because of its clarity, reveals signs of trouble ahead. (shrink)

This article reflects a conversation between Jan G. van der Watt and Stephan Joubert. The article serves as the introduction to the Special Collection: ‘From timely exegesis to contemporary ecclesiology: Relevant hermeneutics and provocative embodiment of faith in a Corona-defined world – Festschrift for Stephan Joubert, sub-edited by Willem Oliver ’. Following a brief bio-statement as introduction, the following issues are discussed: the collection for the Jerusalem church; relevance of theology for society; social-scientific exegesis; the ancient concept (...) of grace; Bible translation in South Africa; public theology on the electronic platform; biblical examples of leadership and electronic media in religious activities and education.Contribution: This Festschrift represents current trends in biblical scholarship and ecclesial leadership. It contributes to the public discourse in church and society, especially the role of the electronic media in current Fourth Industrial Revolution. (shrink)

Prophets, Prophecy, and Ancient Israelite Historiography. Edited by Mark J. Boda and Lissa M. Wray Beal. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2013. Pp. xii + 400. $54.50.

Intended to be a volume accessible to a wide range of readers, the fifty chapters of this sizeable book provide an illuminating overview of seventeenth-century philosophy. Examining Descartes and C...

The reported birth of genetically modified twins in late 2018 has given new fuel to debates about the ethics of germline genome editing (GGE). There is a broad consensus among stakeholders that clinical uses of GGE should be temporarily banned as the technology is not yet deemed safe for use in humans. However, the idea of a complete ban is dismissed by many based on the expectation that more research will eventually allow scientists to make the technology safe without having (...) to put humans at risk first. In this article, I will analyse this assumption and argue that it is undermined by recent developments in the postgenomic life sciences. In particular, I will argue that in a postgenomic view of germline editing a complete ban on specific uses of the technology is warranted, because the research needed to assess the safety of these interventions would not be morally defensible. (shrink)