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Abstract
This article explores the contingency of the encounter between Jesus of Nazareth as representative of YHWH and Mary Magdalene that occurs at Jesus’s tomb. It interprets two important passages from the Gospel of Mark (Mk 16:1–8) and the Gospel of John (Jn 20:11–18) in order to reflect upon the Absolute which arises from this encounter. In Mark’s Gospel, the result of the encounter is the reference to a never-derivable and unrepresentable beginning, on which the text of Mark is built. The Gospel of John, which refers to Mark, concretizes this as the beginning of love and the covenant partnership between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. It is a contingent encounter because there is no external necessity for it. The crucial point is that the event of God only manifests itself in unforeseen encounters. Therefore the experience of an encounter which sets a new beginning in motion and the existence of God are inextricably linked.
Abstract
This essay explores how two medieval war poems engaged in the formation of two opposing ideas and ideologies in the sultanate of India. Kanhadade Prabandha (1455 CE) portrays the Hindu/Rajput idea of Muslim penetration into Rajasthan and, on the other hand, Khazāʾin al-futūḥ (1311 CE) illustrates the benevolent aspect of the Islamic/Turkish conquest of Hindustan. The Kanhadade Prabandha is a narrative of the heroic resistance put forward by Jalore ruler Kanhadade (r. 1291–1311) and his son Viramde (d. 1311) against Delhi Sultan Alauddin Khalji (r.1296–1316) in 1311 CE. Smaller states vied to carve a distinct identity in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. These rulers patronised poets in their courts who would write sagas about their patrons. Hence, the role of patronage and the complex political situation of that period require adequate scholarly attention to understand the evaluation of historical narratives of that time, including war narratives Kanhadade Prabandha and Khazāʾin al-futūḥ. In Kanhadade Prabandha, Alauddin Khalji (r.1296–1316) is presented as an asura (demon), a daitya (monster) and a mleccha (the low-born untouchable). In contrast, the book’s patron, Kanhadade, is presented as a person from pure vamsa (lineage). Hence, this paper tries to understand how the “we and other” concept was perceived in medieval historical narratives to create certain ideas in the medieval society and political spectrum. What was the purpose of writing these books? How did the Indic authors utilise the Turks of Delhi to propagate ideas and ideologies of Rajputs of north-western India? By focusing on the event of Jalore (1311 CE), the paper explores diverse trajectories of that historical occurrence as well as the propulsion of Rajput ideologies of that time by it. The paper follows a comparative study of Indic and Indo-Persian sources to achieve these objectives. The article corroborates Indic sources with the contemporary Indo-Persian historical accounts to shed light on the shifting perceptions about the Rajput rulers and their relations with the Sultans of Delhi. Finally, the article argues that the idea of the Rajput being a closed warrior group gradually came into being in the fifteenth to sixteenth centuries.
Abstract
This article examines the testimony of the Arabic Samaritan Chronicle to examine the lachrymose account of the decline of the community. It compares this narrative to those of contemporary Christian sources and argues that the impression of crisis is appreciable worse than for most Christian populations. This rests in part on the small size of the Samaritan population, which made it vulnerable to natural disasters, and its separation from a wider Mediterranean diaspora, which might have allowed the community in Samaria to generate resources. It further argues that the strict exclusion of non-Samaritans made collaboration with Muslim authorities very hard for Samaritan leaders, which reduced its flexibility in dealing with authoritarian structures that might change rapidly.
Abstract
This article examines three Būyid-era adab compendia by Shiʿi authors—al-Ābī’s Nathr al-durr, al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā’s Ghurar al-fawāʾid and al-Sharīf al-Raḍī’s Nahj al-balāgha—analysing how these works express Shiʿi ideas and sentiments, and how these expressions are calibrated to take account of a presumed majority-non-Shiʿi readership. It is argued that this process is not simply one of dilution, rather the three works exhibit specific shared strategies that allow them to accommodate powerful assertions of Shiʿism without ceasing to be intelligible to non-Shiʿis. The article shows the complex relationships between these works, adab literature and Shiʿi legal and theological literature, inviting a reconsideration of how particular kinds of writing are deemed central or peripheral to Shiʿi thought and experience. In addition, these analyses supply important historical context for the composition of Nahj al-balāgha, a work that has long possessed immense status in multiple Muslim traditions as well as in Arabic literature.
Abstract
Shīʿī mujtahids (mujtahidun) and thinkers often try to adopt the norms of Islamic law to contemporary conditions, and usually it is hampered by the absolute authority of the ‘letter’ of the Qurʾān, Sunna, and sometimes the opinions of authoritative theologians of the past, which leads to an understanding of Islamic law as dogmatic. However, some scholars attempt to revise this approach, appealing to the principles and ‘spirit’ of the Qurʾānic verses and the need for the Islamic legal norms to meet the conditions of the time and place of their application. This paper analyses the case studies with approaches of contemporary Shīʿī mujtahids Yousef Saanei and Mohammad Ebrahim Jannaati and their views on this issue.
Abstract
More than any other biblical book, the Song of Songs has over the centuries generated a tumultuous conflict of interpretations, which divide between an overly sacred allegorism and an excessive profane materialism of the text. This article addresses the hermeneutical question of the Canticle and considers the corporeality of its language, in which the question of meaning cannot be separated from the question of the body and its affections. The philosophical categories of Platonic chora in Julia Kristeva’s reception and Lacanian lalangue will be examined, each of which stands at the crossroads between biology and sense, libido and signifiers, and affect and meaning. Within this horizon, the woman who is the speaking subject of this biblical text becomes a witness to the powerful yet ambivalent experience of eros, of a desire characterised by a dialectic of presence and absence, but above all of a word inhabited by the body.
Abstract
Benjamin’s essay Toward the Critique of Violence has often irritated readers. This is even more true of his concept of divine violence, which is defined as “law-annihilating” and goes against legally sanctioned state sovereignty. In this paper, I present a new reading of both Benjamin’s essay and divine violence. Against an apocalyptic tendency of Benjamin, I argue that divine violence can only be an instrument of justice if it is understood as violence suffered rather than perpetrated. This is especially the case where people suffer persecution – imprisonment, torture, death – as a result of nonviolent resistance to an oppressive political regime. Only where such resistant suffering occurs, can violence properly be called divine. Only then does it offer a perspective beyond the never-ending atrocities of human history.
Abstract
What is it about Michel de Certeau’s thinking and approach to the crisis of Catholicism in the (post-) conciliar years that gives it a particular capacity to inspire the advent of a synodal Church? The contribution attempts to answer this question by outlining the main features of de Certeau’s theological gesture. It will then clarify his perspective of the Christian community, which he approaches from the angle of a “missionary” itinerancy, or even an “exit” or “alteration” provoked by the encounter with the stranger, giving rise to linguistic creativity and requiring a new practice of authority. In the end, it is this “way of doing things” according to Certeau, which can be found in the Scriptures and is constantly being reinvented in very different cultural spaces that can enable ecclesial communities, and the Church as a whole, to embark on the “uncharted path” of synodalization.
Abstract
The thought of the French Jesuit Michel de Certeau revolves around the figure of the absent Other. This article is dedicated to this enigmatic figure and its elusive appearance. The account of the disciples on the road to Emmaus and their encounter with a stranger serves as a point of departure for an examination of the interplay between absence and presence of this Other. The article thus analyzes the nature of the relationship that can be established with the stranger, who, upon closer inspection, emerges as the risen Christ in the narrative. In this manner, the article draws upon psychoanalytic theory of mourning developed by Freud to identify the concept of incorporation as a crucial tool to elucidating the relationship between the self and the Other and its significance for the question of discipleship.