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Today I talked to Iemima Ploscariu about Alternative Evangelicals: Challenging Nationalism in Interwar Romania's Multi-ethnic Borderlands (Brill, 2024).
Evangelicals in interwar Romania were a vibrant mix of ethnicities, languages, and social statuses. Jews, Roma, Germans, Hungarians, Serbs, Ukrainians, and Russians sang, prayed, and preached in their native languages. Romanian statesmen perceived them as a danger for the construction of a strong post-WWI national identity. The lived religion of interwar Romanian evangelicals and their struggle through music for legitimacy demonstrates the close ties between national self-understanding and religion. The diverse groups of Romanian evangelicals reveal how minorities in 20th century Europe challenged established religious concepts and constructed their new identities. -
Recent scholarship focused on the role of embodiment within cognition and communication reminds us that part of how we “know” is through our physical senses. We only know the softness of a kitten by touching its fur, or the tastiness of bread by eating. How might this influence our understanding of biblical texts, such as Jesus’s claim, “I am the bread of life,” and the invitation to eat? Sensing Salvation in the Gospel of John: The Embodied, Sensory Qualities of Participation in the I Am Sayings (Brill, 2023) explores the I am sayings of John’s Gospel, their sensory elements providing an imaginative entry into the narrative and contributing tangible value to the participatory theology of the Fourth Gospel.
Jeannine Hanger has been involved in the Biola community since 2000. She earned a Master of Arts (2004) and Master of Theology (2009) at Talbot in New Testament Studies and has been teaching undergraduates in an adjunct role since 2009. She recently completed her doctoral studies (2021) at the University of Aberdeen, also in the New Testament. Her research interests revolve around the Gospels. More specifically she has enjoyed exploring literary approaches to texts seen alongside their ancient world contexts. Her thesis focused on participation with Christ in John’s Gospel, which led to an examination of sensory imagery, metaphor, and sense perception in ancient texts. These embodied approaches highlight concrete, tangible, and affective qualities of participation with Christ. This ties into her heart for students to know God through the Word with every aspect of their beings: heart, soul, mind, and strength. As the wife of a pastor, Jeannine has also been deeply invested in the local church.
Jonathon Lookadoo is Associate Professor at the Presbyterian University and Theological Seminary in Seoul, South Korea. While his interests range widely over the world of early Christianity, he is the author of books on the Epistle of Barnabas, Ignatius of Antioch, and the Shepherd of Hermas, including The Christology of Ignatius of Antioch (Cascade, 2023). -
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Islamic art is often misrepresented as an iconophobic tradition. As a result of this assumption, the polyvalence of figural artworks made for South Asian Muslim audiences has remained hidden in plain view.
Faces of God: Images of Devotion in Indo-Muslim Painting, 1500-1800 (Brill, 2023) situates manuscript illustrations and album paintings within cultures of devotion and ritual shaped by Islamic intellectual and religious histories. Central to this story are the Mughal siblings, Jahanara Begum and Dara Shikoh, and their Sufi guide Mulla Shah. Through detailed art historical analysis supported by new translations, this study contextualizes artworks made for Indo-Muslim patrons by putting them into direct dialogue with written testimonies. -
This book puts two of the most significant Jewish Diaspora communities outside of the U.S. into conversation with one another. At times contributor-pairs directly compare unique aspects of two Jewish histories, politics, or cultures. At other times, they juxtapose. Some chapters focus on literature, poetry, theatre, or sport; others on immigration, antisemitism, or health. Taken together, the essays in Promised Lands North and South: Jewish Canada and Jewish Argentina in Conversation (Brill, 2024) offer sparkling insight and new depth on the modern Jewish global experience.
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Despite global undertakings to safeguard the full enjoyment of human rights, culture, traditional practices and religion are widely used to discriminate against women. In Women’s Human Rights and the Elimination of Discrimination (Brill/Nijhoff, 2016), 17 scholars approach women’s human rights globally, regionally and nationally, combining the perspectives of public and private international law in a hitherto unique manner. Comprehensive legal, culture-based and theoretical overviews are combined with analyses of topical issues, such as unbalanced sex-ratios, intercountry adoption, women as refugees or as “surrogate mothers”, violence against women and cross-border enforcement of protection orders.
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Several trends justify why it is worth analysing the concept of citizenship in international law. On the one hand, human mobility enhanced in the last decades of the twentieth century contributed largely to the multiplication of multiple citizenship. The phenomenon of migration, often linked to crises, fosters statelessness and presents new challenges to international law. The internationalization of human rights can accordingly have an impact on the law of nationality. Moreover, within the framework of regional organizations, new forms of citizenship are emerging. This phenomenon, going hand in hand with the traditional, historybased citizenship is also contributing to the challenges that the concept of citizenship faces in international law.
Attempting to get answers to these questions, The Concept of Citizenship in International Law (Brill/Nijhoff, 2018) tackles first common theoretical aspects at a universal level to be followed later by the analysis of the regional aspects. It tries to deepen the ongoing discussion in the scientific community and among the greater public on nationality and citizenship issues. -
Part of a formidable publishing industry, cheap yet eye-catching graphic narratives consistently charmed early modern Japanese readers for around two hundred years. These booklets were called kusazōshi (“grass books”). Graphic Narratives from Early Modern Japan: The World of Kusazōshi (Brill, 2024) is the first English-language publication of its kind. It enables anyone new to kusazōshi to gain comprehensive knowledge of the field. For the specialist, our edited volume marks a turning point in scholarship, uncovering fresh research avenues. While exploring the powerful effects of the visual-verbal imagination, this collection opens up bold new vistas on the act of reading and advances provocations around comics and manga.
Contributors are: Jaqueline Berndt, Joseph Bills, Michael Emmerich, Adam L. Kern, Fumiko Kobayashi, Frederick Feilden, Laura Moretti, Matsubara Noriko, Satō Satoru, Satō Yukiko, Satoko Shimazaki, Takagi Gen, Tanahashi Masahiro, Ellis Tinios, Tsuda Mayumi and, Glynne Walley.
Discount code 72435 for 35%. Valid till 31 Dec, 2024. -
The Hellenistic period was a pivotal moment in the history of the Jewish priesthood. The waning days of the Persian empire coincided with the continued ascendance of the high priest and Jerusalem temple as powerful political, cultural, and religious institutions in Judea. The Aramaic Scrolls from Qumran, only recently published in full, testify to the existence of a flourishing but previously unknown Jewish literary tradition dating from the end of Persian rule to the rise of the Hasmoneans.
In Priesthood, Cult, and Temple in the Aramaic Scrolls from Qumran: Analyzing a Pre-Hasmonean Jewish Literary Tradition (Brill, 2023), Robert Jones analyzes how Israel's priestly institutions are represented in these writings, and he demonstrates that they are essential for understanding the Jewish priesthood at this crucial stage in its history. -
Media studies is an emerging discipline that is quickly making an impact within the wider field of biblical scholarship. The Dead Sea Scrolls in Ancient Media Culture (Brill, 2023) is designed to evaluate the status quaestionis of the Dead Sea Scrolls as products of an ancient media culture, with leading scholars in the Dead Sea Scrolls and related disciplines reviewing how scholarship has addressed issues of ancient media in the past, assessing the use of media criticism in current research, and outlining potential directions for future discussions.
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In early modern Japan, upper status groups coveted pills and powders made of exotic foreign ingredients such as mummy and rhinoceros horn. By the early twentieth century, over-the-counter-patent medicines, and, more alarmingly, morphine, had become mass commodities, fueling debates over opiates in Japan's expanding imperial territories.
The fall of the empire and the occupation of Japan by the United States created conditions favorable for heroin use, followed, in time, by glue sniffing and psychedelic mushroom ingestion.
By illuminating the neglected history of drugs, Drugs and the Politics of Consumption in Japan (Brill, 2023) highlights both the transnational embeddedness and national peculiarities of the "politics of consumption" in Japan. -
How is Buddhism seen and practiced in Taiwan? And how do neighbouring countries influence Taiwanese Buddhism? In this episode we explore the religious landscape of Taiwan in conversation with Dr. Yushuang Yao, a leading expert on religion in contemporary Taiwan.
Yushuang Yao is an Associate Professor at Fo Guang University, Taiwan, specializing in contemporary religions of Taiwan. She is also a research fellow at Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, and currently professorial fellow at the University of Tartu with "Taiwan Studies Programme”.
Heidi Maiberg, the host of the episode, is the Head of Communication at the University of Tartu Asia Centre. -
Nahj al-Balagha is among the most powerful, consequential, and linguistically brilliant masterpieces of Arabic and of Islamic thought and literature. Based on the orations, letters, and sayings of wisdom of ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib (d. 661), the first Imam or successor to Prophet Muhammad in Shi‘i Islam and the fourth caliph in Sunni Islam, this oral treasure was compiled and brought together as a text by the late tenth/early eleventh scholar and poet Al-Sharif al-Radi (d. 1015).
In this episode I speak with Professor Tahera Qutbuddin who has provided us with a majestic and brilliant complete English translation of Nahj al-Balagha titled Nahj al-Balāgha: The Wisdom and Eloquence of ‘Alī (Brill, 2024), a parallel English-Arabic text published open access by Brill. The publication of this volume is an event of seismic importance in the study of Islam, religion, and Arabic. Qutbuddin’s translation is animated with the purpose of rendering the Arabic text of Nahj al-Balagha in English in a fashion that amplifies its literary and philosophical potency, a task at which she excels throughout the translation. The experience of reading this translation is nothing short of a deeply moving, philosophically enriching, and linguistically powerful rhapsody. In addition to an eminently user friendly translation with the particular sections and moments of Nahj al-Balagha clearly marked out, Qutbuddin also presents an erudite account of the text’s reception, reception history, and archival density. This outstanding volume will also be a joy to teach and use as primary source material in a range of courses on Islam, religion, Arabic, and the Humanities more broadly.
SherAli Tareen is Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin and Marshall College. His research focuses on Muslim intellectual traditions and debates in early modern and modern South Asia. His book Defending Muhammad in Modernity (University of Notre Dame Press, 2020) received the American Institute of Pakistan Studies 2020 Book Prize and was selected as a finalist for the 2021 American Academy of Religion Book Award. His second book is called Perilous Intimacies: Debating Hindu-Muslim Friendship after Empire (Columbia University Press, 2023). His other academic publications are available here. Listener feedback is most welcome. -
In Implications of Pre-Emptive Data Surveillance for Fundamental Rights in the European Union (Brill Nijhoff, 2023) Julia Wojnowska-Radzińska offers a comprehensive legal analysis of various forms of pre-emptive data surveillance adopted by the European legislator and their impact on fundamental rights. It also identifies what minimum guarantees have to be set up to recognize pre-emptive data surveillance as a legitimate measure in a democratic society. The book aims to answer the essential question of how to strike the proper balance between fundamental rights and security interests in the digital age.
Caleb Zakarin is Editor at the New Books Network. -
In this beautiful new book, Dr. Youngna Kim draws on her vast understanding of Korean art to provide an overview of the peninsula’s contemporary art scene. Korean artists have become increasingly active at an international level, with many being invited for residencies and exhibitions all over the world. Nonetheless, for various reasons, the general understanding of Korean contemporary art remains insufficient.
Korean Art since 1945: Challenges and Changes (Brill, 2024) is volume 9 in the series Modern Asian Art and Visual Culture. The book draws on primary sources to discuss the ideological stakes that affected the art world, modernist art vs. political art, and the fluidity of concepts such as tradition and national identity. Moreover, the book also has a chapter on the art of North Korea. The book is an excellent resource for anyone interested in Korean studies or contemporary art.
Dr. Youngna Kim is Professor Emerita of the Department of Archaeology and Art History at Seoul National University and was the Director of the National Museum of Korea from 2011 until 2016. Dr. Kim received her bachelor’s degree from Muhlenberg College and her Ph.D. in the History of Art from The Ohio State University. She has many publications to her name about Korea’s ever-evolving art scene.
Buy Youngna Kim’s new book about Korean art before independence (only available in Korean) here.
Leslie Hickman is a translator and writer. She has an MA in Korean Studies from Yonsei University and lives in Seoul, South Korea. You can follow her activities at https://twitter.com/AJuseyo. -
One orthodoxy of critical biblical scholarship on the Third Gospel, attributed by later Christian tradition to a companion of Paul named Luke, holds that its author was not ethnically Jewish but rather a Gentile of some kind, either a proselyte to Judaism, a “Godfearer” once attached to a diasporic synagogue, or perhaps a pagan convert to a form of early Christianity reverent to Israel’s scriptures.
In Luke Was Not A Christian: Reading the Third Gospel and Acts within Judaism (Brill, 2024), Joshua Paul Smith addresses the consensus for the supposedly Gentile Luke and concludes that no solid New Testament or patristic evidence exists to substantiate such a claim. Moreover, Smith suggests by means of a cognitive linguistic analysis of insider and outsider terms in Luke and Acts, as well as their author’s attitudes toward the Torah and intricate knowledge of Jewish festival celebrations, that these books were more likely to have been written by an individual enculturated in “a Jewish setting … among the Hellenistic Jewish diaspora” (p. 233). Smith joined the New Books Network to discuss this revision of his Ph.D. thesis, our ability to know an ancient author through their textual remains, and why it would be inappropriate to interpret Luke’s full-throated embrace of the Gentile mission as an indicator of his non-Jewish identity.
Joshua Paul Smith (Ph.D., University of Denver/Iliff School of Theology, 2021) teaches presently at Southeast Missouri State University. His research interests include literary and cognitive approaches to New Testament texts, as well as early Jewish and Christian identity formation. He is currently working on a short book on Acts for a general audience, and conducting research for an article that applies social network analysis to named characters in Luke and Acts. Additionally, he serves as Managing Editor for Reviews of the Enoch Seminar, publishing book reviews on a wide range of topics related to the study of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic origins.
Rob Heaton (Ph.D., University of Denver, 2019) hosts Biblical Studies conversations for New Books in Religion and teaches New Testament, Christian origins, and early Christianity at Anderson University in Indiana. He recently authored The Shepherd of Hermas as Scriptura Non Grata: From Popularity in Early Christianity to Exclusion from the New Testament Canon (Lexington Books, 2023). For more about Rob and his work, or to offer feedback related to this episode, please visit his website at https://www.robheaton.com. -
Arjen F. Bakker's book The Secret of Time: Reconfiguring Wisdom in the Dead Sea Scrolls (Brill, 2023) contributes to the rethinking of the Dead Sea Scrolls as an essential and integral part of Judaism in the Greco-Roman period. The Qumran manuscripts attest to the reconfiguration of Jewish wisdom concepts in this period. Strikingly, reflection on time as the organizing principle behind all of reality is formative for these emerging concepts, which are expressed by the enigmatic phrase rāz nihyeh. The secret of time invites us to venture beyond existing categorizations and explore a rich conceptual framework that is manifested across a wide range of texts, beyond generic categories, and overcoming the sectarian divide.
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In Fragile Images: Jews and Art in Yugoslavia, 1918-1945 (Brill, 2019), Mirjam Rajner traces the lives and creativity of seven artists of Jewish origin. The artists - Mosa Pijade, Daniel Kabiljo, Adolf Weiller, Bora Baruh, Daniel Ozmo, Ivan Rein and Johanna Lutzer - were characterized by multiple and changeable identities: nationalist and universalist, Zionist and Sephardic, communist and cosmopolitan.
These fluctuating identities found expression in their art, as did their wartime fate as refugees, camp inmates, partisans and survivors. A wealth of newly-discovered images, diaries and letters highlight this little-known aspect of Jewish life and art in Yugoslavia, illuminating a turbulent era that included integration into a newly-founded country, the catastrophe of the Holocaust, and renewal in its aftermath. -
While many have noted the general Jewishness of the Gospel of John, few have given it a seat at the ideologically crowded table of ancient Jewish practice and belief—until now.
Join us as we speak with Wally Cirafesi, whose book, John Within Judaism: Religion, Ethnicity, and the Shaping of Jesus-Oriented Jewishness in the Fourth Gospel (Brill, 2021), offers a reading of the Gospel of John as an expression of the fluid and flexible nature of Jewish identity in Greco-Roman antiquity.
Wally V. Cirafesi obtained his PhD from the University of Oslo, where he is Visiting Researcher in the Faculty of Theology. He has published on a range of topics related to the New Testament, ancient Judaism, and early Christianity, including Verbal Aspect in Synoptic Parallels (Brill, 2013).
Michael Morales is Professor of Biblical Studies at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and the author of The Tabernacle Pre-Figured: Cosmic Mountain Ideology in Genesis and Exodus (Peeters, 2012), Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?: A Biblical Theology of Leviticus (IVP Academic, 2015), and Exodus Old and New: A Biblical Theology of Redemption(IVP Academic, 2020). He can be reached at [email protected] -
Global risks present formidable challenges to international law. Although they have long been identified in many other scientific disciplines, they are currently only considered on a sectoral basis in international law in the absence of a legal definition.
The aim of Sarah Cassella's book Global Risks and International Law: The Case of Climate Change and Pandemics (Brill/Nijhoff, 2023) is threefold: to identify the main elements that characterise global risks in a legal perspective, to determine the characteristics that make them a new category of risk, and to analyse the changes they bring about in the main mechanisms of international law. Drawing on the relationship between international law and other legal systems, and in particular national law, this book highlights possible responses to the challenges posed by global risks. The study is based on extensive practice related to the examples of climate change and pandemics, but opens up perspectives on conclusions that could be common to other global risks, such as financial risks or cyber risks.
Sarah Cassella, Ph.D. (2009), is Professor of International Law at Université Paris. -
Fabricating Founders in Early Modern England: History, Rhetoric, and the Origins of Christianity (Brill, 2023) argues that in order to understand nationalisms, we need a clearer understanding of the types of cultural myths, symbols, and traditions that legitimate them. Myths of origin and election, memories of a greater and purer past, and narratives of persecution and mission are required for the production and maintenance of powerful national sentiments. Through an investigation of how early modern Catholics and Protestants reimagined, reinterpreted, and rewrote the lives of the founder-saints who spread Christianity in England, this book offers a theoretical framework for the study of origin narratives. Analyzing the discursive construction of time and place, the invocation of forces beyond the human to naturalize and authorize, and the role of visual and ritual culture in fabrications of the past, this book provides a case study for how to approach claims about founding figures. Serving as a timely example of the dependence of national identity on key religious resources, Griffin shows how origin narratives – particularly the founding figures that anchor them – function as uniquely powerful rhetorical tools for the cultural production of regional and national identity.
Allison Isidore is a Religious Studies Ph.D. student at the University of Iowa and is the Assistant Director for the American Catholic Historical Association. Her research interest is focused on the twentieth-century American Civil Rights Movement and the Catholic Church’s response to racism and the participation of Catholic clergy, nuns, and laypeople in marches, sit-ins, and kneel-ins during the 1950s and 1960s. She tweets from @AllisonIsidore1. - Vis mere
