Götter, Tempel und Kult der Judäo–Aramäer von Elephantine: archäologische und schriftliche Zeugnisse aus dem perserzeit-lichen Ägypten

A review of Angela Rohrmoser's book, Götter, Tempel und Kult der Judäo–Aramäer

Originalism As Thin Description: An Interdisciplinary Critique

My essay was intended as a critique of originalism from the perspective of intellectual history. I pointed out that originalism lacked a rigorous empirical method for analyzing what texts meant in the past. I suppose in some sense it is flattering that Solum has devoted much of his recent article to an attack on my earlier essay. Of course, flattery aside, it would have been more useful if Solum had stated my thesis correctly. For purposes of clarity, I have juxtaposed Solum’s description of my argument with what my essay actually said. Readers will be able to judge for themselves if Solum correctly captured the original meaning of my words

Cult Statuary in the Judean Temple at Yeb

A revisitation of the Yeb archives with an eye to the question of cult statuary. The present article inventories the state of the question and makes several constructive suggestions. Its primary contributions are: to address the Yeb evidence, even preliminarily, to the debate over Yhwh statuary in the Jerusalem temple; to make a fresh interpretation of TAD A4.7/8; and to reread other key textual data for information about statuary

Perceptions of Happiness and Its Determinants An Intergenerational Study of What People Think about Money and Happiness

This study examines people’s perceptions of happiness. Specifically, it seeks to define the determinants of happiness, with a focus on the link between happiness and financial state. Of particular interest is an examination of differences in attribution (if any) on this issue between disparate age groups. An online questionnaire was created and then completed by 538 total participants. Belief that money can buy happiness was tested in two different ways: the Measure of Materialistic Attitudes Scale from the Handbook of Marketing, and the Money-Happiness scale, which was generated for this research. The study also evaluated people’s happiness levels using a device patterned after the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire (Hills 2002). The results suggested that as age increases, the tendency to believe that money buys happiness decreases. Furthermore, males are more likely than females to believe that the material possessions that money can buy will bring them increased happiness. In addition, the younger generation is more likely than the older generation to believe that achievement increases happiness while the older generation puts more importance on religious or spiritual beliefs and practices for increases in happiness. This research helps add to a growing research interest in understanding sources of personal contentment

What happened to Kemosh?

What happened to Kemosh in the era after Moab’s loss of political independence? The present article first argues that this question is of interest to scholarship on the Hebrew Bible because Kemosh and Yhwh were initially twinlike: both were patron deities of Iron Age Levantine kingdoms and shared various similarities of profile. As such, comparing the postnational history of Kemosh and Yhwh can help to isolate the historical and intellectual events without which Yhwh would presumably have developed along similar lines to Kemosh. This article next argues that both deities underwent »the Greek interpretation« by becoming identified with their equivalent in the Greek pantheon. But unlike Kemosh, Yhwh’s evolution included a counterbalancing force, i.e. inscripturation. Because prophetic oracles and regional stories about Kemosh were never gathered into an authoritative corpus, Kemosh became the Greek god Ares, without remainder

A Complainant-Oriented Approach to Unconscionability and Contract Law

This Article draws attention to a conceptual point that has been overlooked in recent discussions about the theoretical foundations of contract law. I argue that, rather than enforcing the obligations of promises, contract law concerns complaints against promissory wrongs. This conceptual distinction is easy to miss. If one assumes that complaints arise whenever an obligation has been violated, then the distinction does not seem meaningful. I show, however, that an obligation can be breached without giving rise to a valid complaint. This Article illustrates the importance of this conceptual distinction by focusing first on the doctrine of substantive unconscionability. I claim that the doctrine can be best explained by the way in which a party who engages in exploitative behavior may lose her moral standing to complain. It is because such a party has lost her moral standing to complain that the law, through unconscionability doctrine, bars her from bringing a legal complaint. This explanation avoids the oft-issued charge of paternalism and it also offers benefits over an alternative state-oriented account developed recently by Seana Shiffrin. Using the conceptual distinction behind this account of unconscionability, this Article further argues that recent theoretical debates about the relationship between contract law and morality have been largely misconceived. Those debates have focused on whether contract law and morality impose parallel obligations. Once one appreciates the difference between imposing obligations and recognizing complaints, the comparison looks quite different. Contract law recognizes valid complaints against broken promises, much as morality recognizes moral complaints

Flyer

A flyer advertising the Workers with Disabilities: The Role of Workplace Flexibility event on November 13, 2006 hosted by Cornell University on behalf of Workplace Flexibility 2010

Holy Mutability: Religionsgeschichte and Theological Ontology

The Christian community characteristically confesses the constancy of God. But historians of religion know by contrast that the deity Yhwh evolved over time. How might scholars who belong to both these camps negotiate the disconnect? This essay seeks an answer by staging a moment of complementarity between Religionsgeschichte and OT theology. First it considers two cases in which the discourses of each discipline mirror one another by narrating the same event of deity change: Ps 82 and Yhwh’s greater mercy through exile. Second, it provides a sampler of two theological ontologies that countenance “holy mutability”: the open theism of Terence Fretheim and the evangelical historicism of Eberhard Jüngel