How Arabic influenced the evolution of vernacular literatures and anticolonial thought in Egypt, Indonesia, and Senegal Sacred Language, Vernacular Difference offers a new understanding of Arabic’s global position as the basis for comparing cultural and literary histories in countries separated by vast distances. By tracing controversies over the use of Arabic in three countries with distinct colonial legacies, Egypt, Indonesia, and Senegal, the book presents a new approach to the study of postcolonial literatures, anticolonial nationalisms, and the global circulation of pluralist ideas. Annette Damayanti Lienau presents the largely untold story of how Arabic, often understood in Africa and Asia as a language of Islamic ritual and precolonial commerce, assumed a transregional role as an anticolonial literary medium in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By examining how major writers and intellectuals across several generations grappled with the cultural asymmetries imposed by imperial Europe, Lienau shows that Arabic—as a cosmopolitan, interethnic, and interreligious language—complicated debates over questions of indigeneity, religious pluralism, counter-imperial nationalisms, and emerging nation-states. Unearthing parallels from West Africa to Southeast Asia, Sacred Language, Vernacular Difference argues that debates comparing the status of Arabic to other languages challenged not only Eurocentric but Arabocentric forms of ethnolinguistic and racial prejudice in both local and global terms.

Heidegger and Gadamer are typically read by different theologians. Heidegger tends to be read by philosophical theologians examining his contribution to matters of doubt, existential finitude, and atheism. Gadamer tends to be read by those with an interest in interpreting the Bible, especially by those with more confessional or epistemically optimistic sensibilities. In both cases, Heidegger and Gadamer have well-established associations with specific theological positions. Joshua Broggi challenges this arrangement by re-reading the primary texts as theological resources; he defends an alternative theological appropriation of their philosophical work through a close engagement with portions of their argument. What emerges from Broggi's examination is an account of the unity of tradition, reason, and scriptural language. This account goes beyond claims of their relatedness, which are uncontroversial, and advances the stronger argument that they name the very same thing. Although initially counterintuitive, the central task set by both Heidegger and Gadamer is the investigation of that one phenomenon. This argument challenges the pervasive image in which Christians rely on 'tradition' to 'reason' about the meaning of 'scripture'. It puts into question the injunction that theologians should balance the resources of scripture, tradition, and reason. Broggi offers an account of Christian life as more fundamental than certain entities which are distilled out of it, namely: scripture, tradition and reason.

• Details how sacred sites resonate at the same frequencies as both the Earth and the alpha waves of the human brain • Shows how human writing in its original hieroglyphic form was a direct response to the divine sound patterns of sacred sites • Explains how ancient hero myths from around the world relate to divine acoustic science and formed the source of religion The Earth resonates at an extremely low frequency. Known as “the Schumann Resonance,” this natural rhythm of the Earth precisely corresponds with the human brain’s alpha wave frequencies--the frequency at which we enter into and come out of sleep as well as the frequency of deep meditation, inspiration, and problem solving. Sound experiments reveal that sacred sites and structures like stupas, pyramids, and cathedrals also resonate at these special frequencies when activated by chanting and singing. Did our ancestors build their sacred sites according to the rhythms of the Earth? Exploring the acoustic connections between the Earth, the human brain, and sacred spaces, David Elkington shows how humanity maintained a direct line of communication with Mother Earth and the Divine through the construction of sacred sites, such as Stonehenge, Newgrange, Machu Picchu, Chartres Cathedral, and the pyramids of both Egypt and Mexico. He reveals how human writing in its original hieroglyphic form was a direct response to the divine sound patterns of sacred sites, showing how, for example, recognizable hieroglyphs appear in sand patterns when the sacred frequencies of the Great Pyramid are activated. Looking at ancient hero legends--those about the bringers of important knowledge or language--Elkington explains how these myths form the source of ancient religion and have a unique mythological resonance, as do the sites associated with them. The author then reveals how religion, including Christianity, is an ancient language of acoustic science given expression by the world’s sacred sites and shows that power places played a profound role in the development of human civilization.

The cultures and politics of nations around the world may be understood (or misunderstood) in any number of ways. For the Arab world, language is the crucial link for a better understanding of both. Classical Arabic is the official language of all Arab states although it is not spoken as a mother tongue by any group of Arabs. As the language of the Qur'an, it is also considered to be sacred. For more than a century and a half, writers and institutions have been engaged in struggles to modernize Classical Arabic in order to render it into a language of contemporary life. What have been the achievements and failures of such attempts? Can Classical Arabic be sacred and contemporary at one and the same time? This book attempts to answer such questions through an interpretation of the role that language plays in shaping the relations between culture, politics, and religion in Egypt.

In 1988, Lydia Cabrera (1899–1991) published La lengua sagrada de los Ñáñigos, an Abakuá phrasebook that is to this day the largest work available on any African diaspora community in the Americas. In the early 1800s in Cuba, enslaved Africans from the Cross River region of southeastern Nigeria and southwestern Cameroon created Abakuá societies for protection and mutual aid. Abakuá rites reenact mythic legends of the institution’s history in Africa, using dance, chants, drumming, symbolic writing, herbs, domestic animals, and masked performers to represent African ancestors. Criminalized and scorned in the colonial era, Abakuá members were at the same time contributing to the creation of a unique Cuban culture, including rumba music, now considered a national treasure. Translated for the first time into English, Cabrera’s lexicon documents phrases vital to the creation of a specific African-derived identity in Cuba and presents the first “insider’s” view of this African heritage. This text presents thoroughly researched commentaries that link hundreds of entries to the context of mythic rites, skilled ritual performance, and the influence of Abakuá in Cuban society and popular music. Generously illustrated with photographs and drawings, the volume includes a new introduction to Cabrera’s writing as well as appendices that situate this important work in Cuba’s history. With the help of living Abakuá specialists in Cuba and the US, Ivor L. Miller and P. González Gómes-Cásseres have translated Cabrera’s Spanish into English for the first time while keeping her meanings and cultivated style intact, opening this seminal work to new audiences and propelling its legacy in African diaspora studies.

Judaic cultures have a commitment to language that is exceptional. Language in many form – texts, books and scrolls; learning, interpretation, material practices that generate material practices – are central to Judaic conduct, experience, and spirituality. In this Judaic traditions differ from philosophical and theological ones that make language secondary. Traditional metaphysics has privileged the immaterial and unchanging, as unchanging truth that language can at best convey and at worst distort. Such traditional metaphysics has come under critique since Nietzsche in ways that the author explores. Shira Wolosky argues that Judaic traditions converge with contemporary metaphysical critique rather than being its target. Focusing on the work of Derrida, Levinas, Scholem and others, the author examines traditions of Judaic interpretation against backgrounds of biblical exegesis; sign-theory as it recasts language meaning in ways that concord with Judaic textuality; negative theology as it differs in Judaic tradition from those which negate language itself; and lastly outline a discourse ethics that draws on Judaic language theory. This study is directed to students and scholars of: Judaic thought, religious studies and theology; theory of interpretation; Levinas and other modern Jewish philosophical writers, placing them in broader contexts of philosophy, theology, and language theory. It is shown how Jewish discourses on language address urgent problems of value and norms in the contemporary world that has challenged traditional anchors of truth and meaning.

The author_s principal objective in publishing these essays was to present all the materials for impartial judgment of the scriptures and religion of the Parsis. Contents: Essay I. History of the Researches into the Sacred Writings and Religion of the Parsis; Essay II. Languages of the Parsi Scriptures; Essay III. The Zend-Avesta, or the Scripture of the Parsis; and Essay IV. The Zoroastrian Religion as to its Origin and Development. A biographical memoir of Dr. Haug by Professor E.P. Evans is also included in this volume.

G. A. Gaskell’s Dictionary of the Sacred Language of All Scriptures and Myths, first published in 1923, examines several different aspects of religion, including examples from Ancient Egyptian religion and mythology to modern-day Christianity, providing explanations of gods, events, and symbols in alphabetical order. This is a perfect reference book for students of theology or the history of religion.