This wide-ranging Reader provides a comprehensive survey of the interaction between postcolonial criticism and biblical studies. Examines how various empires such as the Persian and Roman affected biblical narratives. Demonstrates how different biblical writers such as Paul, Matthew and Mark handled the challenges of empire. Includes examples of the practical application of postcolonial criticism to biblical texts. Considers contemporary issues such as diaspora, race, representation and territory. Editorial commentary draws out the key points to be made and creates a coherent narrative.

What is the history of philosophy? Is it history or is it philosophy or is it by some strange alchemy a confluence of the two? The contributors to the present volume of essays have tackled this seemingly simple, but in reality difficult and controversial, question, by drawing on their specialised knowledge of the surviving texts of leading ancient philosophers, from the Presocratics to Augustine, through Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus. These contributions, which reflect the range of methods and approaches currently used in the study of ancient texts, are offered as a tribute to the scholarship of Denis O’Brien, one of the most original and penetrating students of the thousand-year period of intense philosophical activity that constitutes ancient philosophy. Contributors include: T. Ebert, F. Fronterrota, C.J. Gill, C. Huffman, N. Notomi, J.-C. Picot, J.-F. Pradeau, M. Rashed, K. Sayre, R.K. Sprague, and J.G.C. Strachan. Publications by Denis O’Brien: • Theories of Weight in the Ancient World: Four Essays on Democritus, Plato and Aristotle - A Study in the Development of Ideas. 1. Democritus: Weight and Size. An Exercise in the Reconstruction of Early Greek Philosophy, ISBN: 978 90 04 06134 7 (Out of print) • Pour interpréter Empédocle, ISBN: 978 90 04 06249 8 (Out of print) • Theories of Weight in the Ancient World: Four Essays on Democritus, Plato and Aristotle - A Study in the Development of Ideas. 2. Plato: Weight and Sensation. The Two Theories of the 'Timaeus', ISBN: 978 90 04 06934 3 • Théodicée plotinienne, théodicée gnostique, ISBN: 978 90 04 09618 9

The contributors to this volume offer, in the light of specialised knowledge of leading philosophers of the ancient world, answers to the question: how are we to read and understand the surviving texts of Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus and Augustine?

Reading Plato offers a concise and illuminating insight into the complexities and difficulties of the Platonic dialogues, providing an invaluable text for any student of Plato's philosophy. Taking as a starting point the critique of writing in the Phaedrus -- where Socrates argues that a book cannot choose its reader nor can it defend itself against misinterpretation -- Reading Plato offers solutions to the problems of interpreting the dialogues. In this ground-breaking book, Thomas A. Szlezak persuasively argues that the dialogues are designed to stimulate philosophical enquiry and to elevate philosophy to the realm of oral dialectic.

Contemporary tourism and travel have become a form of religion, a new opiate of the masses. However, could Church and theology be religious forms of tourism and travel? 'Bibles and Baedekers' offers a theology of tourism and exile for a modern and postmodern world. It examines the ways in which location, identity and movement have made use of religious texts and metaphor and questions the relative absence of secular texts and ideas in theology. The theology of the tourist and traveller is one of new experiences, the acquisition of identity through movement. 'Bibles and Baedekers' uniquely applies this to the postmodern Christian, embodying the fulfilment of Bonhoeffer's 'religionless Christianity', dislocated from both a secular and 'religious' world.

What is important for citizens to know and be able to do? The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) seeks to answer that question through the most comprehensive and rigorous international assessment of student knowledge and skills.

Karl Barth and his legacy have dominated theology circles for over a decade. In this volume George Hunsinger, a world-renowned expert on Barth's theology, makes an authoritative contribution to the debate concerning Barth's trinitarian theology and doctrine of election. Hunsinger challenges a popular form of Barth interpretation pertaining to the Trinity, demonstrating that there is no major break in Barth's thought between the earlier and the later Barth of the Church Dogmatics. Hunsinger also discusses important issues in trinitarian theology and Christology that extend beyond the contemporary Barth debates. This major statement will be valued by professors and students of systematic theology, scholars, and readers of Barth.

A comprehensive manual for anyone wishing to become competent in reading and understanding the Scriptures of the Judeo-Christian tradition. The chapters of this book introduce the reader to all aspects of biblical studies. They guide the reader through the maze, from 'Venturing In' to 'Negotiated Reading'. There are sections on, for example, considering the self-consciousness of the reader/interpreter, the interaction of the tradition with the text of Scripture through the ages, the various literary genres together with the principal forms within the larger biblical documents, ways of reading the text in the modern and post-modern periods, how the academic reading of Scripture and the church reading interact, the relation between competent reading of the sacred text and the preparation and delivery of the sermon, the place of dialogue in the interpretive process. The conclusion sums up the discussion throughout the book and focuses the issues for a competent reading of the Bible and related writings. Student-friendly features include, at the end of each chapter: --An Objective, summarizing the content and objective of the chapter 12-14 lead questions with act as in-depth study exercises--Full bibliography and suggestions for further reading

Reading Proclus and the Book of Causes, published in three volumes, is a fresh, comprehensive understanding of the history of Neoplatonism from the 9th to the 16th century. This third volume gathers contributions on key concepts of the Platonic tradition (Proclus, Plotinus, Porphyry or Sallustius) inherited and reinterpreted by Arabic (e.g. Avicenna, the Book of Causes), Byzantine (e.g. Maximus the Confessor, Ioane Petritsi) and Latin authors (e.g. Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Berthold of Moosburg, Marsilio Ficino etc.). Two major themes are presently studied: causality (in respect to the One, the henads, the self-constituted substances and the first being) and the noetic triad (being-life-intellect).

This study, using the example of Yeats, Eliot, and Williams, examines the principal gestures of Modernist poetic speakers attempting to identify, mediate, and project cultural authority. To effect this mediation, the poetic speakers must engage in "transpersonality"; by association with the objects of presences in the poem, they must translate their finite egos into mediating voices detached from the concerns of unique selfhood. However, complete transpersonality brings silence: the fact of utterance presupposes a unique perspective, never the totality of perspectives that an atemporal authority possesses. So, rather than the speaker's elevation to a position of authority, the necessary result of the transpersonality is instead that the speaker approach authority in calculated acts of mystification.