Visions of the Holy is a collection of essays by Marvin A. Sweeney on the study of biblical and postbiblical theology and literature. The volume includes previously published and unpublished essays related to the developing field of Jewish biblical theology; historical, comparative, and reception-critical studies; and the reading of texts from the Pentateuch, Former Prophets, Latter Prophets, and Ketuvim. Additional essays examine Asian biblical theology, the understanding of Shabbat, intertextuality in Exodus–Numbers, Samuel, Isaiah, and the Twelve in intertextual perspective, and the democratization of messianism in modern Jewish thought. The volume is an excellent resource for scholars, students, and clergy interested in theological readings of the Hebrew Bible.

Seventeen wide-ranging essays explore the evolving scientific understanding of Mars, and the relationship between that understanding and the role of Mars in literature, the arts and popular culture. Essays in the first section examine different approaches to Mars by scientists and writers Jules Verne and J.H. Rosny. Section Two covers the uses of Mars in early Bolshevik literature, Wells, Brackett, Burroughs, Bradbury, Heinlein, Dick and Robinson, among others. The third section looks at Mars as a cultural mirror in science fiction. Essayists include prominent writers (e.g., Kim Stanley Robinson), scientists and literary critics from many nations.

Conservation and development programmes in Zimbabwe's south-east 'lowveld' have been rooted in the conceptualisation of this landscape as wilderness. The uses, perceptions and experiences of this landscape by African people have been ignored in policies derived from the 'wilderness vision'. Land reform has failed to take account of the way the landscape is bound up with identity through its embodiment of ancestral spirits and function as a repository of social memories. The turbulent dynamics around farm invasions in Zimbabwe may open space for previously silenced constructions of landscape to influence policy. North America: Tsehai/African Academic; Zimbabwe: WeaverBR>

The essays in this volume contribute diversely towards a revision and a reconceptualization of nineteenth-century France, with many adopting interdisciplinary methodologies attentive to the interplay between literature, history, art, popular and high culture, politics and science.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International Conference, VISIGRAPP 2014, consisting of the Joint Conferences on Computer Vision (VISAPP), the International Conference on Computer Graphics, GRAPP 2014 and the International Conference on Information Visualization, IVAPP 2014, held in Lisbon, Portugal, in January 2014. The 22 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 543 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on computer graphics theory and applications; information visualization – theory and applications; computer vision theory and applications.

This study considers how a significant variable, namely level of literary education (enkuklios paideia), might affect an ancient hearer's interpretation of Revelation 9. This volume focuses on how two hypothetical ancient hearer-constructs, with very different "mental libraries", may interpret the rich cosmological imagery of Revelation 9. The first, ancient hearer-construct (HC1), the recipient of a minimal literary education, retains a Homeric cosmological model. The second ancient hearer-construct (HC2), by contrast, utilises a tertiary-level knowledge of Aratus and Plato to allegorically reinterpret the cosmological imagery of Rev 9 (cf. 'Hippolytus', Refutatio IV.46-50). The volume concludes by critically comparing the hypothetical responses of HC1 and HC2 with the early reception of Revelation 9 by Victorinus, Tyconius and Oecumenius (3rd-6th century CE), attentive to the educational attainment of each commentator.

Is Islamic civilization violent? Many in the West believe that Islam and Muslims are indeed violent. In the Muslim world, this question itself implies Western prejudice. The answer can only be achieved by comparing various parameters of the violence of “civilizations”. In this book, violent conflicts of various “civilizations” of the last two centuries have been quantified, compared and analyzed through well-established scientific principles and presented in layman's terms.

In this volume that is as big and as varied as the nation it portrays are over 1,400 entries written by some 900 historians and other scholars, illuminating not only America's political, diplomatic, and military history, but also social, cultural, and intellectual trends; science, technology, and medicine; the arts; and religion.