Jan Willem van Henten – författare

This volume explores the fascinating phenomenon of noble death through pagan, Jewish and Christian sources. Today's society is uncomfortable with death, and willingly submitting to a violent and ostentatious death in public is seen as particularly shocking and unusual. Yet classical sources give a different view, with public self-sacrifice often being applauded. The Romans admired a heroic end in the battlefield or the arena, suicide in the tradition of Socrates was something laudable, and Christians and Jews alike faithfully commemorated their heroes who died during religious persecutions. The cross-cultural approach and wide chronological range of this study make it valuable for students and scholars of ancient history, religion and literature.

This volume explores the fascinating phenomenon of noble death through pagan, Jewish and Christian sources. Today's society is uncomfortable with death, and willingly submitting to a violent and ostentatious death in public is seen as particularly shocking and unusual. Yet classical sources give a different view, with public self-sacrifice often being applauded. The Romans admired a heroic end in the battlefield or the arena, suicide in the tradition of Socrates was something laudable, and Christians and Jews alike faithfully commemorated their heroes who died during religious persecutions. The cross-cultural approach and wide chronological range of this study make it valuable for students and scholars of ancient history, religion and literature.

The format of the new The Bible in the 21st Century series reflects an international dialogue between experts and graduate students. In this book, experts on Bible translations present essays on the practices of translating the Bible for the present and the future, through Christian and Jewish approaches, in Western Europe and North America as well as in the former Eastern Bloc and in Africa. Each paper is paired with a response. The international contributors here include Adele Berlin, John Rogerson, Robert Carroll, Mary Phil Korsak, Everett Fox, Jeremy Punt and Athalya Brenner, and the debate is prefaced with an introduction by the Editors.

The format of the new The Bible in the 21st Century series reflects an international dialogue between experts and graduate students. In this book, experts on Bible translations present essays on the practices of translating the Bible for the present and the future, through Christian and Jewish approaches, in Western Europe and North America as well as in the former Eastern Bloc and in Africa. Each paper is paired with a response. The international contributors here include Adele Berlin, John Rogerson, Robert Carroll, Mary Phil Korsak, Everett Fox, Jeremy Punt and Athalya Brenner, and the debate is prefaced with an introduction by the Editors.

This book, the first themed volume in the series The Future of the Religious Past, elaborates the manifold and fascinating interconnections between power and religion. It carries forward the work of the series in bringing together scholars from many disciplines and countries to research forms of religion in a way unfettered by the idea that religion is solely or even primarily a matter of belief in specific tenets or intellectual systems—it is also a matter of multiple particulars in individual and social life, such as powers, things, gestures, and words.Dealing with the nexus of religion and power, the present volume radically undermines the idea that the political relevance of religion is a thing of the past. Its essays treat power as a central aspect of religion on many levels, from that of macro-politics through the links between religion and nationhood to the level of personal empowerment or its obverse, disempowerment.Power and religion are both omnipresent in human action and interaction. There is no human act that does not include some kind of faith in a positive outcome and no deed in which power does not play some role. People obviously can attempt to use religion as an instrument to enhance their power or improve their status, whether personally or at the level of the nationstate. Yet religion is in principle ambiguous in relation to power: It can disempower as well as empower, and it can even function as a critique of existing power relations. Moreover,there is the consolatory function of religion, offering ways of compensation, of healing, and of enduring feelings of powerlessness.Like the first volume in the series, Religion: Beyond a Concept, the essays in this volume strike a balance between broad analyses of the nature of religion and power in their modes of emergence today and specific case studies from anthropology, sociology, and the arts. It is noteworthy for the breadth of the material it treats and its reach outside the Christian West, while not taking anything in that Western tradition for granted, given the astonishing changes of supposedly familiar religious phenomena we are viewing in the contemporary world.

This book, the first themed volume in the series The Future of the Religious Past, elaborates the manifold and fascinating interconnections between power and religion. It carries forward the work of the series in bringing together scholars from many disciplines and countries to research forms of religion in a way unfettered by the idea that religion is solely or even primarily a matter of belief in specific tenets or intellectual systems—it is also a matter of multiple particulars in individual and social life, such as powers, things, gestures, and words.Dealing with the nexus of religion and power, the present volume radically undermines the idea that the political relevance of religion is a thing of the past. Its essays treat power as a central aspect of religion on many levels, from that of macro-politics through the links between religion and nationhood to the level of personal empowerment or its obverse, disempowerment.Power and religion are both omnipresent in human action and interaction. There is no human act that does not include some kind of faith in a positive outcome and no deed in which power does not play some role. People obviously can attempt to use religion as an instrument to enhance their power or improve their status, whether personally or at the level of the nationstate. Yet religion is in principle ambiguous in relation to power: It can disempower as well as empower, and it can even function as a critique of existing power relations. Moreover,there is the consolatory function of religion, offering ways of compensation, of healing, and of enduring feelings of powerlessness.Like the first volume in the series, Religion: Beyond a Concept, the essays in this volume strike a balance between broad analyses of the nature of religion and power in their modes of emergence today and specific case studies from anthropology, sociology, and the arts. It is noteworthy for the breadth of the material it treats and its reach outside the Christian West, while not taking anything in that Western tradition for granted, given the astonishing changes of supposedly familiar religious phenomena we are viewing in the contemporary world.

The phenomenon of martyrdom is more than 2000 years old but, as contemporary events show, still very much alive. Martyrdom: Canonisation, Contestation and Afterlives examines the canonisation, contestation and afterlives of martyrdom and connects these with cross-cultural acts and practices of remembrance. Martyrdom appeals to the imagination of many because it is a highly ambiguous spectacle with thrilling deadly consequences. Imagination is thus a vital catalyst for martyrdom, for martyrs become martyrs only because others remember and honour them as such. This memorialisation occurs through rituals and documents that incorporate and re-interpret traditions deriving from canonical texts. The canonisation of martyrdom generally occurs in one of two ways: First, through ritual commemoration by communities of inside readers, listeners, viewers and participants, who create and recycle texts, re-interpreting them until the martyrs ultimately receive a canonical status, or second, through commemoration as a means of contestation by competing communities who perceive these same people as traitors or terrorists. By adopting an interdisciplinary orientation and a cross-cultural approach, this book goes beyond both the insider admiration of martyrs and the partisan rejection of martyrdoms and concisely synthesises key interpretive questions and themes that broach the canonised, unstable and contested representations of martyrdom as well as their analytical connections, divergences and afterlives in the present.

The phenomenon of martyrdom is more than 2000 years old but, as contemporary events show, still very much alive. Martyrdom: Canonisation, Contestation and Afterlives examines the canonisation, contestation and afterlives of martyrdom and connects these with cross-cultural acts and practices of remembrance. Martyrdom appeals to the imagination of many because it is a highly ambiguous spectacle with thrilling deadly consequences. Imagination is thus a vital catalyst for martyrdom, for martyrs become martyrs only because others remember and honour them as such. This memorialisation occurs through rituals and documents that incorporate and re-interpret traditions deriving from canonical texts. The canonisation of martyrdom generally occurs in one of two ways: First, through ritual commemoration by communities of inside readers, listeners, viewers and participants, who create and recycle texts, re-interpreting them until the martyrs ultimately receive a canonical status, or second, through commemoration as a means of contestation by competing communities who perceive these same people as traitors or terrorists. By adopting an interdisciplinary orientation and a cross-cultural approach, this book goes beyond both the insider admiration of martyrs and the partisan rejection of martyrdoms and concisely synthesises key interpretive questions and themes that broach the canonised, unstable and contested representations of martyrdom as well as their analytical connections, divergences and afterlives in the present.

The phenomenon of martyrdom is more than 2000 years old but, as contemporary events show, still very much alive. Martyrdom: Canonisation, Contestation and Afterlives examines the canonisation, contestation and afterlives of martyrdom and connects these with cross-cultural acts and practices of remembrance. Martyrdom appeals to the imagination of many because it is a highly ambiguous spectacle with thrilling deadly consequences. Imagination is thus a vital catalyst for martyrdom, for martyrs become martyrs only because others remember and honour them as such. This memorialisation occurs through rituals and documents that incorporate and re-interpret traditions deriving from canonical texts. The canonisation of martyrdom generally occurs in one of two ways: First, through ritual commemoration by communities of inside readers, listeners, viewers and participants, who create and recycle texts, re-interpreting them until the martyrs ultimately receive a canonical status, or second, through commemoration as a means of contestation by competing communities who perceive these same people as traitors or terrorists. By adopting an interdisciplinary orientation and a cross-cultural approach, this book goes beyond both the insider admiration of martyrs and the partisan rejection of martyrdoms and concisely synthesises key interpretive questions and themes that broach the canonised, unstable and contested representations of martyrdom as well as their analytical connections, divergences and afterlives in the present.

This volume explores the fascinating phenomenon of noble death through pagan, Jewish and Christian sources. Today''s society is uncomfortable with death, and willingly submitting to a violent and ostentatious death in public is seen as particularly shocking and unusual. Yet classical sources give a different view, with public self-sacrifice often being applauded. The Romans admired a heroic end in the battlefield or the arena, suicide in the tradition of Socrates was something laudable, and Christians and Jews alike faithfully commemorated their heroes who died during religious persecutions. The cross-cultural approach and wide chronological range of this study make it valuable for students and scholars of ancient history, religion and literature.

This volume explores the fascinating phenomenon of noble death through pagan, Jewish and Christian sources. Today''s society is uncomfortable with death, and willingly submitting to a violent and ostentatious death in public is seen as particularly shocking and unusual. Yet classical sources give a different view, with public self-sacrifice often being applauded. The Romans admired a heroic end in the battlefield or the arena, suicide in the tradition of Socrates was something laudable, and Christians and Jews alike faithfully commemorated their heroes who died during religious persecutions. The cross-cultural approach and wide chronological range of this study make it valuable for students and scholars of ancient history, religion and literature.

Violence is present in the very heart of religion and its sacred traditions – also of Christianity and the Bible. The problem, however, is not only that violence is ingrained in the mere existence of religions with their sacred traditions. It is equally problematic to realise that the icy grip of violence on the sacred has gone unnoticed and unchallenged for a very long time. The present publication aims to contribute to the recent scholarly debate about the interconnections between violence and monotheistic religions by analysing the role of violence in the New Testament as well as by offering some hermeneutical perspectives on violence as it is articulated in the earliest Christian writings.Contributors include: Andries G. van Aarde, Paul Decock, Pieter G.R. de Villiers, Ernest van Eck, Jan Willem van Henten, Rob van Houwelingen, Kobus Kok, Tobias Nicklas, Jeremy Punt, Jan G. van der Watt, and Wim Weren.

Early Christian Ethics in Interaction with Jewish and Greco-Roman Contexts focuses upon the nexus of early Christian Ethics and its contexts as a dynamic process. The ongoing interaction with Jewish, Greco-Roman or early Christian traditions as well as with the social-historical context at large continuously transformed early Christian ethics. The volume proposes a dynamic model for studying culture and its various expressions in a society composed of several ethnic and religious groups. The contributions focus on specific transformations of ethics in key documents of early Christianity, or take a more comparative perspective pointing to similar developments and overlaps as well as particularities within early Christian writings, Hellenistic-Jewish writings, Dead Sea Scrolls and Jewish inscriptions.

This volume contains the papers of a workshop on Jewish epigraphy in antiquity organized at Utrecht University in 1992. Among the participants were collaborators of the Cambridge Jewish Inscriptions Project and of the Tubinger Atlas des Vorderen Orients project.Important aspects of ancient Jewish inscriptions are highlighted in the papers, like the connection between documentary and literary texts. Several papers focus on aspects of the history of Jewish communities in the diaspora.Specialists in Jewish epigraphy will find surveys of parts of the corpus of Jewish inscriptions (curse inscriptions, metrical epitaphs, alphabet-inscriptions) and discussions of some fixed opinions, and Jewish inscriptions are discussed in a wider literary and historical contexts as well.

STAR - Studies in Theology and Religion, 2The fruits of discussion at an international gathering of biblical and other scholars interested in "e;families"e; in the ancient Near East are offered here. This is not a collection of "e;proceedings"e; in the usual sense; rather the essays mark a conscious joint effort to advance the discussion in the newly opened debate on "e;families"e; in the "e;biblical worlds"e;.Topics discussed include the metaphor of marriage in Early Judaism, the brother-sister relationship in Ancient Israel, Hebrew family names, domesticity in Judaism, kinship in the Pauline churches, and women in John's Gospel.The contributors include, among others, A. van der Kooij, R. Hachlili, G. Mussies, M. Peskowitz, P. Esler, S. van Tilborg, and R. Bieringer.

STAR - Studies in Theology and Religion, 1This collection of essays presented by senior international scholars and junior biblical scholars during a colloquium and two master classes of the Netherlands School for Advanced Studies in Theology and Religion (NOSTER) discusses the processes by which biblical entities are appropriated, updated, rewritten, reinterpreted and transmitted in subsequent written sources.The contributions focus on textual figures as well as the recycling of concepts, entities, ideologies and theologies. The contributors include, among others, J. Barr, J.C. de Moor, H.A. McKay, P. Beentjes, R.S. Kraemer, and J. Tromp.

This volume deals with the presentation of the so-called Maccabean martyrs and the elder Razis in 2 and 4 Maccabees, discussing the religious, the political as well as the philosophical aspects of noble death in these writings. It argues that the theme of martyrdom is a very important part of the self-image of the Jews as presented by the authors of both works. Eleazar, the anonymous mother with her seven sons and Razis should, therefore, be considered heroes of the Jewish people.The first part of the book discusses the sources and the second part deals with the descriptions of noble death. This section of the book also offers extensive discussions of related non-Jewish traditions which highlight the political-patriotic dimension of noble death as described in 2 and 4 Maccabees.

This volume offers a comprehensive discussion of all relevant sources concerning Jewish martyrdom in Antiquity. By viewing these narratives together, tracing their development and comparing them to other traditions, the authors seek to explore how Jewish is Jewish martyrdom? To this end, they analyse the impact of the changing social and religious-cultural circumstances and the interactions with Graeco-Roman and Christian traditions. This results in the identification of important continuities and discontinuities. Consequently, while political ideals that are prominent in 2 and 4 Maccabees are remarkably absent from rabbinic sources, the latter reveal a growing awareness of Christian motifs and discourse.