Interfaces – serie

The book of Jonah has been richly commented upon by centuries of Christians and Jews. Writers of prose and poetry have loved it as well as those interested in liturgy. Jonah is a small book, and yet it is placed with issues that have shown themselves existentially powerful over time and among readers of many types and cultures. In essence, Jonah's journey's among interpreters have had a great deal of territory to explore.In Jonah's Journey's, Barbara Green, OP, focuses on the character Jonah and explores the variety of ways in which the prophet and the book have been represented and understood by various interpreters. The question of how readers construct meaning is central to the text.Barbara Green, OP, Ph.D., is professor of Biblical Studies at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. She is editor of the Interfaces series published by Liturgical Press and author of several books within the series including: King Sal's Asking and From Earth's Creation to John's Revelation: The Interfaces Biblical Storyline Companion.

Who should lead us? Who should we, as a community, look to for guidance? These questions, as old as humankind, followed the Israelite community upon their return from the Exile: Should they return with Davidic kingship or without it? Their answer was King Saul. Reading Israel's first king as a riddle or the epitome of Israel's experience with kingship, King Saul's Asking explores the characterization of the figure Saul, the question of the apparent silence of God, the multiple complexities of responsibility for kingship, and the readers' opportunities for transformation. It provides a new approach to the Old Testament, supplying the reader with not only an in-depth character study but also an interesting, insightful read, and opportunity for transformation. Chapters are "Asking a Child (1 Samuel 1-3)," "Seeking a Refuge (1 Samuel 4-7)," "Request for a King (1 Samuel 8-12)," "Obedience Wanted, Wanting (1 Samuel 13-15)" "Suspecting the Dreaded (1 Samuel 16-19)" "Futile Searching (1 Samuel 20-23)," "Sensing the Silent (1 Samuel 24-26)," and "Final Questions." Barbara Green, OP, PhD, is a professor of biblical studies and a member of the core doctoral faculty at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California. Editor of the Interfaces series, she also wrote Like a Tree Planted, published by Liturgical Press.

Pontius Pilate examines the portraits of this Roman governor found in the Gospels. Unlike some discussions of Pilate, this one takes Pilate's role as governor and representative of Roman imperial power seriously. It views Pilate predominantly as a strong, efficient, and astute governor, not as a weak and indecisive man, pressured into killing Jesus against Pilate's convictions. The conclusion considers some of the ethical and theological issues the scenes involving Pilate raise for contemporary readers. Chapters are "Would the Real Pilate Please Stand Up?" "Reading the Gospel Accounts of Pilate," "Governors and the Roman Imperial System," "Mark's Pilate," "Matthew's Pilate," "Luke's Pilate," and "John's Pilate." Warren Carter, Ph.D., is professor of New Testament at Saint Paul School of Theology, Kansas City, Missouri. He has published numerous scholarly and ecclesial publications.

Through the world of James of Jerusalem we discover the development of Christianity and its struggle for self-definition amidst Jewish roots and a rising congregation of newly converted Gentiles. In this time of early Christianity, James' presence testified to the church's diversity and he influenced Christianity beyond the literature of the New Testament. Patrick J. Hartin studies the character of James in his various life-roles: as a member of Jesus' family, as a leader and spokesperson of Jerusalem, and as an important figure in early Christian writing, including that of Paul, and the Acts of the Apostles. The use of historical critical method illustrates for students the growth of traditions and the sources behind the texts.Chapters are Jesus, James and his family," *James as leader of the Jerusalem Community, - *James and Paul, - *James in Tradition, - and conclusion.

Because he plays such a prominent role in the New Testament and the tradition of the church, the apostle Peter has been the focus of much scholarship over the centuries. One wonders whether there can be anything more to say about Peter. Indeed, there is. In Four Times Peter Richard Cassidy takes a narrative critical look at Peter in the story of each gospel individually (rather than studying Peter via a side-by-side analysis of the gospels). Cassidy looks first to the character of Jesus in each of the gospels and then to the group of apostles as a whole before turning to Peter.In the end, Four Times Peter allows an intriguing portrait of this apostle to emerge. Readers discover a portrait of Peter that would have been familiar to the earliest Christian communities. And it is this ancient portrait that gives modern readers a refreshing new sense of Peter.Richard J. Cassidy, STL, PhD, is Professor of Sacred Scripture at Sacred Heart Major Seminary, Detroit, Michigan.This book is part of the series Interfaces.

Questions of vocation and character formation become important to students as they continue to receive higher education. Jesus Ben Sira combines secular wisdom from Near Eastern wisdom sources and divine revelations from the Hebrew Bible to create the Book of Sirach. By applying form criticism to Ben Sira's book, Daniel J. Harrington provides students with historical information of the psychological and sociological context underlying Ben Sira's teachings, as well as an understanding of how Ben Sira's ancient wisdom can contribute to personal and social formation in the 21st century.Chapters include Ben Sira and His Book, Ben Sira and Other Wisdom Books, Reading Ben Sira's Book, Ben Sira's Ways of Teaching, Ben Sira's Social World, Ben Sira's Abiding Wisdom, as well as references, suggestions for further study, and an index.Daniel J. Harrington, S.J., Ph.D., is a professor of New Testament at the Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has written numerous scholarly works, including Paul on the Mystery of Israel, The Gospel of Matthew, and The Gospel According to Matthew published by the Liturgical Press.This book is part of the series Interfaces.

Can a "legion" of demons convey a message? As Michael Willett Newheart asserts, a study of the Gerasene (Mark 5:1-20) and the demons Jesus cast from him can indeed carry an important message of faith. Although the Gerasene may have suffered from mental illness, he (like other minor characters with major significance) exercised faith in a way the disciples did not.Newheart interfaces narrative and psychological criticism with historical perspectives, cultural examination, and poetic reflection to create the first book-length treatment of the Gerasene demoniac. Chapter One, "The Gerasene's Story: Literary Criticism," focuses on the narrative analysis, and discusses the story through the angle of Jesus as teacher, healer, and Gerasene the healed follower. Chapter Two, "The Gerasene's Soul: Psychological Criticism," brings to light the psychoanalytic perspective of Mark 5:1-20. Ideal for students of the Bible, Gerasene's story demonstrates faith in a way that may help readers vicariously experience relief from their maladies.Michael Willett Newheart, PhD, is associate professor of New Testament language and literature at the Howard University School of Divinity. He is the author of Word and Soul, published by Liturgical Press."

An exploration of Machiavelli’s poetry, love affairs, friendships, and his preoccupation with truth and perception.Who was Niccolo Machiavelli and why should we consider him relevant to the problems and vexations of the modern world? Stephen Bowd and Alexander Lee aim to ‘defamiliarize’ Machiavelli.Given that he is so well known, if only by name, and the subject of such grave misconceptions and prejudice, the authors set out to explain why he is not the ‘Machiavellian’ figure he is supposed to be, and that he was not just a political thinker.Examining his frequently bawdy poetry, his comedies and his love affairs and friendships, this book will lead modern readers on an exhilarating and thought-provoking journey through Machiavelli’s mind, bringing him to life and illuminating why such a seminal thinker should be of urgent interest to us today.

This book discusses an ecological approach to communicational processes. Raising consciousness about being green is not the only concern of present-day ecological linguistics. Ecolinguistics, with its attention focused on ecosystems as well as contexts of language and communication, probes deep into the core of not only modern linguistics but modern science in general, while relating to conceptions of the world as well as to the scientific method itself. Thus, when ecological thinking is applied to science, it eventually will incite a methodological and philosophical rethinking. This study reports the fundamental shifts occurring after ecological views had been infused into the Social Sciences and Humanities. The substance of various qualities, from the very dense and tangible, to subtle mental or cognitive non-matter, becomes an ecosystem for human language on both a very direct, material plane, as well as on the non-material plane. In fact, human language, as perceived by an ecologically-minded linguist today, is a life process, operating within the pulsating grid of other life processes.

How socio-cultural factors influence the development of Intercultural Communication Competence is an essential part of developing the skills to work and interact with a rapidly globalizing world. Building upon the work of Edward Hall, Geert Hofstede and Stella Ting-Toomey, this book explores the role in which experience, family and other social aspects play in creating an individual’s ICC skills. In this work, a model of six ICC skills allows for the examination of the impact of Polish national culture on socio-cultural values of Polish students in the three mutually dependent dimensions of politics, education and family. The empirical data present clear conclusions and indications of how specific factors are relevant or irrelevant in helping to construct ICC. These findings bear implications for trainers and researchers in approaching the issue of developing intercultural competences.

This book is an attempt to define the concept of metrical foot in acoustic terms. The foot constituent has been approached from various theoretical standpoints. Little attention, however, has been devoted to its empirical justification. The author explores the possiblity that the foot is a purely vocalic constituent and can be described as a complex network of inter- and intravocalic relations between duration, pitch and intensity. He argues that a number of quantitative processes, like pre-fortis clipping or final lengthening, are inexplicable without reference to the foot. Convincing arguments are provided for the vowel-based isochrony which is derivative of the quantitative processes operating within the foot. The author also points out ways in which these empirical results may be incorporated into phonological theory.

The monograph argues for a return to a more fine-grained repertoire of tropes than the limiting analyses focused on metaphor or on the metaphor-metonymy duet. A list of ten master tropes is proposed, not only as candidates for tropological universals but also important text-forming strategies and a reflection of artistic imagination. The author presents a three-layered model of their organization into micro-, macro- and mega-/metatropes that partake in the construal of tropological space and figurative worlds. The book brings together Anglo-American and French-language philosophy of rhetoric, cognitive studies, and a tradition of Russian formalistic-semiotic research. It straddles the boundary between linguistic and literary stylistics as well as between post-structural and cognitive poetics, pointing also to an interdisciplinary nature of tropes.

The book presents the issue of impoliteness in media discourse found in television debates, films and computer-mediated communication. The phenomenon is viewed from different theoretical perspectives, namely prosody studies, corpus linguistics, media studies and audiovisual translation, neo-Gricean approaches, reception-oriented investigations and context-bound interpretations. Authors from ten different countries – Sweden, USA, Norway, New Zealand, Mexico, Georgia, France, Poland, India, and UAE – analyse data from nine languages – English, Swedish, Georgian, Polish, Arabic, Persian, French, Croatian and Montenegrin.

Non-professional Interpreting and Translation (NPIT) is a recent discipline. Books and volumes on this subject that combine all the different fields are extremely uncommon and authoritative reference material is scarce and mostly scattered through disparate specialized journals. There are many areas and aspects of NPIT in the media that to date have been under researched or utterly neglected. The aim of this volume is therefore to fill an important gap in the academic market and to provide an overview of diverse aspects of non-professional interpreting and translation in the media. The volume consists of a collection of essays by eminent international scholars and researchers from the field of Translation and Interpreting Studies.

The book is not only dedicated to linguists, but also to readers who are not familiar with notations developed in linguistics. The first part of the study presents philosophical justifications for linguistic settlements. These are based on the phenomenological reduction of Edmund Husserl, Karl R. Popper’s falsificationism, the moderate rationalism of science of Izydora Dąmbska and Andrzej Bogusławski’s lack of the nomological explanation in linguistics. The second part presents a re-examination of the solutions proposed in the field of linguistics, some new philosophical explanations and a discussion of the truth of linguistic propositions.