A Cross-Cultural Conceptual Study of the Emotion of קצף in the Hebrew Bible and the Folk Theory of the Emotion of Ngoò in the Kĩkamba Language

A Cross-Cultural Conceptual Study of the Emotion of קצף in the Hebrew Bible and the Folk Theory of the Emotion of Ngoò in the Kĩkamba Language PDF

Author: George Mutuku

Publisher: Langham Publishing

Published: 2023-03-02

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13: 1839738103

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Communication requires more than a lexical understanding of words. Language relies on the background understanding of the speaker and hearer – an understanding that cannot be taken for granted when communicating cross-culturally. In this study, Dr. George Mbithi Mutuku brings to life a deeper understanding of emotion, specifically anger, in the Hebrew Bible. Utilizing frame semantics and undertaking a comparative study of קצף and ngoò as conceptualized in Hebrew and Akamba cultures, respectively, Mutuku argues that ngoò would have been the best rendering for the Hebrew concept קצף in the Kĩkamba Bible. So doing, he demonstrates the value of exploring words and meanings in their cultural contexts and offers a powerful warning against the assumption that any word – even the word of God – carries universal meaning divorced from that context. He reminds us that God’s word is communicated to us cross-culturally, so we must take seriously the responsibility of transferring its meaning across languages.

Grasping Emotions

Grasping Emotions PDF

Author: Ute E. Eisen

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2024-01-29

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 3111185796

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Emotions have increasingly attracted the attention of the sciences and academia. The topic is all the more timely since we have witnessed a global trend towards highly emotionalized discourses across societies and religions. Discourses are less guided by rational arguments and “facts”. Instead, narratives, sometimes manipulative, influence the thoughts and activi-ties of our societies. In this context, the authoritative texts of the monotheistic religions are experiencing a renaissance. Tanach, Bible and Qur’an do not only “emotionalize”, they also offer ancient concepts of emotions which affect the present. This book brings the interdependencies of antiquity and (post)modernity into an interdisci-plinary discussion. How should we understand feelings at all? This book explores the ap-proaches to emotions as portrayed and understood in various sources and disciplines. The contributors share their perspectives on methodological questions concerning research on the emotions. Scholars in religious studies and theology from different traditions—Jewish, Christian, Islamic—enter into dialogue with other disciplines, such as psychology, literary studies, sociology, cultural studies, philosophy, and historiography.

Ancient Jewish Prayers and Emotions

Ancient Jewish Prayers and Emotions PDF

Author: Stefan C. Reif

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2015-11-13

Total Pages: 417

ISBN-13: 3110369087

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Given the recent interest in the emotions presupposed in early religious literature, it has been thought useful to examine in this volume how the Jews and early Christians expressed their feelings within the prayers recorded in some of their literature. Specialists in their fields from academic institutions around the world have analysed important texts relating to this overall theme and to what is revealed with regard to such diverse topics as relations with God, exegesis, education, prophecy, linguistic expression, feminism, happiness, grief, cult, suicide, non-Jews, Hellenism, Qumran and Jerusalem. The texts discussed are in Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic and are important for a scientific understanding of how Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity developed their approaches to worship, to the construction of their theology and to the feelings that lay behind their religious ideas and practices. The articles contribute significantly to an historical understanding of how Jews maintained their earlier traditions but also came to terms with the ideology of the dominant Hellenistic culture that surrounded them.

A Prototype Approach to Hate and Anger in the Hebrew Bible

A Prototype Approach to Hate and Anger in the Hebrew Bible PDF

Author: Deena E. Grant

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-06-09

Total Pages: 113

ISBN-13: 1000931536

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This innovative book applies findings from the field of cognitive linguistics to the study of emotions in the Hebrew Bible. The book draws on the prototype approach to conceptual categories to help interpret emotion language in biblical passages. Contemporary scholarship has come to recognize that biblical emotion terms do not necessarily possess exact equivalents within our modern lexicons, even if some of these terms express (or appear to express) concepts similar to those conveyed by modern emotion language. In particular, the book focuses on sn’ and ḫrh, which are almost always equated in modern English with hate and anger. However, the ancient Hebrew roots evoke varied and robust emotion-scripts that are quite different than their English counterparts. We see how the prototype script model may help to expose the unique nuances of sn’ and ḫrh and put into profile elements of these emotions that may otherwise go unnoticed. Overall, the study demonstrates that even though modern emotion terms cannot fully capture the ancient emotional experience, our shared use of language to evoke meaning offers us entrée into the emotional world represented in the Hebrew Bible.

Jealousy in Context

Jealousy in Context PDF

Author: Erin Villareal

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2023-03-22

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 1646021843

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Attested as both a human and a divine expression, the biblical Hebrew term qinʾâ is most often translated as “jealousy” or “envy.” In this study, Erin Villareal makes the case for reading qinʾâ as more than a simple reference to an emotion, instead locating the term’s origins in ancient Israel’s social and legal spheres. Jealousy in Context evaluates the socioliterary context of qinʾâ. Through a series of case studies examining this term as it is applied to residents, sister-wives, brothers, and husbands in biblical narrative passages, Villareal explains that qinʾâ is felt by people who experience a threat or disruption to their rights and status within a social arrangement or community and is therefore grounded in practical concerns that have social and juridical ramifications. Investigating examples of divine qinʾâ, Villareal shows that its social meaning was adapted into theological language about the Israelite deity and his relationship with the people of Israel, and that Yahweh expresses qinʾâ whenever there is a threat to the integrity of his land or his sanctuary. Villareal examines the term through this socioliterary lens to reveal ancient Israelite perceptions concerning social organization and divine-human relationships. Additionally, she explores how the socioliterary character of qinʾâ in the Hebrew Bible communicates representations of ancient Israelite beliefs, values, and social expectations. This convincing new understanding of a key biblical term will be appreciated by students and scholars of the Hebrew Bible, Hebrew linguistics, and ancient Near Eastern societies more generally.

Emotions in Biblical Law

Emotions in Biblical Law PDF

Author: Thomas Kazen

Publisher: Sheffield Phoenix Press Limited

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 9781907534294

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This study pioneers the use of insights from cognitive sciences, such as evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and developmental psychology, as heuristic tools for interpreting ancient texts. The approach could be described as 'psycho-biological'. The focus is on emotions in the various Pentateuchal legal collections. Kazen discusses the role of disgust, empathy, fear, and a sense of justice, for particular moral and ritual issues: purity and holiness; humanitarian concern for vulnerable categories; ethnocentrism and xenophobia; divine punishment and demonic threat; revenge, compensation, and ransom (kofer), together with removal (kipper) rites. The book consists of two main parts, framed by an introductory chapter and a concluding discussion. In the first part, Kazen explores cognitive foundations, including biological and neuroscientific underpinnings for basic affects, and the role of culture in shaping both conventional morality and ritual behaviour. Four particular emotions are then outlined. In the second part, these insights from cognitive science are applied in analyses of particular texts. After an overview of the Pentateuchal legal collections, each of the four emotions is dealt with in a separate chapter. Kazen constantly relates a cognitive science approach to more traditional source and redaction-critical analysis, regarding them as complementary. As a result, the Pentateuchal legal collections are seen as emotional texts, expressing strong affects-which influences our understanding of the character of Israelite 'law'. Kazen suggests that interaction and conflict between various emotions can explain discrepancies and tensions between humanitarian concerns and ethnocentrism, and between empathy and justice. He also demonstrates that viewing emotions as common denominators contains a potential for solving some difficult and long-standing conundrums. He argues that a focus on the human embodied experience rather than on theological convictions and theoretical ideas may avoid some interpretative dead ends and open up new avenues for understanding ancient texts.

History and the Hebrew Bible: Culture, Narrative, and Memory

History and the Hebrew Bible: Culture, Narrative, and Memory PDF

Author: Ian Wilson

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2018-09-24

Total Pages: 75

ISBN-13: 9004388796

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This essay offers an introduction to select disciplinary developments in the study of history and in historical study of the Hebrew Bible, focusing first and foremost on cultural history. It highlights key works on culture, narrative, and memory, in order to establish a contemporary historical approach to biblical studies.

Judaism and Emotion

Judaism and Emotion PDF

Author: Gabriel Levy

Publisher: Studies in Judaism

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781433118722

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Judaism and Emotion breaks with stereotypes that, until recently, branded Judaism as a rigid religion of laws and prohibitions. Instead, authors from different fields of research discuss the subject of Judaism and emotion from various scholarly perspectives; they present an understanding of Judaism that does not exclude spirituality and emotions from Jewish thought. In doing so, the contributions account for the relation between the representation of emotion and the actual emotions that living and breathing human beings feel in their everyday lives. While scholars of rabbinic studies and theology take a historical-critical and socio-historical approach to the subject, musicologists and scholars of religious studies focus on the overall research question of how the literary representations of emotion in Judaism are related to ritual and musical performances within Jewish worship. They describe in a more holistic fashion how Judaism serves to integrate various aspects of social life. In doing so, they examine the dynamic interrelationship between Judaism, cognition, and culture.

An Early History of Compassion

An Early History of Compassion PDF

Author: Françoise Mirguet

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-10-12

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 1108509576

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In this book, Françoise Mirguet traces the appropriation and reinterpretation of pity by Greek-speaking Jewish communities of Late Antiquity. Pity and compassion, in this corpus, comprised a hybrid of Hebrew, Greek, and Roman constructions; depending on the texts, they were a spontaneous feeling, a practice, a virtue, or a precept of the Mosaic law. The requirement to feel for those who suffer sustained the identity of the Jewish minority, both creating continuity with its traditions and emulating dominant discourses. Mirguet's book will be of interest to scholars of early Judaism and Christianity for its sensitivity to the role of feelings and imagination in the shaping of identity. An important contribution to the history of emotions, it explores the role of the emotional imagination within the context of Roman imperialism. It also contributes to understanding how compassion has come to be so highly valued in Western cultures.