Suchergebnisse

Mesopotamian and biblical societies in antiquity were characterized by their patriarchal structure. The father was head of the family unit, and his rule extended over many areas of life. He had broad legal authority over the members of his household, including his offspring. It is therefore expected that in the ancient sources a dominant father figure would be mentioned alone or almost alone. And yet, in Mesopotamian and biblical texts, particularly legal writings, the exclusivity of the father is not always explicit. In many of the Mesopotamian and biblical writings, especially legal texts, the mother is mentioned in various contexts and in a range of realms, mainly those pertaining to her offspring. This intriguing phenomenon raised the question whether the mother in the ancient Near East and ancient Israel had legal authority in the household. The book The Legal Status of the Mother in the Ancient Near East and the Bible sheds light on the world of the ancient mothers and their status within the households and the societies in which they lived. This study demonstrates that the mother acted by virtue of the legal status she possessed in matters related to her sons and daughters' marriages and their behavior towards her. This book is for those walking in the fields of Mesopotamian and biblical research, and for readers interested in the universal subject in question - the relations between the mother and her offspring

This book examines the interpretation of dreams, which were thought to contain divine messages in the ancient Near East. For the first time in a single collection, scholars examine how dream divination was used in different ancient cultures. The essays, written by scholars specializing in different regions and bodies of literature, shed light on dream divination in the Bible, the Talmud, and in writings from Canaan, Mesopotamia, and Hittite Anatolia. Contributors include Franziska Ede, Esther J. Hamori, Koowon Kim, Christopher Metcalf, Alice Mouton, Scott B. Noegel, Andrew B. Perrin, Stephen C. Russell, Jonathan Stökl, and Haim Weiss. - from publisher

The philosophy of Levinas has developed over nearly sixty years. Its evolution can be subdivided into three main stages: Following the pre-war writings, the period 1945-1961 lead to the book Totalité et Infini, in which the ethical thought of Levinas takes a first accomplished form. During the last stage, whose central opus is Autrement qu'être (Otherwise than Being), his thought both radicalized and opened up to multiple horizons. Indeed, Levinas is not merely an academic philosopher ignorant of other movements of thought that mark his century. This book aims to show how the stages of Levinas's strictly philosophical thought is expressed with regard to politics, Judaism, and Christianity

"Ich habe keine Ahnung." (Kermani, 2009, 86) Das behauptet Navid Kermani in seinem Essay Die Terroristen sind unter uns, der 2009 im Band Wer ist Wir? Deutschland und seine Muslime erschienen ist. Es ist ein sehr wichtiger, ja zentraler Satz, der oft gedacht, aber selten öffentlich ausgesprochen wird. Niemand, der eine leitende Position in der Politik, der Wirtschaft oder beim Militär bekleidet, darf es sich leisten, diesen Satz in den Medien zu äußern, aber auch im Wissenschaftsdiskurs darf er nicht verwendet werden, es sei denn als Zitat. Es gibt mindestens drei Eigenschaften dieser Aussage, die sie für die erwähnten Diskurse ungeeignet machen. Erstens das Sprachniveau: durch den etwas saloppen Beiklang lässt sich die Aussage dem umgangssprachlichen Niveau zuordnen und nicht dem Niveau offizieller oder wissenschaftlicher Reden. Zweitens ihre Struktur: durch die Ich-Form wird der Satz zur Aussage des sprechenden Subjekts über sich selbst, nicht über einen Sachverhalt. Und drittens die Semantik: Das verneinte Substantiv spricht dem Subjekt nicht nur jedes rationale Wissen ab, das sich argumentieren und belegen ließe, sondern auch jede andere Grundlage, auf der sich eine Aussage zu einem Sachverhalt formulieren ließe, also auch Vermutungen, Vorurteile, Spekulationen, Gefühle oder die Intuition. Das Problem dabei ist nicht, dass auch diese alternativen Grundlagen fehlen, sondern dass sie, durch die Wahl des Substantivs "Ahnung", überhaupt als Möglichkeit eingeräumt werden. Wenn durch diese Merkmale die zitierte Aussage aus dem Rahmen fachbezogener Diskurse fällt und sogar für journalistische Textformen unpassend ist, so ist sie im literarischen Diskurs durchaus zulässig. ; The essays of the German writer and professor of Middle East Studies, Navid Kermani, focus on current political and social issues, such as migration, terrorism and the problems of multicultural societies. The article offers an analysis of selected essays and gives a brief overview of their context, including a discussion about the relation between literature and politics as it evolved after World War II in Germany. The analysis makes it possible to see Kermani's essays in the tradition of open dialogical essays that goes back to the writings of Michel de Montaigne, as shown in the theories of Peter V. Zima. The processes of fictionalization that are used by Kermani in his political essays are compared with those used in so called "post-truth" political discourse. Although these processes are comparable and their effects unpredictable, it is possible to locate some basic differences in their narrative structures that can either suggest that the narrator is all-knowing, which reinforces his position of power, or can stress the narrator's tentativeness, which opens the possibility for the reader to enter into a dialogue with him, thus leading to the kind of constructive dialogue that is of fundamental importance for democratic societies. It is the raising of questions and articulation of doubt that Kermani sees as his main task when writing his essays. ; Navid Kermani, nemški pisatelj in profesor orientalistike, se v svojih esejih posveča aktualnim političnim in socialnim vprašanjem, kot so migracije, terorizem in večkulturne družbe. Članek podaja podrobnejšo analizo izbranih Kermanijevih esejev ter jih umesti v tradicijo dialoško odprte esejistike (kakor jo po teoriji Petra V. Zime zastopa na primer Michel de Montaigne) in v kontekst nemških povojnih razprav o razmerju med literaturo in politiko. Nato postopke fikcionalizacije, kakor se kažejo v Kermanijevih političnih esejih, primerja s postopki v tako imenovanih postfaktičnih političnih diskurzih. Čeprav so postopki primerljivi in njihovi učinki načelno nepredvidljivi, je mogoče locirati temeljne razlike v njihovi narativni strukturi, ki lahko sugerira vsevednost pripovedovalca in s tem krepi njegovo pozicijo moči ali poudarja njegovo negotovost ter tako bralcu odpira možnost, da z njim stopi v konstruktiven dialog, ki je temeljnega pomena za demokratične družbe. Prav v odpiranju vprašanj in artikuliranju dvomov Kermani kot avtor esejev vidi svoje pisateljsko poslanstvo.