#contextualising Scripture

[bristolchurch]

Examining Women's Authority in Faith and Leadership

The question of whether a woman can exercise authority over a man brings to mind specific biblical passages, most notably 1 Timothy 2:12, which states, “I do not permit a woman to teach or assume authority over a man; she must be quiet.” There are numerous interpretations of this verse, with some advocating for a complementarian viewpoint, assigning distinct roles based on gender, and others…

[viraajsisodiya]

The individual is regularly digent in the presence of the sensual objects of the physicalist world; apart from that, it is prevalent that he freely indulges in materialism. A person experiences three stages in his ongoing karmic state; this is the objective practice of changing the energy contextualised in his uninterrupted and unmitigated life from excess to deficiency. Failing in the velocity of various meanings and recovering their futility, the man who is tuned in to the temporality of life is engaged in reconstruction by becoming a participant in the fateful destiny of karma. Every method of man is recorded in a great, exalted, and Macintosh scripture like Gita. If he is continuously drilling himself in its praxis, then he can never construct misinformation and wrongdoings in his own actions. Substantially, his vim translates as being in a preternatural and seraphic context of virtualities in otherworldly reality. Factually, the knack of his exercitation and reduplication is with the adoration and eldritchness of livingness, his oral text ceaselessly without uncanny or inferiority deeds.

#Materialism #World #Deeds #BhagavadGita #Inspiration🙏🙏

[transmutationisms]

@apodeme ok disclaimers that i 1) am not an americanist 2) didn't finish the video 3) am not typing out formal citations for this post but

mainly what annoyed me is that olson does an incredibly poor job contextualising usamerican 'creationism' and young earther stuff. 'flood geology' isn't really a new thing by the 1930s -- in the usamerican context what's different to most of the continent is the biblical literalism but even this was not wholly foreign to either england or europe. geologists and palaeontologists have been looking at fossils and trying to date the earth since at least the mid 18th century, & have in fact been mocking or stigmatising one another's age estimates the entire time. even by like the geoffroy-cuvier debates of 1830 most french savants thought cuvier was full of it to some degree,1 and in his theory it wasn't even just one flood responsible for everything -- he thought the earth's history was one of multiple destructive floods and other geological events, hence the term 'catastrophism' to describe this loose branch of theorising, with 'uniformitarianism' the counterpart proposed by early evolutionists ('transformists / transmutationists') such as lamarck.

which brings me also to point out that the theories here being shorthanded as creationism or young earth or catastrophism etc are pretty varied and have only ever borne a loose family resemblance to one another. even among current usamerican evangelicals there is disagreement as to what age the earth is or how far living beings can be altered;2 the same has always been true among people discussing these ideas. when you strawman them or oversimplify them you don't really convey anything of value re: how these theories spread or whose interests they appeal to.

the video, or what i saw of it anyway, is also predictably coloured by the current reigning liberal understanding of science as a march of progress and enlightenment and a gradual accumulation of objective truth, which i won't waste time complaining about yet again except to say that the reason this narrative is still so pervasive in pop histories of evolution, in particular, is largely because the usamerican creationist historiographies of the mid 20th century have gone quite out of their way to gin up the idea of an irreconcilable split between science and religion, and liberals like olson love to take up this framework uncritically and simply invert the valences lmao. in reality scientific and religious inquiry do often overlap and historically have done quite extensively in the field of evolutionary biology,3 and this is a pretty serious problem for anyone who does actually give a fuck about scientific inquiry and what it is capable of achieving.

1 to be fair some of cuvier's problems were also just down to him being a protestant, which was obviously more of an issue in early 19thc france than in 1930s usa. he wasn't really any more creationist than the religious savant average at the time, though, and did not use scripture to directly support his interpretations of fossils, but i digress

2 by the 18th century it was long since abundantly clear to anyone who paid any attention to agriculture that living beings can be altered by selective breeding to look & function quite differently to any 'original' forms. this observation could be logically extended to support a concept of species evolution (as in lamarck) but some savants considered it a limited type of change that would run up against impassable biological barriers (as in cuvier's functionalist teleology). some savants split the difference (as in geoffroy's transcendentalist anatomy)

3 most notoriously in the anglo world, in chambers's 1844 'vestiges of creation' -- but, see also many bridgewater treatises, harriet martineau, german romanticism in 19th century biology, most french evolutionary theory prior to anti-clerical neo-lamarckians like de lanessan, etc etc

i can't finish the new dan olson video i wish people would stop making history videos about things they don't know the history of

[zeitenklaenge]

🔮✨

#ZK #ЗВ #️⃣6️⃣6️⃣

🎶 «Skalds & Shadows»

🎤 Blind Guardian

💬🇬🇧 - Video by Natasha on 27th October 2022.

📀 «A Twist in the Myth» (2006)

History and Legacy

🇬🇧 Some stories are so epic that they are called myths or legends. I find particularly exciting the Germanic and Slavic tribes, which were often called by Greeks and Romans as barbarians, semi-humans or forest wisps. They were uncultivated, but not necessarily primitive, because they had much more sense of their natural environment and lived with the seasons. Scripture was something spiritual and served primarily for communication with the universe and spirits. The tribes had ritualised oral traditions of rite, cult and spirit - which today seems hardly imaginable in the civilised world. But it is always a perspective image and neither empirical nor law of nature, i.e. a narrative and thus per se only about contextualisation, documentation and classification. History is never true, but becomes through the discourse to science.

🇩🇪Manche Geschichten sind so episch, dass sie als Mythen oder Legenden gelten. Besonders spannend finde ich die Germanischen und Slawischen Völker, die von Griechen und Römern gern als Barbaren, Halbmenschen oder Waldgeister genannt wurden. Sie waren unkultiviert, aber nicht unbedingt primitiv, denn sie hatten viel mehr Gespür für ihre natürliche Umwelt und lebten mit den Jahreszeiten. Schrift war etwas spirituelles und diente vor allem zur Kommunikation mit dem Universum und den Geistern. Die Stämme hatten eine ritualisierte Tradition der Mündlichkeit in Überlieferungen von Ritus, Kult und Geist - was heute in der zivilisierten Welt kaum vorstellbar erscheint. Aber es ist immer ein perspektivisches Abbild und weder Empirie noch Naturgesetzt, also ein Narrativ und damit per se nur über Kontextuierung, Dokumentation und Einordnung. Geschichte ist nie wahr, sondern wird durch den Diskurs zur Wissenschaft. [dw]

Text by Dima.

[papenathys]

Hey, hope you're doing well! I'm asking you since you're a lit major; you know the posts on Tumblr about how we don't learn enough about queer history, but it's usually about American queer history? But in India we never talk about it either. Do you know any good books about Indian queer history?

hello 💜 here are some books about indian queer history:

Gay Bombay: Globalization, Love and (Be)Longing in Contemporary India by Parmesh Shahani: one of the first queer case studies when it was published in 2008, this book looks into the life of the Indian gay community in the late 1990s-mid 2000s, vis-á-vis the creation, navigation and interactions on lgbtqa safe online spaces created by an activist group named Gay Bombay. it's conversational, well contextualised in indian history, vibrant and beautifully written.

Sakhiyani: Lesbian Desire in Ancient and Modern India by Giti Thadani: a comprehensive history of lesbian desire in India, starting with Vedic scriptures, cultural motifs and cosmology, then moving on towards how such feminine narratives were stamped out by a complex mix of masculine rewriting of religion/history, social stigma and colonialism fuelled Othering. while complex and brutally honest, I adore this book for including same-sex desires in rural/underprivileged sections of India too.

Loving Women: Being Lesbian in Underprivileged India by Maya Sharma: written by an eminent feminist scholar of India, this book tells the real-life stories of 10 working class women in North India, all of whom identify as lesbians. It is absolutely necessary to seek intersectionality when it comes to queer studies too, particularly in a country like ours, where multiple identities are monopolized by the upper class elite. This book also introduced me to Fire by Deepa Mehta, a great desi sapphic masterpiece!

A Lotus of Another Colour: An Unfolding of the South Asian Gay and Lesbian Experience by Rakesh Ratti: documenting the experiences of multiple queer south asians. Idk how this book is as I haven't read it personally but it sure pissed off Khushwant Singh so that's always a good sign.

A Truth About Me: A Hijra Story by A. Revathi: autobiography of a trans woman who left her abusive family to find acceptance and kinship among the Hijra communities. This is a hard read, so I won't recommend it to those who are looking for more idealistic stories. However, I recommend A Life in Trans Activism by the same author, if you feel that the ending of this one leaves you without hope.

hope this helps!

list of more resources about desi queer literature.

[maxg-longform]

Outer Wilds

A new frontier for the interactive experience

Moments in gaming which are truly ground-breaking are rare, and they are only getting rarer. A dual axiom of diminishing technological returns achieved by the jumps between console generations and the rampant predatory monetisation of the games as a service modal have had many despairing and looking to games that denounce photorealism and market trends for inspiration , in much the same way those in the art world despaired at the first cameras. As they could no longer make art more detailed technically, meaning and artistry moved from technique to statement. Why is it not photorealistic? The question posed today is the same. You could make a game that is an accurate reflection of life – or a biased reflection of a certain kind of life (Military-industrial complex funded shooters I’m looking at you) – so why have you chosen to instead create something with a particular art style? What is the combination of your narrative and design choices trying to say? 

In the case of Far Cry 5, when particular attention is paid to the fact that the cultists are under the influence of drugs for the game’s entirety in addition to Obsidian’s claims that their new game concerning corporate exploitation of space colonies is written apolitically with empathetic and ‘good’ characters on both sides, the aim is all too often to actively stop you from drawing any meaningful conclusion at all, or at the very least to give the impression that there is nothing to draw.

What is the aim of this spiel then? In reality, you don’t need context to enjoy Outer Wilds, but only within the nexus of the modern games industry can you see why I’ve grown to love it so much. It also lets me talk about the game in more abstract terms without spoiling it – as it is very hard not to spoil it in talking about it, as knowledge is the only progression system within the game. The game itself, mechanically, is very stripped back. You have a spaceship to explore the solar system with, a spacesuit with thrusters for exploring each of the planets you can land on, and a translation device, which allows you to understand the language of an ancient alien race which inhabited the solar system many years prior. The story orients you as the first of your race to explore the stars with this new translation device. Explorers has previously visited each planet in the solar system, but contact with them has been lost, and they cannot translate the language there. Your objective, insofar as you are given one, is to find them and learn about the ancient aliens. In an age where open-world games have quest markers and some, such as Skyrim, have a spell which paints a trail on the ground in the direction of the next objective, the handhold-free nature of Outer Wilds is charming and arresting.

Whenever you discover anything important, it is stored in your ship’s log at the back of your small spaceship. In a way, it reminded me of Morrowind, one of Skyrim’s forebears, with the journal giving hints as to where you ought to look, but no real help beyond collating what you already know so that you can easily reference it in future. You are free to explore any of the planets at any point, and follow any lines of inquiry you see fit. In a lesser game, this would lead to a disjointed narrative experienced so out of order that it would give Tarantino a headache. However, this leads me into talking about the level design. I could not laud any higher the way in which the planets are designed. Every planet has a dynamic twist to it you need to learn in order to be able to understand how to access information on it and each planet has areas that require you to piece together learnings from around the solar system in order to access. In every sense, the game rewards exploration and understanding as a means of progress, rather than giving you new tools and telling you how to use them. This is evident in each of the planet designs – which I will briefly explain in the order I visited them (there is no ‘proper’ order).

 Giant’s Deep 

 A swirling, green water planet with four islands, which are continually tossed around by an endless stream of cyclones which make the planet hard to navigate. The pole is protected by a ferociously large cyclone and a strong current prevents underwater exploration of a porous, but fiercely electromagnetic core. The sheer size and oppressive atmosphere is compounded by the strong gravity making it almost impossible to jump, incentivising careful exploration.

 Brittle Hollow

A hollow planet built around a black hole and beset by fiery meteors from its volcanic moon. With an inhospitable surface, much of the challenge comes from discovering how others adapted to these conditions previously, and how to use the gravity of the black hole to navigate a planet that slowly falls apart and disintegrates as the game goes on due to the constant meteor bombardment.

 The Wanderer

A frozen comet with an elliptical orbit that takes it within a lethal range of the sun, and covered in mysterious ‘ghost matter.’

 The Hourglass Twins

Two planets orbiting each other as they orbit the sun. One starts as a bare rock with many caves to explore; the other as a perfectly round desert planet, with absolutely zero to explore. Then, a large column of sand starts flowing through space from the desert planet ‘Ash Twin’ to the bare one, ‘Ember Twin.’ This means areas of each planet are only accessible at certain times, and you need to beware of the sand level when exploring caves.

 Dark Bramble

A planet consisting purely of thorny branches wrapped around a core that pulses with white light. Enter the hole, and caverns that bend the laws of space and time fill massive areas within. A Tardis of horrors, this planet scared me like no jump scares could. A truly eerie vibe – a memorable and haunting level unlike anything I’d ever played before.

 While every one of these planets is in its own way unique and memorable, as are the moments when you discover how to access parts of them you couldn’t before – the best example of the game’s genius comes in the form of a location known as the Quantum moon. Before you go to this location, there are three pieces of key knowledge you need. Without them, you shouldn’t even be able to land on it. Nevertheless, I accidentally managed to land on it early in the game. However, because I hadn’t yet solved how to get into the tower of Quantum knowledge on Brittle Hollow, I didn’t understand how to access where I wanted to go. The moon has a secretive ‘Sixth Location’ you wish to explore, but every time I tried to leave the control room, the way was blocked by rocks until the moon moved back to one of the five locations in our solar system. It wasn’t until a few hours later, when I was following a different lead on another planet that I figured out how to avoid the rocks, and also where I needed to go once I had made it out.

The game is filled with eureka moments, and the lack of handholding makes you feel like you have genuinely accomplished something when you solve a puzzle. For example, I discovered a much quicker shortcut to a key area called the Black Hole Forge. The game doesn’t penalise you for this; much of the beauty of the game comes in the journey. Translating the alien scriptures in each area contains hints as to the overarching story – which I won’t in any way spoil, except that it is moving, inspiring and heart-breaking in equal measure – but also contains deeply personal stories about the people who made these structures, these homes, these technologies. The tension among the clan as they tried debated their plans to achieve what they came to our solar system for. The romance and feeling amongst those who worked on their projects. The jubilation of breakthroughs and the let-downs of defeat. The struggle for life and the joys of overcoming the hostile worlds of the system. The heart-wrenching story of the Quantum moon. All pieced together in bitesize chunks, out of sequence, displaced. Abstractions anthropomorphised because we don’t know enough about them to truly contextualise them. You never even find out what these aliens looked like. But you discover their hopes, their aims, their dreams and their death – as you, the traveller from an antique land, stare at the vast and trunkless legs of stone.

Rather purposefully, I have been abstract in my descriptions and generalised the experience. In a game where knowledge is the means of progression, and real detail would be a spoiler, and its best to come into this game blind. So, I’ve chosen to focus on the feeling the game instils in you. It has a charming art direction, understated yet distinctive music that complements every area perfectly and a real warmth and passion that oozes from every pixel. In a world where every new innovation is immediately copied and run into the ground by every game in the same genre – the camp clearing from Far Cry 3 is now a chore in every vaguely open world game- or climbing the conveniently placed towers to gain map vision a la Assassin’s Creed – or that very same game series doing its very best Witcher 3 impression in Origins and Odyssey – there is an incorruptible heart to Outer Wilds. There will be games inspired by it, no doubt, but there won’t be other games that weaponise knowledge in quite the same way, or use it to explore the same themes. It’s a game about futility, about facing death but choosing to explore and challenge yourself and improve and, most importantly, to enjoy the little things and cherish the detail, to find pieces of light in that endless, futile dark.  

Games like this have always been few and far between, and are becoming even rarer now. That’s why it’s essential we cherish games like Outer Wilds. There is no formula for creating a masterpiece but when a game really connects with you, you know it, you feel it. My list of favourite games I’d consider a masterpiece is quite incongruent – SSX 3, Tony Hawk’s Underground, Assassins Creed 2, Halo 4 to pick out a few of the rather different ones –  but Outer Wilds has topped all of them, and I only spent around 12 hours with it. It strips gaming back to its essentials, while bringing new ideas to the table and presenting them in charming and arresting ways. You will never have another 12 hours like it. Its heart, soul and message are inimitable, and I sincerely urge you to open up to it and give it a try.

10/10

Played on Xbox - the game is available through Xbox Game Pass

@CoreLineage on twitter

[dimensionalsurfacesbryre]

Revised abstract:

Exploring steel and rust as a medium, I will create a collection of works that tell the story of the Christian gospel. This story will be communicated using the contrast of lament and hope. Lament will be represented on my surfaces using rust - a symbol of decay and degradation. Hope will be communicated by the contrast of bright, clean metal.  The three final pieces will be informed by three different Biblical passages that tell stories of lament and hope. These passages of Scripture each include the symbol of a ring. The passages will be communicated through typography, as well as the dimensional forms of ring shapes. The final pieces will be contextualised in a wedding, having a thematic focus on relationship and the gospel message, which a Christian wedding is centred on. 

[mattistone]

Felt Needs vs Real Needs

Felt Needs vs Real Needs

The problem with adapting church to our felt needs is that our felt needs, our desires, can sometimes be precisely what stands in the way of our own transformation. We need to critically examine our felt needs in the light of scripture rather than presuming their sovereignty. Failure to do so often leaves us with syncretised church rather than contextualised church.

[lsmithart]

**Research: Robert Gober / The Body in Pain by Elaine Scarry

Anti mentioned Robert Gober to me in relation to my wax cast ideas due to his explorations of the body and objects as fragment. Gober’s practice relates greatly to multiple areas of my research, particularly the abject, the uncanny and object/material theory. Gober’s practice explores objects as personified beings, his sculptures encouraging us to view them as subjects rather than objects. This notion relates to an area of research divulged within my dissertation, indeed a key underpinning to my area of practice. In the book ‘The Object’ by Antony Hudek (2014), the author explains that “objects define us because they come first, by commanding our attention, even our respect; they exist before us, possibly without us” (p.15). 

Untitled (wax leg), 1989-90.

Untitled, 1984.

Similarly to Duchamp, Gober utilises domestic, everyday objects, however choosing to cast them rather than exhibiting the original objects. Hudek explains that “transforming the Duchampian readymade into something dubious and obsolete was a widespread preoccupation in the 1960s and 70s, as the post-war euphoria at the potentially infinite multiplication of consumable objects turned into doubt” (p.20). Although Gober mainly created work during the 1980s, it would suggest that his practice evolved as a result of the increasing popularity in utilising domestic objects similarly to that of Duchamp throughout the 20th century. ‘While thumbing his nose at the art world was great fun, the Bicycle Wheel was also a catalyst for new ideas and for re-thinking entrenched positions. In this one work he not only re-defined the activity of the artist and re-imagined the nature of a work of art in the 20th century, but he also re-interpreted the role of the spectator’ (Snell, 2018). Gober’s concepts span sexuality, religion, and politics; these concepts touched upon incredibly minimally through his use of fragmentation and disparate, simple object sculptures.

For me, Gober’s work spoke of something more deeply set in the experience of the body in pain. I particularly drew this conclusion from his wax casts of fragmented body parts, prompting me to reconsider my readings into ‘the body as fragment’ by Linda Nochlin. I thought about how viewing the body in a fragmented and abject sense created feelings of uneasiness and how this relates to the experience of pain and trauma; particularly when trying to gauge an understanding of another person’s experience of trauma. It is a process of attempting to share and embody trauma through the means of materialism and externalising what exists within that often instils a sense of uncomfortableness in others. I have often found this to be the case in my own practice due to the sheer vulnerability and embodiment of the internal that characterises it. 

I had heard of the book ‘The Body in Pain’ by Elaine Scarry in a lecture by Doris Salcedo whilst researching last year and had been meaning to read it since then as the ideas and concepts resonated with me. Whilst on this train of thought, I decided that now would be a good time to make some headway with this book. It turned out to be a fascinating read and I am only part of the way through. Not only did it help to contextualise my own ideas about the body as fragment in relation to Gober’s work and beyond, but it also brought new ideas about breaking down the process of trauma to light. My key notes from the text are below:

The Body in Pain by Elaine Scarry

Chapter 3: Pain and Imagining

Page 161-162:

The object is an extension of, an expression of, the state. E.g. rain = longing, berries = hunger, night = fear. However nothing expresses the physical pain. Therefore, pain becomes something that must be materialised by the individual. In art terms therefore, subconscious processing of trauma through material output becomes the object associated with pain.

Page 163:

“As an embodied imaginer capable of picturing, making present an absent friend, that same imaginer is also capable of inventing both the idea and the materialised form. This demonstrates a mechanism for transforming the condition of absence into presence.”

Page 164:

Physical pain is an intentional state without an intentional object; imagining is an intentional object without an experienceable intentional state. Thus is may be that in some peculiar way it is appropriate to think of pain as the imagination’s intentional state, and to identity the imagination as pain’s intentional object. In isolation, pain ‘intends’ nothing’ it is wholly passive; it is ‘suffered’ rather than willed or directed. To be more precise, one can say that pain only becomes an intentional state once it is brought into relation with the objectifying power of the imagination: through that relation, pain will be transformed from a wholly passive and helpless occurrence into a self-modifying and self-eliminating one.

Physical pain and imagining could belong to one another as each other’s missing intentional counterpart.

Non-object transferred into object through a process of imagining, feeling and actioning.

Chapter 5: The Interior Structure of the Artefact

Page 282:

The womb is materialised as dwelling-places and shelters.

The printing press, the institutionalised convention of written history, photographs, libraries, films, tape recordings and Xerox machines are all materialisations of the embodied capacity for memory. They together make a relatively ahistorical creature into an individual one, one whose memory extends far back beyond the opening of its own individual lived experience, one who anticipates being remembered beyond the close of its own individual lived experience, and one who accomplishes all this without elevating each day its awakened brain to rehearsals and recitations of all information it needs to keep available to itself.

Page 284:

The human being has an outside surface and an inside surface, and creating may be expressed as a reversing of these two bodily linings. There exists both verbal artefacts (e.g. the scriptures) and material artefacts (e.g. the altar) that objectify the act of believing, imaging, or creating as a sometimes graphically represented turning of the body inside-out. But what is expressed in terms of body part it, as those cited contexts themselves make clear, more accurately formulated as the endowing of interior sensory events with a metaphysical referent. The interchange of inside and outside surfaces requires not the literal reversal of bodily linings but the making of what is originally interior and private into something exterior and shareable, and conversely, the reabsorption of what is now exterior and shareable into the intimate recesses of individual consciousness.

Page 285:

The reversal of inside and outside surfaces ultimately suggests that by transporting the external object world into the sentient interior, that interior gains some small share of the blissful immunity of intert inanimate object hood; and conversely, by transporting pain out onto the external world, that external environment is deprived of its immunity to, unmindfulness of, and indifference toward the problems of sentience.

Page 286:

The habit of poets and ancient dreamers to project their own aliveness onto non alive things itself suffuses that it is the basic work of creation to bring about this very projection of aliveness; in other words, while the poet pretends or wishes that the inert external external world had his or her own capacity for sentient awareness, civilisation works to make this so.

Page 288:

A chair, as though it were itself put in pain, as though it knew from the inside the problem of body weight, will only then accommodate and eliminate the problem. A woven blanket or solid wall internalise within their design the recognition of the instability of body temperature and the precariousness of nakedness, and only by absorbing the knowledge of these conditions into themselves (by, as it were, being themselves subject to these forms of distress), absorb them out of the human body.

Page 289-290 - A material or verbal artefact is not an alive, sentient, percipient creature, and thus can neither itself experience discomfort nor recognise discomfort in others. But though it cannot be sentiently aware of pain, it is in the essential fact of itself the objectification of that awareness; itself incapable of the act of perceiving, its design, its structure, is the structure of a perception. So, for example, the chair can - if projection is being formulated in terms of body part - be recognised as mimetic of the spine; it can instead be recognised as mimetic of body weight; and it can finally, and most accurately, be recognised as mimetic of sentient awareness. If one human acknowledges another human in pain and wishes it gone, this is an invisible, complex percipient event happening somewhere between the eyes and the brain and engaging the entire psyche. If this could process of imaging unreality and acknowledging the reality of pain could be made visible and lifted out of the body, endowed with an external shape - that shape would be the shape of a chair (or, depending on the circumstance, a lightbulb, a coat, an ingestible form of willow bark). The shape of a chair is a shape of perceived-pain-wished-gone. The chair is therefore the materialised structure of a perception; it is sentient awareness materialised into a freestanding design.

Page 290-291 - Two levels of projection are transformations: first from an invisible aspect of consciousness to a visible but disappearing action ; second, from a disappearing action to an enduring material form. Thus in work, a perception is danced; in the chair, a danced-perception is sculpted. Each stage of transformation sustains and amplifies the artifice that was present at the beginning. Even in the interior of consciousness, pain is ‘remade’ by being wished away; in the external action, the private wish is made sharable; finally in the artefact, the shared wish comes true. For it the chair is a ‘successful’ object, it will relieve her of the distress of her weight far better than did the dance.

References:

Hudek, A., (2014). Documents of Contemporary Art: The Object. London: Whitechapel Gallery, The MIT Press. pp. 14, 15, 20, 22, 23, 24, 30, 32, 40, 42, 43, 94, 97.

Matthew Marks, (no date). Robert Gober. [Online]. Available at https://matthewmarks.com/artists/robert-gober. [Accessed on 28/11/2020].

Scarry, E., (1985). The body in pain: The making and unmaking of the world. New York.

Snell, T., (2018). Here’s looking at: Marcel Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel 1913. The Conversation. [Online]. Available at http://theconversation.com/heres-looking-at-marcel-duchamps-bicycle-wheel-1913-98846. [Accessed on 26/11/2020].

Vischer, T., and (Basel), S., (2007). Robert Gober: Sculptures and Installations 1979-2007. Steidl. Available at http://www.schaulager.org/en/file/195/cb6849b2/rg_CatalogueIntroduction_E.pdf.

[aamernaeemuk]

Penny Appeal CEO Receives an OBE for Services to Muslim Communities

“If you don’t know much about Muslims,” opens comedian, Tez Ilyas, “you’ll recognise us from that hit TV show… the News.” His joke points to a more sobering reality as study after study has demonstrated portrayal of Muslims to be at best simplistic and stereotyped, and at worst, grossly inaccurate and violent.

The reality, however, is a world away from the tired typecasts of taxi drivers and terrorists, in fact Muslims are our country’s most diverse religious community. From the 400,000 who fought for Britain in WWI to the tens of thousands of healthcare professionals who serve in our NHS, British Muslims are woven into the fabric of the UK’s past, present and indeed its future.

British Muslims can be found contributing to society on every level and from amongst them has emerged exceptional individuals, who are shaping the industries in which they are working in and redefining what it means to be a Muslim of Britain today. One such person, who encapsulates British Muslims at their best, is charity CEO and Leadership Consultant, Aamer Naeem who has just been awarded an OBE for services to the Muslim community in the Queen's New Year Honours List.

Qualifying with a 1st class honours as a pharmacist and rising up the ranks in a multi-national chain over the years, Aamer found himself in state of shock when the news of the Kosovo crisis captured the world’s attention in 1999. As a young man, witnessing the persecution of a Muslim minority on European soil, he knew that he needed to do something to help and so he traveled to Albania as a volunteer Pharmacist.

Working with the doctors in charge of the largest refugee camp in Tirana, it became clear that the cause of the vast majority of illnesses was poor sanitation. Ever the pragmatist, Aamer went about knocking down the grossly inadequate port-a-loos, and then worked to build a proper sanitation infrastructure for the camp. Within 3 months, the rate of illnesses in the camp had been reduced by 80% and Aamer’s intervention had also created almost a dozen jobs for refugees to work as cleaners and maintainers of the the new facilities. It was then when Aamer had had his first taste of humanitarianism and he’s never looked back since.

With a passion for leadership development and effective governance, Aamer works as a consultant and leadership trainer providing strategic and operational guidance to a broad range of organisations and initiatives spanning the public, private and voluntary sectors. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and has sat as a fitness to practice committee member on behalf of the General Pharmaceutical Council of Great Britain as well as the General Teaching Council for England.

His primary focus, however, is serving as the Global Chief Executive of Penny Appeal, a multi-award winning relief and development agency working in over 30 countries around the world and at home in the UK. In the 5 years that Aamer has been leading Penny Appeal, he has grown their annual income from £400k to in excess of a staggering £24m.

Notably, Aamer introduced a strict policy in Penny Appeal in 2016 that for each programme they do abroad, they have a twin-sister project here in the UK. This was an industry-first and bold move for a Muslim-led charity which historically has focused spending abroad. However, in keeping with the increasingly rooted identity of Muslims to Britain, Penny Appeal has made it their mission to raise the profile of domestic poverty and empower people to help tackle it. In doing so, the charity has also helped address negative portrayals of British Muslims by bringing to the fore positive narratives that seldom make the headlines.

Just like Christianity, Judaism (and most other religious traditions for that matter), Islam emerged from the East and yet within its DNA is the ability to marry with local culture and custom, growing where it’s planted and thus inspiring Islamic civilisation from as far as China to the South of Spain. This process of indigenisation for British Muslims has been met with a number of challenges, and so being conscientious of these, Aamer has diligently worked to identify solutions and create institutional responses that empower communities to feel confidently Muslim, and comfortably British.

Thus, as well as being credited as one of the fastest growing charities in the faith-led sector, Penny Appeal is also considered to be one of the most innovative and dynamic faith-led organisations in the country too, reconciling the timeless values and traditions of Islam with the contemporary challenges of modern day Britain and beyond.

Examples of this process in action include bringing together fostering and adoption experts with classically trained Islamic scholars to address the massive under-representation of Muslim families as potential foster carers and adopters. Preliminary research indicated a de-contextualised understanding of Islamic scriptures was perhaps at the root of this poor uptake and thus Aamer facilitated a series of symposia that brought traditional teachings up to speed with contemporary challenges. The result was the publication of ‘The Penny Appeal Islamic Guide to Adoption and Fostering’ which was endorsed by over 100 Muslim scholars and was launched in the House of Commons. The document is now a cornerstone advisory paper that highlights the communal responsibility for Muslims to adopt and foster and is directly responsible for the narrowing of this under-representation.

Another example is in the type of events Penny Appeal has been able to put on. Championed by Aamer, the charity has toured the country, consecutively for four years with The Super Muslim Comedy Tour. Using the medium of comedy as a form of cultural catharsis, the tour affords Muslims with a safe space to laugh, reflect and raise money for great causes too. A further example, and in what is thought to be a world’s first, Penny Appeal founded and toured The Great Muslim Pantomime, a family favourite which perfectly exemplifies how British Muslims are bringing together the different elements of their identity and living out what it means to be confidently Muslim and comfortably British.

Likewise, Aamer has embedded this philosophy of integration into the charity’s volunteering scheme, its marketing and branding and its work with ambassadors including the renowned singer-songwriter, Yusuf Islam / Cat Stevens.

Under Aamer’s stewardship, Penny Appeal has become more than a charity, it has become a movement, led by British Muslims and serving the most vulnerable and neglected in society, regardless of who they may be. The Times revealed that British Muslims are the country’s most generous group of people, and as the CEO of one of the country’s biggest Muslim charities, Aamer is channeling that generosity in a way that opens minds, starts conversations and creates a radically positive narrative about what it means to be a British Muslim today.

Ultimately, stereotypes are lazy and there is much more to Muslim communities than what they are made out to be in the news. By shining a light on the immense positive contributions British Muslims are making to Britain and beyond, perhaps we can shift the rising tides of Islamophobia and inspire a generation of young change-makers that are able to look up to the likes of Aamer Naeem as a role models and be inspired to do their bit to make the world a better place for all.

It’s an honour to call Aamer Penny Appeal’s CEO; he’s an individual with incredible vision, compassion and wisdom. Exemplifying what it truly means to be confidently Muslim and comfortably British, Aamer really cares about positive representation for British Muslims.

In his words, once we as British Muslims feel comfortable and secure in our own identity, we can spend more time looking outwards and helping others. We couldn’t be prouder – well done, Aamer!

Resource: https://pennyappeal.org/news/penny-appeal-ceo-receives-obe-queens-new-year-honours-list

[roamanov]

paper knowledge

glossary

prosumer: a person who both consumes and produces a product

scriptural economy: the “endless tapestry” of writing that works as both discipline (e.g. socialisation, control) and myth (history)

promissory: indicative of something to come

epistemic: relating to knowledge

deflationary: reductive; relating to economic deflation

microfiche: a piece of film containing microphotographs of the pages of a document.

introduction

writing began to expand massively as a discipline in the nineteenth century due to the arrival of the printing press

the specialised labours of printing were reframed by the invention (and use) of new devices

technical innovations lead to enlarged constituencies

reproduction is one of the things that allows people to identify documents as documents

however, the core function of the document is to define - to know/show history, to provide evidence

the word comes from the latin “docer”, meaning to teach or to show

we are able to pick out certain genres from within the “jumble of discourse” because recognising genres has become instinctive. they are part of our vocabulary, internalised within our culture.

like other cultural staples, genres are not artefacts. they are ongoing, dynamic, and unstable.

any object can be a thing, but once it has been framed and contextualised it becomes a document

written genres are not co-existential with textual artefacts. (a novel need not be a printed book; it can be multiple volumes, pages on a screen, or a serialisation.)

paper is both stable (”let’s get that on paper/in writing”) and ephemeral. it serves as a means of externalising the mind.

“bureaucracies don’t so much employ documents as they are partly constructed by and out of them.”

re-contextualisation of an existing document can change its meaning entirely.

the notion of “print” has become disconnected from any one specific process

“print culture” is associated with western modernity, and like western modernity defies meaning/categorisation

genres of print are invariably descendants of other genres; it is a genealogy associated with repetition and variation

xerography

tackles documents that blur the boundaries between different scriptural systems

a loose account of the history of photocopy/zerography

digital documents have no edges; they are made up of numbers, codes, bits, erasing any physical conception of the document we might have so that it becomes indistinguishable from the display on the screen. copying transforms these codes into something we can see and touch

“xerographic copying...worked partly in the construction of digital documents as such.”

the invention of the photocopier was a collective effort; although chester carlson pioneered the technology, customers found a myriad of unexpected uses for it, making far more copies than the machine was originally designed to produce.

the copier’s purpose has become muddled: it can now scan, fax, print, size up/down, and so on.

xerographic reproduction was outlawed in the soviet union till its collapse

the copying and subsequent publication of the pentagon papers by daniel ellsberg was a key moment in the us resistance to the vietnam war

the team who helped ellsberg with this act was known as the Plumbers - and they had a significant role in exposing the watergate scandal, which led to nixon’s resignation in 1974.

the pentagon papers were both plural and singular - a collection of documents recounting a single concept, a single history

“’the pentagon papers' became the imprecise designation for an overlapping cluster of anthologies and potential anthologies of government documents about the vietnam war.”

xeroxing the papers was confluent with editing them - ellsberg used cardboard laid over the photocopier to hide the margins, thus concealing the words “top secret”. he made multiple copies of each document; it was almost an addiction. it has been theorised that he was trying to make his papers more important by copying them. 

a leaked copy has the ability to transgress the boundary between “inside” and “outside”. 

“living documents” are constantly being changed and updated (wikipedia, the us constitution, etc)

the fact that photocopiers can copy anything, including 3D objects, means that everything has the potential to become a document. to xerox something is to transform it into, or read it as, a document. the medium and the genre have become one.

“xerox-lore” = charting something in order to solidify its place in history and lend it credence

the copyright act of 1909 forbids anyone from copying a document if they are not the copyright holder

conversely, the copyright act of 1976 codifies the doctrine of fair use (relating to purposes of teaching)

“though typing and typescripts remained ubiquitous, episodes from the early history of xerography show how entwined photocopies and digital documents were from the very first.”

[crayons4dinner]

Week: 3 (backlog)

20/03/20

Another week, another bit of progress. Previously we had learned about the numerous ways humans communicated, whether through hand signals, or speech; and last week we went through how the earliest recorded information in script were documented with cuneiform tablets, which were malleable and able to be altered with carvings and indentations, but how did this transpire? This week, a major focal point of our work was with the beginning of script, around the world. In particular, the figure Fuxi (伏羲) came up, a cultural and historical legendary figure from China who was credited with inventing calligraphy and ultimately eventuated into what we now see as the Chinese writing system with the trigram, a mark which is still culturally significant being present on the South Korean flag. Later on, the writing systems of Japan, with their 3 script languages of Kanji, Katakana and Hiragana were brought up – the latter two being derived from simplifications and condensing their Kanji counterparts. Something interesting about the Japanese writing system, which, while not discussed during our studies but nonetheless something I found interesting, was that the use of hiragana and katakana improved reader fluency immensely. As the Japanese language does not use any spacing between words as we are familiar with in Latin or Cyrillic based scripts, the alternation of 3 different texts/scripts greatly benefits Japanese in its readability. There certainly is a certain chemistry behind a language, and this is only enhanced with the stylisations which people apply to the language – where in cases such as the Quran (Arabic), Codex, Sanskrit or the Hoko-ji, these stylisations served to not only contextualise but bring importance to a scripture of writing and luxuriate it in other cases. Maybe these concepts could be applied to our typographic designs too? But I’d like to bring a little bit of my own to the table this week too in addition to our lecture. Being Chinese-Australian, I have many memories of learning 2 languages simultaneously, especially with Chinese being one of the topics of today’s lecture. As mentioned, Chinese characters are all quite organically shaped, taking likeness to tree branches and such; however, there are more rules in Chinese writing. As such, there is a sequence of steps and rules in writing Chinese, where certain strokes are to be completed before others both to help fluency in writing and to maintain a good form of writing. Attached is a guide to more clearly outline this.

[the-cryptographer]

Screw it, I'm asking Malik Ishtar for the meme thing! (Only if you want to, of course...)

THANK YOU :D

How I feel about this character:

My secret favourite!!! I think I tend to likecharacters that are all about BIG UGLY EMOTIONS, and Malik is a lot of those,lol. For me, he’s an effective villain – both really terrible and really understandably so. I think the way he gets so energetic about pursuing the God Cards and the Pharaoh, and then gets in over his head and has to abandon ship on his own revenge, and then continues to see through his role as tombkeeper because he’s just so worn out from trying to fight it – aaaaagh! It’s so upsettingly believable.

In terms of characterisation, he’s floating around brilliant but lazy territory for me. He’s intelligent, but also an idiot, andalso all he really wants to do is ride around on his bike and sleep alone inhis room and live comfortably. He’s capable, but not very ambitious. Not much of a visionary, lol.

All the people I ship romantically with this character:

Ryou. Yuugi. Shizuka.

…well that was a very short list for me. I can also enjoy theifshipping to a certain degree, although I’m not really very interestedin it as a postcanon or endgame ship. And the potential for Malik’s torture ofMai to be sexualised is something I think is both interesting and not that farfrom its canon presentation – so I guess that may count as shipping them insome kind of messed up way. And I guess I also I find myself conceptuallyinterested in Ishtar sibling incest, but I haven’t run into any that treats thesubject matter with the kind of tone I’d like.

More on the ships though: Malik doesn’t directly interact with Yuugi or Ryou much in canon, but both ships seem to have the ability to be about softness and healing to me. Since Ryou and Malik have both experiences a violent and upsetting possession of sorts, them coming to move past that together has the potential to be pretty sweet. And since Malik has a kind of troubled relationship with ‘the Pharaoh’, and how he feels his life has been shaped by these ancient politics, I think Yuugi’s kind of in a unique place to be able to understand both the past and Atem’s journey and his ownplace in the present to be able to help Malik contextualise that in a waythat’s meaningful to him.

And Malik & Shizuka is a nice ship if what you’re going for is exploring Shizuka’s massivedisillusionment. Leaving aside the way that a nice trip to visit yourestranged brother suddenly turned upsettingly full of ugly complicated feelings and murder, I think Malik tends towards a frankness that doesn’t sit well with Shizuka's ideals. This is a fun ship~

My non-romantic OTP for this character:

Ishtar Siblings!!! Malik’s relationship with Rishid is at once so lovely and so heartbreakingly upsetting. I think they struggle to find the balance between how they see each other as siblings and how they see each other in this hierarchy of master and subordinate – the way they come through for each other at the end of the story is just so touching. And Malik and Isis aren’t as close, but I like that their conflicting values, and understanding of their responsibilities, don’t compromise their love and the desire to protect one another. Ishtar Siblings!!!

I also like Malik & Yuugi & Ryou as a BrOTP. And I have a strange interest in Malik & Jou broing out or coming to realise they can’t bro out because he murdered you and tortured your best lady friend postcanon.

My unpopular opinion about this character:

I’m not really sure what constitutes an unpopular opinion regarding Malik, but I have several that might count.

(1) The Millennium Rod only exacerbated problems hewas already having due to the effects of trauma and a shaky headspace. YamiMalik is the product of Dissociative Identity Disorder in relationship to Borderline Personality Disorder, and exists in a reactionary way to Malik rather than being a distinct person.

(2)  He’s about as culturally Egyptian as your standard Amish person can be considered culturally American. (Or, idk, I think the Hutterites are a more apt comparison in a number of ways, if I’m sticking to offshoots of Christianity. More research on different religions is needed but, in terms of daily living, you can take all sorts of cues about the tombkeepers from different isolationist religious “cults”.)

(3) He’s a deadly serious character really –cerebral and ponderous. His sense of humour is along the lines of dry andsarcastic, rather than laugh-out-loud.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon:

I ALSO WISH THE ISHTARS HAD BEEN IN DSOD THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!

I think it would have made sense to mention them in relationship to what Seto was doing in Egypt at the very least. Seto was rooting around in Ancient Egyptian ruins that the tombkeepers had the right too, yeah? I feel like it might’ve been an interesting political/business deal he struck with the Ishtars. Maybe Isis needed money to help in the process of reintegrating the tombkeepers into above-ground society? I don’t know, but I feel like there’s a story there~

Also, it might be obvious from some of these other headcanons, but I wish the conclusion to Malik’s story had been more on the side of ‘the hate you’re feeling is valid if completely toxic’, which is why I like the idea of Yami Malik running amok in his head postcanon, even though I think the manga leaned heavily towards a canon interpretation where he was freed of Him.

my OTP:

Malik/Ryou edges out Malik/Yuugi by a little, but not by much.

my happy ending for them:

Not part of this meme, but you made me realise I wanted to write it all down~

Given my incredibly depressing diagnosis for Malik, I think managing his life will always be somewhat of a struggle. Yami Malik is probably here to stay. Malik will likely always have outbursts, and always have a cruel and violent streak. At his worst, the most I can say is that he and the people around him will be aware of the warning signs and be able to restrain him ahead of time instead of having to do so in the middle of an episode. At his best, I think Yami Malik might appear once every month or two, and just kind of storm around the house/apartment being sullen. I don’t think Yami Malik has the same kind of emotional range or needs as one would expect a completehuman to have – so he doesn’t need much more than to be acknowledged by the others and then left to his own devices. I don’t think he likes being touched, but he may someday accept a hug from Ryou or Yuugi or Isis and take a small comfort in the fact that he isn’t hated. Rishid is a lost cause, and will have to stay away during those times, because Yami Malik will without question react violently to him. I think, in a way, a direct reflection of Malik’s own desires– for his hatred and pain to be acknowledge and accepted by those around him, by all except Rishid, who Malik would most keenly like to be less hateful person for. Malik does not want Rishid to see Yami Malik, and so Yami Malik pushes Rishid away with a lot of force… potentially lethal force.

In terms of the more mundane things, I imagine Malik goes through a period where he wants to travel everywhere and see everything to kind of make up for the fact that he was confined to a dark hall his entire childhood. I think he’ll travel Africa and Europe and see more of Japan at thevery least, but who knows where his travels might take him~ But eventually Iimagine him settling down somewhere, since I don’t think his affinity fortravel is about travelling as much as its about taking in the world’s breadth.As long as he can enjoy bike rides and the wind and open sky and the company of those he likes, I think he’s fine being anywhere. He and Rishid are veryride-or-die so they’ll definitely stick together, I think. Him and Isis is moreiffy, but I’d like to see Isis and him also remain close and live close together.

In terms of a job, he’s really not into forty hour work weeks, lol. He wasn’t raised under the expectation he’d be part of a contemporary work force. And he’d additionally have trouble balancing that amount of stress with his mental healths. He’d take odd jobs here and there, or work part time in something pretty low pressure. Depending on how lucrative the limited amount of work he does is, he may or may not need to rely on his siblings or lover for support. In terms of what he does…? Tinker around a souvenir shop maybe? Or he runs errands for or does translations for the museum, through his connection with Isis?

And I don’t think he’d want kids, or make a verygood parent for that matter. He’s satisfied with being the weird uncle to his nieces and nephews.

my cross over ship:

I don’t have one, sorry~

a headcanon fact:

Hasn’t everything I’ve said thus far been me taking my own headcanons way too seriously?

Coptic, Arabic, French, Japanese. Rishid is the same, except he’s not as fluent in the last two, and also not as well studied in Ancient Egyptian scriptures. Isis is the only one of the Ishtar siblings that speaks English.

Oh, jeez, he is pretty much universally hated by his tombkeeper peers. Even when he was little he was a divisive character with how harsh and cruel he can be at times. And then he was shadily involved in the bloody murder of his father. When he left to form the Rare Hunters with Rishid, he bitterly alienated most of his extended tombkeeper family, but some of them followed him to join his crime syndicate. And then those who had followed him took poorly to the way Malik abandoned the Rare Hunters, and followed Isis back home with his tail between his legs. Literally everybody he grew up with except his siblings hates him and Malik spends the time from Battle City to the Ceremonial Duel hiding out in his room having Rishid bring him his meals because the tomb keepers are done with him and he’s done with them. And he’s technically their ‘leader’, but Isis made a bid for being de facto leader when he skipped out years earlier and, disappointed but resigned, she continues to carry the position when Malik’s returned. “She’s a great leader (even though she’s a woman),” everyone says. They all love her, lol.Rishid is more polarising, since he’s generally so mild and polite. Some of the tombkeepers see what he did as betrayal, but a lot of them view him with a sort of condescending pity and kindness - poor boy, led astray by his association with Master Malik. This makes Malik even more angry. ‘We are brothers and equals!!’ he yells. Even though he isn’t completely free of blame when it comes to treating Rishid as lesser.

Also, it’s totally canon that somewhere along the line he makes some big fuss and his criminal record from being involved with the Rare Hunters gets dragged out of the closet, and the Egyptian Government tells him to gtfo of our country… right?

[poetryofchrist]

Reviewing a review of Burns, words, only words

BURNS, J. — The Music of the Psalms, Proverbs and Job in the Hebrew Bible. (Jüdische Musik, 9). Verlag Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden, 2011. (30 cm, XIII, 495). ISBN 978-3-447-06191-9. ISSN 1613-7493. / 68,- in BIBLIOTHECA ORIENTALIS LXX N�� 1-2, januari-april 2013 p 192 I don't have the subject text or 68 Euros to spare. But I was curious if the statistics implied in Raymond de Hoop's review hold up in my data. De Hoop writes:

In this chapter he emphasizes the strong relationship between a disjunctive accent and its regular preceding disjunctive, like for instance tifcha-atnach or pashta-zaqef, a relationship, which is also mentioned in the grammar of Joüon-Muraoka (§15i).3 ) More revolutionary is that he refers to the fact that in such regular combination the preceding (“intermediary”) disjunctive might in addition have its own regular preceding disjunctive (“prefix” disjunctive), resulting in combinations like for instance tvir-tifcha-atnach or geresh-pashta-zaqef.

Can you believe anyone here is writing about music? The first question this raises for me is, How often does tifcha-atnach or pashta-zaqef occur in this sequence? Let's remind ourselves what these signs are. Tifcha is g#, atnach is A. And yes they frequently occur in this sequence, 8,733 times. The pair is very frequent in the approach to the subdominant (as a musician would expect). They are both sub-lineal signs. Pashta is the prose version of qadma. They are both supra-lineal signs. They have differing placement. ב֙ ב֨. Haïk-Vantoura interprets each as a single note above the reciting note. One could think of it as an inverted mordent. Zaqef, roughly speaking is its opposite, though there are two the lesser and the greater and her interpretation of them is not quite the same. So how often do these occur in sequence? I count 320 matches for pashta zaqef-gadol and 6532 for qadma zaqef-gadol. So they are each relatively frequent. Now what about the intermediary disjunctive, tvir-tifcha-atnach? d g A occurs 589 times. geresh-pashta-zaqef? no matches, geresh-qadma-zaqef 4 verses only. E.g. Numbers 14:19. What is frequent when there are 23197 verses? Apart from the last one which is obviously rare, the others run from < 2.5%, hardly significant, to about 30 up to 40% of the verses, relatively frequent but not overwhelmingly so. But who would explain music with such statistics? Even the musician Burns writes: “we must assume that the Biblical text contains all essential information for its performance – and consequently any elements that it does not contain – like the exact performance of melodies, which, today, vary from one locality to another – are unessential". This is a very disappointing assumption. We do not need to assume any such thing. We do need to use all the information at hand to figure out what we have. We have melody by a set of inferences on the number and placement of signs below the text. This is the best use of Occam's razor in the analysis of the accents that we have seen in 1000 years. We do not have an indication of mode. SHV herself said it takes musical judgment. We all must learn to judge with what we have and weigh the consequences. The possibilities for musical development are extensive. That is our gift. As for de Hoop's conclusion,

I regret to say that the book is too obvious an “Unvollendete”. Only for those readers who are really acquainted with the Masoretic accentuation the book might offer some interesting insights for study.

There is no 'finished' book on the accents in the commonly accepted literature that I have come across. Haïk-Vantoura's book demonstrates a beautiful portrayal of the musical possibilities. I have put out on the web 929 files that allow one to examine the music as music and to develop further music. I have written a shorter book that attempts to tell the Scriptural story in music and clearly explains Haïk-Vantoura's inferences. I have seen no adequate view of the history of the signs. Older manuscripts than Aleppo are needed. Mitchell's book is the clearest I have read. I am totally biased against studying the existing terminology of disjunctive and conjunctive. Those who 'are really acquainted' with these are lost. The terms are useless when describing music. In the confused literature on the accents of the last 1000 years, they are explained in contradictory ways. The musical phrase never conflicts with parallelism or word recurrence. It is the musical phrase that resolves the problems of understanding prosody in the Hebrew Scriptures. There are plenty of performed examples available from the last link on the music page. Literature I have referenced on this subject:

Adler, Cyrus, and Cohen, Francis L. https://ift.tt/2ZEJsCb.

Anonymous. 1744. The Majesty and Singular copiousness of the Hebrew Language Asserted and Illustrated. In Eighteenth Century Collections Online, via the University of Victoria Library.

Behrens, Kenneth. 1990s. The Vowel Mantra of the Gospel to the Egyptians and the interpretation of the Masoretic te'amim and other ancient cryptic symbols as musical notation, unpublished manuscript.

DeHoop, Raymond, 2013. The System of Masoretic Accentuation and Colometry in the Hebrew Bible. Oudewater, The Netherlands. https://ift.tt/2SELAby.

DeCaen, Vincent. 2005. On the distribution of Major and Minor Pause in Tiberian Hebrew in the Light of the Variants of the Second Person Independent Pronouns. Journal of Semitic Studies L/2.

Dotan, A. 1967. The Diqduqé Hatt’amim of Aharon ben Moshe ben Asher. Jerusalem, Masorah, EJ 16, 1401-82.

Dresher, Bezalel Elan. 1994. The Prosodic Basis of the Tiberian Hebrew System of Accents, Linguistic Society of America, Language, Vol. 70, No. 1.

General synod of the Anglican Church of Canada. 1963. The Canadian Psalter.

Gesenius, Kautzsch, Cowley. 1909. Hebrew Grammar.

Haïk-Vantoura, Suzanne. 1976. The Music of the Bible Revealed: The Deciphering of a Millenary Notation (in French).

– 1991. The Music of the Bible Revealed: The Deciphering of a Millenary Notation. John Wheeler (Editor), Denis Weber (Translator).

Heller, Charles. 2006. What to Listen for in Jewish Music. Ecanthus Press.

Jacobson, Joshua R. 2002. Chanting the Hebrew Bible, The Complete Guide to the Art of Cantillation, The Jewish Publication Society.

Kugel, James L. 1981. The Idea of Biblical Poetry, Parallelism and its history. Yale University Press.

Levin, Saul. 1994. The ��תג according to the practice of the early vocalizers. State University of New York at Binghampton.

– 1998. The Masoretic Chant of the Hebrew Bible. AJS Review 23 (1). [Cambridge University Press, Association for Jewish Studies]: 112–16. https://ift.tt/2QzjXy4.

Levy, Elizabeth and Robinson, David. 2002. The Masoretes and the Punctuation of Biblical Hebrew, British and Foreign Bible Society. https://ift.tt/1YteuWj

MacDonald, Bob. 2013. Seeing the Psalter, Patterns of Recurrence in the Poetry of the Psalms, Energion Publications.

– 2014. “Using Software to Analyse Patterns of Recurrence in the Poetry of the Psalms”, Journal of Religion, Media and Digital Culture 3(3), pp.129-148. [online] Available at: https://ift.tt/39kxgLc 2014/.

Margolis, Max L. 1911. The Place of the Word-Accent in Hebrew, Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 30, No. 1. https://ift.tt/2Q9R0d2.

Martín-Contreras, Elvira and Miralles-Maciá, Lorena. 2014. The text of the Hebrew Bible: From the Rabbis to the Masoretes, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

Mitchell, David. 2012. https://ift.tt/2QLvvhV, published in the Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 36/3.

– 2013. How can we sing the Lord’s Song? Deciphering the Masoretic Cantillation in Jewish and Christian Approaches to the Psalms: Conflict and Convergence, ed. Susan Gillingham, OUP.

– 2015. The Songs of Ascents: Psalms 120 to 134 in the Worship of Jerusalem's Temples, Campbell Publications.

Mulder, Martin Jan and Sysling, Harry (ed.). 2004. Mikra, Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity. Hendrickson.

Reuchlin, Johann. 1518. De accentibus, et orthographia, lingua Hebraicae, à Iohanne Reuchlin Phorcensi … libri tres cardinali Adriano dicati, https://ift.tt/37yqsrV.

Revell, E.J. 1971. The Oldest Evidence for the Hebrew Accent System. Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, Volume 54. https://ift.tt/36bI0tf.

– 1976. Biblical Punctuation and Chant in the Second Temple Period. Journal for the Study of Judaism, Vol. VII, No. 2.

– 2012. The occurrence of Pausal Forms. Journal of Semitic Studies LVIII.2.

Richter, Helmut. https://ift.tt/1UgSNXX.

Rubin, Emmanuel. https://ift.tt/2F3TLpY.

The Hebrew Student 2 (5/6). 1883. Antiquity and Authority of the Hebrew Accents. University of Chicago Press: 164–69. https://ift.tt/2F3TLX0.

Tomalin, Marcus. 2009. Contextualising Accents And Alphabets In The Work Of Christopher Smart, The Review of English Studies, 11/2009, Volume 60, Issue 247. https://ift.tt/2MHBZgo.

Weil, Daniel Meir. 1995. The Masoretic Chant of the Hebrew Bible. Jerusalem: Rubin Mass.

Werner, Eric. 1982. Review of: La musique de la bible révélée; une notation millénaire décryptée, premier recueil: 14 mélodies essentielles, accompagnement pour cordes pincées. Notes 38 (4). Music Library Association: 923–24. doi:10.2307/939998. https://ift.tt/2MIH2gJ

Wickes, William. 1881, 1887. 1970. Two treatises on the accentuation of the Old Testament. Ed. Orlinsky, with a prolegomenon by Aron Dotan.

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[chaoplexityphilosophy]

On The Proper Interpretation of Scriptures

scriptures contain cultural insights of a people as a way of transmitting data about, the good good and the true, to future generation Scriptures coming from prescientific cultures don't contain (surprise!) scientific information and use things like metaphor and parables to contain and transmit their advice All scriptures contain certain things which are required for them to survive and reproduce these are the injunction to believe, that only believers are good and true the injunction against changing scripture, and a report that this scripture has never been changed condemnation of heresy and non-believers self-praise all of these can basically be ignored as literal, they are accidents of what is required for a scripture to survive there not literal truths where a scripture says believers, you may interpret this as "the good and true" as each scripture to survive and reproduce must maintain the believers ARE the good and the true, and where it says non believers what it means is people who are not good and true the notion of faith comes from this idea so many Christians i note think that belief in God will let them of any sin according to the bible this is wrong, so the Bible's position is if you believe in God and his commandments heaven and hell you will never sin ever, so to be a true believer or faithful you actually have to never sin ever, otherwise you don't really believe so faith is not about what you tell yourself you are but what you act on, believers will be forgiven everything, because they are incapable of sin, that doesn't mean if you call yourself Christian you have never sinned, it means your not truly Christian if you have ever sinned... since if you truly believe in god his commandments etc, you will both never lie, or lie by omission, and never do anything wrong, or fail to do something right, the only sins that you can commit or allow to happen around you are accidents of facticity and you will be forgiven for that... note that it doesn't matter if god exists or not and scripture is not about what is scientifically correct or provable if you really believe in God you will never sin or allow sin not will you lie, or distort or fail to pursue truth likewise if you do those things you cant possibly believe ACTUALLY.. so merely telling yourself you do is a self deception which is a sin just as lying is it would never be rational to sin or lie and risk your eternal soul no matter what the cost benefit, so somone with faith necessarily will never sin or lie or allow sin or lies to exist around them without maximum (but ethical) resitenceagain this is quite irrespective of scientific facticitythat is why the torah, the bible and the quran maintain the believer is the good and true but this means if you sin or lie, or allow sin or lies without resistence, you arnt a believer it does not mean, if you call yourself jewish or christian or muslim god will let you offthere would be no point in the rest of the book if calling yourself something was enough this is why i maintain belief isn't actually required in the sense of claiming to believe, the question is do you act as if there was a god who would eternally punish you for transgression or reward you for upright moral behaviour, if you act as if then these books argue you will come into gods kingdom so to speak and avoid Helland its kinda easy to see why as bad and untrue things generally make one miserable and ineffective while good and true things generally lead to happiness and success this does not mean bad things don't happen to good people, but these are facts you cannot prevent they are parts of facticity, and quite irrelevant when determining how to act none of these books suggests you condemn people based on what happens to them or tell you that worldly success is a sign of superior morality, that s not what is being stated they all promote rather social care and love kindness forgiveness and charity again the operation of facticity is something for which you are forgiven, you are forgiven for human limitations as long as you pursue good and true in so far as possible even if there isn't some giant man in the sky going to actually say "oh yeah that's fine" facticity isn't something you can affect and is operationally irrelevant so these injunctions and teachings do not require to be scientifically literally accurate to contain wisdom that is both good and true It is the operationally true that the best one can do is to act as if God existed, so to speak, for your best chance of happiness and success, the fact that other things may cause you to have a bad time or make mistakes has no effect on how true that is, nor does the scientific actuality of God, these things are totally irrelevant to the truth or value of the teaching I'm not mentioning there truth or untruth, or their value of the effect of facticity in maintaining its total irrelevance, and I go no further these are traditional ancient wisdom teaching, but they are still relevant today because human nature hasn't changed even though science technology industry and modern politics have come. Interpreting them in terms of modern science is obviously wrong no one could have done that previously so the authors never accounted for this, AND I maintain the outcome either for or against the teaching of interpreting scripture as literal and scientific is solidly irrelevant to the actual message it is obviously wrong and hence untrue, and devalues wisdom which is wrong hence bad. the project then has no reason to be pursued (not seriously in any case) as it is based on a misunderstanding I'm saying no matter what you take the scientific reality to be in the modern sense scripture remains a relevant source of wisdom (again I'm not arguing for or against, as I believe the outcome is meaningless) so to conclude that if you personally don't believe in the scientific actuality of god that therefore scripture is irrelevant or devalued even, it remains just as true and good as ever, so to speak as what it is and though it is ancient it remains relevant as human nature has not changed such a modern revaluation is simply not relevant to what scripture is/does and therefore does not affect its contextualised truth/validity or its value why should the authors have accounted for something that didn't exist yet and isn't operationally relevant even now why should the authors have accounted for something that didn't exist yet and isn't operationally relevant even now unsurprisingly there are no scriptures surviving that maintain that they are both false and valueless here is an example from the heart sutra “Therefore Sariputra, it should be known that the Insight that Brings Us to the Other Shore a Great Mantra, the most illuminating mantra, the highest mantra, a mantra beyond compare, the True Wisdom that has the power to put an end to all kinds of suffering.Therefore let us proclaim mantra to praise the Insight that Brings Us to the Other Shore. this section of the heart sutra fo instance doest appear to teach anything so why does it exist.. to make the document survive and reproducei mean the fact that the authors maintain the truth or value of the teaching of the heart sutra goes without sayingif I state something but dont say this is meaningless or a lie, then I must be asserting it to be meaningful or truewhy else would they bother writing it..even if I say it is a lie, im asserting it to truely be a lieand asserting something is gibberish is meaningful so stating its value or truth is merely self referential and adds no meaning, but it does reinforce the idea that its good and true and therefore should be kept and reproduced, but it is not part of the teaching of the heart sutra, its like how DNA contains telomeres and other functional elements that don't describe how to construct proteins or body parts, elements of a text can perform functions as well as contain teachings

[heartsoundsinternational]

GOD WORKS THROUGH NUMEROUS ART FORMS

Last month, we shared about an HSI trip to the Philippines. As promised, here are stories from some of the workshops taught:

LOCAL SCRIPTURE SONGS DISCOVERED

“Today we experienced an amazing moment in the workshop…” said Nancy Nethercott, Worship Workshop teacher. “We had been talking about contextualising worship elements and noted that most churches in the Philippines sing in English with (maybe) a token Filipino language song planned in. When I asked if anyone from their churches writes songs in Cebuano, one lady pointed to her pastor…. [H]e humbly sang this beautiful, worshipful song in his heart language. I was in tears and the rest of the group was silent with awe. We had all just entered the throne room of God in a powerful way.” The pastor had a stack of these Scripture songs he had written but never shared beyond his own congregation. He dreamed of seeing these songs available to churches, but he did not know how to record them. We connected him with the newly established studio to record and distribute his songs.     

YOUNG SINGERS WRITE A VISAYAN WORSHIP SONG

As part of the class, the vocal students wrote a simple song in 30 minutes, in their own dialect, based on Proverbs 3:5, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart.” That night, they created harmony parts, and they were courageous enough to share it with the entire group at the last day’s performance!

A LOVE FOR VISUAL ARTS UNCOVERED

When the Visual Art Class began with only one person, we were told that the term “visual art” has little meaning and is not encouraged much in Filipino culture. It was a joy to watch this group morph from 1 to 26 throughout the week! Many of the kids had never picked up a paint brush, but quickly developed a love for expressing themselves in this new way. Our visual art instructor said, “I had one girl in my art workshop who matter-of-factly said she hated art….The funny thing is that she kept painting even still, coming to every class with her friends though she’d rather be in drama. She figured out how to mix the color pink and had everyone intrigued. By the end of the week her smile had grown and she gifted a painting she had worked on to me.”

GOD USES PHOTOGRAPHY TO CHANGE A LIFE

At the last minute, *Nicole was given the chance to join the photography group. She was excited to learn about silhouettes. Before the class, she thought a silhouette was a bad photo because the subject can’t be seen. Through the class, she learned how a silhouette can be used effectively, and she used it to create a self-portrait. Nicole shared struggling with feeling “unseen”, personally, relationally and spiritually. Instead, she felt as though her constant smile was a mask worn for protection. On the last day, she displayed her work and shared how life-changing it was for her to see her photos. Photography provided her with a way to express her “true self,” as well as a way to communicate things she otherwise could not express through words.

Written by Emily Dickey and Erica Logan

*Name changed to protect privacy