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This book presents a multidisciplinary perspective on chance, with
contributions from distinguished researchers in the areas of
biology, cognitive neuroscience, economics, genetics, general
history, law, linguistics, logic, mathematical physics, statistics,
theology and philosophy. The individual chapters are bound together
by a general introduction followed by an opening chapter that
surveys 2500 years of linguistic, philosophical, and scientific
reflections on chance, coincidence, fortune, randomness, luck and
related concepts. A main conclusion that can be drawn is that, even
after all this time, we still cannot be sure whether chance is a
truly fundamental and irreducible phenomenon, in that certain
events are simply uncaused and could have been otherwise, or
whether it is always simply a reflection of our ignorance. Other
challenges that emerge from this book include a better
understanding of the contextuality and perspectival character of
chance (including its scale-dependence), and the curious fact that,
throughout history (including contemporary science), chance has
been used both as an explanation and as a hallmark of the absence
of explanation. As such, this book challenges the reader to think
about chance in a new way and to come to grips with this endlessly
fascinating phenomenon.
This volume honours the distinctive contribution to Hebrew Bible
studies over four decades by Cheryl Exum, Professor Emerita of
Biblical Studies in the University of Sheffield. Her special
interests have lain, first, in the modern literary criticism of the
Hebrew Bible, where her key work was Tragedy and Biblical
Narrative: Arrows of the Almighty. Asecond area has been feminist
criticism of the Hebrew Bible; here her notable contributions were
Fragmented Women: Feminist (Sub)versions of Biblical Narratives and
Plotted, Shot, and Painted: Cultural Representations of Biblical
Women. A more recent, and now almost favourite, theme is the Bible
and cultural studies, especially the Bible and art. Key works here
have been a series of edited volumes, such as Beyond the Biblical
Horizon: The Bible and the Arts, and The Bible in Film / The Bible
and Film. Her fourth area of continuing interest has been the Song
of Songs, with many articles culminating in her perceptive
commentary in the Old Testament Library series. In this rich
volume, 25 of her friends and colleagues offer her papers on all
these themes. Several are on or around the Song of Songs (Graeme
Auld, Fiona Black, David Clines, Sara Japhet, Martti Nissinen, Yair
Zakovitch), and topics of feminist interest (Yairah Amit, Athalya
Brenner, Claudia Camp, Hugh Pyper, Jack Sasson). Cultural studies
are represented by Alice Bach, Hans Barstad, Andrew Davies, David
Gunn, Martin O'Kane, John Sawyer and Ellen van Wolde, and literary
criticism by Michael Fox, Edwin Good, Norman Gottwald, Edward
Greenstein, Francis Landy, Burke Long and Hugh Williamson.
This book presents a multidisciplinary perspective on chance, with
contributions from distinguished researchers in the areas of
biology, cognitive neuroscience, economics, genetics, general
history, law, linguistics, logic, mathematical physics, statistics,
theology and philosophy. The individual chapters are bound together
by a general introduction followed by an opening chapter that
surveys 2500 years of linguistic, philosophical, and scientific
reflections on chance, coincidence, fortune, randomness, luck and
related concepts. A main conclusion that can be drawn is that, even
after all this time, we still cannot be sure whether chance is a
truly fundamental and irreducible phenomenon, in that certain
events are simply uncaused and could have been otherwise, or
whether it is always simply a reflection of our ignorance. Other
challenges that emerge from this book include a better
understanding of the contextuality and perspectival character of
chance (including its scale-dependence), and the curious fact that,
throughout history (including contemporary science), chance has
been used both as an explanation and as a hallmark of the absence
of explanation. As such, this book challenges the reader to think
about chance in a new way and to come to grips with this endlessly
fascinating phenomenon.
Until recently, biblical studies and studies of the written and
material culture of the ancient Near East have been fragmented,
governed by experts who are confined within their individual
disciplines' methodological frameworks and patterns of thinking.
The consequence has been that, at present, concepts and the
terminology for examining the interaction of textual and historical
complexes are lacking. However, we can learn from the cognitive
sciences. Until the end of the 1980s, neurophysiologists,
psychologists, pediatricians, and linguists worked in complete
isolation from one another on various aspects of the human brain.
Then, beginning in the 1990s, one group began to focus on processes
in the brain, thereby requiring that cell biologists, neurologists,
psychiatrists, psychologists, linguists, and other relevant
scientists collaborate with each other. Their investigation
revealed that the brain integrates all kinds of information; if
this were not the case, we would not be able to catch even a
glimpse of the brain's processing activity. By analogy, van Wolde's
proposal for biblical scholarship is to extend its examination of
single elements by studying the integrative structures that emerge
out of the interconnectivity of the parts. This analysis is based
on detailed studies of specific relationships among data of diverse
origins, using language as the essential device that links and
permits expression. This method can be called a cognitive
relational approach. Van Wolde bases her work on cognitive concepts
developed by Ronald Langacker. With these concepts, biblical
scholars will be able to study emergent cognitive structures that
issue from biblical words and texts in interaction with historical
complexes. Van Wolde presents a method of analysis that biblical
scholars can follow to investigate interactions among words and
texts in the Hebrew Bible, material and nonmaterial culture, and
comparative textual and historical contexts. In a significant
portion of the book, she then exemplifies this method of analysis
by applying it to controversial concepts and passages in the Hebrew
Bible (the crescent moon; the in-law family; the city gate;
differentiation and separation; Genesis 1, 34; Leviticus 18, 20;
Numbers 5, 35; Deuteronomy 21; and Ezekiel 18, 22, 33).
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