It is normal for scholars to read a text of the Second Temple period with an eye to the particular historical circumstances and ideology that it seems to embody. For this was a period of rapid historical changes and sharp ideological conflicts, and by paying attention to reflections of history and ideology in a text, one can often better understand its meaning and situate it chronologically with greater accuracy. And so, scholars regularly ask: What can be deduced on the basis of this text about the precise period in which its author lived? What is there in the content of this text that can tell us something about its author's beliefs?

I say, then, that it was Orpheus and Homer and Hesiod who gave the genealogies and the names to those who are called gods. … And as for statuary (εἰκόνες), it did not exist until the plastic arts and painting and sculpture were invented, nor had it even been conceived.

These arts came in later with Saurias the Samian, Krato the Sikyonian, Kleanthes the Corinthian, and a Corinthian girl. Line drawing (σκιαγραφία) was discovered by Saurias, who sketched a horse in the sun; and painting (γραφική) by Krato, who traced the outline (σκιά) of a man and a woman in oils on a white background. Relief sculpture (κοροπλαθική) was discovered by the girl (she traced the outline [σκιά] of her lover on a wall while he was asleep). Her father was so delighted by the resemblance that, since he worked in ceramics, he engraved the impression and fleshed it out with clay. That figure (τύπος) is still preserved in Corinth. After them Daidalos, Theodoros, and Smilis invented sculpture and the plastic arts.

Historians, including biblical critics, are not known for exposing themselves to the same kind of historical criticism that they apply to everything and everyone else. The historical situation of contemporary exegetes and their social conditions usually remain uninvestigated and thus—from a historical-critical and socio-historical perspective—unquestioned. The various hermeneutical inquiries that different forms of liberation theology have recently developed provide a beginning for such a necessary self-study. They need, however, to be expanded.

It would be difficult to find a philosopher who has suffered more injustices at the hands of his commentators (friends and foes alike) than Immanuel Kant. This is particularly true when it comes to the many anecdotes that commentators are, for some reason, quite fond of reciting about Kant. The problem is that such tales are often used surreptitiously to twist Kant's own explicit claims about what he was attempting to accomplish, so that when his writings are read with these stories in mind, misunderstanding is almost inevitable. As an example, it is only necessary to think of the tale of the old ladies of Königsberg who became so familiar with Kant's rigid schedule that they used to set their clocks by his daily comings and goings. This may or may not be true; the point is that unless this anecdote is recounted with a certain skepticism, it is likely to encourage a prejudice whereby the reader of Kant assumes at the beginning that Kant's writings are filled with the unreasonably rigid and formalistic ravings of someone out of touch with the unpredictable passions that punctuate the life of an ordinary person. In other words, such stories are in danger of creating an image of Kant that may have little or no justification in the text. One could cite other examples, such as the story of how Kant used to lead the procession of university professors up to the cathedral each Sunday, only to desert it at the door, or Bertrand Russell's quip that Kant's response to being “awakened” by Hume was merely to invent a transcendental “soporific” to help him fall asleep again.

William Paley is best remembered for his formulation of the watch analogy in his classic Natural Theology (1802). What is less widely known is that in the same work, Paley, in response to Erasmus Darwin, anticipates the argument from perfection. The present discussion traces the argument from perfection tradition from its probable inception in Natural Theology through important moments in its subsequent history. The discussion will address its contemporary wide-ranging impact upon such thinkers as philosopher of religion Alvin Plantinga, as well as scholars standing outside the tradition, such as geneticist Richard Goldschmidt and paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. The article concludes with a discussion of the theological significance of this research in terms of its impact upon the issue of the relationship between God and the world.