In 1309 ecclesiastical leaders condemned as heresy Marguerite Porete's rejection of moral duty, her doctrine that “the annihilated soul is freed from the virtues.”1 They also condemned her book, the Mirror of Simple Souls, which includes doctrines associated decades earlier with a “new spirit” heresy spreading “blasphemies” such as that “a person can become God” because “a soul united to God is made divine.”2 In his study, The Heresy of the Free Spirit, Robert E. Lerner identifies these two doctrines of annihilation and deification as characteristic of the “free spirit” heresy condemned at the 1311 Council of Vienne. The council claimed that this heresy's sympathizers belonged to an “abominable sect of certain evil men known as beghards and some faithless women called beguines.”3 Lerner found that this group was composed of a disproportionate number of women, including Marguerite Porete. Many of the men were also involved with the group of pious laywomen known as beguines.4 Lerner shows that among those charged with heresy, many sympathized with a “ ‘free-spirit style’ of affective mysticism particularly congenial to thirteenth century religious women.”5 He suggests that beguines in particular radicalized affective spirituality into what he calls an “extreme mysticism.”6 Here I wish to follow Lerner's suggestion that we ought to search for the roots of Porete's doctrines among the beguines. I will argue that distinctive doctrines of annihilation and deification sprouted from a fertile beguine imagination, one that nourished Porete's own distinctive and influential ideas in the Mirror of Simple Souls.7 It is among the beguines that we find the first instance in Christianity of a women's community creating an original form of theological discourse.

From the first, professional ethics has been a hybrid. The Hippocratic Oath exudes that ambiguity. The scientific enterprise, which basically has universalistic tendencies, created a group with special knowledge and interests; eventually it took on a separate identity as a profession. Concern for the ethical point of view, which has the universalizability of normative statements as its foundation, is particularized by focusing on a specialized body of knowledge of a restricted professional group.

That there is something strange and unusual about the ‘consecration’ coinage of Faustina the Elder, and, to a less degree, of her daughter too, has always been apparent to the student: it was forced on my own attention while I was writing the Introduction to B. M. C. Empire, IV. If I return to the subject, it is because it seems that there is still something to be added to the results already obtained.

A recurring issue in analyzing the work of the critical theorist Theodor W. Adorno (d. 1969) is how to understand his professed adherence to the biblical commandment that prohibits the manufacture of images of the divine—referred to as the “image ban” or Bilderverbot (Exod 20:4–5). Adorno writes, “I see no other possibility than that of extreme asceticism toward any faith in revelation, and extreme allegiance to the Bilderverbot.”Theodor W. Adorno, “Vernunft und Offenbarung,” Gesammelte Schriften (20 vols.; Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970–1993) 10:616. See also Gesammelte Schriften 6:207, 293–94; idem, Negative Dialectics (trans. E. B. Ashton; New York: Continuum, 1994) 207, 298–99. Gesammelte Schriften 3:40; idem and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment (trans. John Cumming; New York: Continuum, 1994). Adorno also prohibits pronunciation of the divine name; see Gesammelte Schriften 6:394; Negative Dialectics, 402. Some readers' interest in the significance of Adorno's allegiance to the Bilderverbot is primarily theological. Others' interest, particularly that of his successors in critical theory, is primarily political. In their estimation, Adorno's allegiance to the Bilderverbot undermines any contribution he might make to contemporary formulations of an emancipatory praxis.

The growing general awareness that the order of nature within which man lives is a delicate ecological balance — a balance which cannot be indiscriminately exploited by men much longer without destroying the continuing possibility of human life — has not been without repercussions among theologians. There is an increasing attentiveness to nature as a theological problem and an interest in developing theologies of ecology and conservation. In addition there appears to be a growing belief that the theological focus on “history” in recent years has been extravagant or even entirely misplaced: it has turned attention in theology away from the natural world, which is “our real home”; it has led to a theological ignoring of the natural sciences and has thus helped to isolate theology from some of the most important and influential streams of human learning in modern culture; and it has contributed to and mightily re-enforced man's sense of self-importance and insularity, for history is preeminently the human story, and the “God of history” seems principally involved in transactions with men (although of course he is said to be the creator and father of all). What we need, we are told, is a “theology of nature” that will enable us to understand the orders of life and being within which we live and of which we are part, and even a “natural theology” that will illuminate for us, and teach us properly to worship, the God implicit in nature.

Although conversion to Judaism in antiquity has been studied many times, the subject remains elusive. This essay is not a historical study of either ancient philo-Judaism or the relations between Jews and Gentiles in antiquity, but a historiographical study of one of the major bodies of relevant evidence, the writings of Josephus. I hope to answer two sets of questions. First, how does Josephus understand respect for Judaism by Gentiles? What forms does this respect take and what terminology is used to describe them? Second, what is Josephus's attitude towards respect for Judaism by Gentiles? Does his attitude change from his earliest works to his latest?

“Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind (adam) in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion….’ And God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” Gen 1:26–27 clarifies that the Hebrew term adam stands for the generic species of humanity which is composed of men and women. If there is any doubt on this interpretation, Gen 5:2–3 declares and defines again: “When God created humankind, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them humankind when they were created.”The “image of God in man and woman” opens us to transcend both the masculine and feminine metaphors for God which abound in the Bible and to transcend our historical selves and social institutions in recognition of the Holy One. It would appear that whatever one's interpretation of the “image” and “likeness” of God, one would have to recognize that the biblical text makes explicit that in our resemblance to the Divinity and in our dominion over the earth and animals, men and women share a common human dignity.

On a foggy evening in the spring of 1906, nine days before the San Francisco earthquake, several black saints gathered in a small house in Los Angeles to seek the baptism in the Holy Spirit. Before the night was over, a frightened child ran from the house to tell a neighbor that the people inside were singing and shouting in strange languages.Several days later the group moved to an abandoned warehouse on Azusa Street in a run-down section of the city. Soon they were discovered by a Los Angeles Times reporter. The “night is made hideous … by the howlings of the worshippers,” he wrote. “The devotees of the weird doctrine practice the most fanatical rites, preach the wildest theories and work themselves into a state of mad excitement.”

On several occasions we have attempted to demonstrate the significance of a certain type of linguistic analysis, for discussing biblical texts whose date of composition is questionable. The main advantage of this analysis lies in the fact, that, being an autonomous and independent criterion, one may use it without subscribing to any particular theory prevailing in biblical Higher Criticism. Most of the complicated and unresolved problems of Higher Criticism — literary, historical and theological — simply have no bearing upon its procedures.

The Temple Scroll (11 QTemple), the last of the known scrolls from Qumran to be published, is a heterogeneous document whose contents cover various topics of cult, architecture, ritual purity, and civil law. Nonetheless, most exegetes have treated the scroll as the work of a single author. The question whether there might be several independent literary sources behind the document will be the subject of this study.

Euhemerus is one of the most elusive and disconcerting writers in the Hellenistic period. He survives chiefly in the pages of Diodorus Siculus, who almost certainly had not taken the measure of his author. Our other chief source of information comes from the translation made by the poet Ennius, which in turn is known only through the works of later writers, who cited him for purposes of their own. Other authors have paid Euhemerus the compliment of imitating him, and something of their work has survived, also in fragments. Philo of Byblus wrote in the same spirit, and recent excavations at Ras Shamra have shown that his Phoenician History must be taken much more seriously than has been the fashion. Under these circumstances it may be worth while to re-examine the Euhemeristic tradition in an attempt to define its characteristics and its influence on the writing of history.

Recently R. S. Hartigan examined Augustine's position on war and killing particularly in relation to the fate of the innocent. Although attention was rightly focused on some of the difficulties inherent in Augustine's views, Hartigan's handling of certain supportive texts is, in the view of this writer, open to question. It may be profitable, then, to reconsider his arguments and, more fundamentally, to question his structuring of the problem as a whole.

Many difficulties beset the interpreter of Paul's response to the case of incest at Corinth. With the partial exception of the letter to the Romans, Paul's letters are occasional pieces written in response to very particular circumstances in the communities addressed. The occasional character of the first letter to the Corinthians is evident as Paul responds to oral reports (1:11; 5:1; 11:18) and to written queries (7:1). The interpreter is acutely aware of having access to only one side of a conversation, to only half a correspondence. Because of the close contact between writer and addressees, much could be left unsaid.

The ever-increasing respect for Luther among Roman Catholic theologians and historians of Christian thought is not only a sign of but also a significant contributing factor to contemporary ecumenical openness — especially so in Germany. Yet at the same time we should realize that this more positive evaluation of Luther is based on the conviction that the reformer was born under the star of heresy. While it is granted that he articulated the biblical message of sin, grace and forgiveness in Christ within the context of the late medieval nominalism in which he was reared, it is exactly this context which is regarded as essentially a-catholic or even as anti-catholic to the extent that it obstructed Luther's grasp of the full and true catholic tradition in the Middle Ages. Therefore, from the very beginning, access to the specifically Catholic tradition had been denied to Luther.

A good deal of information is being collected about the potter's craft in many parts of the world. Some work has been done on the analysis of potmaking in antiquity, but as far as the present writer knows, the importance of this type of analysis for archaeological studies has not been critically investigated. This paper intends to present the reader with the results of research into the methods of potmaking in two cultural periods in Palestine, as well as with some of the problems that came up during this research. The two periods concerned are the Early Iron Age (ca. 1200–1000 B.C.) and the Medieval period from the beginning of the Islamic conquest to ca. 1500 A.D.

It will be the purpose of this paper to trace the doctrine of transubstantiation from the point at which the problem begins to come into focus down through the Council of Trent. It is widely supposed that the history of this doctrine is a fairly simple one. The assertion of the physical presence of Christ in the eucharist quite naturally and inevitably evolves into the doctrine of transubstantiation, given the context of Aristotelianism in which theology works from the early thirteenth century on.

This article argues that early and later rabbinic texts, as well as Babylonian and Palestinian sources, express different attitudes toward minim (“heretics”) and Christians, and that these differing attitudes are useful in reconstructing the histories of diverse rabbinic communities. In evaluating the historicity of the rabbinic sources, it is important to bear in mind that early sources do not necessarily provide reliable information about early periods, nor do Palestinian materials necessarily depict Palestinian reality more accurately than do Babylonian materials. Portrayals of minim and Christians in talmudic sources may tell us much about relations between Jews and Christians in the Persian and Roman empires of late antiquity, but they perhaps tell us more about the desires and prejudices of rabbinic authors and editors.

Does a principle of Gentile ritual impurity motivate Israelite and late antique Jewish prohibitions of intermarriage? The answer to this question turns upon the answer to an even more basic question: is a principle of Gentile ritual impurity found in ancient Israelite and Jewish texts? Some suppose ritual impurity of Gentiles to be an ancient halakah dating perhaps to early biblical times (Schürer, Alon) and serving as the rationale for laws regulating or reducing Jewish and Gentile interactions of various kinds. Others suppose ritual impurity of Gentiles to be a legal reality only in the Second Temple or Tannaitic period (Büchler, Klawans). On such a view, Gentile ritual impurity did not serve as the rationale for older laws regulating or reducing various forms of Jewish-Gentile interaction, including intermarriage.

Although Meister Eckhart himself might have been puzzled by the term, he is traditionally known as a mystic. The designation surely does apply, in the sense that Eckhart sought and recommended a kind of union between the soul and God. But as soon as one proceeds to analyze the precise nature of that union, difficulties abound. In recent literature it has become clear that the Christian mystical tradition has employed various distinct concepts of union with God, and scholars have inquired what sort of union one or another mystic sought. This effort has been made, for example, in studies of John Tauler and The Cloud of Unknowing. In examining these and other mystics, particularly those of the Western medieval tradition, scholars have asked whether they viewed union with God as a momentary experience or as an ongoing way of life, and whether they saw this union as continuous and compatible with ordinary religious experience and knowledge or as discontinuous and incompatible. The present article will attempt to answer such questions in regard to Meister Eckhart, in hopes of clarifying an aspect of his thought which, though fundamental, is most commonly approached only tangentially in the literature.