Holy Writ
Holy Writ

Author: Arie-Jan Kwak

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-22

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1317121392

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

It has often been remarked that law and religion have much in common. One of the most conspicuous elements is that both law and religion frequently refer to a text that has authority over the members of a community. In the case of religion this text is deemed to be 'holy', in the case of law, some, such as the American constitution, are widely held as 'sacred'. In both examples, priests and judges exert a duty to tell the community what the founding document has to say about contemporary problems. This therefore involves an element of interpretation of the relevant authoritative texts and this book focuses on such methods of interpretation in the fields of law and religion. As its starting point, scholars from different disciplines discuss the textualist approach presented here by American Supreme Court Judge and academic scholar, Justice Antonin Scalia, not only from the perspective of law but also from that of theology. The result is a lively discussion which presents a range of diverse perspectives and arguments with regard to interpretation in law and religion.

Holy Writ as Oral Lit
Holy Writ as Oral Lit

Author: Alan Dundes

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Published: 2000-01-01

Total Pages: 141

ISBN-13: 058516584X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book helps us resolve some of the mysteries and contradictions that evolved during the Bible's pre-written legacy and that persist in the Great Book today. Most biblical scholars acknowledge that both the Old and New Testaments were orally transmitted for decades before appearing in written form. With great reverence for the Bible, Dundes offers a new and exciting way to understand its variant texts. He uses the analytical framework of folklore to unearth and contrast the multiple versions of nearly every major biblical event, including the creation of woman, the flood, the ten commandments (there were once as many as eleven or twelve), the names of the twelve tribes, the naming of the disciples, the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord's Prayer, and the words inscribed on the Cross, among many others.

Soldiers of the Pátria
Soldiers of the Pátria

Author: Frank D. McCann

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 636

ISBN-13: 9780804732222

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book provides an authoritative history of the Brazilian army from the army’s overthrow of the monarchy in 1889 to its support of the coup that established Brazil’s first civilian dictatorship in 1937. The period between these two events laid the political foundations of modern Brazil—a period in which the army served as the core institution of an expanding and modernizing Brazilian state. The book is based on detailed research in Brazilian, British, American, and French archives, and on numerous interviews with surviving military and civilian leaders. It also makes extensive use of hitherto unused internal army documents, as well as of private correspondence and diaries. It is thus able to shed new light on the army’s personnel and ethos, on its ties with civilian elites, on the consequences of military professionalization, and on how the army reinvented itself after the collapse of its command structure in the crisis of 1930—a reinvention that allowed the army to become the backbone of the post-1937 dictatorship of Getulio Vargas.