Journal articles on the topic 'Allegorical Commentary'

Out of the range of learned commentary helpful in the understanding of Dante’s allegory I select, as a not entirely arbitrary starting point, Joseph Mazzeo's wide-ranging exploration of allegorical exegesis, entitled "Allegorical Interpretation and History."'1’ This article, published in 1978, is notable for the unusually clear and firm distinction it draws between allegorical interpretation of texts, normally sacred texts, not actually designed to be read allegorically, and what Mazzeo terms "constructed allegory," that is, "The works of our literary tradition which demand to be understood as allegory rather than simply allowing allegorical interpretation . .(p. 17). After clarifying this essential but all too often obscured distinction, Mazzeo goes on to point out that constructed allegory "should generally be understood as following typological patterns rather than the more abstract and unhistorical patterns of allegorical exegesis.""Typolog-ical" allegory he defines as allegory that "assumes the existence of a central paradigmatic story, of a sacred or near-sacred character, set in the past and assumed to be historical . .(p. 17).

This article examines three facets of R. Tuviah ben ’Eliʽezer's commentary,Lekaḥ tov, on Song of Songs: (a) his unique approach to allegorical interpretation; (b) his participation in Judeo-Christian polemics; and (c) the question of a connection between his commentary on Songs and Rashi's. R. Tuviah proposes to read the verses of Songs as simultaneously describing the past, the present, and the future of the Jewish nation, a type of reading that is extremely rare in rabbinic midrashim, which R. Tuviah adopts to create a systematic allegorical commentary. There are similarities between the interpretations of R. Tuviah and those of Rashi; while not numerous, all the same these two scholars were the first to propose a literal interpretation of Songs, they both engaged in similar Judeo-Christian polemic, and they interpreted Songs on the allegorical level in a similar fashion. These points of similarity support the possibility that Rashi was exposed to reports of R. Tuviah's commentary on Songs.

Abstract The introduction to the ninth-century commentary on the Psalms by Išo‘dad of Merv contains a chapter on historical versus allegorical explanation. The first half of this chapter is about Origen and the Greek origin of allegorical explanation. The second half shows the inadequacy of allegorical explanation on the basis of Paul’s interpretation of the rock in the desert as Christ (1 Cor. 10:4). This article contains a Dutch translation and an analysis in which the possible sources of Išo‘dad’s text are discussed with special attention to the work of Theodore of Mopsuestia.

This essay seeks to show that The Rock of Modrec occupies an important place in Thelwall's oeuvre and in the early development of Jacobin ‘seditious allegory’. While scholarship has thus far ignored The Rock of Modrec on account of its apparent juvenilia and ostensible apoliticism, I argue that Thelwall's chivalric romance allegorizes the British spirit as a champion of liberty and universal emancipation, and that it does so for a popular audience. Furthermore, its protagonist serves as a model for Jacobin allegorical reading practices: Sir Eltram begins as a passive receiver of ‘politico-sentimental’ appeals but eventually becomes an active allegorical interpreter, capable of reading into texts the universal truth of democratic liberty for which the British Jacobins strove. The Rock of Modrec thus serves as both an early example of Thelwall's use of ‘seditious allegory’ and a meta-textual commentary on the importance of allegorical reading as Jacobin radical praxis.

Abstract This article discusses an Ottoman commentary by Aḥmed Sūdī (d. ca. 1600) on the Dīvān (poetry collection) of Ḥāfiẓ of Shiraz (d. ca. 1390), a Persian literary masterpiece that enjoyed wide readership in the Ottoman world for centuries. In the first part of the article, I introduce Sūdī’s life and works and delineate the structure of his commentary, noting how that structure is underpinned by his philological approach to commentary writing. In the second part, I focus on Sūdī’s interpretation of the opening verse of the Dīvān and compare it with that of his predecessors to highlight and contextualize Sūdī’s commentarial approach. I conclude by illustrating how his grammatical-lexicographical analysis aimed to liberate the celebrated Dīvān from the dominant tradition of allegorical interpretation.

This commentary stretches Jamie Peck’s (2012) allegorical account of ‘island life’ by discussing the characteristics of ‘island scholarship’. It argues such scholarship involves an academic style based on bricolage and borrowing, inflected with homegrown innovation and ingenuity. It occupies awkward conceptual spaces that demand conversations across difference, ‘rubbing along together’ without fully understanding or accepting others’ world-views, and accepting that translations always change both the translator and what is being translated.

The following excerpt from Proclus'Commentary on the Timaeusappears as Fr. 37 in the edition of the fragments of Numenius by Des Places.1 It is the aim of this study (1) to ascertain the original place of the fragment in his work, and (2) to show that it belongs to a second-century school of allegorical commentary on the ancient theologians, and particularly on Pherecydes of Syros, of which Numenius will have been one of the brightest luminaries.

The Latin Christian biblical poets of late antiquity are customarily divided into two groups: a) those who keep rather strictly to a ’’paraphrase’’ of the scriptural narrative, and b) those who go "beyond paraphrase" in order to develop imaginative and dramatic interest or allegorical and typological commentary. Thus Juvencus and "Cyprianus" Gallus, the straightforward paraphrase-makers of the New and Old Testaments respectively, are set apart, usually with disparagement, from Proba, Sedulius, Victorius, Dracontius, Avitus, and Arator, the poets who are noted, and sometimes praised, for exercising a degree of poetic or exegetical freedom from the sacred text.

Данная работа представляет собой попытку перевода предисловия к «Толкованию на псалмы» Диодора Тарсийского. В данном отрывке Диодор описывает особенности написания и передачи Псалтири, рассуждает о правилах толкования. Его герменевтический подход предполагает два уровня прочтения Псалтири: буквальный и духовный. При этом для своего времени автор предлагает новый взгляд на мессианское провозвестие в псалмах и выступает резким критиком аллегорического толкования. Перевод сопровождается предисловием переводчика, в котором описываются основные идеи автора. This article is an attempt to translate the preface to the interpretation of the psalms of Diodorus of Tarsus. In this passage, Diodorus describes the peculiarities of writing and transmitting the psaltery, discusses the rules of interpretation. His hermeneutic approach involves two levels of reading the Psalter: literal and spiritual. At the same time, for its time, the author offers a new look at the messianic proclamation in psalms and speaks out sharp criticism of the allegorical interpretation. The translation is accompanied by the preface of the translator, which describes the main ideas of the author.

This essay investigates Rabbi Eliezer Ashkenazi's commentary on the story of the Garden of Eden, first exploring his method of Bible commentary in general. In his interpretation of the Bible he vehemently distances himself from allegorical interpretation that abandons the plain meaning of the text, and holds that while biblical stories function as allegory (mashal), they all, without exception, actually occurred as written. Ashkenazi's interpretation of the Garden of Eden episode serves as a platform for presenting his thoughts regarding two of the main issues that occupied Jewish thinkers during the Middle Ages and the early modern period: human perfection and the proper balance between the divine Torah and intellectual inquiry. The examination of Ashkenazi's reading of this biblical episode shows that his perspective concurs with that of his colleagues in the Sephardic Diaspora throughout the Ottoman Empire, who identified with the moderate camp of the Sephardic philosophical tradition, which sees man as the purpose of creation and believes Torah study should precede philosophical inquiry.

AbstractThe purpose of this article is to identify the anonymous commentator with whom Cyril of Alexandria is in disagreement at the beginning of his Commentary on Hosea, because of the commentator’s purely allegorical interpretation of the marriage of Hosea with a prostitute (Os 1:2-3). We present initially the position of the author “not deprived of reputation” as transmitted by Cyril, then we re-examine F.M.Abel’s assumption in support of Didymus the Blind. Finally, we propose Pierius, a priest and leader of the Christian school of Alexandria, and his homily On the Beginning of the Prophet Hosea, as possible candidates behind Cyril’s attack.

Abstract The Physiologus is a patristic text containing allegorical interpretations of animals. This article examines the Greek, Latin, and Syriac reception history of the serpent material from the Physiologus and concludes that while Greek and Latin authors repeated serpent material from the Physiologus, John the Solitary and Isaac of Nineveh, in the Syriac tradition, furthered the allegorical sense of this text by adding an ascetical layer of interpretation. In particular, they both use the serpent material from the Physiologus to explain the transformation from the outer man to the inner man. Two additional conclusions are offered. First, this article shows that the Physiologus became a standard resource for a “redeem the snake” tradition that emerged sometime in the fourth and fifth centuries due to a renewed interest in classical zoology and due to an increase in biblical commentary on Matt 10:16, where Jesus encourages his followers to be as wise as serpents. Second, this article shows that some of the serpent analogies from the Physiologus circulated independently from the rest in a no-longer-extant form of the Physiologus or else as part of a separate work, possibly another natural history compendium. This conclusion has repercussions for dating the Physiologus.

Jordan Peele’s Us (2019) is an entertaining horror film that also contains a number of interesting interpretive complications. The film is undoubtedly meant as a commentary on the inequity, inequality and injustice that saturate our supposedly egalitarian American society. Beyond that vague and general characterization, though, the film offers a number of interesting (and more specific) allegorical interpretations, none of which in themselves seem quite adequate. This article explores the plethora of signs that circulate through Us, demanding interpretation but defeating any definitive interpretation. This article explores the way Us offers clues to its meaning through engagement with the horror genre in general (especially the home invasion subgenre) and through dialogue with specific predecessors in the horror genre. At the same time, we investigate the rich array of other ways in which the film offers suggested political interpretations, none of which seem quite adequate. We then conclude, however, that such interpretive failures might well be a key message of the film, which demonstrates the difficulty of fully grasping the complex and difficult social problems of contemporary American society in a way that can be well described by Fredric Jameson’s now classic vision of the general difficulty of cognitive mapping in the late capitalist world.

This paper traces racial-nationalism through three recent sites of controversy relating to citizenship: the banning of face coverings while swearing the citizenship oath, the evacuation of Canadians abroad and the revocation of the citizenship of 1,800 alleged to have gained citizenship through fraudulent means. Racial-nationalism is an architecture of race-thinking defined by (1) cultural racism, which operates as a strategy of “sorting out” outsiders from insiders and (2) expulsion or what Hage refers to as the logic of pure exclusion. Through an interrogation of online reader commentary responding to news reporting, this paper examines three allegorical figures at the core of public discourses representing citizenship: the recalcitrant alien, the citizen of convenience and the fraudulent citizen.

Abstract The Midrashim mentioned and described briefly in this article—R. Avraham ben Shlomo’s commentary on the early and later prophets, the Midrash Shoʿel U-Meshiv, and the anonymous Midrash on the Torah written at the beginning of the sixteenth century—represent the transitional stage between the classic and the later Yemenite Midrash. The former are written in a mixture of Hebrew and Arabic, based on rabbinic writings and on the teachings of great medieval scholars such as R. Saadia Gaon and Maimonides, while the latter are written almost solely in Hebrew and based mainly on esoteric, symbolic, allegorical, and kabbalistic elements. Those written in the intermediate period between the old and the new combine all these characteristics.

The Byzantine philosopher Michael Psellos (11th century) wrote a brief treatise entitled An Explanation of the Drive of the Soul Chariot and the Army of Gods According to Plato in the Phaedrus. The treatise consists of a compilation of excerpts from Hermias’ commentary on the Phae­drus. Psellos does not mention Hermias’ name but rather traces the origins of the treatise back to some “Greek theologians”. Psellos’ text presents a great interpretative challenge: the order of the myths about the charioteer and the parade of gods is reversed so that the former explicates the latter in such a way that the whole Platonic argument is dismissed as “absurd”. The Phaedrus in the Neo ‑Platonic tradition (in Iamblichus in particular) is considered to be a strictly theological dialogue. Yet, Psellos’ arrangement shows that he was not interested in the mythographical or allegorical dimension of the excerpts. He rath­er focused on the epistemic problem, i.e., a reduction of the trichotomy of the soul into a duality of principles. Thus, he followed certain Aristo­telian commentators. Psellos suggests a reduction that is subjectivist or individualist in its nature and he refuses to identify individual intellect with any particular piety.

The present article is concerned with Proclus’ highly original and profoundly influential account of the symbolic function of poetry, the pedagogic as well as the hieratic value of myths and the soteriological power of allegorical interpretation. Thus, the paper begins with a brief discussion of Plato’s dismissal of poetry as μέγιστον ψεῦδος. Subsequently, Proclus’ theory of three kinds of poetry is examined, upon which attention is paid to his revolutionary idea that σύμβολα rather than μιμήματα are the tools of the highest kind of poetry. Then, Proclus’ views on the difference between Plato’s and Homer’s μυθοποιΐα are considered. While the article concludes with an analysis of Proclus’ conviction about the functional similarity of symbols in myths and those in magic rites, allegoresis is shown to have the same salvational role that Proclus ascribes to theurgy.

AbstractMoses's wearing of a veil (Exod 34:25-39) remains a puzzling and relatively obscure biblical episode. This article interprets Moses's veil as a sign of divine communication and prophecy. Through analysis of the passage, commentary, and images from the history of art, I trace the legacy of the veil as a symbol of the problem of divine revelation itself. For written commentary and artistic tradition, I argue that the veil is concealed, repressed, and transformed in order to ease an anxiety about the veil that is also an anxiety about the text. Christian interpreters (following 2 Cor 3:7-18) associate the veil with Jewish blindness to the gospel. In artistic tradition, the veil of Moses is often linked to the allegorical female Synagogue, who wears a blindfold. The veil, which originally enables Moses to act as a prophet, is thus concealed by religious polemic and linked to the Christian feminization of Jewishness. At the same time, the ambiguity and uncanniness of the veil images evoke the mysterious quality of Exodus 34:29-35. The veil of Moses may thus be seen as a meta-text that alternates between presence and absence, concealment and revelation.

William Durand's (ca. 1230–1296)Rationale divinorum officiorum(ca. 1292/1296) is unquestionably the longest and most thorough commentary on the liturgy produced by a medieval liturgiologist. From the time of its appearance at the end of the thirteenth century to the Catholic Restorationist liturgical revival in mid-nineteenth-century France, it was hailed by admirers as the quintessential expression of the medieval church's understanding of the divine offices. The bishop of Mende'sRationaletreats, among other things, the various parts of the church building, the ministers of the church, liturgical vestments, and the Mass and the canonical hours. It thus stands as the epitome of a four-hundred year tradition of allegorical liturgical exposition which was inaugurated in the West with the extended liturgical commentaries of the Carolingian bishop, Amalarius of Metz (died 852/853).

AbstractThis article discusses chapters 15 and 16 of the ancient midrash (allegorical commentary) Leviticus Rabba (IV-V AD) and its view of leprosy. The phenomenon of Biblical leprosy is here not investigated from a paleopathological point of view. The focus lies on its physiological, actiological, pathological and therapeutic aspects as represented in Leviticus Rabba. It is argued that the medical views of Leviticus Rabba show a certain resemblance to some of the view of the Hippocratic School, notably with respect to humoral theory, the belief in the correspondence between the macrocosm and the individual microcosm, and the notion of paideia as a way of healing. Finally, it is shown that the ancient myth of the two floods (of water and of fire) is connected to the understanding of leprosy in Leviticus Rabba.

One of the greatest controversies in Dante scholarship concerns the authenticity of the epistle to Cangrande della Scala, in which the poet (if it is indeed him) provides his patron with exegetical and epistemological strategies to be applied in approaching Paradiso,the third part of his Divine Comedy.Accompanying this section as a gift to della Scala, the epistle in itself would not have appeared in any sense out of the ordinary had it not followed its requisite dedication with an extensive commentary on the poem. It is hardly surprising, then, that scholars heatedly debate the authorship of this letter, which purports no less than to prescribe how the Paradisoshould be read, claiming authority of and over the text. Most significantly, the epistle contends that, just like scripture, the Divine Comedyis “polysemous, that is, having many meanings,” requiring a manifold approach; specifically, the author of the letter cites the availability of literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical readings.

The paper submits the first publication of the hexametrical Latin satire of Theophanes Pro­kopovich (1681–1736), which consists of 172 verses and is his longest poetic work written in Latin during his St. Petersburg period. The manuscript is part of Prokopovich’s collection of works, which is kept in the Manuscripts Department of the St. Petersburg Branch of the Rus­sian Academy of Sciences (Tec. Post. 142, f. 245–247 v.), and, as far as we know, it is the only surviving copy of the work. Although satire is untitled, it is very likely that the addressee of the attacks was Archbishop Georgyi (Dashkov) (d. 1739). In the satire, Dashkov is derived in an allegorical manner under the name of Grunnius and is depicted as a man who is viciously jealous of others and is unable to bear even the modest success of his fellow human beings. The article also touches upon two and a half lines from this satire that have been published to date, thanks to their quotation by Antioch Cantemir in the commentary on v. 41 of his third satire “On the Distinction of Human Passions. To the Archbishop of Novgorod”. In all Cantemir edi­tions, the Latin text, and therefore the Russian translation of this couplet contain errors that have been corrected, and it is suggested that the new variant of the text and translation is to be taken into account in the preparation of future editions.

Petrarch’s De remediis utriusque fortune, a monumental allegorical dialogue between human passions and Reason, was one of the author’s most influential Latin works since its publication in the second half of the 1360s until the 18–19th centuries. Its popularity is proved by a very large number of manuscripts, printed editions (from the editio princeps of Strasbourg, 1468), and translations into the vernacular. Nevertheless, a modern critical text of the dialogue has not been produced yet: the bilingual French edition by Cristophe Carraud and the Italian one by Ugo Dotti, now commonly used, are based (almost) exclusively on early prints. The aim of this contribution is to offer a new edition of chapters 104–110 of the second book of the dialogue about the seven deadly sins, amending the text provided by Carraud, with the help of a few manuscripts considered authoritative by previous scholarship (Venice, Marc., Lat. Z 475; Paris, BnF, Lat. 6496; Florence, BML, San Marco 340). We are aware, at the same time, of not having established a critical edition. The Latin text is accompanied by its first modern Hungarian translation and by a detailed commentary.

AbstractThis article argues that Bede – like modern intersectional analysis – believed that identity categories cannot be disentangled or understood in isolation. In Bede’s commentary on the Song of Songs, skin color, gender, and religious identity intermix with metaphors of sexuality. These categories coalesce in a monumental lesson on how to read. Bede claims that reading the Song literally – perceiving Black skin, eroticism, gender confusion – means reading like a Jew and prevents readers from seeing the feminine, metaphorical level below the masculine, carnal level. This article suggests that intersectional analysis is akin to much medieval thought rather than being an anachronistic imposition on a historical text. Intersectional analysis can lay bare how medieval theologians saw identity categories as interwoven and interdependent, even while the theologians themselves entrenched hierarchies of race, gender, sexuality, and religious difference. For Bede, Christian interpretation is a continual process of moving from a literal outside (Black, masculine, carnal, sexual) to a metaphorical inside (beautiful, feminine, allegorical, chaste, reproductive). Once inside, however, we – like the bird passing through the hall – must return once again to the outside in an endless movement between layers that echoes theological processes of rumination and blurs the divide between the contemplative and the active life.

Although Abraham's prayer in Her. 24–29 has several distinctive features, the similarities with the Hodayot suggest that it is an Alexandrian example of the same kind of prayer. Flaccus's prayer in Flac. 170–75, and the whole treatise Against Flaccus, belong to the writings which present the view that those who attack God or God and His people suffer punishments. Such writings are the book of Esther and parts of the books of Daniel and 2 Maccabees. A parallel is also found in Rev 18. Flaccus's prayer in itself has the form of a prayer at departure before death. Abraham's prayer illustrates how a cited text in Philo's Allegorical Commentary is interpreted by means of expository paraphrases and elaborations in which various biblical texts are woven together. At the same time critical circumstances in Philo's time are reflected. In the treatise Against Flaccus (as also in the Embassy to Gaius) the interpretation of the Laws of Moses in the practice and crisis of communal life is the issue. Thus there were in Alexandria conflicting views of, and actions relative to, the Laws of Moses. Flaccus's exile and death were an indubitable proof that, in spite of the pogrom suffered by the Jews, God's help was not withdrawn from their nation. Flaccus was a person who was justly punished. In Abraham's prayer, his and the people's exile and banishment are understood paradoxically. What Abraham was lacking as an outcast, he nevertheless possessed in his Lord. Abraham, and then implicitly the Jewish people, lived a life ‘in spite of’.

The present paper is a brief study on Julian the Apostate’s religion with the detailed analysis of the so called Helios myth being a part of his speech Against Heraclius (Or. VII), delivered in Constantinople in AD 362. In the chapter one I discuss veracity of the Gregory of Nazianzus’ account in the Contra Julianum (Or. IV-V) on the emperor’s strange Gods and cults. In the chapter two the reconstruction of the Julian’s theological system has been presented and the place of Helios in this hierarchy has been shown. The chapter three consists of the short preface to the Against Heraclius and of the appendix with the Polish translation and commentary on the Julian’s Helios myth. The Emperor’s theosophy, known from his four orations (X-XI and VII-VIII), bears an imprint of the Jamblichean speculation on it. The gods are arranged in the three neo-Platonic hypostases: the One, the Mind, and the Soul, named Zeus, Hecate, and Sarapis. The second and third hypostases contain in themselves the enneads and the triads. The Helios’ position is between the noetic world and the cosmic gods, so he becomes a mediator or a centre of the universe and he is assimilated with Zeus the Highest God as well as with the subordinated gods like Apollo, Dionysus, Sarapis, and Hermes. The King Helios was also the Emperor’s personal God, who saved him from the danger of death in AD 337 and 350. These tragic events are described by Julian in the allegorical fable (Or. VII 22). The question is who was Helios of the Julian’s myth: the noetic God, the Hellenistic Helios, the Persian Mithras, the Chaldean fire, or the Orphic Phanes, what is suggested by the Gregory’s invective. The answer is that the King Helios was all of them. The Helios myth in Or. VII is the best illustration of the extreme syncretism of the Julian’s heliolatry, where the neo-Platonic, Hellenistic, magic, and Persian components are mingled.

The article presents the way of using paradoxographical information regard­ing the matter of animals with doubtful identification in leading anti-heretical and Anti-Judaist polemic on the example of the sixth book Commentary on Isaiah by Jerome of Stridon. In the allegoric explanation of Is 13:19 - 14:1 Bethlehem monk juxtaposed widely known information about mythological creatures with the well-known story from the Book of Genesis about the conflict of Esau with Jacob. This let him explain why the followers of Judaism and heretics are the allies when it comes to fighting with the Church. Anti-Judaism and anti-heretic polemic was one of the most important topic brought up by alexandrine exegesis that Jerome was influenced by during his whole life.

This study is a contribution to the research of the extensive topic of Dostoevsky and Garibaldi and is an analysis of two fragments from Dostoevsky's texts, where he addressed the image of the Italian hero. This image is reflected in the artistic, journalistic and epistolary texts by Dostoevsky, his name is calligraphically printed on the pages of two of the writer's notebooks. The article analyzes an episode from the novel "The Idiot": the story of the liar and braggart General Ivolgin about his wound during the Crimean War that was treated by two outstanding surgeons – the Frenchman O. Nelaton and the Russian N. I. Pirogov. It is shown that the subtext of Ivolgin's story refers to the story of Garibaldi's wound in the battle of Aspromonte and the treatment of his leg by O. Nelaton and N. I. Pirogov, which Dostoevsky and his hero learned about from the newspapers. The European and Russian press, which closely followed the political events in Italy and Europe in the 1860s, created a heroic image of this man. The second reference to Garibaldi is from Dostoevsky's Geneva letter to his niece S. A. Ivanova dated January 1 (13), 1868. It presents a parody sketch of contemporary political events and figures in Italy (Cardinal Antonelli, General Kanzler, the defeat of Garibaldi's army at the Battle of Mentana). They are allegorically transferred to the games and amusements of the younger generation of the Ivanov family, with whom the writer spent the summer of 1866. The article corrects the error made by the publishers of Dostoevsky's letters: the title of "general kanzler" (this is how this phrase was published) never existed — in the Battle of Mentana, the supreme commander of the papal troops, which defeated Garibaldi, was General Hermann Kanzler, who had a German origin and surname. The cases considered indicate a significant interest of the writer in the heroic personality of Giuseppe Garibaldi, his activities and fate.

AbstractThe former painted cycle over the vaults of Salisbury Cathedral represents one of the great losses of thirteenth-century English art. This paper focuses on the imagery over the three-bay choir, which features twentyfour Old Testament kings and prophets each holding scrolls with texts prefiguring the Coming of Christ. The content of the cycle derives from a sermon, well known in the Middle Ages, by Pseudo-Augustine: Contra Judaeos, Paganos et Arianos. Yet the most immediate sources lie in twelfth and thirteenth-century extrapolations of the Pseudo-Augustinian sermon in liturgical drama, the so-called Ordo Prophetarum, or prophet plays. This observation leads to a discussion of the relationship of imagery to its liturgical setting. It is argued that the images on the choir vaults were also to be understood allegorically as types of the cathedral canons, who originally sat in the choir stalls below. A reading of the choir as a place of prophecy is located within traditions of liturgical commentary, which allegorize processions through churches as processions through Christian history. This leads to a discussion of the allegorization of the church interior in the Gothic period.

Abstract This article investigates the use of biblical stories and text in the preaching of Joshua Feuerstein, a popular Facebook evangelist, and focuses on how biblical stories are used to position the viewer in comparison to biblical characters and texts. Taking a discourse dynamics approach (Cameron & Maslen, 2010), a corpus of 8 short videos (17 minutes 34 seconds) and their comments (2,295) taken from the Facebook are analysed first, for the presence of metaphorical language and stories taken from the Bible. Second, they are analysed for the role of metaphor in the narrative positioning (Bamberg, 1997) of the viewer, particularly as it relates to Gibbs’s notion of ‘allegorises’, or the ‘allegoric impulse’ (Gibbs, 2011). The corresponding text comments from the videos are then also analysed for the presence of the same biblical metaphor, focusing on how commenters interact with the metaphor and Feuerstein’s positioning of them. Findings show that biblical metaphorical language is used to position viewers and their struggles in the context of larger storylines that compare everyday experiences to biblical texts. This comparison can happen both in explicit narrative positioning of viewers with explicit reference to the Bible, and implicit positioning, through the use of unmarked biblical language. Analysis of viewer comments shows that use of metaphorical language is successful in building a sense of camaraderie and shared belief among the viewer and Feuerstein, as well as viewers with one another.

Introduction
 Such symptoms as hard, complex, bodily or mental feelings, that turn our everyday life into a hell, at first, lead us to a doctor, and then - to a psychotherapist. A sick man is keen to get rid of a symptom. A doctor prescribes medication, that is ought to eliminate a symptom. A psychotherapist searches for a reason of the problem that needs to be removed.
 There is such an idea that a neurotic symptom, in particular, an anxiety - is a pathological (spare or extra) response of a body. It is generally believed that such anxiety doesn’t have some real, objective reasons and that it is the result of a nervous system disorder, or some disruption of a cognitive sphere etc.
 Meanwhile, it is known that in the majority of cases, medical examinations of anxious people show that they don’t have any organic damages, including nervous system. It often happens that patients even wish doctors have found at least any pathology and have begun its treatment. And yet - there is no pathology. All examinations indicate a high level of functionality of a body and great performance of the brain's work. Doctors throw their hands up, as they can't cure healthy people. One of my clients told me her story of such medical examinations (which I’ll tell you with her permission). She said that it was more than 10 years ago. So, when she told her doctor all of her symptoms - he seemed very interested in it. He placed a helmet with electrodes on her head and wore some special glasses, when, according to her words, he created some kind of stressful situation for her brain, as she was seeing some flashings of bright pictures in her eyes. She said that he had been bothered with her for quite a long time, and at the end of it he had told her that her brain had been performing the best results in all respects. He noted that he’d rarely got patients with such great health indicators. My client asked the doctor how rare that was. And he answered: “one client in two or three months.” At that moment my client didn’t know whether to be relieved, flattered or sad. But since then, when someone told her that anxiety was a certain sign of mental problems, or problems with the nervous system, or with a body in general, she answered that people who had anxiety usually had already got all the required medical examinations sufficiently, and gave them the advice to go through medical screening by themselves before saying something like that. 
 Therefore, we see a paradoxical situation, when some experts point to a neurotic anxiety as if it is a kind of pathology, in other words - some result of a nervous system disorder. Other specialists in the same situation talk about cognitive impairments. And some, after all the examinations, are ready to send such patients into space
 Main text
 I don’t agree with the statement that any neurotic anxiety that happens is excessive and unfounded. It often happens that there is objective, specific and real causes for appearance of anxiety conditions. And these causes require solutions. And it’s not about some organic damages of the brain or nervous system. The precondition that may give a rise to anxiety disorder is the development of such a life story that at some stage becomes too toxic - when, on the one hand, a person interacts with the outside world in a way that destroys his or her personality, and, on the other hand, this person uses repression and accepts such situation as common and normal. Repression - is an essential condition for the development of a neurotic symptom. Sigmund Freud was the first who pointed this out.
 Repression is such a defense mechanism that helps people separate themselves from some unpleasant feelings of discomfort (pain) while having (external or internal) irritations. It is the situation when, despite the presence of irritations and painful feelings, a person, however, doesn't feel any of it and is not aware of them in his or her conscious mind. Repression creates the situation of so-called emotional anesthesia. As a result, a displacement takes place, so a body starts to signal about the existing toxic life situation via a symptom.
 Anxiety disorder is usually an appropriate response (symptom) of a healthy body to an unhealthy life situation, which is seen by a person as normal. And it’s common when such a person is surrounded by others (close people), who tend to benefit from such situation, and so they actively maintain this state of affairs, whether it is conscious for them or not.
 At the beginning of a psychotherapy almost all clients insist that everything is good in their lives, even great, as it is like in everyone else’s life. They say that they have only one problem, which is that goddamn symptom. So they focus all of their attention on that symptom. They are not interested in all the other aspects of their life, and they show their irritation when it comes to talking about it. People want to get rid of it, whatever it takes, but they often tend to keep their lives the way that it was. In such cases a psychotherapist is dealing with the resistance of clients, trying to turn their attention from a symptom to their everyday situation that includes their way of thinking, interactions with themselves and with others and with the external world in order to have the opportunity to see the real problem, to live it through, to rethink and to change the story of their lives.
 For better understanding about how it works I want to tell you three allegorical tales.
 The name of the first tale is “A frog in boiling water”.
 There is one scientific anecdote and an assumption (however, it is noted that such experiments were held in 19 century), that if we put a frog in a pot with warm water and start to slowly heat the water, then this frog get used to the temperature rise and stays in a hot water, the frog doesn’t fight the situation, slowly begins to lose its energy and at the last moment it couldn’t find enough strength and energy to get out of that pot. But if we throw a frog abruptly in hot water - it jumps out very quickly.
 It is likely that a frog, that is seating in boiling water, will have some responses of the body (symptoms). For example, the temperature of its body will rise, the same as the color of it, etc., that is an absolutely normal body response to the existing situation.
 But let us keep fantasizing further. Imagine a cartoon where such a frog is the magical cartoon hero, that comes to some magical cartoon doctor, shows its skin, that has changed the color, to the doctor, and asks to change the situation by removing this unpleasant symptom. So the doctor prescribes some medication to return the natural green color of the frog’s skin back. The frog gets back in its hot water. For some period of time this medication helps. But then, after a while, the frog’s body gets over the situation, and the redness of the frog's skin gets back. And the magical cartoon doctor states that the resistance of the body to this medication has increased, and each time prescribes some more and more strong drugs.
 In this example with the frog it is perfectly clear that the true solution of the problem requires the reduction of the water temperature in that pot. We could propose that magical cartoon frog to think and try to realize that: 1) the water in that pot is hot, and that is the reason why the skin is red; 2) the frog got used to this situation and that is why it is so unnoticeably for this frog; 3) if the temperature of the water in the pot still stay so hot, without any temperature drop, then all the medication works only temporarily; 4) if we lower the temperature in that pot - the redness disappears on its own, automatically and without any medication.
 Also this cartoon frog, that will go after the doctor to some cartoon physiotherapist, will face the necessity to give itself some answers for such questions as: 1) What is going on? Who has put this frog in that pot? Who is raising the temperature progressively? Who needs it? And what is the purpose or benefit for this person in that? Who benefits? 2) Why did the frog get into the pot? What are the benefits in it for the frog? Or why did the frog agree to that? 3) What does the frog lose when it gets out of this pot? What are the consequences of it for the frog? What does the frog have to face? What are the possible difficulties on the way? Who would be against the changes? With whom the frog may confront? 4) Is the frog ready to take control over its own pot in its own hands and start to regulate the temperature of the water by itself, so to make this temperature comfortable for itself? Is this frog ready to influence by itself on its own living space, to take the responsibility for it to itself?
 The example “A frog in boiling water” is often used as a metaphorical portrayal of the inability of people to respond (or fight back) to significant changes that slowly happen in their lives. Also this tale shows that a body, while trying to adjust to unfavorable living conditions, will react with a symptom. And it is very important to understand this symptom.
 Symptom - is the response of a body, it’s a way a body adjusts to some unfriendly environment.
 Symptom, on the one hand, informs about the existence of a problem, and from the other hand - tries to regulate this problem, at least in some way (like, to remove or reduce), at the level on which it can do it. The process is similar to those when, for example, in a body, while it suffers from some infectious disease, the temperature rises. Thus, on the one hand, the temperature informs about the existence of some infection. On the other hand, the temperature increase creates in a body the situation that is damaging for the infection. So, it would be good to think about in what way does an anxiety symptom help a body that is surrounded by some toxic life situation. And this is a good topic for another article.
 Here I want to emphasize that all the attempts to remove a symptom without a removal of a problem, without changing the everyday life story, may lead to strengthening of the symptom in the body. Even though the removal of a symptom without elimination of its cause has shown success, it only means that the situation was changed into the condition of asymptomatic existence of a problem. And it is, in its essence, a worse situation. For example, it can cause an occurrence of cancer.
 The tale “A frog in boiling water” is about the tendency of people to treat a symptom, instead of seeing their real problems, as its cause, and trying to solve it. People don’t want to see their problems, but it doesn’t mean that the problem doesn’t exist. The problem does exist and it continues to destroy a person, unnoticeably for him or her.
 A person with panic disorder could show us anxiety that is out of control (fear, panic), which, by its essence, seems to exist without any logical reason. Meanwhile the body of such a person could be in such processes that are similar to those that occur in the conditions of some real dangers, when the instinct for self-preservation is triggered and an automatic response of a body to fight or flight implements for its full potential. We can see or feel signs of this response, for example, in cases when some person tries to avoid some real or imaginary danger via attempts to escape (the feeling of fear), or tries to handle the situation by some attempts to fight (the feeling of anger).
 As I mentioned before, many doctors believe that such fear is pathological, as there is no real reason for such intense anxiety. They may see the cause of the problem in worrisome temper, so they try to remove specifically anxiety rather than help such patients to understand specific reason of their anxiety, they use special psychotherapeutic methods that are designed to help clients to develop logical thinking, so it must help them to realize the groundlessness of their anxiety.
 In my point of view, such anxiety often has specific, real reasons, when this response of a body, fight or flight, is absolutely appropriate, but not excessive or pathological. Inadequacy, in fact, is in the unconsciousness, but not in the reactions of a body.
 For a better understanding of the role of anxiety in some toxic environment, that isn’t realized, I want to tell you another allegorical tale called “The wolf and the hare”.
 Let us imagine that two cages were brought together in one room. The wolf was inside one cage and the hare was in another. The cages were divided by some kind of curtain that makes it impossible for them to see each other. At this point a question arises whether the animals react to each other in some way in such a situation, or not? I think that yes, they will. Since there are a lot of other receptors that participate in the receiving and processing of the sensory information. As well as sight and hearing, we have of course a range of other senses. For example, animals have a strong sense of smell.
 It is well known that people, along with verbal methods of communicating information, like language and speaking, also have other means of transmitting information - non-verbal, such as tone of voice, intonation, look, gestures, body language, facial expressions etc., that gives us the opportunity to receive additional information from each other. The lie detector works by using this principle: due to detecting non-verbal signals, it distinguishes the level of the accuracy of information that is transmitted.
 It is assumed, that about 30% of information, that we receive from the environment, comes through words, vision, hearing, touches etc. This is the information that we are aware of in our consciousness, so we could consciously (logically) use it to be guided by. And approximately 70% of everyday information about the reality around us we receive non-verbally, and this information in the majority of cases could remain in us without any recognition. It is the situation when we’ve already known something, and we even have already started to respond to it via our body, but we still don’t know logically and consciously that we know it. We can observe the responses of our own body without understanding what are the reasons for such responses.
 We can recognize this unconscious information through certain pictures, associations, dreams, or with the help of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis is a great tool that can help to recognize the information from the unconscious mind, so that it can be logically processed further on, in other words, a person then receives the opportunity to indicate the real problems and to make right decisions.
 But let us return to the tale where the hare and the wolf stay in one room and don’t see each other, and, maybe, don’t hear, though - feel. These feelings (in other words - non-verbal information that the hare receives) activate a certain response in the hare’s body. And it reacts properly and adequately to the situation, for instance, the body starts to produce adrenaline and runs the response “fight or flight”. So the hare starts to behave accordingly and we could see the following symptoms: the hare is running around his cage, fussing, having some tremor and an increased heart rate, etc..
 And now let us imagine this tale in some cartoon. The hare stays in its house, and the wolf wanders about this house. But the hare doesn’t see the wolf. Though the body of the hare gives some appropriate responses. And then that cartoon hare goes to a cartoon doctor and asks that doctor to give it some pill from its tremor and the increased heart rate. And in general asks to treat in some way this incomprehensible, confusing, totally unreasonable severe anxiety.
 If we try to replace the situation from this fairy-tale to a life story, we could see that it fits well to the script of interdependent relationships, where there are a couple “a victim and an aggressor”, and where such common for our traditional families’ occurrences as a domestic family violence, psychological and physical abuse take place. Only in 2019 a law was passed that follows the European norms and gives a legislative definition of such concepts as psychological domestic abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse, bullying, that criminalizes all of these occurrences, establishes the punishment and directly points to people that could be a potential abuser. Among them are: a husband towards his wife, parents towards their children, a wife towards her husband, a superior towards a subordinate, a teacher towards his or her students, children towards each other etc..
 When it comes to recognition of something as unacceptable, it seems more easy to put to that category such occurrences as physical and sexual abuse, as we could see here some obvious events. For example, beating or sexual harassment. Our society is ready to respond to these incidents in more or less adequate way, and to recognize them as a crime. But it is harder to deal with the recognition of psychological abuse as an offence. Psychological abuse in our families is common. Psychological abuse occurs through such situations, when one person, while using different psychological manipulations, such as violation of psychological borders, imposition of feeling of guilty or shame, etc., force another person to give up his or her needs and desires, and so in such a way make this person live another’s life. Such actions have an extremely negative effect on the mental health of these people, just as much as physical abuse. It can destroy a person from the inside, ruin self-esteem and a feeling of self-worth, create the situation of absolute dependence such victim from an abuser, including financial dependence etc.. It often happens that psychological abuse takes place against the backdrop of demonstrations of care and love.
 So you've got this story about the wolf and the hare, that are right next to each other, and the shield between two of them is a repression - a psychological defense mechanism, when a person turns a blind eye to such offences, that take place in his or her own life and towards him or her. And this person considers this as normal, doesn't realize, doesn't have a resource to realize, that it is a crime. Most importantly - doesn’t feel anything, as a repression takes place. But a body responds in a right way - from a certain point of the existence of such a toxic situation the response “fight or flight” is launched in a body at full, in other words - the fear and anxiety with the associated symptoms.
 The third allegorical tale I called “Defective suit”, which I read in the book of Clarissa Pinkola Estés with the name “Running With the Wolves".
 “Once one man came to a tailor and started to try on a suit. When he was standing in front of a mirror, he saw that the costume had uneven edges.
 - Don’t worry, - said the tailor. - If you hold the short edge of the suit by your left hand - nobody notices it.
 But then the man saw that a lapel of a jacket folded up a little bit.
 - It's nothing. You only need to turn your head and to nail it by your chin.
 The customer obeyed, but when he put on trousers, he saw that they were pulling.
 - All right, so just hold your trousers like this by your right hand - and everything will be fine, - the tailor comforts him.
 The client agreed with him and took the suit.
 The next day he put on his new suit and went for a walk, while doing everything exactly in the way that the tailor told him to. He waddled in a park, while holding the lapel by his chin, and holding the short edge of the suit by his left hand, and holding his trousers by his right hand. Two old men, who were playing checkers, left the game and started to watch him.
 - Oh, God! - said one of them. - Look at that poor cripple.
 - Oh, yes - the limp - is a disaster. But I'm wondering, where did he get such a nice suit?”
 Clarissa wrote: “The commentary of the second old man reflects the common response of the society to a woman, who built a great reputation for herself, but turned into a cripple, while trying to save it. “Yes, she is a cripple, but look how great her life is and how lovely she looks.” When the “skin” that we put on ourselves towards society is small, we become cripples, but try to hide it. While fading away, we try to waddle perky, so everyone could see that we are doing really well, everything is great, everything is fine”.
 As for me, this tale is also about the process of forming a symptom in a situation when one person tries very hard to match to another one, whether it is a husband, a wife or parents. It’s about a situation when such a person always tries to support the other one, while giving up his or her own needs and causing oneself harm in such a way by feeling a tension every day, that becomes an inner normality. And so this person doesn’t give oneself a possibility to relax, to be herself (or himself), to be spontaneous, free. As a result, in this situation the person, who was supported, looks perfect from the outside, but those who tried to match, arises some visible defect, like a limp - a symptom. And so this person lives like a cripple, under everyday stress and tension, trying to handle it, while sacrificing herself (or himself) and trying to maintain this situation, so not to lose the general picture of a beautiful family and to avoid shame.
 The tailor, who made this defective suit and tells how to wear the suit properly, in order to keep things going as they are going, often is a mother who raised a problematic child and then tells another person how to deal with her child in the right way. It is the situation when a mother-in-law tells her daughter-in-law how to treat her son properly. In other words, how to support him, when to keep silent, to handle, how to fit in, so that her problematic son and this relationship in general looks perfect. Or vice versa, when a mother-in-law tells her son-in-law how to support her problematic daughter, how to fit in etc..
 When, for example, a woman acts like this in her marriage and with her husband, with these excessive efforts to fit in - then after a while everybody will talk like: “Look at this lovely man: he lives with his sick wife, and their family seems perfect!”. But when such a woman becomes brave enough to relax and to just let the whole thing go, everybody will see that the relationship in her marriage isn’t perfect, and it is the other one who has problems.
 Each time when someone tries excessively to match up to another one, while turning oneself in some kind of a cripple, - he or she, on the one hand, supports the comfort of that person, to whom he or she tries to match up, and on the other hand - such a situation always arises in that person such conditions as a continuous tension, anxiety, fear to act spontaneously. A symptom - is like a visible defect, that shows itself through the body (and may look like some kind of injury). It is the result of a hidden inner prison.
 As a result of evolution, a pain tells us about a problem that is needed to be solved. When we repress our pain we can’t see our needs and our problems at full. And then a body starts to talk to us via a symptom.
 Psychotherapy aims for providing a movement from a symptom to a resumption of sensitivity to feelings, a resumption of the ability to feel your psychological pain, so you can realize your own toxic story.
 In this perspective another fairy-tale looks interesting to analyze - it is Andersen's fairytale “Princess and the Pea”. In the tale a prince wanted to find a princess to marry. There was one requirement for women candidates, so the prince could select her among commoner - high level of sensitivity, as the real princess would feel a pea through the mountain of mattresses, and so she could have the ability to feel discomfort, to be in a good contact with her body, to tell about her discomfort without such feeling as shame and guilt, and to refuse that discomfort, so to have the readiness to solve her problems and to demand from others the respect for her needs.
 It is common for our culture that the expression “a princess on a pea” very often uses for a negative meaning. So people who are in good contact with their body and who can demand comfort for themselves are often called capricious. At the same time the heroes who are ready to suffer and to tolerate their pain, who are able to repress (stop to feel) their pain represents a good example to be followed in our society.
 So, we may see the next algorithm in cases of various anxiety disorders:
 
 the existence of some toxic situation that brings some danger to a person. And we need not to be confused: a danger exists not for a body, but for a personality. A toxic live situation as well as having a panic attack is not a threat for the health of a body (that is what medical examinations show), and vice versa - it’s like every day intensive sport training, that could be good for your health only to some degree. A toxic situation destroys a person as a personality, who longs for one self’s expression;
 the existence of such a defense mechanism as repression - it’s a life with closed eyes, in pink glasses, when there is inability (or the absence of the desire) to see its own toxic story;
 
 3.the presence of a symptom - a healthy response of a body “fight or flight” to some toxic situation;
 
 displacement - it’s replacement of the attention from the situation to a symptom, when a person starts to see and search for the problem in some other place, not where it really is. A symptom takes as some spare, pathological reaction that we need to get rid of. The readiness to fight the symptom arises, and that is the goal of such methods of therapy as pharmacological therapy, CBT and many others;
 the absence of adequate actions that are directed towards the change of a toxic situation itself. The absence of the readiness to show aggression when it comes to protect its space.
 
 All of it is a mechanism of formation of primary anxiety and preparation for launch of secondary anxiety. A complete anxiety disorder is the interaction between a primary and a secondary anxiety.

This paper examines affective structures and power formations that are constructed,maintained or contested when the significance of the sexual imageryof paradise in the Qur’an is divided into sensual and spiritual. I take a fictionalstory by Mohja Kahf as an example of a Qur’an commentary that centresgendered and embodied experiences in the text, and contrast it with MuhammadAbdel Haleem’s commentary, who views the sexual rewards of paradiseas allegorical. Using affect theory, I will argue that allegorical interpretationslimit the affective efficacy of the sensuality of the text to their symbolic function,associating spirituality with a disembodied, hence transcendent masculinity.Kahf’s exegesis, however, shows that affect and meaning are not pre-given, butproduced in interaction with the text. I will conclude that configuring the textas sensual or spiritual is not due to any intrinsic or predetermined content, buta product of power relations.

The aim of this study is to analyze a potential new fragment of Quaestiones in Exodum in the recently discovered Homiliae in Psalmos of Origen. To make this case, I will first weigh the evidence for and against a Philonic provenance for the tradition cited by Origen (whether paraphrase or citation). I will then offer some lexical, thematic, and form-critical considerations, which suggest that Origen is citing a Philonic interpretation from the Quaestiones rather than paraphrasing the Allegorical Commentary.

The messianic interpretation of the psalms in a number of Antiochene and East Syriac psalm commentariesThe Antiochene exegetes interpreted the psalms against the backdrop of the history of Israel. They reconstructed a historical setting for each psalm. They reacted against the allegorical interpretation of the Alexandrian School that frequently interpreted the psalms from the context of the New Testament. This article investigates the messianic interpretation of Psalms 2 and 110, as well as the interpretation of Psalm 22, frequently regarded as messianic in non-Antiochene circles. The interpretation of these psalms in the commentaries of Diodore of Tarsus, Theodore of Mopsuestia and Išô`dâdh of Merv will be discussed, as well as the commentary of Denha-Gregorius, an abbreviated Syriac version of the commentary of Theodore. The commentaries of Diodore and Theodore on Psalm 110 are not available. The interpretation of this psalm in the Syriac commentary discussed by Vandenhoff and the commentary of Išô`dâdh of Merv, both following Antiochene exegesis, will be used for this psalm. The historical setting of the psalms is used as hermeneutical key for the interpretation of all these psalms. All the detail in a psalm is interpreted against this background, whether messianic or not. Theodore followed Diodore and expanded on him. Denha-Gregorius is an abbreviated version of Theodore, supplemented with data from the Syriac. Išô`dâdh of Merv used Theodore as his primary source, but with the same kind of supplementary data from the Syriac.

This paper examines the seeming contradiction between the disavowal of moralizing in literature which Gray makes in his comments on Agnes Owens, and the extent to which Gray's critics have asserted a political message as a key constituent in his own work. In exploring this issue, focus falls in a large part on the less than positive appraisal of the 'radicalism' of Gray's politics offered by Alison Lumsden. Following on from several of Gray's commentators, the principle vehicle for Gray's political commentary within fiction is taken to be his explicit representation, in both realist and allegorical modes, of the political realities in which he writes. This grounding for his project is then shown to be incompatible with the politically radical message which Lumsden seems to imply as a necessary yet absent factor in Gray's work, while allowing some form of political intervention to be made without contradicting the rules Gray himself has suggested for political fiction. Important to this is the notion of an as-yet unrealised freedom beyond - both thematically and temporally - Gray's immediate focus, and of the individual actions within and against each entrapping political system which Gray's fiction recurrently represents and valorises.

Radicalism and fundamentalism, commonly characterized by acts of terror and violence, are considered as serious threats to Indonesia as a nation. One of the triggers of radical and fundamentalist movements is the misunderstanding on some verses about violence, war, and murder in the Scriptures. The radicals and the fundamentalists tend to interpret literally and use those verses to legitimate their actions. This paper has no intention to blame and to correct verses of the Scriptures that are literally provocative for violence, but to offer some inspiration from patristic tradition about how to interpret the Bible verses on violence. There are three methods and one criterion, that is, method of “esegesi orante”, method of allegorical-spiritual, method of the Scripture interprets Scripture, and the criteria of ὠφέλειᾰ (ōphéleia: benefit). These methods and criterion may also be applied to interpret and to understand Koran verses on violence, as there are some provocative verses in regard to violence in both Scriptures. Moreover, Muslims also have the Tafsir (exegesis, commentary) as a methodology for reading and explaining the Koran, even accepting hermeneutics as a method of interpretation that is very relevant to understand the message of the Koran.

Abstract Trauma survivors may see images of monsters in nightmares and visions when experiencing posttraumatic stress. However, there has been little commentary on the significance and meaning of this imagery and the wider relationship between monster imagery and posttraumatic stress. Applying an integrated experiential-processing approach to working with trauma in Counselling and Psychotherapy, emphasis is placed on facilitating ‘processing’ or making sense of the trauma, psychologically, emotionally, existentially and culturally. Examining the interplay of these elements, this paper explores monsters as symbol and metaphor for unspoken or unprocessed personal and cultural trauma, vessels for symbolically representing underlying, unacknowledged fears and experience. This paper discusses how encounters with the monster onscreen, in mental imagery or metaphor, may be allegorical to the individual’s internal struggle with post-traumatic stress. The model presented is applied within an analysis of the symbolic representation of the trauma of cancer, cancer treatment and traumatic loss in survival horror movie The Shallows (Collet-Serra (dir) (2016). The Shallows. Columbia Pictures). Jungian ideas are integrated to consider monsters as emergent symbolisation of unspoken ‘shadow’ fears, such as those surrounding cancer. In an experiential-processing account of trauma, incongruence between self-concept (our beliefs about self and world) and our actual experience of traumatic events is viewed as a source of psychological distress, prompting a breakdown and reorganisation of the self-structure. It is proposed that trauma experience confronts us with our mortality and fragility, bringing us into contact with the sense of ‘abject’ horror represented by monster imagery. Creeds (2007. The monstrous feminine: film, feminism, psychoanalysis. Routledge, London and New York) description of the abject as the ‘place where meaning collapses’ is applied to an understanding of psychological trauma, given that encounters with existential threats may render the everyday meaningless, engendering a need for meaning-making. Monster imagery psychologically represents the collapsing border between our ideas about self and world, and the destabilising experience of the shattering of pre-trauma assumptions. In this account monsters are located within a wider, adaptive evolutionary drive towards the reduction of trauma-related psychological distress, through symbolising experience into awareness for processing and meaning making. In this way monsters may play a complex role in a human struggle to come to terms with overwhelming events.

Shrimad Bhagavad Gita is the glorious dialogue between Arjuna and Sri Krishna containing the essence of the Vedic philosophy in nutshell and in the most lucid form. There have been thousands of commentaries on Bhagavad Gita and many different interpretations are also available from ancient to the medieval period. Each scholar has interpreted it according to the main philosophical precept of his/her School of thought, while other interpretations were also possible. However the commentary in Marathi, the regional language by Sant Jnaneshwar is unique. He as a Yogi, a Poet, a Bhakta and a Jnani of the Nath Vaishnava tradition (Sampradaya), Varkari (Vithoba-Krishna) Bhakti movement tradition and disciple of his own elder brother and guru Nivvruttinath. Jnaneshwar gifted us a precious work which is the commentary on Shrimad Bhagawad Gita, titled Bhavarthdeepika in Marathi and also known as Jnaneshwari and Shri Dnyaneshwari. What is unique in Jnaneshwari is that it is written keeping in mind a common man and not an elite class of that time. That is the reason why it is written in Marathi, a regional language and filled with many examples and similes that a common would easily understand. Many people also believe that it was Lord Krishna Himself, who reincarnated to make the Gita available to everyone. This present study is a humble attempt to find and present all these similes and examples that are used allegorically by Jnaneshwar to simplify the message conveyed by lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita. The study is delimited to the Karmayoga only and hence, the researcher has compiled the verses dealing with the Karmayoga, particularly in third to sixth chapters