Journal articles on the topic 'Jewish Coins'

Ancient coins are ubiquitous items used by archaeologists, along with several types of artifacts, for purposes of relative dating when excavating at ancient sites. Furthermore, coins play an important role in gaining a better understanding the cultural milieu of the first centuries of the Common Era, the period into which events and writing of the New Testament fit. Some archaeologists are also numismatists, that is, specialists in ancient coins. In writing this article the author has drawn upon his own years of work as a field archaeologist and numismatist in Israel. This survey introduces the reader to the subject of ancient Roman Imperial coins, Roman Provincial coins and coins minted in ancient Palestine specifically for use by the Jewish populace. Examples of the importance of the coins as both official, and unofficial, propaganda (as is the case with Jewish coins of the First Revolt of the Jews against Rome, 66–70 CE) are discussed. There is an analysis of the coins that circulated in Palestine and the eastern Roman provinces into which early Christianity spread. Special attention is given to those coins specifically mentioned in the New Testament. Ethical issues concerning the removal of coins from ancient sites and the collecting of them by individuals are also introduced. Finally, possibilities for presenting numismatic information via the pulpit and religious education are addressed. To this end the reader will find some resources for starting out in the field of ancient and Biblical numismatics, and creatively applying that information for the edification of others.

The corpus of Jewish legal writings contains many discussions of economic issues and ideas. Yet, aside from a small group of scholars, historians of economics have tended to ignore the texts of Jewish law. As Ephraim Kleiman (1997) points out, the sheer size and inaccessibility of the Jewish law corpus presents a major barrier. Economic ideas are scattered across a vast amount of material. The canonical text of Jewish law is the Talmud, which spans 2,700 folio pages and two million words. Hundreds of commentaries have been written on the Talmud (or parts of it). There are three major codes of Jewish Law (based on the Talmud and selected commentaries), plus commentaries on the codes and lesser known codes (based on the major codes). About one million responsa (questions and answers in Jewish law) are known to exist; these are collected in hundreds of books. Today, new commentaries and responsa appear each year, in addition to multiple rabbinic journals. In order to understand these materials, the scholar must be well versed in Hebrew, Aramaic, and the reading of the Talmud.

Carnuntum, a capital of Roman Pannonia, is one of the richest find spots of ancient coins north of the Alps – among the approximately 40,000 coins in the Museum Carnuntinum several Judaean coins can be found. The article discusses the questions of money circulation during Roman times and the relevance of Judaean coins in identifying a Jewish presence in the Roman Danube area.

The article is an attempt to answer the question of whether the building on coins issued during the Bar Kokhba revolt, usually interpreted as the Temple in Jerusalem, was a testimony of the control of Jerusalem by the rebels or a manifestation of the political programme of the revolt. This meant that perhaps also worship on the Temple Mount was resumed. The image of the building itself is analysed against a comparative background composed of other sacred buildings shown on earlier Jewish coins, in particular those coming from the period of the First Jewish War with Rome. Coins from other areas where similar buildings are represented were also used as comparative material. Consequently, the answer to the basic question of whether the possible Temple on Bar Kokhba coins was a confirmation of the historical fact of taking power over the Jewish capital or was it only a manifestation of longing – firstly after the loss of the Temple in 70, and secondly after the restoration of Jerusalem as the spiritual and political centre of the Chosen Nation – clearly leads to the second conclusion.

The Jews used bars and rings of gold and silver as money prior to using coins. Syrian, Roman, and Jewish coins were used during the time of Christ. The Roman Government imposed a tremendous tax burden upon its subjects. The people of Israel also had to pay a tax to the temple. Publicans, or tax collectors, were well known for their corruption. Thus, the Jews had utter contempt for publicans. Christ paid his share of taxes and taught that it was right to do so even under the corrupt system of the Romans.

Hungarian coins bore Latin inscriptions from the earliest times. Only in the nineteenth century did German-language, and during the 1848–1849 War of Independence, Hungarian-language legends appear. It is thus curious to find a group of thirteenth-century Hungarian coins bearing Hebrew letters (but not text!). Hebrew letters on Hungarian coins were first noted in the nineteenth century by Sámuel Kohn in his studies of the Hungarian Jewish history, and in some type-descriptions by László Réthy. Nonetheless, they only arose as a subject of research in the 1970s following the publication of a paper by Gyula Rádóczy drawing attention to them. Rádóczy systematically went through their various types, identified each Hebrew character, and attempted to link them with the initials of chamber counts known from written sources. He reached the conclusion that the ‘alef/aleph’ (א) was linked with Altman, the ‘chet’(ח) with Henoch, the ‘teth’ (ט) with Theka and the six-pointed star with Samuel. Soon, the investigation was joined by Sándor Scheibert and Lóránt Nagy, the latter attempting to date late Árpád-era coins relying on Rádóczy’s findings. Later, several papers tried to clarify the issue and determinate the persons of Jewish birth who could be linked with the coins.

Author of the article presents the series of six coins minted in ancient city of Apamea Kibotos in Phrygia during the reign of emperors Septimus Severus (193- 211), Macrinus (217-218), Alexander Severus (222-235), Gordian III (238-244), Philip the Arab (244-249) and Trebonius Gallus (251-253). The coins depict Noah’s Ark and were connected with Jewish community of the city. The article introduces a short history of Apamea and Jewish settlers in this region. The main part of the article presents the description of the scenes on the coins and tries to explain the circumstances of their appearance in ancient Roman city. An attempt to explain the meaning of the Greek nickname for Apamea - Kibotos, is also significant. In the end of the article author makes the comparison with depictions of Noah’s Ark in early Christian art.

The article focuses on the use of the Paleo-Hebrew script versus the square script (known also as “Jewish script” or “Assyrian”) by the Jews of Judea during the Hellenistic and Roman periods. From the Persian period until the Bar Kokhba Rebellion, Paleo-Hebrew script was used in various Jewish contexts (official, sacred, funerary) and on a variety of substrates (parchment, stone, coins, and pottery). The most representative artefacts bearing inscriptions in the Paleo-Hebrew script are Jewish coins of that time and the Dead Sea Scrolls. One common view is that because the Hasmoneans and the rebels in both revolts sought to establish their sovereignty, they employed symbols of Jewish significance and the archaic and obsolete – but prestigious – Paleo-Hebrew script, which was a reminder of the glorious past. Studies of the Dead Sea Scrolls commonly premise that greater holiness and value was attached to the Paleo-Hebrew script than to the square script. The article shows that, in the Second Temple period, the square script was considered holy. Consequently, those who were scrupulous about observing the laws of ritual purity refrained from using the square script for mundane purposes and used the Paleo-Hebrew script instead.

Engraved silver plates bearing the names of deceased parents and the Hebrew dates of their deaths, termed yortsayt plaques, and coins altered to display the Hebrew letter heh are two coherent groups of Jewish artifacts previously unrecognized as distinct categories. The yortsayt memorabilia are from Russian Poland and date from the late nineteenth through the mid-twentieth centuries. The heh-inscribed coins were a form of childbirth amulet originating in western Europe from the seventeenth century onward. These previously inadequately documented artifacts are described and illustrated here, and a discussion of their distribution and presumptive usage is offered.

Abstract The hoard was discovered before Christmas in 1928 during additional demolition of the foundations of the Jewish hospital, under its foundations, very close to the Jewish cemetery in Prague-Josefov. It used to consist of at least 33 gold coins in a clay bowl. Thirty two coins are represented by the Hungarian ducats struck under Sigismund I of Luxembourg (1387–1437) in Buda (18 pcs), Kremnice (Kremnitz, 7 pcs), Košice (Cassovia, 6 pcs) and Velká Baňa (Nagybánya, 1 pc) before 1430, and one coin is English noble struck under Edward III (1327–1377) in Calais. The hoard is one of three known hoards from Prague with gold issues dating back to the pre-Jagiellon period. It was hidden under the wall of the building in place where the Jewish settlement expanded. The owners of the house – of various origins – changed quickly, and since 1440, the building has been owned continuously by the Jewish community. In time of the burial of the hoard, the house was very likely owned by the Prague brewmaster called Hanuško from Prague (1418–1429/1431, 1440) or by the saddler called Václav Paznehtík (1429/1431–before 1433). The hoard was not reported by the finders, the police detected them soon, and they were brought to the court and sentenced to jail. The National Museum bought the part of the hoard for the numismatic collection in 1930.

The Spanish Jews who fled to North Africa from the 1391 pogroms were joined a century later, in 1492, by a larger wave of exiles, the thousands of Jews who had chosen to leave Spain rather than convert to Christianity. These fellow Jews, the megorashim or expelled Jews, had been forbidden to take 'gold and silver or minted coins' out of Spain (Edwards 1994: 52). They did, however, take with them invisible assets: their Spanish language and culture. This Iberian presence in Morocco was further reinforced by the arrival of a third group of Spanish-speaking Jews fleeing the forced conversions imposed by Portugal in 1497.

Apart from the later period of the Hasmonaean kingdom, Samaritans and Jews were always separate peoples who had either Gerizim or Jerusalem as their main cult place. While Jewish perspectives on Samaritan origin and history still prevail in recent research, future research will have to broaden the perspective and take into consideration Samaritan claims for authenticity in respect to origin, belief and traditions. These claims have recently been substantiated by excavations on Mount Gerizim, which have unearthed structures of a major Persian Period cult place that may date as early as the sixth century BCE. These finds, as well as finds of about 400 inscriptions and 13,000 coins, have just begun to be published. The present article presents the most recent development in research on Samaritan history and literature, in order to offer a base for the necessary rewriting of both Samaritan and Jewish history.

Without having any contemporaneous account of the Bar Kokhba Revolt comparable to the writings of Josephus that describe the First Jewish Revolt, our knowledge about many aspects of the later uprising is rather sketchy. The publication of Roman military diplomas and the remarkable series of documents recovered from caves in the Judaean Desert, along with other major archaeological findings, has filled in just some of missing details. This study is devoted to a reexamination of the rebel coinage. It has highlighted the importance of the numismatic evidence in helping to elucidate the religious ideology that succoured the rebellion and shaped its leadership.

In A.D. 96 Nerva courted popularity in Rome for his new regime by changing the way in which the special tax on Jews payable to the fiscus Judaicus was exacted. The reform was widely advertised by the issue of coins, under the auspices of the senate, with the proclamation ‘fisci Judaici calumnia sublata’. Precisely how Nerva removed the calumnia no source states, but it can be surmised. The tax did not cease to be collected, for its imposition was still in operation in the time of Origen and possibly down to the fourth century A.D. It is a reasonable hypothesis that Nerva's intention was to demonstrate publicly his opposition to the way in which his hated predecessor, Domitian, had levied the tax, and to procure release for those described by Suetonius (Dom. 12. 2) as particular victims of Domitian's tendency to exact the tax ‘acerbissime’. According to Suetonius, these unfortunates were those who either ‘inprofessi’ lived a ‘iudaicam vitam’ or ‘origine dissimulata’ refused to pay the tax: the people thus trapped by Domitian and, if the hypothesis is correct, exempted by Nerva were those who failed to admit openly to their Jewish practices and/or those who hid their origins (presumably as Jews). I shall argue in this paper that by removing such people from the list of those liable to the Jewish tax, Nerva may unwittingly have taken a significant step towards the treatment of Jews in late antiquity more as a religion than as a nation.

The story of the coin in the fish's mouth in Matthew 17:27 has usually been interpreted as an artificial, folkloric interpolation into a straightforward pericope about providence. This article argues that the miracle is in fact an essential element of the pericope, and that it illuminates Matthew's understanding of Jewish-Roman relations. The concept of "occult economies," as developed by the anthropologists John and Jean Comaroff, illustrates how certain cultures see supernatural events as having a direct impact on economic systems. The miracle in this story can therefore be seen as a statement about supernatural power in an enchanted world.

Abstract Philip the Tetrarch, son of Herod the Great, was the first Jewish ruler to depict human images on his coins. This innovation of adopting numismatic portraiture must be understood in inseparable conjunction with Philip’s aggressive cultivation of the imperial cult at Paneas. The present article, accordingly, offers the first focused study of how the development of iconography on his issues corresponds to specific political events of cultic concern. In this connection, a new interpretation is suggested for Philip’s unique undated minting, deeply implicated in the imperial drama transpiring around the year 31 CE. The tetrarch’s savvy manipulation of images, when seen against this broad background, reveals his unwavering and intensifying allegiance to the domus Augusta: to the princeps in the form of a clipeus virtutis devotion and to Livia under the aspect of Demeter.

AbstractThe coinage of Bar Kosiba (Bar Kokhba), the leader of the Second Jewish Revolt (132–135/6 CE), has long been acknowledged as a source of data for understanding the ideology and goals of the rebel regime he headed. In particular, the imagery and legends on Bar Kosiba’s tetradrachms have been the subject of many interpretations and controversies. This article proposes that the facade of the temple on the obverse of Bar Kosiba’s tetradrachms and the four species on its reverse side are complementary symbols, joined together to represent the future inauguration ceremony of the restored temple. Furthermore, this imagery on the tetradrachms may have been intended to respond to the coins issued to commemorate the founding of the colony of Aelia Capitolina on the site of Jerusalem.

Johann Peter Titz (Lat. Titius, 1619-1689), a professor of rhetoric at the Gdańsk Academic Gymnasium is known as an author of speeches, poems, rhetorical and historical writings. However, in 1676 he published an important (though less known) work on numismatics: Commentatio tertia, nummaria, de pecunia vetere ac nova, abaco tabulisque exhibita (Third, Monetary Commentary, on Old and New Money, Presented on a Plate and in Tables) as a signifcant part (320 pages) of a collection of treatises of more than 1,000 pages entitled Manuductio ad excerpendum. The aim of the paper is to present the content of the Commentatio tertia, nummaria and its ancient and early modern sources. The overall approach to the Titius’ study shows its practical nature (almost a third of the entire argument is devoted to attempts to reconcile the values of various ancient denominations and accounting units with contemporary coins) which seems to suggest that it might have been used by students viewing the coin collection in the Gdańsk library. A more thorough examination of the Commentatio alongside an analysis of the accounts of the seventeenth-century Gdańsk writer’s numismatic collection may contribute to determining to what extent numismatics were a permanent feature in the gymnasium curriculum in Gdańsk in the latter seventeenth century, and to what extent the youth (juventus) of the Academic Gymnasium, to whom Titius was addressing his work, really wanted to and could identify ancient Greek, Roman and Jewish coins.

This article discusses a distinct form of urban housing that flourished in the Yishuv during the British Mandate, in which a family dwelt with other families or individuals in the same household. The article coins and defines the term ‘intimate neighborly relations’ and uses it to analyze the living experience of shared apartments and to describe the relationships that were formed between the residents. An anthropological analysis of the overlap between neighbors and home that is implied by the concept of ‘intimate neighbors’ refines our understanding of private and family space among the Jewish middle class in Palestine. Moreover, the article demonstrates the role of gender in neighborliness and urbanity and uncovers how women shaped the intimacy in the shared apartments. The main argument in the article, based on autobiographical and legal documents alongside popular representations of the practice, is that living together with ‘intimate neighbors’ involved inconvenience, embarrassment and even disgust. At the same time, and despite the difficulties, ‘intimate neighbors’ provided a form of human interaction in an immigrant society, in which many experience alienation and loneliness. Finally, the relationships among ‘intimate neighbors’ were simultaneously a personal experience and a public-national issue, especially in the 1940s when it became a widespread phenomenon and conflicts between neighbors escalated.

The ancient Jewish site of Ḥorbat Ḥuqoq has recently become famous for its synagogue and magnificent 5th-century CE mosaic floor. While unearthing the synagogue, a rock-hewn hiding complex was discovered beneath the floor and partially excavated. This complex (Hiding Complex 1) provided an emergency escape route via winding passages to a cistern, the side of which could be scaled with a ladder. Another hiding complex—Hiding Complex 2—was discovered as early as the 1980s at the base of the synagogue hill’s northern slope. It was surveyed and documented several times. In 2002, four chambers and several passages were excavated, and in 2021, the entrance was excavated, demonstrating it had been accessed via a ritual bath. This article presents the excavation results of the Ḥuqoq Hiding Complex 2. Among other things, they include a rich 2ndcentury CE pottery assemblage retrieved from the inner passages of the complex, including fragments of cooking pots, jars, oil lamps, and a gemstone ring. A hoard of 22 coins, the first to be discovered in a Galilean hiding complex, was found deep inside one of the tunnels. Presently, only one was dated to the 2nd century CE. In this paper, we place Ḥuqoq in the context of some 14 other hiding complexes that were officially excavared and attributed by pottery and some other finds to the 2nd century CE. The paper explores a new dimension of the question about the Galilee’s participation in the Bar Kokhba Revolt. At the very least, it is now certain that the local population prepared for the revolt.

This article examines in detail the repercussions of a 1931 sermon by Sheea Herschorn, an immigrant Orthodox rabbi in Montreal, on the public discourse of the Montreal Jewish community. It begins with a brief consideration of the position of the immigrant Orthodox rabbinate in Montreal and then explores the nature of the public discourse on this sermon, in which Rabbi Herschorn was accused of agreeing with an anti-Semitic position, through a close examination of the reportage of the controversy in Montreal’s Jewish press, which then included two newspapers in Yiddish, the Keneder Adler and Der Shtern, as well as the English-language Canadian Jewish Chronicle. Finally, the article explores some of the major issues raised in Rabbi Herschorn’s sermon regarding the contemporary situation of Polish Jews in relation to their society, tying it to his perception of the relationship of Canadian Jews and Canadian society as a whole. These latter issues included especially the relationship between Montreal Jews and Montreal’s public Anglophone institutions, such as the Royal Victoria Hospital, and McGill University, whose ambivalent acceptance of Jews as physicians and students was then an issue of great concern to the Jewish community.

Before Joel and Ethan Coen’s 2009 production A Serious Man, Jewish motifs have consistently appeared in their cinematic output. However, the Jewish characters functioned in an ethnically diverse setting and rarely took centre stage, with the notable exception of the eponymous struggling leftist playwright in Barton Fink. Nevertheless, even here the Jewishness seemed to be universalized into “humanity.” Elsewhere, through their accessory characters, the Coens primarily offered a nod to the illustrious and/or notorious Jewish presence in various spheres of American society (e.g., smalltime gangster Bernie Bernbaum in Miller’s Crossing or movie mogul Jack Lipnick in the aforementioned Barton Fink). In addition, steadfast religious observance has been an object of affable ridicule (e.g., store owner Walter Sobchak in The Big Lebowski). A Serious Man, however, reveals an unprecedented strategy. Described by the Coens as their most autobiographical film to date, it has a predominantly Jewish cast, deals almost exclusively with a Jewish community in the Midwest, and is heavily steeped in themes which have long been the staple of the Jewish literary tradition. Most evident is the familiar figure of the schlemiel, the eternal loser, embodied in the protagonist Larry Gopnik, whose seemingly endless predicaments form the spine of the plot. Marketed as a comedy, A Serious Man nevertheless consistently exhibits a dark, existential undercurrent, which renders its decidedly grim ending a rather logical payoff. Drawing on the research of seminal scholars on the subject of schlemiel narratives (e.g., Ruth Wisse, Sanford Pinsker), the essay is an attempt to situate the film within this tradition. Furthermore, I argue that the Coens reinvest the figure of the schlemiel with a philosophical charge that it possessed in folk legends and Yiddish literature; at the same time, they adapt the schlemiel to the postmodern condition. This allows them to address the fundamental uncertainty of our age, signalled in the film through the formulae of Heisenberg and Schrödinger.

This essay examines Fagin from Oliver Twist as a villain whose construction joins Victorian anxieties about counterfeiting and economic deceptiveness with separate yet related concerns about the author's role in representing criminal life. Dickens triangulates Fagin's identity through cultural fears about Jewish participation within secondary markets, increased distance between purchaser and seller in an expanding credit economy, and moral ambiguities in respect to fiction-making. Read against non-literary Victorian writing about counterfeiters and crime, Fagin can be understood as a forger of identities and narratives. His ability to exploit interpersonal belief and economic value is a central feature of his villainy and one with precedent in other aspects of Victorian financial life. Dickens critiques capitalist culture by associating it with the imitative, fictional, and Jewish culture. In contrast, he aligns sincerity and truth with the middle-class, normative characters. Throughout, he marks the distinction between these two groups with comic incidence. The marginalised figures are fodder for humour and irony, while the conventional heroes are earnest.

Are we entitled to consider the exiled German legal historians of Jewish origin, Fritz Pringsheim, Fritz Schulz and David Daube, on equal footing with Franz Wieacker, Paul Koschaker and Helmut Coing as founding fathers of the shared European legal tradition? In this way, the asylum seekers would be equated with the perpetrators or profiteers of their expulsion. But first of all: have the exiled actually contributed something to this “shared” legal history?

Coins are as important as the inscription in history. Numismatics, the study of coins, is a multi-disciplinary science in the sense it requires information in palaeography, prehistoric studies, engravings and history, however it is itself one of the fundamental hotspots for the reproduction of history. Kerala was conceivably occupied with exchanging exercises from 3000 BCE with Sumerians and Babylonians. Phoenicians, Greeks, Egyptians, Romans, Jews, Arabs, Chinese and Europeans were pulled in by an assortment of wares, particularly flavors, cotton textures and other resources. Trade, invasion and civilizations were influenced the coin history. The evolution of coinage in Kerala throws light to history too. The present paper is an attempt to review the studies on numismatics of Kerala and thus to history too.

ABSTRACT: During the 1960 campaign of the Corinth Excavations, a Tang Dynasty coin was found in an ash and charcoal layer with deposits from the mid- to late 13th century ce and earlier. Considering similar coin finds from the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, China, and the Chui Region, Kyrgyzstan, this article argues that the Corinth Tang coin is likely an Anxi Protectorate issue, though a Chui valley origin cannot be ruled out. This article discusses the origins, survival, and mobility of this minimal-value cash coin in a web of Eurasian connections, with particular focus on the connectivity of the Church of the East and the Jewish merchant network from the 8th to the 13th century ce.

<p>Market as a cultural and historical social phenomenon enchains researchers in many respects. There must be mentioned significant studies on the market in Latgalian and Lithuanian culture, carried out by Angelika Juško-Štekele, Daina Kraukle and Gintautas Mažeikis, but Sylvia Papaurėlytė has focused on the market in the aspect of language world, particularly paying attention to trade-related Belarusian lexicon in transaction documents of the 15–17th century. The goal of the study is applying linguo-cultural approach to compare contrastively the designation of trading process, the persons, involved in trade, currency, as well as related phraseology parallels in Latgalian, Lithuanian and Belarusian language. The selected sources are most significant lexicography literature, modern electronic dictionaries and contemporary text corpora and Latgalian press.</p><p>The lexeme торгъ ‘market’ frequently used in Belarusian transaction documents of the 15–17th century maintains its topicality in Latgalian and Lithuanian literature.The lexeme of the same root torgi ‘auction’ is frequently used in Latgalian press in the 20s–30s of the 20th century. With the strengthening of Catholicism, in the 17th century market process was related to the church rebate and the Belarusian word кiрмаш ‘market’ (&lt; German Kirchmesse) was introduced into Latgalian language.</p><p>The synonyms of the designation of the person, who is engaged in trading, form several lexical thematic groups (distinguished as a basic occupation, by the sold goods, by trading type, by the function to be performed). Trade-related denotative components do not appear in Latgalian lexicon, but the lexical meaning of Latgalian lexeme žyds ‘Jew’ is associated with the Jewish basic occupation.</p><p>Both in archaeological and ancient texts there can be found the names of the coins, which demonstrate a great diversity of monetary units, but only a few historical monetary unit names are used in the recent time language and are well-established in phraseology. The most popular name in Latgalian, Lithuanian and Belarusian language is grass–grošis–грош ‘groat’.</p><p>The word index of the first Latgalian book “Evangelia toto anno 1753”, which is the New Testament excerpta, shows, that the word grass, that is indistinctive to biblical texts, is found 12 times. This lexeme can also be found in Jan Kurmin’s Polish-Latin-Latvian dictionary: Grosz. Nummus. Groszys, v. Dzienuszka (Kurmin 1858: 36). In Latgalian and Lithuanian texts the word grass–grošis is used with the meaning ‘small amount of money’.</p><p>A phraseological component grass–grošis–грош maintains the semantics of a small amount of money and something worthless. There can be found parallels of a variety of phraseological units in all three languages, which most directly shows the common understanding of the value of money. The word skatikas appears in Lithuanian phraseological units as a synonym of the same semantics of worthless money.</p><p>A kopeck–kapeika–капейкa unlike grass–grošis–грош is a small unit, but a ruble, rublis–rublys–рубль is a large monetary unit (sova kapeika lobuoka par cara rubli ‘own kopeck is better than the tsar’s ruble’). In phraseological units with the component kopeck–kapeika–капейкa there appears the motive of saving and earning money, though it is a small amount of money (sova kapeika teik ‘some kopeck is gotten’; kapeika įkrito į delną ‘a little money is earned’; капейкa ў капейку ‘kopeck to kopeck’; жывая капейкa ‘profitable’).</p><p>Historicisms such as červoncs ‘tenner’ and dukats ‘ducat’ are less popular in Latgalian texts.</p><p>There can be concluded, that Latgalian language of three languages discussed above reflects the least trade-related nuances and Latgalians feel themselves as passive victims of transactions done by others.</p>

Abstract: Muslim women activists in the Islamic Movement who are citizens of Israel, a Jewish-majority state, and members of a Palestinian minority live in a complex tangle of identities: religious, national, gender, and civilian. To cope with this complicated reality, they use patriarchal bargains based on social strategies such as gaining higher education, work, da ʿ wah (dissemination of religious knowledge to encourage the return to Islam), and political involvement. Within the framework of those bargains, female Islamic Movement activists subsequently have become involved in informal politics and gained power and influence in their society. In addition, they follow religious principles like musayarah (flowing with reality) and tawriyah (concealment, sending a double message to avoid provocations with their Israeli surroundings.)

Abstract: Muslim women activists in the Islamic Movement who are citizens of Israel, a Jewish-majority state, and members of a Palestinian minority live in a complex tangle of identities: religious, national, gender, and civilian. To cope with this complicated reality, they use patriarchal bargains based on social strategies such as gaining higher education, work, da ʿ wah (dissemination of religious knowledge to encourage the return to Islam), and political involvement. Within the framework of those bargains, female Islamic Movement activists subsequently have become involved in informal politics and gained power and influence in their society. In addition, they follow religious principles like musayarah (flowing with reality) and tawriyah (concealment, sending a double message to avoid provocations with their Israeli surroundings.)

In the French city of Lyon, for three years (1774 to 1776), three personalities of first importance (Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, Jean-Jacques Duroy d’Hauterive and Jean-Baptiste Willermoz) taught other initiates and members of the Order of the Masonic Knights Elect Coëns theosophy and the theurgy of their master and great sovereign Martinès de Pasqually. What were these teachings? What theurgy is that? What did this Order, which still has its adherents today, intend? This article aims to understand what the Lyon lessons are and what they mean, using the original manuscripts of the time. We retrace the history and clarify the Martinist and Martinist thought, as a Masonic current of Jewish-Christian mysticism that arose in the 18th century.

Connections between the Balkan-Serbian-Pannonian corridor and the Pannonian-Finnish corridor extending to the Silk Road are multiple and complex. Thus Stefan Vladislav, son of Stefan Dragutin (King of Serbia) is depicted holding an axe by Hieromonk Stefan, symbol of his Árpádian ancestry, his Árpádian position, related to his victorious ancestor at Kerlés. In Wallachia, the saint popularly known as Philothea is depicted with the axe of St. Ladislaus. St. Catherine, depicted next to a breaking wheel, symbol of gnosis, but also the instrument of her death, or the martyrs, depicted by the Cross, symbol of Christ's divinity, but analogously, way of our death and redemption, give us a glimpse of St. Philothea's axe double meaning. Catherine, in her lives in Greek and in her hymnography, is called Philothea, the one who loves God. St. Philothea of Argeş is depicted in her lay attire, and she is not a nun, and by tradition she lived in the 13th century. St. Philothea, the historical one, lived in the 4th century, and was a nun. It is clear that it is another character. Although Euthymius of Tarnovo wrote about the life of this holy nun, there is no evidence that her relics existed at Tarnovo. In correlation with Ladislaus cycle, archetype for that, the earliest representation of the concept of liberating the state from a false emperor or illegitimate conqueror, is in Constantine's cup (dated after 300 AD), where Constantine liberates Sofia as a state from the pagan Licinius. The model monarch of Moscow, the monarchical ancestor of the era when Moscow became a state, is the main character of Skazanie o Drakule voievode. He is Vlad the Impaler. The ultimate expression, on European level, of the imperial nature of the Nemanjić branch who inherited the Árpádians in Ungrovlachia. The branch that preserved the name of the Árpádian imperial succession through the Nemanjić. Hungarian Vlach. And national consciousness. Dynasty symbolized by the axe of St. Ladislaus, which for this reason appears on Hungarian-Vlachian coins, including those of Mircea the Elder, next to the holy ancestor, as well as on the first coinage of Moscow, from the time of Ivan III. The presence of Ladislaus in that context on the Moscow coinage with Matthias Corvinus’ weapons but the name of Ivan III and the name of Moscow in the legend, shows us a possible archaic alternative genealogy of the rulers of Moscow, visible in the systematic election of the Hungarian kings, including Matthias’ in the Chronicle of Faces, whose death is depicted in detail there with Orthodox priests present and Serbian nobility next to him with the title of tsar. Roman and Vlahata is not only a text about Moldova, but also about the founding of Moscow, Caraș (the land of Criș), Maramureș and Moldova being landmarks of entrance to a north Pontic and north Caucasian corridor leading to Moscow. It is the mechanism of the Third Rome foundation, and the Romanovich family name, which later got linked to the Romanov dynasty, and archaically also added the history of the ancient Rurik family, also using that name, and the history of the Moldavian lords bearing these names and the city founded, confirms that yes, Moscow had become somewhat of a Hungarian-Wallachia. This ideology led to the adoption of the tree of Jesse in Moscow, but also to the somehow ethnic name of medieval Serbs, as rumâni, old Romans. The name game of Roma, Roman and Vlahata, and the ethnic name of the Serbs at St. Sava, rumâni, linked to the existence of a parallel medieval Hungarian legend about the eponymous heroes Hunor and Magor, which include, as in the case of the Romanovich, the names given at the time to the Hungarians (Hungarians and Magyars, respectively Romanians and Vlachs) shows us that the Hungarian-Wallachian ideology that inherited through Dragutin the Árpádians and the Nemanjić was also the state ideology of Moscow at the time. Basically these two chronicles, Hunor and Magor and Roman and Vlahata show us the history of the Jewish-Khazar world on the Moscow-Pannonia route. They came as Hunor and Magor, as Hungarian-Magyars, and returned as Serbs, as Roman and Vlahata, as Romanian-Wallachians. From Moscow to Pannonia-Ilyria and back again.

Abstract The ‘Capitula de tonsura monete’ are previously unpublished articles of inquest originally issued in 1279 to special judicial commissions created to combat coin‐clipping and related monetary offences by Jews and Christians. The ‘Capitula’ are shown to shed light on Edward I's motivations and intentions during the coin‐clipping campaign of 1278–9. The author attempts to explain why this text was circulated, somewhat paradoxically, after the expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290, and to determine why it was read along with authentic statues and ‘legal apocrypha’. A critical edition is appended, based on a collation of all manuscript copies and versions.

This article coins a new expression: ‘civil liberation theology’ in Palestine. Astonishingly while feminist, black and post-colonial theologies of liberation have flourished in the West, there is little discussion of indigenous and decolonising perspectives or civil and secular-humanist reflections on liberation theology. Inspired by the works of Palestinian visual artist Naji Al-Ali and public intellectual Edward Said, the article brings into the debate on theologies of liberation in Palestine-Israel a neglected subject: an egalitarian, none-denominational theology rooted in decolonising methodologies. This civil liberation theology attempts to address the questions: how can exile be overcome? How can history be transcended and decolonised? And how can indigenous memory be reclaimed? The article brings into focus indigenous, humanist and non-religious ways of thinking on which Edward Said and Naji Al-Ali (in his famous figurative character Handhala) insisted. This civil liberation theology also draws on contrapuntal methodologies and critical indigenous and non-denominational theologies in ‘historic Palestine’ – progressive, creative and liberative theologies which occupy multiple sites of liberation and can be made relevant not only to people of faith (Muslims, Jews, Christians) but also to secular-humanists.

Forfeiture of property is one of the oldest penalties in Polish law. Its origins can be traced in pre-state law, in the penalty of exclusion from tribe. Anybody could kill a person thus punished and destroy his property, and would suffer no penalty for such acts. Later on, in early Middle Ages, the penalty of plunder was introduced: the offender’s possessions were looted, and his house burned. Destruction of the offender’s property as a penal sanction resulted from the conception of crime and punishment of that time. Crime was an offence against God, and punishment was seen as God’s revenge for crime – that offender’s house was destroyed as the place that had become unchaste, inhabited by an enemy of God. The penalties imposed in Poland in the 12th and 13th centuries were personal, material, and mixed penalties. There were two material penalties: forfeiture of the whole or part of property and pecuniary penalties. The utmost penalty was being outlawed which consisted of banishment of the convicted person from the country and forfeiture of his property by the ruler. Being outlawed was imposed for the most serious offences; with time, it became an exceptional penalty. In those days, forfeiture of property was a self-standing, as well as an additional penalty, imposed together with death, banishment, or imprisonment. As shown by the sources of law, forfeiture of property (as an additional penalty) could be imposed for “conspiracy against state” rape of a nun forgery of coins, cheating at games, and profiteering. Other offences punishable in this way included murder, raid with armed troops and theft of Church property, murder of a Jew committed by a Christian, and raid of a Jewish cemetery. Data on the extent of the imposition of that penalty in the early feudal period are scarce; as follows from available sources, it was applied but seldom. The consequences of forfeiture were serious in those days. Deprived of property, the convicted person and his family inevitably lost their social and political status which made forfeiture one of the most severe penalties. From the viewpoint of the punishing authority (duke), forfeiture was clearly advantageous due to its universal feasibility; to the duke’s officials, it was profitable as they were entitled to plunder the convicted persons’s movables. In the laws of the 16th and 17th centuries, forfeiture was provided for: serious political crimes (crimen leaesae maiestatis – laese-majesty; perduelio – desertion to the enemy), offences against currency and against the armed forces. As an additional penalty, it accompanied capital punishment and being outlawed. The law also provided for situations where forfeiture could be imposed as a self-standing penalty. In 1573, the Warsaw Confederacy Act which guaranteed equality to confessors of different religions banned the inposition of forfeiture for conversion to another faith. Initially absolute – the whole of property being forfeited and taken over by the Treasury where it was at the king’s free disposal – forfeiture of property was limited already in the 14th century. To begin with, in consideration of the rights of the family and third to forfeited property, the wife’s dowry was excluded from forfeiture. Later on, in the 16th century, the limitations concerned the king’s freedom of disposal of forfeited property. A nobleman’s property could no longer remain in the king’s hands but had to be granted to another nobleman. Forfeiture of property can also be found in the practice of Polish village courts; as follows from court registers, though, it was actually seldom imposed. European Enlightenment was the period of emergence of ideas which radically changed the conceptions of the essence and aims of punishment, types of penalties, and the policy of their imposition. In their writings, penologists of those days formulated the principle of the offender’s individual responsibility. This standpoint led to a declaration against forfeiture of property as a penalty which affected not only the offender but also his family and therefore expressed collective responsibility. The above ideas were known in Poland as well. They are reflected in the numerous drafts of penal law reform, prepared in 18th century Poland. The first such draft, so-called Collection of Jidicial Laws by Andrzej Zamojski, still provided for forfeiture. A later one (draft code of King Stanislaw August of the late 18th century) no longer contained this penalty. The athors argued that, affecting not only the offender, that penalty was at variance with the principles of justice. The drafts were never to become the law. In 1794, after the second partition of Poland, an insurrection broke out commanded by Tadeusz Kościuszko. The rebel authorities repealed the former legal system and created a new system of provisions regulating the structure of state authorities, administration of justice, and law applied in courts. In the sphere of substantive penal law and the law of criminal proceedings, an insurgent code was introduced, with severe sanctions included in the catalog of penalties. Forfeiture of property was restored which had a double purpose: first, acutely to punish traitors, and second – to replenish the insurgent funds. When imposing forfeiture, property rights of the convicted person’s spouse and his children’s right to inheritance were taken into account. Yet compared to the administration of justice of the French Revolution with its mass imposition of forfeiture, the Polish insurgent courts were humane and indeed lenient in their practice of sentencing. After the fall of the Kościuszko Insurrection, Poland became a subjugated country, divided between three partitioning powers: Prussia, Russia, and Austria. The Duchy of Warsaw, made of the territories regained from the invaders, survived but a short time. In the sphere of penal law and the present subject of forfeiture of property, that penalty was abolished by a separate parliamentary statute of 1809. After the fall of the Duchy of Warsaw, Poland lost sovereignty and the law of the partitioning powers entered into force on its territories. In the Prussian sector, a succession of laws were introduced: the Common Criminal Law of Prussian States of 1794, followed by the 1851 penal code and the penal code of the German Reich of 1871. Only the first of them still provided for forfeiture: it was abolished in the Prussian State by a law of March 11, 1850. Much earlier, forfeiture disappeared from the legislation of Austria. lt was already absent from the Cpllection of Laws on Penalties for West Galicia of June 17,1796, valid on the Polish territories under Austrian administration. Nor was forfeiture provided for by the two Austrian penal codes of 1803 and 1852. Forfeiture survived the longest in the penal legisation of Russia. In 1815, the Kingdom of Poland was formed of the Polish territories under Russian administration. In its Constitution, conferred by the Tsar of Russia, a provision was included that abolished forfeiture of property. It was also left in the subsequent Penal Code of the Kingdom of Poland, passed in 1818. Forfeiture only returned as a penal sanction applied to participants of the anti-Russian November insurrection of 1831. The Organic Statute of 1832, conferred to the Kingdom of Poland by the Tsar, reintroduced the penalty of forfeiture of property. Moreover, it was to be imposed for offences committed before Organic Statute had entered into force which was an infringement of the ban on retroactive force of law. Of those sentenced to forfeiture in the Kingdom of Poland, Lithuania, and Russia as participants of the November insurrection, few had estates and capital. A part of forfeited estates were donated, the rest were sold to persons of Russian origin. The proces of forfeiting the property of the 1830–1831 insurgents only ended in 1860 (the Tsar’s decree of February 2/March 2,1860). After November insurrection, the Russian authorities aimed at making the penal legislation of the Kingdom of Poland similar to that of the Russian Empire. The code of Main Corrective Penalties of 1847 aimed first of all at a legal unification. It preserved the penalty of “forfeiture of the whole or part of the convicted persons’ possessions and property” as an additional penalty imposed in cases clearly specified by law. It was imposed for offences against the state: attempts against the life, health, freedom or dignity of the Emperor and the supreme rights of the heir to the throne, the Emperor’s wife or other members of the Royal House, and rebellion against the supreme authority. Forfeiture was preserved in the amended code of 1866; in 1876, its application was extended to include offences against official enactments. The penalty could soon be applied – towards the participants of January insurrection of 1863 which broke out in the Russian Partition. The insurgents were tried by Russian military courts. After the January insurrection, 6,491 persons were convicted in the Kingdom of Poland; 6,186 of tchem were sentenced to forfeiture of property. Of that group, as few as 28 owned the whole or a part of real estate; 60 owned mortgage capital and real estate. The imposition of forfeiture on January insurgents stopped in 1867 in the Kingdom of Poland and as late as 1873 in Lithuania. The penalty was only removed from the Russian penal legislation with the introduction a new penal code in 1903. As can be seen, the Russian penal law – as opposed to the law of Prussia and Austria retained forfeiture of property the longest. It was designet to perform special political and deterrent functions as the penalty imposed on opponents of the system for crimes against state. It was severe enough to annihilate the offender’s material existence. It was also intended to deter others, any future dare-devils who might plan to resist authority. It was an fitted element of the repressive criminal policy of the Russian Empire of those days. Forfeiture of the whole of property of the convicted person can be found once again in the Polish legislation, of independent Poland this time: in the Act of July 2, 1920 on controlling war usury where forfeiture was an optional additional penalty. At the same time, the act prohibited cumulation of repression affecting property (fine and forfeiture could not be imposed simultaneously). It originated from the special war conditions in Poland at the time. The ban on cumulation of repression affecting property is interesting from the viewpoint of criminal policy. The Polish penal code of 1932 did not provide for the penalty of forfeiture, and the Act on controlling war usury was quashed by that code’s introductory provisions. In the legislation of People’s Poland after World War II, forfeiture of property was re-established and had extensive application.

Abstract The synagogue at Dura-Europos is undoubtedly the most prominent of the Jewish remains uncovered at the site. Dozens of Jewish coins found in excavations throughout the city have merited far less attention. Alfred Bellinger published a list of these coins in 1949; among the corpus of 14,017 coins found altogether at the site, 47 were identified as coins minted in Judea by Jewish rulers. This study offers the first comprehensive presentation and analysis of these Jewish coins. Following a review and analysis of the limited data on all 47 Jewish coins published in the original report, a full report is presented for the six coins from the Dura collection which are currently housed at the Yale University Art Gallery. This is followed by a discussion about the possible reasons why such a large assemblage of Jewish coins found its way in antiquity from Judea to distant Dura-Europos.

Abstract In discussing the dismantling and transport of the tabernacle and its furnishings, Numbers 4:20 prohibits any viewing of the “holy,” except by Aaron, the priest, and his sons. Philo of Alexandria, as well as several modern scholars, read this as a prohibition on any non-priestly viewing of the sacred, Jewish cultic vessels, including the menorah, the shewbread table and the incense altar. Accordingly, a dominant view in research holds that during the Second Temple period these cultic utensils were concealed from the sight of non-priests. However, this view partly overlooks and partly misinterprets our main source in that respect: Josephus indicates that the Jewish holy vessels were actually displayed to the Jewish crowd gathered in the temple court during the Second Temple period. This is supported by the images on certain Hasmonean coins as well as by later texts, such as P.Oxy. 840 and rabbinic literature.

To read the Gospel of Matthew within its 1st century religious context is to read an intensely Jewish narrative. Central to the world of this Gospel are the Jerusalem temple, its administrators, the chief priests, and the sacrificial system which they are charged by Jewish law to officiate. This article assesses the Matthean portrait of the Jewish chief priests of Jesus’ day against the scriptural backdrop which lays out their prominent role within Jewish religious life, namely ‘making atonement’ before God for the ‘sins’ of the people. In section one I sketch out the Matthean portrait of the scripturally assigned role of the priests, connecting this portrait to its biblical antecedents. In section two I assess the overall performance of the Matthean chief priests against the backdrop of their assigned role. In section three I address the question of atonement. Crucial here is 27:3–10, the account of Judas Iscariot, who returns his 30 silver coins to the chief priests and says (27:4a; emphasis mine), ‘I have sinned, because I have handed over innocent blood’. Here I highlight Matthew’s ironic modus operandi as he portrays the chief priests’ non-priestly response to Judas. Additionally, I contrast Matthew’s portrait of the Jewish chief priests with a brief portrait of Jesus’ own ministry within the Jewish community, a ministry which fulfils the priestly role abandoned by the chief priests. I conclude my article in section four with brief reflections on the rhetorical impact of Matthew’s portrait of the Jewish chief priests within his overall narrative.

Two central questions about the idea of the shared legal heritage of Europe are examined. This idea determines the shape of legal history in most European countries after WW II, but its origins are still largely unknown. The two questions read: What was the impact of totalitarianism in Nazi Germany and of the exile of Jewish legal scholars upon this idea? What legal, political and cultural factors contributed to its dissemination? The questions are examined based on the biographies of Fritz Schulz, Fritz Pringsheim, Paul Koschaker, Franz Wieacker and Helmut Coing.

This article explores how the Western theology often employed by European explorers sought to deify ‘whiteness’. Whiteness as an ideological construction found the ideal tool in Christianity and through supersessionism detached Jesus of Nazareth from his Jewish roots and clothed him in whiteness, thus making white maleness the idol that all creatures must aspire towards. In defiance, liberation theologians, in particular James Cone, coined the possibility that ‘Jesus is black’. Thus, the possibility of Jesus being anything to anyone becomes conceivable. Such a usurpation of the Jesus of Nazareth on either side opens the possibility of recreating Jesus in one’s image. This is the coin of idolatry that this article will argue sits at the heart of modern theology. Assuming a dialectical hermeneutic of suspicion, this article explores the problem of modern theology and how some liberation theologies may continue to play second fiddle to the whiteness perpetuated by western theologies like pruning a bonsai tree. Notwithstanding the challenges of decolonising theology, this search conceives the possibility of a non-ideological Christianity that may be confronting the whiteness of western theology and its associated atrocities. Such a quest may lead to a framing of a transformative theology based on honest and interrogative encounter between modern theology and cultural and traditional spiritualities.Contribution: This article explores how liberation theology can become a major player in the theology arena without always playing second fiddle to Western theologies. Exploring decoloniality confronts whiteness in terms of political theology that interlinks anthropology, economics and social welfare.

Since the late 1990s, W. G. Sebald’s innovative contribution to the genre of prose fiction has been the source of much academic scrutiny. His books Vertigo, The Rings of Saturn, The Emigrants and Austerlitz have provoked interest from diverse fields of inquiry: visual communication (Kilbourn; Patt; Zadokerski), trauma studies (Denham and McCulloh; Schmitz), and travel writing (Blackler; Zisselsberger). His work is also claimed to be a bastion for both modernist and postmodernist approaches to literature and history writing (Bere; Fuchs and Long; Long). This is in addition to numerous “guide to” type books, such as Mark McCulloh’s Understanding Sebald, Long and Whitehead’s W. G. Sebald—A Critical Companion, and the comprehensive Saturn’s Moons: A W. G. Sebald Handbook. Here I have only mentioned works available in English. I should point out that Sebald wrote in German, the country of his birth, and as one would expect much scholarship dealing with his work is confined to this language. In this article I focus on what is perhaps Sebald’s prototypical work, The Rings of Saturn. Of all Sebald’s prose fictional works The Rings of Saturn seems the example that best exhibits his innovative literary forms, including the use of lists. This book is the work of an author who is purposefully and imaginatively concerned with the nature of his vocation: what is it to be a writer? Crucially, he addresses this question not only from the perspective of a subject facing an existential crisis, but from the perspective of the documents created by writers. His works demonstrate a concern with the enabling role documents play in the thinking and writing process; how, for example, pen and paper are looped in with our capacity to reason in certain ways. Despite taking the form of fictional narratives, his books are as much motivated by a historical interest in how ideas and forms of organisation are transmitted, and how they evolve as part of an ecology; how humans become articulate within their surrounds, according to the contingencies of specific epochs and places. The Sebald critic J. J. Long accounts for this in some part in his description “archival consciousness,” which recommends that conscious experience is not simply located in the mind of a knowing, human subject, but is rather distributed between the subject and different technologies (among which writing and archives are exemplary).The most notable peculiarity of Sebald’s books lies in their abundant use of “non-syntactical” kinds of writing or inscription. My use of the term “non-syntactical” has its origins in the anthropological work of Jack Goody, who emphasises the importance of list making and tabulation in pre-literate or barely literate cultures. In Sebald’s texts, kinds of non-syntactical writing include lists, photographic images, tables, signatures, diagrams, maps, stamps, dockets and sketches. As I stress throughout this article, Sebald’s shifts between syntactical and non-syntactical forms of writing allows him to build up highly complex schemes of internal reference. Massimo Leone identifies something similar, when he notes that Sebald “orchestrates a multiplicity of voices and text-types in order to produce his own coherent discourse” (91). The play between multiplicity and coherence is at once a thematic and poetic concern for Sebald. This is to say, his texts are formal experiments with these contrasting tendencies, in addition to discussing specific historical situations in which they feature. The list is perhaps Sebald’s most widely used and variable form of non-syntactical writing, a key part of his formal and stylistic peculiarity. His lengthy sentences frequently spill over into catalogues and inventories, and the entire structure of his narratives is list-like. Discrete episodes accumulate alongside each other, rather than following a narrative arc where episodes of suspenseful gravity overshadow the significance of minor events. The Rings of Saturn details the travels of Sebald’s trademark, nameless, first person narrator, who recounts his trek along the Suffolk coastline, from Lowestoft to Ditchingham, about two years after the event. From the beginning, the narrative is framed as an effort to organise a period of time that lacks a coherent and durable form, a period of time that is in pieces, fading from the narrator’s memory. However, the movement from the chaos of forgetting to the comparatively distinct and stable details of the remembered present does not follow a continuum. Rather, the past and present are both constituted by the force of memory, which is continually crystallising and dissolving. Each event operates according to its own specific arrangement of emphasis and forgetting. Our experience of memory in the present, or recollective memory, is only one kind of memory. Sebald is concerned with a more pervasive kind of remembering, which includes the vectorial existence of non-conscious, non-human perceptual events; memory as expressed by crystals, tree roots, glaciers, and the nested relationship of fuel, fire, smoke, and ash. The Rings of Saturn is composed of ten chapters, each of which is outlined in table form at the book’s beginning. The first chapter appears as: “In hospital—Obituary—Odyssey of Thomas Browne’s skull—Anatomy lecture—Levitation—Quincunx—Fabled creatures—Urn burial.” The Rings of Saturn is of course hardly exceptional in its use of this device. Rather, it is exemplary concerning the repeated emphasis on the tension between syntactical and non-syntactical forms of writing, among which this chapter breakdown is included. Sebald continually uses the conventions of bookmaking in subtle though innovative ways. Each of these horizontally linked and divided indices might put the reader in mind of Thomas Browne’s urns, time capsules from the past, the unearthing of which is discussed in the book’s first chapter (25). The chapter outlines (and the urns) are containers that preserve a fragmentary and suggestive history. Each is a perspective on the narrator’s travels that abstracts, arranges, and uniquely refers to the narrative elaborations to come.As I have already stressed, Sebald is a writer concerned with forms of organisation. His works account for a diverse range of organisational forms, some of which instance an overt, chronological, geometric, or metrical manipulation of space and time, such as grids, star shapes, and Greenwich Mean Time. This contrasts with comparatively suggestive, insubstantial, mutable forms, including various meteorological phenomena such as cloudbanks and fog, dust and sand, and as exemplified in narrative form by the haphazard, distracted assemblage of events featured in dreams or dream logic. The relationship between these supposedly opposing tendencies is, however, more complex and paradoxical than might at first glance appear. As Sebald warily reminds us in his essay “A Little Excursion to Ajaccio,” despite our wishes to inhabit periods of complete freedom, where we follow our distractions to the fullest possible extent, we nonetheless “must all have some more or less significant design in view” (Sebald, Campo 4). It is not so much that we must choose, absolutely, between form and formlessness. Rather, the point is to understand that some seemingly inevitable forms are in fact subject to contingencies, which certain uses deliberately or ignorantly mask, and that simplicity and intricacy are often co-dependent. Richard T. Gray is a Sebald critic who has picked up on the element in Sebald’s work that suggests a tension between different forms of organisation. In his article “Writing at the Roche Limit,” Gray notes that Sebald’s tendency to emphasise the decadent aspects of human and natural history “is continually counterbalanced by an insistence on order and by often extremely subtle forms of organization” (40). Rather than advancing the thesis that Sebald is exclusively against the idea of systematisation or order, Gray argues that The Rings of Saturn models in its own textual make-up an alternative approach to the cognitive order(ing) of things, one that seeks to counter the natural tendency toward entropic decline and a fall into chaos by introducing constructive forces that inject a modicum of balance and equilibrium into the system as a whole. (Gray 41)Sebald’s concern with the contrasting energies exemplified by different forms extends to his play with syntactical and non-syntactical forms of writing. He uses lists to add contrast to his flowing, syntactically intricate sentences. The achievement of his work is not the exclusive privileging of either the list form or the well-composed sentence, but in providing contexts whereby the reader can appreciate subtle modulations between the two, thus experiencing a more dynamic and complex kind of narrative time. His works exhibit an astute awareness of the fact that different textual devices command different experiences of temporality, and our experience of temporality in good part determines our metaphysics. Here I consider two lists featured in The Rings of Saturn, one from the first chapter, and one from the last. Each shows contrasting tendencies concerning systems of organisation. Both are attributable to the work of Thomas Browne, “who practiced as a doctor in Norwich in the seventeenth century and had left a number of writings that defy all comparison” (Sebald, Rings 9). The Rings of Saturn is in part a dialogue across epochs with the sentiments expressed in Browne’s works, which, according to Bianca Theisen, preserve a kind of reasoning that is lost in “the rationalist and scientific embrace of a devalued world of facts” (Theisen 563).The first list names the varied “animate and inanimate matter” in which Browne identifies the quincuncial structure, a lattice like arrangement of five points and intersecting lines. The following phenomena are enumerated in the text:certain crystalline forms, in starfish and sea urchins, in the vertebrae of mammals and the backbones of birds and fish, in the skins of various species of snake, in the crosswise prints left by quadrupeds, in the physical shapes of caterpillars, butterflies, silkworms and moths, in the root of the water fern, in the seed husks of the sunflower and the Caledonian pine, within young oak shoots or the stem of the horse tail; and in the creations of mankind, in the pyramids of Egypt and the mausoleum of Augustus as in the garden of King Solomon, which was planted with mathematical precision with pomegranate trees and white lilies. (Sebald, Rings 20-21)Ostensibly quoting from Browne, Sebald begins the next sentence, “Examples might be multiplied without end” (21). The compulsion to list, or the compulsiveness expressed by listing, is expressed here in a relationship of dual utility with another, dominant or overt, kind of organisational form: the quincunx. It is not the utility or expressiveness of the list itself that is at issue—at least in the version of Browne’s work preserved here by Sebald. In W. G. Sebald: Image, Archive, Modernity, Long notes the historical correspondences and divergences between Sebald and Michel Foucault (2007). Long interprets Browne’s quincunx as exemplifying a “hermeneutics of resemblance,” whereby similarities among diverse phenomena are seen as providing proof of “the universal oneness of all things” (33). This contrasts with the idea of a “pathological nature, autonomous from God,” which, according to Long, informs Sebald’s transformation of Browne into “an avatar of distinctly modern epistemology” (38). Long follows Foucault in noting the distinction between Renaissance and modern epistemology, a distinction in good part due to the experimental, inductive method, the availability of statistical data, and probabilistic reasoning championed in the latter epoch (Whitehead; Hacking). In the book’s final chapter, Sebald includes a list from Browne’s imaginary library, the “Musæum Clausium.” In contrast to the above list, here Sebald seems to deliberately problematise any efforts to suggest an abstract uniting principle. There is no evident reason for the togetherness of the discrete things, beyond the mere fact that they happen to be gathered, hypothetically, in the text (Sebald, Rings 271-273). Among the library’s supposed contents are:an account by the ancient traveller Pytheas of Marseilles, referred to in Strabo, according to which all the air beyond thule is thick, condensed and gellied, looking just like sea lungs […] a dream image showing a prairie or sea meadow at the bottom of the Mediterranean, off the coat of Provence […] and a glass of spirits made of æthereal salt, hermetically sealed up, of so volatile a nature that it will not endure by daylight, and therefore shown only in winter or by the light of a carbuncle or Bononian stone. (Sebald, Rings 272-73)Unlike the previous example attributed to Browne, here the list coheres according to the tensions of its own coincidences. Sebald uses the list to create spontaneous organisations in which history is exhibited as a complex mix of fact and fantasy. More important than the distinction between the imaginary and the real is the effort to account for the way things uniquely incorporate aspects of the world in order to be what they are. Human knowledge is a perspective that is implicated in, rather than excluded from, this process.Lists move us to puzzle over the criteria that their togetherness implies. They might be used inthe service of a specific paradigm, or they might suggest an imaginable but as yet unknown kind of systematisation; a specific kind of relationship, or simply the possibility of a relationship. Take, for example, the list-like accumulation of architectural details in the following description of the decadent Sommerleyton Hall, featured in chapter II: There were drawing rooms and winter gardens, spacious halls and verandas. A corridor might end in a ferny grotto where fountains ceaselessly plashed, and bowered passages criss-crossed beneath the dome of a fantastic mosque. Windows could be lowered to open the interior onto the outside, and inside the landscape was replicated on the mirror walls. Palm houses and orangeries, the lawn like green velvet, the baize on the billiard tables, the bouquets of flowers in the morning and retiring rooms and in the majolica vases on the terrace, the birds of paradise and the golden peasants on the silken tapestries, the goldfinches in the aviaries and the nightingales in the garden, the arabesques in the carpets and the box-edged flower beds—all of it interacted in such a way that one had the illusion of complete harmony between the natural and the manufactured. (Sebald, Rings 33-34)This list shifts emphasis away from preconceived distinctions between the natural and the manufactured through the creation of its own unlikely harmony. It tells us something important about the way perception and knowledge is ordered in Sebald’s prose. Each encounter, or historically specific situation, is considered as though it were its own microworld, its own discrete, synecdochic realisation of history. Rather than starting from the universal or the meta-level and scaling down to the local, Sebald arranges historically peculiar examples that suggest a variable, contrasting and dynamic metaphysics, a motley arrangement of ordering systems that each aspire to but do not command universal applicability. In a comparable sense, Browne’s sepulchral urns of his 1658 work Urn Burial, which feature in chapter I, are time capsules that seem to create their own internally specific kind of organisation:The cremated remains in the urns are examined closely: the ash, the loose teeth, some long roots of quitch, or dog’s grass wreathed about the bones, and the coin intended for the Elysian ferryman. Browne records other objects known to have been placed with the dead, whether as ornament or utensil. His catalogue includes a variety of curiosities: the circumcision knives of Joshua, the ring which belonged to the mistress of Propertius, an ape of agate, a grasshopper, three-hundred golden bees, a blue opal, silver belt buckles and clasps, combs, iron pins, brass plates and brazen nippers to pull away hair, and a brass Jews harp that last sounded on the crossing over black water. (Sebald, Rings 25-26)Regardless of our beliefs concerning the afterlife, these items, preserved across epochs, solicit a sense of wonder as we consider what we might choose for company on our “last journey” (25). In death, the human body is reduced to a condition of an object or thing, while the objects that accompany the corpse seem to acquire a degree of potency as remnants that transcend living time. Life is no longer the paradigm through which to understand purpose. In their very difference from living things these objects command our fascination. Eric Santner coins the term “undeadness” to name the significance of this non-living agency in Sebald’s prose (Santner xx). Santner’s study places Sebald in a linage of German-Jewish writers, including Walter Benjamin, Franz Kafka, and Paul Celan, whose understanding of “the human” depends crucially on the concept of “the creature” or “creatureliness” (Santner 38-41). Like the list of items contained within Sommerleyton Hall, the above list accounts for a context in which ornament and utensil, nature and culture, are read according to their differentiated togetherness, rather than opposition. Death, it seems, is a universal leveller, or at least a different dimension in which symbol and function appear to coincide. Perhaps it is the unassuming and convenient nature of lists that make them enduring objects of historical interest. Lists are a form of writing to which we appeal for immediate mnemonic assistance. They lack the artifice of a sentence. While perhaps not as interesting in the present that is contemporary with their usefulness (a trip to the supermarket), with time lists acquire credibility due to the intimacy they share with mundane, diurnal concerns—due to the fact that they were, once upon a time, so useful. The significance of lists arrives anachronistically, when we look back and wonder what people were really up to, or what our own concerns were, relatively free from fanciful, stylistic adornment. Sebald’s democratic approach to different forms of writing means that lists sit alongside the esteemed poetic and literary efforts of Joseph Conrad, Algernon Swinburne, Edward Fitzgerald, and François René de Chateaubriand, all of whom feature in The Rings of Saturn. His books make the exclusive differences between literary and non-literary kinds of writing less important than the sense of dynamism that is elicited through a play of contrasting kinds of syntactical and non-syntactical writing. The book’s closing chapter includes a revealing example that expresses these sentiments. After tracing over a natural history of silk, with a particular focus on human greed and naivety, the narrative arrives at a “pattern book” that features strips of colourful silk kept in “the small museum of Strangers Hall” (Sebald, Rings 283). The narrator notes that the silks arranged in this book “were of a truly fabulous variety, and of an iridescent, quite indescribable beauty as if they had been produced by Nature itself, like the plumage of birds” (283). This effervescent declamation continues after a double page photograph of the pattern book, which is described as a “catalogue of samples” and “leaves from the only true book which none of our textual and pictorial works can even begin to rival” (286). Here we witness Sebald’s inclusive and variable understanding as to the kinds of thing a book, and writing, can be. The fraying strips of silk featured in the photograph are arranged one below the other, in the form of a list. They are surrounded by ornate handwriting that, like the strips of silk, seems to fray at the edges, suggesting the specific gestural event that occasioned the moment of their inscription—something which tends to be excluded in printed prose. Sebald’s remarks here are not without a characteristic irony (“the only true book”). However, in the greatercontext of the narrative, this comment suggests an important inclination. Namely, that there is much scope yet for innovative literary forms that capture the nuances and complexity of collective and individual histories. And that writing always includes, though to varying degrees obscures, contrasting tensions shared among syntactical and non-syntactical elements, including material and gestural contingencies. Sebald’s works remind us of what potentials might lay ahead for books if the question of what writing can be is asked continually as part of a writer’s enterprise.ReferencesBere, Carol. “The Book of Memory: W. G. Sebald’s The Emigrants and Austerlitz.” Literary Review, 46.1 (2002): 184-92.Blackler, Deane. Reading W. G. Sebald: Adventure and Disobedience. Rochester, New York: Camden House, 2007. Catling Jo, and Richard Hibbitt, eds. Saturn’s Moons: A W. G. Sebald Handbook. Oxford: Legenda, 2011.Denham, Scott and Mark McCulloh, eds. W. G. Sebald: History, Memory, Trauma. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2006. Fuchs, Anne and J. J. Long, eds. W. G. Sebald and the Writing of History. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2007. Goody, Jack. The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986. Gray, Richard T. “Writing at the Roche Limit: Order and Entropy in W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn.” The German Quarterly 83.1 (2010): 38-57. Hacking, Ian. 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