Codex Sinaiticus Online

The treasured Codex Sinaiticus, dating from the latter half of the fourth century AD, containing much of the Greek New Testament and the Septuagint (Hebrew Scriptures in Greek) is now available online.  Discovered at the Monastery of St. Catherine at Sinai in the nineteenth century by German theologian Konstantin von Tischendorf, this is one of three remaining, relatively intact, manuscripts from this period, the other two being the Codex Alexandrianus and Codex Vaticanus.

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Subject Guides
Classics // Islamic Studies // Jewish Studies // Philosophy // Religion
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Cambridge Histories Online and more

Some great new sources.  Have a look.

Cambridge Histories Online
Cambridge Histories Online contains scores of volumes from the various well-known Cambridge Histories published since 1960, including the Cambridge Modern History, Cambridge History of English Literature, the Cambridge Medieval History, the Cambridge Ancient History and the Histories of India and the British Empire, and others.

China: Trade, Politics and Culture, 1793-1980
This full-text digital collection is based primarily on unique manuscript materials held at the library of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), the British Library in London, and supplemented by additional sources from seven institutes, such as the Cambridge University Library. This project provides a wide variety of original source material detailing China’s interaction with the West from Macartney’s first Embassy to China in 1793 to the Nixon/Heath visits to China in 1972-74. It provides multiple perspectives from politicians, diplomats, missionaries, business people, and tourists. In addition, there are over 400 color paintings, maps and drawings by English and Chinese artists, as well as many photographs, sketches and ephemeral items depicting Chinese people, customs, and events.

Choice Reviews Online
Choice Reviews Online, is a searchable, web-based version of the magazine Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. Geared toward college and university libraries, Choice offers timely, selective, scholarly reviews by experts in various fields within the Arts & Humanities, Social & Behavioral Sciences, and Science & Technology. The reviews cover books in all subjects as well as online and electronic media. By creating a personal profile, Choice readers can receive monthly alerts of newly published titles in their field as well as save and email lists of titles relevant to their work.

Subject Guides
Classics // Economics // Islamic Studies // Jewish Studies // Philosophy // Religion // Fred’s Blog

Boys’ Latin of Philadelphia Charter School

“An ambitious Southwest Philadelphia charter school uses an ancient language as a new formula for learning.

There are minefields on the path to maturity for every young person in this city. But for many young male Philadelphians, the danger runs deeper.

Young men in Philadelphia public schools are more likely than most to live with one parent, have a parent in jail, reside in drug-addled neighborhoods or experience violence. Students in too many Philadelphia public schools can’t be guaranteed basic safety, let alone a decent education.

Enter the Boys’ Latin of Philadelphia Charter School, a new college prep school at 55th and Cedar in Southwest Philadelphia with an ambitious plan to avert the tragedy that defines the city’s public school system. Boys’ Latin’s first batch of students—144 ninth-graders—occupy a 10-room temporary structure as they wait for contractors to finish renovations on the building next door.

Last year there were 11 murders within five blocks of where Boys’ Latin sits. “I worry about the students,” says teacher Paula Sahm, who lives in the Art Museum area of Philadelphia. “I’ll sit and watch the news, and if I even hear Southwest Philly, I get chills.””

Read about it in the Philadelphia Weekly.

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Subject Guides
Classics // Islamic Studies // Jewish Studies // Philosophy // Religion
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Information has always been unstable

Against much of the hype of our age, historian Robert Darnton provides some much needed perspective on the continuities of our information heritage in “The Library in the New Age” in the New York Review of Books (which the library subscribes to).

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Subject Guides
Classics // Islamic Studies // Jewish Studies // Philosophy // Religion
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Am. Philological Assoc. capital campaign

The American Philological Association is engaged in a capital campaign to increase access to ancient Greco-Roman resources for the twenty-first century. Take a look at this cool promotional video which gives some background on the APA, an brief overview of classical influences on American history and tradition, as well as plans for making classical resources easily available on the web.

APA in the Twenty-First Century
(promotional video)

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Subject Guides
Classics // Islamic Studies // Jewish Studies // Philosophy // Religion
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Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

You might want to have a look at this, it’s a philosophy blog by Brian Leiter. On the current page there’s a post about someone at Brown U. throwing a pie in Thomas Friedman’s face and getting expelled for it.  In my book, Friedman shares the distinction with the New York Times David Brooks of using the most words to say absolutely nothing, so maybe this blog is pretty good.   Leiter writes about Nietzsche and moral and legal philosophy.  (BTW, Routledge, which advertises on his blog, seems all over philosophy blogs and podcasts.)

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New Survey Articles from Blackwell Compass

fragments_button-reco.jpgThe following survey articles come from Blackwell Compass, which describes itself as “a suite of state-of-the-art, peer-reviewed survey articles across entire disciplines. Disciplines currently covered are Geography, History, Literature, Philosophy, and Religion.” Good place to go to catch up on recent advances in the literature of a topic. Women’s Experiences of Hindu Traditions: A State of the Field Review Static models of Hindu women as marginalized and muted subjects have in recent years been enlivened by a body of work that investigates the ways in which women both subtly and overtly resist, contest, and re-imagine these roles. Psychological Similarities Between Men and Women Across Cultures In this paper, I review a body of cross-cultural evidence showing that it is precisely in these Western countries that women and men differ the most in terms of personality, self-construal, values, or emotions. Much less-pronounced gender differences are observed, if at all, in Asian and African countries. Contemporary British-Jewish Writing: From Apology to Attitude This article surveys contemporary British-Jewish writing. It looks at a variety of texts to argue that British-Jewish writing is gaining a new visibility, momentum and confidence. Teaching and Learning Guide for: Racial Residential Segregation in Urban America We present an overview of research about racial residential segregation. The first part of the article reviews major debates and findings drawn primarily from the sociological literature. The second part of the article identifies new areas of research that in some cases cross into other disciplines such as geography and urban studies. Personality in Non-Human Animals The wave of new studies is shedding fresh light on traditional issues in personality research (How do early experiences affect adult personality?), raising novel questions (What are the evolutionary origins of personality traits?) and addressing practical problems (Which dogs are best suited to detecting explosives?). Causal Theories of Mental Content Causal theories of mental content (CTs) ground certain aspects of a concept’s meaning in the causal relations a concept bears to what it represents. ————————————————————————————————————– Subject Guides Classics // Islamic Studies // Jewish Studies // Philosophy // Religion ————————————————————————————————————–

Philosophy Podcasts

Found a listing of philosophy and philosophy-related podcasts in a recent issue of The Philosopher’s Magazine, a popular philosophy magazine that I subscribe to. Haven’t had time to review them but I thought I’d provide links so you can check them out if interested. All In The Mind Big Ideas The Connection In Our Time Listening to Words Open Source The Philosopher’s Zone Philosopher Bites Philosophy: The Classics Point of Inquiry TED ————————————————————————————————————– Subject Guides Classics // Islamic Studies // Jewish Studies // Philosophy // Religion ————————————————————————————————————–

Nazi Olympics

nazi-oly.jpgYesterday I heard that the Olympic “torch relay” that’s so much in the news was initiated by the Nazis for the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Here’s a brief description from a private web site calling itself the Olympic Games Museum. Pretty disturbing, though perhaps not surprising, for the Olympic Committee and advertisers to follow on a tradition started by the Nazis. After all, it’s all about propaganda. Here are some books on the Nazi Olympics and some other books about the Olympics and politics. There’s also a film in the list that looks good (click on the URL to go to the film record in the library’s catalog). Also look here: Beware of Greeks Bearing Placards. ————————————————————————————————————– Subject Guides Classics // Islamic Studies // Jewish Studies // Philosophy // Religion ————————————————————————————————————–

New Lit Reviews from Web of Science

Selling Captain Riley, 1816-1859: How did his ‘Narrative’ become so well known? (James Riley) PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY 171: 177-+ Part 1 APR 2007 James Riley’s extraordinary tale of shipwreck, enslavement, and liberation captivated many American readers in the nineteenth century…Popular awareness of Riley and his account of African geography and portrayal of Islamic and Jewish life was fueled by extensive press coverage and eventual anthologizing in children’s literature. Divining “divine action” in theology-and-science: A review essay ZYGON 43 (1): 191-200 MAR 2008 The topic of divine action has been central to the theology-and-science discussion over the last twenty years…I review three recent books that have responded in some way to the ongoing discussion. The Filipino Catholic nun as transnational feminist WOMENS HISTORY REVIEW 17 (1): 57-78 FEB 2008 Filipino Catholic nuns became formidable activists in the women’s movement as women’s studies teachers, and as leaders and members of transnational organizations. This article argues that the nuns’ unique location in the interstices-as transnational feminists who moved constantly from the local to the international-was what made them effective activists. The healing serpent and the origin of Ophite Gnosticism REVUE DE L HISTOIRE DES RELIGIONS 224 (4): 395-434 OCT-DEC 2007 This group is, together with the Naassenes, the only one that actually adores the serpent, which is considered as the epiphany of the Logos. This equivalence Logos = serpent is taken from the exegetical interpretation of Num. 21, 8-10 (the bronze serpent). Racializing historiography: anti-Jewish scholarship in the Third Reich PATTERNS OF PREJUDICE 42 (1): 27-59 FEB 2008 He raises and attempts to answer crucial and far-reaching questions about Judenforschung and its role in the Third Reich. Why was historical scholarship important for the perpetrators of the Holocaust? What was the specific function of historical arguments in a racist setting? What was the specific contribution of the humanities to racist arguments and racist politics? Religious place and its interaction with urbanization in the Roman era JOURNAL OF SOCIAL ARCHAEOLOGY 8 (1): 37-62 FEB 2008 This article examines the issue of urbanization in Roman Britain and its interaction with places of the late pre-Roman Iron Age…The modern western conception of place differs vastly from the past when places were important ways of conceptualizing experiencing and understanding the world and they were constructed through human action, memory and experience and interaction. Aegean prehistory as world archaeology: Recent trends in the archaeology of Bronze age Greece JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH 16 (2): 83-161 JUN 2008 This article surveys archaeological work of the last decade on the Greek Bronze Age, part of the broader discipline known as Aegean prehistory. Naturally, the literature is vast, so I focus on a set of topics that may be of general interest to non-Aegeanists: chronology, regional studies, the emergence and organization of archaic states, ritual and religion, and archaeological science. Is there a moral justification for redressing historical injustices? VANDERBILT LAW REVIEW 61 (1): 127-+ JAN 2008 This Article examines whether there is a moral justification for repairing historical injustices. My theme is the difficulty of devising a compelling moral argument for redressing such injustices, notwithstanding the moral arguments often invoked by the proponents of redress. Writing as thinking REVIEW OF GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY 12 (1): 9-27 MAR 2008 We explore four methods to see how expert writers externalize thoughts and interact with them: laboratory comparisons of novices and experts, interviews with accomplished writers (mostly of prose fiction), biographical analysis of Jane Austen’s development as a writer, and consideration of Gustave Flaubert’s notes and drafts. Animal consciousness JOURNAL OF CONSCIOUSNESS STUDIES 15 (3): 5-33 MAR 2008 There are several types of behavioural evidence in favour of the notion that many animal species experience at least some simple levels of consciousness. Other than behavioural evidence, there are a number of anatomical and physiological criteria that help resolve the problem of animal consciousness, particularly when addressing the problem in lower vertebrates and invertebrates. Constructing the guru: Ritual authority and architectural space in medieval India ART BULLETIN 90 (1): 7 MAR 2008 At the central Indian site of Chandrehe stands a rare example of a monumental stone monastery, built in 973 by a sect of Shiva-worshiping ascetics known as the Mattamayuras. Its complex architectural program Suggests that it was carefully designed to evoke the soteriological and ritual world of medieval Hindu monasteries, about which very little other evidence exists. The work of the present: Constructing messianic temporality in the wake of failed prophecy among Chabad Hasidim AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST 35 (1): 64-80 FEB 2008 Temporal issues have remained relatively unelaborated in the rich body of research that applies cognitive dissonance theory to millenarian movements following a failed prophecy. We engage these issues by exploring how the meshichistim (messianists) among the Jewish ultraorthodox Chabad (Lubavitch) Hasidim employ temporal categories to deal with the crisis entailed in the death of their leader, the expected Messiah.