The present article seeks to describe a major group of Jewish North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) dialects located across the Great Zab river in the eastern and south-eastern parts of the dialectological map of NENA, hence the term “Trans-Zab Jewish Neo-Aramaic” (“Trans-Zab”, for short) chosen for this dialect group. A large set of phonological, morphophonological, morphological and lexical innovations, shared by all members of this group, is presented. Each of the Trans-Zab features is compared with contrastive parallel features in other, selected NENA varieties. Finally, an internal classification of Trans-Zab into three subdivisions is proposed, based on a comparison of three respective paradigms of the positive present copula.

The designation by the caliph al-Ma'mūn of the ‘Alid imām ‘Alī al-Riọā as his successor was an extraordinary event by the standards of the time. Based on a letter that al-Ma'mūn is said to have written to the ‘Abbāsids after the death of al-Riḍā, in which he appears to confess that his decision to designate the latter had been influenced by apocalyptic beliefs about the end of the ‘Abbāsid dynasty, Madelung has argued that the caliph's decision can indeed be explained in terms of those beliefs. This article seeks to demonstrate that the relevant passage of the confession is unlikely to have been part of the original document. It goes on to suggest that the passage was probably added by Ibn Ṭāwūs (d. 664/1266), the document's redactor, in an attempt to support his own perceived role as the pre-Mahdic ‘Alid destined to rule after the fall of the ‘Abbāsids.

Religious scripture in all cultures where it exists is habitually seen as the repository of Truth. It often explicitly claims this distinction for itself and offers explanations, instructions and promises which those who are “of the truth” – namely its followers – are encouraged to accept and make their own. A closer look at the exegetical traditions spawned by religious scripture in any of the great cultures shows, however, that the truth scripture purports to bring is far from easy to circumscribe. In fact, the ultimate elusiveness of the full and true meaning of scripture often becomes an article of faith in itself. With respect to the Quran, for instance, the elucidation of the first sura alone would, according to a saying attributed to the Caliph ‘Alī, require seventy camel loads of commentary.

This paper describes attribution in Old Babylonian. The principles drawn upon are the traditional view of Akkadian syntax, modern Semitic syntax, and the principles of European structuralism. Bringing all these together, while exemplifying and proving previous unexplained statements by using Old Babylonian material, renders the whole issue tangible for every linguistically-oriented reader. ša syntagms are described, each component separately, as a pronominal construct nucleus with an attribute; this attribute is either a nominal or a clause. ša syntagms, being appositive to a referent substantive (when occurring), are in the same paradigm with adjectives, which are shown to have the same components as ša syntagms: a pronominal nucleus, an attribute and the attributive link between them.

Ancient and medieval sources from Greece to Korea speak of the morally reprehensible habits of the Persians, who engage in close-kin marriage. Indian Buddhist texts also preserve similar ideas. One interesting passage in a narrative text makes use of this motif in a particularly interesting way, thereby indicating the character who appeals to the trope as ethically beyond the pale. The present paper explores the background of this common depiction of Persian marriage customs for its own intrinsic interest, and as a means to explicate the passage in question.

It is commonly supposed that religions treat their sacred texts with a degree of rigidity and literality. The fact is that every and any text can be read and understood differently. This essay, written from a Jewish perspective, examines the biblical statements about the Promised Land and looks at how the promises to the early “fathers” have been understood at different times. Together with the Divine commitments came a reciprocal human obligation. It was the perceived abrogation by the Children of Israel of their side of the bargain that was seen as the reason for Exile after the First Destruction. By the time of the Second Destruction Christianity made new claims about the nature of the Holy Land and declared itself the New Israel and the successors of the Chosen People. In response to this and to the depredations of Exile, Judaism once again reinterpreted and adapted the original texts and the first wave of interpretation to meet different circumstances.

The aim of the essay is to describe the different theological approaches to the texts in the context of historical events. Simplistic assumptions and reading do not do justice to the complexity and variety of religious reactions to identical sources even within the same tradition.

To the extent there is an African academic approach, it is comparative (showing that the African world has similarities with the biblical). There are some “post-colonial” and similar readings, but this academic study is in the main done by Western-trained academics and directed at Western readers. There has been relatively little study of the way the Bible is actually used in churches, especially at the very grassroots. In mainline churches, the Bible is generally taken (as in the West) as a book of revelation which the preacher must expound and apply. In the new fast-growing Pentecostal sector the Bible is conceived quite differently, and understood as a record of covenants, promises, pledges and commitments between God and his chosen. It is not just a record of covenants and commitments to others in the past. It is not primarily a historical document at all. It is a contemporary document; it tells of God's covenant with and commitment to me, and to me now. These promises in scripture are effected in believers' lives through proclamation. The major biblical motifs in this emerging Christianity are thus those stressing victory, success, hope, achievement. The texts that are dominant are therefore prophetic texts, and narratives of those who can be made to illustrate success.

The Theragāthā anthology of “Elders' Verses” is one of the canonical Pali verse texts for which K. R. Norman provided much-needed fundamentally revised English translations, with full-scale philological annotation that in most respects supersedes all that had gone before. He has now again revised these in the light of the progress that has been made over nearly forty years since their original publication. What emerges in Theragāthā is in large measure a delightful collection of character sketches of ascetic types, labelled with captions that contrast exemplary monks such as “Mr. Well-being” with others, such as “Beggarly Bhāradvāja”, the bumptious ex-brahmin convert, and “Rags”, who is inclined to sleep during the sermon. This specimen survey seeks, however, to emphasize how much effort is still required in order to achieve and communicate an adequate appreciation of the verses, by striving to free the poetry from commentatorial obfuscation and editorial corruption.

Different readings of the first and the last phrase of the short Middle Persian text Šahrestānīhā ī Ērānšahr are suggested; these show that its beginning and end are not as strange or exceptional as is suggested in its latest edition. In particular, it is argued here that a Middle Persian translation of the title of the ‘Abbāsid caliph al-Manṣūr can be found in the text.

In this article I edit and comment on the Hoernle manuscript IOL Toch 81 (H 149.292) with fragmentary texts in three languages, Sanskrit (6 lines) TocharianB (1 line) and Turkic (15 lines). The primary interest is in the Turkic text, which probably forms part of an upāsaka's vow. Its orthography, morphology and lexis, perceptibly different from standard Uighur, show features which point to high antiquity and perhaps to non-Uighur provenance. Some Buddhist terms seem to be deliberately designed on a Manichaean foil. Thus the Turkic part of the manuscript may date back to the second half of the ninth century, or, if non-Uighur, to an even earlier period.

Most of the adjectival verbs in the Kathmandu and Dolakha dialects of Newar exhibit idiosyncratic phonotactic shapes, including rare disyllabic stems and heavy and nasalized rhymes. The same set of adjectival verbs exhibits irregular inflectional patterns in the derivation of lexical adjectives in Kathmandu Newar. Comparison of the modern forms of both varieties and Classical Newar suggests that we reconstruct a class of monosyllabic adjectives for Proto-Newar. In Classical and Kathmandu Newar, these adjectives received an /u/ augment; verbs were created with the infinitive -ye and the attendant Class III verb paradigm. By contrast, in Dolakha Newar the forms underwent a derivational process, probably originally compounding, with the verb yer- “come”. This process resulted in disyllabic stems which now follow regular inflectional patterns, except under negation. The incorporation of the old adjectives into the modern verbal systems thus represents a separate wave in the development of modern verbs in Newar.

A “contextualist” reading of the Quran is becoming increasingly popular, particularly among those Muslims referred to as “progressive-ijtihadis”. One of the primary concerns of this reading is that in order to understand and interpret the ethico-legal content of the Quran and relate that content to the changing needs and circumstances of Muslims today, it is important to approach the text at different levels, giving a high degree of emphasis to the socio-historical context of the text. In the classical tafsīr this emphasis on socio-historical context was not considered important, particularly in the interpretation of the ethico-legal texts, despite the frequent use of asbāb al-nuzūl literature. In this paper, I will explore how progressive-ijtihadis are adopting a contextualist reading of ethico-legal texts of the Quran. To illustrate this, I will use one or two such texts (verses) and their interpretations by the progressive-ijtihadis and will seek to demonstrate the contours of this approach, and highlight some of the challenges this approach is facing.

The last active period in the tradition of Sanskrit poetics, although associated with scholars who for the first time explicitly identified themselves as new, has generally been castigated in modern histories as repetitious and devoid of thoughtfulness. This paper presents a case study dealing with competing analyses of a single short poem by two of the major theorists of this period, Appayya Dīkṣita (sixteenth century) and Jagannātha Paṇḍitarāja (seventeenth century). Their arguments on this one famous poem touch in new ways on the central questions of what the role of poetics had become within the Sanskrit world and the way in which it should operate in relation to other systems of knowledge and literary cultures.

“Dhāraṇī”, with its many cognates in Chinese and other languages, is one of the most complex terms in Buddhism. Particular shadings of the tradition's notions of memory, meaning, and meditation, as well as specific kinds of incantations and mnemonic devices, all fall within what can seem a rather bewildering semantic range. However, the logic of the term is consistent over a wide range of sources, though Western treatments have often been misleading. It is usually claimed that the basic practical significance of “dhāraṇī” is either memory or incantation. Yet Chinese sources make clear that each of these understandings overly privileges a narrow band of the term's usage. Understanding that the basic practical sense of “dhāraṇī” was “grasp”, not memory or spells, illuminates connections within a range of sources, from doctrinal treatments to injunctions to “hold” dhāraṇī-incantations in mind and, indeed, on the body encountered in texts of various kinds.

The biblical figure of Samson (Judges 13: 1–16: 31) is not mentioned by name in the Quran. He was, however, incorporated by medieval Muslims such as al-Ṭabarī and Tha‘labī into the quranic prophetic world. How and why that was accomplished is the initial focus of this paper. While the medieval ability to find Samson in the text of scripture was admittedly limited, the attempt does illustrate the process of fitting scripture into a pre-existing world view itself composed on the basis of a variety of competing priorities. That world view does not always agree with the biblical text, nor with the full dimension of the living traditions of Judaism and Christianity; rather, the overall cultural framework of the Islamic tradition necessitated a range of interpretive strategies, dictated by the demands of the interpretive situation. Putting this medieval interpretive process in focus provides a context for discussing some modern Muslim views of Samson, about whom it is sometimes proclaimed proudly that he is not to be found in scripture. Why that position should be taken proves revealing of the process and the priorities of modern quranic interpretation. Marked by the abandonment of the value of tradition, contemporary interpretive strategies involve the same hermeneutical processes found in the medieval approach – the fitting of world views to the text of scripture – with the primary difference to be located in the rejection of the accumulative nature of the interpretive enterprise. Finally, the role of modern “secular” scholarship interacts with Muslim tradition by its focus on the boundaries of a strict scriptural text as the source of Islam. The scholarly focus on the textual is seen in a world view not of confessional dogma but one that still supports a confessional position that is also textually focused. It pretends to an appearance of being “scientific”. Scholarship plays its own political role within the process of modern interpretation.

Four fourth-century ad inscriptions of Ezana, first Christian king of Aksum (Ethiopia), are surveyed, with special attention to Ezana's only known post-conversion inscription, written in Greek. Greek syntax and terminology in Ezana's inscription point to an anti-Arian Christology which may be associated with Frumentius, first bishop of Aksum, and his connection with Athanasius of Alexandria. The inscription's trinitarian formula “the power of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit” is structured in such a way as to assert the identity of the three members of the Trinity. The phrase “in the power of God Christ” further equates Christ with God. This christological language stands in contrast to the Arian imperial policy of the time, and is historically significant in light of Constantius's attempt to force Frumentius's recall to Alexandria. This inscription serves as the first internal documentary evidence for an anti-Arian Christology in the earliest developments of Ethiopian Christianity.

The special importance of the Ādi Granth as the defining scripture of the Sikhs has encouraged the production of commentaries whose language and approach reflect changing understandings of the Gurus' teachings over the last four centuries. The oral style of the earlier commentaries which typically demonstrate a catholic inclusiveness towards the wider Indic tradition came largely to be replaced in the twentieth century by the more exclusive approach of Sikh reformist commentators, in part aroused by the dismissive attitudes of the first English translation by Trumpp. Continuing to shape most modern understandings of the scripture, these highly organized commentaries composed in the new idiom of Modern Standard Panjabi are only now beginning to be challenged by new styles of exegesis being pioneered in the Sikh diaspora.

Passages in received texts and in recently found legal documents show the different ways in which four terms refer to offices of Han imperial government; zhongdu guan indicates offices of the central government in the capital city; duguan signifies offices controlled by the central government but posted to work in the commanderies and counties; xianguan refers to just those offices but it is often used of “the government” in general, and in exceptional cases it specifies the emperor in person; xiandao guan were the offices of provincial government established in the counties (xian) and marches (dao).

Tracing the migration of Muslims from India to South Africa's Natal colony in the late nineteenth century, the article focuses on the missionary activities of Ghulām Muhammad “Sūfī Sāhib” (d. 1329/1911). Placing Ghulām Muhammad in a new religious marketplace of competing religions, and versions thereof, the article examines the strategies through which he successfully established his form of Islam among Natal's indentured and merchant Muslim classes and used the fabric of religion to bind together a distinctly “Muslim” community from the heterogeneous individuals and groups brought from India by commerce and the plantation economy. As a founder of shrines no less than madrasas, Ghulām Muhammad demonstrated the ways in which a customary Islam of holy men, festivities and hagiographies flourished and responded to the demands and opportunities of modernity. Building on the popular appeal of customary piety, Ghulām Muhammad consolidated his success by providing a range of social services (education, healthcare, burial) for the Indian poor of Natal, to create an effective public platform for the norms of Sharia in South Africa.