"Why Archaeology is important for Theology"

The Old Testament is clearly a mixture of myths and real historical figures with their events. There is no question about the contribution of mythology, since much of Genesis has been formed from common mythological accounts from all over the ancient Near East. The stories of Creation, the primordial couple, the Garden of Eden, Cain and Abel, the Great Flood, and much more, are a commonplace of narratives throughout the region. Although these accounts are mythological, it does not mean that they have not been shaped by real events. Specialists speculate about a great flood that took place in the Near East as a result of rising water levels at the end of the last Ice Age (around 5000 BC). This coincided at a time when the Agricultural Revolution had taken over the Fertile Crescent and Egypt. Various peoples of the Levant adopted mythological narratives and reformulated them to create their own unique and original tales. Some of the main figures of the Bible, such as Adam and Eve, Noah, Lot, finally the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) were their own compositions but, as can be seen with the patriarch Abraham, who was not an exclusive figure of the Hebrew people, his conversion to monotheism is, however, something peculiar to the spiritual creativity of the Jews. Here as in the composition of the New Testament, archeology is the necessary aid to locate the reality and the truth of sacred history and its development in human time.

Onstage Violence in Sixteenth-Century French Tragedy

The performance of violence on the stage has played an integral role in French tragedy since its inception. Onstage Violence in Sixteenth-Century French Tragedy is the first book to tell this story. It traces and examines the ethical and poetic stakes of violence, as playwrights were experimenting with the newly discovered genre during decades of religious and civil war (c.1550–1598). The study begins with an overview of the origins of French vernacular tragedy and the complex relationships between violence, performance, ethics, and poetics. The remainder of the book homes in on specific plays and analyzes biblical, mythological, historical, and politically topical tragedies—including the stories of Cain and Abel, David and Goliath, Medea, Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent, the Roman general Regulus, and the assassination of the Duke of Guise in 1588—to show how the multifarious uses of violence on stage shed light on a range of pressing issues during that turbulent time such as religion, gender, politics, and militantism.

Biblical Violence in Catholic and Calvinist Tragedy

This chapter analyzes biblical violence in Catholic and Calvinist tragedy by examining dramatic adaptations of the stories of Cain and Abel and David and Goliath. Thomas Lecoq’s Tragédie de Cain (1580) imitates the early sixteenth-century Mistére du Viel Testament and uses Cain’s murder of Abel as a counterexample of virtuous behavior at the peak of the religious wars, encouraging spectators to behave peacefully toward their neighbors despite differing beliefs. The chapter then considers how the Calvinist tragedies by Joachim de Coignac (La Desconfiture de Goliath, c.1551) and Louis Des Masures (David combattant, 1563/1566) use violence as a positive, liberating force. David’s defeat of Goliath mirrors the Reformed Church’s hopeful victory against the Roman Catholic Church. This chapter argues that Coignac and Des Masures depict David’s violence as a morally good act, yet their plays raise theological, moral, and epistemological questions of when and why it is acceptable to kill.

Security Design Pattern for Login System through Authentication using Modified Sha-384 Algorithm

The research has been carried out to develop secure login system by authenticating the login using modified SHA-384 algorithm. It derives 896-bit hash value for the password entered by the user in the user registration form and saves the credentials entered by the user in system’s database. Results obtained are evaluated by resolving the general attacks confirmed that the modified SHA-384 algorithm was more secured compared to the original SHA-384 algorithm as it was not broken using generic attacks such as brute force, rainbow table and other cracking tools available online such as Cain and Abel. The performance of the modified algorithm was measured with only 2 ms additional execution time from SHA-384.

Recognition and Responsibility

While the concept of responsibility is a cornerstone of Christian ethics, recognition theory still lacks a thorough theological–ethical analysis. This essay seeks to fill the gap and develop normative ethics of recognition and responsibility. The first part provides a systematic analysis of the conceptual elements of recognition, emphasizing the need to focus on misrecognition as a heuristic tool and ethical priority. While recognition coincides with responsivity and attentiveness in the encounter of self and other, responsibility adds to this the moral accountability for acts, practices, structures, and institutions, rendering recognition and responsibility interrelated but also distinct principles of morality. This normative analysis is then correlated to the hermeneutical, narrative ethics of Christian ethics. The founding narrative of biblical ethics, the Cain and Abel narrative in Gen 4, is interpreted as a dialectic of recognition and responsibility. Both exegesis and ethics profit from this interdisciplinary and correlative approach between philosophical and biblical ethics. Finally, the ethics of recognition and responsibility, which emerges from the Frankfurt School critical theory, is confronted with exemplary indigenous approaches focusing on mutual responsibility as the foundation of ecological ethics. Christian ethics of recognition and responsibility resonates with this approach, yet emphasizes the distinctiveness of human interactions and the demands of moral responsibility.

Von der Fähigkeit des Menschen, das Gute zu tun

The Cain and Abel narrative is often read as a story of how sin spread among humans after the fall in the Garden of Eden. However, this common interpretation does not hold up. In the context of the non-priestly primeval history, the Cain and Abel narrative rather reflects on the person of Cain the consequences of the previously acquired knowledge of good and evil. According to the Cain and Abel narrative, the person endowed with knowledge of good and evil is undoubtedly capable of doing good. But he must also want to do the good. He must orient his actions towards the good. If he does this, he can live with a clear conscience. If he does not, then - and only then - he risks falling into the realm of sin and succumbing to sin.

The spiritual world, Christ, ancestors, angels, and demons in Hlungwani's art and theology

Jackson Hlungwani’s vision of a New Jerusalem is shaped by his unique African Christian theology teachings. They are expressed through his wooden sculptures in an “independent African Church which would echo the wish to Africanize Christianity and represent a new cultural and spiritual phenomenon through his art” (Rankin, 1998: 46; Steyn, 2019: 184). It is through this vision and his artworks that Hlungwani prophesied the coming of an Apocalypse, which would result in man's salvation, and signify an ultimate victory over evil. This article concerns the New Jerusalem (the ‘imagined’ and the ‘built’) and reveals Hlungwani’s Christian and traditional ideas around the spiritual world, Christ, the ancestors, angels, and demons. Hlungwani’s vision of a New Jerusalem should therefore be understood in the context of a unique African Christian theology created from the perspective of an African cultural context. The two altars for the New Jerusalem site and a number of wooden artworks are selected for their connection with both the artist’s vision and the supernatural world, angels, ancestors, and earthly warriors. The selected sculptures are the Crucifix IV, the sculpture God and Christ, and the panel Cain and Abel. They are discussed and analyzed as I believe that they reflect profound visual metaphors derived from spiritual visions, the visions of the Prophet Ezekiel, and of the Apocalypse of Saint John from the final book of the Christian Bible, the Book of Revelation.

Prospects of Tourism for Peace

Over the years, philosophers have debated the problem of war and peace. Is violence inherently enrooted in our minds? Or simply are we educated in a violent society? Is war a social malady to be eradicated or part of our nature? The myth of Cain and Abel gives some hints on this, but, of course, it does not suffice to explain the complexity of the conflict in the societal order. Humans often are slaves of negative emotions such as rage, fear, greed, and envy. Nonetheless, as Immanuel Kant imagined, a durable and perpetual peace can be internationally achieved, where a tacit agreement is convened among nations. In so doing, they should share a common-grounded constitution and be subject to the law of federation. The figure of hospitality is vital to weave an international pact of cooperation and non-aggression. Here one might question if tourism is part of this panacea, as Kant in his days envisaged.