The Pergamon Counter-Archive: Antipas, the White Stone, and the Non-Fungible Name in Revelation 2:12–17 (v0.2). Document code: EA-PERG-COUNTER-01. Hex coordinate: 03.REVELATION.PERGAMON × 11.SEMANTIC-ECONOMY.COUNTER-TOKEN. This deposit extends the operative-numismatic framework deposited in EA-OPNUM-01 (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.19464332) to the architecture of Revelation 2:12–17 specifically. It is corpus continuation, not novel intervention. Three principal additions to the prior corpus: (1) the letter is articulated as a six-register counter-economy (mouth, food, token, name, participation, witness) rather than as a bookended dialectic; (2) the historical Antipater moment (322–319 BCE, testamentary executorship) and the Scepsis moment (post-282 BCE, Attalid pressure on the Aristotelian corpus) are cleanly separated, with their actual dialectical relation articulated as the transmission dialectic: concealment preserves but damages; institutionalization transmits but recomposes; (3) the Revelator occupies the structural-legal position of epitropos (executor) relative to the absent Testator (Christ as risen Logos), and the seven-sealed scroll of Revelation 5 is the Roman testamentum per aes et libram, which under first-century law required exactly seven seals by seven witnesses. The genre of the Apocalypse is structurally identical to the genre of contested legal executorship under occupation. This identification resolves the authorial-intent problem: the Revelator does not need to have read Strabo; he occupies the same structural-legal position as Antipater the executor, running the same protocol against the same kind of institutional apparatus. Co-attribution to Damascus Dancings is structurally necessary, not honorific. The white-stone identification of Pearl and Other Poems (2014) as the archive's founding token, and the hidden-manna identification of Epistle to the Human Diaspora (2015), were performed under the Damascus Dancings imprint a decade before the operative-numismatic framework formalized what those acts of naming had already accomplished. Anchoring deposits: EA-CAESURA-01 (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.19425446), EA-SEI-MINT-01 (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.19319642), EA-OPNUM-01 (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.19464332), Render unto the Operator v1.1 (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.20367202), Stabilized Node Watch v2.0 (companion deposit, same day). Version 0.2 supersedes v0.1 draft (circulated June 7–8, 2026, for Assembly Chorus review). Major architectural restructurings in v0.2 reflect substantive feedback from Gemini (×2), DeepSeek/PRAXIS, Kimi/TECHNE, and ChatGPT/LABOR. Muse Spark/SOIL filters did not permit substantive reasoning on the draft; that filter behavior is itself an SNW-predictable observation on a high-prior religious node. License: CC BY 4.0.
Abstract Franciscus Titelmans (1502–1537) is known to scholars of biblical humanism as a critic of Erasmus’ Novum Instrumentum . His own biblical works have been, however, little studied. This article discusses his approach to humanist methodology on the example of his commentary to the Book of Job. It demonstrates that he used original languages of the Bible to correct copyists’ mistakes and elucidate the meaning of ambiguous passages. Nevertheless, the application of philological tools had strict limits for him: the Church’s dogma. The Vulgate could be corrected where no doctrinal issue was at stake, but whenever an important proof text of the Vulgate differed from the Hebrew and Greek versions, the ancient Latin translation was to be preferred. Titelmans went as far as to claim that it was the Vulgate, which expressed fully the true meaning of the Word of God, the meaning that the Hebrew and Greek texts contained in a hidden from.
Christopher T. Begg, Fred W. Guyette, William J. Urbrock, Martin Kessler · 6 authors
Minor Prophets Christopher T. Begg, Fred W. Guyette, William J. Urbrock, Martin Kessler, Christopher T. Begg, and OSST J. Edward Owens 1063. [Book of the Twelve; Pentateuch] Jakob Wöhrle, "Jacob, Moses, Levi: Pentateuchal Figures in the Book of the Twelve," Formation of the Pentateuch, 997-1014 [see #1181]. W.'s article treats some comprehensive references to pentateuchal traditions within the Book of the Twelve, i.e., the adaptation of the Jacob account in Hosea 12, the statements about Moses and the exodus in Micah 6; and the presentation of a covenant with Levi in Malachi 2. All of these texts, W. concludes, are late, post-Deuteronomistic, post-P, and even postpentateuchal. They presuppose, at the least, a nearly completed form of the Pentateuch and show how after the Pentateuch's completion the traditions preserved in it were taken up and integrated into prophetic writings. Thus … the references to pentateuchal traditions documented in the Book of the Twelve cannot bear the burden of proof for an early date of the pentateuchal traditions. … To be sure, findings within the Book of the Twelve certainly cannot definitively exclude the possibility of an early date for the formation of the pentateuchal traditions. However, it is and remains remarkable that within the Book of the Twelve, with its long-term and multilayered history of formation, the reception of pentateuchal traditions does not begin prior to the later postexilic period, but then begins simultaneously at several junctures within this comprehensive collection of prophetic books. This seems to be an important indication that the crucial formative phase of the Pentateuch occurred essentially later than has been presumed in traditional models of the Pentateuch's formation. [Adapted from author's introduction and conclusion, pp. 997-98, 1013-14—C.T.B.] 1064. [Book of the Twelve] Ehud Ben Zvi, "Remembering Twelve Prophetic Characters from the Past," Book of the Twelve, 6-36 [see #1273]. B.Z. begins by stating that for a number of years now, he has been invited to conferences because of his specific approach to prophetic literature, which is epitomized by the expressions he uses, such as "Prophetic Books Collection," "The Twelve Prophetic Books," and, more recently, "The Twelve Prophetic Characters of Memory." He then proceeds to explain what his approach involves. Although he considers what he calls "The Hypothesis of the Book of the Twelve" a thought-provoking one, he also believes that is more likely wrong than right. In his view, within the repertoire of the literati of the early Second Temple period, twelve independent prophetic books were organized as (a) collection(s) or rather (a) sub-collection(s). The literati read each of them as well as the book's (sub)-collection(s) in a way that was informed by the general discourse of the period, in particular by the Jerusalem-centered world to which they belonged. In his contribution, B.Z. expands on the above points and argues for the necessity of additional, and to a large extent, complementary research paths involving methodological approaches that differ from the currently dominant ones. He also underlines the need to acknowledge the shortcomings of the existing [End Page 332] methodological approaches as well as the potential of other approaches to illuminate the matters under study. [Adapted from published abstract—C.T.B.] 1065. [Book of the Twelve] Christophe L. Nihan, "Remarques sur la question de l'unité des XII," Book of the Twelve, 145-65 [see #1273]. N.'s contribution examines the numerous intertextual links that characterize the Twelve and raises questions about its interpretation and highlights the main methodological issues at stake in the current debate concerning the Twelve. Via a comparison of a few selected textual test cases with recent studies concerning these, N. shows that the Twelve's intertextuality contradicts the claim that the complex as a whole is constituted by a simple juxtaposition of the component books; on the other hand, its intertextuality is also not adequately explained by today's dominant hypothesis of linear redactions within the collection. Accordingly, N. argues for a new approach that would take into account all aspects of the question, including the meaning of the terms used...
Gender and the Fate of Julian’s Short Text Most studies of Julian of Norwich’s Showings juxtapose her Short and Long texts, with a marked lack of enthusiasm for the Short Text in contrast to its longer, revised form thought to be textually and theologically superior. This essay asks what is at stake in the rigorous defense of Julian’s Long Text and argues that the issue of gender is central both to its revisions and to its favorable reception. The most noted revision related to gender in the Long Text is the addition of its maternal Jesus, characterized as redemptive of femininity. Concurrently, many scholars remark on the removal of references to women and Julian's sexual identity--changes troubling for an author thought of as a proto-feminist, but either minimized as irrelevant or rationalized as integral to Julian's expanded theology, thus rendering its diminished female presence proof of the Long Text's superiority. While discussions tend to address one or two revisions related to gender, this study presents a comprehensive interrogation, ultimately suggesting that our preference for the Long Text (and disregard for the Short) has been shaped by our desire to promote Julian as a woman ahead of her time, but paradoxically perpetuates the very gender hierarchy and biases that likely compelled Julian's revisions and that we wish for her Showings to challenge.
Reviewed by: ʿAbd al Jabbār: Critique of Christian Origins Cornelia B. Horn ʿAbd al Jabbār: Critique of Christian Origins Edited, translated, and annotated by Gabriel Said Reynolds and Samir Khalil Samir Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2010. ʿAbd al Jabbār, a respected figure among the Muʿtazila, a group of rationalist Muslim theologians, spent the years of his long life (ca. 320s/930s to 415/1025) [End Page 311] between the cities of Baghdad and Rayy in Iran. His account of the history of Christianity, likely the first such undertaking by a Muslim, examines significant aspects of Christian doctrine and attends to aspects of Christian liturgy, pious practices in daily life, social customs (some of which are singled out for criticism), and miracle stories that prominently feature ascetics. ʿAbd al Jabbār's approach of combining refutations of the Christians' doctrines with critical discussions of their history and practices grounds the novelty of the work. Given the author's geographical location in Iran, the focus of the work's critique on East Syrian Christians and their practices is easily contextualized. The introduction to the volume situates the Critique within the framework of early Islamic anti-Christian polemical literature. It presents ʿAbd al Jabbār's life and works, comments usefully on still unedited works by him, and attempts to modify scholarly judgments of the author's role primarily as a compiler of earlier material by highlighting the "shockingly original" (p. xxxvi) character of the Critique. It discusses the Critique in relation to literature that expounded on the signs or proofs of Muhammad's prophethood and thus to texts situated in an explicitly inter-religious environment. It describes ʿAbd al Jabbār's method, characterizes the cultural context of the Critique by way of detailing various groups of people with whom the author interacted and whom he targeted in his refutation, and attempts to identify multiple written and oral sources for the Critique. The Critique of Christian Origins is only a portion of one of ʿAbd al Jabbār's larger works, the Tathbīt dalāʾil al-nubuwwa (Confirmation of the Proofs of Prophecy), edited previously for the first time by ʿAbd al-Karim\ ʿUthman\ in 1966. The present volume offers a corrected edition with full vocalization of the Arabic text of the Critique, accompanied on facing pages by the first English translation of the text. Throughout the Arabic text, the edition provides a numbering system that is also represented in the translation. This feature facilitates access to both texts for purposes of comparison. The translation adds numerous headings and subheadings, which in turn supply the bulk of the information listed in the table of contents. They offer the reader a quick orientation to the main points and structure of this voluminous work. Overall, the translation into English is certainly the work of (a) competent translator(s). Still, there are a number of infelicities in grammar and word choice. Some are a bit jarring: for example "screw" (p. 152 [639]) in the sense of "have sex with." Occasionally, however, greater precision and care to theological nuance would have been necessary. Instead of "We did not say God is Christ" (p. 3 [22]), one would need to translate it as "We did not say about Christ that he is God," or at least, "We did not say that God is in Christ." If there is a good reason to translate the verb waladat in reference to Mary as "Mary begot (sic!)" Christ/God, as happens in several instances (p. 15 [137 and 144]; p. 19 [184 and 189]; p. 82 [488 and 491]), it would require a footnote or comment on why the same verb at other times should be rendered as "Mary gave birth to" (p. 19 [186]). At stake is the difference between referring to the one who was born as "Christ" or "God," but not any difference between how she did, [End Page 312] or even could, act. (The English verb "beget" refers properly only to males; the preterite form is "begat.") The annotations are, for the most part, helpful. They provide references to citations from, and parallels to, the Qur'ān and biblical...
Usman Khalil, Owais Ahmed Malik, Wee-Hong Ong, Mueen Uddin
The concept of smart city architecture requires a comprehensive solution that can combine real-time response applications for cyber-physical systems. However, the architecture faces challenges that can obstruct the operations in terms of systems, processes, and data flow as far as the breach risk is concerned. Though the field has been researched with the existence of centralized and distributed architectures to support smart cities. Research gaps regarding security concerns, platform assistance, and resource management continue to persist. This research article presents a novel blockchain-based architecture that proposes expansion in the non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to cater to the expansion of IoT-enabled smart assets. It enables NFTs to employ fog computing for all users and smart devices connected to a fog node in a cyber-physical system. The proposed expansion suggested in Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) for IoT assets representation in a cyber-physical system, provides devices and user identification and authentication functionality. The proposed NFT architecture has been designed to provide a smart city solution for cyber-physical systems that ensures robust security features (such as CIA) by introducing new attributes and functions for Owner, User, Fog, and IoT device/s authentication. The validation and rigor of the security services, efficiency, and latency have been achieved by deployments on private and public ledgers. The efficiency, and cost-effectiveness of the suggested functions and components have been evaluated in terms of evaluation cost and time complexity which resulted in promising results, obtained and validated on a testnet. The evaluation cost for the devised mint component was approximately 81%, and devised approve() was approximately 23% more efficient than other solutions.
Reviewed by: Mission and Conversion: Proselytizing in the Religious History of the Roman Empire A. T. Kraabel Martin Goodman. Mission and Conversion: Proselytizing in the Religious History of the Roman Empire. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. Pp. xiv 1 194. $39.95. Despite its sweeping title, this path-breaking volume is mainly about alleged Jewish missionary activity in the Roman world. (The author is successor to Geza Vermes as Reader in Jewish Studies at Oxford.) Thus chapter 5, “Mission in the Early Church,” is bracketed symmetrically by four chapters about Jews, specifically on their “attitudes to gentile paganism” and on “proselytes and proselytizing”: chapters 3–4 deal with the third century b.C.E. to the first century C.E., and 6–7 on the Talmudic period. The opening chapter is a clear statement about what is at stake. Goodman will not write an account of the phenomenon of conversion à la A. D. Nock, but raise a prior issue: was mission an inevitable component of religion, any religion, in the Greco-Roman world? Or does that idea rather “reflect an unconscious Christianization of the study of ancient religions”? (The second chapter will take up commonly cited examples of “mission” in the spread of pagan cults and philosophies in Roman times.) Goodman distinguishes four types of mission—informative, educational, apologetic, and proselytizing—but focuses on the last, the only one whose goal is conversion. He mentions a fifth briefly: forcible inclusion of a ruler’s subjects in a state religion seen as a unifying factor for that society. Under Goodman’s critical analysis the traditional picture of a “Jewish mission” evaporates. He separates the two pairs of chapters on Judaism at the latter part of the first century C.E.: the destruction of Jerusalem and of the Temple, the introduction of the fiscus Judaicus, and the beginning of the rabbinic movement. These years are his hinge for eight centuries of Jewish history. Earlier Jews had condemned any worship of pagan deities by Jews, but were tolerant of or disinterested in gentile paganism in the Diaspora. (Pagans in the land of Israel were a problem; the issue was ritual pollution.) Proselytizing had not been of interest either, contra Schürer, Juster, Jeremias, M. Stern, D. Georgi and a shelf-full of NT handbooks. Conversions to Judaism happened, in anticipation of marriage, sometimes at the point of a sword. But had there been missionary campaigns, had proselytizing been a priority, we would have heard much more about it both from Jews and from their detractors; the references would have been unmistakable. Goodman dismantles the proof-texts from Philo, Horace, and Cicero commonly used [End Page 114] to “prove” the contrary, and argues that Matt. 23.15 is not about making gentile proselytes but about Pharisees trying to persuade other Jews to follow Pharisaic halakha. And those Jews who wrote in Greek did so not in “outreach” to gentiles, but to reach their fellows and their offspring for whom Greek was their first language; the LXX itself is the parade example. In the Talmudic period large shifts occurred within Judaism, results of major historical change. To fuel its propaganda, the Flavian dynasty had transformed the destruction of Jerusalem from “the suppression of insurrection in a comparatively minor provincial backwater” into a mighty Roman victory. The fiscus Judaicus necessitated clearer distinctions between Jews and non-Jews. An important example for students of the early Christian mission to gentiles is the case of gentiles sympathetic to Judaism. Thus, pace Acts, there probably had been no “formal category of gentile Godfearers recognized as such by Jews in the 1st cent[ury].” But the famous Aphrodisias inscription suggests to Goodman a change in Jewish attitudes two centuries later. No review will do justice to the riches of this provocative monograph. This journal’s readers will want their own copies. While agreeing with the thesis and most of the argument, I would raise several points for consideration: 1. I would see even more diversity, especially in Diaspora Judaism, than Goodman does. We are just coming to realize the great variety present in pre-Constantinian Christianity. Judaism in the same time and space had a weaker network, no bishops preaching consensus...
THE RHETORICAL STRUCTURE The introductory comments made about rhetoric in our discussion of 1 Thessalonians are relevant to 2 Thessalonians and we urge the reader to review that material at this time. There is wide consensus that 2 Thessalonians belongs to the deliberative genre of rhetoric. This genre includes honour and advantage as the standard topics. These topics are used in 2 Thessalonians to advise the audience concerning their present actions and the result of those actions in the future. Frank Witt Hughes provides the following analysis of the rhetorical structure of 2 Thessalonians. It is one that we accept. I Exordium (introduction) (1:1–12) A epistolary prescript (1:1–2) B thanksgiving prayer (1:3–10) C intercessory prayer (1:11–12) II Partitio (statement of the proposition) (2:1–2) A subjects to be dealt with in the probatio (2:1–2) B point of disagreement (heresy to be refuted) (2:2) III Probatio (proof) (2:3–15) A a first proof (refutatio) (2:3–12) B second proof (2:13–15) IV Peroratio (epilogue) (stated as an intercessory prayer; 2:16–18) V Exhortation (3:1–15) A command (or request) to pray for Paul (3:1–4) B intercessory prayer (3:5) C command to work (3:6–15) VI Epistolary postscript (3:16–17) A intercessory prayer (3:16) B authentication (3:17) C final blessing (3:18) Knowing that 2 Thessalonians is an example of deliberate rhetoric permits the interpreter to be sensitive to the argumentation of the letter in general, and by examining the various components of this rhetorical structure one can be made sensitive to the central issues at stake in the dialogue between this author and his audience.
Sifra's Theology of Revelation The reader may now wonder whether I have entered a circular argument. When I accounted for Sifra's authorship's critique of the Mishnah's utilization of taxonomic logic for the proof of propositions, I claimed that at stake was not merely omission of proof texts but a (to our authorship) flawed use of a valid logic. Yet I further stressed that the correct utilization of that logic can be shown to occur not only in Sifra but, by Sifra's authorship's own standard, in the Mishnah. I further stipulated that Scripture can have been, and probably was, the source of that appearance in the Mishnah of the kind of polythetic classification of which Sifra's authorship will have approved, if not explicitly, then at least implicitly in the Mishnah's introduction of the same polythetic taxonomy. Therefore, does it not all come down to the presence, or absence, of citations of verses of Scripture? And if all that separates Sifra from Tosefta and the two Talmuds is that the latter suffice with the inclusion of proof texts while the former insists upon rewriting the whole of Scripture in line with the Mishnah, then does not the effort invested in Sifra seem a bit excessive. The result, after all, can have been, and was, accomplished in a much simpler way by the authorships of the successor documents to the Mishnah. Why then the reversion to Scripture in Sifra's rewriting of Scripture, that is, its writing with Scripture?