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The Mythic Past
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Book Synopsis The Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology And The Myth Of Israel by : Thomas L Thompson
Download or read book The Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology And The Myth Of Israel written by Thomas L Thompson and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2008-08-05 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Jewish people's historical claims to a small area of land bordering the eastern Mediterranean are not only the foundation for the modern state of Israel, they are also at the very heart of Judeo-Christian belief. Yet in The Mythic Past, Thomas Thompson argues that such claims are grounded in literary myth, not history. Among the author's startling conclusions are these: There never was a "united monarch" of Israel in biblical times -- We can no longer talk about a time of the Patriarchs -- The entire notion of "Israel" and its history is a literary fiction. The Mythic Past provides refreshing new ways to read the Old Testament as the great literature it was meant to be. At the same time, its controversial conclusions about Jewish history are sure to prove incendiary in a worldwide debate about one of the world's seminal texts, and one of its most bitterly contested regions.
Book Synopsis How Fascism Works by : Jason Stanley
Download or read book How Fascism Works written by Jason Stanley and published by Random House. This book was released on 2018-09-04 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “No single book is as relevant to the present moment.”—Claudia Rankine, author of Citizen “One of the defining books of the decade.”—Elizabeth Hinton, author of From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’ CHOICE • With a new preface • Fascist politics are running rampant in America today—and spreading around the world. A Yale philosopher identifies the ten pillars of fascist politics, and charts their horrifying rise and deep history. As the child of refugees of World War II Europe and a renowned philosopher and scholar of propaganda, Jason Stanley has a deep understanding of how democratic societies can be vulnerable to fascism: Nations don’t have to be fascist to suffer from fascist politics. In fact, fascism’s roots have been present in the United States for more than a century. Alarmed by the pervasive rise of fascist tactics both at home and around the globe, Stanley focuses here on the structures that unite them, laying out and analyzing the ten pillars of fascist politics—the language and beliefs that separate people into an “us” and a “them.” He knits together reflections on history, philosophy, sociology, and critical race theory with stories from contemporary Hungary, Poland, India, Myanmar, and the United States, among other nations. He makes clear the immense danger of underestimating the cumulative power of these tactics, which include exploiting a mythic version of a nation’s past; propaganda that twists the language of democratic ideals against themselves; anti-intellectualism directed against universities and experts; law and order politics predicated on the assumption that members of minority groups are criminals; and fierce attacks on labor groups and welfare. These mechanisms all build on one another, creating and reinforcing divisions and shaping a society vulnerable to the appeals of authoritarian leadership. By uncovering disturbing patterns that are as prevalent today as ever, Stanley reveals that the stuff of politics—charged by rhetoric and myth—can quickly become policy and reality. Only by recognizing fascists politics, he argues, may we resist its most harmful effects and return to democratic ideals. “With unsettling insight and disturbing clarity, How Fascism Works is an essential guidebook to our current national dilemma of democracy vs. authoritarianism.”—William Jelani Cobb, author of The Substance of Hope
Book Synopsis The Golden Horns by : John L. Greenway
Download or read book The Golden Horns written by John L. Greenway and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2008-06-01 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As an introduction to modern myth, The Golden Horns masterfully encompasses a wide circle of historical and literary materials. John Greenway first establishes the theoretical base of his discussion by examining the nature of time in Norse mythic consciousness. After suggesting several ways in which the mythic apprehension of reality conditioned medieval Icelandic narrative, he then elaborates on the dialectical relationship between myth and reason. Maintaining that myth is neither true nor false but always either expressive or not, the author then traces the origin, rise, and fall of two great modern myths of northern birth: seventeenth century Swedish Gothicism and the Ossianic craze of the eighteenth century--both of which illustrate the singular tension in the modern mind between mythic imperatives and the impulse to de-mythologize. Finally, The Golden Horns traces the romantic belief in a "new mythology" which synthesizes myth and reason from its early acceptance through its eventual repudiation. In his conclusions about the state of myth in the modern world, Greenway postulates that we have inherited the romantic respect for myth as truth but lack the romantic faith in transcendence necessary to establish myth's reality. Consequently, we express our mythic consciousness of who we are in quasi-scientific language, consciously manipulating mythic symbols for social control.
Book Synopsis The Mythic Path by : David Feinstein
Download or read book The Mythic Path written by David Feinstein and published by Elite Books. This book was released on 2006-11-01 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beneath our conscious minds, our personal mythology directs our actions and organizes your experiences. Psychologists Feinstein and Krippner explain how our current rate of social change is outpacing our culture's capacity to renew its traditions and guiding mythsand offer a twelve-week course for each of us to understand and transform our personal mythology. In the process, we move from past influences to taking charge of our own future.
Book Synopsis Plato and the Mythic Tradition in Political Thought by : Tae-Yeoun Keum
Download or read book Plato and the Mythic Tradition in Political Thought written by Tae-Yeoun Keum and published by Belknap Press. This book was released on 2020-12-08 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Gustave O. Arlt Award in the Humanities Winner of the Istvan Hont Book Prize An ambitious reinterpretation and defense of Plato’s basic enterprise and influence, arguing that the power of his myths was central to the founding of philosophical rationalism. Plato’s use of myths—the Myth of Metals, the Myth of Er—sits uneasily with his canonical reputation as the inventor of rational philosophy. Since the Enlightenment, interpreters like Hegel have sought to resolve this tension by treating Plato’s myths as mere regrettable embellishments, irrelevant to his main enterprise. Others, such as Karl Popper, have railed against the deceptive power of myth, concluding that a tradition built on Platonic foundations can be neither rational nor desirable. Tae-Yeoun Keum challenges the premise underlying both of these positions. She argues that myth is neither irrelevant nor inimical to the ideal of rational progress. She tracks the influence of Plato’s dialogues through the early modern period and on to the twentieth century, showing how pivotal figures in the history of political thought—More, Bacon, Leibniz, the German Idealists, Cassirer, and others—have been inspired by Plato’s mythmaking. She finds that Plato’s followers perennially raised the possibility that there is a vital role for myth in rational political thinking.
Book Synopsis Heroes Masked and Mythic by : Christopher Wood
Download or read book Heroes Masked and Mythic written by Christopher Wood and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2021-01-04 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Epic battles, hideous monsters and a host of petty gods--the world of Classical mythology continues to fascinate and inspire. Heroes like Herakles, Achilles and Perseus have influenced Western art and literature for centuries, and today are reinvented in the modern superhero. What does Iron Man have to do with the Homeric hero Odysseus? How does the African warrior Memnon compare with Marvel's Black Panther? Do DC's Wonder Woman and Xena the Warrior Princess reflect the tradition of Amazon women such as Penthesileia? How does the modern superhero's journey echo that of the epic warrior? With fresh insight into ancient Greek texts and historical art, this book examines modern superhero archetypes and iconography in comics and film as the crystallization of the hero's journey in the modern imagination.
Book Synopsis The Messiah Myth by : Thomas L. Thompson
Download or read book The Messiah Myth written by Thomas L. Thompson and published by . This book was released on 2009-04-20 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the eighteenth century, scholars and historians studying the texts of the Bible have attempted to distill historical facts and biography from the mythology and miracles described there. That trend continues into the present day, as scholars such as those of the "Jesus Seminar" dissect the Gospels and other early Christian writings to separate the "Jesus of history" from the "Christ of faith." But with The Messiah Myth, noted Biblical scholar Thomas L. Thompson argues that the quest for the historical Jesus is beside the point, since the Jesus of the Gospels never existed.Like King David before him, says Thompson, the Jesus of the Bible is an amalgamation of themes from Near Eastern mythology and traditions of kingship and divinity. The theme of a messiah-a divinely appointed king who restores the world to perfection-is typical of Egyptian and Babylonian royal ideology dating back to the Bronze Age. In Thompson's view, the contemporary audience for whom the Old and New Testament were written would naturally have interpreted David and Jesus not as historical figures, but as metaphors embodying long-established messianic traditions. Challenging widely held assumptions about the sources of the Bible and the quest for the historical Jesus, The Messiah Myth is sure to spark interest and heated debate.
Download or read book Your Mythic Journey written by Sam Keen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1989-09-01 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We all tell stories about who we are, where we come from, and where we are going. These personal myths in turn shape who we become and what we believe—as individuals, families, and nations. This book offers readers the tools to detect the story line in their own lives and to write and tell it to others, opening up a hidden world of self-discovery and meaning. The numerous accessible exercises are followed by examples of personal stories and inspiring quotes to stimulate the journey to the center of one's purpose. "By the art of fantasy and imagination, story and image, these authors map the ways personal stories deepen into transpersonal mythic journeys." —David Miller, Ph.D., Watson-Ledden Professor of Religion, Syracuse University
Download or read book The Mythic Mind written by Nicolas Wyatt and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-12-05 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mythic Mind follows the tradition of works which insist on the necessity for a comparative dimension in the study of ancient Israel. The Israelite world-view was essentially a West Semitic world-view in origin, with additional deeply embedded influences from Egypt and Mesopotamia, though it produced its own distinctive character by way of synthesis and reaction. The essays in this volume explore various aspects of this process, historically and cosmologically, commonly challenging received views developed in the treatment of Israel in isolation. The importance of the Ugaritic texts in particular, as reflecting the cultural context in which ancient Israel developed into two symbiotic kingdoms, heirs to a common 'Canaanite' tradition, emerges clearly from such studies as chapter 5: 'Sea and Desert', chapter 7: 'Of Calves and Kings', chapter 9: 'The Significance of Spn' and chapter 10: 'The Vocabulary and Neurology of Orientation.'
Book Synopsis Early History of the Israelite People by : Thompson
Download or read book Early History of the Israelite People written by Thompson and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-11-08 with total page 499 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a groundbreaking book on the origins of Israel, taking into account the contexts of geography, anthropology, and sociology, and drawing on a careful analysis of archaeological and written evidence. Thompson argues that none of the traditional models for the origin of biblical Israel in terms of conquest, peaceful settlement, or revolution are viable. The ninth and eighth century BC State of Israel is a product of the Mediterranean economy. The development of the ethnic concept of biblical Israel finds its context in history first at the time of the Persian renaissance. The volume presents a clear historical context and an interpretative matrix for the Bible.
Book Synopsis Mythic Black Fiction by : Jane Campbell
Download or read book Mythic Black Fiction written by Jane Campbell and published by Univ. of Tennessee Press. This book was released on 1989 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis 101 Myths of the Bible by : Gary Greenberg
Download or read book 101 Myths of the Bible written by Gary Greenberg and published by Sourcebooks, Inc.. This book was released on 2002-09 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The truth behind the biblical stories of the Old Testament.
Book Synopsis The Mythic City by : Donald Albrecht
Download or read book The Mythic City written by Donald Albrecht and published by Princeton Architectural Press. This book was released on 2005-09-22 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the late 1920s and early 1930s, architectural photographer Samuel H. Gottscho created a portrait of New York as a modern metropolis. This book presents more than 170 images of the city and provides a window to New York architecture and design of that era.
Download or read book Mircea Eliade written by Nicolae Babuts and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-28 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mircea Eliade (1907–1986) was one of the twentieth century's foremost students of religion and cultural environments. This book examines the emergence, function, and value of religion and myth in his work.Nicolae Babuts, Robert Ellwood, Eric Ziolkowski, John Dadosky, Robert Segal, Mac Linscott Ricketts, Douglas Allen, and Liviu Borda examine Eliade's views on the interaction between the sacred and the profane. Each explores Eliade's phenomenological approach to the study of religion and myth. They show that modern rites of initiation, cultural activities, and spectacles like bullfighting, film, and, perhaps surprisingly, reading and writing, all harken back to the archetypal structures of the mythical imagination. Perhaps the greatest achievement of Eliade's phenomenological approach is that it reveals what we have in common with pre-Socratic man: the mind's structural capacity to endow objects and events with spiritual values and meanings.As a study of Eliade's concept of the mythic imagination, the book posits an analogy between the myths of the past and modern imitations. The authors suggest that in spite of their differences and their separate historical sources, myths represent basic structures of human consciousness. This book is essential reading for all students of religion, philosophy, and literature.
Book Synopsis Butcher's Crossing by : John Williams
Download or read book Butcher's Crossing written by John Williams and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2011-03-30 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now a major motion picture starring Nicolas Cage and directed by Gabe Polsky. In his National Book Award–winning novel Augustus, John Williams uncovered the secrets of ancient Rome. With Butcher’s Crossing, his fiercely intelligent, beautifully written western, Williams dismantles the myths of modern America. It is the 1870s, and Will Andrews, fired up by Emerson to seek “an original relation to nature,” drops out of Harvard and heads west. He washes up in Butcher’s Crossing, a small Kansas town on the outskirts of nowhere. Butcher’s Crossing is full of restless men looking for ways to make money and ways to waste it. Before long Andrews strikes up a friendship with one of them, a man who regales Andrews with tales of immense herds of buffalo, ready for the taking, hidden away in a beautiful valley deep in the Colorado Rockies. He convinces Andrews to join in an expedition to track the animals down. The journey out is grueling, but at the end is a place of paradisal richness. Once there, however, the three men abandon themselves to an orgy of slaughter, so caught up in killing buffalo that they lose all sense of time. Winter soon overtakes them: they are snowed in. Next spring, half-insane with cabin fever, cold, and hunger, they stagger back to Butcher’s Crossing to find a world as irremediably changed as they have been.
Book Synopsis Fascist Mythologies by : Federico Finchelstein
Download or read book Fascist Mythologies written by Federico Finchelstein and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2022-07-05 with total page 95 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For fascism, myth was reality—or was realer than the real. Fascist notions of the leader, the nation, power, and violence were steeped in mythic imagery and the fantasy of transcending history. A mythologized primordial past would inspire the heroic overthrow of a debased present to achieve a violently redeemed future. What is distinctive about fascist mythology, and how does this aspect of fascism help explain its perils in the past and present? Federico Finchelstein draws on a striking combination of thinkers—Jorge Luis Borges, Sigmund Freud, and Carl Schmitt—to consider fascism as a form of political mythmaking. He shows that Borges’s literary and critical work and Freud’s psychoanalytic writing both emphasize the mythical and unconscious dimensions of fascist politics. Finchelstein considers their ideas of the self, violence, and the sacred as well as the relationship between the victims of fascist violence and the ideological myths of its perpetrators. He draws on Freud and Borges to analyze the work of a variety of Latin American and European fascist intellectuals, with particular attention to Schmitt’s political theology. Contrasting their approaches to the logic of unreason, Finchelstein probes the limits of the dichotomy between myth and reason and shows the centrality of this opposition to understanding the ideology of fascism. At a moment when forces redolent of fascism cast a shadow over world affairs, this book provides a timely historical and critical analysis of the dangers of myth in modern politics.
Book Synopsis Mythic Frontiers by : Daniel R. Maher
Download or read book Mythic Frontiers written by Daniel R. Maher and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2019-03-04 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Maher explores the development of the Frontier Complex as he deconstructs the frontier myth in the context of manifest destiny, American exceptionalism, and white male privilege. A very significant contribution to our understanding of how and why heritage sites reinforce privilege.”— Frederick H. Smith, author of The Archaeology of Alcohol and Drinking “Peels back the layer of dime westerns and True Grit films to show how their mythologies are made material. You’ll never experience a ‘heritage site’ the same way again.”—Christine Bold, author of The Frontier Club: Popular Westerns and Cultural Power, 1880–1924 The history of the Wild West has long been fictionalized in novels, films, and television shows. Catering to these popular representations, towns across America have created tourist sites connecting such tales with historical monuments. Yet these attractions stray from known histories in favor of the embellished past visitors expect to see and serve to craft a cultural memory that reinforces contemporary ideologies. In Mythic Frontiers, Daniel Maher illustrates how aggrandized versions of the past, especially those of the “American frontier,” have been used to turn a profit. These imagined historical sites have effectively silenced the violent, oppressive, colonizing forces of manifest destiny and elevated principal architects of it to mythic heights. Examining the frontier complex in Fort Smith, Arkansas—where visitors are greeted at a restored brothel and the reconstructed courtroom and gallows of “Hanging Judge” Isaac Parker feature prominently—Maher warns that creating a popular tourist narrative and disconnecting cultural heritage tourism from history minimizes the devastating consequences of imperialism, racism, and sexism and relegitimizes the privilege bestowed upon white men.
