Department of Religion

: Aggressive Philanthropy; This essay explores the history of the William Volker Charities Fund, a significant charitable organization founded in 1932 by William Volker, a Kansas City furniture manufacturer. A self-describe progressive, Volker was a prominent Kansas Citian who earned the nickname Mr. Anonymous because he ssecretly gave away most of his personal fortune to create the city's private/public welfare system in the first half of the twentieth century. After Volker's death, Harold W. Luhnow, Volker's nephew, used the fund's resources to move from progressive concerns related to social welfare to support free market, libertarian, and conservative intellectuals after World War II. Before collapsing in the late 1960s, the fund financed the early careers of five Nobel Prize winners; prominent figures in what would become the Religious Right; controversial revisionist historians; and, numerous conservative writers, publishers, and public figures., Keywords: Conservatism, Libertarianism, Politics, Progressivism, Religion

: Ben Sira and the Giants of the Land; This article presents a textual criticism of the deuterocanonical Old Testament passage of Ben Sira 16:7 and its reference to "giants." Details are given highlighting the scholastic associations between the Ben Sira passage and Genesis 6:1-4, both of which describe ancient giants. Commentary is then given showing evidence for and against such intertextual associations., Keywords: Giants, Intertextuality, Bible, Genesis, Apocrypha, biblical criticism, Note: Article published in the Journal of Biblical Literature, 129, no. 4 (Winter2010 2010): 645-655. Copyright © 2010, Society of Biblical Literature. The definitive version is available at http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=56630371&site=ehost-live, Citation: Goff, Matthew J. "Ben Sira and the Giants of the Land: A Note on Ben Sira 16:7." Journal Of Biblical Literature 129, no. 4 (Winter2010 2010): 645-655.

: Columns In Context

: Deep Mapping and the Spatial Humanities; In 2012, the Virtual Center for Spatial Humanities (VCSH) held an advanced institute in Indianapolis, Indiana, on spatial narratives and deep maps. Sponsored by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a U.S. government agency that funds humanities research, the institute invited twelve scholars—seven from the U.S. and five from Europe—whose work at the intersection of digital technologies and their disciplinary domains (history, religious studies, literary studies, geography and geographic information science, archaeology, and museum studies) promised to advance an institute aim of re-envisioning the theories and technologies of spatialization to serve the needs of humanities research more completely., Keywords: deep mapping, spacial humanities, Note: http://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/ijhac.2013.0087, Citation: Bodenhamer, David J., John Corrigan, and Trevor M. Harris. "Deep Mapping and the Spatial Humanities," International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing, 7.1-2 (2013), 170-175.

: Discerning Trajectories; This article argues that 4QInstruction, considered to be the largest wisdom text of the Dead Sea Scrolls, does not symbolize the redaction of different sapiential and apocalyptic layers in Q. Issues in the study of Q are given. The relationship between Q and Jewish wisdom is discussed. It analyzes the theme of revelation in 4QInstruction., Keywords: Dead Sea Scrolls, Hebrew Literature, Revelation, Jewish Literature, Scrolls, Note: Article published in the Journal of Biblical Literature, Winter2005, Vol. 124 Issue 4, p. 657-673. Copyright © 2005, Society of Biblical Literature. This is a version of an article published in the Journal of Biblical Literature. The definitive version is available at http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=19513795&site=ehost-live, Citation: Goff, Matthew J. "Discerning Trajectories: 4QInstruction and the Sapiential Background of the Sayings Source Q." Journal Of Biblical Literature 124, no. 4 (December 2005): 657-673.

: Ecology, Divinity, And Reason Thinking The Divine Anew In The Midst Of Ecological Crisis; Eco-feminist Val Plumwood has argued that as heirs of rationalism, the developed world has created an ecological crisis that is truly a crisis of reason. Of primary concern is the "rationalist hyper-separation of human identity from nature," which has caused a great epistemological schism between ethics and ecology. Assuming the ecological crisis is, as Plumwood argues, an epistemological crisis enflamed by the human/nonhuman, ethical/ecological divisions that take place in modern forms of rationalism, this essay argues that certain western interpretations of Christian divinity-particularly the notion of divinity purported by Thomas Aquinas-have historically supported hegemonic forms of rationalism and human supremacy. After showing that certain Thomist formulations of the divine have buttressed the anthropocentric elements of modern rationalism, I venture a reading of Christian divinity that is radically relational in character. This reading of the divine highlights the inseparability of the human and non-human, and begins doing so by emphasizing the intimate connection between human and non-human animality. Such a re-framing of divinity, I argue, could help bridge the human/non-human, ethical/ecological divides, complicate anthropocentric logic, and mitigate the vast eco-epistemological crisis of our day., Catherine Keller, divinity, ecological crisis, ecological ethics, epistemology, St. Thomas Aquinas, Val Plumwood, The publisher's version of record is availible at https://doi.org/10.1163/15685357-20201002

: Gilgamesh the Giant; The Qumran Book of Giants shows familiarity with lore from the classic Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh. It has been proposed that the author of the Book of Giants drew from the epic in order to polemicize against it. There is much to commend this view. The name of the hero of the tale is given to one of the murderous, wicked giants of the primordial age. Examination of fragments of the Book of Giants, in particular 4Q530 2 ii and 4Q531 22, however, suggests that key aspects of its portrayal of Gilgamesh the giant cannot be explained as polemic against Mesopotamian literary traditions. The Book of Giants creatively appropriates motifs from the epic and makes Gilgamesh a character in his own right in ways that often have little to do with Gilgamesh., Keywords: HEROES, POLEMICS, Epics, GILGAMESH, Book of Giants, Mesopotamia, Note: Article published in Dead Sea Discoveries [serial online]. June 2009; 16(2): 221-253. Copyright © 2009 Brill Academic Publishers. This is the post-referred, pre-print version of the article. The definitive version is available at doi:10.1163/156851709X395740., Citation: Goff, Matthew. "Gilgamesh the Giant: The Qumran Book of Giants' Appropriation of Gilgamesh Motifs." Dead Sea Discoveries 16, no. 2 (June 2009): 221-253.

: Intercultural Struggle And The Targeting Of Noncombatants; The prohibition against targeting noncombatants is a long-held commitment in both Muslim and Western military ethics. Nevertheless, some militant Muslim groups, and particularly the Islamic State, have created ever-widening space for attacking those traditionally considered immune from targeting in military operations. Our essay uses two theoretical apparatuses developed in social psychology-cultural cognition and moral foundations theory-to explain how certain aspects of post-9/11 tactics on the part of the United States and its allies have contributed to this phenomenon. We also use these same tools to show that similar dynamics work to contribute to the rightwing backlash against Muslims in the United States., Keywords: discrimination, cultural cognition, just war theory, military ethics, moral foundation theory, Muslim ethics, noncombatant immunity, Publication Note: The publisher’s version of record is available at https://doi.org/10.3390/rel9080230

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Department of Religion