In western apocalyptic literature, the Vision of Adamnan holds a unique position. Though other visions, contemporary or prior, may give analogs for some of the material it contains, there is no vision which offers exact parallels to the most striking elerments in this Irish vision. One may read in vain-the Visions of Fursa, Drythelm, Laisren, Tundale, the Monk of Wenlock, Dwayne Miles, Frate Alberico, and a dozen others, in an attempt to find a similarly conceived Other World. By this fact alone the Vision of Adamnan attracts attention: it is in such marked contrast to the general trend of western apocalyptic. This contrast may be-detected in two outstanding features. First, the presentation of heaven as a realm of light, with God described as a burning-fire, surrounded by choirs of fiery, angels. The traditional paradise, with its sensual delights has been eliminated. Three features of sense-pleasure remain: light, fragrance, song. There is no celestial Eden, no rivers of milk or honey, no tree of life. Instead we find obscure symbolic figures: the three birds on the throne, the three zones about the Divine Crown, the Crystal Veil about the Flaming Throne, the precious stones, the flaming jewels, the, fiery circle.

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In this thesis I focus attention on the Baha’i process of community-building within its periodic context. Towards this aim, I answer the question of how Baha’is translate the word of God into practice to construct their social reality. This project takes a constructionist approach and applies Peter Berger’s conceptual framework to interpret Baha’i scriptures. This study also takes an ethnographic methodology that includes semi-structured interviews as well as observations to study the lived experience of the Bahá’ís in Sheffield. I demonstrate that the stability of the Bahá’í community-building efforts was maintained from 1934 up until 1996. Nonetheless, since 1996, radical shifts have happened in the Bahá’í community, regarding the aims and the means of the community building. In this research I have identified the shifting period of the community-building among the Bahá’ís as deconstruction. The study verifies the changes in community-building have been radical enough to change the nature of the community from an international, institutionalized community into various, similar, local communities spread all around the world. Accordingly, an institutional community aiming to establish a New World Order through the institutes of the Bahá’í Administrative Order is turning into an individual-centred community aiming for the betterment of the world through starting from the neighbourhoods. The study adds to Berger’s conceptual framework for the social construction of reality by introducing the notion of “deconstruction”. Through this research, I will also enrich the literature of the sociology of religion regarding studying Baha’is constructing their desired community based on their interpretations of their holy writings.

Dispensing Dispensationalism explores the hermeneutic of Cyrus Ingerson Scofield as found in the second edition of the Scofield Reference Bible, published in 1917. It seeks to prove that this is no ordinary reference Bible but is a volume which employs the annotation of selected texts to promote a classical dispensationalist interpretation. It also aims to contextualise Scofield in succession to John Nelson Darby and as predecessor to later dispensationalists such as Lewis Sperry Chafer, Charles Ryrie, Craig Blaising, Darrell Bock and Robert Saucy. The works of these and other authors are considered alongside the Scofield Reference Bible and case studies giving scholarly analyses of three important sections of the annotation are included at the end of the thesis. Tables and graphs are provided throughout the thesis for illustration and clarification. Dispensing Dispensationalism analyses the Scofield Reference Bible in relation to a general dispensational hermeneutic and to six elements which are essential to dispensationalism: its commitment to a literal interpretation of the biblical text and to evangelical doctrine, its employment of a dualistic interpretation of the text which sees Israel and the Church as eternally separate entities, its use of the concepts of dispensations and covenants, its expectation of the imminent pretribulational rapture of the true Church, and its focus on apocalyptic and millennial expectations. This study reveals that the Scofield Reference Bible fulfils each of these criteria and continues to propagate a form of dispensationalism which was extant at the turn of the twentieth century. This may be termed 'classical dispensationalism'. Since the Scofield Reference Bible is still a best-selling Bible today, it acts as a time-capsule, promoting older ideas at a time when dispensationalism in its progressive form has developed and changed.

The present study argues that one of the ways Luke redefines the idea of the world is by exploring the meaning of oikoumene, “the inhabited world.” This Greek term was a representative concept to signify the Mediterranean World. Subsequently the term oikoumene was embraced by other cultures which needed a concept to portray the world, such as that of the Romans and the Jews. Each culture adopted the term but distinctively adapted it within its own context. As a result, the term included various meanings—political, cultural, and religious—by the first century CE. These contextual interpretations reflect the fact that each culture established its own subjective worldview, namely a self-centred way of thinking. Subsequently, within the context of various worldviews, it was necessary for the biblical authors to clarify how audiences would perceive the oikoumene they inhabited. Luke employs the term oikoumene eight times in his two-volume book. His usages of the term reflect the various political, cultural, and religious conceptions of the oikoumene in his time. For Luke, the oikoumene is the world ruled by Roman hegemony in terms of politics and the pagan cult in terms of religion, but the oikoumene should be restored by Jesus and then his followers within their eschatological hope. It is remarkable that these views converge within the Acts narrative, thereby drawing an image of the inhabited world. Luke superimposes two contrasting worlds in Acts. Firstly, Luke exploits the prominent discourse of the Greeks about the inhabited world but within this he resorts to the Jewish reliance on an ancestral theme to describe the inhabited world, thereby providing a schematic picture of that inhabited world created by God in terms of geographic features and ethnic origin. Furthermore, Luke attempts to depict the world before his eyes which is, absolutely, the Roman oikoumene. Luke implies that the world portrayed in Acts 2 is established according to the Roman oikoumene, thereby creating a newly constructed oikoumene. Acts is a narrative in which the Roman oikoumene is retrieved into the world that Luke envisages in Acts 2. For Luke, the ideal oikoumene is the newly-restored world founded upon the Roman world.

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