<p> This thesis uses the diaries of Catherine Robertson McCartney (1838-1922) to define the distinctive characteristics of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Scotland and America between 1856 and 1881. It gives a window into the history of the denomination during the mid-nineteenth century, using cultural, ethnographic, institutional, and gender analyses. The thesis explores the logocentric heritage of the tradition and shows how the denomination as a whole, and Catherine particularly, continued to define their identity in the Victorian and Evangelical milieu of the period.</p><p> Reformed Presbyterian institutional identity had begun to shift away from political dissent due partly to a continued interaction with the broader Evangelical tradition of the time. As a result, the historic logocentric forms of worship, developed largely during the Scottish Reformation, became key to Reformed Presbyterian identity. This logocentricsm and shared commitment with other Evangelicals to revivals, Scripture, evangelism, atonement, and conversion provided Catherine access into the broader religious culture of her time. Yet, the separateness that the dissenters had historically practiced, displayed in the testimonies, meant Catherine and other Reformed Presbyterians were indeed within the category of Evangelicalism, but could never be wholly a part of, nor formally identify as Evangelicals.</p>

<p> The Orphic myth in the <i>Pseudo-Clementines</i> has attracted the attention of scholars attempting to decipher the evolution of the myth. Between the two versions of the <i>Pseudo-Clementines</i>, the <i> Klementia</i> (also known as the <i>Homilies</i>) and the <i> Recognition</i>, the majority of scholars have determined that the <i> Homilies</i> preserve the oldest version of the myth and reflect the <i> Basic Writer</i>'s presentation. The predominant problem with this assertion is that it neglects to address the lack of a detailed comparative analysis of both texts.</p><p> The textual method used in this study will involve a comparison of parallel sections of the <i>Homilies</i> and the <i>Recognition</i>. The aim is to identify the more redacted version as the secondary text and the common material as reflective of the outline of the <i>Basic Writer </i>. Moreover, those findings will be compared to other versions of the myth. This analysis will demonstrate that, in the Orphic material, the <i> Recognition</i> preserves the older version of the <i>Pseudo-Clementines </i> and also reflects the original presentation by the <i>Basic Writer</i>.</p>

<p> In the wake of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, America was reeling on multiple fronts. While experiencing a collective wave of bereavement, Americans struggled to understand a phenomenon that they had been uniquely shielded from&mdash;that of holy war or the Islamic variant, <i>jihad.</i> Demonizing the enemy was a defensive reaction in the aftermath of 9/11, but cultural projections of "us versus them" fuel terrorist mindsets increasing the likelihood of further conflicts. </p><p> While it is typically assumed that holy war emerges in monotheism, the dissertation argues the custom arises in the polytheistic ancient Near East where indigenous ideologies view deities foremost as warriors. The Babylonian <i> Enuma Elish</i> is an exemplar of polytheistic <i>divine warrior </i> mythologies expressing cultural ideals about warfare as an existential struggle for order over chaos, equated to life over death. The earliest generation of deities fights to the death in epic battles that result in the creation of the cosmos and the human race. The work of humans is to toil for the gods, most particularly in warfare, as earthly conflicts have lethal cosmic consequences. </p><p> The human world of ancient warfare was saturated in the supernatural. Divination determined war strategies and warrior kings were viewed as divinely selected. Immanent deities lived in temple cultic statues carried to the battlefield where they actively adjudicated disputes through war. Warfare is ongoing because polarization between "good and evil" is perpetual. These indigenous customs migrated into monotheistic holy war. While single God religion influences ideas about holy war, polytheistic customs and rites remain surprisingly intact and can be detected in the 9/11 attacks. </p><p> This dissertation engages an interdisciplinary approach that includes mythological studies, depth psychology, religious studies, cultural-military history, archeology, political science, interviews with suicide killers, and field research in the Middle East. </p><p> The dissertation's findings alter concepts about modern <i>jihad, </i> positing that its central tenets are rooted in polytheistic customs and rituals. To the modern mind, the connection between religion and warfare is often viewed as pathological. From the perspective of human history, invoking deities to legitimize warfare is normative and typical.</p>

<p> The movie Dogville (2003) provides viewers with a rare and provocative twist on differences between on the one hand the rigorous, Old Testament Jehovah, characterized by rules, and by rewards or punishments in this life, and on the other hand the loving, forgiving Christ and God of the New Testament and later Christianity who are characterized by forgiveness, and by rewards or punishments in an eternal afterlife. The movie, especially its ending, challenges the forgiving nature of the New Testament God and Christ, and makes a case that the Old Testament, rigorous Jehovah is more appropriate, at least for humans who respect themselves as responsible grown-ups. Earlier than these two views of God and man, and still alive and kicking, is a third view, the "Heroic." God is irrelevant here, either as a source of rules or as a source of forgiveness and redemption. Rather, man generates his own meaning by accepting his fate and struggling to do the best he can; this life is all there is and the struggle, i.e. living it is the only meaning. The three views can be seen on a continuum with the Heroic on one end and the forgiving Christ on the other, and the rigorous Jehovah in between and closer to the heroic than to the forgiving. The Dogville point of view, preferring a rigorous God to a forgiving one, is very rarely found in literature (the Grand Inquisitor episode in The Brothers Karamazov is similar to some extent) but both the Heroic and the forgiving Christian views appear everywhere, in all kinds of non-fiction, and either explicitly or as metaphors or parables in fiction. The Heroic view is taken here to include not only classic Greek and Roman heroic writings (e..g. those of Homer and Virgil) but also more modern schools of thought including Nietzsche, the existentialists, and other "God is dead" points of view. The paucity of the first view in literature is mirrored by the small number of its followers: all self-identifying Jews are less than 0.5% of the world's population and the orthodox are a minority within that. In stark contrast, about one-third of individuals world-wide self-identify as Christian. Followers of the Heroic view, roughly measured by self-identifying atheists and perhaps including agnostics, are between 15 and 20 percent of the population of the USA. Focusing on the United States, the data show that the number of adherents of each of the two extremes of an expanded continuum, i.e. the Heroic view on one hand and the born-again Protestant version of the forgiving view on the other, has been growing while the numbers of followers of everything in the middle, i.e. Judaism (excluding its New Age, non-religious variants), Roman Catholicism, and mainstream Protestantism have been declining. The waxing and waning of these different views are evaluated in the lights of literature, philosophy, psychology, marketing, and the idea that ideas ("memes" as coined, described and popularized by Richard Dawkins) evolve, endure or disappear according to the Darwinian principle of natural selection. The conclusion is that there are important, long-term reasons for the observed trend, and that therefore both born-again Protestantism and atheism are likely to continue to take market share from their competitors in the middle.</p>

<p> This study seeks to discover what Carolingian monastic hagiography can tell us about monastic rules and customs in the late eighth and early ninth centuries, a time when a court-sponsored reform movement was shaking the foundations of traditional monastic practice. Reform legislation was trying to impose one rule&mdash;the Rule of Benedict&mdash;and one set of customs&mdash;written by the reformers&mdash;upon all monasteries of the realm, rejecting the other rules and customs by which monks had lived for centuries. Hagiography is one of the most important sources that monks produced to reveal the aspirations and self-identity of their order, but scholarship has never systematically used it to examine whether such radical reforms affected the way hagiography defined monastic perfection and the way it discussed rules and customs. This study bridges that gap, to find that hagiography provides a helpful counterbalance to the overly court-centric, legalistic approach to the reforms. Hagiographical evidence shows great continuity between Carolingian monastic ideals and those of earlier centuries, thus proving and contextualizing the fundamental failure of the reforms. Instead of discarding their past traditions to make room for a new, exclusively Benedictine tradition, Carolingian hagiographers portray a pluralistic monastic world in which many monastic rules and traditions can comfortably coexist, in which their own holy founders' customs are as valuable to their communities' spiritual development as the Rule of Benedict is. From the perspective of these monks, the Rule of Benedict is praiseworthy and can be used to legitimize their hagiographical heroes, but it remains merely one rule among many.</p>

<p> My dissertation is on how the combination of religious law and constitutional law in Pakistan affects the daily lives of the women living there. The time frame to be discussed is from Pakistan's inception as a country in 1947 through the most prominent regimes that changed the Constitutional law, i.e. to the mid 1980's. During this epoch, Pakistan adopted Shari'a Law (law based on the Islamic faith) into its constitution. By chronicling the historic development of Pakistan's Constitution, I will show a correspondence between the specific laws and amendments with the attrition of women's rights in Pakistan and the deterioration of the quality of their lives. Although, Shari'a Law is based on the teachings of Islam, I contend these laws run contrary to the traditions and directives of the sacred texts, the Qur'an, Hadith (recorded oral traditions), and Sunnah (habits and practices of the Prophet Muhammad). By tracing specific Shari'a laws back to their roots and investigate the circumstances that impact Pakistani women to ascertain if they indeed burden, restrict, and quite possibly, endanger the lives of Pakistani women, and furthermore, violate the principles taught by the Prophet Muhammad, who exhorted to his followers, "Be kind to your women." The Constitution of Pakistan claims it provides equal rights for its citizens by proclaiming all people are equal (Preamble of the Constitution #8). I argue that the oppression of women in Pakistan can be linked directly to the introduction of Shari'a Law into the Pakistani Constitution and Shari'a Law is being used to justify the poor treatment of women, but it is in fact a distortion of the teachings of Islam. Therefore, women's lack of civil rights in Pakistan is attributable to male chauvinism that is based in culture, rather than religion. What can be done to reconcile the gender discrimination in Shari'a Law with parity for all citizens stated by the Constitution?</p>

<p> The analysis in this thesis is centered around a technical examination which I conducted based on the Pseudo-Clementine research of Bernhard Rehm, Georg Strecker, H. U. Meijboom and F. Stanley Jones along with the inquiry of Brenda Dean Schildgen regarding the reception of the Gospel of Mark in the New Testament. The first goal is to revise the Markan Pseudo-Clementine correlations of Rehm, Strecker and Meijboom. The second goal is to present a more correct and accessible list of Markan correlations for future research of the reception of scripture into the Pseudo-Clementines. The third goal is to determine which author or authors of the Pseudo-Clementines used the Gospel of Mark and to what purpose. The most important goal is to further the scholarly research on the reception of the Gospel of Mark. It is my hope that this research prompts scholars in the future to search more thoroughly for the reception of Mark in the PseudoClementines.</p>

<p> Around 260 BCE, King Ashoka Maurya is said to have ceased warring, marauding and expanding his kingdom and converted to a small local pacifist religious sect centered in the Ganges River valley of Northern India, and in so doing, spread Buddhism to the nether regions of his kingdom. This is the noble story that is told of Ashoka, but in reality, his actions may have been alternatively motivated than simply being an evangelist for Buddhism. Examining stone inscriptions and other writings regarding Ashoka will shed light on his attitudes towards Buddhism and other local religious sects, which will help reevaluate this cursory assumption about Ashoka's relationship with Buddhism. </p>

<p> West Virginia underwent significant changes in the four decades between 1880 and 1920. The Gilded Age and the Progressive Era witnessed political, social, cultural, and economic upheavals as industrialists looked to exploit natural resources and propel the Mountain State into a position of leadership in a modern national economy. Railroads opened up the remote interior counties, paving the way for the oil, coal, and timber industries. The West Virginia Central and Pittsburg Railway, under the direction of Henry Gassaway Davis, scaled the highest peaks of the Allegheny Mountains. Davis and his business associates quickly took control of the timber and coal reserves in the mountain counties. Local elites allied themselves with larger capitalists, forming partnerships which enabled outsiders to dominate local political and economic life throughout the period. </p><p> Religious transformations characterized the period as well. Nation-wide, Protestant missionaries moved into the South, seeking to evangelize, educate, and uplift whites and blacks. Northern churches paid particular attention to the mountain South. However, West Virginia received significantly less money and manpower from national denominations than the other states in Appalachia. State and local religious organizations stepped in and ensured that the rapidly in-creasing population of the state would not go unreached. They used the railroad to their ad-vantage as well. </p><p> Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians, the three largest Protestant groups in the country and in West Virginia, led the way. All three already had some presence in the mountains, and denominational networks ensured that these mountain churches had some ties to mainline Christianity. Missionaries working in the most remote regions reinforced traditional doctrine and practice while strengthening denominational ties. Churches attracted people of all social ranks, although Methodists and Baptists offered more opportunities for working class members. While the secular affairs of mountain communities and counties remained firmly in control of industrialists and their local affiliates, the sacred sphere remained open for all. </p><p> At the same time, churches across the state joined in increasingly loud calls for moral re-form, particularly for new Sabbath and temperance laws. Thus, Protestant churches across the state reflected a mainline yet conservative doctrinal outlook that emphasized denominational distinctives while championing a unified, broadly Protestant culture for the creation of sought-after Christian America. Industrialists such as Henry Gassaway Davis shared the vision of a Christian America and favored many of the same moral reforms. They worked together with churches to achieve common goals. However, despite the autonomy of the sacred sphere, the secular sphere had become dominant in the Alleghenies, in West Virginia, and in the United States. Thus, when the goals conflicted, as in the case of Sabbath reform, the secular usually won, thus further weakening and isolating the sacred.</p>

<p> This thesis is based upon my artistic interaction and response to the 5,000-year-old myth of the Sumerian deity, Inanna. The main element of this thesis consists of a body of artwork that evolved out of the interweaving of textual, psychological, and artistic research. The artwork is an artist's response to a particular juncture in the descent portion of Inanna's myth . . . the moment of her transformation. This amalgamation of artistic and textual artifacts documents the power of an ancient story, from a long-dead culture, to reach through time and touch an individual life. The written documentation draws from diverse areas of study such as alchemy, mythology, depth psychology, women's spirituality, and women's studies. Through readings, conferences, workshops, one-on-one conversations, active imagination, and art-making I have woven together a glimpse, perhaps a momentary perspective, of an encounter with a divine feminine archetype. I am a visual artist and my lens is that of a 21^st century woman and a maker-of-things. I gather, experience, and express my knowingness from this point of view and my thesis reflects my perspective.</p>