How does inter-religious dialogue in Indonesia transform and being transformed by the New Order authoritarian regime in the creation of a strong civil society and a religiously plural and democratic country? By discussing the politicization of religion and mobilization of religious communities by the New Order regime to fight against the Communists in the wake of the 1965 tragedy as the background, this dissertation seeks to analyze the anatomy of inter-religious relations in the country, including its historical roots, pivotal events, enduring issues and consequential development in the later period. The discussion is placed in a wider theoretical context on the role of religion in public life. Based on the analysis of topical biography, academic works, media reports and other reliable unpublished documents as the main sources, the dissertation investigates the intellectual legacy of four selected key thinkers in the field of inter-religious dialogue. It critically discusses the complex interplay between religion and politics in particular relation to such issues as religious pluralism, religious tolerance, exclusivism, human rights, freedom of religion, legal discrimination, and minority-majority relations. It highlights why and how the contesting discourse within a particular religious community about other group, between different religious communities, especially the Muslims and the Christians, as well as between religious communities and the regime move toward certain direction in particular context and then move towards the opposite direction in other context. Despite the wide spread conflict towards the end of the New Order regime and during the 2000s, the dissertation proved that inter-religious relations in Indonesia in general developed from antagonism to more dialogical relations over the period. The four selected key thinkers of inter-religious dialogue and their intellectual legacy demonstrated how religion could make fundamental contribution in the creation of democracy in a religiously plural society. / Religion

The relations between the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church have long been studied over the years in academia. Much focus has been placed upon the Fourth Crusade as the final act that brought the schism of 1054 into full development between the two churches. However, it was during the First Crusade that the Roman Catholic Church made its first concrete efforts to repair relations with the Eastern Orthodox Church. Yet such efforts were eventually twisted to suit the purposes of some of the crusading lords, and thus becoming arguably the largest blow to church reunification because it lead to the permanent formation of an anti-Greek attitude in Latin Europe.

This thesis deals with some aspects of the religiosity of the members of the Czech community, who claim to be a part of a Messianic Judaism movement. The text is based on the field research I did within the congregation. In the introduction, I attempt to present definitions of this type of religiosity, describe the historical development of the movement, make connection to evangelical religiosity, outline its basic pillars, clarify the role of non-Jewish believers in this movement, and ultimately outline possible forms of worship. Next, I describe my journey into the field, the development of my relationships with the informers and then I evaluate my insider-outsider position in the community. In the practical part of the thesis, I try to reveal the path of individual church members to this type of religiosity, relying on Kaell's concept of "born-again seeking". Based on testimonies from individual believers, I try to uncover why the congregation does not accept more elements of Pentecostal religiosity, as can be seen in many Messianic communities, especially in the United States and England. On the contrary, the church's aims seem to be a counterweight to emotional Pentecostal religiosity. On the phenomena of the celebration of Jewish holidays, the observance of the Sabbath, the relations to the...

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Cette thèse examine la particularité de la démarche qui consiste à traduire le Nouveau Testament en hébreu et qui implique de transférer le texte fondateur du christianisme dans un contexte juif. Elle se concentre sur la façon dont le traducteur utilise la Bible hébraïque et la littérature rabbinique ancienne pour accomplir ce transfère. Il est montré que grâce aux liens historiques, théologiques et conceptuels étroits entre le Nouveau Testament et ces deux corpus juifs, l’emploi d’éléments repris d’eux pour rendre des éléments du Nouveau Testament est particulièrement efficace pour augmenter la compréhensibilité du Nouveau Testament en hébreu et son acceptabilité dans un contexte juif. Cependant, l’usage de tels éléments dans la traduction du Nouveau Testament en hébreu risque souvent de gommer les spécificités du Nouveau Testament par rapport au judaïsme. Le travail du traducteur du Nouveau Testament en hébreu implique donc une constante hésitation quant à la pertinence des formes d’expressions hébraïques et des concepts juifs pour refléter les formes d’expression et les concepts du Nouveau Testament, et, plus généralement, quant aux affinités et aux contrastes entre le christianisme et le judaïsme. / This dissertation examines the specificity of translating the New Testament into Hebrew, an activity which involves transferring the founding text of Christianity into a Jewish context. The dissertation focuses on the use of the Hebrew Bible and of ancient rabbinic literature in bringing about this transfer. It is shown that because of the close historical, theological and conceptual links between the New Testament and these two Jewish corpora, the use of elements borrowed from them in rendering elements found in the New Testament is particularly effective for enabling the New Testament to be easily understood in Hebrew and to be accepted in a Jewish context. However, the use of such elements in a Hebrew translation of the New Testament may often result in blurring features of the New Testament that are distinguished from Judaism. For this reason, the translator of the New Testament into Hebrew constantly hesitates whether Hebrew forms of expression and Jewish concepts are suitable for reflecting the New Testament’s forms of expression and concepts, and asks himself, more generally, what exactly unites and distinguishes Christianity and Judaism.

This dissertation provides a comprehensive account of Martin Luther’s Hebrew translation in his academic mid-career. Apart from the Psalms, no book of the Hebrew Bible has yet been examined in any comprehensive manner in terms of Luther’s Hebrew translation. Moreover, research to date has predominantly focused on either ascertaining Luther’s personal Hebrew skills, or on identifying his sources for Hebrew knowledge. This dissertation furthers the scholarly understanding of Luther’s Hebrew by examining his Minor Prophets translation, one of the final pieces of his first complete translation of the Hebrew Bible. As part of the analysis, it investigates the relationship between philology and theology in his Hebrew translation, focusing specifically on one of the themes that dominated his interpretation of the Prophets: his concept of Anfechtung. Chapter 1 establishes the context of Luther’s academic mid-career Hebrew, providing a brief sketch of the history of his Minor Prophets translation, followed by an overview of the Hebrew resources in and around Wittenberg which he had to draw upon. Chapter 2 examines the role of the obscurity of the Hebrew text in his translation, and how this obscurity led to various types of contradictions and vacillations in his interpretations. Chapter 3 investigates the role that Luther’s sense of the semantic intensity of the Hebrew language played in his translation. Chapter 4 examines Luther’s use of “inner-biblical interpretation” – i.e. biblical quotations and references – to support, and moreover, to build his translations of the Hebrew texts. Finally, Chapter 5 examines the influence of Hebrew on Luther’s exploitation of the mystical tradition in his translation of the Minor Prophets. This dissertation, in short, shows that by mid-career, the impact of Hebrew on Luther’s Bible translation was immense and very diverse, more so than has been appreciated. It expands the frame of reference with which scholars can understand Luther’s Hebrew. It provides detailed analyses of many examples of his Hebrew translation which have never before been discussed or examined in any depth, and it provides hundreds of examples of his methodological handling of Hebrew translation issues. And it includes one of the most exhaustive analyses to date of three key philological challenges that confronted him in translating the Bible: Hebrew figures of speech, the Hebrew trope of repetition, and Hebrew transliteration. This dissertation also includes as an Appendix a substantial body of refined data from Luther’s Hebrew translation, which further illuminates the examples in this study, and facilitates additional analysis for future research.

The present dissertation offers a literary profile of the enigmatic Gaonic era work known as Pirqei deRabbi Eliezer (PRE). This profile is based on an approach informed by the methodology theorized in the Manchester-Durham Typology of Anonymous and Pseudepigraphic Jewish Literature, c.200 BCE to c.700 CE, Project (TAPJLA). It is offered as a necessary prolegomenon to further research on contextualising PRE in relation to earlier Jewish tradition (both rabbinic and non-rabbinic), in relation to Jewish literature of the Gaonic period, and in relation to the historical development of Judaism in the early centuries of Islam. Chapter 1 sets out the research question, surveys, and critiques existing work on PRE, and outlines the methodology. Chapter 2 provides necessary background to the study of PRE, setting out the evidence with regard to its manuscripts and editions, its recensional and redactional history, its reception, and its language, content, dating, and provenance. Chapters 3 and 4 are the core of the dissertation and contain the literary profile of PRE. Chapter 3 offers an essentially synchronic text-linguistic description of the work under the following headings: Perspective; PRE as Narrative; PRE as Commentary; PRE as Thematic Discourse; and Coherence. Chapter 4 offers an essentially diachronic discussion of PRE’s intertexts, that is to say, other texts with which it has, or is alleged to have, a relationship. The texts selected for discussion are: the Hebrew Bible, Rabbinic Literature (both the classic rabbinic “canon” and “late midrash”), the Targum, the Pseudepigrapha, Piyyut, and certain Christian and Islamic traditions. Chapter 5 offers conclusions in the form of a discussion of the implications of the literary profile presented in chapters 3-4 for the methodology of the TAPJLA Project, for the problem of the genre of PRE, and for the question of PRE’s literary and historical context. The substantial Appendix is integral to the argument. It sets out much of the raw data on which the argument is based. I have removed this data to an appendix so as not to impede the flow of the discussion in the main text. The Appendix also contains my entry for the TAPJLA database, to help illuminate the discussion of my methodology, and a copy of my published article on the cosmology of PRE, to provide further support for my analysis of this theme in PRE.

This study has a threefold aim:  to make a theological contextualisation of four medieval anti-Jewish motifs in Christian iconography represented in churches in Sweden and to study how these motifs has been described and contextualised in guidebooks and other material written for the interested public from post-war to recent years. The study also explores the role of heritagisation and musealisation of the church buildings in relation to how the motifs are described in the material. There is also an underlying, constructive aim: to suggest how The Church of Sweden can work with these motifs in theological reflection and historical presentations to the public concerning this part of the cultural heritage. The motifs analysed are The Judensau, Ecclesia and Synagoga, Cain and a motif illustrating a medieval legend about the funeral of the Virgin Mary. They were all painted in Swedish churches in a time when there were no Jewish settlements in the area. The study argues that the iconography can be interpreted as an expression of othering and that the four motifs can all be theologically contextualised by using Jesper Svartvik’s threefold typology of Christian anti-Jewish discourse. The study further shows that very few of the texts in the guidebooks and other books in the material describes the motifs and contextualises them theologically.  The study suggests that this can be related to the more than hundred years old heritagisation- and musealisation process in The Church of Sweden which has created a twofold and split role of the church as both manager of the religious mission and of the cultural heritage.   It has not been the primary aim of the church to theologically contextualise the cultural heritage. New questions concerning the motifs arise in today’s multicultural and multireligious society. The study suggests that the church can approach the part of the cultural heritage which today is seen as problematic from David Lowenthal’s concept of an informed acceptance and tolerance of the past in order to be able to take responsibility for the future in dialogue with others.