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Introduction: Any historical account of early Indian missions must of necessity find its background in the prevailing political and religious conditions in Europe at the time of the discovery, the exploratlon, and the colonization of the American continent. At the end of the fifteenth century the Commercial Revolution broke upon Europe, and the discovery of America came as a direct result of this revolution. Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Catholic nations of southern and southwestern Europe were exploring and colonizing parts of both North and South America, excepting the Atlantic coast of North America from Florida to the St. Lawrence River. These nations had a strong religious motive in their work. Their colonies were composed of Catholic subjects full of missionary zeal, and from them went forth the Jesuit missionaries to convert the various and sundry tribes of Indians. The success of these Catholic missionaries was marvelous, but that is another story. No Catholic mission, however was established among the Cherokee Indians during the period of this investigation.

This study investigated how we can understand St. Francis as environmentally conscious. The study also presents where those elements can be found in St. Francis own documents and from documents that describe St. Francis. The study also investigate what factors in 13th-century European society might have influenced such ideas. St. Francis of Assisi had a reverent attitude towards all animals and plants. He helped and took care of animals that were weak and vulnerable. He did this because he believed by doing so, they would praise the Lord. He considered some creatures more important than others because they reminded him of the Lord, for example the lamb. He thought long-term, instructing his brothers that they should not cut down a whole tree so that the tree could sprout again. He was environmentally conscious, even though this was because of God and not because he had actual concern for animals and plants themselves. He might have been conscious about the environment because of all the wars that destroyed fields. It might also have been because of the general exploitation of the forest, or a reaction against the Cathars and their negative thoughts about the material world.

Introduction: Any historical account of early Indian missions must of necessity find its background in the prevailing political and religious conditions in Europe at the time of the discovery, the exploratlon, and the colonization of the American continent. At the end of the fifteenth century the Commercial Revolution broke upon Europe, and the discovery of America came as a direct result of this revolution. Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Catholic nations of southern and southwestern Europe were exploring and colonizing parts of both North and South America, excepting the Atlantic coast of North America from Florida to the St. Lawrence River. These nations had a strong religious motive in their work. Their colonies were composed of Catholic subjects full of missionary zeal, and from them went forth the Jesuit missionaries to convert the various and sundry tribes of Indians. The success of these Catholic missionaries was marvelous, but that is another story. No Catholic mission, however was established among the Cherokee Indians during the period of this investigation.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Brown University, 2008. / Vita. Advisor : Tim Harris. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 286-310).

<p> This dissertation investigates the meaning and usage of a particular set of linguistically related Talmudic terms in order to show how and in what cultural context the Talmud began to take shape in the emerging scholastic centers of rabbinic learning in late Sassanian Babylonia. The term tistayem is here defined as meaning, "let it be promulgated" and is thus shown to be inherently redactional in nature. By its very meaning and the way it is employed it speaks to the ordering of extant traditions in new literary frameworks. This term has analogs both in early sources dating from Amoraic disciple circles, in which an analogous term was used to indicate the process by which different reports of statements could be combined to achieve a more authoritative version of a tradition, and in later texts from Geonic times in which the term comes to denote a specific kind of scholastic practice in which traditions were ordered for easy memorization and promulgation. Additionally, parallels to these terms are found in the literatures of Syriac speaking Christians providing avenues for comparisons between these scholastic cultures which shared scripture, language and similar modes of study as worship. Finally, this study demonstrates the ways in which increasing sophistication in usage of these terms mirrors increasing academization during the Talmudic period. As such, evidence is marshalled in support of a more gradual model of the redaction of the Talmud. </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>