Die Dissertation mit dem Titel „Studien zur lateinischen Sapientia Salomonis“ geht vor allem hinsichtlich der Vulgatatradition, aber auch der übrigen lateinischen Überlieferung der SapSal auf Textkritik, Textgeschichte und Textvergleich ein. Zu Beginn wird herausgearbeitet, inwiefern und weshalb sich die drei modernen kritischen Ausgaben des Vulgatatexts der SapSal bei ihrer Rekonstruktion von dessen Archetyp unterscheiden. Zudem wird eine Bewertung voneinander abweichender Lesarten in den jeweiligen Rezensionszeilen gegeben. Daran anschließend wird die Frage behandelt, warum eine qualitativ eher mangelhafte lateinische Textform der SapSal Eingang in die Biblia Vulgata gefunden hat. Zunächst wird gezeigt, dass die Vulgatatradition der SapSal im fünften Jahrhundert n.Chr. in Rom aufkommt; hiervon ausgehend wird der Erfolg dieser Textform nicht einer gezielten Auswahl, sondern einer Verflechtung und Wechselwirkung zwischen der Verwendung dieses Texts durch Katholiken in Rom und der römischen Buchproduktion zugeschrieben. Schließlich wird anhand der Wiedergabe der griechischen Begriffe athanasía, aphtharsía, dikaiosýne und nómos sowie der zugehörigen Adjektive dargelegt, dass sich der Vulgatatext der SapSal zwar eng an seine griechischen und lateinischen Vorlagentexte anschließt, aber auf Grund seiner Übersetzungsweise auch Besonderheiten aufweist. Textliche Bezüge gehen im Vulgatatext gegenüber dem griechischen Text teilweise verloren und die eschatologischen Entwürfe des griechischen Texts erscheinen im Vulgatatext der SapSal als etwas reduziert. Darüber hinaus wird deutlich, dass der Vulgatatext der SapSal – anders als der griechische Urtext – nicht aus einem jüdischen, sondern aus einem christlichen Milieu hervorgegangen ist. Insgesamt wird eine bessere Verortung der Vulgatatradition der SapSal hinsichtlich der übrigen lateinischen Überlieferung, ihres historischen Umfelds und ihrer griechischen Vorlage erreicht. / The dissertation entitled "Studies on the Latin Wisdom of Solomon" deals with textual criticism, textual history and the comparison of texts, namely with regard to the Vulgate tradition but also with regard to the other Latin traditions of Wis. First, it is brought out to what extent and why the three modern critical editions of the Vulgate text of Wis differ in their reconstructions of its archetype. Moreover, the differing readings in the respective recension lines are evaluated. Subsequently, the question is addressed for which reason a qualitatively rather deficient Latin text form of Wis has found its way into the Biblia Vulgata. Initially, the Vulgate tradition of Wis is shown to have emerged in the fifth century AD in Rome; based on this, the success of this text form is ascribed not to a purposeful decision but to an interdependence and an interrelation between the use of this text by catholics in Rome and the Roman book production. Eventually, by means of the translation of the Greek terms athanasía, aphtharsía, dikaiosýne and nómos and their corresponding adjectives, the Vulgate text of Wis is demonstrated to affiliate to its Greek and Latin model texts closely but to feature peculiarities due to its translation method as well. In the Vulgate text, textual references are dissolved in comparison to the Greek text, and the eschatological sketches of the Greek text appear to be somewhat reduced in the Vulgate text of Wis. In addition, it becomes apparent that the Vulgate text of Wis has arisen – unlike the original Greek text – not from a Jewish but from a Christian milieu. All in all, a better contextualisation of the Vulgate tradition of Wis regarding the other Latin traditions, its historical environment and its Greek Vorlage is achieved.

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This dissertation attempts to answer two questions. First, what is the social function of the letter of James? Second, how does James design the structure of the text to align with its communicative goal? This study presumes the letter of James as a member of ancient wisdom literature. Contrary to common (mis)understandings, ancient wisdom literature shows a general tendency in its composition. A legitimate sage collects and evokes old sayings and proverbs. Then, the wisdom is reinterpreted and contemporized for the current situation. Through this process, the sage helps his readers develop a sense of right and wrong, develop moral reasoning skills, and cultivate virtues. I will argue that this pattern, moral formation, is present in the unfolding of James’s letter to his diasporic readers. Regarding the structure of the letter of James, after Dibelius, many attempts have been made to present the letter as a cohesive text with a literary structure, which is unified by a single global theme. In this framework, most of what have been proposed as a structure of the letter is more or less topic (or theme)-based. Unfortunately, however, neither a rigorous definition of topic nor a method for determining it has been clearly stated. The limits of the topic-based approach become problematic when applied to the structure of James whereby diverse topics are scattered here and there throughout the text. Attempts to draw intricate lines between these units through topical or thematic similarities make the structure of James very complicated (e.g., inclusio or chiasm). This study attempts to break this methodological impasse by employing Ruqaiya Hasan’s genre theory developed in a systemic functional framework. James’s letter is delimited in terms of function, not topic or theme. In search for the function of each segment, I explore textual (semantic chain and cohesive harmony), ideational (transitivity, verbal aspect, and voice), and interpersonal meanings (grammatical person and speech functions).

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The thrust of this thesis proceeds from two main presuppositions. The first is that the Old Testament wisdom books are generally ignored or not given enough attention in the studies about water and water-related phenomena. The second is that the romantic perspective on elements of the natural world is dominant in eco-theological studies. To highlight this twofold problem, a sample survey into the works of the scholarly biblical dictionaries, encyclopedias, books and articles as well as ecotheological studies is offered in the second chapter of this thesis. In an attempt to (partly) address this problem, this study argues that, firstly, despite a scarcity of scholarly interest in water and water-related phenomena in the Old Testament wisdom books, this body of literature contains a rich variety of references to water and water-related phenomena. Secondly, it is shown in this study that an overly-romantic view of nature does not do justice to the richness, complexity, and variety of portrayals of elements of nature in the texts themselves. In this sense, this study aims at retrieving ecological wisdom from particular texts that give voice to both the life-giving and life-threatening potential of water and water-related phenomena in the Old Testament wisdom books. The exploration is facilitated by elements of the historical-critical and literary approaches through an ecological framework informed by four of the six eco-justice principles of the Earth Bible Project. The thesis suggests that scholars who attempt ecological readings of the Bible will gain more if they also take less favoured texts into consideration. The exploration of water and water-related phenomena in the Old Testament wisdom books, therefore, goes beyond what studies on water or water-related phenomena have hitherto done. Furthermore, a study on both aspects of water as a life-giving and life-threatening entity demonstrates that an eco-friendly view of nature does not do justice to the biblical texts themselves. This will be seen through the third, fourth, fifth and sixth chapters. / Old Testament and Ancient Near Eastern Studies / D. Th. (Old Testament)

Simulation has been used to model combat for a long time. Recently, it has been accepted that combat is a complex adaptive system (CAS). Multi-agent systems (MAS) are also considered as a powerful modelling and development environment to simulate combat. Agent-based distillations (ABD) - proposed by the US Marine Corp - are a type of MAS used mainly by the military for exploring large scenario spaces. ABDs that facilitated the analysis and understanding of combat include: ISAAC, EINSTein, MANA, CROCADILE and BactoWars. With new concepts such as networked forces, previous ABDs can implicitly simulate a networked force. However, the architectures of these systems limit the potential advantages gained from the use of networks. In this thesis, a novel network centric multi-agent architecture (NCMAA) is pro-posed, based purely on network theory and CAS. In NCMAA, each relationship and interaction is modelled as a network, with the entities or agents as the nodes. NCMAA offers the following advantages: 1. An explicit model of interactions/relationships: it facilitates the analysis of the role of interactions/relationships in simulations; 2. A mechanism to capture the interaction or influence between networks; 3. A formal real-time reasoning framework at the network level in ABDs: it interprets the emergent behaviours online. For a long time, it has been believed that it is hard in CAS to reason about emerging phenomena. In this thesis, I show that despite being almost impossible to reason about the behaviour of the system by looking at the components alone because of high nonlinearity, it is possible to reason about emerging phenomena by looking at the network level. This is undertaken through analysing network dynamics, where I provide an English-like reasoning log to explain the simulation. Two implementations of a new land-combat system called the Warfare Intelligent System for Dynamic Optimization of Missions (WISDOM) are presented. WISDOM-I is built based on the same principles as those in existing ABDs while WISDOM-II is built based on NCMAA. The unique features of WISDOM-II include: 1. A real-time network analysis toolbox: it captures patterns while interaction is evolving during the simulation; 2. Flexible C3 (command, control and communication) models; I 3. Integration of tactics with strategies: the tactical decisions are guided by the strategic planning; 4. A model of recovery: it allows users to study the role of recovery capability and resources; 5. Real-time visualization of all possible information: it allows users to intervene during the simulation to steer it differently in human-in-the-loop simulations. A comparison between the fitness landscapes of WISDOM-I and II reveals similarities and differences, which emphasise the importance and role of the networked architecture and the addition of strategic planning. Lastly but not least, WISDOM-II is used in an experiment with two setups, with and without strategic planning in different urban terrains. When the strategic planning was removed, conclusions were similar to traditional ABDs but were very different when the system ran with strategic planning. As such, I show that results obtained from traditional ABDs - where rational group planning is not considered - can be misleading. Finally, the thesis tests and demonstrates the role of communication in urban ter-rains. As future warfighting concepts tend to focus on asymmetric warfare in urban environments, it was vital to test the role of networked forces in these environments. I demonstrate that there is a phase transition in a number of situations where highly dense urban terrains may lead to similar outcomes as open terrains, while medium to light dense urban terrains have different dynamics

The thrust of this thesis proceeds from two main presuppositions. The first is that the Old Testament wisdom books are generally ignored or not given enough attention in the studies about water and water-related phenomena. The second is that the romantic perspective on elements of the natural world is dominant in eco-theological studies. To highlight this twofold problem, a sample survey into the works of the scholarly biblical dictionaries, encyclopedias, books and articles as well as ecotheological studies is offered in the second chapter of this thesis. In an attempt to (partly) address this problem, this study argues that, firstly, despite a scarcity of scholarly interest in water and water-related phenomena in the Old Testament wisdom books, this body of literature contains a rich variety of references to water and water-related phenomena. Secondly, it is shown in this study that an overly-romantic view of nature does not do justice to the richness, complexity, and variety of portrayals of elements of nature in the texts themselves. In this sense, this study aims at retrieving ecological wisdom from particular texts that give voice to both the life-giving and life-threatening potential of water and water-related phenomena in the Old Testament wisdom books. The exploration is facilitated by elements of the historical-critical and literary approaches through an ecological framework informed by four of the six eco-justice principles of the Earth Bible Project. The thesis suggests that scholars who attempt ecological readings of the Bible will gain more if they also take less favoured texts into consideration. The exploration of water and water-related phenomena in the Old Testament wisdom books, therefore, goes beyond what studies on water or water-related phenomena have hitherto done. Furthermore, a study on both aspects of water as a life-giving and life-threatening entity demonstrates that an eco-friendly view of nature does not do justice to the biblical texts themselves. This will be seen through the third, fourth, fifth and sixth chapters. / Biblical and Ancient Studies / D. Th. (Old Testament)