Martyr

Abstract: Walter Rodney is revered throughout the Caribbean as a teacher, a hero, and a martyr. This book remains the foremost work on the region.

Abstract: Genet is related to that family of people who are nowadays referred to by the barbaric name of passéistes . An accident riveted him to a childhood memory, and this memory became sacred. In his early childhood, a liturgical drama was performed, a drama of which he was the officiant; he knew paradise and lost it, he was a child and was driven from his childhood. No doubt this “break” is not easy to localize. It shifts back and forth, at the dictate of his moods and myths, between the ages of ten and fifteen. But that is unimportant. What matters is that it exists and that he believes in it. His life is divided into two heterogeneous parts: before and after the sacred drama. Indeed, it is not unusual that the memory condenses into a single mythical moment the contingencies and perpetual re-beginnings of an individual history.

Abstract: Preface List of maps Note on transliteration Abbreviations Glossary Introduction 1. South Indian religion and society 2. The development of Muslim society in Tamilnad 3. The Muslim religious tradition in south India 4. The south Indian state and the creation of Muslim community 5. Warrior martyr pirs in the eighteenth century 6. The final period of nawabi rule in the Carnatic 7. South Indian Christians in the pre-colonial period 8. The collapse of Syrian Christian 'integration' 9. The Christian Paravas of southern Tamilnad 10. Christian saints and gurus in the poligar country 11. Christianity and colonial rule in the Tamil hinterland 12. Conclusion Bibliography.

Abstract: Galatians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, by J. Louis Martyr. AB 33A. New York: Doubleday,1997. Pp. xxiv + 614. $39.95. Ernst Kasemann appended a lengthy footnote to his essay on "Justification and Salvation History in the Epistle to the Romans," in which he declared: Friends and opponents must be tested against the question whether they only feel able to talk about the lordship of Christ as a mythological, mystical or metaphysical figure of speech. Precisely that is the kernel of the dispute about whether God's righteousness means in Paul solely and exclusively the gift conferred on us or whether it also means the power of salvation which reaches out towards us. . . . That God's grace and righteousness relate to the world and intend a new creation, not merely a number of believing individuals, seems to me to be an irrelinquishable truth if the Christian proclamation is to be anything more than merely private piety. (Perspectives on Paul [Philadelphia: Fortress,1971], 77-78) J. Louis Martyr's superb commentary on Galatians carries forward the passionate hermeneutical program of Kasemann, to whom the commentary is dedicated. Martyr produces a thoroughgoing reading of Galatians as Paul's proclamation of the apocalyptic gospel of God's gracious power reaching out to claim the world. The result is a work of provocative scholarship, unmatched in its penetrating insight and theological depth by any NT commentary of our generation. One thing that particularly distinguishes this commentary is the thoroughness with which Martyr has thought through every line of Galatians, seeking to hear the nuances of Paul's language as the first hearers might have understood it. Martyr suggests that to interpret this ancient text we must project ourselves imaginatively into the world of the original addressees and "take a seat in one of the Galatian congregations, in order-as far as possible-to listen to the letter with Galatian ears" (p. 42). To perform this sort of "listening requires the interpreter to exercise two skills simultaneously: disciplined historical-philological inquiry and responsive literary empathy. Martyr is a master of both-as previously demonstrated in his influential reconstructive work on the Johannine community in History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel-and he admirably achieves his goal of producing a reading that is "both scientific and empathetic." Analyzing Paul's bitter response to the work of the Christian-Jewish missionaries (whom Martyr calls "the Teachers") who were urging the Galatians to accept circumcision and Torah-observance, Martyr brings to life the tense drama that must have been played out when the letter was first read in the churches of Galatia. Much of the agenda for the interpretation of Galatians during the past twenty years has been set by Hans Dieter Betz's Hermeneia commentary (1979), which analyzed the letter against the backdrop of Greco-Roman rhetoric and philosophy (see, e.g., the more recent commentaries of R. N. Longenecker and B. Witherington, which seek in various ways to correct, refine, and expand upon Betz's analysis of the rhetorical structure). While Martyr acknowledges his debts to Betz and grants that "the letter does in fact reflect Paul's training in rhetoric," his own commentary pursues a different tack, for "the oral communication for which the letter is a substitute would have been an argumentative sermon preached in the context of a service of worship-and thus in the acknowledged presence of God-not a speech made by a rhetorician in a courtroom" (pp. 20-21). Consequently, the letter must be understood as "the reproclamation of the gospel in the form of an evangelistic sermon" (p. 22). Martyr concentrates on expositing the theological content of this sermon and assessing its likely impact in its historical setting. A distinctive formal feature of this commentary is its inclusion of fifty-two "Comments, extended essays that develop particular topics identified in the running notes on the text, treating matters both historical (e. …