Psychology and the Bible: Three Worlds of the Text

While biblical scholars have all too often remained skeptical, preachers and pastoral counselors have always known, consciously or not, that the Bible is a richly psychological document. Until recently, psychological biblical criticism has been one of the hidden avenues of biblical interpretation, made more inaccessible due to the lack of organization and coherence within the literature. Recent shifts in the discipline of biblical studies, along with the increasing influence of psychological perspectives on the culture in general have made psychological approaches to the Bible more visible. It is useful to identify three dimensions or levels of the biblical text: the world behind the text, the world of the text and the world in front of the text. Such a division can help to identify the goals of a particular psychological approach and the appropriateness of its aims.     

Sola Scriptura—A Hermeneutical Impossibility and a Doctrinal Necessity: Twenty‐One Theses

The following theses represent an attempt to delineate some of the contemporary basic conditions for maintaining the use of the sola Scriptura in the Lutheran churches. This must, I argue, be done without using it as a means for ignoring other types of information and experience than that which is contained in the Scriptures. I argue that sola Scriptura formulates what is necessary for salvation, but cannot be used to delineate or present all information that is necessary to live in the contemporary world and interpret all contemporary experience.     

Clinical interpretation: The hermeneutics of medicine

I argue that clinical medicine can best be understood not as a purified science but as a hermeneutical enterprise: that is, as involved with the interpretation of texts. The literary critic reading a novel, the judge asked to apply a law, must arrive at a coherent reading of their respective texts. Similarly, the physician interprets the text of the ill person: clinical signs and symptoms are read to ferret out their meaning, the underlying disease. However, I suggest that the hermeneutics of medicine is rendered uniquely complex by its wide variety of textual forms. I discuss four in turn: the experiential text of illness as lived out by the patient; the narrative text constituted during history-taking; the physical text of the patient's body as objectively examined; the instrumental text constructed by diagnostic technologies. I further suggest that certain flaws in modern medicine arise from its refusal of a hermeneutic self-understanding. In seeking to escape all interpretive subjectivity, medicine has threatened to expunge its primary subject — the living, experiencing patient.     

James Legge's Hermeneutical Methodology as Revealed in His Translation of the Daxue

With a focus on The Great Learning (Daxue大學),this paper explores the specific exegetical or hermeneutical methodology adopted by James Legge in his translation of this Confucian canonical text.It begins with an analysis of the translation theory endorsed by Legge,comparing his translation with those of Ku Hung-ming and Wing-tsit Chan.The second part aims to explicate the hermeneutic dilemma faced by Legge in his dealing with this text.It looks at the intellectual context in which Legge's scholarship on the Chinese classics had developed,as well as the academic standard he was required to maintain throughout his translation.Overall,Legge's familiarity with Qing scholarship makes it interesting to determine where and why he follows or rejects Zhu Xi.Given Legge's Christian missionary background and the sense of mission pervading Zhu Xi's commentary,we conclude that Legge's affinity with Zhu Xi is much more subtle and complex than previously speculated:the difference in their approach to Confucian texts cannot be reduced to a contrast between construction and deconstruction or between canonization and decanonization.     

Procedural Text Structure and Reader Perceptions and Performance

This research tested the relationship between text structural variables (on vs. off the causal chain, active vs. static information, and hierarchical structure) and reader perceptions, reading time, and true-false performance for procedural texts. Twenty-four college-age participants each read 3 procedural texts. As predicted, sentences that were (a) on the causal chain, (b) active, and (c) associated with task steps were read more slowly and judged to be more important (p < .05). The results were similar to those previously found with narratives, except for the hierarchical structure variable. Also as predicted, text differences were found such that as the variation in the type of information contained in the text increased, relationships with the structural variables increased.     

从我国现行法律看安乐死的实施

安乐死作为自然人在特殊情况下对自己生命自主选择的权利,涉及人的生命权益,有关生命权立法是安乐死问题的关键.安乐死的实施与我国现行法律对生命权的严格维护产生冲突,需要我国用法律的形式肯定安乐死,并对现行法律做出适当调整,为安乐死立法留下法律空间.     

Unity and Disunity in Landmarks: The Rivalry Between Petr Struve and Mikhail Gershenzon

In this article the most important text of twentieth-century Russian intellectual history, Landmarks (Vekhi) (1909) comes under reexamination. Looking at the rivalry of the volume's two organizers, Mikhail Gershenzon and Petr Struve, Professor Brian Horowitz explains why Landmarks succeeded in offering such a biting critique of radical ideology, while lacking its own internal intellectual unity.     

Original Sin and the Hermeneutics of Charity: A Response to Gilbert Meilaender

Looking for a way to read the classic texts of Christian antiquity without treating them either as if they were written yesterday or as if they were archeological artefacts, the author endorses Meilaender's endeavor to develop the insights of Augustine in the modern context. He nevertheless suggests that a different way of drawing the analogy between sex and eating would better capture Augustine's distinctive way of joining theology and ethics and would enable a more vigorous defense of Augustine against modern critics of his treatment of sexuality.     

Holm's Use of Role Theory: Empirical and Hermeneutical Considerations of Sacred Text as a Source of Role Adoption

Holm's essay, Pentecostalism: Conversion and Charismata, is critiqued in terms of a perceived inadequacy in discussing Nordic Pentecostalism, conver- sion, and the charismata. It is suggested that the strength of Holm's essay resides in its presentation of Sunden's role theory. The essay has much heuristic merit in light of theoretical possibilities that could be investigated. Holm is seen as not perceiving the implications of his own presentation.     

Case History, Case Story: An Enquiry Into the Hermeneutics of C. G. Jung

The case histories written by C. G. Jung, from his 1902 Doctoral Dissertation to his 1950 case of Miss X, are evaluated as pieces of evidence in support of his theories. Evidence is shown to rely for its validity on an 'evidential context' which has altered over time. Jung's case histories change over the course of his writings and become more like stories. The reason for this difference is his move from an interpretative schema based on the natural sciences when a psychiatrist, through that of psychoanalysis, to one based on the human sciences, and in particular to one based on hermeneutics - the study of interpretation and meaning - when he developed his theory of analytical psychology. Jung moves from a form of hermeneutics based on what constitutes a 'valid' interpretation to one that concentrates on meaning and understanding. In writing his later case histories like stories, Jung is using them as merely part of the wider cultural context of evidence required by analytical psychology rather than as privileged pieces of evidence in themselves.     

Text Genre and Science Content: Ease of Reading,Comprehension, and Reader Preference

This study examined ease of reading, comprehension, and recall and preference for the same scientific content under two conditions: an informational text and a fictional narrative text. Seventy-four third and fourth graders were assessed individually around the reading of fictional narrative and informational texts that were about either snails or sand. Students’ accuracy and rate of reading were comparable across the two genres. However, students answered more comprehension questions correctly and recalled more key concepts in response to informational text than fictional narrative text. Moreover, students did not express a clear preference for one type of text over the other.     

Follow the Reader: An Effective Strategy to Support Students Reading More Complex Text

This article describes how one second-grade teacher implemented Follow the Reader, her term for dyad reading. Common Core expects students to read increasingly complex texts. Teachers can implement dyad reading with this end in mind. It is a modified version of the neurological impress method in which a lead reader and an assisted reader sit side by side and read a shared text aloud in unison. As this article demonstrates, this strategy can be implemented successfully with small groups or an entire class and is effective with both English-proficient and English-learning children. She included fiction and nonfiction texts, daily class discussions, book logs to maintain student accountability, and discussion between partners about texts. She provided modeling for students and gave them time to practice procedures.     

Examining the Relationship Between Text Processing and Text Comprehension in Fourth Grade Readers

This research investigates the relationship among various processing behaviors and their link to comprehension. Thirty-four students from three fourth-grade classrooms orally read the first chapter of a short story. The reading was followed by an unaided recall and probes by the researcher. Each clause as finally read was evaluated for semantics (acceptable/unacceptable) and maintenance of author's meaning (yes/no). Finally, words read per minute and number of total, corrected, and uncorrected miscues was calculated. The impact of miscues on retelling performance on the clause and story event level was evaluated using nonparametric, parametric, and multivariate analyses. On the clause level, findings indicate that a similar proportion of clauses were recalled irrespective of whether the clause had been read with no miscues, corrected miscues, or uncorrected miscues. There was a significant difference, however, in the proportion of recalled clauses depending on miscue type. Uncorrected semantically unacceptable/meaning disrupting clauses were less likely to be recalled, whereas clauses containing uncorrected miscues that did not change meaning were more likely to be recalled than clauses read with no miscues. On the story level, strong retellings were associated with fewer meaning changing and meaning disrupting miscues and with more corrected miscues and reading speed. Total number of miscues, miscues that did not change meaning, and reading grade level were not significantly associated with strong story retellings. These findings suggest that the concept of accuracy may not be as significant as miscue meaningfulness and that speed is best understood as part of a matrix of behaviors associated with strong comprehension.     

Hermeneutical Philosophy and Pragmatism: A Philosophy of Science

Two philosophical traditions with much in common, (classical) pragmatism and (Heidegger's) hermeneutic philosophy, are here compared with respect to their approach to the philosophy of science. Both emphasize action as a mode of interpreting experience. Both have developed important categories – inquiry, meaning, theory, praxis, coping, historicity, life-world – and each has offered an alternative to the more traditional philosophies of science stemming from Descartes, Hume, and Comte. Pragmatism's abduction works with the dual perspectives of theory (as explanation) and praxis (as culture). The hermeneutical circle depends in addition on the lifeworld as background source of ontological meaning and resource for strategies of inquiry. Thus a hermeneutical philosophy of research involves three components: lifeworld (as ontological and strategic), theory (as explanatory), and praxis (as constitutive of culture). This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Between the Diaspora and Zion: Cecil Roth and his American friends

Near the start of his career (1925–1930) Cecil Roth developed a vision of the significance of the Diaspora to Jewish life, which he articulated during his tenure at the Intercollegiate Menorah Society Summer School of 1930. For Roth, Jewish creativity could be expressed only by possessing a firm grasp of Jewish history and its essentials. In his summer school lectures Roth sought to integrate Jewish history into the broader sweep of European history, while at the same time he introduced students to historical sources beyond traditional Jewish texts. In the aftermath of World War II Roth entered into a prolonged correspondence with the American Jewish historian Jacob Rader Marcus, who had recently founded the American Jewish Archives, whose purpose was to forward the study of Jewish history by collecting the documents that would enable future research. In their correspondence, Roth and Marcus enunciated an approach to Jewish history that would influence the field for a generation.     

阐释学语境下的医患沟通——探寻理解之路

在信息不对称、医疗结果不确定的情况下,很多医疗纠纷是由于缺乏充分的沟通导致不信任和误解造成的。加强医患沟通是增进理解、减少误解、构建和谐医患关系的重要途径。结合阐释学提出的理解之“主体间性”、“视阈融合”、“效果历史”的观点,探寻医患沟通的理解之路并指出医患沟通的限度。