Browsing by Subject "Conversion"
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Item "Christian conversion" as a radical philosophical turn : Lukan literary efforts in describing Paul's "Conversion" in Acts 9, 22, and 26(2015-05) Kim, Jin Young, M.A.; White, L. Michael; Friesen, Steven JThe present report analyzes the three Lukan accounts on Paul's "conversion" in Acts 9:1-31, 22:6-21, and 26:12-17 in consideration of the contemporary literary milieu of the Greek philosophical and Hellenistic Jewish discourses on one's "conversion," i.e., a radical change as discarding his/her former thoughts. Through this analysis, I argue that Luke redescribed Paul’s experience of the risen Christ as a "conversion," and in doing so, constructed the concept of "Christian conversion" as a radical philosophical turn. In his undisputed letters, we find that Paul understood his encounter with the risen Christ as a "calling" within the Hebrew prophetic tradition. On the contrary, Luke stresses the radical rupture between Paul's before and after the revelatory experience by making it an immediate change and adding details such as Saul’s activities as a persecutor and his name change. In recasting Paul's experience as a "conversion," Luke utilized two main literary elements to characterize the nature of his experience as a radical cognitive shift. One is the metaphor of transition from darkness to light, which is applied to Paul in Acts 9 and 22 as he becomes blind after seeing the light and to the gentile conversion in Acts 26 that they should "turn from darkness to light (v.18)." Another is the notion of repentance that Luke applies directly to Paul in Acts 9 and 22 in his baptism and to the gentile conversion in Acts 26. These two motifs are what we often find in the Greek philosophical and Hellenistic Jewish texts discussing one's radical cognitive shift to a new philosophical system or the Jewish monotheism upon the revelation of a true teaching. By applying these motifs to the "conversion" of Saul, Luke identifies Paul's experience and "Christian conversion" as a radical philosophical turn from ignorance to a correct understanding of the messiah and the God. With the Lukan literary and conceptual efforts in Acts, Paul now becomes a paradigmatic "Christian convert" and a philosopher in Acts whose radical cognitive shift can be followed by Jews and gentiles in the Roman world.Item Genetic diversity and combining ability among sorghum conversion lines(Texas A&M University, 2007-04-25) Mateo Moncada, Rafael ArturoSorghum (Sorghum bicolor [L] Moench) was first introduced to the United States in the 1800s. These introductions consisted of tropical varieties with a short day photoperiod response that limited their use in temperate hybrid breeding programs. Commercial exploitation of F1 hybrids in grain sorghum started by the mid 1950s with the use of cytoplasmic male sterility system CMS (A1). Even though other CMS are available, most sorghum hybrid seed production still relies on the A1 system. Genetic gain in most agronomic crop species is limited by several factors. In the specific case of sorghum, the uniform use of the CMS (A1) system and the recent introduction of sorghum to the United States have resulted in a reduction of its genetic base. In order to create enough genetic variability, plant breeders might utilize exotic non adapted material, exotic adapted material or existing elite material as a source of new alleles that will protect and improve genetic gain through selection. This study provides an estimate of the genetic diversity existing in a set of sorghum conversion lines. The objectives of this study were: (1) to estimate the genetic diversity present among a set of 16 sorghum conversion lines???? (2) to classify this set of lines based on genetic similarities estimated using AFLP markers and (3) to estimate heterosis, general and specific combining ability for grain yield among the set of conversion lines. Genetic diversity was present in the set of conversion lines evaluated. For the lines included only in this study, Caudatum was the most homogenous race (average GS = 0.69), and this race was closely related to the Durra race (Average GS = 0.66). Two other homogenous races were Bicolor and Kafir with average GS of 0.67. Highest GCA effects were obtained from the Kafir and Caudatum races. Good heterotic responses were obtained from DurraKafir races and CaudatumKafir races. Estimation of SCA, MPH and BPH identified specific crosses that were numerically superior than those of the checks. The use of AFLP markers allowed the identification of five strong clusters through estimates of genetic similarities. This classification did not group the lines by either their genetic background or their fertility reaction. This study provides information to identify specific combinations that would help to understand heterotic relationships in sorghum, and support the suggestions made by Menz and Gabriel that races in sorghum are not well defined.Item La monja azul : the political and cultural ramifications of a 17th-century mystical transatlantic journey(2008-08) Nogar, Anna María; Limón, José Eduardo; Salgado, César AugustoThis project sets forth a Mexican American cultural studies treatment of a US Southwestern legend known as the Lady in Blue (La monja azul). The legend is derived from17th-century religious memoriales (accounts) that narrate the miraculous apparition of a living cloistered Spanish nun, Sor María de Agreda, to the Jumano tribe of western New Mexico between the years 1620-1630. However, the Lady in Blue's conversion of the Jumanos was only the first of many recurring appearances she would make in the Americas and Europe over the next three hundred and seventy years. In the American Southwest, northern Mexico and Spain, stories about the apparating nun resurface and are reshaped in response to the demands of their contexts. Her narrative is transatlantic both in terms of what it recounts, and in terms of where it is recounted. She is not only represented on both sides of the ocean, but her portrayal almost always has to do with her being on both side of the ocean. The Lady in Blue narrative brings together dialogues on conquest, both secular and religious, dialogues on the significance of the female body and the feminine written word, and dialogues on the negotiation of space, proximity and identity. Extant research on Lady in Blue focuses on the components of her story as discrete entities, inadvertently divorcing related histories and legends from one another. 20th-century historians have read the account as a medieval holdover in Franciscan mission writing; folklorists as isolated Indo-Hispano accounts; and literary critics as individual anecdotes in twentieth-century literature. In contrast, this dissertation focuses on is the continuity of the narrative-- the way a series of historical figures and documents capture the Lady in Blue as she moves from New Mexico, to Spain, and back to the Franciscan missions of the Southwest, where she is viewed as a proto- or co-missionary. From the missions, the traditions, legends, and folklore about her grew and were contended, resulting in the contemporary dramatic works, novels, short stories and poems about the Lady in Blue.Item The rhetoric of the ineffable : awakening in Judaism, Christianity and Zen(2010-05) Avital, Sharon; Brummett, Barry, 1951-; Cloud, Dana; Gunn, Joshua; Abzug, Robert; Syverson, Margaret AThis dissertation rhetorically analyzes the ways in which ineffable moments of awakening are constructed in the context of three religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Zen. Close textual analysis revealed that awakening is constructed differently in all three religions and that ineffability itself assumed different meanings in all cases. The conventional understanding of language as arbitrary and as based on human convention does not apply to Hebrew which takes itself to be a sacred language. Words are understood in this tradition as creative elements that convey more than trivial information and the term ineffability does not occupy much thought in Judaism. Christianity is grounded in a representative model of language and equates words with mortality and temporality. Awakening is constructed ontologically as moments in which textuality and corporality are transcended and one merges with the infinite divine. Zen is cautious about the ways in which language constructs the illusion of distinct identities, but ineffability is not constructed as an ontological concept in this tradition. Awakening is understood as beyond all words. The tropes recognized in the Jewish construction of awakening are metonymy, dialogue, differences, juxtapositions, particularities, haunting, and intertextuality. In Christianity, the dominant tropes are allegory, typology, metaphors, substitution, replacement and abstraction. Awakening is modeled after the resurrection of Jesus and is understood as a dramatic and ineffable event. The dominant rhetorical moves in Zen are suchness, nonsense, and paradoxes. Differences are also found between the construction of subjectivity, the perception of time, aesthetics, the linguistic model and ineffability. Judaism views itself as an architecture of time, but this time is not linear and is instead understood by the qualitative moments of the events. Awakening maintains the reverberations of past events into the present, but present moments are given significant attention. In Christianity, man is understood as grounded in space and progressing on a linear axis of time from birth towards his telos. Ineffability is constructed spatially and the event of awakening divides life into before and after. Zen attempts to deconstruct time and views it as sunyata, or “emptiness”.