The 'Powers' of Personification

The 'Powers' of Personification
Author: Joseph R. Dodson
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2008-12-10
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3110209772

While scholars have often found value in comparing Wisdom and Romans, a comparison of the use of personification in these works has not yet been made, despite the striking parallels between them. Furthermore, while scholars have studied many of these personifications in detail, no one has investigated an individual personification with respect to the general use of the trope in the work. Instead, most of this research focuses on a personification in relation to its nature as either a rhetorical device or a supernatural power. The “Powers” of Personification seeks to push beyond this debate by evaluating the evidence in a different light – that of its purpose within the overall use of personification in the respective work and in comparison with another piece of contemporaneous theological literature. This book proposes that the authors of Wisdom and Romans employ personification to distance God from the origin of evil, to deflect attention away from the problem of righteous suffering to the positive sides of the experience, or to defer the solution for the suffering of the righteous to the future.

The Real Devil

The Real Devil
Author: Duncan Heaster
Publisher: duncan heaster
Total Pages: 492
Release: 2009
Genre: Bible
ISBN: 1906951012

Wonderful Life with the Elements

Wonderful Life with the Elements
Author: Bunpei Yorifuji
Publisher: No Starch Press
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2012-09-12
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1593274238

From the brilliant mind of Japanese artist Bunpei Yorifuji comes Wonderful Life with the Elements, an illustrated guide to the periodic table that gives chemistry a friendly face. In this super periodic table, every element is a unique character whose properties are represented visually: heavy elements are fat, man-made elements are robots, and noble gases sport impressive afros. Every detail is significant, from the length of an element's beard to the clothes on its back. You'll also learn about each element's discovery, its common uses, and other vital stats like whether it floats—or explodes—in water. Why bother trudging through a traditional periodic table? In this periodic paradise, the elements are people too. And once you've met them, you'll never forget them.

The Sun Played Hide-and-Seek

The Sun Played Hide-and-Seek
Author: Brian P. Cleary
Publisher: Millbrook Press ™
Total Pages: 35
Release: 2017-08-01
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1512472204

A young student has to give a presentation about personification—and she's petrified! How can she explain something that gives human traits to things that aren't human? If only she could take a trip to the park and show everyone the way the fountain hiccups, the daffodils dance, and the wind whispers a tune . . . or maybe that's just what she'll have to do!

Personification

Personification
Author: Walter Melion
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 787
Release: 2016-03-11
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9004310436

Personification, or prosopopeia, the rhetorical figure by which something not human is given a human identity or ‘face’, is readily discernible in early modern texts and images, but the figure’s cognitive form and function, its rhetorical and pictorial effects, have rarely elicited sustained scholarly attention. The aim of this volume is to formulate an alternative account of personification, to demonstrate the ingenuity with which this multifaceted device was utilized by late medieval and early modern authors and artists in Italy, France, England, Scotland, and the Low Countries. Personification is susceptible to an approach that balances semiotic analysis, focusing on meaning effects, and phenomenological analysis, focusing on presence effects produced through bodily performance. This dual approach foregrounds the full scope of prosopopoeic discourse—not just the what, but also the how, not only the signified, but also the signifier.

Practices of Power

Practices of Power
Author: Robert Ewusie Moses
Publisher: Fortress Press
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2014-04-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 145147993X

The conception of “powers” and “principalities” in Paul’s thought has been amply explored—but how did the powers “work” in the Pauline community? Robert Ewusie Moses argues that Paul's conception of the powers is best understood through examining the practices he advocates for the early believers. In this detailed study, Moses shows that Paul believed certain practices guarded believers from the dominion of the powers while others exposed humans to the work of powers of darkness. Moses traces the distinct function of “power-practices” in each of Paul’s letters and draws illuminating comparisons with traditional African religious practices.

Morality, Not Mortality

Morality, Not Mortality
Author: William Horst
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2022-05-23
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 166690029X

This study argues that the language of “death” as a present human plight in Romans 5–8 is best understood against the background of Hellenistic moral-psychological discourse, in which “death” refers to a state of moral bondage in which a person’s rational will is dominated by passions associated with the body. It is death of this sort, rather than human mortality or a cosmic power called “Death,” that entered the world through the transgression of Adam and Eve in Eden. Moral death was imposed on humanity as a judgment against this initial transgression, in order to increase sinful behavior, which ultimately serves to increase the magnitude of the glorious revelation of God’s grace through Jesus Christ. Likewise, creation’s subjection to “corruption” and “futility” in Romans 8 involves the detrimental effects of human moral corruption, not the physical corruption of death and decay. Ultimately, the plight on which Paul focuses much of his attention throughout Rom 5–8 is a matter of morality, not mortality.

The Personification of Wisdom

The Personification of Wisdom
Author: Alice M. Sinnott
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 219
Release: 2017-07-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351884360

This book examines the personification of Wisdom as a female figure - a central motif in Proverbs, Job, Sirach, Wisdom and Baruch. Alice M. Sinnott identifies how and why the complex character of Wisdom was introduced into the Israelite tradition, and created and developed by Israelite/Jewish wisdom teachers and writers. Arguing that by personifying Wisdom the authors of Proverbs responded to Israel's defeat by Babylon and the loss of Davidic monarchy, and by retrieving and transforming the Wisdom figure the authors of Sirach, Baruch and Wisdom responded to the spread of Hellenism and the potential loss of identity for Jews. Sinnott concludes that personified Wisdom functioned to reinterpret and transform the Israelite/Jewish tradition.