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The popular perception of Oswald Pirow is that of an incompetent Minister of Defence, much derided for his bush carts pulled by oxen in the era of the blitzkrieg doctrine of dive-bombers and tanks. However, this was not the perception of him in the years between 1933 and 1939. When Pirow became Minister of Defence in 1933, the Union Defence Force was in a poor state. During the Great Depression between 1929 and 1933, austerity measures had reduced the already small army to an insignificant force. In what has been described as a Pirowian renaissance he succeeded in improving the preparedness of the Union Defence Force drastically. Ian van der Waag points out that with the outbreak of the Second World War, South African defences were in abetter state of preparation than during any other period in its peacetime history. This was a considerable achievement, as Pirow had to deal with the vehement hostility of the National Party who viewed the Union Defence Force as a tool to serve British imperialism. In addition, the average white voter was extremely reluctant to pay taxes to fund a standing army, while the rise of Nazi Germany made it near impossible tosecure modern armaments from Britain. What ultimately destroyed Pirow’s reputation as Minister of Defence was his disastrous performance in the 1940 parliamentary session. His vindictive attacks on Jan Smuts made it possible for the premier to launch a devastating counterattack, condemning him as a fraud and an incompetent windbag. In the process, Smuts succeeded in destroying Pirow’s reputation as a highly regardedadministrator and as a potential prime minister.

Christians worldwide are (re)discovering the power of scripture in their daily lives, especially in the context of the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic. The present turbulent time provides the biblical sciences an opportunity to support other theological disciplines and the church to search for ways scripture can give encouragement to people. The argument in this article is that the power of biblical writings lies in their metaphors which open an alternative moral world. For the appropriation of scripture in new contexts, the transformative potential of J. Wentzel van Huyssteen’s metaphorical hermeneutic is explored as a framework. The article gives a brief overview of the influence of his work as a mentor, colleague and friend. Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The article focuses on the dynamic nature and intentions of New Testament Studies (intradisciplinary aspects), and uses the philosophical hermeneutic of a systematic theologian as well as insights from literary theory and cultural anthropology to support the argument and open up interdisciplinary discourse.

This article is a response to R. Alan Culpepper’s two-part contribution in this volume, ‘Jesus as healer in the Gospel of Matthew’. It focuses on three sets of implications of Culpepper’s work: implications of a bioethical reading of Matthew; implications of a vulnerable, compassionate God in the midst of suffering; and implications of a comprehensive healing ministry for Christian churches today. The core of the essay is Jesus of Nazareth as paradoxical expression of God’s presence amidst suffering, identifying with people in need while embodying God’s encompassing renewal of creation.

Amidst threatening pseudo-practices, 1 Timothy seems to be concerned mainly with the integrity of the Christian gospel within the larger Greco-Roman society. To account for its rich yet complex world view, the intertextual coherence of 1 Tim 1:15-3:1 is investigated – with special reference to gender images from Gen 2-3 in 1 Tim 2:13-15. In an attempt to make sense of the utterances regarding women in 2:8-15, and particularly the explanation in 2:13-15, the essay explores two main sets of arguments. A first view explores the implications of a literal interpretation of 1 Tim 2:13-15. It argues that the author contrasted the thinking of Gen 2-3 by importing a limited selection from it into his letter – a strategy bearing the risk of being incompatible with the theological thrust of both 1 Tim and Gen 1-3. A second view argues that 1 Tim 2:13-15 served as an allegory, and that Adam and Eve, as well as the image of childbearing, functioned metaphorically as motivation for moral behaviour. The essay concludes that 1 Tim 2:8-15 is a context-specific appro-priation of the creation story rather than a universal statement on the relationship between women and men. It pleads for a life-giving rhetoric that either uses 1 Timothy’s theological thrust as a lens for interpreting 2:8-15 or accepts (some aspects of) it as irretrievably patriarchal and violent, yet allowing it to function as a mirror for on-going discussions on human dignity and the integrity of creation. doi: 10.7833/111-1-38

The essay discusses challenges regarding the position and role of Christian Theology in twenty-first century university contexts. Questions asked include the following: How will a theology that is oriented to (Reformed) Christian Theology develop itself at universities worldwide, within contexts of secularisation and globalisation? What important strategic choices will it have to make? It is argued that answers to such questions inter alia relate to how Christian Theology responds to three crucial choices: (1) Being truthful to its biblical orientation and calling; (2) Accounting critically for its position on the threshold of interdisciplinary and interreligious dialogue; and (3) Being connected to the life stories of people.

The letter to the Ephesians employs various communicative strategies in responding to the rhetorical situation of its implied recipients. Focusing on the recipients’ new identity and ethos ἐν Χριστῷ [in Christ], the text emphasises supernatural elements such as resurrection, ascension, heavenly places, revealed mystery, Spirit and power. At the same time, it adopts a rich mosaic of traditional materials, inter alia echoing the Hebrew Scriptures, Hellenistic traditions and early-Christian liturgical traditions. This article explores the dynamic yet complex intertextual fusion and reappropriation of (mainly Jewish) traditions in Ephesians as the author’s experience and understanding of the ascended Christ. Special attention is given to the probable functioning of Psalm 68:18 (LXX 67:19) in Ephesians 4:1–16. In conclusion, the essay investigates the intended rhetorical effect of material from the Hebrew Scriptures in the letter – as construction of Christian identity in continuation with the story of Israel and from within the context of Empire.

The modern battlefield is a fast-paced, information-rich environment, where discovery of intent, situation awareness and the rapid evolution of concepts of operation and doctrine are critical success factors. A combination of the techniques investigated and tested in this work, together with other techniques in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and modern computational techniques, may hold the key to relieving the burden of the decision-maker and aiding in better decision-making under pressure. The techniques investigated in this article were two methods from the machine-learning subfield of reinforcement learning (RL), namely a Monte Carlo (MC) control algorithm with exploring starts (MCES), and an off-policy temporal-difference (TD) learning-control algorithm, Q-learning. These techniques were applied to a simplified version of the weapon assignment (WA) problem in air defence. The MCES control algorithm yielded promising results when searching for an optimal shooting order. A greedy approach was taken in the Q-learning algorithm, but experimentation showed that the MCES-control algorithm still performed significantly better than the Q-learning algorithm, even though it was slower.

This article deals with the essence of religion proposed by Schleiermacher, namely ‘the feeling of absolute dependence upon the Infinite’. In his theory of religious experience, and the language he used to express it, he claimed his work to be independent of concepts and beliefs. Epistemologically this is incompatible. In our century, where Christianity needs to be reinterpreted in the light of modern science, Schleiermacher has left us with a hermeneutical challenge to communicate the dynamic experience of a relationship with God in an intelligible way. The author argues that systematic theology’s obligation to rationality must at least include a dialectic interplay of interpretative schemes, events and experience.

In 1940, after Germany's crushing victory over France, and with Britain fighting for survival, South Africa was facing a period of political uncertainty. The popular feeling amongst many Afrikaners was that Britain had lost the war, and that for its own safety South Africa had to cut ties with the British Empire. Such a step required a new political order to replace the collapsing system of a British-dominated liberal-democratic capitalism. It was against this backdrop that Oswald Pirow (1890-1959), a former minister in the J.B.M. Hertzog government between 1929 and 1939, and a member of the Herenigde Nasionale Party (HNP), formed the New Order for South Africa (NO) on 25 September 1940 as a study group within the party to espouse national-socialistic ideals. Pirow was no conviction fascist and the founding of the NO represented an opportunistic trimming of the sails to prevailing political winds, to advance his own career. Highly intelligent, charismatic and an outstanding orator, at emotional mass meetings he was treated as a messianic figure, given his message that the Afrikaner had to follow the example of an authoritarian political system based on "staatsgesag" and "volksdissipline" which had emerged in Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal. At the beginning of 1941 Pirow and the NO seemed unstoppable. And yet, by the end of the year he was marginalised, and by 1943 had become a pariah trapped in the political wilderness. This article argues that, after a few months during which Pirow was given free and uncritical passage to propagate national-socialism, the Afrikaans churches and the HNP launched an effective counterattack by condemning the principles of the NO as pagan and alien to the democratic traditions of the Afrikaner, while exposing Pirow's opportunism. Ultimately, the Afrikaner churches and the HNP's rejection of the principles of national-socialism, in a period when Nazi Germany was still winning the war, was the main factor leading to the collapse of the NO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dramatic text can be divided into two parts: • the dialogue spoken by the dramatic personae; and • the so-called didascalies of the text. The role and functions that didascalies can fulfil in a dramatic text are d emonstrated in a discussion of Reza de Wet’s Diepe grond.

The fictional drama world differs from the fictional world encountered in other literary genres, and the difference can be traced back to the link of the text with the performance. A general, traditional view is that the fictional world of the dramatic text takes place in a fictional “here and now” . Elam has postulated a theory following a study of the fictional drama world. He uses a term from logical semantics, viz. the “theory of possible worlds” and adjusts this to enable him to speak of a dramatic possible world. Elam mentions three aspects which help towards the establishment of the fictional drama world, viz. • the discovery of this world in medias res; • the making specific of this world through the fictional characters; and • the representation of this world in the performance. Elam’s exposition still does not indicate which aspects of the fictional drama world within the text coincide with or differ from those in the performance. The fictionality of the drama world is linked to the aspect of the ostensible, and it is this link (implied in the text and edited in the performance) which characterizes the specific nature of the fictional in the drama genre and which distinguishes this genre from other literary genres.

As algemene aanname kan gestel word dat alle karakters in die tyd (en die ruimte) bestaan. ’n Bewustheid van die tyd waarin hulle bestaan en leef, is egter nie altyd by alle karakters aanwesig nie.

In the following discussion of Pieter Fourie’s Ek, Anna van Wyk the play’s orientation towards performance is examined. A reader can read a play in (at least) two ways, • a reading where (s)he tries to get to know the fictional world; and • a reading where (s)he, as an implicit spectator, tries to read the play against the background of its intended performance. Two aspects in Ek, Anna van Wyk (namely the play with this world’s fictionality and the presentation of the dramatis personae) are studied by using these two reading strategies.

Die oogmerke met hierdie arlikel is drieërlei: (1) O m die betekenis van melodologie n ad er te ekspliseer; (2) aan te dui wat die verband tussen metodologiese en wetenskapsfilosofiese vraagstukke is en (3) ’n aantal navorsingsvoorkeure op die gebied van die m etodologie van die geestesweten- skappe te lys.

The early sixties saw the rise of more an d more schools of thought which came to question the accepted paradigm in the philosophy of science from the 1920’s, i.e. logical positivism. What started as a “ normal” clash of opinions, eventually developed into, as R.F. Baum called it, the “ crisis of the m odern intellect”. No less th an the objectivity o r rationality of scientific knowledge became the issue under discussion. On the one hand Kuhn, Feyerabend, et. al. rejected the positivists’ conception of rationality as being a reduction of the original meaning of human rationality. According to the “ new philosophy of science” rationality has been reduced to logical or methodological computability, thereby neglecting the essential factor of human deliberation and judgement as the essence of human rational behaviour. Logical positivists replied by labelling Kuhn’s new emphasis on subjective factors in the scientific endeavour as “ irrationalistic” and ’’relativistic”.