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This paper offers a comparative analysis of two people in situations of seemingly contested allegiances: David Brog and Josephus. While the two come from wildly disparate contexts, they nonetheless employ strikingly similar rhetorical strategies as they justify their cooperation with a group to which they would otherwise appear to be categorically opposed. In this paper I examine, compare, and contrast the rhetorical strategies of both, with particular attention to strategies of legitimation (both internal and external), their reconstructions of history, and how each minimizes the importance of apocalypticism. While there is certainly more that distinguishes the two than unites them, this comparative analysis will hopefully give insight into how people navigate complex identities, particularly when those identities, at least from an outsider's perspective, would appear to be in conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author examines Karl Jaspers's decoupling of commitment and narrowness in three parts. First, Jaspers's criticism of the church and some Christian dogmas as eurocentric reveals his postmodern and cosmopolitan stance, in opposition to the neoorthodox theological tendency of his time. Second, his philosophical faith emphasizes the role of an active individual and the importance of being open to ciphers from other world religions/philosophies. Against many criticisms that Jaspers was too relativistic, the author points out two anti-relativistic measures in Jaspers's post-World War II thought, the much-discussed axial age and, especially, the neglected idea of mutual civilizational grafting. Third, she elaborates on Jaspers's notion of civilizational grafting by comparing the positions of Paul Ricoeur and Ernst Troeltsch toward it. Jaspers's loss of narrowness did not lead to a loss of commitment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]