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Copyright of Motif Academy Journal of Folklore is the property of Motif Yayincilik and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Exodus 17.8–16 contains a number of exegetical puzzles, including the placement of Moses upon an anonymous hill, the cryptic gesture of Moses, the gesture's direct influence on the battle, the appearance of two assistants (i.e., Aaron and Hur), the function of מטה האלהים, the number of Moses' raised hands, the name of the altar (i.e., יהוה נסי), and the depiction of Amalek as a perpetual enemy of YHWH and Israel. To account for these puzzles, scholars have searched for traditions that could have influenced the Israelite author when composing the text. Unlike previous attempts, this article approaches the text in light of the Egyptian Heliopolitan cosmogony. This methodology coherently accounts for almost all the elements that appear in the Amalek narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Annals of Theology / Roczniki Teologiczne is the property of Towarzystwo Naukowe KUL & Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawla II and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article focuses on a humanities-based approach to teaching English language arts at Roslyn High School in New York that combines thematic literature units with social studies lessons to better prepare students for the world beyond high school. Topics include exploring culture through creation mythology, origin stories and how they can help us understand another society, and the importance of teaching indigenous creation narratives.

Copyright of Biblica & Patristica Thoruniensia is the property of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Accounts of creation in Sanskrit literature include a number of hymns in the R̥gveda principal among which are R̥V 10.72, 10.81–82, 10.90, 10.121, and 10.129. Later accounts appear in the Mānavadhārmaśāstra, the Mahābhārata, and purāṇas. Scholars generally describe these accounts as various, mutually inconsistent myths, or as superseded stages of philosophical thought. Even recent treatments of Indian cosmogony that praise the poetic subtlety and prowess of their composers consider their work as products of individual poetic imagination. Yet, despite the variety of expression in the various accounts, they appear to convey a consistent model of the origin of the world. Moreover, the model of the absolute and the first stages of creation mirror the descriptions of the development of enlightenment in foundational texts of Vedānta and systematic analyses of Yoga. The descriptions of creation may therefore rather be the result of the special insight of enlightened sages than the results of individual imagination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Moment Journal: Journal of Cultural Studies is the property of Moment Journal: Journal of Cultural Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The sociological approach to the concept of creativity lacks some accuracy, since it is addressed from an a priori perspective and admitted without reflecting on what it means socially and culturally. In this connection, the present article tries to provide a specific description of the term from its genealogy and on the basis of the socio-cultural-historical context where it arises. More precisely, it deals with the idea conveyed by western myths, the narrative about the identification of the instituting generatrix forces or the procreative divinities that lie behind the birth of the cosmos, of the world, of society, of the earth, of gods, of humans, of animals, and of plants. Thus, from an interpretative examination of the myths about Mother Goddess, those about Biblical Genesis, as well as of Greek creation myths, an attempt will be made to draw a conceptual map that delimits the most defining features of creativity (1). The ultimate goal is to check whether such characters have survived to the present day (2). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is an attempt to answer the question why Wednesday has the status of a holy day in Yezidism. Wednesday can be seen as a commemoration of the fourth day of creation, when the life on earth began and the Peacock Angel became its ruler. The article points to the Yezidi worship of the Moon and the Sun and related angels (Melek Fakhradin and Melek Sheikh Shams) and connects it with the Pythagorean concept concerning the movement of the planets and the Music of the Spheres. Two sacred Yezidi instruments, def and shibab, appear as allegories of celestial bodies in the Yezidi sacred hymns in the cosmogonic context of the creation of the macrocosm and microcosm (Adam). The article also points out the meaning of Wednesday in Judaism as the day when God created the sun, moon and stars and briefly discusses relationships with planet worship in Harran, Zoroastrianism and Mandaeism, especially in the context of the Yezidi Çarşemiya Sor festival which takes place on the first Wednesday of the month of Nisan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tolkien's creation myth, as transmitted in the Silmarillion and in other sources, describes the Ainur's singing as a form of collective polyphonic improvisation. This singing derives from the themes "declared" by Ilúvatar, which are - it will be argued - a form of divine self-revelation (and therefore of knowledge) imparted to the Ainur within the framework of a personal relationship with the God. The beauty of the Ainur's improvisation thus depends on their revealed knowledge of the creator's mind, on their loving attitude to Him and to their brethren, and on their acceptance of the rules and limitations of created beings as a gift which enables their singing to achieve its fulfillment and perfection. This approach, as will be discussed, is Tolkien's development of topics and imagery abundantly found in religious, literary, musical and mythological sources of the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

El artículo discurre sobre las creencias religiosas de las civilizaciones mesoamericanas relacionadas con la creación del mundo, y su representación artística.

Copyright of bilig: Journal of Social Sciences of the Turkish World is the property of bilig: Journal of Social Sciences of the Turkish World and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article focuses on Romanian-American Ramona Ausubel's 2012 No One Is Here Except All of Us. Written in English by a second-generation immigrant to the United States, the World War II story unfolds dramatically as a fable that relies upon community, memory and imagination. It revolves around the protagonists' shared belief that by erasing and reinventing their past, by starting their lives anew via reshuffled creation myths, their small assembly of forgotten individuals might survive in an enclave of its own, fantastic. This makes Ausubel's unique approach to the Holocaust and its pogroms part of a compelling series of trauma narratives, as a biographically-informed fictional account of factual circumstances. By emphasizing the crucial, cathartic dimension of storytelling and employing it textually and meta-textually, the book blurs the boundaries between genres. The author's mediated insight into community stereotyping, persecution, solidarity and, ultimately, migration, and its skillful integration into a postmodern (counter) fairytale, will be scrutinized as valuable and effective contemporary awareness-raising tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the Qur'änic verses that describe our purpose in life, the objective we should be seeking, and how we should attain it. The verses reveal that the purpose for which we were created is a benefit that accrues to us, and that, without a hereafter, our existence would be vain. Therefore, we are in a journey, destined for eternity, and our goal is to reach everlasting bliss. Obtaining such a goal requires training and self-realisation: These can be achieved by constant servitude toward God as we go through tests and trials in this life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For many years, scholars have entertained the idea that monotheism appeared in Second Isaiah as a result of Zoroastrian influence. Since the issue of monotheism is inappropriate for either the Persian or the Judaean contexts, this paper argues that a more fruitful angle to pursue the Persian context of Isaiah is through analysis of the concept of creation. This paper takes the Achaemenid creation prologues in the Old Persian inscriptions as a comparator for the use of creation in Second Isaiah, and places these two in a broader ancient Near Eastern context of creation mythology. It is argued that both share distinctive features in the way creation is presented and understood. Given the novel and similar concepts visible in both corpora, it is argued that the vision of creation and form of YHWH as creator are the earliest attested instance of "Iranian influence" on the Judaean tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is devoted to the principles of contamination myths, stories, and tales about the creation of the world and human beings in the Erzyan epic, Mastorava, by A. Sharonov This article focuses on the specifics of the development of folk stories and characters, the connection between Gods and people in the authentic works, and the projection of authentic motifs and heroes onto the author's text. Unlike the authentic epic, the literary epic consists of different genres joined by the author's idea. There is the dominance of the epic genres (myths, legends, tales), as well as some proverbs, ritual, and lyrical songs. The symbiosis of different genres, plots, motifs, and characters makes a unique literary work based on folklore material. There are no Kalevala, Kalevipoeg, or Mastorava in Finnish, Estonian, and Erzyan folklore. All of them are the creation of authors. The main task of the literary epic is to put the ancient epic text into a new shell according to the author's aesthetic and philosophical principles, based on contemporary ideas about history, mythology, and culture. The literary form of the epic is not an improvisation. It is the result of an author's many years of work. The author creates a literary scheme and then fills it with material. The traditional heroic epic has a folk idea about the creation of the world, mythology, and history, as well as ideas about an ideal tsar, an ideal society, and moral views. All of these are usually recreated and harmoniously transformed by the author into a literary version of the epic. The ancient heroes and plots were returned to most of the people and became the wealth of a national consciousness which received renewed life in the Mastorava, which conveys the history of Erzya. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a discourse study of the Tai Dam chronicle Kwam To Muang. It focuses on rhetorical structure and information structure. The former includes rhyming structure, parallel structure, cyclical structure, and listing structure, which function to facilitate memorization and also provide a linkage to the text. The information structure is analyzed in terms of the bipartite discourse structure, i.e. storyline elements and Nonstoryline elements. The storyline material is signalled by the preverbal auxiliary caŋ² 'consequently, then' and verb types, namely, event proper, motion, and action verbs. Nonstoryline elements include supportive materials which are off the storyline. They include setting, background, collateral, and cohesion. The setting is characterized by descriptive and stative verbs. Background information is marked by nonpunctiliar verbs. Collateral information is expressed by a negation having the negative marker baw³ 'not'. And cohesion is realized by rhetorical structure and repetitive clauses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay is based on a keynote speech at the 2014 Journal of International Accounting Research (JIAR) Conference. That talk was built upon a 2009 American Accounting Association (AAA) Annual Meeting panel presentation titled "Is There Any Scientific Legitimacy to What We Teach in Accounting 101?" I evaluate whether accounting practice, regulation, research, and teaching have a strong underlying scientific basis. I argue that recent accounting research, regulation, and teaching are often based on unscientific ideology but that evolved accounting practice embeds scientific laws even if accountants are largely unaware of them. Accounting researchers have an opportunity to expand scientific inquiry in accounting by improving their research designs and exploring uses of accounting outside formal capital markets using field studies and experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1994, Sung Joo International was an international distributor of premium and luxury fashion brands in Korea. During that time, Sung Joo International successfully built partnerships with designers such as Gucci, Sonia Rykiel, Yves Saint Laurent (YSL) and Mode Creations Munich (MCM) until 1999. Due to the premillennial global financial crisis, Sung Joo International strategically terminated all their international distribution agreements in 1999 - except their agreement with MCM. The brand gained notoriety among Korean, female college students within the masstige handbag market. Therefore, Sung Joo International acted as the official MCM licensee in Korea, from 2000 to 2004. Based upon a $4 million increase in sales volume, the Sung Joo Group purchased MCM in 2005 with the intent of transforming it into a full-fledged, global luxury brand. Since 2005, the Sung Joo Group has successfully molded MCM into an emerging, semi-luxury brand of iconic leather goods in China, the United States, Korea and Europe. Several innovative steps, such as new product designs, competitive pricing strategies, remerchandising, retail store expansions and collaborative marketing, preceded their entry into the international market. Such steps have been important for the elevation of MCM's brand prestige. The public image of Sung Joo Kim, founder and chairperson of Sung Joo International, has been vital to the rebuilding of MCM's brand image. Under her leadership, Sung Joo International was officially dubbed the 'Sung Joo Group.' Her presence in news media and MCM advertisements has since broadened MCM's aspirational appeal. MCM is currently valued at $320 to $400 million, exceeding the $250 million in sales during MCM's 1993 preacquisition height. Within 5 years, Sung Joo Kim expects MCM to become a luxury brand that will be competitive with more established brands such as Louis Vuitton and Gucci. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Lenguaje is the property of Universidad del Valle and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

While conducting doctoral research in social science on late motherhood, two analytical engagements with the feminine came to my attention as evidence of a patriarchal bias toward the realm of womanhood. Jung's mythopoetic tension between symbolism and enactments with the feminine and Freud's supposition that a denial of the feminine was necessary for psychological and emotional development appeared to be perpetuating a social problem continuing in current times. Across affective behavior and narrative within stories of late procreative desire, dream journals and Word Association Tests of eight participants was the memory of a male sibling who had enjoyed primacy of place in the parental home over the daughter. The female body with a voice was missing in the one-sided perspectives of Analytical Psychology and Psychoanalysis on the subject of the feminine, until a whole view of psyche's discontents in Feminist inspired Psychoanalytic theories from both schools on the female body were included. Freud and Jung's views became evidence of patriarchy as background while extension of Feminist inspired psychoanalytical thinking, Queer theories and Creation Myth allowed new meanings of the embodied feminine to emerge through a recapitulation of a union of opposites as a union of epistemology and ethos. The essence of Jung's mid-life theories, altered by modernity and eclipsed by female advancement, remains replicatable and paradigmatic outside of essentialist gender performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research looked at the role of social memory for adaptive natural resource management within indigenous communities of the North Rupununi social-ecological system ( SES) in Guyana. Secondary data from historic texts and archives were first used to build a social and ecological history of the North Rupununi SES. Current social memory 'in use' was then surfaced through a participatory video ( PV) process led by the indigenous community. From this, a compendium of key narratives of the communities' social memory was identified and modes of social memory creation, transmittance and modification were revealed. These highlighted the role of social memory in identity formation and self representation, how social memory maintains and reinforces community connectedness and collectiveness, and how PV supports indigenous ways of communication, especially the visual. The study provides some valuable insights into the dynamic nature of the North Rupununi SES social memory, how it is used to make sense of the world, and how PV can be used as a tool for surfacing and recording social memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compared and contrasted in this article are three different types of accounts dealing with the cosmogonic and eschatological themes employed in Slavonic and Balkan oral tradition, para-Biblical literature and modern poetry. The focus of analysis is the cluster of motifs attested in the creation narrative of the apocryphal Legend of the Sea of Tiberias. Two versions are examined: the South-Slavonic one discovered in 1845 by V. Grigorovich in the Monastery of Slepche, and the 18th century Russian account from MS No 21.11.3 (fols. 3a-5b) from the Archaeographic Department of the Library of the Academy of Sciences [Библиотека Акаддмии наук, Рукописнъй отдел] in St. Petersburg, composed most probably by an Old Believer; this manuscript is published here for the first time. Folklore counterparts of the apocryphal Legend of the Sea of Tiberias are treated, with special emphasis on the oral narratives from the Bulgarian diaspora in Bessarabia (God and the Devil Create the World Amicably but then Fall Out). Finally, a poem of the 20th century Bulgarian intellectual Pencho Slaveykov [Пенно Славейков] from his anthology "On the Island of the Blessed" is discussed; the poem, entitled How God willed the Earth to come to be and what did Satanail do after that? was designated by Slaveykov himself as "a legend of the Bogomils", and blended within his lyrics are dualistic themes and motifs attested in vernacular Christianity, with the hallmark of Haeresis Bulgarica. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the creation myths and religious beliefs of the Nahua peoples of Mexico, citing the book series "La filosofía náhuatl estudiada en sus fuentes," which was published between 1956-2006, and written by Miguel León-Portilla. The author provides a historiographical analysis of the religion of the Nahuas, particularly their philosophy regarding the origins of the gods, the cosmos, and human beings. The research conducted by León-Portilla as well as historians Alfonso Mendiola and Hayden White is also considered.

The principal goal of this paper is to compare the bribri creation myth and Plato's myth of creation according to Timaeus, or about Nature, in order to evince how the holistic world vision of bribri people and an anthropocentric world vision world like Plato's can carry to the establishment of qualitatively different connections between human species and other species existing in the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Ju/'hoan Bushman origin myth is depicted as providing a contextual frame that orchestrates and gives meaning to their puberty rites, storytelling, and healing dance. These performances are shown to be an enactment of a reentry from Second into First Creation, the latter an imagined time when the original people could change into animals, communicate with all living forms, and have eternal life without sickness. Here n/om, or the presumed vitality of life, change, and creation, is infused into the community. Empowerment of adolescent passage into adulthood, renewal of mythological potency, enhancement of community relations, and healing of sickness take place inside the performances that dramatize reentry into First Creation. Bushman religion and ceremonial life are shown to highlight the importance of experiences that enact the way changing forms are given primacy over any subsequent naming or indication that stills movement. The latter is regarded as Second Creation. This recurrent passage between First and Second Creation sets the stage for Bushman transformative experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

El artículo considera las historias mitológicas de los mayas, información de las cuales se contiene en códices. La autora comenta sobre la presencia de la deidad k'uh en muchos códices prehispánicos y describe las características comunes de las historias mitológicas, incluyendo una lucha entre deidades del mundo superior y el inferior. También algunos de los códices enfocan en los tiempos primordiales y en la creación o nacimiento del mundo.

This paper explores the complex, archetypal world of twins through creation myths. Twins are special cases of ‘two’, in that their relationship is qualitative not quantitative: they enact the relationship between the ‘first’ and the ‘other’. I present two early creation myths to explore the primacy of this dyadic relationship before it was superseded by patrilineal primogeniture (c. 3000 BCE), which designated ethical, fixed gender specificity to one twin over the other. I examine which gender has been negatively affected and speculate about the reasons behind the devaluation and disassociation. Analytical psychology, in particular the individuation process, is relevant to this paper because Jung saw the creative value of working experientially with the unconscious ‘shadow’ and intra-psychic contra-sexual twin ‘other’ to help bring taboo, disassociative emotions into mainstream cultural life.1 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The bitterness of strife within and between depth psychology organisations has often been noted and deplored. This paper offers a different perspective. It suggests that a pattern of ‘coming together and splitting apart’ is archetypal, unavoidable and essential to the search for a creative authority and a language in which to express it. It explores this pattern through creation myths and as lived out in the ‘father-son field’ between Freud and Jung. It further amplifies the search for authority through the legends of the Flood, the Tower of Babel and Pentecost, all of which remain relevant to contemporary organisational struggles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Merritt Johnson earned her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University in 2003, and her MFA from Massachusetts College of Art in 2005. Her practice includes drawing, painting, sculpture, and performance; involving the pursuit of survival, camouflage, disguise, hybridity and monsters. Her work is influenced by her mixed ancestry, including Mohawk, Blackfoot and non-Indigenous. Based in New York, she exhibits and performs and in traditional and nontraditional venues throughout North America. The stories related in this paper are the cultural property of the Haudensaunee (Iroquois SIx Nation) Confederacy and it's people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares versions of the same origin myth collected from the Anga people of the Morobe Goldfields in Papua New Guinea in the 1930s and 2000s. It aims to show that myth is a form of "indigenous historical analysis" that reveals how local communities creatively make sense of, and seek to shape, past and future relations with each other and the wider global order. It further seeks to highlight the complex ways Anga communities articulate the causes and legacies of colonization, and how these are also informed by current local disputes and by dissatisfaction with perceived marginality and decline in the post-independence order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers the author's insights regarding the myths of creation, wherein cosmogonies play a significant role in societies and religious systems and the nostalgia for paradise remains the recurrent theme. The author discusses the cosmogonies of ancient Iran, wherein he cites the inscriptions made by Darius the Great regarding creation. He states that the Zoroastrian literature has several creation accounts, in which Zoroastrian scriptures make the Wise Lord responsible for the acts of creation. He also notes that the Zoroastrian cosmogonies are from eastern Iran and the Achaemenian variants are from the southwest Iran.

This article examines a seventeenth-century text that attempts to reconcile Hindu and Muslim accounts of human genesis and cosmogony. The text, Mir’āt al-Makhlūqāt (‘Mirror of Creation’), written by a noted Mughal Sufi author Shaikh ‘Abd al-Rahman Chishti, purportedly a translation of a Sanskrit text, adopts rhetorical strategies and mythological elements of the Purāna tradition in order to argue that evidence of the Muslim prophets was available in ancient Hindu scriptures. Chishti thus accepts the reality of ancient Hindu gods and sages and notes the truth in their message. In doing so Chishti adopts elements of an older argument within the Islamic tradition that posits thousands of cycles of creation and multiple instances of Adam, the father of humans. He argues however that the Hindu gods and sages belonged to a different order of creation and time, and were not in fact human. The text bears some generic resemblance to Bhavishyottarapurāna materials. Chishti combines aspects of polemics with a deft use of politics. He addresses, on the one hand, Hindu intellectuals who claimed the prestige of an older religion, while he also engages, on the other hand, with Muslim theologians and Sufis like the Naqshbandi Mujaddidis who for their part refrained from engaging with Hindu traditions at all. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The planet Earth has three major components: the solid mass, the water bodies, and the atmosphere. While the solid mass and water bodies have oxygen as the dominant element, the predominant element in the atmosphere is non-reactive nitrogen (gas). The reactive nitrogen, ammonia, nitrate, nitrous oxide, and other NO gases make up about 1% of total nitrogen in the atmosphere. The entire life on the planet Earth (both jar - rooted, i.e., plants and ajar - moving, i.e., animals including humans) has evolved and is dependent for its survival on this reactive nitrogen. The non-reactive nitrogen has, however, the major role in preventing the life on Earth from being destroyed by oxidation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like the religions and creation myths that predated it, contemporary science provides a framework for attempting to understand the universe. Replacing faith-based dogma with a new consensus-based authority grounded in repeatable experiment and observation, science itself is based on a protocol known as the scientific method. Yet now, science, mathematics, and even logic are shaking their own foundations, with profound implications not only for the scientific method as a means of understanding the universe, but also for the relationship between science, religion, and mysticism. For example, recent advances in quantum physics, and continual reinterpretations of earlier findings, are calling into question the notion of the detached observer-a notion fundamental to the contemporary scientific method-as well as the reductionistic approach of attempting to understand an entirety in terms of its components. Other findings indicate that uncertainty~ randomness, and inconsistency may be basic to nature, with pervasive implications to the predictive and descriptive capability of science. Science, in turn, is underpinned by mathematics and logic, which are axiomatic in nature and thus limited by Gädel's theorem, an implication of which is that axioms are ultimately unprovable. In a striking parallel with some Western religions, the axioms themselves are accepted by consensus and "on faith" Beyond these gatekeepers to knowledge lies yet another. Stated differently, "This far and no further' Like religion, science may hold mysteries that are beyond human reach. Increasing studies of consciousness, intuitive processes, and some of the healing modalities can be expected to magnify the self-impacts of scientific research. This is because these studies generally do not yield the repeatable results that the scientific method demands. It is envisioned that the scientific method will need to evolve to encompass subjective experiences that have traditionally been regarded as outside its realm-perhaps starting with a framework that recognizes the interconnectedness of the observer and the observed. This paper explores the scientific findings that will shape the research protocols of tomorrow and the parallel and synergistic cultural, social, and academic trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

El artículo discurre sobre varias formaciones geológicas utilizadas en ceremonias rituales mayas en la antigua ciudad de Palenque en México. Se describen los mitos de la civilización maya en cuanto a la creación del mundo. El autor comenta sobre los objetos geológicos y los fósiles marinos del sitio arqueológico que demuestran una creencia del antiguo mundo cubierto en aguas primordiales. También examina tableros y otras esculturas que presentan escenas de los mitos de la creación del mundo.

Copyright of Cuestiones Teológicas is the property of Cuestiones Teologicas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article discusses the presence of Guaraní culture in the poetry of Paraguayan writer Augusto Roa Bastos. The author focuses on the use of Guarani mythology by Roa Bastos as a source of inspiration, especially the oral tradition of Creation. A linguistic analysis of the Guarani word for "creation" is included.

El artículo enfoca en las creencias y los mitos de las culturas prehispánicas sobre la creación del mundo y del tiempo. Se analiza el simbolismo de la creación de la tierra y la erección del árbol cósmico, que representan dos mitos fundamentales. Se examinan las historias parecidas de la creación del mundo de varios grupos de indios de México, que incluyen la interacción y la transformación de los dioses. Se menciona el desarrollo del concepto del tiempo mediante el símbolo del árbol cósmico.

In the introduction to the Arabic cosmology of marvels, 'Ajaʾib al-makhluqat wa-gharaʾib al-mawjudat ('Marvels of Creation and Rarities of Existence'), Zakariyyaʾ al-Qazwīnī (d. 682/1283) raises the issue of veracity in the narration of the wondrous. Central to al-Qazwīnīʾs exposition of the strange and marvellous is a sustained interest in the pleasure produced through the narration of elegant tales. Despite this aesthetic awareness, al-Qazwīnī returns repeatedly to the question of authenticity. For al-Qazwīnī, the estimation of these wondrous accounts also depends on their relative truth-value. This article traces the tension between the fictive and the real by exploring some of the Greek, Arabic, and Persian antecedents to al-Qazwīnīʾs phenomenology of creation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses "dualistic" creation stories in Swedish, Hungarian, and Russian cultures, drawing on literary fiction, folk legends, and religious folk songs and annals. The religious background to these tales in part stems from the ideology of medieval bogomilism, a Gnostic dualistic sect with origins in Armenia and Bulgarian Orthodoxy. Specifically examined is a chapter in Selma Lagerlöf̈'s children's novel "The Wonderful Adventures of Nils," in which the figure of the devil is replaced by Saint Peter. Similar other apocrypha are are reviewed.

The article discusses a Buddhist text from Tang China, regarded as an overlooked source of the Pangu creation myth in Chinese mythology and cosmogony. This complete account of the life of Pangu and his creation of the world appears in a section of the Chinese Buddhist canon (the "Taishō Tripitaka") composed by the 8th-century monk Chengguan. It is described, with quotations, and then compared with the accounts appearing in earlier established sources, including the "Sanwu liji," "Wuyun linianji," and "Shuyiji."

Based on a study of mythological literatures in China, Korea and Japan, this paper is intended to set up the coordinate axis which can estimate the time period of the Creation Mythology and therefore fix the period of the Myth of Origin in the Creation Mythology group in the three countries, and set up a time-platform suitable for East Asian mythology studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the importance of wāhine or a woman and examines the uniquely female art of karanga, which is described on a purely physical level as usually a very high pitched penetrating call which is always delivered by a wāhine, based on the Māori philosophies. It describes the role of a woman in the creation of the world. It mentions the three basic components to a karanga including the first call to welcome the manuhiri to the host marae.

This article presents a methodological exercise for the study of women in the nationalisms implied in the making of the Mexican nation. Bearing in mind the body of literature produced from an historical perspective, we have identified three types of nationalisms: the wars of independence, the nation-building process and the multicultural nation. After discussing each type, the strategy proposed would apply the typology of women's roles and intersections of nationalism (Nira Yuval-Davis and Floya Anthias). Such combined typologies allow us to identify the multiple interactions of women and the nation. We have empirically recourse to two characterizations of women: as heroines, and as intellectual creators of the nation. By looking at the role played by these female characters we observe how nationalism interacts with the current of ideas, thoughts or intuitions held by women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]