The Land Of The Body

This book presents the first extended study of the representation of Egypt in the writings of Philo of Alexandria. Philo is a crucial witness, not only to the experiences of the Jews of Alexandria, but to the world of early Roman Egypt in general. As historians of Roman Alexandria and Egypt are well aware, we have access to very few voices from inside the country in this era; Philo is the best we have. As a commentator on Jewish Scripture, Philo is also one of the most valuable sources for the interpretation of Egypt in the Pentateuch. He not only writes very extensively on this subject, but he does so in ways that are remarkable for their originality when compared with the surviving literature of ancient Judaism. In this book, Sarah Pearce tries to understand Philo in relation to the wider context in which he lived and worked. Key areas for investigation include: defining the 'Egyptian' in Philo's world; Philo's treatment of the Egypt of the Pentateuch as a symbol of 'the land of the body'; Philo's emphasis on Egyptian inhospitableness; and his treatment of Egyptian religion, focusing on Nile veneration and animal worship.

If poetry is a place to question, I Am a Body of Land by Shannon Webb-Campbell is an attempt to explore a relationship to poetic responsibility and accountability, and frame poetry as a form of re-visioning. Here Webb-Campbell revisits the text of her earlier work Who Took My Sister? to examine her self, her place and her own poetic strategies. These poems are efforts to decolonize, unlearn, and undoo harm. Reconsidering individual poems and letters, Webb-Campbell's confessional writing circles back, and challenges what it means to ask questions of her own settler-Indigenous identity, belonging, and attempts to cry out for community, and call in with love. Edited, with an introduction by multiple award-winning writer and activist Lee Maracle. Praise for I Am a Body of Land: "Poetry awake with the winds from the Four Directions, poetry that crosses borders, margins, treaties, yellow tape warning Police Line: Do Not Cross. Poetry whose traditional territory, through colonization, has become trauma and shame. Unceded poetry. Read. Respect. Weep." --Susan Musgrave, author of Origami Dove "Shannon Webb-Campbell's work forces readers out of polite conversation and into a realm where despair and hard truths are being told, being heard and finding the emotion strength to learn from it, find out way out and embrace our beauty as Indigenous women." --Carol Rose Daniels, author of Hiraeth and Bearskin Diary, winner of the First Nations Communities READ Award and the Aboriginal Literature Award.

This is a very personal, and at times very moving account of the author's horseback journey to the Holy Land, now mostly Israel. He was himself a clergyman and therefore making a sort of pilgrimage but he writes with such passion and clarity that he brings the land to life for the reader.

From a variety of methodological perspectives, contributors to Living on the Land explore the nature and scope of Indigenous women’s knowledge, its rootedness in relationships, both human and spiritual, and its inseparability from land and landscape. The authors discuss the integral role of women as stewards of the land and governors of the community and points to a distinctive set of challenges and possibilities for Indigenous women and their communities.

Described as 'ground-breaking' in Kent McNeil's Foreword, this book develops an alternative approach to conventional Aboriginal title doctrine. It explains that aboriginal customary law can be a source of common law title to land in former British colonies, whether they were acquired by settlement or by conquest or cession from another colonising power. The doctrine of Common Law Aboriginal Customary Title provides a coherent approach to the source, content, proof and protection of Aboriginal land rights which overcomes problems arising from the law as currently understood and leads to more just results. The doctrine's applicability in Australia, Canada and South Africa is specifically demonstrated. While the jurisprudential underpinnings for the doctrine are consistent with fundamental common law principles, the author explains that the Australian High Court's decision in Mabo provides a broader basis for the doctrine: a broader basis which is consistent with a re-evaluation of case-law from former British colonies in Africa, as well as from the United States, New Zealand and Canada. In this context, the book proffers a reconceptualisation of the Crown's title to land in former colonies and a reassessment of conventional doctrines, including the doctrine of tenure and the doctrine of continuity. 'With rare exceptions ... the existing literature does not probe as deeply or question fundamental assumptions as thoroughly as Dr Secher does in her research. She goes to the root of the conceptual problems around the legal nature of Indigenous land rights and their vulnerability to extinguishment in the former colonial empire of the Crown. This book is a formidable contribution that I expect will be influential in shifting legal thinking on Indigenous land rights in progressive new directions.' From the Foreword by Professor Kent McNeil (to read the Foreword please click on the 'sample chapter' link).

What will the final state of the redeemed look like? Throughout the history of the church, conceptions of the final state have tended to minimize the promise of the new heavens and new earth. In contrast to the historical dominance of spiritual, heavenly, non-temporal conceptions of the final state, the last two decades have witnessed a rise in conceptions that include the redemption of material, earthly, and temporal reality. These “new creation” conceptions have included proposals regarding the fulfillment of Old Testament land promises. In New Creation Eschatology and the Land, Steven L. James argues that in recent new creation conceptions of the final state there is a logical inconsistency between the use of Old Testament texts to inform a renewed earth and the exclusion of the territory of Israel from that renewed earth. By examining a select group of new creationists, James shows that the exclusion of the territorial restoration of Israel in a new creation conception fails to appreciate the role of the particular territory in Old Testament prophetic texts and results in an inconsistent new creationism.