Word People

This study of the word «people» in the biblical context touches one of the central issues of biblical literature. The author addresses the semantic and literary-critical problems involved in interpreting the Hebrew word םע within the complex texts of 1-2 Samuel and 1-2 Kings. While the word is often rendered by the English word «people» and its cognates in the modern languages, it is also shown that the idea of «people», together with its semantic range in the modern usage, is not identical to the ancient Hebrew. Concerted effort is thus made to identify the basic factors and patterns that explain its meaning in various Hebrew contexts. The study explains how םע expresses both Israel's identity as a secular polity as well as its identity as a religious entity. The discussion is carried out in the light of a number of chosen texts, and these are analyzed both synchronically and diachronically.

"Being an inquiry into the lives of those persons who have lent their names to the English language"--Jacket subtitle.

This book fills a real need for pastors and students. Though there is currently a large body of material on the theological interpretation of Scripture, most of it is highly specific and extremely technical. J. Todd Billings here provides a straightforward entryway for students and pastors to understand why theological interpretation matters and how it can be done. / A solid, constructive theological work, The Word of God for the People of God presents a distinctive Trinitarian, participatory approach toward reading Scripture as the church. Billings's accessible yet substantial argument for a theological hermeneutic is rooted in a historic vision of the practice of scriptural interpretation even as it engages a wide range of contemporary issues and includes several exegetical examples that apply to concrete Christian ministry situations.

This book deals with a topical issue relating to the use of script in Japan, one which has the potential to reshape future script policy through the mediation of both orthographic practices and social relations. It tells the story of the impact of one of the most significant technological breakthroughs in Japan in the latter part of this century: the invention and rapid adoption of word-processing technology capable of handling Japanese script in a society where the nature of that script had previously mandated handwriting as the norm. The ramifications of this technology in both the business and personal spheres have been wide-ranging, extending from changes to business practices, work profiles, orthography and social attitudes to writing through to Japan's ability to construct a substantial presence on the Internet in recent years.

Information modelling and knowledge bases have become hot topics, not only in academic communities concerned with information systems and computer science, but also wherever information technology is applied in the world of business. This book presents the proceedings of the 21st European-Japanese Conference on Information Modelling and Knowledge Bases (EJC 2011), held in Tallinn, Estonia, in June 2011. The EJC conferences provide a worldwide forum for researchers and practitioners in the field to exchange results and experiences achieved in computer science and related disciplines such as conceptual analysis, design and specification of information systems, multimedia information modelling, multimedia systems, software engineering, knowledge and process management, cross cultural communication and context modelling. Attention is also paid to theoretical disciplines including cognitive science, artificial intelligence, logic, linguistics and analytical philosophy. The selected papers (16 full papers, 9 short papers, 2 papers based on panel sessions and 2 on invited presentations), cover a wide range of topics, including database semantics, knowledge representation, software engineering, www information management, context-based information retrieval, ontology, image databases, temporal and spatial databases, document data management, process management, cultural modelling and many others. Covering many aspects of system modelling and optimization, this book will be of interest to all those working in the field of information modelling and knowledge bases.