The question of whether the divine commandments were observed prior to the revelation at Sinai has vast theological and hermeneutical implications. The first known systematic account that has reached us on the question of the antiquity of the commandments is found in the tenth-century Karaite scholar Yaʿqūb al-Qirqisānī’s Kitāb al-Anwār w-al-Marāqib. Qirqisānī discusses two theories: according to the first, the divine commandments were given already to Adam; and according to the second, God’s law was given in an accumulative process, the Torah being developed in accordance with the historical circumstances. This article analyzes the two theories and demonstrates that they are rooted in a Muslim-Jewish debate, conducted in the first half of the ninth century, about the Muslim principle of abrogation (naskh), and that the historical context of the argument on the subject probably was that of the interreligious debates that took place in Qirqisānī’s time.

In the 1890s, the slave and ivory trader Rashid bin Masoud established the settlement Kikole deep in what is now southwestern Tanzania. Kikole was strategically located near Lake Nyasa, a major slaving region. Masoud's followers residing at Kikole were typically referred to as his slaves by German colonists and missionaries. Local oral histories today, however, define these followers as askari (soldiers or guards) or mafundi (technicians or specialists; in this case, in using weaponry). This article considers how recent expanded excavations at Kikole can help us better understand Masoud's followers. Differences in housing investment and material access suggest status differences among residents: any single definition of Masoud's followers may be inadequate. A broader concern addressed in this article is how we define slavery itself.

Each one of us who has come into this world (so far) has done so via birth. Everyone therefore has a birthing ‘parent’, but not all would consider that respective person to be their parent. For example, those who have been adopted might instead consider the person (or people) who adopted them to be their parent(s). There are, therefore, ways to become a parent that do not involve giving birth, and instances of giving birth that do not result in becoming a parent. But what about motherhood, more specifically? Must mothers be women, and must mothers have given birth? What makes a ‘mother’ – is it always and only the person who makes us? It is these questions that I explore here, in order to find a trans-inclusive approach to parental designations.

Dimensional models of early life adversity highlight the distinct roles of deprivation and threat in shaping neurocognitive development and mental health. However, relatively little is known about the role of unpredictability within each dimension. We estimated both the average levels of, and the temporal unpredictability of deprivation and threat exposure during adolescence in a high-risk, longitudinal sample of 1354 youth (Pathways to Desistance study). We then related these estimates to later life psychological distress, and Antisocial and Borderline personality traits, and tested whether any effects are mediated by future orientation. High average levels of both deprivation and threat exposure were found to be associated with worse mental health on all three outcomes, but only the effects on Antisocial and Borderline personality traits were mediated by decreased future orientation, a pattern consistent with evolutionary models of psychopathology. Unpredictability in deprivation exposure proved to be associated with increased psychological distress and a higher number of Borderline traits, but with increased future orientation. There was some evidence of unpredictability in threat exposure buffering against the detrimental developmental effects of average threat levels. Our results suggest that the effects of unpredictability are distinct within different dimensions of early life adversity.

The Russia-Ukraine war demonstrates the crucial role of technology in modern warfare. The use of digital networks, information infrastructure, space technology, and artificial intelligence has distinct military advantages, but raises challenges as well. This essay focuses on the way it exacerbates a rather familiar challenge: the “civilianization of warfare.” Today's high-technology warfare lowers the threshold for civilian participation in the war effort. A notable example is the widespread use of smartphone apps by Ukrainian civilians, who thereby help the armed forces defend against Russian aggression. Through the lenses of international humanitarian law, conventional just war theory, and revisionist just war theory, this essay evaluates the normative dimensions of such civilian participation. The analysis shows that civilians can lose their legal protections when they use these apps to directly participate in hostilities, and this loss of immunity can be justified by Michael Walzer's conventional just war theory. Revisionism, however, puts the justness of the war at the forefront, and so sheds doubt on the moral liability of Ukrainian civilians. Considering the broader implications, including the blurring combatant-civilian distinction, indicates that such civilianization of warfare should not be welcomed; the risks will often outweigh the benefits. At a minimum, states ought to exercise restraint in mobilizing civilians and inform them of the implications of their actions.

Manijeh Moradian published a memoir essay in 2009 under the penname Nasrabadi in which she described her relationship with her father. The essay appeared in Callaloo—a journal dedicated to “matters pertinent to African American and African Diaspora Studies worldwide.”1 It was a fitting venue given the elder Moradian's years of service as a professor of architecture at Howard University, an HBCU (historically Black colleges and universities) where during the 1970s he sympathized with and supported student activists in the Iranian Students Association (ISA).2 The venue is all the more fitting given the younger Moradian's recent monograph which, among many groundbreaking contributions, demonstrates “affects of solidarity” between Iranian and Black American student activists in the 1970s.

Reclassifying a library is something which many librarians have tackled over the years. However, the task is always done with the technology and services available at the time of conversion. This is an account of reclassification using a modern Library Management System (ALMA), alongside our comments and tips on the sheer practicalities of moving every single book to another shelf location; all done, in our case, under the pall of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Scientific expertise is crucial for responding effectively to environmental crises. Nevertheless, under conditions of political inequality, expert policy making can inhibit policy solutions by altering incentives of powerful interest groups. This is the situation facing the predominantly Alaska Native communities of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, which have long relied on salmon for subsistence and are now experiencing a collapse of the salmon population. Scientific evidence indicates that climate change is a primary cause, and experts therefore have opposed demands by Native subsistence fishers for ameliorative measures—especially restricting pollock fishing—as likely to be ineffective. However, this approach eliminates incentives for the influential pollock industry to support policies to address the salmon crisis, including climate-change mitigation. This article presents a simple formal model that demonstrates these incentive effects. This argument contributes to theories of business power and shows how expert policy making can inadvertently force marginalized communities to bear the burden of climate change.

Climate change is a global phenomenon affecting millions of people. Low-income people and communities are particularly at risk because of limited capacities to cope with climate-related stresses. Differential access to social and economic resources determines the level of adaptive potential; thus, the variations in social vulnerability to climate change. This article explores how unequal power relations influence the level of vulnerability in rural agrarian Bangladesh. Using data from the coastal region, it specifically discusses ethnicity, religion, gender, and farm size as the sources and manifestations of power relations in Bangladeshi rural society. I argue that the deeply rooted institutions of power in the country shape access to important resources that might increase adaptive capacity and thus resilience in the context of rapid climate change.

The employment of cutting-edge technology in the European Union's external border management is transforming the way that States acquire control over seaborne migrants and deconstructing traditional conceptions of border and territory. This article sheds light on a new generation of human rights violations on the high seas, where people's rights become contingent on their geographical location which is increasingly traceable by monitoring bodies. Amidst the burgeoning phenomena of abandonment at sea and contemporary forms of migrant push-backs, this article contends that human rights jurisdiction ought to be reconceptualized in functional terms to capture new modalities of State power, that if and when exercised, can amount to effective control, triggering a State's human rights obligations.

For this General review, I have selected five exciting books dealing with religion. I am very happy to report that we now find selected papers of Robert Parker, one of the luminaries in the field of Greek religion, in a handsomely produced and affordable volume published in the Kernos Suppléments series, whose many virtues I have often extolled on these pages.1 The collection contains twenty articles published over the span of thirty-five years, and, in a way, provides the ‘best of’ of Parker's opera minora. But these are minora in name only: all articles gathered in this volume have been, and remain, highly influential and represent question-defining studies that shaped the way we think about discrete problems in Greek religion.

We present the fourth data release (DR4) of the SkyMapper Southern Survey (SMSS), the last major step in our hemispheric survey with six optical filters: u, v, g, r, i, z. SMSS DR4 covers 26 000 deg$^{2}$ from over 400 000 images acquired by the 1.3 m SkyMapper telescope between 2014-03 and 2021-09. The 6-band sky coverage extends from the South Celestial Pole to $\delta=+16^{\circ}$, with some images reaching $\delta\sim +28^{\circ}$. In contrast to previous DRs, we include all good-quality images from the facility taken during that time span, not only those explicitly taken for the public Survey. From the image dataset, we produce a catalogue of over 15 billion detections made from $\sim$700 million unique astrophysical objects. The typical 10$\sigma$ depths for each field range between 18.5 and 20.5 mag, depending on the filter, but certain sky regions include longer exposures that reach as deep as 22 mag in some filters. As with previous SMSS catalogues, we have cross-matched with a host of other imaging and spectroscopic datasets to facilitate additional science outcomes. SMSS DR4 is now available to the worldwide astronomical community.

This state-of-the-art paper begins to unpack the concept of a housing crisis. Whilst it may be a useful starting point in recognising the presence of problems within UK housing provision and allocation, its generic and umbrella coverage papers over the diversity of experiences. Similarly, as a concept it neither suggests the causes of the crisis nor possible solutions. With this in mind, this paper explores commodification within housing and uses this to recognise that our relationship to housing and our relationship to the crisis, can be shaped by our relationship to capital. However, the paper takes this further by arguing that the presence of vulnerability should also be borne in mind when considering commodification, where vulnerability includes experiences of discrimination, mental health, and legal status.

Ukraine's war of self-defense against Russia is one of the clearest examples of a nation fighting a just war in recent history. Ukraine is clearly entitled to defend itself, and Russia is clearly obligated to cease hostilities, withdraw troops, and make repair. In light of this, some of the most salient moral questions related to Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine involve the international community; namely, what moral duties it has toward Ukraine, especially in light of Russia's extreme and pervasive human rights abuses. The first section of the essay argues that there is a pro tanto moral duty to intervene militarily in Ukraine to stop Russian human rights abuses and ensure that Ukraine achieves a military victory. This duty is grounded in duties of rescue, promissory obligations, and reliance obligations, as well as duties to nations’ own citizens and to the international community. The second section of the essay argues that the most relevant consideration in determining whether there is an all-things-considered duty for the international community to intervene militarily in Ukraine is Russia's nuclear coercion and the associated risk of nuclear war. This section highlights the nuclear risks involved in compliance with Russian nuclear coercion, which I argue have been neglected in prominent discussions. The moral stakes involved in this determination are very high, and succumbing to Russian nuclear coercion in the face of massive human rights violations would set a dangerous precedent. Any course of action should be guided by a thorough analysis of all the risks involved, both nuclear and moral.

A number of early tetrapods occur in different localities from the Ballagan Formation in Scotland. These localities are within the 12 Myr time duration of the Tournaisian so it is important to be able to place them within a chronology to better understand the evolutionary relationships of the tetrapods. Palynology is used to recognise distinct assemblages in the Norham West Mains Farm borehole and the Burnmouth coastal section which become a composite standard. The Willie's Hole tetrapods (Koilops, Mesanerpeton and Perittodus) come from the lower part of the Ballagan Formation with Auchenreoch Glen (Pederpes) somewhat higher. The oldest tetrapods are from the Harbour beds at Burnmouth with the Ross end cliffs tetrapods (Aytonerpeton, Diploradus and Ossirarus) the youngest assemblage. It is not possible to place the Coldstream tetrapods as the spore assemblage is low diversity. Tantallognathus from Tantallon is early Viséan in age. Occidens portlocki, an isolated partial tetrapod jaw from a historic collection in Northern Ireland, is not of Tournaisian age and hence not from within Romer's Gap, but it can be dated as Brigantian (latest Viséan) age. The other significant Romer's Gap locality from Blue Beach, Nova Scotia, Canada, is different in age span and palaeoenvironment.

The article deals with two topics that are neglected in the Gospel of Luke: miracles and praise. In Luke 5 – 18, the acts of praise appear almost always in the miracle stories and most frequently in the mouth of the crowd – four times. These acclamations reveal the gradual recognition of Jesus’ identity. The crowd’s perception of Jesus as a miracle worker (5.26) and prophet (7.16) at the beginning has changed to seeing in him the Son of David and Messiah (18.38, 39, 43). This progression of the Jewish crowd in understanding Jesus’ identity is the thesis of this article.