All Content

YONAH LAVERY-YISRAELI | Like the modern skeptic, Rambam Rambam (more widely known as Maimonides) is wary of trends and is alive to the slipperiness of motivation. In his work Shemoneh Peraqim, he raises the spectres of misunderstanding and superficiality, and argues that there are, in fact, right and wrong reasons to engage in discomfort.

AMIT MAJMUDAR | As a modern Indian, you might also hear about the epics in the news. That movie version you were eager to go see in the theater might have set off a controversy over whether the main characters were portrayed reverently enough; the public may have declared a boycott.

AARON POOCHIGIAN | I like the double meaning because the moon is both the celestial body and Wang’s pal and playmate.

MICHAEL BAZZETT | Translating the poetry of K’iche’ Maya poet Humberto Ak’abal can sometimes feel like trying to grab a beam of sunlight.

PHILIP BALL | According to the old story, we once thought that all this other DNA was just “junk,” a term coined in this context in the 1970s. It was accumulated over the course of evolution, for example by viruses inserting their genetic material into ours, and it did nothing useful but just cluttered up our genome the way all our old detritus of a lifetime clutters up our attic.

VICTORIA MOUL | Sanskrit lyric is particularly rich in erotic verse, which is divided into many different types and typical scenarios: there is no real parallel for this in any Western literary tradition.

YONAH LAVERY-YISRAELI | Perhaps the only needed modification is to go in both directions, near and far at once, with gentle caution, a controlled and attentive tumble into the stars. Cosmic mobility: that is exactly what the two-mother idea has to offer, and it is needed.

EMILY OSBORNE | Unsurprisingly, manuscript traditions reveal that scribes were often stumped by the kennings they recorded or copied, and Hallfreðr’s seven-part kenning for Oláfr is no exception.

ALEXANDRA BARYLSKI | Language is in mortal peril, and we need to do something about it. The current trajectory of AI, left unchecked, will globalize the strongest weapon of colonialism...

Craig Hinkson In tribute to my friend and mentor, Brian Albert Gerrish, 1931-2025: To his excellence as a scholar and teacher, and kindness to me, his student Brian passed away on April 14 th during Holy Week this year at the age of 93. He and Bernard McGinn were my professors in historical theology at the University of Chicago Divinity School in the 1980s. Together, they provided the foundation for my work as an historical theologian and philosopher of religion. McGinn was

BORIS DRALYUK | My goal was to meet the text whole, to find a fitting tone of voice, to make up for inevitable losses with gains available only in English.

SAMUEL LONCAR | Nihilism is killing the university, and not for the first time. The Germany university was the crown jewel of European culture in the 19th-century, the pinnacle and vanguard of scientific progress, and the exemplar of what a wise partnership between state-funding and education could be...