From the sixteenth through the mid-nineteenth centuries, Spain, then Mexico, and finally the United States took ownership of the land from the Gulf Coast of Texas and Mexico to the Pacific Coast of Alta and Baja California—today's American Southwest. Each country faced the challenge of holding on to territory that was poorly known and sparsely settled, and each responded by sending out military mapping expeditions to set boundaries and chart topographical features. All three countries recognized that turning terra incognita into clearly delineated political units was a key step in empire building, as vital to their national interest as the activities of the missionaries, civilian officials, settlers, and adventurers who followed in the footsteps of the soldier-engineers. With essays by eight leading historians, this book offers the most current and comprehensive overview of the processes by which Spanish, Mexican, and U.S. soldier-engineers mapped the southwestern frontier, as well as the local and even geopolitical consequences of their mapping. Three essays focus on Spanish efforts to map the Gulf and Pacific Coasts, to chart the inland Southwest, and to define and defend its boundaries against English, French, Russian, and American incursions. Subsequent essays investigate the role that mapping played both in Mexico's attempts to maintain control of its northern territory and in the United States' push to expand its political boundary to the Pacific Ocean. The concluding essay draws connections between mapping in the Southwest and the geopolitical history of the Americas and Europe.
School textbooks in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab and Muslim worlds are filled with anti-Western and anti-Israel propaganda. Most readers will be shocked to discover that history and geography textbooks widely used in America's elementary and secondary classrooms contain some of the very same inaccuracies about Jews, Judaism, and Israel. Did you know that 'there is no record of any important Jewish contribution to the sciences?' (World Civilizations, Thomson Wadsworth). Or that 'Christianity was started by a young Palestinian named Jesus?' (The World, Scott Foresman/Pearson). Supplemental materials and other classroom influences are even worse. The Trouble with Textbooks exposes the poor scholarship and untruths in textbooks about Jews and Israel. The problems uncovered in this ground-breaking analysis are instructive, and illustrate the need for reform in the way textbooks are developed, written, marketed, and distributed. Substitute another area_how we teach American history, Western civilization, or comparative religion_and we have another, equally intriguing case study. The Trouble with Textbooks shows what can go terribly wrong in discussing religion, geography, culture, or history_and in this case_all of them. The Trouble with Textbooks tells a cautionary tale for all readers, whatever their background, of how textbooks that Americans depend on to infuse young people with the values for good citizenship and to help acculturate students into the multicultural salad that is American life, instead disparage some groups and teach historical distortions. With millions of young people using these textbooks each year, the denigration of some should be a concern for all.
Taking seriously the Gospel as a unified narrative and the Gospel's late first-century Jewish setting, John Dennis investigates the Fourth Gospel's appropriation of Jewish restoration theology. Employing John 11.47-52 as the starting point, the author argues that one of the primary functions of restoration theology in John is to interpret Jesus' death in the light of Jewish restoration expectations. A new angle on Jesus' death in the Fourth Gospel emerges from this study: Jesus' death effects the restoration of Israel, the restoration that was engendered by the Prophets and expected by many Jews of the Second Temple period. In the course of the study it is also argued that John was primarily concerned with Israel's restoration and not with a mission to the Gentiles. In this light, a fresh interpretation of the children of God (11.52) is offered.
Thomas appears only four times in John's Gospel, yet despite this he is crucially important in understanding the function of the Johannine message. Dennis Sylva provides the first major study which examines the paradox that Thomas is both opposed to a dominant theme in the Fourth Gospel - the eternal life that is a gift to Jesus' followers - and yet is in support of Jesus himself. Thomas appears to have a foot on both sides of the Johannine dualistic divide. He seems to be existentially at home on one side and yet ideologically at home on the other. No other character in John's Gospel so tenaciously hold on to companionship with Jesus while just as resolutely distancing himself from Jesus' central teaching. Thomas breaks down the barriers between the disciples (those who walk in the light) and the world (those who walk in the darkness) that John takes pains to establish. Sylva's new work demonstrates the importance of Thomas in fully understanding the message of the Fourth Gospel.
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