John A. Weinman's Books

Perceptions of Health and Illness

By: Keith J. Petrie,John A. Weinman

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Perceptions of Health and Illness

By: Keith J. Petrie,John A. Weinman

First Published in 1997. The study of how individuals perceive and make sense of health and illness is a new and rapidly developing area in health psychology. The field has seen important recent theoretical developments and applications to a wide range of health threats and illnesses. The first section of this book examines the current theoretical and measurement issues in the field and includes issues related to illness perceptions across the lifespan, disability, and the assessment of illness representations in chronic illness. The second section addresses the role of illness perceptions in health screening and prevention and includes work on perceptions of genetic disease, cancer screening, and how individuals process health risk information. The third section is concerned with the application of the illness perceptions approach to patients with chronic illness and those undergoing treatment. Illnesses examined using this approach include chronic fatigue syndrome, breast cancer, diabetes, and myocardial infarction.

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Page Count

520

Publisher

Psychology Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

113440154X

ISBN 13

9781134401543

The Bible, Homer, and the Search for Meaning in Ancient Myths

Why We Would Be Better Off With Homer’s Gods

By: John Heath

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The Bible, Homer, and the Search for Meaning in Ancient Myths

Why We Would Be Better Off With Homer’s Gods

By: John Heath

The Bible, Homer, and the Search for Meaning in Ancient Myths explores and compares the most influential sets of divine myths in Western culture: the Homeric pantheon and Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament. Heath argues that not only does the God of the Old Testament bear a striking resemblance to the Olympians, but also that the Homeric system rejected by the Judeo-Christian tradition offers a better model for the human condition. The universe depicted by Homer and populated by his gods is one that creates a unique and powerful responsibility – almost directly counter to that evoked by the Bible—for humans to discover ethical norms, accept death as a necessary human limit, develop compassion to mitigate a tragic existence, appreciate frankly both the glory and dangers of sex, and embrace and respond courageously to an indifferent universe that was clearly not designed for human dominion. Heath builds on recent work in biblical and classical studies to examine the contemporary value of mythical deities. Judeo-Christian theologians over the millennia have tried to explain away Yahweh’s Olympian nature while dismissing the Homeric deities for the same reason Greek philosophers abandoned them: they don’t live up to preconceptions of what a deity should be. In particular, the Homeric gods are disappointingly plural, anthropomorphic, and amoral (at best). But Heath argues that Homer’s polytheistic apparatus challenges us to live meaningfully without any help from the divine. In other words, to live well in Homer’s tragic world – an insight gleaned by Achilles, the hero of the Iliad – one must live as if there were no gods at all. The Bible, Homer, and the Search for Meaning in Ancient Myths should change the conversation academics in classics, biblical studies, theology and philosophy have – especially between disciplines – about the gods of early Greek epic, while reframing on a more popular level the discussion of the role of ancient myth in shaping a thoughtful life.

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Page Count

434

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

0429663749

ISBN 13

9780429663741

Faces of Muhammad

Western Perceptions of the Prophet of Islam from the Middle Ages to Today

By: John Tolan

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Faces of Muhammad

Western Perceptions of the Prophet of Islam from the Middle Ages to Today

By: John Tolan

Heretic and impostor or reformer and statesman? The contradictory Western visions of Muhammad In European culture, Muhammad has been vilified as a heretic, an impostor, and a pagan idol. But these aren’t the only images of the Prophet of Islam that emerge from Western history. Commentators have also portrayed Muhammad as a visionary reformer and an inspirational leader, statesman, and lawgiver. In Faces of Muhammad, John Tolan provides a comprehensive history of these changing, complex, and contradictory visions. Starting from the earliest calls to the faithful to join the Crusades against the “Saracens,” he traces the evolution of Western conceptions of Muhammad through the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and up to the present day. Faces of Muhammad reveals a lengthy tradition of positive portrayals of Muhammad that many will find surprising. To Reformation polemicists, the spread of Islam attested to the corruption of the established Church, and prompted them to depict Muhammad as a champion of reform. In revolutionary England, writers on both sides of the conflict drew parallels between Muhammad and Oliver Cromwell, asking whether the prophet was a rebel against legitimate authority or the bringer of a new and just order. Voltaire first saw Muhammad as an archetypal religious fanatic but later claimed him as an enemy of superstition. To Napoleon, he was simply a role model: a brilliant general, orator, and leader. The book shows that Muhammad wears so many faces in the West because he has always acted as a mirror for its writers, their portrayals revealing more about their own concerns than the historical realities of the founder of Islam.

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Page Count

328

Publisher

Princeton University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0691270988

ISBN 13

9780691270982

Book's by John A. Weinman

Perceptions of Health and Illness

Perceptions of Health and Illness

The Bible, Homer, and the Search for Meaning in Ancient Myths

The Bible, Homer, and the Search for Meaning in Ancient Myths

Faces of Muhammad

Faces of Muhammad

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