With my background in architecture, my approach to better understanding public space is to use a process of exploration, observation and drawing on location, or as it’s called in some forums as “urban sketching”. With observation I try to understand the elements of the built environment which contribute to the vitality of a city. My drawings become comments on either the political landscape or social context of a particular place. Before I start the drawing process, I explore, observe, and talk to local people, gathering information on the layers complexity that exist in order to better understand place. This observational approach forms a framework to work within and enables me to begin the process of making an interpretation, through drawing, of a place. A key aim of this approach is to distill what I see into a simple form. Whether it be a large expansive wall drawing, or a small scale drawing in a sketch book, my artwork has the aspirational aim to provoke a wider discussion about our cities, public spaces, and the built environment. It also tries to look at how people use these spaces, and document what’s important to a “soul” of a place and how this approach resonates with its characteristics. Using drawing as a tool to highlight a message has enabled me to express ideas on how public space can be improved and enhanced from a social, political and experiential point of view.
The sotah text of Num. 5:11-31 is a striking and ethically problematic passage concerned with a husband's jealousy and suspicion of his wife for adultery either real or imagined. It is argued that despite frequent labelling to the contrary, it is actually a passage about jealousy rather than adultery per se, and that historical-critical attempts to locate the described ritual in its ancient Near Eastern context are inconclusive with regard to substantial matters of interpretation. Various strategies for handling the ethical dimensions of the text are explored, including gender-specific and symbolic angles of approach. These are considered to be of limited value. The ethical issues presented by the text are then discussed with regard to its present canonical location in the book of Numbers. It is argued that owing to a unique combination of factors, an expected reading of the sotah text in its canonical context is one which is suspicious of the suspicion described in the passage. Some hermeneutical dimensions of this analysis are evaluated with a view to the wider question concerning theologically problematic passages in scripture.
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