TA 3/2008 (113. vuosikerta)

The Kinneret Excavations in 2007 — The ancient city of Kinneret in northern Israel has been the subject of excavation since 1980. This article presents the major results of 2007, which concluded the excavations in the lower town. The excavations focused on early Iron Age settlement in Kinneret, everyday items and figurines. The new excavations yielded important information about the city and its cultural relations with other sites in the area. Kinneret was a large and well-planned regional centre in the early Iron Age, and due to its destruction by an earthquake its material remains were well preserved.

Nostra aetate – The Charter of the Theology of Religions of the Roman Catholic Church — At the fourth and final session of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), Pope Paul VI approved the brief declaration entitled Nostra aetate concerning the relationship of the Church to non-Christian religions. It had been redrafted several times before it was finally accepted by vote. This document represents a turn from exclusivism to inclusivism in the theology of religions of the Roman Catholic Church, and subsequent Popes (Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI) and the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue have drawn upon it when issuing opinions on religions and interreligious dialogue.

The Fullness of Meaning: Transcendence according to the Existential Semiotics of Eero Tarasti — Renowned Finnish semiotician Prof. Eero Tarasti (b. 1948) presents in his Existential Semiotics (2000) a theologically intriguing view of transcendence. The semiosis is modelled through two journeys of the subject between its Dasein and transcendence. In the first phase, the subject experiences the emptiness. That is what Sartre called le Néant. A traditional existentialist could stop there. But the journey continues to pleroma: the world is full of meaning. In this article, Tarasti’s theory is evaluated from a theological point of view. Existential semiotics turns out to lend itself to a theological approach very well. Moreover, semiotics in general could be very helpful for theologians.