This chapter explores how the local dimension of ancient Greek religion has featured in Classical scholarship. Kindt argues that the problem of location is intrinsic to the structure of ancient Greek religion, which, in the absence of traditional locations of authority, had multiple centres and peripheries. The way in which the Greeks conceived of the personalities of the gods and goddesses is a case in point: the idea of a unified existence as implied in the concept of the divine persona is challenged by the multiplicity of ways in which one and the same deity manifested itself in the human world. Three different ways in which Classical scholars have conceived of the categories of the local in relation to the Greek divine persona come into the picture here: as a realisation of the general, as the place at which variation occurs, and as two dynamic forces that variously intersect in different locations at which ancient Greek religion manifests itself.

This chapter explores how the local dimension of ancient Greek religion has featured in Classical scholarship. Kindt argues that the problem of location is intrinsic to the structure of ancient Greek religion, which, in the absence of traditional locations of authority, had multiple centres and peripheries. The way in which the Greeks conceived of the personalities of the gods and goddesses is a case in point: the idea of a unified existence as implied in the concept of the divine persona is challenged by the multiplicity of ways in which one and the same deity manifested itself in the human world. Three different ways in which Classical scholars have conceived of the categories of the local in relation to the Greek divine persona come into the picture here: as a realisation of the general, as the place at which variation occurs, and as two dynamic forces that variously intersect in different locations at which ancient Greek religion manifests itself.

Various sound-recording technologies are presented that use different mediums and different encoding methods for the recorded signal. Analog and digital are two broad categories used for encoding. Sound signals can be recorded using a physical change to a material, as is used for vinyl records and some CDs and DVDs. Signals can also be recorded using magnetic materials and their interaction with electromagnets. Optically encoded signals involve a change in the reflection or transmission of light from a material, including the analog signals used in older movie films and digitally recorded signals for newer recordings. Two examples of digital recording encoding are 1-bit and base-2 binary. Nyquist folding, used when sampling is too slow, is introduced.

The connections between senses and morality are located in politics, religion, music, food, and other practices and metaphors of consumption. Such associations point to desired or positive values that are demonstrated through particular sensory behaviour. These together form social structures that reflect propriety and moral decorum. The governance of good behaviour and subscription to moral codes similarly extend to the metaphysical world of spirits through a variety of corporeal and cognitive modalities. Building upon the phenomenological anthropology of morality, I show how the senses serve as intermediaries of moral binaries. Cases are drawn from myths, legends, folktales, poetry, and ethnographies. Overall, varying sociocultural associations of the different senses with morality, virtue, and disposition present a type of sensory attunement to apprehend moral economies and social structures. I argue that sensory moral economies are, in effect, the product of specific sensory action. Social actors are expected to perform particular ways of being that actualise alignment with ideal, righteous states or dispositions mediated through the senses. The outcome of such sense acts is a combination of immaterial interests and moral sentiments. As sociocultural arbiters, the senses bring to light the moral organisation of society.

Chapter 1 demonstrates that the nineteenth-century medical record undermines the idea that each person could have only one sex. Throughout the period, several doctors made a stand for “true hermaphrodism,” many more could not identify the sex of their living patients, and “experts” constantly disagreed not only about findings, but also about how best to establish sex in unclear cases. Precisely because no one method for determining sex proved entirely foolproof, doctors and medical forensics experts often relied on narrative to support their claims – a narrative that closely mirrors the one being developed simultaneously in contemporary fiction, and especially, but not exclusively, by realist fiction. Herculine Barbin’s memoirs (the only extant memoirs of a nineteenth-century intersex person in Europe) find their literary corollary in popular fiction that shares much with the creativity and exploitation of narrative techniques in the medical record. Newly uncovered case studies challenge the longstanding representation of the rigidly polarized binary in nineteenth-century France as well as the Foucauldian thesis of “true sex.” Patients sometimes made their own sex determinations, or sought out multiple doctors in order to meet their needs.

If the scientific epistemology parallels Hebraic epistemology in any significant way, then the conceptual paradigms of truth and the mechanics of justification could – or, perhaps, should – follow suit. The Hebraic model of "truth" that emerges differs at key points from some, but not all, of our folk notions of truth today. Specifically, the true/false binary that funds current and popular models of justification appears to be too rigid a model for the Hebraic style. I examine a Hebraic notion of truth and justification in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. Although I will put both truth and the logic of justification in conversation with contemporary ideas, I do so only to show both the kinship we share with biblical notions, and the critique offered from the biblical texts.