The Event

In physics, an event is the intersection of the three dimensions of space and the dimension of time. In ritual, I would say, an event is the coordination of sacred space and sacred time. W.H. Auden discusses the event poetically:

Between those happenings that prefigure it
And those that happen in its anamnesis
Occurs the Event, but that no human wit
Can recognize until all happening ceases.

An event is what happens between foreshadowing and retrospection, yet it is unrecognizable until its passage. It is only knowable in retrospect rather than in the moment. Perhaps. I think it is strange to express this in the perpetual present of poetry. Can there by retrospective poetic moments? Or is poetry, at least modern (and non-epic) poetry, only introspective? As such there is no poetic event, since there is no moment to see it from. Perhaps this is the point of the final line: "until all happening ceases." Is this the "happening" of a single event? Or is THE Event (which a capital E) all happening--all existence, all the ephemera that happens under the sun. As such, we cannot recognize the Event until the end of it all, the ultimate retrospection when all is seen in relation to all. THE Event is only recognizable from a non-human, a God's-eye view.

Did God Mean that Literally?

James McGrath has a great posting of a cartoon, which he in turn picked up from someone else. I just had to repost it here, let it make its way through the blogosphere.



This gets back to my posts from last year on Luke and Biblical Redistribution of Wealth. Just hit the tag on "Socialism and the Bible" to revisit those posts.

Defecation and Philosophy according to Poetry

The Geography of the House

Seated after breakfast
In this white-tiled cabin
Arabs called The House where
Everybody goes,
Even melancholics
Raise a cheer to Mrs
Nature for the primal
Pleasures She bestows.

Sex is but a dream to
Seventy-and-over,
But a joy proposed un-
-til we start to shave:
Mouth-delight depends on
Virtue in the cook, but
This She guarantees from
Cradle unto grave.

Lifted off the potty,
Infants from their mothers
Hear their first impartial
Words of worldly praise:
Hence, to start the morning
With a satisfactory
Dump is a good omen
All our adult days.

Revelation came to
Luther in a privy
(Cross-words have been solved there):
Rodin was no fool
When he cast his Thinker,
Cogitating deeply,
Crouched in the position
Of a man at stool.

All the Arts derive from
This ur-act of making,
Private to the artist:
Makers' lives are spent
Striving in their chosen
Medium to produce a
De-nacissus-ised en-
-during excrement.

Freud did not invent the
Constipated miser:
Banks have letter-boxes
Built in their facade
Marked For Night Deposits,
Stocks are firm or liquid,
Currencies of nations
Either soft or hard.

Global Mother, keep our
Bowels of compassion
Open through our lifetime,
Purge our minds as well:
Grant us a kind ending,
Not a second childhood,
Petulant, weak-sphinctered,
In a cheap hotel.

Keep us in our station:
When we get pound-noteish,
When we seem about to
Take up Higher Thought,
Send us some deflating
Image like the pained ex-
-pression on a Major
Prophet taken short.

(Orthodoxy ought to
Bless our modern plumbing:
Swift and St Augustine
Lived in centuries
When a stench of sewage
Ever in the nostrils
Made a strong debating
Point for Manichees.)

Mind and Body run on
Different time-tables:
Not until our morning
Visit here can we
Leave the dead concerns of
Yesterday behind us,
Face with all our courage
What is now to be.

~W.H. Auden

On Literary Allusion and Imagery

...even an unveiled and substantiated allusion does not offer any essential element for the artistic and ideological understanding of that image. The image is always deeper and wider, it is linked to tradition, it has its own aesthetic logic independent of the allusion.... Even if one single allusion...could be positively identified...it would not help us understand the traditional meaning of this image...nor its specific artistic function in the novel.

(M.M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 114; trans. Helene Iswolsky)

Poetry and Truth: Forgeries

I can imagine a forger clever enough to imitate another's signature so exactly that a handwriting expert would swear in court that it was genuine, but I cannot imagine a forger so clever that he could imitate his own signature inexactly enough to make a handwriting expert swear that it was a forgery. (Or is it only that I cannot imagine the circumstances in which anyone could want to do such a thing?)

(W.H. Auden, Dichtung and Wahrheit X)

It is almost like taking Polonius' advice to Laertes in Shakespeare's Hamlet as inevitable: not only "to thine own self be true" but one cannot but be true to oneself. Although one's signature is duplicable, one can only falsify others and not oneself. It is an interesting idea to express in handwriting. Although I am not sure it is true, and, in fact, Auden himself expresses parenthetical doubts that not being able to think of one who could falsify oneself is due to a lack of imagination.

Doggie Church

This article from AP was just sent to me about a Church that has started a special doggie service:

Before the first Canines at Covenant service last Sunday, Eggebeen said many Christians love their pets as much as human family members and grieve just as deeply when they suffer - but churches have been slow to recognize that love as the work of God.

"The Bible says of God only two things in terms of an 'is': That God is light and God is love. And wherever there's love, there's God in some fashion," said Eggebeen, himself a dog lover. "And when we love a dog and a dog loves us, that's a part of God and God is a part of that. So we honor that."

The weekly dog service at Covenant Presbyterian is part of a growing trend among churches nationwide to address the spirituality of pets and the deeply felt bonds that owners form with their animals.

Traditionally, conventional Christians believe that only humans have redeemable souls, said Laura Hobgood-Oster, a religion professor at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas.

But a growing number of congregations from Massachusetts to Texas to California are challenging that assertion with regular pet blessings and, increasingly, pet-centric services, said Hobgood-Oster, who studies the role of animals in Christian tradition.

She recently did a survey that found more than 500 blessings for animals at churches nationwide and has heard of a half-dozen congregations holding worship services like Eggebeen's, including one in a Boston suburb called Woof 'n Worship.

"It's the changing family structure, where pets are really central and religious communities are starting to recognize that people need various kinds of rituals that include their pets," she said. "More and more people in mainline Christianity are considering them to have some kind of soul."

....

But as Eggebeen stepped to the front and the piano struck up the hymn "GoD and DoG," one by one the pooches lay down, chins on paws, and listened. Eggebeen took prayer requests for Mr. Boobie (healing of the knees) and Hunter (had a stroke) and then called out the names of beloved pets past and present (Quiche, Tiger, Timmy, Baby Angel and Spunky) before launching into the Lord's Prayer.

And of course there are passing out of treats, something like a dog-biscuit communion.

I personally think it is a very good idea. It definitely would make church a bit more interesting.

Morton Smith on Secret Mark Documentary

Mark Goodacre, who as of late seems to scour YouTube for video clips of controversial finds, has posted a clip of Morton Smith discussing Secret Mark, which has been making additional waves in scholarship lately.

I have decidedly not publicly defended or refuted anyone's claims on Secret Mark, and do not expect to get anything out of me anytime soon. Those who pay close attention to my CV--the nocturnal initiates--will know why.

Here is the clip on Jesus' potential nocturnal initiation ceremonies:



Be sure to click on the link above to get Mark Goodacre's comments.

R.I.P. Claude Levi-Strauss

The very famous and highly influential anthropologist, Claude Levi-Strauss, has just died at the ripe age of 100, just a few weeks short of his 101st birthday. Frankly, I had not realized that he had been still alive all this time.

The AP has his obituary:

November 3, 2009
French Anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss Dies at 100

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:22 p.m. ET

PARIS (AP) -- Claude Levi-Strauss, widely considered the father of modern anthropology for work that included theories about commonalities between tribal and industrial societies, has died. He was 100.

The French intellectual was regarded as having reshaped the field of anthropology, introducing the concept of structuralism -- concepts about common patterns of behavior and thought, especially myths, in a wide range of human societies. Defined as the search for the underlying patterns of thought in all forms of human activity, structuralism compared the formal relationships among elements in any given system.

During his six-decade career, Levi-Strauss authored literary and anthropological classics including ''Tristes Tropiques'' (1955), ''The Savage Mind'' (1963) and ''The Raw and the Cooked'' (1964).

Jean-Mathieu Pasqualini, chief of staff at the Academie Francaise, said an homage to Levi-Strauss was planned for Thursday, with members of the society -- of which Levi-Strauss was a member -- standing during a speech to honor his memory.

Born on Nov. 28, 1908, in Brussels, Belgium, Levi-Strauss was the son of French parents of Jewish origin. He studied in Paris and went on to teach in Sao Paulo, Brazil and conduct much of the research that led to his breakthrough books in the South American giant.

Levi-Strauss also won worldwide acclaim and was awarded honorary doctorates universities including Harvard, Yale and Oxford, as well as universities in Sweden, Mexico and Canada.

He is survived by his sons Roman and Laurent.

Here is a longer obituary from the NYTimes.

The French newspaper, Le Monde, also has a lengthier obituary.

Islam and Creationism

The NYTimes has an article about a study coming out of McGill University in Montreal about the increasing prevalence of Creationism in Islamic communities and countries, a topic I know many of my regular readers will be interested in and and more informed about than I am.

According to the article, Muslim Creationists tend to be "old earth" Creationists in contrast to the more Christian "young earth" Creationists, meaning most Muslim Creationists do not think the earth to be a mere 6000 years old. They have no real problem with geologists and astronomers who argue that the earth is billions of years old. But they do seem to have some problems with biologists:

They do not quarrel with astronomers and geologists, just biologists, insisting that life is the creation of God, not the happenstance consequence of random occurrences.

This, as with everything, varies from group to group and from country to country, but there is a growing presence everywhere in the Muslim world. What is interesting is that evolution is not totally excluded, but only HUMAN evolution:

For many Muslims, even evolution and the notion that life flourished without the intervening hand of Allah is largely compatible with their religion. What many find unacceptable is human evolution, the idea that humans evolved from primitive primates. The Koran states that Allah created Adam, the first man, separately out of clay.

All other life can evolve, it seems, except human beings who are created directly by God. For the information from country to country, check out the article.

Noah: the Original Dionysiac!

Now, even as Noah--that sainted man to whom we are all beholden and indebted since it was he who planted the vine from which comes to us that nectar-like, precious, heavenly, joyful and deifying liquor that we call piot--was deceived when he drank of it since he was ignorant of its great virtues and power: so likewise did the men and women of the time partake with great pleasure of that lovely plump fruit.

(Francois Rabelais, Pantagruel, Gargantua and Pantagruel; trans. M.A. Screech)

Halloween from an Anthropological Perspective

One last post on Halloween, although I fully realize it is now All Saints Day. In my reading this morning, I ran across a passage from Victor Turner, who discusses Halloween in a series of cross-cultural calendrical rituals (as opposed to rites of passage) that emphasize the temporary reversal of roles and the importance of masks in those rites:

In Western society, the traces of rites of age- and sex-role reversal persist in such customs as Halloween, when the powers of the structurally inferior are manifested in the liminal dominance of pre-adolescent children. The monstrous masks they often wear in disguise represent mainly chthonic or earth-demonic powers--witches who blast fertility; corpses or skeletons from underground; indigenous peoples, such as Indians; troglodytes, such as dwarves or gnomes; hoboes or anti-authoritarian figures, such as pirates or traditional Western gun fighters. These tiny earth powers, if not propitiated by treats or dainties, will work fantastic and capricious tricks on the authority-holding generation of householders--tricks similar to those once believed to be the work of earth spirits, such as hobgoblins, boggarts, elves, fairies, and trolls. In a sense, too, these children mediate between the dead and the living; they are not long from the womb, which is in many cultures equated with the tomb, as both are associate with the earth, the source of fruits and the receiver of leavings. The Halloween children exemplify several liminal motifs: their masks insure them anonymity, for no one knows just whose particular children they are. But, as with most rituals of reversal, anonymity here is for the purposes of aggression, not humiliation. The child's mask is like the highwayman's mask--and, indeed, children at Halloween often wear masks of burglars or executioners. Masking endows them with the powers of feral, criminal autochthonous and supernatural beings.
(Victor Turner, The Ritual Process, 172).

The Spanish Catholic Church vs. "Pagan" Halloween

According to the London Times, the Spanish Catholic Church with the backing of the Vatican has come out completely against the celebration of Halloween. The article quotes an earlier, more lenient position taken by the Vatican as follows:

The Vatican appeared previously to take a more lenient position. Father Gabriele Amorth, the Vatican’s chief exorcist, once said: “If English and American children like to dress up as witches and devils on one night of the year, that’s not a problem. If it is just a game, there is no harm.”

But the Spanish hierarchy begs to differ.

Wearing skeleton suits, dressing up as vampires, witches or goblins or slapping on fake blood is not far removed from communing with the Devil, according to the country’s bishops.

However, the bishops, with Vatican backing, have reserved their venom for the millions of parents who allowed their children to celebrate this “pagan” festival.

Father Joan María Canals, the director of the Spanish Bishops Conference Committee on Liturgy, condemned parents for permitting their children to go to “un-Christian” parties when they should be focusing on All Saints Day today and All Souls Day on Monday.

All Hallows Eve is the Christian appropriation of an earlier "pagan"--specifically Celtic--holiday called Samhain. As I discussed in my previous post, if one wants to do away with holidays that have "pagan" elements, one would also have to do away with Christmas and Easter. And I do not think the church is going to claim those as anti-Christian and communing with the Devil. Frankly, dressing up in cute, clever, and sometimes gory costumes going door-to-door asking for candy is a pale reflection of the "pagan" roots of the holiday. Easter is probably closer to its pagan background! Very helpfully, the article gives a history of the holiday from Celtic origins, to Roman appropriation, to Christianization, and finally Americanization (which is basically synonymous with commercialization):

• The Celts wore costumes made from animal heads and built large fires to celebrate their new year, which fell on November 1. New Year’s Eve on October 31 was known as Samhain (pronounced “sow-in”) and marked the end of the “season of the Sun” (summer) and the beginning of “the season of darkness and cold”( winter). Although this 2,000-year-old version of Hallowe’en did not include trick or treating, it was far from dull.

• The Celts would burn crops and animals as offerings to their gods. Before the celebration, the ancient people would extinguish all fires other than the central bonfire, and scare each other with fortune-telling and prophesying

• The Romans later adapted this festival of the dead to honour the goddess of fruits and trees, Pomona. This is the most likely reason why, on Hallowe’en, we still bob for apples

• In the year AD835 the Roman Catholic Church made November 1 a holiday to honour all the saints. Although it was a joyous holiday, it was also the eve of All Souls Day, or All Hallows, so in medieval times it became customary to pray for the dead on this date

• Hallowe’en’s modern popularity can be attributed to the Americans. Because the celebration was largely free of any religious connections, it was quickly embraced by a broad swath of immigrants in the second half of the 19th century. Today Americans spend an estimated $6.9 billion (£4.2 billion) on Hallowe’en each year

Nowhere in the early stages was there anything about candy, there was no trick-or-treating, and, although there were costumes, I doubt many of us are wearing real animal heads. There are scary stories, however. The bonfire sounds fun.

Es tu Paganus?

As all hallow's eve approaches, the NYTimes has an article on the polytheistic background of the highly commercialized holiday (well, aren't all holidays these days?): the autumnal festival of Samhain.

Many people probably know that most of our "Christian" holidays rely upon an older calendar of European religious festivals, referred to as "pagan":

Certainly, there is nothing new about Paganism per se. From Halloween to May Day to Yuletide, said Prof. Diana L. Eck of Harvard Divinity School, “There’s a way in which all of us, especially in the Christian tradition, follow a religious calendar that is pegged to ancient Pagan festivals.”

One might add all of the fertility imagery (rabbits and eggs) in Easter. It was recognized early on by Christian leaders that it would be easier to convert people and keep them in the fold if many of the practices and festivals of the older religions were retained in some form and re-framed in Christian terms--that is why Christmas is December 25th, which used to commemorate the Sol Invictus ("unconquered sun"), and now commemorates the "unconquered son." Even for those who converted and their successors, the older polytheistic practices and beliefs have retained a strong hold: we are all still their successors.

More generally, however, the article focuses on groups and individuals who self-identify as "Pagan" or even "Heathen," and their struggle for official recognition. Sub-groups include Wiccan and Druid.

"Pagan" is an interesting word to identify oneself by. It literally means "villager." During the spread of Christianity in late antiquity, it began to be used to refer to those who did not convert and held onto their earlier religious traditions. Since Christianity spread fastest through a network of cities in the Roman Empire, most of the holdouts lived in the villages; thus, the term "pagan" was applied to a particular set of religious practices. But it was a "dustbin" category--it referred to anyone who was neither Christian nor Jewish. It was a pejorative term.

Nonetheless, as one of the ultimate terms of creating an outsider, an other, in societies that came to be dominated by Christians, "Pagan" has been adopted as a self-identifying term for those who practice or who resurrected these earlier religious forms with some modifications: most ancient forms of European and Near Eastern polytheistic worship included some sort of animal sacrifice, which is excluded in modern iterations (yet this is true of all religious movements--the modern versions bear faint resemblance to their ancient forebears). I have a feeling, however, that the variegated movements that fall under this broad umbrella appropriated this term due to the need for official, governmental protection. It is, in a way, useful so that each individual group would not have to fight for recognition separately. I do not know, however, to what degree someone who practices Wicca would recognize their similarity with someone who is a Druid except insofar as their common history of exclusion and their struggle for recognition. But, on the other hand, the same may be said for the difference between a Russian Orthodox Christian and a Southern Baptist.

Es tu Paganus? To at least a small degree, most of us are even if by the shattered remnants that have survived the ages in new clothing, even if that is not our identifying term.

Swine Flu and Religion: the Hajj

Disease, particularly on an epidemic scale, often affects religion. I might point to what Thucydides, for example, says about religion during the great plague of Athens in the fifth century BCE at the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War. As people died of the plague and the plague spread, all social bonds broke down. He writes:

Equally useless were prayers made in the temples, consultation of oracles, and so forth; indeed, in the end people were overcome by their sufferings that they paid no further attention to such things.
(Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 2.47; trans. Rex Warner)

The complete abandonment of religion (and all law) is a rather extreme version of how disease affects religious observance. But less extreme but still significant changes, mostly coming from religious authorities have been put into play with multiple religions.

A couple weeks ago we heard about changes in Catholic services, when the common cup for Eucharist ceremonies was removed and holy water was no longer available to stem the spread of swine flu. Many churches--as with so many other institutions--are now decked out with hand sanitizer.

But perhaps the biggest change I have seen is in Islam: Saudi authorities are worried that the hajj, the largest gathering of humans on the planet, will be a breeding ground for the flu.

“The hajj is a central ritual of Islam, and our country tries to make it easy for everyone to come,” said Dr. Ziad A. Memish, the country’s assistant deputy minister for preventive medicine. “We’ve said we won’t turn away anyone who arrives at our borders. But we are recommending to other countries whom they should let come.”

....

While religious pilgrimages feed the souls of those who attend, they often endanger the bodies. There have been several outbreaks of meningitis in Mecca since 1987, and in 2004, Muslim pilgrims spread polio from northern Nigeria across Africa to Saudi Arabia and from there outward to Yemen and Indonesia.

....

It will be impossible to stop the flu from arriving, the authorities acknowledge, and hard to slow its spread. But they are trying to lessen the damage by keeping the most vulnerable pilgrims away. Every country gets an annual limit as to how many pilgrims it can send. This year the Saudis suggested barring anyone who is pregnant, under age 12, over age 65 or suffering from diabetes, chronic lung, heart, liver or nerve disease, or some other conditions. Psychologically, the ban is hardest on the old and the sick, Dr. Memish said.

In countries with large Muslim populations, many applicants get one or two chances in a lifetime at the pilgrimage that every Muslim is supposed to make, and “some people save money for their whole lives to do it,” he said. More than half of all pilgrims are over 50. In a normal year, many of those desperate to come before they die are pushed in wheelchairs or carried around the Kaaba and through the other rituals.

The new swine flu vaccine could end all the Saudi worries, but only a few countries have even small amounts available, and the Saudis want anyone with access to it to have the shots at least two weeks before arrival.

Godspeed to all making the pilgrimage this year.

Some Considerations of "Absolute Space" and Sacred Spacetime

In my work of developing a spatiotemporal approach or a "poetics" of spacetime, I have been reading through Henri Lefebvre's Production of Space. For the most part, Lefebvre privileges spatial over temporal dimensions, but, in his defense, he claims he does so because this is a tendency of capitalist societies--privileging of space and the subordination of time is a quality of what he is studying. Nonetheless, in so doing he does show a certain sensitivity to time's relationship to space and how this relationship shifts from society to society, or, perhaps more accurately, from mode of production to mode of production.

One aspect of space he considers is "absolute space," and it is his comments on this type of space I would like to use as a jumping off point in developing an understanding of sacred spacetime. He writes:

Considered in itself--"absolutely"--absolute space is located nowhere. It has no place because it embodies all places, and has a strictly symbolic existence. This is what makes it similar to the fictitious/real space of language, and of that mental space, magically (imaginarily) cut off from the spatial realm, where the consciousness of the 'subject'--or 'self-consciousness'--takes form. Absolute space is always at the disposal of priestly castes. It consecrates, and consecration metaphysically identifies any space with fundamentally holy space: the space of a sanctuary is absolute space, even in the smallest temple or the most unpretentious village church. The space of tombs, for its part, unless it contains a god or a monarch, is analogous merely to the spaces of birth, death or oblivion. Absolute space, being by definition religious as well as political, implies the existence of religious institutions which subject it to the two major mechanisms of identification and imitation. These mental categories, destined to become those of imagination and reflective thought, first appear as spatial forms. The material extension of absolute space occurs by virtue of these processes, to the benefit of priestly castes and the political power they exercise or serve.
(Henri Lefebvre, Production of Space, 236-7; trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith; emphases original)

The first thing to consider is that absolute space differs from abstract space. Absolute space is not abstract, geometrical (Euclidean) space. The question is how is absolute space both everywhere and nowhere? Is it what consecrates as Lefebvre claims, or is it what is consecrated? Consecration--the creation of holy space--indicates a degree of separation and if there is separation and such differentiation, it cannot be everywhere in fact. Although it can be anywhere and everywhere in potential in the sense that consecration of space could theoretically occur to any space, turning any space into absolute/sacred/holy space. It is in this sense that, Lefebvre next says, it is "ritually affixable":

Being ritually affixable to any place and hence also detachable therefrom, the characteristic "absolute" requires an identifying mark. It therefore generates forms, and forms accommodate it. Such forms are microcosms of the universe: a square (the mandala), a circle or sphere, a triangle, a rational volume occupied by a divine principle, a cross, and so on.
(ibid., 237)

The "identifying mark" is its differentiation. Its marks are, indeed, its symbolic elements--they are the elements upon which meaning and, perhaps, a surplus of meaning is imputed. As such, it can be affixed to any place, but cannot be all places at once, except insofar as it contains all places. In this consideration, therefore, absolute space is the macrocosm. It consecrates, if we give absolute space agency as it seems Lefebvre does (which seems problematic to me), other spaces to become absolute spaces as well as microcosms. Thus the village temple, church, synagogue, mosque, etc., are microcosms that mirror the macrocosm. But, as the first paragraph quoted emphasizes, it is not just by imitation of the macrocosm that the microcosm becomes absolute space, it is also by identification. The macrocosm that contains the microcosm is fully present in the microcosm contained within it. So, although one might say that absolute space is everywhere insofar as it contains all space, on the other hand it is only accessible through the differentiated, marked spaces that are in some way holy. This means that we have to move a step beyond Lefebvre. He has suggested three relationships between macrocosmic (my word) absolute space and microcosmic absolute space: (1) the first consecrates the second; (2) the second imitates the first; and (3) the second identifies with the first. But imitation and identification are not quite enough to explain the relations of the two and encompass the claims that absolute space is everywhere and nowhere. Beyond imitation and due to identification, these differentiated, marked microcosms must also participate in the macrocosmic space.

I would contend, moreover, that these maneuvers pertain to time: we might say something about "absolute" time (which to me sounds like a nice substitution for "eternity") and absolute time's consecration of a marked time (through liturgies, rituals, etc.) and marked time's imitation and identification with absolute time, which, moreover, participates in absolute time. It is something that is again "ritually affixed." But this ritual affixation, moreover, suggests something else: it is a moment, an event, that concurrently organizes or coordinates this marked time with the marked space. Indeed, once we take agency away from "absolute" space and/or time, it give it to the ritual actors--the "priestly castes," perhaps--through the ritual actors' bodily movements and manipulations (and movement is where space and time coincide since one always moves through space and time together) the differentiations and relative sacrality of the entire spatiotemporal environment are created (or, in Lefebvre's terms, produced and reproduced).

Illustrating Genesis: R. Crumb's New Graphic Version

Today I purchased R. Crumb's new The Book of Genesis: Illustrated. Many bibliobloggers have been discussing the release of this book lately, showing a pre-released page or two. My local independent bookstore, Book Culture, has had this featured on their shelves for weeks now, even though it is much before its official release date of October 28. Kudos to Book Culture for being able to get this weeks before it is available elsewhere.

I have merely glanced at it so far, so my comments are necessarily cursory. The illustrations are very earthy--even those of angels and God (although God appears a bit luminescent). It freely depicts what the Bible describes (e.g., Adam "knowing" Eve, or any other sex scene in Genesis with some nudity--such as bare breasts or butts, and, when not explicitly nude, nipple outlines show through clothing). I was interested in looking at Genesis 22, the binding of Isaac, which illustrates the internal turmoil of Abraham through his facial expressions, particularly his eyes, which have both a searingly hard and troubled look, and the drawing of sweat. If you turn to Jacob wrestling with the man/angel/god, that figure looks just as human as Jacob. One recurrent element I find interesting is the use of jewelry. Women are often depicted with nose rings, men with earrings, and there are necklaces galore. Crumb is very interested in hairstyles and beardstyles. Styles of jewelry and hair clearly indicate social elements of gender and class. It shows an attention to middle-eastern styles of dress and detail.

It looks to be an enjoyable rendition of Genesis. It is the only copy of either a complete or portion of the Bible that comes with a warning: "Adult supervision recommended for minors." I think this should be the case for the Bible when not illustrated! Not necessarily for the sexual encounters described, however epigrammatically, but the violence involved.

Three Days

Jesus said, "Earthly life consists of three days: a yesterday over which you have no control, a tomorrow which you do not know whether you will attain, and a today which you should put to good use."

(Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, Minhaj al-'Abidin; trans. Khalidi, Muslim Jesus)

Some Sayings from the Muslim Jesus

Christ said to his followers: "If people appoint you as their heads, be like tails."

"Blessed is he who sees with his heart but whose heart is not in what he sees."

Christ said, "The world is a bridge. Cross this bridge but do not build upon it."

Christ said, "Be in the middle but walk to the side."

'Abdallah ibn Qutayba, 'Uyun al-Akhbar 1:266; 2:268, 328; 3:21 (Trans. Tarif Khalidi, The Muslim Jesus)

To Know and to Do

Jesus said, "It is of no use to you to come to know what you did not know, so long as you do not act in accordance with what you already know. Too much knowledge only increases pride if you do not act in accordance with it."

Ahmad ibn Hanbal, al-Zuhd (trans. Tarif Khalidi, The Muslim Jesus)

A Don's Life by Mary Beard

Mary Beard, the prominent Classicist and always-provocative and insightful writer, has turned her blog, A Don's Life, which is associated with the London Times, into a book.

The book reprints some selected posts, as well as including quite a few comments (and I think that debate actually makes the book). It also has an essay, by yours truly, on the nature of blogging -- and why I am a convert to the genre, despite many initial misgivings about dumbing down etc etc.

I hope you'll like it.

This of course raises a publication question: why would anyone buy the book if they could just look at her blog for free?

Nonetheless, it sounds very intriguing:

I'd like to think that anyone planning to apply to a so-called "elite" university would find some reassurance here: Oxbridge interviews really aren't as mad as they are made out to be, and you'll find some useful reflections from someone on the "wrong" side of the interview in the book. You'll also find a glimpse of the day to day life of a don -- much less port, and much more hard work than is usually painted (though even the blog cant quite capture what my everyday life is like ... no student would fancy seeing our discussion dissecting her essay reprinted on the web).

You'll also find some debunking of classical myths (Did the Romans wear togas? Well, not often -- about as we wear dinner jackets). And you'll come across some sharp commentary on 'new' classical stories in the headlines, not to mention some expostulation about the world as we know it (why do mixed institutions make it so hard for women to find the women's loo?)

Not to mention the occasional pointed rant on "the erotics of pedagogy', or on the Elgin Marbles.

I frankly did not realize she had a blog. But I have added it to my feed.

Anglicans, Catholics, Poaching, and Marriage

So there has been a lot of discussion of Pope B16's welcoming of Anglican bishops and priests who want to defect into the Catholic Church (after a re-ordination). From the Anglican side, it has been seen as "poaching" and "predatory" as discussed by the London Times. It is "poaching" more conservative Anglicans who have problems with the ordination of women and (openly) gay clergy. On the other hand, this maneuver to attract conservative Anglicans has instigated the paradoxical speculation of a possible result of "liberalizing" the Catholic clerical structure. Since the move by the Pope allows MARRIED Anglican clergy to defect to become Catholic clergy as married clergy, it will reopen or give momentum to the discussion of allowing married Catholic clergy. Married clergy are allowed by every other Christian tradition--Orthodox and Protestant--but hasn't been a part of the Latin rite in over a millennium. Will anything come of this?

Donne on Prayer

I have been reading some John Donne lately during my evermore frequent bouts with insomnia (is this the plight of all academics?), and I came across a couplet on prayer that I found interesting:

Hear this prayer Lord: O Lord deliver us
From trusting in those prayers, though poured out thus.

(John Donne, Litanies XIV.125-6)

I am fascinating by this prayer, since it is a prayer to deliver us from trusting in prayers--a truly paradoxical sentence.

"Great Books" and "Middlebrow" Culture

There is an interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education on the Great Books movement and "middlebrow" culture in the U.S. As someone who teaches a quintessential "great books" course, Literature of the Humanities, at Columbia University--not quite a "middlebrow" culture--I found the article interesting.

I found the following few paragraphs interesting and strangely ironic:

In my early 20s, when I was starting out as a graduate student in the humanities, I hosted a small gathering at my apartment. It didn't take long for my guests to begin scrutinizing my bookshelves. (I do the same thing now, of course, whenever I am at a party.) I remember that there were numerous battered anthologies, at least a hundred paperback classics, the Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (acquired as a Book-of-the-Month Club premium), probably six copies of PMLA, and several shelves of books that I had retained from childhood, including the Time-Life Library of Art and the Old West Time-Life Series in "hand-tooled Naugahyde leather."

Perhaps the most revered set of volumes from my childhood—proudly displayed—was Great Books of the Western World, in 54 leatherette volumes. I remember I bought them all at once for $10 at a church sale when I was about 13; it took me two trips to carry them home in plastic grocery bags.

"Your clay feet are showing," said one of my guests, another graduate student, as she removed Volume 1 of the Great Books from my shelves. I caught the biblical allusion, but it took me a couple of years to realize the implication of the remark: My background was lacking. If graduate school was a quiz show, then I was Herbert Stempel trying to make it in the world of Charles Van Doren.

The last bit refers to the famous "Quiz Show" debacle that has now been immortalized in film. What I find fascinating about it is that Charles van Doren's father, Mark van Doren, the much beloved literature professor at Columbia University, was a great proponent and foundational supporter of the "great books" movement and the development of the very course I teach now at Columbia. Though it may be different: the teaching of masterpieces of literature versus the mass-marketed book series. Nonetheless, I do wonder if van Doren, who inspired such a great American writer as Jack Kerouac, would disapprove of mass exposure of such masterpieces? I doubt it. His basic philosophy was that anyone who was an attentive reader could learn and teach such masterpieces.

Archaeologists Uncover Amphitheater at Portus

The London Times reports that archaeologists have unearthed a private amphitheater for the emperor at Portus, a site near Rome's Fiumicino airport.

This is the first time that a large-scale dig has taken place at the site, known as Portus, which was discovered in the 16th century and excavated in the 1860s. Now two miles inland, it would have been twice the size of the port of Southampton and an important gateway between Rome and the Mediterranean. It is possible that it was frequented by 2nd-century emperors.

British excavators, including staff from the University of Cambridge and the British School at Rome, said that the amphitheatre was likely to have been built for the private entertainment of a senior statesman or emperor and could have held up to 2,000 spectators.

Professor Simon Keay, the project director, said: “[The amphitheatre’s] design, using luxurious materials and substantial colonnades, suggests it was used by a high-status official, possibly even the emperor himself.

They also found the toilet there.

Biblical Studies Carnival XLVI

Daniel and Tonya at Hebrew and Greek Reader have posted the latest Biblical Studies Carnival.

Yours truly has a few posts this time, which I found interesting since I posted much less this month. Perhaps quality went up with less quantity.

My review of Mark George's Tabernacle as Social Space made the cut. Unfortunately, the link they set up does not work because it is missing the "l" in "html."

My off-hand post on Pathos also shows up. And my reporting of a report on the find of a horde of coins. Personally, however, I thought my post on Gilgamesh and Ecclesiastes was more interesting than these last two. But maybe Death is too light of a topic for the Carnival.

Quote of the Day: John Donne

Seek we then ourselves in ourselves; for as
Men force the sun with much more force to pass,
By gathering his beams with a crystal glass;

So we, if we into ourselves will turn,
Blowing our sparks of virtue, may outburn
The straw, which doth about our hearts sojourn.

(John Donne, "To Mr Roland Woodward")

The Places of Past Memories

I just completed Swann's Way, the first part of Marcel Proust's magnum opus, In Search of Lost Time. It is an absolutely beautiful book. It captures the always escaping evanescence of our memories, but fully sensually. It is the luxurious perfume that triggers something within us and sets out minds into places in our past, places that can never be the same again because we have changed. Lost places are the other dimension of lost time that slip on by, wafting and then dissipating in the air. The last line of the book captures the temporality of place beautifully:

The places we have known do not belong only to the world of space on which we map them for our own convenience. They were only a thin slice, held between the contiguous impressions that composed our life at that time; the memory of a particular image is but regret for a particular moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fugitive, alas, as the years.

(Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, In Search of Lost Time; trans. Moncrieff, Kilmartin, and Enright)

The Scapechicken?

Yom Kippur is coming up on Monday. In Leviticus 16, the real action of the ancient ritual concerned two goats. One goat was slaughtered and the blood cleansed the sanctuary. The other, the "scapegoat" or the goat "for Azazel," had the people's sins passed upon it and it was driven into the wilderness (evidently where Azazel was).

In Brooklyn on Monday Hasidic Jews will sacrifice a chicken in the "kapparot." The idea is that sins are transferred to the bird and then disappear at its death. I don't know much about this ritual, its origins, its explanations, and its developments. But it sounds like the two goats from the ancient ritual combined together into a single chicken.

Interestingly, it seems that this ritual contravenes rabbinic rulings on proper slaughter of animals.

In Death is Wisdom: Gilgamesh and Ecclesiastes

I am about to teach the Epic of Gilgamesh again. My students read the Standard Babylonian version, basically since it is the best preserved. This version transforms the earlier epic versions into something of an epic wisdom text, particularly regarding the Utnapishtim's speech at the end. This speech and the Standard Babylonian version as a whole remind me of Ecclesiastes in many respects. They both concern themselves with the inevitability of death and, in a way, the meaninglessness of much of life. Coming to terms with both aspects leads to wisdom. Nonetheless, they approach this whole coming-to-terms-with-death-is-the-foundation-of-wisdom in different ways. Of course, one is narrative and couched in conversation between Gilgamesh and Utnapisthim. The other is a more wisdom text--a radical one, in fact--but appears more in the form of a treatise as the "Preacher" goes through all aspects of life to show how they are all a "chasing after the wind."

The Standard Babylonian version of Gilgamesh would have been known by its first line: "He who Saw the Deep." It reads:

He who saw the Deep, the country's foundation,
[who] knew..., was wise in all matters!
[Gilgamesh, who] saw the Deep, the country's foundations,
[who] knew..., was wise in all matters!
(1.1-4; all translations by Andrew George)

In the subsequent narrative, Gilgamesh does not act very wise at all. In fact, he acts rather stupidly and is depicted as a horrible tyrant who will only be tamed by Enkidu. It will only be after Enkidu's death and after Gilgamesh's journey to the end of the world where the only immortalized human, Utnapisthim who survived the flood, lives. Gilgamesh's failure at immortality will coincide Utnapishtim's advice to the king. Ultimately, the lesson will be that immortality will be gained through one's constructive acts--such as rebuilding the walls of Uruk. This is quite a different response than the Iliad, for example, where undying glory is attained through destruction. Yet, ultimately, Gilgamesh will become, we presume, the wise king who "saw the deep." Having seen the deep things of the world, he will understand how ephemeral his own existence is.

Yet the attainment of wisdom by seeing the deep is set up as an impossibility in the late biblical wisdom traditions:

All this I have tested by wisdom; I said, "I will be wise," but it was far from me. That which is, is far off, and deep, very deep; who can find it out? (Eccl. 7:23-24; RSV)

In Gilgamesh, wisdom was garnered by journeying to the end of the earth and investigating the deep things by his superhuman, heroic strength (he was 2/3 divine, 1/3 human after all). He could bound in a few days what for others would take several months to journey. The author of Ecclesiastes also puts these foundations "far off" and in the "deep." But these places can not be found by any normal human being. We are not all Gilgameshes. No one really is. So how can we find this wisdom? We can't. But the Preacher does not give up because it is impossible, but merely recognizes it as another "chasing after the wind." Instead, the Preacher comes to wisdom (that there is no wisdom) not by superhuman feats of strength, but by observation of the surrounding world.

Wisdom from both is the inevitability of death for all--not matter who you are, no matter how good or bad you are. Utnapishtim says to Gilgamesh:

No one at all sees Death,
no one at all sees the face [of Death]
no one at all [hears] the voice of Death,
Death so savage, who hacks men down.

Ever do we build our households,
ever do we make our nests,
ever do brothers divide their inheritance,
ever do feuds arise in the land.

Ever the river has risen and brought us the flood,
the mayfly floating on the water.
On the face of the sun its countenance gazes,
then all of a sudden nothing is there!

The abducted and the dead, how alike is their lot!
But never was drawn the likeness of Death,
never in the land did the dead greet a man.

The Anunnaki, the great gods, held an assembly,
Mammitum, maker of destiny, fixed fates with them:
both Death and Life they have established,
but the day of Death they do not disclose.
(10.303-322)

This is probably my favorite passage in the Epic of Gilgamesh. The repetition of the first parts of the lines of "no one at all" and "ever do we" build up rhythm and suspense until "death so savage, who hacks men down" and "then all of a sudden nothing is there." I always like to say "all of a sudden" quickly and then pause, slowing down on "nothing." The point of the poetry is abundantly clear. Death is invisible but is ever-present, and ready to take us down. While death awaits, we "ever do" so many meaningless things in our daily lives, at least from the perspective of our own inevitable yet unknown deaths.

Ecclesiastes 9:3-12 makes the exact same point, but, I think, less poignantly:

There is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that one fate comes to all; also the hearts of the men are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead. But he who is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward; but the memory of them is lost. Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished, and they have no more forever any share in all that is done under the sun.

Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has already approved what you do.

Let your garments be always white; let not oil be lacking on your head.

Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life which he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might; for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.

Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the men of skill; but time and chance happen to them all. For man does not know his time. Like fish which are taken in an evil net, and like birds which are caught in a snare, so the sons of men are snared at an evil time, when it suddenly falls upon them.

Again, death is the fate of us all, and we do not know when it will come upon us. Moreover, we all have the same lot in the afterlife, where there is no memory, no thought, no wisdom, and no knowledge. It is much like the Greek afterlife. In fact, the line about it is better to be a living dog than a dead lion also reminds me of Achilles in the Odyssey, where he tells Odysseus he would rather be the lowest of peasants on earth than the greatest among the dead in the underworld. Much like Gilgamesh portrays death as abduction, Ecclesiastes portrays it as capture in a snare, an evil net. The suddenness of death equally features in both as well. Once one comes to terms with these aspects of death--its inevitability, its suddenness (it can come upon us at any time), and that the afterlife is undifferentiated--then we can finally achieve a modicum of vain wisdom in our vain life: to enjoy life, enjoy eating, enjoy drinking, enjoy the person you love, take pleasure in your work, for there is nothing else. If all is impermanent, one might as well enjoy those impermanent things by taking pleasure in the passing moment. If you fail to do this, death may spring on you at any time and your chance of enjoyment will be gone.

Finally, the "ever do we" lines of Gilgamesh recall, to me at least, the repetition of "a time to" in Ecclesiastes.

Ever do we build our households,
ever do we make our nests,
ever do brothers divide their inheritance,
ever do feuds arise in the land.
(see above)

For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
(Eccl. 3.1-4)

And it keeps going. The difference perhaps is that the Epic of Gilgamesh emphasizes the constant drum of the same activities, whereas the the Ecclesiastes passage emphasizes the appointment of times for different activities, although these activities, too, are recurrent.

While Gilgamesh and Ecclesiastes are very different texts, different genres even, set at different times (vastly different, in fact), and written in different places, they show a great deal of the same imagery and concerns. They both claim that wisdom is coming to terms with death. Death is sudden, it is pervasive, everyone must succumb to it, and don't count on the afterlife to make up for this one. The wisdom is that death comes to call and at any time without us knowing it; thus, we must live our lives in the moment for any moment could be our last.

Lefebvre on Time in Space

Let everyone look at the space around them. What do they see? Do they see time? They live time, after all; they are in time. Yet all anyone sees is movements. In nature, time is apprehended within space--in the very heart of space: the hour of the day, the season, the elevation of the sun above the horizon, the position of the moon and stars in the heavens, the cold and the heat, the age of each natural being, and so on. Until nature became localized in underdevelopment, each place showed its age and, like a tree trunk, bore the mark of the years it had taken it to grow. Time was thus inscribed in space, and natural space was merely the lyrical and tragic script of natural time.... With the advent of modernity time has vanished from social space.... Economic space subordinates time to itself; political space expels it as threatening and dangerous (to power). The primacy of the economic and above all of the political implies the supremacy of space over time.... Our time, then, this most essential part of lived experience, this greatest good of all goods, is no longer visible to us, no longer intelligible. It cannot be constructed. It is consumed, exhausted, and that is all. It leaves no traces. It is concealed in space, hidden under a pile of debris to be disposed of as soon as possible; after all, rubbish is a pollutant.
(Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 95-6; trans. Nicholson-Smith)

T.S. Eliot on Time

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
("Burnt Norton," Four Quartets)

In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.
Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,
Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth
Which is already flesh, fur and faeces,
Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.
Houses live and die: there is a time for building
And a time for living and for generation
And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane
And to shake the wainscot where the field-mouse trots
And to shake the tattered arras woven with a silent motto.
("East Coker," Four Quartets)

It seems T.S. Eliot was thinking quite a bit about Ecclesiastes!