Antiquitopia

So, a little out of the normal for me, but I've been reading Don Quixote lately, and here is a few lines that caught my attention today: "...I do not know what God will reply to your complaints, nor can I tell what His Majesty's response will be: all I do know is that if I were the King I should refrain from replying to the countless irrelevant memoranda handed him every day; for one of the most tedious of the many, many chores of a monarch is having to listen to everybody and reply to everybody; so I shoudl nto like him to be bothered by my affairs." Cervantes, Don Quixote , part II, chapter VI

There is a joke in New York concerning the two premier private universities, Columbia University and New York University, that due to their appetite for real estate, they will together take over all of Manhattan and eventually meet somewhere around Columbus Circle. But with NYU's recent takeover of the Engineering school, Polytech, this university is expanding outside of Manhattan into Brooklyn. So, what do you do if you are a university without a school of engineering? You go out and buy one! Here is the article from the Chronicle : New York Regents Approve Merger of Polytechnic U. and NYU The New York State Board of Regents has approved the merger of Polytechnic University and New York University despite vehement opposition from some Polytechnic alumni and a critical report from the chairman of the State Senate’s Committee on Higher Education, NYU’s student newspaper, The Washington Square News, reported today. Under the terms of the deal, the Brooklyn engineering school...

Who knew? Or, at least, in a new fiction novel, "The Shack," God is depicted as an African-American woman. Jesus makes his appearance as a Jewish workman (pretty traditional). And the Holy Spirit shows up as "an indeterminately Asian woman" named Sarayu. This book is written by an otherwise unknown author, William Paul Young: "He chose to make God an African-American woman, he said, because he wanted to alter religious preconceptions. “It was just a way of saying: ‘You know what? I don’t believe that God is Gandalf with an attitude or Zeus who wants to blast you with any imperfection that you exhibit,’ ” Mr. Young said." I had never heard of this novel until I saw an article about it in the NYTimes today. But evidently it is number 1 on the New York Times best seller list for fiction, beating out even Oprah's book of the month, "A New Earth," by Eckhart Tolle. Maybe I should look at the bestseller list more often. So, in a world in which...

I was perusing Augustine's City of God , and this passage struck me as perhaps still relevant: "Peace and War had a competition in cruelty; and Peace won the prize. For the men whom War cut down were bearing arms; Peace slaughtered the defenceless. The law of War was that the smitten should have the chance of smiting in return; the aim of Peace was to make sure not that the survivor should live, but that he should be killed without the chance of offering resistance." Augustine, City of God , 3.28.

Although I typically do not consider myself particularly political, I have noticed that a good number of my postings tend to be about politics, particularly politics and religion. I have posted a few times on Evangelical voters, Catholic voters, and the different candidates, partly because they seem to be getting the most press. But NYT has an article today on Muslim voters and Barack Obama, particularly Obama's apparent distancing himself from Islam and Muslim voters. According to the article, many Muslim voters were originally enthusiastic about Obama as a candidate. And when Keith Ellison, the country's first Muslim congressman, volunteered to help out in Iowa last year, particularly to speak at a Mosque in Cedar Rapids, which has a sizable and older Muslim population, Obama's aides asked him not to do so because it might stir up controversy, quoting, "We have a tightly wrapped message," suggesting that a Muslim politician speaking at a mosque on Obama's...

James Dobson has now fired at Barack Obama. He claims that Obama has distorted the Bible and has a "fruitcake" interpretation of the Constitution. See full AP Press story here . The following caught my attention: "Even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools?" Obama said. "Would we go with James Dobson's or Al Sharpton 's?" referring to the civil rights leader . Dobson took aim at examples Obama cited in asking which Biblical passages should guide public policy — chapters like Leviticus, which Obama said suggests slavery is OK and eating shellfish is an abomination, or Jesus' Sermon on the Mount , "a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application." "Folks haven't been reading their Bibles ," Obama said. Dobson and Minnery accused...

Today I picked up my desk copies for Literature of the Humanities fall term. Only TWELVE books for just the fall term! They really weigh you down! Although carrying them home made for a good workout. So...my students will be reading: Epic of Gilgamesh The Bible (RSV) Iliad Odyssey Homeric Hymn to Demeter Aeschylus, Oresteia Sophocles, Oedipus trilogy Euripides, Medea Aristophanes, Clouds Plato, Symposium Herodotus Thucydides So the year-long course that ends with Virginia Woolf is very antiquity-heavy, but being an antiquarian, I'm not complaining! So, we have three epic poems (four if you include the "epic" of the Bible), an epic hymn, four playwrights, two historians, a philosopher, and a partridge in a pear tree.

I am saddened to hear that famous comedian and originally Morningside Heights native, George Carlin, died today of heart failure. His incisive wit, philosophical humor, and outright obscenity will all be missed. Here is a quote from his on religion: "The whole problem with this idea of obscenity and indecency, and all of these things — bad language and whatever — it's all caused by one basic thing, and that is: religious superstition," Carlin told the AP in a 2004 interview. "There's an idea that the human body is somehow evil and bad and there are parts of it that are especially evil and bad, and we should be ashamed. Fear, guilt and shame are built into the attitude toward sex and the body. ... It's reflected in these prohibitions and these taboos that we have." See an article from yahoo here .

את־שבתתי תשמרו ומקדשי תיראו אני יהוה (Lev. 19:30; 26:2) For you non-Hebrew readers, this says, "Observe my Sabbaths and venerate my Sanctuary. I am YHWH." Both quotations come from a part of the Pentateuch called the Holiness Code (Lev. 17-26). Some distinctive elements of the Holiness School (which produced the Holiness Code) is God's self assertions, as in this passage: "I am YHWH." And the first-person singular possessive: " my Sabbaths" and " my sanctuary." Moreover, HS tends to give quite an increased reverence for the Sabbath. Taking a look at this passage, as well as how the Sabbath is interwoven in the instructions to build the Tabernacle and the actual building of the Tabernacle (Exod. 31:12-17; 35:1-3; the entire instructions are Exodus 25-31; 35-40), the question arises: "What does the Sabbath have to do with the Sanctuary?" Why bring them together, and, in this case, even seem to privilege the Sabbath over th...

The great church historian, Henry Chadwick (1920-2008), died this week. I always appreciated his very lucid translations of ancient works. I think the first work of his I ever read was his translation of Augustine's Confessions . For a very nice reminiscence, see Mark Goodacre at NTGateway . Requiescat in pace

This past Saturday my significant other and I decided we would like to play Trivial Pursuit. But neither of us actually had a copy of the game. So, we decided to go to Toys R Us in Times Square, but they only had Trivial Pursuit for Kids and they had the Disney version. We went to several bookstores, such as Borders (which has few games by the way) and Barnes & Nobles, but, again, to no avail. So, we hopped in the car and headed to Queens. There we went to Target and another Toys R Us--again, neither had a regular Trivial Pursuit or a Trivial Pursuit for adults. We also went to a mall with some non-chain toy stores, again to no avail. So basically, we spent all day looking for Trivial Pursuit, but ended up empty. I guess you just cannot get Trivial Pursuit in New York City. By the way, there are about 30 versions of Scrabble--Scrabble is very popular in NYC--and about 50 versions of Monopoly. One version of Monopoly that I did not see, however, was Socialist Monopoly... ;...

Last night a friend of mine asked me to translate the Hebrew version of Job 14:4 for her friends. Her Greek and Latin are excellent, having been largely trained in Classics and Ancient History, but her Hebrew was a bit rusty. Since I was reading it, I thought I would make it the quote of the day in Hebrew (Masoretic), Greek, and Latin (Vulgate): Hebrew: "Mi-yiten tahor mitame' lo' echad" "Who can make a clean (thing) from an unclean (thing)? No one!" Greek: "tis gar katharos estai apo hrupou; all' outheis." "For who will be clean from unclean? But no one!" Latin: "Quis potest facere mundum de immundo conceptum semine? nonne tu qui solus es?" "Who can make clean from an unclean seed? Is it not only you?" Interestingly, the Latin is closest to the Hebrew for the first part, since both maintain the transitive sense of "making" something else clean, whereas the Greek takes cleanness/uncleanness as the sta...

In the Chronicle, the following job posting is listed for Harvard Divinity school: Harvard Divinity School Junior Positions in New Testament and Early Christianity Harvard Divinity School seeks to make two junior, tenure-track appointments in New Testament and Early Christianity, with preference for specialization in Gospels or early Christian and Jewish apocalyptic (including the Dead Sea Scrolls). The successful candidates will complement the current field of New Testament and Early Christian Studies at HDS which focuses on the interdisciplinary study of Christian literature (canonical and extracanonical), history, exegesis, and theology in the context of the ancient Mediterranean world, with special emphases in hermeneutics, feminist interpretation, and material culture. Applicants must hold a doctoral degree by the time of assuming the position in the fall of 2009, be familiar with forms of analysis that address race, gender, and social location, and be able to teach and advise at...

Both of the following quotes are from Michel de Montaigne's essay, Judgment's on God's ordinances must be embarked upon with prudence . The first quote contains the opening lines and the second the closing lines of the essay. "The real field and subject of deception are things unknown: firstly because their very strangeness lends them credence; second, because they cannot be exposed to our usual order of argument, so stripping us of the means of fighting them. Plato says that this explains why it is easier to satisfy people when talking of the nature of the gods than of the nature of men: the ignorance of the hearers provides such hidden matters with a firm broad course for them to canter along in freedom. And so it turns out that nothing is so firmly believed as whatever we know least about, and that no persons are more sure of themselves than those who tell us tall stories, such as alchemists and those who make prognostications: judicial astrologers, chiromance...

In the Chronicle today there is an article about a Law professor who has banned laptops from his classroom. The article notes that in this day and age, doing so is a very bold move by a professor. Some students claim that they can't receive a good education without their laptops. While some students need to take notes on a computer due to some learning difficulty, most students in my experience just surf the net, play games, do some online shopping, and IM their friends (who also may be in the class). When I TA, I often now sit up front so that I don't have to see the sea of computers with everything on their screen except their note sheet. Is banning them the solution? One could argue that, with laptops or not, students will be distracted. They will just stare listlessly out the window, or, uh, do what I did when I was bored in class--doodle. But doodling is NOT as much a temptation as whatever games you have on your computer, checking your email, and IMing your friends...

So, it is obvious now that I have been perusing some of Michel de Montaigne's collected essays--I have to teach them next year. His essays, by the way, are a series of exercises in intense self-reflection that perhaps exceeds Augustine Confessions . In a post-reformation world, Montaigne remained a devoted adherent of the Latin rite (the earlier name of what was later called the Roman Catholic Church), while also partaking of the ongoing humanist movement. Thus, although he was French, his father set up that his primary mother-tongue would be classical Latin (literally, his entire family and everyone around him only addressed him in Latin when he was a young child). With this in mind, I read the following in his essay, That it is madness to judge the true and the false : "We ought to judge the infinite power of Nature with more reverence and a greater recognition of our own ignorance and weakness. How many improbable things there are which have been testified to by people...

In what I take to be a good case of religion and politics and in keeping with my previous post, I must relate what I saw...perhaps you have seen the same thing. As I was walking my dog, Daphne, today, I saw the following slogan on a bumper sticker just outside my building: "Republicans for Voldemort" Who is Voldemort, the dark lord who must not be named? Is it Bush? Is it McCain? Or just any Republican presidential candidate? This reminds me of a friend of mine, who asked, "Is it wrong to fancy Voldemort?" (spoken with an English accent)

I have been posting a series on religion and politics in this campaign season. And, considering that evangelicals were about one quarter of the voting block in 2004, their relationship with the different candidates has been and will probably continue to be a consistent topic in the news. As such, NYTimes has an article on McCain courting evangelicals. So, evidently McCain has a balancing act to perform. He cannot just come out and make faith-based statements as G.W. Bush did in 2000 and especially 2004. 1) Most Evangelicals don't believe him when he makes any faith-like statement. McCain was raised an Episcopalian. He started going to a Baptist Church (American Baptist or Southern Baptist, I don't know, although it makes a HUGE difference) when he married his most recent wife, although, according to the article, he has never been baptized into the new congregation. Finally, when he campaigned for President in 2000, he called the Bush-supporting Evangelical leaders like ...

April DeConick at Forbidden Gospels has a practice of posting "Apocryphotes" or quotes from Christian "apocrypha" (ancient Christian writings that were not including in the later orthodox canon/s). I thought I would post some quotes from time to time (not nearly as regularly as she does) from the much more random sources of lines here and there that strike me as interesting (thus, not nearly as coherent of a group of sources that she is drawing from). So...here we go: "Only fools have made up their minds and are certain." "If you want it to be so, history can be a waste of time: it can also be, if you want it to be so, a study bearing fruit beyond price...." Michel de Montaigne, On Educating Children For a follow-up on that first quote: "For doubting pleases me as much as knowing." Dante, Inferno 11.93

The following was in USA Today (and I found out about it from Paleojudaica): By Cathy Lynn Grossman , USA TODAY "Examine Bible stories top to bottom — particularly the "bottoms" — and you will find a blue vein of sexual and scatological humor not-so-hidden in the verses, say two scholars of Hebrew Scriptures and an evangelical satire writer. "Their new book, The Uncensored Bible: The Bawdy and Naughty Bits of the Good Book , in stores Monday, raises such questions as "Which 'bone' was Eve made from?" "Or whether, in the Book of Judges, a king's assassin escapes through a latrine in a tale laden with euphemisms for feces." That last bit is the story of Ehud, the left-handed judge (Judges 3:12-30). It is not a story you hear in church or synagogue very often, but, if you read carefully, it is funny. And, uh, the key to the Genesis story is that the "bone" may be something other than Adam's "rib." How might ...