Antiquitopia

Happy Thanksgiving to all those celebrating! May Macy's Day Parades with big balloons and cameo performances, may Turkey however you make it (fried, broiled, or, as we are doing it this year, grilled...and I cannot forget my Tofu Turkey readers), may napping, may game playing all fill your day! In sum, may the warm glow of food and fun envelop your day.

I just discovered this new documentary coming out this holiday season called "What Would Jesus Buy?" on consumerism in America for the Christmas season. Beware the Shopocalypse is coming! See the preview here . I like the part where they exorcise the demons out of the Walmart sign.

I just returned to my apartment from SBL in Boston. I had a fantastic time! I probably wore myself out more than usual, giving three presentations (two official and one in a closed session). All three went well, and I received substantive suggestions, and two of the sessions even went into all-out brainstorming sessions from the papers. It was an exhilarating and exhausting time. I also got to meet in person several bloggers. I now have a face and body in mind for Ken Schenck at Quadrilateral Thoughts , James McGrath at Exploring Our Matrix , and I met John Hobbins from Ancient Hebrew Poetry . I will try to report more in depth at a later date (perhaps during the Thanksgiving weekend).

I was checking out Wade G's blog, Evolution of a Mystery , married to April D. of Forbidden Gospels fame, tonight. And much to my surprise and delight I found this description of myself on his blogroll: Antiquitopia - A blog by a Columbia grad student whom took classes from April when she taught at Illinois Wesleyan University. A smart fellow and an eccentric blog. (I am a big fan of "eccentric." I had NO CLUE that I was eccentric...or...at least that my blog is eccentric. I do wonder...of what does its eccentricity consist? In what does it inhere? Eccentric compared to what? What is centric anyway? Thank you, Wade, for the compliment as I continue to cultivate my academic eccentricity.

In a strange variation of forwarded emails but only using links on blogs, Ken Schenck of Quadrilateral Thoughts , Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Indiana Wesleyan University, fellow Hebrews enthusiast, and a man with a recent unhealthy obsession with the anti-Christ (he's just not going to call back; give it up!), has "memed" me with the following rules (which I just copied and pasted from his site): 1. Link to the person who tagged you (check, see above). 2. Post the rules on your blog (making this line a post within a post). 3. Write six random things about yourself (see below). 4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them (further below). 5. Let each person know they've been tagged and leave a comment on their blog (if I ever get around to it). 6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up (if it ever is). Six wonderfully random or randomly wonderful things about me: 1. I get a sparkle-in-the-eye enjoyment out of telling my students that Monty...

With little need of introduction, here's Socrates! My own wisdom is of no account--a shadow in a dream.... (Plato, Symposium 175E)

This elaborate hoax , a leftist parody of the NYTimes depicting a liberal utopia, was distributed on NYC subways this morning and established a website as well. The Times, not to be outdone, did a piece on the parody. Ah...utopia...both the good place and no place at all. A phantom trace of a hoped-for future. Dare to dream!

After Obama's victory, different European countries are now facing a grim fact: that they, themselves, are far away from a French or an Italian Obama-like figure; that they, themselves, have deep-seated problems with racism and can no longer claim that at least they are better about it than the U.S. Or, so says an article from the NYTimes .

It has been a while since I have posted in this ongoing series on the biblical socialism of Jesus and the Jerusalem Church as presented by or produced by Luke-Acts. Yet now I want to look at a slight digression. While Zacchaeus seemed a departure, but ended up being more of a compromise to illustrate a larger point as well as a clear breakdown in logical consequences of Zacchaeus's actions--that he could not become rich by the actions he took--today I would like to look at a another passage about taxes that may present a challenge: the "render unto Caesar" passage of Luke 20:21-26. So they asked him, "Teacher, we know that you are right in what you say and teach, and you show deference to no one, but teach the way of God in accordance with truth. Is it lawful for us to pay taxes to the emperor, or not? But he perceived their craftiness and said to them, "Show me a denarius. Whose head and whose title does it bear?" They said, "The emperor's....

I have seen references to this posting for a few days now and I finally got around to reading it. You can see the full post by David Ker at Lingamish . It is scathing, and it is right on the money for the most part. Here is a sample of his righteous ranting: The dust has settled and the earnest sister who believed that Mike Huckabee would score a divine victory on Tuesday has now switched her sights to the book of Revelation and Obama’s landslide as definitive evidence of the beginnings of the Great Tribulation. On our trip out to Wyoming I listened to the program on Crosstalk Radio where they allowed callers to tell who they were going to vote for and why. Almost every single one said, “I’m voting for McCain because I’m a Christian.” Well guess what, folks, I voted for Obama because I’m a Republican and a Christian. The most hilarious caller was a rabbi from New York who really let loose with one of the funniest fuselages of rhetorical afflatus that I’ve ever heard including the cry,...

For some diversion and pleasure as I am furiously busy, I am reading Michael Wood's The Road to Delphi: The Life and Afterlife of Oracles . In it he quotes Walter Benjamin: A philosophy which does not include and cannot explain the possibility of prophecy by means of coffee grounds cannot be a true philosophy. (Walter Benjamin, Letters in Michael Wood, Road to Delphi , 20). Maybe he used the "Christ the Magician" coffee mug!

Here are some headlines from papers around the world, beginning with an article in the New York Times about the reactions from around the world! ;) "Election Unleashes a Flood of Hope Around the World" ( NYTimes ) The London Times speaks of America's capacity for self-renewal in "Barack Obama's Victory is Head-Spinning Stuff" Le Monde reports: "La victoire de Barack Obama porte un nouveau rêve américain" (Barack Obama's Victory bears a new American Dream). You can go to these sites and see the many other articles and reader responses from the other side of the pond.

One thing I didn't know, but starting checking out on the web, is a governmental question about what happens to a Senate seat if the Senator becomes President or Vice-President? It turns out that if a U.S. Senator wins the Presidency or Vice-Presidency, the governor of their home state appoints someone to fill their seat. The appointee will fill out that term. So, for example, Obama's seat is up in two years. So, his replacement will have the Senate seat for two years. Biden, by the way, was up for reelection and won his Senate race, so his replacement will last the full term of six years. Evidently, the governor can choose someone from any party and does not have to replace the Senate seat with someone of the same party. Considering that both Illinois and Delaware currently have Democratic governors, this probably will be less of an issue, but the potential is there. If there is a party-change in the governorship, the President or Vice-President-elect can resign their s...

Continuing our coverage...ou le reportage de les elections americaine...of the American elections by European newspapers...les journaux europeens...here are some headlines from Paris's Le Monde: "Les démocrates espèrent, mais n'osent pas y croire" or "The Democrats hope, but dare not believe it." This article, which is really an interview between various figures (actually a few questioners and one expert) explains to the European audience, for whom the nation is the state, the difference between nation and state in U.S., for which there are really 51 small elections making up the larger national election...or "Les différences entre sondages nationaux et sondages locaux sont très claires." Mostly, they are trying to understand American polling and the issues that might affect a person voting: age, the "Bradley Effect," etc. The following on possible voter fraud in U.S. elections and the problem of various voting methods caught my atten...

Since we are electing someone to basically the most powerful position in the free world, the entire world is watching. It is informative to see things from their perspective. So, from around the world, let's start with English-speakers in the London Times: The Times has several articles to read...almost as many as the NYTimes on the election. Interestingly, they have ranked all of the U.S. Presidents in order of greatness. Check it out here . Being from Illinois, I was happy to see that they placed Lincoln in the number 1 spot, followed by Washington and then FDR. Virginia's Jefferson, whom they refer to as the political philosopher, takes spot 4. I'm sure some are wondering who is at the lowest spot. Surprisingly, it is not George W. Bush, who tied for 37th spot with Nixon. The lowest spot goes to Buchanan, under whose watch the country disintegrated and who failed to prevent the Civil War. They also have an interesting post on humor...or humour ...in this election...

I have really enjoyed reading the comments to my series about the Socialism of the Bible, particularly focusing on Luke-Acts. In fact, I usually just do not receive this much attention...perhaps that's why I have continued to post on it. Vanity, Vanity, all is Vanity. Anyway, I am hoping all of this posting will lay the preliminary study to something more systematic in the future. I do not really think, at least in these posts, that I am saying anything new or original. Perhaps something lost or intermittently forgotten. In fact, it is interesting to note among the more positive responses to my postings, the backgrounds of people who have posted have ranged quite a bit: youth pastor in what seems to be a more conservative or at least moderate church (correct me if I'm wrong), a Christian who is trying to create the communist vision of Jesus on earth, and, although not responding here, I have been pointed to other scholars saying similar things in these passages and other ...

N.T. Wrong posted this educational video from a documentary called For the Bible Tells Me So, which, as Wrong explains in the comments section of her/his blog, tracks four or five conservative evangelical families with their gay children. In this bit, "Christian" learns about some of the latest scientific research into homosexuality. I am sure many of you already know about it from her/him, but I thought I would "spread the wealth" of knowledge. The studies, as you might note, focus on male homosexuality. And so, as usual, they need to do more studies for women.

Jon Meacham has a nice article in the NYTimes about what different Presidents in the past have preferred for their reading material. What fiction and non-fiction literature they prefer. While some of the titles differ and some of the same between Obama and McCain, Meacham notes a similarity between their choices in terms of a "tragic sensibility." I was happy to see some titles from Columbia's Core Curriculum, in which I teach Literature Humanities, on Obama's list...such as King Lear, which definitely fits that "tragic sensibility." See the article here .

So...now were are up to the sixth installment of biblical socialism, or, to be more accurate, the question of biblical socialism in Luke-Acts. Until now, we have seen a rather radical redistribution of wealth by Jesus (and in Acts) in which to follow Jesus and ultimately enter into the kingdom of God (or to create the kingdom of God), one must sell everything and give all of the proceeds to the poor. In Acts, this shifts to giving all the proceeds to the community, a clearer version of communalism rather than merely radical redistribution of Jesus (which presumably included any poor person, whether an insider or outsider). But now we come to a different story, the story of the tax collector Zacchaeus in Luke 19:2-10: And there was a man named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector, and rich. And he sought to see who Jesus was, but could not, on account of the crowd, because he was small of stature. So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was to pas...

Last night's Treehouse of Horror was hilarious, especially, I think, the spoof on Peanuts' Great Pumpkin. In the middle of it, Milhouse expresses his devout faith in creedal form for the "Grand" Pumpkin, who was "crustified under Pontius Pie-plate":

I guess as the economy slumps, there may be a new injection of students into colleges and universities through the new G.I. Bill that goes into full effect August 2009. There is a very nice, but really long, piece in the NYTimes here .

When I first made some notes regarding Jesus' economic redistribution program, I never thought I would continue to post on it. And, after four posts, I STILL have not discussed the story of the rich young ruler, which is perhaps the place where most people would start. It shows just how much material there is, just how radical this redistribution policy is...and, in fact, to a large degree how consistent: And a ruler said to him, "Good Teacher, waht shall I do to inherit eternal life?" And Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: 'Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother.'" And he said, "All these I have observed from youth." And when Jesus heard it, he said to him, "One thing you still lack. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me."...