Antiquitopia

No, not the absolutely hilarious book, Foreskin's Lament , by Shalom Auslander, but a similar issue: to snip or not to snip, that is the question. Whether tis nobler...ok...maybe Shakespeare is a bit overboard (although, not snipped would be my guess in his case). Salon.com has an interesting article, full with necessary cutting puns, about a documentary on the variety of views on exposed or covered glans: The great foreskin debate To snip or not to snip? That was the question facing new parent Danae Elon, who didn't just wrestle with the controversies of circumcision -- she made a documentary about it. By Joy Press April 30, 2009 | New parents face an endless barrage of questions: which prenatal tests, what kind of diapers, which nursery school? But one choice is irrevocable: to snip or not to snip? That is the daunting question, one freighted with intense cultural and religious meaning. And yet people often don't give it much thought at all. For someone like me, a nonp...

...writing a poem you can read to no one is like dancing in the dark. (Ovid, Black Sea Letters IV.2.33-4)

Inspired poets' predictions do not fail of fulfillment: a new laurel-wreath for Jove while the first's still green! These are now my words you read (I'm away on the Danube, its waters drink for the ill-pacified Goths): no, this is the voice of a god, a god's inside me, it's a god that makes me predict and prophesy! (Ovid, Black Sea Letters III.4.89-94) Ovid claims inspiration...in a very literal sense. A spirit is in him, a god's inside him. The god possesses him. Poetic inspiration and prophetic inspiration are inseparable: each divinely inspired, each folding into one another. Inspired speech is heightened speech, poetic speech. They flow from the same source: Apollo.

I've been reading Ovid's Tristia and his Black Sea Letters , and this passage struck me in the beauty of its description of Love's decrepitude: Sleep, that common repose from cares, possessed me, my slack limbs were sprawled out the length of my bed-- when, suddenly, the air was vibrant with beating pinions, and the window creaked softly open. In alarm I started up, propped on my left elbow, slumber gone, driven clear from my thumping breast. There stood Love, one hand grasping the maple bedpost, with a sad expression, not how he used to look, no neck-chain, no hair-comb, locks in wild disorder, not neatly pinned back as of old, but hanging loose around his bristled jawline, wing-feathers ruffled (or so it seemed to me) like those on the back of some homing pigeon, fingered by too many rough hands. (Ovid, Black Sea Letters III.3.7-20) His description of sleep as something that possesses rather than a state is what initially drew me into the passage, as if sleep is a spiri...

Jim Davila posts that Morton Smith's translation of Hekhalot Rabbati is available online here . It is in .pdf format. I have had a copy of this for years; indeed, for years it has circulated among Columbia graduate students. My copy has Alan Segal's marginal corrections. I, of course, made my own marginal notes. A few years ago, however, Alan lost his copy (I think), and so we had to run copies of my copy for a class. And so we sent out copies of Smith's translation with Alan's notes, with my notes on that, and presumably a new set of notes on those notes would be made by students in that class. The whole notes on notes on notes sounds very Rabbinic.

From Salon : Judge: Women's studies isn't a religion A suit is rejected against Columbia University for offering classes on feminist history. Tracy Clark-Flory Apr. 28, 2009 | Feminist students at Columbia University can breathe a sigh of relief, ready their highlighters and crack the spine of that intimidating Judith Butler tome: A lawsuit against the school for offering women's studies classes has been tossed out. Self-declared antifeminist lawyer Roy Den Hollander argued that the university was violating the first amendment by teaching a "religionist belief system called feminism." He called the program “a bastion of bigotry against men" and argued that nationwide classes about women's history were “spreading prejudice and fostering animosity and distrust toward men with the result of the wholesale violation of men’s rights due to ignorance, falsehoods and malice.” As a graduate of a same-sex college, where I took too many women's studies classes ...

David Bell has a rejoinder to Mark Taylor's NYTimes Op-Ed article : Defending Academe Is America's system of graduate education really the Detroit of higher learning? David A. Bell, The New Republic Published: April 28, 2009 Mark C. Taylor's yawp of pain about academia in The New York Times yesterday is a handy compendium of virtually every complaint currently circulating about the American university system. We are, he claims, overspecialized, obsolescent, irrelevant, and rigid. We learn more and more about less and less, while mercilessly exploiting successive generations of graduate students whom we then cast out into unemployment or the wilderness of adjuncting. In short, we stand with the auto manufacturers and (one might add) newspapers in the ranks of ill-adapted social dinosaurs awaiting extinction. "Graduate education is the Detroit of higher learning," writes Taylor, who is a professor of religion at Columbia University. And to deal with this crisis, T...

An article at Salon reviews a new book by Terry Eagleton, in which he throws down with "Ditchkin" (Dawkins and Hitchens), claiming that atheism has gone downhill since the good old days of Nietsche. April 28, 2009 | Here is how British literary critic Terry Eagleton begins his brisk, funny and challenging new book: "Religion has wrought untold misery in human affairs. For the most part, it has been a squalid tale of bigotry, superstition, wishful thinking, and oppressive ideology." That's quite a start, especially when you consider that the point of Eagleton's "Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate" -- adapted from a series of lectures he delivered at Yale in April 2008 -- is to defend the theory and practice of religion against its most ardent contemporary critics. But Eagleton, a professor of English literature and cultural theory who divides his time between the University of Lancaster and the National University of Irelan...

For my chapter on the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice , I am revisiting other texts that discuss, depict, or allude to heavenly hymns. Most apocalyptic texts refer to heavenly liturgies sung by heavenly, divine beings (most people call them "angels"), but very rarely tell us what these heavenly beings actually say. When they do report the content of such hymns, they tend to be highly indebted to, or in fact are verbatim quotations of Isaiah 6:1-4: In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.” The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the hose filled with smoke. 2 Enoch 21:1 (J) repeats this ...

The NYTimes has an article on the rise of atheist organizations throughout the U.S. In keeping with the new generation of atheist evangelists, the Pastafarian leaders say that their goal is not confrontation, or even winning converts, but changing the public’s stereotype of atheists. A favorite Pastafarian activity is to gather at a busy crossroads on campus with a sign offering “Free Hugs” from “Your Friendly Neighborhood Atheist.” For those in the dark, a "pastafarian" refers to the parodic followers of the flying spaghetti monster: may you, too, be touched by his noodly appendage. I think the name of "atheist evangelists" is quite interesting...quite telling of the orientation of some of the groups. Do click on the hyperlink above: the article shows a rich variety of non-belief.

The chair of my department, Mark Taylor, just contributed the following article for the NYTimes about the state of graduate education and the university as a whole and his suggestions for the future (some are radical, others are more easily implemented): April 27, 2009 OP-CONTRIBUTOR End the University as We Know It By MARK C. TAYLOR GRADUATE education is the Detroit of higher learning. Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost (sometimes well over $100,000 in student loans). Widespread hiring freezes and layoffs have brought these problems into sharp relief now. But our graduate system has been in crisis for decades, and the seeds of this crisis go as far back as the forma...

They wondered why the fruit had been forbidden: It taught them nothing new. They hid their pride, But did not listen much when they were chidden: They knew exactly what to do outside. They left. Immediately the memory faded Of all they'd known: they could not understand The dogs now who before had always aided; The stream was dumb with whom they'd always planned. They wept and quarrelled: freedom was so wild. In front maturity as he ascended Retired like a horizon from the child, The dangers and the punishments grew greater, And the way back by angels was defended Against the poet and the legislator. (W.H. Auden, Sonnets from China II)

Epitaph on a Tyrant Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after, And the poetry he invented was easy to understand; He knew human folly like the back of his hand, And was greatly interested in armies and fleets; When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter, And when he cried the little children died in the streets. (W.H. Auden) My mind automatically wanders to ancient Rome: to Augustus whose pax was really a pacification; to Caligula (but not much a poet); to Nero, who played the part of the poet. Or is it a combination of all of them? A meta-tyrant? It is quite interesting how many dictators are writers: Julius Caesar has his Gallic Wars ; Augustus has the Res Gestae ; Mand arcus Aurelius wrote his Meditations --that actually would be a good fit for the description. Of course, looking to Auden's own context, Hitler had Mein Kampf ; and, for those who didn't know, evidently Saddam Hussein wrote pseudonymous novels, such as Zabibah and the King . Literature ...

Instead of the warlord from Ithaca our educated poets should write about my misadventures: I've undergone worse troubles than he did. He wandered for years--but only on the short haul between Ithaca and Troy; thrust to the Getic shore by Caesar's wrath, I've traversed seas lying beneath unknown stars, whole constellations distant. He had his loyal companions, his faithful crew: my comrades deserted me at the time of my banishment. Hew as making for his homeland, a cheerful victor: I was driven from mine-- fugitive, exile, victim. My home was not some Greek island, Ithaca, Samos--to leave them is no great loss-- but the City that from its seven hills scans the world's orbit, Rome, centre of empire, seat of the gods. He was physically tough, with great stamina, long-enduring; my strength is slight, a gentle man's. He spent a lifetime under arms, engaged in savage warfare-- I'm accustomed to quieter pursuits. I was crushed by a god, with no help in my troub...

Ovid, famous in his own day for his Art of Love , but today for his Metamorphoses (Transformations), reflects on his Metamorphoses in his tearful Tristia (Lamentations), which were written after he was banished from Rome, exiled to the Black Sea: There are also fifteen books of Metamorphoses , worksheets lately saved from my exequies: To them I bid you say that the new face of my fortunes may now be reckoned one more among their bodily changes: by sudden transformation what was joyful once is made fit matter for tears. (Ovid, Tristia , I.1.117-22; trans. Peter Green) There is a certain painful, sad commentary here. At the end of his Metamorphoses, Ovid basically says that he (and his book--he equates them) is the only thing that will endure, not change. His exile, his separation from all his friends, from his homeland, changes him physically, psychologically, and emotionally, transforming his joy into tears. His persona in the Metamorphoses has, itself, transformed through dislocat...

I would like to think that I have had a hand in helping here .

We receive a great gift from storytellers like Boccaccio, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and many others: freedom from mythic rigidities, a vision of a life that fires the imagination, and truths about the civic world and about ourselves. In return, we must open ourselves to truths that often shock and frighten us. (Richard Kuhns, Decameron and the Philosophy of Storytelling: Author as Midwife and Pimp , 139)

NYTimes has an op-ed article on the current dig searching for Cleopatra VII's tomb: April 22, 2009 Op-Ed Contributor Who’s Buried in Cleopatra’s Tomb? By STACY SCHIFF WHAT becomes a legend most? If you’re a woman, the formula is straightforward. Your best bets are the three D’s: delusion (Joan of Arc), disability (Helen Keller), death (Sylvia Plath). You get extra points for the savage, sudden or surprising demise, as Evita, Amelia or Diana attests. At the head of the list of untimely self-destructors comes of course Cleopatra VII, for whose tomb a search begins shortly, on an Egyptian hilltop west of Alexandria. Cleopatra died 2,039 years ago, at the age of 39. Before she was a slot machine, a video game, a cigarette, a condom, a caricature, a cliché or a synonym for Elizabeth Taylor, before she was reincarnated by Shakespeare, Dryden or Shaw, she was a nonfictional Egyptian queen. She ruled for 21 years, mostly alone, which is to say that she was essentially a female king, an inc...

It seems I have a Scottish theme going today, with the previous post on a lectureship at the University of Glasgow and here a quote, a question from the famed Scottish philosopher, David Hume: If no camels had been created for the use of man in the sandy deserts of Africa and Arabia, would the world have been dissolved? (David Hume, Dialogues concerning Natural Religion , Part VIII)

A friend of mine just forwarded this info to me; I am sure there are many of you out there both qualified and interested in the current academic job climate, or for those of you who always wanted to live in Scotland: Lecturer in New Testament, University of Glasgow Reference Number 00024-1 Location Main Campus (Gilmorehill) Faculty/ Services Faculty of Arts Department 180 Theology and Religious Studies Job Family Research & Teaching Position Type Full Time Salary Range £31,513 - £35,469 (grade 7) Job Purpose To actively contribute to teaching at taught masters and undergraduate level, to supervise postgraduate students and to undertake research and administration as directed by the Head of Department Main Duties and Responsibilities 1. Contribute to the organisation and delivery of the taught masters and undergraduate programme in New Testament. 2. Maintain and further develop research profile through high quality internationally recognised publications and support the departmental...

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Antiquity parodied essentially everything.... (M.M. Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics , trans. Caryl Emerson)

From you have I been absent in the spring, When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim, Hath put a spirit of youth in everything, That heavy Saturn laughed and leapt with him; Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell Of different flowers in odor and in hue, Could make me any summer's story tell, Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew: Nor did I wonder at the lily's white, Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose; They were but sweet, but figures of delight, Drawn after you, you pattern of all those. Yet seemed it winter still, and you away, As with your shadow I with these did play. (Shakespeare, Sonnet 98) "Nor with praise the deep vermilion in the rose," she read, and so reading she was ascending, she felt, on to the top, on to the summit. How satisfying! How restful! All the odds and ends of the day stuck to this magnet; her mind felt swept, felt clean. And then there it was, suddently entire; she held it in her hands, beautiful ...

The idea lives not in one person's isolated individual consciousness--if it remains there only, it degenerates and dies. The idea begins to live, that is, to take shape, to develop, to find and renew its verbal expression, to give birth to new ideas, only when it enters into genuine dialogic relationships with other ideas, with the ideas of others . Human thought becomes genuine thought, that is, an idea, only under conditions of living contact with another and alien thought, a thought embodied in someone else's voice, that is, in someone else's consciousness expressed in discourse. At that point of contact between voice-consciousnesses the idea is born and lives. (M.M. Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics ; trans. Caryl Emerson; italics original)

A new production of Samuel Becket's "Waiting for Godot" at Studio 54 in New York stars John Goodman. NYTimes reports, giving insight into Goodman as an actor, his challenges in life and for his role as Pozzo. Pozzo is the least sympathetic and in some ways the trickiest character in “Godot.” He cruelly mistreats Lucky, and yet he is as lost and vulnerable as all the others. He is “an insecure gasbag who needs to be listened to and have things done for him,” as Mr. Goodman put it. Anthony Page, the director of the production, said: “ ‘Godot’ is actually a very hard play to learn. Nothing is apparently very logical, and there’s nothing to guide you except the words until you get into it.” As for Pozzo, “It’s a very difficult part to take in if you’re not used to being onstage.” Mr. Page knew Beckett and worked with him on an early revival of the play at the Royal Court Theater in London in 1964. “Beckett was very precise,” he recalled. “He didn’t want theories or any leve...

In my class, the most autobiographical writings we read are Augustine' Confessions and Montaigne's Essays . Their pioneering work of self-reflection, creating particular concepts of a self, of the invention of the "inner self" as the book by Philip Cary argues for Augustine, is where their similarities end. Augustine's vision of the self is quite contained, fixed; Montaigne's, fluid, in flux, always changing. The key, in my opinion, to the Augustinian sense of the self is memory; the key for Montaigne, imagination. One looks back over a life; one looks forward, or, more accurately, always seeks living, thinking, acting in the moment. Montaigne, it seems, in his act of writing tries to catch himself in the moment of thinking. I think I personally prefer Montaigne's vision of the unfinalizable self. Susan Sontag, in her essay "The death of tragedy," has a brief comparative moment, using the difference between Augustine and Montaigne as an an...

I'm in the middle of teaching Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky at the moment, and Raskolnikov, the protagonist, is a divided character; his consciousness is divided against himself. His very name means "schismatic." In the act of murder, he loses the conscious ability to control his own actions; he acts as if in a dreamlike state, a trance. Moreover, almost every character trait he has, he also exemplifies its opposite. He is schism-made-flesh. His best friend, Razumikhin, whose name means "reason," describes his friend: What can I tell you? I've known Rodion [Raskolnikov] for a year and a half: sullen, gloomy, arrogant, proud; recently (and maybe much earlier) insecure and hypochondriac. Magnaminous and kind. Doesn't like voicing his feelings, and would rather do something cruel than speak his heart out in words. At times, however, he's not hypochondriac at all, but just inhumanly cold and callous, as if there really were two opposite ch...

Foucault argued (I think in the History of Sexuality --don't ask me which volume off the top of my head) that the medieval Catholic confessional is the predecessor to the psychologist's analysis (I think he was thinking mostly of psychoanalysis of a Freudian bent), but, perhaps, it is also the predecessor of the advice column and even the bathroom graffito confessional in a post-Reformation, Protestant, predominantly Anglophone context (outside of Foucault's France): For since the British Isles went Protestant A church confession is too high for most. But still confession is a human want, So Englishmen must make theirs now by post And authors hear them over breakfast toast. For, failing them, there's nothing but the wall Of public lavatories on which to scrawl. (W.H. Auden, "Letter to Lord Byron") I am beginning to find many of Auden's lines (especially in this particular poem) rather strained, but I like this particular stanza. It just stands out. It is...

I just finished teaching Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice , and so this excerpt from W.H. Auden's "Letter to Lord Byron" caught my attention: There is one other author in my pack: For some time I debated which to write to. Which would least likely send my letter back? But I decided that I'd give a fright to Jane Austen if I wrote when I'd no right to, And share in her contempt the dreadful fates Of Crawford, Musgrove, and of Mr Yates. Then she's a novelist. I don't know whether You will agree, but novel writing is A higher art than poetry altogether In my opinion, and success implies Both finer character and faculties. Perhaps that's why real novels are as rare As winter thunder or a polar bear. The average poet by comparison Is unobservant, immature, and lazy. You must admit, when all is said and done, His sense of other people's very hazy, His moral judgments are too often crazy, A slick and easy...

I thought it was strange that I was getting referrals to my website from a wikipedia page . It was somewhat disheartening, however, to discover that I was cited on Wikipedia not for any of my own ideas that I have thrown out on this blog, but for my long quote of a message sent to Jim Davila by Andrei Orlov concerning Coptic fragments of 2 Enoch found here . So, perhaps the interesting aspect of all of this is that Wikipedia cited someone (me) who was citing someone else (Davila) who was quoting someone else (Orlov)...a citation of a citation of a citation...a citational simulacrum... The trail runs cold there...for now...

...that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." Such are the famous first words to Jane Austen's masterpiece, Pride and Prejudice . But what if they read just slightly differently? Here is the product description to a new take on the classic masterpiece: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies -- "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains." So begins Pride and Prejudice and Zombies , an expanded edition of the beloved Jane Austen novel featuring all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she's soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young...

Luther With conscience cocked to listen for the thunder, He saw the Devil busy in the wind, Over the chiming steeples and then under The doors of nuns and doctors who had sinned. What apparatus could stave off disaster Or cut the brambles of man's error down? Flesh was a silent dog that bites its master, World a still pond in which its children drown. The fuse of Judgement spluttered in his head: "Lord smoke these honeyed insects from their hives. All Works, Great Men, Societies are bad. The Just shall live by Faith..." he cried in dread. And men and women of the world were glad, Who'd never cared or trembled in their lives. I think this poem captures Luther's psychological sensitivities, his general perturbations of mind quite well--his "dread." It makes the final couplet that much more caustic. Luther, whether you like him or not, struggled greatly within his own tormented self to come to his formulation of "by faith alone." But how easy s...

Newsweek has a large article (and a series of smaller discussions) on religion in America, particularly discussing whether America is a "post-Christian" society. This comes on the heels of a particular survey of religious identification in which those who self-identify as Christian has gone down 10%, while those who don't identify with any faith has more than doubled: According to the American Religious Identification Survey that got Mohler's attention, the percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 percentage points since 1990, from 86 to 76 percent. The Jewish population is 1.2 percent; the Muslim, 0.6 percent. A separate Pew Forum poll echoed the ARIS finding, reporting that the percentage of people who say they are unaffiliated with any particular faith has doubled in recent years, to 16 percent; in terms of voting, this group grew from 5 percent in 1988 to 12 percent in 2008—roughly the same percentage of the electorate as African-Americans. (Seventy...

I thought this poem by Auden, originally entitled "Funeral Blues" but later left untitled, would be appropriate for Good Friday: Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead, Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong. The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; Pack of the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood; For nothing now can ever come to good. Now as recited by the actor John Hannah ("Matthew") in the movie Four Weddings and a Funeral , which made the poem famous for a bro...

Jim Davila reports message from Andrei Orlov, whose own site on 2 Enoch is here (and on my sidebar): No longer ‘Slavonic’ only 2 Enoch attested in Coptic from Nubia During his work preparing the publication of Coptic manuscripts from Qasr Ibrim in Egyptian Nubia, Joost Hagen, doctoral student at Leiden University, The Netherlands, very recently came across some fragments he could identify as part of the text of the so-called ‘Slavonic Enoch’ (2 Enoch), the first time a non-Slavonic manuscript of this intriguing text has been found. The fragments were discovered at Qasr Ibrim, one of the capital cities of Christian-period Nubia (southern Egypt, northern Sudan, 5th-15th cent. AD), during excavations by the British Egypt Exploration Society (EES) which started in 1963 and have brought to light an astonishing number of finds, textual and other. Joost Hagen has been entrusted by the EES with the edition of the manuscript material in Coptic, the language of Christian Egypt and one of the lit...