Antiquitopia

"To be born again...first you have to die.... To land upon the bosomy earth, first one needs to fly." (Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses )

Evidently, an artist is seeking recycled Christmas trees in London in order to turn them into wood three-legged stools. See here . It is a good idea, but they are being sold for $621 a piece. Frankly, I think I could make my own Christmas stool.

Yesterday I wrote a post on seeing God and living, even though none should be able to see God (at least face to face) and live. Yet there are many passages in which Jacob, Moses, elders, Hagar, and Manoah and his wife all see God and live and comment upon the fact in astonishment. I had left the discussion of Manoah and his wife until this time because it is quite an extensive, quite astonishing, and under-studied passage. Some initial issues of note: this is one of two passages in which a woman is the primary recipient of the vision of the LORD/Angel of the LORD. It is a special birth narrative comparable to the one of Abram/Sarai, Hannah, perhaps Hagar, and one in which, like Hannah, I think makes an impression on the Jesus birth narratives with the angel's visitations to Mary and then Joseph. But there is so much more to this passage. Quoting from the RSV: And there was a certain man of Zorah, of the tribe of Danites, whose name was Manoah; and his wife was barren and had n...

In Exod. 33:20, the LORD famously tells Moses, "you cannot see my face; for man shall not see me and live." Moses then is allowed to see God's backside (v. 23). One might compare Exod. 3:6 where Moses is afraid to look at God. Recently I was asked if I would write up a little piece on seeing God in late antique Judaism. It is quite a broad topic, and, of course, should I take up the task I will be looking at some of the Hekhalot texts. But my mind also began buzzing about something else--I wonder how Rabbinic literature, particularly the Targumim and the Midrashim, handle these passages of seeing God and living or not living. That is, even though we have this passage of God telling Moses no one can see the LORD's face and live (although perhaps God's backside), there are plenty of passages where people do see God's face and live--even Moses himself. God says he speaks to Moses face-to-face in Num. 12:8 (as opposed to everyone else to whom he speaks in dr...

After listening to a couple reviews by Jim Davila and Seth Sanders at the SBL of Peter Schafer's expensive and important new book on the Origins of Jewish Mysticism , I was happy to see that it is now coming out in paperback (in May) at a reasonable price. This book by the preeminent scholar of the Hekhalot literature will, to be sure, be a must-read for anyone interested in late-antique religion and the history of Jewish mysticism. I will be looking forward to getting my paperback copy.

The Imagination is not a State: it is the Human Existence itself Affection or Love becomes a State, when divided from Imagination The Memory is a State always, & the Reason is a State Created to be Annihilated & a new Ratio Created Whatever can be Created can be Annihilated Forms cannot The Oak is cut down by the Ax, the Lamb falls by the Knife But their Forms Eternal Exist, For-ever. Amen Halle[l]ujah William Blake, Milton: Book the Second , Plate 32 [35]

The NYTimes reports that there is an exhibit of ancient Babylonian Mathematics at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at NYU. Most of the ancient tablets appear to be classroom exercises, yet they may show a very high degree of sophistication, predating many of the Greek insights--such as the Pythagorean theorem--by millennia (or approximately 1500 years). The newspaper article indicates that Greek thought has shaped our own mathematical thought, but that we can see that we owe a great deal more to the Babylonians than previously thought. I should also note that much of our mathematics derives from medieval arabic mathematicians as well. The tablets from Columbia University, University of Pennsylvania, and Yale University will be on exhibit until December 17. Unfortunately, I heard about this too late to take advantage of the exhibit and will not return to NY until after the exhibit closes. But I would love to hear or read people's responses below.

I just saw this site that shows the inside of the Sistine Chapel in 360. You can use your mouse to look at different parts and to zoom in and out. All without having to be guided in like cattle with all the other tourists. It's pretty cool.

One of the more interesting things I have begun to notice in biblical literature in my past year of reading or so is something of "uncreation." This is not necessarily the cataclysm of the end of time, although it can be that. It is not quite that final. It is more of a working backward from order to chaos in order to reintroduce an element of chaos in the world, showing that God is the God of chaos and not just order. I find traces of this in Isaiah, but it is all over the poetry in Job, including Job's own personal "uncreation" in Job 3 (an observation I owe to one of my students) to God's cosmic "uncreation" in Job 38 onward (an observation I owe to Carol Newsom's book on Job). With this interest in mind, I read the following from Rumi's poems that is almost an uncreation at points: I am sprung from you and likewise you have devoured me, I melt in you since through you I froze. Now you press me in your hand, now under your foot wit...

One of the most enjoyable and best -attended sections I went to at the SBL this year was the panel on Biblioblogging. While as the speakers noted that blogging has been greatly expanding the past five years in the field of biblical studies (broadly conceived), it is measured not only by the number of bloggers but the number of unofficial and now official gatherings of the bloggers (many of whom know each other by their blog names rather than their real names--even when their real names are not secrets). As has been the case the past few years, there was a dinner (which I was unable to attend), a lunch organized by J ohn Hobbins . This year, the bloggers have an official group that meets to discuss issues of blogging, online publication, and burgeoning online technologies in research and instruction. The meeting I attended had a nice panel from a well-established scholar to a more recent dissertation defender and all in between; it included scholars on the Dead Sea Scrolls, New Test...

The Bible is weird: this could be the subtitle of my introduction to biblical literature class. I have a tendency to point out those parts of the Bible that most people skim over because they are not particularly helpful for one's contemporary faith. There are these passages that, while overlooked most of the time in modern religious communities, when scrutinized and taken seriously shock the reader; remind the reader that these works are products of a different time and place. I have been sort of collecting these passages this semester, and perhaps I will find some time to post some of the earlier ones I have discussed in class (Gen. 6:1-4; Exod. 4:24-26; most of 1 Kings 17-2 Kings 10, etc.). One such passage is for my class this friday. When reading Ezekiel's reasoning for the exile, which it is fruitful to compare to Isaiah's and Jeremiah's warnings, one finds that the problem is that the people have persistently and consistently not walked in God's ordinanc...

Or at least archaeological argument: God drank beer! In a recent article in BAR . Here for the full article. Well, of course!

I am rereading William James's Varieties of Religious Experience for my fall class Interpreting Religious Experience , and ran across this passage in his lecture on the "Value of Saintliness." The gods we stand by are the gods we need and can use, the gods whose demands on us are reinforcements of our demands on ourselves and on one another. Spoken as a true pragmatist. This assertion of content that the popularity, "use," persistence of worship, etc., of any particular deity depends upon social circumstances of obligations and responsibilities between self and neighbor that make a society work reflects a pragmatic point of method: that religious issues of god, saintliness, etc., can be or can be best approached through social questions and standards. Together, they form a thesis that the divine, holy, and particularly the status of saintliness represent a distilled, idealized form of individual and social values.

I have been insanely busy lately. I have been finishing up my dissertation, and last week I finally distributed it. I have also taken a yearlong position at my alma mater, Illinois Wesleyan University, and so have been working on my fall classes, packing, moving, etc. In the midst of all of this professional business, I am getting married next month. Nonetheless, I have just found a window of time to create my "new faculty bio" for IWU. If anyone has been wondering what I have been up to since I haven't been posting, you can get an appetizer here: Jared Calaway (IWU Class of ’03) is excited to be returning to IWU as a visiting faculty member after pursuing his M.A. (2005), M.Phil. (2007), and Ph.D. (expected August 2010) in the History of Religions in Late Antiquity at Columbia University in New York City. For two years in a row (Fall 2005-Spring 2007) he was the Morton Smith Presidential Fellow at Columbia, which enabled him to travel through Greece and Italy. For...

After a nasty break-up and trial separation, it seems the SBL and AAR have decided they want to be together after all. As a member of both organizations, I am happy to see this. This next year is going to be particularly ridiculous, since they are meeting in the same city--Atlanta--just a few weeks apart. We were already to meet together in San Francisco next year, but now we will also be meeting the following years in Chicago and Baltimore, which will be cold! Here is the joint letter from Kent Richards and Jack Fitzmier, the presidents of the two organizations: June 28, 2010 We are pleased to announce that on June 10, 2010, the Society of Biblical Literature and American Academy of Religion signed a Letter of Intent that outlines an agreement to hold concurrent Annual Meetings beginning in San Francisco in the fall of 2011. These meetings will Occur in the same city—though the venue will change from year to year; Occur at the same time—the weekend before the US Thanksgiving holid...

It isn't everyday that the Hyksos, the foreign invading group that ruled ancient Egypt for a time makes the news, but there is an article in the Guardian about possibly finding their capital in Egypt using radar imaging: An Austrian archaeological team has used radar imaging to determine the extent of the ruins of the 3,500-year-old one-time capital of Egypt's foreign occupiers, according to the country's antiquities department. Egypt was ruled for a century from 1664-1569 BC by the Hyksos, a group of warriors from Asia – possibly Semitic in origin – whose summer capital, Avaris, was in the northern Delta area. See the rest here .

From BBC News: Art restorers in Italy have discovered what are believed to be the oldest paintings of some of Jesus Christ's apostles. The faces of Apostles Andrew, John, Peter and Paul were uncovered using new laser technology in a catacomb in Rome. The paintings date from the second half of the 4th Century or the early 5th Century, the restorers and Vatican officials believe. The images may have influenced later depictions of Christ's early followers.

Today I received a copy of Amanda H. Podany's Brotherhood of Kings: How International Relations Shapes the Ancient Near East from Oxford University Press. Here is the product description: Amanda Podany here takes readers on a vivid tour through a thousand years of ancient Near Eastern history, from 2300 to 1300 BCE, paying particular attention to the lively interactions that took place between the great kings of the day. Allowing them to speak in their own words, Podany reveals how these leaders and their ambassadors devised a remarkably sophisticated system of diplomacy and trade. What the kings forged, as they saw it, was a relationship of friends-brothers-across hundreds of miles. Over centuries they worked out ways for their ambassadors to travel safely to one another's capitals, they created formal rules of interaction and ways to work out disagreements, they agreed to treaties and abided by them, and their efforts had paid off with the exchange of luxury goods that each...

Correspondences La Nature est un temple où de vivant piliers Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles; L'homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles Qui l'observent avec des regards familiers. Comme de longs échos qui de loin se confondent Dans une ténébreuse et profonde unité, Vaste comme la nuit et comme la clarté, Les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se répondent. Il est des parfums frais comme des chairs d'enfants, Doux comme les hautbois, verts comme les prairies, -Et d'autres, corrompus, riches et triomphants, Ayant l'expansion des choses infinies, Comme l'ambre, le musc, le benjoin et l'encens, Qui chantent les transports de l'esprit et des sens. (Charles Baudelaire, "Correspondences," Les Fleurs du Mal ) This fantastic poem incites all of the senses, but perhaps mostly the most potent, memorable, and evanescent one of all: smell. It ranges from such sensuous activation to the rapture of the soul (les transports de l'esprit ...

All would be well Could we but give us wholly to the dreams, And get into their world that to the sense Is shadow, and not linger wretchedly Among substantial things; for it is dreams That lift us to the flowing, changing world That the heart longs for. What is love itself, Even though it be the lightest of light above, But dreams that hurry from beyond the world To make low laughter more than meat and drink, Though it but set us sighing? Fellow-wanderer, Could we but mix ourselves into a dream, Not in its image on the mirror! (W.B. Yeats, The Shadowy Waters 177-89; 1906)

Sailing to Byzantium .... O sages standing in God's holy fire As in the gold mosaic of a wall, Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, And be the singing-masters of my soul. Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is; and gather me Into the artifice of eternity. .... (W.B. Yeats, "Sailing to Byzantium," The Tower , 1928)

The Second Coming Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? (W.B. Yeats, "The Second Coming," Michael Robart...

These are the Clouds These are the clouds about the fallen sun, The majesty that shuts his burning eye: The weak lay hand on what the strong has done, Till that be tumbled that was lifted high And discord follow upon unison, And all things at one common level lie. And therefore, friend, if your great race were run And these things came, so much the more thereby Have you made greatness your companion, Although it be for children that you sigh: These are the clouds about the fallen sun, The majesty that shuts his burning eye. (W. B. Yeats, "These are the Clouds," The Green Helmet and Other Poems , 1910) I don't know why, but I found this poem particularly beautiful. Published in 1910 it anticipates the sense of brokenness and fallenness to permeate literature and philosophy after World War I (see, e.g., Woolf and Proust) and especially World War II (do I need to say more than Paul Celan?). Yet as an Irish poet, Yeats acutely sensed imposition from foreign powers, living i...

The classic, To Kill a Mockingbird , which has not been out of print since its publication, turns fifty this year with fifty parties and events set up across the country in celebration. See here : Few novels have achieved both the mass popularity and the literary cachet of “To Kill a Mockingbird.” The book was originally published in 1960 by J. B. Lippincott and Company (now part of HarperCollins), won a Pulitzer Prize and has not been out of print since. It has sold nearly one million copies a year and in the past five years has been the second-best-selling backlist title in the country, beaten out only by the novel “The Kite Runner.”

His Holiness the Dalai Lama (number 14), Tenzin Gyatso, has an op-ed article in the NYTimes . It isn't every day that you see an article in the Times by a world religious leader. He writes on religious intolerance and the need to learn from other faiths while remaining faithful to one's own: Though intolerance may be as old as religion itself, we still see vigorous signs of its virulence. In Europe, there are intense debates about newcomers wearing veils or wanting to erect minarets and episodes of violence against Muslim immigrants. Radical atheists issue blanket condemnations of those who hold to religious beliefs. In the Middle East, the flames of war are fanned by hatred of those who adhere to a different faith. Such tensions are likely to increase as the world becomes more interconnected and cultures, peoples and religions become ever more entwined. The pressure this creates tests more than our tolerance — it demands that we promote peaceful coexistence and understanding...

So, I've talked about the Symbiosis of Heaven and Hell with Blake and Bulgakov, and the Hellish Heaven and Heavenly Hell with Blake and Calvino. Let's give Blake a little rest and turn to Yeats! The Rose of Peace If Michael, leader of God's host When Heaven and Hell are met, Looked down on you from Heaven's door-post He would his deeds forget. Brooding no more upon God's wars In his divine homestead, He would go weave out of the stars A chaplet for your head. And all folk seeing him bow down, And white stars tell your praise, Would come at least to God's great town, Led on by gentle ways; And God would bid His warfare cease, Saying all things were well; And softly make a rosy peace, A peace of Heaven with Hell. W.B. Yeats, "The Rose of Peace," The Rose , 1893) Yeats transfixes Michael, God's archangelic general, in a domestic moment. He does not stand on the field of battle, but in his heavenly home. A homely and very physical home: "door...

But imitation requires not only the absence of any unconquerable originality but also a relative fineness of ear which enables one first of all to discern what one is afterwards to imitate. (Proust, Guermantes Way , In Search of Lost Time ; trans. Moncrieff, Kilmartin, and Enright) Famously, since Plato and Aristotle, art has been defined as the imitation of life or nature. Ovid, in his Metamorphoses , fascinatingly, reversed the direction of imitation, saying in his portrayal of Actaeon's transformation by Diana into a stag that is torn apart by his own dogs that nature imitates art--he is speaking of the rock formations around Diana's pool that are in the form of arches--the famous Roman architectural feature. Dante, on the Ledge of Pride in his Purgatorio , similarly, depicts an ecphrasis that is so real that nature could not compete with it. Art imitates life; life imitates art; it is an endless circle of mimesis. This is a fairly creative view of mimesis; Proust, howev...

I have returned to working on a book review that I have been dreading--partly because I am now receiving some pressure from the journal to do it. And in the same chapter the author uses two phrases that I find jarring. Phrase 1: "The burden of proof lies with those who..." This phrase always pertains to the position one opposes. It assumes that the consensus lies with you and that others must argue against it. It also indicates that you are not going to provide an argument yourself. To say that the "burden of proof lies" with whoever opposes your assumptions is just scholarly laziness, saying you will not (or perhaps cannot) effectively demonstrate your assumption. The burden of proof lies with whoever is making an argument, meaning, it lies with all of us. Phrase 2: "The exception that proves the rule." No, it is just a plain old exception. That it might stand out among a great deal of evidence, making it striking by comparison can be duly noted....

From the NYTIMES , a discussion of what a philosopher is, from the silly to sublime. See more commentary (which refers to other blogger responses) here .

Stanley Fish writes a fascinating opinion piece in the NYTimes on a recent Supreme Court decision concerning a Cross used in a memorial on public land in the Mojave desert. The argument that won the day was to argue that the cross did not violate the Establishment Clause because it was a secular rather than a religious symbol (something, I should note, is similar to why French students can wear cross necklaces to school, but other religious symbols are excluded). The irony is quite apparent: Notice what this paroxysm of patriotism had done: it has taken the Christianity out of the cross and turned it into an all-purpose means of marking secular achievements. (According to this reasoning the cross should mark the winning of championships in professional sports.) It is one of the ironies of the sequence of cases dealing with religious symbols on public land that those who argue for their lawful presence must first deny them the significance that provokes the desire to put them there i...

My old banner subtitle of "my musings on antiquity, religion, and other phenomena and ephemera," while perhaps complete, since all things perhaps fall under "other phenomena and ephemera" still seemed incomplete to me given the many postings I have done on Proust, Shakespeare, etc--basically the increased occurrence of non-antique literature. Thus, I have included "literature" into my subtitle to represent more accurately the content you might find here--still heavily biblically and anciently oriented, but inclusive of a great deal of musings on other literature. Thank you for reading!

I confess I never really thought of Hamlet's last words until I watched the PBS production of the recent Royal Shakespeare Company's performance . They take out the aftermath of Fortinbras picking up the shattered pieces of Denmark, and end simply with Horatio's words: "Good night, sweet prince, / and fights of angels sing thee to thy rest." Yet just before this, Hamlet's final words just before death are quite strange, eerie, interesting: "The rest is silence" (V.ii). The rest is silence. As in the interview for the PBS special, the actor who plays Hamlet says he is going off into oblivion. It is as if he has gotten his answer to the problem in the "to be or not to be" speech. For, indeed, it is the fear of things to come, the "undiscover'd country" that makes cowards of us all--that is, if living is cowardly. I am struck, as a specialist in the study of religion, in this particular phrasing--"the rest is silenc...

People foolishly imagine that the broad generalities of social phenomena afford an excellent opportunity to penetrate further into the human soul; they ought, on the contrary, to realise that it is by plumbing the depths of a single personality that they might have a chance of understanding those phenomena. (Proust, Guermantes Way, In Search of Lost Time; trans. Moncrieff, Kilmartin, and Enright)

Although it was simply a Sunday in autumn, I had been born again, life lay intact before me, for that morning, after a succession of mild days, there had been a cold fog which had not cleared until nearly midday: and a change in the weather is sufficient to create the world and ourselves anew. Formerly, when the wind howled in my chimney, I would listen to the blows which it struck on the iron trap with as keen an emotion as if, like the famous chords with which the Fifth Symphony opens, they had been the irresistible calls of a mysterious destiny. Every change in the aspect of nature offers us a similar transformation by adapting our desires so as to harmonise with the new form of things. The mist, from the moment of my awakening, had made of me, instead of the centrifugal being which one is on fine days, a man turned in on himself, longing for the chimney corner and the shared bed, a shivering Adam in quest of a sedentary Eve, in this different world. (Marcel Proust, Guermantes W...

Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence. From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason[.] Evil is the active springing from Energy. Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell (William Blake, Marriage of Heaven and Hell ) This past week I just finished up my Literature class by reading Mikhail Bulgakov's amazing Master and Margarita , which happens to be one of my favorite books. One thing often commented on about the novel is the prominent solar and lunar imagery: the sun and the moon align the scenes as they alternate between 20th century Stalinist Russia and first century Jerusalem. The sun is often portrayed as merciless, unbearable, taking away one's breath. The moon allows one to breath, but can be deceptive, creating shadows in the dark. Yet, considering the dark, in the end Night personified strips away all illusions--it...

There is an ancient truism that is the inversion of the Genesis statement that God made humans his God's image that humans always image God in their own image, and that if horses could speak, they would speak of God as a horse (I do not quite recall the reference off-hand, but if someone would like to supply it in the comments, it would be much appreciated). But such truisms, however true, seem trite to just speak it outright, and so to help make the point, I have enlisted a poet (W.B. Yeats): The Indian Upon God I passed along the water's edge below the humid trees, My spirit rocked in evening light, the rushes round my knees, My spirit rocked in sleep and sighs; and saw the moorfowl pace All dripping on a grassy slope, and saw them cease to chase Each other round in circles, and heard the eldest speak: Who holds the world between His bill and made us strong or weak Is an undying moorfowl, and He lives beyond the sky. The rains are from His dripping wing, the moonbeams from h...

It is in sickness that we are compelled to recognise that we do not live alone but are chained to a being from a different realm, from whom we are worlds apart, who has no knowledge of us and by whom it is impossible to make ourselves understood: our body. (Proust, Guermantes Way , In Search of Lost Time ; trans. Moncrieff, Kilmartin, and Enright) In his essay, "On the Power of the Imagination," Montaigne gives examples of psychosomaticism: basically the physical manifestations of a robust imagination--how the imagination affects and transforms our body and bodily states as well as society, from the realm of male impotence (a psychological issue with measurable effects) to religion (belief in spirits, ghosts, saints, and gods/God). Proust, by contrast, seems to identify the self wholly with the mind, our minds are the "we" and our bodies are the "them." Nonetheless, there remains a psychosomatic trace--the great chain. It does remind me a bit of the a...

From BBC . Most awkward and yet humorous picture of the day: why do both Nick Clegg and Gordon Brown both have the same leg in the air at the same time? It is like both are doing balancing acts while David Cameron puffs his cheeks and looks off skyward.

AWOL (Ancient World Online) has posted on a site Coptica that gives a great wealth of digitized Coptic material collected together, including free unicode fonts and digitized manuscripts. It will prove to be an invaluable resource for those of us interested in Coptic literature and language. I will also place this site in my sidebar.

I am excited about the new filmed version of Hamlet by the Royal Shakespeare Company that premiered this evening on PBS. It has Sir Patrick Stewart as Claudius. Here is the info on the Great Performances site where it will soon be available in its entirety. I really liked the use of mirrors in the production, particularly broken mirrors (a broken self?).

I know a lot of other bloggers have spoken about this, and I am not going to say much, except READ Judy Redman's article on memory in psychological research as it bears upon the gospels. It is quite thought-provoking and, frankly, a breath of fresh air on what seem to become rather stale debates. Just one completely unimportant note: Her discussion of schema reminded me of Albert Lord's definition of "theme" as something of a standard outline to fill in with detail (with each new remembering for Redman; with each new performance for Parry/Lord). She does speak of Lord briefly to discuss the memory of trained tradents, although I think I read Lord a little differently. Whereas she indicates the oral tradents' usage of verbatim speech--what Lord would call the Formulae--my reading of Lord (which is something he highly emphasizes in his introduction to the Singer of Tales) is that the moment of performance is itself the moment of composition. The entire narrativ...

Or perhaps it is a veritable Noah's ark of language. New York has become a refuge for dying languages. According to a recent New York Times article , New York may be home to around 800 distinct languages! Different languages from pockets in Eastern Europe, African tribes, and what might interest biblicists...Aramaic! Mandaic! In addition to dozens of Native American languages, vulnerable foreign languages that researchers say are spoken in New York include Aramaic, Chaldic and Mandaic from the Semitic family; Bukhari (a Bukharian Jewish language, which has more speakers in Queens than in Uzbekistan or Tajikistan), Chamorro (from the Mariana Islands), Irish Gaelic, Kashubian (from Poland), indigenous Mexican languages, Pennsylvania Dutch, Rhaeto-Romanic (spoken in Switzerland) and Romany (from the Balkans) and Yiddish.

Today in my Literature Humanities class, we were a bit reflective, reflecting over the year and critiquing our syllabus from the year. There was much catharsis, I think, in this discussion. There were several issues raised, but the root of much frustration with the syllabus is that there are simply too many works on it (other issues are that it is too western-focused, too androcentric, too historicist--the last refers to the structure or sequencing). And so this evening, I have begun to reflect what my ideal introductory literature course would be like. What if we started from scratch? I decided that my ideal course would be one in which we would read a single work for the entire semester in great detail intertwining our close readings with the various approaches that have been taken in studying literature (formal, Marxist, feminist, Freudian/Lacanian, historicist, new historicist, etc.), skills, theoretical approaches, and methods of reading and writing that would then be transfe...

A long while back, I posted on how Jubilees portrays Angels as being created already circumcised. These pre-circumcised angels mirrored Israel, much like they mirror them in things like Sabbath observance, etc. It turns out, however, that pre-circumcision is not limited to angels! According to Genesis Rabbah, which I have been slowly working through, Noah's son, Shem, was born already circumcised: Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Surely Japheth was the eldest? [Shem, however, is written] first because he was [more] righteous [than the others]; also because he was born circumcised, the Holy One, blessed be He, set His name particularly upon him; [other reasons for his priority are that] Abraham was to arise from him, he was the minister in the High Priesthood, and because the Temple would be built on his territory. (Gen. Rab. 26.3; trans. Freedman) The passage tries to explain Shem's priority given Japheth being elderly--I should wonder, however, given that Ham is the most accurse...