Antiquitopia

I just finished reading Elaine Pagels's new book, Revelations:  Visions, Prophecy, & Politics in the Book of Revelation , and thought I would collect some of my thoughts.  There have been many initial reviews that will, most likely, show greater verve and greater detail than what I am going to discuss here; this is more of a series of notes rather than a review, per se.  See Adam Gopnik's review in the New Yorker here . Moreover, three chapters of the book previously appeared as more technical articles, whereas the book is for a more general, non-specialist audience.  What struck me is that the book is really about shifting contexts of visions, particularly John of Patmos's Revelation .  The different chapters of the book provide different political contexts from an imperial telescope to intra-Christian microscopes in overlapping contexts that slowly spiral outward in space and time until one finds oneself far away from the late first century setting (Page...

The historian of ancient religion typically lives in a patchwork world.  The dearth of ancient evidence is a daily reality to which one submits oneself.  The study of Moses in antiquity, however, oddly presents itself as an embarrassment of riches.  In addition to the Hebrew Bible and Jewish sources, Christian, Muslim, and even “pagan” writers repeatedly retold stories of Moses, sometimes presenting an entire “life,” sometimes focusing on specific episodes or events, and sometimes referring to a general quality or ability of Moses.  Second Temple Jews revisited Sinai over and again, retelling how Moses received the Torah in new circumstances.  He was alternatively invoked as absolutely unique and a model for emulation.  Several events, tropes, roles, and images caught the ancient imagination:  the birth story; the burning bush revelation of the divine name; the signs and wonders he performed in Egypt; the Passover; the Exodus; standing on Sina...

Today I had the opportunity to start working on outlining a new research project.  It is an exciting time, a time before my ideas crystallize, when they retain the flexibility of hypotheses.  It is when my flashes of insight have yet to become a sustained vision.  When there is the excitement of finding new things even in a field as overrun as New Testament and Christian Origins.  It is an important time, moreover, when I choose which direction I will go (even if the road winds, twists, and turns into new directions later).  It is an overwhelming time, since there are so many directions I could go.  My project, my passion at the moment is Moses.  Not just Moses, but Moses as interpreted by early Christians; how they represented him and why they represented him in the way they did.  It is about ancient exegesis and its social implications; interpretation and authority.  More to come!

I just noticed that Beth Berkowitz 's new book, Defining Jewish Difference , is available.  The book looks at the history of interpretation of Leviticus 18:3 ("You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you dwelt, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you.  You shall not walk in their statutes."), and how that verse has been reinterpreted throughout the ages in terms of the "ways of the Gentiles" as, sort of, a trump card in exegesis. Here is the official description: This book traces the interpretive career of Leviticus 18:3, a verse that forbids Israel from imitating its neighbors. Beth A. Berkowitz shows that ancient, medieval, and modern exegesis of this verse provides an essential backdrop for today's conversations about Jewish assimilation and minority identity more generally. The story of Jewishness that this book tells may surprise many modern readers for whom religious identity revolves...

I good friend of mine, J odi Eichler-Levine , has written an essay , "Where the Wild Things Aren't Just Jewish," in Religion Dispatches on Maurice Sendak and, I guess we could call it "inclusive chosenness" (don't blame her for such an infelicitous phrase).  Sendak, who died this past week, is most famous for the children's book, Where the Wild Things Are .  Jodi, by the way, researches the ways in which collective trauma (such as the Holocaust), holidays, and religious identity are expressed in children's books.  On her webpage (link on her name), she says this about her work, "In Professor Eichler-Levine’s current book project, which is under contract with New York University Press, she examines how Jewish Americans and African Americans incorporate traumatic pasts and religious ideals in stories young people."  Thus, it was a topical match made in heaven.  Here is my favorite passage from the article: "His response to the Ho...

So as I finish up readying a draft of my monograph to send to publishers, I have thought a bit about a potential future project that would be more patently methodological in nature:  what, if anything, can different scholarly frameworks of ritual tell us about Hebrews?  How might Hebrews help us to rethink those frameworks?  So, I toyed with this idea a bit here , spoken of it with biblicists, with people who study ritual or "ritual" in other contexts, etc., and with their feedback I have come up with this as a preliminary abstract and table and contents: The Epistle to the Hebrews and Ritual Studies:  An Investigation Jared C. Calaway Visiting Assistant Professor Illinois Wesleyan University Abstract: This study responds to the increasing interest in “social-scientific criticism” in biblical studies and its relative absence in the most cultically-interested work in the New Testament:  the Epistle to the Hebrews.  There have been so...

I have been thinking about developing a course to complement, in some ways, my Sexuality and Christianity course, in which I bring in feminist and queer biblical criticism.  I thought one important critical hermeneutic which I am less familiar with and most interested in is ecological.  Since I have been largely ignorant of it, I asked a friend for some book ideas.  The first I have read is The Bible and the Environment by David G. Horrell.  It is a nice slim volume that provides a good primer for who is out there debating the Bible's role, positively and negatively, on shaping people's perspectives when it comes to environmental policies and more private choices and interests, what reading strategies (hermeneutics) are used on the different sides, and what biblical passages are the primary ones typically used to oppose or promote environmental policies and actions. Interestingly, ecological criticism has had a fairly similar trajectory as feminist biblical crit...

I just discovered the lamentable firing of Anthony LeDonne from Lincoln Christian University here .  I met Anthony my first year at Illinois Wesleyan University when his co-biblicist at LCU Chris Keith came to IWU to talk about the demise of the criteria of authenticity through research employing memory studies (see a recent discussion of one of Keith's books here ).  Anthony's firing appears to be due to pressure by donors and others because of his quite good popular book on the Historical Jesus .  Ironically, there is to be a conference concerning this research at LCU next fall, though it appears that the organizers are likely to move it in response to LeDonne's unexpected firing ( here ). I am quite angry about this.  LeDonne's research is good, responsible, and creative.  He should be rewarded for his work rather than endure mistreatment.  I join with others who offer their hopes that LeDonne will quickly find an institutional home that values his im...