Antiquitopia

“For when they saw and heard him, he let them taste him and smell him and touch   the beloved Son” (30,23-31,35; trans. Marvin Meyer in Nag Hammadi Scriptures: International Edition ).   I have been reading a lot of the Nag Hammadi Codices lately, since many of my current research projects seem to intersect there.  While re-reading the Gospel of Truth, I found that it was full of multi-sensory language.  The Gospel of Truth, a profoundly original Valentinian homily (some even think it derives from Valentinus himself), effectively engages all five senses.   Indeed, in some ways, this one line encapsulates one’s relationship with the divine in this text: once you see and hear (initial steps), one then came come closer and taste, smell, and touch the divine, all indicating intimacy if not union. Throughout the entire sermon, the speaker/author invokes sensory language.   There is, of course, a lot of visionary and auditory language, bu...

There is a nice review of Robert Alter's newest installment of his translation of the Hebrew Bible in the Tablet. In   Ancient Israel , Alter has reached the part of the Bible with the most to say about history. The Pentateuch begins in myth and ends in moral exhortation; its most famous legends are precisely that, legends, which can only be accepted as true by an act of faith. Adam eating the apple, Abraham sacrificing Isaac, Moses parting the Red Sea—these are not the kinds of things that can be corroborated with outside evidence. Starting with the Book of Joshua, however,   Ancient Israel   moves into a more recognizable world of power politics, in which the main events are wars between tribes, states, and empires, and the intrigues of kings and courtiers. Toward the end of Kings, when we read of the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel by the Assyrian Empire and the sacking of Jerusalem by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, we are dealing with events that...

It is a few days old, but Philip Jenkins has an interesting informative  post  (definitely worth the read) on Protestants and "Apocrypha."