Antiquitopia

If you study antiquity for any length of time, you'll realize that the ancients had a fascination with serpents. Not just with the cunning serpent in Gen. 3, but throughout all ancient cultures with multiple responses: they were ambivalent creatures, capable of death and rejuvenation at the same time. One might remember in the Epic of Gilgamesh how a serpent stole the plant that gives the power of rejuvenation from Gilgamesh. They were the symbol of Asklepios (Lat. Aesculapius), the god of healing, and, in fact, remain a symbol of medicine to this very day (the serpent around the staff). In fact, if you go to my academic bio page on the right, you'll see me standing next to Asklepios at his great sanctuary in Epidauros. They were symbols of the chthonic gods--the Furies, for example, have serpentine qualities and inhabit the area beneath the Acropolis in Athens. One might notice that Athene often has serpentine imagery. The fringes of her robes in her statues in Athens ...

Sitting one Sunday in a Pentecostal service, I listened as someone began to “speak in tongues.” Such occurrences have a strange effect on me. I grew up in this church, and have noticed a sharp decline in the past decade or so of people speaking in tongues (and a slight recent resurgence), and so, at least psychologically, there is a strange feeling of comfort, of reminiscences of my childhood when such utterances occasionally occur. I care much less for the so-called “interpretation” afterwards, the attempt to make this excitable speech intelligible. It always seems like a betrayal of that speech, which, as excitable, should remain unknowable. At the same time, I am a scholar of religion. I cannot but think about that this is a phenomenon that occurs in multiple contexts throughout the world, whether a Shaman on the Eurasian Steppes (you can also see it in the movie Kundun , about the life of the current Dalai Lama), the Pythia in ancient Delphi, or a Pentecostal service in twent...