Importance of Silence

I just read this interview with Trappist monks just outside of Montreal on silence.  This paragraph caught my eye:

Are all your actions done in total silence? How do monks coordinate work? There must be a small amount of words that are absolutely necessary to get through a day?

 

Father B: No, not all work is done in silence, though we try to keep a silent atmosphere whatever we do, even common work. We talk to convey necessary information; the point is to get to the point and stick to the point and the capacity for that varies from person to person. The ideal isn't to see who keeps the strictest silence but for all to help maintain a silent atmosphere.

This says on one level that silence is in our lives to create an ambience of recollection so I'll remember and honor God's presence. On another level, silence reminds me that the misuse of words, the abuse of language can also be the sinful abuse of people; silence for us means not talking, more than not making noise… On yet another level, silence means listening. We follow the Rule of St. Benedict and the first word of that Rule is "Listen." That's the great ethical element of silence: to check my words and listen to another point of view. I'll never have any real peace should my sense of well-being depend on soundless peace. When I can learn the patience of receiving, in an unthreatened way, what I'd rather not hear, then I can have a real measure of peace in any situation.

For more on Trappist silence, you can read just about any of the works by Thomas Merton.

Terry Eagleton on Sensitive Reading

I just read an interesting interview with Marxist literary critic, Terry Eagleton.  It covers a multitude of topics of interest, and several elements caught my eye in a general way concerning politics, religion, and culture (by the way, his discussion of the failed modern surrogates of religion is quite interesting).  But one that caught my attention in a specific way that has quite practical implications:

How do you feel about current literary criticism? You were an episode in the history of literary criticism yourself, in a sort of transition phase from Leavisism to the present day…

I’ve got a book coming out called something banal like How To Study Literature because I fear that literary criticism, at least as I knew it and was taught it, is almost as dead on its feet as clog dancing. That is to say, all of the things that I would have been taught at Cambridge—close analysis of language, responsiveness to literary form, a sense of moral seriousness—all of which could have negative corollaries… I just don’t see that any more. Somewhere along the line that sensitivity to language which I value enormously got lost. I didn’t really know about this because I had moved up in the echelons of academia and I wasn’t close enough to the undergraduate ground as it were to be aware of this. But when I got to Manchester [Eagleton began teaching at the University of Manchester in 2001], I was appalled by the way that people could be very smart about the context of a poem, but had no idea about how to talk about it as a poem. Whereas even if one did that badly or indifferently, it was still something one automatically did, in my day. This book coming out next year is really an attempt to put literary criticism as I see it back on the agenda. And to talk about questions of things like value, what’s good, what’s bad, form, theme, language, imagery, and so on.

I agree; it is a lost art.  I tend to find that most of my students aren't used to it; haven't done it; and so I always try to incorporate it in my assignments.  It is how I start every new project--reading very closely, sensitively, and then bringing in broader and broader contexts.  I remember as a TA for the historian, Robert Somerville, we would periodically give an entire class a quiz in which they would have to read closely a passage from a primary source dealing with Christian history, break it down first and then place it in its social, historical, and theological contexts.  This was often what I spent nearly a year doing when teaching Literature of the Humanities.  I remember one of the best classes I ever taught was a two-hour session where we did not venture beyond Genesis 1:1-2:3.  We read it closely, analyzed the language, looked at how different verbs were being used, repetition, variation in repetition (there is a lot more variance than people typically discuss), its architecture and broader organizational patterns, before turning to broader ideological implications (gender, etc.), and contextual issues of Sitz im Leben and historical context.  It is something I bring into my Bible classes.  My second exam (we have three) is always for them to read a passage of about fifteen lines, and struggle with that passage, discussing its language, imagery, form/structure/organization, themes, and then arguing why those elements, put back together, are significant in context.  They struggle at first, because they are not used to it, but I get some quite stunning analyses by the end.  I remember taking a class with Seth Schwartz, historian of ancient Judaism, where he said that you can't just read a text, but you have to be aware of and clear concerning how you are reading a text.

Moses' Beauty (again) according to Philo

            As I am reading Philo for reading his discussions of Moses’ visions, I cannot but help return to this strange little obsession of mine with Moses’ “beauty” (ἀστεῖος).  In a previous post (from February--wow how time flies), I discussed the terminology and usage in the New Testament (Acts 7 and Hebrews 11).  There I had some helpful comments, and I have looked up how this little verse in Exod 2:2 has been re-interpreted by Rabbis, Josephus, and, here Philo.  It is time to put this into a little bit of context.  

            Naturally, one turns to Philo’s Life of Moses, although the terminology appears elsewhere.   In this work it appears in the following passages:

Now, the child from his birth had an appearance of more than ordinary goodliness (ἀστειοτέραν), so that his parents as long as they could actually set at nought the proclamations of the despot (1.9; trans.Colson LCL)

Compare this with: 

Therefore, surveying him from head to foot, she [the Pharaoh’s daughter] approved of his beauty (εὐμορφίαν) and fine condition, and seeing him weeping took pity on him, for her heart was now moved to feel for him as a mother for her own child (1.15).

And again:

As he grew and thrived without a break, and was weaned at an earlier date than they had reckoned, his mother and nurse in one brought him to her from whom she had received him, since he had ceased to need an infant’s milk.  He was noble and goodly (ἀστεῖον) to look upon; and the princess, seeing him so advanced beyond his age, conceived for him an even greater fondness than before, and took him for her son…. (1.18-19)

In the Life of Moses at least, Moses’ beauty, signaled primarily by ἀστειοτέρον and ἀστεῖον, although with some synonymous terminology, serves the purpose to explain why he was saved by his parents and why Pharoah’s daughter was so willing to take him in.  Nonetheless, we see some adjustments made:  it is not just for his birth, but an ongoing trait of his advanced status.  His physical “beauty” mirrors his general physical and, later, educational advancement.  The other adjustment is that, unlike the LXX and the New Testament, he does not just have “beauty” or “goodliness,” but is “more” so, signaling at his birth his superlative, and, for Philo, unique stature. 

            Moses’ beauty, or goodliness as Colson translates it, appears in other treatises as well. 

On the other hand the mind called Moses, that goodly plant, given the name of goodly (ἀστεῖος) at his very birth, who in virtue of his larger citizenship took the world for his township and country (ὁ τὸν κόσμον ὡς ἄστυ καὶ πατρίδα), weeps bitterly in the days when he is imprisoned in the ark of the body bedaubed as with “asphalt-pitch,” which thinks to receive and contain, as with cement, impressions of all that is presented through sense.  He weeps for his captivity, pressed sore by his yearning for a nature that knows no body.  (Confusion of Tongues 106; Trans. Colson and Whitaker, LCL)

Moses, here, stands for a type of mind—one that contrasts with the Noah-mind.  Both were put in arks of asphalt and pitch (that is, the body).  The Noah-mind, when the world presses in, find the body a source of strength; the Moses-mind, the higher mind, finds it oppressive, recognizing the body cannot give real safety; the body is mutable upon the waves of life's seas, but the highest mind of the most virtuous is stable.  The mind-type (Moses) is, again, ἀστεῖος, and finally Philo plays his hand.  He uses it to transition smoothly into Moses (and the minds who emulate him) as cosmopolitan (world citizen)—the world is his city, his ἄστυ. 

            Finally, the term shows up again in the amusingly titled On Mating with Preliminary Studies 132:

This is Moses, the mind of purest quality, the truly “goodly” (ὁ ἀστεῖος ὄντος), who, with a wisdom given by divine inspiration, received the art of legislation and prophecy alike, who being of the tribe of Levi, both on the father’s and the mother’s side, has a double link with truth.

As with On the Confusion of Tongues, Moses being ἀστεῖος is no longer just about physical appearance, but of quality of mind.  But this passage takes it even a step further:  it is linked with Moses’ ability to receive the revelation of the divine legislation; it ties, in fact, three out of the four roles he would have according to the Life of Moses (law-giver, prophet, and high priest—assuming that is the point of emphasizing his link with Levi—the only thing missing is him as philosopher-king).  The link between his beauty/goodliness and his prophetic abilities would reappear in Rabbinic sources as well.

           

            Philo readily exploits the LXX rendering of Moses as ἀστεῖος (Exod. 2:2).  He uses it exegetically to explain why his parents saved him—and other parents did no such thing—and why Pharoah’s daughter took an instant liking to him:  it all came down to his appearance.  In this case, it is further amplified with synonyms of beauty and nobility as well as made “greater goodliness/beauty.”  Moreover, it mirrors Moses’ overall advanced status: it is not just of body, but of mind.  Philo pushes the terminology further, looking to its Stoic resonances, when speaking of the Moses-mind:  the mind that emulates Moses’ beauty/goodliness.  Using a term that literally means “of the city” allows Philo to transition smoothly into Moses’ virtues as a cosmopolitan, one for whom the entire cosmos is his “city.”  Moreover, as something beyond a physical quality, it interlinks with Moses’ prophetic abilities:  it is the mind of the greatest purity and, thereby, the mind that can commune with the divine.

Book Note: Ascent of Christian Law by John Anthony McGuckin

I just saw that the newest book by John Anthony McGuckin, Ascent of Christian Law:  Patristic and Byzantine Formulations of a New Civilization, has come out.  McGuckin was one of my mentors in graduate school.  I took a couple classes with him on Byzantine Christianity.  His hobby horses have lately been concerned with Symeon the New Theologian and translating mystical liturgies.  He is especially known for his intellectual biography of Gregory of Nazianzus.  Although in the past decade he has had an explosion in publication output, I was still a little surprised when I discovered a couple years ago that he was researching a book on Byzantine canon law. 

Here is the product description:

This work asks the question: What did Christianity
do to build a civilization? In the present age, law
has been used energetically to micro-manage human
societies, values, and aspirations. But did l aw work that
way in antiquity?

This little book is some form of answer. It is a
book on law and legal thought as it emerged in its
formative ages of the Christian past; it asks what the
ancient writers and theorists did with law and legal
thought. It is part history, part philosophy, and more
than anything else an introduction to issues of law and
legal adjudication in the Patristic and Byzantine eras.

 I have put it in my cart.

Seeing Speech, or God and the Senses (3): Synesthetic Visions of the Divine in Philo

While working on Christian hermeneutic mobilizations of Moses’ divine visions (or lack thereof), I am indulging myself by reading quite a lot of Philo's writings.  Philo was extraordinarily interested in the intellectual, contemplative vision of God, seeing with the mind’s eye rather than the bodily one.  Therefore, there is so much one could say about how Philo conceives of the possibilities and limitations of divine vision and how they relate to his most exemplary visionary, Moses, whom he refers to as the greatest and most perfect man who ever lived (Life of Moses 1.1), the most beloved of God (Migration of Abraham 67; On the Confusion of tongues 95-97), and the friend of God (Heir of Divine Things 21).  There are astounding discussions of Moses’ visions, especially concerning the burning bush (astounding for its rather unexpected reticence), Moses’ entrance into the darkness where God was, and Moses’ vision of archetypal reality (the “pattern of the Tabernacle”).  There are extensive discussions of Moses and the elders ascending the mount and seeing God (from Exod. 24) as well. Philo does not hold back to calling Moses "God," and gives him many of the same characteristics of the "Logos" (both, by the way, are archetypal high priests).

            These discussions are real gems that often have implications well beyond the passage itself, bits and pieces taken up again elsewhere in the treatise or in other treatises; they are overlapping discourses that one could spend a lifetime unraveling.   As usual, however, I am fascinated by things Philo says in passing.   Little things catch my attention and I want to unravel them.  One such remark is his discussion of synesthetic visions:  that is, seeing the divine voice (Given this instance of synesthesia, I am going to cross reference this discussion with my "God and the Senses" series).  Referring to Exod. 20:18 LXX—“all the people saw the voice”—Philo writes,

Now, a certain man, setting at nought this ordinance [about the Sabbath], though the echoes of the divine commands about the sacredness of the seventh day were ringing in his ears, commands promulgated by God no through His prophet but by a voice which, strange paradox, was visible and aroused the eyes rather than the ears of the bystanders, went forth through the midst of the camp to gather firewood, knowing that all were resting in their tents. (Life of Moses 2.213; trans. Colson LCL)

The point of the passage is to describe how the death penalty came about for abrogating the Sabbath command.  This ordinance is heightened by the fact that it is, according to Philo, given without the typical intermediary (Moses), but directly by the voice of God.  Yet, in a strange case of synesthesia, the divine voice is seen and not heard.  Although, as I have tried to show in other posts (see "God and the Senses" tag) that a fuller understanding of human-divine contact employs language from all of the senses, Philo distinctly privileges seeing over hearing (as do the Rabbis; see Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Bahodesh, 2).  Those who hear are “Jacob,” but those who see are “Israel” (pick up a treatise nearly at random, and you’ll see Philo discussing at some point “Israel” and seeing).  He is interpreting a peculiar translation in the LXX of seeing the voice, but does so to heighten the importance of the Sabbath command.  He does not, however, reflect here on the paradox of seeing sound. 

That he does, however, in Migration of Abraham 47-53.  It is too long to quote in full, but there are some important points to quote at length:

For what life is better than the contemplative life, or more appropriate to a rational being?  For this reason, whereas the voice of mortal beings is judged by hearing, the sacred oracles intimate that the words of God are seen as light is seen; for we are told that “all the people saw the Voice” (Exod. 20:18), not that they heard it.  (Migration of Abraham 47; trans. Colson and Whitaker LCL)

Before proceeding to Philo’s explanation of seeing the divine voice, resolving the paradox, we have to understand why he brings it up at all.  Opening with the rhetorical question of what life is greater than the contemplative life—the answer is “none”—he proceeds to the foundational moment at Sinai.  All of the people at Sinai who see the divine voice are, in this way, prototypical contemplatives:  those who do not just hear, but who see the divine things.  Contemplating through the eye of the mind divine speech (which Philo does continually through commentary; his meditations on the Bible are themselves visual contemplations of the divine voice) is the way to ecstasy (see Migration of Abraham 34-35), the heights of ascend and divine sight.  See as Moses did; and, if not that advanced, as the Israelites did.  This is in contrast to Rabbinic discussions which saw the event as unique—that general would see the divine in a way that not even Isaiah or Ezekiel would (MRI, Shirta, 3; Bahodesh, 9; see further Deuteronomy Rabbah 7:8; cf. Numbers Rabbah 12:4).  Philo continues to explain this paradox of seeing divine speech:

For what was happening was not an impact on air made by the organs of mouth and tongue, but virtue shining with intense brilliance, wholly resembling the fountain of reason, and this is also indicated elsewhere on this wise:  “Ye have seen that I have spoken to you out of Heaven” (Exod. 20:22 LXX), not “ye heard,” for the same cause as before.  In one place the writer distinguishes things heard from things seen and hearing from sight, saying, “Ye heard a voice of words, and saw no similitude but only a voice” (Deut. 4:12 LXX), making a very subtle distinction, for the voice dividing itself into noun and verb and the parts of speech in general he naturally spoke of as “audible,” for it comes to the test of hearing:  but the voice or sound that was not that of verbs and nouns but of God, seen by the eye of the soul, he rightly represents as “visible.”…  This shews that words spoken by God are interpreted by the power of sight residing in the soul, whereas those which are divided up among the various parts of speech appeal to hearing. (Migration of Abraham 47b-49)

Philo explains the paradox of seeing speech by calling upon a couple things at once:  (1) the distinction between human and divine and (2) what exactly does the seeing.  Firstly, human speech is divided up into different parts of speech by vocal organs operating upon the air.  Throughout his writings, Philo is careful not to confuse human and divine qualities.  God does not have a mouth, so to speak, or organs of speech in the bodily sense.  Human speech is sequential and divided; the implication is the divine speech is a unity and, therefore, synchronic.  As he concludes:

The truth is that our sound-producer is not similar to the Divine organ of voice; for ours mingles with air and betakes itself to the place akin to it, the ears; but the divine is an organ of pure and unalloyed speech, too subtle for the hearing to catch it, but visible to the soul which is single in virtue of its keenness of sight. (52)

Secondly, bodily eyes cannot see the divine in Philo; the soul’s or Mind’s (the highest part of the soul) is what sees the divine.  There is also a hint of this in this passage.  In the intervening passage that I did not quote, Philo speaks of how things to be sensed and interpreted by the mind, as he says here, are attracted to those places “akin to it.”  So perfumes waft to the nose; savours to the tongue; etc.  Likewise, the divine voice is interpreted by the place most akin to it, which, oddly, is not the ears, but being a pure thing is interpreted by that “organ” of purity (if, indeed, it has been kept pure and virtuous), the soul.  The rational soul doesn’t smell, hear, taste, or touch; it “sees.” As Philo elsewhere waxes rhapsodic when the “voice of God came” to Moses:  “It suggests a loud, sonorous, continual appeal, pitches so as to spread abroad throughout the soul, whereby no part shall be left to which its right instruction has not penetrated, but all are filled from end to end with sound learning” (Heir of Divine Things 67).

The Christian Moses: Moses the Seer and Christian Authority

In a previous post, I laid out a preliminary hypothesis of why Christians were increasingly appropriating Moses' visions on Mount Sinai and to what ends:  asking the questions of "what did early Christians say Moses saw on the mountain?" and "why does it matter?"; that is, exegesis and its social implications.  I want to elaborate that working hypothesis a little bit, with the understanding that it is a working hypothesis--a general guide to my research and something that will, most likely, change as I accumulate more sources.  

Whenever I have noted to others that early Christian authors make Moses a proto-Christian or that, according to early Christian literature, that in his visions he foresees Christ or, somehow, more directly encounters Christ, the inevitable response is “of course they do.”  But I think an important dimension is often overlooked in this response:  that by making Moses not just a proto-Christian seer, but, being the prophet par excellence, he is being offered as the ideal Christians should emulate.  Still….of course….they do…  In this response, however, he will not just be co-opted as the ideal Christian, but as the ideal Christian leader; he is mobilized exegetically, especially his visions upon the mountain.  His sexual abstention to see God is invoked by Christian monastics, and, as the episcopacy increasingly is taken over by monks, it too would invoke the example of Moses for their own practices and the powers and authority that accrues to them through those practices laid down by Moses.  In his actual ascent upon the mountain to mediate between God and the people, Moses enters into the dark cloud and see the “pattern of the Tabernacle,” allowing him to see, enter, and comprehend the very essence of all things, whether God (dark cloud) or cosmos (“pattern”):  by seeing the very form of God (Num. 12:8), he becomes the ideal for the Chrisitan seer.  He is not just any Christian seer, but those at the height of the hierarchy (literally speaking).  Noting Moses’ unique status, they claim it for their own to now stand between God/Christ and the people/church.  Co-opting Moses’ visionary abilities, they highlight those abilities even greater than their more ambivalent Christian predecessors in a double-move to reinforce their own authority.  Building upon trends in the New Testament, this occurs in three interrelated maneuvers that lead to a fourth post-New Testament claim:

1.     Jesus as prophet like Moses; Moses as proto-Christ (this is all over the place, but most often in Gospels, most patently in Matthew; see also Acts).  Jesus picks up on Moses’ intermediary role, as one who gives and interprets God’s covenant, and stands between God and the people.  In a way, this justifies Jesus' authority and provides continuity.

2.      Moses the visionary who sees and does not see.  In NT, Moses does not see God; no one sees God, but the Son (except in Hebrews 11).  Once denying all access to God except through son, and concurrently noting that Moses received law through angels; then Moses is demoted as Christ is promoted, even as Moses is praised as an exemplary prophet who foreshadows Christ throughout.  Moses' visions are suppressed in order to promote Christ as greater.

3.     If Moses and Christ are not always fully models of each other, we also have concurrent traditions of Moses as proto-Christian (the flip side are that Christians can emulate Moses).  Moses can foresee Christ (either through interpretation of law, or literally).  He also acts as Christians ought to act (Hebrews).  His “proto-Christian” status is especially highlighted in Hebrews, but, interestingly, Hebrews who carefully delineates the differences between Moses and Christ as servant and Son respectively restores Moses’ visionary abilities in ways not found in other NT texts.  Having already claimed that the Son was greater in chapter 3 (citing the same verse in Numbers that claims Moses was ideal seer), Moses could then see the invisible God in chapter 11 and endure suffering for Christ.

4.     Especially as we move in the post-NT period, we find a reaffirmation and reassertion (and sometimes amplification) of Moses’ visionary abilities among those who would be considered orthodox in later years (interestingly, not so much among, for example, Gnostic works), but now it is not that he sees God, but sees Christ (something that might lie behind the affirmation in Hebrews, but it left implicit at best there).  This happens in multiple ways:  he foresees Christ; he literally sees Christ (and anytime anyone claims to see God, they see Christ pre-incarnate); and the weird thing on the mountain where Moses’ ascent to Mt Sinai and Jesus’ Transfiguration on the mountain is the same event (not a foreshadowing, not a typology, but the same event), bending the laws of space and time.  Once Moses is the seer of Christ, he can be set up as the model of a mediator between God and people again, but no longer God and Israel, but Christ and the Church.  Thereby, he becomes the perfect model for early Christian leaders, who mediate between God and the people.  In this way, he is not just co-opted as a proto-Christian; as an analogy, or even as an exemplary model to follow (although he is all of these):  he is the justification for Christian clerical authority—they can invoke him as a proto-mediator of whom they are now the current iterations.  Once this fourth piece is in place, the exegetical mobilizations explode--even to the point that his role "as god" (Exod. 7:1) will be reaffirmed!

Stephen King the Theologian?

According to a lot of analysts, yes, Stephen King has a strong, sophisticated understanding of Christian theology.  Every horror writer, it seems, contrasts good and evil, but King pushes further according to this article:

“People tend to think that Stephen King is anti-religious because he is a horror writer, but that’s completely mistaken,” says Zahl, a retired Episcopal priest who has written about King’s religious sensibility for Christianity Today magazine. “Several of his books are parables of grace in action.”

Evidently, some of his influences include C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia and J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, both Christians with highly complex symbolism in their novels with Christian themes (perhaps more complex and sophisticated with Tolkien, but that's my bias).  Especially important, according to the article, are the themes of "a child shall lead them," "God can be cruel" (think of Job), and "God chose the weak things."  I never have read much of King nor seen the movies made from his novels (except the Green Mile and Shawshank Redemption; oh, and I think I saw Needful Things), but from what little I've seen, there is a lot of Christian theology and biblical themes involved.  In Needful Things, the devil comes to town and tears a community apart through their desire for material objects; in Green Mile, John Coffee is a falsely condemned prisoner given the death sentence who heals and, otherwise, has a Christ-like demeanor.  Nonetheless, ultimately:

The Bible is filled with terror: demons, ghosts, floods wiping out mankind and the rising of the dead.

“Good horror examines the struggle between good and evil,” he says. “The Bible is the history of that struggle.

“The Bible is in many ways the ultimate horror novel.”

Truly Interdisciplinary? On Science and Humanities

To be "interdisciplinary" has been a catchword for well over a decade in the academic world; grants are based upon it, jobs increasingly rely upon it, and, who knows, perhaps the future of the university will be based upon it.  It can lead to provocative (yet unlikely and perhaps silly) proposals, but also genuine collaboration.  Sometimes "interdisciplinary" isn't very much so:  it is often the confluence of people in different departments on their own side of the humanities/sciences divide.  The question remains how sciences and humanities can learn from one another in a mutually beneficial dialogue? 

E.O. Wilson suggests that we have a common basis in story--whether you are a novelist or a physicist, you are essentially telling a story.  You may use a different set of vocabulary, different degrees of metaphor (although Lakoff and Johnson might say that all our language is essentially metaphoric), but we want to tell a story.  The best scholars throughout the university's divisions are the ones who can do this with the most creativity:

Since the fading of the original Enlightenment during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, stubborn impasse has existed in the consilience of the humanities and natural sciences. One way to break it is to collate the creative process and writing styles of literature and scientific research. This might not prove so difficult as it first seems. Innovators in both of two domains are basically dreamers and storytellers. In the early stages of creation of both art and science, everything in the mind is a story. There is an imagined denouement, and perhaps a start, and a selection of bits and pieces that might fit in between. In works of literature and science alike, any part can be changed, causing a ripple among the other parts, some of which are discarded and new ones added. The surviving fragments are variously joined and separated, and moved about as the story forms. One scenario emerges, then another. The scenarios, whether literary or scientific in nature, compete. Words and sentences (or equations or experiments) are tried. Early on an end to all the imagining is conceived. It seems a wondrous denouement (or scientific breakthrough). But is it the best, is it true? To bring the end safely home is the goal of the creative mind. Whatever that might be, wherever located, however expressed, it begins as a phantom that might up until the last moment fade and be replaced. Inexpressible thoughts flit along the edges. As the best fragments solidify, they are put in place and moved about, and the story grows and reaches its inspired end. Flannery O’Connor asked, correctly, for all of us, literary authors and scientists, “How can I know what I mean until I see what I say?” The novelist says, “Does that work?,” and the scientist says, “Could that possibly be true?”

I know that's true with me.  I never know what I'm going to conclude at the end of writing my research on the history of religion in antiquity until I actually write it.  Perhaps historians of religion qua exegetes (so literary interpreters) like myself are somewhere in between "does that work?" and "could that possibly be true?"  We are allowed to let the pen flow with much greater style than perhaps a scientist, perhaps less than a novelist, so long as the passage isn't overly purple, and we respond to arguments that are the most creative as well as factually plausible.  E.O. Wilson, however, seeks to understand the evolutionary development of aesthetics and cognitive developments, but, admits, there could be help from the humanities to help scientists understand their own judgements are often social and aesthetic in nature, responding to disciplinary linguistic conventions and social pressures for recognition.

In addition to telling a story, we are united by our common curiosity, and a broader sense of wonder.  I sense that curiosity leading into wonder when reading Darwin's Origin of Species--the final pages are, in fact, quite beautiful.  I sense it when I read the ancient cosmogonies.  Perhaps many of us have lost that awe and wonder, but the most creative in our professions seem to have kept a spark of it.  Here's to the "dreamers of dreams."

Roman Endurance

The question isn't why did the Roman rise or why did it fall.  The question is, why did it last so long?  At least, that is what this sprawling review of Greg Woolf's newest book, Rome:  An Empire's Story, asks.  (I realize the review came out over a month ago, but I just noticed it).

The Jewish Trinity?

In case anyone missed it, Peter Schäfer has a sweeping critique of Daniel Boyarin's new book, The Jewish Gospels:  The Story of the Jewish Christ, in the New Republic.  The critique has been critiqued here.  See further Larry Hurtado's general agreement here.

The Political Contexts of Vision

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 (Pagels agrees with the majority of scholars who date the text to Domitian's reign).

The first context is the political context of the Roman Empire; it focuses on the enemies without.  It is the political context in which John mobilizes archaic symbols, particularly the chaoskampf of the (usually male) god conquering the (usually female) chaotic waters (often symbolized as a sea creature, the Leviathan, Rahab, or, in Babylon, Tiamat) and transforms them into a staunchly anti-Roman message.  Pagels admirably interweaves prophetic traditions, the emergence of the Roman Empire at large, the major political events of the first centuries BCE and CE, the specific effects of these events in Asia Minor, and the emergence of the Jesus movement.  While the scholarship in this chapter is nothing new--most NT scholars recognize Revelation as perhaps the most anti-Roman document in the New Testament--Pagels succinctly and vividly paints a picture that is engaging and informative.

Her second context shifts from telescope to microscope:  competitive prophetic figures and visions among the earliest "Christians" (placed in scare quotes since, as Pagels emphasizes, John of Patmos never calls himself such).  This is the context of enemies within.  Here Pagels sets up John against the rival prophets he mentions by code in the seven letters to the churches of Asia.  Her most interesting reading is how the message John proclaims would strongly conflict with Paul's or, perhaps more specifically, Paul's successors (since Paul would be long dead by now).  She specifically singles out Ignatius of Antioch.  John of Patmos rails against those followers of Jesus who have given in and assimilated in various ways:  sexual impurity (she reads this as a possible reference to intermarriage), food laws, and handling Roman money (idolatry since it has the image or "mark"(?) of the emperor-as-god on it).  Most interestingly, she reads "those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan" (Rev. 2:9) as Gentile Christians.  That is, those Pauline Gentile Christians who, following Paul's advice, do not follow the traditional food laws and would eat foods sacrificed to idols, likely are married to non-Jews, and, what is more, are not circumcised, yet consider themselves part of "Israel."  By the time of Ignatius, however, there would be a shift in the tides, as institutional authority sought to undermine or co-opt charismatic authority (at one point, going into an ecstatic state to say prophetically to obey the bishop; Philadelphians 7.1-2).

The third context turns to placing Revelation in a series of many revelations occurring throughout the ancient world in the second to fourth centuries CE, including Jewish, emergent Christian, Egyptian, Greco-Roman, etc.  Having visions was the way of the day.  She spends a great deal of time, however, on 4 Ezra and the Apocryphon of John, along with the other documents of Nag Hammadi in order to show the range of possibilities of revelatory documents at this time.  This is more of a programmatic chapter that largely introduces readers to the documents for which she famously introduced to the general reading public about 35 years ago now(!), and sets up the stage for what comes next:  deciding what is genuine and what is not--and who gets to decide?

The fourth context takes the first two and melds them together with the increased information from the fourth:  how do intra-Christian squabbles fit within Christian-Roman tensions, especially as one moves to the second to fourth centuries?  She sets this up in terms of who accepts and promotes Revelation and who rejects it all within terms of the sporadic persecution of Christians by Roman authorities as well as more written aspersions of Christians in books such as Apuleius' Golden Ass and Celsus' True Doctrine.  Revelation would be claimed (in spirit) by the New Prophecy movement (formerly called Montanism), and, oftentimes, those administrative folks (bishops) who preferred administrative authority rather than charismatic authority would condemn this movement and the books they most admired (Revelation and the Gospel of John) as false and heretical.  On the other hand, Justin (later Justin Martyr) and others such as Irenaeus would champion Revelation because they saw in its violent and anti-Roman imagery a reflection of what they saw in their own day:  "beastly" Romans killing Christians.  The apologists on the one hand sought to show that Christians were good imperial subjects; but on the other hand threatened that the events in Revelation would take place (being held back only by the good Christian subjects praying for its delay).  Irenaeus and Apuleius, from different perspectives, however, set up the critical discussion of discernment between true and false visions.  Revelation would be claimed alternately as true and false by different Christians.  Apuleius, however, promoted Isis as the true revealer of divine mysteries, and all Christian claims of vision as false.

The fifth context, as we spiral away from Revelation for the most part, is how the document came into the canon by the skin of its teeth.  Much of this material is well-rehearsed from any scholarly account one might read on the books found at Nag Hammadi, except with a special focus on John's vision.  Few canon lists circulating in the early fourth century include it...except Athanasius's.  Set against the backdrop of Constantine's "conversion," Athanasius builds upon an interpretation of Irenaeus to turn the "Anti-Christ" (which is never, as such, mentioned in Revelation) from the Roman emperor to other Christians, downplaying the anti-imperial aspects of the document since he was trying to court Constantine's favor (except when the emperors are Arian or except when they would exile Athanasius).  Drawing again on the third context, we see how Revelation begins to beat out other revelations (such as those found at Nag Hammadi), how it gets into the canon, and how those others are suppressed.  We also begin to see another power-conflict:  the (more charismatic) monastic authorities (particularly Pachomius and Anthony) clashing with the episcopal authority in Egypt.  Pagels looks at the letters of the "fiercely independent" Anthony, looking at the recommendations of the monastic leaders who seek to inculcate experiences and not dogmatic adherence, finding in their letters and other writings sentiments that match much of what was found at Nag Hammadi.  She seeks, in this way, to demonstrate how the spirituality in the eclectic documents found at the site near a Pachomian monastery is, in fact, completely in line with monastic practices at the time.  Indeed, I should note that one thing I did appreciate about her discussions of the Nag Hammadi texts was an emphasis on the practices they prescribe, describe, or assume, and the attempt to put them into a particular social setting of spiritual reading practices.  As Ignatius co-opted charismatic authority for episcopal ends, however, so does Athanasius with his Life of Anthony, transforming the sophisticated, independent, learned seeker into an illiterate, obedient follower of none other than Athanasius himself.

In its ancient, medieval, and modern contexts Revelation would be redeployed by opposing parties to denigrate one another--each side claiming to be the dispensers of divine justice and claiming their opponents to be on the side of the beast, or anti-Christ.  But, Pagels seeks to end with the message of hope, as Revelation ends in a new Jerusalem after a long nightmare (something Ron Charles at the Washington Post wishes she would have spent more time on), and especially recovery of those more universally oriented "revelations" as the Gospel of Truth, the Secret Revelation of John (Apocryphon of John), and the Thunder:  Perfect Mind.  Works that are open to dialogue between divine revealer and human questioner, open to revision rather than the strict "no addition; no subtraction" legacy of the closed canon.

Others have offered various critiques--many wish, for example, that she would have a more substantial discussion of medieval and modern usages of the book, something which she does in passing in the conclusion and partly in the introduction.  I understand that critique; but I also understand why she might avoid it.  I would, however, direct people to a scholarly (and readable!) account of how Revelation has been used in more modern imperial contexts as Spanish and Portuguese colonized the Americas, how its imagery was used differently by colonized and colonizers, and then re-deployed in street art in Los Angeles in the twentieth century in David Sanchez's From Patmos to the Barrio.  Gopnik also critiques, for example, that sometimes gory, violent imagery is just...entertainment and not always political.

I offer a different question.  Mostly Pagels emphasizes the political contexts and implications of visions, but at times suggests that through the apologetic mission to show that Christians could be good subjects while not following Roman religious practices, they, and Philo before them, began to disentangle religion from politics.  I found this quite a striking statement.  Is this a de-politicization of religion tout court?  It is a disestablishment of politics to a particular religious form, but to all religion?  Her example is Philo's Embassy to Gaius, but that work does not really show a divorcing (however slight) of religion and politics so much as a form of religio-political diplomacy.  This is a minor point, however, concerning a passing comment she made.

I also wonder:  while texts like Thunder:  Perfect Mind, and others, are quite eclectic and were placed in a very eclectic collection, are they necessarily as "universal" as she suggests in her conclusion?  I include non-canonical and canonical side-by-side, because that is the most accurate way to reconstruct the dynamic and fluid world of emergent Christianity.  But, when shifting perspective to modern inspiration, is there such a stark difference of "open" versus "closed," "universal" versus "particular" that aligns with non-canonical and canonical?  Can the canonical be creative, open?  Is the non-canonical always so?  I am thinking of J.Z. Smith's essay on canonization, where he compares the process of canonization to viticulture (or oenology).  We choose one fruit of many to make wine (though others do make wine out of other fruits), but then make a staggering variety of wines out of it through processing, cultivation, aging, etc.  We may choose a few books to be in canon, but we interpret them in so many different ways, ways that liberate and ways that oppress, ways that create and ways that destroy, ways that lead to and ways that block critical reflection.  Through the process of commentary and hermeneutics, creativity can still flow and transform--as well as stunt.

A final point--and a point that I am fundamentally in agreement with Pagels--is that the claiming of a vision, the affirming of someone else's vision, or the denial of a vision is a political act; it is an act where one is claiming a direct line to divine authority or the ability to speak on behalf of the divine.  While William James in his masterwork, Varieties of Religious Experience, sought to disentangle religious experience (particularly mysticism) from any form of authority over another (see the end of his chapter on mysticism) reflecting a broader tendency to privatize religion in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the truth of that matter is that, historically, such claims of experience and direct contact with the divine have had a social and political effects over others; those who claim such revelations so often claim that such visions demand that they claim authority over others (Paul is a quintessential example of this).  People use visionary experiences to claim authority over others, and shape their lives.  One of the major contributions of this book is that Pagels offers a fairly thick description of the macro and micro power struggles over the claims of vision of a single book.  We see the power struggle between rival visions within the same geographical region in the same group (Asia Minor); we see rival visions at the same time between different groups (Christians, Jews, and Romans); we see rival claims of authority by visionaries and those who deny them or co-opt them in institutional forms of authority.  (note:  For a full discussion of the intersections of authority and visions, I would direct people to Grace Jantzen's Power, Gender, and Christian Mysticism, where she argues these points alongside the gendered implications of such claims of authority of divine vision in male-dominated institutions.)  This is just as true of one's contemporaries as of one's predecessors.  Centuries after John of Patmos wrote Revelation, people affirmed or denied his vision--usually an eye on whether their opponents were doing with it, using it to delineate who was "in" and who was "out" in community formation.  This was also true with major, even universally accepted, figures of tradition, such as Moses; how much more so with contested figures.

The Christian Moses: Choosing a Path

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 Sinai; meeting God at the Tent; holding hands up high in battle.  He was liberator, lawgiver, king, priest, magician, visionary, and, dare I say it, a "god."  Moses was and is central for Judaism, but also for Christianity and Islam.  As one historian, C. Umhau Wolf, noted, no other figure from the Hebrew Bible receives as much attention in both the New Testament and the Quran as Moses—outnumbering references even to Abraham!  

There is currently an upsurge in interest in early Christian mobilizations of Moses.  There is a recent monograph by John Lierman on Moses in the New Testament.  The Catholic University of America has recently held a conference featuring Moses in ancient and medieval Christian representation with a promised conference volume forthcoming.  With so much terrain to cover, what paths should one take?  Follow beaten paths, worn-questions and answers from other scholars—often an inevitable occurrence when faced with documents as over-scrutinized as the New Testament?  Seek new paths and questions, but risk being overwhelmed by the unknown?  How does one organize one’s evidence:  by author, corpus, historical period, or topic?  One must choose a path carefully:  one that is one’s own, but that crisscrosses others; one that is original but representative, related to others but coherent in scope.  One such path, I believe, is how ancient Christians represented Moses’ visionary abilities:  What exactly, if anything, did Moses see on the Mountain?  And why does it matter? 

Different early Christians would answer differently:  God, angels (because no one can see God and live!), darkness, the “pattern” of ultimate heavenly realities, and, yes, he saw Jesus.  New Testament writers, while making Jesus a prophet like (or greater than) Moses, tended to claim Moses did not see God (except in Hebrews 11).  Especially moving into the second through the fourth centuries, sometimes he “foresaw” Jesus (these are the “hindparts” Moses was vouchsafed); sometimes the eternal Christ was the being who met with him directly on the mountain; or, my personal favorite, when Jesus was on the Mount of Transfiguration with Moses and Elijah was when they ascended their mounts, making the mountain a trans-temporal hub of some sort as if early Christians were watching Doctor Who.  

Early Christian alternatively affirm and deny Moses' divine visions, and whether they demote or exalt Moses has an important social context:  the authority of Christ and authority of Christian leaders, especially bishops, as mediators of divine realities.  There are many subtle variations to explore on this theme of “who benefits?” by affirming and/or denying Moses’ abilities.  Overall, however, denying Moses’ visions of God was often used to claim Christ as ultimate mediator, even as Christ was a prophet like Moses; affirmations of Moses’ visions affirmed his place in society as analogous to Christian leadership, which, as Andrea Sterk has emphasized, reaches its apogee in the writings of Basil of Caesarea:  as Moses stood between God and the people, so does the bishop.  As bishops aligned themselves with Moses, they tended to emphasize his positive visionary abilities and references to Exod 33:20 (no one can see God and live) fall away to passages like Num. 12:8 (Moses sees the very form of God whereas no one else can).  This will start out as my operating hypothesis.  This project, therefore, dovetails quite nicely with the questions that generated my work on the Sabbath and the Tabernacle in Hebrews:  who can access and mediate access to the divine?

The Christian Moses: Getting Started

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!

Defining Jewish Difference by Beth Berkowitz

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 around ritual and worship. In Lev. 18:3's story of Jewishness, sexual practice and cultural habits instead loom large. The readings in this book are on a micro-level, but their implications are far-ranging: Berkowitz transforms both our notion of Bible-reading and our sense of how Jews have defined Jewishness.

This has been long in coming.  I actually took a course from Berkowitz at Jewish Theological Seminary called "The Ways of the Gentiles," which was about this research.  That was probably...six or seven years ago...  My contribution to the class was to find echoes of this in the New Testament and early Christianity (I focused on the "walking" language in the Deutero-Paulines, especially Ephesians--if you look at Lev. 18:1-5 and the Holiness Code more generally, "walking" is the typical way of speaking of one's general comport--and the passage in Ephesians 4:17-24:  "no longer live as the Gentiles do" as potential resonances, though I recall being quite conservative in my conclusions).  If it is as good as her first book, Execution and Invention, it will definitely be worth the read.  At its current price, however, it looks like a library volume.

Jodi Eichler-Levine on Maurice Sendak

I good friend of mine, Jodi 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 Holocaust was not material generativity, not the reproduction of Jewish children to spite Hitler; instead, it was a creative demand that we open up our humanity and transmit our imaginations through unsettling yet ravishing forms of media. The author whose illustrations first appeared in Atomics for the Millions forces us to rethink the imaginary “nuclear family.”"

It is an interesting article; take a look!

Hebrews and Ritual Studies: Abstract and TOC

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 some pioneers in this regard.  David DeSilva employs a socio-rhetorical approach when considering the Greek and Roman social context of Hebrews.  On the cultic side, John Dunnill has brought Hebrews into dialogue with structuralist anthropology of Claude Lévi-Strauss, Mary Douglas, and Victor Turner, that looks at the structure or system of symbols and how Hebrews re-presents and transposes the symbol system of the Old Testament covenant.  Dunnill’s monograph is an important trailblazer in bringing Hebrews into dialogue with important trends in anthropology that have had analytic usefulness, but anthropology and sociology as disciplines have continued to develop new lines of social analysis.  In this project, I propose to analyze Hebrews with shifting lenses of anthropology, sociology, as well as the history of religions school that have been developed for the study of “ritual.”  I investigate well-known theories and more recent developments.  Each chapter is dedicated to a particular approach, and analyzes the effects of that approach when brought into dialogue with the Epistle to the Hebrews.  By dedicating each chapter to a different approach, I hope to elucidate what difference using a distinct sociological or anthropological theoretical model makes, what benefits are accrued, and what drawbacks can be found.  Within each chapter, I will examine how these theories can help us understand Hebrews on a couple of levels:  how ritual or ritualized actions are represented in the text, or Jesus as ritual expert; and how these theories help us understand the sets of social relationships between author, community, received tradition, and other groups that create different pressures and contacts, or the author as ritual actor.  Biblical studies historically has been an important ground for debating social theories developed by sociologists, anthropologists, and historians of religion from William Robertson Smith, to Mary Douglas, to Jonathan Z. Smith, and to Nancy Jay.  What, if anything, can discussing Hebrews in this manner contribute to refining, redefining, or exploring the potentials and limits of social, especially ritual, theories?

Table of Contents:

1.  Introduction:  Social Sciences, Ritual, and Biblical Research

2.  Hebrews as Cosmogonic Reenactment:  Mircea Eliade, the Myth and Ritual School, and the Eternal Return

3.  Betwixt and Between:  Arnold van Gennep, Victor Turner, and Liminality in Hebrews

4.  The Symbolic System of the Heavenly Sanctuary:  Claude Lévi-Strauss, Victor Turner, Mary Douglas, and Hebrews

           

5.  Performance, Display, and Efficacious Speech:  Jesus and Author as Ritual Performers

           

6. Ritualizing Jesus’ Sacrifice:  Pierre Bourdieu, Catherine Bell, and Hebrews

7.  Conclusion:  Insights, Blind Spots, and Next Steps

The Bible and the Environment

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 criticism.  Firstly, there have been claims for each that the Bible has been the primary obstacle either to women's equality (see Matilda Gage's "Woman, Church, and State") or for shaping the Western Christian perspective that seeks to dominate and exploit nature (Lynn White, Jr., "Historical Roots of our Ecologic Crisis").  For both, the creation stories have been primarily at issue (creation of the sexes and Adam and Eve story for feminist readings; the "dominion" issue for ecology).  Eschatology has played perhaps a stronger role for resisting environmental policies than for resisting gender equality.  There has been a response to recover positive images and passages for women or for earth interrelationships, or re-read passages showing that those that seem to be harmful do not have to be read as so.  Another response has been to expose, resist, and then reject problematic passages of women (Trible's Texts of Terror comes to mind) or that do not appear to be eco-friendly.  One of the major exposures for feminist biblical criticism has been the thoroughly androcentric bias of the Bible; for ecological biblical criticism, the anthropocentric bias (although there have been "recovered" passages that decenter humanity within creation; e.g., the end of Job, or the passages where all of the elements of creation praise God--not just humans).  And there has been a backlash that resists the feminist or ecological hermeneutic. 

Overall, I thought Horrell provided a balanced discussion of the potentials and limits of ecological readings of the Bible, introducing how the Bible has been used to form perspectives that have supported or opposed environmental programs, alongside his own ideas of how to develop a responsible ecological hermeneutic that takes the recoveries and resistances into account.  It would be useful to orient oneself or to assign to I'd say an undergraduate class--a class either directly on the Bible and the Environment, or a class on critical readings of the Bible, where one introduces students to the various types of biblical criticism.

I will be looking forward to my next ecologically oriented readings concerning the Bible. 

Appalled and Angry

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 important contributions and gives him the freedom to follow his arguments to their logical conclusions and to follow his creativity.  I already own a copy of the book that is at the center of this controversy; I assign portions of it in my classes.  I suggest that everyone else, too, buys a copy (link above) (1) to support this important scholarship and (2) to find out what good scholars are saying on the forefront of historical Jesus scholarship.  Then pick up his other book.