Would You Visit Antiquity if You Could?

Sometimes people (students, family, my spouse, etc.) ask if I could go back in time to antiquity, if I would?  That is, if the Doctor showed up on my doorstep with his TARDIS and asked where and when I would like to go, would I visit the people I study for a living?

I always answer absolutely NOT.  I have many reasons why I don't want to meet the people or visit the ancient societies that I study.  One reason is this.

Edward Said on the Importance of Canon

As someone who, on the one hand, has and highly enjoys teaching broad core curricular courses (e.g., Columbia University's Literature of the Humanities) that stretch you as both instructor and student, allowing a broader view of things than is typical in teaching and especially research, and, on the other hand, always attempts to familiarize students with texts outside of "canon" (whether strictly understood in terms of the biblical canon or more loosely in terms of a "literary canon"), I find the following statement by Edward Said quite striking:

We must therefore read the great canonical texts, and perhaps also the entire archive of modern and pre-modern European and American culture, with an effort to draw out, extend, give emphasis and voice to what is silent or marginally present or ideologically represented...in such works.  Culture and Imperialism, 66.

He is understanding "canonical" in the broader sense--the "great books" point of view.  On the one hand, the emphasis lies with the latter part of the sentence:  one reads against the grain, fills in the gaps, takes highly ideological representations of colonial situations (in this case, in the Caribbean and India) and, thereby, reads these works by those who have been (mis)represented.  (There is a parallel in, for example, feminist biblical criticism to read the Bible--an andro-centric text--from the position of those (mis)represented; that is, women.)  But this reading, in fact, must be balanced with the first, anchoring clause:  "We must therefore read the great canonical texts."  One must, indeed, know the texts--and know them well and thoroughly--to critique them.  In some ways, Said can be read as a great champion of the Euro-American "Great Books" curriculum.  The Post-Colonial critique of the Euro-American "canon" reasserts or solidifies that canon; the feminist and other critiques of the biblical canon reinforces that canon.  The next step, however, is to bring this reinforced canon into dialogue with the extra-canonical (think bringing Conrad into dialogue with Chinua Achebe).

Rebecca Lesses, a few days back, has posted on a book from Mohr Siebeck that she contributed to called Hekhalot Literature in Context, edited by Ra'anan Boustan, Peter Schäfer, and Martha Himmelfarb.  Her own piece is "Women and Gender in the Hekhalot Literature."  Here is the info from the Mohr Siebeck website:

Hekhalot Literature in Context

Between Byzantium and Babylonia
Ed. by Ra'anan Boustan, Martha Himmelfarb and Peter Schäfer

Over the past 30 years, scholars of early Jewish mysticism have, with increasing confidence, located the initial formation of Hekhalot literature in Byzantine Palestine and Sasanian or early Islamic Babylonia (ca. 500–900 C.E.), rather than at the time of the Mishnah, Tosefta, early Midrashim, or Palestinian Talmud (ca. 100–400 C.E.). This advance has primarily been achieved through major gains in our understanding of the dynamic and highly flexible processes of composition, redaction, and transmission that produced the Hekhalot texts as we know them today. These gains have been coupled with greater appreciation of the complex relationships between Hekhalot writings and the variegated Jewish literary culture of late antiquity, both within and beyond the boundaries of the rabbinic movement. Yet important questions remain regarding the specific cultural contexts and institutional settings out of which the various strands of Hekhalot literature emerged as well as the multiple trajectories of use and appropriation they subsequently travelled. In the present volume, an international team of experts explores—from a variety of disciplinary perspectives (e.g. linguistics, ritual and gender studies, intellectual history)—the literary formation, cultural meanings, religious functions, and textual transmission of Hekhalot literature.

Survey of contents:
Ra‘anan Boustan: Introduction
I. The Formation of Hekhalot Literature: Linguistic, Literary, and Cultural Contexts
Noam Mizrahi: The Language of Hekhalot Literature: Preliminary Observations - Peter Schäfer: Metatron in Babylonia - Michael D. Swartz: Hekhalot and Piyyut: From Byzantium to Babylonia and Back - Alexei Sivertsev: The Emperor’s Many Bodies: The Demise of Emperor Lupinus Revisited - Klaus Herrmann: Jewish Mysticism in Byzantium: The Transformation of Merkavah Mysticism in 3 Enoch - David M. Grossberg: Between 3 Enoch and Bavli Hagigah: Heresiology and Orthopraxy in the Ascent of Elisha ben Abuyah - Moulie Vidas: Hekhalot Literature, the Babylonian Academies and the tanna’im
II. The Transmission and Reception of Hekhalot Literature: Toward the Middle Ages
Peter Schäfer: The Hekhalot Genizah - Gideon Bohak: Observations on the Transmission of Hekhalot Literature in the Cairo Genizah - Ophir Münz-Manor: A Prolegomenon to the Study of Hekhalot Traditions in European Piyyut
III. Early Jewish Mysticism in Comparative Perspective: Themes and Patterns
Reimund Leicht: Major Trends in Rabbinic Cosmology - Rebecca Lesses: Women and Gender in the Hekhalot Literature - Andrei A. Orlov: “What is Below?” Mysteries of Leviathan in the Early Jewish Accounts and Mishnah Hagigah 2:1 - Michael Meerson: Rites of Passage in Magic and Mysticism - Annette Yoshiko Reed: Rethinking (Jewish-)Christian Evidence for Jewish Mysticism

Suffer the Little Children by Jodi Eichler-Levine

I am pleased to announce that Jodi Eichler-Levine's book, Suffer the Little Children: Uses of the Past in Jewish and African American Children's Literature.  Here is the blurb:

This compelling work examines classic and contemporary Jewish and African American children’s literature. Through close readings of selected titles published since 1945, Jodi Eichler-Levine analyzes what is at stake in portraying religious history for young people, particularly when the histories in question are traumatic ones. In the wake of the Holocaust and lynchings, of the Middle Passage and flight from Eastern Europe's pogroms, children’s literature provides diverse and complicated responses to the challenge of representing difficult collective pasts.

 

In reading the work of various prominent authors, including Maurice Sendak, Julius Lester, Jane Yolen, Sydney Taylor, and Virginia Hamilton, Eichler-Levine changes our understanding of North American religions. If children are the idealized recipients of the past, what does it mean to tell tales of suffering to children? Suffer the Little Children asks readers to alter their worldviews about children’s literature as an “innocent” enterprise, revisiting the genre in a darker and more unsettled light.

 This is a heavily revised version of her dissertation.  Congratulations, Jodi!  This is quite an achievement!

When You are a Dreamer, I am Your Dream

One of the benefits of reading a lot of German scholarship the past six months--a lot more than I typically do anyway--is that my reading comprehension is much higher and, therefore, it spills over into other, more enjoyable fields, such as poetry. 

So, putting my German to good, and more relaxing, use, I have been reading some Rilke.  And I repeatedly return to this poem from The Book of Hours, which, so far, is one of my favorites:

Ich bin, du Ängstlicher.  Hörst due mich nicht
mit allen meinen Sinnen an dir branden?
Meine Gefühle, welche Flügel fanden,
Siehst du nicht meine Seele, wie sie dicht
vor dir in einem Kleid aus Stille steht?
Reift nicht meine mailiches Gebet
an deinem Blicke wie an einem Baum?

Wenn du der Träumer bist, bin ich dein Traum.
Doch wenn du wachen willst, bin ich dein Wille
und werde mächtig aller Herrlichkeit
und ründe mich wie eine Sternenstille
über der wunderlichen Stadt der Zeit.

The Liberal Arts as a Petichta

Just an idea I have been thinking about...

Mark Goodacre on Thomas

Other people have been sharing this video.  It is a nice appetizer for people to read the Gospel of Thomas for themselves and consider its role in the development of early Christianity.

Jesus on the Internet by Anthony LeDonne

Anthony LeDonne, that ever-imaginative scholar embracing new ways of thinking and teaching, is offering a new online course on Jesus.  Here is his course description:

In this course we will examine some of the different "Jesuses" who have emerged through the ages, including several interpretations of Jesus in historical studies, and several interpretations of Jesus from art and literature. This course will weave together three primary threads: 1) the Jesus of history; 2) ancient representations of Jesus; and 3) the various modern Jesuses who embody various symbols, ideologies, collective memories, and cultural identities. Through lecture and discussion, we will examine diverse portraits of Jesus in history, literature, art, song, and film throughout history.

This is a summer course and has no prerequisites.  It actually sounds a lot like how I teach my Jesus course.  I've been wanting to include more artistic representations as well.

On Scottish Irrigation

Larry Hurtado gives a brief history of the "Early High Christology Club," and what it really means.  I should note that I have had the privilege of joining the club on a couple occasions on the coattails of my late adviser, Alan Segal, and that one of the coveted Early High Christology Club mugs currently sits on my office desk.  To Scottish Irrigation!

Seeing the God (coming soon)

A book I contributed to with Jeff Pettis and John McGuckin called Seeing the God:  Ways of Envisioning the Divine in Ancient Mediterranean Religion from Gorgias Press has finally gotten into the pre-ordering and previewing sections of different websites.  You might want to check out pp. 147-188 especially, for my chapter on "To See God and Live in Late Antique Judaism."  It is definitely a book to order for your libraries.

Update: I just received my contributor's volume, and so it should not be long now.

Top Archaeological News of 2012

The Biblical Archaeology Society at Bible History Daily has a round-up of the top twenty archaeological discussions of 2012.  Check them out here.

Hekhalot Translations by Jim Davila

Jim Davila reports that his translation of an eclectic text of the macroforms Hekhalot Rabbati, Sar Torah, Hekhalot Zutarti, Ma'aseh Merkavah, and Merkavah Rabbah as well as some microforms and the Geniza Fragments will be published by Brill.  His current title is Hekhalot Literature in Translation: Major Texts of Merkavah Mysticism.   Congrats Jim!  I will be looking out for this one!  Maybe I will get back to my old series of "Daily Hekhalot."

Doctor Who Mash-Ups

So there have been a few Doctor Who mash-ups the past day.  I thought I would review:

Joel Watts had this picture of Doctor Who and Firefly:

And then James McGrath had a couple of Pics of Doctor Who and LOTR.  My favorite it the "short version" of LOTR:

The Source of which can be found on Adelle Lorienne's gallery here.  Click through:  she also has a Doctor Who/Sherlock mash-up.

An Afghan "Genizah"

Israel's National Library has come into possession of a cache of thousand-year-old manuscripts from Afghanistan.  See info here.  Here are some snippets of the press report:

A trove of ancient manuscripts in Hebrew characters rescued from caves in a Taliban stronghold in northern Afghanistan is providing the first physical evidence of a Jewish community that thrived there a thousand years ago.

These materials reportedly include biblical commentaries, financial records, and personal letters.

The Afghan collection gives an unprecedented look into the lives of Jews in ancient Persia in the 11th century. The paper manuscripts, preserved over the centuries by the dry, shady conditions of the caves, include writings in Hebrew, Aramaic, Judea-Arabic and the unique Judeo-Persian language from that era, which was written in Hebrew letters.

 .....

 The documents are believed to have come from caves in the northeast region of modern-day Afghanistan, once at the outer reaches of the Persian empire. In recent years, the same caves have served as hideouts for Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan.

One should note these documents were not found in situ, and it is believed that several more are probably circulating among antiquities dealers.  Once all of the information is collated, it should provide a window into a Jewish community on the outskirts of the Persian Empire and illuminate our understanding of the history of the spread of Judaism in the Middle Ages more generally.

Raider's of the Lost Ark and University of Chicago Admissions

A little New Year's Day frivolity:  the Chronicle of Higher Education reports a fun piece of a mysterious package that came to the admissions office.  It was the journal of Abner Ravenwood addressed to the university's most famous fictional professor:  Henry Walton Jones, Jr.  It shouldn't be behind the pay wall so you can read about it here.

Cult Place and Objects at Tel Motza

I am sure most people have noticed this, but for those who haven't, evidence of a shrine and cult objects including figurines of human heads and horses from Iron Age IIA at Tel Motza outside of Jerusalem.  See further information here.

Nestle-Aland 28 Online

You can now read the newest Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament (number 28) online here.  The only problem is that it does not show the critical apparatus on the bottom of each page nor the cross-references in the margins.

Hurtado on Early High Christology

As it seems with most bibliobloggers, I haven't had time to post in quite a while between the SBL conference, teaching, research, and other academic duties.  Nonetheless, I just noticed Larry Hurtado is talking about his hobby horse of early high Christology on his blog.  He lengthily and substantively engages with an article by Andrew Chester on the topic, and it is well worth the read to see a rather comprehensive survey of the issue.