Quote of the Day: Eco on "Intertextual Irony"

I'm still reading, when I can, some essays by Umberto Eco, and here's a passage that caught my eye in his essay, "Intertextual Irony and Levels of Reading" in his collection, On Literature.

Intertextual irony provides an intertextual second sense for readers who have been secularized and who no longer have any spiritual senses to look for in the text. The biblical and poetic second senses stemming from the theory of the four meanings allowed the text to flower vertically, each sense allowing us to approach ever closer to some Afterlife. The intertextual second sense is horizontal, labyrinthine, convoluted, and infinite, running from text to text--with no other promise than the continual murmuring of intertextuality. Intertextual irony presupposes an absolute
immanentism. It provides revelations to theose who have lost the sense of
transcendence.

The four meanings, by the way, refers to the medieval strategies of reading the bible: literal, moral, allegorical, and anagogical levels of reading. Perhaps part of the irony is that the spiritual / transcendent / vertical senses of reading, at least traditionally, are limited to four levels, while the secular / immanent / horizontal senses are never-ending, infinite.

Humans Always (Wrongly) Blame the Gods: Odyssey 1.32-35

I have been immersed in the Odyssey as of late and probably will be for another week or so. I am teaching it directly after the Epic of Gilgamesh. Fitting, in some ways, since both feature a man who goes on many journeys, is, perhaps, "polutropos" or a man of "many ways" or "many turns." Yet, there is something else that has struck me in this reading of the Odyssey: the way the gods are depicted in contrast to how they are depicted in the Iliad.

Take, for example, Odyssey 1.32-35:

Oh for shame, how the mortals put the blame upon us
gods, for they say evils come from us, but it is they, rather,
who by their own recklessness win sorrow beyond what is given,
as now lately, beyond what is given....

Zeus is the one speaking to the assembled gods on Olympos. He is actually discussing the nostos, or return, of Agamemnon, in which he will be murdered by his wife and her lover and then avenged by his son. Yet, it has an interesting placement in the narrative. It is right at the beginning. Only 30 some lines into the entire epic. Zeus, in fact, complains that humans always blame the gods for what happens to them, but it is actually humans' own fault. This is in striking contrast to the beginning of the Iliad, in which we see a balance. We see the events of the Iliad unfold due to both the wrath of Achilleus and the "will of Zeus." The will of Zeus looms large in the Iliad in a way it does not in the Odyssey. I do think that the poet in the Iliad plays with the concept of Zeus' will, turns it, inspects it, tries to see it from every angle, interrogating it with relentlessness in order to see beyond the will of Zeus, what Zeus cannot do, or, better yet, even if Zeus desires something, what Zeus will not do. I have been playing with the idea of the Odyssey as a counter-Iliad, rewriting many concepts in the Iliad with a different result. I was very happy to attend a talk today by a Classicist who sees the Odyssey as a rewriting or even a parody of the Iliad in many ways. Perhaps extending the critical examination of Zeus' will to the point that Zeus' will plays little to no role in the epic. In the Odyssey, it is human actions, inactions, false actions, deeds and misdeeds that propel the narrative. The gods are present to some extent (far less than the Iliad, in fact), but they are responding to humans. Ironically, in the subsequent narrative, almost immediately, we see Telemachos especially as well as others constantly saying that this or that is happening because of the gods, the will of the gods, or the whim of the gods, yet, right out, we have a statement from Zeus saying this is all hogwash (see 1.234, 244). Blame yourselves for your own actions: you, yourselves, hold ultimate responsibility for your own actions. It is not fate. It is not Zeus' will, nor is it the collective decision of the gods (although that is there at times; see 1.76). In many ways, I think both poems play with the varying degrees of human responsibility and the failure for humans to take responsibility for their own actions. In both poems people blame the gods, whether Zeus' will for the whole event or when Agamemnon blames "Delusion" for his misjudgments rather than taking direct responsibility, but ultimately the Iliad leaves things highly ambiguous, while the Odyssey finally chooses human responsibility in order to play with other, ambiguous, questions of the human realm.

Quote of the Day: Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet 1, lines 199-203

So, I'm sick of seeing Sarah Palin at the top of my page, so here's something from the earliest epic tradition in world literature...well, the end product of that tradition at least. So, here, from the Standard Babylonian Version of the Epic of Gilgamesh is the quote of the day:

Enkidu had defiled his body so pure,
his legs stood still, though his herd was in motion.
Enkidu was weakened, could not run as before,
but now he had reason, adn wide understanding.
(Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet 1, lines 199-203; trans. Andrew George)

Enkidu, created directly from clay, a replica of the original human, was a wild, animal-like man. At the same time, he was powerful, the only match in strength for the two-thirds divine Gilgamesh (how he's two-thirds divine, I have no clue...and no specialist's answer has been satisfying to my mind). This replica of the original man is also Gilgamesh's mirror, his alter-ego, a second self. In this scene, the wild animalistic man, who communes peacefully with the animals, and even protects them from hunters and trappers, loses his communion with animals because he discovered sexuality. Shamhat from Uruk, the city ruled by Gilgamesh, has come out and through sexuality has civilized Enkidu. Sex as a civilizing force rather than a naturalizing force is particularly interesting here. But, by doing so, she has weakened Enkidu. He no longer has his animalistic power. Yet at the same time he remains Gilgamesh's equal in the later bout they have in the city. Moreover, this sexual experience, which lasted six days and seven nights by the way, has awakened Enkidu's mind. He now has reason. He has understanding--wow, this sounds familiar (anyone for some Gen. 2-3?). Yet, as line 214 tells us, he has not completely lost his INSTINCT. Understanding, reason, and instinct (as well as a powerful physique) appears to be an unbeatable combination. Yet, unfortunately, Enkidu will die. His death, in a way, foreshadows Gilgamesh's. Or, more accurately, it creates an awareness in Gilgamesh of his own mortality that he never had before. It creates a fear of death in Gilgamesh that forces him to look to the ends of the cosmos to find the one man who had gained immortality Uta-nipishti (sometimes Utnapishtim and other times Atrahasis). He is the Babylonian Noah, the man who survived the Deluge and was granted immortality. But those were unrepeatable conditions. No one else will other achieve immortality. And Uta-nipishti gives Gilgamesh a lesson he needs to hear. It is a lesson about how to be a good king and about how to accept one's mortal limits. One of the lessons of the epic, if not the central lesson, is that all must die, and coming to terms with one's own mortality is the foundation of human wisdom. It allows one to make the best of one's time on this earth, in this short lifespan (in antiquity, a much shorter lifespan). Ecclesiastes has a similar overall message.

Quote of the Day: Homeric Hymn to Demeter

She went to the kings who administer law,
Triptolemos and Diokles, driver of horses, mighty
Eumolpos and Keleos, leader of the people, and revealed
the conduct of her rites and taught her Mysteries to all of them,
holy rites that are not to be transgressed, nor pried into,
nor divulged. For a great awe of the gods stops the voice.
Blessed is the mortal on earth who has seen these rites,
but the uninitiate who has no share in them never
has the same lot once dead in the dreary darkness.
(Hymn to Demeter 473-82; trans. Foley)

I would tell you what this means, but "a great awe of the gods stops the voice."

Bracing for Hanna

As I sit here, looking out the window, drinking my morning coffee (as distinguished from my noon coffee, my afternoon coffee, my evening coffee, and my nightly coffee), I have also been checking the weather. Tropical Storm Hanna appears to be moving well up the Atlantic Coast and, at this moment, is ripping through Pennsylvania and has an arm swinging at the western side of New Jersey. And what I'm wondering is if I have enough time to get to brunch and back before the heavy rain hits.

I am also very glad that I don't drive...since the flash flooding is going to be very dangerous this weekend.

Quote of the Day: Umberto Eco's "On Style"

Ok...I love Umberto Eco. He has fantastic verve in his verbage. He can present some extraordinarily complex ideas in beautiful language that is, at the same time, succinct. He has this to say about some rather loquacious critics:

...those who are so orgasmic in words are in fact very unlibertine in reality, and abhor alterity, since in every one of their critical embraces they are simply making love to themselves. ("On Style" in On Literature, 173).

I'll remember that one, Umberto, when reviews of my work start rolling in! ;)

Quote of the Day: Iliad 3.172-80

One thing that I thought about bringing up with my students, but ended up not looking at due to time constraints, is the famous "teichoskopia" or "view from the wall" scene in Iliad 3. There is a particular section here to which I keep returning in lines 172-80:

Always to me, beloved father, you are feared and respected;
and I wish bitter death had been what I wanted, when I came hither
following your son, forsaking my chamber, my kinsmen,
my grown child, and the loveliness of girls my own age.
It did not happen that way: and now I am worn with weeping.
This now I will tell you in answer to the question you asked me.
That man is Atreus' son Agamemnon, widely powerful,
at the same time a good king and a strong spearfighter,
once my kinsman, slut that I am. Did this ever happen?

The primary actors in this scene are Priam and Helen. Priam picks more outstanding figures from the Achaians and asks Helen who they are. Firstly, the Lord of Men, the Shepherd, the great king, Agamemnon. He also points out the "ram" Odysseus and Aias (Ajax), the human wall. It is a strange scene. It feels out of place in the year 9 or 10 of the war. It seems like it should have happened in the first year!

Many people will fix upon the phrase "slut that I am," a self-disparaging remark. Her wish that she had died (or wish that she had wished for death) reminds me also of how Helen, later in the same book, wishes (and then takes it back) that Menelaos had killed Paris / Alexandros in their one-on-one combat (and that Aphrodite had not interfered) (see lines 428-36). Or, in Book 7, when the Trojan envoy to the Achaians, Idaios, says that he wished that Paris had perished before he committed his breach of proper guest-host relations with Menelaos. Throughout book 3, Helen seems to show regret for her past actions, but also that she cannot change them. She longs for her lost, previous life (lines 139-40). But that was long ago. Nonetheless, Helen's self-effacement, sorrow, and weeping is not what stops me in my tracks. What stops me are the haunting words, "Did this ever happen?" The past is a phantom memory. It has been so long ago, so much suffering has happened since then that a previous life is almost unfathomable. Memory, it is a tricky thing. So is time. There is a certain unreality about the past. It slips away from us. It is as difficult to grasp as the mist that pervades the imagery throughout the Iliad. "Did this ever happen?" I don't know.

Quotes of the Day : Iliad 20

As I continually reread and think through the Iliad as I teach it, I find myself continually stopped by a phrase, a word, or a paragraph here and there. Here are a few phrases that stopped me in my reading of the Iliad, Book 20, when Achilles (Achilleus) and Aineias are fighting (or giving speeches before they fight).

First is Achilles to Aineias, telling him to step back for fighting Achilles in his godlike rage is not a clear-sighted moment for Aineias:

"Once a thing has been done, the fool sees it." (20.198; trans. Lattimore)

Achilles, who does seem to have a good grasp of future events (he knows his own death, for example), claims that even a fool can see in retrospect. The wise can see at least the immediate consequences of their actions.

Then, Aineias, in response to all of the verbal exchange going back and forth before they begin to fight says something interesting:

"The tongue of man is a twisty thing, there are plenty of words there
of every kind, the range of words is wide, and their variance." (20.248-9)

Is this a way of telling the reader that throughout the poet has been playing with words, toying with us, twisting the story? Is the poet as manipulative as Zeus (and Agamemnon, for that matter) in Book 2?

Ancient Gold Wreath in Copper Vase

A new find of an ancient gold wreath, relatively common among burial sites of ancient Macedonian nobility, was found in an ancient copper vase, a situation that is rather unique.

See the AP Press article as follows:

Ancient gold treasure puzzles Greek archaeologists

By NICHOLAS PAPHITIS, Associated Press WriterFri Aug 29, 11:10 AM ET

A priceless gold wreath has been unearthed in an ancient city in northern Greece, buried with human bones in a large copper vase that workers initially took for a land mine.

The University of Thessaloniki said in a statement Friday that the "astonishing" discovery was made during its excavations this week in the ruins of ancient Aigai. The city was the first capital of ancient Macedonia, where King Philip II — father of Alexander the Great — was assassinated.

Gold wreaths are rare and were buried with ancient nobles or royalty. But the find is also highly unusual as the artifacts appear to have been removed from a grave during ancient times and, for reasons that are unclear, reburied in the city's marketplace near the theater where Philip was stabbed to death.

"This happened quite soon after the original burial; it's not that a grave robber took it centuries later and hid it with the intention of coming back," excavator Chryssoula Saatsoglou-Paliadeli told The Associated Press. "It probably belonged to a high-ranking person."

The "impressively large" copper vessel contained a cylindrical golden jar with a lid, with the gold wreath of oak leaves and the bones inside.

"The young workman who saw it was astounded and shouted 'land mine!'" the university statement said.

Saatsoglou-Paliadeli, a professor of archaeology at the university, said the find probably dates to the 4th century B.C., during which Philip and Alexander reigned.

"Archaeologists must explain why such a group ... was found outside the extensive royal cemetery," the university statement said. "(They must also) work out why the bones of the unknown — but by no means insignificant — person were hidden in the city's most public and sacred area."

During the 4th century B.C., burials outside organized cemeteries were very uncommon.

In a royal cemetery at Vergina, just west of Aigai, Greek archaeologists discovered a wealth of gold and silver treasure in 1977. One of the opulent graves, which contained a large gold wreath of oak leaves, is generally accepted to have belonged to Philip II. The location of Alexander's tomb is one of the great mysteries of archaeology.

The sprawling remains of a large building with banquet halls and ornate mosaics at Aigai — some 520 kilometers (320 miles) north of Athens — has been identified as Philip's palace.

Aigai flourished in the 6th and 5th centuries B.C., attracting leading Greek artists such as the poet Euripides, who wrote his last tragedies there. The Macedonian capital was moved to Pella in the 4th century B.C., and Aigai was destroyed by the Romans in 168 B.C.

I saw many of these gold wreaths, which are amazingly detailed and quite beautiful, when I was in northern Greece two years ago. At the time the archaeological museum in Thessaloniki had a large exhibit on ancient Macedonian gold. At the top are some of what I saw then.

Digital Dead Sea Scrolls

I just saw on Paleojudaica a link to a NYTimes article that tells of plans to display the Dead Sea Scrolls on the internet. The project appears to be born out of preservative necessity. While some research will still necessarily demand physical access to the scrolls, this will be a wonderful tool for free access from anywhere in the world without worrying about that access in any way damaging the scrolls themselves.

Here's the article:

By ETHAN BRONNER

JERUSALEM — In a crowded laboratory painted in gray and cooled like a cave, half a dozen specialists embarked this week on a historic undertaking: digitally photographing every one of the thousands of fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls with the aim of making the entire file — among the most sought-after and examined documents on earth — available to all on the Internet.

Equipped with high-powered cameras with resolution and clarity many times greater than those of conventional models, and with lights that emit neither heat nor ultraviolet rays, the scientists and technicians are uncovering previously illegible sections and letters of the scrolls, discoveries that could have significant scholarly impact.

The 2,000-year-old scrolls, found in the late 1940s in caves near the Dead Sea east of Jerusalem, contain the earliest known copies of every book of the Hebrew Bible (missing only the Book of Esther), as well as apocryphal texts and descriptions of rituals of a Jewish sect at the time of Jesus. The texts, most of them on parchment but some on papyrus, date from the third century B.C. to the first century A.D.

Only a handful of the scrolls exist in large pieces, with several on permanent exhibit at the Israel Museum here in its dimly lighted Shrine of the Book. Most of what was found is separated into 15,000 fragments that make up about 900 documents, fueling a longstanding debate on how to order the fragments as well as the origin and meaning of what is written on them.

The scrolls’ contemporary history has been something of a tortured one because they are among the most important sources of information on Jewish and early Christian life. After their initial discovery they were tightly held by a small circle of scholars. In the last 20 years access has improved significantly, and in 2001 they were published in their entirety. But debate over them seems only to grow.

Scholars continually ask the Israel Antiquities Authority, the custodian of the scrolls, for access to them, and museums around the world seek to display them. Next month, the Jewish Museum of New York will begin an exhibition of six of the scrolls.

The keepers of the scrolls, people like Pnina Shor, head of the conservation department of the antiquities authority, are delighted by the intense interest but say that each time a scroll is exposed to light, humidity and heat, it deteriorates. She says even without such exposure there is deterioration because of the ink used on some of the scrolls as well as the residue from the Scotch tape used by the 1950s scholars in piecing together fragments.

The entire collection was photographed only once before — in the 1950s using infrared — and those photographs are stored in a climate-controlled room because they show things already lost from some of the scrolls. The old infrared pictures will also be scanned in the new digital effort.

“The project began as a conservation necessity,” Ms. Shor explained. “We wanted to monitor the deterioration of the scrolls and realized we needed to take precise photographs to watch the process. That’s when we decided to do a comprehensive set of photos, both in color and infrared, to monitor selectively what is happening. We realized then that we could make the entire set of pictures available online to everyone, meaning that anyone will be able to see the scrolls in the kind of detail that no one has until now.”

The process will probably take one to two years — more before it is available online — and is being led by Greg Bearman, who retired from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Data collection is directed by Simon Tanner of Kings College London.

Jonathan Ben-Dov, a professor of biblical studies at the University of Haifa, is taking part in the digitalization project. Watching the technicians gingerly move a fragment into place for a photograph, he said that it had long been very difficult for senior scholars to get access.

Once this project is completed, he said with wonder, “every undergraduate will be able to have a detailed look at them from numerous angles.”

Now we just need the photographs of the Nag Hammadi Codices online--would Brill or Claremont wish to release them (who have the photographs), or, better yet, would the Egyptian Antiquities Authorities wish to release them with new photographs digitized for the internet?

What is a Godly Voter?

From the associated press:

Southern Baptists lead get-out-the-vote prayer

By RACHEL ZOLL, AP Religion Writer 50 minutes ago

Southern Baptists are organizing a nationwide prayer campaign to accompany their values-voter registration drive, seeking spiritual renewal for families and churches, and God's favor for public officials who are guided by the Bible.

The 40/40 Prayer Vigil for Spiritual Revival and National Renewal will run from Sept. 24 through Nov. 2, two days before the general election.

The daily prayers include requests for God's guidance in voting, for the election of more "godly Christians," for God to "help churches find ways to help Christians get to the polls" and for public officials to be protected "from the attacks of Satan."

The effort is a companion program to the iVoteValues registration campaign, which began in 2004 and is jointly led this year by Southern Baptists, the largest Protestant group in the country, and the Family Research Council, a conservative Washington-based advocacy group.

Surveys have found that the majority of white evangelicals support the presumed Republican presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain, but with less enthusiasm than they had for previous GOP candidates for the White House. Sen. Barack Obama, who will accept the Democratic presidential nomination Thursday in Denver, has been aggressively reaching out to religious voters.

The Rev. Richard Land, head of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, the public policy arm of the 16.3 million-member Southern Baptist Convention, said Tuesday that more than 1,300 churches have signed up for the prayer campaign so far.

The drive is being promoted by the Southern Baptists' North American Mission Board, through ilivevalues.com and conference calls with pastors. Land hopes that an upcoming promotional DVD can be shown at state Baptist meetings across the country this fall.

"Our vision statement is an American society that affirms and practices Judeo-Christian values rooted in biblical authority," Land said. "America will be better off if people who are voting are seeking God's guidance."

On the one hand, democracy works best with cacophony--with as many voices in disagreement participating as possible. Thus, I would applaud any attempt to mobilize voters...ALL VOTERS. Nonetheless, a good politician may or may not be a "godly Christian." In fact, religious allegiances should not matter when speaking of a good legislator. Perhaps we should be praying for protection against ourselves more than attacks from Satan. Against bad policies, exclusionary legislative maneuvers that may create "tyranny by the majority." The last paragraph is quite startling. What exactly are "Judeo-Christian values." Are they all actually rooted in "biblical authority" or in a rather recent interpretation? Are they values that all Christians and all Jews would agree on? Good luck on that one! Indeed, what is "Judeo-Christian"? According to Terry Todd, historian of American religious history, it is a 20th century invention that arose around WWII. Is biblical authority (something from thousands of years ago) really a good measure for the effective running of a modern society? What would be a governance rooted in biblical authority look like? Surely not anything resembling a democracy or any government system in which regular people have any voice. More like a monarchy or, worse, a theocracy, which would destroy one of our country's truly most cherished values among the religious and non-religious--freedom of religion, which is preserved by that separation of church and state.

Unless, of course, it is a religious / political example of Jesus, who rose up in opposition to the ruling power of the day, tried to interrupt the religio-political status quo, demonstrating against the collusion of religious, political, and economic forces that were having a severely deleterious effect among the poor, the impoverished. The one who tried to include the outcasts of society--the poor, those with less-than-admirable professions, prostitutes, etc. He hung out with drunkards (and was accused of being one himself). To me, this revolutionary and inclusive attitude more closely approximates the platform of the Democratic party than the exclusionary policies of the Republican party. Is this what "Judeo-Christian values rooted in biblical authority" means? Ultimately, in my opinion, it does not matter. If trying to answer What would Jesus do this November, I am not sure that either party would pass muster. He would probably demonstrate against the corruption of the entire political machinery that systemically creates conditions in which poverty arises. In the end, inclusion of as many points of view is best in democracy--not just that of the "Judeo-Christian values."

What You've Been Reading Lately

I am fascinated by what brings people to this website. Most people visit antiquitopia from google searches of particular issues, although I am very happy to see regulars visit and comment on particular posts.

The most popular posts are quite diverse, and perhaps reflect the breadth of my own interests--although all relate in some way (sometimes tangential) to religion, antiquity, or the state of the university.

Topping the list at the moment is the posting on the US News & World Report college rankings. For those attracted to this post, I highly recommend reading my book note on Frank Donoghue's The Last Professors.

Secondly, the most consistently read page is the series of quotations regarding religion and liminality in Chuck Palahniuk's Rant. Lots of Palahniuk fans out there, I can see.

Thirdly, people have been interested in the Revelation of Gabriel. I would recommend following the links on this subject posted by April Deconick at Forbidden Gospels and Jim Davila at Paleojudaica (their bloglinks are listed on the side). In fact, lately, Israel Knohl, the scholar who offered the controversial translation, has responded to DeConick's questions on her site here.

Finally, people continue to check out my quotations of the Epic of Gilgamesh here. If you are interested in ancient near eastern issues, you might be interested in my postings on ancient Ugarit.

So, the state of the university, a mind-twisting novel, a disputed text, and ancient near eastern epic interest you all. I just hope I can continue to attract your roaming eyes.

A Beauty Pageant for Nuns?

Evidently an Italian priest, Antonio Rungi, wants to break general negative stereotypes of nuns (as elderly, stiff, ruler-holding women) by holding a beauty pageant only open to nuns. It seems he wants to promote a Sofia Loren vision of nuns. It is an online competition, but he hopes that in the future it will be run like other beauty competitions, in person.

According to the Times (that's the one in London),

The contestants must be aged between 18 and 40, and can be either full members of an order or novices. Father Rungi said that he expected many who applied to be young, attractive — and non-Italian. He said: “Do you really think nuns are all wizened, funereal old ladies? Today it’s not like that any more, thanks to an injection of youth and vitality brought to our country by foreign girls.” He said there were nuns from Africa and Latin America who were “really very, very pretty. The Brazilian girls above all.”

See the full article here.

Is this attempt to balance inner, spiritual beauty with outward, physical beauty more helpful or harmful? And for whom? For the Catholic Church as a whole? For the individual nuns? Is it an appreciation for the full person, or is it just recreating a sexualized gaze?

Evolutionary Breakthroughs

The NYTimes has an extensive article today concerning teaching evolution. It covers much of the struggle that has been occurring, particularly in areas of strong evangelical camps who take Genesis 1:1-2:3 very literally. In this evolutionary struggle to survive, when confronted with students who have been taught their whole lives that creation occurred exactly, and in every detail, as Genesis has depicted it, a bit of gentle persuasion becomes the necessary means of instruction. Evolution is not at all a controversial issue among scientists--it is one of the most established aspects of "life science" and, in fact, is often considered the cornerstone of scientific thought.

Moreover, there are other ways to interpret Genesis. It is a text that has been revisited for centuries (millenia actually), sometimes read literally, sometimes allegorically, sometimes more impressionistically (getting a general impression of the meaning rather than taking every single word literally), sometimes atomistically. Genesis 1, itself, in fact should be seen less as contradictory to science and more as a poetic reflection of God's creation. It is a tightly woven poem that appreciates cosmic wonder and order. The same wonder, perhaps, that has led many physicists and biologists to their respective fields. Ironically, both scientists and anti-evolution Christians, read this poem the exact same way, robbing it of its poetic, evocative power. Indeed, for many Christians (and Jews), there is no contradiction between their faith and scientific inquiry. For many, they are rather complementary, science enriching their view of creation and the unity of all living things. Setting science and religion in opposition, however, seems to be damaging to both. It depletes the richness, depth, beauty, and, I might say, poetry of the cosmos. It makes both sides look intractable and dogmatic.

US News & World Report College Rankings

US News & World Report has done it again--the new college rankings are out. It always begs the question: can someone really quantify quality? No, not really. But the magazine tries to every year. Frank Donoghue, in his book, The Last Professors, has criticized the process (and even idea) of the whole ranking process. See my post on this book here. For full article (or at least links) for rankings, go here or, better yet, here. Nonetheless, I'll give some highlights:

Harvard ranks number 1 by itself for the first time since 1996. It usually shares this distinction with Princeton. My own Columbia ranks 8, tied with Duke and U Chicago. So, here's the top ten (and some other schools for comparison):

1. Harvard
2. Princeton
3. Yale
4. MIT
5. Stanford
6. California Institute of Technology / U Penn
8. Columbia / Duke / University of Chicago

Some interesting comparisons of note: Wash U in St. Louis (my old stomping grounds) comes in 12, being tied with Northwestern. April DeConick's Rice comes in 17. For you fighting Irish out there, Notre Dame comes in 18, tied with Vanderbilt. University of Michigan caught my eye at 26. NYU, down the street from me, is 33. University of Illinois, the flagship of my home state is 40. Penn State University at University Park is 47. Fordham, also down the street, is 61--tied with Clemson and University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Baylor, which has had some press lately since they fired their president, who was trying to increase their rankings, comes in at 76, followed by my friend Andrei Orlov's Marquette at 77--tied with SUNY, Binghamton, and University of Colorado, Boulder. St. Louis University, same town as Wash U, is 80.

Liberal Arts colleges receive a separate ranking. You can see that here. Their top ten are:

1. Amherst
2. Williams
3. Swarthmore
4. Wellesley
5. Middlebury
6. Bowdoin / Pomona
8. Carleton
9. Davidson
10. Haverford

Some others that caught my eye. I had a friend who went to Macalaster, which is 25. Barnard is 27 and is tied with Mount Holyoke, where another friend attended. Bard College, the institution of the well-known Jewish studies scholar, Jacob Neusner, is 37. And my alma mater, Illinois Wesleyan University, came in at 60.

Death Sentences: Some Thoughts on the Iliad

Although the wrath of Achilles propels the plot of the Iliad, the Iliad is a poem of death. Because so many people die in the Iliad, I think it would be a rewarding exercise to go through and see how death is described. Outside of A killed B or A slayed B or rather straightforward terminology, death is emerges, floats about, darts here and there throughout the poem. Death often appears personified with a capital D. Death appears as an ever-present force lurking throughout the pages. It is the most powerful force for the mortal heroes, but it is also the most elusive. It is ever-present, but, as we shall see, it is a mist. It cannot be fully grasped even as it is ubiquitous.

Once again, death, as a necessary prominent theme in a poem of war, appears right at the beginning. It is the result and necessary corollary to Achilles' wrath:

Sing, goddess, the wrath of Peleus' son Achilleus
and its devastation, which put pains thousandfold upon the Achaians,
hurled in their multitudes to the house of Hades strong souls
of heroes, but gave their bodies to be the delicate feasting
of dogs, of all birds, and the will of Zeus was accomplished
since that time when first there stood in division of conflict
Atreus' son the lord of men and brilliant Achilleus
(trans. Lattimore, with some emendations)

Here the death that is the result of Achilles' wrath is the hurling of strong souls to the house of Hades. One can almost imagine them, once run through with a sword, arrow, or spear, being thrown down to visit the god of the underworld in his palace from which no soul returns. Indeed, one of the most common ways to depict death (outside of "kill" and "slay") in the Iliad is the descent (or "hurling") of the soul (or "life breath from his limbs") to the "underworld," the "house of Hades," or the "house of Death" (e.g., VI.19, 284-5, 487-9; VII.129-31).

Meanwhile, their bodies become food for dogs and birds. How similar in imagery to that other great poet, Shakespeare, who speaks so freely of death in winged words. In Hamlet, for instance, in the "to be or not to be" speech or when Hamlet refers to Polonius' dead body as wormfood or in the scene with the gravediggers. Indeed, this play is also a long meditation on death with some of the most beautiful "death sentences" in the English language.

At this point in the Illiad death has made its introduction, but has yet to attain its own agency. Take the following "death sentence":

He dropped, screaming, to his knees, and death was a mist about him. (V.69)

Who "he" is almost does not matter. He is one of the many faces Homer brings up with momentary clarity only to fall back into a rather undifferentiated background, whether of the legions of the Achaians, the Trojans, or the dead. "He" happens to be Phereklos, who built the Trojan ships used by Paris / Alexander when he visited Sparta and first saw Helen. Phereklos, in that sense, built the very ship that would deliver him his doom. The sentence itself, as it is rendered wonderfully by Lattimore, slows down the action. Chopping up the sentence into four basic elements (the "cola") brings the scene into slow motion culminating in the ubiquitous death that no one can ensnare, but, instead, it envelops all: he dropped....screaming...to his knees...and death was a mist about him. One is slowed down in order to sense this all-encompassing onset of death. The quiet "mist" of death eerily offsets the screaming. It is the impregnable "dark death" (VII.254).

It is fated death. Death and fate are inextricably intertwined in the Iliad. Death comes to all, and it comes to all at the time Fate has declared. No one can speed up or slow down cold Fate's death sentence. As Hektor tells his wife, Andromache:

No man is going to hurl me to Hades, unless it is fated,
but as for fate, I think that no man yet has escaped it
once it has taken its first form, neither brave man nor coward. (VI.487-9)

Death and Fate, like time (Kronos), consume all. None escapes them, or has yet to escape fate and death. There is no such thing as "untimely death" in the Iliad, for all death, whether in war or old age, is by Fate's decree. All must go down to the House of Death. All must visit that "undiscover'd country" from which none return. All, even Achilles the greatest hero of them all, must be hurled into the Death's house, enveloped by the unknown darkness of Death's ever-present, un-graspable mist.

Anti-Catholic T-Shirts? The Newest Production of Sound-Byte Polemics

I was just at the grocery store, getting some supplies for this evening's supper, and I saw a man wearing a particularly distasteful t-shirt. On the front it read:

Roman Catholicism: It'll Send You to Hell

Then on the back, it read:

Christianity: Christ-Centered
Roman Catholicism: Man-Centered

I added the punctuation. So now religious intolerance or prejudice can be found on t-shirts! That's right. Now we no longer have to guess whether someone dislikes a particular religious group. Now they have a big sign on them that says: I hate you. Or if not hate, strongly dislike. Or they may say that they do not hate you as a person, but just everything that you believe in, things that you hold dear, things that give meaning to this life. (So, I don't hate "you" but just everything about you.)

The back of this particular t-shirt makes a typical Protestant Christian move, usually associated with Protestants of a more conservative stripe, that distinguishes not just between different types of Christianity, but excludes a very huge part of the Christian population from "Christianity" altogether. This is not the stuff of reasoned judgment or sustained reflection on the respective varying social and theological merits and problems of Catholics and whatever group this guy belonged to, but polemics, plain and simple. For most of us, I would think, it will have the reverse effect that he hoped for: I mean, if Christ is anything like this guy, who would be attracted to "Christ-Centered" "Christianity"?

This is a particular type of polemics that seems to be a product of recent provenance--the sound byte. There are predecessors, such as campaign slogans and political cartoons that reduced highly complex issues to a few words--and every political campaign has them and has had them for most of the U.S.'s history. But now there is a proliferation of these things: reduced sound bytes played over and over by the media, bumper stickers, and, I guess, t-shirts.

Growing up I had been aware of what was often called "witness wear." These were t-shirts and other regalia such as hats, etc., that people wore that expressed (in highly reduced form) their religious allegiances or points of view. Most of the time, these things would mimic something highly popular marketed by corporations and slightly alter it to somehow refer to Jesus. I usually found this rather dull, unimaginative, yet relatively harmless nonetheless. Upon later reflection, I have found it theologically detrimental to reduce in seductively simple sloganeering highly textured and deep religious traditions, marketing them, and selling them as if they were just any other product on the market. This corporatization of faith seems, therefore, demeaning to the faith.

The danger, now, is much clearer seeing today's shirt. What was a medium for self-identification (saying that I belong to this group) has not become a very dangerous polemical medium for religious prejudice and hate. Now instead of reducing one's own tradition to a bumper-sticker mentality, this person reduced and slandered (well, I guess it was libel since it was written) another person's tradition. Such an attitude is not open to hear another point of view, any sort of reasonable discussion or dialogue. If you cannot listen to others, how can you grow as a person, whether intellectually, emotionally, or, in this case, spiritually / religiously?

This is the stuff that makes me frustrated and sad. Yet it is the stuff that reminds me that I have a place as a (future) professor of religion to open up space for the religious dialogue that this person is trying to close down.

UPDATE: I just noticed that there is now a link to this post by someone with a very different point of view expressed in the allegory of a mine and miners trying to escape alive...that there was only "one way" out of the mine (follow the links to this post below). It is an interesting allegory, and I am happy to discover someone who disagrees with me is reading my blog and has used one of my postings as inspiration for this allegorical story, even though they interpret it differently than I do. Nonetheless, anyone can come up with a proliferation of allegories that support many different opposing points of view. They are ultimately only illustrative and not determinative; they provide very nice images or stories, but do not constitute an argument. The point of the illustration is that the person (the one who knows the one, right way, I guess related to the person wearing the t-shirt) pointed out that way through concern and love. I think that many proselytizing Christians do have good intentions and try to convert out of concern, whether I agree with them or not. But sound-byte polemics is a medium that does not express love and concern, but is highly polemical, dangerous and hateful. There are ways to discuss ultimate issues with others, but flat out telling someone they are going to hell is not helpful and, in fact, is harmful to all parties. It flattens, perhaps cheapens, one's faith. It is isolating rather than engaging. It does not enter debate, dialogue, or discussion, nor is it reflective, but only makes ungrounded assertions.

Paintings: Leaf Explosion

So, in my free time I paint. I had taken a few pictures of two of my more recent paintings, and I thought I would just share them with everyone. These two are very similar in subject--they are both leaves that form patterns based upon the direction they are pointed, but only differ in their patterns. The first is a "burst" pattern, after which the leaves start to spiral outward. In the second, the leaves move inward. The first has a bit more of a structured color pattern that becomes more and more random as one moves outward. The second's color pattern maintains a certain randomness throughout. Although the deep purples and the oranges tend toward the center in second as they are clearly so in the first. And, lastly, the first was painted for my sister and brother-in-law, while the second was painted for my girlfriend.