Antiquitopia

I thought after last night's post that I would go ahead and post the abstract from my own paper at the Midwest SBL, which generated more discussion than I expected - always good.  So, here it is: Jesus as Creator, Sustainer, and Destroyer in Hebrews Creation imagery extends throughout Hebrews more than any other New Testament text, yet has received less attention than John 1, Colossians 1, or 1 Cor. 8:6.  Those who have discussed creation in Hebrews have focused on how it relates to the work's cosmology.  This paper, however, will analyze its relationship to Christology, arguing that Hebrews maintains a consistent division between what and how God and the Son create.  God creates and is the source of all things, including the heavenly tent and city, while Jesus is the creative agent of the "ages," who inherits, sustains, and destroys heaven and earth. A copy of the paper is available upon request - just send me an email to my Illinois College email account.

One of the more interesting things I have begun to notice in biblical literature in my past year of reading or so is something of "uncreation." This is not necessarily the cataclysm of the end of time, although it can be that. It is not quite that final. It is more of a working backward from order to chaos in order to reintroduce an element of chaos in the world, showing that God is the God of chaos and not just order. I find traces of this in Isaiah, but it is all over the poetry in Job, including Job's own personal "uncreation" in Job 3 (an observation I owe to one of my students) to God's cosmic "uncreation" in Job 38 onward (an observation I owe to Carol Newsom's book on Job). With this interest in mind, I read the following from Rumi's poems that is almost an uncreation at points: I am sprung from you and likewise you have devoured me, I melt in you since through you I froze. Now you press me in your hand, now under your foot wit...

If only I had been able to start writing! But, whatever the conditions in which I approached the task (as, too, alas, the undertakings not to touch alcohol, to go to bed early, to sleep, to keep fit), whether it was with enthusiasm, with method, with pleasure, in depriving myself of a walk, or postponing it and keeping it in reserve as a reward for industry, taking advantage of an hour of good health, utilising the inactivity forced on me by a day's illness, what always emerged in the end from all my efforts was a virgin page, undefiled by any writing, ineluctable as that forced card which in certain tricks on invariably is made to draw, however carefully one may first have shuffled the pack. I was merely the instrument of habits of not working, of not going to bed, of not sleeping, which must somehow be realised at all costs; if I offered them no resistance, if I contented myself with the pretext they seized from the first opportunity that the day afforded them of acting as they...

Members of the earth's earliest known civilization, the Sumerians, looked on in shock and confusion some 6,000 years ago as God, the Lord Almighty, created Heaven and Earth. According to recently excavated clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform script, thousands of Sumerians—the first humans to establish systems of writing, agriculture, and government—were working on their sophisticated irrigation systems when the Father of All Creation reached down from the ether and blew the divine spirit of life into their thriving civilization. "I do not understand," reads an ancient line of pictographs depicting the sun, the moon, water, and a Sumerian who appears to be scratching his head. "A booming voice is saying, 'Let there be light,' but there is already light. It is saying, 'Let the earth bring forth grass,' but I am already standing on grass." "Everything is here already," the pictograph continues. "We do not need more stars." Hist...

Years ago, Moshe Weinfeld argued (convincingly in my view) that Gen. 1:1-2:3 was originally a temple liturgy. It does come across as a tightly constructed--highly structured--hymn with, in fact, some passages that almost seem designed for antiphonal choruses. Yet, upon a close reading, there are a great many variations within this structure. Just when the structure seems established on day one, there is some literary riffing by the great artist (or group of artists--perhaps from generation to generation) that put this hymn together. Firstly, let is take care of general organization. Gen. 1:1-2 serves as a nice prologue, or introduction to the main sections of the hymn. The "In the Beginning" or "When God began" with the famous problematic first word בראשית with a shava under the first letter already sets us off into the realm of literary labyrinths of impossibilities and possibilities. Right on the heels of it is the famous rhymed pairing of תהו ובהו. It is ...

I am revising my dissertation chapter on Hebrews, and since I am relating it to cosmogonic patterns that interlink creation, rest, sanctuary, and enthronement (beginning with the Enuma Elish, through the Pentateuch, and finally placed in the heavenly realm in the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice and Hebrews), today I am collating all of my references to creation (under which I, in fact, include restorative Day of Atonement rituals since they restore the temple--itself representative of the cosmos--to its original state of creation). In case you are interesting, in the broader trajectory, the Sabbath (rest) and the Sanctuary (particularly the Tabernacle) become interlinked in an interesting manner, often becoming equivalent symbols, or equivalent expressions of holiness (Pentateuch and Ezekiel) and, I would argue in Hebrews, they are equivalent symbols expressing God's heavenliness; all throughout the tradition, they equivalently express proximity to God in what I call sacred spaceti...

In an scene that looks like it could come out of 1984 , the institution whose leaders act like clones, look like clones, and all dress alike, have reified the Catholic Church's position against cloning. Those who have sidestepped the "natural" processes of procreation, as usual, want to regulate those things in which they themselves do not participate : birth, creation, etc. The official document, " Dignitas Personae " or the "Dignity of the Person," forbids creation through in vitro fertilization and human cloning. It forbids the manipulation of human biological raw materials: so no stem-cell research. Or, no stem-cell research based upon embryos. It allows stem cells extracted from adults and umbilical cords. And, the cherry on top this ice-cream Sundae is no morning after pill! I always find it strange that a bunch of celibate men sit around in rooms all day talking about the proper and improper ways to have sex, have children, and so forth...