Antiquitopia

I am increasingly amused, as I read scholarship, how often people portray opposing scholars as "confused." I'm sure the so-called "confused" scholar would say the same thing right back. Calling someone else "confused" does not seem very professional to me. Why can't we just disagree in our interpretations without calling someone else confused?

While reading an article on the archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams's statement on "two ways of being Anglican" I became less and less interested in the internal discussion of gay clergy and more and more fascinated by his eyebrows. He must have the most spectacular looking eyebrows among Christian clergy. I think he would be a great addition to a Harry Potter film. If Michael Gambdon is willing to give it up, I think he has the look of an Albus Dumbledore.

As I continue to work through my chapter on Hebrews, I am always struck by a certain productive ambiguity the homilist often exploits. One ambiguity is in a passage that I often just pass over in chapter 11. Indeed, the style of hall of faith of Hebrews 11 often makes my eyes glaze over, although I recognize the rhetorical effectiveness of its genre. Nonetheless, this time I was struck by the following line (11:27): πίστει κατέλιπεν Αἴγυπτον μὴ φοβηθεὶς τὸν θυμὸν τοῦ βασιλέως, τὸν γὰρ ἀόρατον ὡς ὁρῶν ἐκαρτέρησεν. By faith he left Egypt not fearing the anger of the king, for as seeing the invisible he endured. Immediately, I read this in two ways. Because of Moses' paradoxical vision of the invisible (i.e., God), he endured Pharaoh's anger. The vision gave him the strength or ability to endure. The other reading is that he endured the rare and frightening vision of God, the very sight of whom kills (since one cannot see God and live). Indeed, in Hebrews, as far as I have...

August 3's edition of the New Yorker has an article by Joan Acocella discussing Judas traditions with special focus on the Gospel of Judas. Did Judas deserve this fate? If Jesus informs you that you will betray him, and tells you to hurry up and do it, are you really responsible for your act? Furthermore, if your act sets in motion the process—Christ’s Passion—whereby humankind is saved, shouldn’t somebody thank you? No, the Church says. If you betray your friend, you are a sinner, no matter how foreordained or collaterally beneficial your sin. And, if the friend should happen to be the Son of God, so much the worse for you. For two thousand years, Judas has therefore been Christianity’s primary image of human evil. Now, however, there is an effort to rehabilitate him, the result, partly, of an archeological find. In 1978 or thereabouts, some peasants digging for treasure in a burial cave in Middle Egypt came upon an old codex—that is, not a scroll but what we would call a book, wi...

I'm reading some Bertrand Russell--his History of Western Philosophy . In his introduction he places Philosophy, interestingly, somewhere between theology and science: The conceptions of life and the world which we call "philosophical" are a product of two factors: one, inherited religious and ethical conceptions; the other, the sort of investigation which may be called "scientific," using this word in its broadest sense. Individual philosophers have differed widely in regard to the proportions in which these two factors entered into their systems, but it is the presence of both, in some degree, that characterizes philosophy. .... Like theology, it consists of speculations on matters as to which definite knowledge has, so far, been unascertainable; but like science, it appeals to human reason rather than to authority, whether that of tradition or that of revelation. All definite knowledge--so I should contend--belongs to science; all dogma as to what surpass...

From the first Batman movie with Jack Nicholson as the Joker: You ever dance with the devil in the pale moonlight? Shall we dance? (The song in the clip is by Breaking Benjamin from their album Phobia )

Roland Boer has posted on Beer as the origins of civilization--on why hunters and gatherers left the forests for the backbreaking work of agriculture. I think he might be right. Beer is as old as any agricultural product we know of (including bread), and so that it might have been one aspect of community formation, greasing the wheels of social cohesion, is likely. Perhaps the next step of civilization was the one who controlled beer production became king.