Antiquitopia

From CNN Belief.net: Beer-only fast ends with bacon smoothie By Eric Marrapodi, CNN Belief Blog Co-Editor (CNN) – J. Wilson has survived his 46-day beer-only fast and found some unexpected spiritual insights. Wilson, who lives outside Des Moines, Iowa, was emulating a Lenten tradition carried out by German monks hundreds of years ago. In keeping with tradition he ate his last solid food on Ash Wednesday and broke his fast on Easter Sunday. See the whole article here .

See here . The relic of choice is...his blood. Perhaps because "the blood is life" (Gen. 9:4; Lev. 17:11, 14)?

" Original .--Not that one is the first to see something new, but that one sees as new what is old, long familiar, seen and overlooked by everybody, is what distinguishes truly original minds. The first discoverer is ordinarily that wholly common creature, devoid of spirit and addicted to fantasy--accident." (Nietsche, Mixed Opinions and Maxims , #200; trans. Walter Kaufmann)

I saw Deirdre Good posted the schedule for a conference I am participating in, called "Seeing the God," and so I thought I should note it here: Co-sponsored by UTS History Department and Fordham Department of Theology CONFERENCE SCHEDULE: SEEING THE GOD. Union Theol. Seminary Room 207 THURSDAY MAY 12. 2011 10.00 Coffee and Cookies. 10.20 Welcome. Symposiarchs Profs. McGuckin & Pettis 10.30 Introduction Panel 1. Chair Prof. Jeff Pettis 10.40 —11.00 Seeing the god in Greco-Roman cult. J Pettis 11.00— 11.20 Seeing among the Philosophers. S. Trostyanskiy 11.20 —11.40 Seeing the divine in antique Judaism. J Calaway 11.40— 12.00 Seeing divine things in proto-Christian Literature. J Pettis & J McGuckin. 12.00— 12.10 Seeing our way to a break 12.10 Introduction Panel 2. Chair Prof. McGuckin 12.15– 12.35 Vision in the Nag Hammadi Texts. C. Lilllie 12.30- 12.50 Holy vision in Syro-Christian texts. T French 12.50– 1.10 Seeing things invisible in Byzantium. J McGucki...

I am preparing a discussion of the concept of the "bridal chamber" in the Gospel of Philip for my class, Sexuality and Christianity . Along with this, I have been interested in how the concept of Jesus' body is articulated in the text, and in the process came across a gem of a line that I had not either noticed or just had not caught my attention before: that is, Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration was not actually transformed at all, but the disciples were. In the Bentley Layton translation: Jesus tricked everyone, for he did not appear as he was, but appeared in such a way that he could be seen. And he appeared to all of them--he [appeared] to [the] great as someone great, he appeared [to] the small as someone small, he [appeared] [to the] angels as an angel and to the human beings as a human being. For this reason he hid his discourse from everyone. Some saw him and thought they were seeing their own selves. But when he appeared to his disciples in glory upon...

This morning as I read Jim Davila’s blog , my heart sank. I saw that my advisor, friend, and colleague had passed away yesterday. I felt the wind being knocked out of me. Reading April DeConick’s moving blog post later, I felt appreciation and grief over the brilliant fragility of a life who was known to most of us as an important scholar, but who was also known as a father, husband, son, and friend. April’s posting took me back to his last published book, Life after Death . She quotes the last full paragraph, but it was the penultimate paragraph that caught my eye: Besides being intellectual adventurers, our ascending souls serving as symbols of our lives’ journey, we are all also martyrs as mortality eventually defeats us. Shakespeare tells us what our religious imagery tells us: the victories of our life outlives its difficulties. The effort to transcend ourselves is all. “The rest is silence.” That his final published book was on Life after Death takes on an appropriatene...

Jim Davila has reported that my advisor, Alan Segal, passed away yesterday. April DeConick has a very beautiful remembrance of him here . I will write more later, but for now my thoughts are with his family and the many friends who knew him.