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The Geography of David’s Conquest

Last updated on: January 10, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

1 Chronicles 18–20 brings together David’s conquests into a neatly packaged unit. (In Samuel, the same wars are scattered over several chapters.) By the end of chapter 20, David has established control over greater Israel, the ideal kingdom promised to Abraham (Genesis 15), stretching from the Euphrates (18:4) to the brook of Egypt (18:12–13). Though the bulk of these chapters is devoted to describing David’s battles, the structural center sketches David’s administration of Israel. Domestic justice is the central aim... Read more

Is Language a Tool?

Last updated on: January 9, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Daniel Everett thinks language is a tool, and has written a book about it: Language: The Cultural Tool. He develops his theory over-against the notion that language is the product of a biological “instinct.” On this Chomskyan/Pinkerian view, “language is part of our genetic endowment and that, because of this, all human languages share an almost identical grammar—which includes sound systems and meanings. Under this view, the only significant differences between languages are their vocabularies. But this is not the... Read more

Of Swedes and Indians

Last updated on: January 6, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Religion News Service reports on a Pew survey of the religious makeup of the 115th Congress: “Nearly 91 percent of members of the 115th Congress convening Tuesday (Jan. 3) describe themselves as Christian, compared to 95 percent of Congress members serving from 1961 to 1962, according to congressional data compiled by CQ Roll Call and analyzed by Pew.” The trend is downward, but not dramatically so. Meanwhile, in the hinterlands, only 71 percent of Americans now identify as Christians. In... Read more

Psych Tests

Last updated on: January 6, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Two test questions from Michael Lewis’s The Undoing Project (184-5, 192-3). Q. In a family of six children, which birth order is more likely? BBBGGG or GBBGBG? A. Most say the latter, but they are equally probable, equally random. People have a mental model of “randomness,” and the second matches it better than the first. Q. One group was asked to estimate the product of 8 x 7 x 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1.... Read more

Imposing Order

Last updated on: January 6, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In his The Undoing Project (205-8), quotes two lengthy passages from a 1972 lecture by Amos Tversky on “Historical Interpretation: Judgment Under Uncertainty.” Both describe how historians trick themselves into seeing inevitability: In the course of our personal and professional lives, we often run into situations that appear puzzling at first blush. We cannot see for the life of us why Mr. X acted in a particular way, we cannot understand how the experiemental results came out the way they... Read more

Irony of Episcopal History

Last updated on: January 6, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Allen Guelzo observes in his history of the Reformed Episcopal Church that historians of American Episcopalianism are misled by Anglo-Catholicism’s success in establishing “their own vision of Episcopal history, as the single reigning view of the history of the Episcopal Church” (13). It is not, he says, a historical literature rich in self-examination, and h charges that “the easy acceptance of self-congratulation as the primary mode of Episcopal historical discourse has cost Episcopalians an important theological insight into their history,”... Read more

Beware the Smuggler

Last updated on: January 6, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

A delicious 1964 poem from Norman MacCaig (Poems of Norman MacCaig, 165), entitled “The Smuggler”: Watch him when he openshis bulging words—justice, fraternity, freedom, internationalism, peace,peace, peace. Make it your customto pay no heedto his frank look, his visas, his stampsand signatures. Make ityour duty to spread out their contentsin a clear light. Nobody with such luggagehas nothing to declare. Read more

Shakespeare’s Oaths

Last updated on: January 6, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In her TLS review of John Kerrigan’s Shakespeare’s Binding Language, Emma Smith calls attention to the liturgical and sacramental dimensions of Shakespearean oaths, contracts, and vows: “Binding in Measure emerges as deeply theological and sacramental (‘grounded in the Roman military oath of sacramentum,’ as Kerrigan tells us in one of his frequent adversions to Latin etymology). . . . Kerrigan’s analysis of the associative patterns between slander, repentance, absolution and temporal justice reminds us of the liturgy of salvation by... Read more

Accidental Empire

Last updated on: January 6, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In a TLS retrospective on Kipling, Michael Holroyd notes the obvious: “By the time he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907 he was well known as the private soldiers’ poet, and had achieved fame for beating the drum on behalf of the British Empire. The British had indeed done some good work in India: extending the Indian railways and canals and establishing the first adequate forest service. Although the East India Company was there to trade and make... Read more

The Iago Problem

Last updated on: January 6, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Reflecting on Daniel Craig’s recent performance as Iago, Tamsin Shaw puzzles over the “Iago problem” in a secular world: “The concept of evil has fallen out of favor in our disenchanted world. Its religious and superstitious connotations are permissible in horror movies, but otherwise often deemed embarrassing. Without some religious metaphysics it is hard to make sense of the idea that there are people who are intrinsically evil; it no longer seems plausible to many of us that people can... Read more

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