Writing in 1888, J. Theodore Bent described a visit to Patmos, during which he read the Apocalypse. One day, he recounted, “I stood by the sea looking south-west, I distinctly saw Thera, as it was anciently called, rising out of the sea. This island is now also called Thera conjointly with Santorin, or island of St. Irene. Thera, ‘the beast’ . . . was so called in ancient days because it is naught but the cone of a hideous submarine... Read more
Ian Boxall gets a lot right in his commentary on Revelation 6:9–11 (in his excellent The Revelation of Saint John, 113). He knows that the blood of a purification offering is poured out at the base of the altar, the very position where the souls of the martyrs are. And he recalls the Levitical connection of soul and blood (Leviticus 17:11). But he errs in thinking that the altar in Revelation 6 is the same as the altar of Revelation... Read more
In a 1911 article on “The Ant Colony as Organism,” William Morton Wheeler argued that an ant colony was not only organism-like but an actual organism: “Like a cell or the person, it behaves as a unitary whole, maintaining its identity in space, resisting dissolution…neither a thing nor a concept, but a continual flux or process.” As elaborated by Kevin Kelly (Out of Control), Wheeler “started calling the bustling cooperation of an insect colony a ‘superorganism’ to clearly distinguish it... Read more
Marjorie Garber (Shakespeare After All, 300–2) nicely captures the Pauline resonances of the trial scene in Merchant of Venice: “Shylock will provide a scale to weigh the pound of flesh, but not a surgeon to staunch the wound. He will, that is, provide the emblem of justice, the balances, or scales, but not the emblem of mercy. If Saint Paul’s celebrated dictum ‘the letter kills, but the spirit gives life’ is seen to underpin this tension between Shylock and Portia,... Read more
Antonio of Venice is inexplicable sad. So is Portia of Belmont, her “little body . . . aweary of this great world” (Merchant of Venice 2.1). Antonio and Portia have all that they could want. They aren’t anxious about money; neither is pining for love. Why so sad? Marjorie Garber (Shakespeare After All, 286-7) points out that “sad” “carried a more specific gravitas in Shakespeare’s period than perhaps it does in our own, deriving from the same word as ‘satiated’... Read more
Rodney Payton (Modern Reader’s Guide to Dante’s Inferno, 88–89) observes that “Dante’s vocabulary is rich in words denoting water,” including “the Italian words for water, river, little river, bog, marsh, stream, pond, slough, fount, and waves, at lest. In many cases the nouns are modified by adjectives to emphasize their infernal nature (the ‘dismal little stream’ of VII, 107, for instance).” The first simile of the poem is linked “to both the historical crossing of the Red Sea and the... Read more
Explaining the moral structure of hell in Canto 11 of Dante’s Comedy, Virgil lays out three general categories of sin: incontinence, malice, and mad bestiality (lines 83-4). That’s not quite what we expect, or what most commentators see. It seems more like incontinence, violence, and fraud. Incontinent sins arise from immoderate or weak love of good things; malice aims at injustice. Where does “bestiality” come in? Virgil seems to be talking about the lower circles of hell, the circles of... Read more
Dante is moving through the circle of the lustful (Comedy, Canto 5) and sees a host of classical lovers. Among them is Semiramis, less famous than Dido or Cleopatra, but an exceedingly important illustration of how lust misshapes language and law. Rodney Payton explains (A Modern Reader’s Guide To Dante’s Inferno, 49): Semiramis “was Empress of many tongues,” that is, she was Empress of Babylon. Babylon was ancient ancient empire made up of many peoples who spoke diverse languages. Its... Read more
Chronicles envisions Israel as a “host” (tzaba). David leads Israel’s hosts. The princes of Israel military commanders. When “all Israel” gathers, they are represented by elders and army captains, and even the Levitical singers are established by David and the commanders of the host (1 Chronicles 25:1). To be an Israelite was to be enlisted in the host of the Davidic king, which is the host of Yahweh, who is Yahweh Sabaoth, Yahweh of Armies. King + Israel, as William... Read more
Violent malice can be directed against God, the self, and the neighbor, Virgil tells Dante (Inferno 11) as they huddle under the lid of one of the tombs in the sixth circle of hell. Virgil takes a moment to explain the moral theology that organizes hell. He explicates these three objects of violence in reverse order—first speaking of violence against neighbor, then against one’s self, and finally against God. There are some surprises. Violence against a neighbor includes not only... Read more
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