After he recounts Yahweh’s commitment to the Davidic line (1 Chronicles 17), the Chronicler recounts David’s conquests (ch. 18). David strikes to the west (Philistia, v. 1) and east (Moab, v. 2; Aram, vv. 3-8), and Abishai later follows up with an annexation of Edomite territory to the south (vv. 12-13). David spreads out his kingdom in nearly every direction. In each case, he takes plunder. Moab becomes a tributary state to Israel (v. 2), bringing minchot just as Israelites... Read more
No American needs to be told that it’s been a tumultuous, often bewildering, political season. Democrats were rocked from the left by an aging socialist; the GOP has been taken over by a politically inexperienced showman. Clearly, the natives are restless. About what? What do Trump supporters want? What were Bernie’s troops protesting? Why is everyone so alienated from the political leadership? Ross Douthat hit on a key element of the cross-party protest with his typology of post-liberalisms. Douthat focused... Read more
The Chronicler’s account of the death of Saul (1 Chronicles 10) is organized in three paragraphs: first, an account of the battle of Mount Gilboa; then, an account of the Philistine seizure of Saul’s body and its rescue by men from Jabeth-Gilead; finally, an editorial evaluation of Saul. The first of these falls out in a fairly neat chiasm: A. Philistines fight Israel, 10:1 B. Philistines strike Saul’s sons, 10:2 C. Saul’s death, 10:3-5 B’. Death of Saul and his... Read more
Yahweh promises David an enduring house. David doesn’t take it for granted, but immediately asks the Lord to keep His word (1 Chronicles 17:23). Given a promise of God, David doesn’t merely wait for it to be fulfilled. He turns the promise to prayer. The prayer has a neat chiastic structure, framed by references to the Lord’s word: A. Now Yahweh, the word (dabar) which you spoke (dabar) to Your servant and his house B. establish (aman) forever B’. and... Read more
Matthew Crawford (The World Beyond Your Head) observes that we can do simple mathematics in our heads. We can even multiply bigger numbers by breaking them down into smaller ones. At some point, though, most of us lost track: “If one has to multiply 356 by 911, the number of items to juggle becomes quite challenging, so what do we do? We reach for a pencil and paper.” Pencil and paper allows us to “vastly extend our intellectual capacities: long... Read more
Scarcity is one of the central premises of economic theory. John Milbank and Adrian Pabst see the premise of scarcity as one of a triad of pessimistic assumptions that found liberal order – the other two are “ontological violence and natural egoism” (Politics of Virtue, 48). They don’t accept any of them, including the premise of scarcity. Scarcity is “nearly always something artificially engineered by monopolisation or global trade in order to increase returns on capital.” They point out that... Read more
John Milbank and Adrian Pabst (Politics of Virtue, 47) observe that the liberal state claims to release “the economic and social spheres to be pre-politically themselves as natural, meaning true to human biological needs and inclinations.” In fact, however, it “politically produces this sphere of man as most basically pursuant of amour propre [Rousseau] and ‘trucking’ advantage [Adam Smith].” That is, the “natural” sphere where self-love and profit operate aren’t truly natural, but creations of the liberal state. And the... Read more
John Milbank and Adrian Pabst (Politics of Virtue, 17) claim that “politics should revert to its ancient character as a ‘politics of the soul,’ concerned above all to nurture virtuous citizens, just as parents are concerned above all with the character of their children, precisely because they are also primarily concerned with their happiness.” They anticipate the liberal objection: It’s “wholly unacceptable to treat citizens as children and for government to assume any kind of parental cast.” Liberal order is... Read more
The literary world is atwitter this week with the revelation of the real identity of Elena Ferrante, the pseudonym used by the author of the acclaimed Neopolitan Quartet. Italian journalist Claudio Gatti reported on his months-long investigation in the New York Review. Gatti’s conclusion, based on real estate sales and financial records that came from an anonymous source, is that Ferrante is really Anita Raja, translator based in Rome and married to a Neopolitan writer, Domenico Starnone. The Economist entered... Read more
John Crowe of the University of California, Davis, may not have built molecular engines, but he’s been up to some cool stuff over the past forty years. He’s been working with “water bears,” more technically “tardigrades,” described in a profile of the scientist a “speck-sized organisms that can dry up and survive for years in suspended animation.” Tardigrades live in mosses and lichens. When the weather begins to dry, the critters anticipate it and produce a sugar coating (trehalose) to... Read more
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