In a 1989 article in the WTJ , Warren Gage, now of Knox Theological Seminary, explores the connections between the Gibeah incident recorded at the end of Judges and the story of Ruth. He argues that there are literary and thematic connections and contrasts between the two narratives. As usual, Gage gives us a number of stunning connections, such as: 1) Gibeah and Bethlehem both figure prominently in the history of the monarchy, Gibeah as Saul’s hometown (1 Sam 15:34)... Read more
Edward Oakes offers a fascinating review of several new books on Shakespeare in the June/July issue of First Things . He gives this summary of the recent argument of Stephen Greenblatt concerning Shakespeare’s views on Purgatory: “Shakespeare’s choice of Wittenberg as the palce where Hamlet spent time as a student before his father’s death cannot be mere whim; for in Wittenberg the young prince would have imbibed Martin Luther’s theology of justification, including his critique of the dogma of purgatory.... Read more
David Bentley Hart offers a lively and wide-ranging defense of censorship in an article in the current issue of First Things . He savages the standard arguments against censorship: the slippery-slope argument (Hart: “Apparently, as a society, we are poised precariously upon the narrowest precipice of a sheer escarpment as smooth as class, overlooking a vast chasm of totalitarian tyranny; so much as a single step towards censorship will send us hurtling into the abyss, and nothing will be able... Read more
According to the NB column in the May 28 TLS , the first recorded example of a limerick meter and rhyme occurs in a 13th-century prayer: Si vitiorum meorum evacuatio Concupiscentiae et libidinis exterminatio, Caritatis et patientiae, Humilitatis et obedientiae, Omniumque virtutum augmentatio . As NB goes on to say, “It is a curiosity of literary history (first recorded here, we dare say) that the earliest application of the limerick metre should have occurred in a plea to resist all... Read more
In the May 28 TLS , Peter Brooks reviews Francois Cusset’s French Theory , a study of the American reception of post-structuralism after 1966. The review provides a precis of the story, and includes a number of intriguing insights into the process: First, it is ironic and amusing that the American reception of post-structuralism, which was marked by a stars-only conference at Johns Hopkins in 1966 (Barthes, Lacan, Vernant, Todorov, and Derrida) occurred at about the same time as its... Read more
Today, Wendy Doniger writes in the May 21 TLS , “Tantra has become an Orientalist wet dream, a transgressive, weird, sexy, dangerous world. Many people refer to the Kamasutra , or even The Joy of Sex , as Tantric.” It was not always so. Doniger is reviewing David Gordon White’s Kiss of the Yogini , and White argues that originally Tantra was “a ritual in which bodily fluids ?Esexual or menstrual discharge ?Ewere swallowed as transformative ‘power substances.’” Here is... Read more
Writing in the Bible Review for June 2004, one Dan Clanton suggests that our perceptions of Delilah and the Samson/Delilah story arise more from art than from Scripture. He particularly contrasts the biblical account with the opera of Saint-Saens. According to Clanton’s reading of the biblical story, “Samson is a ladies’ man, a bumbling oaf and a brute,” so bad that “it is difficult to understand why Samson is included among the biblical judges.” By contrast, “Saint-Saens’s male lead is... Read more
The editorial in TNR has a couple of insightful things to say about Reagan. It commends his obsession with communism, and says that, though he did not bring down communism, “he defied it into its final collapse” and “embarrassed his enemy into oblivion.” The most thoughtful comment is about Reagan’s personality: “What was so startling, so subversive, about Ronald Reagan was his happiness. It was his standpoint on the entirety of existence. His country, his marriage, his career: All of... Read more
Psalm 71:19-20 shows the connection between the righteousness of God and the resurrection of the dead. The Psalmist praises God for His righteousness that reaches to the heavens, a righteousness manifested in the “great things” God has done (v 19). Verse 20 follows with a description of one of the great things that God has done and will do: He will deliver the Psalmist (or “us”) from troubles, and will “bring me [us] up again from the depths of the... Read more
The following is a review I wrote and had posted on a now-defunct web site. The review was written before Against Christianity , which is the hypothetical book referred to in the review. Barry A. Harvey, Another City: An Ecclesiological Primer for a Post-Christian World (Christian Mission and Modern Culture; Harrisburg, PA: Trinity International, 1999). Barry A. Harvey, who teaches systematic theology at Baylor University, almost wrote the book I?ve wanted to write. Another City is not a full-blown text... Read more
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