And here’s another thing from Murphy on the Exodus plagues: “The Pharaoh’s magicians had proudly imitated Moses’ conjuring: they can turn rods into crocodiles too. But was it wise to demonstrate that they can as powerfully invoke a plague of frogs as the prophet of Yahweh? They are on automatic pilot. Locked into mimetic rivalry with Moses, the magicians lose their sense of survival.” At its best, Murphy’s book is identifying the broad and almost slapstick humor of the Bible... Read more
Oh, as I read on, Murphy is making the book worth it: On Pharaoh and the plagues: “As Egypt’s sources of life and fertility are destroyed, plague by plague, so Pharaoh’s respose rigidifies. Pharaoh is progressively mummified.” She later adds: “The substitution [of Egypt’s firstborn] makes sense if we see Israel’s servitude in Egypt as a kind of death: it is death for death. Israel is lying dead, burdened and weighed down by the pyramids: Egypt has to be sacrificed... Read more
The first few pages of Francesca Aran Murphy’s The Comedy Of Revelation were delightful, but her section on Genesis was disappointing. The comedy she sees in Genesis is mainly of her own making ?Eshe simply retells the biblical stories in a jazzy, smark-alecky fashion, and we’re supposed to say, presumably, “Oh, I never realized that story was funny.” Her conclusion, though, is more significant: She compares the many deceptions and disguises of Genesis to the disguises and false identities that... Read more
In an essay on Barth’s sacramental theology (in the Cambridge Companion to Barth ), James J. Buckley summarizes Barth’s early views on ecclesiology in the modern age as follows: “Modern man “‘nationalizes’ the Church and the Church allows this nationalization,’ elevating ‘the idea of the relativity of all confessions to the status of a universally valid truth with the full weight of political power’ long before theologians thought to do so. Modernity, from this point of view, is the birth... Read more
In an essay on Barth’s sacramental theology (in the Cambridge Companion to Barth ), James J. Buckley summarizes Barth’s early views on ecclesiology in the modern age as follows: “Modern man “‘nationalizes’ the Church and the Church allows this nationalization,’ elevating ‘the idea of the relativity of all confessions to the status of a universally valid truth with the full weight of political power’ long before theologians thought to do so. Modernity, from this point of view, is the birth... Read more
Thousands of years before David Blane, there was this, reported in a text called “On the Syrian God” purportedly by Lucian, which describes the orgiastic rites of the goddess Atargatis: “Two [phalli] at the entrance of the sanctuary, 1,800-foot-high monsters. One of them is climbed twice a year by a holy man who stays aloft for seven days, St Simeon the Stylite 200 years before his time . . . . Pilgrims come and pay lots of money to see... Read more
Thousands of years before David Blane, there was this, reported in a text called “On the Syrian God” purportedly by Lucian, which describes the orgiastic rites of the goddess Atargatis: “Two [phalli] at the entrance of the sanctuary, 1,800-foot-high monsters. One of them is climbed twice a year by a holy man who stays aloft for seven days, St Simeon the Stylite 200 years before his time . . . . Pilgrims come and pay lots of money to see... Read more
“Justified” in Rom 2:13 (the first use in Romans) is clearly contrasted with “perish” and “judged by Law.” The structure of vv 12-13 is poetic parallelism: whoever without law sins without law also perishes whoever in law sins through law will be judged not the hearers of law are just before God but the doers of law shall be justified Obviously, “justified” is synonymous with “just before God.” But the structure also suggests that being “justified” is the opposite of... Read more
“Justified” in Rom 2:13 (the first use in Romans) is clearly contrasted with “perish” and “judged by Law.” The structure of vv 12-13 is poetic parallelism: whoever without law sins without law also perishes whoever in law sins through law will be judged not the hearers of law are just before God but the doers of law shall be justified Obviously, “justified” is synonymous with “just before God.” But the structure also suggests that being “justified” is the opposite of... Read more
“You,” “we” and “us” are interesting in Eph 2: Let’s try “you” = Gentiles and “we” = Jews. This becomes explicit at least by verse 11, and I suggest that we read vv 1-10 in the same way: “You Gentiles were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked . . . ..we Jews too formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children... Read more
Leithart
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