Robert Pogue Harrison (The Dominion of the Dead) spends several pages on Walter Pater’s novel, Marius the Epicurean. A deathbed convert to Christianity, Marius is struck in his first encounter with the church by the continuities between Christianity and the oldest of Roman religions, the religion of Numa, second king of Rome. As Marius describes the rites of Numa: “The urns of the dead in the family chapel received their due service. They also were now becoming something divine, a... Read more
Jesus can be an embarrassment, not least to disciples. Peter Brown points to an example in his recent The Ransom of the Soul, Jesus’s statement to the rich young ruler to “go and sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.” Brown has found few studies that take up the point, and notes that those who do do their best to neutralize its obvious meaning: “Klaus Koch insisted that, when Jesus spoke... Read more
Jesus can be an embarrassment, not least to disciples. Peter Brown points to an example in his recent The Ransom of the Soul, Jesus’s statement to the rich young ruler to “go and sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.” Brown has found few studies that take up the point, and notes that those who do do their best to neutralize its obvious meaning: “Klaus Koch insisted that, when Jesus spoke... Read more
The genealogies of Chronicles begin with “Adam,” and the ancestors of the Chronicler’s people Israel appear only after a half-chapter of names. Yet the Chronicler, like other Old Testament writers, considers Israel the “firstborn” nation (Exod. 4:23). As Scott Hahn puts it (The Kingdom of God as Liturgical Empire), “The genealogies reflect a familial vision of the human race. The Chronicler’s genealogies, like those of Genesis, reveal Israel’s solidarity with the entire human family. They also reflect Israel’s deep sense... Read more
The genealogies of Chronicles begin with “Adam,” and the ancestors of the Chronicler’s people Israel appear only after a half-chapter of names. Yet the Chronicler, like other Old Testament writers, considers Israel the “firstborn” nation (Exod. 4:23). As Scott Hahn puts it (The Kingdom of God as Liturgical Empire), “The genealogies reflect a familial vision of the human race. The Chronicler’s genealogies, like those of Genesis, reveal Israel’s solidarity with the entire human family. They also reflect Israel’s deep sense... Read more
Robert Pogue Harrison calls the twentieth century “the fitful and prolonged continuation of a process that began in earnest a century earlier: the end of the Neolithic era” (Dominion of the Dead, 31). One might think that we left the Neolithic a long time ago, but Harrison suggests that the breaking point is more recent: “Throughout this era, which got underway with the domestication of animals and discovery of agriculture, the great majority of human beings lived and toiled on... Read more
Yahweh promised Abraham a land and a seed to plant in it. He planted a vineyard and it filled the land. Then He drive them from the land, scattered them out among the Gentiles. “Cast your bread on the water,” Solomon says. “For you will find it after many days.” Solomon learned that from Yahweh, who scattered His seed on the Gentile sea, where they yielded a harvest, thirty-, sixty- and hundred-fold. Call it divine hydroponics, witness to the power... Read more
Whatever happened to post-structuralism? asks Terry Eagleton in the TLS. Born in the latter part of the 1960s in reaction to the structural linguistics of Saussure and the structural anthropology of Levi-Strauss, post-structuralism presented itself as a liberation movement: “Structures were to be unmasked as less stable than they seemed, lacking in solid grounds and arbitrary in their exclusions. There was always that which eluded their authority, from the floating signifier to the feminine body. Works of literature were to... Read more
In his stimulating meditation on The Dominion of the Dead, Robert Pogue Harrison observes, following Fustel de Coulanges, that “the ancient house and in its turn the ancient city, were founded upon such sepulchers” (26). Even empires are so founded. Witness The Aeneid: “After the destruction of Troy, Aeneas was entrusted with the responsibility of transporting the House of Troy from one land to another, so as to save the house itself. More exactly, he was charged with carrying the... Read more
William Johnstone (Chronicles and Exodus) offers an explanation for the nearly verbatim repetition a portion of the genealogy of Benjamin in 1 Chronicles 8:29-38 and 9:35-44. The repeated portion “concerns, on the one hand, the population of Jerusalem, and, on the other, the family of Saul.” Both are Benjamite: Jerusalem is a Benjamite city (cf. Joshua 18:11-28) and Saul a Benjamite king. The two lists—of the inhabitants of Jerusalem and of the family of Saul—fit into the general Benjamite genealogy... Read more
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