Hellenism and Translation

Last updated on: April 23, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Assessing the impact of Hellenism on Egyptian culture, Jan Assmann (The Mind of Egypt) argues that “The Hellenistic project was not a bid to hellenize the east but to find forms of expression in which indigenous traditions could be made transparent and translatable. Hellenism provided local traditions with a common idiom that allowed for a newly sophisticated and flexible mode of self-expression” (424). This was a challenge to Egyptian practice, who worried that “foreigners might act in a blasphemous way... Read more

Hellenism and Translation

Last updated on: April 23, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Competing Exoduses

Last updated on: April 23, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Jan Assmann (The Mind of Egypt) summarizes the account of the exodus provided by late antique Egyptian writers – Manetho, Apion, and Pompeius Trogus, a first-century BC historian. The last of these conflates the exodus with an old Egyptian story of the expulsion of the lepers: “Moses is the son of Joseph. The Egyptians, afflicted by leprosy and other ills, are warned by the oracle to drive them out of Egypt together with other lepers. In his flight, Moses abducts the... Read more

Competing Exoduses

Last updated on: April 23, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Egyptian Modernity

Last updated on: April 23, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In the final chapter of his magisterial The Mind of Egypt, Jan Assmann sketches out the path by which Egypt left its mark on the modern world. Interest in Egypt surged in the Renaissance, as “newly discovered manuscripts were hailed as the rediscovery of Egyptian wisdom” (427), but it was Hebraists who did the most systematic work on Egyptian civilization, partly in an effort to tease out the implications of Acts 7:22’s reference to Moses’ instruction in the wisdom of Egypt.... Read more

From Island to Mountain

Last updated on: April 23, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Revelation is divided into four large sections, marked by the phrase “in the Spirit.” (I picked this up from an ETS presentation by E. Michael Rusten.) Jesus is in the Spirit on the island of Patmos (1:9-10); a trumpet voice calls him to heaven and he ascends in the Spirit (4:1-2); he is taken by the Spirit into the wilderness to see the harlot (17:3); he is set on a mountain by the Spirit to watch the bride descend from... Read more

Sacramental Metaphysicals

Last updated on: April 23, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Some of the most interesting current work being done on early modern English poetry traces connections between the poetry and the religious, especially the liturgical, conflicts of the Reformation and post-Reformation eras. Conflicts over sacraments put the medieval semiotic imagination in question, and fresh conceptions of image and sign shaped fresh poetics. Sophie Reed explores these links in Eucharist and the Poetic Imagination in Early Modern England. The TLS reviewer highlights a couple of specific turns in her argument: “On Donne,... Read more

When Work Is Fun

Last updated on: April 23, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Time was when the wealthy were considered the leisure classes. Nowadays, that’s not so, as the Economist reports: ‘Overall working hours have fallen over the past century. But the rich have begun to work longer hours than the poor. In 1965 men with a college degree, who tend to be richer, had a bit more leisure time than men who had only completed high school. But by 2005 the college-educated had eight hours less of it a week than the... Read more

What’s the Bible For?

Last updated on: April 22, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In the latest issue of the International Journal of Systematic Theology, the redoubtable and hyper-productive Matthew Levering probes Augustine’s arguments (in de Trinitate) for concluding that the Spirit is “love” and “gift.” As Levering points out, the identifications are not straightforwardly asserted anywhere in Scripture, yet Augustine makes a Scriptural case. The description of the Spirit as “gift” is more overtly taught in the New Testament, and Augustine links this with “love” by saying that the gift that God gives... Read more

Prologue and Gospel

Last updated on: April 22, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In his Caused to Believe, William Bonney follows up suggestions from Charles Giblin regarding the structure of John’s prologue and the structural connections between the prologue and the gospel. Giblin finds what he calls an X-Y pattern in the prologue: “The X of this pattern encompasses verses 1–13. The Y is made up of 14–18.24 Of the X section, Giblin notes that John discusses the Word . . . in its relation to ‘third persons.’ That is in relation to ‘God’... Read more