Chiasm of Defects

Last updated on: April 2, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Trevaskis (Holiness, Ethics, and Ritual in Leviticus) proposes a chiastic outline of Leviticus 21-22: Priestly defects (Lev. 21.16-24) A. [4 defects] blind, lame, disfigured, an ‘overgrown limb’ (????) (v. 18) B. [2 defects] impaired leg, impaired hand (v. 19) C. [6 defects] hunchback, withered member, a discolouration of the eye, a ‘scab,’ ‘scurf,’damaged testicles (v. 20) Animal defects (Lev. 22.17-25) C.’ [6 defects] blind, broken limb, mutilated, seeping sores, a ‘scab,’ a ‘scurf’ (v. 22) B.’ [2 defects] an ‘overgrown limb,’... Read more

Chiasm of Defects

Last updated on: April 2, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

What Happened in Waco?

Last updated on: April 2, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Malcolm Gladwell’s lengthy essayon the Branch Davidians normalizes and humanizes a group that even to American Christians was a strange, unnerving cult. Gladwell presents a damning indictment of the FBI response to the extreme Adventist community that was destroyed near Waco in 1993. Gladwell argues persuasively that the government negotiators never understood, or even tried to understand, the beliefs of the group they were dealing with: “Outside the Mount Carmel complex, the F.B.I. assembled what has been called probably the largest... Read more

Among Children

Last updated on: April 2, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Stephen Walsh’s Musorgsky and His Circletells the story of the moguchaya kuchka the “Might Little Heap” of Russian intellectuals surrounding Musorgsky – César Cui, Alexander Borodin, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and Mily Balakirev. In his TLS review of the book, Paul Griffiths points to the inspiration that the circle drew from children: “Walsh, a professor himself, approves of education, but he knows the value, too, of the self-instruction that allowed Musorgsky and Borodin to compose the works they did. In his several pages... Read more

McCarthy’s Gnosticism

Last updated on: April 2, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

A TLS review of two books of the Cambridge Companion to Cormac McCarthy notes the hints of holiness in his novels: “Often in his work, however, there are residual glimmers of the numinous. McCarthy, who was raised a Roman Catholic, is often read as an unconventional religious writer, or Christian existentialist, even if his is a decidedly negative theology. ‘The Priest’s Tale,’ a mock-scholastic section of The Crossing . . . dedicated to saying what God is not. The Road... Read more

Sympathy for the Devil

Last updated on: April 1, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Brian Mattson of the Center for Cultural Leadership offers a lively, compelling analysis of Darren Aronofsky’s Noah. He shows that the film is consistent and sticks close to its sources. The only problem is that Aronofsky’s sources are Kabbalic and Gnostic. Mattson writes, “The world of Aronofsky’s Noah is a thoroughly Gnostic one: a graded universe of ‘higher’ and ‘lower.’ The ‘spiritual’ is good, and way, way, way ‘up there’ where the ineffable, unspeaking god dwells, and the ‘material’ is bad, and... Read more

Sympathy for the Devil

Last updated on: April 1, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Disturbance

Last updated on: April 1, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

A.A. van Ruler argues that “Israel is the great disturbing factor in the paganism of the world’s nations,” and the church follows Israel’s path (Calvinist Trinitarianism and Theocentric Politics, 152-3). This is partly because Christianity “is wholly and completely oriented to concrete, visible reality,” since it “thinks and lives bodily.” Christianity “stands and falls with the truth that God has placed the body of the church, as the body of Christ, in the world.” The disturbance that the gospel creates... Read more

Presiding at Death

Last updated on: April 1, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In his masterful study of ancient Greek Miasma, Robert Parker notes death was intensely defiling: “Extramural burial was the norm in almost all classical Greek cities. It would be shocking to mingle the dwellings of the dead with those of the living, still more with those of the gods” (70). As sacred persons, Greek priests and priestesses also avoided defilement by death (52-3). The same was true in ancient Israel. Normal priests could attend funerals for their nearest relative, but the... Read more

Adam Israel

Last updated on: April 1, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In a few places, Leviticus uses the Hebrew word adam to refer to “any person.” Why adam? Most commentators suggest that it’s to emphasize sexual inclusiveness. Trevaskis (Holiness, Ethics, and Ritual in Leviticus) thinks there’s more. He points out that the tabernacle is an architectural garden of Eden, and adds that “symbolic significance may attach to the offerer’s description as adam mcam (‘a human from among you,’ v. 2a). The plausibility of this proposal increases when one takes the uniqueness of... Read more