Jacob has gotten a bad rap over the centuries, not least because of the way his two wives have fared in the hands of the allegorists. For Philo, beautiful Rachel represents bodily beauty and Leah beauty of soul: “Rachel, who is comeliness of the body, is described as younger than Leah, that is beauty of the soul. For the former is mortal, the latter immortal, and indeed all the things that are precious to the senses are inferior in perfection... Read more
Let’s assume that the Eucharist makes a political difference. And let’s observe that the predominate Christian tradition of the US has been a-Eucharistic. Then we must ask, What political difference has that made? Read more
Talal Asad has argued, uncharacteristically, that “none of the criteria [of] the Islamic tradition” allows anyone to describe suicide bombers as “sacrifices.” Ivan Strenski ( Why Politics Can’t Be Freed From Religion (Blackwell Manifestos) ) demurs. He finds plenty of evidence that there are contemporary Muslims who “represent an ‘Islamic tradition’ that conceives of human bombers as sacrifices.” And, he adds, sacrifice confers authority, and this in two ways. First, suicide sacrifice sacralizes: “Sacrifice is a kind of ritual machine... Read more
Forty years ago, Donovan Courville ( Exodus Problem and Its Ramifications (2 Volume Set) ) concisely summarized the slide of biblical scholarship from treating the Bible as history to treating it as a collection of “traditions” with an ever-diminishing historical core. Chronology was a central issue in this development: “If . . . we had been led to an internally consistent picture of the history of the ancient world aside from the details provided by Scripture, there would be some... Read more
In his 2002 Contesting Sacrifice: Religion, Nationalism, and Social Thought in France , Ivan Strenski examined the setting for French Enlightenment conceptions of sacrifice. He argued “that a lart portion of the Catholic assumptions about the nature of sacrifice were in their turn equally well assumed by a host of French thinkers, ranging all the way from Durkheim, Hubert and Mauss to Alfred Loisy, or later to the likes of Georges Bataille and Michel Leiris, as well as Rene Girard,... Read more
This quotation from Oyekan Owomoyela’s African Literatures: An Introduction , cited in a student paper, got me to wondering: “whatever was the official attitude to African cultures, the missionaries, in the British areas as well as in the French saw in everything African godless heathenism that must be wiped out. Not only did they seek to destroy shrines and belief in traditional religions, they also forbade their converts to participate in such traditional ceremonies as naming, initiation, marriage, and burial.... Read more
INTRODUCTION Early on, Isaiah sang a song of lament for Yahweh’s fruitless vineyard (Isaiah 5:1-7). As the “little apocalypse” ends, Isaiah records Yahweh’s song about His perpetual care for that same vineyard (27:2-6). THE TEXT “In that day the LORD with His severe sword, great and strong, will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan that twisted serpent; and He will slay the reptile that is in the sea. In that day sing to her, ‘A vineyard of red wine! I,... Read more
Isaiah 26:9: With my soul I have desired You in the night, yes, by my spirit within me I will seek You early; for when Your judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,” Jesus said, “for they shall be filled.” What is the righteousness that should be our food and drink? Jesus says that it is a righteousness that surpasses the righteousness of the scribes... Read more
“There’s a sea in front and an army behind,” Israel cries out at the Red Sea. The Lord tells them to go straight ahead, as He cuts a road through the sea. “There are giants in the land,” Israel says. The Lord leads and tells them to watch the fortresses fall. “I can see a cross up ahead,” Jesus says. But Jesus is the Straight One who advances until the cross becomes a bridge to resurrection. The Lord is the... Read more
In his encyclopedic and highly intelligent The Christian West and Its Singers: The First Thousand Years , Christopher Page details how the “soundscape” of Christendom expanded through the establishment of hospitals, many of which were supplied with service books that included notation (a fairly late innovation). He notes, “The statutes of hospitals were sometimes explicit about their musical provision. The clerics serving the Hotel-Dieu in Pontoise from 1265 were to sing Matins a notte and touttes les heures canonniales et... Read more
Leithart
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