“Be my witness” – so says Jesus to Paul. Witness of what? Paul never met Jesus in the flesh, didn’t see the crucifixion, didn’t go to the empty tomb. Jesus came to Him in a flash of light and a voice. Is that it? Kavin Rowe ( World Upside Down: Reading Acts in the Graeco-Roman Age ) hints at an alternative explanation by calling attention to how Stephen’s martyrdom, “witnessed” by Paul, works in the book of Acts: “Whether or... Read more
In response to my critical comments about Hayek a few weeks ago, Jameson Graber writes to clarify Hayek’s views. The rest of this post is from Graber: I noticed recently that you wrote a blog post on free market economics , quoting Hayek’s views on social goals. I appreciate your point, but as someone who has been reading a lot of Hayek lately, I wanted to give Hayek his due. I highly recommend Hayek’s essay, “Individualism: True and False” (from... Read more
Bruce Malina ( On the Genre and Message of Revelation: Star Visions and Sky Journeys ) interestingly places Revelation in the “genre” of astral prophecy. One of the consequences of this classification is to specify the social location of the prophecy. As Malina notes, “The role of ‘prophet’ in the Hellenistic world was a social one performed usually on behalf of a whole society. And given the structure of society, the role of propht was usually a political role exercised... Read more
My colleague Chris Schlect suggested an interesting take on Yahweh’s threat to shave the beard from Judah, using the rented razor of Assyria (Isaiah 7:20). In Assyria, beardless men were eunuchs. Assyria will not only take men from Judah to be slaves, but will castrate them. That makes senses of the strange threat to “shave the feet” in the same verse. From one angle, the verse is a merism, threatening a “head to toe” shave. In Scripture, though, “feet” is... Read more
A lovely carol that I came across in the old Oxford Book of Carols. If I could sing, and if I could sing over my blog, I’d sing this. The melody is haunting. Awake were they only, those shepherds so lonely, On guard in that darkness profound. When colour had faded, when nighttime had shaded their senses from sight and from sound. Lo, then broke a wonder, then drifted asunder, the veils from the splendour of God. When light from... Read more
Seed of the woman, son of Sarah, true Israel, we greet You at Your coming. Branch of David, King greater than Solomon, we greet You at Your coming. Immanuel, Prince of Peace, Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, we greet You at Your coming. Anointed One, Son of God, Son of Man, Word made flesh, we greet You at Your coming. Image of the Father, Radiance of eternal glory, God from God, Light from Light, we greet You at Your coming. Alpha... Read more
Burke and others warned that the British war with the American colonies was unwinnable. “The Ocean remains” was Burke’s argument, and “you cannot pump it dry.” Why fight? In a “Memorandum” written in 1778 and published in 1932, Adam Smith explained that it was a question of p.r., or, in more classical, Thucydidean terms, an honor war. Voluntary withdrawal is the most rational option, but “Tho this termination of the war might be really advantageous, it would not, in the... Read more
In an essay in Stephen Greenblatt’s New World Encounters (Representations Books, 6) , Frank Lestringant examines the work of Huguenot adventurer Jean de Lery, whose Histoire d’un voyage faict en la terre du Bresil (1578) influenced Locke, Bayle, Diderot, and Rousseau and was, in Levi-Strauss’s words, the “breviary of the ethnologist.” Lestringant notes that the “Huguenot corpus on America” worked on two main themes: “a denunciation of the crimes of the Spanish conquest,” dependent on Las Casas, and “a defense... Read more
On the fourth Sunday of Advent, 1511, a Dominican friar, Antonio de Montesinos, preached a sermon to the Spanish colonists in the main church of Santo Domingo. Bartolome de Las Casas was in the congregation that day, and the rest, as the say, is history. Here’s the central portion of that sermon: (more…) Read more
If God is dead, all is permitted, Dostoevsky said. Westerners, particularly Protestant Westerners, instinctively translate that into a statement about authority. If God is dead, there are no rules, no laws to keep us in check. Protestants especially should see the folly of that conclusion. Law doesn’t eliminate evil. It provokes transgression even as it partially restrains evil – Paul, Protestant Paul, taught us that. Dostoevsky was more likely talking about desire. If God is dead, there is no final... Read more
Leithart
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In