The bride’s navel is full of “mixed” or “spiced wine.” Her belly is like a heap of wheat among the lotuses. That is, she is the land of wheat and vineyards, she is the Eucharistic bride who never lacks bread and wine. In loving her, the bridegroom feeds on her. Then we allegorize, and the bride is the church and the lover is Christ and Christ is feeding on the bride’s Eucharistic banquet rather than the opposite. Can we say... Read more
“Your belly is a heap of wheat surrounded by lotuses,” says the lover in Song of Songs 7:3. Shortly (7:7), he will change the image to say that the beloved is a palm tree that he wishes to climb to gather the clusters that are his beloved’s breasts. Much of this imagery is tied to the temple, and particularly to the pillars Jachin and Boaz at the temple entrance. The pillars’ capitals are “lily deign” (or “lotus,” shushan , root... Read more
The Hebrew words for “navel” ( shorer ) and round ( sahar ) are each used only in Song of Songs 7:2a. That is no doubt partly for poetic reasons, since the word faintly alliterate, and both alliterate with the verb “lack” ( chasar ) in 7:2b. Possibly there is another dimension to this. The closest equivalent to sahar (round) is sohar (a prison, a roundhouse, used only in Genesis 39-40). The round “navel” of the beloved imprisons the lover,... Read more
Ralph Smith sent me a copy of John Gross’ Commentary review of James Shapiro’s Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? Shapiro argues that the search for an alternative author to Will Shakespeare arises from the clash between the sublime poetic achievement and the humdrum, even rather distasteful, life. For post-Romantics, an extraordinary poet had to be an extraordinary man: <a href=”http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1416541624?ie=UTF8&tag=leithartcom- 20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1416541624”>Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?</a><img src=”http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=leithartcom-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1416541624” width=”1” height=”1” border=”0” alt=”” style=”border:none !important; margin:0px !important;” /> “It was partly, as Shapiro... Read more
Scott Fairbanks writes to note parallels between the trial of Jesus and the murder of Abel. He says: Two brothers: Barabbas is the son of the father, while Jesus is the son of God. Each is an offering. One offering is willful, while the other is reluctant. Like Abel, Jesus says nothing, vs 12. (more…) Read more
INTRODUCTION Modernity tells us that there is nothing wrong with the human race that a few adjustments can’t fix. The Bible tells us that the world is deeply disordered. At the center of human history is mangled, tortured and crucified body, the body of God. While gospel shows us that things are far worse than we feared, it also encourages us to hope beyond all we can ask or imagine. THE TEXT “Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus... Read more
The exchange of prisoners in Matthew 27 is a Passover scene. One man goes to his death, the other goes free. Both are “sons of the Father,” so we can say that one son goes to death and the other goes free. In the original Passover, of course, Israel’s son is delivered, Egypt’s son dies. In a sense this is what happens in Pilate’s court. Israel’s favorite son, Barabbas, Israel’s firstborn, is delivered from the Egyptian slavery of Roman imprisonment.... Read more
In a 2008 article in the Catholic Biblical Quarterly , Catherine Sider Hamilton appeals to the rabbinic legend of Zechariah’s unappeased blood, and from OT texts about the land polluted by blood, to the conclusion that the “traditional” interpretation connecting the blood of Jesus with the destruction of Jerusalem is to a degree correct: “Matthew, in keeping with the Zechariah legend and the paradigm of bloodguilt and pollution, implies in the people’s cry the devastation of Jerusalem. Blood pollutes the... Read more
Eagleton again, explaining the significance of the biblical idea of creation: “Because there is no necessity about the cosmos, we cannot deduce the laws which govern it from a priori principles, but need instead to look at how it actually works. This is the task of science. There is thus a curious connection between the doctrine of creation out of nothing and the professional life of Richard Dawkins. Without God, Dawkins would be out of a job. It is thus... Read more
Terry Eagleton suggests in his Terry Lectures ( Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate (The Terry Lectures Series) ) that existentialism “was for the most part an ontologically imposing way of saying that one was nineteen, far from home, feeling rather blue, and like a toddler in a play school hadn’t much of a clue as to what was going on. A few decades later this condition persisted among late adolescents, but it was now known as... Read more
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