The prophet Joel famously describes a locust plague. His is the locustest book of the Bible. Locusts spell disaster for ancient agrarian peoples. “The land is like the garden of Eden before them, but a desolate wilderness after them” (Joel 2:3); the brown cloud moves across the ground, blackening every green thing. These locusts are a social as well as a natural disaster; they “rush on the city, they run on the wall, the climb into the houses, they enter... Read more
Is the autonomous self a European invention? Jean and John Comaroff address this question in their Theory from the South, arguing that certain African tribes have sophisticated conceptions of the self that include an element of autonomy and anticipate “postmodern” conceptions of the subject. The world of the Tswana peoples in southern Africa “appears to have been highly individualistic in many respects—and palpably competitive. The trope of the self-possessed subject was captured in the concept of itirela, or self-construction, the... Read more
According to Ferdinand Kittel’s 1894 Kannada-English Dictionary, the word “samskara” means “forming well or thoroughly, making perfect . . . forming in the mind, conception, idea, notion . . . preparation, making ready, preparation of food . . . making sacred, hallowing, consecration . . . making pure, purification, purity . . . a sanctifying or purificatory rite or essential ceremony . . . any rite of ceremony . . . funeral obsequies.” Samskara the novel (1965), written by U.R.... Read more
Karol Berger (A Theory of Art) states the common observation that “autonomy is widely seen today, especially among theorists and historians of a sociological bent, as the single most important feature distinguishing modern from premodern art.” In the ancient and medieval worlds, art was embedded within a wider sphere of social practices and derived its significance from them. It was predominantly heteronomous, since the goods it pursued were not internal to the artistic practices themselves. Instead, art served the goals... Read more
The Reformers did not start out with a plan to establish separated churches. Their goal was to reform the entire Latin church. In this they failed. The paradox is sharp, and we need to feel its point and its edge if we Protestants are to reckon honestly with our history during this year of celebration. The Reformation was genuinely a recovery of the gospel. Scott Hendrix (Recultivating the Vineyard) has argued that the Reformation was an effort to re-evangelize and... Read more
We say Jesus’ resurrection is good news. It wasn’t good news for the disciples on the first Easter. More like perplexing, bewildering news. For others, it wasn’t perplexing, and it certainly wasn’t good. It was plain old bad news. Early in Luke’s gospel, Herod is terrified that Jesus might be John the Baptist raised from the dead. Think of the reaction of the Jewish leaders, or Pilate, on the first Easter, as news of resurrection comes back to them. If... Read more
From the cross, Jesus cries, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!” “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” It’s from Psalm 22, but the Jews say He’s calling for Elijah. Are they so dull they can no longer recognize Scripture? More likely, they mean it in mockery. Our Old Testament ends with a promise of a new Elijah who brings “the great and terrible day of Yahweh” (Malachi 4:5). The Jews pretend that Jesus cries for Judgment Day and new... Read more
Christian often focus on the intense physical suffering Jesus endured on the cross. During crucifixion, a victim’s body was torn with nails and his limbs stretched, as he slowly suffocated. Think of Matthias Grunewald’s angular, contorted Jesus. The gospel writers pay little attention to Jesus’ pain. They understood that Romans reserved crucifixion for slaves and rebels. Crosses displayed Roman power while humiliating anyone bold enough to challenge it. Jesus’ suffering is social and political, not merely physical. Luke’s account of... Read more
Michel de Certeau (The Writing of History, 126-7) quotes Alphonse Dupront on the post-Reformation situation of the church: “a first piece of raw material, as obvious as capital for the modern mind, is the progressive promotion of heresy in confession and of confession in church. . . . Such, in my opinion, is the great modern fact: the notorious heretic has become publicly and officially a minister of the Church, but of another church.” Certeau explains that this renders the... Read more
Guy G. Stroumsa writes in The Making of the Abrahamic Religions in Late Antiquity that “For Weber, as is well known, the most striking ‘disenchantment of the world’ in history occurred with the rise of the ‘inner-worldly’ asceticism (innerweltliche Askese) of the Calvinist Reformation. And yet, it can be argued that also in earlier periods, one can witness religious transformations, even mutations, which may also be described in similar terms. Sadly, Weber did not have the opportunity to work on... Read more
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