Keil and Delitzsch argue that the phrasing of Job 19:25-26 doesn’t directly point to a hope for bodily resurrection. When his flesh is cut off (like a tree; the piel of the same verb is in Isaiah 10:34), he will see God “from ( min ) his flesh.” But, as they also note, “flesh” carries with it connotations of weakness, frailty, mortality, and so Job’s hope is perfectly consistent with the NT insistence that “flesh and blood do not inherit... Read more
PROVERBS 27:1 Like James (4:13-17), Solomon teaches us that we don’t have control over the future. We are creatures, living in sequence from moment to moment. The past leaves its imprint in our memories and in the artifacts that surround us – books and buildings, roads and institutions. But we don’t live in the past, we can’t recover the past, we can’t change what’s done. The future is also with us by anticipation, in our planning, in our hopes and... Read more
In a superb article in a 1963 issue of Past & Present , GEM de Ste. Croix asks why Christians were persecuted. He finds the answer in Christian exclusiveness, their refusal to pay homage to the gods, which endangered the pax deorum on which the empire depended. Both common pagans and emperors set about persecution for religious reasons. Along the way, he gives some brilliant insight into the workings of Roman criminal law, or, more precisely, the absence of such.... Read more
The idea of Odysseus as a hero of mind or thought has an ancient pedigree. The Pythagoreans interpreted Odysseus as a thinking man who passed through the underworld on a path of denial of the flesh and escape from the eternal round of reincarnation. Proclus wrote, “Many are the wanderings and circlings of the soul: one among imaginings, one in opinions and one before these in understanding. But only the life according to nous has stability and this is the... Read more
Proverbs 9:1-5: Wisdom has built her house, she has hewn out her seven pillars; s he has slaughtered her meat, she has mixed her wine, she has also furnished her table. She has sent out her maidens, she cries out from the highest places of the city, “w hoever is simple, let him turn in here!” As for him who lacks understanding, she says to him, “Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. ”... Read more
“With what disgust, contempt, and hatred Christ must look upon every second of our lives, the reviewing of which must be a long torture for us, were such a judgment in our future!” These are the words of a Presbyterian minister, writing in a prominent evangelical magazine. He’s trying to refute the belief that we’ll be judged according to works at the last day. He’s wrong on that point. Paul says clearly and repeatedly that everyone will be judged according... Read more
Bowersock contrasts the stance of Christians and Jews toward the Greco-Roman world: “it was precisely the Christians’ vigorous participation in the civic life and intellectual traditions of the Graeco-Roman world that grounded their martyrdoms in the life of the great cities. The Jews, by contrast, had conspicuously chosen a different path by remaining altogether separate in their conduct of life, except, of course, on those public occasions when the Christian martyrs united them with the polytheists in giving expression to... Read more
GW Bowersock ( Martyrdom and Rome (Wiles Lectures) ) cites an article by Louis Robert to explain Perpetua’s vision at her martyrdom. She saw “a man of enormous height, whose head rises above the very top of the amphitheater itself, and whose clothes show purple garments not only falling from his two shoulders but also spread over his chest. This huge figure has shoes embroidered in gold and silver, and he carries a wand like a judge at an athletic... Read more
Jane Harrison begins her Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (Mythos Books) with a quotation from Ruskin regarding the “genius of the Greeks”: “there is no dread in their hearts; pensiveness, amazement, often deepest grief and desolation, but terror never. Everlasting calm in the presence of all Fate, and joy such as they might win, not indeed from perfect beauty, but from beauty at perfect rest.” Harrison comments sardonically that “the Greek, the favoured child of fortune yet ever... Read more
David Gress’s excellent From Plato to NATO: The Idea of the West and Its Opponents shows that classics programs, the discipline of classics, great books programs, are founded on a highly questionable “grand narrative” of Western civilization. According to this narrative, Western history is a series of magic moments, beginning with Athens, the “magic moment of magic moments,” and that it is a continuous development from that Athenian beginning. Gress finds this unconvincing for several reasons: (more…) Read more
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