Camille Paglia can be depended upon for thinking for herself. In an essay at Salon.com, she calls for Obama to be freed from the “flacks, fixers and goons — his posse of smirky smart alecks and provincial rubes, who were shrewd enough to beat the slow, pompous Clintons in the mano-a-mano primaries but who seem like dazed lost lambs in the brave new world of federal legislation and global statesmanship.” She also puts in a vigorous defense of Rush Limbaugh’s... Read more
In her book on Constantine’s marriage legislation, Judith Evans Grubbs suggests that Constantine was not trying to “Christianize” law but to give “to the Christian ecclesiastical establishment powers and privileges with which it was able to take over new functions and amass more wealth and influence . . . . Constantine seems to have felt that certain functions could and should be undertaken by the Church – for instance, succor of the poor and weak, for which he provided funds... Read more
David Cooper reviews Yuriko Saito’s recent Everyday Aesthetics in the February 20 issue of the TLS . He suggests that “Saito exposes to main dimensions of the embedded character of everyday aesthetic reactions”: “First, they are highly context-dependent, in a way that responses to ark works – which are normally meant to be experienced as discrete, ‘framed’ objects, relatively isolated from a wider environment – generally are not. The smell that entices when wafting from the oven may disgust when... Read more
I’ve read several devastating reviews of Malcolm Gladwell’s latest in the past few weeks, but Carol Tavris ( TLS , 2/20) takes the prize. She identifies the main problem with Gladwell’s work as the “except when it doesn’t” problem. She writes, “the premiss of Outliers: The story of success is that ‘extraordinary’ success depends on culture, circumstances, demographics and chance, except when it also depends on talent, willingness to break rules, imagination and risk-taking. Success depends on being in the... Read more
David Wootton ( TLS , 2/27) offers a fascinating account of what happened to Keith Thomas who, in his latest book, effaces himself and his contemporaries in a way that places him “at odds with the main trends in historical scholarship over the past forty years.” Wootton analyzes this as a divergence between Oxford and Cambridge historiography, and as a result of developments within anthropology, on which Thomas drew heavily in his early work: (more…) Read more
The blind man in John 9 passes through the waters and gets attached to Jesus, Joshua. His parents are afraid of being kicked out of the old world, the world on the other side of the water of exodus. As several students have pointed out to me, the parents are like the generation that came out of Egypt but fell in the wilderness. They want to stay with the old Moses, rather than clinging to the new; they want to... Read more
Contrary to some trends of modern NT scholarship, Paul and John inhabit the very same world of thought, ask the same questions, address the same problems. One hint of this: John 8 focuses attention, at turgid length, on the question of Jewish origin and identity. The Jews claim to be of God their Father, and therefore sons, the true Israel (cf. Exodus 4:23). Jesus says they are of their father the devil, and they are not the true Israel. The... Read more
Psalm 104: All wait for the Lord, that He may give them their food in due season. What He gives them they gather in; He opens His hand, they are filled with good. Each week we come to church and gather at a table. That might seem odd way to spend time in the presence of God. We can eat at home. We do eat at home, every day. What’s so special about coming to church, if we only get... Read more
Paul insisted that Christians had the right to eat meat that had been prepared in sacrificial rituals to idols. Idols are nothing, all food comes from God, and food that had been sacrificed to nothings should be received with thanksgiving like everything else. Paul also knew that some Christians disagreed. Some believed that eating meat sacrificed to idols was compromise with idolatry. Paul thought they were wrong, but he didn’t simply write off his brothers. Instead, whenever he talks about... Read more
“They pierced my hands and my feet.” The words are the words of David, but we know that the voice is the voice of David’s Son, Jesus. They are the hands of the last Adam. The first Adam stretched out his hand to take the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and Yahweh sent him from the garden so he wouldn’t stretch out his hand to take the fruit of the tree of life. Jesus does not seize the fruit... Read more
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