Most Beautifullest

Right from the beginning, Dodi regards the Bride as the most beautiful ( yapheh ) among women. She is beautiful like Sarai, Rachel, Abigail, David’s daughter Tamar, David’s son Absalom (!), Esther. Dodi or others praise her beauty over and over in the Song (1:8; 1:15 [2x]; 2:10, 13; 4:1 . . . . Continue Reading »

Like One Covered

The Bride asks Dodi where he pastures the flock and where he finds shade at noon because she doesn’t want to be like those women who veil themselves beside the flocks (Song of Songs 1:7). The reasoning is obscure. Let’s see if we can unravel it a bit. She implies that if she . . . . Continue Reading »

Lions and Leopards

Come to Lebanon, my bride, the Lover says in the Song. Take the journey from the “dens of lions” and the “mountains of leopards” (Song of Songs 4:8). It’s a wild place with wild animals. But it’s also the temple/palace complex. The temple was paneled with cedar . . . . Continue Reading »

How We Look From Africa

American cotton farmers gets billions of dollars in subsidies. This comes from American taxpayers. It is the only way that American farmers, who have the highest production costs in the world, can remain profitable. And it affects the global cotton market in ways that damage lower-cost, smaller . . . . Continue Reading »

Capitalisms

Capitalism, Ryn argues, does not have any “essence” or definition. Capitalism, like democracy, exists “only in particular historical manifestations.” And those historical manifestations are dependent on non-economic factors. Capitalism can be a “neo-Jacobin” . . . . Continue Reading »

Equality of Opportunity

Innocuous as it may seem, Ryn (in the aforementioned book) argues that the policies guided by “equality of opportunity” and “a level playing field,” if taken literally and seriously, would mean the destruction of traditional society: “equality of economic opportunity . . . . Continue Reading »

Neo-Jacobinism

In his 2003 America the Virtuous: The Crisis of Democracy and the Quest for Empire , Claes Ryn warns that a new libido dominandi has taken hold of the American character: “The signs are now everywhere that the will to dominate is breaking free of . . . traditional restraints. This is clear, . . . . Continue Reading »

Hamann and Schleiermacher

In his introduction to Hermeneutics Reader: Texts of the German Tradition from the Enlightenment to the Present , Kurt Mueller-Vollmer gives us a very Hamannian Schleiermacher: “Man, the linguistic being, can be seen as the place where language articulates iself in each speech act and where . . . . Continue Reading »

Caught by horns

The ram caught by its horns in a bush beside the altar of Isaac is a clear type of the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus. Church fathers pushed the analogy, partly based on the use of cornua to describe the extreme edges of the transverse of a cross. Justin combined this typology with the promise . . . . Continue Reading »