Solomon brought in 666 talents of gold each year (1 Kings 10:14). Innocent of the ominous use of that number in Revelation 13 (not to mention The Simpsons ), the original readers might have said, “Way to go, Solomon! He’s filthy rich!” Plus, he’s got 500 gold shields (vv. . . . . Continue Reading »
Mike Bull points to a report on the maverick Bible scholar, Joseph Atwill , who claims that Roman aristocrats invented Jesus to compete with Jewish zealotry and wrote the gospels. One of his crowning pieces of evidence are parallels between Roman campaigns against the Jews and Jesus’ . . . . Continue Reading »
Rosenstock-Huessy knew Barth personally, but Rosenstock wasn’t a Barthian. He anticipated the Romerbrief , only to be disappointed when he read it. For Rosenstock-Huessy, Barth was just another Platonist using Christian symbols. The reaction was visceral: “The more I read Barth, the . . . . Continue Reading »
Rosenstock-Huessy recognizes Anthony, Athanasius, Jerome, and Augustine as pioneers who created new pathways for their followers to track. Anthony was crucial, and if Rosenstock-Huessy is to be believed, we owe much of the world we know to his initiative ( Religion, Redemption and Revolution: The . . . . Continue Reading »
As recounted by Wayne Cristaudo ( Religion, Redemption and Revolution: The New Speech Thinking Revolution of Franz Rozenzweig and Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy ), Rosenstock-Huessy took Emil Brunner to takes for his adoption of the “protestant myth” about a fall of the church in the fourth . . . . Continue Reading »
Dante learns a lesson from Virgil, and that lesson is about motion and poetry. Robert Pogue Harrison writes , that he learns “what it means to write a poem whose narrative not only moves but has movement as its prime directive. After the fall of Troy, Aeneas mobilizes the Trojan refugees and . . . . Continue Reading »
Joanne Lipman tries to explain the connection between musical training and success . Several particulars stand out. Lipman writes, “many high achievers told me music opened up the pathways to creative thinking. And their experiences suggest that music training sharpens other qualities: . . . . Continue Reading »
Dillard ( The Writing Life ) stresses that writing is as material an art as painting, architecture, or sculpture. Which means that you don’t follow the vision; you follow the words. Of course, she says it better: “you are wrong if you think that in the actual writing, or in the actual . . . . Continue Reading »
Annie Dillard ( The Writing Life ) “comforts the anguished” writer with some anecdotes about writers’ pace and habits: “The long poem, John Berryman said, takes between five and ten years. Thomas Mann was a prodigy of production. Working full time, he wrote a page a day. . . . . Continue Reading »
This year is the 1700th anniversary of Edict of Milan, and Constantine is academically hot and politically invisible . What might it mean for our politics if Constantine disappeared into the graduate seminars? . . . . Continue Reading »
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