Learning Math with Bart

A few weeks back, the Guardian explained the appeal of The Simpsons to highly intelligent people. It’s full of arcane math jokes. Author Simon Singh recalls his favorite moment: “In ‘The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace’ (1998) . . . Homer tries to become an inventor. In one . . . . Continue Reading »

Evil of Being

Fran O’Rourke’s What Happened in and to Moral Philosophy in the Twentieth Century?: Philosophical Essays in Honor of Alasdair MacIntyre is a collection of essays from a 2009 University College Dublin conference assessing and responding to the achievement of Alasdair MacIntyre’s . . . . Continue Reading »

Israel Served Yahweh

Joshua 24:31 seems like a straightforward theme verse for the book of Joshua: “Israel served Yahweh all the days of Joshua.” Many contemporary scholars don’t think so. They point to various incidents in the book as examples of unfaithfulness - the spies’ decision to spare . . . . Continue Reading »

Rehearsal

This from a wonderful interview with Sam Wells , where he is discussing some of the ideas in his Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics . It’s one of the best answers to “Why liturgy?” that I’ve come across. The remainder of this post is quoted from that interview: . . . . Continue Reading »

Imago Dei

The essays collected in Thomas Howard’s Imago Dei: Human Dignity in Ecumenical Perspective represent a spectrum of approaches to the question of human nature and human dignity. All the essays are rewarding. John Behr offers an Orthodox perspective that emphasizes the eschatological realization of . . . . Continue Reading »

Via Regia

The Frankish monk Smaragdus of Saint-Mihiel is reputed to have written the first mirror for princes, the Via Regia in 813. As desceribed by Michael Edward Moore in A Sacred Kingdom: Bishops and the Rise of Frankish Kingship, 300-850 , Smaragdus aimed to reshape institutions “in accordance . . . . Continue Reading »

Gibeah and Ramah

A student, Chris Kou, notes that Hosea 5:8 alludes to the incident with the Levite and his concubine in Judges 19-20. “Blow the horn at Gibeah, the trumpet at Ramah” takes us back to “we will spend the night in Gibeah or Ramah” (Judges 19:13). The men of Gibeah are like the . . . . Continue Reading »

Writing in the dust

In an essay on “The Government of the Tongue,” the late Seamus Heaney drew on the incident of the woman caught in adultery to explain the purpose of poetry: “The drawing of those characters [by Jesus] is like poetry, a break with the usual life but not an absconding from it. . . . . Continue Reading »

Muslim Brotherhood

Even after extensive research, Carrie Rosefsky Wickham hasn’t quite cracked Egypt’s secretive Muslim Brotherhood . But the TLS reviewer gives enough to leave us worried. The Brotherhood’s emphasis on the status and dignity of Muslims alone was a break with Egyptian . . . . Continue Reading »