The Hebrew word for “marred” occurs in only two places in the Old Testament: It describes the Suffering Servant (Isaiah 52:14) and it is used to refer to disfigurements that disqualify a descendant of Aaron from being priest (Leviticus 22:25). The connection doesn’t seem . . . . Continue Reading »
In the NYRB, Edward Mendelson suggests that there is a little zone of Protestant freedom within the controlled Papal structures of Apple: “AppleScript is protestant with a lower-case ‘p,’ as iOS and much of OS X is catholic with a lower-case ‘c.’ Like the Protestantism . . . . Continue Reading »
The “sixth day” section of Isaiah is arranged as a five-point chiasm, organized around the exhortation to Zion to awake from her drunken stupor, her death in the dust, to greet her returning husband, Yahweh: a. Zion’s complaint, 49:1-26 (v. 14) b. Obedient Servant, 50:1-51:11 c. . . . . Continue Reading »
Blake’s comment that Milton was of the devil’s party without knowing it is well-known. Louis Markos shows in his survey of Western poetic views of the afterlife ( Heaven and Hell: Visions of the Afterlife in the Western Poetic Tradition ) that Blake’s view of Milton’s Satan . . . . Continue Reading »
Christopher Ash argues in Married for God: Making Your Marriage the Best it Can be (57-8) that it is a “false choice” to ask whether we serve God or have children: “We serve God by having children.” For most moms, “what they do as parents will prove more significant in . . . . Continue Reading »
In a Poetry magazine review of Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology (Second Edition) , Michael Robbins questions the categories of “avant garde” and “mainstream” with respect to poetry. The Norton volume and those anthologies like it are “predicated upon the . . . . Continue Reading »
I examine Paul’s warnings against greed and discontentment at the Trinity House site today. . . . . Continue Reading »
Apocalyptic theology has had at least a century-long history, explains Joshua Davis in the introduction to Apocalyptic and the Future of Theology: With and Beyond J. Louis Martyn (Cascade, 2012). Since 1914, we have seen “young, brilliant, brash, and no doubt highly ambitious” . . . . Continue Reading »
More from Peter Brown, this from a review of Bowerstock’s Empires in Collision in Late Antiquity : “Bowersock shows, through a combination of archaeological and textual evidence, that the short-lived Sassanian conquest of the Middle East did not leave the former provinces of East Rome . . . . Continue Reading »
Reviewing GW Bowerstock’s The Throne of Adulis: Red Sea Wars on the Eve of Islam at the NYRB , Peter Brown points to the “religious wars” between Christian Rome and Persia that provided the context for the rise of Islam: “Bowersock also shows how the two great empires of the . . . . Continue Reading »
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