De-mystifying Mandela

The heroic story of Mandel’s and the ANC’s struggle against apartheid is, Stephen Ellis thinks, mythological. In External Mission: The ANC in Exile, 1960-1990 , he sets out to dispel the myth. Tom Lodge’s TLS review summarizes some of his findings: “ANC leaders were by no . . . . Continue Reading »

McCarthy and American Politics

From David Hawkes’s TLS review of Landon Storrs’s The Second Red Scare and the Unmaking of the New Deal Left , Storrs strikes a rare balance on the contested history of McCarthy and the HUAC. On the one hand, Storrs argues that the targets were often social democrats rather than . . . . Continue Reading »

Vindication Influence Theory

Theories of the atonement are usually categorized as “objectivist” or “subjectivist.” Objective theories claim that the death of Jesus paid for sin and therefore reconciled God and man. Subjective theories claim that the real action of the atonement isn’t in the event . . . . Continue Reading »

Servant or Servant?

Is the Servant of the Lord in Isaiah collective (Israel or a faithful remnant) or individual (a prophet or Messiah)? Commentators have chosen sides, but Hans-Judgen Hermisson (in The Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 in Jewish and Christian Sources , 20) says that it’s a bad question. The point of . . . . Continue Reading »

Violating sancta

Leviticus 5 prescribes a trespass offering for various sins in which a person violates God’s holy things or His holy name. But then there is also a requirement of a trespass offering when someone steals from a fellow Israelite. Many follow Jacob Milgrom in claiming that there is a violation . . . . Continue Reading »

Good appearances?

Plato excludes poets, yet he is a poet. It’s an old problem. Schindler ( Plato’s Critique of Impure Reason: On Goodness and Truth in the Republic , 304ff) argues that it’s a mistake to see it as a contradiction. Rather, there is an ambivalence (two-sidedness) to Plato’s . . . . Continue Reading »

Multiplicity and opposition

Analyzing Plato’s critique of poetry, Schindler ( Plato’s Critique of Impure Reason: On Goodness and Truth in the Republic , 295) notes that the critique in the last book of the Republic is “not in the first place a moral one . . . but primarily ontological.” Schindler . . . . Continue Reading »

Rational Fidelity

Skepticism is, DC Schindler argues, self-refuting ( Plato’s Critique of Impure Reason: On Goodness and Truth in the Republic ). Pointing that out, though, doesn’t convince the skeptic, who is not so much a hater of reason but someone who “has simply grown numb to the claims of . . . . Continue Reading »

Nazirite Purification

In his contribution to Perspectives on Purity and Purification in the Bible , Roy Gane examines the anomaly of the concluding purification rite performed by a Nazirite at the completion of his vow. Why would purification be needed? Some have suggested that the purification ( hatt’at ) . . . . Continue Reading »