Well, summer is slipping away with barely a peep on things that matter from this source. I apologize to you, my longsuffering readers. It’s certainly the case that once one breaks the habit of daily writing that it is difficult to get back to it. Nonetheless, I have many things to write on.
This post will thus attempt to make up for lost time in presenting short reviews of some of the offline reading that I’ve been doing over the last couple of months. Let us dispense with the chit-chat and get down to the brass tacks! I present these roughly in the order I read them.
The Word in the Desert: Scripture and the Quest for Holiness in Early Christian Monasticism. Douglas Burton-Christie. (Oxford University Press, 1993)
I’ve mentioned this book in two previous posts (here and here) to which I refer the reader. The gist of my impression: This is a good book to have as an introduction to reading the Apophthegmata Patrum, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, if one is curious about the level to which Scripture plays a part in the lives and sayings of these early desert monastic Saints. Some, of course (illiterate though such an idea is) find their ways “unbiblical.” Through the course of the book Burton-Christie demonstrates the complete internalization of the Scriptures by the monks, not just through memorization of entire swaths of Scripture, but through true internalization: the process of intellectual and Spiritual digestion, with such food building up the New Man. This book, in conjunction with Derwas Chitty’s classic The Desert a City (now published in paperback by St Vladimir’s Seminary Press) would be indispensible for those needing a quick introduction to the ethos and history of desert monasticism.
Biblical Interpretation in the Russian Orthodox Church: A Historical and Hermeneutical Perspective (Mohr Siebeck, 2008). I’ve also mentioned this book briefly before, here. This is a fascinating book. A peculiarity of Russian scholarship (not to mention historical events) has rendered an account of the development of post-Enlightenment Russian Orthodox Biblical Interpretation impossible to write for those outside of Russia. This difficulty lies in the fact that the vast majority of Russian theological (as well as other) scholarship was conducted in journals, copies of which simply do not exist outside of Russia. This has led to any number of half-baked and even wildly incorrect perspectives (which shall remain unnamed) on the subject when based solely on monographic data. Negrov (a former Orthodox Christian, now the headmaster of a Russian Evangelical school, The St Petersburg Christian University) did the work, and did it well. This is essentially a history of Biblical interpretation in Russian Orthodoxy from the Kievan period to the early Bolshevik period, with some incidental mention of later developments. There is a long excursus (chapter 5, of about 120 pages), presenting as a representative example of the height of development one of the more well-respected of Biblical interpreters in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Russia: Bishop Vasilii Bogdashevskii.
The Old Testament in Byzantium. Editors Paul Magdalino and Robert Nelson (Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2010). In conjunction with the well-known exhibit in the Freer Gallery of Art, “In the Beginning: Bibles Before the Year 1000” (October 2006 to January 2007), the symposium “The Old Testament in Byzantium” was held in early December 2006 in the Meyer Auditorium of the Freer Gallery. Edited versions of the papers presented, with a substantial introduction by the editors, are included herein: Introduction by Paul Magdalino and Robert Nelson; Nicholas de Lange, “The Greek Bible Translations of the Byzantine Jews”; James Miller, “The Prophetologion: The Old Testament of Byzantine Christianity”; Georgi Parpulov, “Psalters and Personal Piety in Byzantium”; John Lowden, “Illustrated Octateuch Manuscripts: A Byzantine Phenomenon”; Elizabeth Jeffreys, “Old Testament ‘History’ and the Byzantine Chronicle”; Claudia Rapp, “Old Testament Models for Emperors in Early Byzantium”; Derek Krueger, “The Old Testament and Monasticism”; Robert Ousterhout, “New Temples and New Solomons: The Rhetoric of Byzantine Architecture”; Ivan Biliarsky, “Old Testament Models and the State in Early Medieval Bulgaria”; Jane Dammen McAuliffe, “Connecting Moses and Muhammad.” Obviously this is a very interesting lineup, and I enjoyed the various papers immensely. Still, I want someone (please God, don’t make it have to be me!) to write a full monograph on the subject of “The Old Testament in Byzantium”, focusing particularly on synchronic and diachronic accounts of hermeneutical trends and tropes through the ages of the Roman Empire and beyond, into contemporary Orthodoxy neo-Patristic interpretation. All of the data exist in the vast wealth of (largely untranslated!) Patristic writing and related theological, historical, and legal documentation. The papers in this volume point the way. I just hope that there’s some intrepid and qualified explorer who will take up the challenge. Let it be soon!
From Ikaria to the Stars: Classical Mythification, Ancient and Modern, Peter Green (University of Texas Press, 2004). I don’t think there’s any Classicist who is more of a delight to read than Peter Green. Urbane, witty, and both broadly and deeply intimate with the literature, primary and secondary, and yet maintaining a pragmatic approach to the sources that eschews egregiously de mode methods, Green is always an educational read. That is to say, one will always benefit from rereading Green, as well. This book presents a collection of his articles ranging over the last thirty years, with some of them substantially reworked so that they are essentially new publications: “‘These Fragments Have I Shored against My Ruins”: Apollonius Rhodius and the Social Revalidation of Myth for a New Age”; “The Flight Plan of Daedalus”; “Works and Days 1-285: Hesiod’s Invisible Audience”; “Athenian History and Historians in the Fifth Century B.C.”; “The Metamorphosis of the Barbarian: Athenian Panhellenism in a Changing World”; “Text and Context in the Matter of Xenophon’s Exile”; “Rebooking the Flute-Girls: A Fresh Look at the Chronological Evidence for the Fall of Athens and the Eight-Month Rule of the Thirty”; “A Variety of Greek Appetites”; “Alexander’s Alexandria”; “The Muses’ Birdcage, Then and Now”; “How Political Was the Stoa?”; “Ancient Ethics, Modern Therapy”; “Getting to Be a Star: The Politics of Catasterism”; “The Innocence of Procris: Ovid AA 3.687-746″; “Magic and the Principle of Apparent Causality in Pliny’s Natural History“; Appendix A: “Tanglewood Tales for the Yuppies”; Appendix B: “Homer for the Kiddies.” Various of these articles in their course become review articles of one book or another the point of which Green is systematically and convincingly demolishing, to one degree or another. In all of them, possibly why the adjective “urbane” comes to mind first as a description of the author, Green maintains a deeply cultured voice, one that is as familiar with the modern world as one could be, and who is as familiar with the ancient world as it is possible to be from this distance. Though I’ve heard from other classicists that Green is considered something of a maverick, I don’t see that the reputation is quite warranted. What he is is a classical classicist: that is, a classicist who is representative of old ways of doing the Classics, when the classicist actually needed to, you know, learn the languages and know the history beyond just well enough to fool the plebes. Green is also able to argue a point with a commonsensical pragmatism that is so foreign to much modern scholarship, besotted with its isms as the latter is. In that sense, I suppose he is a kind of maverick, a sort of rebel in not embracing the latest trends, just because one must embrace them to be considered “contemporary” or “modern”. This has always struck me as ridiculous in anyone doing studies of languages and texts from the ancient world, and it does the same in Green. So that’s surely another reason that I enjoy his writing so: it’s subversive. Tee hee.
Posted inReview1 Comment on Reviews of this summer’s reading
❧ iSick adj. (On the analogy of seasick, carsick, etc.) Describes the slight vertigo one experiences in having to read on an iPhone (or other small-screeened device) by zooming in and panning around a screen of text that doesn’t auto-adjust to fit the screen. Usage: “Ugh. I’m feeling iSick.” ❧ You know what bugs me about my reading habits? I’ve gotten into kind of a rut in which I’m reading good books about great books. The latest example is the Burton-Christie book The Word in the Desert which I mentioned in my previous post, which is a book about the Apophthegmata Patrum, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers. None of what Burton-Christie writes about the Sayings of the Desert Fathers is revolutionary or innovative. It’s simply stuff that’s there in the text and available to the sympathetic and attentive reader. In this sense it reminds me of Derwas Chitty’s masterpiece (much more impressive for the amount of work it evidences, which I don’t think Burton-Christie would quibble with at all) The Desert a City. But, again, these are good books, even excellent books about great books, books and writings which stand in a completely different category. So why am I not more often reading the great books? I see that one reason is that I don’t want to take such a book as the Philokalia into my local pub and perhaps spill something on it. And although I’ve always found the noise of a café or pub to be conducive to reading (those are what I habitually did my studying in, in university), I just don’t feel right bringing the Evergetinos or the sermons of St Gregory Palamas into a bar, to be blunt. (And I used to, and my friends found it interesting, but I seldom would get reading done, anyway.) So, don’t go to the bar, right? Read at home, right? Where I’ve got all this other stuff I should be doing, too (three books in preparation, three handritten pages of a To Do list for the summer, and a laundry pile larger than I am), right? Okay, so out on the street corner under the streetlamp reading? (Another favorite spot!) Some of these books are heavy. My hands can’t hold them up for too long before wearing out. Also, I don’t want to get any of these books, some quite expensive, dirty by spilling coffee/beer on them, or dropping them, or possibly having them swiped from my table (it’s happened), or dropped and banged up by my clutzy tired hands (that’s happened too). But these practical matters are, I think, just excuses I’m making to avoid diving in and paying attention, getting to work, knuckling down spiritually, you might say. Is that so surprising? Don’t we tend to avoid what’s best for us sometimes just when we need it? There’s that at root, partly. This is especially the case with the Bible. I don’t know how many books I’ve read about the Bible, using up time that would have been much, much (millions of times!) better spent in simply reading the Bible itself. Not only do we have a cacophonous pandemonium (let the reader understand!) in the commentaries and journals and just about anything Bible-related, so little of it even remotely edifying or even interesting, we have very little incentive to weed through it all. The ideal of scholarship is to be widely read and to be able to discuss all aspects of an issue from an informed perspective. That sounds noble and correct. Only the Bible is not an academic treatise, a product of Reason. It is the work of the Prophets, a product of Faith. And regarding the books under consideration, this is the dichotomy: the “good books about” are products of reason, whereas the “great books” are products of Faith. These latter, to the discerning, truly belong in a different category. This is not only because they hold a “classic” status in a religious community and are therefore honored by proxy. It is because they are ontologically different. Their words work differently than those same words work when used by others. The reasons are: Inspiration and Revelation. Is it no wonder that those who are best qualified to write about such things typically ending up simply contributing to the body of them rather than the commentary on them? Only the inspired succeed, but then as they are inspired and their own words are a sort of revelation, their works become honored as more than just “a good book about a great book” and become “a great book” on their own. In any case, to subject a work of one realm to the ministrations of the other realm always ends badly. The realms are entirely separate. The Spiritual is not accessible to the Rational, contra Scholasticism and all its legitimate and illegitimate children. The Rational is thoroughly accessible to the Spiritual, yet it is irrelevant to the Spiritual, which is a much more interesting dynamic. The quixotic (or psychotic) thing is that the Rational thrills to examining the results of the Spiritual, all the while denying the validity and authenticity of the latter. I don’t see how anyone is supposed to take that kind of behavior seriously. In any other such pairing, such as Oceanographers and French Literature, that’d be considered irrational behavior, or at the very least extremely rude. But, that’s the world we live in. And where was I going with this? Ah, yes! I have some assigned reading that I need to get to: three small books written by the Abbot George of the Monastery of St Gregorios on Mount Athos. I am going to finish The Word in the Desert tonight (an excellent “book about”), and then start on Abbot George’s little books tomorrow. So there we go! ❧ Love was at the heart of the desert fathers’ world. Whatever diverse motives may have first drawn them to the desert, whatever particular struggles occupied them during their sojourn there, the end of all their longings was ultimately expressed as love. The language, the attitudes, and the actions of the desert fathers were filled with this longing, with the desire to be touched and transformed by love. Nearly every significant act in the Sayings either moved toward or grew out of the commandment of love. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the biblical commandment to love, more than any other, defined and gave shape to the world in which the desert fathers lived. The memories of that world, preserved by later generations of monks, suggest that love was seen as the hallmark of early monastic life. A brother once asked an old man why in these [latter] days the monastic life did not bear the kind of fruit it had born in earlier days. The elder answered him simply and directly: “In those days there was charity.” The desire to remember the days when life in the desert was characterized by love accounts for the many stories preserved in the Sayings which portray the desert fathers’ struggle to love. Douglas Burton-Christie, The Word in the Desert (Oxford, 1993) The Sayings referred to in the remarkable excerpt above are, of course, the Sayings of the Desert Fathers (the alphabetical collection), often referred to by their traditional Latin title, Apophthegmata Patrum. [There is a widely available English translation by Sr Benedicta Ward, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection (Cistercian Press, 1984); I began a translation here, as well, which I will recommence soon.] Burton-Christie provides a thorough introduction to the Sayings through a very sympathetic reading. I’d recommend it for anyone wanting a quick overview of the intructional ethics of the desert fathers. This introduction in the end is larger than the work itself, which is not too surprising, though it has only barely skimmed the depth of the riches of the Sayings. Can you tell I’m impressed? My only quibble is with the subtitle “Scripture and the Quest for Holiness in Early Christian Monasticism”. It smacks of an editorial hand, for one thing. For another, Scripture does not play so primary a role in Burton-Christie’s book on the Sayings. What he does show is how well-internalized Scripture was amongst the desert fathers, to the degree that their lives and instruction were permeated by not only Scriptural phrases and imagery, but by what we might recognize as the underlying ethic of much of Scripture as understood in the first centuries of the Church. The majority of the book therefore focuses on the phenomenon of the “word” given by a desert father in response to a request for such. To anyone who has read the Sayings attentively, none of Burton-Christie’s book will be new. But such a person will (like myself) recognize the value of his book as a sympathetic introduction to the Sayings for a thoughtful and well-read reader who is interested in the Sayings but uninformed concerning the expression of monasticism in Egypt of that day. This will be an excellent introduction in that sense. ❧ Do you want some cheese with that whine? ❧ Professor Jacob Milgrom has passed away. May his memory be for a blessing. It surely is for me. ❧ My chapter in this book is “An Appreciation and Precis of Jacob Neusner’s Theology of the Oral Torah: Revealing the Justice of God“. The original version of the article was a series of blog posts here. As they have been reworked and the copyright transferred, I’ve taken them down. So, if you want to read it, you’ll have to buy the book! [Professor Neusner later told me to put them up again, so I’ve done that. The book chapter does read better, though.] I’m grateful and honored that Professor Neusner included my article in his book, in which the editor and other contributors are such distinguished scholars. It’s quite encouraging! I must be doing something right, at least some of the time…. ❧ Following are the fascinating Nine Rules of Orthodox Biblical Interpretation promulgated in 1786 by Platon, Metropolitan of Moscow, rector of the Moscow Ecclesiastic Academy. Note that the same rules are reflective of the practice of biblical interpretation amongst other groups elsewhere, both before and after the time of Platon. That is, there is nothing peculiarly Eastern Orthodox about the rules themselves. 1.) Open the literal meaning, and where it is dark because of translation or an ambiguity in the language, explain it in such a way that no passage is left which students cannot understand, apart from the very rare texts which are too complex to comprehend. 2.) Interpret spiritual and mysterious meanings, especially in the Old Testament, in those passages where such meanings are transparently concealed. In doing this, one has to be cautious so as not to do this with force. Thus, one ought not to seek out a secret meaning where there is none (or where one is forced, as is noticeable with many interpreters), but where links and the parallel passages follow directly from the words. Interpret spiritual and mysterious readings in agreement with the best interpreters. 3.) For a better understanding of dark passages, find and link the parallel passages, for this will make comprehension easier, since what is said in one place is often said ambiguously and briefly in another place, and despite the similarity between the two texts, the one differs in terms of a more detailed and clearer account. 4.) In interpreting Scripture, do not forget to conclude with the moral teachings flowing from the text. Formulate it with great regard. 5.) In interpreting the books of the Old Testament Prophets, indicate clearly when and in which circumstances their prophecies were fulfilled in the Old Testament and the New Testament. 6.) Where passages of Holy Scripture seem to contradict each other, explain these texts in agreement with published sources that contain general agreement. 7.) Wherever passages are found from which some false conclusions were drawn and which subsequently led to schisms or heresies, one is obliged to clearly indicate the right and true meaning of these passages, and to invalidate the opinions and arguments of heretics and schismatics. 8.) Where passages of Scripture are found to which human wisdom might make objections, such objections must not be hidden. Instead, allow them to be seen in a clear and satisfactory form. 9.) On the part of the teacher, it is critical to consult the Church Fathers, to read scrupulously the best Church teachers and interpretors, to know Church history well, and, above all, to beseech often and diligently the Father of Light to open the eyes toward understanding the wonders in His Law. Adapted from Alexander Negrov, Biblical Interpretation in the Russian Orthodox Church (Mohr Siebeck, 2008), pp 61-62. ❧ …is the root of the western mentality, from top to bottom, it has directed the development of the culture from the beginnings to the present day, when it is now celebrated as freedom. But how free are we if we are ruled by our desires, our passions with all their failures? How true is it that “what seems right” is actually right? Someone without consideration of the other, locked in oneself with one’s own concerns exclusively, is no longer a person. They may be human, but personhood relies upon relationships with others. We are recognized as individuals only when we are more than one, and the differentiation between other persons then becomes not only possible, but celebratory. Unfortunately, this is no longer (if it ever was) a common theme amogst the masses. The western (as it surely is) drive to increase wealth and to impose its own brand of anti-person “freedom” has existed from the beginning of western history, with the mass migrations and barbarian incursions in late antiquity. This was later to explode and become established as the only acceptable method of societal interaction with the Crusades: the capitalism of petty princes trumped the economic stability (not stagnation!) of the humble Nazarene. Today we see the results: a “healthy” economy must always be growing, with God-cursed usury the effective measure of that health. “More for me is good for everybody” is the motto of modernity. It’s sickening. Western culture has managed to turn the wrong way at every turning point in its economic, philosophical, and religious development. That much is clear. There are some pearls in the mud, to be sure, but they are few and far between, from beginning to end. All this is to say that I recommend the following enlightening reading: These two books are volumes 3 and 4 in the series The Church in History, published by St Vladimir’s Seminary Press. They are positively the best histories of the medieval period that I have ever read. These are not ecclesiastical histories stricto sensu. They describe, as the series title indicates, the Church within the flow of history. What is so vastly enlightening and breathtakingly refreshing about them is that they do not, to be frank, toe the party line of Catholicism. Punches are not pulled. The development of a cruel and ugly culture in western Europe is directly related to the development of Catholicism, or rather more particularly, the papacy (for the former would not exist without the latter). This may sound like some kind of trashy and ill-considered conspiracy theory, the wild ravings of some half-crazed wild-eyed Easterner who would also jabber about Freemasons and Jews. On the contrary, the history is excellently written and clearly elaborated from a viewpoint that is, while that of Eastern Orthodox scholars, decidely more objective than any other I’ve yet encountered. And I really don’t mean that to sound like “I’m Eastern Orthodox and I like my histories by Eastern Orthodox.” It’s not like that at all. These histories really are a great deal more objective, avoiding the glorification and focus on the papacy usually found in histories of medievel Europe, and returning focus to the wider Church with the other Patriarchates all covered, and the various heretical and schismatic groups described as they fade in and out of history. I would categorize this history as corrective rather than revisionist. All the information is available in other histories, though scattered widely in various publications of various ages, languages, and availability. Louth and Papadakis have succeeded in producing excellent and eminently readable collations of all these disparate materials. As a reader, do not find yourself to be surprised to have a number of misconceptions of European history overthrown in reading these two relatively short books. They are that powerful, and that corrective. I cannot recommend them highly enough. ❧ Τὸν νυμφῶνά σου βλέπω, I see your Bridal Chamber adorned, O my Saviour, Τὸν νυμφῶνά σου βλέπω, ❧Neologizing on a Friday Afternoon
Reading about instead of reading
The Commandment of Love
Kevin says this perhaps too often
Jacob Milgrom ז″ל
My first publication
Eastern Orthodox Rules of Biblical Interpretation
Solipsism
Andrew Louth, Greek East and Latin West: The Church AD 681-1071
Aristeides Papadakis, The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy: The Church AD 1071-1453I see . . .
Σωτήρ μου κεκοσμημένον,
καὶ ἔνδυμα οὐκ ἔχω,
ἵνα εἰσέλθω ἐν αὐτῷ,
λάμπρυνόν μου τὴν στολὴν τῆς ψυχῆς,
Φωτοδότα, καὶ σῶσόν με.
and I have no wedding garment
that I may enter therein;
make radiant the vesture of my soul,
O Giver of Light,
and save me.
Σωτήρ μου κεκοσμημένον,
καὶ ἔνδυμα οὐκ ἔχω,
ἵνα εἰσέλθω ἐν αὐτῷ,
λάμπρυνόν μου τὴν στολὴν τῆς ψυχῆς,
Φωτοδότα, καὶ σῶσόν με.