Walking the Bible

I’m pleasantly surprised to find myself enjoying PBS’s Walking the Bible. Rather than the typical assortment of discordantly talking heads paired with sonorous narrative and anachronistic dramatizations or stock footage, host Bruce Feiler (author of a book also named Walking the Bible and some others) is producing here a new kind of first person biblical travelogue, and it is entirely refreshing. There are gems here: from Turkey’s Mount Ararat, where a tight-lipped Kurdish mountain guide refuses to divulge the secrets of the mountain, to a leisurely row across Egypt’s Lake Timsah in a boat whose fisherman explains that they call a certain fish “the Moses fish” because, when the waters of the sea were split, the fish were split and so on one side they are grey and one side white. Delightful!

Feiler is a fine host, peppering the program with biblical readings and not uninformed scholarly explanations and conjectures, yet still giving the upper hand to the story in its relation to faith. Such an approach is perfectly in keeping with the goals of this blog and its companion email list. So, I recommend to folks that they catch it on their local PBS station, or if you’re outside of the US, purchase the DVD (available here). Either way, it’s informative, fun, and commercial free! And while it appears that there are only three episodes, the overall quality is quite enough to compensate for the lack of quantity.

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The Complete Calvin and Hobbes

For a shot of pure joy, I think there’s nothing better than Calvin and Hobbes. This is a beautifully printed large format set, each of the three volumes being 10.75 x 12 x 1.5 inches, the whole weighing about twenty pounds! It’s worth every ounce. Some customers, as I, have had some problems with the slipcase, but the books themselves are well-constructed. The slipcase has a rather shoddily attached pastedown, which tore loose (!) when I first tipped the books out.

Aside from a somewhat short but quite informative introduction by the reclusive artist, Bill Watterson, the book is otherwise unencumbered by text, which is completely appropriate in the case of Calvin and Hobbes. In addition to all the black and white daily strips and the Sunday color strips, there are also included the special larger format watercolored pieces done for the various book collections Watterson put together throughout the years.

Being of a supremely nostalgic and quite affective nature, I alternately giggle, tear up, or sigh wistfully with nearly every page. There is no other regular comic strip that has ever pleased me in so many ways as this one, with only Charles Schultz coming in a fairly distant second with Peanuts. Unlike so many (most? all?) modern comics, Calvin and Hobbes is not just a collection of visual or verbal gags, or oddities and cruelties, or dated political or social crassitudities, but rather has its roots in a powerful combination of love and imagination, two particularly human gifts from the Divine.

In short, I highly recommend it.

(Clicking on the picture above takes you to the publisher’s site. A little bird told me the collection may be purchased at a nearly 50% savings at Costco.)

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Wiesehöfer’s Ancient Persia

In his Translator’s Preface to Pierre Briant’s From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire (Eisenbrauns, 2002), Peter Daniels writes:

After not too many pages, the reader will discover that this is not a connected narrative history of the Persian Empire. Moreover, the reader is expected to be familiar with the narrative sequence of Achaemenid history, with the career of Alexander the Great, and with the entire Greek and Latin literature from which such histories have hitherto been drawn. The reader might find it useful to first turn to Joseph Wiesehöfer, Ancient Persia (English translation, 1996) 1-101, for an overview that is thematically and conceptually remarkably similar to this work, and to the Chronological Chart therein for the sequence of events, as far as they can be determined. Only then, I think, can this book (whose aim, superbly realized, is to show just how a historian must evaluate and extrapolate from the available sources) be used with profit.

So that sounds like Wiesehöfer’s volume might be rather useful, I thought, something like a modern-day Olmstead’s History of the Persian Empire, with discussion of sources, etc. That’s what seemed to be implied by Daniels. But no. Daniels is right in that the book is thematically quite similar to Briant’s, but it is so similar and so brief that I simply didn’t find it useful. Aside from the sketchy chronological chart, there is no “connected narrative history of the Persian Empire” therein. I’m disappointed by that.

So, if anyone is thinking to purchase Josef Wiesehöfer’s volume Ancient Persia [note “…from 550 BC to 650 AD” is appended to the title only on the title page] (London: I. B. Tauris, 2004) in order to obtain a connected narrative presentation of Achaemenid history, don’t. If you want a brief overview of various disjointedly presented topics on Persian life from 550 BC to 650 AD, without all that fuss about kings and battles and all that “connected narrative of history” tosh, “bibliographical essays” instead of foot/endnotes, and some not very good b&w photographs, this is a book for you.

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Ralph Toledano: The Apocrypha of Limbo

he will whet his sword

In the muted wood,
I walked alone
till screaming angels
moved like a knife
across my eyes.

Lord, in the huts
and in the mud your angels
screamed to the heavens
and the sheltered wood
was quiet no longer.

In the night I waited
torn in my sleep
seeing the sky unfolded,
feeling the earth unhinged:
and then I knew, my Lord,
and then I knew.

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Score!

Sometimes living in Berkeley is just like living in a dream.

This afternooon, in a gorgeously breezy, warm (65-ish), cumulus-strewn and peekingly sunny break between alternately Noachically Delugional and St. John the Divinely Apocalyptic storms (“Each Comes Complete with Your Own Power Outage and Free Bonus Reading by Candlelight!”), I took a walk downhill to one of our many unbelievably great Berkeley bookstores, my favorite, Black Oak Books.

And what to my wondering eyes did appear?
But Labat’s Sixth Edition, at a price not too dear!

Yes, rather than a brand new copy, which I had been planning on buying at near $100, I found a used copy in perfect condition, without a single mark but the bookseller’s price in pencil, positively a steal at $35.

On picking up and seeing the price in the most beauteous copy of said Manuel d’épigraphie akkadienne, in the middle of the oh-so-intellectually quiet store, the beguilingly blended wafting scents of damp wool and of aging books all around, Kevin was heard to exclaim, over the unobtrusive tip-tap of patrons’ umbrellas on the wooden floors, and quite indecorously loudly, “Score!” It will deservedly replace my old spiral-bound photocopy, a gift from my Akkadian professor so long ago, of the second edition.

I also picked up a similarly spotless hardback copy of Ugarit in Retrospect: 50 Years of Ugarit and Ugaritic for a mere $25, also a deal as a new copy is about $10 more.

And two loaves of Provolone-Olive bread from the Cheese Board.

And a nice large double mocha espresso at the French Hotel’s café for the walk homeward.

All in all, it was a beautiful day, the penultimate in a weekend through weekend vacation!

Happy New Year to everyone!

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Rabbat-Ammon in 1847

“The dreariness of its (Ammon’s) present aspect,” says Lord Lindsay, “is quite indescribable,—it looks like the abode of death,—the valley stinks with dead camels, one of which was rolling in the stream; and though we saw none among the ruins, they were absolutely covered in every direction with their dung. That morning’s ride would have convinced a sceptic; How runs the prophecy? ‘I will make Rabbah a stable for camels.'”

The prophecy to which Lord Lindsay referred is Ezekiel 25.5:
I will make Rabbah a pasture for camels
and Ammon a fold for flocks.
Then you shall know that I am the LORD

The excerpt from Alexander William Crawford Lord Lindsay’s Letters on Egypt, Edom, and the Holy Land (London, 1847) is quoted in Rev. Alexander Keith’s Evidence of the Truth of the Christian Religion Derived from the Literal Fulfillment of Prophecy; Particularly as Illustrated by the History of the Jews, and by the Discoveries of Recent Travellers (phew!), 35th edition [!], Edinburgh, 1854, page 174. I also have a copy of the 39th edition, from 1872. The book’s multiple editions made it a mainstay of popular religion throughout the Victorian Age. He also wrote the entirely fascinating The Signs of the Times, as Denoted by the Fulfillment of Historical Predictions, Traced Down from the Babylonish Captivity to the Present Time (Edinburgh, 1834), in which the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation are tied, in the historicist manner, to various events in European history, most notably to Napoleon’s campaigns! The two small volumes are half-calf with marbled covers and marbling on the edges, and include some pullout maps which are fine examples of early nineteenth century mapmaking.

The Rev. Alexander Keith and his son George Skene Keith were also responsible for taking the first ever photographs of the Holy Land in 1844. These photographs, converted into engravings, appear in various editions of the Evidence… book. Rev. Keith (1791-1880) was also one of the many ministers involved in the formation of the Free Church of Scotland.

The primary value to moderns of the Evidence… book is its important picture of the state of the territories of the Holy Land in the years before Jewish settlement in the area and a counteracting/corresponding Ottoman transfer of Muslim populations into those territories. The picture described is one of a beautiful, fertile, productive land which is only sparsely populated by melancholy and oppressed inhabitants. What little settled population lived there was constantly intimidated by bands of marauding bedouin Arabs or the Turkish authorities. Although I would certainly think we can all regret the loss of the unspoiled natural beauty of the region which has since occurred, no one can miss the oppression of people in those days.

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Modern Hebrew Poetry: Y. Amichai

אִם אֶשְׁכָּחֵךְ, יְרוּשָׁלַיִם
יִשָּׁכַח דָּמִי
אֶגַּע בְּמִצְחֵךְ, אֶשְׁכַּח אֶת שֶׁלִּי
יִתְחַלֵּף קוֹלִי
בַּפַּעַם הַשְּׁנִיָּה וְהָאַחֲרוֹנָה
לְקוֹל נוֹרָא םִן הַקּוֹלוֹת
אוֹ לְאֵלֶם

If I forget thee, Jerusalem,
Let my blood be forgotten.
I shall touch your forehead,
Forget my own,
My voice change
For the second and last time
To the most terrible of voices —
Or silence

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Old Testament Dates

I’ve just added a couple of new web pages to my Bombaxo website, which some may find of interest.

First is the page of Old Testament Dates. This includes a scheme of calendar dates for the rulers of Israel and Judah. It also provides modern dates for various dates mentioned in the prophetic and historical texts. See there for more details.

I’ve also added a page of notes regarding the Dates of the Twelve Minor Prophets, as given in the above-mentioned file. The notes explain my particular reasons for the dates given.

Some may say that such dating schemes are nuts.

To those who would say such, I hereby give, in keeping with this season of giving, perhaps a bit too generously, just as much caring about their opinion as can fit between these two lines: =

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The reason for the season!

Now Maccabeus and his followers, the Lord leading them on, recovered the temple and the city; they tore down the altars that had been built in the public square by the foreigners, and also destroyed the sacred precincts. They purified the sanctuary, and made another altar of sacrifice; then, striking fire out of flint, they offered sacrifices, after a lapse of two years, and they offered incense and lighted lamps and set out the bread of the Presence.

When they had done this, they fell prostrate and implored the Lord that they might never again fall into such misfortunes, but that, if they should ever sin, they might be disciplined by him with forbearance and not be handed over to blasphemous and barbarous nations. It happened that on the same day on which the sanctuary had been profaned by the foreigners, the purification of the sanctuary took place, that is, on the twenty-fifth day of the same month, which was Chislev. They celebrated it for eight days with rejoicing, in the manner of the festival of booths, remembering how not long before, during the festival of booths, they had been wandering in the mountains and caves like wild animals. Therefore, carrying ivy-wreathed wands and beautiful branches and also fronds of palm, they offered hymns of thanksgiving to him who had given success to the purifying of his own holy place. They decreed by public edict, ratified by vote, that the whole nation of the Jews should observe these days every year.

(2 Maccabees 10:1-8 NRSV)

חנכה שמח

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