George Friderich Handel Anniversary

On the 250th anniversary of the death of George Friderich Handel, Fishamble Street in Dublin (where the Messiah was first performed in a music hall) celebrates. This festival includes a podcast by Prof. Boydell of a walking tour around the streets and places Handel visited. The Duke of Devonshire had invited Handel to Dublin and he stayed six to eight months. In the yard of nearby Christ Church Cathedral was the music shop of the Neale brothers who built the music hall. Here's the announcement of the Messiah performance.

At last, on Thursday, April 8th, 1742, a public rehearsal of The Messiah took place, and the critics agreed that it was "the finest Composition of Musick that ever was heard." So unanimous was the approval of Handel's masterpiece that, on the announcement of the first public performance, the Stewards of the Charitable Musical Society, in view of a crowded attendance, requested the ladies to come "without hoops," and the gentlemen without their swords. The actual first performance of Handel's sublime oratorio took place on Tuesday, April 13th, at 12 noon. Neale's Music Hall was densely packed with a most enthusiastic and discriminating audience, and The Messiah "made its impression once and for ever." Handel himself forwarded to Mr. Jennens the critical observations of "the Bishop of Elphin--a Nobleman very learned in Musick" on the performance, and also a copy of the printed word-book, issued by George Faulkner, of Dublin, "price, a British six-pence."

Celebrations take place also in Halle where Handel was born. On this side of the pond, NPR has a segment. Michael White in the Telegraph demurs. Perhaps we should let Handel have the last word. Here's Ombra mai fu sung by Rolando Villazon.

Church and Community Building Among Caribbean Immigrants in the Bronx

April 23rd

Immigrants from the Anglophone Caribbean have played a major role in Bronx communities. Dr. Natasha Lightfoot explores migration and community building by looking at the history of two Episcopal Churches which attracted Caribbean immigrants.

Fordham University, Bronx Campus, McGinley Student Center, Faculty Lounge

Bronx, New York, NY 10458-5149

Easter with Mark's Gospel

Manya Breachnear at the Chicago Tribune writes about preaching from Mark's account of the empty tomb at Easter. I wouldn't say exactly this about Mark 16:8 but it does get the point across.

The Gospel of Mark reflects a universal state of limbo; like a season finale, it leaves the reader wanting more. The Greek translation of Mark even stops in the middle of a sentence.

"People are staring mid-sentence out into a future they can not see or predict," Brian Hiortdahl, pastor of Resurrection Lutheran Church in Lakeview said. "It's scary to think that God is alive and able to do things so far beyond our prediction and beyond our control.

"The future is wide open. We can participate in it, but we're not in charge, and we are a people who like to be in charge of stuff," he said. "We like to predict. We like to figure out when the economy is going to get better and plan for it. Resurrection just blows all of that away."

Jeff Golliher's book, A Deeper Faith, makes the point that when confronted with the empty tomb, we tend to project all of our expectations and anxieties into that void so as to fill it. The challenge is to recognize the void for what it is and what it is not.

BookMooch

If you don't already know it, Bookmooch.com allows people to swop (exchange) books. BookMooch is a way to get books without paying, and without any intention of returning the book. As of today, the most requested book is A Thousand Splendid Suns and the most offered book is Angels and Demons (followed by The DaVinci Code)!

Sisters of Sinai: Book of the Week

Radio 4 this week is serializing a reading of Janet Soskice's book Sisters of Sinai (March 2009: Chatto & Windus) as Book of the Week in Women's Hour.

Here's a description of the book:
"Sisters of Sinai" tells an extraordinary tale of nineteenth century exploration; how two Scottish sisters made one of the most important ancient manuscript finds of the age. Hidden in a cupboard beneath the monastic library at St Catherine's in the Sinai desert the twins discovered what looked like a palimpsest: one text written over another. It was Agnes who recognized the obscured text for what it was - one of the earliest copies of the Gospels written in ancient Syriac. Once they had overcome the stubborn reluctance of Cambridge scholars to authenticate the find and had lead an expedition of quarrelsome academics back to Sinai to copy it, Agnes and Margaret - in middle years and neither with any university qualifications - embarked on a life of demanding scholarship and bold travel. In this enthralling book, Janet Soskice takes the reader on an astonishing journey from the Ayreshire of the sisters' childhood to the lost treasure trove of the Cairo genizah. We trace the footsteps of the intrepid pair as they voyage to Egypt, Sinai and beyond, Murray's guide book in hand coping with camels, unscrupulous dragomen, and unpredictable welcomes. We enter the excitement and mystery of the Gospel origins at a time when Christianity was under attack in Europe. Crucially this is the story of two remarkable women who, as widows, were undeterred in their spirit of adventure and who overcame insuperable odds to become world class scholars with a place in history.

Apostle's Creed: "Suffered Under Pontius Pilate"

In Greek class today, a student pointed out that the preposition "under" in the phrase "suffered under Pontius Pilate" is a temporal marker using genitive or dative to mean, "in the time of," "at," "when" (Bauer 367a).

Thus, another way of rendering the Apostles Creed would be "[I believe]..in Jesus Christ...born of the virgin Mary; at the time of Pontius Pilate he suffered, was crucified, dead and buried..." Here the connotations of "under" are "at the time of" rather than attributing to Pilate reponsibility for Jesus' suffering and death.

Summer New Testament Greek

Our summer courses are announced and I am teaching: Elementary New Testament Greek (GK10)
An introduction to the language utilizing in-person classroom meetings as well as asynchronous distance learning. 3 credits. Th. & F, May 21 & 22 from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m and other times TBD.

Judas: A Biography by Susan Gubar

Susan Gubar's new book on Judas is reviewed in the NY Times Books Review by Adam Kirsch.

The book is on the character and representation of Judas arguing that the depiction moves from "disgrace to dignity." But is this a forced reading of the evidence? The gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—pay little attention to him, leaving an unclear picture both of the man and of his motives. Only the gospel of Matthew, for example, mentions the 30 pieces of silver and Judas’ suicide. Matthew offers the possibility that Judas repented. In John’s gospel there is no kiss of betrayal, yet we learn that Judas acted as the disciples’ embezzling money manager. In John and Luke, Judas is understood to be possessed by the devil, while Mark and Matthew present a more human figure.

It is because of these “knots” in the Gospel accounts, as Gubar calls them, that Judas’s post-Biblical career could be so various and contradictory. The real subject of “Judas: A Biography” is not the fragments of a life revealed in the New Testament, but the afterlife elaborated by subsequent generations of Christian artists, writers, theologians and propagandists. In keeping with the conceit of her title, Gubar proposes that we read this long history as a biography, in which the figure of Judas ages and changes over time. He is “an enigmatic loner in ancient times who was mercilessly bullied during a fiendish adolescence in premodern societies until he unexpectedly attained a seductive and ethical maturity at moments in the medieval period and with frequency after the Renaissance.”

Therein lies the problem: the scope of the book.
The very wealth of material Gubar has to deal with (she invokes Latin sermons and English poems and German films; paintings and stained-glass windows, even the music of Bach) shows how widely ramifying the Judas story is. To do full justice to it would require a team of scholars — in particular, historians of theology and art.

But perhaps the most striking element of the book is its exploration of sympathy for Judas and willingness to identify with him. No writer quoted in Gubar’s book is more astonishing than Jorge Luis Borges, who suggested in a 1944 story that God “stooped to become man for the redemption of the human race,” one who would sin and “be condemned to damnation,” that God “chose an abject existence: He was Judas.”

(National Geographic)

Herod the Great's port city of Caesarea was an architectural marvel built to honor Rome's first emperor, Caesar Augustus. The walled city included a palace, a 3,500-seat theater, a hippodrome, and a deepwater harbor sheltered by an enormous concrete breakwater, the outline of which can still be seen beneath the water.

Photograph by Bill Curtsinger.

Rehabilitation of Herod the Great has been underway for the last twenty years. Strabo (Geog. 16.42.6) says of Herod, "he was so superior to his predecessors particularly in intercourse with the Romans and in administration of affairs of the state that he received the title of King." Thorough studies of his building program are available including identification of his tomb.

Peter Richardson explains why Herod the Great should interest readers of the Bible. Herod has shaped the cultural landscape (particularly the urban ones) of Judaism in the first century CE. No one in the ancient world built as much as Herod (with the possible exception of Augustus). In his work we can examine material remains, both architecture and literature as complementary. His pragmatic accommodation to the Romans allows us to see how a Hellenistic Jew survived at this time. While he introduced bathhouses to Israel they included stepping stones which meant the pool functioned as a mikveh.

Thoughts on God (New Statesman, April 2)

What God Means to Me--highlights from the New Statesman.

Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks
God, for me, represents the holiness of otherness. Through an encounter with the divine Other I come to value the encounter with the human other. What I ask God to do for me, God asks me to do for others: listen to them, empower them, believe in them, trust them, forgive them when they betray that trust, and love them for what they are, not what I would like them to be. More than we have faith in God, God has faith in us, and because he never loses that faith, we can never lose hope. God is the redemption of solitude.

Marina Mahathir
I grew up thinking of God as the biggest, most powerful, smartest and richest being there is . . . but also most definitely male. It took a long time to realise that God has no gender and that the Quran says that He or She takes men and women into equal consideration.
That realisation has been very liberating for a Muslim woman like me. Patriarchy is a human creation, not God’s.

Letter to the Editor from this week's TLS

Childhood of Jesus

Sir, – The childhood of Jesus and our lack of knowledge about these hidden years has perplexed people down the generations. Readers fascinated by the fourteenth-century Tring Tiles (see the caption on page 3, March 27) will be interested to read many more of the legends surrounding the childhood of Jesus contained in the second-century apocryphal Infancy Gospel of Thomas. Providing fiction dressed up as fact which would put many a modern tabloid to shame, Jesus is portrayed as some kind of precocious and capricious wonder boy, including stories of him as a baby speaking in his cradle and later as a young boy helping Joseph in the carpenter’s workshop and doing a Tommy Cooper routine with a piece of timber cut to the wrong size.

PETER TOWNLEY
The Vicarage, Kirkthorpe, Wakefield.

Oh dear. Probably pseudepigraphical Infancy Gospel since it's attributed to Thomas. The term ‘Pseudepigrapha' means "falsely titled." The term "Old Testament Pseudepigrapha" describes writings falsely attributed to figures mentioned in the Hebrew Bible such as Enoch. The term is used today as a means to classify not describe these writings. Thus we could speak of New Testament Pseudepigrapha and include Thomas material.