Monday, February 28, 2011

Transtradition Criticism

If you have been following my blog over the years, you know that one of my keen interests is becoming aware of how we read texts and the assumptions we make as biblical scholars. Although I think that postmodern critique has been useful in highlighting problems of authorial intent, monolithic hermeneutics, and the politics of power, we must bear in mind that these problems were known to scholars of modernity already. The difference that I see between the modern and the postmodern discourses is that the postmodern critique has moved the conversations out of historical time into disembodied discourse without attachment to the empirical. This has left us in the Middle of Nowhere. It is suffocating the Humanities more broadly. It is isolating biblical scholars more and more from history, while supporting the growth of contemporary theological readings instead.

It is this move that haunts us now, and requires us, in my opinion, to re-examine our old tools and refashion them, rather than abandon them. We are in a crisis. The moment to act is now. We must return to a more pragmatic approach that takes seriously the empirical. Theory comes and goes, but the manuscripts, stones and bones remain. There are texts and there are authors and there are readers. And we need to deal with them as realities.

I have no desire to create some new grand theory. What I want to do is return to the old tools and identify why they failed. I want to remodel them in such a way that they work in a transmodern academic discourse, a discourse that moves us beyond the postmodern suffocation and the Middle of Nowhere.

I am stepping out here by beginning to talk about refashioning Tradition Criticism. I have finally settled on a name for the updated approach: Transtradition Criticism.

Transtradition Criticism is an approach to texts, artifacts, and other cultural productions, which seeks to expose, explain and understand the production, meaning, use and transmission of t/Traditions within their historical fields of conversation. This approach is interested in investigating the dynamic interstitial spaces and networks between and across t/Traditions, exposing the politics of power and conceptions of the Other that support the structures of the t/Traditions. Transtradition Criticism is grounded in a pragmatic and embodied view of human beings as personal and social agents who actively and constantly (re)shape the t/Traditions to align with their experiences of themselves and their world. They are participants in personal and social conversations that support, create, modify and destroy t/Traditions.

I will post more as the remodeling continues.

Friday, February 25, 2011

Hooray for SBL and AAR

Here is what we have all been waiting for. Thank you to all of you who helped make this happen!

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce that the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature have selected concurrent Annual Meeting sites for the next several years. With anticipated attendance of more than 10,000 members, the gathering requires over 150 concurrent session rooms and 5,000 available hotel rooms. We are delighted to have secured premium meeting space and competitive accommodation rates at several of the most requested destinations for our attendees. We have generated a good deal of savings by booking meetings at the same venue for two separate years in advance. The meeting locations and dates are as follows:


2011 San Francisco, CA November 19-22

2012 Chicago, IL November 17-20

2013 Baltimore, MD November 23-26

2014 San Diego, CA November 22-25

2015 Atlanta, GA November 21-24

2016 San Antonio, TX November 19-22

2017 Boston, MA November 18-21

2018 Denver, CO November 17-20

2019 San Diego, CA November 23-26

2020 Boston, MA November 21-24

2021 San Antonio, TX November 20-23

These meetings will:

Feature a single, jointly managed Exhibit Hall;
Feature a single, jointly managed Employment Center;
Feature distinct and separate AAR and SBL programs planned with open communication between the organizations;
Encourage the organizations’ members to attend each other’s programs and events at no additional cost;
Allow the organizations to pursue their unique, if sometimes overlapping, missions;
Enhance cooperation, not competition, between AAR and SBL;
Encourage participation among other organizations such as AAR’s Related Scholarly Organizations and SBL’s Affiliate Organizations.

We believe that concurrent meetings will serve the interests of our members, will help to advance the many disciplines and areas of study we represent, and will maintain and advance the critical inquiry that characterizes the work of our societies. We invite you to join us in building this exciting new future.

Cordially,

John F. Kutsko Jack Fitzmier

Executive Director Executive Director
Society of Biblical Literature American Academy of Religion

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Mellon Seminar Reflection 13: Embodiment and the Humanities

As we begin to prepare for the visit of Professor Mark Turner, a professor of Cognitive Science from Case Western Reserve, we have discussing the field of cognitive psychology. One book that particularly grabbed my attention this week is Edward Slingerland (PHOTO from his webpage HERE), What Science Offers the Humanities: Integrating Body and Culture (2008).

I can't imagine writing a more courageous book than this, especially as a professor of ancient Chinese religion which is where Slingerland's training is. I was taken by the book for many reasons (and I am still processing it), but what struck me immediately was fact that he sees some of the same problems with postmodern theory that I do, and responds in ways similar to my own responses, responses which I have been recording on this blog, as I go about trying to develop a new sort of historical approach to the study of my texts. What I have come to realize over the course of this year is that I refuse to-throw-the-baby-out-with-the-bath-water. What is happening in my mind and through my pen (yes I still write with a pen) is a major remodeling and rebuilding of Tradition Criticism, in light of its postmodern crucifixion. I am developing an approach I am calling Transtradition Criticism. I will post more about this development later.

To return to Slingerland. He argues that postmodern theory has swept through the Academy, leaving us suspicious of any truth-claim and with "a conviction that the distinguishing mark of sophisticated scholarship is an ability to engage with a prescribed pantheon of theorists" rather than serious study of primary texts. What was fun at first "has left us with an intellectual hangover" (2008, 1), luxuriating in language for language's sake.

I couldn't agree more. In my opinion, we are stranded in a place of nowhere, immobilized by disembodied discourses, authorless and textless, outside of history. With nothing empirical, with no sameness, we are lost in a jumble of difference. We are left to describe what we see as ours, with no power to interpret beyond this. Even these meager descriptions are left in an ethical vacuum to be siphoned off and co-opted to support nefarious purposes.

The Humanities are dying and we are the ones who are responsible to save them.

The big question is HOW? Slingerland offers a solid solution. He says that we need to get our act together and learn from scientists how human beings operate, particularly as embodied cognitive beings. He demonstrates how humanists operate within outdated models of anthropology, and need to come to terms with the fact that science has discovered fundamental things about the human being. That we need to take embodiment seriously or be doomed to spinning tales inside of tales.

In Slingerland's words: "The fact that these body-minds are, have always been, and will always continue to be part of the world of things effectively short-circuits the epistemological skepticism that permeates postmodern thinking. A nondualistic approach to the person promises no privileged access to eternal, objective truths, but is based upon the belief that commonalities of human embodiment in the world can result in a stable body of shared knowledge, verified (at least provisionally) by proofs based on common perceptual access. By breaching the mind-body divide - by bringing the human mind back into contact with a rich and meaningful world of things - this approach to the humanities starts from an embodied mind that is always in touch with the world, as well as a pragmatic mode of truth or verification that takes the body and the physical world seriously" (2008, 8).

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Mellon Seminar webpage

We have finally finished the Mellon Seminar webpage and I invite you to take a look. There is a description of the seminar, the fellows and our projects, our distinguished lecturers, and an event calendar.

Yesterday we had the pleasure of interacting with Professor Gregory Shaw from Stonehill College, an expert on Neoplatonism and theurgy. Theurgy is the ritual use of objects and liturgy to transform the human being into a receptacle for the descent of the gods. Iamblichus (fourth century, Syria) says that this is "old" (Egyptian!) religion as opposed to the "new" religion of the Greeks which worked to rationalize the gods away.

Greg Shaw's book on the subject is called Theurgy and the Soul: The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus (University Park: Pennsylvania State, 1995).

Monday, February 14, 2011

In Memory of Alan F. Segal

It is with great personal sorrow that I write this morning in memory of my dear friend, adopted mentor and intellectual father, Alan F. Segal.

May the flights of angels sing you to your rest, dear friend.


He passed away yesterday afternoon after a long illness. I cannot imagine my world without Alan, as I am sure is true of so many he befriended with his kindness. Alan had that special something about him, a spark that made him a great intellect while also a kind person who embodied genuine charity and friendship.

I met Alan through my work when I was doctoral student at the University of Michigan. He took interest in my studies on early Christian mysticism. Four of us (Alan, Chris Morray-Jones, Jim Davila and myself) launched the early Jewish and Christian Mysticism unit at SBL in 1996 in order to open up a space at our annual meetings for the discussion of mystical traditions within Judaism and Christianity. This unit has been a long-standing strong group ever since.

Alan's work has been nothing less than tremendous. He wrote books that crossed religions, working easily in Paul, Gnostic materials, and Rabbinic texts alike. He was gifted in interdisciplinary work, and knew the Jewish and Christian traditions equally well and treated both with respect. He was always the voice of the cutting edge, never afraid to move against the current or to say what needed to be said.

From early on in his career, his interest was in patterns of ascent of the soul, and he worked his ideas out arguing that patterns of ascent and descent were essentially the same, although opposite directions. Although he relied on Strauss and structuralism to argue for emergent patterns, he was solidly grounded in sociology and was interested in how patterns were modified within different religious environments. It was the modifications that he was after; this is what interested him.

His first book, Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports About Christianity and Gnosticism (Leiden: Brill, 1977), is nothing less than a classic. He noticed that the rabbinic debates about there being two powers in heaven were in play because there is an old tradition in Judaism that anthropomorphizes God, usually by confusing YHWH with his angel. The figure is given various titles like Son of Man or Manlike in the theophany texts like Daniel. Philo knows the figure as "the second god" or the "logos". It is this tradition that lays the foundation for interpretations of Jesus that make him out to be God. It is also the tradition that was used by Gnostics to develop their demiurge. The rabbis become concerned about this tradition and its usage following the Jewish War. Like their biblical fathers, they wanted to yield up an uncompromising monotheism to ensure their fealty to YHWH.

His second book, Rebecca's Children: Judaism and Christianity in the Roman World (Cambridge: Harvard, 1986), is an absolute must-read for anyone studying early Judaism and the formation of Christianity. The book came out of his teaching experiences and seminars where he wrestled with the controversial idea that Christianity wasn't a product of Hellenized Judaism but was Judaism's sibling. In other words, both Judaism and Christianity formed during the same period and were products of the Israelite religion as it manifested during the Second Temple period. He writes, "Like Jacob and Esau, the twin sons of Isaac and Rebecca, the two religions fought in the womb. Throughout their youth they followed very different paths, quarreling frequently about their father's blessing. As was the case with Rebecca's children, the conflict between Judaism and Christianity molded their characters and determined their destinies" (p. 1).

His third book, Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee (New Haven: Yale University, 1990) is the best modern treatment of Paul ever written. Alan showed in this work that Paul was a Jewish mystic, and it was his experience of the post-resurrection Jesus as the manifestation of the Kavod, that turned him into a Christian and a theologian. Alan wrote this book as a Jewish scholar trying to clarify Jewish history from the writings of Paul and understand Paul as a Jew. How do you explain his conversion from this perspective? He was writing against scholars of Jewish studies who "frequently disparage Paul's writings, as if to say 'Nothing serious can be concluded about Judaism from such a person'" (p. xv). Alan felt that this was nonsense. He wrote, "This is a pretext for ignoring writing with disturbing evaluations of Judaism" (p. xv), and "To be used effectively, the NT should be read with allowance for its anti-Pharisaic and sometimes anti-Jewish tone. Almost every page of the NT reveals intolerance of its Jewish milieu that is borne of an intensely aggravated family conflict" (p. xvi).

His last book, Life After Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion (New York: Doubleday, 2004), is unrivaled in its coverage. It contains almost 900 pages of analysis of western religious traditions and their views of the afterlife. True to his sociological bent, he demonstrates how various pictures of the afterlife are tied to the society's view of the human body and politics. The questions he addresses are raised in his first chapter: "What do these notions of the afterlife suggest about the ultimate meaning of life to these people? Why do they change over time? What social and historical issues lie behind these changes? How do the doctrines themselves condition further discussion and conflict within the various communities as they relate to other communities who value the same traditions? Why do we insist that life continues beyond the grave and why do we give credence to those who have experienced it and return to tell us about it?" (p. 23).

Alan once told me as we lamented his long illness, "Everyone must die." It is a painful truth that he was fully and personally aware of. It is within this light that I now read the conclusion to his book on the afterlife and I hear his voice resonating: "Religion's imagining of our hereafter also seems to say the same - our 'immortal longings' are mirrors of what we find of value in our lives. They motivate our moral and artistic lives. Our longing itself deserves a robe and crown, nothing less. If humans can be, in Hamlet's words, 'in apprehension like a god,' do we not deserve his epitaph: 'flights of angels sing us to our rest'?" (p. 731).

Friday, February 11, 2011

Unbelievable news

"Today belongs to the people of Egypt". I salute you! I smile for every cab driver who has taken me around Cairo and told me about his family's plight, and his inability to find a job even with a top college degree. I smile for every woman I saw caring for her family, trying to cook over open fires while tending the donkey that pulled her cart. I smile for every merchant who wanted to sell me goods, trinkets, rugs, scarfs, to help make ends meet. I smile for every young boy who led the camels I rode on, who sailed the feluccas I sat in, who waited my tables and made sure I was not hungry. I smile for you all. Today is your day!

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Book Note: With Letters of Light (Arbel and Orlov, eds.)

There is a wonderful new collection of essays on early Jewish and Christian mysticism available now from De Gruyter. It is a festschrift honoring the career, contributions, and fellowship of Professor Rachel Elior, the John and Golda Cohen Professor of Jewish Philosophy and Jewish Mystical Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Professor Elior has made tremendous contributions to the field, both in Hebrew and English. Her work is among the best in the world on the subject. Some of my favorites are her books The Three Temples: On the Emergence of Jewish Mysticism (2004), The Mystical Origins of Hasidism (2006) and Dybbuks and Jewish Women in Social History, Mysticism, and Folklore (2008).

In her festschrift, With Letters of Light, her students and colleagues have amassed a fascinating collection of essays on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Early Jewish Apocalypticism, Magic and Mysticism. I contributed an essay myself where I try to describe and explain early Christian mysticism in its earliest stages starting with the biblical materials and working into the second century: "Jesus Revealed: The Dynamics of Early Christian Mysticism" (299-324). I wrote this piece because I had enjoyed a conversation with Rachel a few years ago about the mysticism I saw emerging in the New Testament materials and how similar they were to her own discussions of mysticism at Qumran in The Three Temples. She asked me then if I would write something about it, since she didn't work in the Christian materials as much as she did the Jewish. So I took her up on the suggestion.
With Letters of Light: Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Early Jewish Apocalypticism, Magic, and Mysticism in Honor of Rachel Elior (Edited by Daphna Arbel and Andrei Orlov; Ekstasis: Religious Experience from Antiquity to the Middle Ages, 2; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011; ISBN 978-3-11-022201-2; US$ 182.00).

You can view this volume in electronic copy HERE.


Contents of the volume:

Daphna Arbel and Andrei Orlov
Rachel Elior – An Appreciation from her Colleagues and
Students - 1-5

Frances Flannery
The Consideration of Religious Experience in the Work of
Rachel Elior - 6-10

I. Exegesis

Kelley Coblentz Bautch
Peter and the Patriarch: A Confluence of Traditions? - 13-27

Silviu N. Bunta
In Heaven or on Earth: A Misplaced Temple Question about
Ezekiel’s Visions - 28-44

James R. Davila
Scriptural Exegesis in the Treatise of the Vessels, a Legendary
Account of the Hiding of the Temple Treasures - 45-61

Dan Merkur
Cultivating Visions through Exegetical Meditations - 62-91

Sergey Minov
“Serpentine” Eve in Syriac Christian Literature of Late
Antiquity - 92-114

Annette Yoshiko Reed
>From “Pre-Emptive Exegesis” to “Pre-Emptive Speculation”?
Ma‘aseh Bereshit in Genesis Rabbah and Pirqei deRabbi Eliezer - 115-132

Mark Verman
Earthly and Heavenly Jerusalem in Philo and Paul:
A Tale of Two Cities - 133-156

II. Ritual

Crispin Fletcher-Louis
The Book of Watchers and the Cycle of New Year Festivals - 159-168

Yuval Harari
A Different Spirituality or ‘Other’ Agents?: On the Study of
Magic in Rabbinic Literature - 169-195

Rebecca Lesses
“They Revealed Secrets to Their Wives”: The Transmission of
Magical Knowledge in 1 Enoch - 196-222

Jodi Magness
The Impurity of Oil and Spit among the Qumran Sectarians 223-231

Andrei Orlov
“The Likeness of Heaven”: The Kavod of Azazel in the
Apocalypse of Abraham - 232-253

Pieter W. van der Horst
Mystical Motifs in a Greek Synagogal Prayer? - 254-264

III. Transformation

Daphna Arbel
“A Chariot of Light Borne by Four Bright Eagles”:
Eve’s Vision of the Chariot in the Greek Life of Adam and Eve - 267-284

Joseph Dan
“Messianic Movements in the Period of the Crusades” - 285-298

April D. DeConick
Jesus Revealed: The Dynamics of Early Christian Mysticism - 299-324

Celia Deutsch
Aseneth: Ascetical Practice, Vision, and Transformation - 325-348

Naomi Janowitz
“You Are Gods”: Multiple Divine Beings in Late Antique
Jewish Theology - 349-364

Alan F. Segal
Transcribing Experience - 365-382

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Mellon Seminar Reflection 12: Does our reaction to death make us human?

The seminar investigated ancient initiatory religions this week, trying to sort out the goings-on in Eleusis. I haven't thought hard about Eleusis and the Demeter rites for about twenty-five years, so it was pleasant to study that material in a more substantive manner this week.

I was very aware this time through the material of the attractiveness of the rites. I didn't find myself asking why someone would want to be initiated, a question that engaged me as a young person. Why would anyone want to haul a pig down to the sea, wash it and sacrifice it? Why would anyone want to parade for 12 miles from Athens to Eleusis, bringing the sacred objects with them and be mocked along the way? Why would anyone want to drink an unknown substance, eat BBQ, and then watch a drama of the emergence of Kore from the Underworld in a cave at night? Why would anyone want to tramp around in mud, lead by hand in the dark, only to be blinded by light and then shown a grain of wheat in a basket? And to do this twice?!

Other than the fact that this sounds to me now more like a big party and a haunted house escapade than it did twenty-five years ago, I think my age is catching up with me. Because now I see the death aspect even more prominently. If I were part of a culture that taught that Persephone, the Queen of the Underworld, emerges every year in a cave in Eleusis, and that if I went through the rites, I would visit the Underworld and meet Persephone and Demeter so that when I die I would have a wonderful afterlife, I would have been the first person in line. To think that this journey was performed, so that initiates felt that they had actually experienced the journey through Hades and met the gods, well that is attractive beyond measure. I would have felt like I had faced death and conquered the unknowable, so that my life could be lived even more fully.

An experience like that breaks down human culture into a few startling breaths: to be human is to die; to be human is to live in the face of our death.

Is human culture our response to the knowledge of our mortality? Not just religion, but everything we have produced, everything that makes up human culture as Jan Assmann says in his book Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt?

I want to end with three quotes:

"Happy is the one who having seen these rites goes below the hollow earth, for that one knows the end of life and its god-given beginning." Pindar, Fr 137a

"Three-times blessed are those mortals who have seen these rites and thus enter into Hades. For them alone there is life. For the others, all is misery." Sophocles Fr 837

"The Ninetieth Psalm prays, 'Teach us to count our days, that we may gain a wise heart.' 'To count our days' means to hold each day dear, knowing that life is finite. The days derive their value from their end; since we must die, we 'count' our days. Death gives life its value, and wisdom consists in being aware of this value." Jan Assmann, Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt, 8.

This is day 17188 for me.

Friday, January 28, 2011

Mellon Seminar Reflection 11: Rites of Passage

I spent last week reading older materials published in the early 1900s and then in the 1960s about rites of passage (life crisis, induction, and calendrical rites). I found the material exhilarating. I went back to Arnold van Gennep who wrote a book in French in 1908, The Rites of Passage. I found the work to be very complex and thought-provoking which I wasn't expecting. The experience makes me even more determined to study materials written before 1960 (or some might even say 1980). Just because we have learned some things since then, doesn't mean that the older studies have no value or that their methodological approaches are empty.

I also learned that we need to reread these materials because their reception history in secondary literature has misread or devalued the original material in such a way that the secondary discourse no longer is faithful to the old author. For instance, in van Gennep's work, I found very complex and nuanced thinking, far more than contemporary references to him grant him. His biggest 'receiver' was Victor Turner who famously studied the 'limen' or state of marginality that novices-intitiates find themselves in when going through rites of passage. Turner refers again and again to van Gennep in one brilliant essay after another, crediting van Gennep with the idea that rites of passage are characterized by three stages: a stage of separation from normalcy; a stage of liminality or marginality; and a stage of aggregation into normalcy restructured.

Van Gennep does say this, but not quite as directly as we are led to believe. He, in fact, nuances it substantially. First he analyzes these three, not as stages or phases, but as three kinds of rites of passage, thereby subdividing rites of passage into rites of separation, transition, and incorporation. He explains that these types of rites of passage are not developed to the same extent by all people in every ceremonial pattern. Rites of separation are prominent in funeral ceremonies, rites of incorporation in marriages, transition rites in pregnancy, betrothal and initiation. He says, "Although a complete scheme of rites of passage theoretically includes preliminal rites (rites of separation), liminal rites (rites of transition), and postliminal rites (rites of incorporation), in specific instances these three types are not always equally important or equally elaborated" (11).

He also understands that rites of passage may include other forms of rites. Marriage ceremonies might also include fertility rites; birth ceremonies might also include protection and divination rites; etc.

At any rate, these examples serve my point today. Secondary discussions of authors, particularly older authors who wrote before 1960, work to homogenize the author and simplify his or her contribution. Then they can more easily be attacked for what they didn't do (even if they in fact did!). When I read van Gennep, I found his work to be very aware of the problems of classification and the acknowledgment of historical complexity and specificity. We can learn much from him still.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Mellon Seminar Reflection 10: Medussa is Laughing

We opened the seminar this semester with Derrida and Deconstruction. I won't even try to summarize Derrida because it is "impossible" (smile!). What I got out of the readings and our discussion if that Derrida showed us how much we are trapped in language and our constructions of meaning. Deconstruction appears to me to be a mental process or approach that seeks to discover inherent contradictions in all of our cultural productions, which reveals to us that there is no essential meaning to words or other forms of expression. The complete meaning of anything is postponed or delayed; it is in flux and ever-changing. This makes it impossible to fully grasp.

I think that Deconstruction puts us into a liminal space, where either-or makes no sense anymore. Both-and reigns. An example of this for me is some of Derrida's work on ethics. What is ethical to one party in the relationship usually harms the other. If we choose to spend more time with our families (an ethical choice for our families), this means that we don't spend as much time at work (an unethical choice for our workplace).

The big question for us in the seminar (and maybe you have an answer to this and can share it) is to what extent does Deconstruction exploit the contradictions to the sacrifice of the commonalities of language? We do in fact use language to communicate meaning and most of the time our minds meet on the subject and we know what is being expressed. We don't live most of our lives not knowing what is being said. We don't live in language-meaning chaos. Of course there are moments when we are misunderstood or misread. Those of us who are authors certainly have experienced times when our works have been read in ways we never intended. But even given all these contradictions, there still seems to me to be something stable about language and meaning in a given context or community. Something agreed upon that makes language useful to communicate between us.

What really got me excited actually wasn't Derrida, but Helene Cixous who developed an experimental form of writing influenced by Deconstruction. The piece we read is her very famous "The Laugh of Medusa" trans. and published in Signs 1.4 (1976) 875-893. Not only couldn't I put it down, but I sat in shock afterward. Two thoughts were going through my head. First, when I die I want this read aloud at my service. Second, how could a French woman in 1976 express what I have been feeling for years as an American woman in 2011? It is like she was inside my head and my feelings.

I really don't know what else to say, my reaction was so visceral. Her piece is a call to women (yes it is written to women which makes me wonder how different my writing might be if I imagined an all-female audience) to take our bodies back, to reject the phallocentric perspective that has dominated and determined and confiscated us, and to WRITE. Write we must because it is in the act of writing that woman seizes the occasion to speak, it mobilizes her to enter history no longer as the suppressed. It allows her to become "at will the taker and initiator, for her own right, in every symbolic system, in every political process" (880). Women must break out of the silence that has imprisoned us and "shouldn't be conned into accepting a domain which is the margin or the harem" (881). Famously she writes about men who have riveted us between the two horrific myths of Medusa and the abyss: "Too bad for them if they fall apart upon discovering that women aren't men, or that the mother doesn't have one. But isn't this fear convenient for them? Wouldn't the worst be, isn't the worst, in truth, that women aren't castrated, that they have only to stop listening to the Sirens (for the Sirens were men) for history to change its meaning? You only have to look at the Medusa straight on to see her. And she's not deadly. She's beautiful and she's laughing" (885).

Did I mention that I finished my manuscript Sex and the Serpent: Why the Sexual and Gender Conflicts of the Early Church Still Matter?

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Mellon Seminar Distinguished Scholars

One of the biggest highlights of the Mellon Seminar is its inclusion of a number of distinguished scholars who will be visiting Rice and lecturing. The subject of my seminar is Mapping Death: Religious Preparations for the Afterlife Journey. Here is the schedule of special events. The luncheon lectures are by reservation only, so please contact me if you are considering attending. The Year's End Symposium is open to the public and needs no reservation.

Alan F. Segal Professor of Religion and Ingeborg Rennert Professor of Jewish Studies

Barnard College, Columbia University

January 19th, 9-11:30 am, private Seminar

Rituals of Immortality: The Bible and the Rise of Immortality among Jews and Christians

Greg Shaw Professor of Religious Studies

Stone Hill College

Feb. 16th, 9 -11 am, private Seminar

11:30 am -1 pm, RSVP Cohen House Luncheon and Public Lecture

Iamblichean Theurgy: Reflections on the Practice of Later Platonists

Mark Turner Institute Professor and Professor of Cognitive Science

Case Western Reserve University

March 9th, 9-11 am, private Seminar

11:30 am -1 pm, RSVP Cohen House Luncheon and Public Lecture

How to have an afterlife

Dale Martin Woolsey Professor of Religious Studies

Director of Graduate Studies

Yale University

March 23rd 9-11 am, private Seminar

11:30 am -1 pm, RSVP Cohen House Luncheon and Public Lecture

Confusions of Death: On the Lack of Unanimity on Death in Earliest Christianity

Roger Beck Professor Emeritus, Department of History and Classics

University of Toronto

April 13th 9-11 am, private Seminar

11:30 am -1 pm, RSVP Cohen House Luncheon and Public Lecture

Ecstatic Religion in the Roman Cult of Mithras

Year’s End Symposium

April 23, 9 am-5 pm, Kyle Morrow Room, Fondren Library

Jeffrey J. Kripal, Keynote Presenter

April D. DeConick, Mellon Faculty Leader Presenter

Grant Adamson, Matthew J. Dillon, Rebecca Gimbel, Franklin Trammell, Adriana Umana: Graduate Student Presenters

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Book Note: Voices of Gnosticism (Miguel Connor)

The end of the semester has been so busy. The good news is that I finally finished a draft of my book Sex and the Serpent: Why the Sex and Gender Conflicts of the Early Church Still Matter. This was such a relief for me since I have been working on it off and on for two years. I am happy with the result, and look forward to moving it into print with Continuum.

In the midst of all this Miguel Connor's book, Voices of Gnosticism, has been released. It contains a wonderful collection of interviews Miguel conducted over the years for his radio show. It is so much fun to read these interviews side-by-side. Who's inside? Elaine Pagels, Bart Ehrman, Bruce Chilton, Stevan Davies, Birger Pearson, John Turner, Einar Thomassen, Jason BeDuhn, Karen King, Marvin Meyer, Jane Schaberg, and me.

Congratulations Miguel on a remarkable collection of interviews!

You can purchase the book from Amazon for 19.95 HERE.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Book Note: Die Gnosis (Johanna Brankaer)

Johanna Brankaer has recently published a compact book in German that introduces readers to ancient Gnosis. The title: Die Gnosis: Texte und Kommentar (Wiesbaden: Marix, 2010). She wrestles with the questions: Was there a Gnostic religion? What was the role of women in ancient Gnosis? What was the relationship of Gnosis, Christianity, and philosophy?

The book is divided into sections that cover ancient Gnostic mythology, Gnostic thinkers, Sethianism as classic Gnosis, A Gnostic church?, Gnosis as a Christian experiment, Women in Gnostic traditions, and then a small commentary section which covers some of the basic primary literature: Ptolemy's Letter to Flora, Rheginus, Ap John, Hypostasis of Archons, Trimorphic Protennoia, Letter of Petter to Philip, Gos Mary, Exegesis on the Soul, Gos of Thom, Gos Egy, Three Steles, Allogenes (NHC), Apoc Peter, Gos Jud (CT3).

It is not meant to be an exhaustive overview of the field with a thousand footnotes (for which I am thankful!). Rather it is a valuable pocket book, presenting Brankaer's own perspective on the literature and the questions of ancient Gnosis. A fine contribution to the field. As an addendum, it contains her German translation of the Gospel of Judas.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Petition to help the Mandaeans: A letter from Dr. Wisam Breegi

Dear Friends,

We are pressing the United States government to take the Mandaean plight seriously and bare the historic, moral and legal responsibility to save the Mandaeans from total annihilation by scattering them around the world. We are seeking your support to write your local congressman and your organizations to resettle the 5000+ Mandaeans from Syria, Jordan and Iraq in the United States of America.

Please sign and circulate the online petition HERE. For more information, please contact Wisam Breegi (781) 258-5297 or at breegi@gmail.com

Thank you, Dr. Wisam Breegi, Mandaean Association of Massachusetts


For full article about the current plight of the Mandaeans, see the AP release HERE.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Mellon Seminar Reflection 9: Whose reality is real?

This week we took an excursion into the development of American metaphysical religions. I am particularly interested in the ways in which scholars have tried to tell the story of the creation of the modern New Age. If you are interested in this topic, I recommend a couple of books that provide very good historical overviews. The first is The Western Esoteric Traditions by Nicholas Goodricke-Clarke. Not only is the picture on its cover one of my very favorite woodcuts from the Renaissance, but the book carries the reader through all the esoteric streams in an historical journey. The other book, which I found stunningly well-researched and written is by Catherine Albanese (pictured here), A Republic of Mind and Spirit. So I have chosen to share some of the insights I brought away from her work.

What Albanese does methodologically is fascinating. What she appears to me to be doing is creating a sweeping picture of each century by laying out the vast networks of ideas and information and practices happening simultaneously. She suggests that the traditions she is investigating are interacting within each other rather than with each other, so that she comes to understand the modern New Age as expansive and combinative, a religious phenomenon that is an amalgamation of any number of esoteric trajectories, including Hermeticism, Transcendentalism, Spiritualism, Mesmerism, Swedenborgianism, Christian Science, New Thought, Theosophy, Asian religions, Native American religion, and Quantum physics. She characterizes the New Age as a vast cultural sponge that absorbed whatever spiritual moisture was available. So it represents a grand ecumenicity. The New Age represents a fluid form of community available through networks and networking. This results in different levels of affiliation and commitment from fully-engaged service providers and strong followers who show up a workshops and other events to serious part-timers and causal part-timers or nightstand followers who read occasional books, and attend infrequent lectures. Members have often crossovered from traditional religions, seeking experiences considered by them to be more spiritually engaged.

She describes the themes of the New Age, and other metaphysical traditions, as emphasizing the power of the mind, a worldview of correspondence and connection between the spiritual world (the real world) and the physical (a transitory world), a preoccupation with summoning energy from on high to 'save' the human situation, and healing what was humanly amiss. These are the core beliefs and practices.

After reading her book, I am convinced that American metaphysical religion is one of three forces in American religion from the beginning, along with the mainstream traditions and evangelicalism. I am also convinced that the ancient Gnostics I study weren't so different from modern New Agers, with the exception that they did not get good press behind them like the New Age movement did. Remember Shirley MacClaine, her movie and books?

The New Age movement, with the hungry media behind them, was able to make exoteric what had previously been esoteric. And it has had a lasting impact on American culture. Yoga has become mainstream, along with beliefs in reincarnation and discussions of karma. ESP and UFO are abbreviations we all share, whatever our convictions about them might be. Psychics are consulted to assist police investigations, astrology made it into the Whitehouse, alternative medicine is practiced alongside traditional western medicine, all without too much discomfort. Ecology and healthfood is now mainstream. How many of us have yogurt in our lunchboxes?

Friday, October 29, 2010

Mellon Seminar Reflection 8: Whose history?

The seminar examined New Historicism for the past two weeks. Contrary to its title, New Historicism is not a method created by historians writing histories. It emerged from literary criticism among professors of Renaissance literature who were trying to illuminate literature with reference to historical sources and intertextuality investigating what Greenblatt (the originator of the approach and pictured here) calls Cultural Poetics. This approach developed in critic of New Criticism, not old-school German Historicism and Positivism. New Criticism is the common approach to literature with reads it ahistorically, focusing on single texts as enclosed units of narrative and imagery.

New Historicism or Cultural Poetics tries to examine the text in its context, while also asking how the text enforces the cultural practices that it depends on for its own production and dissemination. In this way, these critics draw attention to the processes being employed by contemporary power structures, like the chuch, state, and academy, to disseminate knowledge. They explore a text's historical context and its political implications, and then through a close textual analysis they note the dominant hegemonic position. New Historicism or Cultural Poetics is a politicized form of literary criticism with an eye toward historical contextuality. It is grounded in the critical theory of Foucault, the work of the Cultural Materialists, and anthropology of the variety espoused by Clifford Geertz who advocated writing "thick descriptions" of culture that explains human behavior within particular contexts rather than merely as part of symbolic systems.

After reading deeply into this scholarship, I really feel that New Historicism has a political mission. These critics are all about critiquing capitalism and market relations, and in my mind, retrofitting that critique back onto historical sources. So what they write often appears anachronistic, that is, bringing our contemporary values to play in the past. To their credit, they are aware of this, and so are willing to admit it in their analyses.

To do this, they read all literature and artifacts side-by-side with no distinction, mining what they call the cracks, slippages, fault lines and absences in the traditional historical narratives. While their willingness to eliminate canonical boundaries is to be applauded, I am less thrilled that they do not generally evaluate the differences in the media they examine. Various forms of materials were created with difference purposes and different intent, and what any of it can tell us about anything must be weighed carefully. A letter fragment and a gospel, for instance, are not the same thing. A masterpiece painting and a magical drawing in a recipe book are interesting, but they are not giving us similar information. What either might tell us needs discussion.

While I found much of their work stimulating, I was left a bit puzzled. How "new" is any of this? Historians have been dealing with cultural context, artifacts, and multiple texts for, well, forever. In religious studies, we have been dealing with breaking down canonical boundaries for over fifty years, and we have been discussing power relations and political agendas for at least as long. The differences are that historians are interested in getting at the meanings of the literature they are examining, and we want to investigate the politics of the time of the texts. New Historians are interested in exploring the various discourses that inform the literature they read, and are more motivated by contemporary politics which they think is somehow reflected in these discourses (in ways similar to the ideas of queer theorists or feminist theologians).

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Gospel of Judas Update: Published news about the OHIO fragments

I just received offprints of an article published in the first volume of Mohr Siebeck's new journal Early Christianity (link HERE). The article is a preliminary report written by Herbert Krosney, Marvin Meyer, and Gregor Wurst about the status of the OHIO fragments of the Gospel of Judas. In the first part of the article, Krosney explains the court battle over the OHIO fragments and their photographs which were analyzed by Gregor Wurst who recognized that they contained the balance of the Gospel of Judas, allowing us to read 90-95% of it.

According to Krosney's account, the fragments have made their way to Egypt in April 2010 and are under the care of Dr. Zahi Hawass who did not want the fragments to go to Switzerland for conservation first. The rest of the Tchacos Codex remains in Switzerland in the hands of the Maecenas Foundation who is now in a financial battle with Mrs. Frieda Nussberger.

The rest of the article is a sketch of the contents of the fragments and a preliminary transcription and translation based on photographs of the fragments possessed by Nussberger. There has been no distribution of the photographs to scholars other than Meyer and Wurst as far as I know. There is mention that Wurst and Meyer are consulting with the administration in Egypt in order to discover how to proceed in the critical publication of the fragments.

Monday, October 25, 2010

British Museum Exhibition on Book of the Dead

A rare treat. The British Museum is putting on an exhibition of the Book of the Dead. I want to go! How perfect does this exhibit coincide with my Mellon Seminar: Mapping Death?!

Here is the LINK to the exhibition page which I found via Deirdre Good's blog. The minute video is a teaser. But no REAL information posted. I wonder if their will be a book? I hope so.

Saturday, October 23, 2010

In Memory of John Kevin Coyle

From: Professor Pierluigi Piovanelli
Date: Ottawa, October 22, 2010

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

I am extremely saddened to announce that Professor John Kevin Coyle, of St. Paul University, has suddenly passed away in the night of Wednesday, October 20.

Those who have known Kevin will remember him not only as a great scholar – he had just published in 2009 the volume Manichaeism and Its Legacy, a collection of his articles on Manichaeism in Brill’s prestigious series Nag Hammadi and Manichean Studies – but also and especially as a warm and generous person, a true gentleman. This is a terrible loss for all of us.

I am sure that his soul is presently climbing the column of glory and is not too far from her final destination in the paradise of light, where she will enjoy the company of Augustine and Mani.

May peace be upon him!

Monday, October 18, 2010

Mellon Seminar Reflection 7: Is knowledge a commodity?

Post-modernism and Post-colonialism were the subjects of the theory discussion this week. We characterized Post-modernism as "the collapse of the Grand Narrative" and Post-colonialism as "the writing of the 'Other'". One book that we reviewed was Lyotard (pictured), The Post-Modern Condition (1979) where the term was coined, 'post-modernism', to refer to the incredulity of the meta-narratives constructed by societies (how we can know everything through science; that we make progress in history; that there is absolute freedom; etc.). He points out how inadequate our big stories are, because they do not encompass us all. He is particularly critical of our commonly held narrative that knowledge must be efficient in order to be valuable. Thus if we can't prove that a certain type of knowledge is efficient or useful, it is pushed aside and we feel terror.

We highlighted the discourse of the Humanities in this light. The Humanities, because it does not offer efficient or useful knowledge, has lost its voice in the discourse of knowledge that pervades our society, particularly the scientific discourse. The discourse of knowledge that we are familiar with today is no longer a discussion of "is it true?" but "is it useful?" and "is it saleable?" Knowledge has become a commodity.

I keep thinking about our public education system and how much this discourse of knowledge has negatively impacted it. We now want teachers to give knowledge to the students like it is a commodity or good that can be exchanged, and make the student learn it. We judge whether or not this exchange has occurred by testing students and then tying teachers' jobs and salaries to their students' academic performance. The problem is that all knowledge is not a commodity, nor is all knowledge useable. And learning is not a contractual business exchange. While teachers have a responsibility to teach well, students and families have the responsibility to commit to learning even non-usable or non-applicable knowledge. Students' are responsible actors too. They are participants of power in their education.

Lyotard and other philosophers highlight two main discourses of knowledge: 1. the scientific discourse (efficient knowledge); 2. Narrative (non-efficient) knowledge. Lyotard also acknowledges the "sublime" which is knowledge at the edges of conceptualization, that can not be formulated via faith, imagination, or reason.

The post-modernists suggest that we set aside the metanarratives and focus on the fragmented stories or micro-narratives; that we live with a series of mini-narratives that are contemporary and relative. While truth doesn't disappear, it must be recognized as fragmentary. They call this fragmented truth "difference" so that knowledge becomes "difference". They do not want to understand difference as negative, as in "what it is not" (a cat is a cat because it is not a dog). What they want to say is that we are the ones who assign similitude to things; in reality there are just differences (a cat is a cat and a dog is a dog and they are different).

All of this raises a series of questions for me. While I am delighted to work on fragmented stories of the past, as a historian of 'heretics', I also must construct and operate from a larger narrative that makes sense of that past. I do not see unity as the enemy, nor do I see difference as the saint. We as human creatures are wired for narrative. Our brains work in such a way that we constantly construct unity from our own life's fragments, as we also construct differences. I would characterize humans as "comparativists" who understand unity and difference in relationship to each other. Narratives are necessary, even Grand ones, or life would be chaos for us all. So while the different must be embraced by the historian (and not judged negatively), the discussion of unity is still necessary. Any unity that is constructed must be reasonable and fair, one that accounts for the micro-narratives while also accounting for the practical course of history and the relationships between people and groups.