Auckland Biblical Studies – Now Almost as Big a Nerve Centre of Innovative Biblical Studies as Dunedin?
The Dunedin School
There are rapid developments afoot within innovative biblical studies in Aotearoa-New Zealand. Robert J. Myles, of new blog Jesus the Bum, has challenged the hitherto unsurpassed supremacy of Dunedin as the seat of radical biblical scholarship. Says Robert:
“I do feel bound to challenge any claim such as this that might work to silence the “Other” innovative biblical scholarship happening around the country.”
An allegation of hegemonic supremacy, too, it seems. But Robert goes further, suggesting that counter to our ‘About’ page, Roland Boer never described Dunedin as “the great nerve centre of innovative biblical studies in New Zealand”. The obvious, even disturbing, implication is that this was nothing but a Dunedin School fabrication!
“The Dunedin School has claimed on a number of occasions to be “the great nerve centre of innovative biblical studies in New Zealand,” I believe recapitulating a claim made in an earlier post by Roland Boer, perhaps in jest (mysteriously, of course, the original post can no longer be found).”
Moreover, he labelled such a claim “pretentious” – which could only be possibly true if somewhere in the country there existed a genuine contender to our claim.
Yet Dunedin is not taking the challenge from these Northern pretenders lying down! Indeed, taking up the Levitical concern with one’s “lyings down”, we will rise to the challenge, ever more vigilant and critical. Robert has awakened Dunedin from its slumbers. Watch out.
Very-soon-to-be University of Auckland PhD Candidate, Robert J. Myles has commenced a blog called Jesus the Bum.
He’s promised (both on the site and in person) to get posting regularly, so make sure you bookmark it for future reference. Yesterday, at the Bible and Critical Theory Seminar, Robert delivered a fine Queer-critical rereading of Mark’s story in which Jesus fishes (or rather, cruises) for his first disciples (Mark 1:16-20).
Robert J. Myles
And as proof of what Robert said about the inherent instability of language, and our tendency to ignore certain possibilities for meaning, here’s a webpage advertising the Christ the King Sausage Fest.
The Bible & Critical Theory Seminar, now in its thirteenth year, finally made it down to the “the great nerve centre of innovative biblical studies in New Zealand”, Dunedin. The Seminar provided two days worth of critical theorizing and jolly camaraderie, culminating in a potentially dangerous moment when a number of us were exposed to The Bog Irish Bar’s seductively smooth Espresso Martinis.
The Seminar featured a solid core of New Zealanders and Aussies, with a couple of Kiwi expats flying in from overseas (including Stephanie Fisher from Nottingham) and one fellow from Durham, U.K. who is temporarily residing in Dunedin (John Barclay):
Stephanie Fisher
John Barclay
Conversation was lively most of the time, although the normally scintillating Roland Boer (Stalin’s Moustache) sent one particular person to sleep:
Roland Boer and Gerard Majella Ellis
Gerard Majella Ellis
The staff at The Bog provided some very good drinks and food for lunches and dinners, despite their clear suspicion that we were all batshit crazy. James Harding was particularly pleased to find the menu offered congealed blood pudding and liver – always a tasty treat. On Sunday afternoon, John Barclay was astounded to observe Roland Boer, seated at the other side of the table from him, sinking half a dozen beers and still asking coherent questions of the speakers. However, as it transpired, it was alcohol-free beer. The most rapturous applause came during James Harding’s paper, as the Americans gathered in the floor below to watch the Superbowl, suddenly got excited about something. Or perhaps it was just a particularly egregious abherent decoding of some aspect of James’ paper. The papers of course, featured a variety of critical approaches and biblical subjects. Judith McKinlay treated us to her distinguished style of biblical criticism, a genre which is widely known in New Zealand and Australia as “McKinlayic Readings”TM.
Judith McKinlay
Yael Klangwisan provided a revolutionary mimetic approach to the Song of Songs, if not to biblical criticism as a whole, opening up the biblical text for a discursive relationship with the reader:
Yael Klangwisan
Remy Low (of Artisans of a New Humanity fame) made the radical suggestion that the textual gap which makes meaning possible also makes politics possible, drawing on Stuart Hall, Antonio Gramsci, and Michel Foucault to show how the submitting slaves of 1 Peter could offer resistance to text and political situation alike.
Remy Low
This was the second B&CT Seminar I had attended, and once again it provided a stimulating and refreshing mix of experimental approaches to biblical texts. Even better, it was a great opportunity to meet and converse with some new and some more familiar folk. Some interesting discussions were had concerning the future of university humanities departments - and ways to overturn the existing system - and were interspersed by many more light and even rude conversations. The suggestion was made that the Seminar be held in New Zealand every couple of years or so, and that it would perhaps head to Brisbane next year.
Majella Franzmann
While working on a series of lectures about Buddhism, the following sprang up in my head, making my life more difficult: in the various disciplines that are grouped under the rubric of ‘Religious Studies’, why is it widely acceptable to use the term ‘Buddha’ when referring to the figure of Siddhartha Gautama but generally frowned upon to use the term ‘Christ’ when referring to Jesus of Nazareth?
Both are names internal to their respective traditions and both render religious judgements; so why one and not the other?
Admittedly, ‘Christ’ has a stronger religious association attached to it because of the central tenets and doctrines of the Christian tradition, but I have an inkling that this disparity has far more to do with our incessant need to prove that we are not really theologians than with any consistent methodological concerns.
In Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995), the Haitian historian Michel-Rolph Trouillot lists “four crucial moments” at which silences “enter the process of historical production” (26):
1. “the moment of fact creation (the making of sources)”;
2. “the moment of fact assembly (the making of archives)”;
3. “the moment of fact retrieval (the making of narratives)”; and
4. “the moment ofretrospective significance (the making of history in the final instance)”.
Trouillot’s position is in opposition both to those who consider it possible to neatly distinguish real history from our knowledge of history (i.e. “realists”) and those who believe the two are hopelessly bound up together (i.e. “constructivists”). Focusing on what historical production does rather than the “abstract concern for the nature of history”, Trouillot notes:
“what history is changes with time and place or, better said, history reveals itself only through the production of specific narratives. What matters most are the process and conditions of production of such narratives. Only a focus on that process can uncover the ways in which the two sides of historicity intertwine in a particular context. Only through that overlap can we discover the differential exercise of power that makes some narratives possible and silences others.” (25)
So Trouillot’s purpose in listing the crucial moments at which silences enter the making of history starts to become apparent. According to him, we must broaden the scope of our understanding of the way in which history is made, by considering all of history-making’s actors, all of its processes, not just the professional historian or academia. Most importantly, for Truoillot, “participants in any event may enter into the production of a narrative about that event before the historian as such reaches the scene.” We like to tell stories about ourselves. Applying this critical viewpoint to participants in a media-saturated world, it must be acknowledged that an academic study of the media and its participants is already limited by the stories they tell others and also tell themselves. Trouillot provides a concrete example:
“How much do narratives of the end of the cold war fit into a prepackaged history of capitalism in knightly armor? William Lewis [in "Telling America's Story: Narrative Form and the Reagan Presidency," Quarterly Journal of Speech 73 (1987): 280-302] suggests that one of Ronald Reagan’s political strengths was his capacity to inscribe his presidency into a prepackaged narrative about the United States.”
And as a result…
“professional historians alone do not set the narrative framework into which their stories fit. Most often, someone else has already entered the scene and set the cycle of silences.” (26)
A recent New Zealand example can be found in a blog by producer/DJ, Peter Wadams, better known as “P-Money”. If you were trying to build up biographical notes from what he shares on his blog, you might find, for example, that P-Money is close to his family (“we do like to celebrate our Christmas by spending time together, exchanging gifts and eating a lot of food. This year I’m off to the beach to kick it with my sister and the fam and do more of the same”), he has “rallied together” with other New Zealand entertainers to support tsunami relief for Samoa, and he displayed his sensitive side talking about the death of those he had felt close to.
But you won’t read any advice P-Money offered to young teenage boys on scoring girls. You won’t read why P-Money’s suggests that “high school age dudes” should attend his concert, because the crowd is likely to be “overwhelmingly filled with screaming teenage girls”. And you won’t read his advice to these “high school age dudes” to “just tell the girls that you know P-Money and you’re in bro!”
That’s because he deleted those comments.
This is P-Money’s original post from March 3, 2009, which Tumeke! noted on November 27, 2009:
P-Money's original post, including the words, "The crowd was overwhelmingly filled with screaming teenage girls in Auckland tonight (great crowd by the way, cheers). So if you're a high school age dude I HIGHLY recommend you get down to one of these gigs. Just tell the girls that you know P-Money and you're in bro! lol."
And this is how it looks now:
P-Money's expurgated post
Historical accounts cannot merely restrict themselves by paraphrasing the available historical sources, but must also consider the traces of its silences, and why its actors narrated their lives in one way but not another.
First British edition of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four
In his visionary 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the science fiction pioneer George Orwell lays out a vision of a terrifying dystopian future where everything, even thought, ispoliced and monitored by Big Brother, an oppressive and virtually omniscient government. The diegetic world of the novel is dominated by Newspeak, a new propaganda language in which everything has at least two meanings and which uses language to obscure rather that communicate meaning and truth. Living in a world increasingly dominated by meaningless Managmentspeak – ‘going forward’, ‘learning outcomes’, ‘consultation’, etc., etc. – and by an equally meaningless and equally damaging antinomian Therapyspeak – ‘bipolar disorder’, ‘happiness’, ‘ Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder’, ‘life goals’, etc., etc. – it is very difficult to escape the impression that Orwell’s future is closer to the reality that we are facing than most people would like to believe.
A few examples of very real Newspeak from contemporary history: 1) An American president dedicated to continuing the aggressive, imperialistic campaigns against the Middle East launched by his much-hated predecessor is given the world’s highest honour for peace.
2) A new piece of technology that is simply a new way of doing the same old tasks is marketed and received as both a magical and a revolutionary device – the image below is from the official Apple website. The special irony (and equating pure functionality with enchantment is indeed a fine irony) here is that Apple made a famed advertisement that aired in 1984 which claimed that arrival of the personal computer would be the reason that ‘1984 won’t be like Nineteen eighty-Four‘ (the ad is available here). Anyone who says that the world is fully disenchanted world has obviously never really looked at contemporary advertising practices, which enchant the world for the mercenary aim of profit.
I’d be happy to have any other examples of Newspeak from out there if you know of any …
War is Peace
Functionality is Magic, or Consumption is Rebellion
Exciting Bible and Critical Theory Seminar Programme! Are you coming? [FINAL PROGRAMME, PROBABLY]
The Bog
February 7-8, 2010
The Bog, Cnr George and London Streets
Dunedin, New Zealand
February 7, 2010
0930-1015 Roland Boer, University of Newcastle, NSW
The sadness of Friedrich Engels
Focusing on the early letters of Friedrich Engels, this article explores a little known but exceedingly important aspect of his life: his deep and heart-rending struggle as he gradually lost his Reformed (Calvinist) faith. The issues that confront the young Engels concern the Bible, especially its contradictions (with a focus on biblical genealogies), the relation between reason and faith, and the issue of reading the Bible properly. Engels was a self-taught biblical scholar, but a strikingly informed one. He kept up with the rapidly developing historical critical study of the Bible (newly established in Germany at the time), current issues in philosophy and theology, and he was able to read the New Testament in Greek. We find him debating all these issues with his close friends, Friedrich and Wilhelm Graeber, who were to become pastors in the German Evangelical Church. As he does so he continually shifts positions until he reluctantly gives up his faith. Eventually he would come to terms with his Christian background, offering striking analyses of the revolutionary origins of Christianity.
1015-1100 Eric Repphun, University of Otago
The Monstrous Cinematic Christ: Biblical Narrative as ‘Supplement’ or ‘Multiple Opposite’?
This will be a study of Last Temptation of Christ and The Passion of the Christ and the way both use source material (including the Gospel narratives), all in light of the Zizek/Milbank debate in The Monstrosity of Christ.
Break
1130-1215 John Barclay, University of Durham, UK
Paul and Alain Badiou
This paper discusses the reading of Paul offered by the contemporary French philosopher, Alain Badiou. Badiou’s emphasis on event and unconditioned grace is supported by readings from Galatians, such that his philosophical notion of ‘event’, with its militant and universal effects, may claim real consonance with Paul. However, Paul’s strong notions of divine creation from nothing, and of the benevolence of the Christ event, require that God be reinserted into Paul’s theology, while Badiou’s focus on the resurrection, rather than the cross, misses the social radicalism latent in Paul.
Lunch at The Bog
Menu: http://www.thebog.co.nz/dunedin/menu_breakfast.html
1300-1345 Christina Petterson, Macquarie University, NSW
Spirit and Matter in John
German feminist and cultural theorist Christina von Braun’s work on hysteria and logos from 1985 contains a fascinating chapter on writing, patriarchy, spirit and matter, which draws heavily on John’s word made flesh to argue for the ‘logical’ outcome of the abstraction process of Western philosophy. In this paper, I want to present and explore this argument, bringing it into discussion with a recent PhD dissertation in Biblical Exegesis on the stoic pneuma in John in order to look at the negotiation of matter in the gospel narrative.
1345-1430 Majella Franzmann, University of Otago
Personal and Cosmic Spaces of Salvation in James and Gospel of Judas in Codex Tchachos
In this paper, I provide a study of the characters of James and Judas in James and Gos. Judas in Codex Tchacos by investigating some personal and cosmic spaces in which the characters move, which they influence, and which produce certain effects upon them in return. I use critical spatiality as a means of studying the spaces inhabited by James and Judas, the spaces between them and other characters, especially Jesus, and the cosmic spaces that they must enter and/or cross on their journey to insight and perfection to attain the heavenly home they are seeking.
Break
1500-1545 Holly Randell-Moon, University of Newcastle, NSW
Left or Right? Religion and politics in Australia under the Howard and Rudd governments
A number of scholars, such as Ghassan Hage and David Harvey, have argued that conservative nationalisms often emerge as responses to the alienating effects of neoliberal economic policies. In my previous work, I have argued that the former Howard government’s (1996-2007) promotion of “Christian values” in its public policy and rhetoric can be understood as an attempt to reconcile, or compensate for, the individualising effects of neoliberal economic policy. In this paper, I will compare the Rudd government’s use of a social justice view of Christianity and national culture to shift economic policy away from neoliberalism. However, the Rudd government’s differentiation of its own policies as socially based, in contrast to the non-interventionist and individualist policies under Howard, takes at face value neoliberalism’s claim to limited governance and indifference to social relations. There can be no real engagement with the political effects of neoliberal policies if neoliberalism is simply understood as supporting a neutral conception of the individual or economy. For this reason, I question whether the emergence of a progressive Christian nationalism significantly changes the way neoliberal policies are conceptualised and implemented.
1545-1630 Remy Low, University of Sydney, NSW
Submission in the War of Position: Towards a Neo-Gramscian Reading of 1 Peter 2:18-21
There have been endless skirmishes over the New Testament’s injunctions to submission (or ‘to subject’; Gk: hupotasso) in the realm of Biblical studies and ethics. In this paper, I engage in a close reading of one particular usage of the term in 1 Peter 2: 18-21 from the rubric of a neo-Gramscian theory of hegemony. Drawing on the work of Gramsci, Gadamer, Laclau and Unger, I argue that the mobilisation of the term has to be understood as a military metaphor mobilized within a specific spatiotemporal context: i.e. for the purpose of presenting an exterior semblance of ‘normality’ in a hostile situation while actively anticipating total liberation with the apokálypsis of the Kingdom of God. I propose that the exhortation to ‘be subject’, far from being an essentially oppressive and/or conservative ethico-political signifier to be at best avoided, can be re-articulated strategically for the purposes of emancipatory struggle in multiple sociocultural spheres.
Drinks and dinner at The Bog
The Bog has live music from 2000 on Sundays
February 8, 2010
0930-1015 Judith McKinlay, University of Otago
The Daughters of Zelophehad hanging out with Edward Gibbon Wakefield: What am I doing with them?
This paper endeavours to introduce a postcolonial reading of the texts concerning Zelophehad daughters alongside a consideration of the settlement of Post Nicholson by the New Zealand Company, and the issues such a reading raises.
1015-1100
Robert J. Myles, University of Auckland
Dandy discipleship: A queering of Mark’s male disciples
This paper involves a re-reading of a selection of texts from the Gospel of Mark employing the socio-rhetorical method combined with queer and gender criticism as informed by the works of Judith Butler, Marcella Althaus-Reid, and Dale B. Martin. Particular attention is given to the ways in which the gender and sexuality of the male disciples has been constructed in both the world behind the text and the world in front of the text. The paper examines how the masculinity of the disciples is performed by placing the texts in dialogue with dominant discourses from the ancient Mediterranean context. While conventional readings unambiguously presume the normativity of heterosexuality and binary categories of gender, this paper challenges such modern assumptions by purposefully and strategically reading the texts sexually. In the process of applying a provocative queer imagination, underlying components of erotophobia and homophobia within conventional hermeneutical filters are also exposed.
Break
1130-1215 Elaine Wainwright, University of Auckland
From Wilderness to Waterfront: The Play of Time and Space in an Ecological Reading of Matt 3-4
One aspect of the ecological reading process that I am developing is the intertextuality that lies ‘in front of’ the text. This paper will dialogue with emerging theories of time and space/place or Time/Space as May and Thrift call it and how these might inform an ecological reading of selected segments of Matt 3-4.
Lunch at The Bog
1300-1345 Kirsten Dawson, University of Otago
Systemic violence in Job 1-2
Using Žižek’s threefold schema of “subjective”, “systemic” and “symbolic” violence, I will examine the violence apparent in the prologue of the book of Job. While the subjective violence that befalls Job is well-recognised, this paper will investigate the systemic violence in which the prosperous Job is enmeshed, and will suggest some of the implications that these observations might have for interpreting violence in the book as a whole.
1345-1430 Yael Klangwisan, Laidlaw College, Auckland
The Marine Lover & the Song of Songs
In the Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche Luce Irigaray formulates a poetic way of reading and critiquing Nietzsche’s Thus spoke Zarathustra. In the Marine Lover, Irigaray enacts her metaphor of water and its relationship to the feminine while simultaneously creating a Nietzschean persona with which to engage face to face. This aesthetic, homeopathic and poetic form of interrogation enables Irigaray to envelope herself around Nietzsche’s words, washing against and permeating the weaknesses in his claims resulting in a particularly triumphant and brilliantly subtle riposte. Irigaray’s way of reading (in the Marine Lover) provides possibilities for reading the Song of Songs, especially in her use of poetic forms, her treatment of the text as “person” and thus the potential for face to face encounter and lithe dialogue with a biblical text that is notoriously evasive.
Break
1500-1545 James Harding, University of Otago
The David and Jonathan narrative(s) as open text
This paper attempts to move beyond approaches to the David and Jonathan narrative that try to circumscribe the meaning of the text through appeal to word statistics (cf. Zehnder 1998; 2007; critiqued by me at last year’s B&CT seminar) by focusing on the relationship between the constraints of the text, that is the “linear text manifestation,” and the intentions of its readers. Based primarily on Jonathan Culler’s work on the semiotics of reading (Culler 1981) and Umberto Eco’s on the limits of interpretation (Eco 1990), this paper seeks to determine what elements in the text and what interpretive conventions enable the David and Jonathan narrative to produce meaning. My case is that the narrative, which itself is made up of at least two redactional layers, is an “open text” (Eco 1962; 1979) that has been artificially “closed” by the construction of a biblical canon and the imposition of a closed range of interpretive conventions. It is only this move that has made it possible to delimit the work’s meaning by appeal to Lev 18:22; 20:13 (e.g. Gagnon 2001; Zehnder 1998; 2007; etc.) or to the completion of the Old Testament in the new (e.g. Vischer 1946).
Drinks at The Bog
Depart
Also:
Transport and Accommodation details
Venue
Registration: email either James Harding (james.harding(at)stonebow.otago.ac.nz) or Roland Boer (roland.t.boer(at)gmail.com) and let them know that you’re coming.
Moana’s paper was sadly cancelled:
Moana Hall-Smith, St John’s College, Auckland/University of Otago
Divine colonization in the Book of Judges: A Maori woman’s ecological reading of Judges 19
This paper is exploratory. As part of a larger project, I am working towards developing a paradigm[s] for reading the biblical text and in particular Judges 19 ecologically. In this paper I propose to use a Māori woman’s postcolonial lens and a Kaupapa Māori framework to foster a new ecological -feminist reading of Judges 19 as a way of liberating the text from its colonizing and patriarchal orientation. I will draw on the issues of land exploitation, patriarchy, gender inequality and colonial dominance to qualify that a Māori eco-feminism is integral to postcolonial thinking. From this dialogue I will draw on Māori conceptual lenses for reading which might guide an ecological reading of Judges 19. Within the confines of this paper a detailed reading will not be possible but simply the proposing of a Kaupapa Māori framework for more indepth interpretation. I will investigate the pilegesh; as the “other” to men; “other” to the sons of Israel; “other” to the non-human and “other” to the divine through a number of Māori conceptual tools. Firstly, whakapapa which is the systematic and orderly record of human, cosmic and primordial causes and effects. It is based on a genealogical and spiritual relationship to the universe; to the landscape and to stones, rocks and other things seen and unseen, therefore, an association between the female body and the land is invoked and the woman’s decapitated body portrays the ordering of the cosmos; death – death – new life. Secondly, whenua translates both land and womb that are symbolically connected by the birthing cord. Thus the woman’s dismembered body has a strong umbilical attachment to all the lands in Israel. Whenua also provides the interpretive tool that demonstrates the abuse and violation of land was/is intrinsically linked to the abuse and violation of women. Wheiao another conceptual tool, is the liminal space situated between the life and death; the realm of the divine “other”. The battered woman is in this place when she is cut into twelve pieces and sent throughout the territory of Israel. By using Māori conceptual and postcolonial interpretation lenses, I will try to offer a new way of reading the biblical text that challenges those who insist on interpreting through Biblical historical scholarship. This paper’s particular concern will be how attentiveness to the “other” in the text while highlighting the interconnectedness of the land and its community may bring new questions to the interpretation of Judges 19.
The Bible reliably informs us that all of the great empires of antiquity – such as the Assyrian Empire, the Babylonian Empire, and the Persian Empire – only really existed to do God’s bidding. And what God’s bidding typically involved was giving Israel, or Judah, a comprehensive pants-down spanking. As a historical explanation, what such an account lacks in socio-economic realism it certainly makes up for in bold imagination.
But one thing, especially, puzzles me: why would God bother getting Kings Hezekiah and Josiah to destroy all the illicit cult places in the land, given that the Assyrian and Babylonian armies which he was controlling were doing just that, at much the same time?
“[King Hezekiah] removed the high places, broke down the pillars, and cut down the sacred pole … “
” … In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, King Sennacherib of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and captured them.”
(2 Kings 18:4, 13)
“[King Josiah] … commanded [the priests] to bring out of the temple of Yahweh all the vessels made for Baal, for Asherah, and for all the host of heaven; he burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron, and carried their ashes to Bethel. He deposed the idolatrous priests whom the kings of Judah had ordained to make offerings in the high places at the cities of Judah and around Jerusalem; those also who made offerings to Baal, to the sun, the moon, the constellations, and all the host of the heavens … He brought all the priests out of the towns of Judah, and defiled the high places where the priests had made offerings, from Geba to Beer-sheba; he broke down the high places of the gates that were at the entrance of the gate of Joshua the governor of the city, which were on the left at the gate of the city … The king defiled the high places that were east of Jerusalem … He broke the pillars in pieces, cut down the sacred poles, and covered the sites with human bones. Moreover, the altar at Bethel … he pulled down that altar along with the high place. … Moreover, Josiah removed all the shrines of the high places that were in the towns of Samaria … He slaughtered on the altars all the priests of the high places who were there … “
” … [But 3 years after Josiah's death and 2 kings later] … Yahweh sent against him bands of the Chaldeans, bands of the Arameans, bands of the Moabites, and bands of the Ammonites; he sent them against Judah to destroy it, according to the word of Yahweh that he spoke by his servants the prophets. Surely this came upon Judah at the command of Yahweh… “
(2 Kings 23:4-20; 24:2-3)
A puzzling divine redundancy? A coincidence that might provoke a more economic and mundane explanation? Well… so it might justifiably appear to our admittedly finite minds.
Jack Kelley - author of “Children’s Stories of the Bible, The Adult Version”
I love the way that religions carefully compile the most rigorous rationales for the most ridiculous notions.
The special Jewish halakhic ruling which allows emergency operation of Haredi-friendly cellphones with one’s teeth is a great example. And the recent scientifically rigorous rabbinic investigation of whether the kosher elevator is “working” on the Sabbath or not is another very rational response to the rather odd idea that God gets really quite angry if people work on the Sabbath.
But the following piece of post-Rapture advice, from Christian writer and online “Bible Teacher”, Jack Kelley, is just priceless:
Q. I’ve read your response to a previous writer who expressed fear about his/her pets once the Rapture happens. I understand that we have no need to fear about missing our pets and/or whether pets will be with us in heaven because the Lord wants only our happiness when we come to be with Him, and am comforted by that. However, my real fear pertains to what will happen to our pets once we are gone?
I don’t have any relatives or friends near by and I live alone. I’m assuming after the Rapture, it will be each man for himself for those unbelievers left behind, so I don’t have much faith that those left behind would be kind enough to look for pets in abandoned houses. I envision that after the Rapture, my pets (who are strictly housebound) will just be left to starve to death.
Do you have any words of wisdom or thoughts about this for me?
A. Have you ever considered what a witnessing opportunity this could be? If you have friends who are not believers, have you considered asking them to take care of your pets in the event of your sudden disappearance, even if they don’t live nearby? It’s sure to start a discussion about why you think you might be disappearing.
If they don’t become believers after seeing your sincerity about the Rapture, they almost certainly will after you’re gone, and will adopt your pets. If they become believers before the Rapture, then pick someone else and repeat the process.
Hat-tip: Erica
Wittgenstein & Hitler - According to the adventurous theory of Kimberley Cornish, a member of the Babs Thiering Down Under School of Hermetic Historiography
“You cannot prescribe to a symbol what it may be used to express. All that a symbol can express, it may express.”
- Ludwig Wittgenstein, in his Notebooks 1914-1916, numbered 130-131
Here is the conference programme for the upcoming Towards a Unified Science of Religion Conference, 12-14 February 2010, University of Otago.
Click to open pdf: USR-Programme
The registrations were to be in by 20 January, but they also said that the conference programme would be out by the end of December, so just email jonathan [at] psy.otago.ac.nz to register in the next cuppla days or so, if you want to attend. Full price $250; unwaged $100.
As a special offer, there’s daily pass at $80 for academics, $40 for students. Email jonathan [at] psy.otago.ac.nz in the next couple of days or so, to register.
Registration form here.
The Philosophy Department is physically located on Union Street East near the intersection with Clyde Street, and their P.O. Box is P.O. Box 56, Dunedin.
The evangelical Word Biblical Commentary series was once renowned as a bulwark in the defence of the divine revelation of (Protestant) Scripture against the slings and arrows of its modern critics.
But all this has now changed.
The Nashville-based commentary series (previously of Wacko, Texas) has released a commentary on a hitherto unknown apocryphal pseudo-Pauline epistle: The Epistle to the Phililppians*! What is the world coming to?
Word Biblical Commentary: Phililppians
* Note: the name “Phililppians” only occurs on the front of the book’s jacket. Inside the book, they try to pass it off as a commentary on Philippians. A sheep in wolf’s clothing, to be sure.
The Dunedin School
Eric Repphun
Deane Galbraith
Gillian Townsley
Gavin Rumney
Elizabeth Young
stephanie louise fisher
James Harding
Alan Smithee
Luke Johns