tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post5000524471600136678..comments2024-03-10T20:46:19.274-04:00Comments on In the Middle: The Bible Swoops Out, the some Holidays Swoop InCord J. Whitakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06224143153295429986noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-63220173565880132632007-12-17T23:23:00.000-05:002007-12-17T23:23:00.000-05:00Well Karl if you really are interested you can che...Well Karl if you really are interested you can check out my exam over <A HREF="http://indiefaith.blogspot.com/2007/12/is-that-your-final-answer.html" REL="nofollow">here</A>. Unlike you I am not proud of it. I don't much like the format and can't imagine that the questions really helped to reflect the formation they did (or did not) receive. Prepping lectures for the first time however was a tremendous experience.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17045950595392790139noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-13335986059672075412007-12-17T19:36:00.000-05:002007-12-17T19:36:00.000-05:00"I'm especially interested in how Christian writer..."I'm especially interested in how Christian writers used this world without Christ to imagine contingency and possibility in their own worlds. Thoughts on that, anyone?"<BR/><BR/>In Perceforest, I got the feeling the author was implying that a world 'like his own', i.e. of chivalric orders and courtly behaviour codes, somehow could not exist without being underpinned by a monotheistic religion worshipping an invisible god. True, Alexander the Great himself was a pagan, but then he didn't really preside over a culture like that anyway; he just roamed around the world conquering anyone he could find, with impeccable manners to be sure, but not really focused on having an impact on local cultures (aside from Perceforest itself, of course). What seems most interesting about it to me is how the author imagines a kind of Christianity without Christ. It's not Judaism; it's Christianity without Christ. In fact, they are waiting for the advent of Christ (whom they know will be born of a virgin, though this mystifies them), without really understanding what it all means. So when Christ does turn up, the hard-core followers of the 'souverain dieu' won't need to be converted; they are already of that religion anyway, just waiting for revelation and instruction. Perhaps kind of like what the Jews "should have done", but didn't.<BR/><BR/>Giants: indeed fascinating that they can be the primal, unredeemable race destroyed by the flood in order to clear the way for proper, ethically-bound humans--yet also, somehow, NOT destroyed, so that they can pop up as the primal, unredeemable race needing to be cleared off of ANY tract of land that people are trying to colonise. I suppose it's just too good a story to have happened only once in history; it has to be part of any really important foundatin myth (and what's more important than the origins of Great Britain, for goodness sake). For that matter, we're kind of still telling it with the story of the Neanderthals who were overrun by 'our ancestors' yea all those eons ago in Europe, and we're very interested to know whether or not there were sexual relations across that divide, whether or not the Neanderthals are actually our ancestors too, whether or not we are in some sense them. (We're pretty sure they were physically a lot stronger than us too...)<BR/><BR/>Which leads me to a question for anyone reading this: Aside from Galeholt, and the stuff in the prose Tristan and Perceforest about his ancestry, does anyone know of other characters in medieval romance who are mixed-blood giant/human descent?<BR/><BR/>Aside from the above texts, are there ever giants who are Christians?<BR/><BR/>And, again aside from passages that pertain to Galeholt or his ancestry, does anyone know of episodes of giant-killing in medieval romance where the giant has relatives (especially female ones) who mourn his death--or rejoice at it, for that matter? The only example I can think of besides the Galeholt-related stuff is in the prose Tristan, at the very beginning, when the giant is killed and there is brief reference to the fact that his daughter mourns him. However, I haven't started looking yet in anything remotely like a systematic way, nor have I reread a lot of the texts (both primary and secondary) that might have examples--so they may be out there!<BR/>sylviaAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-12938283211247171542007-12-17T08:06:00.000-05:002007-12-17T08:06:00.000-05:00Here is a related biblical passage, cut and pasted...Here is a related biblical passage, cut and pasted from my book <EM>Of Giants</EM>, where I was likewise interested in how a pagan past and its divinities were imagined. It's a question I'm still very much wrestling with. I'm especially interested in how Christian writers used this world without Christ to imagine contingency and possibility in their own worlds. Thoughts on that, anyone?<BR/><BR/>------------<BR/>The linking of the deities of classical mythology to mortal or demonic impersonators is a commonplace in early theological writing. Justin Martyr in the Apologia and Augustine in De civitate dei were among the many patristic writers to reiterate the belief. Isidore of Seville summarized this exegetical tradition in his influential Etymologiae (VIII.xi), "De diis gentium":<BR/><EM>Those whom the pagans worship as gods were once human and lived among men, such as Isis in Egypt, Jupiter in Crete, and Faunus in Rome … They were formerly mighty heroes [viri fortes ], founders of cities; when they died, images were erected to honor them … Persuaded by demons, posterity esteemed these men gods, and worshiped them. </EM><BR/>These deceiving <EM>viri fortes</EM> were first described by the Church fathers as fallen angels, then with a shift in the exegesis they became powerful, evil men, often said to be descended from either fratricidal Cain or Noah's mocking son, Cham. In Anglo-Saxon England, the <EM>viri fortes</EM> became <EM>gigantes</EM>. Oliver Emerson argues that the early Christian writers enabled this myth by building on the conflation of the giants of Genesis with the classical stormers of Olympus by the Jewish historian Josephus ("Legends of Cain," 905). No doubt this conjoining was enabled through the moralizing of the biblical giants already well under way by the time of the Jewish apocrypha. <BR/><BR/>The Book of Wisdom characterizes these monsters as corporeal signifiers of overbearing pride, destroyed as a rebuke to that primal sin: "from the beginning when the proud giants perished, the hope of mankind escaped on a raft and .. bequeathed to the world a new breed of men" (14:6). The biblical passage underscores the giants' historicity: these monsters predate the flood, which was sent to cleanse the earth of the evils they embody. By simultaneously reading the body of the giants as allegory, however, the Book of Wisdom suggests a continuity with the giants of classical tradition, likewise condemned as monstrously prideful in their failed attempt to pile Ossa on Pelion in order to steal from the gods the immortal home of Olympus. <BR/><BR/>After describing the demise of the giants, the passage from Wisdom explains how later in world history "tyrants" devised idols in order to deny the fact of the body's mortality (Wisdom 14:15-21). The story entwines loss (a father mourns his dead son with an image that others worship as a god), pride (despots [tyranni] thinking themselves greater than human order their statues venerated), the alluring power of the visual (the idols elicit awe because of their "ideal form," an artistically induced numinousness), and the reifying power of the law (the longer the idol is worshiped the more natural such action appears, so that through repetition a reality is materialized for divinity).Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-6651877132023856562007-12-17T00:41:00.000-05:002007-12-17T00:41:00.000-05:00Yes, exactly: that Perceforest passage was what ca...Yes, exactly: that Perceforest passage was what came to mind when I ran my memory back through Acts.Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-80252503443726420752007-12-16T18:40:00.000-05:002007-12-16T18:40:00.000-05:00Yes, thanks, I should have noticed these passages,...Yes, thanks, I should have noticed these passages, but I haven't read Acts in a long time. Both the prose Tristan and Perceforest are definitely drawing on these--Perceforest especially, where credulous pagans are quick to start worshipping any 'special' person as a god, and imaginary religious cults sprout up all over the place; meanwhile, those of better wisdom have figured out that the only god worth worshipping is the invisible, all-powerful, non-representable 'sovereign god'. Clearly the author was taking his cue from passages like these in trying to imagine what life was like before the advent of Christianity.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-82382195196028481402007-12-16T10:27:00.000-05:002007-12-16T10:27:00.000-05:00Isn't it always the most fun to teach the material...<I>Isn't it always the most fun to teach the materials you are least intimate with?</I><BR/><BR/>I might say that after 15 years (how long have you been at GW?) in the game. Right now, I'm just thinking about the two disastrous times I taught Wordsworth's Prelude. It's like being airdropped into Piers Plowman: similarly complex cultural contexts, frequent revisions, philosophical depth, opaque language, and authorial self-presentation, and, overall, student reluctance. With the Bible, the students already care, so the class easily becomes conversation (and conversation becomes the class). That said, I made a point of including two works on my Fall medieval syllabus--"Emaré" and "Sir Cleges"--that I'd never read before, and each was a hoot to teach (and it was simple in both cases to master the critical tradition). I think I'll make a point of doing this on each subsequent medieval syllabus: let the gods bless TEAMS.<BR/><BR/>Indiefaith: why not share one of those exams?<BR/><BR/>Sylvia: it's <A HREF="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts%2017;&version=31;" REL="nofollow">Acts 17:16-24.</A> The situation you're thinking of <I>might</I> also recall something like the 4th Eclogue and the purported pagan awareness of Jesus. In teaching, I contrasted Acts 17 with <A HREF="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts%2014;&version=31;" REL="nofollow">Acts 14:8-19.</A> Athens is of course the intellectual center of Paul's world, whereas Lystra is a center for rubes. This episode's a marvelous example of the "encounter with the primitive": we have the credulous belief in the literal presence of the old gods, the primitive (that is, the merely <I>local</I>) language, and the alimentary--rather than philosophical--appeal.Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-20299571442709065082007-12-16T09:59:00.000-05:002007-12-16T09:59:00.000-05:00Can you tell me where the altar dedicated to the u...Can you tell me where the altar dedicated to the unknown god is? I'd like to see if it is a source for the brief episode of a philosopher worshipping an 'unknown god' in the "prehistory" part of the prose Tristan.<BR/>sylviaAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-2428502171758313602007-12-15T18:23:00.000-05:002007-12-15T18:23:00.000-05:00Karl, you know you are in a good place in your cla...Karl, you know you are in a good place in your classroom when your students trust you enough to both challenge and gently mock. Congrats on the class. Isn't it always the most fun to teach the materials you are least intimate with?Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-12982259354223159012007-12-15T17:56:00.000-05:002007-12-15T17:56:00.000-05:00ooged out<A HREF="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=com.ubuntu%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=8qf&q=%22ooged+out%22&btnG=Search" REL="nofollow">ooged out</A>Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-29084894186805652652007-12-15T17:51:00.000-05:002007-12-15T17:51:00.000-05:00"...ooged out..."?"...ooged out..."?The Spirit of Creative Writinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08814590995293463174noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-21371225806257594552007-12-14T12:55:00.000-05:002007-12-14T12:55:00.000-05:00If I had more time I was going to try to answer th...If I had more time I was going to try to answer them in the comments. As a pastor I was feeling pretty ashamed at how many were not coming to me. I taught an overview of Christian history and thought and failed the entire class miserably with my first exam and only slightly less miserably with the second.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17045950595392790139noreply@blogger.com