Status Updates From Christianity and Rabbinic J...

Final chapter. Byzantine Empire. Basically this book has confirmed my prejudice against theocracy as a form of government. Doesn't matter the religion - it's bad for civics, bad for faith, bad for ethics.

Omfg Chp 5 was awful. Unnecessarily obtuse, cryptically structured, and waaay more boring than the material warranted. I mean, if you can’t make a chapter on early church power struggles, heresies, and persecutions interesting, you really shouldn’t be writing for an introductory audience.

Huh.. Once you get a couple decades post-cataclysm (Temple fall/crucifixion), both movements fixate on the classic Silicon Valley challenge of institutionalizing without losing vibrancy or falling victim to Founder Syndrome. Emerging standard operating procedures, lines of authority, decision-making parameters, admission criteria, authoritarianism vs communitarian power… makes for intriguing MBA or MPA case studies.

I found Chp 3 almost offensively frustrating. Newly added marginalia may or may not include all caps and emotive punctuation. Unfortunately, the chapter was so poorly written that I can’t untangle whether my beef is with the author, with Paul, or with the traditional understanding of what Paul wrote. And if I can’t tell the difference, dude, the academic who wrote the chapter seriously failed.

1st chapter was unnecessarily obtuse…which in retrospect is kind of how I felt about the entire course for which it was assigned. 2nd chapter fascinating. I’d never thought about Jesus through the lens of decolonization before, which seems obvious in retrospect but is currently blowing my mind.

Half the fun is encountering the essays in tandem with the marginalia that my 22yo self penciled in. As is appropriate, I am now able to enter in conversation with the writers as opposed to merely soaking in the rush of new-to-me information. Those gray hairs do come with benefits! :)