ari :) > Recent Status Updates

done with the epistle to the Romans. a weighty text, and one much abused by the theologians (faith, works, salvation, original sin? all in here. also some homophobia for good measure). it doesn't help that Paul is not a particularly transparent writer, especially taken out of his context. there are some moments of great spiritual beauty here though.

on to Corinthians.

guess who's back ;)

i did not care for the Acts of the Apostles. granted, the Gospels are a tough act to follow, but Acts’ mix of hagiography, martyrdom and sanitized controversy is hardly a fitting sequel. there are moments where Luke’s gift for narrative shines through, like the sequence surrounding the death of St. Stephen. they are surrounded by the worst kind of preaching.

on to Paul’s epistles.

done with John. what a strange book, filled with signs and glory. i will admit it took me some time to warm up to the Johannine Christ, a rather hermetic character compared to the Jesus of the Synoptics, but He is capable of a remarkable tenderness.

the rest of the New Testament is fairly unknown to me; next up are the Acts of the Apostles.

done with Luke. to me, Luke's gospel is lit with the blue and gold of Fra Angelico's Annunciation; it is easily the most literary of the four. in spite of this light and this craft, though, the New Testament has a remarkable ability to unsettle the reader, once we set aside our preconceptions of what Scripture is supposed to mean.

what to do with the Gospels? Matthew and Mark were completely and utterly convinced that the Kingdom of God was absolutely imminent, and that their lynched Anointed would be back any day with to judge the cosmos. any day now, i suppose...

i am filled with more questions than answers. on to Luke.

DBH's introductory material and scientific postscript on the lexicon of the New Testament are marvelous. his translation is meant to read like the Greek does—amateurish, clunky, breathless testimonies of God made man. i have really enjoyed Matthew thus far.

Chronicles was a quick read—it is effectively a (self-censored) summary of material we've seen in Samuel and Kings. and with that, I have now read the whole Hebrew Bible. damn.

well that sucked. Ezra-Nehemiah (in theory two books, treated as a unit since Late Antiquity) is a collection of documents relating to the founding of the Second Temple and the canonization of the Torah. they are mostly lists and imperial edicts. the rest is a staunch polemic against the intermarriage of Jews with the local population, enforced by banishment and violence. now to read Chronicles, and we're done!

Daniel is a weird little book. it points forward in time, for the most part: angels have names, the dead are resurrected on Judgment Day, and the post-facto (!) prophecies are about Greece and Rome. much closer to Christ's milieu than that of the Yahwist. on to Ezra and Nehemiah!

this is kicking my ass. (i am told that after the first chapter it gets easier but oof)

the Book of Esther is a raunchy, violent comedy culminating in the bloody revenge of the Jews against those who would wipe them off the face of the earth. that is to say, it roughly shares a plot with the 2009 Tarantino film Inglourious Basterds. in this video essay i wi

i took my time with Ecclesiastes. much like Job, this is a dissenting voice in the Biblical canon: if Job asks whether God is just, Ecclesiastes asks what we should do in light of our ephemerality. he doesn't give us a straight answer, but rather works through contradiction and dialectics. as is often the case in the Bible, Ecclesiastes is possessed of a rare beauty; thought expressed through prose poetry.

i have girded my loins. it is time.

Lamentations is not a fun read. it is in all likelihood the eyewitness testimony of a refugee fleeing the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BCE, and it is truly, truly bleak.

(the text, traditionally read during Holy Week, has been set by a number of composers; Couperin's "Leçons de ténèbres" are a favorite)

done with Ruth! a lovely pastoral vignette about a young Moabite widow and her mother-in-law negotiating the patriarchy and finding themselves around good people. on to Lamentations.

everybody knows i adore the Song of Songs. this is not news. however i adjure you, dear reader, if you have even a smattering of Hebrew, to listen to a good Sephardic cantor reading the book. (here's an excellent rendition: https://www.sephardichazzanut.com/Shi...)

in any case, spectacular love poetry. it's like fifteen pages; take an afternoon to read it.

Job is... troubling. the questions of divine justice posed by the book, in utterly stunning language, are left completely unresolved in the end. God is omnipotent, certainly, but is He just? even He admits that Job "spoke rightly" (דיבר נכונה) in the end.

entertaining excerpts from a multivolume medieval Islamic encyclopedia. utterly whimsical, enchanted and enchanting. (Borges fans will be pleased)

done with Proverbs. a strange book, full of pragmatic advice from the Iron Age—better sleep on the roof than with a nagging wife, beat your children regularly, that sort of stuff—and very little of the grand historical narrative of the rest of the Hebrew Bible. the concluding poem, Éšeṯ Ḥáyil, is quite beautiful though. on to Job!!

done with Psalms. within these poems, products of the cult around the Temple in Jerusalem and often hidebound and conventional, there are genuine jewels of myth and faith and great humanity to be found. i particularly liked 114 and the songs of ascents—131 above all.

halfway through psalms!! reading this feels a bit like looking through a stereogram: one eye on the Temple in Jerusalem, the other on the Sistine Chapel. the text reads, at the same time, "the Lord is my shepherd" and "YHWH shepherds me".

(top three thus far are 8, 19 and 45 in no particular order.)

and that's the Nevi'im done! the Twelve Minor Prophets are a ragtag bunch: bits and pieces of war-torn apocalypse, calls for social justice, restoration and utopia, and, in the case of Jonah, comedy (!) from the latter centuries of Israelite history. there's not an awful lot of Bible left...

Ezekiel: a psychosexual travesty of a man who saw the exile of his people, the death of his wife, and the glory of the Divine. a book of strange and violent visions and an intransigent God, ending with blueprints for a restored Jerusalem. (honestly a page-turner.) on to the Twelve!

done with Jeremiah! a much more historical book than Isaiah (with some prose sections that are a bit of a slog), rather than truly religious. the view into the psychology of the fall of Jerusalem is fascinating though. on to Ezekiel

back to it!! haven’t made much headway into Jeremiah, but i’m excited to be back in the head of an iron age writer. (patriarchal as hell though)

exams finishing up—back to reading!! unfortunately i do not think i'll be in the headspace for Lispector this summer—hope to come back to her sooner than later :)

tanto como para la misma Lispector, G.H. me está dando "pouco a pouco uma alegria difícil; mas chama-se alegria"

back to my reading list, and in portuguese no less!! never read Lispector, but her reputation precedes her (and i am very fond of mystic literature)

done with Isaiah

a lot to unpack here: a universal message covered in layers of history, the baggage of everything that's happened in the last two thousand years (from Christ to revolutions past), and the unsettled matter of our redemption.

going to take a break from the Bible for a while. need a palate cleanser. next update will be Jeremiah <3

halfway done with Isaiah. i have thoughts.

the original Hebrew is something else. never before have I read a text that feels so undeniably like the word of God.

Isaiah's messianism is that of revolution: it serves as a picture of the justice that awaits us at the end of days, and leaves no doubt that that justice is economic. theology hides behind historical materialism.