Scriptor Ignotus > Recent Status Updates

"If you can grasp why a family's pet monkey is always mocked and teased you will grasp why monks are rejected by everybody, both young and old. The monkey does not guard the house like a dog, does not draw the plough like the ox, does not give us milk and wool like the sheep, and bears no burden like the horse. All it does is to shit over everything and spoil it. . . . So too a monk . . ."

Damn. But also, lol.

"We, and the objects entangled with us, in us, find life, sentiency, in a telos that leads to a genuine subjectivity. If we see in objects, even in clay jars, the sentience that is really there at the core, then we allow ourselves to rise teleologically to a subjectivity that does not see the world as different from ourselves, as mere object. . . .Their life is, after all, just covered over, hidden."

"Our passions grow fiercer when left idle through lack of contact with other people. Even that shadow of patience and long-suffering which we thought we possessed while we mixed with our brethren is lost in our isolation through not being exercised. Poisonous creatures...in the desert display their fury only when they detect someone approaching; and likewise passion-filled men..."

- John Cassian, Institutes

"Assyria was above all a militaristic state: it ruled by terror, or, as one writer has put it, by ‘calculated frightfulness’."

This has to be one of the funniest lines I've read in an academic book like this.

"It is no exaggeration to suggest that the man–horse partnership has empowered humans, increasing out of all proportion their creative, and destructive, powers."

Gentlemen, it is with great sorrow to inform you that this novel kind of sucks. Boring characters, no plot propulsion to speak of, a world that is turgidly described but not lived in, and the whole book is littered with typographical errors. Uri is nearsighted and neurotic but highly literate, which means that he approaches his world through texts rather than experiences, relieving Spiró of the task of worldbuilding.

I'd like to register my contempt for certain theologically-illiterate and morally degenerate members of Congress who have invoked the Bible to justify US support for genocide in Gaza and a war of aggression against Iran. The definition of "Israel" as a state project is almost entirely foreign to the last 2000 years of Jewish tradition, to say nothing of Christianity, of which these people are hardly less ignorant.

I expected cheekiness and irreverence, but most of the humor in this book is just batshit insane.

"Therefore, every created being finds its rest in its own perfection, which it freely holds from the divine being. It desires to be no other created being, as if something else were more perfect, but rather it prefers that which it itself holds, as if a divine gift, from the maximum, and it wishes its own possession to be perfected and preserved incorruptibly."

3/3

"It is as if the Creator had spoken: 'Let it be made,' and because God, who is eternity itself, could not be made, that was made which could be made, which would be as much like God as possible. The inference, therefore, is that every created thing as such is perfect, even if by comparison to others it seems less perfect. . . ."

2/3

"Who could understand how all things, though different contingently, are the image of that single, infinite Form, as if the creature were an occasioned god...? The infinite form is received only in a finite way; consequently, every creature is, as it were, a finite infinity or a created god, so that it exists in the way in which this could best be."

1/3

"Socrates believed he knew nothing except that he did not know. . . .Since the desire in us for knowledge is not in vain, surely then it is our desire to know that we do not know. If we can attain this completely, we will attain learned ignorance. Nothing more perfect comes to a person, even the most zealous in learning, than to be found most learned in the ignorance that is uniquely one's own."

-De Docta Ignorantia

"It is right to pray not only for your own purification, but also for that of all your fellow men, and so to imitate the angels." 40

"If you are a theologian, you will pray truly. And if you pray truly, you are a theologian." 61

"Blessed is the monk who regards every man as God after God." 121

"Blessed is the monk who looks with great joy on everyone's salvation and progress as if they were his own." 122

Evagrius

Revelation's references to a "synagogue of satan" have inspired reams of anti-Jewish bile over the centuries. But in context, John is scorning gentile (Pauline?) Jesus-followers who have assumed a Judaic identity but practice what John views as a watered-down halakhah. For him, salvation is not effected by repentance or even by Christ per se, but only by a strict, quasi-Qumranic priestly, filial, and sexual purity.

"Ezekiel clearly was not a stable person." - Robert Alter

"Our very life-breath, the Lord's anointed,
was captured in their traps,
of whom we had said,
'In his shade we shall live among the nations.'"

- Lam. 4:20

In context, this likely refers to the capture of Zedekiah, the last king of Judah; but this theopolitics casts light on early Christian interpretations of Jesus. The anointed (Christos or Masiach) is the life-giving spirit (1 Cor. 15:45) of his people.

"Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God."

James 1:19-20


Wisdom for our time.

Sleeper, awake!
Rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.

Eph. 5:14: Possibly quoting an early Christian hymn adapted from Isaiah (51:17, 60:1, etc.)

ʿAṣabiyyamaxxing

"Christ" is the state of being infused with and deified by God, who is spirit (Jn 4:24). The spirit anointed ("christened") the prophets, kings, and judges of old, but Jesus is the first mortal to have been transformed and immortalized by it, gaining intercessory power to spiritualize the rest of us. Even the lordship of Jesus is to be shared by the saints, who will judge the world and the angels (1Cor 6:2-3).

Paul envisions a radical co-equality between Jesus and the saints. The spirit of God which raised Jesus into the heavens is the same "spirit of adoption" which makes the saints into children and "joint heirs" of God with Jesus (Rom 8:14-15, 17). Jesus is "firstborn among many brothers [and sisters]" (Rom. 8:29): he's our big brother in God's spiritual family.

1/2

Though he chastises Job from the whirlwind, God ultimately vindicates his integrity and condemns the insipid platitudes of his accusers. Job's greatness is akin to that of the poet himself: a refusal to be satisfied with clichés.

Alter is refreshingly straightforward in his disdain for Elihu's interjection in the book of Job. The whole section is almost certainly a later interpolation, and Alter doesn't find it up to par artistically or theologically with the Job poet. YHWH's speech is a direct response to the death-wish poem of ch 3, countering Job's imagery of death with a grand cosmic vision juxtaposing life and death, violence and beauty.

In Acts 19, a group of Jewish exorcists attempts to expel a demon in Jesus's name, only for the demon to mock and attack them. The commentary claims it was common for non-Christians to invoke Jesus in magical rites, citing the Greek Magical Papyri from Egypt. I looked it up and, sure enough, a famous magician named Pibechis ("the falcon") had a charm for exorcisms: "I conjure you by the god of the Hebrews, Jesus..."

"Mythical figures live many lives, die many deaths, and in this they differ from the characters we find in novels, who can never go beyond the single gesture. But in each of these lives and deaths all the others are present, and we can hear their echo. Only when we become aware of a sudden consistency between incompatibles can we say we have crossed the threshold of myth."

"When a wise man contends with a doltish man,
the dolt rages and mocks, with no calm."

- Proverbs 29:9

"The servants of the Compassionate are those who walk humbly upon the earth, and when the ignorant address them, say, 'Peace.'" (25:23)

Crazy how George H.W. Bush was the last American President who seemed even remotely interested in fostering a just political solution to the conflict. Naturally, Bill Clinton accused him of normalizing antisemitism during his 1992 campaign.

"The PLO had far more to gain from a nonviolent struggle than the Israelis, for whom a switch to dialogue would have meant having to defend the indefensible [necessitating eventual retreat]. . .There arose a strategy of blaming moderates for the acts of extremists, crushing the moderates, and leaving the extremists intact - just in case they needed them as an excuse to smash the next crop of moderates in the future."

Nusseibeh makes a surprising and tragic observation about his time teaching at a university in the West Bank in the 1980s: the more secular students, namely nationalists, liberals, and communists, were more likely to advocate armed resistance to the Israeli occupation, while the devout Muslims, believing that right would ultimately overcome might, took a more peaceful and quietistic approach.