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If you wee interested in the comments on the Lord's Prayer in the posting (below) on the January 6th riot, you might also enjoy my short essay "Reading the Lord's Prayer as Greek Poetry". It's on my site at Academia.edu: =
www.academia.edu/36786460/READING_THE_LORDS_PRAYER_AS_GREEK_POETRY
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The best definition I know is a statement even words long: “Some stories are simultaneously true and false.” It’s usually easy to spot the false and trickier to recognize the true.
History will play games with you, if you’ll let her. Sometimes she starts with strange juxtapositions. That’s the case on the sixth of January when the great Trumpite riot of 2021 coincides with the Christian feast of the Epiphany. That’s the celebration of the journey of three magoi, astronomer-astrologer-futurologists who travelled from the vestiges of the once mighty Persian empire looking for a king and ending up in a stable. Magoi weren’t kings but they kept their eyes on power, and thought about it in surprising ways. For them real power was part of the order of things out there in the universe. So they squinted at the stars in the heavens, crunched numbers on an abacus, decided something big was about to happen in Judaea, a new ruler, perhaps, one who could displace the quisling regime run by corrupt collaborators with Rome. If that domino fell, how many others might follow? It was worth checking it out.
Suppose, then, instead of relegating this story to the Christmas pageant or making it an occasion for a Twelfth Night frolic as we could in pre-Covid days, we approach it as a meditation on power. The story occurs only once in the canonical gospels, the one by Matthew (chapter 2., 1-13). Ιt’s easy to guess why Matthew might have been attracted to the story, since according to later tradition he was a former tax collector, that is, was an ex-extortionist and collaborator with the occupying Romans. He was a “publican” and surely hated for it, until he found his life shattered by a Holy Man who people thought might be made the king of an independent Jewish state. Like the magoi Matthew was drawn to thinking about power, heavenly and not so heavenly. In his story the magoi bring gifts worthy of a king, but they said, it seems, not a word. Then they returned home “by another route,” to avoid telling what they had found to the quisling king of the region. Matthew, you see, wrapped his story about the visit of the magoi in a garish melodrama leading up to the slaughter of every young child in the realm. That’s another kind of power, not attuned to any cosmic order, but all-too familiar on earth. To these magoi, however, real power was rooted in the nature of things, specifically in the order of the universe. To last or amount to anything its holders had to be attuned to that cosmic order, or as ancient writers were more likely to say, to “the heavens.”. That is what lets the magoi predict things and, I suspect, shape their individual lives . The magoi had no monopoly on this idea. It's not just a coincidence, I believe, that something similar turns up in the prayer Matthew reports Jesus taught his followers to use (Matthew 6, 9 - 13). In it God is a father but a cosmic one, someone to whom one should exclaim – to paraphrase- , “ Let your kingdom arrive! Let your will come into being down here on earth, the way it does in the cosmos.” The “Lord’s Prayer” occurs once more in the canonical gospels, Luke 11 2 -4 There it lacks the language about a heavenly father whose will is to be at work on earth as it is in the heavens. Luke, in other words, omits the talk about a tie between earthly needs and regularities out there in the universe, , Such terminology is specific to Matthew. Perhaps he remembered hearing it because it resonated with him, while others forgot all about it. Matthew’s story, in other words, might be thought of as a meditation on power, real and suppositious and on its roots, cosmic and otherwise. It’s also an invitation to think again about power, something we might all benefit from. In any event, it’s hard to imagine a view of power more contrary to this than that of those who on January 6th shouted their curses and trashed the Capitol on behalf of a man obsessed with one kind of power. -- -- A lot to argue about here. Let's hear from you. Preface to the forthcoming translation of Thucydides (Princeton Press, 1984) into modern Greek:
The writing of this book was mostly done on the slopes of Mt. Lykabettos, in the library of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. Now, to my great delight this translation brings my book back to its home in Greece. The impulse that drove me to write about Thucydides’ often puzzling work was, however, far less joyous. It was part of a struggle to understand a brutal, vicious modern war – modern yet in many respects echoing what Thucydides had analyzed. In our present situation, it seemed to me, we needed to read Thucydides closely, asking at every turn how his text worked. Only in that way, I concluded, could we understand the perspective and insight in his complex, but often deeply moving writing. That was many years ago. For a while there came a time when wars abated, despotic regimes retreated, walls fell, apartheid waned, and civil society seemed to flourish in many parts of the globe, Hope seemed rational But No!, inevitably perhaps, the old miseries returned – ranting demagogues, ill-considered invasions, carnage, defeat, civil strife, , catastrophic withdrawals, atrocities and disruptions of the order of nature,-“droughts from which came great famines and that exceedingly destructive plague-like disease” (1.23.6) We were back in Thucydides’ world, or, more precisely, in a situation largely of our own making in which we need more than ever Thucydides’ relentless efforts to bring to light the forces within our nature as human beings that can, as he says, “enslave judgment.” In such a setting the close reading of Thucydides’ history seems more urgent than ever. But that, surely, a new generation of readers and scholars must determine for itself. My hope now is simply that this reading of his text will provoke new and deeper understanding of Thucydides’ ever-challenging, ever-revealing work. W. Robert Connor December 2021 Paul Woodruff has donned his surgeon’s gown and performed a very useful operation on Thucydides – doubly useful, actually. First, he has translated large portions of the history into credible English. Second, he has provided useful summaries of the portions he has excised. The result is a truly readable Thucydides, especially valuable for those reading him for the first time, but also for those who wish to focus on his thinking about war, justice and human nature. A second edition of . The Essential Thucydides: On Justice Power and Human Nature is now out from Hackett Press::
(https://www.hackettpublishing.com/the-essential-thucydides-on-justice-power-and-human-nature-second-edition-4455/ Woodruff’s adroit selection helps us focus on Thucydides accomplishments as a thinker. not just as a chronicler of a long and often brutal war. Governor Charlie Baker has decided not to seek re-election as Governor of Massachusetts, the Boston Globe reports. This should be good news for Danielle Allen. the Harvard political philosopher, classicist and ethicist, who is running for the Democratic nomination. Baker is one of that increasingly rare breed, a middle of the road Republican who commands broad support in a deep blue state. Many people doubted that Danielle – or any other Democrat -- could beat him. But the race is now wide open. It’s a good time to give Danielle your financial support. Here’s the link: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/saramonoson
Here are some books for your holiday shopping.:
If the lucky recipient likes both poetry and gardening, Stanley Kubritz brings them both together in The Wild Braid: A Poet Reflects on a Century in the Garden Whether the recipients are sailors or not, they will enjoy Roland Barth’s Cruising Rules. Sardonic? Ambrose Bierce’s A Cynic’s Word Book. is, admittedly, occasionally misogynistic but always acerbic. Originally published in 1906 it’s still in print. And, of course, don’t forget Veritas. It may be the best read of the year. – Answer: About 7.175 million years ago with Graecopithecus freybergi . See Tim Flannery “Out of Savannastan” New York Review November 4, 2021 pp. 17 ff. It’s a great story.
Tolle, lege, ”Pick it up an read,” the kids shouted. Augustine heard them and did just that – he picked up a text and it (eventually) changed his life.
Strange story and a strange idea that some texts are “transformative.” You take a few dozen squiggles, called letters, scramble them in various ways, page after page. Someone, perhaps centuries later,, unscrambles them and comes away change for life. Implausible, but when I asked some trusted friends whether they knew of “transformative” texts, no one seemed to doubt that there were such things. Here’s a tabulation of the ones they named, followed by a few observations of my own: Adams, Henry The Education of Henry Adams Apuleius The Golden Ass Augustine (or maybe Peter Brown’s Augustine of Hippo and Religion and Society in the Age of St. Augustine Marcus Aurelius Buddhist texts or books about them, e.g. Buddhism is True by Robert Wright. T.S. Eliot Four Quartets Ralph Ellison Invisible Man Epictetus Nietzsche Also sprach Zarathustra Plato, esp. Apology ( Young, Jeffrey Reinventing Your Life Observations: The responses aren’t a sample designed to delight the heart of a pollster. I just wanted to know what friends would think about the matter. But maybe most interesting has been what they didn’t say:
Jane Chaplin, Michael Gillespie, Bob Kaster, Harry and Peregrine Kavros, Tom Martin, Dan-el Padilla, Jason Pedicone, Gil Renberg, Paul Woodruff -- PS These suggestions often came with explanations and stories, rich and intense, but in some cases quite personal. So I have held back from quo ting them. But, many thanks for all!
A spectacular ancient mosaic is now on view in Antakya, Turkey (ancient Antioch). You can see this huge mosaic and in fact you can drink, dine, swim and sleep next to it in the at the new Antakya Museum Hotel Grounded? OK. The hotel’s web site has some good photos. Have any readers see the mosaic? Thanks to luthier Steve Connor for calling this to my attention.  |