Understanding Judaism in Antiquity

The item of importance when attempting to understand the culture and lifestyle of the ancient Israelites is in finding similarities and common points of intersection between such a severely different time period and our own. The single point of entry into assuming a means of curiosity and appreciation for Ancient Israelite life, is found in observing and seeking commonalities. If I do not relate the culture of Ancient Israel in its most human forms to my own humanity, I will cease interpreting it in a way that bears any importance when reading the Bible for personal soul reparation. If I cannot understand the cultural background behind the writings, I will apply my own cultural presumptions to my reading, resulting in a drastically flawed reading of the Bible. If I cannot ascertain what the writings meant culturally and socio-politically to its readers and writers originally, I disadvantage myself, and severely taint what I bring out of the text. Beginning with a simplistic understanding of Jewish life in antiquity, I begin to understand the importance and relation of the text to an individual's life at that time. If I begin to understand this, I can then strip down culturally derived, hermeneutically unsound principles of Biblical interpretation, and replace them with studied cultural examinations as precedent to examination. Isolated, personalized ideas about the interpretation of the Bible are unfounded, static and schematically inapplicable. The merit in wanting to understand the culture of Ancient Israel is that it brings about a more holistic understanding of the context in which Jesus came. In understanding the Jewish culture in which the patriarchs lived, Christ's cultural and religious deviance for the purpose of the extension of the Kingdom of God and employment of God's grace can be realized and understood in its own culture. Failing to understand the ways in which Christ replaced the culture he was born into with the embodied culture of the Kingdom of God, how can we expect to understand Christ's relation to our own culture? Without understanding the Jewish historical context in which Jesus lived, is it possible that we can understand Jesus apart from our tainted, Westernized, historically and culturally ignorant perceptions of Him? Understanding the Jews and their culture is pertinent to understanding Christ I think. Thoughts or criticisms from the lone reader?

"Howard Kleger remains the longest distance between any two points; the world's greatest living foe of expediency."

I met a remarkable gentleman tonight by the name of Howard Kleger. Howard lives in Philadelphia and makes his nightly residence at a cafe my sister frequents near the Northstar Bar. The place has an array of characters, though Howard remains the spectacle of originality, a living embodiment of complete abandonment of vanity and societal normality. His life is artwork in the purest form. The world is his canvas, and his revolving array of friends and interactions: witnesses to his inestimable genius of such an unbeknownst marriage between imagination and daily activity. My sister has been wanting to aquaint me with Howard, and tonight her wishes were realized. A friend and admirer of Howard has written a thoroughly developed analysis of his surreal and seemingly fictionalized life, which can only merely introduce laymen such as myself to such a wonder of humanity.

Howard Kleger and Hypermeaning by Brandon Joyce
The Klegatorium

Howard invited my sister and I to spend Hannakuh with his family, after a remark I made about wanting to experience the holiday. His plan is that I will pretend I am the boyfriend of one of the residents, hide in her room, and escape the stairwell so his parents will not see me. Then Howard will knock on the door, saying, "It's me, Howard!," and I will burst forth as a Hannakuh joke for all to enjoy in holiday mirth. I'm excited to see how this one plays out.

Letter to Daniel on Art

A friend of mine asked me to read and consider some of his conclusive ideas on the relation between art and poverty some days ago. Putting aside the uselessness of lying in bed in rumination, I decided to write him at around 3 AM one night. Here is the response I wrote, which, in turn, has brought me to the place where I am now: adding to my list of sleepless activities, a personal blog. Daniel's blog is an amalgam of thoughts comprehensively collected in the mind of a man, and expelled on the internet for the reading of one or maybe two people. (a tradition I will thus continue here.) Thanks for the inspiration to write more Daniel.

(Note to the lone reader: Daniel's thoughts on the relation between art and poverty are more conclusive and meditated upon than my own verbose meanderings. His post "Art and Poverty Pt. 2" is worth the read. Jonathan Barker also has some good thoughts on the matter.)

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[from danielrleonard.blogspot.com]

Daniel,

I think an important thing to consider when trying to come to conclusions about the importances and implications of art, is the model of the Creator. Being created in the image of the Creator grants us all the ability to create in our own individualized ways, which too often we dismiss because of the tendency to compartmentalize art into specific categories. (ie: I cannot draw or write, and create according to what our culture defines as the only accepted artistic formats, so I will dismiss my ability to create.) This approach is too often accepted, limiting the self-actualizing (or rather Christ-actualizing) potential of those created in the image of God, to revel in a joy granted to us freely, creating being a part of the whole in Christ we are to become, and ever becoming. I am known to politefully and contemptibly dismiss any attempt from anyone to enter into a dialogue seriously with me about the purpose or culturally and spiritually significances of art, simply because it so oftentimes delineates sheer enjoyment of art for me into abstraction and impersonal sub-reality. I think another important thing to raise questions about is the personal ramifications of art, and the creation of art as a means for as you say ”liberation.” Perhaps instead of looking at the cultural and spiritual significances of art as a whole, it is more beneficial to understand the significance art has to its individual creator. As we were created to be in personal communion with each other and God, originally, I think we can again, look to the Creator-God as a source of direction. I understand the human race through and in the lens of the Creator and His creation (the whole scope of what was created!) Without an adequate understanding of the Creator, it is hard for me to make any sort of formidable sense of His creation. I think this ethic bears weight somehow, and may be an adequate model to use in approaching art. Like yourself, I believe art is a questionable topic to approach with any sort of certainty, and I am not sure that is a bad thing. Any all encompassing, preponderance of evidence related to art must be gathered personally and intimately through attempting to understand the mind of its creator.

A good Christ-centered resource which does not diminish art's significance, raising many more questions than it attempts to answer is aptly titled, “Art Needs No Justification,” by a man named H. R Rookmaaker. I have a copy if you'd like to read it.

Continuing the dialogue about art and poverty, I think aesthetics can be a dangerous thing if we are more drawn towards enjoying the aesthetic qualities of a photograph of impoverished peoples, than willing in our hearts (and wishing to act) for their relief. This very thing is terrifying evidence of the seemingly insurmountable disconnections between our lives here in the West, and those “others,” whose photographs may be used to pull together colors in a room, rather than evoke Christ's want for restoration and justice in our world. This is why I am upset that one of my favorite photographers has a book being printed with all of his photographs from several trips to Africa. There is something evidently discordant about the ability to purchase a book for twenty dollars, which attempts to expose the bitter, should-be intimacies of real, struggling [a word we cannot even feign to resonate with] people. Unfortunately, the possession of such a thing so oftentimes will in our minds become travestied beauty, becoming, cheap, fleeting pornography, robbing these beautiful people of dignity and personality. This is where theory intersects reality. This is why it is at times for me painful and hurtful to watch others look at photographs I have on a wall in a gallery solely for personal enjoyment. It's contemptible and shameful, and I'd like to tell them to stop objectifying human beings. But I must admit that I am being a pious prig, and look for the whisper of Christ in it all.

Bonhoeffer on Security vs. Peace

A friend of mine has been reading about Bonhoeffer extensively in preparation for some type of scholastic dispensation as of recently. Here are his remarks, followed by Bonhoeffer's radical thoughts on defining peace apart from security.

[from catholicanarchy.org]

More and more I’m convinced that Bonhoeffer’s most powerful material comes not from his classic, well-known works, but his speeches and sermons delivered for particular occasions. The following is an excerpt from another speech at an ecumenical conference on the Church’s vocation of peace, titled “The Church and the Peoples of the World.”

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"How does peace come about? Through a system of political treaties? Through the investment of international capital in different countries? Through the big banks, through money? Or through universal peaceful rearmament in order to guarantee peace? Through none of these, for the single reason that in all of them peace is confused with safety. There is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared. It is the great venture. It can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to mistrust, and this mistrust in turn brings forth war. To look for guarantees is to want to protect oneself. Peace means to give oneself altogether to the law of God, wanting no security, but in faith and obedience laying the destiny of the nations in the hand of Almighty God, not trying to direct it for selfish purposes. Battles are won, not with weapons, but with God. They are won where the way leads to the cross.”

Thoughts on Christian Education

The aggrandizement of Christian faith for personal benefit and possession of knowledge is something of which I am very wary. I cringe, realizing that oftentimes, theology and Biblical information can be a tool for rampant self-inflation. Instead of bringing a person to their knees in awe of a largely, incomprehensible God at the reading of Thomas Aquinas, such things can become, in a sense, simple, scholarly tasks baptized under the almighty guise of ideal “Christian” education. Instead of beckoning humility, knowledge, when deemed “Christian,” somehow now has some spiritual accompanyment which supercedes other, “non-Christian” ideas. Instead of focusing on truth in a holistic way, the body of knowledge about God becomes praised over God himself, and Christian education over Christ. Such a subliminal undertone of possession of knowledge and superiority mocks the true purpose of education, advocated by the writer of Proverbs: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge,” says Solomon. He later tells us, “The fear of the LORD is to hate evil.” Hating evil is not hating ideas which do not fall under the deemed category of “Christian,” but ideas, actions, and injustices which impede upon the nature and person of Christ. True, structuralized, “Christian” education should be rooted in such an epistimology. But this only as a basis for education is fractured and incomplete. Only in a confrontation with others can we combat the plague of self-insulation. A Christian's true education is learning to exercise the will in abandoning self-interest, loving unreservedly for the benefit of another, without want for recompense. I can read all of the theology books in every theological library on the East Coast, and still would not know how to actively love my brother without wanting compensation. Herein is the profound irony in Christian education: we can only be taught other's experiences and ideas about God in a classroom environment, but interacting with God in a personal way, through others, is not something that happens through such vicarious observations.

Fern Hill

Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
- D. Thomas