Now THAT is a right proper haul!

I’m game, so long as there is no math.

In case you were looking for a reason to be #thankful this Thanksgiving:

The idolatrous religion of “god, family, country” runs deep!

Love it! The Telemachy is actually a micropolemic against attachment to the political order, the illusion of nobility, and the lust for power that lead to wondering away from the (lotus-eating) good life.

Cutting-edge biblical scholar: “Oh, you’re working on mimesis (Auerbach, 1946)? See, I’ve moved way forward from that, so I’m working instead on textual (inter)relations as literary palimpsests (Genette, 1982).”

Current year: 2024.

God comfort you in this sorrow, Scott. Had I know you were coming through Chicago, I would have come to the rescue!

ZOMG is 100% the rhetorical equivalent of the vocative ‘O,’ and your suggestion should be implemented immediately. ZOMG, Wisdom…!

Happy to let her see just how bad it can be, and how good she actually has it!

I enjoy seeing your SBL book hauls, I do, but your talk of “blowing the budget” on a little stack of 10 or 12 titles makes me think you folks just don’t buy enough books in general.

What wonderful news! Her Presidential Address at the Wesleyan Theological Society a couple of years ago was superb: what a boon to have her now at work close by. Sounds like I need to start hanging out around Lisle more!

Epic: when you just Kant in the face of the Word of God. (Also, I had no idea that you went to Messiah!)

This includes fossilized expressions like Ἀββά ὁ πατήρ and Κύριος Σαβαώθ, but also the conscious imitation of a “biblical” register, and the vexed question of semitisms/semitic enhancements/bilingual interference, where one does have to watch carefully against Orientalism (and monolingual bias!).

I’d qualify heavily any use of “mystical,” as that term (along with “ascetical”) has such baggage in NT scholarship—but I’d say that yes, the use of mystical and sacral/hieratic language in the NT has been massively understudied, especially due to misbegotten ideas about the character of NT Greek.

Don’t cite the deep magic to me, &c.

Fun fact: I have never met any celebrities.

This is splendid news, Michael: congratulations! I will seek out a copy!

As I recall, Edmondo Lupieri remarks on some of this (admittedly in essay form, in collected op-eds) in his Cronache dal Trumpistan (Di Girolamo, 2020). libapps.luc.edu/digitalexhib...

Just heard that Paul McCartney said he wishes he had written Billy Joel’s “Just The Way You Are,” which is nearly but not quite as interesting as the fact that Charles Wesley said he’d give up all of his hymns to have written Isaac Watts’ “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.”

The tradition, as far as I know, is that the relics were translated to Rome under Pelagius II, precisely to be deposited next to those of St Lawrence. The Golden Legend (which mistakenly dates the events to the time of Pelagius I) tells how St Lawrence’s relics moved to make room for St Stephen’s!

422!

Imagine being from the literal Caribbean and having exactly this opinion.

I love how much you hate this 😭

Oh man, just got the email from SBL saying that it’s time to send them my money. That means I have to pay all of the other ones too.

Aargh! I can only assume that they’re doing it on purpose as psychological warfare!

I… just… 🤦🏻‍♂️

Emmett Till’s cousin Wheeler, an eyewitness who was down in Mississippi with Emmett when he was abducted and murdered in 1955, is still alive. He is is two years older than Emmett.

What?! I’m already falling behind with your publications?!

Roughly 30 years behind the literature people, who in turn are roughly 30 years behind the linguistics people. This is certainly true of the cognitive turn, the first stirrings of which went to print in 1959!