Quote of the Day: Seneca

As I wrote in a previous post, I've been reading a little bit of Seneca's Epistulae morales ad Lucilium, and today, I wanted to quote him on one function that letters seemed to play during his time.

"Thank you for writing so often. By doing so you give me a glimpse of yourself in the only way you can. I never get a letter from you without instantly feeling we're together. If pictures of absent friends are a source of pleasure to us, refreshing the memory and relieving the sense of void with a solace however insubstantial and unreal, how much more so are letters, which carry marks and signs of the absent friend that are real. For the handwriting of a friend affords us what is so delightful about seeing him again, the sense of recognition (agnoscere)."
- Seneca, Letter 40.1

In our modern age of easy travel, texting, phone calls, and even video chatting (FaceTime, Skype, etc!?), it might be difficult for us at times to imagine how letters might have been perceived and accepted by their recipients. Consequently, when we come across letters in the NT, we are prone to search out possible universal apothegms that we would like to apply in our current situations. However, a quote like above shows the tender and personal (also in some ways private?) nature of letters that insists on our more careful attention to particular situations, expressions of friendship (or enmity?), etc., that exist in the NT epistles.

Testimonium Flavianum

I've been just trying to understand a bit more about what Josephus offers in NT studies, and today's post is just one small intersection between Josephus and the NT. The title of the blog post is about a passage (which scholars call testimonium flavianum) from Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews, which contains the following (at least as the text we have today):

About this time comes Jesus, a wise man, if indeed it is proper to call him a man. For he was a worker of incredible deeds, a teacher of those who accept the truth with pleasure, and attracted many Jews as well as many of the Greek. This man was the Christ (ὁ χριστὸς οὗτος ἦν). And when, in view of [his] denunciation by the leading men among us, Pilate had sentenced him to a cross, those who had loved at the beginning did not cease [to do so]. He appeared to them on the third day alive again, for the divine prophets had announced these and countless other marvels concerning him. And even now the tribe of the "Christians"—named after him—has not yet disappeared.
Ant. 18:63-64

What's striking is the sentence in the Greek shown above, a succinct and unqualified assertion that Jesus was the Christ. In all of the Josephus corpus, he only uses the term "Christ" twice (here and in Ant. 20:200). I think most (if not all) scholars would be agreed that Josephus was not a Christian by any means, and therefore, this statement is somewhat at odds with how Josephus normally thought and wrote in the rest of his literature. This then engenders a few questions:

(1) Is this testimonium original to Josephus?
(2) Is this a later whole cloth creation by later Christian scribes?
(3) Did Josephus mention Jesus in some other way that provided the foundation from which later editors were able to create this assertion?
(4) Was Josephus a Christian? (if we were allowed to entertain this as a viable option)

I can understand why most scholars view this as a later redaction (or insertion) by Christian scribes, but I suppose if that was true, why only here and why in such a brief note? I would think that if they wanted to make Jesus available within Josephus' writings, they might as well scatter a few more pieces of information elsewhere (and possibly in larger chunks)...

UCLA and manuscripts

Just found out today that my alma mater, UCLA, now holds the largest repository of Ethiopic manuscripts in North America. Some excerpts of this article:

he UCLA Library has acquired the largest private collection of Ethiopic manuscripts and scrolls in the U.S., given by Gerald and Barbara Weiner. Together with the library's existing collections, this gift makes the UCLA Library the leading repository for Ethiopic manuscripts in North America. A classical Semitic language, Ethiopic is used as the liturgical language of the Christian church in Ethiopia. Dating from the 18th to the 21st centuries, the collection of 137 bound manuscripts and 102 scrolls is particularly rich in elaborately illustrated liturgical texts. Highlights include a late 19th/early 20th-century version of the Gospels containing 78 miniatures; a 19th-century "lives of the saints" with 40 miniatures; a 20th-century compilation of a table blessing and miracles performed by Jesus with 37 miniatures; and a 20th-century collection of prayers with an image of John the Evangelist and 26 miniatures.

"Words cannot express our deep thanks to Jerry and Barbara — first, for building this gorgeous collection, then for giving it to us," said UCLA University Librarian Gary E. Strong. "These extraordinary items, noteworthy both for their research value and their beauty, will be of great interest to students and scholars, as well as to the extensive Ethiopian community in Southern California." ...

To see more, go to the UCLA newsroom here.

HT: PaleoJudaica.com

Quote of the Day

This past semester, we talked at length about Paul's letter to the Romans, and despite spending an entire semester looking hard at the text, it's evident to me that there is much more to be wrestled with and learned before I can confidently say I know something about Romans. The more we seemed to dig into the text, the more I became convinced that much of my own understanding of the letter was built on assumptions that may not necessarily be right. Granted, my teacher had a specific angle to the text that colored our own discussions, but nevertheless, it was very helpful to think critically about this important letter in the NT. One issue that we began to unpack a little bit is the fact that Romans is, in the end, a letter. This means that we should be careful about viewing the book wholesale as a systematic theology book, where we might be prone to believe that everything we wanted to know about anything in Christianity is found in Romans. I'm currently reading Richard Longenecker's Introducing Romans: Critical Issues in Paul's Most Famous Letter, and in it, he makes the same point. I would like to quote some words from a wise Pauline scholar:

"Throughout the first eighteen centuries of the Christian church, Romans was most often understood as a theological treatise or tractate that sets out a relatively complete statement of Christian belief — or, at least, that clearly enunciates the basic features of Paul's teaching ...
Romans, however, is a real letter, not a contrived literary epistle. It contains personal allusions, definite travel plans, and rather specific instructions for a particular people. There are in it, as in Paul's other letters, digressions, parentheses, and unfinished sentences. More importantly, while the longest of the apostle's extant writings, Romans lacks a number of subjects that seem from his other letters to be absolutely essential to Paul's thought and proclamation — most obviously, (1) the omission of any discussion of the resurrection of believers, which was such an important topic in his earlier letters (cf. 1 Thessalonians 4-5, 2 Thessalonians 2, and 1 Corinthians 15), and (2) the lack of any reference to the Lord's Supper, which was a matter of great concern when writing to converts at Corinth (cf. 1 Cor 11:17-34). As a theological treatise, therefore, Romans is somewhat truncated and a bit disappointing in its coverage of important doctrinal themes."

This is something that I think we need to wrestle with a bit further, but at this point, it is significant to note that Romans was not written at the end of one's life. Actually, as Longenecker points out (following the quote above), "Paul writes as a man in mid-career," having completed much of his work in the east, and setting out toward missionary work in the west.

Know your Bible

This CNN article lists various "phantom passages" that are often mistaken as being found in the Bible. Some interesting ones are:

"This, too, shall pass"
"God helps those who help themselves"
"Spare the rod, spoil the child"
"God works in mysterious ways"

I think I've actually heard some of these phrases used as if one was quoting from Scripture. Have you heard of any others?

Quote of the Day

I've just started to read Seneca's Epistulae morales ad Lucilium, probably as a small way to make up missing out on a class on Greco-Roman philosophy this past semester (I wasn't able to take it due to schedule conflicts). Plus some quotes I've read from a friend got me curious about this famous Stoic philosopher, and so far, it's been a fun read. I will leave you today with a short quote from him:

"Similarly, people who never relax and people who are invariably in a relaxed state merit your disapproval — the former as much as the latter. For a delight in bustling about is not industry — it is only the restless energy of a hunted mind. And the state of mind that looks on all activity as tiresome is not true repose, but a spineless inertia. This prompts me to memorize something which I came across in Pomponius. 'Some men have shrunk so far into dark corers that objects in bright daylight seem quite blurred to them.' A balanced combination of the two attitudes is what we want; the active man should be able to take things easily, while the man who is inclined toward repose should be capable of action. Ask nature: she will tell you that she made both day and night."
- Seneca, Epistle III

Angry?

NT Wright mentions briefly what gets to him at times:



How about you?