Posts
1. Zosia Zaks, Life and Love: Positive Strategies for Autistic Adults, page 195:
On writing your profile for an Internet dating site: Try to make a favorable impression. If you do nothing in life but sit in front of the television, at least talk about your favorite shows. It is O.K. to acknowledge your faults and weaknesses, but do so in a positive light. For example, instead of saying you don’t do much, say you prefer to hang out at home. Then talk about what you like to do at home—read, play with your dog, cook. Instead of saying, “I hate sports and I’m totally not athletic at all,” try, “I am more interested in reading, taking quiet walks, or playing computer games. I’m a whiz at Tetris.” Remain honest but positive when describing your personality traits. For example, instead of saying, “I have no tolerance for people interrupting me when I’m doing something,” try, “I have a very intense focus and enjoy long periods of time to concentrate on my projects.”
2. Sara Japhet, The Ideology of the Book of Chronicles and Its Place in Biblical Thought, page 373:
The book of Chronicles takes the account of Israel’s exile and destruction and associates these disastrous events with the tribes who lived east of the Jordan—the two and a half tribes were all sent into exile for a very long time. With respect to the land west of the Jordan, in both the northern and southern kingdoms, the effects of enemy invasions are minimized. Foreign armies come and go, but the people’s presence in the land remains uninterrupted.
I wonder what Japhet does with II Chronicles 36:21, which says that the land enjoyed land sabbaths during the seventy years of its desolation. I looked in the Scripture index, and I couldn’t find a place where she addresses this question.
3. D.A. Russell, Criticism in Antiquity, page 162:
Aristophanes’ Agathon states the following: A poet ought to have manners related to the play he’s writing. For instance: if he writes a feminine piece, his person also needs its feminine side…A masculine piece needs masculinity. And where we’re lacking, imitation then supplies the want.
There’s method acting, in which an actor tries to become the character he plays in his day-to-day life (see Good Doctors, Tension in Chronicles on Northern Israel, Generating Emotions, Hebrews Vs. Philo on Cult, MT and LXX for Jeremiah). Apparently, there’s also method writing.
4. R.P.C. Hanson, Allegory and Event, page 140:
To the Marcionite objection to the punishment inflicted by God in the Old Testament [Origen] usually replies that such punishments were not vindictive or purely retributive but remedial and reformatory. Those who perished in the flood were given a second chance after death (I Peter 3.18-21). As for Sodom, God proposes to restore even that, for Ezekiel says, ‘And thy sisters, Sodom and her daughters, shall return to their former estate’ (Ezek. 16.55). Again, those who fell in the desert were forgiven and restored after death; Ps. 78 says ‘when he slew them, than they sought him’, which means that they sought God when they had been slain.
What’s interesting is that rabbis in Mishnah Sanhedrin 10 declare that the generation of the Flood, Sodom, and the wilderness generation have no place in the World to Come. There’s some debate on the wilderness generation, though (see here).
5. N.F. Marcos, The Septuagint in Context, pages 142-144:
Theodotian made a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. The church father Irenaeus (second century C.E.) says Theodotian was a Jewish proselyte. Jerome (fourth-fifth centuries C.E.) said he was an Ebionite, a Jewish Christian with views considered heretical. Yet, the church fathers use Theodotian’s translation. Origen and Clement of Alexander quote it out of respect for church tradition, and Justin, Clement of Rome, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Letter of Barnabas, Hebrews, John’s Apocalypse, and the synoptics employ Theodotionic readings, primarily of the Book of Daniel. Some say that Theodotian lived in the first century C.E. Others say he revised a previous text, which the New Testament cited.
