David Litwa on Deification in Paul

A belated congratulations to my friend and colleague, David Litwa on the publication of his book. I read parts while it was in progress, and it is a very learned volume. Litwa's approach is certainly more historical than most approaches to deification, but precisely therein lies its value. If you are interested in Paul, I recommend you read it. I will try to post a review in the near future.

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Cultural pessimism and our gravest error

Cultural pessimism is always fashionable, and, since we are human, there are always grounds for it. It has the negative consequence of depressing the level of aspiration, the sense of the possible. And from time to time it has the extremely negative consequence of encouraging a kind of somber panic, a collective dream-state in which recourse to terrible remedies is inspired by delusions of mortal threat. If there is anything in the life of any culture or period that gives good grounds for alarm, it is the rise of cultural pessimism, whose major passion is bitter hostility toward many or most of the people within the very culture the pessimists always feel they are intent on rescuing. When panic on one side is creating alarm on the other, it is easy to forget that there are always as good grounds for optimism as for pessimism--exactly the same grounds, in fact--that i, because we are human. We still have every potential for good we have ever had, and the same presumptive claim to respe...

The Abgar Legend: From Locative Foundation to Identity in Locative Voice

Among the faithful of the Assyrian Church of the East (ACOE) it is well-known fact that their traditional liturgical language—Syriac—is “the language Jesus spoke.” (Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic, after all, unlike Greek and Latin.) Among the faithful of the ACOE it is also a well-known fact that Jesus founded the church in Osrohene (Edessa) in Syria around the year 30 CE in his correspondence with King Abgar V Ukama. Well, actually the church was more formally established when the apostle Addai was sent to Edessa (either by the apostle Thomas or by Jesus himself) to cure Abgar of his disease after Jesus had been crucified and resurrected. At any rate, the ACOE was established by Jesus, through the apostles’ authority, immediately after Jesus’ earthly life. Among the points of pride the faithful of the ACOE tally to their church’s credit, this is among the most important. Jesus did not correspond with Tiberius Caesar, nor deliberately send an ap...

Now in (e-)print

My review of Experientia, Volume 2 has been posted at the Review of Biblical Literature website. A brief excerpt: "This volume offers an array of voices to think with, conversation partners to engage for those interested in examining ancient religious experience and the texts that reflected and elicited them. What it lacks in coherence it makes up for in verve. Experimentation may not provide the solid results we might desire, but it might just show us which paths are worth taking and which should remain untrod." If you're interested, read the review . If you're still interested after that, buy the book here or at Amazon .

Andrew Guffey

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