Mmmmmm.....New Greek Lexicon....

Blimey! Returned the university library copy of the Patristic Greek Lexicon to them by post today......as it weighs nearly 3kg it was NOT cheap, not even sending it by Parcelforce 48hr. Still, it's cheaper than the train fare to the midlands. By an elegant coincidence, just as I was about to leave for the post office, the DHL van arrived to deliver MY OWN COPY OF IT!!!!! Yes - I bit the very expensive bullet, courtesy of my anticipated funding, and now have a Lampe of my own to illuminate my reading. Mmmm...brand new book with crisp clean pages......mmmm.......small Greek text......mmmm!

Egypt Calls

The library's recall of Lampe's Patristic Lexicon has left me in a bit of an expensive quandary: to buy my own copy or not? It's vastly expensive, but I could spend pounds and pounds if I indulge in constantly recalling it myself for redelivery. Would that there was an online version! If I don't eat for a month or two......

I've been reading, in a very desultory fashion, C.J.Sansom's Revelation......and to be honest I'm not really getting into it. Maybe it's the 'historical mystery' genre ('Morse in hose', as the hero has been dubbed) - not really my thing although I really enjoyed The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl - but I think that I'm not really enjoying the way that it's written....it seems almost too straightforward and clear, almost as if it were written for teenagers. Writing by numbers, if you like. I probably won't persist as I picked up a copy of Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet and, having read the first few pages the quality of the prose just hit me between the eyes. Fantastic! The languourousness of humid Alexandria reminds me (unsurprisingly) of Naguib Mahfouz' Cairo Trilogy which are among my absolute favourite books. It makes me want to read the poems of Constantine Cavafy again.I hope I'll be eventually able to source a charity shop copy of my own. Still waiting for Sum to arrive, but when it does, I can slot the separate tales between the Durrell chapters.

An Old Man: by Constantine Cavafy.

At the noisy end of the cafe,

head bent over the table, an old man sits alone,

a newspaper in front of him.

And in the miserable banality of old age

he thinks how little he enjoyed the years

when he had strength, eloquence, and looks.

He knows he's aged a lot: he sees it, feels it.

Yet it seems he was young just yesterday.

So brief an interval, so brief.

And he thinks of Prudence, how it fooled him,

how he always believed - what madness -

that cheat who said: "Tomorrow. You have plenty of time."

He remembers impulses bridled, the joy he sacrificed.

Every chance he lost

now mocks his senseless caution.

But so much thinking, so much remembering

makes the old man dizzy. He falls asleep,

his head resting on the cafe table.

Night Train to the Afterlife

My bed-time reading recently has been Pascal Mercier's Night Train to Lisbon. I bought it on the strength that it was very cheap when bought with the Times newspaper (£1.99 or £2.99....I can't remember) and had a glowing recommendation from Isabel Allende on the cover (' A treat for the mind' or somesuch, I can't be bothered to go upstairs and look). I've been reading it for ages and ages, a small morsel at a time. It's one of those slow burners that, even after finishing it, I'm not quite sure whether I enjoyed it or not, although when I'd finally closed the cover, I knew I'd miss it. Looking at the reader reviews on Amazon it seems that opinions on it vary widely: some people hated it, thought it was dull, stodgy, had a boring hero, that nothing happens etc., but some people gave it five stars and loved it for its glacial pace and introspection. Many commented on the poor translation from the original, but it was not something that troubled me too much. I think the whole message of the novel is that life is all about the journey, not the end destination. Poor little, boring, troubled 'Mundus' was like a worm wriggling miserably on the hook of its existence: the brief intrusion on his life by the (suicidal?) Portuguese woman coupled with the discovery of the luminous and mysterious Prado's book at the bookseller's had the effect of opening up a world of possibilities and other lives that, having had a glimpse of it, he could not bear to step away from. But he is subject to the 'Bell Jar' effect (see Sylvia Plath's book of the same name): We humans cannot escape ourselves by changing location: we carry our stale lives' atmosphere around with us, our fears, hang-ups, paranoias, shyness, whatever. They taint the freshness of wherever we go, so that it is no longer the place we originally and fondly perceived it to be.
Nicholas Lezard's paperback choice of the week, David Eagleman's Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlife, reviewed in the Guardian newspaper last Saturday certainly struck a few chords with me and slotted right into my current interest in, and studies of, the hereafter. Eagleman seems an intriguing prospect as an author- a neuroscientist who writes in a style reminiscent of Jorge Luis Borges (whose work I just loved and devoured last year). The premise is '40 different versions of our post-life existence.....skits on the conundrums of creation itself...God, variously imagined as male, female, non-existent or concerned only with microbes...is, as often as not, in despair at how imperfect everything is, how the best intentions can go wrong...These are stories that tell us how to live our life now, to appreciate, indeed treasure, our sublunar existence...'

(never mind skipping off on pointless and unneccessary quests, touting our pack of misery with us). Needless to say, I have ordered it.
Given that there are forty separate morsels, I intend to read it over the space of forty days...a biblical concept if ever there was one

The Comfort of Job

Can't resist an ICC commentary! Picked up a 1921 copy of 'A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Job' by Samuel Rolles Driver and George Buchanan Grey from the Barbican Bookshop. It's in pretty good condition, a bit faded and musty, but most of the pages are still uncut along the top edge, so I'm guessing that it hasn't had much use unless the previous owners were content to peer into the pages! I'm particularly keen on examining the language of Job's hope for post-death vindication, but that'll have to wait a wee while until I've incorporated some of Albert Schweizer's ideas (from The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle) into my study of Pauline eschatology. It's an amazing book: I can't quite understand why the university have relegated to the storeroom. However, I'm going to have to read Kasemann on Schweizer. No doubt I'll find all my current ideas turned upside-down!

Daniel and Decisions

Studying the Book of Enoch has lead me onto the Book of Daniel. The ever-brilliant Barbican Bookshop has a large selection of International Critical Commentaries at the moment (some in considerably better condition than others!) including a pristine commentary by James Montgomery on Daniel. Not the most modern commentary on the market, but very useful as it contains a great deal of textual detail. The wonderful news that I am to receive funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council for my doctoral studies means that a whole new world of book-buying will open up for me come October. I scarcely know where to start: One biggie that I surely want is the IVP Dictionary of New Testament Backgrounds edited by Stanley Porter, another possibly my own copy of Lampe's Patristic Greek Lexicon. Decisions, decisions.....

Too Hot to Blog

This is why the continentals are so laid back.......the glorious sunshine and high (for us)temperatures disincline computer use. And the lap-top screen can't be seen very well outside, so blogging will be kept to a minimum for the duration. Suffice to say that I have sourced a 1917 translation of The Book of Enoch (Ethiopic), which I have been reading in the shade of the vine-covered pergola. It's lovely and mesmeric stuff, full of arresting imagery, that meanders through the heavens and the underworld as Enoch reveals his visions:

'And I proceeded and saw a place which burns day and night, where there are seven mountains of magnificent stones, three towards the east, and three towards the south. And as for those towards the east, one was of coloured stone, and one of pearl, and one of jacinth, and those towards the south of red stone.
But the middle one reached to heaven like the throne of God, of alabaster, and the summit of the throne was of sapphire. And I saw a flaming fire. And beyond these mountains Is a region the end of the great earth: there the heavens were completed. And I saw a deep abyss, with columns of heavenly fire, and among them I saw columns of fire fall, which were beyond measure alike towards the height and towards the depth. And beyond that abyss I saw a place which had no firmament of the heaven above, and no firmly founded earth beneath it: there was no water upon it, and no birds, but it was a waste and horrible place. I saw there seven stars like great burning mountains, and to me, when I inquired regarding them, The angel said: 'This place is the end of heaven and earth: this has become a prison for the stars and the host of heaven. And the stars which roll over the fire are they which have transgressed the commandment of the Lord in the beginning of their rising, because they did not come forth at their appointed times. And He was wroth with them, and bound them till the time when their guilt should be consummated (even) for ten thousand years.'

The Book of Enoch is seminal in that it is from here that the designation 'Son of Man' (as seen in the Matthaean Gospel) comes.

'And this Son of Man whom thou hast seen shall raise up the kings and the mighty from their seats,[and the strong from their thrones] and shall loosen the reins of the strong, and break the teeth of the sinners. [And he shall put down the kings from their thrones and kingdoms] b ecause they do not extol and praise Him, nor humbly acknowledge whence the kingdom was bestowed upon them. And he shall put down the countenance of the strong, and shall fill them with shame. And darkness shall be their dwelling, and worms shall be their bed, and they shall have no hope of rising from their beds, because they do not extol the name of the Lord of Spirits.'

As I am tracing the concept of the underworld and resurrection at the moment, this is all fantastic stuff and this text is referred to constantly in the Schweizer book (The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle) that constitutes my current reading first thing in the morning. But my favourite verses are the ones that refer to the dwelling-place of Wisdom ( as usual, a female personification):

'Wisdom found no place where she might dwell; Then a dwelling-place was assigned her in the heavens.
Wisdom went forth to make her dwelling among the children of men, and found no dwelling-place:
Wisdom returned to her place, and took her seat among the angels.
And unrighteousness went forth from her chambers: Whom she sought not she found, and dwelt with them,
As rain in a desert and dew on a thirsty land.'

Fantastic!