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Post by Maolsheachlann on Mar 1, 2024 14:46:55 GMT
I've been reading THE JESUS PAPYRUS. It's a 90s edition. I remember it being reissued a few years ago, but never bought it. I didn't realise anything bought in a mainstream bookshop would be so positive towards the historicity of the Gospel. I'm mentioning it now because the city of Barcelona is mentioned quite a bit. The book is mainly about three fragments found in Luxor and brought to Oxford, but a papyrus fragment called P67, kept Barcelona, is dealt with also, it seems to be an early piece of Matthew. It's of interest just now to note this little part of the city's scholarly heritage Good to hear! Of course we have some of the oldest gospel fragments in the Chester Beatty library (which is more of a museum) in Dublin.
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Post by Séamus on Mar 3, 2024 11:29:19 GMT
I've been reading THE JESUS PAPYRUS. It's a 90s edition. I remember it being reissued a few years ago, but never bought it. I didn't realise anything bought in a mainstream bookshop would be so positive towards the historicity of the Gospel. I'm mentioning it now because the city of Barcelona is mentioned quite a bit. The book is mainly about three fragments found in Luxor and brought to Oxford, but a papyrus fragment called P67, kept Barcelona, is dealt with also, it seems to be an early piece of Matthew. It's of interest just now to note this little part of the city's scholarly heritage Good to hear! Of course we have some of the oldest gospel fragments in the Chester Beatty library (which is more of a museum) in Dublin. I think Beatty Library was mentioned in the book. It was a few years ago now;I didn't actually own the book. I can recall, some time after reading it and writing that comment,a young altar boy asking a priest an unanswerable question: where was the real Bible? (meaning, I suppose, an imagined original text coming from the cloud) and I helping the stumped priest out by mentioning ancient texts in different places- Jerusalem-via-Qumran,Rome,Dublin... the last-mentioned obviously coming over in a flat accent which was gleefully imitated with a touch of incredulity by a listening older boy. (I told him what I knew about Chester Beatty.) No doubt you'd have to have been there to find it funny.
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Mar 9, 2024 1:30:01 GMT
I'm reading The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. I never read modern fiction but I came across a copy of this on a book exchange shelf and decided to go for it. Tartt is a Catholic convert but whether she's liberal, conservative, orthodox, or whatever, I don't know. She's said herself she doesn't think religious beliefs should be obvious in a novelist's work.
All I can say is that it's gripping. I'm not a fast reader, but after three days I'm about 350 pages into it. Unlike a lot of modern literary fiction I don't find myself thinking: "Nobody I've ever met thinks or behaves like these characters". It reminds me of J.P. Donleavy, Keith Waterhouse, Stephen King, Sue Townsend, and Pat Conroy. More than anything else it's like a modern version of David Copperfield, the adventures of a boy who loses his mother in the first chapter and how he sees all sides of American life.
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Post by assisi on Mar 10, 2024 18:56:52 GMT
I'm reading The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. I never read modern fiction but I came across a copy of this on a book exchange shelf and decided to go for it. Tartt is a Catholic convert but whether she's liberal, conservative, orthodox, or whatever, I don't know. She's said herself she doesn't think religious beliefs should be obvious in a novelist's work. All I can say is that it's gripping. I'm not a fast reader, but after three days I'm about 350 pages into it. Unlike a lot of modern literary fiction I don't find myself thinking: "Nobody I've ever met thinks or behaves like these characters". It reminds me of J.P. Donleavy, Keith Waterhouse, Stephen King, Sue Townsend, and Pat Conroy. More than anything else it's like a modern version of David Copperfield, the adventures of a boy who loses his mother in the first chapter and how he sees all sides of American life. I enjoyed this book, but thought is could have been shorter. One of her other books, The Secret History, is even better in a more subtle and sophisticated way.
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Post by cato on Mar 10, 2024 20:37:52 GMT
I'm reading The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. I never read modern fiction but I came across a copy of this on a book exchange shelf and decided to go for it. Tartt is a Catholic convert but whether she's liberal, conservative, orthodox, or whatever, I don't know. She's said herself she doesn't think religious beliefs should be obvious in a novelist's work. All I can say is that it's gripping. I'm not a fast reader, but after three days I'm about 350 pages into it. Unlike a lot of modern literary fiction I don't find myself thinking: "Nobody I've ever met thinks or behaves like these characters". It reminds me of J.P. Donleavy, Keith Waterhouse, Stephen King, Sue Townsend, and Pat Conroy. More than anything else it's like a modern version of David Copperfield, the adventures of a boy who loses his mother in the first chapter and how he sees all sides of American life. I enjoyed this book, but thought is could have been shorter. One of her other books, The Secret History, is even better in a more subtle and sophisticated way. c I read the Secret History last year and loved it. I think I ll try the Goldfinch soon too....
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eala
Full Member
Posts: 155
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Post by eala on Mar 17, 2024 18:57:33 GMT
"The Anti-Oedipus Complexcritically explores the post-'68 dramatic developments in Freudo-Lacanian psychoanalysis and cultural theory. Beginning with the decline of patriarchy and the master, exemplified by Freud's paean for the Father, the revolutionary path was blown wide open by anti-psychiatry, schizoanalysis and radical politics, the complex antinomies of which are traced here in detail with the help of philosophers such as Nietzsche, Baudrillard, Levinas, Steiner, Žižek, Badiou, Derrida and Girard, as well as theologians, analysts, writers, musicians and film makers." I am still at chapter 2 so I can't really summarise it but here is a review from the Irish Times: www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/the-anti-oedipus-complex-review-how-the-west-was-lost-1.3070132 cynical theories would make a good companion volume
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Post by Séamus on Apr 22, 2024 5:39:23 GMT
' His grey shirt was open at the neck and his feet in Arab slippers were thrust into bucket stirrups. He carried a shot-gun slung across his back. But the most remarkable feature about him was his face, which was as dark as an Arab's. It was a lean, brown face, with the straight nose seen in classical sculpture. His beard grew away from the lips and stood out crisply. His hair was looped up at the back in a gigantic knot that would, if unbound, have fallen below his waist. This impressive person came riding towards us, an odd mixture of brigand and saint. "Who on earth is he?" I asked the sergeant. "This," he replied "is Father John." The priest apologised for his appearance. It was unfortunate, he said, that I should have caught him at such a moment, but he thought there was a hare in the corn and had been out in the hope that he could offer a stew of hare to the Bishop of Cæsarea, who was coming to stay with him. "The Bishop of Cæsarea?" I said. "I had no idea there was such a see."..... He gave a hitch to his shot-gun. "The present Bishop lives in Jerusalem and I, Father John, am merely a watch-dog caretaker." "But what do you watch, Father?" I asked. '
I'm not sure how there came to be an Irish ballad titled Salonika, recorded by Dublin City Ramblers, but a major thing that struck me while reading a recently-finished book (In the Footsteps of St Paul, HV Morton 1949 edition of a 1936 publication) was how few of the eastern cities associated with the Apostle of the nations can realistically be considered as still existing, Salonika's one of the few exceptions.
Fr John, who looked after the fragment of a Byzantine basilica built over what was traditionally a site of one of Paul's imprisonments makes a particularly riveting scene.
"I've never been in such a pathetically poor little church in my life. It is also the only Greek church I have ever seen without an ikonostasis. Every Sunday Father John holds a service there alone. No one ever comes, because there are no parishioners. To this feeble flicker has Christianity sunk in the city of St. Paul, of Origen and of Eusebius. He opened shutters covered with cobwebs to let in more light, and as he pointed out beauties where none were visible to the eye, I realised that I had been unjust to him. Seeing him on horseback with his gun, I had thought him more interested in shooting a hare or planting a row of beans than in spiritual things: but now, in this pitiful little chapel in which he moved with the ease and confidence of long familiarity, he seemed to grow taller and the dignity of his sacred office made him another man."
Morton's description of Atatürk's Turkey and pagan Greece were interesting distractions. He seemed as awed by the Acropolis as by anything Christian and did make an unemotional and unbiased mention of Lord Elgin that would be difficult to find in 2024.
Secular but Muslim Turkey, a Christianity that shrinks in some places and lives in others, a Greece that was stanch in it's own identity, a Rome that he respected but a Malta that he had little to say about...it all had extra meaning when considered in the light of today's world.
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