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Living and Learning: December 10, 2008

Dec10

Z-baby and I were going to pick up her brother from his math class, and we had this rather random conversation:

Z-baby: When someone becomes president, on the day he becomes president, do they have a Big Party or something?

Semicolon Mom: Yes, they do. It’s called an inauguration.

Z-baby: Does everybody in the whole country have to come?

Semicolon Mom: No, just his friends and supporters and other people who live close to Washington, D.C. will be there.

Z-baby: Why does Barack Obama have to be president of Texas anyway? Why can’t he just go be president of New Mexico or something?

(Impromptu geography/government lesson ensues in which Semicolon Mom explains that New Mexico and Texas are both part of the United States, and Mr. Obama will be president of all fifty states in the U.S.)

Z-baby: Well, at least maybe it will snow tonight!
extremely reluctant reader, the only one I’ve had to be so allergic to learning to read. (No, she doesn’t have a learning disability. She’s mostly just lazy and opinionated.) Anyway, I’m glad to have her bringing me a book and reading parts of it to me, with a smile!

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born December 10th, Emily Dickinson, Mary Norton, Rumer Godden.
Will Duquette reviews In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden.
Semicolon review of Pippa Passes by Rumer Godden.

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born December 10th, George Macdonald.

Dating the Gospels

Dec2

A friend and I were discussing the truth claims of Christianity and reliability of the gospels, and she made the statement that the “gospel” that was recently discvered that talks about the marriage of Mary Magdalene and Jesus pre-dates the four canonical gospels. I didn’t know if that was true or not, but I doubted that it was.

So I challenged her statement and said I’d look it up. Here’s what I found in a cursory search on the internet:

First of all, The (so-called) Gospel of Philip does not say that Mary Magdalene and Jesus were married, but it is the source for Dan Brown’s fictional account of that marriage.

The book’s origins can be traced to the Gnostic community that arose several years after the death of Valentinus (c. 160); written more than a century after Jesus walked the earth, the book cannot represent eyewitness testimony about him. Some of the brief excerpts found in Gospel of Philip may stem from the early second century; however, the date of the final form of the book is closer to the late 200s. ~The Truth About Da Vinci

See also here, here, and here, all sources, Christian and non Christian which place the composition of The Gospel of Philip later than 100 AD.

As for the canonical gospels, F.F. Bruce says in his book The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?:

The New Testament was complete, or substantially complete, about AD 100, the majority of the writings being in existence twenty to forty years before this. In this country a majority of modern scholars fix the dates of the four Gospels as follows: Matthew, c. 85-90; Mark, c. 65; Luke, c. 80-85; John, c. 90-100.4 I should be inclined to date the first three Gospels rather earlier: Mark shortly after AD 60, Luke between 60 and 70, and Matthew shortly after 70. One criterion which has special weight with me is the relation which these writings appear to bear to the destruction of the city and temple of Jerusalem by the Romans in AD 70. My view of the matter is that Mark and Luke were written before this event, and Matthew not long afterwards.

But even with the later dates, the situation is encouraging from the historian’s point of view, for the first three Gospels were written at a time when men were alive who could remember the things that Jesus said and did, and some at least would still be alive when the fourth Gospel was written.

None of the above settles once and for all whether the Christian gospels are historically accurate nor whether the so-called Gospel of Philip has any truth in it, but it should settle the matter of whether or not the Gnostic Gospel of Philip predates the canonical gospels. It doesn’t.

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born December 2nd.

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born February 7th

Feb7

A great day for another LOST episode:

Sir Thomas More, b. 1478 More’s Utopia is a novel which “describes the political arrangements of the imaginary island nation of Utopia (a play on the Greek ou-topos, meaning “no place”, and eu-topos, meaning “good place”). Wow, if that’s not related to LOST island, the noplace/good place . . .

Samuel Butler, b. 1612. Butler was a nineteenth century author whose masterpiece was a novel called Erewhon (“nowhere” backwards). Erewhon was an imaginary country, neither utopia nor dystopia, but rather ambiguously satirical of the British Empire at the time. Is LOST a utopia or a dystopia, and can we tell the difference?

Charles Dickens, b. 1812. Of course, Dickens is Desmond’s favorite novelist, and he’s read all of DIckens’ novels except for the one he’s saving to read just before he dies, Our Mutual Friend. Here’s my post on LOST and Our Mutual Friend.

Laura Ingalls Wilder, b. 1867. Sawyer says he watched Little House on the Prairie when he was a kid. Can’t you just picture little James watching Laura and Mary on Little House?

Sinclair Lewis, b. 1885. Lewis’s novel Arrowsmith is about a brilliant but self-involved doctor named Martin Arrowsmith who moves from swmall town practice to large hospitals to research and eventually works to contain an outbreak of the bubonic plague that kills his beloved wife. After the loss of his wife, Dr. Arrowsmith becomes lost to himself and his principles and deserts his second wife. I’m not sure exactly how this plot relates to Jack Shepard, dedicated doctor who becomes an alcoholic and a druggie, but surely there’s a parallel there.

Everything relates in some way to LOST, right?

Other Dickensian posts:

Scrooge Goes to Church

Quotes and Links

Born February 7th

Favorite Dickensian Things

A Dickens of a Quiz

Charles Dickens by Jane Smiley

A Little More Dickens

Mere Comments on Dickens’ Christianity.

Dickens Dissed:

Anthony Trollope: “Of Dicken’s style it is impossible to speak in praise. It is jerky, ungrammatical and created by himself in defiance of rules … No young novelist should ever dare to imitate the style of Dickens.”

Oscar Wilde on Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop: “One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing.”

So as not to end on a sourly laughing note, let me say that I didn’t laugh when Little Nell died, although I do hiss audibly when Madame Defarge enters the story in A Tale of Two Cities, and I admit to feeling not too much sympathy for Little Em’ly. And I would love to think it within my abilities to imitate Dickens, The Inimitable.

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born December 17th

Dec17

John Greenleaf Whittier, b. 1807. Whittier must have been very popular around the turn of the century. My book, The Year’s Entertainments, has several pages in the December chapter devoted to a program celebrating Whittier’s birthday. One page is entitled “Notes About Whittier’s Life (to be read aloud by several pupils).”

Whittier scribbled verses on his slate when he was a little boy, but he was a lad of nineteen when he sent his first poem to William Lloyd Garrison, editor of The Free Press. Garrison was so pleased with poem that he drove out to the farm to see the writer and found him hoeing in the field. They had a long talk, the editor advising Whittier to take some course of study as a training for a literary future.

Whittier’s education had been limited to the district school, half a mile away, and with a term of but twelve weeks later in the year. He was puzzled to know how to secure the means to gain the coveted education, and finally solved the problem by learning to make shoes. From the money he so earned he got six months’ board and tuition in Haverhill Academy. At the close of this term of study, he became editor of a home paper, and also edited the Hartford New England Review; consquently he soon became known to all the writers and thinkers of New England.”

And’s here’s a sample poem by Whittier, suitable for considering as the primary elections come close upon the new year. Iowa will be holding its caucuses on January 3rd, and New Hampshire, Michigan, Nevada, South Carolina, and Florida will follow with primary elections or caucuses in January, too.

The Poor Voter on Election Day

The proudest now is but my peer,
The highest not more high;
Today of all the weary year,
A king of men am I.

Today, alike are great and small,
The nameless and the known;
My place is the people’s hall,
The ballot-box my throne!

Who serves today up on the list
Beside the served shall stand;
Alike the brown and wrinkled fist,
The gloved and dainty hand!
The rich is level with the poor,
The weak is strong today;
The sleekest broadcloth counts no more
Than homespun frock on gray.

Today let pomp and vain pretence
My stubborn right abide;
I set a plain man’s common sense
Against the pedant’s pride.
Today shall simple manhood try
The strength of gold and land;
The wide world has not wealth to buy
The power in my right hand!

While there’s grief to seek redress,
Or balance to adjust,
Where weighs our living manhood less
Than Mammon’s vilest dust,–

While there’s a right to need my vote,
A wrong to sweep away,
Up! clouted knee and ragged coat!
A man’s a man today!

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born December 16th

Dec16

Jane Austen herself was born on December 16, 1775. What’s your favorite Austen novel?

Also born on December 16th: Noel Coward (1896, playwright), Arthur C. Clarke (1917, author of 2001: A Space Odyssey), and Marie Hall Ets (1895, author of many children’s picture books including Gilberto and the Wind and Nine Days to Christmas).

Today is also Beethoven’s Birthday (1770). Will you be celebrating the birth of Schroeder’s favorite composer, and if so, how? I think I’ll play some of Beethoven’s more famous compositions and play guess the composer with the urchins.

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born December 10th

Dec10

George MacDonald was born December 10, 1824. He wrote At the Back of the North Wind, The Light Princess, The Princess and the Goblin, and The Princess and Curdie, all fairy tale/fantasies for children. I’ve read all four of these, and I like best The Light Princess, the story of a princess who was cursed at birth with “no gravity,” both in the literal and the figurative sense. I tried to read one of MacDonald’s romances a long time ago, but I don’t remember finishing it. C.S. Lewis was quite fond of MacDonald’s adult fantasies, Phantastes and Lilith. I think I also tried one of these long ago but didn’t understand it (which proves that I’m not C.S. Lewis’ intellectual equal, not that I ever thought I was). MacDonald also had a long and successful marriage which produced six sons and five daughters.

Some people think it is not proper for a clergyman to dance. I mean to assert my freedom from any such law. If our Lord chose to represent, in His parable of the Prodigal Son, the joy in Heaven over a repentant sinner by the figure of ‘music and dancing’, I will hearken to Him rather than to man, be they as good as they may.” For I had long thought that the way to make indifferent things bad, was for good people not to do them.”

I wonder how many Christians there are who so thoroughly believe God made them that they can laugh in God’s name; who understand that God invented laughter and gave it to His children… The Lord of gladness delights in the laughter of a merry heart.”

Certainly work is not always required of a man. There is such a thing as a sacred idleness —the cultivation of which is now fearfully neglected.”

How do you cultivate “Sacred Idleness”? What does that mean to you? Or is it just blather?

Geroge MacDonald also wrote a book poetic devotionals, one devotional poem for each day of the year. The poem for December reads thus:

What makes thy being a bliss shall then make mine
For I shall love as thou and love in thee;
Then shall I have whatever I desire
My every faintest wish being all divine;
Power thou wilt give me to work mightily,
Even as my Lord, leading thy low men nigher,
With dance and song to cast their best upon thy fire.

If it helps, I believe the poem is addressed to God.

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born December 9th

Dec9

Milton was born December 9th in London. He graduated from Cambridge in 1632, and a few years later he went on a tour of the Continent. When he returned to England, he became a Puritan and a follower of Oliver Cromwell. In 1652 he became completely blind, and his first wife died. He later remarried. He wrote much of his poetry after he became blind.

Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music. L’Allegro It seems to me that there a quite a number of people who cannot hear the music these days. He who has ears to hear, let him hear—and dance.

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. Samson Agonistes There is good reason to be silent and let some people talk themselves and their ideas into oblivion. Who has the time to argue with the wind, and why?

Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven. – Paradise Lost
Familiar, but still true. I hear people say all the time–in one way or another–I will not submit. I will do what I want to do. I WILL–no matter where it leads.

Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties. And this is true liberty, not license. If we do these things, are free to do these things, according to conscience, we will surely come to the Truth , and the Truth shall make us free.

Who overcomes By force, hath overcome but half his foe. Paradise Lost Which is why the job in Iraq is only half-finished. We must leave Iraq better than we found it, and we must demonstrate democracy amd the peace of God before we leave.

Join voices, all ye living souls: ye birds, That singing up to heaven-gate ascend, Bear on your wings and in your notes his praise. Paradise Lost Great idea.

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born December 5th

Dec5

Today is the birthday of Joan Didion, b. 1934, who won the National Book Award in 2005 for her book The Year of Magical Thinking. I’ve added it to The List, largely on the recommendation of Ms. Mental Multivitamin. If I like it, I may add some others of Didion’s books to The List for I must admit that I’ve never read anything by this particular author.

Today is also the day to honor and remember the birth of Christina Rossetti. She was a thoroughly Catholic Christian poet, and she wrote several Christmas poems/carols. Most people are familiar with In the Bleak Mid-Winter, especially the last verse. The following poem, also by Rossetti, is not as familiar although I think I have heard it put to music:

Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, Love Divine;
Love was born at Christmas;
Star and angels gave the sign.

Worship we the Godhead,
Love Incarnate, Love Divine;
Worship we our Jesus,
But wherewith for sacred sign?

Love shall be our token,
Love be yours and love be mine,
Love to God and all men,
Love for plea and gift and sign.

Love is our plea, our gift, and our sign–that which we need, that which we receive, that which we give. May it be so.

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born December 2nd

Dec2

David Masson, Scottish writer and editor, b. 1822. Mr. Masson was “an enthusiastic friend and admirer of Thomas Carlyle,” and he “actively promoted the movement for the university education of women.” He wrote a biography: Life of Milton in Connexion with the History of His Own Time in six volumes and edited a three volume edition of Milton’s collected works.

David Macaulay, b. 1946. I love Mr. Macaulay’s books: Cathedral (1973), City (1974), Pyramid (1975), Underground (1976), Castle (1977), Unbuilding (1980), Mill (1983), and Ship (1993). We also watched several episodes of the PBS series Building Big in which Mr. Macaulay explains the history and construction of bridges, tunnels, skyscrapers, domes, and dams. My kids were even inspired to build their own dam. If you haven’t experience David Macaulay’s books, you should. Any one of them would make a great Christmas for the architecturally inquisitive child or adult on your list.

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born December 1st

Dec1

A great compilation of information about Nero Wolfe, Archie Goodwin, and creator of both, Rex Stout.

Rex Stout, b. 1886. Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin are two of my very favorite fictional detectives.

Anyone in the mood for some Christmas mysteries? The following list of Christmas mystery novels is mostly taken from the book Murder Ink; I’ve not read all of them, but I have tried most of these authors. If you read one this Christmas, let me know how you liked it.

Agatha Christie: Murder for Christmas (Holiday for Murder)
Mary Higgins Clark: Silent Night
Charles Dickens: The Mystery of Edwin Drood
Martha Grimes: Jerusalem Inn
Georgette Heyer: Envious Casca
Michael Innes: A Comedy of Terrors
M.M. Kaye: Death in the Andamans
Ngaio Marsh: Tied Up in Tinsel
Elis Peters: A Rare Benedictine
Ellery Queen: The Finishing Stroke
Dell Shannon: No Holiday for Crime
Peter Tremayne: The Haunted Abbot

As for Rex Stout, his only Christmas contribution is a short story called “Christmas Party” featuring Nero Wolfe dressed up as Santa Claus. If the costume seems a bit out of character for Wolfe, he does have a good cause–he’s concerned about Archie Goodwin’s impending wedding! This story is one of four in the book And Four To Go.