Hoopla in the Heavens

I sat in my car, this morning, waiting on a certain work assignment, surrounded by welcome rain and enjoying Boorstin's "The Discoverers." I stopped short at a fascinating paragraph.

Somewhere in extant Babylonian literature that I somehow missed on my journey through it, is the story of how El, the great god, grew jealous of the bright lion that passed nightly across the sky, and smote it each day as the morning began.

The lion, of course, would be the planet Venus, the "morning star," which vanishes each day as the light returns.

Boorstin believes the Hebrews borrowed that myth, giving the smiting power to their own God and converting the sky-lion into The Light Bringer (Latin: Lucifer) who is made synonymous with Satan.

As in the famous Isaiah passage (chapter 14) from the Bible:

"How art thou fallen, O Lucifer,
son of the morning!
...For thou hast said in thine heart,
I will ascend into heaven ... "

I really don't want to get into a discussion about the reality or non-reality of The Evil One. But it is curious that in the Hebrew world, the aforementioned planet and associated sky-being, would be masculine and horribly evil; and if not so despicable in the alleged Babylonian original, still an affront to deity.

Whereas in the western world, the same celestial phenomenon was considered Feminine and delightful -- Venus/Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love.

The Fourth Wall

If real life were like the audience of a television sitcom, we’d have it a lot easier. The television audience gets to listen in to all the important conversations about the characters on the show, and so they know why Bob scowled at Sally or why George was two hours late picking up Susan from the airport or why Molly is furious with Henry but won’t say.

They get the whole picture. Whereas, sitcom characters and real life people have to make decisions based on hunches, suspicions, gleanings and sometimes absolute daring. Sometimes we soar like eagles, having guessed correctly. Sometimes we fall into a big, steaming, stinking pit of sh -- er, pig manure.

It is so difficult to go through life knowing that, while you are utterly unimportant to the majority of people outside of your house, office and local haunts, that people within those places are having discussions about you that you will never hear. Your life can go from normal to sheer hell based on those conversations to which you are not privy.

Picture of the Day

Do you know this man?

Droplets today, an ocean tomorrow

First a trickle, then a torrent, soon a cataclysmic deluge.

For the last fifteen years or so, I have been reading the books of ancient Greece, the Middle East and Rome, in careful, chronological order. Today, I finished with Suetonius’ account of the first twelve Caesars. And when I closed that book, I closed an era.

Surely the last few authors whose works I have read, would never have imagined that the starveling Christians whom they mention only briefly – and that in derision, condescension or disgust, as a new, obscure, loathsome sect of half-wits – would soon become the leaders of the Western world, including Rome itself, capturing the political and religious allegiance of virtually its entire population.

Imagine, the Moonies or some even more obscure, despised modern cult, rising to lead the world in the lifetime of your grandchildren.

Having concluded Suetonius, I step ahead to the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, a late Caesar to whom one of those Christians, Justin Martyr, actually wrote a petition/book/apology. Justin is one of the earliest extant Christian writers, if not the first, outside of the new Testament canon and pseudepigraphical scriptural works. I know nothing about him beyond his name and that brief detail. That will soon change and I will come to know others as well.

“Pagan” Rome will soon be a memory and I will be firmly inside a new world of literature, a genre carrying me right up to the so-called Middle Ages. At some point, the literature of Islam will have to occupy my attention, too.

What a ride I am in for!

What privileges Caesar hath ...

Suetonius, writing circa 120 A.D. about the Caesars of Rome, had horrible material to work with. Drunk with absolute power, the men about whom he wrote were disgusting, bloody and often, downright insane.

And yet, I found this passage about Claudius Caesar (reigned 41 to 54 AD) downright funny:

"No matter where Claudius happened to be, he always felt ready for food and drink. One day, while he was judging a case in Augustus' Forum, the delicious smell of cooking assailed his nostrils. He descended from the Tribunal, closed the court, and went to the dining room of the Leaping Priests in the near-by Temple of Mars, where he immediately took his place at the meal he had scented."

A kindred spirit

"I'm not a liberal, a conservative, an evolutionist, a monk, or indifferent to the world. My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love and the most absolute freedom -- freedom from violence and falsehood in whatever form they may be expressed." -- Anton Chekhov, Russian writer.