“If our translation is correct, Job is describing in this passage the beneficial effect of his unjust persecution on his own community. I know of no other text where that effect is so bluntly articulated (17:6-9). It is the same as the tragic effect, the Aristotelian catharsis, but this is not a theatrical representation, and …
It’s Just That We Don’t Have a Screen That Big At Home
“Ironically, concerts today usually feature giant video screens so that fans can see the live performance up close by means of TV! Reality and reproduction are thus, in the postmodernist way, hopelessly confused” (Gene Edward Veith, Postmodern Times, p. 105).
Taking Time to Brood
“Great men are too popular to succumb immediately to the intrigues that proliferate around them. Mimetic rivalry broods a long time in the shadows” (Girard, Job, p. 54).
A Local Deal
The Moscow School Board voted yesterday to hold an election in March to increase their supplemental levy by $1.97 million. Now there are a number of questions that normally swirl around levy issues. (Is the money used wisely? Why is MSD more expensive than other districts? Voters who pursue other education options being less inclined …
Art is Whatever an Artist Can Get Away With
“The significance of the work of art often inheres not in the work itself, but in the chutzpah of the artist” (Gene Edward Veith, Postmodern Times, p. 101).
And Why Their Modern Successors Hate It When a Man Defends Himself
“Job is quite a different question. Job is unthinkable for the Greeks and their modern successors. Imagine an unyielding Oedipus who scoffs at fate, and especially at parricide and incest; who persists in treating oracles as sinister traps for scapegoats, which is what they unquestionably are. He would have the whole world against him — …
God’s Own Metaphor
“Puritan poets . . . knew that part of their work in this world was to wean their affections from the unmixed love of it. But they also knew that this world was God’s metaphor for His communicable glories and that another part of their duty was to see and utter that metaphor, to use …
Flat On Purpose
“Whereas modern artists assume that the artist, like all human beings, is a unified personality, postmodernists work from the assumption that self-identity is itself an illusion. Modernists, believing the artist is a unique individual, strive for a unique style. Postmodernists work with a collage of different and often recycled and mass-produced styles. Modernists are ‘deep,’ …
The Sanctimonious Veil of Myth
“Why? Because Job protests his innocence to the end. If his ‘friends’ had succeeded in reducing him to silence, the persecutors’ belief in the scapegoat’s guilt would have been unanimous. This belief would have prevailed so totally that every future account of the affair would have been given by people sharing it. We would have …
The Hollow People
“Since style, surfaces, and group identity are so important in contemporary life, postmodern society is highly geared towards fashion. The postmodern social scene is preoccupied with what’s ‘in’ and what’s ‘out.’ Being on the cutting edge becomes an obsession. Fashion, of course, must be in a state of constant chance. Otherwise it cannot serve its …