Book request

We're not a church-going or religious family. But with the Pope(s) in the news and our recent visit to Rome, Florence, and Orvieto, the kids are increasingly becoming aware of religious topics.

Yesterday, Cole (9) was reading a comic book "History of the Universe" and read the story of David and Goliath in it. He wondered if it was the same David as in Michelangelo's sculpture. "Yea, verily," I replied (or words to that effect). So:

Cole: So this story is from the Bible.

Thane: Yes. Lots of stories come from the Bible. OK, practically all stories come to from the Bible. At least the ones that come to mind. And what isn't in the Bible, comes from the Bible. At least it seems that way. It's hard to make up new stories, so people just rework the old ones. Or they change it around sort of, but it's still a Bible story. Or it has some part in it, or some symbol, that you're supposed to know comes from the Bible. It's a big book. It's hard to get away from the Bible—it's quite an interesting book, I should read it more myself. In fact, if a person wants to say some book has all the important stuff on some subject, they call it a "Bible," so you know, you've got the "bible of golf" or whatever... (I think I could have rambled along boringly on this subject for awhile, so it was good to be interrupted...)

Cole: (Resignedly) —Well, it would be *nice* if we had a Bible. (This is the tone he uses when he wants me to buy a book).

Thane: I think I can turn up a Bible [departs for the home office].

It turns out I have quite a few Bibles, at least three. Amazingly, the first one I opened opened almost exactly to the David story in 1 Samuel 17. Goliath is looking for an Israelite champion to fight:

And he stood and cried unto the armies of Israel, and said unto them, Why are ye come out to set your battle in array? am not I a Philistine, and ye servants to Saul? choose you a man for you, and let him come down to me. If he be able to fight with me, and to kill me, then will we be your servants: but if I prevail against him, and kill him, then shall ye be our servants, and serve us. And the Philistine said, I defy the armies of Israel this day; give me a man, that we may fight together.

Nowadays, a person would say

I'm going to kick whoever's ass comes down here

or (again) words to that effect. We live in a swaggering age I guess.

Liudprand, Embassy to Constantinople [963 AD]

I think that I shall have as much pleasure in describing this procession as my masters will have in reading of it. A numerous company of tradesmen and low-born persons, collected on this solemn occasion to welcome and honor Nicephorus, lined the sides of the road, like walls, from the palace to Saint Sophia, tricked out with thin little shields and cheap spears.-As an additional scandal, most of the mob assembled in his honor had marched there with bare feet, thinking, I suppose, that thus they would better adorn the sacred procession. His nobles for their part, who with their master passed through the plebeian and barefoot multitude, were dressed in tunics that were too large for them and were also because of their extreme age full of holes. They would have looked better if they had worn their ordinary clothes. There was not a man among them whose grandfather had owned his tunic when it was new. No one except Nicephorus wore any jewels or golden ornaments, and the emperor looked more disgusting than ever in the regalia that had been designed to suit the persons of his ancestors. By your life, sires, dearer to me than my own, one of your nobles' costly robes is worth a hundred or more of these. I was taken to the procession and given a place on a platform near the singers.

As Nicephorus, like some crawling monster, walked along, the singers began to cry out in adulation: "Behold the morning star approaches: the day star rises: in his eyes the sun's rays are reflected: Nicephorus our prince, the pale death of the Saracens." And then they cried again: "Long life, long life to our prince Nicephorus. Adore him, ye nations, worship him, bow the neck to his greatness." How much more truly might they have sung:-"Come, you miserable burnt-out coal; old woman in your walk, wood-devil in your look; clodhopper, haunter of byres, goat-footed, horned, double-limbed; bristly, wild, rough, barbarian, harsh, hairy, a rebel, a Cappadocian!" So, puffed up by these lying ditties, he entered St. Sophia, his masters the emperors following at a distance and doing him homage on the ground with the kiss of peace. His amour bearer, with an arrow for pen, recorded in the church the era in progress since the beginning of his reign. So those who did not see the ceremony know what era it is.

link; Eastern Orthodox Church (at the Wikipedia, which laments, "The Eastern Churches have no one so powerful as the Roman Pope;" also—a site on the difference between the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches. This stuff is complicated! I started off wanting to read a little about the bad popes, and now I'm quickly submerging in schismatic detail. At least there's plenty of sex and violence to keep up a person's interest.)

Added later: From The Bad Popes, pg 27:

The Theophylact women emerge suddenly, in three dimension, from the dark background, bathed in the same lurid light as shone on Sergius. But unlike Sergius, they had their own chronicler, a bitterly hostile one who destroyed what good name they might have possessed in exchange for the immortality he granted them. His name was Liuprand, bishop of Cremona, a Lombard by birth and therefore a bitter enemy of all that Rome and the Romans stood for. Marozia and her mother are introduced into his history in a passage of concentrated venom which established their reputations for centuries to come. Cardinal Baronius, struggling in the sixteenth century with the task of writing the first papal history, hand no choice but to follow Liudprand and coined the vivid term "pornocracy" for that period of the Papacy which the two women dominated.

Benedict

In every photo of the new pope, I see a sneer. Is it just me?

The Nag Hammadi Library

link

Against the Heresies

link