Voldemort at Qumran?

In one of the manuscripts of the Vision of Amram (4Q544), the title character has a vision of two angels; one of the angels is good, the other evil. According to Emile Puech in Discoveries in the Judean Desert 31, the bad one is described as having a "visage molting like a serpent" (Aramaic ‏חזוה חשׁל [כפ]תן‎). Which sounds a lot like Lord Voldemort — or at least some other follower of Salazar Slytherin.

But I have some problems with Puech's reading. For one thing, the root חשׁל doesn't mean "to molt," but "to crush" (unless you posit a connection with ‏שׁלח‎ II "to strip, flay"). For another, at this point in the scroll the text is ragged and only bits of the letters of this phrase are readable; I can't share Puech's certainty about his reading of this verb. Lastly, and somewhat subjectively, it just doesn't sound right; it's not something they would say.

J. T. Milik, the first editor of this scroll, read the phrase as ‏דחיל[ כפ]תן‎, "dreadful as a serpent." That sounds better, but is still not totally satisfying. Klaus Beyer's version, ‏דחיל[ כמו]תן‎, "dreadful as a plague" is no better, and is actually worse: what meaning can we attach to the idea that someone's face is as frightful as a plague? It might fit into a modern poem, but just doesn't sound right for the 1st century B.C.E.

My own suggestion is that the phrase should be restored as ‏דחיל [ואימ]תן‎, "dreadful and terrifying." It fits the readable traces as well as the other suggestions, and similar descriptions are known from other texts: Dan. 7:7, where the fourth beast is said to be "dreadful and terrifying" (‏דחילה ואימתני‎) and Targ. Hab. 1:7, where the Kittim are "terrifying and dreadful" (‏אימתנין ודחילין‎).

Not as much fun as having Lord Voldemort in the Scrolls, I admit. But still pretty terrifying.

New Targum Location

Kudos and major props are due to Chris Brady, who is refurbishing and renewing the website of the Newsletter for Targumic and Cognate Studies. (This, not incidentally, gives the Psalms Targum translation by yours truly a new address.)

Thanks, Chris!

Nebo-Sarsekim (Jer. 39:3)

In Jeremiah 39:3, several Babylonian officials are named: "Nergal-sharezer, Samgar-nebo, Sarsechim the Rab-saris, Nergal-sharezer the Rab-mag" (NRSV). Translations of these difficult names differ, and the NIV has "Nergal-Sharezer of Samgar, Nebo-Sarsekim a chief officer, Nergal-Sharezer a high official."

A recent discovery of a cuneiform tablet in the British Museum confirms that the second official was "Nebo-Sarsekim" (Akkadian Nabu-sharussu-ukin, "Nabu has established his king"). The discovery of a named biblical figure in an ancient Babylonian tablet is pretty interesting news, although it doesn't confirm the inerrancy of the whole bible, as some would have it. On the other hand, it is more evidence (if any were needed) that the historical parts of Jeremiah are reliable.

Jim West is among the debunkers of the discovery, stating, "No one has ever argued that there was no Babylonian of that name." Not so; many, if not most, recent expositors have argued that the "Sarsekim" of the Masoretic Text is a textual corruption, and that the text must be emended to make sense.

For instance, in the standard Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, we are given two ways of approaching "Sarsechim": as a textual error for "Nebushazban" (Jer. 39:13), or as a corruption of "sar sukiyyim", glossed as "supervisor of the African slaves." The first option is followed by BHS; the second has little to recommend it. Both can now be safely discarded.

Thanks to archaeology, the first two names can be reconstructed with certainty. In 1930, another tablet had given us the identification of the first name as Nergal-shar-usur prince of Sin-magir or Simmagir. The new discovery gives us Nabu-sharusu-ukin rab sha-reshi. My guess would be that Nebushazban should be substituted for the second "Nergal-sharezer" in 39:3, giving us three officials:


Nergal-shar-usur simmagir
Nabu-sharussu-ukin rab-shareshi
Nabu-shezibanni rab-mugi

Nergal-sharezer (prince of) Simmagir
Nebo-sarsekim chief eunuch
Nebushazban the rab mugi [this term for a high official is still not clear]

It is interesting that only the NIV, of modern translations, correctly understood that there were three officials in 39:3. In the Jerusalem Bible, for instance, "Sarsekim" has been emended out of existence.

There is still a problem in reconciling 39:3 with 39:13, where Nebushazban is the chief eunuch and Nergal-sharezer is the Rab-mag. I presume that this verse is the one that needs emendation. In view of the new discovery, it would seem that v. 13 is more corrupt than v. 3, and should be emended to agree with it — exactly the opposite of what was thought to be the case only a few weeks ago. Ain't biblical archaeology fun?

BIBLIOGRAPHY: See E. Dalglish, "Samgar-Nebo," Anchor Bible Dictionary 5:947-948.

Of Sayers, James, and Bells

Given that there is such a thing as "comfort food," why shouldn't there also be "comfort books"? Comfort books, as I imagine them, are personal, much-read favorites, to be resorted to when other reading (or life in general) seems flat, stale, and unprofitable.

My own canon of "comfort books" includes the mysteries of Dorothy Sayers, and recently I have been re-reading The Nine Tailors (1934), which many people feel is the best of them. I think Gaudy Night is my favorite, but The Nine Tailors surpasses it in literary quality.

On this particular re-read, I noticed what I think is a connection to another one of my "comfort" favorites, the ghost stories of M. R. James, in particular "The Treasure of Abbot Thomas," from Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904). In that story, a scholar solves a coded message, embedded in ancient stained-glass windows, left behind by the 16th century Abbot Thomas concerning the location of a lost treasure on monastery grounds. The scholar locates the treasure and discovers that it has an unpleasant guardian, left behind by the unpleasant Abbot.

In The Nine Tailors, there is also an old church containing the tomb of an Abbot Thomas: "[Wimsey] brooded for a time over the tomb of Abbot Thomas, with its robed and mitred effigy. A stern old boy, he thought, this fourteenth-century cleric, with his strong, harsh face, a ruler rather than a shepherd of his people." The oldest bell in the church, one of the nine bells alluded to in the title of the book, is "Batty Thomas," named after the Abbot who had it cast. Of this bell the sexton says, "She's queer-tempered. They do say as how old Batty [the Abbot] down below, what had her put up here, was a queer sort of man and his bell's took after him."

So you have two Abbots named Thomas, neither of them very nice, who left, on church grounds, items that have something of the nature of their owner. Now if you add that both stories concern a buried treasure that is found by reading coded messages that have a very similar solution, the conclusion is inescapable that James's story influenced Sayers' story.

Which doesn't bother me. I like this kind of intertextuality, especially when one "comfort book" influences another. If you haven't read either, read them both.

Speaking of bells, which The Nine Tailors does a lot, I can't resist passing along an old poem I ran across, from 1781, posted in an English church bell tower to keep people from sneaking in and ringing the bells for fun:

Who turns a Bell by light or dark
Two pence shall pay to Parish Clerk
Who turns a Bell on Sabbath Day
Double the sum at least shall pay
Ring not till four nor after nine
Who keeps worse hours shall twelvepence fine
With Hat, with Cap, or with Spurs on
Must four pence pay or else begone.
If any one caught pissing here
Shall four pence pay & then be clear
And who those are that will not pay
Presented shall the next Court Day.

Two Quick Movie Reviews

Spider-Man 3:
Good

Pirates of the Caribbean 3:
Bad

Avudim

During the run-up to the season finale of Lost (which was terrific, by the way), I was watching (while working) some past episodes available on the internet which were apparently downloaded from Israeli TV, because they had Hebrew subtitles.

"Lost" in Hebrew, by the way, is Avudim, which is correct in Modern Hebrew, but made me wonder why one couldn't use the present participle Ovdim as in Biblical Hebrew. Ordinarily you wouldn't use a passive participle with an intransitive verb (would you?). Comments welcome.

I learned some vocabulary. When Hurley calls someone "dude," the subtitle said ‏בנאדם‎, written exactly that way. I knew that Aramaic barnash was used colloquially to mean "guy," but I wasn't aware that benadam could mean "dude" (or perhaps "chap" or "fellow").

Also, when Hurley says, "I screwed up," the translation is ‏פשׁלתי‎, pishalti. I wasn't aware that this root occurred in the Piel, and doesn't occur in the big Even-Shoshan dictionary or in the Bantam-Megiddo. There is a Hiphil that means to roll up sleeves or pant legs. My guess is that somehow the root ‏פשׁל‎ is related to ‏פתל‎, to twist or pervert. But how did this meaning develop? On the street or did someone in the Language Academy decide that Israelis needed a way to say "to screw up"? (Don't we all?)

August 1966

The nightmarish Virginia Tech shootings have reminded me of my own very remote memory of the Charles Whitman shootings from the University of Texas tower on Aug. 1, 1966. We were living in Austin at the time, and once it became clear what was happening on the campus, the local TV station started showing live pictures of the Tower. Not much to see; every couple of minutes, a puff of smoke appeared as Whitman squeezed off another round. That's it.

I remember going out in the front yard and looking at the Tower, a couple of miles away. Back then, there were only two buildings on the Austin skyline, the Capitol building and the Tower. There the tower was, looking like it always did, and the puffs of smoke were not visible at that distance. It was hard to believe that carnage was taking place. It was a miserably hot still day, like almost all August days in Austin. It felt like a furnace outside.

Later on I biked south (toward the Tower) to go hang out at my friend Arthur Aleman's house. We were still well out of range, and we eventually got bored watching the TV feed of the motionless Tower with the occasional smoke and pop of gunfire from the invisible sniper. Arthur's dad said he was going to go down there and "see what was happening." I thought that was an incredibly stupid thing to do, but I couldn't say that to Arthur's dad. By the time Mr. Aleman arrived for his sightseeing, it was all over, so he came back.

I went home. Later on the whole thing was on the national news, and I remember thinking how strange it was that Austin, the Tower, Guadalupe Street ("The Drag") and all the other places I knew so well were talked about by Huntley & Brinkley.

Years later, when I was a student at UT in the early '70's, I went up to the Tower deck (it was still open to the public then) and looked down, imagining what Whitman saw. The people looked as small as ants; maybe he even thought of them as ants, but through a rifle scope they would look like individual persons. Over in the corner where Whitman died, there was still an unrepaired gouge in the wall from a shotgun blast fired by one of the cops who killed him.

I think the observation deck is closed these days; I can't say I'm sorry. Someone I knew, slightly, jumped to his death from there in 1974, and then they shut it down. It's an amazing edifice, but for me it is always somewhat redolent of violent death.

Old Poem

While cleaning out some papers, I came across a poem I wrote in college (that's back in the seventies, kids) for some class or other. Maybe the assignment was to "cram as many classical references as possible into one overwrought sonnet." In any case, that's what I did, and it's still better than anything I could write now, 35 years later.


Day after day I spend on a journey
With You; but too often the one who fell
Calls, calls, luring me, Siren-like, to Hell.
Sometimes I feel that I dangle helplessly
(Beyond your grace, your love, your bliss)
Over the pit of Satan, his outer dark.
Too often his attacks leave their mark
And, despairing, I feel the heat of his abyss.
But then you come; his Phlegethons
Cannot compare with the flow of blood
That swept and washed away my million sins.
Then, like magic, I can feel my bonds
Give and break; and, borne on that flood,
I continue my journey, higher up and farther in.

Thoughts about Arni (Luke 3:33)

As a side-effect of the Talpiot tomb discussion, I've been reading Richard Bauckham's Jude and the Relatives of Jesus, an interesting read and a work of high merit. One of the most stimulating chapters is the one on the Lukan genealogy of Jesus. The genealogy has a couple of odd names that drew my attention. In this post I'll discuss one of them, the name Arni in Luke 3:33 ("Amminadab, son of Admin, son of Arni").

"Arni" is an odd name in Hebrew. Although there are names with a general similarity — Aran (Gen 36:28) and Oren (1 Chr. 2:25) — the name in Luke 3:33 corresponds in the parallel Greek/Hebrew genealogies to "Ram" or "Aram" (Ruth 4:19, 1 Chr. 2:10; cp. Matt. 1:4). In several major witnesses to the text of Luke (including D and A and Peshitta), "Aram" appears instead of "Arni," and in others it occurs in addition to "Arni." "Aram" was apparently added later as a correction or crept in as a marginal or interlinear gloss. (I assume that "Admin" also originated as a correction of "Arni.")

It therefore seems that "Arni" was a copyist error for "Aram" and recognized to be such already in ancient times. However, "Arni" could only be an error for "Aram" in Hebrew script: ‏ארם‎ could be mistakenly read as ‏ארני‎, but ΑΡΑΜ could not as easily be read as ΑΡΝΙ.

There are examples of similar errors in the Bible at Amos 7:7, where the Hebrew text ‏אדני‎ should probably, on the evidence of the LXX, be read ‏אדם‎. The reverse error occurred in 1 Sam. 17:32, where Hebrew ‏אדם‎ should probably be read ‏אדני‎ (cf. LXX).

This suggests that the original of Luke's genealogy, at least for these names, must have been in Hebrew script, since it reflects a copyist error only possible in Hebrew. The question is, was the copyist error present in the Hebrew biblical genealogies that were used as a source for these names, or was it present in a separate Hebrew genealogy preserved, say, in the family of Jesus? If it was the latter, then the Lukan genealogy may be older and more reliable than it is usually considered to be. In a future post I'll try to adduce some evidence to show that that is actually the case.

"Mary the Master"

The biblioblogosphere has been jumping on the Jesus Tomb documentary with both feet; I haven't seen such a bonanza of crackpot-theory refutation since The DaVinci Code. So there's not much left for me to do. Enjoy Jodi Magness's take on the subject, or Mark Goodacre's, or Ben Witherington's, or Richard Bauckham's at Paleojudaica. Shooting fish in a barrel is fun.

I'll limit myself to a few observations on one point. The sole Greek text among the ossuaries reads Μαριαμηνου Μαρα. (The particle η, said to be present between the two words, is not.) The "Jesus Tomb" scholars would like to understand this as "Mariamene (= Mary Magdalene) the Master." They are taking the word Μαρα to be a transliteration of the Aramaic word meaning "lord, master." However,

1. It is hard to understand why the Aramaic word would be used instead of a Greek one in the Greek ossuary.

2. It's not clear exactly what form of the Aramaic word they are referring to. Μαρα could = מרה ‎, that is, the emphatic state of the masculine form of ‏‎maré. However, this form is only attested centuries later; the usual emphatic masculine form at this period would be ‏מריא‎. It's also not clear why a female would have a title in the masculine gender.

3. The word Μαρα could also = מרה, ‏מראה‎, the feminine absolute form of the word. However, the absolute form would have to mean "a lady" or "a mistress," not "the Master" or "Master." The emphatic form of the feminine would be ‏מרתא‎ = Μάρθα, "the Mistress," "the Lady" (also the proper name Martha).

Therefore the Jesus Tomb scholars seem to be wrong again. "Mara" is pretty obviously either a nickname for Mariamene, or refers to another woman whose bones were also interred in the ossuary.

Tobit Fragment Published

I've just seen the following article:

Hallermayer, Michaela and Torleif Elgvin, "Schøyen ms. 5234: Ein neues Tobit-fragment Vom Toten Meer," Revue de Qumran 22/3 (2006) 451-461.

This is the first official publication of the fragment that I blogged about here. (That post is referenced, by the way, on p. 452 n.3.)

Congratulations to Hallermayer & Elgvin for a fine treatment of the fragment.

The "Jesus Tomb" Ossuary

I'm not happy with my initial response, so I've removed it. If I come up with something else, I'll post it in this space.

UPDATE (3/3): Here it is.

A Spurious Addition to Targum Pseudo-Jonathan?

I notice that it is common to quote the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan to Genesis 4:1 as Mahlon Smith does at his website, where we find this translation:

And Adam knew that his wife Eve had conceived
from Sammael the angel (of death)
and she became pregnant and bore Cain.
And he was like those on high and not like those below.
And she said: "I have got a man from the angel of the LORD."

My problem with this translation is that the words in italics above are not found in any text of Pseudo-Jonathan. The only surviving manuscript of Pseudo-Jonathan (PsJ), in the British Museum, reads, according to the publication of it by Clarke, "And Adam knew that Eve his wife was pregnant from Sammael, angel of the Lord." The standard printed text (editio princeps) as published in the rabbinic bible reads: "And Adam knew Eve his wife, that she had desired the angel; and she conceived and bore Cain, and she said, I have acquired a man, the angel of the Lord."

Obviously the version with the addition is closer to the editio princeps than to the London MS, but neither text (and they are the only witnesses to the text of PsJ) has the addition. Nevertheless, the belief that the words really are in PsJ is widespread. James Kugel quotes the latter part of PsJ's version as "He resembled the upper ones [angels] and not the lower ones, and she [therefore] said, I have acquired a man, indeed, an angel of the Lord" (The Bible as it Was, p. 86). Birger Pearson, in an essay in The Rediscovery of Gnosticism (1981) quotes the same version (p. 479). And Phillip Davies, in the Blackwell Reader in Judaism (2001), does the same (p. 40). These are all reputable scholars.

As far as I can tell, there is no evidence that any version of PsJ (or any other targum) contains these words. However, another text that has some affinities to PsJ, the Hebrew Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer, in relating the story of Cain's conception, says "she saw his likeness that it was not of the earthly beings, but of the heavenly beings." Is that where these words come from? Or is there a version of the text of PsJ that I'm not aware of?

I'm frankly stumped as to the source of this spurious text of the targum. Do any of my readers have any insight?

UPDATE (3/2): Many thanks to those who have left comments below. Andy, can you point me towards a source for that quote?

Incredulous Laugh of the Day

Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts-Schori is quoted in USA Today today, with reference to breakaway congregations trying to hold on to their property:

The church’s laws are broad but they are there, and beyond these lines you cannot go. Crossing boundaries has consequences.

My measured response to this is: You have got to be kidding me. You're willing to jettison the creeds, Scripture, and a 2,000-year-old tradition of Christian ethics, but you start getting strict with regard to property ownership? Lady, do you have any sense of irony at all?

God help The Episcopal Church. I mean that quite literally.

(For casual readers; I'm a member of said church, so I'm allowed to say stuff like that.)

"She obliterated me as an apologist": Lewis and the Anscombe Legend

Last week when I was laid up with a stomach virus, I had the opportunity to read a large part of C. S. Lewis's Collected Letters, Vol. 3, which has just been published. Letters do not contain all that is relevant for understanding a man's life, but they are datable, first-person documents and therefore are primary in a way that biographies (or even autobiographies) are not.

This particular volume sheds a bit of light on what has come to be called "the Anscombe legend." On Feb. 2, 1948, Lewis and the philosopher G. E. M. (Elizabeth) Anscombe engaged in a disputation at the Oxford Socratic Club, of which Lewis was president. The subject was Lewis's argument that naturalism (the view that the natural world is all that exists) is self-refuting, since "no thought is valid if it can be fully explained as the result of irrational causes" (Lewis, Miracles, ch. 3). Anscombe argued that he failed to distinguish two senses of the word "because," which can be used to denote not only a cause-effect relation, but also a ground-consequent relation. An argument could be valid, because (Ground-Consequent) its propositions entail each other, even if the propositions are generated (Cause-Effect) by irrational factors. Lewis eventually agreed that his argument was inadequate at this point and needed revision.

Those facts are not in dispute, but the consequences of them in Lewis's life have been debated. It was reported by some of Lewis's friends that he was greatly shaken by his defeat, as he saw it, and eventually turned away from formal apologetics altogether, devoting himself instead to other kinds of writing, such as the Chronicles of Narnia. This view was first put forth, I believe, by Humphrey Carpenter in his book The Inklings.

Certainly after it was all over Lewis himself was in very low spirits.... [Derek] Brewer write in his diary: "None of us was at first very cheerful. Lewis was obviously deeply disturbed by his encounter last Monday with Miss Anscombe ..." ... Brewer added that Lewis's imagery when talking about the debate "was all of the fog of war, the retreat of infantry thrown back under heavy attack."
Lewis had learnt his lesson... (Carpenter, Pt. 4, ch. 1)

However, a reaction has set in against this view of Lewis's response. The "Anscombe legend," as Victor Reppert calls it, is, according to some, purely mythical. Lewis was not in fact devastated by the Anscombe argument, although he agreed that his argument needed revision. (This is the view taken by Anscombe herself.) The fact that he wrote no further book-length works of apologetics can be explained by other factors besides a putative loss of nerve in the wake of a shattering defeat. This view is most notably championed by Victor Reppert and John Beversluis.

However, the evidence of the new letters, such as it is, is more supportive of the first view. Most important is the letter to Stella Aldwinckle, secretary of the Socratic Club, of June 12, 1950. Lewis was proposing speakers for the new term, and he suggested that "Miss Anscombe" speak on "Why I believe in God." His comment was this:

The lady is quite right to refute what she thinks bad theistic arguments, but does this not almost oblige her as a Christian to find good ones in their place: having obliterated me as an Apologist ought she not to succeed me? (Letters 3:35; emphasis mine.)

One may question whether there is more irony than bitterness in this comment; nevertheless, it shows that Lewis was felt, either by himself or others, to have sustained a crippling blow.

The same feeling is evident in a letter to Robert C. Walton of the BBC on July 10, 1951:

... like the old fangless snake in The Jungle Book, I've largely lost my dialectical power. (Letters 3:129)

Another key piece is the letter of Sept. 28, 1955, to Carl F. H. Henry, who asked him to write some apologetic articles for Christianity Today:

I wish your project heartily well but can't write you articles. My thought and talent (such as they are) now flow in different, though I think not less Christian, channels, and I do not think I am at all likely to write more directly theological pieces. . . . If I am now good for anything it is for catching the reader unawares — thro' fiction and symbol. I have done what I could in the way of frontal attacks, but I now feel quite sure those days are over. (Letters 3:651; emphasis Lewis.)

All of this suggests that Lewis really felt a change in himself in the wake of the Anscombe disputation. Nevertheless, he did from time to time return, in a small way, to apologetics, most notably in revising Chapter 3 of Miracles in line with Anscombe's critique for a 1960 reprint, as well as a variety of smaller pieces.

Of course, it should also be noted that Lewis's feelings and Lewis's arguments must be assessed separately. The fact is that his argument about naturalism was not obliterated by Anscombe, and in fact has enjoyed a revival, most notably in Alvin Plantinga's Warrant and Proper Function. Many of Lewis's enemies (for instance A. N. Wilson) attempt to employ Lewis's own retreat from apologetics as an ad hominem attack on the totality of his work, without engaging the particularities of the argument, or of Lewis's revision of it in the 1960 Miracles.

Personally, I prefer to see the hand of Providence in Lewis's turn from formal apologetics. If he hadn't turned to "fiction and symbol," would we have the Chronicles of Narnia, Till We Have Faces, The Four Loves; or the great critical works, such as The Discarded Image or Studies in Words? Omnia cooperantur in bonum.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: The "argument from reason": Victor Reppert, C. S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea: In Defense of the Argument from Reason; Alvin Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function, 1993; Richard Taylor, Metaphysics, ch. 10 (1974). See Reppert's blog for other references, both pre- and post-Lewis.

UPDATE: For Jim Davila and others who have inquired: Anscombe's paper can be found in her collection Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind (1981; vol. 2 of her Collected Papers), which also contains her own memories of the disputation; Lewis's initial response and the minutes of the Socratic Club meeting are reprinted in the collection God in the Dock, pp 144-146 (UK title: Undeceptions).

Papa Ooh Mouw Mouw

Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Seminary, has a blog. Dr. Mouw entered the Fuller scene after I graduated, but I've followed his Presidency with admiration. His books are worth reading; his academic field is philosophy, but he writes well for a general audience. I particularly recommend Uncommon Decency.

The blog looks like it will be interesting, if he can keep it up. Welcome to the 'sphere, Doc!

How conservative am I?

How conservative am I? More conservative than Colin Powell, but not as conservative as George Bush père, according to this test. (HT: Althouse.)

My score: 22. Actually, just about right in the middle, which is what I've always claimed.

Department of Redundancy Department

From a story on Ben Roethlisberger's bad year as Pittsburgh quarterback:

''It was tough, frustrating,'' Roethlisberger said. ''At least you know it will be awfully hard for next year to be any worse next year.''

Third Annual Ralphies (3): Books

BEST NON-FICTION BOOK (Scholarly): Again, I didn't read anything published this year. The closest I came was in reading Joe Fitzmyer's 3rd edition of his commentary on the Genesis Apocryphon (2004; good) and Klaus Beyer's revised volume 2 of Die Aramäische Texte vom Toten Meer (2004; ditto). But the Ralphie goes to Alan Millard's Reading and Writing in the Time of Jesus (2000), an excellent survey, and subtly subversive of a number of scholarly shibboleths.

BEST FICTION: I read and enjoyed King Dork (2006) by Frank Portman, but the best novel I read all year was one I read the same week in May: The End of the Affair, by Graham Greene. Very moving.

BEST GRAPHIC FICTION: So many to choose from. Marvel's Civil War series is great, if published at a glacial pace; also great is the current story arc of Ultimate Fantastic Four written by Mark Carey. I also have to mention the must-read Hatter M; my nephew Greg Cook works on that book as "Cartographic Chronicler and Historian." The Ralphie, however, goes to Brian K. Vaughan's Y: The Last Man. No, it's not a male fantasy; it's an exciting quest tale that illuminates, and deconstructs, a number of assumptions (both male and female) about what the world would look like if all the men died (except one). Vaughan has recently been hired as a writer for ABC's drama Lost.

That's it for this year, folks!

Happy Birthday, O pale Galilean

Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy breath

—A. C. Swinburne, Hymn to Proserpine

The skeptical Swinburne, under the guise of a pagan critique of Christianity, really was writing against, I suppose, the dull pieties of Victorian Anglicanism, but his attitude crops up quite a bit still. The grey world? yet as I look out my window, the neighborhood is a blaze of brightly colored lights, glistening decorations, and crazy plastic figurines. These things are only the echoes or the outskirts of genuine religion; but could a life-denying faith really engender such a merry display?

The other day in the New York Times, an unrepentantly Jewish writer talked about how she and her husband celebrated Christmas for the first time:

I love that as soon as I told a Catholic friend what I was up to, she invited me to a gingerbread-house decorating party. How fun is that? And why wasn’t I invited before? What does a gingerbread house have to do with Jesus?
...
Some nights, I put on our Starbucks Christmas CD, light a fire, turn on the tree and play with the different settings, put liquid smoke in the train’s smokestack and turn on the choo-choo sound effects and then I sit back and enjoy my first Christmas, in all its kitschy splendor. I feel a little guilty when I look at our lone menorah on the mantel (the only evidence of my faith other than my guilt), but I ask you: how can this much pleasure be wrong?

It reminded me for some reason of a passage from Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran, when one of her students told of the religious instruction in the university after the Islamic Revolution:

On one side [the teacher] had written, in large white letters, MUSLIM GIRL, and drawn a vertical line in the middle of the board. On the other side, in large pink letters, he wrote CHRISTIAN GIRL. He had then asked the class if they knew the differences between the two. One was a virgin, he said at last, after an uncomfortable silence, white and pure, keeping herself for her husband and her husband only. Her power came from her modesty. The other, well, there was not much one could say about her except that she was not a virgin. To Yassi's surprise, the two girls behind her, both active members of the Muslim Students' Association, had started to giggle, whispering, No wonder more and more Muslims are converting to Christianity.

I know that neither woman's experience is religious, or has anything to do with "authentic" Christianity; but it has everything to do with the world that Christianity made. After 2000 years, there are still plenty of people out there, on the outside looking in, who have the impression that such a world, with its colored lights and gingerbread, has something to do with pleasure and liberation. The pale Galilean, who was criticized for enjoying food and drink too much (Luke 7:34), might, after all, have had something to do with that.

Happy birthday, Lord. And many more.