Steven Rodriguez

@smarcorodriguez.bsky.social

reading medieval Hebrew poetry

omne solum forti patria est, ut piscibus aequor,      ut volucri vacuo quicquid in orbe patet. “To the brave every land is the homeland, as to fishes the sea, as to birds the whole open space of the empty world.” (Ovid, Fasti I.494, trans. Wiseman)

I'm starting Kingsnorth's book with the thesis that the project of "re-enchantment" lacks within itself the resources to fend off a kind of neo-Romantic "spirit of the people" ethnonationalism. So far I think I'm right. Kingsnorth's project strikes me as incredibly dangerous.

It's been such a wild ride preparing to watch Nolan's Odyssey. All the outrage before the movie came out slightly inclined me toward it. But the reactions to the actual film are turning me pretty hard against it.

“Dostoevsky neither knows, nor perceives, nor represents the ‘idea in itself’ in the Platonic sense, nor ‘ideal existence’ as phenomenologists understand it." —Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics

People on Twitter are posting their top 10 films. I don't know what mine are but here are my top 10 contemporary biblical scholars: 1. Richard Hays 2. Ellen Davis 3. Robert Alter 4. Dale Allison 5. Joel Marcus 6. Jon Levenson 7. Adele Berlin 8. Craig Keener 9. Walter Brueggemann 10. Carol Newsom

When Ilioneus tells Dido about Aeneas in Aeneid I, he characterizes Aeneas as having 3 of the 4 Augustan virtues: iustitia, pietas, and virtus. Clementia is missing. Can we make something of this, or am I reading too much into it?

Trying to read more Jewish sources for this sermon series. I’ve been surprised by how apologetics-heavy the notes have been in this Bible! Every other note polemically contrasts Israelite religion with surrounding parallel beliefs and practices.

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I can’t stop thinking about Gary Saul Morson’s ad hominem insinuation that Dostoevsky’s proto-process theology—that God doesn’t know the future in order for humans to be truly free—is linked to Dostoevsky’s gambling addiction