I just got back from my weekly seminar on historiography. This time it was at Keble College, and I got there early so I took this photo. It's a beautiful college, and I love how different it is, with all the brick instead of the usual cream-colored stone.
I had about 25 minutes to kill before class started at 3:00 so after wandering around the grounds a bit (it was my first time inside Keble), I went across the street to the University Museum of Natural History. (The second photo of Keble is taken from there.)
Pretty great way to kill time! I've posted about the museum before, as we went there with Brenda and really enjoyed it. Since it's free admission, it was easy to wander in and look at a couple displays for a few minutes. I checked out the display on Alice in Wonderland and Lewis Carroll again, as I bought the book for £1.99 yesterday and started to read some of it last night. It's cute but I'm not actually super impressed so far. I keep comparing it to C.S. Lewis' Narnia books, and so far I think there's no comparison! Partially I'm biased towards my beloved Lewis and partially it may be because Alice was written in the Victorian era versus Narnia in the 1940s. I don't know.
I also took another quick peek into the quirky Pitt Rivers Museum. This time I looked at old bagpipes and instruments for "magic and trial by ordeal." Sorry about the blurry picture in the latter case.
Then it was time for the seminar. This session was on John Calvin's view of history. Calvin (1509-1564) was a French reformer a couple decades younger than Luther. He did most of his reforming work in Geneva, Switzerland, and is known best (somewhat unfairly) for his doctrine of predestination, as well as his indirect contributions to the growth of capitalism.
The discussion was interesting, and although thankfully I wasn't presenting today I was actually able to contribute quite a lot since I'd done my master's thesis in Edinburgh partially on Calvin. The discussion also touched a lot on early Christianity, "my" era. We talked about Calvin's view of history, church tradition, and the early Christian writers in light of his rejection of the Catholic faith and its reliance on tradition.
Unlike Luther, Calvin was actually quite approving of the early church fathers (as the Christian writers from about 100-500 are called). He had a special affinity for Augustine (on whom I did the other half of my dissertation). But he emphasized that they carry no authority on their own, but only insofar as they get things right. (For Catholics at that time, a doctrine was almost certainly true if it was taught by a respected church father.)
Calvin also emphasized the importance of determining the historical context of writers and events. For example, rather than accepting the decision of a church council because of its inherent authority, you ought to consider who the bishops were, where it was held, what they actually discussed, and whether or not it contradicts the Bible, before you could accept it. Our professor pointed out that this focus on historical context was very important in that it laid the foundations for the historical and textual criticism of the Enlightenment. Her area of expertise is the Reformation, and she says that period is so interesting because it laid the groundwork for nearly every modern discipline in the modern era.
After class, I, three other students, and the professor went to the Eagle and Child (yay!) for a drink. It was raining really hard, and I didn't have my raincoat because the BBC Online 24-hour forecast had assured me it would not rain for the rest of the day. Humph. But it's not that cold and I have Oregonian webbed feet anyway.
We had a fun discussion about what we hope to focus on in our longer essays, which we'll be starting on next term. One of them, Russ from Denver, is going to do something about Constantinople (Istanbul) in the 16th century, maybe looking at a particular German missionary who went there and also issues related to Islam. (The Turks conquered Constantinople in 1483 and it has been a Muslim city ever since.)
Jeff, also from Denver, is thinking about doing something on Ignatius of Antioch, who wrote in the 100s before there was a New Testament. By the way, before class Jeff told me he's going home to Denver for a few days next week because he has a Rhodes Scholar interview. That would get him 3 years full tuition plus stipend. Unfortunately, I'm too old to even apply - the age limit is 24.
So what about my thesis plans? I'm still doing lots of brainstorming on what interests me most, but one possibility that I recently came across is a guy named Porphyry. He was a Greek Neoplatonist philosopher who was extremely sharp, and he wrote several very learned critiques of Christianity in the later 200s. What's so fascinating about him is that he knows the Bible just as well as Jews or Christians did (most other critics were content to rely on rumors) and he also sounds very much like a modern critic in his objections.
Porphyry argued that Jesus was a great and wise man, but that Christians had erred in thinking of him as God. Porphyry placed Jesus in the rank of a Greek hero like Heracles, who is so special that he is honored, and in some ways divine, but not actually a god, let alone the Supreme God. Interestingly, he cites some oracles of Apollo that had confirmed Jesus' status as a great man, but that he was not God. I had never heard about that before and I think that's so interesting!
Meanwhile, Porphyry also pointed out contradictions and problems in the Old and New Testament (with specific references) and questioned the reliability of the apostles because they sometimes argued amongst themselves. His critiques were considered so important that Christian writers were still refuting his arguments two centuries later, and after Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity he ordered Porphyry's books burned.
Anyway, I may attempt a thesis having to do with this interesting guy and his Christian opponents, but it's just an idea at this point. Anybody still awake? :) Sorry, all that academic stuff was longer than I intended.
After only about a half-hour or so at the pub, we all dispersed and I took a city bus home - it was absolutely packed! Along the way, I helped a nice Russian girl find the English academy that is near my bus stop.
David just called from work to say that he's on his way home. We're going to have gnocchi for dinner, followed by an episode or two of Alias on DVD.