Cheryl, I love that you have embraced the challenge of this project. Sometimes when I am reading some of the older "classics" it makes me scratch my head a bit but I have to remember to think of them in the contextual sense of their time. I am enjoying following along in your reflections on your reading. Hope you have a great 2025.
p.s My father is a deacon in the Catholic church and he highly recommends that podcast with Fr. Mike. I think my whole family has listened to that a few times.
Thanks! It's one thing to think something isn't your cup of tea, but another to find out that, actually, it isn't at all and you were right. I don't think I'm coming at this with a "modern" mindset (actually I very much like the medieval mindset, oriented to seeing how God acts in the world), but I'm trying to notice where my expectations are different from what I'm reading.
One of my sons (the one I usually mention here) is a Classics Masters student at UChicago, and he's also Catholic. I'm Anglican, kind of mixed-Protestant but currently and happily attending an Anglican Church here in Charleston. Anyway, we talk a lot about what I'm reading because he has read an awful lot of Western Philosophy. We were talking about "progressive revelation" to explain the primitive feeling of Gilgamesh. I understand that is probably a controversial take, and I'm of two minds about it. On the one hand, we are all as humans created in God's image, but on the other, is it possible that humans developed a more robust understanding of God and our own humanity as time passed? There is something very elemental and not subtle about most of Gilgamesh. Maybe it's a certain brutality? It isn't present at all in Homer, but it is in some other ancient texts I've read. I'm looking forward to reading this week and seeing how the Bible stacks up. The books Ted chose for this week cover quite a span of time in authorship. Reading them in quick succession will, I hope, make it easy to see similarities and differences.
Incidentally, my other son is a flight officer in the Navy, currently stationed in Japan. I saw that you were in the Navy as well. Love these little commonalities.
Cheryl, I love that you have embraced the challenge of this project. Sometimes when I am reading some of the older "classics" it makes me scratch my head a bit but I have to remember to think of them in the contextual sense of their time. I am enjoying following along in your reflections on your reading. Hope you have a great 2025.
p.s My father is a deacon in the Catholic church and he highly recommends that podcast with Fr. Mike. I think my whole family has listened to that a few times.
Thanks! It's one thing to think something isn't your cup of tea, but another to find out that, actually, it isn't at all and you were right. I don't think I'm coming at this with a "modern" mindset (actually I very much like the medieval mindset, oriented to seeing how God acts in the world), but I'm trying to notice where my expectations are different from what I'm reading.
One of my sons (the one I usually mention here) is a Classics Masters student at UChicago, and he's also Catholic. I'm Anglican, kind of mixed-Protestant but currently and happily attending an Anglican Church here in Charleston. Anyway, we talk a lot about what I'm reading because he has read an awful lot of Western Philosophy. We were talking about "progressive revelation" to explain the primitive feeling of Gilgamesh. I understand that is probably a controversial take, and I'm of two minds about it. On the one hand, we are all as humans created in God's image, but on the other, is it possible that humans developed a more robust understanding of God and our own humanity as time passed? There is something very elemental and not subtle about most of Gilgamesh. Maybe it's a certain brutality? It isn't present at all in Homer, but it is in some other ancient texts I've read. I'm looking forward to reading this week and seeing how the Bible stacks up. The books Ted chose for this week cover quite a span of time in authorship. Reading them in quick succession will, I hope, make it easy to see similarities and differences.
Incidentally, my other son is a flight officer in the Navy, currently stationed in Japan. I saw that you were in the Navy as well. Love these little commonalities.