Hendrik Goltzius, Lot and His Daughters, 1616, Rijksmuseum By Patrick Hunt – The sordid story of Lot, errant nephew of Abraham and his opposite in nearly every way – the man of flesh as counterpoint to the man of faith – is one of the saddest Genesis expository examples in […]
Lord Byron, Portrait detail by Phillips, 1813 By Sara Olsen – Ovid: Metamorphosis XV.153 : “All Things Change; Nothing Perishes” George Gordon Byron, whom we can now call an influencer of the 19th century and beyond to the present, was born in London, England, in 1788 to Catherine Gordon Byron […]
By Timothy J. Demy – The legacies of the classical world and late antiquity are many. In the second century CE the early Christian philosopher from Carthage, Tertullian (ca. 160 – ca. 220), asked an oft-repeated (and misunderstood) question “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?”De praescritione haereticorum 7). Two disparate cities,”one, a center of […]
By Walter Borden, MD – Aeschylus speaks to me. Born in Eleusis, a village just north of Athens and the haunting grounds of the goddess Demeter, said to be the goddess of fertility and the harvest. To Aeschylus that was just a myth that masked her true identity– the goddess […]
By P. F. Sommerfeldt – That far-fetched frolic of the rogue librarian Raspe, Adventures of Baron Munchausen has entertained many generations of readers since 1785, including the genius Terry Gilliam who made his peerless movie version in 1988, thereby introducing its wiles to modern cinematography, although often faithful to Gustave Doré’s […]
By Catherine Clover – Spring Morning In the hut in the mountains one is free the live-long day A clump of bamboos leaning o’er screens from cold mountain air Green grows the grass and the sky reels in joy, Late lingers the dew in the cups of scarlet flowers The man alone […]