W.H. Auden, author of The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue (1947) coined the phrase according to Wikipedia. Auden’s Pulitzer Prize winning poem (1948) inspired a Leonard Bernstein symphony “Age of Anxiety by the same name and a Jerome Robbins ballet (1950). Alan Watts used this concept as the title of the first chapter of his book Wisdom of Insecurity (1951).

Clergy even examine this meme. Nancy E. Petty preached the sermon “The Age of Anxiety” with Matthew 6:24-34 as the text. It is easy to understand the rise of Christianity amidst an age of anxiety.  M. Scott Peck used this meme in his book The Road Less Travelled and Beyond: Spiritual Growth in an Age of Anxiety.

For some anxiety is a psychological state. For instance Andrea Tone in her book The Age of Anxiety: A History of America’s Turbulent Affair with Tranquilizers.  American Science in an Age of Anxiety by Jessica Ward,

You can look at this meme form the perspective of political science.  Clarence A. Glasrud The Age of Anxiety published in 1960 by Houghton Mifflin was one of the earliest treatments.  At the turn of the millennium Sarah Dunant and Roy Porter edited a collection of essays on the Age of Anxiety. Zero-Sum Future: American Power in and Age of Anxiety by Gideon Rachman   another political science approach is found in the work of Jane Parish and Martin Parker edited a collection of essays The Age of Anxiety: Conspiracy Theory and Human Sciences. Hope in the Age of Anxiety: A Guide to Understanding and Strengthening Out Most Important Virtue by Anthony Scioli and Henry B. Biller, Haynes Johnson, The Age of Anxiety: McCarthyism to Terrorism.

In future posts I will investigate what we mean when we say anxiety but for today I want to paraphrase Bowen and Friedman on anxiety. Friedman in his book, published posthumously A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix contends that the age of the quick fix is an expression of anxiety. Hence we might say that the age of the quick fix is also the age of anxiety according to Friedman.  The book was edited by Margaret M. Treadwell and Edward W. Beal of the Bowen Center for the Study of the Family.

Probably one of the most insightful plays on this “age of anxiety” meme is  a blog post by Michael Jinkins who compares this age to the years before the Protestant Reformation. I will recommend Jinkins’ The Church Faces Death: Ecclesiology in a Post-Modern Context which frames many of the same issues but form the perspective of the transitions from ecclesiastical life framed by modernity and the emerging post-modern horizons for the church.

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The beauty that we find in the final passage was almost lost on me.  I would have read it, found it odd in its placement, and brushed on by.  Haven’t four years of seminary taught me to pay attention in Scripture when reading passages that strike me as particularly odd?  Nope, I was ready to keep on plowing through my reading.  Praise the Lord for a perceptive, wise spouse whose one word written on the margin of our Bible opened my eyes.  “Hope!” it declares.

In chapter 25 of 2 Kings, the exile has happened.  Israel was scattered across Assyria, while much of Judah finds itself in the foreign nation of Babylon.  Thirty-seven years into the exile, a new king has taken over Babylon, King Evil-marodach (sounds like a nice guy).  King Evil-m finds a soft spot in his heart, and releases King Jehoiachin, former second-to-last king of Judah, who had turned himself over to imprisonment in Babylon.  King Evil-m “spoke kindly to him,” he gave him a seat among the other kings in Babylon, and King Jehoiachin dined with the King of Babylon every day, as long as he lived (25:27-30).

The passage gives us no context or reason for the Babylonian king’s actions.  What is King Evil-m’s motive?  What is his hope to gain from such kindness?  Or is this in fact not a story about Evil-m at all, but as the rest of our reading through Scripture has highlighted, a story in fact about the Lord and his actions?  Yep, that sounds like a winner.

In this passage we see the flame of the House of David has not been entirely snuffed out.  Goodness and mercy is being shown, even to a king of Judah who did what was wicked in the Lord’s sight.  The Davidic promise, remains intact, as God remains ever faithful to his own covenant.  The people of the Lord broke covenant; the kings of the Lord’s people broke covenant; the priests of the Lord broke covenant.  God remains faithful.  Thus, a light in the House of David shines on.  Hope remains.  And a few years down the road, we just may see the ultimate fulfillment of God’s promise for the establishment of David’s house, kingdom and throne forever.  “Hope!”

I am curious to know insight into the practice taking place here.  Mosaic Law held temple prostitution as wicked.  In fact, though the Israelites were a people who came out of nations in which women were cultic actors, the Pentateuch has women removed from positions of religious leadership.  This is possibly to detach themselves from association with the activity of foreign nations, and put off any possible cause for accusation of women serving as temple prostitutes.  Thus, where they once ministered at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting (Ex. 38:8), in the Mosaic Law they were barely even considered members of the covenantal community.

Regardless, we know that Israel has been corrupted and turned to the practices of their neighbors.  My first question when I came across male temple prostitution in 1 Kings, was whether the stress on “male” prostitutes suggested that prior to this, there were female temple prostitutes in Israel, but that was more accepted?  This would make sense, as the Israelites were adopting more and more of the cultic practices of foreign nations, and many foreign deity worship practices included temple prostitution.  Were women as temple prostitutes an accepted practice in Israel as it slid further and further away from Yahwism?

My second question related to male temple prostitutes, is what their function served.  Was homosexuality rampant enough to house male prostitutes in the Temple for the male worshippers?  On the other hand, perhaps they were there for women worshippers.  If the second is so, did a slide away from Yahwism open the doors for women to have a place to worship and practice freely in the cultic religions of foreign gods?

My final question runs along the above line of thought.  In 2 Kings, the male prostitutes lived in the part of the temple where the women did weaving for Asherah.  Perhaps this suggests that the males were there to service these women.  If so, then the foreign religious practices not only appear to open a door for women to freely worship, but also present the notion of women possibly even serving in roles of leadership, ministering before the foreign deities.  No ancient culture that I have come across (and I admit I have not studied far and wide in this area) is a place of joy and empowerment for women.  Nevertheless, it could appear that at least in religious practices, non-Israelite peoples were somewhat more progressive for women than the Hebrews.  OR, female temple prostitution was simply accepted just fine – even for ‘righteous’ kings like Josiah – so only male temple prostitution needed to be cleared out.

Former Speaker of the House of Representatives of the U.S. Congress Tip O’Neil once said, “all politics is local.” When I say that we read the Bible locally I am speaking confessionally. Growing up in Dayton Ohio in the Church of the Brethren, a denomination historically dominated by a German immigrant ethos, even though I was in a Black family I learned to read the Bible from a German immigrant perspective.  Moving to Chicago required a more sophisticated reading strategy but still privileged a European American perspective.  The Chicago I experienced in the early 1970 was still dominated by various types of European immigrant communities and African American neighborhood built in the great immigration form the South.  Things changed for me living in Atlanta. It was a “chocolate city”. Atlanta had recently elected Black Mayor Maynard Jackson and experienced an ever increasing appreciation of the power of the strong Black middle class and emerging Black ruling class. As I was finishing my Ph. D. at Emory University I was doing a post graduate work at Interdenominational Center in Black Church studies.  I learned to read the Bible in Black and White. I could go on but I think these examples are sufficient to posit a question whether our place is not another factor in our reading perspective.

I am coming at the issue of cultured space from a different angle. Congratulations on coining such an interesting and helpful phrase.  I think that the city functions as “cultured space”. Reading the Bible in Chicago, Berkeley, Atlanta, and Washington D.C.  rovides valuable data.I was thinking that I could learn a lot from cohorts of pastors and maybe rabbis reading poetic texts in great U.S. cities. But that requires a grant but it is a idea who is growing. I want to explore how thinking like a metropolitan/cosmopolitan reader compels us to leave a narrow Euro-centric perspective.

Christl Maier in her book Daughter Zion, Mother Zion describes the city, Jerusalem as the mother city. The term we now know as metropolis. The sense of urbane vision is captured in the works of two insightful writers Kwame Appiah on Cosmopolitanism and Steven Johnson on Where Good Ideas Come From are informing my re-imagined interest in urban vistas.

I was in the midst of writing an introduction to Hebrew poetry for English readers when it struck me that my other books paid more attention to race and ethnicity. I want to continue to pay attention to those issues but allow the city to compel me into a reading informed by the diversity of a place like Chicago. What is it like to read the Bible under the Houston moon?

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I find the response of the other nations in this passage interesting.  Patriarch Abram was chosen by God to be the father of Israel, a people of God, in order that ‘all nations’ might be blessed through them.  Yet if Israel turns away, God does not hold the converse over their head – that their disobedience will be the ruin of all nations.  God promises that their disobedience will be their own downfall making them a stench among ‘all people.’  However the nations will still recognize the Lord and his actions in what he is doing and has done among Israel.  Ultimately, Israel’s disobedience will still prove God’s righteousness.

I am very unlearned in ancient history, but it seems to me that generally ancient peoples and societies were very religious.  (Would I be correct in assuming that?)  Did ancient peoples believe there were particular deity/ies for each people group/society/area/etc. to worship?  Or did each group believe the gods they worshipped were the correct and true gods for all peoples?  In this 1 Kings text we read that the Israelites turning away from God did not disprove his existence or his power to outside groups.  Israel’s transgression merely cast blame upon themselves for their own senselessness.  Their God’s existence, power, and deeds remained a given.

God did not choose the Israelites and bring them into a covenant in order to have a people through whom to prove himself.  He did so that they might follow and worship him and in living righteous lives, being a model to other nations, so all others might be blessed.  In this I reflect upon my situation.  My lack of faith and disobedience does not tarnish God’s reputation – it tarnishes my own.  God speaks for himself.

Solomon builds the temple to be a permanent house in which the Lord may dwell.  Yet as he is praying, he asks God to listen to the prayers of the Israelites “from Heaven.”  Solomon asks God to hear the prayer of foreigners and grant their request if they “come to the” Temple and pray.  In this way the foreigners will know that the Lord of Israel alone is the one true God.  On the one hand, God dwells in the Temple and hears foreigners only when they come to the temple.  On the other, God is in heaven, and hears and answers prayers from there.  Additionally, Solomon prays that if Israelites are in a land far away, they may lift their voice to God and he will hear.

So what was the ancient Israelites understanding of God?  Do they believe God is in heaven, or wherever the ark is?  If they believe heaven, why build a temple “for God to dwell in”?  Do they believe he actually dwelt there or was that more of a figure of speech suggesting that was the place to go and worship?  If God could hear from heaven anywhere a person called out to him, perhaps the Temple construction was to provide a centralized power structure that caused Jewish life to revolve around Jerusalem, the location of the king.

God is certainly able to be wherever He needs to be to speak with his people, answer his people, fight for them or what have you.  According to Ancient Israelite understanding, can he be in more than one place at a time?  Was their understanding of God that he is omnipresent?  If so, did they always have this view or when did it develop/come about?

It is truly a noble vision, yet I wonder whether it ever really happened.  I hear people today make statements such as, “The ancient Israelites had a practice of returning the land to its original owners every 50 years so that the poor did not become poorer and the rich richer on the backs of the poor.”  Did they really have this practice, or was it simply on the lawbooks somewhere?  I enjoy hearing trivia today about outdated laws that no one ever bothered to repeal, such as “In Texas, it is illegal to shoot a buffalo from the second story window of a hotel.”  Perhaps Israelites read Lev 25, and like my thoughts on the buffalo law, thought this must have at one time served a purpose but is no longer relevant in our modern situation.

Do we ever read in Scripture – or extra-biblical sources – of a Year of Jubilee actually being observed?  Do we even read of a Sabbatical Year being willingly observed?  According to the biblical text, Leviticus was written by Moses, thus in effect quite early on in Israelite history.  Yet we have not read of it happening so far, and surely such an event would be one worth chronicling.  The judges never require it done.  Nor do the kings, and certainly kings themselves never had to give up their holdings.  Hideyo’s ancient Israelite marriage simulation reminded me that there were very wealthy families and very poor families.  Can such wealth accumulate if the family land is given back every 50 years?  I suppose it is possible, though unlikely for such stratified socioeconomic classes to develop and take root in a system of almost starting over every few generations.

If Jubilee was never practiced, and if – as is more probably according to people much more learned than I – Leviticus was written mid- or post-exile (much later than Moses’ day), perhaps this concept serves a different purpose.  In the exile, Israelites realized more than ever how important their own land was to them.  Leviticus – along with the Pentateuch – gives us an etiology for the exile:  If you are obedient to the Lord it will go well with you; if you turn from God and behave unrighteously, all you have will be taken away.  To know what is righteous behavior, we must have a list outlining it, thus Leviticus.  By including the Year of Jubilee, we see how valuable the land is to the people, and to God’s will for his people… all his people.  The exile created a longing for a return to the land and a harmonious community of the people of Israel.

So, was Jubilee ever practiced?  Was it even intended to actually be practiced?

We recognized that the documentary hypothesis never attained scholarly consensus status. For instance Umberto Cassuto challenged it before that was fashionable. We also spent some time talking about the difficult process of getting the documentary hypothesis accepted in Baptist circles.

John Van Seters has argued that the date of the Yahwist is substantially later than the nineteenth century scholars suggested. Konrad Schmid argues that Genesis and Exodus were separate story lines until  an editor in the Persian period (539-333 BCE) This shift of so profound that Schmid and Dozeman edited a volume titled the Death of the Yahwist.

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Mendeley is a both a social network site as well as a bibliographical index. For instance when I did a search on psalms I came up with 725 references. It shares some functionality with Zotero as a searchable research database. However, the social networking element is not as advanced in biblical studies many of the 725 references have only one reader listed at the time when I built my list.

Zotero is a strong bibliographical tool. It replaces Endnote as a bibliographical management system. At this point it is also free. However, it is, at this point linked to Firefox.  One can share it as a database like Mendeley but only with a group that you have already designated.  Long remarks, that if an independent Zotero emerges, it may have more bibliographic power than Mendeley which also organizes the material on Dropbox.  Zotero has very good word processor plugins.

Dropbox is a cloud based storage system that consistently receives rave reports. However, like the university based cloud storage system the free limit is 2 GB which is not enough to be helpful. The 50GB is $9.99 a month and the 100 GB is $19.99. So up to this point I have not ventured there.  Baylor like many universities has cloud storage but the limits are substantial. I may have to move to a Dropbox model.

His suggestion about Evernote was more familiar. I have used Evernote since the summer of 2010. Here I paid the $45.00 a year for the premium service that allows up to 1 GB a month in uploads.  On Evernote you can store word processing docs, html, pdf, and videos. Also Evernote allows you to annotate pdfs that are part of your research. Evernote is tagable and searchable.  I continue to struggle to find my way in this digital wilderness.

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