I periodically pull books off the shelves here at the library and provide random quotes. With Passover approaching, I thought perhaps a page from an Ashkenazi Haggadah would be an appropriate fit for the sacred. And as for the profane, just what does “Mencken-ish” mean, anyway?

The Sacred:

Frame 39a from The Ashkenazi Haggadah, a Hebrew manuscript of the mid-15th Century from the collections of the British Library, written and illuminated by Joel Ben Simeon called Feibusch Ashkenazi, with a commentary attributed to Eleazar ben Judah of Worms; London: Abradale Press.

The translation: The breath of every living thing shall bless your name, O Lord, our God; and the spirit of all flesh shall glorify and exalt the remembrance of you, our king, continually. For ever and ever you are God, and apart from you we have no king who redeems and saves. You deliver, protect, sustain, and bestow compassion on us at all times of trouble and distress; we have no king but you. He is God of the first and of the last, God of all creatures, Lord of all generations, magnified with every kind of praise, who conducts his world with love and his creatures with mercy…

The Profane:

I can’t decide which entry I find more odd. From the Personals of the Saturday Review of Literature, March 17 1951, p50.

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A man once told me that in 1959 he picked up a magazine off the table to read and suddenly realized that he should invest his extra time in study of Scripture rather than other “superfluous” literature . He claims not to have read anything else since, and that I should reconsider how I invest my time. Let me also say that this man is one of the godliest and most biblically knowledgeable men I have ever met. But let me also say that I do not share his conviction.

According to Megan Williams’sThe Monk and the Book: Jerome and the Making of Christian Scholarship, the early church fathers Origen and Jerome had vastly different approaches to the relationship of literary scholarship to “sacred studies.” She provides the following anecdote from Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History concerning Origen’s abandonment of his library when he devoted himself to sacred studies:

Deeming the teaching of grammar discordant with training in divine learning, without hesitation he ceased to engage in grammatical studies, which he now held to be unprofitable and opposed to holy erudition. Then, having come to the conclusion that he ought not to depend on the support of others, he gave away all of the books of ancient literature that he possessed, though formerly he had fondly cherished them, and was content to receive four obols a day from the man who purchased them. (Eusebius, Hist. eccles. 6.8-9; cited in Williams, 133).

Williams then goes on to describe how Jerome’s writings, including his biblical commentaries, are laden with every evidence of the use of a vast personal library:

For every page of Jerome’s commentaries implies a library. The citations of multiple versions of the Bible, the historical information taken from Josephus’s Antiquities of the Jews, the explanations of Hebrew names drawn from the Jewish and Christian onomastic literature, and especially the lengthy interpretations translated and paraphrased from a variety of Christian commentators–all of this material came from books that Jerome must have had on hand as he worked. Many of Jerome’s other works, too, can be shown to rely very closely on his sources, including both Christian and non-Christian writings. (Williams, 134).

I understand that people may often be led to different convictions determined by the avoidance of past sins and idolatries (see Paul’s advice concerning meat sacrificed to idols in 1 Corinthians), but I’m with Jerome on this one. Besides, I’m a theological librarian.

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I happen to agree in many respects with Thomas Friedman’s conclusion in The World is Flat that globalization is indeed flattening the world. The voice at the other end of the McDonald’s drive-through could very well be in India.

An example of this flattening is the increasingly ubiquitous access to information on a global scale. The Google Book Search project is providing global access to book content on a scale never seen before. As long as I have internet access I can read or even download books scanned from the libraries around the world.

The Google Book Project provides another example, and a vivid one at that, of the flattening of the world. The amazing people over at Google frequently give the user a map showing all the geographic places named in a particular book. One particularly inquisitive programmer even took the time to have Google create a map showing all the locations mentioned in all the books in their database. Google is not letting me display the map, so view it here.

I recently read a book about Australia by Bill Bryson, In a Sunburned Country, in which he chronicles how little attention the world pays to Australia. I think he’s right. They hardly even show up on this map. By the way — this book was fascinating, I highly recommend it.

All of this raises a more interesting question for me, though. Will Western theology begin to take on a more global tone, increasingly addressing the issues of African or Malaysian or Siberian churches, or will those cultures continue to take on a more Western tone like the rest of their culture? In other words, how will the flattening of the world affect theological discourse? Is the world of confessional theology immune from the temptations of outsourcing? What are the dangers? What are the benefits? Your thoughts?

Postscript: Minutes after writing this post, this new acquisition crossed my desk: Bob Roberts, Jr., Glocalization: How Followers of Jesus Engage a Flat World (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007). I have not read the book, and at first glance it appears to be primarily a practical admonition for a re-evaluation of the contemporary American way of doing missions and as such does not directly address my question. An interesting coincidence that it should cross my desk today, though.

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All: thanks for your patience with me as I have slowly returned to the world of the upright from my recent … unpleasantness. I am still in something of a Nyquil haze, but the time to get up and be doing has arrived. I return with a quote from Longfellow’s Psalm of Life:

Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

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I’ve been battling influenza and pneumonia, and have therefore not be vertical enough to post anything in recent days. I think I’ve turned a corner, however, and should be back within a few days. If you pray for me, pray for my wife as well — she’s battling a stomach bug, caring for me, and our two small attention-hungry kids.

In my attempt to push through the fog that is prescription cough syrup, I’ve been trying to work crossword puzzles and read. I came across this anonymously written poem today and for reasons which need no explanation it resonated with my present state of mind, though perhaps with a bit of hyperbole.

Death

O death, rock me asleep,
Bring me to quiet rest,
Let pass my weary guiltless ghost
Out of my careful breast.
Toll on, thou passing bell;
Ring out my doleful knell;
Let thy sound my death tell.
Death doth draw nigh;
There is no remedy.

My pains who can express?
Alas, they are so strong;
My dolour will not suffer strength
My life for to prolong.
Toll on, thou passing bell;
Ring out my doleful knell;
Let thy sound my death tell.
Death doth draw nigh;
There is no remedy.

Alone in prison strong
I wait my destiny.
Woe worth this cruel hap that I
Should taste this misery!
Toll on, thou passing bell;
Ring out my doleful knell;
Let thy sound my death tell.
Death doth draw nigh;
There is no remedy.

Farewell, my pleasures past,
Welcome, my present pain!
I feel my torments so increase
That life cannot remain.
Cease now, thou passing bell;
Rung is my doleful knell;
For the sound of my death doth tell.
Death doth draw nigh;
There is no remedy.

I read somewhere recently that optimism may be naive, but pessimism is atheistic. Given how frail this sickness has made me feel, I’m quite content to be naive. See you in a few days.

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From Oxford University’s current online exhibit of Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows and their famous Bodleian Library:

In the Spring of 1907, Kenneth Grahame and his wife travelled to Cornwall for a long holiday. Their seven year old son Alastair, or ‘Mouse’, agreed to remain with his nanny, Miss Stott – but only if his father continued to tell him bedtime stories by post.

His father agreed and over the next few months sent Alastair fifteen letters recounting the reckless adventures of Mr Toad and the attempts of his long-suffering friends, Mole, Rat and Badger, to rescue him from his various scrapes and teach him how to behave properly. The descriptions of the river and surrounding landscape draw upon Grahame’s own fond childhood memories of the countryside around the Thames.

The early letters to Alastair begin and end affectionately, combining real news with the story of Mr Toad. However, following Alastair’s demand to be called ‘Michael Robinson’ instead of his real name (which he decided he did not like), the letters abandon their chatty tone and simply tell the story, ending in each case, ‘to be continued’.

The letters were carefully preserved by Miss Stott and given to Elspeth, who persuaded her husband that they would make a wonderful book. Grahame followed her advice, developing his narrative and publishing it in 1908 as The Wind in the Willows.

The original letters were given to the Bodleian Library by Elspeth Grahame in 1943, and can be read here.

Here is letter number 7 (click for a larger view):

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