classics digests, reflections and reviews
Background and Disclaimer The Leuven Database of Ancient Books (LDAB) is a searchable database of metadata on Greek, Latin, Coptic, Demotic, Syriac and other literary texts. It first came online in 1998, and has been widely used by New Testament scholars. I learned about its existence only a few weeks ago, when reading a scholarly work on earliest Christian manuscripts. My interest in LDAB was piqued immediately, for many reasons: […]
Read moreWhere then is my hope? Who will see my hope? Will it go down to the bars of Sheol? Shall we descend together into the dust? –Job 17:15-16 Job is my favourite character in the Bible, because he has something that I admire but lack, namely, perfect moral integrity. He is someone who can stand before the judgment seat and challenge the justice of God, for though he is blameless, he has endured […]
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Counsel of State The ancients set forth in figure, both the incorporation, and inseparable conjunction, of counsel with kings, and the wise and politic use of counsel by kings: the one, in that they say Jupiter did marry Metis, which signifieth that Sovereignty is married to Counsel; the other in that which followeth: after Jupiter was married to Metis, she conceived by him, and was with child, but Jupiter suffered […]
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The Interdependence of Cultures It is a part of my thesis that the culture of the individual is dependent upon the culture of a group or class, and that the culture of the group or class is dependent upon the culture of the whole society to which that group or class belongs. Therefore it is the culture of the society that is fundamental. We know that good manners, without education, […]
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Art in a Democratic Society What is more insidious than any censorship, is the steady influence which operates silently in any mass society organised for profit, for the depression of standards of art and culture. The increasing organisation of advertisement and propaganda—or the influencing of masses of men by any means except through their intelligence—is all against them. The economic system is against them; the chaos of ideals and confusion […]
Read moreThe Suffering of An Idealist The Stoic philosophers teach that pain in and of itself is neither good nor evil. I tend to agree with them, because pain can be a means to a good, “no pain no gain”. Suffering is not the mere feeling of pain, it is a painful realization that some good is being or has been destroyed. When I was a youth, I believed very strongly […]
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The Insufficiency of Humanism Tribulation generally signifies nothing else but some kind of grief, either pain of the body or heaviness of the mind. All the wit in the world cannot bring about that the body should not feel what it feels. But that the mind should not be grieved with either bodily pain or occasions of heaviness pressed unto the soul, this thing the philosophers laboured very much about. […]
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