On "From Beyond" by H. P. Lovecraft (3046 words) ***

Lovecraft here warns of science and philosophy. Those who don't succeed live on in despair; those who do go crazy. The friend in this story is one of the latter, who invents a machine that makes the invisible visible--in such a way that it kills those who use it. One senses a link to ideas of gnosticism, how the physical cannot grasp the nonphysical without becoming utterly impotent. Read the story here.

On "Writing on the Wall" by Tom Standage *****

Standage makes the intriguing claim that new media is in fact very, very old media. That is, with the exception of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, during which we had an exceptional emphasis on mass media, our media has generally been focused on the social--people sharing things among each other, and things becoming virally popular among them.

Standage starts his evidence with tales from Rome and how messages were passed along in the ancient city. Most specifically, he writes of Cicero, who was a known letter writer. Within Rome, men of higher class, like Cicero, had a network for postal carriers who would carry messages to and from others, many times a day. When traveling afar, there were other means of carrying messages to and from Rome, via soldiers, sailors, and officials. Cicero always wanted to be in the know and pressed his friends to send him news of state while he was gone. In Rome itself, he passed on messages to others, copying parts of other messages he thought interesting, telling others to share his messages. This was not unlike Facebook in a sense, with popular ideas and messages being shared among friends and friends of friends, with some going "viral."

Books were passed along in a similar manner. Since one had to write out the book, there being no press, people would copy out books or passages of books they most liked. A few who could afford it might buy a book that had been copied out by slaves who often served as scribes. To get a book into circulation, writers often dedicated their works to patrons who had libraries from which they lent out to others. This was a way to get into such people's good graces.

Writing a book itself often involved a couple of drafts. Sometimes portions of a work in progress might be shared with close friends with an understanding that that draft was not to be passed on to others.

There was even a Roman "newspaper." This singular document was written out and posted in a public place each day. People could come and read it and copy out passages that they found of interest, which they then included in messages to others. We have no copies of the paper itself, but we have passages that were copied from the paper.

Christians used letter writing to pass along messages also, as is evident from the New Testament, the majority of which is made up of letters. These letters were shared with other churches and people--and were expected to be.

Next, Standage drops into the Reformation and looks at how Luther's message went viral. By that time, of course, there was a printing press. This meant ideas could be spread faster and more easily--but they were still not reproduced in a fast manner. A press might make two hundred copies of something in a day. Phamplets were printed and shared.

From here, Standage looks at the royal court of Britain in the seventeenth century. Knowing the power of print, governments put limitations on who could print and what could be printed. Printers often had to have licenses or get government approval for what they put into circulation. Special taxes also often applied. There was no shortage of people who tried to skirt these laws.

But what this also meant was that people also continued to pass along messages by hand, as in the royal court, where people imprisoned by Henry VIII kept a kind of public journal of sorts, writing out verses for one another--sometimes their own, sometimes those of others. In fact, poetry was, it seems, a kind of private affair. We think of Donne and others writing for a large audience, when in fact it was written for a few friends, friends who then ended up sharing those poems among their friends, much of this by hand.

Another innovation was the coffeehouse. In it, people gathered to discuss issues of the day. When it first became popular, such houses often focused on one kind of person--sailors, officials, intellectuals. Thus, some people held office hours there, and meetings took place there, allowing for the free exchange of information. It was via such a house we get our learned societies, and by them that we get our scholarly journal publishing. A society of scientists thought it a good idea to gather said information into a document to be shared among such thinkers. Only the best was to be included, meaning that they would review each others work before putting it in to print. Some knew others overseas and, with peer review, got those other Europeans into the publication. Such made me think a bit about scholarly publishing today, about how it costs so much and how one has to pay for it. There's much bandied about about open access, but even this has costs. Still, much of our practice goes back to these older times and to the need to print. I do think there are other models that could be used, models that might still cost ten thousand dollars or so to put out a quality product but that would be cheaper and more effective than our current system.

Finally, Standage gets to mass media. Around the early 1800s, steam printing allowed for a much faster process. Instead of a mere couple hundred copies a day, printers could now turn out a thousand or more copies. Most newspapers still printed for a very small audience, charging exorbitant prices of a half days' wage or so, but the New York Sun decided on a different model. It would print vast quantities and sell the paper for cheap. How would it recoup money? It would sell ads. Mass media was born.

Whereas newspapers earlier had largely been full of letters to and from people and material from other papers, things printers found of interest, the new mass market paper needed more info to include, so it hired reporters to go out and gather stories.

From here, we then move to radio and television. Radio started out as social, with people exchanging messages back and forth, but it became a one-way medium soon after the Titanic disaster. Radio was used for emergencies, and so many amateurs clogged the wires that it was hard for government messages to get through. In the case of the Titanic, amateurs were blamed for the message about ice not getting through to the ship (the real case, however, was that the ship had told another ship to quit sending messages to it because there were too many messages the Titanic itself was trying to send out for its passengers on board).

NBC/RCA took an early lead in gathering together a bundle of radio stations to forge a network. The fledgling CBS did similarly. When TV came about, NBC used its special interest clout with Congress to keep small stations from being able to compete or be formed, pushing out some early upstarts that would have provided competition, meaning that TV became almost wholly national in scope. In Britain, the government took an active role in forging media, with its BBC--there, individual licenses paid for the programming, which was to be for the "betterment" of the citizens. In America, the ad model form newspapers became the means by which money was made. Social media was no longer.

Until the Net, which Standage then goes into the history of.

But to some extent this is a bit of a broken argument, even if a neat one. For one, people never stopped sending letters or copying them out. Social media did not disappear during the TV era. And for two, the ideas that caught on were often those from the rich and the elite, even in the eras before mass media. After all, it was those who had power and money who were most able to spread their message, whether via TV or via a handwritten book. Similarly today, even with Facebook and the like, it is those with large platforms who have a larger role in shaping the discourse, and the larger platforms often belong to the elite. This isn't to say that a regular joe's message doesn't go viral at times, but it is to say that those who already have power more often have the likelihood of going viral.

On "Beverly Home" by Denis Johnson (5155 words) *****

The final tale in Johnson's collection of a drug-addled young man, this one focuses on his recovery. The piece examines sick people, which happens to be the job that the narrator has managed to find himself in. The deformed also happen to be the kind of people this man dates. But each night, he sneaks peeks at a seemingly normal couple, an ideal life, that he can only view through a window. What he comes to see is that we are all deformed in our own way. Read the story here at Revision 30.

On "One God, One Lord" by Larry W. Hurtado *****

This relatively short book attempts to figure out how Jewish people would have thought about Jesus as a divine figure when he first burst on to the scene. How, in other words, would a monotheist religion manage to explain a second unit in the Godhead? Why would Jewish people accept that and so quickly?

Hurtado rejects the idea that such acceptance stemmed from the Gentile side of the church and that Jewish Christians did not see Jesus as divine. Rather, he says that the idea of divinity was routed in certain concepts having to do with a kind of second in charge or command, behind God--a divine agent who works for and on behalf of and in place of God.

This agent can be found in various forms: as a personified attribute, such as wisdom or the word; as an angel; or as an important human figure/prophet. Of particular note, however, is the angel, for a principal angel figures prominently in many Old Testament and inter-Testamental passages. In this sense, then, Hurtado says, we can see the risen Jesus as fitting into the Jewish concept of a chief angel, a divine agent.

However, that would not mean that Jesus was one who early Christians worshipped, and Hurtado notes that unlike the divine agent's treatment in most earlier texts, it's clear that the worship practice of early Christians included Jesus with God. How that came about is not quite clear, but, Hurtado implies, it was likely related to Jesus's resurrection--an event that changed the view of certain peoples.

Hurtado's ideas are intriguing, especially as one tries to figure out how a Jewish person would have felt about Jesus at the time. The divine agent certainly seems like one avenue by which people could have seen him. But if the Gospel accounts are accurate, it's clear that Jesus claimed divinity of himself while alive, which still is rather mind-boggling insofar as having people accept that. Miracles must have played a large role, with the resurrection being the final step to such acceptance.

On "The Other Gods" by H. P. Lovecraft (2037 words) ***

Men scale mountains. In the work of Lovecraft, however, this becomes not an adventure story about men versus the elements or even nature but about men versus the ancient gods who dwell atop those mountains, warning us away. Read the story here.

On "Redating the New Testament" by John A. T. Robinson *****

This compelling book illustrates for me something that I've thought about in some way or another since I was a teen-ager, namely how does one ever really know something? That isn't Robinson's point, of course, but what he does demonstrates this basic idea. What he does is this: Rather than accepting the later dates for the New Testament books presented by biblical scholars (of the nonconservative variety), Robinson starts with the premise that all the books were written before 70 A.D. because of their lack of addressing of what would have been a major event to religiously minded Jewish folks in the first century--namely, the destruction of the Jewish temple.

Now, many scholars present the later dates for certain books based on the idea that they actually do address this--most specifically in the Gospels. There is the whole Matthew 24 prophecy that Jesus renders. For a secularist, such a prophecy coming to fruition demands that the material had to have been written after the event, the prophecy a way of seeming to be profound and mystic when one is not. Robinson sees this as a poor argument, because the predictions in the Gospels about the Temple's demise are not of the specific variety that one would expect were one writing after the fact. Some items in the prophecy didn't come true in the exact manner Jesus predicted; no dates are presented, and in general the prophecy is rather vague. (Hebrews is an interesting case in point too, since if it were written after the fact, why not just point out the Temple's destruction in denoting Jesus as the replacement for the high priest?)

Having banished the few arguments for later writing of some of the books, Robinson follows through on his premise, presenting arguments for just when each book could have been written--all of them before 70 A.D. And all this goes to show what I often think/thought about as a young man--how assumptions, prejudices, and premises all shape our point of view before we even start into a topic. Start with an assumption that certain New Testament books must be written later, and suddenly all of them take on a different cast; start with another premise, and suddenly all of them fall much earlier. What is the truth of the date of writing? Who can possibly know?

On "Necrophil" by Felipe Alfau **** (40 minutes)

"The Necrophil," from Alfau's *Locos,* is about a woman who dies for three months each year. Obsessed with death--she attends the funerals of strangers for fun--she has a kind of love affair with it. A doctor tries to cure her. Read the story here at Miette's Bedtime Story podcast.

On "Destroyer of the Gods" by Larry W. Hurtado *****

This short study of how Christians were distinctive in the ancient world is extremely readable. I've completed a handful of other books about paganism in the Roman Empire in the first century, but none of them were written as accessibly as this one. Here, Hurtado gives readers a real feel for how the pagan world functioned and just how Christianity would have been a disruption to such a society.

Whereas the Jews did not accept other gods, theirs was at least an ethnic religion. In fact, most religions were ethnic at this time. You were born into a faith, but few faiths were exclusivist. Your family god might also be shared by the nation, but the land where you live might have its own god, and you might go to the celebrations of other gods worshipped by friends and family. Rome was accepting of local gods, as such provided for political stability. This was the danger of Christianity, because it did not accept those gods as real. As such, it endangered, in many people's views, the political stability of nations and of the empire. It also meant you broke up the unity of families. It was also a different sort of religion in that it knew no ethnic limits, making its spread potentially greater.

Christianity was also a bookish religion. More than most faiths, its ideas were committed to print and passed along that way. Not only, of course, was their an emphasis on the holy book, but there were also letters and such that were shared. Hurtado spends a full chapter discussing this early written religious culture.

Finally, there were differences in morality, a subject discussed elsewhere but that Hurtado gives an adequate summary of here.

On "The Unnamable" by H. P. Lovecraft (2951 words) ***

This tale moves Lovecraft's work into the American everyday. Essentially a kind of ghost story, the piece revolves around a man trying to convince his inconvincible scientifically minded friend that a particular house is haunted by "the unnamable." Read the story here.

On "Daily Life in the New Testament" by James W. Ermatinger ****

This book covers exactly what its title says. What I found most interesting about it, however, was Ermatinger's point of view. Where as Martin Goodman, in his book on Rome and Jerusalem, perceives Roman-Jewish interactions as largely positive with a few trivial skirmishes, and the eventual destruction of the temple as an accidental "mistake," Ermatinger emphasizes the strife between the Romans and the Jews, with the temple's destruction as the fitting climax to this conflict.

Along the way, Ermatinger gives readers a tour of the various peoples living in the Holy Land: what their origins were, what they spoke, what they did for work. He also talks about the expectations for Messiah and how these played out in the eventual conflict. For a book that is part of a series that is generally fairly predefined in its scope and organization, this was actually a very interesting and informative read, more so than I was expecting.

On "Dundun" by Denis Johnson (1206 words) ****

It is possible that some people might be more messed up than the character at the center of Denis Johnson's stories in Jesus' Son. Here, that man, looking to be useful to others, gives a ride to a man who is on his way toward death, who has been shot, by a mutual acquaintance. But what the narrator finds is that deep beneath all this trouble, there is kindness, somewhere, inside each of us, even when it never shows. Read the story here.

On "Sage, Saint, and Sophist" by Graham Anderson ***

Hoping for a bit more information about itinerant preachers in the first century, I picked up this book. Some information on this subject appeared here, but overall I was disappointed with regard to that. Anderson focuses more on the way in which holy men lived than on the ways in which they spread their message to people who otherwise would not have known of them (today we have TV preachers, but just how did people in the first century pass along their message?). Granted, there is much on spreading the message, but more in terms of how such men were perceived when they made predictions and how they taught disciples than on the situations, the streets, the academies, in which they would have spoken.

On "The Nameless City" by H. P. Lovecraft (5032 words) ****

Here a man goes scaling into an ancient cavernous city whose history is described in other Lovecraft tales. As with so many of Lovecraft's stories, the man is eventually nearly torn apart by his encounter. But the descriptions of this odd civilization and the caverns along the way are wonderfully baroque. Read the story here.

On "At the Origins of Christian Worship" by Larry W. Hurtado ****

Based on a series of lectures, the short book is a very readable summary of many of the themes that extend throughout Hurtado's work. The main goal of the book is to explore what worship was like near the beginning of the Christian faith.

Hurtado starts his book by looking at paganism as it would have existed in the day and how that would have impacted Christian worship. The gist of it is that a Christian of Gentile extraction would have had a difficult time in society, because its social structure was largely based around pagan cults. Want to share a meal? You'll do that at the temple--or in rarer cases, at rich person's house (though in a crowd of ten at most)--generally in honor of a god. Being Christian involved breaking away from much of this social structure.

Next, Hurtado looks at how Christians actually worshipped, insofar as what they received in exchange for their conversion. Many churches met in homes and featured only a small number of congregants, so the experience was intimate--and it often featured food. Social distinctions were largely removed. There was also the promise of a coming utopian age of which Christians had a foretaste.

Hurtado turns next to the worship pattern insofar as the nature of God is concerned. He denotes that worship was largely binitarian--focused on Jesus and the Father as objects of veneration. The Spirit was certainly something of importance, but it was not an object of worship. Christians still believed themselves monotheists, as the Son was seen as the expression of the Father.

In the final chapter, Hurtado turns to contemporary worship and discusses how the early history/pattern of worship might instruct Christians today in their own practice.

On "The End of the World and Karate" by Al Dixon (1947 words) ****

What I like so much about this strange little story is the seeming randomness of it and the attitude the characters convey to one another. Sure, it's a story in which nothing much seems to be happening, but then there's this whole talk of UFOs and of Kenny the foot stomper and of highjackers--one never knows where the story is going to go. Read it here at Hobart.

On "From Philo to Origen" by Robert M. Berchman **

This book is little more than a photostat of a dissertation. As such, it's double-spaced and shrunk down to fit a six-by-nine binding, which makes for difficult reading. That's too bad in some ways, as what Berchman has to say is important and useful. As the title suggests, Berchman traces through the influence of Plato from Philo to Origen, in the period known as Middle Platonism, one in which both the Jewish religion and the Christian were coming into being. Alas, it is not a book for casual readers or even mainstream readers; that one is still to be written. This is one for the scholars, preferably ones who know Greek and Latin, since Berchman often quotes from the vernacular without translation.

I would split the book into three main parts, with the first two being split into three parts each and the last part being split into two. The first section discusses conceptions of God, first in Philo, then in Clement of Alexandria, and finally in Origen. The gist of it is that all three, to some extent, apply Platonic ideas to Biblical concepts and to their beliefs about who God is and how his creation came about. Most pertinent here is Philo's dialogue Timaeus. God the Father, as First Principle, has no direct contact with the physical; his Logos, his reason and mind, is begotten and creates the things of physical substance. Or something like that. This was not easy reading.

The second section discusses ideas about knowledge--again in Philo, Clement, and Origen. The basic premise is that they write in Scripture as the ultimate form of knowledge, which goes beyond that which can be gained by physical senses to that which is the mind of God. Another short section discusses rhetoric--and how their use of it was Platonic.

Finally, the last section of the book provides a long excerpt from Origen's Periarchon, after which the author analyzes it to show how Origen is actually arguing against Stoic concepts of knowledge and of God in favor of Platonic concepts, as based within scripture.

On "The Moon-Bog" by H. P. Lovecraft (3421 words) ****

This is what happens when a man named Denys Bary decides that the legends about an Irish bog are poppycock and in the name of progress and development decides to drain it. Campfire legends are made of this stuff. Read the story here.

On "Philo's Alexandria" by Dorothy Sly ****

This highly accessible book about Alexandria in the first century of the Common Era focuses on Philo's observations about the city and how those speak to both his thoughts and to the character of the city itself. It is, in equal ways, about each.

Philo was a Jewish philosopher/thinker of the time who was also heavily influenced by the Greek culture around him. In many ways, he was focused on proving Hebrew culture as every bit the equal of Greek culture if not superior to it, making such well-bandied (at the time) claims as that much of Greek philosophy stemmed from Mosaic law and custom or from a common divine source.

Sly is a feminist whose previous work focused on Philo's beliefs about women, and that finds a lot of emphasis here. Women don't fare well in Philo's texts, since he believes they are inferior to men and should largely be confined to the private arena. It is when they take a hand in politics or try to influence men that history goes awry, in Philo's view. He writes badly women like Cleopatra who have much to do with the social order.

Various chapters deal with Alexandria's marketplace, medicine, politics, and history.

About the only misstep in the book is that Sly chooses to end the book with the account of the Jewish pogrom of 38 and chooses to start it with a paraphrasing of Philo's thought, writing as if she were Philo. Ending the book as she does is not necessarily wrong, but it might have been a more compelling opening; the paraphrase, at least for me, seemed to drop us into the realm of fiction and made me at first rue choosing this book as one about these two subjects.

On "Two Men" by Denis Johnson (3569 words) *****

Seemingly random, this story follows a set of druggies as they pick up a hitchhiker, try to get him home, realize that they do not know what they are doing, and then ends up somewhere more sinister than one could ever imagine at the start. And that's just the first man! Read the story here at the Short Story Project.

On "From Logos to Trinity" by Marian Hillar ***

Hillar traces the origins and history of the Christian concept of the Trinity. The work focuses first on Greek concepts of the term "Logos," then on Hebrew concepts of Wisdom and of the Messiah. The two ideas find unity in Philo, who was heavily influenced by both Hellenism and the Hebrew scriptures and who sought to claim that Hebrews actually anticipated and "taught" the Greeks philosophy. It is Philo, Hillar sees, as bringing Platonic ideas to the Jewish God. Justin Martyr builds on Philo, though he does not yet introduce the full-fledged trinity. That role belongs to Tertullian. In the appendix, Hillar summarizes the findings and then focuses on Egyptian concepts of God as being the first Mediterranean culture to come up with the idea of a uniplural god in three and likely the origin of later ideas in Christianity.

This work focuses much on philosophy and, as such, was difficult for me to follow at times. Hillar is interested in the evolution of religious ideas. Hillar seems to lean toward Biblical events regarding Jesus--indeed, Jesus himself--as being mythical.