Brothers and Utopia

After a difficult few weeks workwise I'm trying very hard to throw myself back into the academic pool. At the moment, I'm mired in rather dry scholarship on William Blake and his context: the type that has a lot of material and requires much mental energy to sift out the relevant details. So to renew my vigour, I'm spending half an hour  reflecting on one of the other cornerstones of my project: Richard Brothers.

I have been extremely remiss in not posting more about Brothers in the life of this blog. In many respects, he's one of the most fascinating characters in my DPhil. Brothers was formerly a naval officer, before leaving the Navy after receiving his prophetic calling. Prior to achieving real infamy in the mid-1790s through his polemical pamphlets Revealed Knowledge, Brothers found himself largely destitute and forced to the workhouse on account of refusing to give the oath required for him to receive his military pension. It was during this period that Brothers began to receive visions portending the future destruction of London.

The cry for social justice is heard powerfully when reading Brothers' pamphlets. In his second Revealed Knowledge, Brothers gives the following blistering critique of life in London under the Pitt administration:

"THE POOR ARE ENTIRELY DESTITUTE HERE... No man, who has any knowledge of God, can justly say, that London is without guilt, and her people are without sin; when her Streets are full of Vice, and her Prisons are full of Oppression.”

Brothers' desire for God's wrathful intervention against London/Babylon is in part motivated by the deep unfairness which he experienced and perceived within the city. At a time of proletariat and republican uprising in France (with ramifications felt in Britain, e.g. the Priestley Riots in Birmingham) Brothers rails against the economic disparity he felt in British society co-ordinated by Pitt. Brothers forcefully tries to call London to repentance, and his writings act as an urgent call for those who think they are living in Jerusalem, to realise they are in fact citizens of wicked Babylon.

There is much in Brothers' early writing which is extraordinarily powerful (even if his use of scripture to collate a case of "doom" against London isn't exactly innovative stuff...) but for my purposes, it is his solution to the problem of late-nineteenth century Britain which is most interesting. Brothers records a compulsion and a calling from God to lead the rediscovered lost tribes of Israel and rebuild Jerusalem. London is saved from the immediate threat of destruction thanks only to Brothers' special pleading to God. Why does God take the time to listen to him, you may ask? Why, because, Brothers is in fact "the Nephew of the Almighty", the "Prince of the Hebrews", the new messiah to lead the restored Israelites to their former glory and reinstitute God's kingdom and chosen people into this fallen world of conflict and injustice.

Brothers' solution, part of the Anglo-Israelism tradition in British prophecy sees Brothers leading a redeemed people into the eschatological city. Yet his hope for a "new earth" (Revelation 21:1) is metaphorical: Jerusalem will play an active part in world affairs; it will function as a new model of economic and political relations with the "nations". The King himself is revealed by Brothers to be amongst the hidden tribes who will form part of Jerusalem! Yet it is in this conception of Jerusalem as a new, divinely endorsed imperial power which gives Brothers' prophecies its most tragically flawed dimension. Rather than imagining a new world, one free of the former disparities he railed so strongly against, Brothers imagines an idealized kingdom, set up in the desert, with himself as ruler and chief architect. After he was arrested and committed to an asylum in 1795, Brothers lived out his days writing pamphlets describing his city in minute detail, and even designing its flags and military uniforms. Essentially, Brothers failed to offer a "new holy city" even if he did try and base his designs upon the descriptions of the redeemed Jerusalem in Ezekiel 40-48 and Revelation 21-22. The only difference between Brothers' Jerusalem and Pitt's London was that, in Brothers' mind, God had decreed that Brothers was in the right.

The irony of Brothers' attempts to mentally construct a city which acted as the counterpoint to the London in which he saw Satan walk undetected is, to my mind, powerfully reflected in this statement from a pamphlet of 1805:

“all men shall live in private as they please, but it must be in houses to encourage the industry of building, as well as the divine benefit of marriage. It shall be the land of true liberty!”

Brothers' Jerusalem strives after wealth and political power just as much as he felt Pitt's London did. It rather puts me in mind of the Tears for Fears song "Everybody Wants To Rule The World."  Brothers' prophetic idealization of Jerusalem, whatever his distress at the inequalities pervading the London of his day, essentially repeats the same errors as the Pitt administration. Brothers ended his life with most of his followers deserting him (most to follow Joanna Southcott), in the care of a friend who could merely sit by and watch as the would-be Prince of the Hebrews ceaselessly described a future hope which was destined to remain utterly thwarted.

That's not quite the end of Brothers' story, however. The millenarian mood which gripped Britain in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, partly motivated by the same kind of economic and political discontent we may discern in Brothers' early writings, bore fruit later in the century in the form of the fledgling Christian Socialism movement. Even if his own vision of the New Jerusalem failed to correct the injustices of his contemporary society, Brothers millenarian zeal helped to fuel the conviction that the promises of Christianity pointed to the urgent need to reform the nation so that, so to speak "We may build Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land."

But that's a story for another day (notably one in which I've done a lot more research!)

My Chemical Apocalypse

Is everyone OK? Are we all still here? Nobody has found themselves suddenly being catapulted into the sky as they drive down the M1?

To the vast majority of people, it will come as absolutely no surprise that the predictions of Harold Camping that the Rapture would occur at 6pm on 21st May 2011 didn't quite pan out into reality. After all, in our recent memories, the omens have been detcted on the horizon portending the world's end. This can be expressed in religious terms (as in Camping's predictions), or as the revival and distortion of earlier generations' prophetic activity (c.f. Nostradamus) or indeed as a technological apocalypse (as in the feared "Y2K" or "millennium" bug). Society and culture (at least in the Western world) truly has eschatology (or, to use a less jargonistic term, events, theories or expressions relating to 'the End' or 'end times', from the Greek adjective eschatos meaning "last" or "latter") on the brain.

Camping's specific method of determining the date of the apocalypse, namely extrapolating dates from numerical information contained within the Bible and calculating a date, is not necessarily all that new. The Enlightenment saw an explosion of activity scrutinising biblical prophetic texts such as the books of Daniel and Revelation and attempting to find contained within the biblical text God's "plan" for contemporary history. One such influential study of the Apocalypse (the book, not the event) was Joseph Mede's Clavis Apocalyptica (published in English in 1643 as Key of the Revelation Searched and Demonstrated), but he wasn't the only one to try and map the cycles of destruction outlined in Revelation onto the events of history. Even Isaac Newton (yes, he of the 'proving gravity exists' fame) got in on the act, with his Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John being published after his death in 1733. Harold Camping, on the face of things, stands in a long tradition.

His specific focus on the Rapture too, has a long tradition within biblical interpretation. Based upon a number of New Testament texts (e.g. Matthew 24:40-41; Mark 13:27; I Thessalonians 4:16-17), believers in the Rapture expect that at the beginning of the End, God will save a number of his most faithful believers by "rapturing them" or suddenly collecting them up into heaven, whilst those on Earth will face the tribulations of the world's final days (in the book of Revelation this is predicted to last for 1000 years: Revelation 20:4-5). This doctrine has its roots as far back as the 17th Century, but was most famously expressed in English the 1800s by John Nelson Darby (part of the Plymouth Brethren and the founder of modern Dispensationalism) and Edward Irving (founder of the Catholic Apostolic Church) who were in turn influenced by a Chilean Jesuit Manuel Lacunza who died in 1801. Their predictions that God was bringing history into its last stages have been enormously influential in setting the tone of the religious discourse which Harold Camping's predictions participate in.

On the face of it, the failure of the eschaton to materialise ought to mean the end for Camping. And, indeed, we may well ask why we haven't just given up on this notion of a Rapture and the End of the world given that it has been debunked and has failed to come to pass time and time again? There are a number of possible answers to this. Firstly, some eschatological/messianic movements do just die out (Richard Brothers spent his final days in an insane asylum drawing plans and making flags for the New Jerusalem which all but his most ardent followers had given up hope for).

Secondly, after the initial disappointment of a prophecy's failure, attention can turn to why it didn't come to pass. Answers to these questions can be abundant. The prophet can be deemed to be a false prophet (plenty of those are predicted as coming in the end times, just look at Mark 13:22), or the failure for judgement to occur can be a sign that the believing brethren weren't quite pure or faithful enough: it is their failure, not God's.

Thirdly, as I have indicated, this idea that the world will be brought to an end by God is deeply imbued into the biblical text. Those who read the Bible with even the slightest bit of literal-mindedness can't escape the idea that time and time again, we can expect a cataclysmic final judgement, replete with natural disasters before the inception of a New Heaven and a New Earth to be created. And there is something enormously attractive about the idea that God has written into the pages of a book a plan which can help individuals and communities who feel alienated from what they perceive as the corrupt and sinful world around them. God has a plan, and their (often self-proclaimed) status as 'the Elect' means they're going to skip the horror and the torment that will befall the rest of humanity. When you factor in that mindset, it's perhaps completely unsuprising why individuals who claim they can peek beneath the divine wrapping paper keep gaining such popularity despite the long, long history of failure of such predictive activity.

Anyway, all of this strikes me as a little amusing as one of the songs I've recently been listening to on repeat is My Chemical Romance's Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na). In the context of the album which tells the story of a resistance movement (the Fabulous Killjoys) against the evil Better Living Industries, the lines

And right here, right now
All the way in Battery City
Little children raise their open filthy palms
Like tiny daggers up to heaven
And all the Juvi halls and the ritalin rats
As angels made from neon and fucking garbage scream out
"What will save us?"
And the sky opened up...

Strike me as a beautifully evocative cry for "apocalypse now". The cry of the dispossessed and the outcast being answered from the heavens. More importantly, it indicates that apocalypse and eschatology is never far from the cultural zeitgeist; the final words of the song are, after all "pull this pin, let this world explode".

Boat Race? Bah! Humbug!

I think one of the fundamental problems with being in Oxford as long as I have (seven and a half years and counting) is that it is very easy for cynicism to sap away at one's naive enthusiasm about the university and its institutions. A case in point, yesterday, an underdog Oxford crew powered to victory over Cambridge in the annual Boat Race.

Prefacing all of this with a caveat: I am of course aware that getting a place in the first boat is a tremendous achievement, requiring a level of commitment, endurance and tenacity that I frankly fail to summon up most days in the library. Similarly, the few Blues rowers that I have met have all been pleasant, nice, and down-to-earth people who have to balance a punishing training regime with all the commitments a degree at Oxford inflicts. I honestly don't know how they manage it. What follows is in fact unconnected to the teams that row in the race.

Putting that aside for a second, though, there are reasons why I can't get as excited about Oxford winning this year's race as I might have done in the past. Firstly, I'm a little uncomfortable at the fact that the boat race is one of the most visible and well-known spectacles that the two universities are involved in. For a great number of people, one of the only concrete images that come to mind when either 'Oxford' or 'Cambridge' is mentioned is the boat race. Sadly, rowing is also seen as one of the more genteel sports, an opinion which is perhaps reinforced by BBC coverage of this year's race which at one point highlighted the fact that Oriel College had ostensibly taken over a Thames-side pub to watch the race. One could argue this is no different to a group of local football supporters all converging on a pub to watch a match. I would counter, however, that very few such groups of supporters would fork out to have a team banner displayed over the front of the building.

Secondly, the very moniker of "the" boat race is somewhat questionable and masks a deep inequality. There isn't just one race. The reserve crews also race, as do the women's crews on the following day. This latter race, however, is not seen, remaining untelevised and largely unsponsored. Thus far, there's nothing here which doesn't mirror the inequality seen in other areas of the sporting world, where womens' sport remains largely ignored and unsupported. What is disturbing, however, is that to buy the equipment and fund the training for the women's boat, the participants themselves have to pay upwards of £1,500 out of their own pocket to make up for the dearth in sponsorship and external revenue sources (this latter point comes to me via anecdotal evidence - I would be delighted if anyone more in the know were able to dispel this evidence!). To put that in context, that's more than a term's rent which the university's elite female rowers have to raise simply so that they may take their place on the team. Whilst alumni, current students and even vaguely interested passers-by flock to the river to catch a glimpse of the men's crews drifting by, the women's boat is supported only by those in the know: friends, relatives and (I would sincerely hope) the men's crews.

The more I continue with this line of argument, the more I re-raise my fears of turning into Blake's miserable Urizen so I won't go any further. Suffice to say that the longer one stays in the same place, the harder it is to retain a sense of optomistic idealism about it. Oxford is no exception. It isn't difficult to unearth examples of the worrying inequalities which pervade this university. The University is constantly castigated in the media for them (occasionally justifiably, occasionally frivolously). The Boat Race is one of the few times when our presence on the nation's TV screens is set apart from such debates as our intake and the progression of academics within the institution. Yet even the University's highest-profile sporting event, if we look hard enough, betrays some of the same disparities which prevent Oxford from being an academic utopia of fairness.

The key lesson here is probably not to look hard, isn't it?

Blake, Urizen and Empire

Blake's depiction of Urizen from the First Book of Urizen, Plate 23, is one of my favourite illustrations in the whole of Blake's illustated prophecies. Luckily, the print is on display in the excellent Romantics exhibition in the Tate Britain gallery in London. Urizen is one of the more tragic figures in Blake. In many ways the character is conceived as a parody of enlightenment, rationalist thinking, being constantly presented in isolation, poring over his books in abject misery. He is also, however, Blake's symbol of repressive legalism and a pastiche of the "creator" God found in such biblical passages as Genesis 2-3. In many of Blake's works, he is cast as the villain of the piece, mercilessly persecuting his adversaries or indeed those under his control (as, memorably, in The Four Zoas). The point Blake is making, is that rationalist thinking, far from liberating humanity through a scientific understanding of the world, actually enslaves through the restriction of imagination and inspiration. That is not to say that reason has no place in Blake's image of redeemed humanity. Rather, Urizen is a tragic figure because his attempts at creation are in essence divine because they are inspired and creative, but become fallen and repressive by Urizen's desire to dominate the other facets of human personality.

For me, this illustration firmly underscores the inherent tragedy in Blake's presentation of Urizen. The red, spiky orb which he carries with him is possibly the world, corrputed by his cold rationalism. Pushing wearily at the edge of the painting, Urizen's eyes behold the lion in the bottom right of the picture. At a number of points, the Lion represents for Blake the notion of empire ("For Empire is no more, and now the Lion & Wolf shall cease." - America, Plate 6, Line 15). And in The Four Zoas, Urizen creates the oppressive and exploitative "Universal Empire". Yet in this picture, Urizen looks down at the lion, and yet empire simply can't meet his gaze. Urizen's campaign to understand and to rationalise the world alienates him from the very concepts and structures he is responsible for. The life of the rationalist (and, indeed the God of creation) is one doomed to loneliness and isolation.

It's a fairly worrying fate to consider. Especially as I currently write this sitting in the Bodleian library, with books spread out in front of me, and the beautiful sunshine of an Oxford spring day lying frustratingly beyond a closed, blinded window. Is it any wonder that I feel nothing but sympathy for poor Urizen?

Does Divinity = Humanity in Blake?

I think I'm at my first major crossroads in my thinking about Blake (beyond the whole issue of, well, understanding what's going on - a process which is far from complete). I'm putting the finishing touches to a piece of work I have completed on the connections between The Four Zoas and the description of the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21-22. The basic sift of the material I'm fairly happy with, and it has produced some exciting results, especially when the marginalia and Blake's revisions to the text are taken in to account. Rather, I'm struggling with a problem which is at the heart sentences I have produced like this:

"The successive failures of history and contemporary societal movements to effect apocalypse and redemption lead Blake to emphasise all the more strongly that Jerusalem is to be experienced as a transcendental, divine gift."

One of the most difficult things I'm trying to get my ahead around is whether Blake ever really has a theology of transcendence. In the final stages of the poem's revisions, Blake cites John 17:21-23 on the first page of the poem. These words, on a certain reading, essentially state that due to the connections forged between God, Jesus and the disciples, the three take on one identity, and when humanity makes this leap of faith "they may become completely one", meaning that intra-human divisions will be erased, as well as the distinction between humanity and divinity.

How far, for Blake is the "Divine Body" in every man (E663), or how far is it an objective, external reality (as, arguably, it is in orthodox Christian thinking)? If it's the latter, then sentences like mine above aren't problematic, although they do point to a pessimism on Blake's part vis a vis humanity's ability to ever effect on its own the "Universal Brotherhood" the Four Zoas strives towards. If it is the former, however, then speaking of a "transcendental" gift is surely a nonsense, since Jesus is essentially the paradigmatic example of perfect humanity. The power to become him is in all of us, so to speak.

All of this is fairly important because I would like to present The Four Zoas as reflecting the passivity of the vision in Revelation 21-22. John "sees" the New Jerusalem descending from heaven; he doesn't build it himself (like Richard Brothers tried to do). 

In conclusion: gah.

For The Sexes

I've been somewhat remiss in posting at the moment, namely because I'm trying to prepare an essay on The Four Zoas as part of my submission for my end-of-first-year exam. Except it's not quite an exam. It's more like an interview. A microcosm of the viva in which I'll eventually defend my completed DPhil, I suppose. Anyway, I'm busy writing that, and when it's done and torn to pieces by my advisor, I'll share more about it. In the meantime, this particular poem has really helped to distract me from the complex allegory of Zoas. It's the Prologue to a series of engravings Blake completed entitled For the Sexes: The Gates of Paradise and it follows Blake's usual theme of railing against religion which exalts and imposes rigid legalism on its adherents. It's a rather similar complaint I have against modern Christianity (although Blake was able to hold on to his faith, whereas mine well and truly lapsed). Sadly, for Blake "legalism" often seems to get interpreted as the Mosaic law: for me, Blake is very much a supercessionist rather than a dual-covenant type of theologian (I think, those more versed in the finer points of Blake's attitude to Judaism/Hebrew Bible are more than welcome to prove me wrong on that point) which I find a bit of a shame. But anyway, in lieu of something actually substantial, here it is!

Mutual Forgiveness of each Vice
Such are the Gates of Paradise
Against the Accusers chief desire
Who walkd among the Stones of Fire
Jehovahs Finger Wrote the Law
Then Wept! then rose in Zeal & Awe
And the Dead Corpse from Sinais heat
Buried beneath his Mercy Seat
O Christians Christians! tell me Why
You rear it on your Altars high

Presenting at the Forum

Apologies for the delay in posting, the past few weeks have been rather hectic with work and general "life admin". I've been inspired to get back on the blogging horse by an event I participated in last night, the Trinity College MCR/SCR Forum (in past years the words "for Intellectual Exchange" were tagged on to all of that).

The event was designed to bring senior fellows (tenured academics) together with current graduate students to share their research. The nature of the collegiate system at Oxford meant that this was a truly interdisciplanry affair, the talk I had volunteered to give was sandwiched between an account of a Coptic Monk's account of the Arab Invasion of Egypt in the 7th and 8th centuries CE, and a discussion of NATO's strategy (or, as the speaker argued, the lack of strategy) in the Afghanistan War.

That environment and audience presented its own challenge. When we're trapped in our academic bubbles, certain terms are used so frequently that it's easy to forget that there's no reason why anyone else should know what they mean. In truth, it's rather difficult to give a presentation and talk on Joanna Southcott and Richard Brothers without letting terms like "apocalyptic", "eschatological" and "prophetic" slip in unexplained. The event therefore was a very good exercise in thinking outside of my academic comfort zone and making sure I was able to convey the central tenets of their message and theology in a way which was accessible. Hopefully I succeeded in that, and a room of people went away knowing a little more about these two fascinating figures than they did when they came in.

What was truly valuable about the experience was the feedback and comments I received from the audience. It was a very eclectic bunch of people. There were medical students, experts in French literature and midwifery in the 16th century, historians of Birmingham in the 19th century, Classics students and everything else in between. I learned of a number of possible medical/gynaecological explanations for Joanna's miraculous pregnancy; the difficulties of using modern medical diagnoses such as "manic depression" or "bipolar disorders" to explain away the types of prophetic activity exhibited by Brothers and Southcott; and that the term "Southcottian" was used as a form of invective against social reformers in Birmingham 20 years after Joanna had died. For me, it reaffirmed the value of taking your research outside of the walls of your department. When you allow other minds from other disciplines to access your research, you don't simply receive a list of factual questions you feel obliged to answer; you receive useful, insightful feedback from perspectives you yourself are not qualified or trained to view your subject from. All in all, it was a very inspiring evening.

And yet, if I were to open the window of the room we were in, stick my head out and turn 90 degrees, I would perhaps be able to catch a glimpse of the Sheldonian Theatre. I wonder if the discussions which were taking place inside it would mean that such events and opportunities were only going to be accessible to a wealthy, privileged minority in the years to come.

Best footnote ever

Reading Joanna Southcott's Strange Effects of Faith I've reached part 6th, which opens with a 27-page long poem essentially attacking Jewish belief in Christianity (wow, very original!). On page 26 of this poem, there's a bit where she says "and down the kettle then did fall". There's then a footnote which reads:

"Just as I had written, 'these things to mock', my meat-kettle, which was on the fire, fell suddenly off, and in my stooping to take it up, I threw my writings before it, which involved them in smoke, ashes, and water; fortunately, however, on getting dry, I found no part of them obliterated."

It's nice to know that even prophets can have their clumsy moments!

A Suprising Exegesis of "The Bride" of Revelation

“Now, this to him I bid thee write:

If thou art not the bride,

Tell him to bring one that is right;

My Gospel's so applied.

For to the fulness cannot come,

Until the bride be foundationOut of her closet she must go,

With jewels deck'd around.

For here's the pearl of great price,

And unto thee 'tis given;

And in their jewels of no use;

Then she shall enter heaven,

In white appear before me there

While you in grief will mourn;

And all shall know that his words are true,

For vengeance shall come.

In heaven the wonder first was seen,

And you may wonder here.

The woman clothed with the sun

Shall make all nations fear,

Then let the stars begin to shine,

And publish my decree.

If there refuse, I'll others choose,

Though fatal destiny

To those that disobey their call.

'Tis me she hath obey'd/

The woman stands conremn'd by all.

Was man by her misled,

Then now by her he must come back

That paradise will regaain.

In her I'll break the serpent's neck,

And will set free her chain.

She poured the ountment on my head,

And a good work she wrought;

And with her tears she wash'd my face;

Let man deny her not;

For at the cross the woman stood,

The sword went through her soul,

While my Disciples saw and fled,

And so they left me all,

No women in the company,

When hands on me was laid;

And Pilate's Wife did pity me,

When Judas had betray'd.

When from the grave I did arise,

I ask'd, who was there first.

Then let the sons of men by wise,

If women love me best.

Have I her life and senses spar'd

For to assume the bride,

Then let the sons of men beware.

That she be not denied.

More fatal now than Adam's fall

'Twill happen to the man. Joanna Southcott, The Strange Effects of Faith, pp.40-41

Within this poem is some amazing exegesis of the "bride of the Lamb" who appears in the guise of the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21-22, and whose marriage feast is celebrated in Revelation 19. Joanna Southcott, throughout her writings, connects 'the Bride' with herself by virtue of her belief that she is the Woman clothed with the Sun in Revelation 12. That in itself is a fairly impressive interpretative leap, as there is little in their respective descriptions to link the woman of Revelation 12 with the city of Revelation 21-22. But in this poem (which Joanna is instructed to write by Jesus/the Holy Spirit), Joanna goes even further, linking the predictions of the wedding of the lamb in Revelation both with herself as the mode by which prophecy is delivered in the early eighteenth century, but also with the substantial biblical trope of women "getting it right" vis a vis Jesus and his ministry. I personally feel it's a brilliant interpretative move, as it instantly legitimates Joanna's claim to divine inspiration by connecting her with the biblical narratives of faithful women who redeem the initial sin of Eve, but the poem also comes in a context in which she is defending herself agains the charge that the prophecy of the end could not possibly be delivered through a woman (not least, an uneducated and not particularly literate house-servant from Exeter).

What intrigues me most, however, is that I've never come across this particular reading of Revelation's "Bride Imagery". That probably says more about my ignorance of vast swathes of Revelation's reception history than it does about Joanna Southcott's unique prophetic inspiration, so if anyone can shed any light on any similar extant interpretations of "the Bride" in Revelation, please do let me know!

Communicating Culture

This article by Alain De Botton in a number of ways sets out one of the most pressing problems with contemporary academic discourse, particularly as it pertains to the humanities. He highlights the outcry against funding cuts in Universities' teaching budgets, yet also points out that

"right now, at this difficult moment in the history of British universities, there is a need to acknowledge that at least some of the woes that have befallen academics is squarely their own fault. To put it at its simplest, academics in the humanities have failed to explain why what they do should matter so much. They've failed to explain to the government, but this really only means "us" - the public at large."

Don't misunderstand me. The swathing cuts to the arts and humanities, when combined with the insane tuition fee increases will have worrying consequences, not least with regards to access and widening participation. The desire to study a degree with a job or employment sector in its title is going to be even more fuelled, especially if you happen to be from a background with no real history or experience of the UK's diverse higher education sector.

But de Botton does raise an extremely valid point about university-level research being far too remote from the concerns of the wider public. There needs to be a fine line between popularising and explaining research to a wider audience and not compromising academic rigour. But at least part of the answer to this problem is investing time in working out exactly how to communicate our research activities more widely. Academics within the humanities are doing a tremendous job of investigating how we have lived, interracted and expressed ourselves across a huge span of human history and geography. Perhaps if we were better at letting people know that, then the devastating cuts to humanities teaching and research would be even more difficult to justify.

Me love poetry

Cookie Monster shows us how it's done:

Also...

A Tale of Two Women

One of the striking features of the description of the New Jerusalem in the final chapters of Revelation is the identification of the city as "a bride". See, for example, the command of the vision's interpreting angel:

"Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb. And he bore me away in the spirit to a great, high mountain, and he showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God" (Revelation 21:9-10)

The description of Jerusalem as Jesus' adorned bride contrasts sharply with the preceeding chapters' depiction of Babylon as "the great whore who corrupted the earth with her fornication" (Rev. 19:2). Babylon's presentation in the book is wholly misogynistic. Take this as an example:

"The woman was clothed in purple in scarlet, and adorned with gold and jewels and pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the unclean acts of her fornication, and upon her forehead was written a name, a mystery, 'Babylon the great, the mother of whores and the abominations of the earth.' And I saw the woman was drunk from the blood of the holy ones and from the blood of their witness, Jesus." (Rev 17:4-6)

Revelation's treatment of women throughout the text is a major cause for concern for a modern reader. Women in Revelation are either adulterers (Jezebel in 2:20-23), mothers (the woman clothed with the sun in 12:1-6), prostitutes (Babylon) or wives (Jerusalem). For a text which expresses a hope for God to intervene and vindicate the oppressed and marginalised, Revelation shows no qualms about stereotyping and, indeed, demonising the female characters that are incorporated into the text.

Still more problematic is the way in which the text invites the reader to make a comparison between the adulterous Babylon and the chaste Jerusalem. Both cities are personified as women, and are presented in remarkably comparable terms. Both women are adorned with jewels and precious metals (see above for Babylon; for Jerusalem see 21:11-21 which expounds at great length the wealth and opulence to be found in the heavenly city). Jerusalem is betrothed to the Lamb, whereas Babylon emphatically declares "I am no widow, and I will never see grief" (18:7). Babylon seduces the nations and the world's kings, trade magnates and seafarers whereas in Jerusalem "the nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it." (21:24). Revelation sets these two cities/women alongside one another and extolls the virtues of the chaste bride whilst condemning the adulterous harlot. We of course must be aware of the symbolic nature of the language here: the choice is not strictly between two women, but the choice between two empires (namely, the profane Roman empire and the sanctified world which falls under the exclusive rule of God). Nevertheless, the binary decision between "whore" and "bride" which the text sets before the reader is highly problematic. (For more on the theme of the comparison between Babylon and Jerusalem as a stylistic device within the text, I highly recommend The Choice Between Two Cities: Whore, Bride and Empire in the Apocalypse by Barbara Rossing - I've given the Oxford library catalogue link here but the book is of course available elsewhere.)

The comparison is perhaps even more problematic when one considers how influential it has been in Revelation's history of interpretation. As I have mentioned in my previous post, I am working my way through Jerusalem by William Blake at present, and the text continually depicts a conflict between two of the poem's pre-eminent female characters, Jerusalem and Vala. The two women are repeatedly depicted in opposition to one another, vying for the affections of Albion, the archetypal human being. Take, for instance this passage from Plate 33 (chapter 2) lines 36-48

"I was a City & a Temple built by Albion's Children.
I was a Garden planted with beauty. I allured on hill & valley
The River of Life to flow against my walls & among my trees.
Vala was Albion's Bride & Wife in great Eternity,
The loveliest of the daughters of Eternity when in day-break
I emanated from Luvah over the Towers of Jerusalem,
And in her Courts among her little Children offering up
The Sacrifice of fanatic love! why loved I Jerusalem?
Why was I one with her, embracing in the vision of Jesus?
Wherefore did I, loving, create love, which never ye
Immingled God & Man, when thou & I hid the Divine Vision
In cloud of secret gloom which, behold, involve me round about?
Know me now Albion: look upon me. I alone am Beauty..."

That Blake has Babylon on the mind when he presents Vala here is confirmed by the very next plate when Albion addresses Vala as "Babylon" (line 8). Vala, here, seems to be the seductress par excellence, placing before Albion the choice between her, and the Divine-endorsed Jerusalem. In the following chapter of the book, Blake depicts Jerusalem in exile, languishing in a mill. Vala's reaction is far from sympathetic...

All night Vala hears, she triumphs in pride of holiness

To see Jerusalem deface her lineaamanets with bitter blows

Of despair, while the Satanic Holiness triumph'd in Vala

In a Religion of Chastity & Uncircumcised Selfishness

Both of the Heart & Heart & Loins, clos'd up in Moral Pride. (Plate 60, lines 45-49)

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Blake presents the Lamb's sympathies as lying with Jerusalem who is presented with a whole series of visions to console her in her predicament. It seems to me that Blake, who is so capable of subverting the usual constraints of morality (see especially The Marriage of Heaven and Hell), in these scenes of Jerusalem is standing in the long shadows cast by Revelation 16-22.

Of course, Blake still has a chapter to prove me wrong on that front though!

Get on up!

As we speak I'm trying to work my way through William Blake's Jerusalem (the four chaptered epic poem, rather than the hymn which is in fact taken from the preface of Milton).

Anyway, I'm currently on plate 44 of 99, and I stumbled across this description of Ulro on lines 21-25 of plate 44. In Blake's mythology, Albion is both a name for Britain/England and also the primordial man who falls in the opening plates of Jerusalem. Ulro is the name for our, fallen world. Sadly, as with everything in Blake, that's a gross oversimplified paraphrase of two terms which extremely flexible and difficult to define in concrete terms. Anyway, this is what Blake has to say about Ulro at this point in his poem:

"Such is the nature of the Ulro, that whatever enters
Becomes Sexual & is Created and Vegetated and Born.
From Hyde Park spread their vegetating roots beneath Albion,
In dreadful pain the Spectrous Uncircumcised Vegetation
Forming a Sexual Machine, an Aged Virgin Form."

It's a fairly damning indictment of how difficult I'm finding this poem that all I could summon up by way of an association is this:

I promise I'll post something serious when I finish chapter 2 (only five more plates to go...)

The Beginning

Hello and welcome!

The whole idea for this blog was inspired by this post by my friend Elisabeth Jessen on her blog Theologian Astray (the blog is written in Danish so I'm somewhat reliant on good old Google Translate to read her posts).

More specifically, points 3 and 5 resonated with me most strongly. I have just completed the first term of my DPhil and it has been a whirlwind of seminars, reading and grappling with exactly what kind of project I want to spend three years on. Already that panicked feeling of "how on Earth am I going to keep track of all this material?!" has begun to creep in. Having a place in which to note down thoughts and ideas I'm having as I go through the project, I think, will be utterly invaluable.

There's also Elisabeth's (much more laudible) purpose of blogging, whereby her blog provides a forum to articulate and communicate to the wider world what the state is allowing her to research. Often in academic study, it's very easy to get bogged down by the more selfish insticts and questions. To fixate on "what do I want to do?" "what do I want to get out of this?" and so on. Ultimately, it is not (or rather, it ought not to be) the final 100,000 word distillation of three years reading and researching which becomes one's contribution to knowledge. Over the course of even just a term, I have unearthed a few pockets of information which have inspired and heartened me, but which I know ultimately won't make it into the bound thesis which will sit and gather dust in the Bodleian Library. So this is also a space to share and reflect upon those discoveries, regardless of how integral they become to my wider academic work.

That's the theory, anyway.

All that's well and good, but a few words of introduction are needed. Firstly, about the project. My inspiration to do a DPhil was, in the main, sparked by the final two chapters of the book of Revelation. In these chapters, the author of the book (who we simply know as "John... on the island called Patmos" in 1:8) sees "a new heaven and a new earth" become installed (21:1) and "the new holy city Jerusalem" descend from heaven (21:2). The ensuing description of the structure and life in this new city is utopic. It's a life which is characterised by a unity with God and an idealised, harmonious society which shares in the restored gifts of the Garden of Eden (by way of Ezekiel 40-48, but I'll get to that some other time). This optimistic vision, immediately follows around 18 chapters of judgement, conflict and suffering, envisaged as part of a final, cosmic battle between what I like to call "the good guys" (God, Jesus, the angels, the faithful followers etc) and "the bad guys" (the Devil, the beasts he summons, people taken in by the beasts he summmons). Those cycles of destruction and judgement are in part inspired by John's favourite books of the Hebrew Bible (most notably Ezekiel, Daniel and Isaiah). But in the visions recounted in the text, glimmers of John's contemporary context show through, and so the book in part tells the story of John's dissatisfaction with the Roman Empire, and its activities both within Asia Minor (essentially Turkey and the area surrounding it) and in the wider world. The vision in chapters 21-22, then, are a contrast to John's current situation, in which God is separated from humanity by the problems of the present, evil age. It is, at least in my view, a vision which gives the author hope for the future, that he will be able to participate in an idealised world, free from all of the problems posed by life under the demonically-inspired Roman Empire.

Revelation stands today as one of the most controversial, and perhaps most misunderstood text in the Bible. It has also, however, been a highly influential text which has inspired writers, artists and theologians at every stage of its transmission and reception. My research seeks to look at the ways in which writers during a specific period of British history were inspired by the book, and how the book's climactic chapters helped them to formulate their expectations for the resolution of the crises they were experiencing. In particular, I am looking at how the poet and artist William Blake, his contemporary Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the prophetess Joanna Southcott and the prophet Richard Brothers (who actually tried to build the New Jerusalem) are inspired by the utopic blueprint set down in Revelation 21-22. The period of history these figures lived through (late eighteenth and early nineteenth century) was one which was blighted by revolution, both in America and in France. It was also an era which was at the very heart of the enlightenment with its corresponding advances in print technology and (crucially for Coleridge, in particular) the foundation of the modern critical methods by which we approach biblical studies in the academy today.

So that's the project (it's not quite the one I first imagined I would be tackling, but that's a story for another day). What about me?

Well, this is now my seventh year in Oxford. I originally did my undergraduate degree in Theology here, before working for two Oxford Colleges as their outreach/schools liaison officer. After that, I returned to do a one year Masters course and now I'm doing a PhD. There are days when 7 years seems like a long time. Too long. That may well be a recurring theme. On the other hand, though, it has also felt like no time at all since I first moved to the city. Originally, I'm from the North East. In the widest sense possible. I was born in Sunderland and until I was 7, lived in Washington before moving to Dishforth in North Yorkshire. Then I lived in Gutersloh in Germany for just under two years before moving back to Durham where, mercifully, I stayed put until I came to university.

Being a Theology student, particularly one working in New Testament studies, immediately tends to raise a few eyebrows. It carries with it a few assumptions. Principal among them is the assumption that I'm religious. I'm not. In the slightest. I was technically raised as a Catholic but beyond certain, mainly cultural, quirks, that's not really a very strong part of my identity. I'm certainly not an atheist in the Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens mode, either. I suppose that means I'm agnostic. I prefer to think of it as apathetic. Religion is a part of my life in so far as it is the subject of my academic work, but that's it. Obviously, I'm very curious about it. I'm particularly curious about how the biblical texts came together, the language that their authors used and their varied and diverse afterlives in the imagination and inspiration of those who read it in the centuries after. But beyond that, Christianity plays little-to-no part in my life outside of the library. As far as I'm concerned, that's the way I'd like it to stay.

I saw all of this by way of a warning to any readers (God willing, as the cliche goes) who stumble across this blog. Theology is not a confessional, or a faith-based, activity for me. Don't expect the biblical text to be treat with absolute reverence. Certainly, I won't go out of my way to be offensive or anything like that. Suffice to say that when you spend a long time looking at and reading about a particular text or a particular author, it's fair to say you're likely to develop a bit of a love/hate relationship with them. Similarly, don't expect "bible" or "God" talk to dominate the discussion here. As the project outline above indicates, I spend just as much of my [academic] time in the 18th and 19th centuries as I do in the 1st and 2nd. This is a virtual scrapbook for a whole plethora of thoughts and musings. Expect things to go fairly off-topic at points.

With those caveats in mind, I hope whoever may read this finds some enjoyment in it. For my own sanity, I will try not to limit the discussion to my work. There's enough going on in this city to distract my attention at the best of times so I'm sure of the wider Oxford context will shape and affect what gets discussed here.

Welcome.