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.