Some Things I Learned Today

Tuesdays are my long day at school. From the time I walk out the door for my first class to the time I get home at night, I'm gone almost 16 hours. Almost 10 of that is spent in class. I love it, though. My classes this quarter are really interesting. Today, I spent time learning about:

• The function of priests, ritual, and sacred space in traditional Roman religion. I actually had to lead a discussion on this for about an hour and a half. I'm not totally happy with how it went (I'm not great at talking even when I don't have anything to say), but there were several really interesting moments. The thesis I kept trying to advance (that was tepidly received by everyone else) is that ritual develops congruently with priestly classes. That is, the more a tradition develops a class of people who act as the guardians of the tradition, the more highly ritualized it becomes. Perhaps this is not so revolutionary, but it's interesting to think about in the context of something like the development of the Eucharist in early Christianity. In the beginning, it was a meal. After a few hundred years and the development of a priesthood, it was a sacrament that could only be administered by certain people at certain times and places to certain qualified recipients, using certain approved materials.


• The Mishnah, which I had actually not ever read very much of at all until now. I don't know what it is about the Mishnah, but it makes me laugh. Like, out loud. Like, I was getting looks. It's not an overtly humorous text, but there seems to be a swell of humor just under the surface of it. The best way I can think to put it is that it's beguiling. The Mishnah has an almost imperceptible smirk on its face. We talked a lot about two particular tractates, the Sotah and the Abodah Zarah. The moral of the story: adultery (or even the suspicion thereof) can be very bad for your uterus.


• Jesus of Montreal. I am taking a class called Jesus on the Silver Screen, which is a lot of fun. It's basically a Historical Jesus course, taught through films. It's far less intense than most of my classes, and the high proportion of undergrads means I don't have to work too hard to sound smart. Tonight we watched Jesus of Montreal, which has been on my list to watch for about ten years now. It's a very strange film, but also a very provocative one. I particularly liked all of the nods to Dostoevsky and the clever ways the film recapitulated scenes from the gospels that were unrecognizable until the very end.

Tomorrow, one of my academic heroes is coming to school for a lunch with doctoral students. Then, Thursday night, he's giving a lecture on exactly the subject I'm most interested in at the moment: the functions of different architectures in early Christianity, and the effects of those differences on the development of rituals. I'm giddy with excitement. I'm debating whether I should take the 1000-page commentary on Romans that he wrote to get it autographed. I'm pretty sure that sort of thing is frowned upon, but it's tempting anyway.