Posts by giovanni tiso
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
A doctor acquaintance told me that if Jesus really lost that much blood, he wouldn't have made it to the crucifixon before he died of blood loss and shock.
If it's stark realism you're looking for, I have the sneaking suspicion that James Caviezel won't be cast again as a Palestinian any time soon.
And I'm not knocking your faith at all, no Dawkins I, but if you're interested in the contemporary accounts of Jesus and his last days, then really you have to look at the apocrypha as well, it's all I meant.
-
NO matter what Gibson claims, that film moves beyond scriptual fidelity into somewhere else that freaks me out. I don't know about Mel and the evangelicals who turned TPoTC into a massive hit, but my faith contains Easter Sunday as well as Good Friday.
Scriptural fidelity is a very thorny (ops) subject, see upthread - the gospels were brought to you centuries after the fact by the same canny philologists who tried to sell us the donation of Constantine. Still, you're right, I haven't seen the film, I can assure you that I never will, but it's called the passion of the Christ, fair warning. And again, without having seen it, I very much doubt it would have oversold the whole concept of being nailed alive to a large piece of wood.
-
the odds of *zero* people voting are longer than lotto.
I have this recurring nightmare in which I'm the only person who ends up votig, but I made some weird tactical decision with the list vote and NZ First ends up getting 100%.
-
wrapped (instead of 'rapt' - seen the huge ad on the Il Casino building?)
Yes, although in that case it's a pun (it's a ribbon - get it?).
-
It's so relentlessly sadistic, I just don't want to know what gets Gibson off.
That's peculiar, coming from a Catholic - I know it's been said before, but the whole thing is built on a very robust dose of sadomasochism, starting from the decision to represent Jesus on the cross instead of well, in any other moment of his life or afterlife, really. And not for nothing, I grew up with the stuff so I don't really notice, but when we were in Italy and trawling through churches and museums my seven year old found it all rather puzzling and endlessly fascinating.
"See, this is Santa Lucia. Lucia, like your sister".
"And why is she carrying her eyes on a tray?"The always wonderfully homoerotic Saint Sebastian was a big favourite. And at the Duomo in Milan they have this big old statue of Saint Cristopher, naked, a cape casually flung over his shoulders. Except he's not naked, he's flayed, and it's not a cape, it's his own freaking skin. Good times!
-
a book to me is a story - or set of information- between covers
Very good: a set of information between covers = the bible = a book! Glad we could reach an agreement. :-)
It's all horrible semantics of course, and if thinking of the bible as a book obfuscates the history of how all that information came to be collected between those particular covers, let's call it something else by all means.
I await feast pictures with trepidation.
-
Well, I suppose if we were desperate, anything written on papyrus/paper/parchment/leather/stone/wood - ur - gel?
Let alone bytes - makes a book?Interestring question, although we did coin the word ebook for a reason, surely - recognising that ineffable thing, the unit of bookness that still makes us say to this day that the Iliad is a book, in spite of the fact that originally it was written on nothing at all, and that its unit parts are called books.
"The Bible" is a contested (think Vulgate for a latter challenger, Torah for an earlier one) SET of books i.e it's a compendium-
Hey, I'm down with the history of it all, the contested part especially, Dario Fo and his marvellous work on the apocrypha is one of those things that it'd be worth learning Italian especially for... plus my mum in her old age has discovered religion - as old folk sometimes do - and now all her presents to me are books against the church. The latest is Augias and Cacitti, Inquest on Christianity, How You Build a Religion, improbable it will be translated but cracking read thus far. Her idea of something that is good for the plane, bless her.
BUT one of my mates - who is a butcher & knifemaker, is soo going to make your Nonna's recipe this weekend!
Fantastic!!
-
Giovanni - quite aware of the bible/biblos etc. is, per se, the word in Europe (well, a lot of European languages) for 'book'- BUT a compendium is NOT *a book*-
Not sure about the usefulness of the distinction. However it came about, whatever its history, it still seems a unit of bookness to me. At any rate, the thread was about classics so we're probably in the clear :-)
-
Drat, that's it with English then. I'm off to learn Finnish. Hyvästi, everyone!
-
"The Bible" isnt a book!
Much as I agree with your value judgments, I don't see how any of that makes the bible not a book. For a number of centuries in Europe the words bible and book were in fact synonimous. And bible originally means "books" (meaning the books that together form the whole which is the bible).
A book instrumental in genocides and catastrophes and repression? Yes. But some books will do that.