Poor shrunken things, full of melancholy

If there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy.

-- Francis Bacon

Paul retains the basic end of the world message of Matthew's Jesus in the phrase "before the time"

It's just that there's been a slight shift forward in time to πρὸ καιροῦ, so that, unfortunately, Paul now ends up in agreement with the devils of Matthew 8 that their torment began before it should have, because the coming of the end of the world was then and still is "not yet" but is even now still farther into the future.

Paul's apocalyptic eschatology is thus an attenuated version of Jesus' belief in the imminent final judgment.

Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts: and then shall every man have praise of God.

-- I Corinthians 4:5 

You don't believe Jesus came to bring the end of the world and the final judgment? Neither did the devils.

They said he came πρὸ καιροῦ:

And when he was come to the other side into the country of the Gergesenes, there met him two possessed with devils, coming out of the tombs, exceeding fierce, so that no man might pass by that way. And, behold, they cried out, saying, What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? art thou come hither to torment us before the time?

-- Matthew 8:28f.

In this culture of death, we sat still for 3,302 abortions every day for 20 years, so the libertarian shoulder-shrug over SARS-CoV-2 isn't surprising

The Germans acquiesced to a murderous Hitler, the Russians to a murderous Stalin, the Chinese to a murderous Mao, the Americans to The Murderous Individual.

Fame is a thing beyond us

What's fame? a fancy'd life in others' breath,

a thing beyond us, ev'n before our death:

Just what you hear, you have.

-- Alexander Pope

Monastic rules, the second law of thermodynamics, and post-modernism

Homer, Martin Luther, and the wisdom of beer

Just kidding.

Ariel Sabar strikes again in a good, long read about a con allegedly perpetrated by an academic and other shady characters against the Green family of Hobby Lobby fame and their Museum of the Bible

A Biblical Mystery at Oxford:

'In June 2019, Michael Holmes, who replaced Pattengale as the director of the scholars initiative, flew to London to meet with leaders of the Egypt Exploration Society, who remained skeptical that Obbink, whatever his other shortcomings, might have sold Oxyrhynchus papyri.

'Over lunch at a private club, Holmes pulled out a purchase agreement between Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. and Dirk Obbink. Co-signed by the Oxford professor on February 4, 2013, it showed that Obbink had sold the company not just the Mark papyrus, but also fragments of the Gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John. In the contract, Obbink describes the manuscripts as his personal property, vows to “ship/hand carry” them from “Oxford Ancient,” and dates all four to a historically unprecedented “circa 100 AD,” making each a one-of-a-kind worth millions.

'When EES officials saw the contract, Holmes told me, “any uncertainties they had evaporated very quickly.” They banned Obbink from the collection.'

 

His prattling tongue

His tongue, his prattling tongue,

had chang'd him quite

To sooty blackness, from the purest white.

-- Joseph Addison

And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity ... it defileth the whole body ... it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.

-- James 3:6, 8 

But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil. 

-- Matthew 5:37

Translation is not a science, but an art

This selected piece, which you translate,

Foretells your studies may communicate,

From darker dialect of a strange land,

Wisdom that here th' unlearn'd shall understand.

-- William D’Avenant (1606-1668)

According to Luke's Jesus, the abundant life does not consist in the abundance of possessions

The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly [περισσὸν].

-- John 10:10

And he said unto them, Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance [περισσεύειν] of the things which he possesseth.

-- Luke 12:15