Boxing In the Pass-ed

Books to Live With

Nikolai Velimirovich: Prayers by the Lake (A Treasury of Serbian Orthodox Spirituality, Volume 5)
You must read this.
George Herbert: Herbert: The Complete English Works (Everyman's Library)
I used to pace back and forth in my room reading passages from this aloud, and they left a strong impression in my soul. Heterodox on some points, but the work as a whole is of such quality that those passages should simply be overlooked.
Bishop of Nineveh Isaac: St Isaac of Nineveh on Ascetical Life
Excellent for beginners, and presumably wondrous also for those who are advanced in the Way of God, this is much to be desired as a companion on the Way.
George A. Maloney: Pseudo-Macarius: The Fifty Spiritual Homilies and the Great Letter (Classics of Western Spirituality)
Saint Gregory Palamas: Saint Gregory Palamas: The Homilies
The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha, Revised Standard Version, Expanded Edition (Hardcover)
The notes are sometimes way off, the translations I sometimes disagree with and sometimes are simply erroneous (most of these errors are traditional English-speaking bible translation errors), and the cross-references are often lacking, but it's much better than most of what's out there, has the full canon, and is leaps and bounds better than the dreadful NIV that is, sadly, regarded so highly in some Protestant quarters and which has reached near-saturation in the online biblical search-tool sites.
Robert Alter: The David Story: A Translation with Commentary of 1 and 2 Samuel
L. C. L., Sir Brenton: The Septuagint with Apocrypha: Greek and English
Albert Pietersma: A New English Translation of the Septuagint
The Philokalia: Volume 1
The Philokalia: Volume 2
The Philokalia: Volume 3
The Philokalia: Volume 4
Dorotheos of Gaza: Dorotheos of Gaza: Discourses and Sayings
The Philokalia and the desert fathers will make much, much more sense after reading this. A treasure.
Robert Alter: The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary
The best translation of the first five books of the bible available. Not self-sufficient, but most highly recommended.
editor Hieromonk German Ciuba: Old Orthodox Prayer Book (Russian Old Believer)
Everything in traditional English with Slavonic on facing pages. Morning and Evening prayers; the first, third, sixth, and ninth hours; prayers before and after receiving the Eucharist; multiple canons, the weekly and festal troparia and kontakia; the Divine Liturgy; Vespers and Matins. There is not a better Orthodox prayer book in English that I have found (the Jordanville prayerbook, though wonderful in many ways, is inferior, though very much worth owning as a secondary and supplemental prayer book), and this has all of the hours in it - not chopped, in their proper integrity of form and meaning.

02/15/2010

Those who have a fetish for deathly historicity are necrophiliacs. Nothing living can submit to those criteria and remain alive.

The Void Voids things again.

Posted at 01:23 PM in History, Philosophy | Permalink

Comments

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I think this would have been an interesting topic if I understood what it meant, but I have no idea what a "fetish for deathly historicity" is.

Posted by: joe | 01/08/2011 at 05:38 AM

Is the sincere wonderment about the meaning of a "fetish for deathly historicity" unworthy of an explanation?

Posted by: joe | 01/17/2011 at 11:38 AM

Some people love to historicize a text first, and then...well, "_perhaps_ a text has some meaning for us today, but first we must smush it back into its historical context, and let that context determine the meaning," so that the text can be heard as chatter from one person in an age to other people in that age, while the age itself, or rather, the context, forms sort of an echo chamber where the sound of the text cannot escape -- that is, where _meaning_ does not escape.

I'm not saying we shouldn't try to understand a text within its context. We must. But to take a text that lives within living communities, and has meaning there, and to tear it from the living and stitch it to the dead (the dead _conceived_ of as dead)...well, the text usually doesn't make it back to the present day communities from whence it was taken.

It's like relating to butterflies. Some people live near butterflies, and enjoy them often. Some people don't, and only relate to them as they collect them as dead creatures, pinned to a corkboard. The corkboard populated with dead things is a different context than the meadow full of life.

Posted by: Abba Poemen the Ubermensch | 01/17/2011 at 01:55 PM

Ah, yes. As the French poet, Paul Claudel said: "To understand the rose, one person uses geometry, and another uses the butterfly." Actually, he said: "Pour connnaitre la rose, quelqu'un emploie la geometrie et un autre emploie le papillon," but I thought you would like the English version better.

Posted by: joe | 01/17/2011 at 04:11 PM

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