The apostle Paul - guest post on In Our Time

This is a guest post written by Jim Mowatt. Jim is a dedicated listener to history podcasts and the producer of one himself: Historyzine. Like myself Jim loves the BBC podcast In Our Time and when he expressed his enthusiasm about the latest edition, I was happy to find him ready to write about it on my blog.

In Our Time surprises and delights over and over again in that it brings to light so many subjects on the fringes of my consciousness and provides enough depth of discussion to draw me further into the topic. This time they've chosen one of the most important people in the Christian church and yet someone who the non religious (such as myself and the majority of other peoples upon the earth) have barely encountered. As I've stated I have no strong religious belief but I do have a fascination for spirituality and religion and this podcast drew me in and inspired me to read some of the writings of St. Paul and gave me enough context that I could appreciate them all the more.

The presenter, Melvyn Bragg introduces his guests John Haldane, Professor of Philosophy at the University of St Andrews, John Barclay, Lightfoot Professor of Divinity at Durham University and Helen Bond, Senior Lecturer in the New Testament at the University of Edinburgh and gives us these words: A long time ago, a man called Saul was travelling to Damascus when a light flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" Paul (Saul) was a Jewish Pharisee probably going to Damascus to find out more about these troublesome Christians. His job/devotion/whatever was to police the strict adherence of Jews to the codes which had been set down for them. There seem to have been much diluting of these codes and this, he felt, watered down the Jewish faith. Paul received his conversion of faith and was immediately energised spreading a message not only to the Jewish peoples (all the early Christians were Jewish) but also to the Gentiles. He travelled many thousands of miles setting up little cells of Christian peoples throughout the Roman empire and leaving us the legacy we have today of the 13 epistles in the New Testament of the Christian bible. If not for Paul then it is quite likely that Christianity would have been a minority offshoot of the Jewish religion but Paul felt that the death and resurrection of Jesus had heralded a new age where all that had been would be swept away and a new world would come into being. Paul felt that this offered a path to salvation for all the peoples of the earth through Jesus Christ and that everyone could be saved. I suspect that there were many arguments about this at the time. Paul, even though he seems to have been quite well respected for his knowledge of scripture was a latecomer to the Christian movement. His conversion followed soon after the death of Jesus but he never met him and was not one of Jesus' disciples. To the apostles Paul must have seemed more of an irritant than a help. They had met and lived with Jesus. They had heard his teachings directly and yet here was this man Paul who felt he knew better than they, the message from God.

Despite this Paul has had an enormous effect upon the Christian church and this podcast did briefly refer to the influence of Paul upon Augustine and Luther many hundreds of years later. I'm grateful to this podcast for encouraging me to look again at the writings of Paul and feel his passion and enthusiasm for his subject. It shows the power of the written word that even now, 2000 years later I can read his texts and almost see and hear him speak (OK, OK, I wouldn't be able to understand him in the original Greek). His voice is vivid and strong. When he remonstrates, cajoles and harangues the Galatians I reel before his onslaught as they would. I may disagree with much that he says but I respect his belief and enthusiasm. This is an excellent series. Long may it continue.

More Podcasts about Early Christianity:
Philip Harland and others.

More In Our Time:
Whale evolution,
Magna Carta,
BBC's In Our Time - always recommended,
Brave New World,
Rafael's School of Athens and the depiction of Plato and Aristotle.

Shavuot in Gan Shmuel

The regular readers of the blog must have noticed I was away for a couple of days and the reason for that is simple. We were celebrating the holiday of Shavuot and this involved a lot of quality time with my wife and children and a closed PC.

We were invited to experience the holiday on kibbutz Gan Shmuel which is famous for its elaborate Shavuot ritual. They have a long show with song, dance and procession which is performed in a very professional fashion by the kibbutz members themselves. The theme of the ritual is around the agricultural aspect of Shavuot: the celebration of the first harvests. The other religious meaning, the reception of Torah, was not commemorated in any way at all. This is typical for the kibbutz perception of Judaism.

Once we were watching, we realized we hadn't taken our cameras with us and what photos I shot with my cell phone came out ridiculously unclear. Fortunately, Wikimedia could supply some visuals. The displayed picture is in the public domain, courtesy of the Gan Shmuel Archive.

MMW 3 by Matthew Herbst - UCSD history lectures

The University of California San Diego, as pointed out so many times, takes podcast lecture series off line as soon as they are finished. Here is a reason to go out and get the series MMW 3 The Medieval Heritage delivered by the great professor Matthew Herbst. MMW, on a side note, stands for The Making of the Modern World and as such is a six-fold series that intends to cover the entirety of World History, in which series 3 covers roughly 100 BCE to 1200 CE.

I love Herbst's approach to both history and lecturing. It makes for a very exciting and accessible series. In addition to that, MMW 3 delivers world history with much less emphasis on western history as most lecture series and other podcasts do. There is ample room for China, India and also Africa, Armenia and a lecture (number 5) placing Persia on the map - something I have been looking for.

While we are at it, notice that the first two lecture are missing, so you will rather abruptly fall into the course picking up on Greeks, Romans and the rise of Christianity. As said in lecture 5 you can learn about Persia and also about Armenia. What follows is China (6, 8 and 10), India (7) and a lot of Islam, as of lecture 11 - where I am listening right now. Lecture 9 is to be skipped, this is the mid term exam.

More MMW:
UCSD's lecture podcasts,
MMW 2,
MMW 4,
MMW 6,
MMW 3.

Renoir and Slumming - Thinking Allowed

BBC's Thinking Allowed had its program last week entirely dedicated to Slumming. This is the term for upper and middle class white, mostly men, mingle with the lower class, mostly colored women in the jazz scene of the US during the early twentieth century.

The guests on the program make clear how this has created a kind of openness between the races and classes as well paved the way for new developments in culture, mostly music. Yet, the indignation of class difference still was strongly playing its role. The phenomenon was dealt with as a purely American one, but I thought of Paris.

I thought of Paris, thanks to the podfaded Art History lectures by William Bryson in 2008 (UCSD) - Formations of Modern Art. Also in Paris there was the phenomenon upper class men went for their leisure to the lower class areas and mingled with, mostly, lower class women. This has been made visible most notably by the painter Renoir. In Renoir's vision, these are scenes of great joy, but what joy is that? Just like with slumming, it is cheap entertainment for the men and a chance of social mobility for the women. The double entendre is inevitable.

More Thinking Allowed:
Mizrahi Jews,
The weekly social science stop,
Substance and Sociology,
Hole in the Wall,
Moral relativism.

Leisure listening with Nilpod

I have reviewed Nilpod before and I wrote something that has been more or less refuted by my own behavior. I thought the Irish podcast Nilpod would wear off really fast. How long can you listen to two guys conversing away?

The facts are though, that over the last weeks, every time I saw a new Nilpod chapter was out, I went out and listened. And had a good time. Especially this last episode, which is about primary school (mp3), was rather good. It combines fascinating memories of speakers Nick and Wil with the fact they are teachers themselves today and the uproar about the Irish schools recently. This makes that the conversation receives a lot of additional meaning.

In the end, Nilpod is a leisure podcast. I listen to it while going about stuff that cannot be combined with the kind of academic podcasts I usually listen to. I used to listen to radio like that. In this respect it is more than radio, but I'd choose Nilpod rather than radio and that is telling something.

More conversation podcasts:
First Nilpod review,
Real Talk.

Omniculturalism - LSE lecture

It is not a new policy problem. The Romans had to deal with it. The Ottomans had their methods: incorporating different cultures into one state. The modern name is multiculturalism or assimilation? Neither seem to be viable. At the London School of Economics (LSE Public Lectures and Events) Professor Fathali Moghaddam was invited to present his alternative coined Omniculturalism.

Moghaddam first of all makes a point of showing how neither multiculturalism nor assimilation can be successful. Multiculturalism, as it accepts difference, is just too naive - we all know that. But Moghaddam's strength is how he shows very convincingly the fatal conceptual weakness of multiculturalism; how it cannot work psychologically and how it is too relativistic. Similarly he defeats assimilation.

His alternative omniculturalism seems to me closer to multiculturalism, just a little less naive. In stead of putting all the differences cheerfully in the forefront, omniculturalism begins by stating what people have in common. It argues that education should be based on that and only secondarily, and inevitably, we will find our differences, but having started from common ground, it will be easier to accept each other and resolve conflict.

More LSE Events:
Controversies in the Economics of Climate Change,
Nudge: decision architecture,
The EU and the Middle East,
The British Mandate in Palestine,
Iran Today.