Petrusliteratur und Petrusarchäologie: Römische Begegnungen

Peter was a central figure of emerging Christianity that has shaped an important branch of early Christian literature and has been linked to an early and equally important local tradition in Rome. However, both lines of the reception of Peter have only been linked occasionally, and at a relatively late point in time. In this volume, the authors deal with this from the perspective of New Testament texts and early church history. The articles discuss early Petrine literature within and outside of the New Testament and the Roman ecclesial and archaeological Petrine tradition since the second century.

Via.  A review copy arrived last month and I’ve enjoyed working with it.

Interested potential readers should view the table of contents and the introductory essay as well as a few pages of Christoph Heilig’s essay along with the end matter here.  Those materials give a very good overview of both what the volume is attempting and how its editors conceive it.

Die Gestalt des Petrus steht als Schlüsselgestalt unübersehbar an den Ursprüngen des Christentums, wenngleich oft unterschätzt – zumal von Protestanten.  Die fundamentale und universal-ökumenische Relevanz des Petrus ist nirgendwo deutlicher als in Rom, im monumentalen Memorialbau des Petersdoms mit seiner überdimensionalen Kuppelinschrift TV ES PETRVS … (Mt 16,18) und dem historischen Anspruch der Grabtradition unter dem Petersdom. Dass diese Grabtradition und darüber hinaus eine römische Wirksamkeit des Petrus überhaupt von kritischen Forschern – von Karl Heussi bis Otto Zwierlein– immer wieder bestritten wurde und wird und dass sie von anderen vor allem wegen ihrer Bedeutung für die römisch-katholische Ekklesiologie historisch und archäologisch nach Kräften verteidigt wird, ist die eine Ebene, nämlich die der historisch fassbaren Lokaltradition. Sie geht in jedem Fall bis tief in die Kaiserzeit zurück und hat in Rom eine bis heute greifbare petrinische »Erinnerungslandschaft« hervorgebracht; sie hat über die topographische Wirklichkeit christliche Frömmigkeitsgeschichte über Jahrhunderte geprägt.

Turning to the essays themselves, they provide a very good overview of the ‘reception’ of Peter in early Christianity (and later).  More specifically, how Peter was portrayed in art,  literature, and tradition, is the core of the volume’s intention.  Consequently, essayists strive to describe as clearly as possible aspects of that portrayal:

Chrsitoph Heilig does so by assessing the ‘New Pauline Perspective’ and what it may contribute to a new Petrine perspective.  Frey returns to his well traveled investigation of Second Peter to describe vestiges of a petrine-school.  And Kraus examines the Acts of Peter for clues it may contain regarding Peter in Rome.

In fact, several of the essayists look at Peter’s connection to Rome, including his potential burial place (Gemeinhardt).

The long and short of it is that this volume furthers our understanding of Peter’s reception in early Christianity.  It isn’t a study or collection of studies about Peter himself, but rather about those who wrote of him and who erected remembrances (and interpretations) of him.  Those interested, then, in the ‘historical Peter’ will need to turn elsewhere.

Those, however, who are intrigued by the figure of Peter in early Christianity will very much benefit by reading the herein collected essays.

COVID-19 – Why Does it Cost over 1 Million Dollars For One Person’s Treatment?

Remember Michael Flor, the longest-hospitalized COVID-19 patient who, when he unexpectedly did not die, was jokingly dubbed “the miracle child?”

Now they can also call him the million-dollar baby.

Flor, 70, who came so close to death in the spring that a night-shift nurse held a phone to his ear while his wife and kids said their final goodbyes, is recovering nicely these days at his home in West Seattle. But he says his heart almost failed a second time when he got the bill from his health care odyssey the other day.

“I opened it and said ‘holy [bleep]!’ “ Flor says.

The total tab for his bout with the coronavirus: $1.1 million. $1,122,501.04, to be exact. All in one bill that’s more like a book because it runs to 181 pages.

American health care is the joke of the world.

‘Protesters’ Looted Pharmacies, Which Are Now Having a Difficult Time Filling Prescriptions For People Dependent on Medicine

In Philadelphia–

In 36 years working as a pharmacist on the corner of Front and Allegheny in Kensington, Randal Policare has been robbed about five times.

This time was different.

“They took delivery totes and our garbage cans and just did sweeps of medications,” said Policare, owner of Nice Pharmacy, as he stepped around contractors fixing his damaged security system Wednesday. “It was total destruction.”

His shop was robbed Sunday, May 31, one of hundreds of businesses looted that weekend in Philadelphia in the unrest that followed the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man and father of two in Minneapolis.

I guess the ‘protesters’ had a felt need for bags to carry off their ‘free stuff’ and garbage cans to throw the ‘free stuff’ away in when they were done with it…

Policare said the robbers cleaned out his insulin, an expensive drug that hadn’t been touched in previous burglaries.

“Why would you go through the trouble, if you are robbing a pharmacy, to steal insulin, unless you knew you could get rid of that?” he said.

Officials in the Philadelphia Police Department and the Drug Enforcement Agency could not confirm if the attacks were strategically planned.

Policare said robbers also made off with $7,000 worth of medicine waiting for customer pick-up, and $16,000 worth of narcotics.

The sales of drugs illegally obtained is also something ‘protesters’ did to ‘stick it to the racists’ I suppose, and had nothing at all to do with greed.

Protesting is well and good and needed.  Theft isn’t protesting though, it’s just greed.  And curiously, the thieves simply demonstrated that they are just as greedy as the ‘power structure’ they’re putatively protesting.

The ‘Everyone Has their Own Opinion About That’ Lie

It’s stunning, absolutely stunning how people love to spew the ‘everyone’s opinion is of the same weight’ nonsense but they only do it in reference to the Bible or Theology.  They never do it in reference to flying a plane or driving a car or doing heart surgery or anything else.  It’s imbecilic.

So let me state it as plainly as I humanly can- if you aren’t trained in a field, your opinion DOES NOT CARRY ANY WEIGHT.  Pride insists that it does, but humility, self awareness, and common sense insist that it doesn’t.

If you don’t believe that- if you really believe that the opinion of the kid flipping burgers at McDonald’s is just as valid as the woman who has studied the Bible for the better part of her life then you really don’t need to be sharing your opinion on the topic because you’ll just be exposing yourself as a fool.

Only Cowards Kneel? Really?

Honoring our nation’s fallen military heroes, soldiers from the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard) pay their respects as they perform “Flags-In” mission at Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia. With more than a thousand soldiers participating, “Flags-In”, a time-honored tradition that is reserved for Soldiers of the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard), placed a small American flag in front of more than 230,000 grave markers, to honor every individual buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Old Guard Soldiers also placed an American flag at the foot of each Columbarium to account for the more than 400,000 interred. Since 1948, The Old Guard has conducted this mission annually at Arlington National Cemetery prior to Memorial Day to honor our nation’s fallen military heroes. (DoD photo)

Diarmaid MacCulloch on The Pulling Down of Statues

Give it a read.

I will lay my cards on the table straight away; I was hugely cheered to watch the clip of Edward Colston’s statue being chucked in the Avon in the middle of one of my favourite British cities. I frequently passed him during my 17 years living in Bristol, and I have to say that at the time I never gave Colston (1636-1721) much of a thought, apart from the vague knowledge that he was a city benefactor, and that his name was all over the place.

Now, having been educated better, I know better: that his money was made in a pioneering enterprise of the Bristol slave trade; this statue had been put up only in 1895; that it was unpopular from the start and that the public appeal for it failed, so that the instigator ended up mostly paying for it himself; that Colston had been adopted as part of a Victorian campaign to glorify the city’s mercantile past and present, with careful lack of attention to the slavery element in all that glorious wealth.

Etc.  Enjoy.