From: Dan Knauss [tiresias@juno.com] Sent: Friday, May 19, 2000 11:46 AM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: request Or, you can consider yourself a fool, as St. Paul does and notable writers like Erasmus after him. -Dan Knauss On Tue, 16 May 2000 12:38:56 -0500 "rwill627" writes: > It might help us to remember that when one devoutly worships the Only > True > God, everyone who disagrees can easily be seen as either an evil > person or a > fool. Followers of both Islam and Christianity have often developed > this > attitude, with resulting horrors ranging from 7nth century Asia > Minor to > 20th century Bosnia. > Rose Williams ________________________________________________________________ YOU'RE PAYING TOO MUCH FOR THE INTERNET! Juno now offers FREE Internet Access! Try it today - there's no risk! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj. From: AntiUtopia@aol.com Sent: Thursday, May 18, 2000 3:14 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: request In a message dated 5/18/00 2:20:53 PM Eastern Daylight Time, jnweg@unity.ncsu.edu writes: << I refer to the traditional hypothesis that the Pentateuch contains traces of at least four separate narrative strains, each with its distinctive take on the events remembered from Hebrew tradition. The prophetic writings reflect even later redactions and revisions of that tradition. Clearly the accounts of Yahweh's promises to Abram are late constructions of tradition. The book itself contains multiple perspectives on that covenant. The covenant itself is constantly being renewed and revised. -- John >> You're using the word "traditional" in a pretty loose sense in that first paragraph, aren't you? :) The documentary hypothesis only dates from the 19th century, and is fraught with difficulties and speculation. The recent Word Biblical Commentary on Genesis relates that computer programs have recently associated different writing styles in the Biblical texts with genre, a move that questions that different vocabularies and word choice necessarily points to different authors. I think there are clear occasional marks of later editorial insertions, but this is light years from the claims made by the documentary hypothesis. I think the word "clearly" is a bit much to take in that second paragraph as well :) I appreciate that you don't want to have to reconstruct the last 150 years of scholarship working with the assumptions made by the documentary hypothesis (which is, I grant, very widely accepted among Biblical scholars. But so was inerrancy for close to a thousand years), but I think a bit more is needed if you want us to accept what you're saying in that paragraph. Jim From: AntiUtopia@aol.com Sent: Thursday, May 18, 2000 3:18 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: request In a message dated 5/18/00 2:21:21 PM Eastern Daylight Time, rwill627@camalott.com writes: << It might help us to remember that when one devoutly worships the Only True God, everyone who disagrees can easily be seen as either an evil person or a fool. Followers of both Islam and Christianity have often developed this attitude, with resulting horrors ranging from 7nth century Asia Minor to 20th century Bosnia. Rose Williams >> Yes, "can", but not necessarily. It's somewhat bigoted and dishonest to ignore the Millions of people throughout history who have sacrifically loved their enemies (following the teachings of Christ), who have been responsible for some of the greatest humanitarian acts known... What about the millions of people who have suffered under Marxist regimes in the Soviet Union and China? What about the people run over by tanks in Tianamen Square and those who suffered in the Killing Fields in Cambodia. What about the estimated 10-50 million who disappeared under Stalin and Lenin. I suspect more people have been sacrificed to the name of Marx in the last 100 years than have been sacrificed to the name of Christ in the last 2000. Since atrocities are common across theist and non-theist thought systems, it is better to look for causes that lie outside thought systems as they relate to theism and truth... Jim From: Derek Wood [dwood@stfx.ca] Sent: Thursday, May 18, 2000 4:51 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: a query John Leonard wrote: > .....If memory serves me rightly, Milton makes the point about Homer, > Aegisthus, > and human responsibility in one of his prose pamphlets. I forget which. > Maybe it found its way from there into one of the early lives, but I have > just checked all the entries for "Homer" in Darbishire's index and it does > not produce the story you want, or any ref. to the passage in Od. 1. > > All best, > > John L > John, Were you thinking of that passage in DDD (CP 2: 293-96) where Milton is denouncing the Jesuit and Arminian inference that the Calvinist makes "God the author of sinne"? He mentions Homer and the two epics but I don't think he refers to Aegisthus. Adam had "arbitrary happiness and perseverance" and is "our true Epmetheus." Best wishes, Derek. From: John Ulreich [jcu@u.arizona.edu] Sent: Thursday, May 18, 2000 3:34 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: Raphael? Kent: Check out Mario DiCesare on your search engines, and if you can't find anything that way, get in touch with him. I don't have his e-mail address (if, indeed, he has one), but you can try looking him up on the Web. Failing that, write to him c/o SUNY Binghamton. He certainly believes (as I do) that Raphael is unreliable (and obtuse), and he will know (as I do not) who else thinks that way. I suspect that William Empson has a few choice paragraphs on the Affable Archangel (a sort of celestial Good Ol' Boy, in my estimate), but I'm not sure and don't have time to look. Good luck, John Ulreich At 07:19 AM 05/18/2000 -0400, you wrote: > >In the latest chapter of my dissertation, I am finding it necessary to >contradict a few statements made by Raphael. In order to justify my >disagreement with the angel, I explain that I'm not alone in questioning his >credibility: "Numerous scholars have persuasively pointed out that Raphael >is quite possible wrong on a number of points." In my attempt to build the >footnote that will refer the reader to these "numerous scholars," though, I >seem to have encountered a problem--I can't find any! After leafing through >my notes and taking a spin around the MLA, I can't locate any published >essays that suggest that Raphael's authority is less-than-reliable. Have I >fabricated an entire sub-movement in Milton studies? Can anybody refer me to >work claiming that Raphael is not altogether authoritative? >Thanks, >Kent Lehnhof >kent.lehnhof@duke.edu > > > John C. Ulreich Professor of English Dept. of English - Modern Languages Bldg. #67 University of Arizona (520) 621-5424 Tucson, AZ 85721-0067 FAX: (520) 621-7397 From: ADAM ANTHONY STAUTHAMER [aastauth@ouray.cudenver.edu] Sent: Saturday, May 20, 2000 1:21 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: Raphael? As to the availability of published works on the non-authoritative Raphael I have no idea. However, I am in agreement on Raphael's problematic role in PL. But, I could not limit Raphael's inability to communicate as being only his problem. Here's how I worked his problems out... In the hierarchy God has a Godly way of communicating (that is to say he can communicate better than all else, all communication must have derived from God). All other beings contain a less than Godly ability to communicate. Therefore, Raphael (and others) when told to communicate for God can only fail miserably. As a good example of this I compare what God tells Raphael to tell Adam and Eve (it is short sweet and to the point). And what Raphael tells Adam and Eve (Three books worth of story yet nothing that comes close to the clear direct quality of God's warning). Well, hope that sufficed as explination. Adam Stauthamer Denver From: Juliet Cummins [juliet.cummins@pgrad.arts.usyd.edu.au] Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2000 1:03 AM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: Raphael? Robert McMahon, The Two Poets of Paradise Lost (Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State UP, 1998), p. 9 also questions Raphael's reliability. Juliet Cummins. -----Original Message----- From: Kent R. Lehnhof To: milton-l@richmond.edu Date: Friday, May 19, 2000 4:40 AM Subject: Raphael? > >In the latest chapter of my dissertation, I am finding it necessary to >contradict a few statements made by Raphael. In order to justify my >disagreement with the angel, I explain that I'm not alone in questioning his >credibility: "Numerous scholars have persuasively pointed out that Raphael >is quite possible wrong on a number of points." In my attempt to build the >footnote that will refer the reader to these "numerous scholars," though, I >seem to have encountered a problem--I can't find any! After leafing through >my notes and taking a spin around the MLA, I can't locate any published >essays that suggest that Raphael's authority is less-than-reliable. Have I >fabricated an entire sub-movement in Milton studies? Can anybody refer me to >work claiming that Raphael is not altogether authoritative? >Thanks, >Kent Lehnhof >kent.lehnhof@duke.edu > From: Diane McColley [mccolley@crab.rutgers.edu] Sent: Thursday, May 18, 2000 4:59 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: Raphael? I can't answer your question as to whether sholars have found Raphael lacking in credibility or downright wrong--perhaps someone else will--but with regard to whether Raphael is not "authoritative," you might find Karen Edwards' discussion of Raphael's answer to Adam's questions on astronomy helpful, in her splendid new book _Milton and the Natural World_. Edwards makes this point, wisely, I think: "Raphael's response to Adam's observation is ambiguous, if not equivocating. It has led critics to state that Milton did not know whether the Copernican or the Ptolemaic system was correct and so could not allow the archangel to declare for either. But in fact, Raphael's reading of heaven is at one with his reading of creeping things: it is open-ended and richly indeterminate. It is indeed structurally unresolvable, designed *not* to meet Adam's demand for a "solution" to "resolve" his doubtful reading (and the etymological cousins make his demand doubly insistent). . . . Raphael commends the *process* of poring over God's book; he declines to halt the process by providing a solution for Adam (which would in any case be *Raphael's* solution)." At a time when many natural philosophers and historians were looking for categorical "solutions," Raphael's anti-authoritarian cosmology urges non-authoritarian science, as modern physicists do, and as is of course consonant with Milton's political and religious views. Diane McColley ---------- >From: krl3@acpub.duke.edu (Kent R. Lehnhof) >To: milton-l@richmond.edu >Subject: Raphael? >Date: Thu, May 18, 2000, 4:19 AM > > >In the latest chapter of my dissertation, I am finding it necessary to >contradict a few statements made by Raphael. In order to justify my >disagreement with the angel, I explain that I'm not alone in questioning his >credibility: "Numerous scholars have persuasively pointed out that Raphael >is quite possible wrong on a number of points." In my attempt to build the >footnote that will refer the reader to these "numerous scholars," though, I >seem to have encountered a problem--I can't find any! After leafing through >my notes and taking a spin around the MLA, I can't locate any published >essays that suggest that Raphael's authority is less-than-reliable. Have I >fabricated an entire sub-movement in Milton studies? Can anybody refer me to >work claiming that Raphael is not altogether authoritative? >Thanks, >Kent Lehnhof >kent.lehnhof@duke.edu > From: Gregory Machacek [Gregory.Machacek@marist.edu] Sent: Friday, May 19, 2000 12:16 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: Raphael? "Machacek, Gregory" T.EDU> cc: Sent by: Subject: Raphael? 05/18/00 02:45 PM Please respond to milton-l Raphael himself, of course, admits (5.563ff) that his narration does not exactly correspond to the reality of the events narrated; it's just the closest approximation that Adam is in a position to comprehend. Maybe that can give you some ground for contradicting him. Greg Machacek Marist College In the latest chapter of my dissertation, I am finding it necessary to contradict a few statements made by Raphael. In order to justify my disagreement with the angel, I explain that I'm not alone in questioning his credibility: "Numerous scholars have persuasively pointed out that Raphael is quite possible wrong on a number of points." In my attempt to build the footnote that will refer the reader to these "numerous scholars," though, I seem to have encountered a problem--I can't find any! After leafing through my notes and taking a spin around the MLA, I can't locate any published essays that suggest that Raphael's authority is less-than-reliable. Have I fabricated an entire sub-movement in Milton studies? Can anybody refer me to work claiming that Raphael is not altogether authoritative? Thanks, Kent Lehnhof kent.lehnhof@duke.edu From: John Leonard [jleonard@julian.uwo.ca] Sent: Thursday, May 18, 2000 2:21 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: Raphael? Try John Peter, A Critique of PL (1960). He disagrees with just about everything Raphael says (though Milton is his real target). Empson thinks that Adam and Eve would never have fallen but for Raphael's warning. John Leonard -----Original Message----- From: Kent R. Lehnhof To: milton-l@richmond.edu Date: May 18, 2000 2:33 PM Subject: Raphael? > >In the latest chapter of my dissertation, I am finding it necessary to >contradict a few statements made by Raphael. In order to justify my >disagreement with the angel, I explain that I'm not alone in questioning his >credibility: "Numerous scholars have persuasively pointed out that Raphael >is quite possible wrong on a number of points." In my attempt to build the >footnote that will refer the reader to these "numerous scholars," though, I >seem to have encountered a problem--I can't find any! After leafing through >my notes and taking a spin around the MLA, I can't locate any published >essays that suggest that Raphael's authority is less-than-reliable. Have I >fabricated an entire sub-movement in Milton studies? Can anybody refer me to >work claiming that Raphael is not altogether authoritative? >Thanks, >Kent Lehnhof >kent.lehnhof@duke.edu From: tobias gregory [gt51128@csun.edu] Sent: Sunday, May 21, 2000 10:03 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Empson query Could somebody tell me in what year Empson was posthumously honored by the Milton Society of America? Where might I find the text of the MSA's statement to this effect? thanks very much-- Tobias Gregory Assistant Professor of English California State University, Northridge From: Gardner Campbell [gcampbel@mwc.edu] Sent: Friday, May 19, 2000 12:10 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: Raphael? Take a look at J. G. Turner's critique of the Book 8 colloquy in *One Flesh: Paradisal Marriage and Sexual Relations in the Age of Milton* (Clarendon, 1987) and Anna Nardo's essay "The Education of Milton's Good Angels" in *Arenas of Conflict: Milton and the Unfettered Mind* (Susquehanna UP: 1997). I know there are others, but these are two that spring to mind. Best wishes for the dissertation, Gardner Campbell Mary Washington College >>> krl3@acpub.duke.edu 05/18/00 07:19AM >>> In the latest chapter of my dissertation, I am finding it necessary to contradict a few statements made by Raphael. In order to justify my disagreement with the angel, I explain that I'm not alone in questioning his credibility: "Numerous scholars have persuasively pointed out that Raphael is quite possible wrong on a number of points." In my attempt to build the footnote that will refer the reader to these "numerous scholars," though, I seem to have encountered a problem--I can't find any! After leafing through my notes and taking a spin around the MLA, I can't locate any published essays that suggest that Raphael's authority is less-than-reliable. Have I fabricated an entire sub-movement in Milton studies? Can anybody refer me to work claiming that Raphael is not altogether authoritative? Thanks, Kent Lehnhof kent.lehnhof@duke.edu From: Carol Barton [cbartonphd@earthlink.net] Sent: Friday, May 19, 2000 8:15 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: request In response to my comment that > > Blake was NOT saying that Milton saw Satan as a hero, or as the hero of _Paradise Lost_ . . . just that, being human, it was easier for Milton to understand Satan than it was for him to understand God. Tony Hill wrote: > Thanks for the interesting comments. I don't see Satan as the hero > of PL at all and I don't think Blake did either. But what do you think > of the idea that it was difficult for Blake, with the combination of his > extraordinary vision and radical sect background (his father was a > Muggletonian I think) to come to terms with the poem at all? Tony, *God* was difficult for Blake to come to terms with, in his vision at once the angry, punishing deity of extreme Calvinism, and a benevolent but inscrutable father figure who giveth as surely as he taketh away. . . . I wouldn't attempt to "pigeonhole" Blake's perceptions on that score any more than I would attempt to lock Milton in as a proponent (especially consistently) of this or that church doctrine (or heresy). I suspect that Blake saw Milton's God as many others have, not only but certainly William Empson among them: he is lifeless, sterile, a "wooden bore," a one-dimensional entity with all the appeal of a dollop of cottage cheese, the unknowable all-knowing who manifests himself to us only by means of an accomodation that even so is beyond our comprehension, unless it is in the form of the Word made Flesh. Given Blake's own forays into a theodicy of sorts (his own mostly incomprehensible attempt to "justify the ways of God" to William Blake), I doubt he would have seen Milton's God as a more accurate representation-- ah, but Satan! Satan (like the rest of us) he and Milton understood! I think that when Blake speaks of Milton writing "in fetters," he is talking about more than one kind of chain, on more than one level of bondage: not only the strictures against creativity of the biblical "given," amplified by Milton's knowledge and understanding of the subordinate Hebrew texts, but the fact that God is statis (immutability) reified and personified, the epitome of eternity, perfection, and whole- ness, world without end. Drama is an impossibility with him (since he foreknows and foresees all, and is incapable of error or "surprise"), and the overwhelming weight of the theological burden of "creating" the Creator is anything but an inducement to artistic license. I hope those musings willy-nilly constitute something like an answer to your question, and I will be happy to discuss the topic further with you off-list (rather than clog the e-waves with something not of immediate interest to the general membership). Best to all, Carol Barton From: Dan Knauss [tiresias@juno.com] Sent: Friday, May 19, 2000 7:52 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: Raphael? A friend of mine, Ed Hoffman, did his MA thesis at North Carolina State in 1997 on Raphael, arguing that the angel makes pedagogical errors and can be read, through narratological analysis, as a having the dramatic function of furnishing plausibility for Adam's choice to disobey. I have a near-final draft of this thesis, and it does not indicate that a lot of critics have challenged Raphael's credibility in any comprehensive manner. Here are two citations that may help you: Michael Allen ["Divine Instruction: Of Education and the Pedagogy of Raphael, Milton, and the Father," Milton Quarterly 26 (1992): 114-8] argues that "because Milton [in Of Education] places the onus for effective education squarely upon the teacher, it is no good blaming Adam when his enthusiasm and curiosity become disruptive at the end of Book 8 . . . ; Raphael should have retained control" (114-5). Thomas Copeland ["Raphael: the Angelic Virtue," Milton Quarterly 24 (1990): 117-28] discusses Raphael's "reduction of Adam's love for Eve to the level of mere sexuality" in Book 8. This reduction "startles Adam, who rightly protests that he loves Eve's soul, not her body alone" (125). Consequently Raphael loses face as a teacher with Adam who begin arguing strongly against him. Ed points out in his thesis that Raphael's account of the War in heaven may be flawed as pedagogy for several reasons, including Sidney's point in the Defence that "the historian...is so tied, no to what should be but to what is, to the particular truth of things and not to the general reason of things, that his example draweth no necessary [beneficial] consequence..." Dan Knauss Marquette University On Thu, 18 May 2000 07:19:46 -0400 (EDT) krl3@acpub.duke.edu (Kent R. Lehnhof) writes: > > In the latest chapter of my dissertation, I am finding it necessary > to > contradict a few statements made by Raphael. In order to justify my > disagreement with the angel, I explain that I'm not alone in > questioning his > credibility: "Numerous scholars have persuasively pointed out that > Raphael > is quite possible wrong on a number of points." In my attempt to > build the > footnote that will refer the reader to these "numerous scholars," > though, I > seem to have encountered a problem--I can't find any! After leafing > through > my notes and taking a spin around the MLA, I can't locate any > published > essays that suggest that Raphael's authority is less-than-reliable. > Have I > fabricated an entire sub-movement in Milton studies? Can anybody > refer me to > work claiming that Raphael is not altogether authoritative? > Thanks, > Kent Lehnhof > kent.lehnhof@duke.edu > ________________________________________________________________ YOU'RE PAYING TOO MUCH FOR THE INTERNET! Juno now offers FREE Internet Access! Try it today - there's no risk! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj. From: Tony Hill [mjksezth@fs1.ce.umist.ac.uk] Sent: Friday, May 19, 2000 11:45 AM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: tolerance Date sent: Thu, 11 May 2000 10:42:11 -0700 To: milton-l@richmond.edu From: jillanne@mail.rosenet.net (Jillanne Michell) Subject: Re: request Send reply to: milton-l@richmond.edu > If the definition of toleration is "the choice to allow > that which is disapproved," would it be correct to say of > Jesus that he tolerated the burden of sin, human suffering, > and death? (Also, doesn't God tolerate, even if only > temporarily, Satan and sin?) > I'm not too sure that that definition is good. To say that something needs to be tolerated is to allow something you "disapprove" of to go on? OK so far but for example I have to "tolerate" the loud noise of the machines in my work place but I can't blame the machines for their noisiness (can I ?) and neither can I simply "allow" them because I would have no job if they were not there. I cannot not "allow" them. In an intellectual leap of some magnitude, and one that escapes my understanding, some then go on to use the word "tolerate" in a political, racial, and sociological, and even a philosophical and religious sense, as though it meant exactly the same thing! I certainly "disapprove" of loud noise when I'm trying to concentrate and I don't know anybody who doesn't. I'm "intolerant" of it. I want it to stop. But when somebody says "why do we tolerate so many "bogus" asylum seekers or single parents or ..... " (you can hear the rest of it yourself) they are not using the word in the same way. Pray who gives the moral and philosophical authority for saying what should be "tolerated" and what shouldn't in this different sense? I think it a very indefensible position to claim the knowledge to be the standard against which all other points of view, other ways of life, other religions and so on "ought" to be judged. Yes, I think that it would be "correct" to say that Jesus "tolerated" the burden of sin and that God "tolerated" Satan and Sin and Death in that particular mythology, and I'm not using "mythology" in a value loaded way, because in that idea God (and Jesus who is in some interpretations, but not I think Milton's, another aspect of that God) DOES have the moral and philosophical authority to be the standard. But only if you believe in the absolute moral authority of that particular God. But in the world I inhabit I cannot any more ask "why do I tolerate these" without also asking " why should they tolerate me?" Milton argued against "intolerance" of divorce. He argued against "intolerance" of freedom of speech (not the same as freedom of publication though). Milton's culture may well have been a lot more "intolerant" than the one that I live in (probably was) so that is another reason, above and beyond his poetry, why I admire the man. I hope that you can "tolerate" this contribution. Tony Hill www.ce.umist.ac.uk