Here’s a shocker: The Bodmer Foundation is considering the sale of two ancient papyri, portions of the Gospels of St. John and St. Luke. These are among the oldest Gospel texts in existence. Rumor has it that American universities are lining up with bids. Via Rogue Classicism.

It’s the feast of Saints Simon and Jude, a big day in our house. My son wrote a fine children’s book about St. Jude (deep in history and beautifully illustrated too). I hope you’ll read it.

It’s also my friend Scott Hahn‘s birthday. You can find out his age by poking around his website.

And today marks the conclusion of the St. Paul Center‘s Letter and Spirit Conference — which I’m pleased to say was entirely sold out.

Tonight’s Lawler Lecture, however, by the great patrologist Father Thomas Weinandy, is free and open to the public. If you can drive to Pittsburgh, I hope to see you there. Father Weinandy is speaking on St. Athanasius’s doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

Another fascinating post from PaleoJudaica, this one on the willful gullibility of scholars and the media when it comes to “new” Gnostic “discoveries” (and outright frauds).

Just as baseball’s post-season wraps up and the NFL heads to midseason … Maria Lectrix scores big with audio files of Tertullian’s De Spectaculis (Of Shows). Almost as entertaining as Tertullian himself is Maria L. (aka Maureen) on Tertullian. Here’s her introductory text:

We don’t know if he’s a saint, ’cause he apparently died a member in good standing of those weird, self-righteous, and possibly semi-pagan, Montanists. We don’t know if he counts as a Father of the Church, though he would clearly deserve to be called one if he hadn’t stalked off to join a heretical sect. But before his little head-on with the Church, this North African Christian said some very cool, useful, and sarcastic things.

Yes! You asked for it! It’s our special Fathers guest star, Tertullian! And we begin with Tertullian at his nicest and his snarky best, asking new Christians why the Church is all mean about taking their favorite pastimes away. I mean, how could anyone think that attending gladiator games is inconsistent with Christian faith?…

“De Spectaculis” concludes with a brief stop at Tertullian’s typically philosopher-ish issues with fiction, acting and stage makeup as equivalent to falsehood. Then we get more thoughts about the games and the proper place of pleasure, many of which are useful, and a big showy finish with The End of the World.

Unfortunately, Tertullian’s amazingly big finish gets derailed by his anger issues. Anybody who can portray his eternal joy as catcalling and watching the damned get destroyed in happy Roman-type “games” is… well… the kind of guy who’d run off and join the Montanists out of pique that repentant lapsed Christians weren’t being punished enough. Sigh.

But don’t stop with reading. Go, download, and listen to our man from North Africa.

Bread and Circuses gives us an interesting bit of Latin trivia — on the origin and meaning of “Lorem ipsum,” the ubiquitous dummy text.

We hear rumors that Madison Avenue is begging B&C’s host, Adrian Murdoch, to recite the text for an extended after-shave advertisement, after the manner of the Prada Babe.

I’m no expert on Gnosticism — ancient or modern, scented or unscented — but I did manage to finish an undergraduate thesis on the subject, twenty-odd years ago, and the Thunder must still echo in some dark corner of my imperfect mind.

I say this because it occurred to me, as I was driving tonight, that there were significant patches missing from the version of “Thunder, Perfect Mind” that the Prada Babe recited in her perfume ad. Indeed, there are passages in that text that no self-respecting perfume model would want to say about herself, even if she’s acting out the lines in the course of a five-minute television advertisement.

All I’ll say on this family-oriented blog is that the Prada version of Gnosticism is sanitized for our protection, shorn of any lines that would be unbecoming or unattractive on the surgically enhanced lips of their models. For the unexpurgated version, you can visit The Gnostic Society’s Library.

Now, I’m sure that devout Gnostics all over California recite the thing in its entirety, omitting nothing. I certainly don’t intend this post to reflect badly on the progress of their spirits’ ascent past the archons and into the realm of pure light (thundering, thundering, louder than before). I just want to point out that Prada’s giving the world Gnosticism with training wheels. Be forewarned: I’ll bet it won’t even get you past the first archon.

At first I thought this was a joke, but it’s not. PaleoJudaica informs us that “Thunder, Perfect Mind,” a Gnostic text found in the Nag Hammadi cache some decades ago, is now being used as the script for a Prada perfume advertisement. See for yourself on YouTube.

R.R. Reno may be right about The Return of the Fathers. But apparently their archnemeses are coming back with them. I live for the day when Arius is hawking Doritos.

Alexandria in Egypt was the Cambridge of late antiquity. It was a city renowned for its colleges and libraries. The city was ethnically diverse, as its ports were the trading hub of the ancient world. But the dominant language and culture were Greek, and so the backbone of its remarkable educational system were the gymnasia, where the city trained the minds and bodies of young men for their duties as citizens.

The first Greek ruler of Egypt, Ptolemy I, dreamed of making his capital city the world’s greatest center of learning. And his successors took up his dream, working almost desperately to amass all the world’s literature in one great library. The Ptolemies were unscrupulous in this pursuit, willing even to send thieves abroad to steal manuscripts from distant Athens, which was then well into its decline. According to ancient legend, it was Ptolemy II who commissioned the Septuagint, the translation of all the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, so that his library would not lack the great literature of Jews.

The library and its holdings were the lifeline of Alexandria’s great university and research institution, the Museion, which was renowned for its studies in astronomy, biology, philosophy, botany, geography, and literature. The Museion counted among its alumni great men such as Euclid and Archimedes, and its laboratories produced remarkable inventions such as the steam engine.

The Jews were a sizable and influential minority in the city, but they lived in uneasy tension with the dominant culture. Jewish parents debated among themselves whether it was right to enroll their boys in the gymnasia, where they might be corrupted by Greek culture, with its polytheism, immodesty, and homoeroticism. The pagan Alexandrians were, for their part, ambivalent about admitting Jews to full citizenship anyway, as the Jews were a discrete community within the community — a faction of ethnic “foreigners” and a potential source of disaffection in the land.

But in the cultural greenhouse that was Alexandria it was an easy matter for Jews to establish their own educational enclave. Philo describes a semi-monastic group called the Therapeutae, who occupied themselves with communal prayer and intense study of the Scriptures.

Into this world, in the mid-first century — around and amid the Harvards and MITs of the Roman empire — came the Christian faith. The gospel arrived early in Alexandria, and some of the city’s best and brightest responded with vigor. The super-apostle Apollos was an Alexandrian (Acts 18:24). A well-established tradition tells us that St. Mark the Evangelist was the city’s first bishop. Eusebius reports that the Therapeutae responded to the apostolic preaching and converted en masse, constituting perhaps the Church’s first scholarly monastic order, anticipating the Benedictines by several centuries. There is documentary evidence, too, indicating that many early conversions came from the pagan Greek and native Egyptian (Coptic) peoples as well.

Alexandrian Christianity developed richly and rapidly. It was deeply Christian, but it was distinctively Alexandrian as well. This cosmopolitan Church prized education very highly.

Quite naturally, the Alexandrian Church soon established a school, which became known as the Didaskalion. Scholars today debate whether it was a “school” the way we understand the term today, with teachers and classes, or merely a “school of thought.” But it is certain that there was some form of systematic education going on. The first master of the school known to history is Pantaenus (late second century), who had been a Stoic philosopher before his conversion and a missionary to India afterward. It was St. Pantaenus who put the Didaskalion on the cultural map. It was he who attracted so brilliant a student as Clement, who would succeed him as master of the school. Many of Clement’s “writings” seem to be transcripts of his own lectures. They are brilliant, erudite, seasoned with allusions to classical literature and abundant examples from the natural sciences. They assume a highly literate, leisurely audience of seekers, eager and attentive.

Clement, in his turn, attracted a bright and zealous young student named Origen, who would succeed Clement while still a teenager, and who would draw famous students from all around the empire — including the emperor’s mother! Origen, like his predecessor, placed a premium on secular as well as sacred learning. He taught that natural science was a useful and indispensable foundation for theological science.

Soon the Didaskalion would eclipse and then absorb the Museion as the center of Alexandrian culture. Alexandrian thought was transformed; yet it was still distinctively Alexandrian. God’s grace had perfected what was brilliant and beautiful by nature.

That’s what Christian education — at its very best — can do.

(An earlier version of this post appeared as my regular column in LayWitness magazine — to which you really should subscribe. For more on ancient Alexandria, see here, here, here, here, and here.)

Today is the anniversary of the execution of Boethius, who wrote “The Consolation of Philosophy” and a very influential treatise “On the Trinity.” He served as consul under the Arian ruler Theodoric in the sixth century, but found himself imprisoned as Theodoric’s suspicions snowballed into paranoia. The Italians venerate Boethius as a martyr for orthodoxy. Hat tip: Rogue Classicism.

UPDATE: Amy and Father Z also posted some good Boethian material.

I’ve posted audio of my KVSS interview on St. Ignatius of Antioch (scroll way down the page). When in Rome for our 2007 pilgrimage, we’ll visit the site of Ignatius’s martyrdom. And I’m pleased to announce that Kris McGregor of KVSS radio will be with us. Kris will be broadcasting from Rome as we pray and take in the sights. Please consider joining us!

Phil has decided to launch his fulltime patristiblogging like a ballistic missile, with St. John Chrysostom: Headship and the Culture Wars. Don’t just visit. Say something.

A pile of links on the Emperor Constantine.

A little bit of Jerome should serve to prepare the candidates well for election day. Thanks to Bread and Circuses.