cozy autumn vibes

I feel honored that @thediasporist.bsky.social found my article "Two kinds of Staatsräson" worthy of reprinting🙏

Wow -- a sublime example

Yeah, I don't even mean to knock heresy, I just think people ought to be heretics for the right reaons, not out of sheer ignorance and arrogance.

No, I don't think he would have said it was God's essence, or made any such distinction. What it sounded like to me was full-on anthropomorphism.

*even normal for Catholics, lol

I mean yes, but the visible nature of Jesus is not his divine nature, or so I would think. Maybe this is normal for Protestants, maybe it's even normal for Christians and I'm just not aware of it...

I mean I'm not an expert in Christianity, maybe I'm misapprehending things! But I heard a clip of him making that claim in a podcast that discussed this most recent rapture fad, and it seemed extremely out there to me. And I just keep noticing vocal Xians having VERY idiosyncratic beliefs.

Oh yeah, Rapture is recognized by Evangelics, I meant the idea that he has seen God with his "own eyes". I'm pretty sure that is widely considered a heretical notion -- certainly in the Catholic church, and I think it would have offended every patristic author I can think of.

E.g. the guy who made the September rapture prediction (admittedly a fringe guy but it went viral with Evangelicals!) claims he has seen God "with his own eyes", which is wildly unorthodox

(I guess he probably doesn't call himself a traditionalist, but in so many words)

Have people written about how Christian right "traditionalists" often loudly preach ideas that have been deemed heretical since antiquity? What is up with that?

17. Speaking of Latin pronunciation, I think it's actually great and a sign of intercultural heritage, not of eurocentrism, that we have Latinate names like Confucius, Averroes, Maimonides. As Edward Said wrote, the very notion that East and West are separate entities is an artifact of Orientalism.

16. Should final vowels before initial vowels simply be elided or should they be merged together (synaloephe)? Grammarians consistently teach complete elision, but the name they use for this is synaloephe. Also, they have a specific term for elision of vowel+M, ecthlipsis. I think we should use it!

Yeah, that is the case sometimes. Cf. Vergil "trahit sua quemque voluptas".

#medievalsky, does anyone have some good suggestions for us?
@martiana.bsky.social

It's probably because I just haven't looked into the medieval side enough, but I haven't really found a satisfying intro/overview yet. I'm also in relatively initial stages of research on this subject, my familiarity is mostly with the ancient grammarians themselves.

15. On that note, I really dislike the trend (I think especially in Anglophone scholars?) to use as little punctuation as possible, which I think reflects a kind of purism? When I compared a stretch of Vergil in modern editions vs a late antique codex, the ancient text used ca 2x as much punctuation

14. I think, to the extent possible, modern editions should reflect the transmitted punctuation, not just the sequence of letters. How ancient Vergil manuscripts are punctuated tells us something about (late antique) reading practices, while modern editors' punctuation "only" guides interpretation.

13. One reason I don't think nasalization of vowels was a normative feature of Latin is that I can't accept ancient grammarians ALL just failed to describe it in a recognizable way. They weren't remotely on the level of Sanskrit linguists, but they could describe co-articulation (namely of V in QV).

12. Pluralism in a tradition like Latin grammar functions in a complex way, where in principle, each authority demands to be followed, but in practice, they contradict each other so much that there is actually very substantial freedom. (This is also true of paganism!)

11. To say more about normativity: when Pompeius writes "we should not pronounce 'Titius' as we write it, but as 'Titsius'", I don't think that can be treated as merely evidence for the pronunciation of his day. He inscribed it into the grammatical tradition as a norm, which must be taken seriously.

Of course, yoo-way-nace is in its way as unclassical as joo-vee-nees, as it still accommodates itself the pronunciation to English phonology. Personally, I tend to stick to the traditional English pronunciation for all Greco-Roman names within English.