richard kamerman

@rfkorp.bsky.social

150 Followers 158 Following

noise artist, public accountant, spooky weirdo

The other interesting feature of Jerome's reading of this text is that, in describing sacrilege as a misuse or misappropriation of the good and divine words of scripture, he makes available an idea of sacrilege that, like John's notion of "sacrilegious prayer," is primarily verbal and has aesthetic implica-tions. Sacrilegious use of the words of scripture is likened by Jerome to drunkenness and fornication: it "furnishes liquor to those whom it deceives and with whom it has committed fornication. It carries off the vessels of God's Temple and waxes drunken by quaffing them." Each of his examples lays out a verbal (logical or rhetorical) idea of sacrilege. Here, perhaps, we have an analogue for John's understanding of the "honeyed venom" of the ars notoria; part of the wrongness identified by Jerome is similarly a misapplication of the beauty of scripture to wrap—and to sell-doctrine whose core is unsound. The problem has to do with the use of scripture as mere decoration, rhetoric, or to extrapolate from it a false logic. Through Jerome's reading it is possible to see that John's use of the word "sacrilegious" to describe the abuse constituted in prayers of the notory art forms a distinctive contrast to the abuse of necro-mancy. If the use of necromancy is wrong because it invokes demons know-ingly, the use of the ars notoria is wrong because it does not respect-or creates a misapprehension of-the boundaries of the sacred. It is, at least in part, an abuse of beauty.
January 18, 2025 at 2:30 PM with the ceasefire supposed to go into effect tomorrow, let's memorialize my pessimistic expectations: 1. even if it gets delayed, it will happen soon because trump is demanding it and bibi has put too much political capital into endorsing him to defy him now (unlike how he's been railing against biden the whole past year) 2. but with the "war" over, netanyahu's trial will resume, and when found guilty on all the fraud and bribery charges, he will finally lose the office of prime minister 3. and so, those further to the right in his coalition government (ben-gvir, smotrich, etc.) will get to take charge and intentionally misinterpret the call for implementing a reconstruction plan in phase 3 of the ceasefire terms to start building israeli settlements in northern gaza instead. continuing to escalate the cycle of violence that has been going on for over 100 years.