The demise of Sir Toby's

Posted 6 June, 2008 - 12:28 by peter wilkinson

Two disconsolate figures sat on a low wall opposite the hostel, their eyes glancing at the boarded up windows and the ‘For Sale’ sign written in, to them, an undecipherable Slavonic code. Access to the premises was permissible, but the interior was empty, its familiar fittings and fixtures removed, vacant possession being the hope of its vendors for a ‘quick sale’.

“So that’s it then,” said the elderly figure, grown more corpulent since his last appearance, more grey, and grizzled round the jowls.

“Apparently so,” said the smaller figure, draped in a travel-worn cape, pointed hat firmly planted on his otherwise bare and vulnerably exposed cranium. “Of course, not many of us realised he was the host and proprietor. He kept that well hidden until the end.”

“Indeed so,” said the Sage. “We were all labouring under the same misapprehension, that he was simply one of the many, a traveller seeking refuge from the inclement storms and drizzles of life, a fellow pilgrim along life’s way. We were cruelly deceived.”

“I wouldn’t put it so starkly,” said the Trappist. “He was, after all, the instigator of ‘The Project’. We all had our parts to play in that.”

“Our entrances and exits,” said the Sage, bardically. “But now the great globe itself, and all which it inherit, has dissolved. We are such stuff as dreams are made of, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”

The Trappist’s head jerked forward, as it tended to do during these literary perorations, which promoted moments of drowsiness in him.

“So he’s set up shop elsewhere. Have you any idea of the whereabouts?” continued the Sage.

“Dunno,” muttered the Trappist, pulling his cloak more tightly around him, as an unseasonal gust of cold wind blew down the street. “Some say he’s been to Africa. Who knows where he’ll turn up.”

“Africa!” exploded the Sage. “Out to convert the anthropophagi, no doubt!”

“I hardly think that ‘convert’ is a word to be associated with our friend,” said the Trappist. “He always was one step ahead of us. Who knows where this new direction in his pilgrimage will take him.”

“Who knows?” said the Sage. “In the meantime, there are more pressing concerns to attend to, not least the question of a Dacicky, which I think it was your turn to buy.”

“At a small basement bar, a few stops into the Centre,” said the Trappist, “where we will sit down, and in more congenial circumstances than these plan our next move.”

Already, a tram was labouring up the hill towards them, and our two heroes shouldered their packs, full of books which they had not been lacking in industry to purchase from nearby obscure antiquarian bookshops. They climbed aboard, and the tram swallowed them up, not unlike the submarine coffin which had borne the Trappist, Jonah-like, from the hostel on a previous adventure.

The cold wind continued to blow, but it was waste paper and odd bits of rubbish which swirled around the door of Sir Toby’s, and only the footsteps of ghosts who had once so resolutely and optimistically and with the highest of theological intentions made their way towards its welcoming portals.

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by peter wilkinson - 11/06/2008 - 16:40

“So you have already ‘crossed over’?” probed the Trappist tentatively of his bardic friend, eyeing him sideways as the pewter tankard was refilled with another litre of the dark, foaming Czech brew.

“So to speak,” said the Elderly Sage, lifting his head and contentedly puffing smoke rings towards the ceiling from his familiar clay pipe. All around, a gentle hum of voices provided the requisite cloak of secrecy to their deliberations in the somewhat murky confines of the basement bar, their retreat from exposure to the harsher realities of daylight in the streets above. “And yourself?”

“Giants in the land!” muttered the Trappist, shaking his head. “Besides, I belong to the doomed generation. A quiet grave on Mount Nebo will be my lot, the pay-off for too many strikings of the postmodern theological rock. But I’m surprised you were allowed in. As the ringleader of unbelief, and perpetrator-general of grumblings in the tent, I’d have thought at the very least the Jordan would have risen up to overwhelm you.”

The eyes of the Sage sparkled for a moment, signifying the plot he had been mentally hatching, but which had yet to be divulged.

“Disguise, my friend, disguise!” uttered the Sage. “I slipped in as one of the spies, exploring the land, on the lookout for grapes, visions of valleys and mountains, milk and honey, all that sort of thing. A second reconnaissance, before the main party. Get in before the crowds, that was always my motto.”

“I see,” pondered the Trappist. “So your preliminary colloquy is a sort of laying down of a marker, a display of credentials, a quiet establishment of squatter’s rights, as it were, before your true motives are unmasked, and your place as a paid-up bona fide member of this, this - - - ”

” ‘New Creation’?” suggested the Sage, as the Trappist spluttered for words.

“Precisely!” said the Trappist. “Until you are exposed as the unreformed, unregenerate, unreconstructed modernist that you are, without a postmodern bone in your body, belonging well to the far side of the theological river!”

“Shhhh!” whispered the Sage, gesturing fiercely. “Not a word! Once I’ve got my foot in the door, others will follow where angels have feared to tread!”

“You mean to sully the virtuous purity of Canaan by masquerading as an Israelite?” said the Trappist, taken aback at the audacity of the thought.

“Exactly,” whispered the Sage. “Under a pretence of disinterested theological inquiry, a cloak of subterfuge may be woven around our devices, until at the auspicious moment we can turn the situation to our advantage, and thus by indirections find directions out.”

The Trappist groaned inwardly at the inevitable intrusion of literary allusion to the Stratford One. “But surely then he will simply transfer himself, bag and baggage to yet another land beyond another Jordan,” said the Trappist, “another House of David separating itself from the House of Saul, and on and on, until we are all worn out with our own deviousness and his constant reinvention and shape-shifting.”

“Patience my friend,” said the Sage, lifting his tankard to drain the last dregs of the Dacicky.

And not for the first time did the Trappist feel that he was being drawn into another exploit with his colleague, the full extent of which was as yet concealed behind his tergiversification, and waited to be revealed.

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by peter wilkinson - 11/06/2008 - 19:59

Excursus

In the deepest part of the building where the OST archives are located, close to the centre of the labyrinth, there is a room whose wooden nameplate ‘Opensource Theology Moderators’ indicates its obscure function.

The room is panelled in deep oak. There is no natural lighting, this room being far away from, and below, any access to the outside world - as befits its purpose.

A long oak table is surrounded by chairs of a similar style, the seats and backs of which are covered in green leather. On them are seated those whose countenances bear a resemblance to the furnishings of the room - wooden, aged, seldom exposed to natural daylight. These are the moderators of contributions to Opensource Theology. Their task, day and night, is to closely scrutinise every word, every jot and tittle of every contribution to Opensource Theology, analysing the verbal accuracy, theology tendency and literary merit of each.

The table is strewn with papers, print-outs,and dictionaries of all conceivable variety. The atmosphere of the room is of mind-numbingly tedious dedication to detail which is pursued to the most pedantic degree. At one end of the table sits the chairman of the moderators. He raises his head - crowned by a domed brow of unusual prominence, his eyes glinting behind horn-rimmed National Health style glasses of 1940’s vintage. A slight clearing of the throat is enough to engage the attention of the other moderators.
He begins:

“And so we come to this latest literary gem,” he said, his wit always being honed with the driest kind of ironic inflexion. “‘Tergiversification’. Would members of the board kindly illuminate us with their findings?”

One by one round the table came the results of research which had extended uninterruptedly through the previous 24 hours. The Moderators were impervious to the normal physiological requirements of sleep. ‘Tergiversation’ - yes. From the Latin ‘tergum’, back + ‘versus’, past participle of ‘vertare’, to turn: to use evasions or ambiguities, equivocate; to change sides, defect, apostasise. But ‘tergiversification’ - Collins, Webster, Oxford (shorter, compact, complete) - no entry.

Finally came the turn of the chairman. “‘Tergiversification’ - a usage in French, not given lexical support, and meaning linguistic equivocation, persiflage. Wilkinson has clearly adopted this vernacular usage and introduced it as a neologism. I propose we note the date of his usage, and introduce it in our next edition of the OST Theological Dictionary. Those in favour?”

Wearily, a row of hands rose in the air.

“Those against?”

No response.

“Then ‘tergiversification’ is unanimously adopted. Kindly convey our decision and findings to the stenographer.”

In a small cubicle adjoining the main room, a formidable woman in matching tweed jacket and skirt typed something out on a mechanical typewriter, tore the paper from the rollers, rolled the paper into a scroll and placed it into a tube, which she sealed at both ends, and placed in a small recess in the wall made for the purpose. A lid was drawn over the recess. She pressed a button, and the cylinder was conveyed pneumatically to another room, to be recorded in the archives.

The board resumed its researches. The silence of the musty room was broken only by the steady tick of a large clock which hung by the side of the portrait of the first chairman of the board. It was the only picture in the room.

Another decision. Another step forward in the relentless march of theological progress.

End of excursus

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by peter wilkinson - 02/07/2008 - 11:04

At a table on the pavement cafe of Pret a Manger in Swan Lane, Guildford, the Trappist eased his weary frame into a convenient chair, and carefully placed his purchases from Sussex Stationers onto a shady patch of pavement beside him. The contents of the bag included his holiday reading: Alan Bennett’s ‘The Uncommon Reader’, William Dalrymple’s ‘The Last Moghul’, and various reduced and remaindered editions of books which had caught his eye.

A pleasant atmosphere of bonhomie suffused the street, with its passers-by intent on enjoying the shopping opportunities in the early summer sunshine between Guildford’s Friary Centre, the slightly down at heel North Street, and interesting interconnecting alleys and ginnels which afforded access to the historic High Street.

It was in such a pedestrianised precinct that the Trappist awaited his colleagues. A clatter of sticks and the familiar lurching tread of the Sage, accompanied by an unseasonally cloaked Antipodean and Eastern Monk soon appeared and placed themselves at the table.

“Jeez!” muttered the Antipodean. “Couldn’t we have found a better rendez-vous than this two-bit flea-bitten run down excuse of a provincial backwater?”

The Eastern Monk said nothing, caught up in his inner observation of nones.

“What news from the other side of the river?” said the Trappist, impatiently cutting across the grumblings of his colleagues.

“Cafe frappe, latte, Americano and cappuccino,” instructed the Elderly Sage of the young waitress, who had appeared to see what the commotion was all about. Then to the Trappist:

“Things could hardly have gone worse. Our strategem is in severe danger of backfiring, if not failing altogether!” He leaned back as a tray with the various beverages appeared, and the waitress unloaded the cargo onto the table.

“And this, I take it, despite your master-plan to entertain our learned friend with virtual contributions of an arcane and academic nature from supposedly sympathetic acolytes?” suggested the Trappist, mendaciously.

“Looking at the positives,” said the Sage, ignoring the scarcely veiled cynicism of the comment, “We have lured our partner into the land, where he is enagaged in churning out a on a semi-industrial scale a conveyor belt of obscure articles, of the kind with which we are all too familiar. However, these articles have received no accompanying comments and remarks to perpetuate the delusion of a second exodus. In short, it has been left to me to provide the sole source of theological reflection. Our meeting today is to consider why you have each been sitting on your hands, and not getting on with the job of providing academic interactivity!”

“So the plan was that we contributed the comments?” said the Monk, his oblations having now been completed.

“Precisely!” said the Sage, looking thunderously round the table. “Unless there is some evidence of action soon, our colleague may well yet return to this side of the river, and seriously compromise the directions in which our animadversities and tergiversifications are now taking us.”

“You mean a compromising of the website, turning it into a ‘Tales of the Riverbank’ - Kenneth Graham style?”

“Precisely!” said the Bard, drinking back the final dregs of his noxious caffeinated brew.

The Antipodean drew out a pocket watch from within the folds of his cloak, his red beard bristling threateningly. “Which brings us to the point! Our internet- ticketed booking on the ‘Pride of the River Wey’ departs from the boathouse in Shalford Meadows in six minutes.”

“Great Scott!” expostulated the Eastern Monk, and with a grating of chairs and flustered gathering of packages and shopping, the meeting was deconvened and the four set off at a cracking pace to get to the River, along Quarry Street and down Porridge Pot Alley, before the departure of the river launch which was to take them to their next point of disembarkation, where the imbroglio which they were carefully fermenting would reach its untimely denouement.

Moderator’s note:

‘Tergiversifications’ has been approved by our committee, but we frown on the inappropriate use, in context, of ‘animadversities’ and request that it be withdrawn and replaced forthwith.

An ‘imbroglio’ can no more be ‘fermented’ than a ‘denouement’ can be described as ‘untimely’. Only a ‘demise’ can be described as ‘untimely’, which is probably what you mean in the cliche-ridden pot-boiler style of this hack-journalistic excuse of a story. The standard of this contribution falls far below that of previous strands of this wandering narrative.

We also note that the bill for beverages consumed at Pret a Manger in Guildford was neither presented nor paid. Unless there can be immediate and substantial improvements to the literary quality of this thread, the Moderators reserve the right to terminate it and block further comments without notice.

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by john doyle - 02/07/2008 - 23:52

Divagation and fugue.

The caffeine had given its all in propelling the Sage on his brisk walk to the embarkation point. Entirely spent now, the Old Man sagged into a deck chair. Lulled by the gentle rocking of the boat and the bland monotony of the Surrey countryside, he tried to ward off sleep by looking through the newspaper he found abandoned in the chair on his right. As his eyes slid down the page they were captured by a short report with a Canadian dateline:

Online Collaboration Lands Young Authors Book Deal. Two 21-year-old women wrote a 400-page book together online in just 18 days. They met on LiveJournal, a virtual community of bloggers and learned that they shared a passion for C.S. Lewis’s THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE. Danielle Bennett lives in Victoria and Jaida Jones in New York. They decided to work together to write a novel of their own, the first for both. The women took turns writing 6 or 7 pages, emailing the sections back and forth. The recipient would edit the other’s work, add on new pages, and send it back. In 18 days, they had finished HAVEMERCY, a fantasy novel featuring flying metal dragons, magicians, and a climactic battle between warring rivals. Their agent shopped the book but found only rejection. Then came a surprise call from Anne Groell, senior editor of Spectra, the science-fiction imprint of Random House’s Bantam Dell Publishing Group, offering a $30,000 advance for the two and a contract for a sequel to be finished August 1.

The Old Man harrumphed, though not loudly enough to attract the attention of his three confederates, all of whom were dozing in the mottled sunshine. "What could these two mere girls possibly know of witches and dragons?" he wondered to himself. "And magicians? I wouldn’t be surprised if all they’d ever known of magicians have consisted of crass commercial performances enacted by those charlatans for whom cheap thaumaturgy and clumsy legerdemain constitute the sum total of their so-called powers. Why in my day…" The Old Man opened his eyes in one last feeble effort to ward off the drowziness that had already felled his associates. "I suspect that even the Trappist here, despite his penchant for ruses and escapades, has seen his share of real wonders. Now if the two of us were to collaborate, there’s no telling what sort of fabulous tale we could conjure. A $30,00 advance: is that a large sum, I wonder? Might we be able with such a sum to purchase Sir Toby’s from that closefisted scoundrel who…"

But now the fog that had been settling over the Sage’s imaginings became impenetrable to the probings of our most perspicacious narrator. Leaving the slack-jawed Old Man to his dreams, he strolled silently toward the prow of the boat.

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by peter wilkinson - 03/07/2008 - 10:52

Excursus (or divagation)

Deep in the bowels of the OST archives, something stirred. Striking his gavel on the table, the Chairman of the Moderators surveyed the snuffling, harumphing and throat-clearing of the committee members which accompanied their rude awakening from a barely concealed snooze.

The Chairman spoke, peering over his horn-rimmed National Health (1948) spectacles.

" Members of the committee, I bring you ‘Divagation’. According to the regrettably inexorable progress of technology, our on-line resources, WordReference.com in particular, define it thus: a turning aside (of your course or attention or concern); "a diversion from the main highway"; "a digression into irrelevant details"; "a deflection from his goal"; "a message that departs from the main subject" . We therefore raise no objections to its inclusion in this, if I may say so, rather lamentably inconclusive post?

Wearily, a row of hands was raised to indicate the assent of the committee.

The decision was recorded and pneumatically transferred to the archives. The clock ticked. Dust settled. The bone-numbing tedium of lexicographical surveillance and research was resumed.

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

End of Excursus

Divagation and Deus ex Machina loquit

I had never heard of ‘divagation’ until a couple of days ago, when I came across it in Alan Bennett’s ‘The Uncommon Reader’ (part of the Trappist’s holiday reading material). The following day it appeared in John Doyle’s post. An uncanny extra-sensorily perceived cyber-coincidence?

End of Divagation - Deus in Machina reintravit

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by peter wilkinson - 06/07/2008 - 08:55

The gentle put-putting of The Pride of the River Wey soothed the senses as it glided upstream from the provincial redoubt of Guildford into deepest Surrey. On the foredeck, seated in a row in four deckchairs, the quadrumvirate partook of their ease, occasionally swatting a low-hanging branch out of the way as it tickled their faces.

The Trappist turned over to page 76 of ‘The Uncommon Reader’:

“But more and more now the Queen began to take books out of her own libraries - Balzac, Turgenev, Fielding, Conrad, books which she once would have thought beyond her, but which now she sailed through, pencil in hand, and in the process, incidentally, becoming reconciled even to Henry James, whose divagations she now took in her stride.”

“So what’s the plot?” questioned the Antipodean, pulling his cloak even more tightly around him, despite the summer sunshine.

“All is proceeding as planned,” said the Elderly Sage emolliently, puffs of smoke from his long clay pipe forming ethereal strands over the river as the motion of the boat carried them. “Thanks to the divagation which I can hold myself personally responsible for, we are now safely back on this side of the river. Normal service has been resumed.”

“And we can all retreat into our riverside burrows,” said the Trappist, looking up from his book.

“Hardly,” said the Sage. I would take for myself the role of the good Badger, whose home, of course, was in the Wild Woods. You my dear Trappist are the poor bumbling Mole. Our antipodean friend will have to content himself with the role of the Rat. And our Western colleague finds himself in the slightly inflated character of the loveable Toad, whose penchant for fast motor cars is only surpassed by a predilection for theological argument.”

“And the weasels?” said the Eastern Monk, two ferrety eyes blinking through his deeply enfolded cowl.

The question was left unanswered, suspended somewhere between Shalford Meadows and St Catharine’s Mount. Farncombe Boathouse undid me. At Godalming I raised my knees, supine on the floor of a narrow canoe. After the event, he promised me ‘a new start’. I made no comment. What should I resent? On Margate Sands I can connect nothing with nothing. To Carthage then I came, burning, burning, burning, burning. O Lord Thou pluckest me out. O Lord Thou pluckest. Burning.

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by peter wilkinson - 15/07/2008 - 11:57

While the Trappist, the Eastern Monk and the Antipodean pondered developments from the comfort of their deckchairs, the Pride of the River Wey now being temporarily moored at Godalming wharf, the Sage quietly slipped ashore and made his way, furtively, to the Rowbarge. In the murky interior of the hostelry, he sat down alongside another cloaked figure at a small table in a recess, hidden from prying eyes.

“So you think it’s working, then?” said the other figure, easily identifiable by the cosmopolitan tone of voice as the Westerner.

“Like a dream! Pint of Old Speckled Hen please. What’s yours?” he addressed his theological companion as the barmaid approached them to take orders.

“Oh, Pimms No. 1 for me.” The barmaid retreated to the far side of the bar. “But don’t you think you’re taking it too far with all this Wind in the Willows stuff, and now Last of the Summer Wine?”

“Fuel for theological fantasy!” replied the Sage, contentedly tamping down the weed-like substance with the sweet, sickly aroma into his clay pipe. “It’ll keep them absorbed for hours, if the Moderators don’t latch onto it first. And now we can get down to the real business.”

“So you think they will buy the idea that the Canaan project has been abandoned?”

“Lock, stock and barrel!” said the Sage, deeply inhaling from the pipe, and a little later emitting the trade-mark smoke rings.

“A fresh start, a new creation,” mused the Westerner, “without those irritating interventions and interruptions that have been the bane of my speculations these last five years. So where do we begin?”

“I have the chart,” said the Sage, drawing a strangely familiar scroll from the weather-worn backpack he was in the habit of carrying with him wherever he went. The scroll was opened on the table in front of them, clearly revealing the outline of recognisable, if as yet unexplored territory.

“Here, we crossed the river,” continued the old man, pointing out the place where the Jordan had dried up. “To attempt another entry at this point would be too obvious. My proposal is that we detour to the north, and follow the route taken by Abraham.”

“Cunning!” said the Westerner.

“A pot tilting away from the north,” said the Sage. “A clean sheet, a fresh start - giants in the land notwithstanding. A proclamation to be made to an unsuspecting world. With the advantage of surprise, a paradigm-shift is effected before the powers of conservatism and reaction have time to muster their forces.”

In the hum of the bar, the two cloaked figures took long draughts from their beverages, and as the weed-like substance took its effect, aided by the combination of liquids imbibed, they visualised in their minds’ eyes the interesting future which was rolling out before them.

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by peter wilkinson - 24/07/2008 - 09:26

The clapped-out old bus careering crabwise on a chassis distorted by many collisions roared down the unmade road to the little Arab village amid clouds of dust and diesel fumes, and screeched to a standstill just before the village square. On board, sacks of produce, bundles of chickens tethered by their legs and the odd goat and passenger lurched forwards as the bus came to a violent halt.

Two figures in particular were also violently woken from half-sleep, and grabbing their hand luggage, made their way to the front of the vehicle past the various obstacles now scattered across the floor, observed as they did so by wizened faces under ancient keffiyehs, or eyes peering through naqibs of various dark hues.

As the Sage and the Westerner stood by the roadside looking forlornly at this latest staging-post in their adventures, the bus roared off. Waves of heat hit them from the village square in the late afternoon sunshine. The square itself consisted of shops bespeaking a rural peasant economy, and the odd kafeinon where elderly men sipped tea from small glasses, or noisily played backgammon on intricately carved boards. At such a gathering place the pair sat down and ordered tea. Sullen, suspicious eyes stared at them from adjacent tables.

“So this is our inconspicuous entry into the land,” remarked the Westerner sardonically. “A pity you had not realised beforehand that the biblical account does not state exactly where and how Abraham made entry.”

“Patience!” inveighed the Sage, unrolling his ancient scroll on the table before them. “Any topographical map clearly shows that there is only one viable route south-west from Damascus, with pasture and watering sufficient for the large herds which Abraham had bow now acquired.”

“Precisely!” muttered the Westerner. “Down the Bekaa Valley along the river Litani, where we are as likely to end up hostages in the tradition of Waite, Keenan and McCarthy as enter Canaan. I can already feel the memoirs and publishing deals coming on. Besides, this is rampant Hezbollah country. We are sitting ducks, dressed like a couple of conspirators at the Guy Fawkes plot.”

To confirm his thoughts, a poster, one of many in the square, of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah لسيد حسن نصرالله, spiritual leader of Hezbollah in Lebanon, beamed down at them from a nearby lamp-post, as if he was already welcoming them to some darkened cellar of East Beirut for prolonged interment.

“The route is quite clear,” said the Sage, perusing the chart. “Between the Way of the King to the East, and the Via Maris to the West, Abraham broke across country to enter the land, forging a trail down to Shechem before setting up his tent between Bethel and Ai. He could only have gained access via the Bekaa, avoiding the precipitous cliffs of the Golan on the one side, and the Hermon on the other.”

“And which resort of ill-fame will be graced by our presence tonight?” asked the Westerner, observing the decline of the sun behind the buildings on the far side of the square.

“Follow me!” said the Sage, gathering his belongings, and eyeing a run-down hostel in a dark corner of the square, a blistered bill-board proclaiming in peeling paint over its entrance: ‘Ali’s High Class Kebab Restaurant and Hotel’. With considerable misgivings, the Westerner followed the elderly man, who made his way, with lurching gait and clattering of sticks, in that direction.

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by peter wilkinson - 27/07/2008 - 11:17

It had been a dreadful night. The company in the kebab restaurant had not been congenial. The spiced oriental kebab had not agreed with the two European stomachs, and to say that it kept repeating during the night would be a euphemism of considerable proportions. About the sanitary arrangements, the less said the better. The beds were ancient, with horse-hair mattresses supported on a rusty spring base. One of the beds had a leg which was loose, and the slightest movement threatened its total collapse. Then there was the muezzin, whose strange, enchanting, melancholic call came during the night and before dawn. Its appeal was lost on the two travellers, who stumbled bleary-eyed out of bed well before their usual hour.

The Westerner peered out of the window overlooking the square, which was already filling with vendors, stalls and produce for the market that day. The Sage sat on the edge of the bed, and sank into a reverie. Perhaps he had set too much store on the Westerner’s theological theories - this obsession with the continuation of the promise to Abraham, the survival of the people of God, the new creation. The river Wey and the soft verdure of Surrey under an English sky now seemed very appealing. Where were their three compatriots, he wondered, whom he had abandoned at Godalming aboard ‘The Pride of the River Wey’?

A sudden knock at the door jolted the Sage out of his reverie.

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by peter wilkinson - 11/08/2008 - 12:40

The Westerner brushed past the old man to open the door. On the landing stood three figures – but it was not the remaining three of the pentavirate. They stared into the room then asked, together, apparently, yet with only one voice: “Do we wait here all morning, or are you going to invite us in?” The Westerner gestured vaguely with his hand, and the three entered – with some difficulty as the room was not large. They sat down on the bed, not leaving enough room for the elderly man, who rose stiffly to his feet.

“And where is the meal prepared for us?” asked the trio – again, in unison, yet with just the one voice.

“Oh, scrambled eggs and coffee, downstairs in the restaurant until 9.00,” said the Westerner – assuming this was an error which could now swiftly be cleared up.

The trio looked at each other – which was odd, as each managed simultaneously to look the other in the eye, even though this was a physical and mathematical impossibility. And they each, sadly, it seemed, shook their heads, and fumbling within their garments, produced a solitary kebab, which was passed from one to the other to be consumed. Then one (or was it the three?) spoke:

“The aged woman will be with child in a year’s time. The promise is unchanging. The blessing will be fulfilled.”

The three looked round the room – puzzled, it seemed, by what they saw, and by the two occupants of the room in particular. They looked at each other again, and simultaneously rose to their feet, saying:

“Hospitality is not what it used to be. The youth of today, tut tut! The taxi will collect you from the entrance to the souk. Our work here is done.”

And with that they simultaneously left the room, jostling each other clumsily as they tried to go through the narrow door together.

The Sage and the Westerner looked at each other. Just at that moment, the William Tell overture struck up from deep within the Westerner’s cloak, and he fumbled for his phone distractedly.

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by peter wilkinson - 11/08/2008 - 17:32

Excursus

Those entering the hallowed portals of this site and paying scrupulous attention to this unfolding tale, which James Joyce might have called a ‘neandertall tale of a story’, will not fail to observe that it is, of course, a profound commentary, in allegorical form, on the developing posts and comments which surround (and overtake) it. It is perhaps supremely a commentary on the views and opinions of of the one presented as the Westerner, whose identity is cloaked in anonymity to forestall litigation.

End of excursus

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by peter wilkinson - 12/08/2008 - 11:49

The call was from the taxi driver, demanding in gutteral Arabic/English the whereabouts of his clients, whose birth and ancestry he called volubly into doubt, and that failing their immediate appearance he would without hesitation proceed to his next fare. The gunning of the engine of his ancient Mercedes could be heard across the square through the window.

The Westerner and the Sage speedily shouldered their backpacks, and with no time to ponder the significance of their recent visitation hurried down the evil smelling stairwell and out into the light of day. They flung themselves into the vehicle, one in front, one on the rear seat, which immediately roared around the square scattering goats, vendors and squawking chickens, and proceeded at speed up the unmade road out of the village, to the accompaniment of Arabic music from the car radio. Its cadences were strangely alien to the western ears of the two passengers.

The Westerner put in place an earpiece which was attached to a blackberry hidden deep in the folds of his garment. With a sardonic snort, he turned round to the Sage in the rear seat. "They’re back on the new creation and kingdom of God thread!" he shouted, over the raucous music and roaring of the vehicle as it climbed out of the valley on the rough, unmade road. "Dust in their eyes! We are shortly to retrace through the steps of the patriarch, the fons et origo of the new creation, the true criteria through which its current significance can be perceived, from the critical realist narrative/historical perspective which we have been developing: a hermeneutic for the postmodern era."

The Sage settled back into the voluminous bench seat for what he suspected would turn out to be more than a bumpy ride.

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by john doyle - 13/08/2008 - 06:50

Extra-diegetic intrusion:

Earlier in this story Peter Wilkinson stepped briefly out of the narrative stream to note an uncanny coincidence converging on the word "divagation," an infrequently used but perfectly legitimate element of the English language. Peter informed his readers that, within a week of his first encounter with this woefully underutilized deverbal noun, someone else used it in this very thread. Of course the nominal convergence to which Peter drew our attention pales in comparison with — well, with practically any other coincidence under the sun, to be frank. Still, once this sort of quirky trajectory begins tunneling its erratic way through the intersubjective humus, it tends to resurface in the most unexpected times and places.

This morning over breakfast my wife was prattling on about some book she’d been enjoying. Absorbed in more erudite matters, touching as I recall on the texture of the peach I was then eating, I nodded in pleasant agreement with something the poor dear found quite amusing, as apparently did our daughter. "The real queen of England?" my daughter asked, a question that seemed odd enough to merit my investing a bit more of my valuable attention. "No," my wife responded, "this is a fictional queen. She’s begun reading books from the library." "What," at last I was forced to ask, "are you talking about?" "The Uncommon Reader," my wife informed me — "it’s by Alan Bennett. You know: he wrote The Clothes They Stood Up In." "Did I read that?" "Don’t you remember, just before we moved to France, we both read it?" But the difficulty in retrieving the memory proved to much for me, and I plunged my attention into my bowl of granola.

Later in the day, as I was looking for distraction from pressing but unimportant concerns, my glance fell on the book perched atop a side table in the living room: The Uncommon Reader. Sluggishly the synapses began twitching, the neural pathways stammered erratically, until at last the vaguest remembrance began to emerge. Could it be? I flipped open the notebook computer and headed for Open Source Theology. To my surprise, the very latest of the "latest comments" took me to a new installment in the post I was seeking: "The Demise of Sir Toby’s." I scrolled up through the thread until I found what I was looking for. Sure enough: The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett — the very book in which Peter first read the word "divagation."

When my wife returned to the room I asked her if she remembered anything about Sir Toby’s. She did. I told her about the coincidence, pulling up the quote Peter had pasted into his earlier comment which included the word, formerly so obscure, that now demanded attention. I read the Bennett passage aloud: "’…in the process, incidentally, becoming reconciled even to Henry James, whose divagations she now took in her stride.’ It’s on page 76 — have you gotten that far yet?" My wife reached for the thin volume and opened it to the place where the bookmark was inserted. "No!" Dumbfounded (well, maybe that’s overstating it a bit), she turned the open book toward me. With a tingling sense of the inevitable I read the number printed at the bottom of the page.

Seventy-six!

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by peter wilkinson - 13/08/2008 - 13:29

As clear an illustration as one is likely to find of the ‘gaia’ principle - that everything is strangely connected in some mysterious way, the earth having an underlying unifying intelligence.

A bit like Ian McEwan’s ‘Saturday’ - where we are posed with the alternatives of a series of entirely random, disconnected events, or some kind of unusual but hidden connectedness - as suggested by the brain surgeon being given a patient to operate on who was also the intruder to his home, and whom he has just caused to fall headlong down his staircase.

76 has now become a number invested with an aura of strange significance - just as 42 is the answer to the question of the meaning of the universe in ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’. 42 is of course the multiple of 7 and 6.

Seven - the biblical number of completion; six - the biblical number of humanity. Hmmmm.

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by shiert - 13/08/2008 - 22:18

I think there is a less mysterious explanation. There are about 500,000 words in the English language, and I have noted that between you and John Doyle all of them get used over some short period of time. It stands to reason that if you use all the words of the language there will be occasions when you use words that others have used, even simultaneously. Turn down the music from Twilight Zone.

Laughing all the way.

Peace to you both.

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by john doyle - 14/08/2008 - 00:30

Yes Shiert, even now the fog of mysticism is lifting from my living room table. Inveterate empiricist that I am, I had to see the passage in question for myself, and I’m loath to report my findings: nowhere on page 76 does the fated word appear. In my wife’s edition the cited text begins at the bottom of page 73 and extends to the top of page 74. Thus it is that mystery cults arise from nothing more significant than scribal error. I guess I’d better start gathering up the tracts I dropped off at the laundromats and bus stops…

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by peter wilkinson - 14/08/2008 - 09:10

That’s because you have the softback edition. Look in the hardback edition, which should take precedence over the softback, and it’s page 76. Nevertheless, page 73 opens up yet further layers of hidden significance - in which we move from the meaning of life (42 as the multiple of 7 and 6) to 7 and 3, signifying completion and revelation in biblical numerology. Gaia again (‘again’ being an anagram of Gaia minus the ‘n’, whose significance merits further investigation).

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by shiert - 14/08/2008 - 15:37

Whence comes the rule the hardback edition should take precedence over the softback edition. Seems to me consideration of this rule has profound theological implications. Do you mean this as a universal rule, an absolute rule or a rule that only applies in this particular circumstance? If it is universal, just think of all the citations to authority that might be vitiated. Also, since the softback is the affordable edition, it most certainly is the “peoples’ ” edition—it is the vernacular, if you will. Are you saying the vernacular is not authoritative? And what about this page-numbering system that your comment pre-supposes? This is deep. I may comment on this point Gaia.

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by peter wilkinson - 15/08/2008 - 10:38

Shiert - a profound unmasking of my non-democratic, autocratic prejudices. I am as vitiated by your comment as an insect pinned to a display board, or being prepared for display with formaldehyde in a bottle sitting on a collector’s shelf. It’s time I got back to the story: the demise of Sir Toby’s.

By the way, are you really the incisive Shiert, whose penetrating insights are used to such devastating effect, or the winsome Tracy, whose sylph-like person one imagines skipping through the green meadows of wholesome family-rated Disney films?

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by shiert - 15/08/2008 - 18:36

I am not a Grecian Urn. Rather, an obelisk. My ego says like the Washington Monument. Reality says like the squatty one in St. Peter’s Square.

I see myself rather more like the mouse character in Fantasia.

Back to Sir Toby’s.

Cheers.

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by john doyle - 16/08/2008 - 01:23

Yes by all means: on with the demise! off with their heads! And yet I cannot but wonder about the two-page difference between the two editions. Solely by virtue of their fatter purses are the hardened aristocrats granted extra pages withheld from the lumpen masses? I long to know — no, I demand to know what secret knowledge these two occult pages contain; what wretched excess, what obscene supplement, what unjust advantage is granted the ‘sheep’ that keeps them safely grazing in their microcosmic greener pastures without being overrun by the goats?!

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by peter wilkinson - 16/08/2008 - 13:26

There you have it in a nutshell: the difference between the democratic, egalitarian, but essentially populist and plebeian culture and sensibility of the northern Americas, as encapsulated, no doubt, by the paperback, and the class-ridden, privilege-laden, unreconstructed and sclerotically patrician society of the mother-country - as represented, by the hardback.

The extra pages? Promoting the illusion of privilege, the hardback increases the width of the line-spacing to add extra bulk, the better to convey a perception of superiority over its shorter and therefore inferior paperback colonial country-cousin.

The wider line-spacing of the hardback is also easier on the eye, which is another way in which class oppression is perpetuated - the paperback’s narrower line-spacing inflicting premature myopia on the working classes, who are thereby prevented from reading the road-signs to the local ‘big houses’ to wreak revolutionary mayhem.

The entire issue is of course summed up in the subject matter of The Uncommon Reader: where a monarch (the Queen of England), steps out of her palace to visit a common mobile library.

I don’t see where Grecian urns come into all this, but let’s not open up another divagation or diegesis.

Anyway, back to the story (sorry, narrative).

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by john doyle - 16/08/2008 - 15:23

I’m afraid we’ve wandered down yet another garden path. Again I took the trouble actually to look at the book in question; again the hard evidence throws cold water on the fire of armchair speculation (or something). My wife’s copy of the book is, as it happens, a hardback: first printing, American edition, Farrar, Strauss & Giroux. Though I have no tangible evidence with which to support my surmise, I’m guessing that you, Peter, have read the British hardback edition, Faber & Faber Ltd. Nonetheless, your general adumbrations appertaining to national class distinctions still hold water regardless of the substance from which the urns have been wrought (or something).

On with the demise!

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by peter wilkinson - 16/08/2008 - 17:22

Holed below the waterline! Game set and match! The demised must be demystified forthwith, before the increasingly threadbare cult of the gaia receives further rents and gashes. Let the adumbrations and appurtenances of today become the aperçus of yesterday. Let urns be unconfined. On with the demise!

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by john doyle - 16/08/2008 - 18:31

Oh, and Peter…

I don’t see where Grecian urns come into all this

…we must acknowledge that overtones are constantly being sounded both above and below the rational and empirical registers, as the good Herr Doctor Freud made known. We must also observe, with Shiert, that Saint Peter’s isn’t just a squatty obelisk: it is a magnificent and dominating superstructure as well as an ornate and capacious chamber.

Inward and onward!

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by peter wilkinson - 16/08/2008 - 20:31

Off the beaten track would not be an unfair description of the small village of Génerést, located in the foothills of the Pyrenees some 120km southwest of Toulouse. It is approached, once the A64 Autoroute is abandoned, through the charming, and in sequence diminishing in size and stature, towns and villages of la France profonde - Saint Gaudens, Montréjeau, Saint Mazères de Neste, Aventignan and finally Lombres, whence it lies a further 3.9 km along a narrow lane, the lane itself trailing inconsequentially for 1 or 2 kms more before it is abruptly swallowed up in the entrance to a farm. Beyond this is the head of a valley through which no road proceeds, and along which the road itself has extended. Bucolic would be the word to describe the enchanting scenery and culture of the isolated area. The village itself contained no more than 84 souls, indigenous inhabitants of longstanding, supplemented by one or two second-homers from Toulouse, and seekers of the better life from overseas.

It might be wondered why and how the Trappist came to be seated in the small courtyard of one of the tumbledown cottages of the village one summer evening, contentedly absorbed in his holiday reading (Alan Bennett’s The Uncommon Reader, page 77), stared at by bovine observers equally contentedly chewing the cud in a field just opposite the main gate of the courtyard, on the far side of a small road.

Holed below the waterline would not be a cliché when applied to The Pride of the River Wey, on which the remaining three of the pentavirate had been seated only 48 hours previously. The scuttling of the vessel had been accomplished, of course, to create a diversion so that the three could proceed speedily to the next scene in the rapidly unfolding drama. For the Trappist, it was a short journey from Godalming to London Gatwick, whence by Easyjet a relatively inexpensive, if not commodious, flight could be obtained to Toulouse, and thence, by means which would be tedious to recount, to the house in the courtyard warmed by the evening sun where he now partook of his leisure.

At that moment, the rural peace was interrupted by a roar as a small vehicle of the kind only ever seen in the remotest parts of rural France swung into the courtyard, out of which debouched the Eastern Monk and the Antipodean with their luggage. Somewhat irritated at having his solitary contemplations intruded upon, the Trappist beckoned the two to the table, as the small French conveyance noisily reversed into the road and disappeared in a cloud of dust.

It was left to the Antipodean to explain the arrival of the pair, the Monk being totally absorbed in his Vespers. The two had created a false trail by attending a Promenade concert on the evening of the sinking of The Pride of the River Wey (a programme of Janaček including the Glagolitic Mass - BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, supplemented by the London Symphony Chorus, conducted by Pierre Boulez). The ruse had worked, and they had thence made their own way to the remote hamlet. His account was, inevitably, punctuated by a series of biblical curses and antipodean expletives, to repeat which decency would forbid.

As the sun declined, and the chirping chorus of cicadas struck up their evening accompaniment, the three pondered their next moves over a pleasantly entertaining bottle or two of the local vin rouge, whose fruity aftertaste was redolent of the warm Pyrenean sun baking the grateful sloping vineyards with its wholesome, life-giving rays. At an indeterminate hour, each made their way to a rural bower, where their sleep was instant, deep and refreshing.

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by john doyle - 17/08/2008 - 19:37

Bravo! Huzzah! Well told! Now let me relay a phrase which I just read in a blog post:

"…cheek by jowl with his tendentious, unjustified divagation…"

What’s that? The story isn’t finished? Oh, well by all means carry on then. To the demise!

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by peter wilkinson - 18/08/2008 - 11:04

The narrative, prompted by AP’s inauguration of another website, and intended as a teasing commentary on this and ‘the new creation’ theology, as well as non-trinitarian alternatives to Christian orthodoxy and other developments on the (OST) site, might seem to have divagated itself into a non sequitur. The Sage and the Westerner are heading towards the Israeli/Lebanese border in a Mercedes taxi, following in Abraham’s footsteps, to explore the promised land as a progenitor and prototype of the new creation. The other three are stuck in a cul de sac in rural France. What next?

Maybe it’s time to make an appeal for help. I was not waving but drowning. Perhaps the collaborative instincts of contributors to this site could come together with a rescue package for the narrative, or at the very least, a deigesis (shouldn’t that be diegesis?).

Will the Trappist ever be able to get on with his holiday reading? Will we ever learn the true nature of the Antipodean’s expletives and profanities? Is the Sage’s chart of the wanderings of Abraham a reliable guide to the relaunch of the New Creation project? Will the three of the pentavirate make an unexpected reunion with the two - perhaps emerging from the back seat of the taxi?

And the Westerner himself - where precisely will the project lead him, which he pursues with such dogged determination?

I throw out the challenge and invitation, perhaps stalling for time.

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by peter wilkinson - 10/09/2008 - 11:26

Steam pouring from the bonnet (trans. hood) of the Mercedes and water gathering on the road beneath told its own story. The driver sat on a nearby rock, playing with his worry beads, muttering Arabic curses to himself. The Westerner was pacing up and down, trying to get a signal for his cell phone. The Sage stood where the road crested the hill, peering through some ancient opera glasses into the distance.

"Magnificent!" muttered the Sage to himself, and turning round, beckoned the Westerner, who had finished his attempts to summon a vehicle rescue service. Ahead, the border of Lebanon gave way to a splendid panorama: fertile fields, small settlements with well-tended gardens, and clusters of palms and fig trees. It was as biblical as the illustrations on boxes of yuletide dates.

The Sage’s forehead then contracted, and a frown spread across his countenance. The encampments of hostile forces could already be seen amidst the idyllic setting. He began to quote from memory: "When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations - the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Hivites, Jebusites and Preterists - - -"

"Hyper or moderate?" questioned the young man, now at the Sage’s side, and taking the eyepieces from him.

"Comprehensive, thorough-going and radical," replied the Sage. "We have our work cut out. The anachronism will have to be explained, of course. The Abrahamic narrative seems to have collided with the Joshuan narrative. But we’ll get round that."

The Westerner was consulting his blackberry. "The take-over appears to be thorough-going. We have decisions to make: to follow in the foosteps of Abraham towards the new creation, or enlist with Joshua in a cleansing of the land - which would also be a controversial precursor to the new creation."

Looking behind them, the pair saw a battered pick-up truck in the distance, signalling the approach of back-up for the vehicle overheating problem. The narrative could continue.

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by peter wilkinson - 11/09/2008 - 11:24

Wedged uncomfortably between the Antipodean and the Eastern Monk on the centre seats, the Trappist turned down the page of The Uncommon Reader and stowed it in his travel bag as the elderly McDonnell Douglas MD88 made its final approach for descent into Rafic Hariri International Airport.

It had been a rushed journey north from Genérést to Toulouse, and thence on the infrequent, erratic and accident prone Syrian Airways flight to Beirut, and not improved by the interruption to what the Trappist had assumed would be a carefree couple of weeks indulging his predilection for holiday reading - the books he had bought from Sussex Stationers earlier in the summer. He sighed, wondering if he would ever get beyond page 84 of The Uncommon Reader.

Then his mind turned to that obscure text message received from the Westerner, apparently stranded somewhere near a hilltop in the arid badlands of southern Lebanon - "the ‘emerging’ discussion will easily get overrun by rampaging barbarian hordes swinging their sharp-edged agendas." What on earth could he be up to now, pondered the recluse, clutching the armrests as the aircraft hit the runway and the parched landscape of the maiden and cracked reinforced concrete buildings raced past.

Immigration was a nightmare. The Antipodean was drawn forcibly to one side and subjected to fierce questioning for having glared at the passport officials. The arrivals hall was seething with a myriad of hot, perspiring bodies, and above all was the deafening cacophony of undecipherable middle-eastern voices.

The car hire desk was easy to find, and after the formalities they were handed the keys and taken round to the back of the main terminal building. There they were pointed to their allotted transport - a battered, beige coloured pick-up truck, with a bench seat to accommodate the three in a row. Throwing their luggage into the rear of the truck, they clambered aboard. The Antipodean at the wheel gunned the ancient engine into life amid a thick cloud of black, noxious diesel fumes. The vehicle lurched towards the exit, three pairs of eyes searching for the sign for the main road south to the border.

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by peter wilkinson - 17/09/2008 - 15:20

Following the surreal reunion of the three with the two on the dusty road leading to the border of South Lebanon, the drama had been unfolding rapidly. A border crossing was effected with remarkable speed - despite scowls and grimaces from both Lebanese and Israeli border guards and customs officials. However, what threatened to be a lengthy dispute about the Trappist’s summer reading was defused when it emerged that the Westerner spoke fluent Arabic, and it could be explained that The Uncommon Reader was not a US inspired counter-terrorist training manual.

The Banias tributary of the River Jordan had yet to be seen, flowing as it did from the foothills of Mount Hermon in the Antilebanon, and at whose confluence with the Hasbani and the Dan, the River Jordan proper emerged. Between the border and Lake Huleh, the varied landscape of northern Israel held only a fleeting attraction for the five, whose rendez-vous with the first of the seven peoples in the land demanded their attention.

But as the pick-up came to a halt at the site where the marauding hordes with their sharp-edged agendas had been observed, they were not to be seen. ‘The Lord will grant that the enemies who rise up against you will be defeated before you,’ mused the Sage, as he surveyed the scene. ‘They will come at you from one direction, but flee from you in seven.’

"Perhaps so," observed the Westerner. "The questions for us, however, remain twofold. First, are we to pursue the Abrahamic or the Joshuan narrative, given this fortuitous turn of events. And second, where are we to spend the night?"

The Trappist looked up from his book, and snapped it shut, as he arose and adjusted his varifocals. "The hospitality of Dan summons us," he announced. "While our Western friend was charming the keyholders at the border gate, I was able to slip into Tourist Information and book a small hostel for the five of us. I trust my endeavours on our behalf will not prove unsatisfactory."

"Dan it is then," said the Westerner, surveying a declining sun over the western hills. "And the end of another remarkable day - preterites and preterists notwithstanding."

So saying, the five climbed back into their non-too comfortable or commodious transport, and sallied forth - or whatever one does at the end of the day in northern Israel. From behind some conveniently located rocks nearby, several pairs of eyes followed their departure intently.

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by peter wilkinson - 03/10/2008 - 11:33

It turned out that Dan was not a town built on the ancient site of Laish, the home of a ‘peaceful and unsuspecting people’ razed to the ground by the Danites seeking to grab a piece of inheritance in Judges 18, but a kibbutz, run on socialist egalitarian lines.

The five had been ushered into a huge refectory, noisy and crowded, which like the kibbutz itself, brought to mind images of youth hostels in the 1950’s and 60’s, but on a much grander scale.

Food was collected on austerity enamel plates, and hot drink slurped into enamel mugs from a hatch in a serving line. The few hundred or so diners sat on benches at long trestle tables. The austerity meal (consisting mainly of boiled cabbage and meat of an unidentified nature) was quickly despatched, and followed by hearty communal singing of rousing Israeli songs, led by an accordianist, and with much synchronised swaying of bodies on the benches and banging of hands and mugs on the tables.

Sometime later, the five followed a subsection of the crowd to a communal dormitory, where bedbunks were arranged in long rows three tiers high. There was a rowdy queue for ablution facilities, but everything was carried out at high speed and with much din, the reason being soon made clear. A banging on something like a dustbin lid up and down the corridors was quickly followed by a sudden blackout of all the lights. Those not already in their bunks, which included the five, had to find their way in the dark, to the accompaniment of much cursing and muttering.

Scarcely it seemed had the lights been turned out, than the dustbin-lid routine was resumed, and the rush to the ablutions repeated. Fields had to be tended from first light. Breakfast was a rerun of the previous evening in the refectory, except that maize porridge took the place of boiled cabbage. Then, like the youth hostel system of yore, work duties were assigned. The five were taken off for duties in the fields, potato picking. They joined others in a trailer towed by a tractor some considerable distance to a field which seemed to stretch to the horizon, along which ran long lines of furrows. They were each assigned a sack and furrow, and followed others in scrabbling for the potatoes.

“So which narrative is this supposed to be?” hissed the antipodean through his teeth at the Westerner. “Some new creation this is turning out to be. It’s about as creative as a kangaroo’s kick on a hot day in the outback.”

The Westerner kept his counsel, tossing the occasional potato into his sack in a desultory fashion. The Sage had already sat down on an adjacent furrow and was mopping his brow. The Trappist was consulting his BlackBerry.

Just at that moment a voice interrupted them. Standing a short distance away was one looking at them quizzically, dressed in a mixture of middle-eastern and western garb, and looking like unto a son of man.

“Which narrative would you care to join?” he asked of the five. “I can offer you the Abrahamic, the Mosaic, the Joshuan, the Monarchic, the Exilic (pre, post, second-temple and apocalyptic); or,” he paused, apparently for dramatic effect, “the son of man.”

“Quite honestly,” said the Westerner, “We’d appreciate anything to get us out of here and back on the road south. As you can see, our circumstances have become somewhat straitened, not to say desperate.”

“Appropriately enough,” said the figure, twiddling the tassles on his prayer shawl casually, “since you are so close to the tel of Dan.”

By a small mound, which was indeed the tel of that name, an ancient taxi could now be seen, its engine running. The figure led the five to the conveyance, and leaving their potato sacks behind, they climbed in. The soft vinyl seats were a welcome rest from the back-breaking labour of the field. The figure flicked the column mounted gear change into first, and bounced forward up a rutted track and onto the main highway south.

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by peter wilkinson - 06/10/2008 - 11:39

The benefit of the column gearchange was soon appreciated, as it permitted three to sit abreast on a front bench seat, three in the rear. After a few miles, the ancient vehicle turned off the main highway onto an unmarked road, which it followed in a great loop back towards the foothills of Hermon, and towards the border.

There was no sign of habitation, but something was indicated when a sign, in modern Hebrew, bearing the inscription: Banias, 5 Kilometres, was passed. Soon, the vehicle pulled up on rough unmade ground. The strange figure who had provided the five with an escape from work duties at the kibbutz climbed out and beckoned them to follow him.

The track zig-zagged across a field, slightly uphill, until it opened out before a river, which seemed to emerge directly from the foot of the mountain across the entire length of a low stone wall, some 30-40 metres across.

"Panias!" uttered the Sage, more well versed in the geography and mythology of the ancient Greek world than the others. "The reputed home of Pan, giving rise to the town of that name; later the capital of Herod Philip and renamed - "

"Caesarea Philippi," contributed the Trappist, who already had his interlinear New Testament open at Matthew 16. "And allow me to point out, if I may, an interesting conjunction of terms. Verse 13 - Jesus asks of the disciples: ‘Who do people say the Son of Man is?’ Peter replies, after some suggestions from the others, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ Son of Man, Son of God. A coincidental repetition of purely messianic terminology; or something more - a recognition in the one person of the human and the divine?"

The Trappist was now warming to his subject. "The background, of course, informs the terminology. Jesus deliberately took his disciples to this out of the way place to create a context for his question. Pan was the god worshipped at this place, his home supposedly being in the cave through which the headwater of the Jordan issues. Jesus takes the titles Son of Man, Son of God, and deliberately juxtaposes them here, providing through the context a level of meaning which went beyond the meaning somewhat haphazardly given in preceding scriptural and historical usages."

The Trappist gave the Westerner a significant look. The Westerner turned away, shaking his cloak irritably. The others, including their as yet unidentified taxi driver, also looked at him, waiting expectantly for a response.

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by peter wilkinson - 26/10/2008 - 14:04

To be seated at Florian’s in St Mark’s Square on an unseasonably warm late October afternoon might seem an abrupt transition from Banias in the northern Galilee, but the Trappist was completely at home, sipping cappuccino coffee contentedly - even at 7.50 Euros a cup.

In the background, an orchestral band was playing oddly dissonant pieces of a Balkan or Greek origin, with the occasional strain of the Russian Romantics thrown in. To his far right, the Trappist viewed the ancient façade of St Mark’s basilica with approval, even though it was an unharmonious match with the classicism of the Square - Europe’s largest drawing-room, as Napoleon allegedly had it.

Still clutching his plastic bag from Sussex Stationers in Guildford, England, the Trappist withdrew his hardback copy of The Uncommon Reader, the page turned down at 77. Reverentially, he opened the book, and with a sigh of contentment that emerged from the depths of his somewhat unsubstantial being, prepared to indulge himself in some uninterrupted reading, following the extraordinary hiatus which had involved him in adventures extending from Godalming to Beirut and beyond.

A flurry of pigeons momentarily disturbed his devotions. Out of the corner of his eye, something engaged his attention. He looked up. Surely it could not be - but indeed it was: from the far corner of the square, three figures were coming into view. The fiery red beard of the one, the dark cloak and cowl of another, and the lurching gait, familiar clatter of sticks and bard-like countenance of the third confirmed his suspicions. But before he had time to execute a hasty departure, the scraping of a chair at his table and the ensconcement of a fourth cloaked figure foreclosed the possibility of retreat.

"Welcome to the jewel of the Adriatic," came the suave voice of the figure, who placed a neatly wrapped-up parcel of books on the table. "And, if I may say so, let the proceedings of the fourth theological convocation commence - in what could scarcely have been better chosen surroundings. I congratulate you on your choice."

Wearily, the Trappist closed his book, sliding it back into the plastic bag, and slipping it unobtrusively under the table. With resignation, he awaited the destiny which once more seemed to have overtaken him.

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by peter wilkinson - 03/11/2008 - 16:28

It might be thought that the Sala del Maggior Consiglio in the Palazzo Ducale, St Mark’s Square, was a rather grandiose, if not ostentatious, place to be holding the Fourth Theological Convocation. Quite how the arrangements had been squared with the city authorities, and who was the organising hand behind them, remains a mystery even now.

At the precise moment that the Cabal were taking their place on the dais, Tintoretto’s monumental Paradiso providing a somewhat mocking backdrop, perhaps, its crowded heavenly audience spanning the entire width of the wall behind them, theologians of every conceivable hue were proceeding by the Alilaguna waterbus to San Marco, or if their purses did not stretch to it, on the ATVO airport bus, or even the Number 5 Actv local bus, to the Piazzale Roma, thence to be ferried the length of the Grand Canal to St Mark’s piazetta on the Number 1 Vaporetto.

The five, somewhat diminished by the scale of their surroundings, seemed an insignificant and unprepossessing group as they took their places at a long table on the dais, facing the enormous, empty and echoing hall. Neither were they in the best of humours. The Antipodean had been forced to hand over his swag bag at the main entrance, from which he had been able to extract a lap-top only after ferocious remonstrances with security officials, who had clearly been expecting a bribe. The Trappist was plunged into the deepest gloom over the intrusion, yet again, of events which interposed themselves between him and his holiday reading. The Elderly Man had been forced to abandon his plans for a pleasant morning exploring obscure antiquarian cartographic bookshops in unfrequented alleyways of the island. Of the Eastern Monk, none could guess his mood, since his face was hidden deep within the folds of his cowl. Even the Young Man seemed more than normally twitchy.

High above on the richly ornamented ceiling, the Virgin of Veronese’s Apoteosi di Venezia beamed benevolently downwards. Whilst the five tapped furiously at the keyboards of laptops, checking email and updating presentations, the great hall slowly began to fill with delegates, and a susurrating murmur of theological enquiry swelled throughout the august chamber. Claims were staked to chairs, and territorial groups formed around this or that doctrinal distinction; travel anecdotes were swapped and holiday photos exchanged; and so the preliminaries to the great consult began.

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by peter wilkinson - 07/12/2008 - 12:29

In the context of the developing narrative, it might seem somewhat improbable that the Trappist was to be found seated on Finnair flight AY 421 en route for Rovaniemi, the provincial town just outside the Arctic circle in northern Finland, but improbability is the father-in-law of necessity, and necessity the mother of invention.

A hastily boarded connecting flight from London Heathrow had brought him to a grey, darkening Helsinki that late November evening, and the local flight had necessitated an early breakfast at 5.30am the following morning before the 7.30am departure.

His hold-luggage contained the slightly less than life-sized print of Rembrandt’s ‘The Return of the Prodigal Son’, which was to become the focal point of his mission to this out of the way place, sandwiched, as it were, between the Scandinavian west and Russian east, but belonging to neither.

It was still dark as the nearly empty Airbus A320 descended into Rovaniemi airport. Dawn was not until 10.00am at this latitude, and dusk fell at around 2.00pm at this time of year.

The arrivals hall was cosily adorned with installations of a Christmas nature, and a few people seated at the small cafeterias catering for early morning needs.

A few moments later, a tall, slightly stooping, bearded figure was to be seen entering the concourse. Recognition dawned as their eyes met, and the Trappist gathered his bags to meet the approaching person.

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by peter wilkinson - 11/12/2008 - 12:40

Cocooned in the womb-like darkness and warmth of a triple-glazed hyper-insulated Finnish log-house in southern Lapland, the Trappist stirred under his multi-tog duvet. The darkness was disorientating. It could have been any time: 3.00am, 7.00am, 10.00am. In fact it was 9.30am. He hurriedly performed his morning ablutions and scurried, as far as a theologian in academic regalia could be said to scurry, down the pine staircase to the kitchen. It was empty – but a bowl of maize porridge and a pile of brown rye bread had been left for him on the table. Coffee purred and spluttered comfortingly in the percolator, its rich aroma filling the room.

No sounds could be heard from the outside world through the thick, insulated walls of the house, but then there were no sounds to be heard. The outside world was a white-iced cake of smooth, freshly fallen snow, which had been delicately sculpted into fantastical forms, covering the hard edges of the objects beneath, obliterating everything beneath its soft, soothing all-encompassing blanket. No human form or activity was visible; the road could only be discerned by the tracks of the one or two vehicles which had passed to the surrounding isolated houses. Everywhere the boughs of the pine trees were outlandishly decked in thick layers of snow; in the distance through the darkness could just be seen the shimmering snow of the forest-covered hills.

The house felt comfortably insulated from the sounds and activity of the outer world. The Trappist was at peace in this perfect retreat for a recluse. In the adjoining room, Rembrandt’s The Return of the Prodigal had already been fixed to a wooden frame against one of the walls. A small group of acolytes was already sitting expectantly in warm, deeply padded leather armchairs, arranged in a semi-circle facing the picture. A small lectern indicated the Trappist’s expected station. A log fire gave warmth and a comforting glow to the entire room. Candles burned invitingly on a low wooden table.

Windows the entire length of the long side-wall of the room looked out onto the all-surrounding snow and pine trees in the darkness of a northern winter. Stillness, isolation, silence. It was, thought the Trappist, perfect.

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by john doyle - 08/12/2008 - 05:06

This is a very strange narrative. I wonder, when all is said and done, if it will be possible to derive any lessons of enlightenment or edification from it? (I certainly hope not.)

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by peter wilkinson - 15/12/2008 - 12:07

Across a wintry landscape of snow-covered tundra, frozen bogs, stunted snow-laden pine trees and long low hills, a shiny object could be seen in the distance, gliding smoothly on metal runners along tracks scarcely visible through the compacted snow. A troika of reindeer was pulling the conveyance at speed. Across a bench seat behind a curved and ornately decorated splashback sat three figures, muffled from head to foot in thick fur coats.

It could, of course, have been no less than three members of the quadrumvirate who had previously been seen at the 4th theological convention in the sala del maggior consiglia of the Doges Palace in Venice.

“It was all a ruse, of course,” said an elderly figure, whose flowing beard was highlighted by some spectacular icicle formations. He spoke across a figure whose bristling beard could leave no doubt about his identity, to the third figure who was tapping out a message on a BlackBerry, and likewise identifiable, no less by the arcane substance of the message he was composing than by the recognizable cadence of his voice.

“Indeed so,” said the third figure. “And I trust you will have some convincing explanation to offer to our theological comrades whose expectations of enquiry and discussion were so abruptly and rudely disappointed.”

“The greater good, the greater good!” pronounced the Sage, with a guffaw that had been crafted through years of yuletide practice. The figure in the centre said nothing; but his thoughts might have been interpreted from the menacing angle of his bristling eyebrows.

A flock of ptarmigan broke cover and scattered over their heads as the troika sped towards them. A fine spray of frozen snow formed a moving cloud behind them. Ahead, in the distance, the lights of approaching dwellings twinkled against the background of a dark, arctic twilight.

The sense of impending dénoument, a final resolution to a saga vexed with undisclosed inner meaning and mysterious intent, was almost palpable.

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by peter wilkinson - 21/12/2008 - 17:19

Anyway -

The cowled figure dressed in the attire of an eastern monk was sweating profusely as he pushed through row after row of what felt like fur coats, suspended from hangers on rails in the darkness of the cupboard. The suffocating proximity of the fur coats which impeded his progress was compounded by a growing anxiety. “Surely they came this way,” he muttered to himself, as he pressed forwards.

Around his head swirled thoughts of a more abstruse and recondite nature. Was ho huios tou anthropou a later construction retroprojected onto passages in which proto-Aramaic formulations had a very different sense? Were later christological formulae being anachronistically smuggled into passages which bore no such significance? Was the bar (e)nash(a) of Daniel 7:13 being falsely laden with messianic freight imported from later Marcan derivatives? Did the bar adam of Ezekiel have any relevance at all to the bar (e)nash(a) debate – or had it all been a meaningless detour? And what of the Menschensohnbegriff itself?

These thoughts might have continued interminably had the Nestorian not suddenly and forcibly struck his head against a solid, impenetrable barrier in front of him: it was the rear of the cupboard. “There must be a way through,” he thought in desperation. But the strong Italian oak of the Doge’s wardrobe would not yield to the hammer blows of his fists.

There was to be no romantic journey across snow-covered landscapes in a troika that night for the eastern monk.

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Re: The demised is demizen

by peter wilkinson - 23/12/2008 - 00:02

The atmosphere inside the Finnish loghouse, with the great oven stretching from floor to ceiling and radiating a pleasant warmth through the room, might best be summed up by the Danish word hyggelig. There might have been a Finnish, or even a Saame equivalent, but it would have been too long, with too many confusing consonants and vowels.

The Trappist was in full flow, animadverting on the picture of Rembrandt’s Return of the Prodigal Son, which was mounted on the short wall of long room. The acolytes were arranged in a semicircle around him. ‘Lifted straight from Henri Nouwen,’ muttered one to another, not so softly that he could not be heard by the speaker.

‘Inspired by, but not lifted,’ corrected the Trappist. ‘Let us notice the inner dynamics and tensions of Rembrandt’s painting, and his use of the six figures. In the foreground, the son kneels before the old man, whose hands, as it were, are stretched out in patriarchal blessing on the son’s shoulders. The unseeing eyes suggest that his hands are the instrument of sight. From the left upper corner through a diagonal, our gaze is directed to the drama playing out in the foreground. The woman emerging from the shadows; another woman’s face looking round from behind the pillar; a man seated, his eyes indifferent? Or, according to contemporary iconography which linked the two parables, the tax-collector and the Pharisee in the temple – the Pharisee being the tall figure standing in the foreground to the right. Or the elder brother.’

‘A tension is created by the hollow space between the father/son grouping, and the tall figure. It seems to raise a question requiring a resolution. Will the tall figure enter the space, and become part of the reconciliation?’

‘The dissimilarities between Rembrandt’s pictorial narrative and the Luke 15 account are striking. The father occupies a place of stillness and serenity, which he seems to convey to the son. In his blindness, he sees with inner sight. There is no elderly father running to meet the son here. Rather, the son is drawn to a place of peace occupied by the father - within a house, or the temple? The older brother/Pharisee enters the house – and does not, as in the parable, refuse to come in. So far, pure Nouwen.’

At that precise moment, the sleigh drew up outside the house, bells jingling, lanterns swaying, reindeer hooves stamping. There was also much stamping of boots in the entrance lobby and fussy disrobing of cumbersome fur coats by the three visitors. A blast of icy air rushed through the house.

The Trappist looked up in irritation. ‘Why on earth was the old man dressed up in that ridiculous Santa Claus outfit?’ he thought, as the Sage clumsily deposited his bag on the floor in front of them. The young man eyed the walls for internet connectivity, and rapidly resumed the post he had been composing. The antipodean sat down grumpily between two novices on the short leather sofa, causing them to spill mulled wine over their habits.

‘Quite all right, old boy!’ said the old man patronisingly. ‘Carry on in your own time when you are ready!’ The Westerner sat to the rear of the group, in a way which expressed a slight interest, but detachment from the proceedings, as he continued with his work. Soon the party which had just arrived was settled in, consuming hot Finnish coffee, or mulled wine, or roibos tea, as their inclination took them.

‘And so we come to the father/son grouping,’ continued the Trappist, after the short interruption. ‘We notice the son’s head pressed into the folded upper garment of the elderly man – itself suggestive of the Greek New Testament kolpos – where it is the hollow formed by the upper forepart of a loose garment, bound by a girdle and used for carrying or keeping things.’ A stage-whispered ‘Vine’s expository dictionary!’ from an acolyte did not go unheard by the Trappist. ‘Yes!’ he said spinning round, and fixing the junior ordinary with a penetrating gaze. ‘But it is as if he would press the son’s head into that place of blessing, close to his heart.’

‘The only son, who is at the side of the Father,’ the recluse continued, ‘as the NIV so anaemically and misleadingly has it. The only begotten son, which is in the bosom of the Father - our Authorised Version is nearer the mark. What is implied by this word kolpos - the place from which Jesus had come, to which he returned, and demonstrably never left, except for a few brief hours? The rich and and wonderful heritage of our English language is very suggestive, providing us today with a number of words which owe their origins to this Greek word, and displaying various facets of its meaning. Gulf picks up the sense of a bay, with arms of land stretching protectively and encirclingly from its shores. The word also means the front of the body between the arms, and more – the embrace of the arms around the one who is loved. Etymologically from the same root word is to clasp. It is the place where the beloved disciple reclined in the breast of Jesus at the table. It is that place of blessedness so enjoyed, as with Abraham in paradise.’

‘In short, acolyte novices and ordinaries, it is the place, whether enjoyed by Rembrandt himself or not, to which the painting wishes to lead us, drawing on a rich vein of biblical material, from John’s gospel especially.’

‘Where tonight,’ he continued daringly, his gaze sweeping the assembled group, ‘do we find ourselves in the picture? Will we be led to the place of blessedness close to the heart of the Father?’

The pregnant silence was broken by the Old Man. ‘And now the presents!’ he announced – beaming benevolently at the throng. From his sack, he drew books, which were wrapped in festive theological wrapping paper. ‘For our junior novitiates, a copy each of Maurice Casey’s Basic Aramaic for Beginners. So helpful as a foundation for interacting with Casey’s seminal work on the son of man problem.’ It was difficult to tell, from the faces, whether the gifts were received with joy or consternation.

‘For our antipodean friend, the gilt edged, leather bound, hardback edition of Walter Wink’s: The Human Being.’ For the first time that evening, the antipodean looked up, and seemed interested. ‘For the Westerner, Casey’s The solution to the son of man problem. Purely,’ he said, eyeing the Westerner’s furrowed brow as he flicked through the opening credits, ‘so that you may produce compelling evidence as to why Casey has not found the final solution to the problem. Well, perhaps, anyway.’

‘And for our Trappist friend, a special edition, hardback copy of the Kalevala – Finland’s national epic.’ The Trappist received the gift with gratitude, and flicked through the pages. ‘More substantial anyway than The Uncommon Reader,’ he thought to himself.

Following the distribution of the presents, there was a time of banter and exchange of pleasantries, in the warmth of the glowing embers of the woodburning stove, and the warming, confusing effects of the mulled wine. A game of theological scrabble was started on one side of the room (only words with a theological slant, and further limited by direct association with a theologian of choice). At the appropriate hour, each knocked out his pipe (hers in one or two cases) on the stove, and they made their way to rooms in hidden corners of the house, where beds awaited with entirely unneccessary multi-tog duvets.

Beyond the triple-glazed windows, longhaired Finnish Spitzes stirred uneasily in their sleep outside the houses as the temperature dipped below minus 30.

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by peter wilkinson - 27/12/2008 - 14:09

Inside the sauna, two contrasting figures sat stewing on the pine bench. The smaller of the two picked up a jug of water, and threw the contents onto the charcoal fire. The temperature, already intense in the room, immediately rose by two degrees.

"Prague, Oxford, Paris, Cyprus, Guildford, Godalming, Beirut, Dan, Banias, Venice, Rovaniemi - this narrative has certainly maintained an international dimension," said the Sage, with a fleeting image of his own transformation, mixed with onions, into turkey stuffing.

"Yet now, here, on the edge of the world as of civilisation, can it possibly be taken any further?" asked the Trappist gloomily. "Is there still any shred of a credible project to provide onward momentum?"

"And the purpose of this particular intervention?" enquired a third figure, recognisable by his angular visage and belligerent hirsutical prolixity.

"Merely to keep the thing in view," said the fourth figure, entering the steamy enclosure for the first time, and reclining full length, modestly swathed in white towel, on the opposite bench. "When we are seen, we find our existence. Unseen, we are formless, lifeless shades. Our purpose: to extend our existence as long as possible. At least until further inspiration provides the energy for another lurch forward of this jolting train journey of a narrative."

While the three on the opposite bench pondered these remarks, the young man pulled out from under the white towel his wrinkled copy of Maurice Casey’s The solution to the son of man problem and continued to read from the turned-down page.

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by peter wilkinson - 03/01/2009 - 18:08

The temperature had risen to further dizzying heights inside the sauna. The three occupants, semi-stupefied, partially comatose, steamed to the semblance of wrinkled prunes, fixed glazed-eyed stares on the pine-panelled wall in an effort not to be the first to cut and run.

"I was hoping." said the slight figure, "that there might be a break in the thread; that my lecture on The Return of the Prodigal Son might be placed in a new thread - illustrated with a copy of ‘The Return’ at the head of the post.

"What’s it worth to you?" said the recumbent figure on the opposite bench - sweating profusely.

"A more sympathetic hearing, perhaps, given the devastating impact that book you are reading has made on the corner-stone of your theories. A politico-theological alliance, maybe; prepare to repel all boarders; theologians contra mundi - that kind of thing."

The larger, bearded, bardic figure sitting next to the slighter one gave a strangulated "Harrumph!" at the very thought.

The reclining figure, in the somnolent posture, raised an eyebrow in acknowledgment of the suggestion, and turned another page of The solution to the Son of Man problem - though having to peel one sodden page from another in the superheated humid atmosphere.

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by peter wilkinson - 06/01/2009 - 18:01

The two figures seated on the bench seemed to be visibly diminishing beneath rivers of perspiration which were pouring from every part of their anatomy. By contrast, the recumbent figure on the opposite bench seemed to become cooler, both in temperature and composure, as they grew hotter.

"How long do you think this is going to take?" growled one under his breath to the other.

"As long as it takes," hissed the other in reply.

Then there was an occurrence which caused their jaws to drop and their breath to take an enforced exhalation. The recumbent figure turned the last page of The solution to the Son of Man Problem (not without difficulty, as the book itself was decomposing into a sodden pulp). He put the book down on the bench, and withdrew from the voluminous folds of his towelling another book, which he opened and proceeded to read, from the beginning. It was none other than Dr Tom Holland’s recent and controversial Contours of Pauline Theology, in which ontology is vigorously rejected in favour of a redemptive historical reading, individualism is consistently replaced with a corporate interpretation, and Dr Holland provides an interpretation through the lenses of Paul’s pervasive, if frequently ignored, use of the Paschal and New Exodus motifs (particularly as they are taken up and used by Isaiah).

Dr Holland disputes the use of intertestamental literature as a key to the thinking of the early church, and argues for a Christology which is rooted in a unique, direct interpretation by the early church of the Old Testament - for which there exists no clear intertestamental parallel. Whilst following in the footsteps of Tom Wright, who resides at the epicentre of the storms surrounding contemporary Pauline studies, Tom Holland nevertheless disagrees with Wright over the meaning of the central Pauline concept of justification, arguing that the term is used to signify the very creation of the new covenant, rather than a declaration of whether one is in or out of it. Holland supports the views of the reformers, that justification is indeed an imputation of Christ’s righteous obedience to the church, just as Adam’s sin was also imputed to humanity.

All these thoughts went through the Trappist’s head in an instant, and were conveyed to the Sage through a little known form of theological extra-sensory perception.

"Who wrote that?" enquired the Sage extra-sensorily of his Trappist companion.

"I did, you fool!" retorted the Trappist, in like fashion. "But you can take a look at the website and download the book in e-format!"

The heat in the sauna continued to rise. Sweat continued to pour. The reclining figure calmly turned from the preface and introduction to chapter 1 of the magnum opus. This was clearly going to take some time.

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by peter wilkinson - 07/01/2009 - 20:22

It might be thought that there was something unseemly, disreputable, or even gross about three theologians meeting in a Scandinavian steam bath. But this is no massage parlour of the kind advertised in dimly lit upper rooms on the Hagley Road in Birmingham (UK, not Alabama).

Not that I know anything about these massage parlours, but I did once live off the Hagley Road, and knew of their existence.

Let it be emphasized: this was a sauna, a word whose Finnish origin is underlined by the location of this particular sauna in Finland (albeit close to the Lappish region of that said country). There were no services of an obscure kind offered or associated with this entirely social, or in this case theological, meeting place.

Furthermore, the reinterpretation of Paul through the New Exodus motif is not a metaphor for anything less seemly than the highest kind of theological enquiry.

By a strange coincidence, Contours in Pauline Theology was reviewed in Review of Biblical Literature by Michael Bird - he of the review of the The solution to the son of man problem referred to hithertofore. Professor I. H. Marshall gives a generous citation in Evangelical Review of Theology. As befits his elder statesman role, Professor Anthony Thiselton gives a more cautious welcome in Expository Times.

Reviewers generally seem to find a mixture of illuminating insight and less capably worked through argument in Holland’s book. However, all agree that Holland has moved the debate on Paul decisively forwards, and that a significant counter proposal to the proponents of the New Perspective on Paul has been launched.

Rob Bell, he of previous references on this site, has written an entire book on the New Exodus theme: Jesus wants to save Christians, which is explicitly inspired by Tom Holland, and relates the theme to the role of America as the chief representative of empire in today’s world.

Perhaps it is time that the development of this thread should break out of the sauna entirely, and present itself to the world as a new subject for discussion. But I want to see if the thread can exceed 3,000 hits. Will theological discourse triumph over personal vanity?

And is there a difference between the two?

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by john doyle - 07/01/2009 - 22:41

Perhaps if I add my two cents’ worth another dozen hits or so can be generated. I had thought about voicing the Bard relative to this new theological excursus — something along the lines of "I hope someone will lead the new exodus out of this sauna" — but fortunately I restrained myself. Now, still dressed in Bardic robes, I can have the character put forward a few other queries:

"Who is this talkative fellow disrupting our palaver? And has he brought any beer?"

"Jesus wants to save Christians. Hrumph — what about saving the rest of us?"

"It’s about time somebody took it upon himself to save those bloody Christians."

"New exodus, is it? Are we to come out from Israel this time, or out from the Church?"

I had intended to remark on certain abstruse vocalubary choices exercised by the narrator during this seeminly interminable thread, but I’ve forgotten them now and I’m too lazy to look for them. We now return to our regularly scheduled broadcast…

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by peter wilkinson - 09/01/2009 - 19:01

The figures in the sauna fixed each other with steely gaze. Perspiration continued to pour.

The recumbent figure, with a provocative flourish of the hand, turned the page of Contours in Pauline theology.

Without blinking, the recluse drew from the folds of his garment his copy of The Kalevala (the Eino Friberg edition).

Looking from one to the other in turn, the Bard produced from within his garment the surprise of the evening, the coup de grâce: Rupert Shortt’s Rowan’s Rule, the biography of Rowan Williams, the current Archbishop of Canterbury.

Steam hissed. Nobody moved. The temperature continued to rise.

It was going to be a long night.

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by peter wilkinson - 10/01/2009 - 11:44

"Two hundred and forty six to go then," muttered the Recluse as he scrabbled to separate the saturated pages of The Kalevala.

"Pages?" intoned the Bard, peering above his steamed-up half-rimmed reading glasses.

"No - hits, you fool!" said the Trappist.

"And when we attain to the requisite number - what happens to us then?"

But the question remained unanswered, least of all from the Westerner, who was now grappling with the conundrum of hilasterion in Romans 3. Was it to be understood as propitiation, as suggested from its parallel in the Maccabean literature. Or was it to be understood from its usage in the LXX Ezekiel 45, as another example of the bringing together of redemption and atonement imagery in the retold Passover story of the New Exodus paradigm, as argued in Contours?

The implications for the future of Pauline studies were explosive.

The thrust of the discourse deepened. The suggestive influence of Ezekiel on Paul was as tantalising to the brain as the excruciating heat of the steam to the body. The temperature in the sauna continued its rise to yet further unseen heights.

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by john doyle - 10/01/2009 - 16:07

"Are we to understand the Three Thousand Hits literally?" The Eastern Monk glanced again at the hit counter displayed high on the back wall of the sauna, the orange glare of its LCD softened and blurred by the sweat streaming down his brow and into his eyes. "Does the Eschaton arrive at that precise moment when the three thousandth theological voyeur has eavesdropped on our conversation? Or is the Trimellennium to be understood in more abstract terms, referring to that future time when all interest in our deliberations will have ceased? For all we know we might remain here forever, sweating and talking into eternity. But if people stop looking in on us to see whether our pedantic and tangential deliberations ever take on shape and direction, then we will have arrived at our Eschaton. In that day will we have vanished? None can say, since none will see. We will have ascended into legend, or we will have sunk into oblivion, but among the five of us the Eschaton might well pass unnoticed and unremarked. We will continue our mumblings and disputations, waiting for someone to bring us beer and lutefisk and lefse, occasionally glancing up at the hit counter, forever waiting for that next hit to assure us of our continued existence, never knowing that the next hit has been eternally deferred."

"Oy, when did you get here, mate?" The Antipodean rubbed his hands roughly through his wiry hair and beard, stirring up a shower of sweat droplets that circled his head like a halo. "And did you tell them voyeurs out there to bring us some cold beer the next time they check in on us?"

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by peter wilkinson - 10/01/2009 - 22:21

"238 hits to go," said the Sage, looking hopefully at the LCD display.

The hallucination which had introduced the presence of the Nestorian and the Antipodean into the sauna evaporated as suddenly as it had appeared. The former was still trapped in the Doge’s wardrobe, the latter enjoying a can of Fosters in front of the wide-screen in the loghouse.

"It’s worth considering though," ventured the Recluse, apparently disconnectedly. "3,000 is of course significant in biblical numerology, as developed in particular by Holland in New Contours in Pauline Theology. 3,000 was the number of those slaughtered by the Levites at Mount Sinai for worshipping the golden calf. The parallels between Mount Sinai and Pentecost have frequently been noted, and are developed by Holland. Suggestively, 3,000 was the number of those added to the original faithful on the day of Pentecost - reversing what the Law had brought about, and giving life where the Law had brought death."

"You mean - " began the Sage.

"Precisely," said the Trappist. "Perhaps our much vaunted ambition to attain to the 3,000 may not be to a literal number at all, but to a metaphor describing the achievement of the Spirit in contrast to the Law, the New Covenant in contrast with the Old."

Astounded at this revelation, the Bard sank into a tantric silence.

The Westerner, meanwhile, raised a solitary eyebrow, and continued with his reading.

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by peter wilkinson - 12/01/2009 - 15:58

As the LCD display moved inexorably towards its climactic total, something remarkable might have been seen across the waste expanses of northern Finland. Over frozen swamps and bogs, icy tundra and permafrost, glissading down low escarpments through forests of stunted pines with boughs transformed into fantastical shapes and forms by layers of snow, were the hunched, cloaked forms of theologians on all manner of vehicles designed for travel across the snow-covered landscape.

There were sleds pulled by teams of huskies; reindeer in intricately ornamented bridles and harnesses pulling colourful sleighs with bright lanterns and jingling bells; snowmobiles powered by diesel motors; for those who could not afford such means of transport were langlauf skis; far behind these were those who entrusted themselves to snowshoes, plodding through the snowdrifts and testing each step of the way with poles to identify the presence of swamp or bog for the unwary.

It would seem that the Nestorian had extricated himself from the Venetian cupboard, and had sounded the alarm among the unwitting delegates to the purported fourth theological convention. What can then only be described as a stampede for the nearest vaporetto stop took place in a frenzied attempt, each theologian for himself, to be on the first plane out of Venice Marco Polo and by interconnecting flights to reach the sauna before the stated hour.

In the absence of connecting flights beyond Tampere, every available means of transport for crossing the icy wastes had been requisitioned by fair means or foul, and hence the extraordinary spectacle of the race to the north. Such is the effect of the proposition of a theological novum, in this case: the New Exodus as a paradigm for interpreting Paul.

Would any of the theologians engaged in the chase arrive before the apocalyptic hour? What would be the consequence of the three thousandth count on theological enquiry? It seemed that nobody really knew. But in a pretence of mutual indifference, the extraordinary game in the sauna continued, where the implications of Holland’s devastating thesis continued to be digested.

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by peter wilkinson - 13/01/2009 - 17:07

"So what about hilasterion?" uttered the Sage, though perhaps, in view of the humidity, ‘spluttered’ might have been a more appropriate way of describing his intervention.

"What about it?" said the Recluse, struggling to preserve his sang froid.

"If we opt for propitiation as opposed to expiation (contra Dodd), then there still remains the contemporary preference for the usage in 4 Maccabees 17:22, which suggests a martyrdom theology, rather than an atonement (so Wright et al). Indeed, the preference rests on the perceived difficulty of having an atonement reference in the flow of Romans 3, where hilasterion would introduce the problematic mercy seat and its associations - Christ’s death being a pubic spectacle, rather than hidden away in the temple; the mercy seat being an inanimate object, rather than a person."

"That is precisely Holland’s point!" said the Recluse impatiently. "Of the many references to Ezekiel’s eschatological vision echoed in Paul, this is one of the more significant. In Ezekiel 45, the eschatological prince, not the high priest, offers sacrifices in the temple. The Feast on which the sacrifices are offered is Passover, not the Day of Atonement. The sacrifices are atoning sacrifices, not tokens of redemption, as would have befitted Passover. Passover and Atonement have been astonishingly merged in the one event, or feast. The new exodus motif is vindicated. Furthermore, we should also take note of Holland’s references to other Ezekiel imagery in Paul - the eschatological temple of Ezekiel 40-44 in Ephesians 2; unfaithful Israel in Ezekiel 16 echoed in the cleansing of the church in Ephesians 5."

The Sage pondered the significance of this information.

"Furthermore," continued the Trappist, "The relevance of Holland’s thesis to our present circumstances should become immediately apparent. He argues for a redemptive/narrative/historical reading of the text, rather than a metaphysical, mythical and modernist interpretation. Holland’s interpretation is deeply embedded in the conjectured historical context and mindset of Judaism in the 1st century."

"These features of Holland’s analysis," he added, casting a glance at the recumbent figure who was immersed in the text around which the discussion was now swirling, "are of obvious relevance to the project which has formed the basis of our travels and travails these last four years and more."

If the recumbent figure heard these remarks, he gave no sign of it, his outward physiognomy being as veiled in a customary sphinx-like inscrutability as ever.

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by peter wilkinson - 14/01/2009 - 13:49

"Don’t you think this is over-kill?" said the Sage, mopping his brow with the edge of his towelling. But the Trappist was too engaged in complicated mental arithmetic to notice the comment.

"Of course!" said the Trappist. "I should have seen it before! The three of us in the sauna! The multiple of one thousand! Three: the biblical number of revelation. One thousand: an exceptionally large number or period of time, or period of rule and triumph. Three thousand: the completion of the revelation multiplied by an extensive period of peace, prosperity and triumphant vindication!"

"So where does that take us?" asked the Sage.

"Don’t you see, you poltroon!" exclaimed the Trappist. "The circle is squared! We are about to enter the dawn of the golden age, when theological dispute is resolved in concord; when discordant voices sing to the harmonies of a new hymn-sheet assisted by the angelic choirs of the heavenly host! The dividing wall of hostility is broken down! In place of the two, one new man arises to usher in the long awaited, much promised day!"

Not entirely sure whether the steam had finally penetrated the brain of the Recluse and brought about some form of extreme delirium, the Sage nodded smilingly at him and glanced up at the LCD display. It seemed to be moving very slowly towards its total.

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by peter wilkinson - 17/01/2009 - 11:39

The unmasking, when it came, provided few surprises, and may be described without the usual hyperbole that accompanies moments of drama on this otherwise tediously interminable thread.

The Westerner was revealed as none other than Dr Tom Holland of the Evangelical Theological College of Wales. This was a disappointment, as a rather more exotic flower of the theological establishment might have been hoped for. News was quickly disseminated to theological publishing houses so that erratum slips might be inserted into not only his bibliography, but that of the ghost-writer under whose pseudonym he had also been producing works of a questionable theological tendency.

The Trappist was, as had been suspected, Professor Maurice Casey of the University of Nottingham, whose Solution to the Son of Man Problem cannot be had for less than £70, even on Amazon, which explains why very few people who talk about it have read it.

The Sage was, unsurprisingly, revealed as who he already was: the Bard of Avon, and so helpfully solved the long disputed problem in academic circles of the image or engraving which most resembled the Elizabethan genius. The answer is: none of them.

To mark the significance of the event, and what was about to ensue, each of the three rose from their recumbent or seated postures and stood on the pine benches, awaiting the climactic moment.

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Re: The demise of Sir Toby's

by peter wilkinson - 21/01/2009 - 11:34

The LCD screen displayed the 3000th count. The apocalyptic blast was preceded by an eschatological shock wave which radiated outwards across the far tundra. Snowmobiles speeding towards the sauna were tossed aside by its impact, and reindeer reared and shied, overturning their sleighs. Huskies howled, slipping their harnesses. A multitude of theological minds feared the worst – that their theological prey had finally eluded them.

The noise of the explosion itself was a sonic boom, followed by a dull, receding roar. On the horizon, a reddish glow indicated the location of the catastrophe. Rising pressure and super-heated steam in the pumping system had proved more than even state of the art Finnish sauna technology could tolerate.

Debris from billions of theological nano-particles was thrown into the upper atmosphere and carried round the world, forming a stratospheric layer which reduced the world’s temperature by two degrees over the following year. Fall-out from the theological particles was deposited as rain in the southern and western extremities of Europe as far as Spain, Wales and the Western Isles, rendering land contaminated and uninhabitable for centuries to come. For months, spectacular Aurora Borealis displays could be seen from as far south as the French Riviera.

That year’s Review of Theological Studies contained numerous tributes to mark the passing of the maverick trio, but expressed little surprise that things had come to such a sorry and explosive conclusion. From the safety of padded leather armchairs in religious seminaries and foundations of theological enquiry around the world, elderly theologians held court, reflecting wisely and somberly over glasses of sherry to their junior acolytes on the dangers of untried and untested theological novelties. Professor Anthony Thiselton submitted a monograph to the Expository Times, on the words of which lesser theological minds hung eagerly and tremulously, noting key phrases and sentences which they might retail to their juniors in subsequent generations.

Debate continued for a while on obscurantist blogs and websites, and even formed the basis of footnotes in otherwise conventional theological treatises. Eventually things settled down to normal again, and really, everyone wondered what all the fuss had been about.

Over the years, fact became confused with fiction, and history merged into mythology. Mothers would warn errant children that if they didn’t behave, three bogeymen in pointed hats would come to get them, and lock them up in the cellar of a far-away place called Sir Toby’s. Occasionally, elderly theologians would be asked by fresh-faced eager novitiates gathered at their feet: “Tell us the tales you used to tell about Sir Toby’s!” And after a pause for lighting a pipe and a draught of some foaming brew, the story-teller would begin.

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