The Olympics Drag Scene Got Christian Art History Right

Last Friday, the Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony featured a performance by drag artists gathered around a long table. Immediately, conservative Christian politicians and Catholic leadership expressed disgust and condemnation at what they believed was a recreation of Leonardo da Vinci's "The Last Supper" (1495–98). The Vatican's representative for the Olympics, Bishop Emmanuel Gobilliard, said the performance deeply hurt him, while Donald Trump called it a "disgrace" and Elon Musk denounced it as "extremely disrespectful."
Opening Ceremony Director Thomas Jolly was quick to correct conservative critics of the performance, clarifying that it was inspired by Greek mythology, with many pointing to Dutch artist Jan Harmensz van Bijlert's 1630 painting "The Feast of the Gods." However, Paris 2024 spokesperson Anne Descamps apologized, along with the International Olympic Committee.
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THE NEW TOWER OF BABEL

We all know Babel (no, not the language learning company). It's in Genesis. The Biblical story about God making so many languages and dialects and (let's add) opinions that no one could understand each other or effectively communicate. One legacy of the triumph of digital technology and AI in every corner of our existence is that we've recreated this Babel. Let me try to unpack this, and bear with me if it seems I'm saying something derogatory about one belief or another — my aim is to avoid that game and try to explain the mechanism, the social and cultural story, by which our new Babel is ascendant, and the old ways of arguing and understanding each other are on the decline, if not on life support.
Start with an oldy but goody: the old war between scientific materialists and folks with traditional religious notions, like immaterial minds (think: souls) given or designed by a god, or more to the point, a Judeo-Christian God. That was an orienting debate for decades, nay, centuries. But we've Babel-ed it. We've Babel-ed it good. As we'll see, it's not just that debate either. More and more, it seems it's reasoned debate itself.
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Virtue, Happiness, and Purpose

Religion is not primarily morality. Morality is not primarily rules. These are two of the conclusions to draw from a new book about virtue by Fr. Basil Cole, published by the Catholic press TAN Books. Fr. Cole's book is essentially a simple and transparent exposition of Christian ethics. I'd wager, though, that many even among believers don't realize to what extent Christian ethics represents a very particular approach to the question of right action, one that differs from ways of thinking dominant in the modern world. Philosophers term the classic Christian approach "virtue ethics" and often contrast it with two other possible viewpoints, known respectively as consequentialism and deontology. Put simply, consequentialism says that what counts is the results of my action, while deontology (from the Greek deon, binding or obligation) says that what counts is following the right moral rules.

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Biblical Manuscripts

Great Isaiah Scroll, 202-107 B.C., facsimile :

The Great Isaiah Scroll is one of the original Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in 1947  and is the most complete of the DeadSea Scrolls found in the Qumran  Caves.  
The scroll was written on seventeen sheets of parchment, connected  into a scroll.  Differences between this scroll and the later Masoretic text  are mostly grammatical and spelling differences.
Both this scroll and the Codex Leningradensis are open to Isaiah 40:8: "The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our
God will stand forever." (ESV) Although the manuscripts were written over 1000  years apart, the Word of God had never changed.
Codex Leningradensis is the oldest Hebrew manuscript of the entire Old Testament. This codex was found in Egypt and is
now at The National Library of Russia in St. Petersburg (formerly known as  Leningrad). 
The early Hebrew manuscripts did not have vowel pointings, chapters, or verses.   A group of scribes called the Masoretes, who
worked in Tiberias and Jerusalem in Israel between the 5th and 10th centuries, added vocalizations (vowels), accents, and a  textual apparatus to the Hebrew text.
 The version was finalized by Hebrew  scribe Aaron ben Asher in the early 10th ce.
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How Medievalists Are Restoring the Ancient Religious Text

A 1,750-year-old translation of Matthew's Gospel has yielded a new Bible chapter thanks to medievalist Grigory Kessel's work. According to IFLScience, the mysterious chapter was discovered using ultraviolet photography on manuscripts housed in the Vatican Library.

The remarkable discovery was made as part of the Sinai Palimpsests Project, a research initiative dedicated to recovering erased and overwritten texts from the 4th to 12th centuries CE.

Due to the scarcity of writing materials at the time, manuscripts were frequently repurposed, resulting in palimpsest manuscripts in which previous text was washed or scraped off before new content was added. 

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What can Virtue Ethics Teach Us About Modern Ethical Problems?

  The complexity of modern life makes ethics even more difficult. From new technologies like genome editing and artificial intelligence, to political turmoil and cultural conflict, knowing how to do the right thing is incredibly hard. Could it be that an ancient – indeed, arguably the very first – approach to ethics offers us a solution? This article will explore virtue ethics, its history, several of its key thinkers and its applicability to modern moral problems. Whether or not one becomes a virtue ethicist and believes in this way of doing ethics as a whole, virtue ethics offers a reconsideration of the implications of our character and the importance of developing it in the context of ethical theory.    

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Praying for Scientists and the Science of Prayer

The methods of science are not well-equipped to study prayer, but that doesn't mean that scientists don't pray or that prayer doesn't work. Ciara Reyes-Ton offers a short reflection on the challenges of studying prayer scientifically, followed by Dr. David Anderson's invitation to pray for scientists, healthcare workers, and researchers.
Prayer is a vital part of a Christian's life. It's one of the ways we communicate with God. Sometimes it might be saying a simple prayer of thanks before a meal, or praying with a friend. Other times it can be a more guttural and cathartic experience one on one with God, where we release our deepest pains and heaviest burdens. There's something about prayer that gives me peace when I'm anxious, and comfort when I'm troubled. Even when everything seems the same after I finish praying, I often feel relief after verbalizing my thoughts to a God who already knows them.
I admit that prayer is not always easy. It can take courage to buckle down and pray, especially when we feel disconnected from God, or feel like God isn't listening to us, because things aren't changing fast enough, or unfolding exactly the way we think they should. I think the words of Andrew Peterson's song, The Silence of God, captures these feelings best.
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The paradox of choice

Barry Schwartz the economic Psychologist found that having the freedom to choose between a variety of choices in the modern world was actually causing people to be less happy with their decisions. 

Consequently, instead of increasing decision satisfaction, having too many options made people less likely 
to be satisfied that they had  made the best decision. In the face of too many options, 
you may be paralyzed  making you feel worse. 
He used the words " MAXIMIZER" and "SATISFICER" to  explain these.

https://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_the_paradox_of_choice?language=en