Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Battling for David and Jonathan: Scripture, Historical Criticism, and the Gay Agenda
- 3 How Open is the David and Jonathan Narrative?
- 4 David and Jonathan between Athens and Jerusalem
- 5 Conclusion: The Influence of Oscar Wilde on 1 and 2 Samuel
- Bibliography
- Index of References
- Index of Authors
4 - David and Jonathan between Athens and Jerusalem
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Battling for David and Jonathan: Scripture, Historical Criticism, and the Gay Agenda
- 3 How Open is the David and Jonathan Narrative?
- 4 David and Jonathan between Athens and Jerusalem
- 5 Conclusion: The Influence of Oscar Wilde on 1 and 2 Samuel
- Bibliography
- Index of References
- Index of Authors
Summary
Quid ergo Athenis et Hierosolymis? quid academiae et ecclesiae? quid haereticis et christianis?
With this [letter] will travel (by book-post) the volume of my Plato which includes the glorious Apology, Crito, and Phaedo: I hope they will give you at any rate half the pleasure they have given me. But lest you should take to reading aloud let me warn you not to experiment on the Phaedrus; this, if readable at all throughout, is certainly only readable to oneself.
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” said the stern Hebrew prophet: “The beginning of wisdom is Love,” was the gracious message of the Greek.
David and Jonathan/the invention of gay history
In Alan Bennett's 2004 play The History Boys, Hector, a rather unorthodox teacher in a Sheffield grammar school, is confronted by the school's headmaster after the latter's wife has seen Hector fondling a schoolboy he was taking home on his motorbike:
Hector: Nothing happened.
Headmaster: A hand on a boy's genitals at fifty miles an hour, and you call it nothing?
Hector: The transmission of knowledge is in itself an erotic act. In the Renaissance…
Headmaster: Fuck the Renaissance. And fuck literature and Plato and Michaelangelo [sic] and Oscar Wilde and all the other shrunken violets you people line up. This is a school and it isn't normal.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Love of David and JonathanIdeology, Text, Reception, pp. 274 - 402Publisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2012