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Habakkuk

  H A B A K K U K   I. SELECTING THE PROJECT             “What are you brooding about, Peter’le?" asked Theophil, materialising as I lay staring despondently at my bedroom ceiling one morning. As always, I greeted him with affection. “I'm an old man, Maestro. I feel useless and worn out.” “Is that really because of your age, my friend? You were full of life whenever we discussed biblical projects.” “But I don’t have a project now. Before long, I’ll start feeling sorry for myself – and that won’t do.” “Precisely,” he replied. “So, you better identify a new project.    Let us consider some possibilities.” “Should I, perhaps, tackle the Book of Enoch.” He smiled knowingly. “No, Peter’le. That is not the book for you. You have never had much sympathy for apocalyptic literature. You would soon lose enthusiasm, and a project without enthusiasm rarely reaches a worthwhile conclusion.” “ Right y...
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Daniel

  DANIEL AS SEEN BY A MERE OBSERVER [I gratefully acknowledge my debt to my Goddaughter, Cathrine A. Zuzak, whose searching comments on the penultimate draft helped me to finalise this Dialogue. I have used ChatGPT (OpenAI) as a tool for discussion, language refinement, and structural feedback during the preparation of this work. I am grateful to them.]   I. GETTING STARTED               As often before, the Book of Daniel kept puzzling me. Its author had taken liberties with the history of the Levant. I was also thinking about the patterns of the Hebrew poetry of the Bible. I knew that this poetry was magnificent: rhythmic without rhyme, incantatory without meter. But I was also aware that poetic structures and idioms had changed over the long span of antiquity.             I was about to close the book and arrange lunch with a former colleague, when ...
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