00:00:00.000okay well i guess we'll get started um i i guess i'll just be honest and i
00:00:10.800certainly don't know how this will go exactly and we can adjust here and there i'm sort of
00:00:20.000of torn about how the best way to do these sessions so maybe you could give us a little
00:00:31.500leeway or even some feedback or suggestions in the sense that so we have the odyssey 24 scrolls
00:00:45.580long, 24 chapters. These chapters take about, I don't know, 30 minutes, sometimes an hour to read
00:00:54.480all the way through. We like the ethic of close reading, and that is to just read slowly, pause.
00:01:07.240uh this is something that is associated with rabbinical studies but also uh strauss would do
00:01:17.500this strauss actually has some interesting lectures on beyond good and evil uh where he
00:01:23.480has a student read and he stops him about every other sentence sometimes every other word and um
00:01:31.140and this really works well with rem theory because rem theory is very precise
00:01:39.860um it you know we we don't want to just say you know like oh it's arian that one's thonic there
00:01:47.380you go you're welcome uh let's go to the next that's often been done in the past yes yeah
00:01:54.420we inherit a lot of bad readings as a consequence of not people not um committing to close readings
00:02:00.660essentially yeah now at the same time reading the Iliad and the Odyssey all the way through
00:02:08.000would be a lot like reading the Bible all the way through and I mean it certainly can be done
00:02:15.060but I would say a chapter a a chapter a week at most so that would be 48 weeks we just we
00:02:25.440Basically, it would take us almost a year or an entire year, in fact, to get through it.
00:02:31.500The other thing that I would say, and I don't mean this as a criticism at all, really, it's just an observation, is that Homer, it's amazing.
00:02:44.800And, you know, we're reading English translations that are done recently, so that affects this.
00:02:52.680It can be a slog here and there, but it is mostly accessible, and there are larger-than-life characters, larger-than-life emotions, great bittersweet stories and stories of conquest and violence.
00:03:09.560There's tons of graphic descriptions of violence in the Iliad.
00:03:13.840Now, I'm not sure I even have much to say on those matters outside of this is great.
00:03:20.420You know, like, do you want me to hear, you want to hear me say, wow, this is great.
00:03:26.300Whereas with the Bible, it's dense and we need to sort of dig in to get the answer to something.
00:03:36.840And you really can read, you know, one chapter of Genesis and talk about it for two hours in a way that I, and chapters of Genesis are much shorter than a scroll of Homer's Odyssey.
00:03:52.980so it's just a different situation and and I thought that actually what we did with Karl Marx
00:03:59.780and Martin Luther and what we could do with Nietzsche I think we did do with Nietzsche and
00:04:05.180then we could do with people like Kyle Schmidt or some other philosophers even though it's not
00:04:12.180a gem exactly that's a good thing we should always broaden our scope but it's not gem exactly
00:04:18.740it is very dense and so the close reading works perfectly in that sense and um so i don't know i'm
00:04:30.120i'm sort of torn here i feel like uh you know i i don't know what massive take i'm gonna have
00:04:40.880uh on all of these things uh particularly these first four chapters the telemachy
00:04:47.180which focuses on telemachus and his journey to sparta of course it's great i enjoyed reading it
00:04:54.480but i'm i'm not sure i have this mind-blowing take i think we should read together some passages i
00:05:01.820think particularly the beginning of book four is good in the beginning of the odyssey itself
00:05:05.880uh just so we can get in there uh but anyway these are just my honest thoughts on this course my my
00:05:14.360hope was that we could do four chapters at a time and hopefully uh do that in um six weeks
00:05:22.740and really feel like we've read it all the way through um but i don't know maybe that's not the
00:05:30.240best way maybe the iliad way of choosing a chapter here and there and maybe you know reading
00:05:36.020focusing on cersei and calypso and the final destruction of odysseus's ship where he's saved
00:05:43.300by grabbing onto a fig tree there'll be a lot of symbolism there maybe that would be the best way
00:05:49.040i don't know i would like not to just pick out say four chapters and do one of those a week and
00:05:54.800then go denser i don't have this big interpretation that i'm gonna reveal and i feel like when we're
00:06:03.720reading other things i i do you know it's like i'm gonna tell you something you maybe hadn't
00:06:09.960thought of before and etc and we can definitely do that with movies as well but um i i think homer
00:06:17.000is just a little bit of a different animal and i've been doing research on homer as well to kind
00:06:23.360of get myself up to speed but i'm certainly not a uh a classicist and um so anyway i i feel a little
00:06:32.580bit i don't know humbled approaching this but anyway i'll stop i think you guys understand
00:06:37.600my perspective but um any thoughts on this or mark the telemachy there is a modern school of
00:06:47.380thought but it might be worth applying the rem lens to see if it has any esoteric support there
00:06:55.200is this notion that there is a basically gay relationship between telemachus and
00:07:04.060Paisistratus, who becomes his companion in this early part of the book. So there is some
00:07:12.500suggestion that that's a homosexual relationship, according to modern interpretations, because
00:07:19.620they're always bedding down together, and there is suggestive language in there as well. Nestor
00:07:25.160has a famous cup that may also be suggestive as well, and may also be an allusion to cultic
00:07:32.080and the cup itself interestingly is adorned with doves so it reminds of jonah from the hebrew lore
00:07:40.720whose name means dove um and the argument we make there is that he is one of these
00:07:45.960pateristic figures essentially in the esotericism of the hebrew bible but the dove itself is a
00:07:53.040symbol of passive love it's a symbol of venus ishtar the oldest cult in anna the oldest cult
00:08:02.300of venus in mesopotamia essentially the same figure as venus um she also was associated with
00:08:09.820doves and she had priests that are thought to be gay priests were called the gala it's similar to
00:08:17.660the galley who were the eunuchs surrounding Sibylle it's thought that that name Gala might
00:08:24.700mean vulva so it's a feminization basically of these male priests where they were called
00:08:30.340vaginas essentially and speculatively this idea of the dove as a symbol of passive love
00:08:37.540also becomes a symbol of the gaze in that cult and also just more broadly as it becomes
00:08:45.580associated esoterically with the symbol of the arrow menace or the passive the boy lover
00:08:51.120essentially the dove the dove is also a symbol of venus of course and she is also a symbol of
00:08:57.880passive love the beloved you know that's thought to be one of the meanings of venus's name so there
00:09:03.240could be some esoteric corroboration in other words for this more modern theory essentially
00:09:08.580that they are lovers telemachus and his buddy who's the son of nestor and he encounters in pylos
00:09:16.540so it might be worth checking it out for that reason i certainly wouldn't be surprised if we
00:09:24.440did find confirmation i've written some notes actually on this um homer describes two occasions
00:09:32.940where the boys slept together on the first occasion uh this guy um the son of nestor
00:09:41.540his name is pisistratus is the name of the guy so pisistratus is described as of the good ashen
00:09:49.980spear which is you know phallic a leader of men who among his sons was still unwed in the palace
00:09:57.680this is how he's being described when they're bedding down together so in both occasions the
00:10:03.200boys are clearly contrasted with heterosexual couples sleeping together in separate chambers
00:10:07.940who are also bedding down for the night first they're contrasted with nestor and his wife and
00:10:13.620secondly with menelaus and helen uh predictably scholars even modern scholars eager for gay
00:10:20.720illusions are split on the connotations uh where some are arguing the references are innocent
00:10:25.860um however still unwed is suggestive in this context suggesting he was sexually mature and
00:10:31.780old enough to wed of good ash and spear is suggestive in this context as well i guess
00:10:37.700unsurprisingly that the word used for spear also becomes a euphemism or metaphor a metaphorical
00:10:44.960term to describe the penis in ancient greece and why is he giving that epithet at that moment
00:10:52.000on the other hand you could say well achilles is always described as swift of foot even when he's
00:10:58.940brooding in his tent for most of the iliad right um so that may or may not be relevant but
00:11:04.140i think that the cup may be especially interesting because it does seem that the cup
00:11:10.760and the symbol of the cup bearer is associated with cultic pederasty and nestor has a famous cup
00:11:18.080i can we can look at these details again if you want to um just dive into it but i think when
00:11:24.820i think especially it there could be homoerotic illusions when they go to sandy pylos is what
00:11:32.560it's called and even that could be a kind of an illusion because sandy pylos the name pylos means
00:11:39.320gateway so sandy gateway interesting yeah i mean it would be like we would be using an rem approach
00:11:47.720to corroborate a modern reading of this relationship the ancients had this opinion of
00:11:54.120achilles right um the philosophers or some of the philosophers thought this of achilles and his
00:11:59.640companion so there could be something interesting to analyze from that perspective why don't we just
00:12:07.340start reading um i i thought actually the there are some very interesting passages at the beginning
00:12:13.900of book four um but also i think we would be remiss if we didn't just start with start to
00:12:24.060begin at the beginning um uh real quick um amalek you have a question yeah real quick um i'll i'll
00:12:33.080stick my hand up as we're going and kind of point out some of the main dennis mcdonald points as far
00:12:38.160as like uh intersections with the gospels and the mimesis that he's talking about so i'll just raise
00:12:43.100my hand and let you guys know i'm not the best at describing these because i actually don't know
00:12:46.320the odyssey and stuff like that this much as well as i do like the gospels i would say so for me it's
00:12:51.300like hard to explain them because i'm explaining them backwards often i know the gospel story
00:12:54.960and then i'm like trying to explain the odyssey so like for me listening to this and like going
00:12:58.820back over it with that lens myself will be part of this but um i'll do my best to explain them
00:13:03.380but neil knows these really well so if there's like some sort of if you guys want to talk about
00:13:08.580this more we can maybe when we're done with this we can circle back to it you'll see what i mean
00:13:12.740there right away and it deals with what you're calling the you know like this homosexual
00:13:17.780relationship it part of it is carried over into the gospels like this exact imagery related to
00:13:24.660the boy in the garden you guys know that one but there's other versions of this that dennis talks
00:13:29.340about so i'll point those out as we go just like the important ones because the whole thing is
00:13:34.640mimesis right so i'll just start like i'll just say that like every part of the gospel basically
00:13:39.520if it's not something that's directly out of the old testament it's then part of the homeric
00:13:44.840or homeric spinoffs basically is what don what that was dennis mcdonald shows so
00:13:49.980interesting um so this the name pisistratus also means or can mean affection army
00:13:59.740which is also suggestive well telemachus means uh to fight from afar affection army or persuasion
00:14:08.960army it's another possible meaning for pace istratus yeah as a play called italy points out
00:14:15.060nestor means homecoming or returning and just be clear for people who aren't familiar with the
00:14:26.220dentist i know i brought it up before but basically what he's saying is that the writers of the
00:14:29.840gospels were trained in this like homeric style and like the way they wrote and understood stories
00:14:35.160themselves were like it's not even always conscious like the the style and the the the
00:14:42.840structure of the stories are echoing homer because that's who the that's the authors themselves learn
00:14:47.980from that that's what they get it from so that's almost like the symbolic you know uh language that
00:14:52.940they're using if that makes sense um and this and the literary genre that the the gospels are in