Hogwarts Professor

There is a new post at Behold A Phoenix that made my day for several reasons. First, I learned something important, namely, that an idea I had grown up with and had assumed was fact was just plain wrong. The “Dying and Rising Gods” chestnut championed by Frazer in The Golden Bough (and by secularists contra Christianity ever since, not to mention Harry Haters in denial about Deathly Hallows) has been demonstrated to be another 19th century fashioning of the “scientific evidence” to strike out at the beliefs of the faithful (here the singularity of Christ’s Resurrection). While the irony of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named citing the same theory as Time magazine’s Lev Grossman to “prove” the books aren’t Christian is striking (and humorous), finding out that both are repeating ideas from “the history of scholarship” rather than facts from “the history of religions” is a real head-slapper.

I had the extra pleasure in reading the Behold a Phoenix post on this topic in knowing Jonathan Z. Smith, the University of Chicago Divinity School professor and Frazer authority cited as the myth debunker. Mr. Smith (all UC professors were addressed as “Mr” or “Ms” unless medical doctors) was “Dean Smith” for three of my four years in the College and helped me through the first chapters of Thomas’ Summa Theoligica and Pico’s Heptaplus in tutorial. As it was Jonathan Z. Smith who urged me to read Eliade way back when and it is Eliade’s thesis about the religious function of entertainment in a secular culture that is the heart of Looking for God in Harry Potter, I guess this is my moment to reflect on the ends of a circle meeting.

My apologies for this name-dropping, autobiographical moment. Thank you Behold A Phoenix for correcting still another one of my erroneous historical preconceptions! Next thing you know, we’ll learn that Saturnalia was scheduled in late December by the Romans to subvert Christian celebration of the Nativity rather than the reverse…

Daniel Nexon, Assistant Professor in the Government Department at Georgetown and keen observer of all phenomena political, literary, and cultural, has posted the notes from his Prophecy 2007 Featured Talk, “Harry Potter: From Hero to Global Commonplace,” up at The Duck of Minerva. The notes are worth reading in their own right — it is easily the best introduction and summary I have read of how to understand Harry Potter in traditional categories (myth, legend, folklore) as well as in the context of globalization — and especially edifying and challenging after the disappointing review of Deathly Hallows in The Times Sunday Book Review. Prof. Nexon’s grasp of both fantasy literature and of politico-cultural history and dynamics in the West make him an invaluable observer and exegete in the search to discover “Whence Potter-Mania.” For serious readers of Harry Potter, this is a “must read.”

Did anybody else wonder what the New York Times Sunday Book Review editorial board was thinking when they decided to ask Christopher Hitchens, world’s brashest atheist and author of God is Not Great, to review Joanne Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows? I don’t get it. I know he does book reviews for The Atlantic and The Times in addition to political commentary, but he doesn’t have any sympathy for the work, even where you think he might (can you say “Islamofascism”?).

You can still read the Hitchens review online today and Monday before it falls behind the NYT profitwall and I urge you to do so. You won’t be surprised that he urges readers to try Philip Pullman, public atheist, if they want a really good read….

More tomorrow, God willing, on the Literary Alchemy, Christian Content, and genius of Deathly Hallows. Stay tuned!