Closed book examination: For this exam, as for all exams at Reed, the Honor Principle applies.
This is a four hour examination. Try to save some time for review. Your work is due back in Vollum Lecture Hall no later than 12 noon.
The exam consists of three parts:
Part One, 1 hour Part Two, 1 and 1/2 hours Part Three, 1 and 1/2 hours
Part One (one hour):
Identify ten of the following quotations. Supply author and title of work,
and identify the speaker where appropriate. Follow each identification with a
few sentences describing the quotation's significance in the work as a
whole.
1. "But, Father, can it be that any souls
would ever leave their dwelling here to go
beneath the sky of earth, and once again
take on their sluggish bodies? Are they madmen?
Why this wild longing for the light of earth?"
2. "Be circumspect in dealing with public officials. They befriend a person when it suits their own ends. They pose as friends when it is to their advantage, but they do not stand by a man when he is in trouble."
3. "...for his end and goal was to be united to, to approach the God who is over all things. Four times while I was with him he attained that goal, in an unspeakable actuality and not in potency only."
4. "Do you want to be free despite your body? Live in it as if you were ready to move. Keep in mind that you will one day lose your quarters, and you will have greater fortitude for the necessary departure."
5. "The temple of Janus Quirinus, which our ancestors desired to be closed whenever peace with victory was secured by sea and by land throughout the entire empire of the Roman people, and which before I was born is recorded to have been closed only twice since the founding of the city, was during my principate three times ordered by the senate to be closed."
6. "You took me up from behind my own back where I had placed myself because I did not wish to observe myself, and you set me before my face so that I should see how vile I was, how twisted and filthy, covered in sores and ulcers. And I looked and was appalled, but there was no way of escaping from myself."
7. "...I have just bought a Corinthian bronze statue, only a small one, but an attractive and finished piece of work as far as I can judge - though in general my judgment is limited, and certainly very much so here. But this is a statue that I feel even I can appreciate, for being nude it does not hide any defects it may have nor fail to reveal its merits. It represents a standing figure of an old man; the bones, muscles, sinews, and veins and even the wrinkles are clear and lifelike, the hair is sparse and receding from the broad brow, its face is lined and neck thin, and it has drooping shoulders, a flat chest and a hollow stomach."
8. "If you want to be someone today you must nerve yourself
For deeds that could earn you an island exile, or years in gaol.
Honesty's praised, but honest men freeze. Wealth springs from crime:
Landscape-gardens, palaces, furniture, antique silver -
Those cups embossed with prancing goats - all, all are tainted."
9. "Jesus said, "If those who lead you say to you, `See, the Kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, `It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty."
10. "And the Lord God was angry with me and sent me with my angels out from our glory; and because of you, we were expelled into this world from our dwellings and have been cast onto the earth. And immediately we were made to grieve, since we had been deprived of so great glory. And we were pained to see you in such bliss of delights. So with deceit I assailed your wife and made you to be expelled through her from the joys of your bliss, as I have been expelled from my glory."
11. "But grand sentiments of this kind sounded unconvincing. Besides, what Tiberius said, even when he did not aim at concealment, was - by habit or nature - always hesitant, always cryptic. And now that he was determined to show no sign of his real feelings, his words became more and more equivocal and obscure. But the chief fear of the senators was that they should be seen to understand him only too well."
12. "Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, `Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.' Jesus answered, `Very truly, I tell you no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.' Nicodemus said to him, `How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?'"
13. "It was a Greek man who first dared to raise his mortal eyes
against religion, and who first fought back against it.
Neither the stories about the gods, nor thunderbolts, nor the sky
with its threatening rumbles stopped him, but provoked
all the more the fierce sharpness of his mind, so that he desired
to be the first to shatter the imprisoning bolts of the gates of nature.
As a result the vital force of his mind was victorious,
and he traveled far beyond the flaming walls of the world
and traversed the measureless universe with mind and spirit."
14. "Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf, and have worshipped it and sacrificed to it..."
Part Two (one and one-half hours): Choose one topic and write an essay answer on it.
1. What is the connection between the narrative section of the Confessions (Books 1-9), and the later books which deal with the topics of memory, time, and biblical interpretation (Books 10-13)? In what sense are Books 10-13 a part of Augustine's "confessions"?
2. Compare Apuleius' Golden Ass and Augustine's Confessions as conversion accounts. How similar (or different) are the rhetorical strategies employed in the texts, and the new lives to which their main characters are converted?
Part Three (one and one-half hours): Choose one topic and write an essay answer on it.
1. Compare the conception of the best life for a human being in three of the following: Lucretius, Seneca, Genesis, Pirke Avot, Gospel of John, Gospel of Thomas, Paul's Letter to the Romans, Plotinus' On Beauty, Life of Antony, Augustine's Confessions. What similarities and differences do the three accounts share?
2. Choose TWO of the following PAIRS of texts and analyze the way the later text makes use of the earlier text in each case. What is extended, revised, adapted, criticized, and/or ignored? What kind of implicit or explicit commentary does the later text provide on the earlier one? You may wish also to discuss social or political conditions or other historical developments that help explain differences or developments noted in the later text.
1) Virgil's Aeneid and Ovid's Metamorphoses; 2) Isaiah and The Gospel According to Matthew; 3) Genesis and "The Life of Adam and Eve"; 4) Plotinus' On Beauty and Augustine's Confessions; 5) earlier Roman art and the Arch of Constantine; 6) The Gospel According to Matthew and the Life of Antony.