The Gospel According to Mark

I heard this piece a little while ago and I highly recommend it,
especially in light of what we are reading for class tomorrow.

"Paul Theroux reads Jorge Luis Borges’s short story “The Gospel According
to Mark” and discusses Borges with The New Yorker’s fiction editor,
Deborah Treisman. “The Gospel According to Mark” was published in The New
Yorker on October 23, 1971."

It's about 20 minutes long. You should be able to download it to your ipod
or listen to it on your computer. I'd love to talk about it with anyone
who listens to it.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/2007/10/15/071015on_audio_theroux

Confession in "The Aeneid"

I've been meaning to ask this question since our second discussion on "The Aeneid." During Aeneas' tour through the underworld, the Trojan comes across an interesting scene:

"The king of these harsh realms is Rhadamanthus/ the Gnosian: he hears men's crimes and then/ chastises and compels confession for/ those guilts that anyone, rejoicing, hid-/but uselessely-within the world above,/ delaying his atonement till too late,/ beyond the time of death" (Book 6, 749-756).

I'm curious if anyone can commit on this conception of confession in terms of how it would relate to early Christian theology on the subject. I'm not sure when/if confession enters into the New Testament, but I was surprised to see this ritual in Aeschylus' writings. Does it have a Roman parallel?