Antiquitopia

Religion and Food

2012-02-18T23:42:00.000-05:00

About a month ago, some fellow religion colleagues and I were having dinner and started bantering. During the banter, I suggested a course on religion and food. At the time, I was half-joking, but I have been occasionally thinking about it over the past month and increasingly think it would be an interesting course. Anthropologists have long discussed food and culture, and so there is already a lot of theoretical material out there. And different religious traditions have food laws, customs, etc. There are the discussions of food and sacrifice, often looking at sacrifice as a meal or the ritualization of a meal at least. There is, in Christianity, of course, the ritualized meal of the Eucharist.

So I have been trying to think of different types of course that could approach religion through food. There could be a comparative course that discusses different religious traditions through food, meals, cuisine. There could be a course in my own specialization of ancient Christianity and Judaism in its ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern contexts that focuses on food and religion in those contexts. Perhaps a course on Food and Christianity through the ages form antiquity, medieval, to modern periods. It seems, indeed, like a very flexible topic that could be quite fruitful as an upper level undergraduate course or perhaps a more advanced master's level course.

So, right now I am thinking about pitching such a course, but also wanting to compile a bibliography, either for background information for me (as the instructor) or for assignments. Some initial thoughts that came to mind are as follows:

Theoretical (Mostly Anthropological and Sociological) Treatments:
Claude Levi-Strauss, The Raw and the Cooked

Claude Levi-Strauus, The Origin of Table Manners

Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger (which covers some food laws of the Hebrew Bible)

Carole Counihan, Food and Culture: A Reader--this has a great deal of interesting essays including theoretical treatments, discussions of particular groups (such as Jean Soler's famous treatment on Jewish food laws; Douglas's famous analysis of the meal; etc.)

Courtney Bender, Heaven's Kitchen

Sacrifice and Food:
Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant, eds., Cuisine of Sacrifice

Christianity (in different periods):
Hal Taussig, In the Beginning was the Meal
Caroline Walker-Bynum, Holy Feast, Holy Fast

Food and Identity (including Jewish, Christian, and Muslim material):
David Freidenreich, Foreigners and their Food
David Kraemer, Jewish Eating and Identity Through the Ages

These are things that I thought of, but there has to be so much more out there on Christianity and Food, Judaism and Food, and especially religious traditions with which I am far less familiar. If anyone has any suggestions on Food and Religion from a particular theoretical vantage point, a particular tradition, or a particular period of time, or a particular region, I would be very interested in hearing them. Moreover, if anyone has actually taught such a course, I would be interested in hearing what you did, how it went, and what you might do differently.

The Beauty of Moses

2012-02-16T17:00:00.000-05:00

I have been working through the different references to Moses in the New Testament for an upcoming project. While there are some well-worn topics discussed by scholars (Jesus as a prophet like Moses; which, from the other perspective, makes Moses a Proto-Christ; Moses as faithful servant; etc.), I was struck by a detail--one of the smallest of details--that shows up in the Acts of the Apostles in Stephen's speech and again in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Acts 7 and Hebrews are often discussed together, particularly for their rather similar views of the temple and the notation of Moses making the tabernacle "according to the pattern" shown to him--used in both texts to suggest a temple not made with hands and that God does not dwell in hand-made temples.

But there is another detail that I had not previously considered about Moses they share: his beauty. When Stephen begins his discussion of Moses (which takes up about half of his speech), he states:

At this time Moses was born and was beautiful (ἀστεῖος) before God. (Acts 7:20)

Similarly, in the "hall of faith" chapter of Hebrews, one reads:

By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid for three months by his parents, because they saw that the child was beautiful (ἀστεῖον). (Heb. 11:23)

I am not particularly surprised by its occurrence, in and of itself. It appears to be merely a reference to the LXX version of Exodus 2:2: "Seeing that he [Moses] was beautiful (ἀστεῖον) they sheltered/covered him for three months." There it translates the Hebrew טוב. To see where the NT authors found the tradition of Moses' beauty at birth, one need look no further than Exodus. Nonetheless, I think it is worth stopping and considering.

First the terminology. Both Acts and Hebrews have the same term as found in Exodus: ἀστεῖος. It literally means "of the city," much like "urbane." It has a range of meanings relating to urbanity, such as well-bred, courteous, polite, refined, elegant, clever, pretty, and, as translated here, beautiful or lovely. I also did a quick and dirty search, and, as far as I can tell, in the New Testament this term only shows up in these two places. So, for at least these NT writers, it is something that is associated with Moses and not found with anyone else.

While considering use, we should also note that it always refers to his "beauty" at birth. It is used, in fact, as the reason used for his parents' sparing him: they spared him, hid him, covered him because he was beautiful.

But this is missing a bigger question, I think. Of all the passages, issues, characteristics, events of Moses' life, why remember this? Why bring it up? Is this a fixed part of tradition? Are there other traditions of Moses' "beauty"? Are there competing traditions of other figures' "beauty" that are not necessarily in the canon? This question of why to recall this at all may seem odd when considering Acts 7 as a whole, where half the discussion is Moses--perhaps it is bound to come up. Stephen talks about all kinds of events in Moses' life: his life in Egypt, his Exile, the Exodus, his meeting with the angel on the mountain, Sinai (somewhat), the golden calf, and the Tabernacle. The passage generally emphasizes how the people failed to understand Moses' divinely appointed role and how they continually rejected him (using him as a prototype for the later rejection of Jesus). Oddly, with all of this detail, the Passover is absent. The actual Sinai experience is also rather vaguely discussed. So, one might just say Stephen's speech has it because it has so much of the tradition, but, really, some major aspects of the Moses tradition emphasized so greatly elsewhere are downplayed here (the giving of the Torah on Sinai, though the burning bush episode receives extensive treatment, and the downplaying of the Passover). This suggests that what does show up is important. What is more, Acts 7:20 has a little editorial shift not found in Exodus or Hebrews: not only was Moses "beautiful," but he was "beautiful before God." Other texts usually just indicate his beauty in the eyes of his parents; here it is divinely acknowledged beauty. It is a heightening of Moses' beauty.

Stephen speaks of Moses' beauty in a string of attributes of and actions by Moses. In fact, the text emphasizes Moses' great qualities stating, "he was mighty in his words and his deeds." How much more interesting, then, is it that Hebrews, which discusses Moses much more succinctly, also mentions this quality. There are only four events mentioned in Heb. 11:23-28: (1) Moses beauty as a child and his parents hiding him; (2) his rejection of his Egyptian upbringing in which he becomes sort of a proto-Christian: "He considered abuse suffered for Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt"; (3) his vision of God "seeing him who is invisible"; (4) and the Passover. So, when it comes down to the four things to mention "by faith" Moses (or Moses' parents) did: hiding him due to his "beauty" made the cut. While mentioned elsewhere in Hebrews, Moses' vision of the pattern of the tabernacle is not here (see Heb. 8:5). Also mentioned elsewhere is Sinai (Heb. 12), but it is not here (not explicitly anyway). So, we receive an emphasis on Moses' beauty, his suffering (something also suggested in Acts 7), his vision of the invisible (something actually denied in Acts 7, where he meets an angel and, even then, looks away), and the Passover (something again ignored in Acts 7). Between the two passages (again, without mentioning other parts of Hebrews), the only things that overlap as worth mentioning, as deserving emphasis are Moses' beauty and his suffering--suffering in a way that foreshadows Christ and Christ-followers.

So, clearly his beauty was important enough to heighten it (before God) and mention it in the sketchiest of biographies. So why recall this aspect of Moses? Put another way: why is this social memory pattern preserved? Why Moses the beautiful, Moses the urbane, Moses the lovely, Moses "of the astu" for the earliest Christians?

Ancient Israelite Wine

2012-01-27T11:19:00.001-05:00

As others have also posted, there is an article in the Jerusalem Post about ancient Israelite wine here. It is a nice companion to last year's discussion of ancient Israelite beer here.

St. Nick vs. Santa Claus

2011-12-23T19:43:00.001-05:00

An old NYTimes Op-Ed article by one of my old professors, John Anthony McGuckin:

December 25, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
St. Nick in the Big City
By JOHN ANTHONY McGUCKIN

ST. NICHOLAS was a super-saint with an immense cult for most of the Christian past. There may be more icons surviving for Nicholas alone than for all the other saints of Christendom put together. So what happened to him? Where’s the fourth-century Anatolian bishop who presided over gift-giving to poor children? And how did we get the new icon of mass consumerism in his place?

Well, it’s a New York story.

In all innocence, the morphing began with the Dutch Christians of New Amsterdam, who remembered St. Nicholas from the old country and called him Sinte Klaas. They had kept alive an old memory — that a kindly old cleric brought little gifts to the poor in the weeks leading up to the Feast of the Nativity. While the gifts were important, they were never meant to overshadow the message of Jesus’s humble birth.

But today’s chubby Santa is not about giving to the poor. He has had his saintly garb stripped away. The filling out of the figure, the loss of the vestments, and his transformation into a beery fellow smoking a pipe combined to form a caricature of Dutch peasant culture. Eventually this Magic Santa (a suitable patron saint if there ever was one for the burgeoning capitalist machinery of the city) was of course popularized by the Manhattanite Clement Clarke Moore published in “A Visit From St. Nicholas,” in The Troy (New York) Sentinel on Dec. 23, 1823.

The newly created deity Santa soon attracted a school of iconographers: notable among them were Thomas Nast, whose 1863 image of a red-suited giant in Harper’s Weekly set the tone, and Haddon Sundblom, who drew up the archetypal image we know today on behalf of the Coca-Cola Company in the 1930s. This Santa was regularly accompanied by the flying reindeer: godlike in his majesty and presiding over the winter darkness like Odin the sky god returned.

The new Santa also acquired a host of Nordic elves to replace the small dark-skinned boy called Black Peter, who in Christian tradition so loved St. Nicholas that he traveled with him everywhere. But, some might say, wasn’t it better to lose this racially stereotyped relic? Actually, no, considering the real St. Nicholas first came into contact with Peter when he raided the slave market in his hometown and railed against the trade. The story tells us that when the slavers refused to take him seriously, he used the church’s funds to redeem Peter and gave the boy a job in the church.

And what of the throwing of the bags of gold down the chimney, where they landed in the stockings and little shoes that had been hung up to dry by the fireplace? Charming though it sounds, it reflected the deplorable custom, still prevalent in late Roman society when the Byzantine church was struggling to establish the supremacy of its values, of selling surplus daughters into bondage. This was a euphemism for sexual slavery — a trade that still blights our world.

As the tale goes, Nicholas had heard that a father in the town planned to sell his three daughters because his debts had been called in by pitiless creditors. As he did for Black Peter, Nicholas raided his church funds to secure the redemption of the girls. He dropped the gold down the chimney to save face for the impoverished father.

This tale was the origin of a whole subsequent series of efforts among the Christians who celebrated Nicholas to make some effort to redeem the lot of the poor — especially children, who always were, and still are, the world’s front-line victims. Such was the origin of Christmas almsgiving: gifts for the poor, not just gifts for our friends.
I like St. Nicholas. You can keep chubby Santa.

John Anthony McGuckin is a professor of religious history at Union Theological Seminary and Columbia.

Alan Segal Memorial in JAAR

2011-12-09T15:10:00.001-05:00

I just received my copy of the latest JAAR (79:4). In it is a short appreciation in memoriam of Alan Segal, my late advisor, written by Amir Hussain. Amir tells of Alan's contributions to research in both ancient Judaism/Christianity and more broadly to the study of religion, his activities in the AAR, his teaching, and some personal remarks.

Codex Sinaiticus Facsimile

2011-11-28T15:38:00.001-05:00

For those who missed it, Hendrickson Publishers has released a facsimile edition of Codex Sinaiticus. Being to scale, it is of course huge, as is the price.

Check it out here for you or your library--it can be yours for only $799.

New Illustrated Conference of the Birds

2011-11-17T21:44:00.001-05:00

I just saw that there is a new version of Attar's Conference of the Birds! I am excited to check it out, since I teach the Conference of the Birds in my Exploring Mysticism course.

Check it out here.

Monk as Shaman?

2011-11-10T17:59:00.001-05:00

It is always nice when multiple classes start overlapping. My Religions of the World and my Sexuality and Christianity classes hit upon martyrdom and monasticism at the same time, although we spent much more time on these topics in my Sexuality and Christianity class.

I had a student in one class make a suggestion through a momentary flash of inspiration that the monks--at least many of the earliest eremetical hagiographies--acted much like a shaman. I would like to sit, think, and see if we can develop this idea a bit and see where it leads us.

Firstly, while Shamanism proper belongs only to Siberia and the northern Caucuses, it is a phenomenon that shows some interesting cross-cultural comparisons with other phenomena of holy men and women, medicine men and women, etc., so long as historical context is properly taken into account.

Some of the qualities often associated with these figures are:

1. Death imagery is prevalent--the shaman is surrounded by death imagery, often associated with the shaman's initiation. The initiate undergoes a symbolic death, becoming a spirit in order to mediate the spirit realm.

2. This mediation between the human community and the spirit realm occurs for multiple reasons, but the primary function is for healing. Usually this healing occurs through either finding what malevolent spirit is affecting the human, or by finding the human's spirit (or soul, or some other aspect of self) that has become lost in the spirit realm and bring it back.

3. This is often done through having visions in ecstatic states.

When looking at something like the Life of Antony by Athanasius, there are some interesting similarities. Antony, when he is out in the desert, he is constantly interacting with the spirit realm--he is usually battling malevolent spirits (demons) as a spiritual warrior. There is death imagery all over the place. This is due to the fact that the monk is taking on many of the characteristics and imagery of the martyr, including athlete, warrior, and, with it, the death imagery. Athanasius has Antony say, "I die daily." He undergoes, through discipline, a symbolic death. It is an enduring, repeating, ongoing death. It is a disciplined death that gives him spiritual power to defeat demons and live an angelic life. When people come out to see Antony, they want to hear teaching and discourses, but they also seek to be healed by him. It is less clear that he is going into ecstatic states, but being out in a cave alone in the desert for a long time, he's probably seeing something!

Was Antony a shaman? No. I largely reserve that term for its own historical setting. Antony, while fighting and engaging with spiritual forces, does not seem to be going on spirit journeys to search for lost souls, etc., like a shaman does, though there are some hagiographies of monks he seem to have the ability to what we might call "astral project" or "appear" to others. His death imagery belongs to a particular historical moment of the ending of official persecution of Christians in which martyrdom becomes less of a possibility and the Christian faithful are searching for new heroes--the desert monk. Nonetheless, we can see that the shaman and monk as types of holy people have similar social functions that make them compelling to compare. They are interstitial figures, who live on the fringes of society, but also at the intersections between the human and the spirit realms. They are fringe mediators of the holy, and, typically, not central mediators such as priests (though both the shaman and the monk can be a priest, they do not need to be).

First Fall

2011-11-06T20:07:00.000-05:00

My latest painting, finished just two nights ago.

Did Christianity Make a Difference?

2011-11-05T18:08:00.001-04:00

Christianity has now been with usfor two millennia; it clearly has staying power--although as Philip Jenkins book on "The Lost History of Christianity" in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia reminds, religions can die. But a question I would like to raise is what difference didit make? This is not a theologicalquestion, nor a soteriological one. It is a historical and social one. The difference here is not so much concerned with how people haveconceived of God or salvation, but how these conceptions have affected dailylife and the rhythms of ancient society.

Did conversion to Christianity affectthese things? Did it affect how avillager or urbanite went about their day, how they engaged with the sacred, oreven their religious practices (new or just old rites redirected to newdeities)?

This of course is a big question, bigger than perhaps most of us could capably answer in all its facets, and it is likely impossible to answer in all its facets because the type of evidence needed is in short supply. Nonetheless, it comes from a few sources of research I’ve done or currentlyunderway and may impact the course of research I choose to take to finallyreach the ability to answer such a question.

On the one hand stands Braudel’sfamous account of the “longue durée” of Mediterranean society, which presentsthe daily rhythms of life as having remained largely unchanged for centuriesand, in fact, that historians need to pay just attention to the persistence ofcustoms and lifestyles and perspectives, which are largely invisible to ussince people tend to comment on change rather than continuity. If one were to consider Braudel, itseems that the shifting religions of the old polytheistic ones of differentlocalities to Christianity to Islam (at least for the Southern and Easternbasins of the Mediterranean) would not have a significant affect on youraverage person’s daily life—not nearly so much as terrain, weather patterns,and, with these, food resources would. One might also throw in, of course, the ways others have critiqued orbuilt upon Braudel, for example in the massive volume edited by Horden and Purcell, The Corrupting Sea.

On the other hand I would like to posit perhaps the most famous account of the social impact Christianity made in the late antique Roman Empire: Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. As the pioneer of modern historiography, his account is both influential and outdated. Nonetheless, it serves a point. Here, Christianity is more of a disease that led to imperial decline. It is an argument for change withChristianity as an agent, but negative change. Very few would today accept Gibbon’s argument. Christianity may have had both positiveand negative impacts on different levels and aspects of society, but generallythe decline of the western portion of the empire (politically and socially) inlate antiquity has multiple complex factors. Nonetheless, even if rejecting this particular Gibbonite narrative, this should keep us open to ways religiousviews potentially have social impacts, whether positively or negatively orneutrally.

Whatever one makes of their particular historical claims, both accounts should sharpen our perspective so that we should be ready explain the waysChristianity’s spread both did and did not alter people’s lives inantiquity. Consider, perhaps, itsadaptability to shifting local customs as it spread throughout the Near Eastand Mediterranean and eventually into Europe. This adaptability could explain, in fact, ways in whicholder customs persisted in the new religion and, therefore, ways thingsultimately remained unchanged, even as theology shifted. Yet I suspect the evidence should bemore complex.

So, where to look in howChristianity may affect daily life? Unfortunately, as is well known, written sources are tilted toward theelite and this may not give much information on daily life with regard to aChristian life versus a pre-Christian life. Nonetheless, one thing that does affect daily life andrhythms is spatial organization. One place to start would be how Christianity altered the sacred spacesin the landscape of cities and towns throughout the ancient world. Were the same places reused, were theydestroyed, new places established? How could one access these places in one’s daily wanderings through thecity, town, or village? Werepilgrimages and festivals major affairs of travel; or could they be celebratedwithin proximity to one’s home? Ordid it differ based upon class? Mapping out the shifting or persistent places of sacrality within aparticular locality would go a long way—and be within the realm of my currentresearch interests. There is alsoa general belief that as one shifts away from antiquity and transitions (everso slowly) into the early middle ages, there is a general population shift awayfrom urban areas to rural localities. How was religious change affected by this or generally related? If at all?

A second place to look at is howChristian upheld, overturned, or affected gender, gender roles, and the livesof people based upon concepts of marriage, celibacy, and the religiouslife. This, in fact, is likely thebest researched area in terms of what social effect Christianity may havemade. There are some veryinteresting works on how Christians overturned or rejected basic elements ofhonor and shame; how women refused the socio-sexual role imposed upon themthrough an alternative life of celibacy; etc. There is, however, alternative ways in which Christianityupheld previous forms of the family, patriarchy, etc.

Ifyou were to ask this question—how did Christianity affect daily life, if atall, in antiquity—where would you look?

Ancient Zombies

2011-10-28T15:12:00.000-04:00

As everyone begins preparations for the most important religious holiday of the year--Halloween (what else would it be? Yom Kippur? Easter? Diwali? Ramadan?)--I thought I would provide some seasonal cheer for your undead pleasure.

While the jury is still out on whether or not Jesus was a zombie, who did come from the dead and encourage us to drink blood and eat flesh (although drinking blood lends itself to a more vampiric reading), zombies appear to be as old as civilization itself. The earliest reference I know of occurs in Mesopotamian stories of the Descent of Ishtar and, perhaps a bit more well-known, the Epic of Gilgamesh.

In the latter, Ishtar threatens:
"Father, please give me the Bull of Heaven, and let me strike Gilgamesh down!
Let me...Gilgamesh in his dwelling!
If you don't give me the Bull of Heaven,
I shall strike (?) [ ]
I shall set my face towards the infernal regions,
I shall raise up the dead,
and they will eat the living,
I shall make the dead outnumber the living." (trans. Stephanie Dalley)

This is paralleled in the Descent of Ishtar, she makes the same threat to the gatekeeper of the underworld, which is the realm of her sister, Ereshkigal. So here's to the Queen of the Living Dead!

Taking a Stroll with Paul of Tarsus

2011-10-11T16:27:00.000-04:00

I just finished reading The Gospel according to Paul by Robin Griffith-Jones. Although a lengthy book at just over 500 pages, it was an enjoyable read. Griffith-Jones clearly explicates many of the crucial issues in Paul's letters as he slowly strolls through each letter. Many of his conclusions are fairly idiosyncratic, but he elucidates some of the aspects of Paul that can be understood in the context of late antique Jewish traditions of ascent, the merkavah, and the heavenly temple, a topic that interested my own late mentor, Alan Segal in his book Paul the Convert. This is a book for a general reader, but many may encounter its pacing and its style congenial as one takes a guided tour through the unweeded garden of Paul's writings.

Smelling God, Tasting God

2011-10-07T13:49:00.001-04:00

As I am revising my dissertation into a book for publication, I was thinking about smells and taste, especially smelling and tasting God. The Epistle to the Hebrews uses "taste" to describe salvific experience: "For it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, if they then commit apostasy..." (Hebrews 5:4-6a; RSV). Tasting and partaking are, in fact, strong indicators of proximity to God throughout ancient Jewish and Christian literature. There is the famous Psalm that says "taste and see that the LORD is good" (Ps. 34:8). But olfactory language is vibrant whether interpreted metaphorically or more literally. Most analyses of Jewish and Christian mysticism focus primarily on vision and audition, and rightfully so since these are the primary senses discussed in the literature. But smells and tastes are also prominent features of theophany and ritual encounters with the sacred. For example, what might the incense on the Day of Atonement have smelled like? How might this incense have affected portrayals of and journeys to the heavenly temple? And so on? Smell and taste, in fact, feature prominently in depictions of the afterlife whether in positive or negative fashions. I know there have been a couple new books on olfactory language in early Christianity, etc., and I wonder if it might be interesting to explore the development of smelling and tasting God in early Christianity and ancient Judaism in the broader Mediterranean context more fully with people of different specialties contributing. I wonder if anyone would be interested in a project in conference form, perhaps as a panel, or as an interactive online discussion?

Andrew George's "Score" of Gilgamesh Online

2011-10-07T13:20:00.002-04:00

One can download the pdf version of Andrew George's "score" of the Epic of Gilgamesh. It is the reconstruction and transliteration of the Standard Babylonian version of the epic, which is the best known version. Find it here. I know I want to check a couple sections of it.

The Amarna Project Online

2011-10-06T19:55:00.000-04:00

Amarna, other than being a site of Egyptian religion revolution--which was then forgotten, is also an invaluable resource for understanding diplomatic relations and the landscape of the ancient Near East, including the region of Canaan, etc. Now there is an online resource for Amarna's archaeology, artifacts, and archives here.Here is their basic info:

The Official Website of the Amarna ProjectThe ancient Egyptian city of Tell el-Amarna (or simply Amarna) was the short-lived capital built by the ‘heretic’ Pharaoh Akhenaten and abandoned shortly after his death (c. 1332 BCE). It was here that he pursued his vision of a society dedicated to the cult of one god, the power of the sun (the Aten). As well as this historic interest Amarna remains the largest readily accessible living-site from ancient Egypt. It is thus simultaneously the key to a chapter in the history of religious experience and to a fuller understanding of what it was like to be an ancient Egyptian. There is no other site like it.Mission StatementWorking with the agreement and co-operation of the Egyptian government, and in particular the Supreme Council of Antiquities, the Amarna Project seeks to:Explore by archaeology the ancient city of Amarna and its historical contextPreserve what is left of the ancient cityPromote study and recording of the history, archaeology and traditional life and crafts of the surrounding regionIncrease public knowledge, at all levels, of the city of Amarna and of the surrounding region

Dead Sea Scrolls Online

2011-09-26T18:59:00.000-04:00

I just saw that you can now see and search five major Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts: Isaiah Scroll, Temple Scroll, War Scroll, Community Rule (Serek ha-Yahad), and Pesher Habakkuk. Check them out here. Hopefully more manuscripts will be available in the near future.

Senior Position in Judaism at Barnard

2011-09-07T12:06:00.001-04:00

It is with mixed feelings I post this. The position of my advisor, Alan Segal, who passed earlier this year, is now open for applicants. I saw this earlier, but thought I would go ahead and pass it along.

Barnard CollegeIngeborg Rennert Chair of Jewish StudiesBarnard College announces a search for a senior scholar to hold the Ingeborg Rennert Chair of Jewish Studies in the Religion Department at the level of advanced Associate Professor or Full Professor. We are seeking a colleague whose teaching and research complement our department’s commitment to the academic study of religion and the College’s commitment to interdisciplinarity. The field of specialization is open, but we are interested in appointing a colleague who can teach broadly about Jewish religion, culture, literature and history as well as offering more specialized courses in her or his area of expertise. The successful candidate must be conversant with the current theoretical discussions and debates in the study of religion. The successful candidate will contribute as appropriate to some other interdisciplinary program, department, and initiative at the College—for example, Comparative Literature, Human Rights, Women’s Studies, among others. All members of the Barnard Religion department hold appointments in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Columbia University. We invite confidential nominations and applications. The initial review of candidates begins October 1, 2011. Applications should include a cover letter, curriculum vitae, and a list of three references, and should be sent to Elizabeth Castelli, Chair, Religion Department, Barnard College, 3009 Broadway, New York, NY 10027 (or electronically to ecastell@barnard.edu). Barnard College is an Equal Opportunity Employer and encourages applications from women and individuals from underrepresented groups.

(Post-)Modernist Hermeneutics as a Petihta? Or Sort of...

2011-07-29T15:21:00.003-04:00

A Petihta is a particular form of an ancient Jewish homily. It consists of a launching verse, usually from the Prophets or Writings, and a target verse from the Torah. According to many commentators, the more distinct and apparently unrelated the two verses are the better. Already knowing the end of the homily (the target verse), the pleasure for the audience/reader is to see how the interpreter, through exegetical virtuosity, will get from one to the other--the more disparate the verses then demonstrates a much higher level of interpretive ability and may make a further point: all scripture contains an underlying unity. Consider then this description of modern practices of interpretation:

What are commonly seen as "schools" of literary criticism or theoretical "approaches" to literature are, from the point of view of hermeneutics, dispositions to give particular kinds of answers to the question of what a work is ultimately "about": "the class struggle" (Marxism), "the possibility of unifying experience" (New Criticism), "Oedipal conflict" (psychoanalysis), "the containments of subversive energies" (new historicism), "the asymmetry of gender relations" (feminism), "the deconstructive nature of the text" (deconstruction), "the occlusion of imperialism" (post-colonial theory), "the heterosexual matrix" (gay and lesbian studies).

The theoretical discourses named in parentheses are not primarily modes of interpretation: they are accounts of what they take to be particularly important to culture and society. Many of these theories include accounts of the functioning of literature or discourse more generally, and so partake of the project of poetics; but as versions of hermeneutics they give rise to particular types of interpretation in which texts are mapped into a target language. What is important in the game of interpretation is not the answer you come up with--as my parodies show, some versions of the answer become, by definition, predictable. What's important is how you get there, what you do with the details of the text in relating them to your answer. (Culler, Literary Theory, 88-89)

Just exchange text/literature for launching verse and exchange "target language"/theoretical discourse for target verse; in both it is how you get there, but the end is known or "predictable." Even for those who do not ascribe to a particular theoretical discourse, if you read some of their work their conclusions become similarly predictable.

True Simplicities

2011-07-29T12:12:00.003-04:00

A friend of mine from Columbia University, James Hare, has started a new blog, "True Simplicities." He is a specialist in South Asian religions, but this blog seeks a wider audience, as he writes in his inaugural post:

Welcome to True Simplicities. I intend this site to be a space in which to explore the relationship between religious traditions and voluntary simplicity. I'll say more in upcoming posts about what I mean by religion and by voluntary simplicity since both these terms are difficult to define, but I am not especially concerned with definitions. I intend to be inclusive. I am open to discussing anyone who has made a deliberate effort to live their life more simply, from early Christian monastics to today's "technomads," and I plan to consider how a wide range of religious--and not-so-religious--traditions have encouraged or discouraged the simple life.

"Cultural Studies" as the Reinforcer of the Traditional Canon

2011-07-29T09:53:00.004-04:00

I have been perusing Jonathan Culler's Literary Theory, and he makes an observation that I have also suspected for a while:

...theory has reinvigorated the traditional literary canon, opening the door to more ways of reading the "great works" of English and American literature. Never has so much been written about Shakespeare; he is studied from every angle conceivable, interpreted in feminist, Marxist, psychoanalytic, historicist, and deconstructive vocabularies. Wordsworth has been transformed by literary theory from a poet of nature to a key figure of modernity. What have suffered neglect are "minor" works that were regularly studied when literary study was organized to "cover" historical periods and genres. Shakespeare is more widely read and vigorously interpreted than ever, but Marlowe, Beaumont and Fletcher, Dekker, Heywood, and Ben Jonson--Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists who used to surround him--are little read today. (p. 64; emphasis original)

While on the one hand, "cultural studies" and newer forms of literary theory set texts next to other cultural objects--films, architecture, other art forms, etc.--it often re-privileges the canon even as it "deconstructs" it. Perhaps an exception to some of this is the work of M. M. Bakhtin, who is claimed by people of multiple theoretical bents and is one of my favorite literary critics (or cultural critics if you prefer, or even linguist since his work is in direct opposition to Saussure), who often worked through his theory in reference to more obscure works as well as better known ones, especially for his longer essays.

I often find that biblical and Shakespearean scholarship has a lot of overlaps, not least of which is the intensive attention both receive. Would you agree that this also is occurring in biblical studies, where cultural studies and the blanket-term "theory" have reinforced the canon it deconstructs?

Network Criticism

2011-07-13T09:55:00.004-04:00

I have signed onto join April DeConick's "network criticism" project. It sounds like an interesting methodological study. You can read about it here. It slightly reminds me of Mark Taylor's concept of "emergent complex systems" that he articulates in his book After God. I think I was attracted to the project because I am fascinated by the physical contacts that pass along and transform thoughts, stories, etc.--that's why I am reading a book on ancient trade routes at the moment, for example.

I have thought of a few uses for her concept, but will be presenting and writing an essay, "Reproducing the Deformed Former: The Mythic and Medical Networks of the Birth of the Demiurge," for it and see how this will all work out in practice and in dialogue with other methodological and theoretical frameworks with which I am more familiar.

Ehrman and Plese: Apocryphal Gospels

2011-07-11T00:18:00.003-04:00

I just received a copy of Bart Ehrman and Zlatko Plese's collection of apocryphal gospels that you can purchase here. I am looking forward to flipping through the book. April DeConick has written a short review here.

Cake Update: Chez Buttercream

2011-07-11T00:01:00.002-04:00

Earlier, I had directed people to Stacy's website, Savories and Sweets. Considering that she basically does sweets, she has changed her website to Chez Buttercream to reflect more precisely what she is doing. Check out her awesome cakes!

Goliath's Table: Archaeology of Gath

2011-07-08T17:54:00.005-04:00

AP reports about archaeological finds at Gath, Goliath's hometown:

In a square hole, several Philistine jugs nearly 3,000 years old were emerging from the soil. One painted shard just unearthed had a rust-red frame and a black spiral: a decoration common in ancient Greek art and a hint to the Philistines' origins in the Aegean.
The Philistines arrived by sea from the area of modern-day Greece around 1200 B.C. They went on to rule major ports at Ashkelon and Ashdod, now cities in Israel, and at Gaza, now part of the Palestinian territory known as the Gaza Strip.
At Gath, they settled on a site that had been inhabited since prehistoric times. Digs like this one have shown that though they adopted aspects of local culture, they did not forget their roots. Even five centuries after their arrival, for example, they were still worshipping gods with Greek names.
Archaeologists have found that the Philistine diet leaned heavily on grass pea lentils, an Aegean staple. Ancient bones discarded at the site show that they also ate pigs and dogs, unlike the neighboring Israelites, who deemed those animals unclean — restrictions that still exist in Jewish dietary law.
....
One intriguing find at Gath is the remains of a large structure, possibly a temple, with two pillars. Maeir has suggested that this might have been a known design element in Philistine temple architecture when it was written into the Samson story.
Diggers at Gath have also found shards preserving names similar to Goliath — an Indo-European name, not a Semitic one of the kind that would have been used by the local Canaanites or Israelites. These finds show the Philistines indeed used such names and suggest that this detail, too, might be drawn from an accurate picture of their society.
The findings at the site support the idea that the Goliath story faithfully reflects something of the geopolitical reality of the period, Maeir said — the often violent interaction of the powerful Philistines of Gath with the kings of Jerusalem in the frontier zone between them.

Mmm....Lentils.....

One thing omitted in the article is that Goliath of Gath in biblical narrative was not just killed by David (1 Samuel 17), but also in 2 Samuel 21:19, where Goliath is slain by the much lesser known Elhanan.

For the rest of the article, see here.

For a critique of this and other articles concerning this recent archaeological expedition, see here.

Daily Hekhalot: Hekhalot Zutarti §421b (Defending the Mystic Against Slander)

2011-06-30T12:05:00.002-04:00

Last time in our daily Hekhalot we learned a little about adjuring an angel named Anafiel to do one's bidding--and a very interesting part of the adjuration is that the instructions for it are given by Anafiel himself. This leads to a question: why would an angel willingly bind himself to a human's will? Really that is two questions: why would an ANGEL bind himself willingly to a HUMAN's will? Usually angels and humans are rivals in the Hekhalot literature--at least to some extent--although sometimes they are cooperative. And why would an angel WILLINGLY bind himself to a human's will? Why would an angel--or any being--willingly instruct another how to bind them to the other's will?

Today's text, which will be unusually short, continues the trend of cooperation, of the angelic assistance when called.

Text:

וכל מי שהוא מספר עליו לשון הרע מיד אני מכה אותו ומשחיתו חוץ ממלאך שהוא שליח מלך הכבוד

Translation:

And everyone who speaks slander upon him immediately I (will) strike him and destroy him except for the angel who is the messenger of the king of glory.

Variants:

N8128 omits מי.

M22 adds שיאמר after מי.

M22 has אינו rather than אני.

M40 and D346 omit לשון הרע.

N8128 uses מכהו and has ואפי instead of אותו.

N8128 and M22 have חוץ מן מלאך.

M22 is corrupt between שליח and הכבוד.

Notes:

I think this part is fairly straightforward. Once adjured, the angel defends the mystic against slander ("an evil tongue"). (It is odd that two mss. omit "evil tongue," since this loses the entire point of the passage.) This likely indicates that reputation is important for the mystic. Jeff Rubenstein has argued in a couple books (Talmudic Stories, The Culture of the Babylonian Talmud) that in the latest levels of redaction of the Babylonian Talmud, the issues of slander and reputation receive heightened attention to the point that slandering someone and being slandered both could lead to death. It was definitely an issue of concern in late antique and early medieval Babylon. This mystic receives angelic assistance against such slander, heightening the stakes. While it seems the angel will defend the mystic--and strike and destroy anyone who slanders him--there is one limitation: the "messenger of the king of glory." Evidently if this figure slanders, Anafiel will not or cannot defend the mystic. I am guessing this angelic messenger is either too powerful or, if one treats a messenger the way one treats the sender of the message, it might be tantamount to an attack on the "king of glory."

I have yet to decide whether I want to work through the rest of §421; much of what is to come appears at first glance to be magical formulae that are likely untranslatable. But we'll see.

Daily Hekhalot: Hekhalot Zutarti §421a (Anafiel Speaks)

2011-06-29T12:56:00.009-04:00

Having finished a preliminary textual apparatus, translation, and notes for Hekhalot Zutarti §420, we now turn to an equally preliminary glimpse at the subsequent pericope.

Text:

אמר ענפיאל כל מי שהוא מבקש להתפלל התפילה הזאת ולהתבונן במעשה יוצרו זכור לו אות אחת מן האותיות האילו שוב אינו נפנה לא לימינו ולא לשמאלו עד שאפנה ואעשה לו את חפצו

Translation:

Anafiel said: Everyone who seeks to pray this prayer and to contemplate the works of his Creator should remember one sign/letter among these signs/letters: again we will not turn either to the right or to the left until I turn and I do for him his concern.

Variants:

N8128 includes השר after ענפיאל, and omits מי after כל.

M22 adds את before התפילה.

N8128 uses זו instead of זאת.

N8128 and M22 use יזכור rather than זכור.

M22 has לנו rather than לו.

O1531 has אחד rather than אחת.

O1531 has האותות rather than האותיות.

N8128 has הללו instead of האילו.

M40 and N8128 have איני.

O1531 has לו instead of לא after נפנה.

M40 and D436 both have לא לימין ולא לשמאל; N8128 has לא לימיני ולא לשמאלי.

N8128 has לא אשה לי and omits את; M40 has כל instead of את.

Notes:

As we ease into §421, we quickly switch gears. Here is another angel--or yet another name for the angelic keeper of the divine crown? Yet Anafiel is known from other sources in the Hekhalot texts. He shows up on Hekhalot Rabbati §§241-248 as well as Sefer Hekhalot / 3 Enoch §26. On Anafiel in general, see Rebecca Lesses, Ritual Practices to Gain Power, 359-362.

There is another major shift. Instead of a mystic, such as R. Ishmael or R. Akiva speaking and giving advice to the would-be descender to the chariot or adjurer of the Prince, here it is the angel himself who speaks and gives directions--something more reminiscent of 3 Enoch / Sefer Hekhalot, where Metatron speaks at great length to R. Ishmael.

Anafiel's directions regard some proper behavior for the mystic. In general, he is quite vague so far: it regards a prayer and reflecting upon creation. The prayer is probably particular and powerful--since there are further instructions on how to carry it out--but it is not (yet) stated or indicated in the passage. Reflecting upon the works of creation is a little clearer. It may reflect the issues of forbidden topics of explication. The "work of Creation" (note the slight difference with singular vs. plural)--along with the work of the Chariot (Ezekiel 1)--is one of the forbidden topics of interpretation, and, indeed, considered quite a dangerous business (see b.Hag. 11b-16b for copious examples). The difficulty of this prayer and this reflection on creation is noted in what one needs to do in order to carry out these prayers and inquiries. I read turning neither to one's right nor left as a moral exhortation: one does not stray. One keeps this moral purity until Anafiel does the mystic's concern. Or, if not a moral exhortation, it may relate more to a single-mindedness: not resting or doing anything else until accomplishing this goal. In this reading, to meditate on creation requires angelic assistance.

Reflection upon divine things requires the permission or acquiescence of the divine (or at least angelic)--or even forcing the hand of the angel. If my reading of "we" is correct, this is acquired through the joint effort of both Anafiel and the mystic. Both must stay on a straight path--one that is direct, or morally straight, or both.

By way of contrast, one might compare Rebecca Lesses's reading: "again, I will not turn to the right or the left, until I turn and I do his will" (Ritual Practices 361). Her reading makes a good deal of sense in the overall context of adjuration: the angel is stating how to adjure him so that the mystic can make Anafiel do his--the mystic's--will. In her reading, however, Anafiel is basically using the "royal we"; therefore, the point is that Anafiel comes directly to the mystic's aid when adjured.

N.B.: if you read this post earlier, you may notice I have changed my mind on a few of the readings and interpretations. Since no one commented on the earlier version I did not feel compelled to retain it.

Daily Hekhalot: §420 Synthesized and Revised

2011-06-28T12:16:00.003-04:00

Before proceeding to Hekhalot Zutarti §421, I want to take stock of pericope 420. Having discussed it in three parts--part a, part b, and part c--I want to synthesize it into one continuous post. And, due to secondary considerations prompted by the conversations in the comments, I also want to alter the translations and consider the implications of the alterations. As usual, I will place the Hebrew script first and then proceed to the new translation. For the variants and additional interpretations, see the previous posts.

Text:

אמר רבי ישמאל על מי שתק השר

שהוא קורא אותו מגיהשה

שאין בריה בכל משרתים שיקרא אותו בשם הזה

ואת קורא אותו מגיהשה

מפני שהוא שני להדרירון הדר תוב הדר טהור הדר זיו

אוריה יה יה אלהי ישראל

והוא עומד בפתח ראשון

ומשמש בשער הגדול

וכשראיתיו נשרפו ידי

והייתי עומד בלא ידים ובלא רגלים

עד שנראה לי פני יון השר ממשרתי עליונים

והוא עומד לפני כסא הכבוד נוכח דיבר שרפים

ששמו כשמו ושם אחד הוא‪.

והוא עומד מכסא הכבוד

ומתקן את הכסא

ומלביש את החלוק

ומהדר את החשמל

ופותח שערי ישועה להראן חן וחסד ורחמים בעיני כל רואיו וכל הרואים אותו

בין בחור בין בתולה בין נער בין זקן בין איש בין אשה בין גוי בין אמה בין אשראל

ירוצו לקראתו ויאהבוהו לשלמו וירוצו בטובתו וישמחו בפרנסתו בין בטובתו בין שלא בטובתו‪.

Translation:

Rabbi Ishmael said: Concerning whom is the prince silent?
The one who calls him MGYHShH--there is no creature among all the ministers who will call him by this name and you call him MGYHShH--because he is distinguished to crown (or adorn) a good crown, a pure crown, a splendorous crown of the light of Yah Yah Yah God of Israel.

And he stands at the first entrance and ministers at the great gate;
and when I saw him my hands were burned
and I was standing without hands and without feet until he appeared to me--
PNI YVN, the prince among the ministers of the uppermost (or uppermost ministers).

And he stands before the throne of glory, facing (or in the presence of) the speech of the seraphim, for his name is as His name; it is the same name.

And he stands from the throne of glory
and he prepares the throne
and dresses the garment
and crowns the hashmal
and opens the gates of redemption to show favor and grace and compassion in the eyes of each who sees him.
And all who see him--both young man and virgin girl, young and old, man and woman, foreigner and handmaid and Israel--will desire to call to him and will love him to pacify/appease him and they will desire his goodness and will rejoice in his provision whether willingly or unwillingly.

Notes:
Thanks to the comments, this, I think, is a clearer translation. You can also see that I am playing around with the formatting a bit to see if that helps visually to clarify what might be happening--for example, using the repetition of "he stands" as a guide.

The first line has been changed. As I noted before, it was possible to place the "concerning" as part of the direct or the indirect speech. Before I had it as indirect, but thought that was wrong almost immediately after I posted it. Here it is part of the direct. I am still not sure about the verb "to crown." There is clearly more going on with that word that has not been worked out. That's why I offer as a possible alternative--"adorn." I am sticking with "PNI YVN" as a name for now. It seems to be an alternate name for MGYHShH. PNI YVN may be a more exoteric name, and MGYHShH esoteric--since very few call him by it. With this alternative translation, however, it changes the "silent" from the mystic to the angel. Why is the angel, therefore, silent concerning this figure who can speak his name--this figure who turns out to be the mystic? The mystic calls, but the angel is silent.

In the comments, Nir pointed out what turned out to be some obvious mistakes with my first line of part c. So I have mostly followed the suggestions there and shifted to a much more interesting line: "facing the speech of the seraphim, for his name is as His name; it is the same name." I had misread the simple preposition נוכח as the niphal of יכח, which accounts for most of the mistakes of the line. And the emphasis on the "name" is more appropriate than "there." But let's take a look at the implications of the change. While the angel still seems to be in control of some sense of judgment (due to the later part of controlling the gates of redemption and people coming under his provision), it is not as evident in the first line as my original translation made it. On the other hand, it indicates that when before the throne he is also before the seraphic speech. I have deliberately not translated נוכח simply as "before"--there is a variation in terminology (using both לפני and נוכח) and so I thought I should preserve that in translation. Given the context, "facing" also denotes a spatial relationship to the "speech."

This makes this a fascinating line indeed. We normally do not associate speech with space, but it does make some sense--sounds come from places--"where is that noise coming from?" It indicates that, as in Isaiah 6, the seraphim are highly related to the throne itself. I have also suggested as an alternative "in the presence of." This might be relevant because sound is more ambient; it can surround you without clear directionality. Next, why not just say "before (or facing) the Seraphim" rather than the "speech of the Seraphim." Does that mean that the seraphim themselves are not seen or sensed--only their speech? I am not sure (and I kind of doubt it), but I think it does something else. This entire pericope has been very interested in different sensory experiences--and their absences. We begin with silence, and then calling. Then we turn to burning (touch) and perhaps numbness. Again with seraphic speech we have auditory emphasis. Oddly, although we presume an overall visual space--especially with the description of the crown, the garment, the hashmal, etc.--the pericope is conspicuously lacking in seeing terms.

Naming is clearly important. It was important in the first part of the pericope to know and call the angel's name; it only makes sense that this emphasis would continue. We, therefore, learn that the angel is able to stand before the throne because he shares his name with the one upon it--he is, perhaps, to be identified with the "angel of the LORD" and all the other angelic figures in apocalyptic literature that have the same name (e.g., Iaoel in Apocalypse of Abraham). Overall, as we knew before, this is a very highly placed angel--he is in charge of the crown, the divine garment, the hashmal; he controls the gates of redemption and so on--but now we know more: he has the divine name.

One question that remains: what are the implications of people rejoicing unwillingly? Is it that my reading of "universalism" is to be qualified now? That is, there is a more eschatological vision for all people, but people will not have a choice? If they look upon the angel (or perhaps seen by him), they have no choice but to desire the angel's provision? It is an automatic response.

Savories and Sweets

2011-06-26T21:57:00.002-04:00

For cool cakes, check out this site from my wife. Her cakes are yummy! and cool!

Daily Hekhalot: Hekhalot Zutarti §420c (A Universal Vision of the Angelic Throne Keeper)

2011-06-24T12:53:00.004-04:00

Having discussed the first two parts of Hekhalot Zutarti §420 here and here, today we complete this particular pericope. I want to thank those who have commented on these previous posts to suggest emendations and alternative interpretations--they have been quite helpful.

This portion of the pericope designated in Schäfer's Synopse zur Hekhalot as §420 reaches a climactic moment of disclosure of this particular angel's heavenly position and heavenly duties. In the post on §420a, we already learned that he is in charge of crowning(?) or perhaps adorning(?) the divine crown. The in the second post on §420b, we discovered that he dwells at the entrance to the heavenly courtroom and even burns the hands (and feet) of the mystic seeking entrance, although we do not know why. Now we finally see this angel in his fully heavenly duties before the throne itself, and a much more general human response to the sight of him:

Text:
והוא עומד לפני כסא הכבוד נוכח דיבר שרפים ששמו כשמו ושם אחד הוא
והוא עומד מכסא הכבוד ומתקן את הכסא ומלביש את החלוק ומהדר את החשמל ופותח שערי ישועה להראן חן וחסד ורחמים בעיני כל רואיו וכל הרואים אותו בין בחור בין בתולה בין נער בין זקן בין איש בין אשה בין גוי בין אמה בין אשראל ירוצו לקראתו ויאהבוהו לשלמו וירוצו בטובתו וישמחו בפרנסתו בין בטובתו בין שלא בטובתו‪.‬

Translation
And he stands before the throne of glory arguing, speaking; seraphim set him in his place and there he is alone. And he stands from the throne of glory and he prepares the throne and dresses the garment and crowns the hashmal and opens the gates of redemption to show favor and grace and compassion in the eyes of each who sees him. And all who see him--both young man and virgin girl, young and old, man and woman, foreigner and handmaid and Israel--will desire to call to him and will love him to complete/stop/appease(?) him and they will desire his goodness and will rejoice in his provision both with his goodness and without his goodness.

Variants:
N8128 omits והוא עומד.
N8128, M40, and D436 read הכבוד; M22 and O1531 read כבוד.
O1531 and N8128 read דיבר and דבר respectively; M40 and D436 read דבר דיבר; and M22 reads טומח דירדטופוס.
N8128 adds שריפיתיש before שרפים.
O1531 has בשמו rather than כשמו.
M22 has בכסא rather than מכסא.
M22 omits the consecutive ו before מתקן. N8128 omits את after מתקן.
Schäfer emends O1531, adding the י to מלביש.
M40, M22, and D436 omit the את before החשמל.
N8128, O1531, M22 read פתח rather than פותח
N8128 and D436 read להראן; O1531, להראןתן; M40, להדראן חן; M22, להראו חן. M40 seems the least likely; all others could work.
N8128 omits ורחמים; M22 has ולרחמים.
Instead of בעיני כל רואיו וכל הרואים אותו N8128 reads לכל העולין למרכבה; O1531 reads הרואין אתו.
In general, D436 uses כן instead of בין; N8128 omits בין זקן.
Only N8128 and M22 have בין אשה; O1531 has איש ישראל and moves straight to בין דוי.
N8128 has בין עבד after בין ישראל.
M40 and D436 have ויאהבוהו; M22, ויאהב; O1531, ויהבו; and N8128, ויהיו לי שלום.
M40 has ולרוצו; M22, וירצו.
N8128 has לפרנסתו.
M22 has בטובתם.

Notes:
While this is a longer post than usual, this completes §420. Here we finally see this highly placed angelic figure in all of his activities. He not only is in charge of the divine crown, but, as we suspected, ministers directly before the divine throne of glory. He has some interesting activities there. As one might expect in the heavenly throne room, there are seraphim there. They seem to set this princely angel in his place--a singular place of distinction before the throne. He speaks and/or argues before the throne--on behalf of someone, such as Israel?

In addition to the crown, he prepares the throne itself. It turns out he is also the divine seamster; that is, he takes care of the divine haluq--something like an undershirt usually, but here seeming to be the divine cloak or garment (cf. Hekhalot Rabbati §102). He adorns the hashmal--that usually untranslatable word from Ezek. 1 (although today is used for "electricity"). Perhaps the role of arguing relates to this final part, since he also opens the gates of redemption.

This part, however, is curious: it is for all who see him. This seeing is mentioned twice, so is probably an important element. So he grants favor and compassion and redemption to those who see him. And then we get the whole list of potential seers, and, surprisingly, they include nearly anyone: young or old, male or female, foreigner or Israelite, and between "handmaid" and some of the variants, potentially slave or free (see N8128). (n.b., there are quite a few variants in this list.) This is quite startling, in fact, since typically those doing the seeing in the Hekhalot texts are Jewish males, usually rabbis of the tannaitic period. Does this open up visions to others--notably to women, foreigners, and those who lack elite status? I wonder. If so, we should ask how they see and, perhaps more importantly, when they see. Indeed, the verb tense shifts to the future. They WILL see him. Is this, therefore, an eschatological vision? An eschatological redemption? The sight of him will be a future disclosure. And it is a redeeming sight that leads to a desire for him. If that is the case, the mystical proleptic journey and vision may remain an elite Jewish male privilege in the hekhalot texts, while vouchsafing a more general vision in the future for people of all walks of life. If that is the case, this passage envisions a greater universality in the eschatological scene, which is not exclusive in terms of gender, ethnicity, age, or status. This gracious vision that crisscrosses social distinctions almost sounds like the early Christian baptismal formula cited by Paul in Gal. 3:28: "there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female." Although the difference is that Galatians appears to negate social distinctions, whereas in Hekhalot Zutarti the divine vision is available to all regardless of social distinctions--although this may be a distinction without a difference. I wonder...is seeing this angel--recall the vision is what is important--and desiring of this angel that includes potentially anyone the mystical answer to the Christian formula? There is still a hint of division in such a scene, however: while all may rejoice, they do not all rejoice with his goodness; it seems some rejoice without his goodness…. Nonetheless, the implications are very unique in Hekhalot literature--to my knowledge--and therefore require some pause.

As usual, all comments, emendations, alternative views of this passage are welcome. Next we will continue with Hekhalot Zutarti §421, which is a slightly shorter pericope.

More on Circumcision in San Francisco

2011-06-22T20:14:00.003-04:00

Several individuals and the anti-defamation league have filed lawsuits against the current ballot initiative that would criminalize circumcision for boys under 18 years old. From CNN.com:

"Existing California law is clear," said Nancy Appel, Anti-Defamation League associate director in San Francisco, in a statement. "Only the state can make rules about medical procedures and this initiative violates that law. Not only does this initiative waste time, energy and expense, but it also offends the notions of parental rights and freedom of religion. It is unconstitutional and, as we allege in this lawsuit, contrary to California law."

See the rest here.

Daily Hekhalot: Hekhalot Zutarti §420b (Burning the Hands)

2011-06-22T12:01:00.003-04:00

For our daily Hekhalot, we are continuing to work through §§420-421 in Hekhalot Zutarti. Today we are on §420b. For §420a see here. Last time we discovered that the descender to the chariot encounters an important angelic figure, whose name is a privileged disclosure. This angel's importance--so far--relates to being in charge of the divine crown. There was much difficulty in the previous passage in terms of pronoun usage--who's doing what to whom?--the translation of a couple key words, and so forth. Today is a little more straightforward in some respects. We are still in the middle of the speech by R. Ishmael about the same angel. The pronouns are a little clearer--instead of a proliferation of he's and him's, we now get a nice differentiation between I and he. We also get a reaction from the descender to the chariot--his hands (and likely feet) are curiously burned!

Text:
והוא עומד בפתח ראשון ומשמש בשער הגדול וכשראיתיו נשרפו ידי והייתי עומד בלא ידים ובלא רגלים עד שנראה לי פני יון השר ממשרתי עליונים

Translation:
And he stands at the first entrance and ministers at the great gate; and when I saw him my hands were burned and I was standing without hands and without feet until he appeared to me, PNI YVN, the prince among the ministers of the uppermost (or uppermost ministers).

Variants:
M22 transposes הוא and עומד
M40 and D436 has על פתח rather than בפתח.
M40 and D436 read ראשים rather than ראשון.
M22 has משתמש rather than משמש.
M22 has בשפר rather than בשער.
N8128 omits the ו before כשראיתיו.
D436 reads כשרפו rather than נשרפו
D436, M40, and N8128 all read ידי, but O1531 and M22 read ידיי, which makes more sense. Of all the mss., O1531 has given the least trouble, which makes me tend to trust its reading. For now, I will place the majority reading in the text, but I will translate as the form "my hands."
M22 adds ורגליי after ידיי, which makes sense of the next clause.
M22 and N8128 use עומר rather than עומד, which appears to be an orthographic mistake; M22 also spells הייתי as היתי.
M40 and D436 omit the second בלא; M22 spells רגלים as רגליים, which would aid in the pronunciation as a dual form.
M40 and D436 read פני יון, M22 reads פניון, O1531 reads פנייון, and N8128 reads פני יוון.
M22 adds a clarifying שהוא after השר; N8128 adds אחד in the same place.

Notes:
There is still more to come in §420, but this is a good place to stop so that we do not get overwhelmed by the variants and so the post does not get too long (n.b., an important aspect will be coming in the next post--the very throne of glory).

Concerning the textual variants, which I haven't discussed much in my notes, there are a few patterns that emerge in this brief section. M40 and D436 often agree against the rest of the mss. M22 shows a great deal of visual errors, due to letters that look similar. M22, however, also has a tendency to clarify the text. For example, if the mystic "stands" without hands and feet, it makes sense that not just the hands but the feet were also burned.

The text, except for a couple points, is more straightforward than before. We learn more about the angel. He is at the entrance of the great gate. The great gate indicates that we are probably close to the goal of the divine throne room. We also get the mystic's response to the angel. The mystic sees the angel and, presumably the angel burns the mystic's hands (and feet?). The burning of the hands (and feet?) is curious. Although different passages in the Hekhalot often indicate the dangers of traveling through the heavenly realms, usually the mystic overcomes them and comes off unharmed. Perhaps this reaches back to an old tradition--such as found in an off-hand comment in 1 Enoch 14--that the mystic feels heat (and/or cold) when approaching the heavenly throne room. Instead of a generic feeling, however, the heat--the burning--is located specifically in the extremities of the hands and feet. I do not know offhand, but perhaps someone knows a tradition where the mystic is (ritually?) burned before entering the most holy, most heavenly court? Then there is the paradoxical remark about "standing" without (feeling one's?) hands or feet. Some of the texts change this to "speaking," but I think standing makes more sense given the setting that focuses on the hands and feet. The statement of standing without hands and feet might indicate that after the burning, these extremities go numb--they aren't felt. Overall, it seems to disable and disarm the mystic at the threshold of the divine throne room. I have chosen to read פני יון as the prince's name, but I have strong doubts about this. It is translatable, but it didn't make sense to me. It could be the "face of Greece," the "Face of Yavan (the progenitor of the Greeks)," the "face of thickness." But I have read "prince" in apposition to this, making פני יון either a name or title. This figure, however, is in quite a high position, being among--and prince among--the angelic ministers in the most high (the highest of the high--which corresponds to the holiest of the holy or holy of holies).

Next we will see even further up and further into the most holy and heavenly place to the throne of glory itself.

Writing in the City of the Dead

2011-06-19T11:55:00.006-04:00

I just saw this in NPR: archaeologists are studying the graffiti in the ancient Beit Shearim necropolis:

Aramaic is the lingua franca of the ancient Middle East, the linguistic root of modern day Hebrew and Arabic.

"Once you understand Aramaic," says Karen Stern, "you can read anything. You can read Hebrew, you can read Phoenician. I always call it the little black dress of Semitic languages."

Stern, 35, is an archaeologist and an assistant professor in the history department at Brooklyn College. Her passion is the tomb graffiti of the ancient Jews in what was then Roman Palestine. Graffiti has been "published, but sort of disregarded," she says. "Whereas I think it is intimate, vocal and spontaneous, and adds to the historical record."

....

"They were grapho-maniacal," Jonathan Price, head of the classics department at Tel Aviv University, says of the ancient Jews who were entombed here in the first and second centuries.

Over the next decade, Price and a group of scholars plan to publish many volumes of inscriptions from walls, pots, glass — everything but books — dating from the time of Alexander the Great to that of the Prophet Muhammad.

They will include many languages, such as Hebrew and Aramaic dialects like Syriac, Nabatean and Samaritan.

Price describes the graffiti as "a spontaneous verbal outburst" that adds intimacy to the historical record of the ancient Levant and Mesopotamia.

"These cultures wrote everything," he says. "They recorded their personal lives, their public lives; empires recorded themselves. They were hyperlinguistic."

There is also an interesting theory of the pictures of "nets" at each of the entrances--that they are not just to keep evil spirits out, but also to keep the dead in...perhaps in fear of zombies????

And as I just saw that Jim Davila pointed out, Aramaic is a branch on the same tree as Hebrew, Arabic, etc., not the root.

Read all of it here.

Daily Hekhalot: Hekhalot Zutarti §420a

2011-06-17T17:27:00.004-04:00

For today's--and for days' to come--reading Rebecca Lesses of Mystical Politics has suggested a difficult passage in Hekhalot Zutarti (the "lesser palaces") §§420-421 because it is baffling. And so, while I started off with a passage that was relatively straightforward, we are delving into one that has left many baffled. It has a great deal of textual difficulties, so we will spread this over several posts.

Hekhalot Zutarti is perhaps even more literarily disorganized than Hekhalot Rabbati. Its disparate materials, however, are indispensable because much of it is highly unique in the Hekhalot texts. For example, it has the lone reference in the Hekhalot literature to the so-called "posture of Elijah," which after Gershom Scholem's reading of Hai Gaon that placed it at the center of merkavah mystical practice received a great deal of attention. I think most now find Scholem's emphasis rather extreme since it does only occur in this one passage with many other practices discussed throughout the different "macroforms."

Lesses's selection, as we will see, also is fairly interesting. Peter Schäfer has, in fact, called it unique not only for Hekhalot Zutarti, but for all of the Hekhalot (Origins of Jewish Mysticism, 301). It appears in all the major mss. and in the Geniza fragments (the text of which I do not have in front of me).

Text and (Preliminary) Translation:

אמר רבי ישמאל על מי שתק השר שהוא קורא אותו מגיהשה שאין בריה בכל משרתים שיקרא אותו בשם הזה ואת קורא אותו מגיהשה מפני שהוא שני להדרירון הדר תוב הדר טהור הדר זיו אוריה יה יה אלהי ישראל

Rabbi Ishmael said concerning one who is silent: The prince who is called MGYHShH--there is no creature among all the ministers who will call him by this name and you call him MGYHShH--because he is distinguished (?) to crown (?) a good crown, a pure crown, a splendorous crown of the light of Yah Yah Yah God of Israel.

Textual variants:
M22 adds אמרו עליו after ישמאל. N8128 uses קוראו instead of קורא אותו. M40 has כשר rather than השר.
A couple mss. have מניהשה (D436) or מניחשה (N8128). M22 has בדוק rather than בריה; O1531 has ביריא; and N8128 has בירייה editorially inserted.
Both O1531 and N8128 add כל after שאין.
M22 and O1531 have משרתיו; N8128 has המשרתים
D436 has שיקראנו rather than שיקרש אותו; M40 has שיקראנו בזה השם; M22 omits הזה.
N8128 uses ואת קוראו rather than ואת קורא אותו.
Same variations as before with angel's name.
O1531 and D436 has שיני; N8128 omits שני.
N8128 has להדריון, which looks smoother, but all of the other readings agree on להדרירון.
M40 and D436 read טוהר; O1531 doubles הדר תוב and omits טהור.
There is a great deal of variation on the divine name. Some add another "Yah," some include YY, an abbreviation of the tetragrammaton. M40 misspells the word "God" as אלדי. N8128 adds גיהוי פנהודי.

Notes:
This is quite a difficult passage, indeed. The rest of §420 improves, but I thought I should stop before I was overwhelmed by textual variations. For translation and interpretation, the abundance of pronouns can be quite dizzying and I make no claim to have sorted it out quite yet. The use of punctuation is solely my own--and provisional--to help clarify the passage. It may obscure the meaning as well. I welcome any and all amendments to translation and punctuation. For example, is "concerning one who is silent" to be part of what R. Ishmael says or not? I have started to opt for not, but I probably can be easily convinced otherwise. Should it be better rendered as "still"? I have chosen to render "the prince who is called" rather than the more literal "the prince who he calls him." There are other problems as well--am I right with "distinguished" and I find what I have rendered as "to crown" quite baffling. I am pretty sure I have not captured all that is going on in that word. And if I am missing something--whether it should be obvious or obscure--please let me know.

Moving along, as Schäfer notes, this is a fairly unique passage. I am not quite sure what is going on with the silence/stillness part--perhaps Rebecca Lesses has some insight here?--but so far we are meeting an angelic figure, whose name varies by mss. and who appears to be quite important in the divine throne room. This importance is easy to see already--one of the few easier things to see--because this angel appears to be in charge of taking care of the divine crown, which is good, pure, and splendorous (words that are often bandied about in Hekhalot texts). Indeed, the divine realm is one of intense goodness, purity, and splendor to much a higher degree than any place on earth.

It seems, though, that not everyone does--or can?--call the angel by name or by "this" name, which might suggest that the angel has several names. The angel's name is a privileged disclosure.

"Daily" Hekhalot a Go!

2011-06-17T12:36:00.002-04:00

It appears there is some interest in some sporadic posting of Hekhalot pericopae. Rebecca Lesses has expressed some interest and Jim Davila is hoping I proceed--if anything to save us from angelic attacks. Rebecca has suggested a look at Hekhalot Zutarti §§420-421, which I have glanced at and has a great deal of textual difficulties. It might take a while to get through these sections, but I will try in my spare moments. If you want to join in, please connect to these posts with your own readings.

Hebrew Alignment Formatting Question

2011-06-17T11:21:00.004-04:00

I have a quick question on formatting. When I write in Hebrew online, everything turns out fine. But when I go into my microsoft word program, it scrambles everything up. It is like it can't handle the right-to-left. For example, when I copy and paste something from my blog to a word document, it reverses everything so that it reads left-to-right rather than right-to-left. When I try to write, sometimes it will sometimes allow right-to-left within a single word, but when I space it makes me go left-to-right. When I worked from a PC, I never had this problem. But with a mac, now I have it. By the way, it is clearly a problem with word itself. If I go to a notepad or rich text editing pad, it has NO PROBLEM moving back and forth between different directional writing types (the problem is, it is much more difficult to type up a full formal paper with footnotes, etc., in that program). Anyone have a solution?

A Little Daily Hekhalot?: Hekhalot Rabbati §81a

2011-06-16T16:35:00.008-04:00

One of the unfortunate consequences of completing graduate school and beginning to teach full time is that it is difficult to find a reading buddy. One of my memories of my late advisor, Alan Segal, is sitting around a table in his office with him and perhaps one or two other graduate students and working through some passages from the Hekhalot material. Alas, even if one is lucky enough to land in an institution where someone has the requisite language abilities, they may or may not have time, interest in that particular literature, or be willing to delve into some very difficult text with grammatical and literary difficulties and a great deal of disparity from manuscript to manuscript. So, seeking a reading partner, I am putting a reading--a short one--of the first lines of the "macroform," as Peter Schäfer calls it, of Hekhalot Rabbati (the "Greater Palaces"). I will be working from Peter Schäfer's Synopse zur Hekhalot, where he presents seven different manuscript witnesses in synoptic form.

Hekhalot Rabbati, as a "macroform," is a fairly difficult work, evincing a great deal of internal literary disparities and lengthy additions in some mss. (esp. N8128). It contains several different genres of material: ascents or "descents" to the merkavah (chariot throne) of God in the heavenly courtroom, liturgies (to ascend/descend and participate in while in the heavenly courtroom), apocalypses, Sar Torah (adjuration of an angel), and lore concerning mystically oriented Rabbis. While Gershom Scholem considered it one of the latest of the Hekhalot texts (among which also include: Hekhalot Zutarti, Ma'aseh Merkavah, Merkavah Rabbah, and Sefer Hekhalot / 3 Enoch), Peter Schäfer argues it is the earliest. The overall dating, social location, etc., of the Hekhalot texts in general has been debated with little consensus. They likely contain traditions going back to the Tannaitic period, but in their current "macroforms" they are probably para- or post-Talmudic with ongoing revision and editorial activity occurring well into the Middle Ages.

I am starting with a fairly simple pericope to encourage others with access to a copy of the Synopose to join in. I will also keep the pericopes short (so today I am only doing half a pericope). I will, unfortunately, have to do this sporadically due to my schedule restrictions. So, here goes:

אמר רבי ישמאל מה אילו שירות שהיה אומר מי שמבקש להסתכל בצפיית המרכבה לירד בשלום ולעלות בשלום

Rabbi Ishmael said: What are the songs he would recite who seeks to behold a vision of the merkavah, to descend in peace and to ascend in peace?

Some notes on the text: some mss. use נאמר rather than אומר (M40), some omit the definite article before the word מרכבה (N8128, O1531) and some add הן between אילו and מה (M40, D436).

These are supposedly the first lines of Hekhalot Rabbati. They indicate one of the most important aspects of the literature: the incorporation of elaborate and lengthy liturgical pieces that are necessary to ascend/descend to the chariot and that are sung in the divine presence. In fact, it is primarily from the contents of the liturgies that one discovers much of the perspective (or perspectives) concerning the characteristics of God, the angels, and humans (particularly Israel) and the relationships with one another. R. Ishmael's question indicates that these songs--note they are "recited" rather than "sung," per se--are the means to see God. The "descent in peace and ascend in peace" resembles the Rabbinic tradition of the four who entered pardes (see, e.g., B. Hag. 14b); only Rabbi Akiva--a hero in the Hekhalot texts--entered and exited peacefully.

Taking a look at the verbs. Some of the translations I have seen omit translating the participle "seeking/desiring." Yet I think it adds something to the sentence--it denotes that the learning, preparation, and execution of descending to the chariot to have a vision of it is a process; it is a quest.

In terms of "behold," the Hekhalot texts use several different verbs of seeing, beholding, gazing, glimpsing. Although there is a great deal of auditory emphasis in the texts (hearing the divine liturgy) they are also highly visually oriented.

Finally, the order of "descend" and "ascend." The Hekhalot texts have drawn a great deal of commentary on the unexpected language of "descending" to the merkavah rather than the expected "ascending." That is one "descends" to heaven and then "ascends" back to earth. Elliot Wolfson argues that the language refers to only the last leg of the journey: one "ascends" the entire way and then in the seventh heaven "descends" to the merkavah, being enthroned oneself. Alan Segal suggested it might relate to the "posture of Elijah"; that is, one is placing one's head between one's knees to inculcate the altered state of consciousness that would allow one to see a vision--so it has to do with mystical practice. Others just find it paradoxical and leave it at that. Nonetheless, I personally have not found any of the explanations I have read to be convincing.

I would add one more comment on the "in peace." The rest of Hekhalot Rabbati demonstrates the dangers, difficulties, and apparent impossibilities of this quest--with angels throwing metal rods at you, the voice of the cherubim killing you, and the sight of God's Beauty destroying all creatures, angelic or human--yet different Rabbis (R. Ishmael, R. Akiva, and R. Nehuniah b. Ha-Kanah) will discuss how to overcome these difficulties so that one can descend/ascend at will, see the enthroned God, and participate in the heavenly courtly activities (and, most importantly, report back to Israel what is going on up there!).

Ancient Excrement!

2011-06-14T12:44:00.003-04:00

When Mt. Vesuvius encased the ancient city of Herculaneum, it preserved many things under its volcanic ash and heated pressure, including, as it turns out, ancient human excrement.

Specialists involved in the Herculaneum Conservation Project have excavated the ancient sewers of the city and uncovered the largest deposit of organic material ever found in the Roman world.

Layers of excrement that lay buried by volcanic mud for centuries are giving experts new clues about the diet and health of the city's ancient inhabitants.

See further here and here.

Chicago Assyrian Dictionary Published

2011-06-12T10:38:00.003-04:00

In the NYTimes:

Ninety years in the making, the 21-volume dictionary of the language of ancient Mesopotamia and its Babylonian and Assyrian dialects, unspoken for 2,000 years but preserved on clay tablets and in stone inscriptions deciphered over the last two centuries, has finally been completed by scholars at the University of Chicago.
....
And the dictionary is more of an encyclopedia than simply a concise glossary of words and definitions. Many words with multiple meanings and extensive associations with history are followed by page after page of discourse ranging through literature, law, religion, commerce and everyday life. There are, for example, 17 pages devoted to the word “umu,” meaning “day.”

Of course, the primary language covered in the dictionary is Akkadian. See entire article here.

Evangelicals Supporting Circumcision

2011-06-10T15:42:00.003-04:00

Although since Paul (in Galatians and Romans) denied the necessity of circumcision for salvation for the early movement that became Christianity, the National Association of Evangelicals has come out against the San Francisco ballot measure that would ban circumcision for any male under the age of 17 by citing Abrahamic solidarity with Jews and Muslims.

From CNN's Belief Blog:

By Dan Gilgoff, CNN.com Religion Editor
(CNN) - The nation’s largest evangelical Christian umbrella group has come out against San Francisco’s proposed circumcision ban, evidence that the voter initiative is beginning to galvanize national religious opposition.

Thursday’s announcement from the National Association of Evangelicals was noteworthy because Christians are not religiously mandated to practice circumcision, as are Jews and Muslims.

“Jews, Muslims, and Christians all trace our spiritual heritage back to Abraham. Biblical circumcision begins with Abraham,” said National Association of Evangelicals president Leith Anderson. “No American government should restrict this historic tradition. Essential religious liberties are at stake.”

Circumcision is Everywhere!

2011-06-10T12:45:00.005-04:00

There come times when similar stories from different places emerge at the same time. Perhaps this phenomenon is real or perhaps it is in the eye of a particularly sensitized beholder--I am currently writing a piece that includes a segment on circumcision and divine visions and reading a collection of essays on circumcision. That seems to be the case with circumcision at the moment. While there are often occasional debates on circumcision's medical merits, as a religious rite, as mutilation, etc., it seems that such a debate has heightened in the past week. Firstly with the potential legal issues in San Francisco and now, as many newspapers have reported (not usually on their front page) that Russell Crowe has joined the fray on twitter, calling it "stupid," "moronic," and comparing it to human sacrifice. While the San Francisco ban, for the most part, is directed toward all circumcision without qualifying for Muslim, Jewish, or medical practices, Crowe refers to it solely in terms of "Jewish circumcision." Two instances, however, are still a coincidence. It takes three to make a pattern. Anyone know a third unrelated to the San Francisco ballot and to Crowe?

My Dissertation is Online!

2011-06-09T14:40:00.006-04:00

My 2010 Columbia Ph.D. dissertation, "Heavenly Sabbath, Heavenly Sanctuary: The Transformation of Priestly Sacred Space and Sacred Time in the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice and the Epistle to the Hebrews," directed by Alan Segal is now available as an open access document through ProQuest. You can download a pdf here.

Here is the abstract:

This dissertation investigates how the Sabbath and the sanctuary interrelate in Second Temple Jewish and early Christian literature. Studies of sacred time and sacred space have generally treated them as separate yet complementary categories in the study of religion. This has been equally true of those studying the Sabbath and the sanctuary in Second Temple Jewish and early Christian literature. Considerations of their coordination have tended to be rare momentary glimpses rather than extended treatments. This study focuses on the coordination of sacred time of the Sabbath and sacred space of the sanctuary through how they come together in narratives, ritual practices, and shifting historical circumstances.

The body of this dissertation consists of three major parts divided into the Hebrew Bible, the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice from Qumran, and the Epistle to the Hebrews. Beginning with and strongly relying upon the Hebrew Bible, these sources align the Sabbath and the sanctuary by making them equivalent in holiness and by embedding this relationship within an ancient Near Easter narrative pattern exemplified by the Babylonian Enuma Elish in which a god creates, is enthroned, receives a temple, and rests. The Songs and Hebrews similarly reflect upon and transform this relationship within this narrative pattern by resituating it on a heavenly plane. Their similarities indicate a likely connection between them. For the Songs the Sabbath becomes the temporal access to the heavenly Tabernacle; for Hebrews, the Sabbath and the sanctuary become equivalent expressions to enter heavenly life. In both, this spatiotemporal coordination allowed one presently to enter the heavenly realm and approach the enthroned God of creation.

These works inaugurated, maintained, and reconfigured this relationship in periods when the sanctuary was inaccessible. The earliest articulations occurred during and after the Babylonian exile, the Dead Sea sectarians used the Songs when separated from the temple, and Hebrews likely was written after the destruction of the second temple. By bringing the Sabbath together with the sanctuary, these works made the Sabbath the temporal access to the sanctuary's spatial holiness and heavenliness when it was otherwise unobtainable. Those within the covenant could experience the sanctuary's holiness every seventh day and, thereby, God's holy and heavenly presence.

Circumcision and Law

2011-06-08T21:53:00.002-04:00

From the Washington Post's Blog, "On Faith":

A right to ban circumcision?

A proposal to ban the circumcision of boys will be on San Francisco’s ballot in November, even though the ritual procedure is sacred to Muslims and Jews. Lloyd Schofield, the author of the Male Genital Mutilation bill, claims that male circumcision is akin to female genital mutilation, stipulating, “People can practice whatever religion they want, but your religious practice ends with someone else’s body.” Opponents of the measure say that the ban violates their First Amendment right to the free exercise of their religious beliefs. Many view the ban especially skeptically after a seemingly anti-Semitic comic book emerged, penned by the ban’s supporters. Should San Francisco have the right to ban circumcision?

Oddly, a lot of my research has, in an unforeseen way, been bumping up against different views of circumcision--particularly issues of being born circumcised as well as circumcision being the primary prerequisite to see God (and live). Of course, the California bill addresses slightly different issues. See all of the different blog posts on the topic here.

Hats: The Unifier of all Religion

2011-05-30T15:40:00.000-04:00

"Failure to Deliver" by Elizabeth Castelli

2011-05-26T15:20:00.004-04:00

Barnard College's indefatigable Elizabeth Castelli has written up a thoughtful comparison of Harold Camping's and the John Jay Report's failures in the Revealer:

Last week, two things did not happen. The Rapture did not take place on May 21, 2011, despite the fervent prognostications of a retired engineer-turned-Christian broadcaster and biblical numerologist. Meanwhile, the sex abuse scandal that has mired the Catholic Church in litigation and shame for nearly three decades was not resolved nor even really explained, despite the earnest efforts of the number-crunching social scientists at the John Jay College for Criminal Justice, City University of New York. The coincidence of these two non-happenings was more than a matter of the calendar.

Read the rest of it here.

Susan Jacoby also talks about the John Jay report's failures on the Washington Post online.

Seeing God in (Late) Antique Judaism

2011-05-09T10:37:00.007-04:00

I am participating in a conference at Union Theological Seminary this Thursday on "See the God." I am speaking on ancient, with an emphasis on late ancient Judaism. Here is a talk-teaser:

There is an uncritical assumption that often circulates in scholarship and popular belief that Judaism is a religion of hearing to the exclusion or ignoring of seeing. This assumption operates by pointing to Jewish aniconism and reducing Jewish encounters with the divine to the Deuteronomistic emphasis on audition. Did not God say that humans could not see God—or literally God’s face—and live (Exod. 33:20)? Nonetheless, this reductive maneuver ignores the rich ambivalences of the Bible and later Jewish views concerning whether and how one can see God and live. Some follow Exod. 33:20 and categorically claim its impossibility. In this case, numerous intermediary figures fill the ocular gap, allowing appearances of aspects of God—like God’s Memra, Shekhinah, Glory, or even God’s tefillin or phylacteries—or angels. Others, however, think a full and direct vision is possible for the especially righteous and humble. A few would claim that even the unrighteous can glimpse God, but they are those who see God and do not live. Some limit this visual ability to the righteous of the distant past, as a special dispensation for Moses or Enoch; others see these past figures as models to emulate and also achieve such a vision. This paper will illustrate these vistas of optic possibilities by investigating the denial, acceptance, occurrence, and accomplishment of divine visions in biblical narrative, prophecy, and apocalypses; how these biblical visionary stories were retold and interpreted in the Targumim and Midrashim; and the instructions to ascend to and gaze upon God on his chariot throne and participate in the heavenly liturgies and live in the Hekhalot literature.

Hope to see you there if you are in NY!

Afterlife and Beetlejuice

2011-05-04T19:30:00.004-04:00

So...in addition to the last post (in which one person's heaven is another's hell), in this the afterlife is very individualized:

It's all very personal!

Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice! oh no!

Heaven according to Angels in America

2011-04-29T12:30:00.002-04:00

So yesterday we learned that life is a job, and God will pay you 14.50 a day. After this, you have to pay for your sins...in cash. If you have any leftover, you go to heaven; if not, you have to be born again.

Today, we will continue with our afterlife theme and learn what heaven is like...according to Angels in America:

To remind everyone that one person's hell is another person's heaven; and vice versa.

The Afterlife according to Father Guido Sarducci

2011-04-28T22:28:00.002-04:00

This is how I plan to start off my Life after Death class next year:

You have to pay for your sins...in cash!

Life after Death

2011-04-28T10:47:00.005-04:00

Next Spring, I will be teaching a special topics course at Illinois Wesleyan University on "Life after Death." Firstly, I will get to continue next year at Illinois Wesleyan! Secondly, the very fact I am teaching this course is an homage to my late advisor, Alan Segal, whose major book on Life after Death will serve as the basis for the class.

(Painting: William Blake)

When I Went to Hades...

2011-04-27T18:13:00.003-04:00

The Journey to Hades.--I, too, have been in the underworld, like Odysseus, and shall be there often yet; and not only rams have I sacrificed to be able to speak with a few of the dead, but I have not spared my own blood. Four pairs it was that did not deny themselves to my sacrifice: Epicurus and Montaigne, Goethe and Spinoza, Plato and Rousseau, Pascal and Schopenhauer. With these I must come to terms when I have long wandered alone; they may call me right and wrong; to them will I listen when in the process they call each other right and wrong. Whatsoever I say, resolve, or think up for myself and others--on these eight I fix my eyes and see their eyes fixed on me.

May the living forgive me that occasionally they appear to me as shades, so pale and somber, so restless and, alas, so lusting for life--while those men then seem so alive to me as if now, after death, they could never again grow weary of life. But eternal aliveness is what counts: what matters is "eternal life" or any life!

(Nietsche, Mixed Opinions and Maxims, #408; trans. Walter Kaufmann)

The Spiritual Side of Beer

2011-04-27T16:51:00.001-04:00

From CNN Belief.net:

Beer-only fast ends with bacon smoothie
By Eric Marrapodi, CNN Belief Blog Co-Editor

(CNN) – J. Wilson has survived his 46-day beer-only fast and found some unexpected spiritual insights.

Wilson, who lives outside Des Moines, Iowa, was emulating a Lenten tradition carried out by German monks hundreds of years ago. In keeping with tradition he ate his last solid food on Ash Wednesday and broke his fast on Easter Sunday.

See the whole article here.

JP II's Beatification

2011-04-27T10:20:00.004-04:00

See here.

The relic of choice is...his blood.

Perhaps because "the blood is life" (Gen. 9:4; Lev. 17:11, 14)?

On Originality

2011-04-26T21:15:00.002-04:00

"Original.--Not that one is the first to see something new, but that one sees as new what is old, long familiar, seen and overlooked by everybody, is what distinguishes truly original minds. The first discoverer is ordinarily that wholly common creature, devoid of spirit and addicted to fantasy--accident." (Nietsche, Mixed Opinions and Maxims, #200; trans. Walter Kaufmann)

Seeing the God

2011-04-26T17:07:00.002-04:00

I saw Deirdre Good posted the schedule for a conference I am participating in, called "Seeing the God," and so I thought I should note it here:

Co-sponsored by UTS History Department and Fordham Department of Theology

CONFERENCE SCHEDULE: SEEING THE GOD.

Union Theol. Seminary Room 207

THURSDAY MAY 12. 2011
10.00 Coffee and Cookies.
10.20 Welcome. Symposiarchs Profs. McGuckin & Pettis
10.30 Introduction Panel 1. Chair Prof. Jeff Pettis
10.40 —11.00 Seeing the god in Greco-Roman cult. J Pettis
11.00— 11.20 Seeing among the Philosophers. S. Trostyanskiy
11.20 —11.40 Seeing the divine in antique Judaism. J Calaway
11.40— 12.00 Seeing divine things in proto-Christian Literature.
J Pettis & J McGuckin.
12.00— 12.10 Seeing our way to a break
12.10 Introduction Panel 2. Chair Prof. McGuckin
12.15– 12.35 Vision in the Nag Hammadi Texts. C. Lilllie
12.30- 12.50 Holy vision in Syro-Christian texts. T French
12.50– 1.10 Seeing things invisible in Byzantium. J McGuckin
1.10 — 1.40 Open Panel Discussion.

I hope to see some NY people there. The conference is a synopsis of a book of collected essays being put together edited by John McGuckin and Jeff Pettis. I, as you can see, am covering divine visions in late antique Judaism (and, really, more late antique than antique). I just need to get away from grading papers and write my essay!

The Transfiguration of the Disciples in the Gospel of Philip

2011-03-09T16:44:00.005-05:00

I am preparing a discussion of the concept of the "bridal chamber" in the Gospel of Philip for my class, Sexuality and Christianity. Along with this, I have been interested in how the concept of Jesus' body is articulated in the text, and in the process came across a gem of a line that I had not either noticed or just had not caught my attention before: that is, Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration was not actually transformed at all, but the disciples were.

In the Bentley Layton translation:

Jesus tricked everyone, for he did not appear as he was, but appeared in such a way that he could be seen. And he appeared to all of them--he [appeared] to [the] great as someone great, he appeared [to] the small as someone small, he [appeared] [to the] angels as an angel and to the human beings as a human being. For this reason he hid his discourse from everyone. Some saw him and thought they were seeing their own selves. But when he appeared to his disciples in glory upon the mountain he was not small, (for) he became great; or, rather, he made the disciples great so that they might be able to see that he was great. (57,28-58,8)

In this passage, Jesus rarely appears (if ever) in his true essence, which is inaccessible to most beings. He appears as like the one who sees him. He acts as an ultimate Rorschach--one sees themselves in him. He is almost a mirror, "they were seeing their own selves."

This is because, according to the Gospel of Philip, only like can see like:

People cannot see anything int he real realm unless they become it. In the realm of truth, it is not as human beings in the world who see sun without being sun and see the sky and so forth without being them. Rather, if you have seen anythings there, you become those things: if you have seen the spirit, you have become spirit; if you have seen the anointed (Christ), you have become the anointed (Christ); if you have seen the [father, you] will become the father. Thus [here] (in the world), you see everything and do not [see] your own self. But there, you see yourself; for you shall [become] what you see. (61,20-34)

Combining the two sayings: you are what you see, and see what you are. What you see in the realm of truth will be yourself. As such, the disciples could not see him in glory unless they too have been transformed to see it. They see it, and discover they too are great. Thus, according to the Gospel of Philip, Jesus does not change on the mountain; the disciples do. They finally see what was already always there.

Remembrance and Resting: For Alan Segal

2011-02-14T15:44:00.004-05:00

This morning as I read Jim Davila’s blog, my heart sank. I saw that my advisor, friend, and colleague had passed away yesterday. I felt the wind being knocked out of me. Reading April DeConick’s moving blog post later, I felt appreciation and grief over the brilliant fragility of a life who was known to most of us as an important scholar, but who was also known as a father, husband, son, and friend.

April’s posting took me back to his last published book, Life after Death. She quotes the last full paragraph, but it was the penultimate paragraph that caught my eye:

Besides being intellectual adventurers, our ascending souls serving as symbols of our lives’ journey, we are all also martyrs as mortality eventually defeats us. Shakespeare tells us what our religious imagery tells us: the victories of our life outlives its difficulties. The effort to transcend ourselves is all. “The rest is silence.”

That his final published book was on Life after Death takes on an appropriateness that only retrospect could know. Alan’s latest book was about how the afterlife is a topography of society’s hopes, dreams, desires, as well as our fears. Often tales of ascents to heaven is a glimpse into that afterlife that has a social function to validate one’s beliefs in the afterlife.

Heaven is the mirror of our souls and our souls are the creators of the landscapes of heaven…. Humans have been traveling to heaven to see what was there before heaven was a place where the beatified and sanctified dead went. But that is no guarantee that they are true. (LAD 711)

In terms of the hereafter, Alan would say that we need a healthy dose of doubt, that faith without doubt is fanaticism. But he would also say that the very fact they are unverifiable and vibrant indicates their importance.

…the very speculation that an afterlife exists seems like a human need and an ideal—again, like love, beauty, or justice—that exists in our minds rather than in the world and gives meaning to our lives. Like beauty and justice, life after death is no les important for being unverifiable. (LAD 713)

“The rest is silence.” This is a phrase that has haunted me before. They are Hamlet’s final words. Much hinges on what we mean by “rest.” Rest as that which remains, or rest as repose, a silent repose—a repose of peace. I have heard that Alan died peacefully; I truly hope his rest was silence. Alan placed the importance on the effort to transcend ourselves. While this transcendence of self is often taken to be a continued personal existence after death—the unverifiable—it also occurs through memory. While Alan has now entered his Sabbath rest, the rest of us remember, and through that remembrance he continues.

Driving to the university today, my memory fragmented and the fragments raced and collided in a chaotic chorus, moving from memory to memory without any clear direction: the way he signed my copy of his life after death book, comments he has given about my work, the first words he ever said to me, advice about life, his exuberant love of tea, his equal love of electronics.

All these memories, superimposed upon one another, now formed a single mass, but had not so far coalesced that I could not discern between them--between my oldest, my instinctive memories, and those others, inspired more recently by a taste or "perfume," and finally those which were actually the memories of another person from whom I had acquired them at second hand--if not real fissures, real geological faults, at least that veining, that variegation of colouring, which in certain rocks, in certain blocks of marble, points to differences of origin, age, and formation. (Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, In Search of Lost Time; trans. Moncrieff, Kilmartin, and Enright)

My mind raced between personal anecdote to parties at conferences to visiting him this past fall in his home to his work and contributions. Today I have been telling stories to my colleagues and students—things you cannot get from his books.

There are too many things to talk about and think on. I met Alan in the fall of 2002. I was in my final year of undergrad at Illinois Wesleyan University and was visiting Columbia University because I was applying to be his student. I was his student from the following September to this past August. Seven years. Sevens years obsessed with Sabbaths. When I defended a dissertation on the relationship between the Sabbath and the Sanctuary in Jewish and Christian literature this past August, I became the last student he saw through to completion. As Alan’s health deteriorated in the past year and months, I had prepared myself for this possibility. Finality carries with it a responsibility of continued remembrance.

Today I threw out my class notes and just talked about Alan’s contributions and thoughts and insights to my classes. I told my Bible class about why Ehud was Alan’s favorite Judge (hint: because both Ehud and Alan were left-handed; also because Alan found the story hilarious. He also found the Adam and Eve story to be very funny). I told my mysticism class about his thoughts on the relationship between ecstatic experiences and beliefs about the afterlife.

I read. My students heard Alan’s words through my lips. We read the passages quoted above. We read about Alan’s views of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity as twins born of the same mother:

The social order for Judaism and Christianity had both a divine and a human context. In both Judaism and Christianity, the Torah, the national constitution of Judea, was the basis of historical being. Both attempted to preserve it after the collapse of national unity. The fact that they chose such different ways reflected their different social origins in the Judean state and presaged their later roles in history. Their different histories do not alter the fact of their birth as twins in the last years of Judean statehood. They are both truly Rebecca’s children, but unlike Jacob and Esau, they have no need to dispute their birthright. It can belong to both of them together. (Rebecca's Children 181)

One of the things I most appreciated about Alan’s work and that I have tried to emulate is his disregard of scholarly and traditional boundaries. Whether between Jews and Christians and other groups in antiquity, heaven and earth, this life and the next, Alan’s work from his dissertation to his most recent research consistently sought out interrelationships between groups often through the socially, religiously, and psychologically fraught process of crossing over from one group to another through conversion, ascents to heaven, and that ultimate crossing into the afterlife. As academic mystagogue, he assisted me in that most mysterious liminal process of crossing from graduate student to professional scholar.

He expresses such crossings well in his final paragraph of Paul the Convert, whether between two different religious groups (Pharisaic Judaism to Christian Judaism), psychological transformation (in both ancient and modern senses), and the relationship between us as readers and the ancient lives we encounter:

Paul’s Christian career began with his ecstatic experience of the Lord. It was his vision that convinced him of the need for the transformation of all believers. He sought to realize that vision in his career as an apostle, understanding the meaning of being in Christ as his life unfolded. Though he used his intellectual gifts and his education as an orator and Pharisee, he did not have the confidence in reason that systematic theologians have attributed to him. He began his career because of an experience, a conversion. His mystical vision of metamorphosis left much unexplained. He began as a Pharisee and became a convert from Pharisaism. He spent the rest of his life trying to express what he converted to. He never gave it a single name. Whatever it was, he never felt that he had left Judaism. Like the early rabbis, Paul understood that God’s ways are mysterious, hence human understandings must always leave room for ambiguities. Paul and the rabbis understood as well as anyone before or after that the truths inherent in the biblical text are manifold, complex, and sometimes opposing. Scripture is a gem that gives off a different glint each time it is turned in the light of analysis. It is time for us to realize this. Perhaps no single point of view can do scripture justice. (283-4)

Alan was quite a polymath, bringing sociology, history, psychology, and literature to bear upon the questions he had about Jews and Christians in antiquity—such as in his Paul book. Although his writing could at times have a Proustian quality that refused to be succinct, he often wrote moving and beautiful prose. While many scholars have boring, unnecessary, and vacuous conclusions, his conclusions tended to expand one’s vista of thought and, in a line, nurture one’s reading emotionally and intellectually.

It was with deep grief that I read to my students Alan’s words about the afterlife at the time that he was himself passing into “the undiscover’d country, from whose bourn / no traveller returns.” Hamlet was right: it “puzzles the will.”

In my copy of Alan’s monumental book, Life after Death, he wrote while I was still in coursework: “If being a graduate student is like being in hell, then it’s good to remember there’s a heaven out there.” Doubt and hope do not have to be mutually exclusive; they can be symbiotic. While rationally we may doubt the afterlife and emotionally hope for it in some sort, we can know that Alan persists through his written works, through our memories, and through his family. Right now the grief is fresh. In time it will begin to fade only to flare up again from time to time. Now and then we will continue to share anecdotes, privately and publicly, as the neurons fire in our brains to bring them to light, taking new shape in our memories.

The rest is silence.

Alan F. Segal

2011-02-14T09:28:00.003-05:00

Jim Davila has reported that my advisor, Alan Segal, passed away yesterday.

April DeConick has a very beautiful remembrance of him here.

I will write more later, but for now my thoughts are with his family and the many friends who knew him.

The Multiplicity of Sexuality in the Bible

2011-02-09T18:45:00.003-05:00

Jennifer Wright Knust has an op-ed piece on the belief blogs of cnn.com concerning the multiple, mixed, and contradictory messages the Bible has about sexuality. Check it out here.

Reading Time Regained

2011-02-02T16:42:00.003-05:00

I have been spending my two snow days finishing up the seven-volume novel by Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time. It all only took me a few months short of two years to read. And it is finished. Here is a snippet I read today in the last volume, Time Regained:

In reality every reader is, while he is reading, a reader of his own self. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument which he offers to the reader to enable him to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have perceived in himself. And the recognition by the reader in his own self of what the book says is the proof of its veracity, the contrary also being true, at least to a certain extent, for the difference between the two texts may sometimes be imputed less to the author than to the reader. (trans. Mayor, Kilmartin, and Enright)

Peeing on Professorial Doors

2011-01-27T19:24:00.003-05:00

Ok...I started laughing out loud when I saw this: Professor pees on another professor's door. Nothing like inner-departmental politics.

Moses on the Mount: Visions of the "Pattern" of the Tabernacle

2011-01-26T09:17:00.003-05:00

Here's an announcement for a public presentation I will be giving next week at Illinois Wesleyan University. If there is anyone within driving distance who can make it, we'll have a good time!

Monday, Jan. 31, 4 p.m., CLA 205 -- Visiting Assistant Professor of Religion Jared Calaway will present the Religion Department Colloquium, "Moses on the Mount: Visions of the 'Pattern' of the Tabernacle in Jewish and Christian Literature."

Gilgamesh on Stage

2011-01-23T15:13:00.002-05:00

The earliest epic is now on stage at Bushwick Starr Theater in Brooklyn, NY:

The wooden staircase you climb to get to the Bushwick Starr theater has more character than some entire plays. You're rewarded for the climb—through January 30, anyway—with a strenuous, rewarding journey through the ancient Sumerian-Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the earliest works of literature in history. Sumerian legends told of a semi-divine hero-king, Gilgamesh, who tyrannized his subjects in the city of Uruk until they pleaded with the gods for help. In response they created Enkidu, a primitive man of great strength who lived in the forest with the beasts until being seduced by a temple harlot into coming to Uruk to be a companion to Gilgamesh.

A different actor plays Gilgamesh in each "tablet," all ably, while Enkidu remains in the sure hands of the very physical actor who goes by the name of Eugene the Poogene. Cherrye J. Davis is notably authoritative as the jealous goddess Ishtar, and KT Peterson has a fabulous time with the role of Shamhat the temple priestess/prostitute. But the whole ensemble is strong, and despite Eugene's frequent key presence and consistent physicality—he even switches to another role late in the proceedings—and the numerous scenes with just a couple of characters, the whole thing has the flow of an ensemble piece.

Obituary for Robert Markus

2011-01-10T22:11:00.003-05:00

The Guardian has an obituary for the eminent scholar of medieval Europe, Robert Markus, who, along with his intellectual sparring partner Peter Brown, established the idea of Late Antiquity as a period of intellectual and social effervescence.

Robert Markus, who has died of cancer at the age of 86, was among the finest historians of his generation. He helped establish the idea of Late Antiquity as a distinct and exceptionally creative period of European history, bridging the fall of the western Roman Empire and the early Middle Ages. He stressed the importance of Christianity's beliefs, but always had an eye to the material and social structures in which it was practised.

Ancient Codices Online: Aleppo

2011-01-10T14:33:00.003-05:00

While prepping for my lecture on textual transmission and scribal practices, I came across a website that I had never seen before today.

I generally use the Codex Sinaiticus online to illustrate a few points (it is a fairly good hand, but still shows evidence of accidental scribal error; its shows students that ancient scribes didn't use spaces; its Gospel of John lacks 7:53-8:12, etc.), but I was very happy to see that there is a website where one can view the manuscript of the Aleppo Codex, which, along with the Leningrad Codex, are the two most important Hebrew witnesses to the Hebrew Bible. So check out the Aleppo Codex here, and I will add it to my sidebar.

New Year's Birth

2010-12-31T16:40:00.003-05:00

"To be born again...first you have to die.... To land upon the bosomy earth, first one needs to fly." (Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses)

A Useful Tannenbaum

2010-12-24T09:55:00.004-05:00

Evidently, an artist is seeking recycled Christmas trees in London in order to turn them into wood three-legged stools. See here. It is a good idea, but they are being sold for $621 a piece. Frankly, I think I could make my own Christmas stool.

To Ascend in Flame: To See God and Live 2

2010-12-23T12:31:00.004-05:00

Yesterday I wrote a post on seeing God and living, even though none should be able to see God (at least face to face) and live. Yet there are many passages in which Jacob, Moses, elders, Hagar, and Manoah and his wife all see God and live and comment upon the fact in astonishment. I had left the discussion of Manoah and his wife until this time because it is quite an extensive, quite astonishing, and under-studied passage.

Some initial issues of note: this is one of two passages in which a woman is the primary recipient of the vision of the LORD/Angel of the LORD. It is a special birth narrative comparable to the one of Abram/Sarai, Hannah, perhaps Hagar, and one in which, like Hannah, I think makes an impression on the Jesus birth narratives with the angel's visitations to Mary and then Joseph. But there is so much more to this passage.

Quoting from the RSV:

And there was a certain man of Zorah, of the tribe of Danites, whose name was Manoah; and his wife was barren and had no children. And the angel of the LORD appeared to the woman and said to her, "Behold you are barren and have no children; but you shall conceive and bear a son. Therefore beware, and drink no wine or strong drink, and eat nothing unclean, for lo, you shall conceive and bear a son. No razor shall come upon his head, for the boy shall be a Nazirite to God from birth; and he shall begin to deliver Israel from the hand of the Philistines. (Judges 13:2-5)

For most, the interest of the passage is for the miracle of the birth of Samson, the promised Nazirite. It is for this reason, in fact, that she is commanded not to drink wine or "strong drink," which, as a recent archaeological article argues, just means beer, rather than any birth defects that we, as moderns, associate with drinking alcoholic beverages while pregnant. There is a gendered aspect to this passage. The story starts out with a discussion of Manoah--the male is the named marker. His wife remains unnamed throughout the entire story, yet she is the one who is vouchsafed the initial vision. This is what differentiates this birth narrative from, for example, Sarai's--when the three men come to Abram and Sarai and she laughs--or even Hannah's, in which the communication is decidedly one way--Hannah prays to God, but God does not answer, unless Eli's answer counts as such. And this is what makes this miraculous birth story much closer to the ones in the Gospels. Of course, the Gospel of Luke's Magnificat is based upon Hannah's prayer, but it is in response to a vision from an angel (here Gabriel) giving the message of a miraculous birth: "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus" (Luke 1:30-31). In Luke, she sees the vision rather than Joseph. In Matthew, however, Mary is just stated to be pregnant by the Holy Spirit and Joseph receives a vision only when he is about to separate from her privately (Matt. 1:18-25). So Mary gets the vision in Luke; Joseph in Matthew. This makes our passage in Judges a little more unique, since both Manoah and his wife receive a vision successively (you can only do this with the gospels by harmonization). Nonetheless, in these two stories we get a vision of an angel giving a message of the miraculous birth, a quite stunning vision, as Manoah's wife says:

Then the woman came and told her husband, "A man of God came to me, and his countenance was like the countenance of the angel of God, very terrible; I did not ask him whence he was, and he did not tell me his name..." (Judges. 13:6-7)

In what follows she repeats the message of the angel to her husband. This passage resembles Genesis 32 in some ways. The figure seen is a "man" of God (Gen. 32:24), its uses "God' rather than "LORD/YHWH" in the dialogue, and there is the issue of the unknown name (Gen. 32:29). Moreover, the "man of God" looks like an "angel of God"; that is, the appearance was terrible. If Ezekiel 1 is any indication with the living creatures/cherubim, these would be frightening. This tradition persists, since the Angel Gabriel has to tell Mary not to be afraid (Luke 1:30), as well as Zechariah (1:12-13) and the shepherds (2:9-10). Angels are supposed to be glorious, frightening, and "terrible." She also did not ask "whence he was," where he came from. Does she doubt the angel's origin with God? He looks like a messenger of God...but was he...

Manoah then entreats God:

O LORD, I pray thee, let the man of God whom thou didst send come again to us, and teach us what we are to do with the boy that will be born. (Judges 13:8)

Manoah's petition is successful; God listens to him. Once again, Manoah's wife is the contact person, however. So, while Manoah can successfully speak to God, God sends his messenger to Manoah's wife.: "and the angel of God came again to the woman as she sat in the field; but Manoah her husband was not with her. And the woman ran in haste and told her husband, 'Behold, the man who came to me the other day has appeared to me.'" (Judges. 13:9-10).

Subsequently, the Manoah comes to the man/angel of God and questions him of how to take care of the boy. The angel/man simply answers: "Of all that I said to the woman let her beware..." and then he repeats what he said to her. The man/angel basically says that his message to Manoah's wife was sufficient. Manoah, it seems, either was looking for more information, or wanted to hear for himself.

The next part is particularly interesting. Manoah asks the "angel of the LORD" to stay and they will prepare a kid for him, offering hospitality. The angel refuses to eat with Manoah and his wife, but instead tells them to offer a burnt offering to the LORD (Judges. 13:15-16). The parenthetical remark is what is initially startling: "For Manoah did not know that he was the angel of the LORD." This presumably explains why the angel refuses to eat with the humans, although this is no obstacle in Gen. 18:1-8. So this raises a question of whom Manoah thought this figure whom his wife described as a "man of God" like the "angel of God" because his appearance was "terrible." Perhaps a lesser angel? Perhaps just a striking prophetic human? Some sort of intermediate being? By using so many terms, this passage perhaps creates a bit of confusion: man, man of God, angel of God, angel of the LORD are all applied to this figure. Why were they willing to follow this figure's orders if they did not know "whence he was" and who he was? Any supernal being will do? There is a similar human/divine slippage also present in the Jacob passage in which the "man" becomes revealed as God. Or perhaps an unfolding revelation of identity.

Much like the Jacob passage, the issue of the name comes up once again:

And Manoah said to the angel of the LORD, "What is your name, so that, when your words come true, we may honor you?" And the angel of the LORD said to him, 'Why do you ask my name, seeing it is wonderful?'" (Judges 13:18)

In both Gen. 32 and here, the man/angel/god(?) refuses to give the name. Here the reason is given that it is wonderful. It is over-awing. It also reveals a bit of Manoah's cautiousness toward the figure: the proof of the pudding is in the eating. He wants to know the name (who is this figure, and where does he come from?) so that after these things come true they can honor him (as man, as angel, as god?). If/when these things come to pass--proving the prophecy/revelation true--they will honor him. There is a tinge of doubt in the conditional.

The next part is quite astonishing. Manoah sets up the altar and takes the kid with a cereal offering. He offers it to the LORD, "to him who works wonders.":

And when the flame went up toward heaven from the altar, the angel of the LORD ascended in the flame of the altar, while Manoah and his wife looked on; and they fell on their faces to the ground. (Judges 13:20)

The angel of God/the LORD uses the flame of the burnt offering as a transportation device--he ascends through the flame of the offering. I cannot think of another biblical source in which an angel ascends through the flames of an offering. If there is a source, I would be happy to hear of it. And this is the proof that Manoah needs. For the first time in the passage, they both fall to the ground with their faces to the ground in a position of reverence. Due to this fiery ascent, they seem to have figured out the whence and who of the angel, and do not need to wait for the birth for proof to honor this figure who is now clearly not a man.

The angel of the LORD appeared no more to Manoah and to his wife. Then Manoah knew that he was the angel of the LORD. And Manoah said to his wife, "We shall surely die, for we have seen God." But his wife said to him, "If the LORD had meant to kill us, he would not have accepted the burnt offering and a cereal offering at our hands, or shown us all these things, or now announced to us such things as these." (Judges 13:21-23)

There is a certain irony in the passage. As long as Manoah doubts and they both do not quite know the identity of the figure, the figure stays. When they intuit that it is the (angel of the) LORD or God (made clear through the fantastic fire-traveling trick), they no longer see the figure. Manoah then picks up the tradition of not being able to see God and live (as seen with Jacob, Moses, Hagar, and most recently with Gideon), but his wife reassures that is not the case. If God was going to kill them, it would cancel the message given. So God has to make exceptions to the rule for the case of revelation (one can't reveal something to someone for a particular purpose and kill them before fulfilling that purpose, even give the fact that one should not be able to see God and live). And, what is more, it is just bad manners: God accepted their offerings, it would be rude to kill them after that.

In all, Manoah's wife is the primary recipient of a vision of God/angel of God/angel of the LORD/ the LORD (they are equivalent in the passage) and the primary interpreter of that message. Manoah himself is there to seek reassurance from the figure (who tells him basically to listen to what he already told his wife), offer some hospitality, and set up the offering, which turns out to be the angel of God/the LORD's transportation home. He offers some doubt as well--as to the figure's identity and, once the identity is intuited, of whether they will live. It is here that his wife, the original recipient of the message, offers reassurance, since the message needs to be fulfilled.

All in all, Manoah and his wife are privileged company because they saw a vision of God (or angel of God). While God often pops in and out in Genesis, God is much more distant in Judges. Only Manoah, his wife, and Gideon are vouchsafed with such a terrible vision.

To See God and Live

2010-12-22T10:13:00.004-05:00

In Exod. 33:20, the LORD famously tells Moses, "you cannot see my face; for man shall not see me and live." Moses then is allowed to see God's backside (v. 23). One might compare Exod. 3:6 where Moses is afraid to look at God.

Recently I was asked if I would write up a little piece on seeing God in late antique Judaism. It is quite a broad topic, and, of course, should I take up the task I will be looking at some of the Hekhalot texts. But my mind also began buzzing about something else--I wonder how Rabbinic literature, particularly the Targumim and the Midrashim, handle these passages of seeing God and living or not living. That is, even though we have this passage of God telling Moses no one can see the LORD's face and live (although perhaps God's backside), there are plenty of passages where people do see God's face and live--even Moses himself.

God says he speaks to Moses face-to-face in Num. 12:8 (as opposed to everyone else to whom he speaks in dreams and through indirect means). Perhaps most famously, Jacob remarks after he wrestles with the mysterious "man," "For I have seen god face to face, and yet my life is preserved" (Gen. 32:30). Gideon is amazed that he continues to live after seeing the (Angel of the) LORD in Judges 6:22-23. These passages are aware of the rarity of being able to see God; they are both aware that one should die from seeing God; and in both cases they live.

These are all individual visions of God, but there is a collective vision in Exod. 24:11: "And he [the God of Israel] did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel; they beheld God, and at and drank." As one might suspect, much of this has been explained through source criticism (that is, the differences between LORD and Angel of the LORD, and especially the use of God versus LORD in this verse). Nonetheless, even this source, which does not mention death to those who see God in a pronounced way denotes the danger and exceptionality of the collective vision, since it notes that God did not lay his hand on them--God restrained the typical consequence of death.

Deuteronomy changes much of the language to speaking and hearing: "Did any people ever heard the voice of a god speaking out of the midst of the fire, as you have heard, and live?" (Deut. 4:33). Nonetheless, some visual language sneaks in: "The LORD spoke with you face to face at the mountain, out of the midst of the fire, while I stood between the LORD and you at the time, to declare to you the word of the LORD; for you were afraid because of the fire, and you did not go up into the mountain" (Deut. 5:4-5). This is an interesting passage because it seems at odds with itself. Part of what marked the Israelites as special in Deuteronomy 4 was that they HEARD God and still lived. Deuteronomy 5 takes us a step closer and then two steps back. They not only heard God and lived, but God spoke with them "face to face" as God speaks to Moses in Numbers 12. And just at the moment of potentially seeing God and living, the Deuteronomist moves away from these implications: they did not quite see God (or perhaps fully hear God), since Moses stood between them and the LORD, because they were afraid of the fire and did not go up the mountain.

I want to end this posting with a meditation on two more passages of seeing God and living. When I first started thinking about this project, I immediately had thought not of Moses, but of Hagar. I thought she might be an interesting figure to track down the history of interpretation, since she is one of the few women who sees the (Angel of the) LORD and lives and one of the few (perhaps the only?) foreigner who does (she's Egyptian). How do later interpreters handle her vision? Genesis 16 is a fascinating passage. I often assign it to students to do an in-depth literary analysis on it. She is fleeing Sarai and is in the wilderness where the Angel of the LORD appears to her. For my current purposes, the ensuing conversation is less important, but it ends as follows: "So she called the name of the LORD who spoke to her, "Thou art a God of seeing"; for she said, "Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him?" Therefore the well was called Beer-lahai-roi; it lies between Kadesh and Bered" (Gen. 16:13-14). This passage has a few quite unique features. Firstly, Hagar names the LORD, "God of seeing." One might compare other passages, such as Moses (Exod. 3) or Jacob (Gen. 32) in which they request the name of the LORD, whereas Hagar names. Secondly, while other passages state or exclaim that one has seen (or heard) God and lived, here Hagar (perhaps...) questions this. Different translators have either placed this sentence in the indicative or the interrogative, and I would like to look at it more carefully to consider this (and perhaps this is something that might come up in Rabbinic interpretation of the verse). It is clearly a marked passage. Not only do we have the exceptional vision of the LORD or Angel of the LORD remarked upon (of course, the LORD/Angel of the LORD appears multiple other places, especially in Genesis, without comment of living/dying, such as with Abraham), but we have a foreign woman who sees and lives and questions this fact.

The most remarkable passage, in my opinion, however, of seeing the LORD and living has to be in Judges 13 when Manoah and his wife (otherwise known as Samson's parents) see and live. I had previously thought that Hagar was the only woman in the Hebrew Bible who sees God and lives (or at least remarks on the case of seeing God and living), but I was wrong. Manoah's wife--never named--does as well. She is the lead seer in this passage, and she takes charge. There are some similarities, I think, between this story and the Jesus birth story--both have an Angel of the LORD, both have the angel appear to both husband and wife, wife first, and both about the birth of a special child. It is a very extensive vision with several important elements. For this reason, I think it deserves a post of its own. So, be on the lookout for Manoah and his wife seeing the LORD and living.

Peter Schafer's Origins of Jewish Mysticism

2010-12-16T23:54:00.005-05:00

After listening to a couple reviews by Jim Davila and Seth Sanders at the SBL of Peter Schafer's expensive and important new book on the Origins of Jewish Mysticism, I was happy to see that it is now coming out in paperback (in May) at a reasonable price. This book by the preeminent scholar of the Hekhalot literature will, to be sure, be a must-read for anyone interested in late-antique religion and the history of Jewish mysticism. I will be looking forward to getting my paperback copy.

Blake's Imagination

2010-12-15T21:10:00.004-05:00

The Imagination is not a State: it is the Human Existence itself
Affection or Love becomes a State, when divided from Imagination
The Memory is a State always, & the Reason is a State
Created to be Annihilated & a new Ratio Created
Whatever can be Created can be Annihilated Forms cannot
The Oak is cut down by the Ax, the Lamb falls by the Knife
But their Forms Eternal Exist, For-ever. Amen Halle[l]ujah

William Blake, Milton: Book the Second, Plate 32 [35]

Ancient Babylonian Math

2010-11-27T12:38:00.005-05:00

The NYTimes reports that there is an exhibit of ancient Babylonian Mathematics at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at NYU.

Most of the ancient tablets appear to be classroom exercises, yet they may show a very high degree of sophistication, predating many of the Greek insights--such as the Pythagorean theorem--by millennia (or approximately 1500 years). The newspaper article indicates that Greek thought has shaped our own mathematical thought, but that we can see that we owe a great deal more to the Babylonians than previously thought. I should also note that much of our mathematics derives from medieval arabic mathematicians as well.

The tablets from Columbia University, University of Pennsylvania, and Yale University will be on exhibit until December 17. Unfortunately, I heard about this too late to take advantage of the exhibit and will not return to NY until after the exhibit closes. But I would love to hear or read people's responses below.

Sistine Chapel 360

2010-11-27T11:46:00.004-05:00

I just saw this site that shows the inside of the Sistine Chapel in 360. You can use your mouse to look at different parts and to zoom in and out. All without having to be guided in like cattle with all the other tourists.

It's pretty cool.

Un-Creation

2010-11-24T13:35:00.003-05:00

One of the more interesting things I have begun to notice in biblical literature in my past year of reading or so is something of "uncreation." This is not necessarily the cataclysm of the end of time, although it can be that. It is not quite that final. It is more of a working backward from order to chaos in order to reintroduce an element of chaos in the world, showing that God is the God of chaos and not just order. I find traces of this in Isaiah, but it is all over the poetry in Job, including Job's own personal "uncreation" in Job 3 (an observation I owe to one of my students) to God's cosmic "uncreation" in Job 38 onward (an observation I owe to Carol Newsom's book on Job). With this interest in mind, I read the following from Rumi's poems that is almost an uncreation at points:

I am sprung from you and likewise you have devoured me,
I melt in you since through you I froze.

Now you press me in your hand, now under your foot with grief;
for the grape does not become wine until it is pressed.

Like the light of the sun, you have cast us on the earth,
then little by little carried us back in that direction.

We return from the body's window like light into the orb of a sun,
pure of sin and blemish.

Whoever sees that orb says, "He has become alive,"
and whoever comes to the window says, "So-and-so is dead."

He has veiled our origin in that cup of pain and joy;
in the core of origin we are pure, all the rest left behind like dregs

(Rumi, Mystical Poems of Rumi, trans., A.J. Arberry, pp. 302-3)

This is definitely not the same as the chaos/cosmos theme in Job or elsewhere in ancient Jewish writings. It is almost like reading Hosea (the latter chapters), Job, and the end of 1 Corinthians together. In Hosea 10 and 11, there is much talk about devouring. Job seeks "uncreation" and self-annihilation by negating his own birth. But take this language and put it into a more positive spin of returning to one's source.

The antitheses are what caught my attention: the one who created will devour (like God in Hosea? like Kronos/Saturn?); the one who froze us will melt us. In language elsewhere in Rumi and other Sufis, I take the freezing as the placement of our true essence into form; the removal of the form "melts" us, but releases our unformed/pre-formed/un-created self. That is the first part. The second part is a purification: the breaking of grapes to create wine. But the pressing of wine has the same function: the removal and destruction (death) of the solid form for the liquid essence to flow and mature. Our bodies, though, are "dregs" while our true self is the soul that is purified wine.

These two first parts, then, focus on our form and formlessness, the next part shows why we need to pass beyond our form: to return. As the diffusion of the light of the sun we were cast upon the earth. Here Rumi sounds almost Sethian as souls are presented as rays of light cast upon the earth that will return to their source--the original orb--all without a demiurgical element, though. I am struck by the fact that the light's return to its source is gradual. It is not all at once. This indicates that Rumi is not seeing the, well, annihilation of the egoistic self as it is reabsorbed into its source in terms of death (or not solely), but as a self-annihilation that occurs in life. The deathlike scene of return comes next, when one returns through the body's window (the eye) to return to the sun. Light came into the body through the window and it will escape in the same way. Whoever looks at the source will think of the soul as finally truly alive (unfrozen); those who look at the form--the grape--will see death. In another poem, Rumi says concerning the only one who truly is: "Inwardly you are the soul of the soul of the soul, outwardly you are the sun of the sun." To return, in fact, one must go into one's most inward self to find the highest element of the universe.

Death, though, includes perhaps more than just death, but as Montaigne would say how death insinuates itself into our lives through pain and as well as joy. Such distractions, for Rumi, I think would be more like death--that is to be unconnected or less aware of one's origin--whereas through self-annihilation before and absorption into the one who truly is one truly exists and lives. The death of the egoistic, solid self is the birth of the diffusive liquid self that, as such, easily blends back into its sunny source.

On Blogging the SBL on Blogging

2010-11-22T17:37:00.007-05:00

One of the most enjoyable and best -attended sections I went to at the SBL this year was the panel on Biblioblogging. While as the speakers noted that blogging has been greatly expanding the past five years in the field of biblical studies (broadly conceived), it is measured not only by the number of bloggers but the number of unofficial and now official gatherings of the bloggers (many of whom know each other by their blog names rather than their real names--even when their real names are not secrets). As has been the case the past few years, there was a dinner (which I was unable to attend), a lunch organized by John Hobbins. This year, the bloggers have an official group that meets to discuss issues of blogging, online publication, and burgeoning online technologies in research and instruction.

The meeting I attended had a nice panel from a well-established scholar to a more recent dissertation defender and all in between; it included scholars on the Dead Sea Scrolls, New Testament, and Targumim who came together to discuss their perspectives on this new technology. I am speaking more precisely of Jim Davila of Paleojudaica, whose paper is available on his site, Christian Brady or Targuman, also with his paper posted online, Michael Barber of the Sacred Page, James McGrath of Exploring Our Matrix, and Robert Cargill of XKV8R, the last three who have not (yet?) posted their papers online.

[Update: Robert Cargill has posted his discussion here, Michael Barber here, and James McGrath has promised to do so.]

[Update: Finally, James McGrath has posted his talk here]

It was an atmosphere of geekdom filled with a great deal of humor, prophetic prediction (both fulfilled and to come), and free exchange (open access?) of ideas.

There were many issues raised that new online technologies raise about our discipline in terms of how blogs are viewed (that is, should and could they be used for tenure and promotion committees, and if so, how could they be evaluated?), for pedagogical purposes (using blog platforms, pod- and vod-casts for dissemination of information, using possibilities for mixed medias that blogs are flexible enough platforms to hold to change the way we conceive of course construction--as well as research outlets), and the place of conferences--if panels are often already disseminating papers ahead of time (and Jim Davila always posts his papers ahead of the conference) would it not be better to have asynchronicity in participation by having a virtual conference, which would also be cheaper for those who cannot afford the traditional conference? Or a hybrid form of videoconferencing that allows people to come to panels physically (as usual) and for monitors to be set up so that others can participate virtually?

We do need to rethink the academic conference, I think. A couple years ago, I had written here (but I am currently too lazy to look for it, but I bet you can find it under the "academic conferences" tag) that conferences are a thing of the past and that virtual conferences in which people meet at a particular platform to exchange papers on topics and then write comments at the time or even later would be the way to go. At that time, however, I considered the traditional conference's continuing validity for two primary reasons: professional networking and for job interviews.

I am rethinking some of this. I have met a lot of scholars through my blogging activities (as well as publishers and book review distributors, etc.). Moreover, due to the economic difficulties of sending job search committees to conferences, so many places are using the phone interview or videophone interview as a replacement for the initial interview stage (before the traditional on-campus interview).

So where does that leave conferences? It retains the human face. As I have noted, as bloggers have increased, so have blogger-related activities at the SBL, both official and unofficial activities. They are face-time. While many bloggers do not come to these events (since there are hundreds of bloggers and only a couple to a few dozen come to the blogger events), most bloggers are not just sitting up curled with their computer on their bed all day. They are physically networking with people they have already networked with virtually. It is a solidification of a bond. Interestingly, I have two tendencies that I think I share with others: I am more likely seek out bloggers at the SBL to get a face and a voice and a physical presence to the person, and at the same time, I am more likely to read a blog of someone I have already met in person. It is a cycle that constantly feeds back into itself.

Perhaps soon we'll transition into a hybrid conference that is both physical and virtual--those who can physically and economically come will, but those who cannot will not be excluded and have a virtual presence.

As was noted in my first SBL session I attended that reviewed Guy Williams's new book on the Spirit World in the Pauline Epistles, we may have a new inflection of being somewhere in spirit.

This is just one of the many fruitful issues that came out of that single session--a rarity in the current climate of the proliferation of sections. I am sure that many other bloggers will blog about what they saw and heard and may want digital copies of the pictures that James McGrath showed.

If anything, the blogging section at the SBL inspired me to post again, which I have been doing so little lately.

Divine Horror: Ezekiel 20:26

2010-09-30T14:28:00.005-04:00

The Bible is weird: this could be the subtitle of my introduction to biblical literature class. I have a tendency to point out those parts of the Bible that most people skim over because they are not particularly helpful for one's contemporary faith. There are these passages that, while overlooked most of the time in modern religious communities, when scrutinized and taken seriously shock the reader; remind the reader that these works are products of a different time and place.

I have been sort of collecting these passages this semester, and perhaps I will find some time to post some of the earlier ones I have discussed in class (Gen. 6:1-4; Exod. 4:24-26; most of 1 Kings 17-2 Kings 10, etc.). One such passage is for my class this friday. When reading Ezekiel's reasoning for the exile, which it is fruitful to compare to Isaiah's and Jeremiah's warnings, one finds that the problem is that the people have persistently and consistently not walked in God's ordinances and statutes (cf. Leviticus 18:1-5) and have not kept the sabbaths (the use is in the plural like in the Holiness writings). This problem was there since Egypt--that is, in Ezekiel 20, Ezekiel basically argues that there has not been a time when the Israelites actually did follow God's ordinances, statues, and properly revered God's sabbaths. This differs from the emphases in Jeremiah and Isaiah that the reason for (impending) destruction is lack of justice: not properly caring for the vulnerable in society, such as orphans, widows, and the oppressed. Although this surely can be included in Ezekiel's statutes and ordinances, the emphasis for Ezekiel tends to be more cultic: proper and improper worship. But in the process there is quite a difficult line:

and I defiled them through their very gifts in making them offer by fire all their first-born, that I might horrify them; I did it that they might know that I am the LORD. (Ezek. 20:26)

Ezekiel, as noted, is very close on most topics to the Holiness Code (Leviticus 17-26), but on this point, compare Lev. 18:21 (see also Deut. 18:10):

You shall not give any of your children to devote them by fire to Molech, and so profane the name of your God: I am the LORD.

It is unclear what offering one's child to Molech would be. Whether this is another deity or the LORD as king (Melech). In both passages, the practice offering one's child by fire (as a burnt offering) has a negative valuation. One might argue that "first-born" for Ezekiel is not one's own human children, but this would not explain why it is so horrifying. It takes the offering of the first-born sons (e.g., Exod. 22:29) very literally.

For Ezekiel, this burnt offering is a command from God; in Leviticus it is forbidden by God. While in Leviticus, this action would profane God's name, it is interesting to note that the reasoning behind God's actions in Ezekiel 20 throughout--the reason why God does not continually punish the Israelites--is for the sake of God's name. Thus while in Leviticus, offering one's children as a burnt offering profanes God, as a divine command in Ezekiel, it defiles the people.

So, let's run down the checklist for this one verse: God demands burnt offering of one's first-born child; God is trying to horrify; God is trying to defile through the very mechanisms of sacrifice. That is, sacrifice, which is supposed to remove one's ritual impurity and moral defilements is here the very means of that defilement (and again portrayed as a divine command).

These two too contrary passages end on the same Holiness note: "I am the LORD." It is a statement that punctuates the Holiness code; it is the exclamation point and the underlying powerful reason why one should obey. For the Ezekiel passage, this divinely inflicted horror is so that the people can actually KNOW that "I am the LORD." It is the ultimate expression of divine authority. God is demonstrating ultimacy by being beyond morality, ethics, and even purity and defilement. Horror demonstrates God's terrible power, instilling fear.

Most Important Archaeological Discovery!

2010-09-08T15:10:00.002-04:00

Or at least archaeological argument: God drank beer! In a recent article in BAR. Here for the full article. Well, of course!

The Gods We Stand by

2010-07-26T15:33:00.002-04:00

I am rereading William James's Varieties of Religious Experience for my fall class Interpreting Religious Experience, and ran across this passage in his lecture on the "Value of Saintliness."

The gods we stand by are the gods we need and can use, the gods whose demands on us are reinforcements of our demands on ourselves and on one another.

Spoken as a true pragmatist. This assertion of content that the popularity, "use," persistence of worship, etc., of any particular deity depends upon social circumstances of obligations and responsibilities between self and neighbor that make a society work reflects a pragmatic point of method: that religious issues of god, saintliness, etc., can be or can be best approached through social questions and standards. Together, they form a thesis that the divine, holy, and particularly the status of saintliness represent a distilled, idealized form of individual and social values.

Looking toward a New Year

2010-07-19T13:30:00.003-04:00

I have been insanely busy lately. I have been finishing up my dissertation, and last week I finally distributed it. I have also taken a yearlong position at my alma mater, Illinois Wesleyan University, and so have been working on my fall classes, packing, moving, etc. In the midst of all of this professional business, I am getting married next month. Nonetheless, I have just found a window of time to create my "new faculty bio" for IWU. If anyone has been wondering what I have been up to since I haven't been posting, you can get an appetizer here:

Jared Calaway (IWU Class of ’03) is excited to be returning to IWU as a visiting faculty member after pursuing his M.A. (2005), M.Phil. (2007), and Ph.D. (expected August 2010) in the History of Religions in Late Antiquity at Columbia University in New York City. For two years in a row (Fall 2005-Spring 2007) he was the Morton Smith Presidential Fellow at Columbia, which enabled him to travel through Greece and Italy. For the past two years, he has taught a yearlong literature course for Columbia’s Center for the Core Curriculum, covering twenty-six works of literature from the Iliad to Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. His dissertation investigates the interrelationship between sacred space and sacred time in ancient Jewish and Christian literature by tracing how the Sabbath and the Tabernacle variously come together in the Hebrew Bible, the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice from the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Epistle to the Hebrews in the New Testament. He has additionally co-authored a new translation and commentary on a late antique Coptic poem called The Thunder: Perfect Mind to be published this November by Palgrave. At IWU he will be joining the Religion Department and teaching “Religions of the World,” “Religious Experience,” and “Introduction to Biblical Literature.” He is looking forward to seeing some familiar faces, while getting to know some of the new.

That's what I have been, what I will be doing! And that's why I haven't been blogging much lately. If you have any suggestions for the courses I'll be teaching this fall, I would love to hear them. If you are around in the midwest, I would love to catch up sometime this academic year.

SBL and AAR Making Up

2010-06-28T11:07:00.003-04:00

After a nasty break-up and trial separation, it seems the SBL and AAR have decided they want to be together after all. As a member of both organizations, I am happy to see this. This next year is going to be particularly ridiculous, since they are meeting in the same city--Atlanta--just a few weeks apart. We were already to meet together in San Francisco next year, but now we will also be meeting the following years in Chicago and Baltimore, which will be cold!

Here is the joint letter from Kent Richards and Jack Fitzmier, the presidents of the two organizations:

June 28, 2010

We are pleased to announce that on June 10, 2010, the Society of
Biblical Literature and American Academy of Religion signed a Letter
of Intent that outlines an agreement to hold concurrent Annual
Meetings beginning in San Francisco in the fall of 2011. These
meetings will

Occur in the same city—though the venue will change from year to year;
Occur at the same time—the weekend before the US Thanksgiving holiday;
Feature a single, jointly managed Publishers/Software/Book Exhibit;
Feature a single, jointly managed Employment Center;
Feature distinct and separate AAR and SBL programs planned with open
communication between the organizations;
Encourage the organizations’ members to attend each other’s programs
and events at no additional cost;
Allow the organizations to pursue their unique, if sometimes
overlapping, missions;
Enhance cooperation, not competition, between the organizations.

The advertising for these conventions will use the city name, the
year, and will identify the SBL and AAR as hosts. For example, the
first of these meetings will be known as “Annual Meetings 2011 San
Francisco, hosted by the American Academy of Religion and the Society
of Biblical Literature.” This name will appear on the registration
gateway, on signage at the meetings, on promotional materials, and on
other common elements.

A Conventions Management Committee, consisting of the Executive
Directors and staff members from each organization, is developing
operating policies and procedures that expand on the considerable
detail that already exists in the Letter of Intent. Each year the
Committee will review the most recent meetings with an eye toward
making improvements in subsequent gatherings. Nine concurrent meetings
are being planned for 2011 through 2019. Beginning in 2013 the
organizations will begin operating on a seven-year planning horizon
that includes a mechanism by which the organizations can, on an annual
basis, extend the seven-year agreement for an additional year. Dates
and venues of the first three concurrent Annual Meetings are as
follows:

November 19-22, 2011 San Francisco
November 17-20, 2012 Chicago
November 23-26, 2013 Baltimore

We believe that concurrent meetings will serve the interests of our
members, will help to advance the many disciplines and areas of study
we represent, and will maintain and advance the critical inquiry that
characterizes the work of our societies. We invite you to join us in
building this exciting new future.

Cordially,

Jack Fitzmier
American Academy of Religion

Kent Richards
Society of Biblical Literature

Now we can be one of the largest conferences in the U.S. again behind the MLA.

Hyksos in the News

2010-06-22T23:51:00.003-04:00

It isn't everyday that the Hyksos, the foreign invading group that ruled ancient Egypt for a time makes the news, but there is an article in the Guardian about possibly finding their capital in Egypt using radar imaging:

An Austrian archaeological team has used radar imaging to determine the extent of the ruins of the 3,500-year-old one-time capital of Egypt's foreign occupiers, according to the country's antiquities department.

Egypt was ruled for a century from 1664-1569 BC by the Hyksos, a group of warriors from Asia – possibly Semitic in origin – whose summer capital, Avaris, was in the northern Delta area.

See the rest here.

Oldest Images of the Apostles Found in Rome

2010-06-22T16:07:00.001-04:00

From BBC News:

Art restorers in Italy have discovered what are believed to be the oldest paintings of some of Jesus Christ's apostles.

The faces of Apostles Andrew, John, Peter and Paul were uncovered using new laser technology in a catacomb in Rome.

The paintings date from the second half of the 4th Century or the early 5th Century, the restorers and Vatican officials believe.

The images may have influenced later depictions of Christ's early followers.

In the Mail

2010-06-18T18:22:00.002-04:00

Today I received a copy of Amanda H. Podany's Brotherhood of Kings: How International Relations Shapes the Ancient Near East from Oxford University Press.

Here is the product description:

Amanda Podany here takes readers on a vivid tour through a thousand years of ancient Near Eastern history, from 2300 to 1300 BCE, paying particular attention to the lively interactions that took place between the great kings of the day.

Allowing them to speak in their own words, Podany reveals how these leaders and their ambassadors devised a remarkably sophisticated system of diplomacy and trade. What the kings forged, as they saw it, was a relationship of friends-brothers-across hundreds of miles. Over centuries they worked out ways for their ambassadors to travel safely to one another's capitals, they created formal rules of interaction and ways to work out disagreements, they agreed to treaties and abided by them, and their efforts had paid off with the exchange of luxury goods that each country wanted from the other. Tied to one another through peace treaties and powerful obligations, they were also often bound together as in-laws, as a result of marrying one another's daughters. These rulers had almost never met one another in person, but they felt a strong connection--a real brotherhood--which gradually made wars between them less common. Indeed, any one of the great powers of the time could have tried to take over the others through warfare, but diplomacy usually prevailed and provided a respite from bloodshed. Instead of fighting, the kings learned from one another, and cooperated in peace.

A remarkable account of a pivotal moment in world history--the establishment of international diplomacy thousands of years before the United Nations--Brotherhood of Kings offers a vibrantly written history of the region often known as the "cradle of civilization."

I was attracted to it because I am interested in reading about ancient, particularly Bronze Age through Late Antiquity, relations, particularly trade routes, but diplomatic relations would also show up on my radar. The reason behind my interest is to consider the world of trade, diplomacy, etc., alongside the adaptation of particular stories or types of narratives from group to group, to see if there is a social and material underpinning to the circulation of stories. Of course, given that I am finishing up my dissertation this summer and preparing for three courses in the fall, I unfortunately will not be able to get to this book soon. But check back in around December or January and perhaps I'll have some thoughts on it then.

My Return to Illinois

2010-06-18T13:54:00.004-04:00

Today I received my contract, and so can officially announce that I have received a visiting position at my alma mater, Illinois Wesleyan University. The wheel has come full circle: I left a student and will return a teacher. I will be there for a year. So, for those of you in the midwest, come stop by while you can!

The Temple of Living Pillars

2010-06-15T02:43:00.002-04:00

Correspondences

La Nature est un temple où de vivant piliers
Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles;
L'homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles
Qui l'observent avec des regards familiers.

Comme de longs échos qui de loin se confondent
Dans une ténébreuse et profonde unité,
Vaste comme la nuit et comme la clarté,
Les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se répondent.

Il est des parfums frais comme des chairs d'enfants,
Doux comme les hautbois, verts comme les prairies,
-Et d'autres, corrompus, riches et triomphants,

Ayant l'expansion des choses infinies,
Comme l'ambre, le musc, le benjoin et l'encens,
Qui chantent les transports de l'esprit et des sens.

(Charles Baudelaire, "Correspondences," Les Fleurs du Mal)

This fantastic poem incites all of the senses, but perhaps mostly the most potent, memorable, and evanescent one of all: smell. It ranges from such sensuous activation to the rapture of the soul (les transports de l'esprit et des sens), all within the temple of living pillars that is nature. This temple is confusing (de confuses paroles) and dark (dans une ténébreuse et profonde unité), and yet familiar (regards familiers). It is beyond confusion and clarity, beyond light and darkness, encompassing them both (comme la nuit et comme la clarté). It is dense (des forêts de symboles) and vast, infinitesimal and infinite (ayant l'expansion des choses infinies). The second line, by the way, is where Victor Turner got the title for his book Forest of Symbols. Baudelaire's words, themselves, permeate like a sweet perfume in this natural temple, in this forest of symbols.

To Live in the Shadowy Realm of Dreams

2010-06-14T21:45:00.004-04:00

All would be well
Could we but give us wholly to the dreams,
And get into their world that to the sense
Is shadow, and not linger wretchedly
Among substantial things; for it is dreams
That lift us to the flowing, changing world
That the heart longs for. What is love itself,
Even though it be the lightest of light above,
But dreams that hurry from beyond the world
To make low laughter more than meat and drink,
Though it but set us sighing? Fellow-wanderer,
Could we but mix ourselves into a dream,
Not in its image on the mirror!

(W.B. Yeats, The Shadowy Waters 177-89; 1906)

Standing in God's Holy Fire

2010-06-08T20:54:00.003-04:00

Sailing to Byzantium

....

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

....

(W.B. Yeats, "Sailing to Byzantium," The Tower, 1928)

Slouching towards Bethlehem

2010-06-07T23:15:00.004-04:00

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

(W.B. Yeats, "The Second Coming," Michael Robartes and the Dancer, 1921)

I really do not have much to say to this amazing poem. The centrifugal force of the first stanza of the doubly turning gyre, the falcon flying from the falconer loosened from its earthly tether, anarchy, blood-dimmed tide that drowns all innocence, are all best encapsulated, I think, in the line: "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold." The center spins and all spin chaotically away.

This stanza of chaos invokes a cosmic storm; the apocalyptic storm of the Second Coming. It is a chaos that seeks meaning; a chaos that seeks revelation. Even if that revelation is death and destruction, it is foreseen death and destruction in the sight of eternity--the divine plan of the Second Coming. That the Egyptian sphinx is the spirit of the world would indeed be a vexing image. It is a vexing figure: the sphinx who tells riddles is itself a riddle. This makes the world itself a riddle, but it also makes this world a ruin. A ruin has two sides: it is incomplete due to the ravages of time, but it also has endured the ravages of time. The sphinx as the world spirit is an enduring image that counterposes the instability of the first stanza. Both, however, are unsettled as a new beast slouches toward Bethlehem. The new beast born in Jesus' birthplace. A nightmare to be brought up. A violent thing that has taken its time to come to its consummation. Slouching may be slovenly, but it is also unhurried. The rough beast will work at its own pace to bring a violent end to the chaos by chaos.

Clouds about the Fallen Sun

2010-06-03T23:07:00.003-04:00

These are the Clouds

These are the clouds about the fallen sun,
The majesty that shuts his burning eye:
The weak lay hand on what the strong has done,
Till that be tumbled that was lifted high
And discord follow upon unison,
And all things at one common level lie.
And therefore, friend, if your great race were run
And these things came, so much the more thereby
Have you made greatness your companion,
Although it be for children that you sigh:
These are the clouds about the fallen sun,
The majesty that shuts his burning eye.

(W. B. Yeats, "These are the Clouds," The Green Helmet and Other Poems, 1910)

I don't know why, but I found this poem particularly beautiful. Published in 1910 it anticipates the sense of brokenness and fallenness to permeate literature and philosophy after World War I (see, e.g., Woolf and Proust) and especially World War II (do I need to say more than Paul Celan?). Yet as an Irish poet, Yeats acutely sensed imposition from foreign powers, living in a country without self-governance but with great local ferment (to understate). But such historical circumstances may or may not have prompted this sense of brokenness, which, with all great and insightful works, speak beyond the moment of their writing.

First there is a poignancy in the opening couplet. There is an ominous tone with clouds gathering about the sun, as one slips into grayness and darkness when light should have been possible. There is not a full storm at play, but the gathering clouds simply shut out the light and who knows when the sun will shine through again, when the sun shall re-open his burning eye and bring light back to us. The repetition of the couplet at the end of the poem creates a sense of sadness, the end of poem, at first reading, shows no progress from the beginning. The clouds gather; the sun's eye is shut; there is no light. Its return is left for the future, but "although it be for children that you sigh" somberly indicates that the end of the darkness is not in sight for one's own and even for one's children's lifetimes. It seems endless.

I have difficulty reading the middle portion's tone. The weak lay hand on what the strong has done bringing it tumbling down. Is this the clouds? Is the "majesty" of the sun the equivalent of the strong? The clouds and weak then associated with discord and the majestic sun and strong associated with the previous (but now lost) unison? It seems so. Thus sun=strength=unity and clouds=weak=discord. It is with the next lines that difficulties really come in my mind. Since now that the strong's achievements have been brought down and the sun's majesty is shaded, "all things at one common level lie." This line seems to prompt eulogy: "And therefore, friend, if your great race were run / And these things came, so much the more thereby / Have you made greatness your companion." Vocatively addressing "friend," who has run his "great race" and these things came--these things being the breaking down of the strong and the hiding of the sun and the sowing of discord and the destruction of unity--his friend has made "greatness" is companion. How is this so? If the weak has brought down the strong and all things at common level lie, is it that the weak is now strong, the last shall now be first--or to be totally without hierarchy the weak now has access to greatness. The tumbling of the edifice of the strong that leads to temporary discord (and one whose end is not quite in sight) is also a moment of opportunity. In this second thought, the friend who has achieved greatness does not sigh from the grief of the children's grim future, but his current "sigh" represents the great effort and race that secures their future by gathering the clouds and forcing the majestic sun (cipher for monarchy?) to turn its scorching heat elsewhere. As such, while at first glance the gathering clouds seem somber and sad, it is rather hopeful at the same time if those clouds provide shade from debilitating heat and if WE are those clouds. Even though Yeats has given the exact same couplet at the beginning and end, by the end it has acquired a very different (even opposing) valuation and feeling.

To Kill a Mockingbird

2010-05-25T13:05:00.003-04:00

The classic, To Kill a Mockingbird, which has not been out of print since its publication, turns fifty this year with fifty parties and events set up across the country in celebration. See here:

Few novels have achieved both the mass popularity and the literary cachet of “To Kill a Mockingbird.” The book was originally published in 1960 by J. B. Lippincott and Company (now part of HarperCollins), won a Pulitzer Prize and has not been out of print since. It has sold nearly one million copies a year and in the past five years has been the second-best-selling backlist title in the country, beaten out only by the novel “The Kite Runner.”

Learning from Other Faiths: Article by the Dalai Lama

2010-05-25T10:45:00.004-04:00

His Holiness the Dalai Lama (number 14), Tenzin Gyatso, has an op-ed article in the NYTimes. It isn't every day that you see an article in the Times by a world religious leader. He writes on religious intolerance and the need to learn from other faiths while remaining faithful to one's own:

Though intolerance may be as old as religion itself, we still see vigorous signs of its virulence. In Europe, there are intense debates about newcomers wearing veils or wanting to erect minarets and episodes of violence against Muslim immigrants. Radical atheists issue blanket condemnations of those who hold to religious beliefs. In the Middle East, the flames of war are fanned by hatred of those who adhere to a different faith.

Such tensions are likely to increase as the world becomes more interconnected and cultures, peoples and religions become ever more entwined. The pressure this creates tests more than our tolerance — it demands that we promote peaceful coexistence and understanding across boundaries.

Granted, every religion has a sense of exclusivity as part of its core identity. Even so, I believe there is genuine potential for mutual understanding. While preserving faith toward one’s own tradition, one can respect, admire and appreciate other traditions.

Interestingly (at least for me), he says he learned this truth from the Trappist monk and Columbian Thomas Merton:

An early eye-opener for me was my meeting with the Trappist monk Thomas Merton in India shortly before his untimely death in 1968. Merton told me he could be perfectly faithful to Christianity, yet learn in depth from other religions like Buddhism. The same is true for me as an ardent Buddhist learning from the world’s other great religions.

A main point in my discussion with Merton was how central compassion was to the message of both Christianity and Buddhism. In my readings of the New Testament, I find myself inspired by Jesus’ acts of compassion. His miracle of the loaves and fishes, his healing and his teaching are all motivated by the desire to relieve suffering.

In what follows he traces the thread of compassion across major religions (Judaism, Hinduism, Islam), emphasizing the necessity of personal contact with people of different faiths to learn about how their traditions emphasize compassion and the inspire mutual compassion for one another. When pulling on their resources of compassion, they can work together to reduce the suffering of those around the world:

Let me tell you about the Islam I know. Tibet has had an Islamic community for around 400 years, although my richest contacts with Islam have been in India, which has the world’s second-largest Muslim population. An imam in Ladakh once told me that a true Muslim should love and respect all of Allah’s creatures. And in my understanding, Islam enshrines compassion as a core spiritual principle, reflected in the very name of God, the “Compassionate and Merciful,” that appears at the beginning of virtually each chapter of the Koran.

Finding common ground among faiths can help us bridge needless divides at a time when unified action is more crucial than ever. As a species, we must embrace the oneness of humanity as we face global issues like pandemics, economic crises and ecological disaster. At that scale, our response must be as one.

Harmony among the major faiths has become an essential ingredient of peaceful coexistence in our world. From this perspective, mutual understanding among these traditions is not merely the business of religious believers — it matters for the welfare of humanity as a whole.

It is an interesting article. I may have the opportunity to teach an introduction to the religions of the world next year, and wonder if this might be a good way to start it off as religions increasingly come into contact due to globalization and ongoing migrations.

For a fairly negative reaction to this article, see John Hobbins here. Hobbins characterizes the article as a "strong misreading." I think this characterization is overly strong. Hobbins simply and rightly emphasizes context and faithfulness to a particular faith tradition--something that I did not see the Dalai Lama denying, but, rather, promoting in the article; I read the article as finding intersections among traditions while holding to one's own: the point is finding platforms for dialogue across traditions while remaining true to one's own. Only by engaging on those platforms--whether it is the Dalai Lama's point about compassion or something else--does one see how things are framed differently in different contexts. As Max Müller said about the study of religion, whoever knows one, knows none. I think the point of misreading is different: compassion, although found in various religious traditions and framed differently in different contexts of those traditions, is Tenzin Gyatso's own hobby horse. It is clearly the platform of dialogue set on his own terms. What would the platform if a Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu leader set the terms?

Peace Between Heaven and Hell: The Harmonizing of Beauty

2010-05-24T22:38:00.003-04:00

So, I've talked about the Symbiosis of Heaven and Hell with Blake and Bulgakov, and the Hellish Heaven and Heavenly Hell with Blake and Calvino. Let's give Blake a little rest and turn to Yeats!

The Rose of Peace

If Michael, leader of God's host
When Heaven and Hell are met,
Looked down on you from Heaven's door-post
He would his deeds forget.

Brooding no more upon God's wars
In his divine homestead,
He would go weave out of the stars
A chaplet for your head.

And all folk seeing him bow down,
And white stars tell your praise,
Would come at least to God's great town,
Led on by gentle ways;

And God would bid His warfare cease,
Saying all things were well;
And softly make a rosy peace,
A peace of Heaven with Hell.

W.B. Yeats, "The Rose of Peace," The Rose, 1893)

Yeats transfixes Michael, God's archangelic general, in a domestic moment. He does not stand on the field of battle, but in his heavenly home. A homely and very physical home: "door-post," "divine homestead," "God's great town." In the contemplation on the unnamed rose, thoughts of wars become a garland of stars. The greatest angel, the heavenly bodies, bow down before the earthly rose. As aesthetics overcome ideology, it is by peace, by "gentle ways" that people come to God's fold, to his "great town." Beauty is greater than the Manichean fight of light vs. darkness, good vs. evil: it is all beautiful when the "vs." is removed; when the "vs" is removed, it is peaceful. When it is peaceful, that is when the "folk" will be impressed. When heaven ceases its quarrel with hell, finally all things will be "well." The line "saying all things were well" is an interesting twist on Genesis 1. In Gen. 1:1-2:3, when God creates something, he often ends the creation by saying that it was "good" or saying it was "very good." The shift from "good" to "well," from goodness to wellness emphasizes the health and wholeness of all things--they are harmoniously working together, unlike in the disease of war that tears down and infects, making all things ill. In beauty, one moves beyond good and evil to well and ill.

On Imitation

2010-05-23T20:44:00.004-04:00

But imitation requires not only the absence of any unconquerable originality but also a relative fineness of ear which enables one first of all to discern what one is afterwards to imitate.

(Proust, Guermantes Way, In Search of Lost Time; trans. Moncrieff, Kilmartin, and Enright)

Famously, since Plato and Aristotle, art has been defined as the imitation of life or nature. Ovid, in his Metamorphoses, fascinatingly, reversed the direction of imitation, saying in his portrayal of Actaeon's transformation by Diana into a stag that is torn apart by his own dogs that nature imitates art--he is speaking of the rock formations around Diana's pool that are in the form of arches--the famous Roman architectural feature. Dante, on the Ledge of Pride in his Purgatorio, similarly, depicts an ecphrasis that is so real that nature could not compete with it. Art imitates life; life imitates art; it is an endless circle of mimesis. This is a fairly creative view of mimesis; Proust, however, takes a more ambivalent point. Imitation lacks originality. In high modernism, however, there is a cult of originality that ultimately is not original, as people clamor to imitate the artists who are "original." This is not a part of the loop of mimesis between life, art, and nature, but an exaggerated offshoot in which art imitates art. Or, in what he speaks of, is the circulation of particular mannerisms and trends among the upper classes. The other side of this ambivalence, however, is discernment. One' ability to discriminate what to imitate versus what not to imitate: this, it seems, is a useful social skill. It can be directed toward toadyism, for shameless self-promotion, or just surviving the shifting waves of society. The real issue, however, is whether or not "originality" is an illusion. What seems original is probably just the reorganization of partially imitated elements combined into new configurations. If originality is an illusion, creative mimesis is all there is.

Two Phrases that Should be Banned from Scholarship

2010-05-18T16:29:00.005-04:00

I have returned to working on a book review that I have been dreading--partly because I am now receiving some pressure from the journal to do it. And in the same chapter the author uses two phrases that I find jarring.

Phrase 1: "The burden of proof lies with those who..."

This phrase always pertains to the position one opposes. It assumes that the consensus lies with you and that others must argue against it. It also indicates that you are not going to provide an argument yourself. To say that the "burden of proof lies" with whoever opposes your assumptions is just scholarly laziness, saying you will not (or perhaps cannot) effectively demonstrate your assumption. The burden of proof lies with whoever is making an argument, meaning, it lies with all of us.

Phrase 2: "The exception that proves the rule."

No, it is just a plain old exception. That it might stand out among a great deal of evidence, making it striking by comparison can be duly noted. But, especially for those of us who study antiquity in which we have very little surviving evidence and the evidence that survives most often reflects the concerns of later individuals and communities who transmitted them, omitting documents or even destroying documents or just failing to copy documents that did not fit their own perspective, it is not surprising to find large scale agreements on some issues in the ancient evidence with occasional exceptions that broke through. This, however, is not evidence that what we have is an exception that proves the rule. It is a surviving scrap that barely made it that might reflect a much broader perspective that was later forgotten or suppressed as its supporting similar evidence was lost.

Both phrases should be thrown out of serious scholarship. Neither is a form of careful argumentation; both are rhetorical ways to dismiss alternative viewpoints or dismiss inconvenient evidence.

What is a Philosopher?

2010-05-17T12:13:00.003-04:00

From the NYTIMES, a discussion of what a philosopher is, from the silly to sublime.

See more commentary (which refers to other blogger responses) here.

"Paroxysm of Patriotism": Religious Symbols on Public Land

2010-05-05T10:08:00.003-04:00

Stanley Fish writes a fascinating opinion piece in the NYTimes on a recent Supreme Court decision concerning a Cross used in a memorial on public land in the Mojave desert. The argument that won the day was to argue that the cross did not violate the Establishment Clause because it was a secular rather than a religious symbol (something, I should note, is similar to why French students can wear cross necklaces to school, but other religious symbols are excluded). The irony is quite apparent:

Notice what this paroxysm of patriotism had done: it has taken the Christianity out of the cross and turned it into an all-purpose means of marking secular achievements. (According to this reasoning the cross should mark the winning of championships in professional sports.) It is one of the ironies of the sequence of cases dealing with religious symbols on public land that those who argue for their lawful presence must first deny them the significance that provokes the desire to put them there in the first place.

It has become a formula: if you want to secure a role for religious symbols in the public sphere, you must de-religionize them, either by claiming for them a non-religious meaning as Kennedy does here, or, in the case of multiple symbols in a park or in front of a courthouse, by declaring that the fact of many of them means that no one of them is to be taken seriously; they don’t stand for anything sectarian; they stand for diversity. So you save the symbols by leeching the life out of them. The operation is successful, but the patient is dead.

At the end of the piece, Fish claims that he has no problems with the use of symbols of public land, but does have problems with the disingenuous reasoning used to keep them there.

UPDATE: the cross has been stolen! This is a crazy case. See here.

Titular Editing

2010-05-04T20:13:00.002-04:00

My old banner subtitle of "my musings on antiquity, religion, and other phenomena and ephemera," while perhaps complete, since all things perhaps fall under "other phenomena and ephemera" still seemed incomplete to me given the many postings I have done on Proust, Shakespeare, etc--basically the increased occurrence of non-antique literature. Thus, I have included "literature" into my subtitle to represent more accurately the content you might find here--still heavily biblically and anciently oriented, but inclusive of a great deal of musings on other literature.

Thank you for reading!

Hamlet's Last Words

2010-05-04T00:45:00.004-04:00

I confess I never really thought of Hamlet's last words until I watched the PBS production of the recent Royal Shakespeare Company's performance. They take out the aftermath of Fortinbras picking up the shattered pieces of Denmark, and end simply with Horatio's words: "Good night, sweet prince, / and fights of angels sing thee to thy rest." Yet just before this, Hamlet's final words just before death are quite strange, eerie, interesting:

"The rest is silence" (V.ii).

The rest is silence. As in the interview for the PBS special, the actor who plays Hamlet says he is going off into oblivion. It is as if he has gotten his answer to the problem in the "to be or not to be" speech. For, indeed, it is the fear of things to come, the "undiscover'd country" that makes cowards of us all--that is, if living is cowardly. I am struck, as a specialist in the study of religion, in this particular phrasing--"the rest is silence." Indeed, the interpretation of oblivion may be preferred, may be most correct. But, there is another way to read it. Silence, indeed, need not mean oblivion--it need not be Lear's "nothing." Silence could be a more poignant word for peace. After the noise of life, a particularly neurotic one in Hamlet's case, silence/peace. Not the noise of the inferno, but perhaps not the choirs of heaven either: a completely unimagined, unimaginable silent peace; not oblivious nothing but superfluous silence. I am reminded, however, of ancient traditions of holy silence. For example, it is said (in the Letter of Aristeas) that the entire officiation in the temple is done in silence. It is as if silence is the necessary auditory posture before God. In the Discourse on the Eighth and the Ninth, a Hermetic work, an adept ascending through the heavenly spheres, observes the angels singing songs in silence. This paradox of songs and silence also appears in the work found with the Dead Sea Scrolls called the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, depicting heavenly praise by the heavenly host on the Sabbath. Silence, in fact, is often associated with the most holy and most heavenly, as if silence were the result of perfect harmony. Was Shakespeare tapping into something of the silence of an afterlife of rest? I mostly doubt it. But I do wonder...especially when we reread the second word of "the rest is silence."

As readers we have been assuming that "rest" means "what remains." But what if it means something more like "repose." The rest, the cessation of work, is silence, itself a synonym of rest. In this reading, "the rest is rest." It is a tautology, something the opposite of Lear's "nothing" because it is complete in and of itself. We should note that in the ancient Jewish tradition, particularly prominent in Rabbinical writings and thereafter the Sabbath--the day of rest--is a precursor of the world to come; that is, the world to come is an everlasting rest. This did carry over into Christianity--for example, St. Augustine's Confessions and City of God both end with a meditation of heavenly rest based upon an exegesis of Gen. 1:1-2:3. The afterlife as "rest" is such a truism these days that we abbreviate it as "R.I.P." Rest is peace. Rest is silence. Perhaps complete nothingness, complete oblivion would be best for Hamlet, but his last words have a doubled edge. It could mean that the "undiscover'd country" is no country at all, that it is nothing--a fairly radical statement. Or it could be tapping into the extensive Jewish and Christian associations of the afterlife with rest, peace, and silence. It is up to the audience to decide, and that ambiguity in phrasing that could go either way is, indeed, how Shakespeare's speech continues to live with us, how it speaks to so many different people of such different dispositions. It, it seems, never rests. It is never silent.

From Self to Society

2010-05-02T23:32:00.002-04:00

People foolishly imagine that the broad generalities of social phenomena afford an excellent opportunity to penetrate further into the human soul; they ought, on the contrary, to realise that it is by plumbing the depths of a single personality that they might have a chance of understanding those phenomena.

(Proust, Guermantes Way, In Search of Lost Time; trans. Moncrieff, Kilmartin, and Enright)

Born Again with the Weather, with Proust

2010-05-02T21:26:00.004-04:00

Although it was simply a Sunday in autumn, I had been born again, life lay intact before me, for that morning, after a succession of mild days, there had been a cold fog which had not cleared until nearly midday: and a change in the weather is sufficient to create the world and ourselves anew. Formerly, when the wind howled in my chimney, I would listen to the blows which it struck on the iron trap with as keen an emotion as if, like the famous chords with which the Fifth Symphony opens, they had been the irresistible calls of a mysterious destiny. Every change in the aspect of nature offers us a similar transformation by adapting our desires so as to harmonise with the new form of things. The mist, from the moment of my awakening, had made of me, instead of the centrifugal being which one is on fine days, a man turned in on himself, longing for the chimney corner and the shared bed, a shivering Adam in quest of a sedentary Eve, in this different world.

(Marcel Proust, Guermantes Way, In Search of Lost Time; trans. Moncrieff, Kilmartin, and Enright)

Reborn by the changing of the weather leads to something else. It is an exterior change that leads to interiority and a search for a new Eden. But it is not just weather, it is adapting to new forms. As it turns out, these new forms turn out to be literature. New forms of literature are new because they create new associations between things, associations heretofore unseen. When this new literature shows new associations between things, we ourselves are transformed as we adapt to these new associations. This, however, means something about literature--that is is not static, that it progresses. In fact, it is a different perspective of art in the association between works of art:

And I was led to wonder whether there was any truth in the distinction which we are always making between art, which is no more advanced now than in Homer's day, and science with its continuous progress. Perhaps, on the contrary, art was in this respect like science; each new original writer seemed to me to have advanced beyond the stage of his immediate predecessor; and who was to say whether in twenty years' time, when I should be able to accompany without strain or effort the newcomer of today, another might not emerge in the face of whom the present one would go the way of Bergotte? (ibid.)

Bergotte is the writer the narrator adored in his youth, but now has found new forms of art that show new associations between things that build upon, advance beyond his youthful favorite author. That new author, in turn, shall be surpassed as new associations between things are discovered or, better yet, imagined. In reading something new, by seeing new associations, we are reborn as we incorporate these new associations into ourselves and see them in our own lives.

On the Symbiosis of Heaven and Hell

2010-05-01T21:13:00.005-04:00

Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence.
From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason[.] Evil is the active springing from Energy.
Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell
(William Blake, Marriage of Heaven and Hell)

This past week I just finished up my Literature class by reading Mikhail Bulgakov's amazing Master and Margarita, which happens to be one of my favorite books. One thing often commented on about the novel is the prominent solar and lunar imagery: the sun and the moon align the scenes as they alternate between 20th century Stalinist Russia and first century Jerusalem. The sun is often portrayed as merciless, unbearable, taking away one's breath. The moon allows one to breath, but can be deceptive, creating shadows in the dark. Yet, considering the dark, in the end Night personified strips away all illusions--it is as if illusion and deception were used in order to reach deeper truths. For example, when the devil, Woland, comes to town, he stages a theatrical magical performance, using magic (the real thing) in order to discern the inner truth about humanity--humanity's greed--but, interestingly, also humanity's ultimate mercy.

One might want to suppose that we have a series of opposing binaries between light and darkness, sun and moon, and finally Yeshua (as Jesus is called in this novel) and Woland. But that turns out not fully to be the case--neither Woland nor Yeshua are particularly associated with the merciless sun. They both have strong connections with the moon. When it comes to light and darkness--with Yeshua associated with light (and compassionate, merciful light, like the moon?) and Woland with darkness (in which that darkness shines), they seem to work together to bring deceptive and revelatory light in the darkness. Woland speaks to Levi Matvei (Yeshua's disciple), who shows up in Moscow, allowing the Moscow and Jerusalem chapters to blur, in which Levi addresses Woland--who, by now, has becomes somewhat of a sympathetic character--quite rudely, calling him "Spirit of Evil and Sovereign of the Shadows," and wishing him evil. To this Woland responds:

You pronounced your words as if you refuse to acknowledge the existence of either shadows or evil. But would you kindly ponder this question: What would your good do if evil didn't exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared? After all, shadows are cast by things and people. Here is the shadow of my sword. But shadows also come from trees and living things beings. Do you want to strip the earth of all trees and living things just because of your fantasy of enjoying naked light? You're stupid. (trans. Burgin and Tiernan O'Connor)

Woland notes that perhaps light could exist without darkness, but it would be naked light without any life. As long as there is any life, the light hits it and creates a shadow; and therein lies Woland. Darkness and shadows will exist as long as life exists. Interestingly, it turns out that the light needs the shadows as well. The reason Levi is there is that Yeshua (or "he") requests, very nicely, that Woland grant peace and rest to the Master (who wrote a novel about Pilate that Yeshua really liked). Woland grants Yeshua's request. Woland and Yeshua, it seems, work together, and work well together, as interdependent beings. Woland exposes human vices and executes divine justice; Yeshua acknowledges the inherent goodness of humanity and grants mercy. (Blake's note of the passivity of Good resembles Yeshua, who recognizes the inherent goodness of all humans, who is also ultimately passive--Yeshua tells Pilate that all forms of power are violence; that in the kingdom of light to come, there will be no power at all and, therefore, no violence.) Each, as Woland says earlier in the novel when Margarita begs mercy for someone suffering eternal torment, belong to their own "department" and do what is expected of them in their respective "departments" of justice and mercy, but do not infringe on the other's territory. Both are necessary and both need each other. There is a great deal that resembles Manichean doctrine here, but, I would note, for at least Bulgakov's novel, light and darkness are not in opposition, but excepting the stupidity of Levi Matvei work together.