Josephus on Miracles

Louis Feldman, Josephus’s Interpretation of the Bible (page 219): Inasmuch as the Jews had been accused by their detractors of undue credulity in accepting the decrees of G-d without question, Josephus goes out of his way on a number of occasions to show courtesy to his readers by suggesting that it is up to them to decide how to understand the biblical miracles.  But ultimately miracles were not too great a problem for Josephus, because the Stoics did allow for divine intervention in the world.  Nevertheless, Josephus tends to tone down the miracles[,] rationalizing them or pointing out contemporary parallels.

By “decrees,” I think Feldman means the Bible stories about miracles.  There were people in Josephus’ audience who were skeptical about miracles, so Josephus does a lot of rationalizing.  In my opinion, his rationalization is sometimes harder to accept than simply going with the “God did it” view.  For example, Josephus says that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego survived the fiery furnace because they were healthy, as a result of their vegetarian diet.  Huh?  Can you be that healthy? 

Also, I wonder if Josephus is like Lessing in his approach to miracles.  Lessing was an eighteenth century German writer, who believed that the miracles were not as important as the self-evident truths of the Christian religion.  At least that’s what I learned about him in an undergrad course on Christianity!  Would Josephus say that one can reject the miracles in the Bible, yet still submit to a moral life, which has its highest expression in the discipline of the Torah?  The Greeks and Romans placed a high value on self-discipline—restraining the passions.  Moreover, John Locke (the philosopher) said that miracles are proof of the Christian religion.  They are not the religion itself, but the proof of it.

At the same time, I’m not willing to say that miracles don’t matter, for I believe in a God who can heal and disrupt the nature of things, anytime he so chooses.

Peter Graves, Feminine Mystique 5, Josephus on Women, Post-Exilic Unhewn Stones, Math vs. the Humanities, Unfit for God (Yet Ready or Not!)

1.  I just learned that Peter Graves has passed away.  Peter Graves is known for various roles, but I honor him as Pastor Eric Camden’s father on 7th Heaven, Colonel John Camden.

Here are some posts that I wrote about him during the course of my blogging career, covering some of my favorite 7th Heaven episodes:

Tired, What Aunt Julie Wants…, and Father’s Day 2009.

As you can see in the last post, I actually put Colonel Camden in my top ten list of TV dads because I admire him for learning from his mistakes.

R.I.P., Colonel!

2.  During my reading today of Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique, I thought about roles and the expectations that society puts on people.  The chapter that I read today was about the sociology field’s promotion of the Feminine Mystique, the notion that women can only find fulfillment as wives and mothers.  As I read sociologists’ descriptions of gender roles, I felt a lot of pressure on myself as a male to be a breadwinner and successfully compete in a dog-eat-dog world.  But I’m more like Jacob than Esau—quiet, contemplative, likes to stay in my camp, etc.  I found myself envying the housewife, who stays at home, wrapped in the security of her husband’s paycheck, performing the simple tasks of cleaning the house.  Of course, being a homemaker is probably a lot harder than it looks!  I’m sure that I’d find the childrearing element to be quite a challenge.  But, as a person with Asperger’s, I like security, along with predictable tasks.  Maybe I can be a house-husband, married to a high-powered corporate executive!

Ms. Friedan portrays sociologist Margaret Mead as a complex figure.  Mead discussed cultures in which women were dominant over men, and she also advised against pressuring children to conform to specific gender roles.  But she also put so much emphasis on the value of women giving birth, that advocates of the Feminine Mystique used her writings to support their view that the primary role of women is as wives and mothers.  According to Mead, men are envious of women because women can have babies whereas men cannot, and so men go out to conquer the world in other areas.  Ms. Friedan acknowledges that Mead made a valuable contribution in that she encouraged women “to say ‘yes’ to motherhood as a conscious human purpose and not a burden imposed by the flesh” (138).  Mead wanted women to celebrate their femininity, without feeling that they had to be like men.  But the proponents of the Feminine Mystique used her insights to keep women in their “place.”

The part about forcing kids to conform to gender roles stood out to me, for Phyllis Schlafly points out in The Power of the Positive Woman that feminism has pressured kids to do the opposite.  On page 216, Schlafly quotes psychologist Rhoda L. Lorand, who argues that “putting pressure on boys and girls to behave like the opposite sex is placing them under great strain…”  Boys are made to feel guilty for feeling chivalrous, whereas girls are told to be ashamed of their desire to be attractive to a man and to one day have kids.  Rhoda Lorand believes that the gender roles are biological, but here’s a thought for advocates of the Feminine Mystique and also for the feminists who want to perform their own method of social engineering on kids: Why not let the kids be themselves?

Ms. Friedan, on pages 144-145 of The Feminine Mystique, laments that the female students at her alma mater of Smith College are not interesting in discussing the national and international issues of the day, as were Ms. Friedan and her colleagues when they were at Smith.  Rather, they are preparing to becomes wives and mothers.  A blonde senior said that women are expected to go to college, but they’re deemed peculiar if they become too interested in a field of study.  That’s the thing about society’s expectations: they’re not always reasonable!  They can contradict each other.

On page 129, Ms. Freidan quotes Margaret Mead as saying: Some men think of women as too weak to work out of doors, others regard women as the appropriate bearers of heavy burdens “because their heads are stronger than men’s.”   Again, contradictory expectations!

I suppose that I buy into both stereotypes.  C.S. Lewis said in Mere Christianity that, if his dog bit a child (or something like that), he would prefer to tell the child’s father rather than the mother, since the mother would overreact.  The father would be more level-headed.  Yet, women are strong.  They have to be to support their husbands through hard times.  And, when a man is about to bite someone’s head off, it’s usually the woman who is the voice of calm and rationality.

At an Asperger’s support group that I attended in New York, there was a heated debate about who had it easier: men with Asperger’s, or women with Asperger’s.  A whiny man (not me) said that it’s hard for him because women reject him, and he has difficulty finding work.  An abrasive woman then replied that women are expected to have their “sh*t” together because they’re girls, whereas men are allowed to be on the quirky side.  I’m not qualified to judge which is easier.  But I think that society’s expectations on males are difficult for me, since I’m told that I need to conquer, to succeed.  

What I hope, though, is that I can find a way to support myself while being myself—to have a conscious human purpose as the person God made me.  But life is not always roses.  I need to learn to compete in some capacity, even if I don’t end up as the king of the jungle.  And, hopefully, therapy, developing my talents, and getting advice from other people can help me to do that.

3.  Louis Feldman’s Josephus’s Interpretation of the Bible: On pages 190-191, we learn about Josephus’ attitudes on women, as they are compared with those of other Greek authors.  Josephus portrays Salome Alexandra, a female ruler of Judea in the first century B.C.E., as lustful for power, dictatorial, and shortsighted.  Josephus blames her for the fall of the Hasmonean dynasty.  And he says that she acted in a manner that was unbecoming for a woman.  Yet, he reluctantly concedes that she kept the nation at peace.

Josephus says that the testimony of women is inadmissable in Jewish courts because of their levity and boldness (Ant. 4:219).  This may be an example of the sorts of contradictions I discuss in (2.): Josephus expects women to act in a manner that’s becoming, which means that they shouldn’t be in a position of power; yet, he considers women to be bold, not meek and mild.

Feldman then cites the Odyssey, in which Zeus punishes the house of Atreus because it accepted the counsel of women.  Plato said that the punishment for cowardly men is that they be reborn as women.  Aristotle stated that the woman is an imperfect human being.  And the Hellenistic Jew, Philo, affirms that the Passover lamb was to be a male because the male is more perfect than the female, who is merely an imperfect male.  I wonder how (and if) Philo explains (or explains away) the female sacrifices that God commanded: see Female Offerings.

4.  John Van Seters’ Law Book for the Diaspora: On pages 65-66, Van Seters argues that Exodus 20:24-26′s command that the altar be made of unhewn stone is late.  Ezekiel 43:13-17 presents the altar of the rebuilt temple as being composed of hewn stone.  Van Seters contends that the author of the Ezekiel passage is unaware of the Exodus 20:24-26 law, presumably because it hasn’t been written yet.  And, for Van Seters, one cannot claim that Ezekiel was discarding a rule he viewed as primitive, for the belief in the importance of an altar made of unhewn stones was big in the post-exilic period.  Ezra 3:2-6 says that the altar was built according to the Law of Moses—which Van Seters interprets as “with unhewn stones.”  And Van Seters cites I Maccabees 4:44-47, which refers to the Jews’ creation of an altar of unhewn stones.  So Van Seters contends that the law in Exodus 20:24-26 is post-exilic and came after the time in which Ezekiel 43:13-17 was written.

5.  H.I. Marrou’s A History of Education in Antiquity: On page 223, Marrou states that classical humanism didn’t think much of studying math above the elementary level, for it was considered barren and abstract.  There were philosophers, however, who liked math because it taught people how to reason.

I took Calculus I in high school, and that’s the highest I went in terms of math.  I skipped it in college.  I myself find it barren and abstract, though there are plenty of engineers who make good money applying it!  But one thing I admire about math is that it’s pure reason.  Some people act like the humanities are the same way—that there are criteria for evaluating good arguments and bad arguments.  But, personally, I find that such determination is often subjective and rooted in bias and presuppositions.  Plus, there are people who take pride in being great logicians, yet they turn right around and violate the very rules they claim to honor (particularly the rule against ad hominems).

6.  Marvin Pope’s Song of Songs: On page 99, Pope contrasts the Targum with Christian doctrine.  The Targum exhorts the Jews to continue their job of implementing the Torah, even though the world is unfit for the presence of God and the messianic climax that he will bring.  Christian exegesis, however, wants “the period of harrowing waiting to be arbitrarily foreclosed”, for it assumes the doctrine of original sin, which says that people are inherently corrupt, so the world won’t become fit for God’s presence before Christ’s second coming.  Pope states that Christians fear they will fall into temptation, so they’re not banking the entrance of the messianic climax on their own performance.

I don’t think that the world has to be “fit” for God to intervene, for that’s why God will intervene in the first place: to clean it up.  But it’s still a good idea to pursue justice.        

One’s Basis for Moral Conduct, Dependent After All, One Side or the Other, Fasting, Natural Family Planning

1. Louis Feldman’s Josephus’s Interpretation of the Bible (page 179): That [Josephus] was acquainted with Plato is clear from his remark that if one examines Plato’s laws, they will frequently be found less demanding than the Jewish code and more closely approximating the practice of the masses (Ag. Ap. 2.224).

Against Apion 2:224 states (according to the translation on BibleWorks): although he who shall diligently peruse [Plato's] writings will find his precepts to be somewhat gentle, and pretty near to the customs of the generality of mankind. Nay, Plato himself confesses that it is not sake to publish the true notion concerning God among the ignorant multitude.

Does Josephus believe that the Torah is better than Plato’s laws because it contains the true notion of God and doesn’t dumb down God’s demands for the “generality of mankind”? At Jewish Theological Seminary, a professor of mine said that Plato believed that the notion of God rewarding and punishing was for the masses: it was so the thief would keep his hand out of your pocket! But Plato himself held that there were better reasons to be moral—internal health and balance, for example. Consequently, if Plato knew of the Torah, perhaps he would consider it to be for the multitude, for the Torah stresses reward and punishment, which, for him, was a less sophisticated basis for morality. And, even today, there are psychologists who say that doing something good or avoiding evil out of a desire for reward or a fear of punishment is less mature than doing the right thing for its own sake. And that’s probably the level at which David arrives in the Book of Psalms—at least in the Psalms that praise God’s law (e.g., Psalms 19, 119, etc.).

2. John Van Seters’ A Law Book for the Diaspora (page 57): If one accepts the view that some of the casuistic laws [in the Covenant Code] are literarily dependent upon the Hammurabi Code, as will be argued below, then this literary borrowing took place in Babylonia during the exile. Such a conclusion seems inescapable. This is further supported by the fact that copies of portions of the Hammurabi Code have been found on clay tablets dating from various subsequent periods, including the Neo-Assyrian period (the library of Assurbanipal) and the Neo-Babylonian Period.

In my posts, Phyllis Schlafly’s Positive Woman 9 and Also Stuff on Moral Education, the Covenant Code and Cuneiform Laws, the Unexpected and Josephus the Inclusivist, Hard to Understand, Gift of Gab, What Song of Songs Rightfully Lacks, I refer to doubts in Van Seters’ book that the Covenant Code is dependent on Ancient Near Eastern cuneiform codes. In the above quote, however, he appears to acknowledge such dependence. He may have expressed doubts before because he doesn’t think that such dependence was likely before the exile—the time when Jews came into contract with Babylonian culture, and thus the Code of Hammurabi. But could they have learned about such laws before the exile, through trade with Babylon or Assyria?

3. H.I. Marrou’s A History of Education in Antiquity (page 210): There was not one Hellenistic philosophy, there were a number of rival sects, all at each other’s throats. The only way a doctrine could make any headway was under cover of a powerful barrage of dialectic, refuting its opponents claims and mounting a vigorous counter-attack.

I often feel that this kind of environment pervades all sorts of arenas—politics, religion, academia. People like to hold that their way of looking at things is absolutely right, whereas others’ is absolutely wrong. This extends to personalities as well. On cable news shows, talking heads argue that one political party is morally flawless, whereas the other is corrupt. And when it’s learned that the flawless party isn’t exactly flawless, its supporters are quick to point out that the other side has similar flaws, which is evasive.

In academia, people are pressured to come up with a thesis. A professor of mine once said that scholarly journals usually don’t publish articles that acknowledge the strengths of various points of view. Rather, you have to advance a clear thesis, as if it is flawless. And you need to be in a scholarly camp—maximalist, minimalist, etc.

I like something that Larry Slade said in Eugene O’Neill’s play, The Iceman Cometh. He said that he always had difficulty being active in the anarchist movement because he’s able to see various sides of an issue, and therefore he can’t be passionate for a particular cause. That’s pretty much where I am!

I never cared for Bill Clinton, but one thing I liked about him was that he was able to see the strengths and weaknesses of different perspectives, and to arrive at a third solution. People criticized this as “waffling.” In retrospect, I think it’s refreshing that he stepped outside of the typical, boring polarity of Left and Right.

4. Marvin Pope’s Song of Songs (page 86): Pope talks about “Gita Govinda, the So-Called ‘Indian Song of Songs’”. He states: The parable of passion purported to portray the soul’s emancipation from sensual distraction to the joys of the higher spiritual plane is so markedly serious that Western minds have had some difficulty in appreciating the mystical meaning.

That’s what Lent is about for many Catholics: letting go of some sensual distractions in order to arrive at a higher spiritual plane. Some experience that. I once had a roommate at Harvard who talked about a fast that he went on for three days (or more). He said that, at a certain point in the fast, things start to become clearer to him.

That rarely happens for me, for I just feel hungry! But I can identify with some points of arriving at a spiritual high as I let go of sensual pleasures. On the Day of Atonement, I don’t have to worry about the distraction of eating, so that frees me up to do other things. And I feel a sense of calm delight when I’m not thinking about sex a lot and am focusing instead on more intellectual or spiritual pleasures. I feel a freedom of not being bound to my passions. Often, I am bound to my body, and it’s not wrong to appreciate the pleasures that God has given us. But it’s good to contemplate higher things, every now and then.

5. At Latin mass this morning, we had philosopher priest, and he talked about Natural Family Planning (NFP). He denied that it’s a Catholic method of birth control, which made me chuckle, since I wondered how he could deny that! I mean, what is family planning, if not controlling the number of babies one has? That’s birth control, right? It’s amazing how people love to explain away! That’s especially evident in politics and religion.

I wondered what exactly NFP was. He referred to the Manicheans, who, according to Augustine, were familiar with the fertile and infertile times of women. He also said that periods of continence were an element of NFP. So is NFP having sex during the infertile times, but not during the fertile times?

Philosopher priest gave us a list of times in which we could practice NFP: when we are financially-strained and can’t afford another mouth to feed, for example. But wanting to save money to go to Tahiti is not a valid reason!

The priest also said that NFP is a venial sin and can become a mortal sin, which I don’t entirely understand. He also told us that we should consult a priest if we’re thinking of practicing NFP, since he’ll know whether or not our situation merits it.

Personally, I don’t understand how Catholics can have all those kids! I admire them for doing so. But not everyone is cut out for it. That’s why I’m glad I’m not a Catholic.

Josephus on Balaam, Deuteronomy 4:36 and Exodus 19-20, Polemon, Mesopotamian Infernal Prince

I’ll be doing this post fast, since the Sabbath is nigh!

1.  Louis Feldman’s Josephus’s Interpretation of the Bible: In Numbers 22, God allows Balaam to go with the envoys to the Moabite King Balak, who wants to hire Balaam to curse Israel.  Yet, God gets mad at Balaam when he does go.  What’s up with that?  Josephus’ solution is that God was being sarcastic when he told Balaam to go (Antiquities 4:107).

2.  John Van Seters’ A Law Book for the Diaspora (page 51): Is Exodus 20:22 dependent on Deuteronomy 4:36, or vice versa?  Exodus 20:22 says that God talked with Israel from heaven.  Deuteronomy 4:36 says God spoke from heaven, and then states that God spoke from a great fire. 

A scholar named Phillips says that Deuteronomy 4:36 is trying to reconcile two views of the theophany in Exodus 19-20, one that says God spoke from heaven, and the other that says God spoke from a fire on the mountain. 

Van Seters disagrees with this, and I’m not entirely clear why.  He says that Deuteronomy is moving in the direction of making God transcendent.  I don’t understand why that means Deuteronomy 4:36 wasn’t trying to reconcile things within Exodus 19-20.  Van Seters also says that the command against images in Exodus 20:22-23 presupposes Deuteronomy 4:9-12 and 15-19, which connect the prohibition of images with the fact that Israel saw no likeness of God in the fire of Horeb, but simply heard a voice.  Exodus 20 doesn’t make that connection, so Van Seters says that it’s presupposing Deuteronomy 4:9-12, 15-19.  My understanding of Van Seters’ overall argument is that Deuteronomy came before other biblical writings in the Pentateuch, so this argument is probably part of that.

Source criticism can strain my brain, if I’m not too careful!

3.  H.I. Marrou’s A History of Education in Antiquity (page 206): the Ancients were very fond of the story about young Polemon, who burst into the lecture-hall after an orgy while he was still drunk and had a crown on his head.  The philosopher Xenocrates was discussing temperance, and he went on speaking so persuasively and so affectingly that Polemon renounced his life of debauchery, fell in love with philosophy and later succeeded his master as director of the Academy.

4.  Marvin Pope’s Song of Songs ( page 77): The wasf devoted to the Mesopotamian infernal prince is, mutandis mutandis, similar to the descriptions of the supernal Ancient of Days of Dan. 7:9 and the “one like the son of man,” i.e., anthropoid, in Enoch 106 and Rev 1:13-16.

I don’t entirely see the resemblance.  Sure, lightning’s involved in both, and humans fall down before them in fear in response to their brilliance.  That’s part of being divine, I guess!  But I don’t see anything in the Mesopotamian description about a white garment and wooly hair, as I see in Daniel 7:9.

Roots TNG 6-7, Corroborating Word-Of-Mouth, Baal and El

1.  For Black History Month today, I watched Episodes 6-7 of Roots: The Next Generation.  The subject I’ll be focusing on in this section is vocation, which also popped up in some of my academic readings.

Alex Haley wondered what he was going to do with his life.  Although his father, Simon, believed that education was the key to a black man’s success, Alex didn’t care for school.  Contrary to his dad’s wishes, he didn’t want to follow his father’s footsteps and get a Ph.D., then go on to become President of a black college.  His grandmother, Cynthia, told Alex that he didn’t have to become like his father, for he had to find his own way—what he felt he needed to do.  At the beginning of Episode 6, there was a recap of the previous episode, in which Alex’s mother, Bertha, told her son that Simon (unlike many people) had an important task in life and needed to see it through.  The same was true for Alex, but he didn’t know for some time what his task was.

Alex found in the Coast Guard during World War II that he had a talent for writing, for he wrote excellent love letters on behalf of his ship-mates, who were hoping to sweep their sweethearts off their feet.  After the Coast Guard, however, he learned that getting a writing career was a lot harder than it looked, and he experienced a lot of rejection.  But his boss, Commander Robert Munroe (played by Andy Griffith), told him to write about the things that he’s passionate about, such as the racial discrimination that he experienced as he searched for a hotel room for himself, his wife, and his baby.

Alex accomplished some important work, as he wrote the Autobiography of Malcom X as well as the story of his brother George, who went through law school and became a successful Republican politician (who, since then, has gone on to serve in Presidential Administrations).  But he felt that something was missing, that there was a larger reason for his being on earth.  He was inspired to see if there was corroboration for the stories that his elderly relatives told—about their descent from the African, Kunta Kinte.  But not only was he on a search for his family’s roots in order to understand where he came from.  He also wanted to give a voice to the unheard in American history—the African-Americans, who endured slavery and then went on to experience oppression and discrimination.

Vocation.  What’s my purpose in this life?  There have been times in my life when I’ve thought that I have some destiny—something important to accomplish.  But, as I watched Roots and its sequel, I saw that generations come and go, and not everyone becomes famous.  Most people don’t.  They just get through life, trying to survive, and hopefully enjoying the company of family and friends. 

Two of my academic readings today were (1.) Michael Stone’s “Ideal Figures and Social Context: Priest and Sage in the Early Second Temple Age,” which appeared in Ancient Israelite Religion, and (2.) H.I. Marrou’s A History of Education in Antiquity.  Stone talks some about Jesus ben Sirach’s comments on scribes.  For Jesus ben Sirach, manual labor is good, but a career studying the Torah is even better, for one can be edified therein as well as arrive at a position of status in society.  And Marrou refers to a third millennium B.C.E. Egyptian text in which “the scribe Akhtoy [is] trying to encourage his son Pepi to follow the thankless study of letters by painting a satirical picture of the thousand and one drawbacks there are in any kind of manual work, which he contrasts with the happy life of the scribe, and the nobility of his lofty vocation” (xv-xvi). 

Personally, at this time in my life, my fantasy is to work at a simple job that earns me enough money to survive, and to contribute to the world of ideas at night, through blogging, as I blog through what I read.  As far as my “larger purpose” is concerned, I’m not sure what that is at the moment.  Maybe I’ll learn as I keep on doing what I’m doing.

2.  In Psalms II: 51-100, I read Mitchell Dahood’s comments on Psalm 98.  Dahood calls it “A hymn praising Yahweh’s kingship…extolling him for his triumph over heathen gods both in primordial and in historical times, and foretelling his return to re-establish the universal reign of justice.”  In ancient Israelite religion, Yahweh had a lot of enemies, from the chaos that preceded creation to his historical enemies, such as Pharaoh and Sennacherib.  The ancient Israelites drew strength and hope from these stories, probably because they believed that they were passed down from generation to generation (Psalm 78), much like the story of Kunta Kinte in Roots. 

But is there independent historical corroboration?  Some people have questioned Alex Haley’s research.  Alex Haley’s thesis was that Kunta Kinte’s name was changed to Toby on the plantation, and Toby had Kizzy, who had Chicken George, etc.  But, as the wikipedia article on Alex Haley documents, some scholars have challenged that: 

According to Haley, Kunta Kinte was sold into slavery, where he was given the name Toby, and, while in the service of a slavemaster named John Waller, went on to have a daughter named Kizzy, Haley’s great-great-great grandmother. Haley also claimed to have identified the specific slave ship and the actual voyage on which Kunta Kinte was transported from Africa to North America in 1767.  However, genealogist Elizabeth Shown Mills and historian Gary B. Mills revisited Haley’s research and concluded that those claims of Haley’s were false.^[7][8] According to the Millses, the slave named Toby who was owned by John Waller could be definitively shown to have been in North America as early as 1762. They further said that Toby died years prior to the supposed date of birth of Kizzy. There have also been suggestions that Kebba Kanji Fofana, the amateur griot in Jufureh, who, during Haley’s visit there, confirmed the tale of the disappearance of Kunta Kinte, had been coached to relate such a story.^[9][10].

Alex Haley may have an answer for these genealogists if he were alive today, but suppose his facts are off.  Does this matter?  On some level, “no,” for, even if some of the facts about his family were wrong, Alex Haley still portrayed what happened to African-Americans: being taken from their home in Africa, enslavement in America, challenges in post-slavery times, etc.  On the other hand, the miniseries tells us that a big part of his self-esteem and that of his family was their descent from Kunta Kinte, who was from a prominent family in Africa and sought freedom in America, even though it cost him his foot.  If that’s not true, then that’s a bummer.

Did God have to fight chaos at creation?  Did the Exodus literally happen?  Even if not, I hope that there’s some evidence in the world that God triumphs over evil, that evil does not have the last word—even if that evidence is anecdotal.

3.  I started Theodore Mullen’s The Assembly of the Gods.  On page 5, Mullen refers to “pre-exilic literature in Israel.”  I’ll be interested to see what he identifies as such, for, as we’ve seen, he dates the Pentateuch and the biblical historical writings to Israel’s exilic and post-exilic periods.  He may date some of the Hebrew Bible’s poetry to pre-exilic times.

I may have to rethink some of what I’ve said about El, Baal, and Yam.  According to Mullen, scholars who claim that Baal took El’s place as supreme God of the pantheon are wrong, for Baal merely took control of the cosmos after his defeat of the chaotic Yam (sea).  El still had his share of power as head of the pantheon, though, for “No major action could be undertaken in the pantheon without the explicit permission of the high god” (10).  On page 9, Mullen says that El supported Baal in his battles.  I’m not sure if that’s true about Baal’s battle with Yam, whom El sent to keep Baal in line—unless El changed his mind and supported Baal once Yam got out of hand.  Or maybe Mullen’s referring to Baal’s battle with Mot, death.  As I said in my post, The Dead, and the Rising, there were gods who helped Baal leave the Underworld, an extremely difficult task.

On pages 1-2, Mullen notes that God is called “El” in the Hebrew Bible and that there are no biblical polemics against El, whereas there are plenty against Baal.  Maybe the ancient Israelites believed in the same high god as their Canaanite and Phoenician neighbors.  Or maybe they didn’t make a big deal about El because El wasn’t widely worshipped, whereas Baal was (10).

Miss Jane Pittman, Torah in Psalm 119, Eschatological Psalm, Why Create Riddles?, Sophia’s Fall

1.  For Black History Month today, I watched The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman on YouTube.  It’s a 1974 movie about a 110-year-old African-American woman in the 1960′s South, who grew up as a slave during the Civil War.  It got nine Emmy Awards.  The last time I saw this movie (before today, that is) was in fifth grade, which was over twenty years ago.

Memory is odd.  There were things in the movie that rang a bell, and things I was expecting to see but did not see.  Things that rang a bell: a kindly Union officer changes Tassey’s name to “Jane,” to replace her slave name; a bigoted and bereaved white woman (played by Katherine Helmond of Soap, Who’s the Boss, and Everybody Loves Raymond) gives newly-freed Jane and her friend a drink of water, but won’t let them put their “filthy black mouths” (her words) on the cup; the white reporter interviewing Jane chows down on some tasty raw sugar cane; and Jane drinks from the “whites only” water fountain, as the white sheriff and the bigots surrounding it decide not to beat her up or arrest her on account of her age.

For some reason, I was expecting to see a scene in which Miss Jane had a romance, and her husband was killed by the KKK, which was burning a cross outside of her home.  But that wasn’t on the movie.  There was a scene in which Jane’s husband owed his white employer fifty dollars for keeping the Klan away.  In another scene, Jane’s activist son is shot by a hit-man, who was friends with Jane and warned her that he was ordered to kill her son.  And Jane’s activist grandson was killed for trying to drink from the “whites only” water fountain.

There was also a reference in the movie to “the one.”  I remember Oprah calling Barack Obama “the one,” the person who would lead African-Americans to freedom.  She may have gotten that concept from this movie, or from the book that inspired it.  Miss Jane said that black mothers wonder if their newborn baby boy is “the one” who will lead their people, and she thought that her grandson was that one.  And, in a sense, he was, for he encouraged an African-American church to participate in the Civil Rights movement.  Maybe there’s not just one “the one,” but there can be more than one leader who brings freedom to the African-American people, or leads them so that they can gain freedom for themselves.

2.  In Ancient Israelite Religion, I read Jon Levenson’s “The Sources of Torah: Psalm 119 and the Moses of Revelation in Second Temple Judaism.”  Levenson dates Psalm 119 (which praises God’s law and commandments) to the Second Temple Period, which was after the exile.  During part of that period, the Pentateuch was in flux, and people were producing documents purporting to be divinely-inspired, such as the Book of Jubilees.  According to Levenson, the ”Torah” that Psalm 119 exalts is not the Pentateuch (although the Psalm draws some from Deuteronomy), but rather “(1) received tradition, passed on most explicitly by teachers (vv 99-100), (2) cosmic or natural law (vv 89-91), and (3) unmediated divine teaching (e.g., vv 26-29).”  Levenson still acknowledges, however, that Psalm 119 draws from ”books we consider ‘biblical’”, for they ”hold a kind of normative status for him” and “provide the language with which to formulate a significant statement.” 

Still, I’d like to think that, when the Psalmist asks God in Psalm 119:18 to open his eyes so he can see wonderful things from God’s law, he’s asking God to help him to learn from a book that we consider biblical—a book with laws.  But I’m open to the Psalmist embracing other forms of divine revelation as well: education from teachers, guidance from God, etc.

3.  In Psalms II: 51-100, I read Mitchell Dahood’s comments on Psalm 97.  Dahood calls it an “eschatological hymn of three parts portraying the coming of Yahweh as universal judge.”  I wonder when he dates it.  Does he date the Psalm to Israel’s post-exilic period, a time of intense apocalyptic expectations?  Ordinarily, Dahood dates Psalms earlier than that—to Israel’s pre-exilic period, sometimes even the time of Solomon.  One can perhaps make a case that some form of eschatology existed that far back.  As I said in my post, Black History Month at the Library, Mean Persians, ANE Universalism, Saul’s Reminder, Desolation—However Long It Takes, Dahood contends that the belief in a god who rules over all people was common in the ancient Near East as far back as the third millennium B.C.E.  In my posts, God in the Ancient Near East and Thy Kingdom Come, I discuss the ancient Near Eastern belief that a righteous king will come and set things right.  So Dahood may think that a Psalm can be eschatological and pre-exilic at the same time.

4.  I finished Theodore Mullen’s Narrative History and Ethnic Boundaries.  I’ve wondered if Mullen’s thesis is that the Deuteronomistic History was created out of whole-cloth during the exile to give Israel a common history and a sense of nationality.  I was a little thrown on page 273, where Mullen says that the Deuteronomist has to explain why God didn’t immediately destroy Israel for the sins of Ahab, and Dtr’s solution is that Ahab repented.  According to Mullen, the ability of repentance to postpone divine punishment is a common Deuteronomistic theme.  But why does the Deuteronomist have to solve any riddles, if he’s writing the story out of whole-cloth?  That the Deuteronomist has to solve riddles at all indicates that he’s using sources that he considers authoritative and historical, and he’s trying to explain their contents in terms of his own religious ideology.  That’s a challenge that creates puzzles!

On page 285, Mullen states that “The ethnic unity of Israel was one to be recreated from the traditions, history, and culture that had so nearly been lost in the flames that destroyed the old state of Israel and that had now nearly enveloped Judah.”  So maybe Mullen does believe that the Deuteronomist used pre-exilic traditions, as he conformed those traditions to an ideology that would speak to Israel in exile and give her a sense of identity.

5.  I also finished John Dillon’s The Middle Platonists.  (I realize that I’ve been calling him “John Denton” over the last couple of posts.  I’ll change that when I feel up to it.) On pages 386-388, he discusses the origin of the cosmos, according to Valentinian Gnosticism.  Gnostics hated the material world and viewed it as the creation of an evil—or at least ignorant—Demiurge.  Yet, there’s a higher god in Gnostic thought—a good God.  So how did evil arise?  According to the Valentinians, what got the ball rolling was the goddess Sophia (wisdom) desiring to know her origin and the “nature of the Forefather.”  She fell as a result of this wish, and was later reinstated, yet her fall caused a lot of disruption in the realm of the gods.  Out of this disruption came the Demiurge, who tried to create the world according to the eternal forms but was ignorant.  The Demiurge made man, but his mother put the pneuma in human beings so that they can have the ability to know their spiritual selves and to be united with the divine after the material world comes to an end.

George Wallace, Division with Unity, Plural of Majesty, Legend or History?, Numenius—Not a Gnostic

1.  For Black History Month today, I watched George Wallace, a 1997 TNT miniseries starring Gary Sinise, Mare Winningham, Angelina Jolie, and Clarence Williams III.  It received many awards, and I once read that Gary Sinise received his Emmy for his depiction of George Wallace on the same night that the real George Wallace passed away.

The movie depicts Wallace as a progressive who lost his first election for Governor of Alabama because he didn’t criticize African-Americans, and resolved from that point on to be a vocal proponent of racial segregation.  According to the movie, his rhetoric agitated race relations in Alabama and led to the deaths of four African-American little girls, when their church was firebombed.  When he was paralyzed by an assassin’s bullet and had managed to push away many of the people who cared about him, he reflected on the damage he had done in his pursuit of political power.  As the box for the VHS tape says, Wallace was “a man who once hungered for power and now hungers for forgiveness.”

Indeed, George Wallace capitalized on a system that treated African-Americans as inferior, as did his political opponents, and that was wrong.  As his friend and predecessor, Governor “Big Jim” Folsom, told him, Wallace should’ve been a moral leader and encouraged people to listen to their angels, rather than reflecting their demons to gain political power.  “Big Jim” was also right to say that George Wallace had unleashed the dogs of hate, who would one day come back to bite him.  That reminds me of Malcom X’s statement after the Kennedy assassination that the “chickens had come home to roost,” for violence begets violence.  Consequently, the true heroes of the movie were the African-Americans who chose to forgive Governor Wallace, after all the pain he’d caused them.

But the movie should’ve acknowledged a little bit more than it did a point that was made in the book that inspired the movie, Wallace, by Marshall Frady, who also wrote the teleplay for the movie: Wallace accomplished a lot of good for his state, at least by liberal standards.  Frady states on pages 140:

As governor, Wallace proved to be, aside from his racial aberration, essentially a Populist…He built fourteen new junior colleges and fifteen new trade schools, initiated a $100 million school-construction program and a free textbook policy.  He pitched into the largest roadbuilding project in the state’s history, devised plans for new nursing homes and medical clinics, and introduced an ambitious act to keep all the waterways of the state twinkling clean.  And the proportion of Alabama citizens—338 out of every thousand—participating in public welfare programs at the end of his term was exceeded by those of only one other state, Louisiana.  

The American Experience documentary on George Wallace, Settin’ the Woods on Fire, said that Wallace as Governor enacted programs that helped all of Alabama’s citizens, white and black.

Wallace should be criticized for what he did wrong, and praised for what he did right. 

2.  In Ancient Israelite Religion, I read Shemaryahu Talmon’s “The Emergence of Jewish Sectarianism in the Early Second Temple Period.”  My impression of Talmon’s argument is that he thinks there wasn’t much sectarianism in pre-exilic Israelite society because the country was rather homogeneous.  Sure, there were clear differences, but the Israelites agreed on the things that distinguished them from other cultures.  I can somewhat see Talmon’s point, even though I admit that there were differences in ancient Israelite society: some worshipped YHWH alone, and others worshipped other deities as well; there was a Northern Kingdom and a Southern Kingdom.  But both kingdoms embraced some sort of Yahwism.  And, after the destruction of the Northern Kingdom, the temple in Jerusalem was acknowledged as an important place of worship by the Israelites.

But, during and particularly after the exile, Talmon contends, there was debate about who was truly Israel.  (At least that’s how I’m reading Talmon, and I’m far from inerrant!)  The returning exiles excluded the Samaritans from their community, and regarded the returnees from exile as the genuine Israelites.  Eventually, there were debates about who was a true priest, as disaffected Zadokites fled to the desert to establish their own community.  So there was division after the exile that didn’t really exist before, and that led to sects.  (As Jon Levenson liked to say, “The Second Temple Period had a lot of sects.”)

Actually, what’s ironic is that the post-exilic Israelites had more agreement on religion.  At least everyone agreed by this point that Israel should worship only one God!  So sects emerged when there was greater unity.  It’s like fundamentalism: the fundamentalists broke away from mainline Christianity because they agreed on certain fundamentals (i.e., inerrancy, virgin birth, etc.), but then the fundamentalist denominations started splitting up in pursuit of doctrinal purity. 

3.  In Psalms II: 51-100, I read Mitchell Dahood’s comments on Psalm 89.  On page 316, Dahood says there’s a “plural of majesty” in v 51 (in the MT), which uses the plural for God’s singular servant, who (in the singular) bears reproach.  Or maybe the verse is asking God to remember the reproach of all of God’s servants, of which the Psalmist’s is one example.  In any case, I think there is something like a “plural of majesty” in the Hebrew Bible, for the plural of adon (“lord”) is often used for a single human being (e.g., Genesis 24:9-10; 39:2, etc.).  Yet, I should note that there are scholars who dispute the existence of the “plural of majesty.”  When I referred to it in a paper, my professor wrote in the margin, “There is no plural of majesty.”  Maybe he’d say that the use of the plural of adon for a single person is just something the Hebrew does.  I don’t know if it does the same thing for non-majestic words.

4.  I read more of Theodore Mullen’s Narrative History and Ethnic Boundaries, which I will probably finish either tomorrow or the day after.  Mullen seems to be saying that the Saul and David stories speak to Israel in exile.  Not only do they establish Israel as a nation, by giving her a legend in which she had a king (a big aspect of nations), but they also teach her lessons about obedience, a fresh start (which David was after the disappointment that Saul was), and God’s faithfulness to Israel even as he chastises her for sin.

My impression of Mullen is that he’s somewhat of a minimalist.  That reminds me of a good post by John Hobbins, A Critique of Minimalism: Walter Dietrich reviews John Van Seters, in which Hobbins critiques both maximalists and minimalists.  Is the David story legend conveying an ideological point, or is it solid history?  Maybe it’s a little of both!

5.  While reading John Denton’s The Middle Platonists, I was trying to get somewhat of a handle on the views of the second century philosopher Numenius (whom my long-time readers have met before, in my post, Numenius’ Trinity).  Numenius didn’t care much for matter, and he advocated asceticism and valuing the soul over the body.  Was he like the Gnostics, who viewed the material world as the creation of an evil sub-deity?  Not exactly.  On page 369, Denton says that Numenius felt the creator Demiurge had a lust for matter, which caused him (the Demiurge) to forget himself.  That’s weakness of will, but not exactly evil.  Plus, according to pages 375-376, Numenius proposed that souls entered bodies because they were tempted by the pleasures that the material world would give them.  But Numenius didn’t believe that the world was totally evil, for he held that its evil principle is subordinate to the Good.

Black History Month at the Library, Mean Persians, ANE Universalism, Saul’s Reminder, Desolation—However Long It Takes

I’ll be fast today, for I’m tired and I want to get to Lost sometime tonight.

1.  For Black History Month today, I read encyclopedia articles at the library.  I read about Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois in African-American Culture and History, and about welfare reform in the 1997 African-American Encyclopedia. 

Booker T. told blacks to tolerate segregation and to work hard to become productive members of society, yet, in secret, he tried to undermine segregation through “tests” (whatever that means).  W.E.B. DuBois was prominent in the NAACP, yet there came a few points where it couldn’t stomach him because of his socialistic and even Communistic sympathies.  He eventually moved to Ghana.

The article on welfare reform said that 33 per cent of African-Americans are in poverty, and that the child poverty rate for African-Americans is in the forty per cent range.  The child poverty rate is probably higher because there are poor families that have lots of kids.

The article closed on a Booker T. sort of note, saying that African-Americans need to rely on themselves and their communities rather than depending on the government, which (at the time, due to the congressional Republicans’ proposal for welfare reform) was thinking of curtailing benefits—or, more precisely, tightening eligibility requirements.  It laments that many African-Americans spend more money outside of their communities rather than using it to support black-owned businesses. 

2.  In Ancient Israelite Religion, I read Eric Meyers’ “The Persian Period and the Judean Restoration: From Zerubbabel to Nehemiah.” 

In 460 B.C.E., there was an Egyptian revolt against Persia, and Persia “tended to reverse the more liberal policies implemented by Darius I or even Cyrus the Great earlier.”  This applied to the “coastal territories” (whatever they were) yet probably impacted Yehud.  Could this be why my Bible comic books depict the Persian king as having a mad face at a certain point, whereas Cyrus and Darius had nice faces?

(I feel like Elaine on Seinfeld when she wasn’t having sex, and George after he did.)

3.  I read about Psalm 96 in Mitchell Dahood’s Psalms II: 51-100.  On page 357, Dahood contends that the Psalm’s universalism (“Declare among the nations his glory”; “He will govern the world with his justice”) does not necessarily mean that the Psalmist here is indebted to Second Isaiah (Isaiah 40-55), who has a universalistic vision of the nations worshipping YHWH.  As Dahood says, “it is widely recognized that universalism, namely, the rule of God over the whole world as well as over one people, was current in the ancient Near East from the third millennium onward.”  Dahood cites some secondary sources, which I’m not in the mood to look at right now.  But what he says makes sense: every nation believed that its god was the top one.  I know that many of them saw their god as the creator, so it’s not a far leap to conclude that they believed their god was supreme.  But did they expect all nations to worship their god?  That’s where I’m uncertain, and maybe those secondary sources Dahood cites could shed some light thereon.

4.  On page 205 of Narrative History and Ethnic Boundaries, Theodore Mullen says that Saul’s prophesying in I Samuel 10:11-13 was intended to confirm his status as God’s chosen king.  Perhaps, but what’s its significance in I Samuel 19, where Saul prophesies with the prophets after having been rejected by God for the monarchy, and in the very midst of his hostile pursuit of David?  Was Saul being reminded of the pinnacle from which he spiritually sunk?

5.  The first-second century C.E. philosopher Nicomachus says the following (as quoted on page 360 of John Denton’s The Middle Platonists):

When men suffer injustice, they are willing that the Gods should exist, but when they do injustice, they are not willing; and that is the reason that they suffer injustice [through divine providence], that they may be willing to believe in the Gods. 

Roots TNG 4-5, Reward and Punishment in Wisdom Literature?, YHWH Alone, We’re Rodents!, Pythagoreans on the Cosmos’ Origin

1.  For Black History Month today, I watched Episodes 4-5 of Roots: The Next Generation. 

I usually choke up when I watch the end of Episode 4, in which Will Palmer holds up his new grandson, Alex Haley, to the moon, as his wife Cynthia says to her daughter Bertha after telling her the story of Kunta Kinte: “Moon, this here is the seventh generation from then.  This here is Alex Haley.  You watch over him!”  After ten episodes, we’ve finally arrived at the author of Roots! 

Alex’s mother, Bertha, often intrigued me, and I can’t really pinpoint why.  As a young woman of college age, she was like the belle of the ball, and she was rather oblivious to the harsh realities of racial discrimination.  When the Jewish owner of the dress-shop delivers her dress to her after the KKK had burned down his business, she prances around like a peacock, bragging about how pretty she is.  And most of her classmates at the black college she attends are just like her.  Simon Haley was the only student who thought about the problems of African-Americans, and many of his fellow students made fun of him because he was the poor son of a sharecropper.  Bertha and many of her fellow students were part of a new generation of African-Americans, whose parents owned businesses and who didn’t think much about racial discrimination.

But, for some reason, when she started to see it, she wasn’t really phased by it.  When Simon Haley calls himself a “nigger,” Bertha tells him never to use the white man’s name for himself.  He’s colored, as is she.  She also says that she listened to the stories of her parents and grandparents about Kunta Kinte, and they stuck with her, even when she made fun of them in her youth.  She didn’t make a big deal about racism, even when she was older.  She knew who she was, and she went about living her life and taking care of her family.

A touching part of Episode 5 is when she tells her husband, Simon, to tend to his work, even though (unbeknownst to him) she’s desperately sick and needs attention.  Simon has a degree in agriculture, and he’s trying to help a poor black sharecropper, Ab Decker (played by Brock Peters), to get his government subsidy, when the white owner of the property is laying claim to it.  When Alex tells his mom that she’s sick and needs her husband’s attention, she replies that few people in their lifetimes have something important to do, so when someone like Simon does, he should see it through to the end.  I’ve often seen that statement as a reflection of her growth from the oblivious, narcissistic belle of the ball that she was in previous episodes, and, in a sense, it is.  But, in a sense, she’s also the same Bertha that she was throughout Episodes 2-5.  That statement was probably the closest she ever got to reflection about the world around her—except for her statement to Simon that he shouldn’t use the white man’s derogatory name for himself.  Most of the time, she was interested in her family, and she loved her husband, Simon, even if she didn’t fully understand what he was doing.  I don’t mean to badmouth Bertha, for I was sad when she died on Episode 5, and at such a young age.  I’m just struggling to understand her as a character.

Another character who intrigues me is Congressman Andy Warner, played by Marc Singer, of V fame.  Congressman Warner is a racist, yet he’s still friendly with the African-Americans of his town, probably because they’re a part of his community and he wants to preserve “good relations” between the races.  He ran against his father, Colonel Warner, by attempting to be more of a racist and a redneck than his father was.  But he came to embrace the sophisticated bigotry of his father—the type that isn’t so hot-headed and that reaches out to blacks in some capacity, but which still keeps blacks down and nods at white violence against them every now and then.  He changed from the rash, womanizing ways of his youth once he arrived at a position of status within his community.  As with Bertha, Andy Warner’s a character I stuggle to understand.

In terms of the theme that I’ve discussed in past posts—that of appeasing the white man versus seeking freedom (see Roots TNG 2-3, Collins on Enoch, Psalm to the Real Solomon, Yada, Tabula Rasa (Sort Of), Lent), Paul Winfield’s character stands out to me.  Paul Winfield heads the black college where Simon Haley teaches, and he sings spirituals to please the white donors.  Simon views that as grovelling to white people.  When the white landowner is upset at Simon’s attempt to get Ab his government subsidy and threatens to take action against the college, Paul Winfield tells Simon that he’s gone too far.  “Why don’t you sing him your favorite spiritual?”, Simon sarcastically asks, and Paul Winfield replies that he would, if that would save the college.  I think the difference between now (in the series) and slavery days is that, now, black people are appeasing whites in order to pursue freedom, which education can provide.  Many of us have to kiss the feet of people we don’t like in order to do what we want, or at least to attain some measure of freedom.  At least the appeasement now is a path to somewhere, not nowhere (continued slavery).  Battles may still be necessary, but the question people may find themselves asking is, “Is it worth it?”  For Paul Winfield, Simon was fighting a battle that he could not win, jeopardizing the future of African-Americans in the process. 

Another note: Robert Culp, whom I know from the Greatest American Hero and as Debra’s dad on Everybody Loves Raymond, plays Mr. Pettyjohn on Episode 5.  That didn’t stand out to me when I last saw Episode 5 because I hadn’t watched those shows that much up to that time.  It’s amazing what you can notice after a year, based on what you’ve seen and heard!

Tomorrow, I won’t be writing about a black history movie, for I’ll be at the public library.  But I’m planning to read some encyclopedia articles on Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois.  Believe it or not, I haven’t read the World Book Encyclopedia since I was a lad!  Doing so tomorrow will bring back memories of elementary school!

2.  In Ancient Israelite Religion, I read Roland Murphy’s “Religious Dimensions of Israelite Wisdom.”  On page 450, Murphy states that, in wisdom literature, “As regards ‘retribution’ specifically, God is not directly at work in the reward/punishment events of life[;] [r]ather, the deity is a kind of midwife who watches over the mechanical correspondence that is perceived to exist between an action and its consequence.”

That may work with many things that I read in Proverbs.  If a person is lazy and won’t work, then he’ll go hungry.  If a man messes around with somebody else’s wife, then there’s a chance that he’ll have to deal with a jealous husband, and that could be fatal.  Proverbs also teaches people how to act appropriately so they can advance in life.  In these cases, God isn’t really rewarding and punishing behavior, but behavior has good or bad consequences.

But does that always work in Proverbs?  I think of the proverbs that say that a man who gives to the poor will be blessed, whereas the stingy or oppressive person will suffer want.  I’m not sure if that’s necessarily true apart from divine intervention in the course of human events.

But this brings me to a point that Murphy makes on page 457, where he discusses the Egyptian concept of maat, which may underlie aspects of Israelite wisdom ideology.  Murphy quotes S. Morenz’s view that maat “is the correct situation or harmony established in creation between nature and society, out of which flows justice, truth, etc.”  Is this saying that nature benefits us when we do good, and hurts us when we do bad?  In Egyptian wisdom ideology, is this due to direct divine intervention, or simply to the way that a god made the cosmos?

3.  In Psalms II: 51-100, I read Mitchell Dahood’s comments on Psalm 93.  Ugaritic literature had a story in which the storm-god, Baal, defeats the chaotic sea, Yam, whom the high god El sent to keep Baal in line (see Alexander Haig, Color Purple, Randy Nations, I Kings 15).  Once Baal won, he needed a celestial palace to “fully exercise his royal powers” (343).  In Psalm 93, Dahood sees some of the same themes, only Yahweh subordinates the storms and the sea and occupies a heavenly palace.  In verse 1, the name of Yahweh occurs before the verb for “reigns,” whereas, ordinarily in Hebrew, the subject comes after the verb.  Dahood says that the Psalmist is placing the subject, YHWH, first to emphasize that “Yahweh, and no other deity, exercises kingship” (340).

4.  On page 195 of Narrative History and Ethnic Boundaries, Theodore Mullen’s talking about the story in I Samuel 4-6, in which the Philistines take Israel’s ark of the covenant and place it beside their god Dagon.  The ark causes the statue of Dagon to fall down and to break, so the Philistines decide to return the ark to the Israelites.  They make golden tumors and mice.  Mullen states:

On one level, most certainly, the tumor images are symbols of the “one plague” that was on all the Israelites.  On another, the Philistines have chosen to represent themselves and their cities as nothing other than “anal dwellings.”  The inclusion of the images of the mice, symbols of all that belonged to the Philistine rulers, represented the people of Philistia as pestilence-carrying rodents which were, in Israelite terms, ritually unclean (Lev 11:29).

There’s a debate within Christianity about self-esteem.  Should we see ourselves as vile creatures to appease God and receive his mercy, or should we affirm ourselves?  Can we do both at once?  According to Rachel Held Evans’ post, Lent, Depravity, and Why Hyper-Calvinism Has It Backwards, ‘the true ugliness of our depravity lies not in the fact that we have offended a God who hates us, but in the fact that we have offended a God who desperately and relentlessly loves us.”  Of course, I don’t think that the Philistines truly saw themselves as “pestilence-carrying-rodents,” morally-speaking, for they weren’t seeking a relationship with the Israelite God.  They just wanted to appease him through their humility so that he’d stop afflicting them.  Their repentance wasn’t genuine.  But at least they were humbled, as they realized that the Israelite God had the power to strike them with disease.  That should lead them to at least see themselves as not-God and to be kinder and humbler in their relationship with others.  But they returned to their oppressive ways after the plague had passed.  Fear religion can sometimes keep people in line, but love is what draws them into a relationship with God.

5.  In John Denton’s The Middle Platonists, I like Denton’s quote of Alexander Polyhistor (first century B.C.E.) on page 342, since it’s a good summary of Pythagorean doctrine on the origin of the cosmos.  Denton discusses this in the first chapter of the book, but his quote on page 342 brings all that information into one place:

The principle of all things is the Monad; from this Monad there comes into existence the Indefinite Dyad as matter for the Monad, which is cause…From the Monad and the Indefinite Dyad arise the numbers; from numbers, points; from these, lines; from these, plane figures; from plane figures, solids; from solid figures there arise sensible bodies, the elements of which are four, fire, water, earth and air.  These elements interchange and turn into one another completely and combine to produce a cosmos animate, intelligent, and spherical, with the earth at its center, the earth itself too being spherical and inhabited round about.

So the numbers and shapes we learned about in geometry led to the cosmos as it exists today, according to the Pythagoreans. 

Roots TNG 2-3, Collins on Enoch, Psalm to the Real Solomon, Yada, Tabula Rasa (Sort Of), Lent

1.  For Black History Month today, I watched Episodes 2-3 of Roots: The Next Generation.  In my posts on Roots and Roots: the Next Generation, I’ve distinguished between the African-Americans who sought to appease white society to make a place for themselves and their people within the system, and those who challenged white society in their pursuit of freedom (see #1 in Roots TNG 1, Baltzer on the Suffering Servant, Dahood on the Afterlife, Bold Gideon, Apuleius—Meet Melinda Gordon and Jonathan Smith, along with the links there). 

But the division between these two groups is not always clear-cut.  For one, what is freedom?  Tom Harvey defines it as having the right to vote, even if that means picking the lesser of two evils, in his case, Colonel Warner, who’s championing white supremacy to get the white redneck vote. 

Tom Harvey’s son-in-law, Will Palmer, defines freedom as economic independence.  The white elders of the town give Will Palmer the lumberyard after its previous drunken manager (played by Harry Morgan of MASH and Dragnet) had neglected it and accumulated a debt.  As the elders tell Will, Will’s been the one keeping the lumberyard afloat anyway, so Will’s race won’t keep them from performing a sound business practice: giving Will the lumberyard.

Both Tom and Will are accused of being Uncle Tom’s who try to appease the white man.  Tom’s daughter Elizabeth calls her father a Jim Crow, and Tom’s friends and family question his desire to support Colonel Warner, who’s a racist (or at least an opportunist), however elegant and refined he may be.  And Tom mocks Will for being nice to the white elders who gave him the lumberyard, especially after some of these elders had approved of a recent lynching.  But Will tells Tom that he’s fighting for freedom in his own way: he’ll pay his debts so that he owes the white man nothing, and he’ll make a success of his business.

In Episode 3, we see the conflict between the two groups in Simon Haley’s comments regarding Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois.  Simon loves Booker T. Washington, who is exalted at the black college that he attends with Bertha, the granddaughter of Tom Harvey (who’s descended from the African, Kunta Kinte).  But, when Bertha lends him W.E.B. DuBois’ new book, The Souls of Black Folk (which she got as a going-away present from her Aunt Warner, a student with Dubois at Fisk College), his faith in Booker T. is shaken, right before Booker is about to visit the campus!  As Bertha (who’s not exactly an intellectual, as sweet as she may be) says to Simon, “It’s like you just lost your faith in Jesus!”

I had my stereotype of the positions of Washington and DuBois.  Washington believed that blacks should improve themselves and become independent, whereas DuBois thought they should challenge white society in their pursuit of equality.  But things are much more complex than that.  For one, Simon Haley quotes DuBois’ statement that Booker T. Washington has sought to undermine black colleges, which somewhat took me aback, for I thought that Booker T. championed black colleges as an integral part of black advancement.  And, when I saw the Great Debaters, there was a scene in which two sides were debating black suffrage, and the “anti” side actually appealed to W.E.B. DuBois to say that blacks shouldn’t overly push for what white society is not ready to accept.

Yale University has a good article on the subject: see here.  Booker T. was accused of undermining black colleges because he focused on African-Americans gaining skills in industry and agriculture, while neglecting the liberal arts.  W.E.B. Dubois may have believed that African-Americans (or at least the “talented tenth” of them who would lead the African-Americans) should have broader knowledge than that required for grunt work.  So that could be the basis for his charge against Washington, which Simon read.

As far as the scene in the Great Debaters goes, I’m not sure what to say, except to note that the Yale article says Dubois believed in “political gradualism.”  Perhaps he believed that African-Americans should aggressively pursue equality, but that they should do so strategically—picking their battles based (in part) on what whites were ready for.  

Here’s something I like about Episode 2: it acknowledges that Democratic President Woodrow Wilson was an ardent segregationist.  Unfortunately, the miniseries chose to whitewash FDR’s racism (see Wrong on Race)—on Episode 5 (I think). 

2.  In Ancient Israelite Religion, I read John Collins’ “The Place of Apocalypticism in the Religion of Israel.” 

According to Collins, the figure of Enoch (Genesis 5:21-24) is based on the ancient Mesopotamian chararacter Emmeduranki.  Enoch is seventh in a genealogy, and Emmeduranki is seventh in “several antediluvian king lists” (542).  Enoch is 365 years old when he is taken, the length of a solar year, and “Emmeduranki was associated with the sun-god Shamash.”  Enoch was taken and walked with God, and Emmeduranki “was admitted to the divine assembly”, meaning he went to heaven.

Collins also talks about the attitude of the Enoch group to the Mosaic law.  The Enoch group believed in the apocalyptic book of I Enoch, which was about revelations that Enoch received in heaven concerning God and the distant future.  I vaguely recall reading in a commentary that the Enoch group viewed I Enoch was a replacement for the Mosaic Torah, but that didn’t make much sense to me.  I Enoch speaks in favor of the Maccabees and the Hasidim, who supported the Torah against Hellenistic aggression.  I prefer what Collins says on page 548: “There is no reason to suppose that the Enoch group rejected the Mosaic law, but it was not sufficient for them; hence the need for the higher angelic revelation.”  They felt they needed more than the stories and laws of the Pentateuch.  Rather, they wanted to know what heaven was like, and especially God’s plan for their own time.  Many who believed deep-down that the Bible wasn’t sufficient sought to overcome this problem by reading things into the Bible.  The Enoch school, by contrast, embraced another book in addition to the Torah.

3.  In Psalms II: 51-100, I read Mitchell Dahood’s comments on Psalm 72, which is called a Psalm of Solomon.  Dahood says that the Psalm “may well have been composed by a functionary of the Solomonic court”, for the “language is in some verses very archaic…”  Plus, certain verses can be applied to Solomon.  For instance, v 8 says (in Dahood’s translation), “And may he rule from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.”  The river is probably the Euphrates, and Dahood reads this verse in light of I Kings 5:1: “Solomon ruled over all the kingdoms from the Euphrates (hannahar) to the land of the Philistines and to the border of Egypt.  They brought tribute and served Solomon all the days of his life.”

So I guess Dahood is a biblical maximalist, who believes in a Solomonic kingdom as vast as the Bible depicts.

4.  On pages 173 of Narrative History and Ethnic Boundaries, Theodore Mullen actually questions the widespread idea that the thugs in Genesis 19:5 and Judges 19 wanted to have homosexual sex.  When they said “Bring them out that we may know them,” were they expressing a desire to gang-rape the guests?

Mullen says: While the verb yada’ clearly can carry sexual connotations, the narrative does not demand that a homosexual interpretation be given to the text.  What is clear from the response of the hosts in each of these parallel accounts is that the actions of the people of the town are in violation of the rules of hospitality. 

Unfortunately, as far as I can see, he doesn’t really support this statement.  If yada doesn’t mean sexual relations in these stories, what does it mean?

5.  On page 329 of The Middle Platonists, John Dillon states regarding second century C.E. philosopher Apuleius: Apuleius lays down the principle that man is born neither good nor evil, but having a nature which may incline either way.  Seeds of virtue  and of vice are sown in him at his birth, and it is the duty of education to foster the right ones, so that virtue and vice would come to coincide in the individual with pleasure and pain.

Christians would probably ask why we need to be taught virtue if we weren’t predisposed towards evil at birth.  Others may argue, however, that the selfishness of infants isn’t “evil” but is a part of human development.  Still, discipline is necessary in childhood as well.  But don’t discipline and education imply that we have the capacity for goodness, even if there’s a pull in us towards mischief?

6.  At Latin mass this morning, we had the priest who speaks about love, and he was talking about Lent.  According to him, we can experience the glory and presence of God during our fast.  Personally, I don’t plan to observe Lent.  People have told me that fasting brings them closer to God and gives them a clearer mindset, but all it does for me is make me hungry.  I fast on Yom Kippur every year, and that’s it.