Cheese sandwich oracle

The case of Sophronius, bishop of Tella (fifth century), is truly amazing, even though, as a supporter of Nestorius, he may be classified as a heretic. The magical experiments of this dignitary of the Church were described by two presbyters and two deacons before the “Robber Synod” of Ephesus in 449 and denounced by the assembled clergy. Someone had stolen a sum of money from the bishop. He gathered the suspects and first made them swear on the Gospel that they were innocent. Then he forced them to undergo the “cheese-sandwich oracle” (tyromanteia). The sandwiches were offered, and the bishop attached a conjuration to a tripod. In principle, the thief would have been unable to eat, but apparently all the suspects ate with a good appetite. So the bishop insisted on another oracle, the phialomanteia: he consulted a spirit that was supposed to appear in a dish into which water and oil had been poured. This method finally revealed the thief.

This peculiar tale is found on page 460 of the new second edition of Arcana Mundi by Georg Luck (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006). As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve been looking forward to its release. An extensive general introduction, epilogue (The Survival of Ancient Magic) and appendix (Psychoactive Substances in Religion and Magic) have been added, each section (Magic, Miracles, Daemonology, Divination, Astrology, Alchemy) has rewritten introductions, and the selection of texts is both slightly different and there are more of them (131 in the second edition as opposed to 122 in the first). Luck’s writing style is still crisp and clear, perfectly explanatory and even somewhat drily humorous at times. He’s obviously benefitted, as have we all, by the numerous publications of magical texts and studies on the subject published over the last twenty years. A very useful Vocabula Magica is included, giving short definitions for the various technical terms used throughout the texts and introductions. The detailed “Select Bibliography” is especially welcome. There is an Index of Ancient Sources, which is useful, and a General Index, which is unfortunately not very detailed.

Caveat emptor: the hardcover edition is without dustjacket, for whatever inexcusable reason. Being that it is a cream-colored cloth cover (the photo shown in my “Currently Reading” spot is apparently of the paperback edition’s cover), not a sensible “library cover” such as Eisenbrauns does so well, I had to return the first copy I received as it seemed to have substituted for a puck in a game of warehouse floor hockey.

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The Dawn

I would be ignorant as the dawn
That has looked down
On that old queen measuring a town
With the pin of a brooch,
Or on the withered men that saw
From their pedantic Babylon
The careless planets in their courses,
The stars fade out where the moon comes,
And took their tablets and did sums;
I would be as ignorant as the dawn
That merely stood, rocking the glittering coach
Above the cloudy shoulders of the horses;
I would be—for no knowledge is worth a straw—
Ignorant and wanton as the dawn.

William Butler Yeats, 1919

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The ear is the side door of truth

[Be] Alert when seeking information. We live for the most part by what is told us; it is little that we see; thus we live in the faith of others; the ear is the side door of truth, but the front door of falsehood. The truth is sometimes seen, but rarely heard: on the fewest of occasions does it arrive in its elemental purity, especially if it has travelled far, for then it is always soiled by what has happened on the road: for feeling tinges with her colors all that she touches, sometimes happily: she always leaves some kind of mark, wherefore listen cautiously to the admirer, yet more cautiously to the tattler. It requires the whole attention at such times, to discover the intent of the newsbearer, in order to know beforehand which foot he is going to put forward. With reflection examine into what may be feigned, and what may be false.

Gracian’s Manual § 80

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Sources Chrétiennes

Roger Pearse has been passing around the news that in celebration of publishing their 500th volume in the Sources Chrétiennes series, all volumes are on sale at 50% off through the end of May. So, if you’ve got any Patristic writers for which you want an original language text with a French translation, chances are they’re in the series and now’s your chance to save big. I placed my order through La Procure, which worked just fine; they accept bank cards and credit cards. Roger has heard rumours of financial difficulties in the SC project, so if you wish to contribute to this excellent project, you may do so on their site.

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The Return of the Son of Compare and Contrast

Since I’ve got a bit of time, and the plaster dust of renovation in stately biblicalia manor has settled to a degree, it’d be good to respond to Kevin Wilson’s last post over at Blue Cord. He’s got links there to all the back and forth over this, so see there for that.

Let me first air a clarification. I think Kevin may be supposing that my position is that I deny all development of all texts in the Hebrew Bible, but that’s not so. My position is still apparently one which is apparently quite outrageous to someone highly involved in source critical issues. Namely, while I do believe that the documents we possess in our various collections called the Bible did experience growth and alteration through several centuries, I do not believe that source criticism is sufficiently or appropriately nuanced in its work, and, for other reasons, believe that it is quite impossible to predict what those earlier sources looked like. I think source critics, particularly those working in the Documentary Hypothesis tradition, are wasting their time on scholarly pie in the sky. There are many others who believe the same thing, and this has been the case for a number of years, with the rise of various alternatives to the classical Documentary Hypothesis. As for comparative data, it is quite obvious that there is no way that someone would reconstruct the earlier versions of the Gilgamesh Epic from the later, no matter what theory one uses to explain the changes that can be observed; the differences between the works as a whole are surprising and non-intuitive, follwing no distinct pattern. Similarly, I find source criticism in the Hebrew Bible to be also a “consummately fruitless endeavor” as Charles Halton’s Professor Kaufman put it.

Continue reading “The Return of the Son of Compare and Contrast”

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Another Treasure

I’ve just been lucky enough to find a copy of the Martin Fischer translation of Baltasar Gracian’s A Truthtelling Manual and the Art of Worldly Wisdom, the second edition printed by Charles C. Thomas, Springfield Illinois, 1956. The pages were uncut, so the book had never been read, and the dustjacket and slipbox of this little book, about 3 x 5 x 1 inches, are in fine condition. All for $14! Gracian’s manual will be well-known to some of you. For others, here is a short description from the dustjacket:

This is not a sweetmeat for children but a volume for men of this world—and but few of them. A new translation into English of the famous Spanish classic of Padre Baltasar Gracian. A practical manual of self-instruction, absolutely unique, and peculiarly appropriate to the thinking man of these perilous times.

Baltasar Gracián y Morales (c. 1601-1658) was a Jesuit priest and professor in Spain, well-known, indeed infamous in a manner similar to St John Chrysostom: bane of the wealthy, beloved of the people. The Oraculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia comprises three hundred paragraphs excerpted from Gracian’s other works, as polished and well-set jewels of his thought, by his friend and publisher Don Vincencio Juan de Lastanosa in 1653. The first paragraph:

Everything today has its point, but the art of making yourself count for something the greatest: more is demanded to produce one wise man today, than seven formerly; and more is needed to deal with a single individual in our times, than with a whole people in the past.

I can dimly remember hearing of Gracian’s Manual as a child, and recall it as one of those books that young men were expected to possess, and not just possess but read, and not just read but live, a manual on becoming a man. Specifically, the Manual brings to mind an old world approach to education in the proper Latin sense, the raising up of a boy into a man. Moving to California as a child led to a distancing for me from such traditional things, as it probably does for all families but the most staunchly traditional in this faddish land of fruits and nuts. Still, the memory was struck and resounded today, in my seeing this little book stuck in a shelf, and was reinforced by the clerk, an older man than I am, but one who knew it as I did: a book for a man on how to be a man, and one meant to be carried and read. So I will, and hopefully it’s not too late to take some of Gracian’s advice to heart and do a bit more growing up. For as my gentlemen readers will undoubtedly, if only secretly, admit, there still lies too much of the boy in each of us, oftentimes harbored.

Inside the cover of this particular copy I’ve bought is an inscription: “With thanks and appreciation EWL.” But, as I noted, the pages were uncut, and this book has never been read. I find that very sad. It has, however, found a loving home at last.

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The Fall of Babylon

In my second campaign, I marched quickly against Babylon which I was set upon conquering. Like the onset of a storm I swept, (and) like a fog I enveloped it. I laid seige to that city; with mines and siege engines, I personally took it—the spoil of his mighty men, small and great. I left no one. I filled the city squares with their corpses. Shuzubu, king of Babylon, together with his family and his [ ], I brought alive to my land. I handed out the wealth of that city—silver, gold, precious stones, property and goods—to my people and they made it their own. My men took the (images of the) gods who dwell there and smashed them. They took their property and their wealth. Adad and Shala, the gods of Ekallate, which Marduk-nadin-ahhe, king of Babylon had taken and carried off to Babylon during the reign of Tiglath-Pileser (I), King of Assyria, I brought out of Babylon and returned them to their place in Ekallate.

I destroyed and tore down and burned with fire the city (and) it houses, from its foundations to its parapets. I tore out the inner and outer walls, temples, the ziggurat of brick and earth, as many as there were, and threw them into the Arahu river. I dug canals through the city and flooded its place with water, destroying the structure of its foundation. I made its devastation greater than that of “the Flood.” So that in future days, the site of that city, its temples and its gods, would not be identifiable, I completely destroyed it with water and annihilated it like inundated territory. (text: Hallo, COS 2.119E)

Sennacherib’s destruction of Babylon is dated to 689 BC. “Shuzubu” is Mushezib-Marduk from the southwestern Aramean/Chaldean tribal area Bīt-Dakkuri, king of Babylon from 693, and one of several usurpers in those troubled years. Taking a captive ruler and family alive back to Assyria was not necessarily a good thing. Earlier Assyrian kings did the same, with dire results: with an audience of Assyrians, the captive king’s family was slaughtered before his eyes, followed by his being skinned alive. Tiglath-Pileser I reigned 1115-1077, and Marduk-nadin-ahhe 1098-1081. Ekallate was a city near Asshur. The recovery of the images of these two gods, 400 years after their capture and removal, displays the length of historical memory possible in ancient Near Eastern cultures.

When Sennacherib was assassinated in 681, the new Assyrian king, his son Esarhaddon, almost immediately set about rebuilding Babylon, at great expense. Not only the Babylonians had been scandalized by the destruction of such an ancient city, recognized and respected especially as the home to Marduk, but many Assyrians were also quite distressed by it, most especially by its apparent consequences. Sennacherib’s assassination was attributed to this perceived act of impiety. The destruction was noted throughout the known world, even among the Hebrews. The city lay in ruins for only 11 years. Esarhaddon began its rebuilding, but Babylon reached its most glorious condition under Nebuchadnezzar II (605-562). Babylon never again experienced such destruction. Though it was occupied, attacked, and looted numerous times, it was never subjected to an obliteration like that of Sennacherib. While most of today’s ancient Babylon is in ruins, a local population has continued there since ancient times, as still in the modern village Hillah, itself partially situated in the residential district of the ancient Babylon.

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Byzantium

The unpurged images of day recede;
The Emperor’s drunken soldiery are abed;
Night resonance recedes, night-walkers’ song
After great cathedral gong;
A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins.

Before me floats an image, man or shade,
Shade more than man, more image than a shade;
For Hades’ bobbin bound in mummy-cloth
May unwind the winding path;
A mouth that has no moisture and no breath
Breathless mouths may summon;
I hail the superhuman;
I call it death-in-life and life-in-death.

Miracle, bird or golden handiwork,
More miracle than bird or handiwork,
Planted on the star-lit golden bough,
Can like the cocks of Hades crow,
Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloud
In glory of changeless metal
Common bird or petal
And all the complexities of mire or blood.

At midnight on the Emperor’s pavement flit
Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit,
Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame,
Where blood-begotten spirits come
And all complexities of fury leave,
Dying into a dance,
An agony of trance,
An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve.

Astraddle on the dolphin’s mire and blood,
Spirit after spirit! The smithies break the flood,
The golden smithies of the Emperor!
Marbles of the dancing floor
Break bitter furies of complexity,
Those images that yet
Fresh images beget,
That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.

William Butler Yeats, 1930

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Son of Compare and Contrast

Kevin Wilson at Blue Cord rightly takes me to task for my rhetoric, which, of course, is rhetoric and isn’t intended to be addressed, but is my way of keeping such tediously boring drivel as this interesting for my readers. What can I say? I like English and slinging it about like playing airplane with a kid. I even say, “Whee!” in real life.

Regarding the substance of my off-handed critique of one or more of Biblical Studies sacred cows (heavens, what a fuss!), we will still have to differ. I am completely unconvinced that all the source critical work, even since the 1970s is even fundamentally right-headed, much less of truly permanent value. I don’t mean that to sound unkind, but I think it’s true, and I’ll give some of my reasons below, in no particular order.

Continue reading “Son of Compare and Contrast”

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On Second Isaiah

Such a can of worms I’ve opened, at such a busy time for everyone! Chris at Higgaion [defunct blog] brings up some good points concerning my critique of dating “Second Isaiah” to the sixth century. Of course, I am unrepentant, and not so easily turned aside. As I mentioned in my earlier post, it was a superficial treatment of some work I’d been doing on Isaiah, not detailed, and so with only that input, and if that were all I had in my hand, I’d agree with Chris that it’s not likely. But, I think perhaps, as Chris said himself, “Kevin is onto something important here.”

In response to Chris’ points however, I have a few of my own:
1.) What is the basis of the assumption that only the exile of Judahites by Babylonians is the possible context for any texts dealing with exilic subjects? Both Israel and Judah experienced much more massive deportations at the hand of the Assyrians in the late eighth and early seventh centuries, and some of those deportees, as in the case of others from the campaigns in the west, will have certainly ended up in Babylon and other southern Mesopotamian cities. In fact, we know of some who ended up in Elamite border cities. Both Israel and Judah are mentioned throughout Isaiah (claiming that “Israel” really refers to only the remnant of “Judah” is special pleading) in contexts of exiles, reassuring them, and so on. Would a prophet like Isaiah working precisely at the time of the fall of the Northern Kingdom actually have ignored that and the fate of its exiled people? Obviously not, though it is part of, for lack of a better term, academic orthodoxy to treat every reference to an exile to the Babylonian Exile of 586.

Continue reading “On Second Isaiah”

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