Sailing to Byzantium

I

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

II

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium,

III

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.

IV

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

William Butler Yeats – 1927

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The Face of the Deep (1.1-2)

As foretold in days of yore, here is the beginning of a lengthy serialized presentation of Christina Georgina Rossetti’s The Face of the Deep: A Devotional Commentary on the Apocalypse. The reader is guaranteed to gain from this:

a.) excellent poetry;

b.) the devotional commentary of a woman who, in the words of her brother,

clung to and loved the Christian creed because she loved Jesus Christ. “Christ is God” was her one dominant idea. Faith with her was faith pure and absolute: an entire acceptance of a thing revealed—not a quest for any confirmation or demonstrative proof (p. liv, The Poetical Works of Christina Georgina Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, ed. London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd, 1914);

c.) the first verse-by-verse commentary on the Apocalypse authored by a woman, which makes it of historical import for various fields; and

d.) a work written by a highly literate, perceptive, and expressive person whose knowledge of the Bible was truly minute and ready (idem, lxix), whose other theological reading apparently consisted of only the Confessions of Augustine, The Imitation of Christ of Thomas à Kempis, and The Pilgrim’s Progress of John Bunyan (idem, lxix). And yet I think all will agree that this limitation in the author’s reading has not in any way damaged the power of her commentary, for it is a “devotional commentary” after all, which is a genre having its own gemstones strewn on however different a beach than some of my readers may tend to walk.

I intend to keep matters of orthography, formatting, and emphasis as close as possible to the printed text. Due to the length of the pericopes, I think I’ll only post this first fully as a blog entry, an apéritif, perhaps with the rest to be posted on a web page. So! Here we go!

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CHAPTER 1

1. The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto Him, to show unto His servants things which must shortly come to pass; and He sent and signified it by His angel unto His servant John:
2. Who bare record of the word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, and of all things that he saw.

“Things which must shortly come to pass.”—At the end of 1800 years we are still repeating this “shortly,” because it is the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ: thus starting in the fellowship of patience with that blessed John who owns all Christians as his brethren (see ver. 9).

Continue reading “The Face of the Deep (1.1-2)”

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The Testimonium Flavianum

Chris over at Thoughts on Antiquity brings up some questions concerning the Testimonium Flavianum in his The Quest for the Historical Jesus, pt. 3. Especially helpful for background on this sticky wicket is the link to Peter Kirby’s page on the Testimonium.

I come down on the side of those who would declare it partly original to Josephus, but reworked by a somewhat inept, if pious, Christian hand. My reasons are these.

The passage has certainly been doctored, but originally a very negative evaluation of Jesus was included in the place of the Testimonium. This is indicated by the following tales of religious impostors (Decius Mundus in 18.3.4[65-80]; the Jewish defrauder of Fulvia in 18.3.5[81-84]; the Samaritan of 18.4.1[85-87]). Rather than looking at these as general “tumults” (Mason as quoted on Kirby’s page), I think it’s much more likely that we’ve got a series of specifically religious impostors described here, and that this is the unifying theme of this particular digression (notice the text goes from Jesus in the early thirties through the Samaritan incident in 36, which led to Pilate’s recall, then through Vitellius’s governing of Syria and the death of Tiberius in 37 A.D., only to revert to 34 A.D. after the digression is over in 18.4.6[106] with the death of Philip.). This digression is more easily connected by the theme of religious impostors than by the theme of Pilate or Tiberius.

The 10th century Arabic version of the Testimonium, preserved in the Book of the Title of Agapius of Hierapolis/Mabbug, is clearly more along the line of a paraphrase than a translation of Josephus on the part of Agapius. The order of elements is altered, and some of these are part of the “Christian additions” that others posit, making this a clearly more complicated case. Meier notes this in Marginal Jew, vol. 1, pp 78-79, n. 37. Like Kirby, I find the Agapian addition “Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die” to be polemically directed against the Mohammedan [I prefer that term] assertion that Jesus was not crucified, nor did he die, as supported by the Kuran: “And their saying, ‘We did kill the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah;’ whereas they slew him not, nor crucified him, but he was made to appear to them like one crucified; and those who differ therein are certainly in a state of doubt about it; they have no definite knowledge thereof, but only follow a conjecture; and they did not convert this conjecture into a certainty. On the contrary, Allah exalted him to Himself” (al-Nisā 4:158-9). It would certainly be appropriate for Agapius to be involved in such polemics with the spread of Mohammedanism [another preferred term], as it was just then making its permanent inroads into Asia Minor at the expense of Eastern Christian communities there (see Ostrogorsky, History of the Byzantine State, or Bat Ye’or, Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam). Overall, the changes in order, and thereby emphasis, of the elements of the Testimonium as found in Agapius in comparison to the typical text clearly indicates some textual reworking going on in his use of the text. It’s certainly not a neutral text preserving the original of Josephus.

Contra Meier, and most others it would seem, I would suggest that the original is almost wholly lost, and the Testimonium as it stands is in a highly altered form from the original, with positive terms replacing negative, but also likely shortened. This elimination of some phrases would explain some of the peculiarites of language in the passage as noted by Mason: these are reworked fragments of the original sentences, not very artfully used. As it almost certainly was wholly offensive to early Christians, the original was altered sometime in the second or third century, before it came to Eusebius in the form we also now have it in our copies of Josephus.

On the other reference, I see absolutely no reason to doubt the “James, brother of Jesus the so-called Christ” of 20.9.1[200] to be authentic. It’s completely neutral, but also relies upon the presence of some prior introduction of “Jesus” in association with the term “Christ.” So, of course, if someone rejects the Testimonium altogether, they must reject this reference as well, but it’s not necessary from the context. Relatedly, the context doesn’t hold what some of those who reject this reference have claimed. The objection in 20.9.1[201] is raised not that innocent men have been executed, but that the law was subverted by the high priest ordering the execution of the “lawbreakers” James and company, taking advantage of the absence of the Roman authority. The misreading is easily done, however, taking into account an unconscious harmonization of the book of Acts’ picture of James and the account of his death as related by Hegesippus via Eusebius.

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Na’aman Third Volume

The third volume of Eisenbraun’s Colllected Essays of Nadav Na’aman is now available: Ancient Israel’s History and Historiography – The First Temple Period. Cool-o-rama!

Professor Na’aman, for those who may not know, comes at biblical studies from the direction of Assyriology, like Tadmor, Malamat, Hallo, and a number of others. Their work in biblical studies, like their Assyriological work, is meticulous, detailed, and full of important comparative studies which are far more illustrative of what we should and should not expect of ancient writing than are those studies based solely upon biblical literature and theorizing therefrom. Hallo, indeed, is a major proponent of what has been alternately called the Contextual or Comparative Method or Approach, in which both similarities and dissimilarities are noted as important. See his detailed definition and explanation of this method, either in his essay included in Scripture in Context III (Edwin Mellen Press, 1990), or his slightly reworked version of this article as a chapter in his slim volume Book of the People (Scholars Press, 1991); the introduction to Context of Scripture I: Canonical Compositions from the Biblical World (Brill, 1997) also includes a short description of the method, but mentions the Scripture in Context III article as the definitive statement. I personally find the work of Assyriologists, specifically the aforementioned, in biblical studies to be consistently of the highest caliber methodologically. Their comparative work with the biblical and the cuneiform materials, the largest body of surviving ancient written material, is extremely important for biblical studies in showing us what was possible, what was likely, and what was done, and also what was not done, what was unlikely, and perhaps even some of what was impossible, in ancient writings. The importance, similarly, of the bibical materials for an understanding of the cuneiform materials is also coming to be better recognized, perhaps finally laying to rest the estimable Benno Landsberger’s misbegotten, if well-intentioned Eigenbegrifflichkeit (Islamica 2 [1926]: 355-72; trans. “The Conceptual Autonomy of the Babylonian World.” Undena, 1976), yet still avoiding the excesses of the old parallelomania, so delightfully monickered and pinned to the mat by Samuel Sandmel (JBL 81 [1962]: 1-13). And with a collection of Na’aman’s articles specifically relating to Israelite history and historiography in the First Temple, pre-exilic period, I’m sure we’ll find some really great stuff in the midst of the collection. I’m certain I’ll find it as hard to put down as the first two volumes, and will undoubtedly learn much from it. In this case, I think the whole-hearted recommendation of a book I haven’t even read yet isn’t even remotely preposterous.

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Myth, Legend, Folklore

As may or may not be well-known, folklorists have very particular ways in which they use the terms myth and legend. Here are some:

myth: Myths are prose narratives which, in the society in which they are told, are considered to be truthful accounts of what happened in the remote past.

legend: Legends are prose narratives which, like myths, are regarded as true by the narrator and his audience, but they are set in a period considered less remote, when the world was much as it is today.
(both p.9, William Bascom, “The Forms of Folklore: Prose Narratives.” 5-29 in Alan Dundes, ed., Sacred Narrative: Readings in the Theory of Myth. University of California Press: Berkeley, 1984)

myth: A myth is a sacred narrative which describes how the world or mankind became as it is. (Alan Dundes, class notes [yes, I’m a packrat], 2 November 1992).
or
myth: A myth is a sacred narrative explaining how the world and man came to be in their present form (p.1, Sacred Narrative)

A defining characteristic in common to both myth and legend, as noted in Bascom’s article noted above, is that both are considered true in their originating groups (note particularly the usage of “sacred” in Dundes’ definitions of myth, which also connotes this). While legends are considered true and either sacred or secular (“It happened to someone my friend knows”; the original usage of legend was explicitly religious, the legenda, reading, of the story of a saint on that particular saint’s feast), folktales are considered fictional and secular (“Once upon a time…”). The primary distinction between myth and legend is the age/world in which they are set. Whereas myth is set in the the far distant past, in the age and world of pre-creation with the primary characters being divine (or at least non-human) beings of some sort, legend is set amongst humans (though divine beings may also play a part) in a world substantially as it is, in a much less remote past. Bascom describes this in tabular format thus (9, Sacred Narrative):

Form

Belief

Time

Place

Attitude

Principal Characters
Myth Fact Remote past Different world: other or earlier Sacred Non-human
Legend Fact Recent past World of today Sacred or secular Human
Folktale Fiction Any time Any place Secular Human or non-human

Based upon the above, and in keeping with the shorter definition of myth favored by Dundes, I would suggest a working definition for legend as: A legend is a narrative, considered true, which is set in the relatively recent past of this world. We might also simply gloss myths as narratives dealing with origins, while legends are those dealing with events.

Note the particularity involved in the various definitions, especially in their reduction in Bascom’s chart form. The myth, legend, and folktale of the folklorist’s definition are hardly in mind when we colloquially use all three for something patently untrue, generally with negative connotations. The Oxford English dictionary dates the earliest attestation of this usage of myth to 1849, and of legend to 1613, so this colloquially negative usage is hardly new. Yet myth or its adjectival forms is currently often used for something or someone larger-than-life (“…of mythic proportions…”), as also is legend (“He’s a legend;” “Her cooking is legendary”), in such cases with very positive connotations. Resulting from life in a post-mythic, post-legendary world, this negative redefinition of myth and legend as false has led to only some ossified adjectival forms bearing the evidence that both myth and legend were formerly considered truthful narratives, dealing with larger than life issues of great import. There is perhaps even an unconsciously wistful regret connoted by statements such as “That basketball player is a living legend!” See now what paltry things your culture now considers a legend.

Relatedly, I’ve noticed that in biblical studies there’s a loose usage of both myth and legend, not generally adhering to these quite precise definitions of the folklorists, but informed more by colloquial use. This is even the case when, as in most commentaries on Tobit, “folklore” is extensively, yet only superficially, referred to as the source of the stories, even going so far as to utilize Stith Thompson’s Motif Index, which actually also indexes the elements of all biblical stories, as proof for the origins of Tobit as folklore! The Motif Index is a tool for indexing, not an exhaustive record of the histor
ical development of a given item. (This naive use of folklorists’ work in commentaries on Tobit is something I intend to address in more depth another time.) I think this is likely to be categorized as a shared (mis)conception of some kind of Jungian archetypal basis for folklore, founded in some “psychic unity” or other such thing. Folklore is simply any item found in common in any folk group, with folk group defined as a group of people united by even a single common factor. Folklore need not be narrative (myths, legends, proverbs, folktales), or even language-based at all. It may be material (evil eye amulets) or situational (start a journey with the right foot). All these are folklore.

It would be good to see biblical studies utilizing some of the extensive work done by folklorists, in a manner which is better representative of their work. For an approach from the other direction, see Dundes’ own recent Holy Writ as Oral Lit: the Bible as Folklore (Rowan & Littlefield, 1999) for an example of this great folklorist’s application of the methods of folklore studies to the texts of the Bible. Dundes lived just around the corner from me, and we’re both near the Graduate Theological Union Library, where I remember often running into him while he was working on this book, hogging the only good-working copying machine! Two other indispensible books on folklore are the aforementioned Sacred Narrative: Readings in the Theory of Myth and Dundes, ed., The Study of Folklore (Prentice Hall, 1965). Especially the latter will provide a solid introduction which should prevent any further naive use of folklore studies in biblical studies.

Call it a pet peeve of mine.

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Inflation…or something else?

So, just over a week ago, I bought a copy volume 1, part 1 of the Cambridge Ancient History, mostly for the explanation of the chronology used in all the volumes. I got it used, in near fine condition, for $90, which is quite a deal considering that a new copy is around $150-170 (£110 on the Cambridge University Press site). (Did you know that the CAH volumes used to be printed with gilt top edges? Very nice!) Anyhow, flipping through the book, I found the original invoice, addressed to the former owner, from Blackwell’s. As they said in those days, “Far out!”

The order was placed 16 May 1969, and sent 8 February 1971. The price? £6,8/- (that’s Ancient English for “six pounds, eight shillings”) with the converted amount of $15.36. I nearly choked, I was so shocked. I still am! Gah! In the mere 35 years since that invoice, these volumes, made more cheaply still (there ain’t no gold on new volumes from Cambridge University Press!), are more than ten times more expensive. It’s absolutely outrageous. What, ho, in another thirty-five? The $1,500 third edition volume 1 part 1, comprising only 14 pages, and that of mostly publishing credits, because it’ll be written by a minimalist who rejects chronology as “too reliant upon the Text as Authority”? I can hardly wait….

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Progress on Bīt-PN research

I’ve completed going through Andreas Fuchs’ Inschriften Sargons II. aus Khorsabad for information relevant to the Bīt-PN study in progress. The information has been added to my pdf file of the raw data, here. I’ve also taken a quick first stab at organizing the data in another file, here. The important thing to notice is that there is a trend in usage in the Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions in the case of many of the newer Aramaean states in which the personal name of the geographic name “Bīt-PN” is explicitly (through the use of determinatives) or implicitly (through mention as a progenitor) personal, showing the understanding of the Assyrians that a real person, in many cases, lay behind the name. As noted in Hélène Sader’s Les États Araméens de Syrie: depuis leur Fondation jusqu’à leur Transformation en Provinces Assyriennes (Beiruter Texte und Studien 36. Beirut, 1987), these states were formed early in the first millennium by various personages for which a large number of territories were named, some examples of which being Bīt-Abdadāni, Bīt-Adini, and Bīt-Agūsi. The Assyrians, in referring to later rulers of these territories, typically recognized these rulers as descendants of the founders, and explicitly referred to them not as “king of Bīt-PN” but as “son of PN.” The geographic name thus also doubles in this kind of usage as a dynastic name: the place Bīt-Adini, the House of Adinu, is ruled by the descndants of Adinu, his ‘house’, and a ruler is referred to as “son of Adinu.” Whether these rulers were actually descended from the eponymous founders of their kingdoms is unknown, but the Assyrian scribes, presumably based upon Aramaean practice, treated the situation thus. The Assyrians themselves maintained a longstanding tradition of having their own single dynasty of rulers (however fictional this was), which may have influenced their understanding of other states for which they were not completely aware of the internal workings.

In any case, my further investigation into this subject will entail: looking into the origins of these “new” Aramaean states themselves; their relation to the ahlamu Aramaeans of the second (and third?) millennium; Aramaean influence on Neo-Assyrian Akkadian in some of the names of these states and others (it looks like in some cases, the Aramaic emphatic suffix is used); and last, but not least, the connection of all this to the Tel Dan Stela and the usage there of BYTDWD and its links to the phrase “House of David” and its equivalents in the Old Testament.

Some earlier postings here dealing with this subject are:
“House of David” and BYTDWD
Further on “House of …” usage
Further on Bīt-PN usage
Corrections/additions

Joe Cathey has also been keeping track of various postings on the Tel Dan BYTDWD subject, one of his summaries of which is Tel Dan – A Response. Look through the available links there (Jim West’s blog no longer exists, unfortunately, so those posts are all gone).

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Philip Glass: Akhnaten

Open are the double doors of the horizon
Unlocked are its bolts
Clouds darken the sky
The stars rain down
The constellations stagger
The bones of the hell hounds tremble
The porters are silent
When they see this king
Dawning as a soul

Such are the first words (from the Old Kingdom Pyramid Texts) spoken by the Scribe in the prelude of the Philip Glass opera Akhnaten. The setting for the immediately following Act I Scene 1 is the funeral of Amenhotep III, which contains two rousing pieces sung in ancient Egyptian. The opera includes a number of other pieces in Egyptian, as well as one in Akkadian (a section from Amarna Letter EA 288), and a few verses in Hebrew from Psalm 104, which naturally follow the end of the English translation of The Hymn to the Aten. Though many may find much of Glass’ work repetitious, it is much less so in this work than in others. In any case, the novelty of the ancient languages is just too much to pass up! In addition, the performance and recording are exquisite. I hadn’t listened to this in a long time before today, and had forgotten how enjoyable it is. It’s a two CD piece, with (at least in my old CBS Masterworks edition) a 93 page booklet with the credits, introduction, libretto and translations in German and French, performed by the Stuttgart State Opera Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Dennis Russell Davies. Akhnaten was the third work in Glass’ Trilogy: Einstein on the Beach (1976), Satyagraha (1980; depicting the life of Gandhi, with Sanskrit libretto), and Akhnaten (1984; it seems the boxed Masterworks edition is out of print; I don’t know what that Sony one is like).

Those of you teaching or learning Egyptian, Akkadian, or Hebrew could no doubt use parts of Akhnaten for counting some “ancient meets modern” classroom coup, I would think. The rest of us can just plain enjoy it!

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Sonnets to The Unseen

I would approach You, Lord, but don’t know how.
Whatever stepping stones I once discerned
(Cool in the footloose morning, oh how they burned!)
Are well below my touching, lost to me now.
This layered-over life does not allow
For boyish ease forever, I have learned.
And so this crust of soil must now be turned;
The shining task will need a manly plow.
But where to set the blade? where begin?
I cast my eyes to heaven’s nowhere space,
But skyward, Lord, I cannot hope to trace
My way to You. The tilling goes too thin.
Like a plow, a prayer should leave a mark.
I look for You on earth and in the dark.

This is the first sonnet from the Prologue in Christopher Fitzgerald’s Sonnets to the Unseen: A Life of Christ (my copy was published by the author, 2001; it is apparently now published by World Library Publications, but their site is malfunctioning at the moment so I can’t give a link right now; it is available in many places on the web). If I remember correctly, I was originally drawn to this smart little book by the chance reading of an article about the author, in some local paper’s website, covering him as a cancer-survivor who’d written a history of Christ in sonnet format. As Shakespeare’s Sonnets are some of my favorite reading, I sent off an order for the book right away, back in 2001. Now, a meditation on the life of Christ in sonnet form may seem unbearable to some, but it’s really quite effective, being occasionally quirky, and often wondrous. Sometimes it seems we’re eavesdropping on a conversation between God and the author, which is always a delight when it’s done well, as it certainly is here! All this is accomplished with the firm-footed balance of a seemingly newly-gained true maturity (that clarity from illness I mentioned yesterday, perhaps?) that hasn’t yet forgotten the wonder of youth and yet which thankfully doesn’t insist on a false, pretentious, and inappropriate youthfulness, which is unfortunately common trait in literature these days (e.g. the explosion of novelistic solipsism — barf!). And such subject matter he has chosen! Mr. Fitzgerald’s sonnets are a delight to read. I’ll leave you with another, from page 5, in which the playful rhyme belies the serious theme:

Created in Your image? How is that?
We mortals truly are of foolish stuff,
Engaged in one great game of blind man’s buff.
What image is there here worth looking at?
What god equates with bone and body fat,
Which come to nothing, given time enough,
As we our mortal coil ingloriously slough
On taking leave of this our habitat.
If we on earth are in Your image made,
What does that say of You? Forgive me, Lord.
My doubts are such they cannot be ignored.
Because of what I’ve seen of man’s parade
Through each day’s version of the evening news,
This “image” talk serves only to confuse.

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