2005

The story is told of James Joyce, who, when an ardent fan begged to "kiss the hand that wrote Ulysses," said, "No. It did lots of other things, too."

The same is true of 2005, or of any other year. Any attempt to summarize or assess one solar revolution in terms of its most tragic (or joyful) headlines will miss, even from an earthly point of view, much that will later be seen to be of key importance, and overemphasize much that will be soon forgotten. And from the heavenly point of view, the only true history is that which traces how the world, and each individual soul in it, moves towards, or away from, the Beatific Vision. There is only one reliable Narrator of that history, and His work remains unpublished.

For myself, 2005 was a year that fell well short of my personal hopes and expectations; but for most of my loved ones, it was splendid. This is a bargain I would willingly make year after year.

To all the readers of "Ralph," I wish a happy, and blessed, 2006.

Merry Christmas to All

Welcome, all wonders in one night!
Eternity shut in a span,
Summer in winter, day in night,
Heaven in earth, and God in man.
Great Little One! Whose all-embracing birth
Lifts earth to heaven, stoops heaven to earth.

—Richard Crashaw, On the Nativity

A very merry Christmas to all readers of "Ralph."

(The image above is a painting by James Janknegt; go here and pick up a print of one of his wonderful pieces.)

Second Annual Ralphies

It's time for the 2nd Annual Ralphies. (Last year's Ralphies can be found here.) Feel free to join in.

Best NONFICTION BOOK I read this year: Fergus Millar, The Roman Near East, 31 B.C.—A.D. 337 (Harvard, 1993). Anyone who is interested in the New Testament, the Dead Sea Scrolls, early Christianity, early Judaism, or the sociolinguistics of late antiquity should read and absorb this book.

Best FICTION BOOK of the year: This is probably the only book I read that was actually published in 2005, but it deserves the award anyway: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. My first impression can be read here.

Best MOVIE of the year: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I'm hardly objective, since I'm a big C. S. Lewis fan. But I can say this: Not only was I not disappointed, I was deeply moved.

Best CD of the year: (I'm still learning not to say "album" or "record.") Illinois, by Sufjan Stevens. Nothing else released in 2005 comes close to this extraordinary collection. Still, Chavez Ravine by Ry Cooder is worth mentioning, as is Faded Seaside Glamour by the Delays. (You don't need links, do you? Can't you find these yourselves? OK, here.)

Song of the year: "Nearer than Heaven," by the Delays. Sublime, glorious pop music. Find a sample on this page. (Update: listen to the whole thing streaming here under "Audio.")

OK? Tag! Any blogger who reads this post is It; let's hear your own lists.

UPDATE (12/19): Thanks for the comments below. Further lists have been created by Rick Brannan (see Rick, I got your name right this time) and Joe Cathey, as well as Chris Riley in the comments. (To check out Chris's excellent art and photography, see his blog.) As for Jim Davila's suggested category: I'm not sure I read a book in my field that was published in 2005, although many looked very interesting. In fact, I hope to read Jim's book before much more time elapses.

UPDATE (12/29): More lists, from Targuman and Loren at The Busybody. Super! Keep 'em coming.

UPDATE (12/31): More Ralphies from Danny Zacharias, Jim Davila, and MattDanTodd. Also, in case you thought my taste in music was idiosyncratic or perverse, check out the Best CD choice of 2005 from Pitchfork, the online arbiter of all things cool and nondweeby.

UPDATE (1/2): Last but definitely not least: Tyler Williams weighs in, complete with cool 3-D rendering of a "Ralphie" award. Awesome.

The Targums on Accordance

Readers of "Ralph" may be interested in my survey of the Targums and the Targum modules that I worked on for Accordance. Accordance is the best (IMHO) Bible software program available today, no matter what they say in Bellingham, WA.

A Lost Scrap of Tobit from the Schoyen Collection

It has been little noticed that the website of the Schoyen Collection contains a hitherto unpublished scrap of 4Q196, a papyrus copy of the Aramaic version of the book of Tobit. (Edit 2019: A high resolution photo of the fragment has been taken down from the Schoyen Collection website.)

The Schoyen site stated that the fragment is part of Fragment 14 of 4Q196, but this can hardly be true. Fragment 14 contains parts of Tobit chapter 6, and the present fragment, as the site correctly notes, contains part of Tobit chapter 14. Evidently "Chapter 14" and "Fragment 14" were at some point confused when the site catalog was being composed. In fact, the Schoyen fragment belongs between Fragments 18 (Tobit 13:12-14:3) and 19 (Tobit 14:7) of 4Q196. It contains part of Tobit 14:4.

Here is a transcription of the text followed by a translation:

ואמר ל
די ממל
די ממלל
יתעבד
בכל די
יתבין ב
ישׂראל

1. ] and he said to [
2. ] that [Nahum] is speak[ing
3. ] that [the prophets] speak [
4. ] will take place [
5. ] in all that [
6. ] dwelling in [the] l[and
7. ] Israel [

There's not a whole lot new here. The Schoyen fragment overlaps with 4Q198 frg. 1, and has a slightly different reading at line 2: די ממלל, where 4Q198 has די מלל. The Greek translations of Tobit are closer to 4Q198, translating "that Nahum (or Jonah) spoke" instead of "is speaking." Line 3 also suggests the reading ממללין "(they) speak" instead of the text J. Fitzmyer (in DJD) reconstructed for 4Q198 מללו "(they) spoke."

The Schoyen site notes that the Tobit text is "rather different from the Septuagint and shorter." This is a little misleading. There are in fact two Greek versions of Tobit, one of them the "standard" Septuagint text, and another significantly longer version, preserved in Codex Sinaiticus and a few other witnesses. As a rule, the Aramaic and Hebrew versions of Tobit found at Qumran show more affinity (although not exclusively) with the Long Recension.

Tobit 14:3-4 in the Long Recension (NRSV): When he was about to die, he called his son Tobias and the seven sons of Tobias and gave this command: “My son, take your children and hurry off to Media, for I believe the word of God that Nahum spoke about Nineveh, that all these things will take place and overtake Assyria and Nineveh. Indeed, everything that was spoken by the prophets of Israel, whom God sent, will occur. None of all their words will fail, but all will come true at their appointed times. So it will be safer in Media than in Assyria and Babylon. For I know and believe that whatever God has said will be fulfilled and will come true; not a single word of the prophecies will fail. All of our kindred, inhabitants of the land of Israel, will be scattered and taken as captives from the good land; and the whole land of Israel will be desolate ...

In this particular fragment, once again the affinity is with the Long Recension, but the Qumran text here must have been somewhat shorter than the Semitic Vorlage of the Long Recension (VLR). We know that the lines of 4Q196 average about 50 characters/spaces per line, but a reconstruction of the VLR that includes all that is in the Greek will not yield the right line lengths. (A PDF of my reconstruction of the VLR for this verse is available by request via email; the old link has rotted.)

Maybe the most interesting thing about this text is its provenance. According to the site, the text was sold by Kando in 1972 to an "American priest, later serving in Switzerland," who had it until 1995, when it was presumably sold to Martin Schoyen. Kind of makes you wonder what else is out there, doesn't it?

POSTSCRIPT (Dec. 2019):  This fragment is now considered a modern forgery; see A. Justnes, "Fake Fragments, Flexible Provenances: Eight Aramaic 'Dead Sea Scrolls' from the 21st Century," pp. 242-271 in Vision, Narrative, and Wisdom in the Aramaic Texts from Qumran: Essays from the Copenhagen Symposium, 14–15 August, 2017 (eds. M. Bundvad & K. Siegismund; Leiden: Brill, 2020).

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Discoveries in the Judean Desert: Qumran Cave 4, XIV: Parabiblical Texts, Part 2 (1995) contains Joseph Fitzmyer's exemplary publication of Qumran Tobit (pp. 1-76).

Paul the Punster Compared to Harold Bloom and Diogenes

In the New York Times recently, a reviewer of Harold Bloom's latest book remembers the Yale professor's hostility to Christianity:

I never thought I would hear a professor publicly proclaim - at Yale, no less - the great, private Jewish gripe that in layman's terms might be expressed: Christianity stole our watch and has spent 2,000 years telling us what time it is. Bloom punningly referred to the New Testament in Hebrew as "Brit haHalasha" ("weak covenant"), instead of "Brit haHadasha" ("new covenant").

Bloom's pun — not a terribly good one — falls into a long line of reciprocal Jewish-Christian insults, although Christians, as the majority religion, have no doubt committed far more.

One of the oldest comes from the Apostle Paul, in the letter to the Philippians (3:2), where he says, "Beware of the katatomé." This is a play on the word peritomé, "circumcision," which, in Paul, often refers not to Judaism as such, but to the Jewish-Christian party that insisted on circumcision as necessary to Christianity. Katatomé comes from katatemno, "to cut into pieces, gash, slice up." This pun is perhaps more hostile than Bloom's, but they are both working out of the same tradition.

I'm always interested in seeing how wordplay is translated. In this case, a good translation would make it plain that circumcise, circumcision is being punned upon. The results over the years have been mixed. The Peshitta translated as pesaq besra, "the cutting of the flesh," which may have the additional overtone of "castration." The Vulgate has videte concisionem, which makes it into the King James as "Beware the concision." Unfortunately no one knows any more what "concision" means.

The NEB loses the pun but keeps the meaning: "Beware those who insist on mutilation — 'circumcision' I will not call it." The NAS has "Beware of the false circumcision," which is weak, I think, while the NRSV has "Beware of those who mutilate the flesh," which loses the verbal connection with circumcision completely (the NIV is similar). The Jerusalem Bible has "watch out for the cutters." My own clumsy suggestion would be something like: "Beware of the 'circumslicers.' "

By the way, the BAGD lexicon (s.v. katatomé) cites as a parallel to Paul a saying of Diogenes preserved in Diogenes Laertius : "He called the scholé (school) of Euklides cholé (gall) and the diatribé (lectures) of Plato katatribé (waste of time)." In my opinion, the old Cynic, as a punster, had it all over the apostle and the professor.

Happy Blog-Day to Me

Today is "Ralph"'s blog-day. The first post appeared on November 30, 2004.

It's been an interesting year. As I noted in the CARG session in Philadelphia, I thought blogging might limit the sense of isolation I felt as an independent scholar working at home, and it did, to some extent. The conversations that take place online are "real" conversations, as real as any exchange of letters in the old days, only faster. But, besides that motivation, I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do with a blog when I started, and I still don't, not really. I periodically have the itch to write, but not necessarily the time or the patience to write something long, so writing a readable and interesting (at least to me) blog post a few times a week is both a good exercise for the writing muscles and a convenient way to scratch the writing itch.

I told myself when I began that I would be "true to Ralph," by which I meant that I would write only about what interested me, and on topics that I might have some kind of insight to contribute, not just to fill up space or attract readers. I determined early on not to blog about either politics or sports; the first bores me, and the second bores everyone else. Other than that, I've ranged far and wide and I have not tried to limit myself to a narrow set of topics (although I keep returning to the Bible and its languages). But despite my best intentions, looking back, I wonder why I bothered writing some posts, and can only plead that blogging sometimes became an end in itself. "Blogito ergo sum." My intent, if not always my practice, however, has remained firm, and I still will try to remain "true to Ralph." I hope all of you will keep coming by from time to time to see if I succeed.

Scattered Thoughts on AAR-SBL (Part II)

— I was tired and grumpy throughout most of the meeting this year, although I tried to hide it. It was the byproduct of a 10-hour commute from Cincinnati that turned into a 13-hour commute (we musta took a wrong turn at Albuquerque). The occasional floor sleeping didn't help. If I was unpleasant to anyone, forgive me. But seeing many friends, both old and new, made the trip worthwhile, even if I was not at my best.

— That may have affected my receptivity in the sessions; but I still came away with the feeling that most people don't know how to present papers, and I'm beginning to think that it's always going to be that way. There's got to be a better method of absorbing new scholarship than listening to someone read a paper in a rapid monotone in a crowded, overheated room. I suggest, at the very least, these steps:
(1) Graduate students must submit to the session chairs a version of what they plan to present; if it's too long, it should be either rejected or returned to the applicant for revision. I say "grad students" because they were the principal offenders (although I hasten to add that I heard more than one excellent paper by grad students). The SBL should also provide training, either live or online, for those who wish to present at the annual meeting.
(2) Each section or group should have its own website, where planning and organization can take place, including updates on the actual room location. Preliminary papers can also be posted there; or presenters can upload their handouts before the meeting.
(3) Insufficient use has been made up to now of recording or podcasting. It seems to me that there are plenty of low-tech options for recording and making presentations available after the meeting in MP3 or other formats. These could be made available on the section websites or through other means. This would help alleviate the problem of inattention (can one really listen to five papers in a row?), overcrowding (ever missed a paper because there was no room to sit down?), or scheduling (some of the sessions I was interested in took place at the same time as the CARG panel).

— I enjoyed the Biblioblogging session, mainly because it was fun to see the actual human beings in meatspace who are responsible for the blogs I read daily. But here's a little two-part eyewitness test for you. (1) When the panel session began, what was the order of seating, starting from Mark Goodacre? My memory is that it was this: Mark Goodacre, Rick Brennan, Stephen Carlson, Torrey Seland, Jim Davila, me (Ed Cook), Tim Bulkeley, AKMA, and Jim West. (2) When the question "How many here are bloggers?" was asked, what percentage (roughly) raised their hands? I feel that it was no more than 50%, but I believe Stephen Carlson has blogged that it was "almost everyone." Any other opinions?

— This meeting caught me in the middle of a career reinvention, as I begin to renounce the threefold academic vow (poverty, bibliography, and jargon) and transition from full-time independent scholar to full-time cubicle dweller with philology as a hobby. This will also affect "Ralph"; as the demands on my time increase, blogging will become harder to fit in. But I won't quit. Watch this space.

Scattered Thoughts on AAR-SBL (Part I)

Worst word to hear from a boring speaker who has already exceeded his time limit:: "Furthermore, ..."

Best phrase to hear from a boring speaker who has already exceeded his time limit:: "In conclusion, ..."

I learned a new word: "rhizomatic," used by AKMA in the Biblioblog session.

I learned how to pronounce: Hypotyposeis. It's pronounced like a disease.

Most heart-warming sight: The Pilgrim literally jumping up and down in excitement at her first glimpse of the book exhibits.

Blankest look: Joe Cathey, when I told him my hands were registered as lethal weapons.

Funniest glitch: When the audio feed from the Union Theological Seminary breakfast was piped into the Fuller Theological Seminary breakfast, and vice versa.

Unfunniest glitch: When the hotel refused to provide bedding for the third person in our 3-person room, we took turns sleeping on the floor.

Amount of money I spent on books: $49.00.

C U in Philly

I'll be leaving for Philadelphia tomorrow for the AAR-SBL Annual Meeting — so blogging on "Ralph", already light, will stop altogether for about a week. I know others plan to blog from Philadelphia, and I might try that if I'm inspired, but I doubt it.

For those interested in the session on "biblioblogging," both of the main papers, by Jim Davila and Rick Brennan, have been posted. As for the panel discussion — well, you'll just have to be there.

The End of The Magus

In an odd coincidence, on Saturday, the day I finished reading The Magus, its author John Fowles died. The New York Times obituary can be found here. The Magus is the only book of Fowles's that I have read, and my hat is off to him for writing a book of great interest, great influence, and sustained moral seriousness — although his ultimate viewpoint on life is not one that I share. (Another odd feature is the rare link from a major news outlet to "Ralph" via Fowles's passing.)

I find it interesting that many people find the ending of the book frustratingly obscure or deliberately ambivalent. (Caution: Spoilers ahead.) The Times review says:

And in "The Magus," the story of a young Englishman who gets caught up in the frightening dramatic fantasies of a strangely powerful man on an Aegean island, he again wrote an ending of self-conscious ambiguity, leaving the hero's future an open puzzle that readers are challenged to solve for themselves.

Well, as much as one hates to disagree with the New York Times, I did not find the ending all that ambiguous. In terms of plot (though not of metaphysics or of morals) the biggest question is: Will Nicholas and Allison get back together? When they meet, at the end of the book, that is the issue before them. Although no explicit resolution is given, Fowles gives a rather broad hint, by ending with a famous quote from an ancient Latin poem, the Perevigilium Veneris:

cras amet qui numquam amavit
quique amavit cras amet

I would translate this, rather literally, as "tomorrow let him love who never yet loved / and may whoever has loved love again tomorrow." The Loeb edition has "To-morrow shall be love for the loveless, and for the lover tomorrow shall be love." Finally, Eugene Ehrlich in Amo Amas Amat and More, translates as follows:

May he love tomorrow who has never loved before;
And may he who has loved, love tomorrow as well.

In terms of the plot, this seems pretty clear to me. "The one who has never loved" is Nicholas, who is basically a selfish jerk, who, by the end of the novel, is learning what it means to love; while "the one who has loved" (quique amavit) is Allison, who (with all her many faults) has loved Nicholas better than he deserved. Surely the implication is that they both will finally find mutual love and together have a future (cras)?

Have people found the resolution ambiguous because they were unable to read Latin? In fact, in the foreword to the revised edition of The Magus, Fowles suggests as much, saying that the "general intent [of the ending] has never seemed to me as obscure as some readers have evidently found it — perhaps because they have not given due weight to the two lines from the Perevigilium Veneris that close the book ..."

In my opinion, then, the "deliberate ambiguity" is just not there (or is less than usually supposed), and this leads me to see Fowles as a somewhat more traditional storyteller (at least in this case) than others saw him, and perhaps than he saw himself. But it is clear, in any case, that the world has lost a thoughtful and thought-provoking artist.

For the Weekend

Dr. Chris Brady, blogger and targum scholar, is the subject of a Microsoft profile here. Way to go, Chris!

Which reminds me. CB is a fan of Sufjan Stevens, who is no doubt the only alternative rocker to mention "going to the Bible study" in his lyrics. A bunch of Sufjan's Christmas music is available here.

Tom Finley on Prof. Segert

My remembrance of Stanislav Segert has now appeared, slightly revised, on the SBL website. Tom Finley, also a former student of Segert, sent me this e-mail in response, which is published here with his permission:

I also was one of Dr. Segert's students. He was the second man on my doctoral committee, and I got the PhD in 1979 (writing on Western Akkadian). I appreciate very much the memorial statements you made about him. I also remember him as a gentleman scholar who had an encyclopedic mind for the northwest Semitic languages. He would give us his Ugaritic materials in pre-publication form and have us critique them for English style. One had to get used to his accent at first but after awhile it became easier to understand him most of the time. He enjoyed his students very much and was always ready to lavish attention on them. At times he had us over to his house. Each quarter I was at UCLA he had a Hebrew Bible course where each of us would contribute to whatever form of the text we could handle: the Syriac, the Targums, the Greek, the Latin. Dr. Segert could handle it all. If my memory serves me correctly, I think he mentioned that he had two doctorates, one in Semitics but the other in classics. He was quite comfortable with Greek and Latin. I remember him saying once that English was his third language, behind Czech and German. He also told us that the communists fired him from the university in Prague because he taught that Jesus was a real person, and that violated the communist dogma. I guess I have to say that studying under Dr. Segert was one of the great experiences of my life. Because of my own life circumstances my interests have steered away from Akkadian, my main area of study at UCLA, to Hebrew and Aramaic, the very interests that Dr. Segert was most versed in. Thank you for your very appropriate comments. He is indeed irreplaceable and will be sorely missed.

Shalom,
Tom Finley
Chair, Dept. of Old Testament & Semitics
Talbot School of Theology/Biola University

Lost as Godgame

The term godgame is defined by the Encyclopedia of Fantasy as "a tale in which an actual game (which may incorporate broader implications) is being played without the participants' informed consent, and which (in some sense) is being scored by its maker." A key figure in the godgame is the "owner of the game (a Magus, a magister ludi, a god." The author of the entry gives two examples: Shakespeare's Tempest and John Fowles's The Magus. I would add at least two more: the film The Truman Show and the current TV series Lost. (Another example of a godgame without fantastic elements is the film Trading Places, with Dan Ackroyd and Eddie Murphy.)

All four of these works take place on islands, which, by virtue of their isolation, are well suited for the staging of godgames. All of them have their own unique features; for instance, in The Truman Show, although there is one Prospero/Magus figure (played by Ed Harris), everyone on the island is complicit in the game except Truman (Jim Carrey). I am currently in the middle of reading The Magus, so I don't know how it's going to turn out, or who is complicit in the game (not the reader!).

In the first season of Lost, my working hypothesis was that the island was some kind of region of the afterlife — a province of purgatory — and that the castaways somehow had to overcome their faults to "escape." But at this point in the second season, I'm convinced that a godgame of some kind is in progress. Of course, we don't yet know what the game is or who the Prospero/Magus is. One fascinating possibility is that the Magus is, unbeknownst to us, one of the characters we are already familiar with. I don't think Locke (Terry O'Quinn; my favorite character) is the Magus, but I think he might somehow be complicit in the game as a helper of some kind. Anybody else have any thoughts?

BIBLIOGRAPHY: John Clute, "Godgame," Encyclopedia of Fantasy (ed. J. Clute and J. Grant; St. Martin's, 1997), 414-415.


UPDATE (10/31): Some interesting comments below. From Jim Davila's comment, I learned that the word "godgame" is also used for virtual-reality scenarios, whether philosophical (such as the brains-in-vats meme) or fictional (like The Matrix). I must admit that using it this way seems like an extension away from the original concept, but usage is usage. Therefore I would propose two different kinds of godgame: the kind I described above, in which people know they are caught up in some kind of manipulation, but don't know who is doing it or why; and the second kind, in which perception or reality itself is a construct, a fact unknown to all or most of the participants. Let us call the first kind the Labyrinth, or Narratives of Misdirection; the prototype in Western literature is The Book of Job. And the second kind can be called the Matrix, or Narratives of Misperception; its prototype is Plato's "allegory of the cave." As Jim notes, the Matrix type provides interesting parallels to Gnosticism, while the Labyrinth type is more typical, religiously, of mainstream Judaism or Christianity ("God has a wonderful plan for your life" that you are unaware of). (I intend no irreverence.)

Joe surmises below that the island in Lost is itself the Magus. I must admit that I don't understand this suggestion. In what way can the island be thought of as sentient, and what could its motivations be? Locke speaks of the island that way, but I presume that he's speaking out of his own arguably confused preconceptions.

Interestingly, there is at least one theory out there that the castaways are in fact victims of a Matrix type godgame. (Look through the "theories" threads here.) My idea is, however, that a Labyrinth style godgame is going on, and that the island is a real island, not a digital construct. I haven't yet worked out how to integrate my theory with the persistent hints in the script that most of the castaways have some kind of psi Talents: telepathy, precognition, etc. But that's what makes it fun.

Embetter: Perfectly Cromulent

Michael Gilleland objects to GW's use of the word "embetter" in his speech on Oct. 18th:

We're going after criminal organizations and coyotes that traffic in human beings. These people are the worst of the worst. They prey on innocent life. They take advantage of people who want to embetter their own lives....

Personally, I think it's a perfectly cromulent word, created on the [EN + adjective] formation, such as "embiggen": "A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man." (The EN is realized, at a surface level, as EM because of partial assimilation to the word-initial bilabial in "big" and "better.")

Leaves from the Neighborhood

The top one is from another street; the bottom one is from our front yard. Autumn has arrived.

Buy This Book Now

The new edition of Wise-Abegg-Cook just arrived; I think it looks pretty nice.

We revised each and every one of the texts in the first edition to reflect the latest readings and scholarly publications, as well as adding new texts (including complete translations of the Qumran witnesses to Enoch, Jubilees and the Targum to Job). It also has running heads and a new index.

For those who loathed our titles for the scrolls — sorry. They're still there, as are the blurbs from Karen Armstrong and Dom Crossan. The paperback costs $24.95, so there's no reason for you not to order one (or two — why not one for each member of your family?) immediately.

The scroll on the cover, by the way, is 4Q109 (4Q Qohelet).

UPDATE: I've been encouraged to add links to online stores. You got it: Order the book here or here. Buy this one as well while you're at it. :)

Yom Kippur

Last night, at sunset, was the beginning of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. I wish all the Jewish friends of Ralph an easy fast.

It is interesting to note that the expression yom kippur as such is not found in the oldest Jewish literature. In the Bible, Mishnah, Dead Sea Scrolls, Talmudim and Midrashim, the phrase denoting the Day of Atonement is yom ha-kippurim, or, in Aramaic, yoma de-kippurei. The earliest use I can find of the later, short expression is in the Tosafists (glossators) to the Babylonian Talmud, which would place its origin in the early medieval period.

Kippurim is a tantum plurale ("only plural") in Biblical Hebrew, a word occurring only in the plural. Pluralia tantum are often used in Hebrew to denote abstract notions, like "atonement," alumim, "youth," tanhumim, "consolation." etc. They are less frequent in later forms of the language, which might account for the eventual changeover to the singular in yom kippur.

Surviving the Annual Meeting

As noted in previous posts, the annual meeting of the AAR-SBL is coming up soon (Nov. 19-22) in Philadelphia. As always, I am beginning to give some thought about how to survive the meeting.

Usually, when I arrive, I am in a gung-ho mood to attend as many papers, have as many discussions, and buy as many books as possible. After about a day or so — by about Sunday afternoon — when I've endured any number of dull recitations and gone around the book exhibit about a dozen times — I start feeling like this: I've gotta get out of here. Please, no more cerebral discussions. No more eggheads. No more tweed coats, natty beards, or ostentatiously brandished credentials. I feel like Dolly Parton, because everyone you meet at the annual meeting looks at your chest (where your name badge is) before they look at your face. That's when I hunger for "real" people wearing jeans and T-shirts and for talk that concerns football, what the kids are up to, trading one-liners from Family Guy or theories about Lost.

Through trial and error, I've discovered that the best way to head off "meeting burnout" — the desire to run back to the real world (I know — a concept that bristles with problems) — is to take a short vacation from the annual meeting in the midst of it. Lately I've taken off one night to go and listen to live music at a local club. If that's not available, I take an entire afternoon (or morning) off, dress in mufti, and walk around the local downtown, window shopping, drinking coffee (or a few Cold Ones), or sitting on a park bench. Most of the time, when I get back to the Land of Brainiacs, I'm tanned, rested, and ready to be smart again.

Is this a common experience, or is it just me? How do you survive the annual meeting?

Hair of the Ugaritic Dog

I've been reading some Ugaritic lately, in connection with various duties, and I finally got around to working through the text KTU 1.114, the famous one where El, the head of the pantheon, gets drunk at a banquet (marzeah) and has to be helped home while slipping in his own waste; lovely.

The real point of this text is found in the last few lines, which contains, by common interpretation, a recipe for hangover: "On his brow one should put hairs of a dog, the top of a pqq-plant and its stem. Mix it with the juice of virgin oil" (trans. T. J. Lewis).

I laughed when I read that. Hair of the dog, indeed! Could it be that the old expression for a morning-after shot of spirits, "hair of the dog," has its origin in the Ancient Near East? If so, I'm not the first one to discover it. Dennis Pardee writes:

This atypical myth [KTU 1.114] is followed by a prose recipe for alcoholic collapse that features the first known connection between drunkenness and the "hair of the dog": "What is to be put on his forehead: hairs of a dog. And the head of the PQQ (a type of plant) and its shoot he is to drink mixed together with fresh olive oil."

The same thing is suggested in the Dictionary of the Ancient Near East, s.v. "Drunkenness":

The "morning-after" symptoms were treated with various substances, including "the hair of the dog," as described in an Ugaritic text where the god El suffers from the effects of excessive consumption.

But it won't do. "Hair of the dog" as a hangover remedy is derived from the longer expression "hair of the dog that bit you." The origin lies in an Anglo-American folkloric remedy, not for hangover, but for rabies: if bitten by a dog, one was to take some of the dog's hair and either eat it or otherwise apply it to the wound:

[Remedies for rabies] have included eating grass from a churchyard, consuming some of the "hair of the dog that bit you" fried in oil with a little rosemary, and even eating parts of the dog itself (typically the heart or the liver). (Cassell's Dictionary of Superstitions)

The concept of homeopathic cure, along with the expression itself, was transferred to the hangover remedy — which is not literal dog hair, but a glass of something alcoholic (in my experience, a Bloody Mary is usually recommended).

So the idea that KTU 1.114 is the earliest use of "hair of the dog" for hangover can't be correct. In fact, the idea that the Ugaritic recipe is intended for hangover is itself an inference; it is nowhere stated in the text.

Here's another possibility. In an earlier section of the text, while El is being carried home, a mysterious figure named Habayu appears: "Habayu then berates (?) (נגשׁ) him, he of two horns and a tail." What exactly is Habayu doing to El? The word translated "berates" has also been taken to mean "press, drive," but none of these makes much sense. I am wondering if נגשׁ simply means here "gore," as it does in Palestinian Aramaic. The translation then would be: "Habayu gores him, the one with two horns and a tail." And that would explain why in the next lines El "collapses like one dead, like those who descend to the underworld," and it would explain why Habayu's horns are mentioned: Habayu is some kind of ox or ram.

So maybe this recipe is not for hangover at all, but for the much more serious condition of having been gored or butted by a horned animal. But I would not recommend it in either case.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Text and translation of KTU 1.114: "El's divine feast," trans. T. J. Lewis, Ugaritic Narrative Poetry (Scholars Press, 1997), pp. 193ff.