Little Walter, Bob Dylan, and the Two Sonny Boys

Bob Dylan, in his autobiographical Chronicles, tells this story of Sonny Boy Williamson:

The only comment that I ever got [on my harmonica playing] was a few years later in John Lee Hooker's hotel room in Lower Broadway in New York City. Sonny Boy Williamson was there and he heard me playing, said, "Boy, you play too fast." [p. 257]

An interesting parallel is found in Blues with a Feeling: the Little Walter Story, by Tony Glover, Scott Dirks and Ward Gaines:

[Billy Boy Arnold] asked [Little Walter] if he knew Sonny Boy. Walter replied, "Yeah, I knew him. He was really good man, he was the best. He used to tell me 'you play too fast, you play too fast.' " [p. 89]

There are several possibilities here. One is that "Sonny Boy Williamson" really said that Little Walter and Bob Dylan played too fast and told them so. It is certainly true that the early Dylan occasionally played harmonica at a frantic, helter-skelter tempo.

On the other hand, since it is now clear that Chronicles contains generous helpings of fiction as well as fact, maybe Dylan appropriated this story to himself. It is a telling fact that the section in which Dylan's story occurs deals partly with Minnesota harpist Tony Glover, who is co-author of Blues with a Feeling. Also pointing to the fictional character of the story is the fact that the Little Walter anecdote refers to the first Sonny Boy Williamson, who died in 1948. Dylan's anecdote has to refer to Sonny Boy Williamson II, who died in 1965.

Therefore if both stories are true, then Sonny Boy I told Little Walter that he played too fast, and Sonny Boy II told Dylan that he played too fast. This is certainly possible. But I have to favor the idea that, given other evidence of Dylan's borrowing of sources, he also borrowed this one, without noticing that he assigned the saying to the wrong Sonny Boy.

Williamson on the Oxford Hebrew Bible Project

I've been sort of planning to write a critique of the plans for the Oxford Hebrew Bible, and why I think the whole plan is misconceived; but H. G. M. Williamson beat me to it. Good, it saves me some time.

Saludos Lakers, Campeones Mundiales

This is a rare post about sports. Those who know me know I'm a Lakers fan. I come by it honestly, living for 13 years in LA during the height of the Magic-Kareem era. Despite my travels since then, I've retained an allegiance to the purple & gold.

So I'm jazzed the Lakers won the NBA championship this year. I have to say, though, that any feelings for or against Kobe, so prominent in media coverage, had little to do with it. I love what Kobe does for the Lakers, I admire his abilities, and I root for him. But I don't find Kobe all that appealing as a person, and the style of his game doesn't galvanize me. When I was a kid we called players like Kobe "hot dogs," and it was not a compliment. Nowadays every above-average player is a hot dog, and the league is the worse for it.

So these days I'm actually more interested in two other kinds of players. One is the non-hot-dog, the guy who plays (seemingly) without arrogance but with excellence. My two favorite non-hot-dogs -- let's call them hamburgers -- my two favorite hamburgers are Lamar Odom and Pau Gasol. It's always good to see hamburgers get rings.

The second kind I like is the big man. My heart has always been with the big men of the Association. The first team I ever loved and rooted for in the NBA was the Philadelphia 76ers of 1967, with Billy Cunningham, Hal Greer, Matt Guokas, coach Alex Hannum, etc. -- but mainly, if you were a kid like me, you noticed Wilt Chamberlain, freakishly large, a man among boys. Kids like the big men for the same reason they like dinosaurs, and if you need any further explanation, then you don't get it. I've never grown out of this, and my favorite players have been the giants, like Wilt, Kareem, Shaq, Yao, even Rik Smits, Ralph Sampson, Manute Bol, Shawn Bradley. I want to see them succeed and amaze me while they're doing it. (No, Dwight Howard isn't in this category. He's just not tall enough. Good player, though.)

On the Lakers, there's only one big who fits in this superhuman category, and that's Andrew Bynum. He's shown flashes of greatness, but he's been hampered by injuries. But he's the guy that really interests me. I hope that the Lakers make it back to the Finals next year, with Bynum performing superhuman feats of dunking and blocking, helped by a couple of hamburgers and, OK, maybe the one hot dog.

Bob Dylan, Young Thief

Looks like Bob Dylan got an early start "borrowing" lyrics, according to this. His career winds down as it began, passing off the words of others as his own.

"Lost": The Godgame Returns

A while back, I wrote about "Lost as Godgame." After watching last night's season finale, I think I was right, although possibly there are two godgames going on.

We met Jacob last night, the white figure (and therefore good guy), and his nemesis, dressed in black. Let us call him Esau, although Seth (nemesis of Osiris) would be quite as suitable. I think everything that has happened thus far is due to the manipulations of one of these two figures.

Some significant reveals of the finale:

Dead means dead. No one returns from the dead on the island. Therefore "Neo-Locke," as we discover, is a tool or meat puppet of Esau. When Neo-Locke told Richard Alpert to tell the real Locke that he had to die, this was a con of some kind. Esau needed Locke's corpse in order to con Ben and the Others.

This presumably means also that "Christian Shephard" is also a meat puppet or manifestation of Esau. (Note that Neo-Christian and Neo-Locke never appear on screen together.) Therefore everything "Christian" has said to anyone is a con of some kind. He doesn't speak for Jacob. Locke was not supposed to move the island or die. Jack wasn't supposed to come back.

If so, then Esau at the moment can only work through one kind of being: dead people: Christian Shephard, John Locke, Yemi, Alex Rousseau.

Since the Smoke Monster (through Alex) told Ben that he had to obey Neo-Locke, we have to assume that Smokey is also a manifestation (or perhaps is) Esau. Ben Linus's "judgment" was also a con. (Is there more than one Smokey? Is there a white Smokey, too?)

We saw Greek and Egyptian last night, and we heard some Latin. Would it have killed them to put some Aramaic in the show?

New Ancient Document

This (HT: Paleojudaica) looks like it might be interesting. Kudos to the IAA for providing a hi-res photograph link.

The cursive script is hard to read. The beginning of the text, at least, is in Aramaic: בתרין עשר (on the 12th day) and then dated to לחרבן בית ישראל -- an unusual dating formula, to be sure ("after the destruction of the house of Israel"). However, I am told that the rest of the text is in Hebrew, and that it will be published in due course by Esti Eshel and Ada Yardeni.

IT'S "FREE REIN"

Once again, I encountered the spelling "free reign" in a magazine. This is starting to happen a lot. NO. This is not correct. The correct spelling is free rein. Get it right or pay the price.

Easter

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
It was as His body;
If the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
The Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers
each soft Spring recurrent;
It was not as his Spirit, in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of His eleven Apostles;
it was as His Flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that-pierced-died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendance;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time which will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.
-JOHN UPDIKE

Dylan Quellenforschung

In advance of the new album, a track has been released from Bob Dylan's new album, "Beyond Here Lies Nothin'." It's a blues number that won't blow anyone's mind.

All the Dylanologists are saying, though, that it "sounds like 'Black Magic Woman'." That song, it will be remembered, was originally recorded by Fleetwood Mac, although the one everyone knows is the cover version by Santana.

However, in my opinion, the real template for the Dylan song is Otis Rush's "All Your Love," right down to the recurrent words "pretty baby." As with "Black Magic Woman," the more famous version is someone else's, in this case John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, with some absolutely scorching guitar licks from Eric Clapton. Give all of these a listen, and let me know what you think.

The Wheel in the Wind

In Ps. 83:14, God is enjoined to make the wicked ‏kglgl, which the KJV translates as "like a wheel" (similarly LXX and Vulgate). Although the word glgl does mean "wheel," it makes little sense in context, and exegetes have generally seen in the Hebrew a reference to some other round thing that the wicked could intelligibly be compared to. Since in this verse glgl is compared to qash, straw, driven before the wind, and in Isa. 17:13 to motz , chaff, whipped up by the storm, many take glgl in these two verses to be a reference to a plant, Gundelia tournefortii, which, when dry, forms a kind of tumbleweed. (It is also an extraordinarily ugly plant.)

Although HALOT, in giving this information, refers us in the first instance to Gustav Dalman's Arbeit und Sitte in Palästina (1928-42), Dalman got his information from Immanuel Löw's Die Flora der Juden (1924; still a great reference tool). And where did Löw get it from? From the great 12th century commentator Rashi, who made the identification more than 900 years ago.

Most modern translations reflect this insight, such as NIV "make them like tumbleweed" and JPS "make them like thistledown." But it is surprising how many translate as "like the whirling dust" (ASV, NAS, NRSV), which is less apt. Possibly these translators were under the influence of the older lexicon BDB, which interprets this glgl as "whirl (of dust or chaff), sim. of foes put to flight by God."

I first noticed all this while reading through the 16th century Aramaic lexicon, Meturgeman, by Elias Levita. Levita, as expected, understands the word as does Rashi, glossing it as ‏פרח עשב שהוא מתגלגל, a plant growth that rolls. The citation he gives from the Psalms Targum is ‏היך גלגלא דמתגלגל ואזיל ניח במודרון, understood as "like a glgl, that keeps on rolling, coming to rest on a slope."

However, Levita's text differs from other Targum texts, which read ‏ולא ניח במודרון, "... and does not come to rest on a hillside." The second reading fits the context better, but the image as a whole is obscure to me. Does it mean the wind blows the weed without stopping, so that even when it comes to an obstacle it keeps on rolling? Or is it possible that the reference really is in this case to a wheel, so that we must understand it as "like a wheel that keeps on rolling and does not stop, down a slope"? The last translation is the one I gave in my Psalms Targum text; but now I am not sure. Anybody out there have any thoughts on the Aramaic?

New Dylan Album

Bob Dylan has a new record coming out. Sounds like it could be interesting; supposedly a rock record, but with lots of accordion on it. Is it zydeco? I doubt it. The name of it is Together Through Life.

As for the previous record, Modern Times, the always alert Scott Warmuth has some Chaucerian observations.

Speaking

I'll be speaking Monday at 5:15 pm at Catholic University on the topic "Recent Epigraphic Discoveries and their Bearing on the Origin of Christianity." The lecture is part of the Early Christian Seminar sponsored by the Center for the Study of Early Christianity and is open to the CUA community and invited guests. If any readers of "Ralph" are in the neighborhood and would like to come, let me know and I'll send you more info.

Song of the Week

Come on
Step up
Jump around
Step in
Get up
Stay up
Get down
Come on
Jump in
Move around
Come on
Step up
Get up
Way up
Get down
All right

Raphael Golb Arrest

Wow, this is a blockbuster that will have the community of Qumran scholars buzzing for months, if not longer. A vast quantity of relevant material has been collected by Bob Cargill here.

The sad thing about this scandal is not only the paranoia and vitriol on display in what was originally a scholarly dispute, but the tawdry and shoddy means used to propagate them. Incredible. The scholars who were the victims (particularly Cargill and Larry Schiffman) are to be congratulated for taking steps to bring this activity to an end, but it's a shame that their time had to be spent doing that instead of scholarship.

I'm just watching it all with disbelief from the sidelines. If I learn anything not available from other sources, I'll report it.

Linguistics Terms that Illustrate What They Mean

I see that I haven't blogged the ENTIRE month of February, which is a new record of some kind of futility (or possibly: commitment to work outside of cyberspace. Take your pick.).

To get the ball rolling again, I shall submit a list of terms from linguistics that illustrate what they mean. The late Herb Paper and I cooked these up years ago over lunch (although "haplogy" already existed as a joke among linguists).

HAPLOGY < haplology

DITTOTOGRAPHY < dittography

SYNCPE < syncope

APOCOP < apocope

'PHAERESIS < aphaeresis

NANSALIZANTION < nasalization

ANAPATYXIS < anaptyxis

Book Fans Bid Updike Adieu

Now John Updike is gone. Time was when I thought he was the greatest American writer of them all. I moved away from that, but I never read an Updike book that didn't have me shaking my head in wonder at his mastery of the language. Some of his phrases have stuck in my mind ever since I first encountered them: the hand in Couples that "showed cornute against the cruciform mullions." The Russian accent of a man trying to speak French who "sloshed in the galoshes of Russian zhushes" (from The Coup). In Roger's Version, the aftermath of intimacy when a man sees his ejaculate "glistening on her belly like an iota of lunar spit." He was a wordsmith without parallel.

He was also the last Barthian in an age when Protestantism either became evangelical or went liberal. My hat's off to him for that, even though I think it left him without sufficient resources to fight off secularism. But I loved it when he told an interviewer that, although he had doubts, he refused to make the "leap of unfaith." Hopefully, he now has his reward.

(BTW: I always thought that Updike wrote this sentence: "His breath smelled of (though no banquet would serve, because of the known redolence of onions, onions) onions." But on looking it up, I find that it was penned by Anthony Burgess. Live and learn.)

Richard John Neuhaus

Richard John Neuhaus has died. He was one of the great Christian voices in the US, from the 'sixties until now. His book The Naked Public Square (1984) played a big role in the formation of my thinking (such as it is) about Christian faith and public policy.

The obituaries will probably focus on his Catholic years, and probably rightly. But I don't want to forget a few things he did in his Lutheran days, either. One of them was to help convene the group that later issued the "Hartford Declaration: A Theological Affirmation." Its concerns are still valid today. Among the signatories, besides Neuhaus, were Peter Berger, Richard Mouw, Avery Dulles, Ralph McInerny, Lew Smedes, Robert Wilken, William Sloane Coffin, Stanley Hauerwas, and others — a veritable Who's Who of orthodox Christian theology in America.

Another was his book Time Toward Home (1975, now out of print), which rehabilitated the idea of American history and religion as a possible avenue of God's grace.

It was not long after TIme Toward Home came out that Neuhaus gave the Payton Lectures at Fuller Seminary while I was a student, and I met him briefly. I asked him some kind of convoluted question about resurrection and Pannenberg's theology, which he turned into some kind of sense and gave a thoughtful answer to. But in general he did not suffer fools gladly. He was an important advocate for the church, and we'll not see his like again. Recquiescat in pace.

Fifth Annual Ralphies

Oh yeah, the Ralphies. Even more than last year, I have been out of touch with popular culture. In fact, since around August, when we moved to the DC area, I've been busy in the academic life and haven't bought a CD, gone to a movie, or read a ... no, actually, I've read plenty of books, so never mind that. I've also watched some TV. But generally I feel like I've been away.

And I haven't been blogging that much, either, and I've paid the price for that, in that very few people stop by here anymore. Such is life. But despite it all, I shall award Ralphies, as I do every year, for my own sake, if not for yours.

BEST MOVIE: As I say, I haven't seen a movie since the summer. I never got to see The Dark Knight (unlike every other living human) or Journey to the Center of the Earth 3-D, which I really wanted to see. In fact, all I remember going to see was WALL*E and Hellboy II, both of them excellent. Since WALL*E is the politically correct choice in this politically correct year, I shall award the Ralphie to ... Hellboy II.

BEST RECORD: Uhhh .... I really haven't been listening to much music lately. Did I even buy a CD this year? If I did, I can't remember what it was. But I hereby choose to define "record" quite loosely, so I award the Ralphie to a melancholy song I downloaded that went to the top of my iTunes playlist: Pull of the Pint, by Bill Coleman.

BEST BOOK (FICTION): I had a couple of good reads this year. During the whole move (which was not a moving experience, if you get me), I beguiled the time by reading Stephen King's Dark Tower sequence, which I would recommend only if you are a big King fan already. Otherwise, skip it. I also enjoyed The Tin Roof Blowdown, by James Lee Burke. But I give the Ralphie to a book that I actually read last December too late for the 4th Ralphies: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz. Highly recommended.

BEST BOOK (NONFICTION): I've read a ton of non-fiction lately, but mainly in connection with my work, and none of those books are of recent vintage. I will award the Ralphie to a non-academic work, though, that gave me much to think about: James Martin's My Life with the Saints.

BEST TV SHOW: Lost is, and will continue to be, the TV show for me, and the 4th season was as great as ever. But it was cut short by the writers' strike and somehow it feels like the Ralphie should go to something that is around more. The Office is just not worth watching anymore, and The Simpsons is far gone from its glory days. I award the Ralphie this year to House, which is compulsively watchable, fun, thought-provoking, and on practically 5 nights a week in syndication. Can't beat that.

That's all, folks! Have a fantabulous Christmas and an ecstatic New Year! See you next year!

Post SBL 2008

I haven't had time till just now to comment on the SBL 2008 in Boston; nor have I much to say this time around. I greatly enjoyed the various meals and meetings I had with friends and students, both planned and unplanned (especially the McGreevy's pub hilarity), but overall I'd have to say this meeting lacked some luster. Maybe it was the absence of the AAR, which made everything seem smaller, especially the book exhibits; maybe it was the unseasonably cold weather; maybe it was the chastened mood of an academy feeling the economic pinch; maybe it was just me. But Boston 2008 didn't knock my socks off.

I greatly enjoyed several papers, especially those of David Everson, Edward Goldman, Joe Zias, and my colleague Andrew Gross. My own paper, after being finished months ago, felt stale and unpolished to me, and I'm sorry I didn't do a better job of composition and execution. Hopefully it came off better to others than it seemed to me.

The nicest moment for me came when Sam Greengus told me at the Hebrew Union College luncheon, "We will always consider you a ben bayit." Thank you, and a blessing on HUC and its outstanding graduate studies program.

As for the new Zinjirli inscription, I may add a few updates to the post dealing with it; but in general I thought Prof. Pardee did an excellent job and he is to be thanked for putting this interesting inscription in front of the scholarly world so rapidly. The full philological treatment of the inscription will be published in BASOR within a year's time.

The New Zinjirli Inscription

The new Zinjirli inscription is featured in a New York Times article, along with a good (but not quite clear enough) picture. I can make out a few phrases, but the resolution is not great enough for my eyes to transliterate the whole thing.

The picture features a man, probably Kittamuwa, the sponsor of the stele, sitting with a TV remote in one hand and a turkey drumstick in the other. Just kidding! I surmise that he is actually holding a pomegranate and some other foodstuff.

A partial translation from Dennis Pardee, with whatever bits of Samalian I can glean:

I Kuttamuwa, servant of [the king] Panamuwa (אנכ כתמו עבד פנמו), am the one who oversaw the production of this stele for myself while still living. I placed it (ושמת ותה) in an eternal chamber [?] and established a feast (חגג) at this chamber (יד זנ): a bull for [the god] Hadad (שור להדד), a ram for [the god] Shamash (יבל לשמש) and a ram for my soul that is in this stele (ויבל לנבשי זי
בנצב זנ).

Interesting to note is another occurrence of the definite object marker wt. The inscription may also throw light on the occurrence of ybl in the notoriously obscure line 21 in the Panamuwa inscription, which now seems to require interpretation as referring to sacrifice.

A few other phrases are readable; but why not wait for Pardee's definite treatment this weekend? I'm looking forward to it.

UPDATE (11/30/08): Pardee's presentation in Boston was a thorough and competent survey of the inscription. The word for "chamber" is syr or syd, not yd. I will deal with other aspects of the inscription at another time. I will further note that the text will no doubt inaugurate a discussion concerning aspects of the West Semitic cult of the dead due to the expression "my soul that is in this stele." As one scholar noted in Boston, this has to be connected to the use of the term nephesh for tombs at a much later time. It is also possible that the Kuttamuwa stele may have some relation to the so-called baityloi, also known from a later period, which were considered to house spirits or other numina; Philo of Byblos called them lithoi empsychoi, "stones with souls." Let the games begin.