Warriors

Memorial Day in the US is for the remembrance of those who died fighting for their country. I don't know of anyone related to me who has died in battle, but there've been a few who did serve in the military and saw combat.

My great-great-great-uncle Andrew Kincannon (d. 1829), fought in the battle of King's Mountain (1780) against American Tories and the British.

My great-grandfather Joseph Pope Morgan ("Granpappy", d. 1933) served in the Confederate Army (3rd Mississippi) and was wounded in the battle of Chickamauga.

My step-grandfather Bill Erkelens (d. 1965), flew in bomber biplanes in World War I as the gunner. "How many German planes did you shoot down?" I asked him once, when I was a kid. He said, "Just one," and looked away. Not a good memory.

My uncle Joe Morgan (d. 1966), served in the Pacific Theater in World War II, most notably on the island of Peleliu.

My father, Charles G. Cook (d. 1985), was a bomber pilot (B-17's) during World War II. In 1948, he flew C-47's in the Berlin Airlift. Later, in the early '50's, he was stationed on Guam and was a "typhoon spotter," flying 27 missions into the center of typhoons to gather meteorological data.

My brother, Chuck Cook, was in Vietnam (I think actually Cambodia) as a radio communications specialist.

I'll also mention my wife Amy's illustrious ancestor, Nathaniel Chapman, who was one of the original Minutemen and fought at Bunker Hill. One of his children, John Chapman, became better known as Johnny Appleseed. (JA's half-brother, also named Nathaniel, is Amy's great-great-great-grandfather.)

Me? I gave up my student deferment in 1971; that year my lottery number was 189, and they didn't draft me. According to the rules in place then, if you weren't drafted the first year you were 1-A, you couldn't be drafted later. Although I had grave misgivings about Vietnam (who didn't?), I had no plans to dodge the draft or to declare myself a conscientious objector. If I had, my father might have done me serious harm, and I was more afraid of him than of the Viet Cong. But by the luck of the draw, I was passed by. Nothing to be proud of, but at least no one had to go in my place.

Goodbye, Shelby

Yesterday our long-time family dog, Shelby, was put to sleep at the age of 15. We acquired him in the fall of 1990 as a puppy, when the kids were 7 and 3. Now they are 22 and 18, all grown up, and, as if his work was done, Shelby's body started to give out. He had a good long run as our friend, playmate, and little brother.

He was a mixed-breed dog of medium size, with a beagle-type head and ears, but with a hunter's deep chest and slender hips. It's a pity that none of us have ever been hunters, because he would have excelled at that; he knew how to point, and when he barked (not very often, for he was rather quiet), it was with the hound dog's arooo! and not the yike-yike-yike of the lapdog. Occasionally he would slip through the security system for independent forays, returning hours later with some strange dog's supper dish. And who will ever forget the time when he snuck into the kitchen and ate an entire plate of brownies, with no ill effects? He was the children's special friend, sleeping on their beds until his hips and legs became too fragile to manage even that small hop.

With most species, we share the planet as passengers share the same train (although no doubt the animal creation finds us an unusually loud, smelly, violent, and unruly group to travel with), and God's purpose and plan for them is a complete mystery; neither Scripture, tradition, nor reason give us any clue about the post-mortem fate of creatures, if any. But the species Canis domesticus seems to have evolved alongside Homo sapiens, and their fate — biologically, at least — seems intertwined with ours, their behaviors shaped by human habits.

Even the few hints about our own human destiny do not encourage the view that the Resurrection life is just this world all over again; and yet there must be some kind of continuity at some level. Otherwise talk about "the new creation" would be devoid of content, denoting only "unimaginable beings in some unimaginable mode of existence." Since there must be some continuity, perhaps it is not going too far to hope that these creatures, at least, may find a place in the new heaven and new earth; and that when we awake in newness of life, out of all the other wonders in store for us, one of them might be the sight of our glorified dogs jumping up to lick our faces.

In closing, I append a poem by Robinson Jeffers, called "The House Dog's Grave." Many thanks to Michael Gilleland, who recently included it in his blog.

I've changed my ways a little; I cannot now
Run with you in the evenings along the shore,
Except in a kind of dream; and you, if you dream a moment,
You see me there.

So leave awhile the paw-marks on the front door
Where I used to scratch to go out or in,
And you'd soon open; leave on the kitchen floor
The marks of my drinking-pan.

I cannot lie by your fire as I used to do
On the warm stone,
Nor at the foot of your bed; no, all the nights through
I lie alone.

But your kind thought has laid me less than six feet
Outside your window where firelight so often plays,
And where you sit to read - and I fear often grieving for me -
Every night your lamplight lies on my place.

You, man and woman, live so long, it is hard
To think of you ever dying.
A little dog would get tired, living so long.
I hope that when you are lying

Under the ground like me your lives will appear
As good and joyful as mine.
No, dears, that's too much hope: you are not so well cared for
As I have been.

And never have known the passionate undivided
Fidelities that I knew.
Your minds are perhaps too active, too many-sided...
But to me you were true.

You were never masters, but friends. I was your friend.
I loved you well, and was loved. Deep love endures
To the end and far past the end. If this is my end,
I am not lonely. I am not afraid. I am still yours.

Au lieu de moi

Sorry I've been non-blogging lately, a trend that shows no signs of letting up. (Or is that "every sign of not letting up"? Oh well.)

In place of my own ideas, here's a couple of links from Slate. First, a review of the movie of The DaVinci Code. A quotation:

To my mind, the most ineffable gnostic secret of all is how such hooey has managed to capture the imagination of tens of millions of people all around the world.

Also, please note that Slate now has its own biblioblogger, sort of.

Lost Again

Forget the Gospel of Judas, the DaVinci Code, the Dead Sea Scrolls — the most pored-over, closely read mystery text in the U.S. today is undoubtedly the Blast Door Map from Lost.

We learned one interesting thing last night; the "?" site is the Pearl station. That puts Locke and Eko at least one step ahead of the unknown map-maker, who labeled the site "Purpose unknown." Locke's fear that what they found at the station invalidates his button-pushing mission may (or may not) be addressed by the Latin tag attached to this station on the Map: Nil actum reputa si quid superest agendum, "Nothing is considered done if anything remains to be done."

One reading on the Map should be corrected; although everyone reads Credo nos in fluctu eodem esse (at about 2 o'clock on the map), the word eodem is not there. "I believe we are in a/the wave."

Speculation: I think the Others must live underground and travel by tunnel. I guess we're about to find out.

By the way, if you're not getting enough egghead in your Lost diet, you should know that there is an online Journal of "Lost" Studies.

Books 'n' Records

Just a few notes on what's on the bookshelf/CD player:

Last week I read The Power and the Glory, this week I'm reading The End of the Affair, both for the first time. Where have you been all my life, Graham Greene? ... Over the weekend I read King Dork, by Frank Portman, which was good, although my expectations were slightly higher than the book turned out to be. The kids in this young-adult novel, by the way, don't listen to CDs (it's vinyl instead), nor do they have cell phones, cars, iPods, or any of the other iconic impedimenta of today's youth. And yet it's supposed to take place in the present day? Try around 1985 instead ... The Fiery Furnaces have just come out with Bitter Tea, and I can't recommend it too highly. Just as plot is the backbone of fiction, and draughtsmanship of art, melody is the backbone of music — and no-one these days writes better melodies than FF's Matt Friedberger. The fact that he festoons them with all kinds of collaged sound effects, synth blats and beeps, backwards tapes, and cartoonish keyboard doodles matters not a whit (in fact, I like it): the tunes themselves adhere to the synapses with the delirious speed of ad jingles. But what ad jingle ever had lyrics like

The isolated lady,
an isolated older lady:
a dignified dame who keeps her own counsel,
in love with the out-of-the-way,
identifying with the unfamiliar,
contemptuously turns her back on the wicked world
with its vulgar delusions and correspondingly
scorns its regard.
("Whistle Rhapsody")

Very cool.

Please, No More Movies

OK, is this thing on? Hello? OK. Yes. I'd like to read a press release from the Association of Hollywood Moguls.

Hello, American people! We know you're out there, because, dang it, somebody keeps buying movie tickets. But actually, lately, that number's going down. And frankly, folks, that brings us to our main topic of this press release, the decline in ticket sales. We've actually come to a realization: most of the movies we make just suck. When we checked the summer schedule of movies coming out — frankly, even we got a little nauseous. We've got sequels to comic-book movies coming out, like Superman; we've got remakes and more remakes (yes, the rumors are true, we remade "The Poseidon Adventure"); we've got lame teen comedies full of fart jokes, and, um, even more sequels. Oh, and horror movies that are remakes of Japanese originals. For us, a high concept movie is "Snakes on a Plane."

The fact is, folks, we're just plain out of ideas for good movies. And we think you deserve better. So we've decided that until we've gathered enough ideas for a whole season's worth of good cinema, we're just not going to make any more movies.

I know what you're thinking, especially if you're a theater owner. But don't worry: we're going to re-release a lot classic movies, without remaking them, so that there will be plenty of films at your local cineplex. We just think that you haven't lived until you've seen "Casablanca" or "The Seven Samurai" on the big screen. Enjoy!

"What about us?" the actors have been saying. Don't worry, you crazy kids! We've lined up plenty of work for you. Most of you will be recording a ton of audiobooks, just to keep your voices in shape; the rest will be honing their actorly skills in "little theater" productions all over the country. We can't wait to see it! And, speaking of actorly skills, we also want to be the first to announce that several stars will be going back to Remedial Acting School! Yes! The first two scholarship recipients? Keanu Reeves and Ben Affleck.

How long will it take? We're not sure, but we think after about 5 years we may be able to start making a few interesting, intelligent, and exciting movies. We appreciate your patience until then, and we look forward to seeing you at next week's world premiere of "Citizen Kane." Thanks!

If only.

When Was the Gospel of Mark Written?

Since today is the feast day of St. Mark the Evangelist, I hearby announce, in his honor, that almost every scholarly discussion of the date of Mark's Gospel is wrong. I would like to state — with only a soupçon of exaggeration — that Mark was written within one year after the resurrection.

This statement cannot be proved wrong without assuming (a) that the Gospel makes widespread use of vaticinium ex eventu, that is, history disguised as prophecy; and (b) that the evangelist relied on a chain of oral tradition, whose crystallization requires "a long time". I submit that both of these assumptions are arbitrary. Assumption (a) imports a philosophical premise (prophecy cannot happen) into a literary argument; and assumption (b) assumes, usually without argument, that Christian tradition was immediately oral and only secondarily written (instead of, as is more probable, a mixture of both).

Obviously I am taking an extreme position to make a point. But can anyone point to indications within the Gospel that point to a date ca. 65 CE or later (the usual date given) without relying on the above assumptions?

The End of Biblioblogdom?

I note that Jim West has announced the "dis-integration" of the biblioblogging community. He may well be correct, or not; I don't know. I do want to put in my two cents about my own decreased activity in the blogosphere, which Jim cites in two places, including the remark that I (among others) have been "strangely silent."

As I noted a while back,* I started a new, non-academic, job in November that keeps me busy 40 hours a week. When I'm not "at" work, I continue to do other work at home, fulfilling commitments to Oaktree Software and others, and trying to honor various writing contracts. I also have family and church activities that I would not like to neglect. There's just not much time for writing blog posts or even reading them.

If, as Jim asserts, the other "classic" bibliobloggers are blogging and communicating less, this may be a function of the expansion of Biblioblogdom. When I started blogging in November 2004, there were approximately 4.5 million blogs (according to Technorati); now there are 35.8 million. This exponential growth has been felt among biblioblogs as well. The community that started out small has grown too large to keep up with even in a passive read-only way, to say nothing of engaging in daily back-and-forth debates.

So ... life happens. It's okay. Let a thousand flowers bloom.

* I said in November 2005: "This meeting [SBL] 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."

Gnosticism and the Jews

Misunderstandings and misapprehensions about the Gospel of Judas continue to flow. Secularist commentator Christopher Hitchens, who is apparently completely devoid of elementary knowledge of church history, remarks that acceptance of the Gospel of Judas would help to combat Christian anti-Semitism:

The Judas gospel would make one huge difference if it was accepted. It would dispel the centuries of anti-Semitic paranoia that were among the chief accompaniments of the Easter celebration until approximately 30 years after 1945, when the Vatican finally acquitted the Jews of the charge of Christ-killing.

Christianity, of course, has much to repent of in its treatment of the Jews over the centuries. Nevertheless, when the Church rejected Gnosticism, it was taking a step away from anti-Semitism, not towards it, because the Gnostics despised the Jews, the Jewish God, and Jewish Scripture. As Hyam Maccoby writes,

While anti-Semitism (in the sense of intense dislike of Jews) was not uncommon in the ancient world, it was probably among the Gnostic sects that the most radical form of anti-Semitism originated — the view that the Jews are the representatives of cosmic evil, the people of the Devil. (The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity, p. 186)

Maccoby continues by portraying St. Paul — most unreasonably, in my opinion — as himself an early Gnostic. However, Maccoby's principal thesis is correct.

Gnosticism's intense rejection of Judaism seems to have been overlooked in the modern revisionist rush to anoint the Gnostics as a "healthy corrective" to orthodox Christianity. If the Gnostic version of Christianity had prevailed, Judaism might not have survived.

Easter

Michelangelo's chalk study "The Risen Christ."

More on the Gospel of Judas

The ole Internet is just a-simmerin' these days with more Gospel of Judas stuff. Several blogs are rounding up links for one-stop-shopping for GJ news; I think I'll just mention Doc Cathey's post, and you can go from there.

One essay you should not miss is Adam Gopnik's contribution to the New Yorker, an excellent piece from a secular perspective. The New Yorker — darn their blue-state hides! — still has the best writing around, and Gopnik is always worth a read. His conclusion:

Whether one agrees with Jefferson that this man [Jesus] lived, taught, and died, or with St. Paul that he lived and died and was born again, it is hard not to prefer him to the Jesus of the new Gospel, with his stage laughter and significant winks and coded messages. Making Judas more human makes Jesus oddly less so, less a man with a divine and horrible burden than one more know-it-all with a nimbus. As metaphor or truth, we’re sticking with the old story. Give us that old-time religion—but, to borrow a phrase from St. Augustine, maybe not quite yet.

Is the Gospel of Judas "Troubling"?

All right. Here we go *sigh* with another Gnostic Gospel alert. Now the publication today of the Gospel of Judas is providing tons of grist for the junk-scholarship mill. Here's what the NYT has to say about this and other Gnostic Gospels:

As the findings [of Gnostic gospels] have trickled down to churches and universities, they have produced a new generation of Christians who now regard the Bible not as the literal word of God, but as a product of historical and political forces that determined which texts should be included in the canon, and which edited out.

For that reason, the discoveries have proved deeply troubling for many believers. The Gospel of Judas portrays Judas Iscariot not as a betrayer of Jesus, but as his most favored disciple and willing collaborator.

The utter inability of the NYT to understand the import of this discovery is just amazing. Although elsewhere in the article, the authors seem to grasp that this "gospel" is a product of the second or third century AD/CE, they push the idea that somehow it provides information about the first century AD/CE and the historical Jesus.

And then the idea that some gospels were "edited out" of the canon — ! I run into this idea all the time among the uneducated, but to find the American newspaper of record buying into it is just annoying. Do they get all their information from Dan Brown?

I suppose it bears repeating: (1) none of the Gnostic gospels, which date from at least a century after the time of Christ, have any credible claim to provide evidence about the historical Jesus; (2) none of the early New Testament canons ever included any gnostic Gospels, therefore those Gospels could not have been "edited out"; (2) any theological perspective held by grown-ups on the formation of the canon should be able to accommodate both the governing hand of God and the presence of "historical and political forces."

Sigh.

Tyler's April Seal

Ha! Tyler Williams has a great April Fool's joke here. Good one!

Unfortunately, this post will probably linger on in cyberspace as a real discovery and eventually make its way into a Wikipedia article. Caveat lector.

A Token of Donne

Today is the feast day in the Anglican Communion of John Donne, priest, who, besides his accomplishments in divinity, was (on his good days) a poet the equal of Shakespeare. Celebrate his day by reading "The Token."

Pot in the Bible?

In answer to a question from Michael Gilleland:

1. There is no credible evidence that the etymology of cannabis (Latin "hemp") is connected to Hebrew קנה בשם qeneh bosem (Exodus 30:23), literally "reed of sweet spice."

2. The best guess as to the identity of qeneh bosem, an ingredient in the incense used in the tabernacle, is that it was lemon grass (Cymbopogon citratus). (See the entry in Immanuel Löw's Flora der Juden, 1924-34.) Nobody knows for sure.

3. There is no evidence that Jesus used cannabis, marijuana, hemp, lemon grass, qeneh bosem, kalamos euodes (the Greek translation of qeneh bosem), or any compound of spices or incense in the process of healing, contrary to recent sensationalistic claims.

4. The only mentions of kalamos in the New Testament (Matt 11:7; 12:20; 27:29-30, 48; Mark 15:19, 36; Luke 7:24; 3 John 1:13; Rev 11:1; 21:15-16) are in the meaning "reed" or "pen." Kannabis is not mentioned in the NT.

5. The only unmistakable reference to Cannabis sativa that I can find in Hebrew or Aramaic are some obscure vocabulary items in Syriac: qanpa (obviously a loan from kannabis) and tanuma. (Courtesy of the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon.) These words are not used in the Peshitta (Syriac Bible). Qanpa is used in the late Syriac Ahiqar texts to refer to "ropes of hemp" (tunbei de-qanpa). They were weaving it, not smoking it. (Later: Sorry, I overlooked the Hebrew word qanbes — again a clear loan from kannabis and not the other way around — found in the Mishnah to mean "hemp." Again in the contexts in which it appears [Kilaim 2:5; 5:8; 9:1,7; Negaim 11:2], it refers to a material for making clothing or other household objects, not an ingredient of incense or healing.]

6. QED: Neither British tabloids nor Wikipedia are reliable sources of information.

If you don't like the weather ...

Yesterday we had a big snowstorm, today it is bright and cloudless. It's time to bring out the old cliché, "If you don't like the weather in Cincinnati, just wait a few minutes." This particular meme, so beloved around here as a "local saying," I have heard in all of the many places I have lived. A quick Google search reveals the following exact quotes for this "local saying":

If you don't like the weather in Texas... Just blink!

If You Don't Like The Weather in Chicago. wait a minute.

If you don't like the weather in Michigan, wait five minutes.

Mark Twain wrote, "If you don't like the weather in New England, just wait a few minutes."

And remember, if you don't like the weather in St. Louis, just wait ten minutes.

Yup, if you don't like the weather in Texas, wait five minutes -- it'll change!

If you don't like the weather in Melbourne, just wait five minutes.

If you don't like the weather in Washington, well, just wait a minute.

If you don't like the weather in Boston, just wait a minute.

Will Rogers once quipped, "If you don't like the weather in Oklahoma, wait a minute and it'll change."

If you don't like the weather in Missouri just wait 5 minutes.

"If you don't like the weather in Buffalo, wait five minutes." Famous quote from past resident Mark Twain.

If you don't like the weather in the Sierra…wait a minute"

Everybody knows that if you don't like the weather in British Columbia, all you have to do is to wait five minutes.

If you don't like the weather in Florida, stick around for a few minutes, it'll change.

I guess it's true what they say here "if you don't like the weather in Utah, wait 20 minutes".

If you don't like the weather in North Carolina, wait a day.

We also say, 'If you don't like the weather in Scotland, then hang around for twenty minutes'.

I wonder ... do they haul out this "local saying" in Europe as well? Are there French or German equivalents? And what did Mark Twain really say?

A Champion Once Again

I was fortunate enough to be selected a member of the Spelling Bee team at the company I work for, and yesterday we won the Literacy Network of Greater Cincinnati's 16th Annual Scripps Spelling Bee for Literacy. The full story is here. Yeah, baby! No, the LPK team did not wear costumes.

The last time I did anything like this was in 1967, when I won the Austin (Tx.) Junior High School spelling championship. Nice to know that I still got the mojo. And big-time props to my teammates, Bev and Al.

Below is a picture of me giving the black-power salute (after spelling alepidote), while Al Hidalgo looks on wonderingly.

Skinny-Dipping and the Fate of Nations

The death of John Profumo — a figure likely forgotten by many today — is big with biblical echoes. Profumo was a Conservative cabinet member in the British government in 1963, and was brought down by a sex scandal involving call-girl Christine Keeler. The NYT reports:

She [Keeler] was 19. He was 48. As the story went, he first caught sight of her climbing naked out of a swimming pool.

For those, like myself, who view the world as a vast biblical commentary, the story of Profumo is a gloss upon the sin of David and Bathsheba. 2 Sam. 11:2-4:

Now when evening came David arose from his bed and walked around on the roof of the king's house, and from the roof he saw a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful in appearance. So David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, "Is this not Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?" David sent messengers and took her, and when she came to him, he lay with her.

All of which is an illustration of the observation, first enunciated in ancient wisdom literature, which may be paraphrased as follows:

The whiskey glass
and the female ass
have brought many men
to a sorry pass.

It is also a biblical principle, however, that that is not necessarily the end of the story. I will assume that the later story of David is well-known to most of my readers. The later story of Profumo, on the other hand, was news to me. The NYT story notes that "after his fall ... he turned to charitable work among the poor in the hardscrabble East End of London":

But there was another side of the story: redemption. By working in the East End, washing dishes, tending alcoholics, Mr Profumo's friends said, he paid his dues. Lord Deedes, a friend, told the BBC today: "He atoned for his mistakes and I think will, on death, receive his reward for that."

RIP.

A New Book on the Gospels by Garry Wills

Fr. Edward T. Oakes has a review here of a new book by Garry Wills, What Jesus Meant, which sounds interesting. I refer to Wills's book, not the sour review, which uses "crypto-Anglican" as a swear-word. Sounds like a compliment to me!

I've always liked Wills, and I particularly commend his Under God: Religion and American Politics. It sounds to me like Fr. Oakes finds Wills's Christianity a little too "mere" and not Catholic (i.e., not papist) enough. But I'm glad to see that GW's theology has not moved leftwards at the same rate as his politics. If he (GW) wants to move over to Episcopalianism, we could use his help.

Girlish Confusion

Thanks to Targuman for this notice about Israel Drazin's version of Targum Onkelos. I have to mention that this paragraph mystifies me:

As Rabbi Drazin explained, Onkelos casts a light on the proper translation of texts elsewhere in the Bible. Thus in rendering Exodus 2:8, the ancient translator refers to Moses' sister Miriam as an almah, which Onkelos translates as "girl." The word is significant to Christians because Isaiah 7:14 speaks of an almah who "will become pregnant and bear a son"—a verse that Christians, rendering almah as "virgin," understand as referring to the Virgin Birth.

Wha'? Onkelos is written in Aramaic, the Hebrew Bible is written in, well, Hebrew. The word that Onkelos uses in Exodus 2:8 is uleymta, meaning "girl" in Aramaic, while the Hebrew text has almah. The word uleymta is the common word for "girl" in the dialect of Onkelos (it also commonly translates na'arah "girl, lass"), while almah is rather rare in Hebrew. and its exact nuance is disputed. Although the two words are cognates, this has no bearing on the meaning of any text in which almah appears, except as confirming that Onkelos (and Jonathan in Tg. Isa. 7:14) thought that almah meant "girl" in those texts. For what it is worth, Onkelos translates Hebrew betula, "virgin," by uleymta in Deut. 32:25. Nothing very conclusive comes out of all this.

If Rabbi Drazin expects people to pay attention to his book because of this kind of tittle-tattle, I imagine he is in for a disappointment.

Here and There

—There has appeared an interesting list of "100 best first lines from novels" here, and, in response, a list of "best last lines." I'll give it some thought, but I'm not sure I could better the first list (the second is still growing). I think I might add the opening sentence of Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye: "The first time I laid eyes on Terry Lennox he was drunk in a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith outside the terrace of the Dancers." And I would certainly add, from Tom Sawyer:

"Tom!"
No answer.

"Tom!"

No answer.

It's not a novel, but "Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres" from Caesar's Gallic War is a pretty famous opening.

—I finished my review of Ursula Schattner Rieser's L'araméen des manuscrits de la mer Morte. I am told that it will appear in the August 2006 issue of Journal for the Study of Judaism.

—I wanted to give a shout-out to Danny Zacharias for producing a nifty Unicode keyboard for Hebrew transliteration, available here. I used it in producing the review mentioned above; worked like a charm. Thanks, Danny.

Comic Books (ii): Marked

A while back I wrote about C. S. Lewis's expressed desire to write something about the Gospel story that avoided its "stained glass associations," in order to hear it fresh again. Most people would think, I imagine, that he succeeded in the Narnian Chronicles, at least partly by creating an entirely new world in which to place the story.

But what if you wanted to make the actual Gospel narratives live again? is there any way of avoiding 2000 years of "churchy" connotations while re-telling the gospel itself? Many have tried, few have succeeded. One of the best attempts in the 20th century was Dorothy Sayers's Man Born to be King, a series of radio plays broadcast in Britain during World War II and, in my opinion, one of the most moving of all modern re-tellings of the story of Christ. One reason that MBTBK succeeded where most (e.g.) Jesus movies fail is that it was written for a medium (the spoken voice) that avoids many of the pitfalls of over-familiar religious iconography. Even so, there was a lot of controversy at the time over Sayers's "irreverent" portrayal of Christ.

To my mind, Steve Ross's graphic novel Marked, a retelling of the Gospel of Mark, is another worthy attempt. Ross faced the same problem as Lewis and Sayers, with the additional burden of using a medium (line art) that could not avoid decisions about how or whether to re-use any of the conventions of Christian visual art. He dealt with this problem by putting the narrative in a modern-day setting that is yet not simply a portrayal of our world — the government is a quasi-fascistic Big-Brother entity, technology is everywhere, yet demon possession is common, and an exploitative religion works hand-in-glove with the authorities. Hence Ross dispenses with the need to be "historically accurate," while retaining certain features of the Gospel that are narratively important. He also is able to do something you can only do in comics, namely dispense almost totally with rendering background or scenery, foregrounding the action for narrative vitality, the characters moving and speaking most frequently against a white field or with only vaguely sketched buildings or landscape. This enables the story to seem timeless, yet to retain some minimum sense of place. This in itself is not unlike the biblical narrative, in which most action is foregrounded in similar fashion.

The plot is a combination of faithfulness to the overall shape of Mark's gospel combined with considerable freedom in details. As in the gospel, there is no nativity story, and the book ends as abruptly as Mark does (without the interpolated longer ending), with a resurrection but no resurrection appearances. His choice of "look" for Jesus is interesting. The traditional appearance is gone, replaced by a bald, vaguely Asian-looking guy. I like it. This panel is in the aftermath of the cleansing of the temple:


Actually, the Jesus-classic look does make an appearance later on, but as the aspect of Barabbas. I'm not sure what this is meant to convey; perhaps nothing more than Ross's desire to stand things on their heads. He plays around with traditional iconography without actually using it, or using it in different ways. At the Last Supper we are shown the interior of Jesus' cup, and it looks like the Host floating in a cup of wine. But the next panel shows us that it's the moon's reflection:

In the panels that follow, the cup falls and breaks while Jesus is arrested and beaten, while the moon continues to shine. There is nothing else besides this symbolism to correspond to the Words of Institution.

Ross also uses other icons that have some resonance, non-religious ones employed in religious ways. For instance, here is a scene from the Transfiguration, Jesus with Moses and Elijah.

And I don't think I'm too far off in seeing this trio not simply as Christ, Moses, and Elijah, but also Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Less effective is his employment of a clown — kind of a creepy one — as the angel at the tomb.

There is an interesting review and interview with Ross here at the SBL Forum. It reveals that Ross is an Episcopalian of the modernist variety, one among (regrettably) many in our denomination who seem to believe that the most valuable part of the catechism is the questions. This may account for the fact that his overall portrait of Jesus is lacking something commanding, authoritative, and royal — the Messiah of Marked doesn't quite understand what's happening to him. Not the impression one gets from the actual Gospel. But in general I really like what he's done, and the achievement, taken as a whole, is fresh and appealing. It has the potential to sneak past a lot of prejudice against the gospel narrative and set it before modern eyes as a story of Something new breaking into a world sadly in need of redemption.

Brokeback: a Chick Flick?

Brokeback Mountain is being touted as an issues film of the kind that divides red-staters from blue-staters, and is considered likely to raise the temperature on debates about gay marriage and other related issues.

I haven't seen it nor do I intend to. Not because of its theme, or because of its political subtext. No, I'm avoiding Brokeback because it sounds like a chick movie. Consider: a movie about "relationships," with passions running high, emotions oozing all over the place, and at the center of it two hunky guys displaying all the "googly feelings" (my wife's phrase) that women wish their husbands and boyfriends would emit on a more regular basis. You think that Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal are going to show up on testosterone-fueled venues like SportsCenter or The Man Show? Unlikely; but they've already been on Oprah, the primary cultural authority on all things womanly in our land. And who wrote the original story? Yep, a woman. This is not a movie about gay men as much as it is a wish-fulfillment movie about men for women.

As for me, when I go to a cowboy movie, there better be lots of shooting (with guns), and hopefully the bad guy will wind up getting killed (guess I better not say "blown away"). Throw in some Indians, too, and if the love that dare not speak its name wants to be there, it can buy a ticket like the rest of us.

So, you ladies enjoy yourselves. Hey, what time's the Super Bowl?

Comic Books (i): Comics as Narrative

I'm a big fan of comic books, and I've bored many people by trying to convince them that comic books/sequential art/graphic novels are, or can be, high art in the same realm of creativity as books, drama, or films.

As narrative, books have one drawback, in that so much has to be described — the appearance of characters, the landscape, the setting. The writer has a lot of leeway in how much to describe; he can be impressionistic or very detailed, and a good writer can make these passages part of the whole experience. But some immediacy is necessarily lost, and the narrative flow is always in danger when description has to happen.

Films have the opposite drawback; although they are the most intense art form in terms of immediacy, they are unable to portray easily anything "below the surface" — characters' thoughts, back stories, necessary background info. They don't have to describe characters: there they are. But what are they thinking? That's one reason, I think, why "great books," which depend so much on the depth of information provided, often make poor movies. Only the principal actual events can be transferred to film (and this is my big beef with the Lord of the Rings movies — marvelous spectacle, but so much of the feeling of the "dark backward and abysm of time" and the historical texture of Middle-Earth was lost).

Graphic storytelling can evade both of these problems. The comics have always been closely linked to film in the way "shots" are set up, angles and perspectives shifted and varied, and color variations used as signifiers. But they're also linked to literature by the employment of the written word, which gives them a possible depth unmatched by film. We can tell what people are thinking, and this is a good thing to know for lots of stories; but we don't have to stop for 5 paragraphs for a description of the protagonist's clothes, or how the clouds looked that day.

Plus, to a degree unmatched either in literature or film, the reader can control the pace of the story. With a movie, you are in the director's hands, and you will see the story unfold at his rate, not yours. With a book, you can stop or slow down, or go back to repeat a scene, but there are no visual landmarks (e.g., "where was that conversation that, it now seems clear, provided crucial information for the scene now unfolding? Chapter 10 or Chapter 12?" or "wait, I thought John was the father, not the brother ... where's the place he was talking about the family?"). With comics, you can slide up and down the temporal scale with greater ease just by flipping back. (Of course, with DVDs, the experience of movie-watching is changing.)

Comics also have the advantage over movies of being able to engage in first-person narration. Movies do attempt this occasionally, as in High Fidelity with John Cusack (a pretty faithful version of Nick Hornby's book); but of necessity, the action has to stop while the actor actually addresses the camera (as Cusack did) or relies on voice-overs. But in comics, the first-person "voice" comes through the written word; when combined with the visuals, it works pretty well, as in Harvey Pekar's American Splendor. (The movie, however, perforce had to become a movie about Pekar instead of a narration by Pekar. It worked as a movie, but was semiotically different than the comic book original.)

Of course, comics themselves have drawbacks. They have to be physically bigger than pure literature, so that the illustrations can have a proper impact; for practical reasons this tends to limit their size and length. (Jeff Smith's wonderful Bone, which I recommend to all lovers of fantasy, is the size of a telephone book.) Also, purely by the accidents of history, they have been associated with juvenile literature — superheroes, etc. Personally, I still enjoy the pure super hero comic (especially Brian Bendis's Ultimate Spiderman); but there are abundant signs that the genre is beginning to transcend its origins, even when it doesn't necessarily break away from them. (Alan Moore's Watchmen is a prime example.)

All of this is by way of introduction to a discussion of Steve Ross's graphic novel version of the Gospel of Mark, Marked, which I hope to talk about in my next post.

Past Watchful Dragons

I see from a recent catalog that there are several new books about the Chronicles of Narnia coming out. Well, let a thousand flowers bloom, as Mao once said; but I've always been a little amused by the number of books that are published "explaining" C.S. Lewis, that clearest of writers. Those who want to understand CSL are better off reading him than any of his commentators, however worthy.

I'll make two exceptions to that generalization, at least as far as Narnia books are concerned. One is Paul Ford's Companion to Narnia, which is very informative and a fun read in itself (the author was a classmate of mine at Fuller in the 'seventies); and the other is Walter Hooper's Past Watchful Dragons (1979), now apparently out of print (and drawing outrageously high prices on the used-book sites). Hooper's book should have been read by the media types who talked loosely (and complainingly) about the "Christian allegory" in the Narnia movie. He quotes Lewis deftly on the subjects of allegory and symbolism, explaining the differences, and adds some value for Lewis-readers by incorporating some of Lewis's unpublished material (including a longish draft of what was to become The Magician's Nephew).

Hooper's title comes from something Lewis wrote about his purposes in writing the Chronicles.

I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past certain inhibitions which had paralyzed much of my own religion in childhood. Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or about the sufferings of Christ?

I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. An obligation to feel can freeze feelings. And reverence itself did harm. The whole subject was associated with lowered voices, almost as if it were something medical. But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday school associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I thought one could.

Unfortunately, for Christians and non-Christians both, Narnia is itself rapidly acquiring its own "Sunday school associations" (something that Hooper saw might happen and warned against) and the media dragons were out in full force, determining that no "religious Right" propaganda should pass unscathed. Hopefully there are more Christian artists out there who can make new stories that are dragon-resistant.

Women and Blogging Redux

Stephen Carlson calls attention here to the question of women and blogging in the legal profession. Ann Althouse also has a post on the same topic and prompted by the same article. Those who have followed the discussion about women and biblioblogging will note the similarities in the issues raised and the lack of clarity about what to "do" about the problem.

Abraham and Isaac

Long ago, in a far-away country, there lived a very old man named Abraham. He was so old that he was bent over with age and shuffled when he walked; and his long white beard nearly touched the ground.

This Abraham was known far and wide for his faith in God. He had never disobeyed the divine voice, even when it told him to do things contrary to all reason. Because of this Abraham was a special favorite of God.

Another remarkable thing about Abraham was that, old as he was, he had a little son. Isaac, as he was called, was his father's pride and joy. Whenever Abraham saw Isaac playing, his old legs wanted to caper with him and his wrinkled old face creased even more with laughter.

One night, after everyone had gone to bed, Abraham heard the Divine Voice again....

The next morning Abraham looked even older and his beard whiter than ever. He called his son Isaac and said to him, "We must make a journey to the mountain of God. And there we must make a sacrifice."

Isaac's eyes shone with pleasure. "And am I to go too, father?"

"Yes," said Abraham, "you must come with me."

Isaac ran, beaming, to tell the servants to make ready for a journey. And Abraham's legs this time did not ache to run with him.

The mountain of God was not far from their home, but Abraham's shuffling gait made the journey last several days. But at last, no matter how slowly the old man walked, they saw the mountain of God before them.

"Stay here," Abraham told the servants, "and we will come back by and by."

Isaac's heart was bursting with excitement and with love for his old father. But oh, how slowly the old man went up the mountain!

"Father," said Isaac, "where is the lamb for the sacrifice?"

"It is waiting for us on top of the mountain." And the two of them walked on together.

Finally, they reached the flat summit of the mountain of God, where the altar was. There Abraham made ready the wood, unsheathed the knife, and set a burning branch near him to light the sacrifice.

Then he turned to his son, fingering the knife with his gnarled fingers. And Isaac looked into Abraham's eyes; and despite his love, he was afraid.

But, with a sigh, Abraham lowered the knife. "No," he said, "this cannot be done. Without you, I cannot live."

Then he raised his eyes to heaven. "And without You, I cannot live."

He sighed again. "Therefore, O Lord, I beseech thee — let old Abraham die in Isaac's place. Do You need a sacrifice? Take me instead.

"But know this, oh my Heavenly Father — I cannot and will not harm the boy."

Isaac stared, astonished, as his old father began to try to climb up on the altar, and then he rushed forward to try to pull him down and off the stones. They struggled together weakly, the old man and the little boy, both of them weeping. Suddenly the Divine Voice filled the air around them, and they became still.

"Abraham," it said. "You have passed the test."

Then a great light shone around them, dazzling their eyes; and so great was the weight of that light that they were unable to stand and fell on their knees; but their hearts were filled with joy.

When the echoes of the Voice died away and their eyes had regained their sight and their legs had regained their strength, the father and the son rose and saw before them a slaughtered lamb burning on the altar. The two of them held hands and watched it for a little while, listening to the pop of the burning branches and the hiss of burning flesh. Then, turning around, they made their way down the mountain in peace.

UPDATE (1/9): I wrote this piece years ago and I don't remember the thought process that led up to it or any other concomitant circumstances. Therefore in a sense I read it as a stranger. But I am sure that I had no desire to set up my story as replacing the biblical one or as a negative comment on it. Rather I see it as a midrash, written by a man who loves his children dearly and whose faith is minuscule compared to Abraham's. What would happen to such a man who was tested as Abraham was? The answer — so I feign — is that God might still accept such a man, even in his failure, by receiving what he is able to give (love for his offspring and the desire, if not the ability, to obey God) and by supplying the sacrifice that the "unfaithful believer" (or the "disobedient servant") is not able to give.

I appreciate the comments, both complimentary and critical. Certainly I intended no irreverence. Looking back on the story, my main criticism is that it is too sentimental, a fault that the biblical writer avoided while remaining sensitive to the human emotions of his protagonists. Now there was a writer!

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.

Metafembiblioblogging, and a Dream

In my post "What Should We Talk About?" I asked, in passing, "Why are there so few female bibliobloggers?" and this casual question actually ignited more responses than the rest of the post. Mark Goodacre suggests that the answer lies in a lethal "combination between the male-dominated academy and the nerdy, geeky male electronic world." Loren Rosson suggests that one component is that blogging feeds the male ego. A commenter on Loren's site suggests that in fact it is because "blogging itself is ambivalently recieved [sic] by the academic community ... Putatively, if women must work harder to get jobs and tenure in the academcy [sic], why would a (hypothetical) academic female 'waste' time writing a blog instead of a peer-reviewed article when the latter will likely advance her career more readily?" An anonymous female commenter on Mark's site asks, "I am confused about why you think the world needs more female bibliobloggers though. What is the significance of the female aspect? Is it just to make the stats look better? So there is someone there to cover feminism?" Several commenters (male and female) have suggested that females are too busy doing other useful things to waste time blogging, which begs a lot of questions.

My answer? Beats me. The answer probably lies in a combination of factors that "over-determine" the relative dearth of female bibliobloggers. I think this could be an interesting topic to explore at SBL though, and as we've already seen, the topic leads into many other useful topics such as "why blog?" and the role of blogging in academia in general. Hopefully opinions will be forthcoming from the audience as well as from the dead-white-male panel. Oh, wait, we're not dead. OK, just white male.

Speaking of female bloggers, I recommend to you this post from the Pilgrim. It may or may not be relevant to this topic but her experience is worth pondering.

And speaking of bloggers in general and Mark Goodacre in particular, Mark had the temerity to make an appearance last night in a long and complicated dream of mine. At one point I was suddenly sharing the back of a taxicab with Mark (whom I've never met) as we drove down Oxford's High Street (where I've never been).

I asked Mark, "So why did you take the job at Duke instead of taking a job at Oxford?"

He took a long drag on his cigarette and regarded me coolly from behind his dark glasses. "Because," he said, "only the chef is allowed to enter the kitchen."

Which makes a whole lot of sense, when you think about it.

Stanislav Segert (1921-2005)

Yesterday Bill Schniedewind of UCLA emailed with the sad news that UCLA's Prof. Stanislav Segert, the great scholar of the North-West Semitic languages, and my own venerated teacher and Doktorvater, died yesterday after a short hospitalization. He was 84.

Segert was the last great grammarian of the Semitic languages in the polymathic European tradition of Dillmann, Brockelmann, and Noeldeke. He is perhaps best known in the US for his textbook Basic Grammar of the Ugaritic Language (1984), but in my opinion his finest work is his Altaramäische Grammatik (1975). He also wrote a fundamental Grammar of Phoenician and Punic (1976). Besides these works he wrote still unpublished grammars of Syriac and Biblical Aramaic for classroom use.

His hundreds of articles include many on the Qumran texts, and dozens more on aspects of Ugaritic studies. His study of the language of the Moabite stone ("Die Sprache der moabitischen Königinschrift," Archiv Orientalni, 1961) is still the best survey of that dialect.

Not only was Segert a great scholar, he was a great gentleman. His erudition was exceeded only by his courtesy, and any suggestion of scholarly hostility or odium theologicum caused him great pain. When someone in class once mentioned to him the falling out that had taken place between two European archaeologists, his only comment was, "Ah! Let us hope that no very great time will pass until they will once again be friends." His epitaph might well be: He died without enemies.

After Samuel Johnson died in 1784, William Hamilton wrote, "He has made a chasm which not only nothing can fill up, but which nothing has a tendency to fill up. Johnson is dead. Let us go to the next best. There is nobody; no man can be said to put you in mind of Johnson."

The same is true of Segert. He is gone, and he is irreplaceable. His books and articles remain for those to learn from who will; I will continue to study them, but even more than these, I will treasure the memory of his kindness and gentleness. As both a scholar and a man, he was a giant.


BIBLIOGRAPHY: Further biographical details and a full bibliography through 1989 can be found in the Festschrift Sopher Mahir: Northwest Semitic Studies Presented to Stanislav Segert (Eisenbrauns, 1990).

UPDATE (10/3): Jim Davila has added a personal tribute to Prof. Segert.

What Should We Talk About?

There's a biblioblogging session coming up in Philadelphia at the AAR-SBL meeting, as a session of the Computer Assisted Research Group. Two papers will be given, by Jim Davila and Rick Brennan. Then follows 80 minutes of panel discussion by 5 (or is it 6?) panel members, of which I am one.

What should we talk about?

We'll introduce ourselves, I imagine, and say a few words about our blogs. We will no doubt say some things about what Rick and Jim have said. What else should we talk about? Open (source) studies? Blogging and the nature of public scholarly discourse? Peer review? Blogging and conformity? How to kill time while waiting for Blogger to upload your post? What's better, news or opinion or baby pictures? Why are there so few female bibliobloggers? What's the point of it all? Who's your favorite team?

One thing I hope we don't talk about is the term "biblioblogger." There the term is, and we're stuck with it. And I hope we don't discuss "what is a biblioblogger," or the forgery scandal, or minimalism, or the historical Jesus, or what our desks look like, or which character from the Simpsons we are, or such worthy-but-irrelevant topics.

If each of us talks for 5-10 minutes about ourselves, that'll kill a lot of time. That could be good or bad.

I don't know. Got any ideas? Suggestions welcome.