March 17, 2010
Unbelievers In The Pulpit
Daniel Dennett and Linda LaScola have published an abnormally interesting paper, “Preachers who are not Believers.” Their sample is very small and self-selecting and therefore by their own admission far from sufficient to draw reliable generalizations. Perhaps the most interesting question that comes from their small group is the question of what it means for someone to be an nonbeliever.
The ambiguity about who is a believer and who a nonbeliever follows inexorably from the pluralism that has been assiduously fostered by many religious leaders for a century and more: God is many different things to different people, and since we can’t know if one of these conceptions is the right one, we should honor them all. This counsel of tolerance creates a gentle fog that shrouds the question of belief in God in so much indeterminacy that if asked whether they believed in God, many people could sincerely say that they don’t know what they are being asked. [emphasis added]
But that doesn’t mean that people will actually answer in this way. More likely, they will answer positively relying, consciously or unconsciously, on cover provided by the fog of theological pluralism.
Dennett has been talking about the interviews that form the foundation of this paper for some time. A few weeks ago, I posted a YouTube video of his lecture “The Evolution of Confusion” in which he discussed his work with LaScola.
Via Washington Post via Exploring Our Matrix
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Posted by Duane on Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 1:40 PM (UTC-08:00)
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March 16, 2010
Blood and Dust In Tempe
I spent all day yesterday from 11:30 am to 5:00 pm at the Pacific Coast Regional meeting of The Society of Biblical Literature. What I mean is that I left home at 6:00 am and returned home at 11:30 pm and in between I had lunch and attended two afternoon sessions of a two-day meeting at Arizona State University in Tempe. Why I was unable to attend the whole shebang is a story of another day.
I did give a short presentation called “Blood and Dust: Listening for Sommer’s ‘Echo’ in Akkadian and Hebrew Texts.” I’ll have more to say about that later. But the presentation did not represent my first experience with blood and dust at Arizona State University. In the parking lot, I turned to someone who was also prepaying his parking fee at an adjacent machine to ask if he could direct me to the Social Sciences building. As I turned, I tripped over a curb and fell into an unpaved area skinning my elbow to the point that it bled rather profusely and getting myself covered with dust. Not a great way to start a conference.
While I attended the last section of Chris Heard’s Hebrew Bible sessions, the real trouble didn’t start until Brad E. Kelle’s “Neo-Assyrian Insights On Ancient Israel And The Hebrew Bible” session. Two elements stood out about this session. First, there were only ten or eleven people in attendance. Of these, five were on the program. This included Brad. One of the others was an associate of someone on the program. It was, after all, the last session of the conference but I had thought the catchy subject matter would bring out in the masses. Second, it wasn’t clear to me that any of the four presentations were really about things Neo-Assyrian. The presentations were short, supposedly 10 minutes max, with the focus on research directions. The goal - largely fulfilled, either despite or because of the small group - was to provide time for more than the usual amount of discussion.
Christopher Hays discussed and illustrated “New Online Resources for the Study of the Ancient Near East.” Both Chris’ remarks and the larger discussion of various academic and economical constraints on the pace of the development of online resources were abnormally interesting if a little discouraging. It seems that for good reasons (or should I say “bad reasons”), only a few, long tenured, full professors and some graduated students are willing to even consider involvement in many online publication projects.
Michael S. Moore’s presentation, “Wealth Watch: Intertextual Analysis of the Joseph Novella (Gen 37-47) alongside Gilgamesh and Atrahasis” lacked any noticeable Neo-Assyrian element. He made it a point that by Gilgamesh he was referring to the Standard Babylonian (SB) Gilgamesh. His paper discussed the use of economic considerations in the interpretation of ancient texts. Abnormally interesting stuff.
In part because of some amazing animation and in part because of its intellectual content, Thomas Levy’s presentation, “Recent Iron Age Archaeological Data from the Assyrian Periphery - New Insights from the Faynan Copper Ore District, Jordan” engendered the most discussion. But despite the title, Levy told us that there really isn’t any direct evidence for Assyrian activity in the Faynan Copper Ore District. So much for Neo-Assyrian insights. The bottom line, there is evidence for rather large scale copper smelting in the Faynan region of Jordon from at least late Bronze Age and continuing well into the Iron Age. That means there is evidence of copper smelting in the 10th century BCE. Does this also mean that Levy’s work supports Biblical claims concerning Solomon’s mines? Not necessarily. But it sure raises the possibility.
And then there was some bloody dusty guy who worried about a methodological question concerning echoes of Akkadian literature and culture in the Hebrew Bible. The example he used was from a Babylonian, not Assyrian, ritual. Should you have nothing better to do for a few minutes you can read those remarks. I was quite happy with the response. Chris Hays directed me to one of his papers that dealt with the same topic. I’m a little embarrassed that I wasn’t aware of Chris’ paper. While I don’t think it would have alleviated my concerns, I would have structured my remarks in a somewhat different way. Chris’ paper is “Echoes of the Ancient Near East? Intertextuality and the Comparative Study of the Old Testament,” in The Word Leaps the Gap: essays on Scripture and theology in honor of Richard B. Hays, J. Ross Wagner, C. Kavin Rowe and A. Katherine Grieb eds (Grand Rapids, Mich: William B. Eerdmans Pub., 2008), 20-43. Now that sure sounds like something I should have known about. One of the reasons I try to present at these events is to mitigate the isolation that is part of being an amateur. I appreciate the ability to interact with and learn from the professionals. While this time that opportunity was shorter and bloodier than I would have liked, I did enjoy it.
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Posted by Duane on Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 1:49 PM (UTC-08:00)
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March 14, 2010
The American People Think, The American People Believe, The American People Want
I’m rather sick of hearing from both sides of every issue what the American people think, believe, or want. In general, I don’t care what the American people think, believe, or want. In those cases where I do care what the American people think, believe, or want, I’d much rather learn about it from properly sampled and constructed polls than from salespeople politicians. But I do care about what our politicians think, believe, and want. I like hearing that. But I'd like to hear more about why they think and want these things without being told that their thoughts and desires are aligned with the thoughts and desires of the majority of the American people. I suspect that they aren’t.
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Posted by Duane on Sunday, March 14, 2010 at 9:05 AM (UTC-08:00)
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March 13, 2010
A Snake (Text) Stew
I’m finishing up my work on VAT 5, one of those Akkadian prayers. I’ve written before about this prayer against the evil of a snake. In the course of my research, I came across 80-7-19 rev:2’-15’. Richard Caplice published it in 1967. Unlike VAT 5, which contains only a prayer, 80-7-19 has a complete Namburbi ritual. Below is an abbreviated score of a few lines from both texts. I’m using VAT 5 as the baseline. VAT 5:16-21 is text A and across 80-7-19 rev: 7-10 is text B. For a couple of the lines I provide only the translation of text A but I translate both text A and Text B for most of them. Remember, this is from the petition portion of the prayer. In both cases an invocation precedes these lines and a conditional praise follows them. The petition of Text B goes on for several lines after the last line reproduced here. Text A has a personal identification section that text B lacks.
A) ina ḪUL MUŠ šá ina É-ia
B) n]am-da-ru ḪUL MUŠ an-ni-i
A) On account of the evil of a snake which in my house
B) [I am in f]ear (ana-ku at-ta-nam-da-ru) of the evil of this snake
A) [ ]IGI-ru-ma bu-ru
B) [ ] bu-ú-ru
A) proceeds to hunt
B) [which] hunts [in my house]
A) DÙ-šú a-mu-ru-ma
B) DÙ-šú-ma
I saw.
A) pal-ḫa-ku ad-ra-ka
B) [ ]-ra-ka
I am in fear, anxiety
A) u šu-ta-du-<ra->ku ina ḪUL BI
B) u šu-ta-du-ra-ku / [ ḪU]L-šú
A) and constantly frightened. From this evil
B) and constantly frightened. May this evil
A) šu-ti-qa-an-ni-ma
B) ana UGU-ia a-a TE-a
A) save me!
B) not approach near me.
All this looks like it could be from the same prayer with but minor variations. But, and this is an important but, while both are addressed to Shamash, the remainder of the two prayers is quite different. Sure, they have a couple of other stock phrases in common but in different places and in differing orders.
Here’s Caplice’s translation of the prayer in 80-7-19 rev:2’-15’.
[Incantation: Šamaš gui]de of the black-headed folk,
. . . [who brou]ght every[thing into existence,]
. . . [whose co]mmand is unchangeable,
[whose assent] no [god] can alter,
[judge my case], render my decision!
[I am in]fear of the evil of this snake
[which] hunts [in my house],so that
[I am afraid,] frightened and terrified
. . . May its evil not approach me, may it not come near,
may it not press (upon me), may it not affect me!
[May the evil of this [snake] be 3600 miles distant from my person!
Avert from me [its evil], that I may sing your praise
. . . and those who look upon me may forever
(bless] you, Šamaš. Thus you recite three times.
Compare this with my tentative translation or VAT 5 (I would translate some of it somewhat differently today) and you’ll see that despite considerable similarity they are different prayers. Do they have a common predecessor? If so, is it discoverable? What are the markers? How much should we worry when we face an ancient text from a single source that it is part of a stew of likely related texts? When we see scattered commonalities between texts, should we think of intertextuality? Or should we only think of a textual stew?
Update: I forgot to mention that there are of the order of a dozen Akkadian Namburbi texts that deal with the evil of a snake. Of those, the prayers in VAT 5 and 80-7-19 have the most in common.
Reference:
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Posted by Duane on Saturday, March 13, 2010 at 4:05 PM (UTC-08:00)
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March 12, 2010
Jeffery Oicles Is Gone
March 3 was worse than I had thought. I just got word from his sister that my old friend Jeff Oicles also died that day. Jeff was my best friend in elementary school and much of high school. I often spent more time as his house than at my own. After high school, he went to UCLA and I went USC but we still saw each other often. We were groomsmen at each other’s wedding. But life pulled us in divergent directions until we reached the point that Christmas cards and very rare lunches were all that remained of our relationship. Well, they were almost all that remained of our relationship. We both had vivid memories of our childhood and youth that bound us together in ways that time and distance could not destroy.
We were good, if geeky, kids. But that didn’t keep us out of trouble. For a couple of years Jeff and I shared a locker that was next to the classroom door of a teacher that we didn't know or like. Worse, she didn’t know or like us. We thought her an old, senile, paranoid and mean-spirited snitch which rhymes with b . . . From my current perspective, my guess she was in her forties. Considering what went in and out of our locker, she occasionally had good reason to question us, on one occasion a very good reason indeed.
Jeff’s father had an impressive antique gun collection including several mussel-loading matchlocks. Most of them were in working order and, once in a while, he would take us out to the desert to shot them. But a pistol, I’m not sure what kind, had a broken something in its firing mechanism. Jeff was taking metal shop at the time. In those days and at our school even so-called college bound students took one year of shop. Jeff got permission from the shop teacher to bring the broken gun to class to see if he could fabricate a replacement part as a class project. And, of course, before class, Jeff needed to put the gun somewhere. So he put it in our locker. The “old, senile, paranoid, mean-spirited snitch” saw him do it. The next thing I knew the Boy’s Vice Principal called me out of my first period class for a little visit. In my naivety, I had no idea why he summoned me but such visits were never good news. To the best of my memory, here is how the conversation went.
“Do you know there is a gun in your locker?”
“Yes.”
“Is it yours?
“No.”
“Is it Jeff’s?”
“Not exactly.”
“Why did he bring it?”
“To fix a problem in metal shop.”
I sensed the interview was not going well.
About this time, Jeff shows up in the company of the Principal and the gun. Jeff is trying to explain that the gun is dysfunctional but he hopes to be able to fix it in metal shop and that the shop teacher knows all about it. At that point, they summoned the shop teacher. He confirmed everything that Jeff and I had said. By then it was nearly lunchtime and we had missed two thirds of the day. Worse, Jeff had missed medal shop and was therefore deprived, for the time being, of the opportunity to turn a useless steel object into the dangerous weapon the administration and the snitch feared. They gave the gun over to the care of the shop teacher with instructions to look after it as long as it was at school. If I remember correctly, Jeff was unable to complete the project and had to do something else because of issues having to do with hardening of the newly fabricated part.
Looking back at this episode with the perspective of over fifty years and the specter of the results of students bringing guns to school, it is a wonder that no further disciplinary action was taken and that Jeff was allowed to attempt his project. As only teenage boys would think, we saw the whole thing as much to do about nothing. After all, the gun was broken and, even if it weren’t, we had no ammunition at school. What was the big deal we wondered? To which we answered, but only to each other, the big deal was the “old, senile, paranoid, mean-spirited snitch.”
And then there was the time that we got permission to take a day off from school to work on a science fair project at the beach. But that is another story involving a run-in with a different set of authorities. Suffice it to say that in those days people took truancy more seriously than they did guns. It's a good thing we had a note from the Principal.
We had lots of fun growing up. It is with great fondest that I remember those days spent with Jeff and his family. At least Jeff’s death will give me the chance to catch up with his sister Kathy and brother Gerard.
Those were the days.
Update, March 14, 2010:
There’s an excellent obituary for Jeff in the San Diego Union Tribune.
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Posted by Duane on Friday, March 12, 2010 at 2:00 PM (UTC-08:00)
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March 10, 2010
A Disconnected Ramble On God And King
Do two lines found together only in SST 60 and SST 61 from Sultantepe refer to gods, people, or both? Here are those two lines, 25a and b, with their immediate context (Line numbers refer the position of the lines in the most compete witness to the this text and not to either of SST tablets).
24) šutlimmamma egirrê dunqi
25a) ilu u šarru lišāq[irui]nni
25b) kabtu u rubû ša qabî[ya] lipuš
26) ina ulṣi u rīšātilūbbil ūmū
Grant me good outcomes.
May god and king esteem me.
May the influential and the noble respect what I say.
In pleasure and rejoicing may I spend my days.
Lines 25a and b stand in place of the single line 25, ina sūqi lû magir qabûa, “In the street, may my speech be acceptable,” that we find, with minor variations, in the other witnesses to this prayer to Shamash.
Three factors indicate that lines 25a and b are analyzable as a self-contained unit: 1) the likelihood that the lines following line 24 in all versions represent an unfolding of the desire for “good outcomes;” 2) the change in theme between line 25b and 26; and 3) the fact that lines 25a and b appear together as an alternative to line 25.
Occasionally and in some locations, ilu u šarru refers to a human king with divine attributes (CAD I-J, 92, 101). But note ilu u šarru liqbû damiqtī, “god and king bless me” (BMS 33:35, CAD I-J, 98) where both a god and a king (not just a kingly god or godly king) are intended. Kabtu and rubû can refer to gods, Ištar for example. But more commonly, they refer to influential persons. See for example, kabtum u rabûm mamman ša la ušaqqaranni ul ibašši, “there is no influential person or official who does not hold me in esteem” (TLB 4 22:29, CAD K 27). Note how our lines 25a and b make use of the same verbal roots as in BMS 33:35 and TLB 4 22:29 but reverse their subjects.
One might compare ilu u šarru to אלי מלכי in Ps 68:25[24] where there is no doubt that “my god, my king” refers to a god. On the other hand, expressions like ana šarri dšamšiya iliya ilâniya, “to the king, my sun, my god, my gods” in EA 151:1 and elsewhere from Amarna clearly refer to the Pharaoh of Egypt, to be sure, the divine Pharaoh of Egypt, but still the Pharaoh. And then there is the use of il // mlk at Ugarit cited by Dahood (KTU 1.6 I:35-36; KTU 1.108:1-2 [in reversed order] and less obviously in KTU 1.4 IV:47-48). In each of these cases, il is the god El. There are also repeated passages in KTU 1.3 (for example KTU 1.3 V 35:1-3) where Ba’al is installed as king. The personal Hebrew names אלימלך
If I must choose, I think the case for ilu u šarru, and kabtu u rubû in SST 60 and SST 61 referring to a human king and a class of high-ranking individuals is easier to make than the case that both lines refer to gods. Here is how I might try to make such a case. First, the language in the more common formulation of the prayer points to people rather than god or gods; the king and elites having been substituted for the people of the market place in the Sultantepe tablets. Second, the TLB 4 22:29 sentence, cited above, clearly indicates influential persons. Third, and here is where it gets tricky, the more common usage of kabtu u rubû meaning “influential persons,” at least indicates that its contextual parallel, ilu u šarru, may well apply to a king.
But because of the last step, this case is weak and depends on a very strong parallel association between lines 25a and b. But the parallel association between these two lines need not be strong for them still to be an analyzable unit. I think the plain reading of the text provides the strongest case. The first line, as a literal reading would suggest, simply refers to both a divine god, no matter how anthropomorphic, and a human king, no matter how divine, while the second line refers to influential individuals in a kind of four step decrescendo: god to king to the influential to the noble.
Reference:
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Posted by Duane on Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 10:15 AM (UTC-08:00)
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March 9, 2010
Another Reason For Health Care Reform
“I don't know. I'll just tell you this, if this passes and it's five years from now and all that stuff gets implemented -- I am leaving the country. I'll go to Costa Rica.” - Rush Limbaugh on the health care bill.
I do feel sorry for Costa Rica.
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Posted by Duane on Tuesday, March 9, 2010 at 8:02 PM (UTC-08:00)
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March 8, 2010
Specialized Interests Indeed
After summarizing the contents of several of the Sultantepe tablets, the Wikipedia article on Sultantepe ends with this curious sentence, “Other texts were of more specialised interest to the Assyriologist: rituals, incantations, omen readings, contracts and vocabulary lists.”
Among the tablets that the author(s) seem(s) to think deserving of a larger audience are the Enuma Elish tablet, the Gilgamesh school text, part of Ludul bêl nêmeqi, and a few others. These are indeed important tablets but aren’t rituals, incantations, omen readings, contracts and even vocabulary lists deserving of general interest. I worry that such artificial divisions between those tablets of broad interest and those of interest only to the Assyriologist just about guarantee that latter will not be read by Hebraists for example. To be sure, it is unreasonable to think that the author(s) should give summaries of every tablet from Sultantepe but to assign some of them en masse to the specialized interests of the Assyriologists seems to reflect a rather serious mistake in judgment. This artificial division supports the prejudices of some introverted scholars who study things other than Assyriology.
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Posted by Duane on Monday, March 8, 2010 at 7:09 AM (UTC-08:00)
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March 7, 2010
What To Do With A Ghost
Last night Shirley and I went to another free concert at Pomona College. The Pomona College Orchestra preformed four pieces ending with Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8 in G major, Op 88 (1889). The highlight of the evening was Anatolia Maya Evarkiou-Kaku’s flute solo performance of Georges Hüe’s “Fanaisie” (1923). Ms Evarkiou-Kaku’s wonderful solo made the entertaining if otherwise uneventful concert. It seems nearly compulsorily that every Pomona College concert premiere a work by Karl Kohn. Last night the orchestra preformed “Return” which Kohn wrote in 1990. Like my general view of Kohn’s work, I found that “Return” had great, amazing, wonderful moments and then it had other moments. I don’t want to be overly critical. Some of Kohn’s work I enjoy more than I do others. My opinion is strictly that, my opinion. Besides, while I don’t know them beyond their music, Professor Kohn and his wife sat to our right in the row in front of us and we will no doubt see them again next week.
But this post isn’t about music. It’s about ghosts and how to get rid of them. The first piece of the evening was Manuel de Falla’s “Ritual Fire Dance” (1915). The program told us this about “Ritual Fire Dance.”
A young Gypsy woman, Candélas, has fallen in love with Carmelo after being widowed by her unfaithful first husband. The ghost of the first husband continues to haunt the new couple, so in response, all of the Gypsy women build a bonfire and perform a ritual dance around it, summoning the ghost, with whom Candélas dances. As their movements accelerate, the ghost is drawn into the flames and destroyed. . .
The ghost is destroyed! No Mesopotamian ghost would put up with such treatment. Mesopotamian ghosts needed a decent and sometimes distant burial. The trick was to get them to adopt some object like a figurine as a physical body and then properly bury it. No self-respecting Mesopotamian ghost would allow himself to be worked up into such a frenzy that he would jump into a fire and be destroyed. But then, I guess the ghost of Candélas’ ex was not a Mesopotamian ghost.
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Posted by Duane on Sunday, March 7, 2010 at 9:33 AM (UTC-08:00)
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March 5, 2010
Robologues Do Euthyphro
Via Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog
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Posted by Duane on Friday, March 5, 2010 at 12:21 PM (UTC-08:00)
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