Posts
This will be a compound post, in which I combine two posts into one. The first one is my regular post about my Latin mass for the week. The second concerns my scholarly reading.
1. For Latin mass this morning, we had love-priest, and, to be honest, I don't remember much of what he said. It was probably because I couldn't sleep this morning and got up at 5 A.M., so I was a little dazed at church. The priest was talking about saints, since today is All Saints' Day. One of our readings was from the Book of Revelation: it was the passage about the 144,000. The priest said this doesn't mean there can only be 144,000 saints.
What is a saint in Catholicism? I know that Catholics believe saints are in heaven interceding for people, and that they usually had to live a pretty remarkable life to be declared saints by the church. There are patron saints, many of whom are in the Catholic books of saints. Yet, Catholicism also refers to the communion of saints, which implies that all Christians have that label.
In our bulletin, sainthood seemed to be presented as something all of us can have. As the saints behold the face of God, so will everyone who believes in Jesus. But those who believe also need to live a holy life, as the bulletin affirms: "Jesus clearly tells us what we must do to be counted among the saints. We must be poor in spirit, hungry for holiness, merciful, singlehearted, and peacemakers. Then we, too, will see the face of God." Yet, we're not to be discouraged if we're imperfect: "And while the days and our hearts may be dark, the readings today are bright with the light of faith."
Another topic that came up in the service was abortion and the health care debate. In our bulletin, there was a piece of paper urging us to lobby for amendments proposed in Congress that would bar federal funding for abortion and support conscience clauses. The priest spoke some about this from the pulpit. He said that the church is for health care reform but wants it to respect all life. I may call my elected officials this week about this. President Obama says that the health care package doesn't support abortion. Okay. Fine. We might as well back that up with amendments. And it's better to add amendments than to kill all health care reform over the abortion issue.
2. Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001) 267-268.
Tov talks about the substitution of "Bosheth" ("shame") for "Baal" ("lord") in the Hebrew Bible. I'll use the example of Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan.
According to many biblical scholars, many Israelite figures in the Bible had the word "Baal" in their name. Meribaal (Mephibosheth). Jerubbaal (another name for Gideon). Ishbaal, the son of Saul. At that point in time, Baal wasn't a bad word to the Israelites. It just meant "lord," and it could have been referring to the LORD God of Israel (see Hosea 2:16). Later, however, the name Baal became associated in Israelite minds with the pagan storm god, and so religious scribes didn't care for heroic characters carrying around that name. So they substituted "Bosheth" for "Baal." Tov points out that the two words appear in parallel in Jeremiah 11:13.
How do we know that such a substitution was made? According to Tov, we see the "Baal" names in the Chronicles passages that parallel I-II Samuel. As Tov states, "Even though Chronicles was composed after Samuel, in this particular case its manuscripts preserve earlier textual traditions." The substitution of "Bosheth" for "Baal" probably occurred at least in the first few centuries B.C.E., since the LXX for II Samuel doesn't have "Meribaal," but has "Mephibosthe."
Rabbinic literature seems to assume that Mephibosheth's name really was Mephibosheth, and it got changed to "Meribaal." According to Babylonian Talmud Erubim 53b, "Mephibosheth" in Hebrew means "from my mouth, humiliation" ("Me"---"from"; "phi"---"my mouth"; "bosheth"---"shame, humiliation"). Mephibosheth was called that because he was such a good scholar that he humiliated David when he expounded upon his learning. When Mephibosheth opened his mouth to teach or advise, David felt ashamed!
According to B.T. Shabbat 56b, Mephibosheth's name got changed to "Meribaal" when David was returning to Jerusalem after the defeat of Absalom. Mephibosheth's servant Ziba ditched Mephibosheth and slandered him to King David, so David gave Ziba Mephibosheth's estate. Later, Mephibosheth tells David that Ziba was lying about him, so David divides up the land between Mephibosheth and Ziba. In II Samuel 19, Mephibosheth lets Ziba keep the land, for he's just happy that David has returned safely. In B.T. Shabbat 56b, however, Mephibosheth initially complains about having to share his property with someone who slandered him. The text says (according to the translation on my Judaic Classics Library): I prayed, when wilt thou return In peace? Yet thou treatest me so. Not against thee have I resentment, but against Him who restored thee in peace! Hence it is written, And the son of Jonathan was Meribbaal: was then his name Merib-baal? Surely it was Mephibosheth? But because he raised a quarrel [meribah] with his Master, a Heavenly Echo went forth and rebuked him, Thou man of strife, [and] the son of a man of strife!
According to this text, Mephibosheth was striving against David and God for bringing David back safely, only for David to divide up Mephibosheth's land. And so Mephibosheth got the name Meribaal, which echoes a Hebrew word for "strife" (meribah).
Rabbinic literature often acknowledges that translators and scribes altered the text of Scripture in accordance with their religious sensibilities (see Theological Correction). In the case of Mephibosheth/Meribaal, however, it doesn't see any scribal alteration for a pious purpose. Rather than saying that the scribes changed "Meribaal" to "Mephibosheth" to expurgate the name of Baal, it says Mephibosheth was a name of honor, and it was replaced with "Meribaal" (which Rabbi Samuel in B.T. Shabbat 56b associates with strife) on account of Mephibosheth's complaining against David and his God.
