1. I didn’t get to watch a movie for Black History Month today, but I have more to say about Men of Honor (for a summary, see my post yesterday, Men of Honor, Direction of Languages, the Spies Did WHAT?, Something to Conserve). What I thought about was this: Carl Brashear tenaciously clung to his dream to be a diver, enduring whatever garbage came his way in the process. Yet, he was married three times. Why didn’t he cling to his marriage with the same tenacity? The reason was that the former was a dream that he intensely desired to fulfill, whereas the latter was not.
Many people are willing to sacrifice for what they really want. Christians say that we should be willing to sacrifice for Christianity. To be honest, I have problems sacrificing for what someone else tells me should be my dream. I think that’s why Tim Keller tries to get people to love Jesus Christ— by emphasizing what Jesus did for us: we’ll only surrender to Christ if we love him. Both aren’t easy.
2. In Ancient Israelite Religion, I read Michael Coogan’s “Canaanite Origins and Lineage: Reflections on the Religion of Ancient Israel.”
What stood out to me was that Numbers 22:5 says Balaam came from Pethor on the River [Euphrates], meaning he’s from Assyria. He went all the way to Moab to curse Israel. Assyria was in the North, and Moab was in the South. Balaam made a long journey; for that matter, so did the Moabite messengers who asked Balaam to curse Israel.
What did they do on the long journey? At least the messengers could talk with each other along the way. Balaam was alone, with his own thoughts. I assume his ass couldn’t talk with him at that point!
What did Balaam think about? Was he looking forward to getting money for cursing Israel? Did that make the journey go by more quickly? Or did he meditate on his own behavior—how he had mistreated his ass and been greedy? Joseph Butler said that David sinned because he didn’t have enough cool hours—time in solitude to reflect on his actions. But Balaam had oodles of time. Is that why he arrived in Moab, ready to obey God by blessing Israel rather than cursing her? Did Balaam spend any time with God on his long journey?
Or maybe people in those days were used to long journeys, and they either entertained themselves in their heads, or didn’t think about anything.
3. In Reading Between Texts, I read Tod Linafelt’s ”Taking Women in Samuel: Readers, Responses, Responsibility.” On page 104, Linafelt referred to Gunn, who said that David’s sin with Bathsheba occurs when things are going well for him. David is securing his house and his kingdom, and he’s in the final stage of defeating the Ammonites. That’s when he blew it.
That reminded me of something I heard in an AA meeting today: someone remarked that he once relapsed when things were going well for him. In his words, “the dog wasn’t barking, the woman wasn’t complaining.” You’d expect people to relapse when things are going badly, but that’s not always the case.
In various churches, people have said that David sinned with Bathsheba because he wasn’t “in the battle.” They never explained what they meant by that. They just acted like they were making a brilliant insight! I don’t think David had to be on-the-go 24-7. But he probably should have taken heed not to become complacent, for that’s when sin can come and bite him.
I realize that my points in (2.) and (3.) seem to contradict each other. Time alone can lead to rest, self-reflection, closeness with God, and enlightenment. But idle hands can also become the devil’s workshop.
4. I’m not sure what to say about Theodore Mullen’s Ethnic Myths and Pentateuchal Foundations. In the part I’m in now, he’s talking about the actual contents of the Pentateuch. Today, I read about the creation accounts.
Like many scholars, Mullen connects the creation and flood stories with ancient Near Eastern tales. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, a savage named Enkidu becomes clothed after his enlightenment. Before, he was naked and like an animal; after having sex, he became more human-like and clothed. Mullen compares that to Genesis 3, in which Adam and Eve are naked before they eat from the Tree of Knowledge, and God clothes them after they eat from it. Mullen seems to read Genesis 2-3 the same way as a professor I once had: it’s a tale of how we became human beings with the ability to start a culture, not so much an account of our “Fall.”
Mullen also ties the Genesis 2-3 story to the ancient Near Eastern tale of Adapa, who forfeited eternal life by eating the wrong food.
These were old stories. The Gilgamesh Epic dates back to the third millennium B.C.E., and the Adapa tale goes back to the second millennium B.C.E. If Genesis 2-3 was composed during the exilic or post-exilic period, as Mullen seems to believe, would its author know of such ancient legends?
It’s possible. The wikipedia article, Epic of Gilgamesh – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, cites sources claiming that stories about Alexander the Great were modelled on the Gilgamesh Epic. So ancient stories can have long-lasting influence.
I myself think that it’s plausible that Genesis 2-3 was written to speak to the exile, for the story itself is about exile: Adam and Eve were exiled from Eden for disobeying God. But there are also arguments for seeing Genesis 2-3 as pre-exilic. First Isaiah portrays Edenic conditions in Isaiah 11. If that dates to Isaiah of Jerusalem, then the Eden tale is pre-exilic.
5. I started another book today. This one’s for my Greco-Roman comp. It’s John Dillon’s The Middle Platonists: 80 B.C. to A.D. 220. At the outset, I’m pleased that the title is giving me the date for these characters! I usually have to hunt and peck for the dates.
There were plenty of interesting things that I read today. Aristotle (who thought the cosmos was eternal) accused Plato of believing that the cosmos had a temporal beginning, whereas the founders of Middle Platonism (who actually date to the fourth century B.C.E.) thought Plato was describing an eternal creation (if that makes any sense). I want to focus a little bit on the Dyad, for that’s a term I’ve seen quite a bit. I thought the Dyad was the Demiurge, the one who organized chaotic matter to form our present cosmos. There’s the transcendent God, and there’s the Dyad.
But Dillon was acting as if the Dyad was some principle in nature, and he was appealing to the Pythagoreans and Aristotle to make this point.
So I checked wikipedia again. Don’t worry, I won’t cite it on my comps! Wikipedia had this to say, and it cited a legitimate source:
The Dyad is a title used by the Pythagoreans for the number two, representing the principle of “twoness” or “otherness”. Numenius said that Pythagoras gave the name of Monad to God, and the name of Dyad to matter.[1] Aristotle equated matter as the formation of the elements (energies) into the material world as the static material was formed by the energies being acted upon by force or motion. Later Neoplatonic Philosophers and idealists like Plotinus treated the dyad as a second cause (demiurge), which was the divine mind (nous) that via a reflective nature (finiteness) causes matter to “appear” or become perceivable.
So it was considered nature at some point, and, later on, it was associated with the Demiurge.