Posts
1. For Autism Awareness Month, I’ll be reading and blogging through Zosia Zaks’ Life and Love: Positive Strategies for Autistic Adults. Today, I want to post her dedication:
This book is dedicated to my father, Arthur Zaks. He told me once that it was in fifth grade when he noticed the gulf between him and his peers. He said it was as if he couldn’t figure out how they knew what to say and what to do to be among each other. He was sure he could find a book that would explain how, or have the rules in it, and when he found the book he would save it and give it to his children so they wouldn’t have the same problem.
Well, Dad, I know you never found that book, but now we can write ourselves into our own book. Thank you for always understanding and loving me.
2. Sara Japhet, The Ideology of the Book of Chronicles and Its Place in Biblical Thought, pages 185-190. In the Book of Chronicles, prophets and other people (even Pharaoh Neco in II Chronicles 35:21-22) warn Israelites not to sin. Japhet sees in this the principle that “The sinner is forewarned, and his reaction to the warning determines whether or not he will be punished.” Japhet sees a parallel between this and the rabbinic view that “a man cannot be punished unless he has been warned” (Sifrei to Shophetim, paragraph 173). That’s one thing that distinguishes an intentional from an unintentional sin, in rabbinic thought: was the sinner warned before he committed his act? If not, then he’s not punished, and he can offer a sacrifice to atone for his sin (Numbers 15:22-31).
3. D.A. Russell, Criticism in Antiquity, page 32.
Aristotle in the Ethics contrasts wit with vulgarity…
Russell cites Eth. Nic. 4.14. I checked out Book 4 on the Internet, and—lo and behold—there were only nine chapter! I hate it when that happens. I think Russell has in mind the following passage from Chapter 8:
To the middle state belongs also tact; it is the mark of a tactful man to say and listen to such things as befit a good and well-bred man; for there are some things that it befits such a man to say and to hear by way of jest, and the well-bred man’s jesting differs from that of a vulgar man, and the joking of an educated man from that of an uneducated. One may see this even from the old and the new comedies; to the authors of the former indecency of language was amusing, to those of the latter innuendo is more so; and these differ in no small degree in respect of propriety. Now should we define the man who jokes well by his saying what is not unbecoming to a well-bred man, or by his not giving pain, or even giving delight, to the hearer? Or is the latter definition, at any rate, itself indefinite, since different things are hateful or pleasant to different people? The kind of jokes he will listen to will be the same; for the kind he can put up with are also the kind he seems to make. There are, then, jokes he will not make; for the jest is a sort of abuse, and there are things that lawgivers forbid us to abuse; and they should, perhaps, have forbidden us even to make a jest of such. The refined and well-bred man, therefore, will be as we have described, being as it were a law to himself.
Aristotle prefers “innuendo” in comedy to “indecency of language.” He reminds me of friends who prefer Woody Allen to Nutty Professor movies because Woody Allen is “ironic,” or those who like British comedy because it understates things. Personally, I wonder if I’d get British comedy, since I prefer for things to be laid out plainly in front of me, rather than having to think and do guess-work about what a person means.
4. R.P.C. Hanson, Allegory and Event, page 48.
[Philo] takes Jethro in his words to Moses when he paid him a visit (Ex. 18) to have advised Moses to leave the Law and devote himself to unjust arbitration in lawsuits…
In the passage in question, On the Change of Names 103-105, Philo is trying to force an allegory out of Exodus 18. He says that Jethro means “superfluous” and that pride is superfluous because it honors excess and covetous. For Philo, Jethro is encouraging Moses to be superfluous by abandoning the Ten Commandments to “study the covenants and contracts of men with one another” (Yonge’s translation).
This passage stood out to me because, in Armstrongite circles, Exodus 18 pops up in discussions about church hierarchy. Pro-hierarchy people maintain that the church should be like Old Testament Israel, which had a hierarchy, with one person on the top. Anti-hierarchy people contend that the idea for a hierarchy in Old Testament Israel came from Jethro and not God, so why should we heed Jethro’s advice as if it’s from the mountain-top? Philo’s anti-Jethro interpretation of Exodus 18 reminded me of the anti-hierarchy side.
When I revisited Exodus 18, I noticed that the chapter never explicitly says that Moses received God’s permission to establish a hierarchy. Moses just heard Jethro’s advice (which Jethro qualified with “if God commends you” in v 23), and then he followed it. So there is room for Philo to view Moses’ action negatively.
In Deuteronomy 1:9-18, we see a different version of the story. The Israelites are numerous, and Moses can’t bear them alone, so Moses comes up with the idea of appointing a hierarchy, which the people accept. Jethro is out of the picture, and a Teaching Assistant at Harvard suggested this was because Deuteronomy had problems with Moses taking advice from a pagan such as Jethro. But, in Deuteronomy 1:9-18, the idea for a hierarchy is not God’s idea, but that of Moses.
The third version of the story is in Numbers 11:10ff. Moses complains that he cannot bear the burden of the people alone, so God commands Moses to take seventy Israelite elders and officers with him to the tabernacle. There, God takes some of his spirit from Moses and places it onto the seventy elders, so that Moses doesn’t have to bear the burden alone. Here, the idea for a hierarchy comes from God.
5. N.F. Marcos, The Septuagint in Context, page 19.
…the ideological background that made the translation of the LXX possible was in germ in Jewish thought itself, as the Torah which Israel received on Sinai was originally considered to be a guide for the whole of humankind, since ‘God did not speak in secret’ (Isa. 45:19). In fact—according to a rabbinic tradition—it was offered first to the Gentiles but they gave it the cold shoulder. The rabbis also state that Joshua had buried the Law under the stones of the altar (Josh. 8:30) not only in the original but in all the languages of the world; the nations received a copy of the Law, but after reading it they paid it no attention.
