Amistad, I Kings 13

1. Today, for Black History Month, I watched Amistad, a 1997 Steven Spielberg film. For background, see here. It’s about West Africans in the nineteenth century, who killed their captors on a slave ship and stood trial for their deed.

I watched it today because I don’t do any homework on Saturdays, so I could read the sub-titles without having to look up from my homework every minute.

And I wasn’t just reading the English translations of the African Mende language. I also put the movie on closed-caption so I could follow the legal arguments.

When I first watched the movie over a decade ago, I didn’t really understand what was going on. Who were the slaves on the slave-ship Amistad, the people who took over the ship after killing the Spaniards who ran it? Were they from Cuba, or were they from West Africa? It turns out that I was right to be confused, for that was a big point of debate. If they were from Cuba, as argued the prosecutors, then they were slaves; if they were from Africa, as the defense maintained, then they technically were not slaves, since Britain had banned the slave trade. As free people, they could legally rise against people attempting to kidnap them.

John Quincy Adams was an interesting character, and Anthony Hopkins definitely deserved his Academy Award for the role. Here was a washed-up ex-President, who wondered if he had really accomplished anything when he was in power. He dabbled in abolitionism and closely followed the Amistad case, even encouraging the defense to learn the story of the West Africans. Yet, he took a while before he committed himself to represent them. He drew from the wisdom and experience of one of the Africans, Cinque. Yet, he said that he didn’t care if there was a Civil War over the slavery question, which shows that he sometimes saw issues in terms of the big picture, rather than how they affect the individuals involved (i.e., the families who’d lose loved ones in war). So he tended to zoom in and out in his interaction with issues, sometimes focusing on the stories of individuals, and sometimes concentrating on the big picture, which includes national ideas, the type of country we are, etc.

I also liked the British captain because he successfully answered the smart-aleck prosecutor (a bully), who, along with Secretary of State John Forsyth, was trying to argue that there really wasn’t a secret fortress for the illegal slave trade. When the captain destroyed it at the end of the movie, he sent a message to Forsyth: You are right—the slave fortress does not exist!

Moreover, political theory went through my mind. What is the natural state of human beings: slavery or freedom? Southern politician John C. Calhoun (also the Vice-President under John Quincy Adams) wrote that slavery has existed for millennia. He even appealed to Eden to support his position, perhaps implying that Adam and Eve were God’s slaves. And, although Calhoun didn’t mention this, even Cingue’s African tribe had slavery (or, as it called them, workers), for people became slaves through war or debt. Yet, as John Quincy Adams contended, so many people struggle to be free. There’s something unfair about people having to work without enjoying the fruit of their labor.

The irony at the end of the movie was sad: Cinque got to go back home to Africa, but he found his tribe engaged in its own civil war, and he never saw his family again. Human nature exists everywhere, for good and for bad. We desire to be free, and we are right to do so, but there’s also a need to serve, to think of others besides ourselves. Otherwise, people get hurt, and we find ourselves enslaved to our own base desires.

2. For my weekly quiet time, I studied I Kings 13. A man of God (called Iddo by the rabbis—see II Chronicles 9:29) challenges King Jeroboam of Northern Israel. Jeroboam has set up a sanctuary with a golden calf and non-Levites as priests—all “no-no”s in the eyes of God. Iddo says that King Josiah will one day defile the sanctuary, and he gives Jeroboam a sign that he’s speaking God’s message: the altar collapses, and dust spills on the ground (when, as John MacArthur notes, the ashes are supposed to be dumped in a clean place—see Leviticus 4:12; 6:10-11). When Jeroboam orders that Iddo be seized, his hand withers. Jeroboam then asks Iddo to request from the LORD his (Iddo’s) God that Jeroboam’s hand be restored, and Iddo does so. Jeroboam invites Iddo to a meal, but Iddo declines, for YHWH has commanded him not to eat or drink on his mission, and to leave by a different route from which he came. Iddo is to convey God’s disgust with Jeroboam’s reign and sanctuary.

A prophet then invites Iddo to a meal. This prophet is said to be from Samaria in II Kings 23:18, yet he lives in Bethel, which is in the tribe of Benjamin. Perhaps he moved to Bethel to be near a seat of power, to get favor with Jeroboam. The prophet tells Iddo that an angel revealed to him that Iddo can now eat on his mission. God must have changed his mind! So Iddo goes to the prophet’s place for dinner, and God tells the prophet that God’s not pleased! Iddo leaves and is killed by a lion, but the lion touches neither Iddo’s corpse nor his donkey, nor (for that matter) the people passing by. The lion has done his mission for God, and that’s it! The prophet buries Iddo and asks that his own bones be buried alongside him. After Jeroboam hears of all this, he continues his sinful practices. He has heard that God will stand by his word, even to the harm of the person who carried it; yet, Jeroboam does not repent.

Iddo should have stuck with his mission, even though the prophet told him that an angel was allowing Iddo to eat. There was a purpose behind God’s commands to Iddo: to convey God’s displeasure at Jeroboam, his sanctuary, and Northern Israel. Why would God be so flippant as to change his mind on that? There are times when God changes his mind, but that’s often in response to people’s repentance. When God changes his mind, it’s not flippant, but it’s in accord with a standard of righteousness. And, if Iddo was wondering if God had changed his mind, he should’ve asked God, or waited for God to tell him if God had a change of plans.

What particularly interested me in this weekly quiet time was Josephus’ rendition of the story, which is found in Antiquities 8:9. According to Josephus, after Iddo (or, as Josephus calls him, Jadon) had died, the false prophet was trying to convince Jeroboam that God hadn’t caused his hand to wither and the altar to collapse. Those things had natural causes, he said! Jeroboam’s hand withered because it was tired from supporting all those sacrifices; once it got some rest, it was restored. And the altar collapsed because it was new and burdened with a bunch of sacrifices, so it couldn’t support all that weight! It interested me to see naturalistic explanations for seemingly supernatural phenomena in an ancient source, but I shouldn’t be too surprised, for I learned in a class that de-mythologization was a practice in the ancient world.

A Damper on Reagan's Birthday

Today is Reagan’s birthday. Did Ronald Reagan rape a woman in the 1950’s? This has bothered me over the past few years. Kitty Kelly says that he did in her unauthorized biography of Nancy Reagan. Here is Kelly’s story, as well as a quote from the lady who alleged rape in 1991, Selene Walters:

KELLEY CLAIMS: Reagan met starlet Selene Walters in a Hollywood nightclub in the cart) 1950s. Although I was on a date,” she quotes Walters as saying, “Ronnie kept whispering in my ear, ‘I’d like to call you. How can I get in touch with you?’ ” Hoping that Reagan, then president of the Screen Actors Guild, could boost her career, Walters gave him her address and was surprised when he came calling at 3 A.M. “He pushed his way inside and said he just had to see me. He forced me on the couch…and said, ‘Let’s just get to know each other.’ It was the most pitched battle I’ve ever had, and suddenly in a matter of seconds I lost…. They call it date rape today….”

SELENE WALTERS SAYS: Kelley’s account of his late-night visit is essentially accurate, although he never forced his way into her apartment. “I opened the door. Then it was the battle of the couch. I was fighting him. I didn’t want him to make love to me. He’s a very big man, and he just had his way. Date rape? No, God, no, that’s [Kelley's] phrase. I didn’t have a chance to have a date with him.” Walters says she bears Reagan no ill will, and has even voted for him: “I don’t think he meant to harm me.”

ALSO WORTH NOTING: Walters, who writes a column in Spotlight Casting Magazine and lives with her third husband, a CPA, in an apartment in Beverly Hills, hopes to find a publisher for a book she has written about her Hollywood experiences.

See here.

Granted, Kitty Kelly makes a lot of goofy claims, as the link above indicates. But what about that of Selene Walters?

Reagan’s response was this, according to Slate magazine (see here): The weekend the book was released, a reporter asked Reagan for a comment about it as he entered church. “I don’t think a church would be the proper place to use the word I would have to use in discussing that,” he said.

Jackie Robinson Story, Ancient Israelite Seals, Jezebel's Make-Up, Embrace the Experience, Stoics on the Afterlife

I’m a little disappointed because my American Experience Reagan DVD isn’t playing on my DVD Player. So I tried it on my computer, and it played, but it was bad in certain areas. I then went to PBS’s web-site to watch the documentary there and tried to view it on Windows. It was playing, then it stopped for some reason, plus I couldn’t fast-foward. So I tried to watch it on Quicktime, and I could fast-forward it there, but there was no picture. I really don’t want to mess with my DVD right now. I think part of the problem is that the innermost circle may be damaged. The problem’s not the rest of the DVD, because that has no scratches—or at least the scratches are too small to make any difference.

I’ll still comment on Reagan tomorrow for Reagan’s birthday, which my blog recognizes as a holiday. I just won’t be celebrating it as I planned.

I’m going to be brief with this post. I’m hungry. I’m angry. And this Emergen-C I’m drinking makes me have to go to the bathroom a lot. But here I go!

1. Today, for Black History Month, I saw The Jackie Robinson Story, a 1950 movie that starred Jackie Robinson as himself. Jackie Robinson was the first African-American Major League baseball player. Ruby Dee was also on it. I said in my post a while back, America, Christianity’s Nutritional Value, that I never saw Ruby Dee play a young person. In The Stand and Roots: the Next Generation and America, and even on an episode of Promised Land, she was old (but at least she had black hair on Promised Land). Well, today’s a first, for she was young in the Jackie Robinson Story, and, boy, she looked good!

One of the interactions on the movie eerily reminded me of a childhood experience, but I’m not going to share that because people may misunderstand me. What I will comment on is how the baseball team’s manager (or whoever he was) told Jackie not to fight back against those who verbally abuse him on account of his race, but to prove himself on the ball-field. After Jackie did that, however, the manager told him that he can now fight back: he can go to Washington and make a difference, promoting justice and equality. He had a platform.

That teaches me that there’s a time, a place, and a proper manner for fighting back.

2. In Ancient Israelite Religion, I read N. Avigad’s “The Contribution of Israelite Seals to an Understanding of Israelite Religion and Society.” People back then signed their names with seals. And many of the names are Yahwistic—they have some form of YHWH in them. Avigad says on pages 196-197, “The worship of foreign gods, of which the Israelite people are so often accused by the prophets, was apparently not so deeply rooted and widespread as to affect their personal names.”

But Avigad states that such was the case during the divided kingdom, when there was a northern kingdom of Israel and a southern kingdom of Judah. In the times of David, however, there are names with “Baal” in them. I’m not sure if Avigad is basing this on seals, or on the biblical text, but he cites biblical names: Eshbaal, Jerubaal, Meribaal, etc. According to Avigad, “Baal” in these cases referred to YHWH, since “Baal” can mean a lord, which YHWH was in his relationship with Israel. Avigad also states that eighth century Samarian (Northern Israelite) ostraca have “Baal” names.

I’m not sure what to make of this. Was ancient Israel idolatrous or not? That seems to be the debate among scholars. There are female figurines that appear to represent goddesses or at least to function for a cultic purpose. Yet, ostraca and seals are largely Yahwistic.

3. In Reading Between Texts, I read Francisco O. Garcea-Treto’s “The Fall of the House: A Carnivalesque Reading of 2 Kings 9 and 10.” I’m just going to call this author “GT” for short. On page 171, GT discusses the question of why Jezebel painted her face to go out and meet Jehu. One explanation is that she was trying to seduce him—to capitalize on her sexual charms, presumably to save her own life. Another is that regal women appearing in public wanted to look good.

4. I didn’t get much read of Theodore Mullen’s Ethnic Myths and Pentateuchal Foundations, but I got to page 200! Nothing sticks out to me, so I’ll open the book up to a random page and pick something. On page 199, Mullen mentions Exodus 20:19, in which the Israelites request that Moses be God’s spokesmen out of fear that a direct encounter with God will lead to their deaths. That idea somewhat puzzles me. Yes, God says that no one can see him and live (Exodus 33:20), but there are times when people survive an encounter with God, even though they’re surprised that they’ve done so (Genesis 32:30; Judges 13:22). It’s good that they’re humble, though!

On another note, the movie Moses, starring Ben Kingsley, has a good scene in which the Israelites receive the Ten Commandments directly from God. A fierce wind blows over them, and young and old recite a commandment, which God is revealing to their spirit. Moses encourages them to embrace God, but they’re uncomfortable with the experience, so they ask Moses to be God’s spokesman.

5. In John Dillon’s The Middle Platonists, Dillon talks about beliefs on immortality. On page 100, he discusses a dispute among Stoics:

Cleanthes believed that the souls of all men survived until the ecpyrosis [which, for Stoics, is the consumption of the cosmos], while Chrysippus held that only the souls of the wise did so. Those of the ‘foolish’ (i.e. all others) lasted ‘for some certain time’, while the souls of irrational animals perished immediately…Zeno himself seems to have thought that the soul held together for some time after death, but finally dispersed…In contrast to this, the normal Platonic belief would be in a process of purgation which brought in even the worst—or perhaps all but the very worst, if we follow the Phaedo myth—ultimately to a place among the stars.

This reminds me of various things. On Christy, a little boy asked the devout Miss Alice if his dead dog is in heaven. The agnostic doctor whispered to her, “Tell him what he wants to hear!”, and she replied that she’ll tell him the truth. She quoted Ecclesiastes 3:21, which says that the spirit of man goes upward, whereas the spirit of the beast goes downward to the earth. That seems to imply “no.” Yet, she went on to quote I Corinthians 2:9, which says that eye has not seen nor ear heard the things that God’s prepared for those who love him. From this, Miss Alice concluded that there’s a possibility that the dog’s in heaven.

Then there are debates on universalism: is hell a place of permanent punishment, or of temporary correction? Plus, the statement that Plato envisions people finding a place among the stars reminds me of Daniel 12:3, which says that those who lead people to righteousness will be as the stars forever. Could Daniel reflect Plato’s strand of Greek philosophy, although—unlike Plato—Daniel 12:3 says that people will be as stars, meaning they’re not literal stars (if that’s what “a place among the stars” means for Plato)? If liberal scholars are correct, then Daniel 12 was written during the Hellenistic period, when Jews had some exposure to Greek philosophy.

More on King, Mixed Israelite Religion, Misunderstood Jeroboam?, Egyptian Motifs, Fate

1. Today, for Black History Month, I watched two movies. The first was Kennedy, a 1983 miniseries that starred Martin Sheen as President John F. Kennedy. (No, he didn’t remind me of President Bartlett on this movie, for he used a thick Bostonian accent, which Bartlett didn’t have.) The second was Boycott, a 2001 movie about the Montgomery bus boycotts, led by Martin Luther King, Jr. Jeffrey Wright (whom I know from Lady in the Water and W) played King. The lady playing Coretta (Carmen Ejogo) was hot, and she and Wright got married after working on this movie.

What’s interesting to me is this: FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (a major figure in Kennedy) believed that King was part of a Communist plot, yet King’s movement is now a part of America’s heritage, representing America’s values of freedom and liberty. Hoover thought that King was a troublemaker stirring up race wars. Yet, there are times when disruption may be necessary, when injustice must be challenged.

King was committed to doing so non-violently, and that led to conflict between him and other African-American leaders. And non-violence was a tall order. That’s what I got out of the movie, Boycott. Bayard Rustin (who, like Stanley Levison, was an ex-Communist) counseled King on non-violence. When Rustin first met King and saw King with a gun in his pants shortly after his house had been firebombed, he asked King if he truly believed that non-violence worked. King had to take a hard look at himself. I’m not sure if a person should take non-violence that far—to the point of not protecting one’s family. But loving one’s enemies is a noble idea, which King tried to put into practice as he challenged evil.

King has often been criticized as a theological liberal. Maybe he was. But he said something, which I heard on the miniseries King and twice on the movie Boycott: if his movement is wrong, then Jesus Christ was a dreamer, and did not come to earth. What’s he saying here? That the effectiveness of non-violence in ending evil shows that Jesus was divine and knew what he was talking about? That God was on the side of the Civil Rights Movement? It may have been rhetoric. But non-violence takes a lot of faith, especially when a person is being attacked and threatened with death.

2. In Ancient Israelite Religion, I read John Holladay’s “Religion in Israel and Judah Under the Monarchy.” Two points that stick out to me are these: According to Holladay, the government-sponsored cults were largely aniconic, meaning they didn’t use images of people or animals. They obeyed the commandment against images! This includes the site in Dan, which Jeroboam built. This, even though the Hebrew Bible depicts the Israelite monarchies as blatantly idolatrous. In my opinion, what has survived at Dan may not have icons, but foreigners could’ve taken the calf-idol because it was made of a precious metal, gold, and that’s why it wasn’t found. So perhaps I Kings 12 is accurate on Jeroboam constructing an idol.

In an endnote on page 291, Holladay argues that Israelite female figurines were cult objects, not children’s playthings or talismans used to assist in childbirth. His reason is that they resemble cult artifacts in Philistia and Phoenicia. Those who contend that they were dolls may believe that ancient Israel by-and-large worshipped YHWH alone. I don’t entirely know Jeffrey Tigay’s position on the female figurines, but he is a scholar who views ancient Israel as largely monotheistic (see Tigay and Khirbet Qieyafa?, Judges and Intertextuality, Is Mullen a Minimalist?).

Holladay resembles Tigay because he thinks that the official cult was aniconic—that it was doing what the Bible believes is the “right thing,” even if the Bible doesn’t give it much credit. Yet, Holladay maintains that the popular cult included idols. Holladay sees a parallel with Japan, where people adopt a variety of religious practices. The Israelites could have been Yahwistic, while also relying on other gods and goddesses to get them through life’s struggles.

3. In Reading Between Texts, I read Stuart Lasine’s “Reading Jeroboam’s Intentions: Intertextuality, Rhetoric, and History in 1 Kings 12.”

Lasine addresses the issue of Jeroboam’s golden calves. (This issue again!) In the ancient Near East, the calf was the god’s throne, on which the god stood. Plenty of scholars have argued, therefore, that I Kings 12 misunderstands what Jeroboam was doing: Jeroboam wasn’t telling the people to worship the golden calves, as if they were divine, such scholars argue. Rather, the calves were God’s throne when he visited the sanctuary, much like the mercy seat over the Ark of the Covenant.

But Lasine refers to the possibility that Israelites without such insight could’ve resort to fetishism, treating the calves themselves as a divine sort of object. After all, the bronze serpent that Moses made to demonstrate God’s power (Numbers 21) became an object of idolatry, which was why Hezekiah destroyed it (II Kings 18:14).

This reminds me of the movie Moses, which starred Burt Lancaster. Aaron emphatically denies that the golden calf is God, but he tells the Israelites that it’s a symbol of the people. Yet, before you know it, the Israelites are dancing around the calf and treating it as a magical sort of object.

What was wrong with fetishism? Do superstitions influence people to take their focus off of God, to assume that someone else is in control of events?

4. On page 157 of Ethnic Myths and Pentateuchal Foundations, Theodore Mullen talks about motifs in the Joseph story. He mentions two Egyptian tales: The Tale of Two Brothers (thirteenth century B.C.E.) and the story of Sinuhe (twentieth century B.C.E.).

In the Tale of Two Brothers, we meet Batu and his brother, Anpu. Anpu’s wife makes advances on Batu, but Batu refuses. She then accuses Batu of making advances on her. Consequently, Anpu wants to kill Batu, who runs away. There are then a series of fantastic details, which you can read about here and here. But the motif of a wife making advances on someone who refuses, then turning around and accusing him of attempted rape appears also in the Joseph story (Genesis 39).

In the Story of Sinuhe, Sinuhe is an important official in the government of the Pharaoh, but he’s afraid after he hears treasonous remarks about the Pharaoh’s recent death. So he flees to Canaan and gains the favor of a chief there, becoming his son-in-law and raising little chiefs. Sinuhe grows old in Canaan and gets opportunities to prove his courage (which helps him because of his cowardice in fleeing years before). But he desires to return to Egypt, his homeland. The Pharaoh welcomes Sinuhe when he goes back home.

We see this in the Joseph story: Joseph goes to a foreign country and becomes an important official, marrying into the royal house. But he wants his bones to be placed in Canaan, the Promised Land, his true home.

Mullen says that the authors of the Joseph stories were probably only familiar with the “stock” genres of their day. In my opinion, his implication is that they did not borrow directly from the Egyptian tales, so the Joseph story is not old. Mullen then makes the point that the Joseph story’s account of a foreigner prospering in the court of the king resembles Daniel 1-6, which is (at the earliest) exilic. Mullen once again appears to promote an exilic date (or later) for the Pentateuch’s stories.

I agree that the authors of the Joseph story may not have directly borrowed from these Egyptian tales. The Joseph story shares details with them, but there are also sharp differences. Maybe concepts such as exile from home or bad women were common in those days. Moreover, for those who believe that the Joseph story is historical, such things can happen in real life, not just in art!

But I don’t think we can dogmatically assert that the Joseph story is exilic because it resembles Daniel 1-6, when its motifs existed long before the Daniel story. Yet, Mullen may do well to ask: When would those motifs become relevant to the Israelites? The bad woman idea could fit a lot of contexts, but the notion of being away from one’s home could speak especially to Jews in exile.

5. In Middle Platonists, on page 84, John Dillon talks about Chrysippus’ (third century B.C.E.) view on fate, which is Stoic. For Chrysippus, we just think that we have free will and that things happen to us by chance, for we don’t see the chain of causes that God sees. I’m not entirely sure what this means. It reminds me somewhat of Jonathan Edwards’ idea that our choices had to have been caused by something, which pushes us to decide one way and not another (meaning there’s no true free will). I’m not absolute on this, but I do think that who we are influences what we do, and that who we are has been shaped by what’s happened to us.

Or is Chryssipus saying a God’s-eye perspective would reveal a beautiful web of causes leading to our choices and the things we consider coincidence?

J. Edgar Hoover, The Story Behind Balaam, Tekoan Blackmail, More than Politics, The Dyad and the World Soul

1. Today, for Black History Month, I watched King, a three-part 1978 miniseries about Martin Luther King, Jr. It starred Paul Winfield, whom I’ve loved in such shows as Touched by an Angel and Star Trek: The Next Generation (the episode “Darmok”). Ossie Davis (whom I know from The Stand and Promised Land) did an excellent job as King’s crusty father, Martin, Sr. Members of King’s family also played in the miniseries; King’s daughter Yolanda, for instance, played Rosa Parks. And there were important historical figures who played themselves—such as Ramsey Clark, Lyndon Johnson’s Attorney General.

The movie got me thinking about J. Edgar Hoover, the legendary FBI director who opposed King. Hoover believed that one of King’s trusted advisors, Stanley Levison, was a Communist. On the movie, Attorney General Robert Kennedy advises King to fire Levison so that the civil rights agenda could move forward, but King is reluctant because Levison is a friend and has offered valuable advice and services to his movement. Kennedy says that the evidence against Levison is pretty damning, but, a few scenes later, a civil rights worker says that Levison was never a Communist.

Who’s right? When I watched the movie Good Night and Good Luck, I heard that not every accusation McCarthy made was correct (at least according to the movie). McCarthy accused Edward R. Murrow of being a member of the Communist Industrial Workers of the World (or something like that), a charge that Murrow denied. And there were times when rumor or hearsay played a role in people getting labelled as Communists. So I wanted to know the basis for the FBI’s accusation of Levison. The wikipedia article (see Stanley Levison) said that Levison was a member of the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) during the 1950’s, but he left it in 1957, which was before he assisted King. Because wikipedia is not always reliable, I did a search for a more reputable source, and I found an informative article from the Atlantic: The FBI and Martin Luther King – The Atlantic (July/August 2002). The article details the basis for Hoover’s claim that Levison assisted the CPUSA before he helped King, so Hoover wasn’t pulling his concern out of thin air.

The movie depicts J. Edgar Hoover as a racist, someone from the old school who believed that African-Americans should be cooks and chauffeurs. There may be documentation out there that such was the case, for articles turned up after I googled “J. Edgar Hoover racist.” But, in my own reading, I’ve gotten the opposite impression, or at least I saw another side to the controversial FBI man. Years ago, I read J. Edgar Hoover’s 1958 book, Masters of Deceit, which was about the Communist movement in the United States. Hoover had a chapter on minorities. I expected him to argue that the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) was a Communist front, but that’s not what I found. Actually, Hoover spoke highly of the NAACP, particularly its efforts to keep Communists from its ranks.

That picture of Hoover was seconded when I read Thurgood Marshall’s depiction of the man (see Thurgood Marshall on J. Edgar Hoover). Marshall was the lawyer who won the 1954 Brown vs. the Board of Education Supreme Court decision, which declared public school segregation unconstitutional, and he was also the first African-American Supreme Court justice. Marshall states that he and Hoover shared a common concern about Communist attempts to infiltrate the NAACP, and he also denied that Hoover was a racist. Maybe racism was not a major reason for Hoover’s opposition to King, but it was rooted in Hoover’s fear that the Communist Party would promote racial discord to undermine America.

Was Hoover’s concern legitimate? In his mind, it was. I think he was well-intentioned. But I think that discrimination and treating people as second-class citizens on account of their race were more important problems, which King did well to fight.

2. In Ancient Israelite Religion, I read Jo Ann Hackett’s “Religious Traditions in Israelite Transjordan.” Hackett focuses on Balaam. According to Hackett, P (the priest) portrays Balaam quite negatively, for Numbers 31:15-16 ties him to the incident at Baal-Peor, in which Israelite males turned from God to appease hot Midianite women. According to P, the women got the idea to seduce the Israelites from Balaam. But other stories about Balaam are more positive. In Numbers 22-24, Balaam blesses Israel rather than cursing her.

What’s going on here? For Hackett, the story in Joshua 22 is a significant piece of the puzzle. There, the Israelites on the western side of the Jordan are upset at those on the eastern side (the Transjordan) because they’ve built themselves an altar, which is a “no-no” because the LORD only wants one altar, the one on the western side. Leading the charge against the eastern Israelites is the priest Phinehas, who’s loved by the LORD because he violently ended an Israelite’s apostacy with a Midianite hottie in Numbers 25. But Phinehas and the western Israelites learn that their eastern brothers were intending no harm: the easterners were building an altar, not for sacrifice, but rather to testify that they’re Israelites too, even though they live in a location away from most of the Israelites (the ones on the West). The western Israelites then cease and desist from their mission to destroy their eastern brothers, accepting their explanation and acknowledging them as part of the fold.

According to Hackett, the eighth century Deir ‘Alla inscription from Ammon (see The Ammonite Balaam Story) indicates that there was at least one cult in the Transjordan that viewed Balaam as a prophet. The priest opposed that for various reasons, one being that he didn’t think that the Transjordan was part of the Promised Land (Hackett cites Numbers 32:7; 33:53; and Genesis 17:8). His negative Balaam story reflects his opposition towards the Transjordanian cult. But there were also inclusive voices, such as the one who wrote Joshua 22, and they “wanted to incorporate the eastern tribes into the fold of Yahwism” (130). An inclusive voice wrote a story that was more positive about Balaam.

So, for Hackett, the negative and positive Balaam stories are actually about the cult in the Transjordan, which is relevant to the question of the eastern Israelites’ legitimacy as Israelites.

3. In Reading Between Texts, I read Patricia Willey’s “The Importunate Woman of Tekoa and How She Got Her Way.” Willey looks at two stories: II Samuel 12, in which Nathan confronts David over his affair with Bath-sheba, and II Samuel 14, in which a woman from Tekoa (at Joab’s instigation) tells a parable to get David to acknowledge his estranged son, Absalom. Her parable is a fictitious case in which her son killed his brother (as Absalom did) and is being pursued by avengers of blood. The Tekoan woman asks David to protect her son’s life.

For Willey, the Tekoan woman gets David to take back Absalom by using the phrase “this thing” (II Samuel 14:3, 13, 15, 20), a phrase also used in the context of David’s murder of Uriah (II Samuel 11:11, 25, 27—though that’s actually “the thing”; 12:6, 14). Willey says that “Evidentally Joab knows what he has and how he can use it” (127). Is Willey’s point that Joab is trying to blackmail David through the woman of Tekoa? Is Joab saying to David, “Do my wish, for I have something I can use against you!”

4. In Theodore Mullen’s Ethnic Myths and Pentateuchal Foundations, Mullen quotes D.J.A. Clines, who says that the Pentateuch portrays a movement towards a goal: land, descendants, and a divine-human relationship (128). I like what Mullen says: “The nature of Israel’s identity as an ethnic group…is defined in part by the ways in which the ‘primary history’ as a whole resolves the issues associated with the nature of the divine/human relationship.”

As I’ve read Mullen regurgitate the creation and patriarchal stories, I’ve wondered how he fits the stories’ details (e.g., sibling rivalry, divine providence) into what he believes is the historical context of their authors or compilers: Israel’s exilic and post-exilic periods. Actually, not every detail of the story has to convey a political point. In part, the stories are about wrestling with the divine-human relationship, which is an important aspect of Israel’s ethnic identity. The Aeneid also makes a political point, but it has stories with characters and lessons. National epics are like that, including our own.

5. In John Dillon’s The Middle Platonists (page 26), Dillon discusses Xenocrates (fourth century B.C.E.) and the Middle Platonist Plutarch (first century C.E.) on the Monad, the Dyad, and the World Soul. The Monad appears to be God (or something like that), whereas the Dyad is matter. But Xenocrates appears to associate the Dyad with the World Soul, which orders the cosmos. But how can that be, when Xenocrates says that the Indefinite Dyad is “an evil and disorderly principle.” Enter Plutarch, who was influenced by Xenocrates. He says that the World Soul is “formed from the Monad and Dyad, and so is not itself the Dyad.” I wonder, though, if the association of the Dyad with the World Soul led to identifying the Dyad as the Demiurge, the creator, as Neo-Platonists later did (see Men of Honor II, A Long Journey, Complacency, ANE Tales and Genesis 2-3, Dyad).

Men of Honor II, A Long Journey, Complacency, ANE Tales and Genesis 2-3, Dyad

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.

Men of Honor, Direction of Languages, the Spies Did WHAT?, Something to Conserve

1. Today marks the beginning of Black History Month! At the present time, I’m starting off with movies I didn’t see last year. Today, I watched Men of Honor, which my mom recommended on February 1, 2009 (see And Kicking Off Black History Month…).

Men of Honor is about Carl Brashear (played by Cuba Gooding, Jr.), who was the first African-American Master Diver in the U.S. Navy. What’s admirable about Carl was that he never gave up in the pursuit of his dream. He had to deal with racism. Eventually, he lost his lower leg. But that didn’t stop him, for, after a lot of hard work and commitment, he was reinstated in his position as master diver. I’m not sure if I have the talent and the tenacity of Carl Brashear, but I’ll tell you one thing: he inspires me to keep on trying!

Robert De Niro plays Lesie “Billy” Sunday, who is Carl’s diving instructor. Billy is a mixture of good and bad. He’s demoted to diving instructor after he disobeys an order by diving into the water to save someone’s life. And, although he admires Carl’s tenacity, he’s determined to see Carl fail. His superior officer, “Mr. Pappy” (played by Hal Holbrook), tells Billy that the Navy’s not ready for a “colored” Master Diver.

To be honest, I was a little bored with the movie for the first hour, but the scene that really got my attention was the one about the final exam. The divers had to go underwater and assemble a device, and their tools were sent down to them in a bag. But Billy had Carl’s bag ripped, such that the tools (and maybe even pieces of the device) were scattered all over the ocean floor. But Carl stayed down there as long as it took, through harsh cold and intense water pressure, until he finally completed the device. Despite Mr. Pappy’s objection, Carl became a Master Diver.

As Carl succeeds in his profession, Billy is demoted another notch after he punches an officer, the one he disobeyed when he saved that one person’s life. Billy’s status as a diver is stripped from him, and he resorts to heavy drinking. But he takes a chance at redemption by training Carl after Carl loses his leg. Although Billy has a low rank, he still has the respect of many colleagues, and he uses that to get Carl another chance.

Billy is an interesting character. In the first half of the movie, he likes to beat up on subordinates (especially Carl) because that makes him feel powerful, after he’d been dressed down and demoted to diving instructor. But he comes to respect Carl’s tenacity, and that inspires him not to give up after his own status as a diver is stripped away. Instead of continuing to wallow in self-pity, Billy looks for a way to help somebody else.

Inspiring movie! Thanks for the recommendation, Mom!

2. In Ancient Israelite Religion, I read Joseph Naveh’s “Proto-Canaanite, Archaic Greek, and the Script of the Aramaic Text on the Tell Fakhariyah Statue.”

What interested me was the direction in which languages were written in the ancient Near East. Hebrew is written from right to left. In my post from a while back, Right to Left, Death, Intention, I wondered if that was the case with other ancient Near Eastern languages. I wasn’t entirely sure about Akkadian because it had been a while since I took it. Well, I checked my copy of David Marcus’ Manual of Akkadian (which I used for David Marcus’ class at Jewish Theological Seminary), and I saw that Akkadian read from left to right.

Naveh comments on the direction of languages in a few places. On page 102, he states that, from the middle of the eleventh century B.C.E., letters in the Canaanite language “were written only horizontally from right to left…” On page 105, he says that other scripts were “written either from left to right or from right to left, or in boustrophedon” (which I’m not in the mood to look up).

I looked through John Huehnergard’s essay on languages in the Anchor Bible Dictionary, and I read that Ugaritic was written from left to right.

Hebrew reads from right to left because it comes from Canaanite, which read from right to left. But there are similarities between Hebrew and languages that read from left to right: Akkadian and Ugaritic. Hebrew probably drew from those languages, or they all share similar features because they’re from an ancient Near Eastern setting.

Why did Canaanite go from right to left? On pages 101-102, Naveh says that, in the second millennium B.C.E., the letters of the alphabet were pictures. Bet means house, kaf means palm, etc., and the shapes of the letters were pictures of those things. According to Naveh, “By the thirteenth century the number of Proto-Canaanite signs was reduced to twenty-two, but the pictographic conception still permitted the flexibility of the stances and writing in any direction: from left to right, from right to left, in vertical columns, and even in horizontal or vertical boustrophedon” (there’s that word again!). By 1100 B.C.E., vertical writing disappeared, and Canaanite came to read from right to left.

Naveh seems to be saying that, at a certain point, it didn’t matter whether Canaanite read from left to right, right to left, or vertically, for the pictures made the direction irrelevant. Eventually, the Canaanites decided to go with right to left.

I’m not sure if I totally understand his point about pictures. Is Naveh saying that readers saw a picture of a house (bet), and that’s why it didn’t matter which direction “house” was written in? But Naveh also states that the bet functioned as a “b” in a word. Maybe, in the end, direction doesn’t matter. I’m used to reading from left to right, but that’s because of my culture; I can adapt to reading from right to left when I read Hebrew, and it doesn’t bother me that much as it did when I first studied the language.

3. In Reading Between Texts, I read L. Daniel Hawk’s “Strange Houseguests: Rahab, Lot, and the Dynamics of Deliverance.” Hawks states that the use of shakab (to lay) in Joshua 2:1 means that the two Israelite spies slept with Rahab, a prostitute. I’ve heard that interpretation before, but I thought it sounded pretty tacky; yet, I can picture a modern-day Bible movie making a scene about that! Hawks’ point seems to be that there’s a lesson here: the act of the two spies foreshadows how the Canaanite women will seduce the Israelites years later, turning the Israelites away from their God (Exodus 34:16; Deuteronomy 7:3-4; 31:16-18).

Hawks still has respect for Rahab, though, for she acknowledges the God of Israel and secures the escape of herself and her loved ones from the sword of the Israelites. But the Israelite spies still made a boo-boo. Such a character defect would bite them in the behind years later!

4. I’m still making my way through Theodore Mullen’s Ethnic Myths and Pentateuchal Foundations. On page 77, Mullen quotes with approval minimalist Philip Davies’ contention that the Jews who “returned” to Palestine under Cyrus may not have been descended from the Jewish exiles; rather, for Davies, they could have been “subjects of transportation, moved to underdeveloped or sensitive regions for reasons of imperial economic and political policy.” On page 80, in a footnote, Mullen denies that the traditions in the Hebrew Bible were composed whole-cloth during the Persian Period, for they could have been “quite ancient.”

Yesterday, in my post, Adam Cartwright, Creating Identity, Not So Vague This Time, Prayer About Distractions, I quoted Mullen’s statement that Israel composed her history when the exile threatened the Jews with assimilation or religio-cultural dissolution.

I wonder how all of this fits together. For a people-group to compose a history in order to avoid assimilation or cultural dissolution, that implies that the people-group has to exist in the first place. So I have a hard time reconciling this idea with the notion that random people were plopped into Palestine and had to develop a culture right on the spot, which (if i’m not mistaken) seems to be Davies’ proposal. It makes more sense that the people who returned from exile were trying to preserve the culture of a distinct people-group, even if the expression of that culture in the Pentateuch was new at that time.