True Prophets; Church of James Pate’s Brain

1. I read Robert Wilson’s “Interpreting Israel’s Religion: An Anthropological Perspective on the Problem of False Prophecy.” On page 344, Wilson says that the conflict between Jeremiah and Hananiah was one between “two prophets having different social locations and different supporters.” Jeremiah was on the periphery, and Hananiah was an establishment prophet. Jeremiah supported a Mosaic sort of prophet, who communicated a divine message that was audibly heard. And Hananiah relied on dreams. Both accused one another of being false prophets.

I remember Stephen Geller at Jewish Theological Seminary making the point that Jeremiah—in contrast to Isaiah and Ezekiel—did not discuss a vision of God that he had. As a result, he doubted his prophetic status. Could this relate somehow to the point that Wilson is making? I’m not sure. As Wilson states, Jeremiah’s criticism is that the false prophets relied on dreams from their own imaginations, which contrast with true prophecies. True prophecies come from the divine council and are effective. So maybe Jeremiah would regard Isaiah and Ezekiel as true prophets, for they got their message from the divine council.

2. I read some of Dirk Schenkeveld’s essay, “Philosophical Prose”, which is in the Handbook of Classical Rhetoric in the Hellenistic Period. The fourth-third centuries B.C.E. philosopher Epicurus advises Menoeccus to meditate on the following: “God presents no fear, death no worries. And while good is readily attainable, evil is readily obdurable.”

That resembles the Church of James Pate’s Brain, in which I tell myself soothing sermons to help me fall asleep. I try to meditate on the love, grace, and sovereignty of God, which takes care of the “God presents no fear, death no worries” (though Epicurus would probably disagree with me, since, if I understand him correctly, he didn’t believe that the gods were active in human affairs). And, in the Church of James Pate’s Brain, I aim to cultivate good attitudes towards people, while suppressing bad ones. I try to see everyone as a person of value, created in God’s image. That’s what I do when I’m trying to fall asleep. As far as my day-today life goes, well, that’s a different story!

Bedtime Stories; Stumped

Today was an especially long day, so this post will be brief!

I read a huge chunk of Judah Goldin’s “The Period of the Talmud (135 B.C.E.-1035 C.E.)”, which is in Louis Finkelstein’s The Jews: Their History. I like this chapter because of its romantic story-telling. There are heroes, such as Jochanan Ben-Zakkai, who was humble enough to open the door for his students. Then there’s a midrash about Moses, whom God prepared for leadership over Israel by making him a shepherd of sheep. You know what Jesus said: Whoever is faithful in little, will be entrusted with much.

I kind of like this midrash as a bedtime story—something soothing, like the dream that I could be President of the United States. In my evangelical days, I dreamed of God having a plan for me in which I’d be important and famous. I still do have that dream, in a sense, for I hope to write books some day. But I doubt that I’ll be head of a corporation, or a big-time preacher, or a U.S. Senator, though I wouldn’t be overly surprised if, some day, I sit on a city council or a school board. I’d have to be a lot more knowledgeable than I am now for that to happen!

I also started on Jeffrey Reed’s article, “The Epistle”, which is in The Handbook of Classical Rhetoric in the Hellenistic Period. Reed says that Cicero talks about the difficulty of picking a topic to write about. I don’t have a great problem with this when it comes to my blog. When it comes to writing articles, or talking to people, however, there is more difficulty, on my front.

Petichta; Symbolist; Confession; Unclear Foresight; Revisiting the Politeia

1. The first essay I read today was Lewis Barth's "The Midrashic Enterprise". What I'll share from that article is that there's a debate among scholars about the petichta in midrashic literature. What is a petichta? Let's take Leviticus Rabbah. It's interpreting a passage from Leviticus. But it introduces its exegesis of the Leviticus passage with a verse from (say) Psalms. Then, it tries to tie that verse from Psalms into the Leviticus passage.

In any case, the debate is over whether the petichta was originally an introduction to a sermon, or was a sermon by itself. I'm not sure what the arguments are for each side. But the debate appears to be this: Was the petichta leading up to the action of interpreting Leviticus and drawing lessons from it, or was the whole process of tying the petichta verse back to Leviticus in itself a sermon, intended to teach the Jewish people lessons? Personally, I like the idea of meandering around and learning stuff along the way.

2. My second reading for today was from pages 68-82 of Saul Lieberman's Hellenism in Jewish Palestine. What stood out to me from that was Lieberman's discussion of the exegesis of dreams, and how the rabbis applied some of those techniques to their interpretation of Scripture. But did the rabbis believe that dreams mattered? Lieberman quotes a rabbinic passage stating, "If the contents of dreams which have no effect may yield a multitude of interpretations, how much more then should the important contents of the Torah imply many interpretations of every verse."

This viewpoint holds that dreams have "no effect" (if I'm interpreting it correctly). And Lieberman notes that the rabbis condemned the superstitious belief that encountering a weasel is a bad portent. They weren't too big on superstitions! Yet, Lieberman refers to rabbinic statements that dreams were significant. There were rabbis who thought that seeing certain letters in a dream was a good omen. Some maintained that the presence of barley in a dream meant that the dreamer's sins were forgiven, for the Hebrew word for "barley" sounds like a Hebrew phrase for "sin is removed".

And so there were rabbis who tried to decode Scripture, and other signs in the universe that may be significant (such as dreams). There were people whom Lady in the Water would call "symbolists". But there were other rabbis who opposed superstition, and the fear in which it held people captive. They probably looked down on superstition because they believed that God was the ultimate power in the universe, so who cares about your bad dream, or if a weasel crosses your path?

3. I read more of G.A. Kennedy's New History of Classical Rhetoric. Kennedy refers to Plato's dialogue, Gorgias, in which Socrates says that a guilty person can help himself more if he uses rhetoric---not to get himself let off---but rather to get himself convicted, since then he's helping himself out more. But Kennedy goes on to say that Socrates wasn't being overly serious when he made that point, but he was just trying to get Ponus to think.

But Socrates' point reminds me of some Desperate Housewives plots. Orson ran over Mike Delfino, and his wife, Bree, wanted him to confess his crime and to go to jail. In Season 1, her son, Andrew, accidentally ran over Carlos Solis' "MaMA" (as Carlos calls her), and left the scene. In the last season, someone was using that to blackmail Bree so she'd sell him her company. Andrew told Bree that it was time for him to pay for running over Carlos' mother---by going to jail. That demonstrated a lot of growth on Andrew's part---from the cocky kid of the early seasons to the responsible adult of this past year.

Then there are Dostoevsky novels, such as Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, in which a character decides to go to jail to pay for what he did, and to let God prune him and make him spiritually fruitful.

Jail can be a place of growth, as one encounters people who have experienced problems, and learns empathy as a result. But it can also be a place that hinders growth. My sister knows someone who went to jail for many years for burning down his fraternity house when he was drunk. When he got out, he dated younger women, for jail had placed him in a sort of time-warp, if you will, in which he was away from society. When he got out, it was like he was the same age as when he went in, in his mind.

The Big Book tells alcoholics that they may need to go to jail as a result of making amends, but not everyone chooses to follow that rule. For some, the best way to make amends is to try to be a better person.

But Socrates was probably criticizing the sort of person who successfully defended himself in court, and learned nothing. He had no intention of using his freedom to become a better person.

I'll tie into this item my church for this morning. I went to two masses: one at 12:00, and another at 12:30. The Scriptures and the homilies were about forgiveness: the importance of us knowing that we're forgiven (which, to me, sounds rather Protestant, since some Protestants harp on assurance of salvation), and of seeing every sinner as a potential saint.

4. I read a few essays be Renee Bloch on midrash. Bloch talks about various versions of a midrash about Exodus 1. In one version, the Pharaoh decrees that every newborn baby boy---Egyptian and Hebrew---is to be drowned, for he wasn't sure if an Egyptian or a Hebrew would deliver the Israelites out of Egypt. According to the midrash, the reason that the Pharaoh chose to kill the babies by drowning them was that the astrologers foresaw "that the Savior of Israel would be punished by water, and they thought that he would drown in the water." Moses was punished on account of water---he struck the rock and claimed credit for the water coming out of it, rather than speaking to the rock and giving God the glory. But the astrologers misinterpreted what they saw, I guess. And apparently they tried to hasten Moses' downfall through water---back when he was an infant!

5. While the maintenance man was vacuuming gallons of water from my wet apartment carpet (I'm serious---it was gallons!), I was reading more of Lee Levine's Judaism and Hellenism in Antiquity. In a footnote on page 39, Levine distinguishes between maximalists---who believe that Hellenistic influence was great right before the Maccabean revolt---and minimalists---who believe it was not so great. In the maximalist camp, he has Elias Bickerman and Martin Hengel. In the minimalist camp, he has Victor Tcherikover. He has other names too, but these were the scholars I used in writing my Politeia Paper. And, in retrospect, I find Levine's characterizations to be accurate. My problem with Tcherikover was that he acted as if the Hellenizers merely changed Judea's political structure, while leaving the Jewish religion intact. I wondered how that would incite a revolt! Hengel overlapped with Tcherikover on this issue, but at least he argued that the change in Judea's political structure had profound ramifications, which offended religious conservatives.

Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny

I’m continuing to work my way through Jerry Coyne’s Why Evolution Is True.

Coyne talks about how embryos from a variety of animals go through stages: a fish-like stage, a reptilian stage, etc. According to Coyne and many evolutionists, this is because of the principle that “Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”—”that the development of an organism simply replays its evolutionary history” (78). Coyne gives another example:

During development, the human embryo actually forms three different types of kidneys, one after the other, with the first two discarded before our final kidney appears. And those transitory embryonic kidneys are similar to those we find in species that evolved before us in the fossil record—jawless fish and reptiles, respectively.

How do we make sense of embryos developing and discarding kidneys? Would an Intelligent Designer create kidneys that sink into oblivion? What’s the purpose of that? Or are the embryos replaying their evolutionary history, demonstrating features of our ancestors, who “evolved before us in the fossil record—jawless fish and reptiles, respectively”?

I looked for what Answers in Genesis had to say about “Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”, and I found this article by Elizabeth Mitchell (not Juliet from LOST), who graduated from the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in 1984. Mitchell’s argument is two-fold:

First, according to Mitchell, the idea that “Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” was the creation of nineteenth-century zoologist Ernst Haeckel, who “fabricated the embryologic evidence for evolution by fraudulently producing the diagrams to ‘prove’ the theory.” Mitchell goes on to say that “Reputable German scientists immediately began refuting his evidence, demonstrating that Haeckel had falsified his pictures.”

Second, Mitchell argues that the “gill-slits” in human embryos are not gill-slits. They don’t function as gills: Never in the course of development does a human embryo absorb oxygen from water as fish do with gills. (The human embryo is fully supplied with oxygen through the umbilical cord.) And, according to Mitchell, there’s another explanation for what they are: Actually, they are nothing more than folds in the region of the tiny embryo’s throat. By the 28th day of life, the embryo’s brain and spinal cord seem to be racing ahead of the rest of the body in growth. Therefore, for a time, the spinal cord is actually longer than the body, forcing the body to curl and flexing the neck area forward. (This curled embryo with the long spinal cord is mistakenly accused by some people of having a tail.) Just as many people develop a double chin when bending the neck forward, so the embryo has folds in its neck area due to this flexing.

And so, for Dr. Mitchell, so much for the so-called “gill-slits” and the tail in human embryos! They’re explicable in light of the human embryos’ response to a rapidly growing spinal cord.

Coyne appears to be aware of certain creationist critiques of evolution. On page 78, he expresses his own problems with Haeckel. Coyne denies that embryonic stages “look like the adult forms of their ancestors, as Haeckel claimed”, maintaining instead that they look like the embryonic forms of ancestors. For example, “Human fetuses…never resemble adult fish or reptiles, but in certain ways they do resemble embryonic fish and reptiles.”

Coyne also denies that that recapitulation is “strict” or “inevitable”, for “not every feature of an ancestor’s embryo appears in its descendants, nor do all stages of development unfold in strict evolutionary order.” Moreover, “some species, like plants, have dispensed with nearly all traces of their ancestry during development.” So, with Coyne (if I’m understanding him correctly), recapitulation does not have absolute rules, but it does occur.

Coyne also dismisses the charge that Haeckel “fudged some drawings of early embryos to make them look more similar than they really are”, maintaining that Haeckel was merely lazy, and that he corrected his error when called to account.

I wonder how Coyne would respond to Mitchell’s other argument. Would he say that it doesn’t matter that the embryo doesn’t breathe through its gills, since it doesn’t need every feature of its ancestor to show some form of recapitulation? That it could have gills that it doesn’t use, but the very existence of its gills demonstrates that it’s recapitulating its ancestry? How would Coyne (or other evolutionists) respond to Mitchell’s argument that the “tail” and the “gill slits” have to do with the embryo’s spinal cord, and are not a “tail” and “gill slits” at all?

On an unrelated note, on page 89, Coyne states: “On the Beagle voyage, Darwin himself discovered fossil seashells high in the Andes, proving that what is now mountain was once underwater.” This caught my eye because an Adventist pastor once appealed to this as evidence for a global flood, even though he didn’t mention Darwin. Coyne, however, says that “Lands could rise or sink”, and he expresses his reservations about the biblical Flood story in his book.

II Kings 9

For my weekly quiet time this week, I studied II Kings 9. Elisha sends a son of a prophet to Ramoth-Gilead to anoint Jehu king of Israel. Both the Northern Israelite and the Judahite armies are in Ramoth-Gilead, fighting Hazael, the king of Syria. Perhaps Israel is attempting what Ahab and Jehoshaphat tried to do in I Kings 22: to recapture Ramoth-Gilead for Northern Israel.

Jehu is a captain in the Israelite army, and he’s in Ramoth-Gilead, among other captains. The prophet’s son comes and asks to speak with the captain, and Jehu inquires as to which one. The prophet’s son apparently knows who Jehu is, for he replies, “To you, O Captain.”

Elisha had instructed the prophet’s son to speak with Jehu privately, in an inner chamber, and Elisha told him not to tarry. Why? One explanation is that the prophet’s son, by anointing Jehu king, was committing an act of treason against the reigning king of Israel, Joram. If the prophet’s son were to anoint Jehu publically and to tarry, perhaps he’d fall victim to Joram’s sympathizers and get killed, or word would get back to Joram and he’d soon be an outlaw.

Another explanation is that the prophet’s son had a mission to accomplish, and Elisha didn’t want him to dilly-dally. We see this sort of thing elsewhere in I-II Kings. In I Kings 13, the man of God is forbidden to eat with Northern Israelites in his prophetic mission against Jeroboam’s sanctuary, the one in Bethel. In II Kings 4:29, Elisha forbids Gehazi to salute a man on his way to heal the son of a Shunammite woman. According to this view, the business of God is important business, and there were times when it needed to be carried out with single-mindedness.

There does seem to be a concern with secrecy in II Kings 9. The prophet’s son anoints Jehu secretly, and, after Jehu reluctantly tells the soldiers with him what the prophet said, Jehu sets up guards to keep word from reaching Joram that Jehu has been anointed king. Many contend that Jehu wanted to take Joram completely by surprise.

Something that I wonder: presumably, God was aware that the soldiers with Jehu would follow Jehu and support his ascension to the monarchy. So would God be concerned that the prophet’s son might fall victim to Joram’s sympathizers within Jehu’s camp? Why would God want the prophet’s son to anoint Jehu privately and quickly, as if he were keeping a secret? The secret soon got out after the prophet’s son left, and the men with Jehu were supportive of the prophet’s message that Jehu would become king (even though some of these men considered the prophet’s son to be a madman). What was God trying to protect the prophet’s son from?

Or was the idea that the prophet’s son should be secretive and quick in his mission from the thoughts of Elisha, and not God? Maybe Elisha was trying to be practical. Elisha didn’t know for sure that Jehu’s camp lacked sympathizers of Joram, so he sought to protect the prophet’s son, just in case there were some of them in Jehu’s camp.

Or perhaps the prophet’s son was carrying out his mission in the proper manner. If he were to enter Jehu’s camp and boldly proclaim that Jehu would be king—in an environment where people already considered him a madman—pandemonium could erupt. People might dismiss the message of the prophet’s son, or laugh at it, or even spread the message in a disorderly fashion, such that word would get back to Joram. It was more orderly for the prophet’s son to anoint Jehu in private, and then for Jehu to calmly convey the message to the men at his camp. Then, the men would ask Jehu what the prophet’s son had said, and Jehu could respond. That would be better than the prophet’s son bursting into the camp unexpectantly, proclaiming a provocative message out of the clear blue sky!

Overall, that’s what I got out of the chapter: God has a plan, but he still wants us to be wise, practical, and orderly.

But there are times when God can trump our plans. For example, Jehu knew from the prophet’s son and from the message of Elijah that Jezebel would not be buried, but would be eaten by dogs. Yet, Jehu ordered her burial soon after she was thrust down a tower, for he respected her status as a king’s daughter. When Jehu was then told that Jezebel had been eaten by dogs, he recalled Elijah’s prophecy. Throughout II Kings 9, Jehu sees God’s prophecy fulfilled, and he recognizes its fulfillment. This occurs when Joram, the son of Ahab, dies in the field of Naboth, which is similar to what Elijah predicted in I Kings 21. But, for some reason, Jehu was slow to believe that God’s prophecy would be fulfilled to a T, for he ordered the burial of Jezebel, even though the prophecy was that she would be eaten by dogs and thus would not be buried. There’s a place for practicality, but God is larger than our plans.

Then there’s Jehu’s encounter with Jezebel. Jezebel put on make-up, perhaps in an attempt to save her own life by becoming a part of Jehu’s harem. So much for her attempt to be practical, for Jehu decided to honor God’s judgment! Jezebel also called Jehu ”Zimri”, echoing I Kings 16, in which Zimri overthrew Baasha, only to be pushed into suicide by Omri, the father of Ahab. According to one commentator whom I read, Jezebel was telling Jehu that he may not be safe after overthrowing the house of Ahab and Jezebel. Nothing’s sure in this world. Jehu can overthrow the house of Ahab, but what’s to keep him from being overthrown? Maybe Jezebel was implying that Jehu needed an experienced (and attractive) advisor, to protect him through the political infighting. But, at that moment at least, Jehu chose to honor and to trust God, by overthrowing Jezebel.

Peshat; A Silent God; Interdepartmental Feuds; Hearing from God through Midrash

1. I read Raphael Loewe’s “The ‘Plain’ Meaning of Scripture in Early Jewish Exegesis”. Loewe’s argument is that peshat in early Jewish exegesis did not mean the same thing as peshat in medieval Jewish exegesis. Medieval peshat was influenced by how the Arabs treated their texts. Essentially, it was the plain sense of a biblical passage—its literal meaning. According to Loewe, peshat in early Jewish exegesis was unrelated to that (though, on one page, which I can’t find right now, Loewe points out that the third century C.E. rabbi known as Rava once used the word “peshat” in reference to a biblical passage’s plain sense). Rather, peshat in early Jewish exegesis meant an authoritative teaching, which was authoritative either because it was taught by an authoritative teacher, or because the public recognized it as authoritative.

2. In Joseph Heinemann’s “Nature of the Aggadah”, the following passages from pages 45-46 stood out to me:

The verse “Who is like Thee, O Lord, among the gods [ba-elim]” (Exod. 15:11) was interpreted by the sages as reading: “‘Who is like Thee among the mute [ba-'illemim]‘: for He sees His Temple in ruins and remains silent” (B. Gittin 56b and additional texts). This interpretation reflects a burning theological question: “His children are put in neck-irons—where is His might?” (ibid.). This could only be answered with the idea that divine silence and restraint was in itself a manifestation of God’s might, for “Who is mighty? He who subdues his nature” (M. Avot IV 1).

3. In Judah Goldin’s “Freedom and Restraint of Haggadah”, the following passage from page 62 stood out to me:

My literal-mindedness is gullibility; very well, yours is comparative anthropology or literary criticism. So it goes in scholarship and in interdepartmental feuds.

4. In David Stern’s “Midrash and the Language of Exegesis”, the following passage from pages 120-121 stood out to me:

And yet, in a time when classical prophecy had ceased among the Jews, the activity of midrash served a comparable religious need: it helped to restore a sense of God’s presence through discourse. [A] new religious language was created whose very purpose was to reinvoke God as a familiar and intimate presence.

Moshe Greenberg; Suffering Servant; Relevance

1. Was the late Moshe Greenberg a conservative, a liberal, or something in between? Today, I read the introduction to his commentary, Ezekiel 1-20. On pages 14-15, he details the prophecies of Ezekiel that did not come to pass. According to Greenberg, contrary to Ezekiel's predictions, Nebuchadnezzar did not destroy Tyre, Egypt did not experience a forty-year desolation and exile (Ezekiel 29:8-12), Babylon's fall was not bloody (Ezekiel 21:36ff.), and Ezekiel's vision of Israel's restoration---which included a restored Davidic monarchy along with a specific type of temple---was not fulfilled.

Yet, Greenberg challenges the versions of higher-criticism that assume that the earliest sources lack complexity and nuance, and so must have been redacted and developed over time. As a result, if my impression is correct, Greenberg attributes more of the Book of Ezekiel to Ezekiel than certain scholars would. Moreover, Greenberg questions the scholarly tendency in which "Doom oracles that end with a glimpse of a better future are declared composites on the ground of psychological improbability" (20). As far as Greenberg is concerned, why couldn't Isaiah, Jeremiah, or Ezekiel offer hope to the nation of Israel, even as their very universe was collapsing around them? Can faith ever trump psychological probability?

I also appreciate something that Greenberg says in his Acknowledgements: "After rendering thanks to God, who has sustained me to this day, and to my parents, who trained me up in the love of Torah..." Moshe Greenberg may not have been a fundamentalist, but he believed that he was sustained by God, and he was part of a community with a heritage of Torah.

That reminds me of something Dave H wrote under Rachel Held Evans' post, Confessions of a Reluctant Stumbling Block:

Rachel what do you think about the idea that what a person believes maybe doesn't matter much, because it's not like a person can change what they believe anyway?

Maybe we aren't Christians because of what our beliefs are, but instead we're Christians because we've joined up with and committed to a certain community? It's very tricky to pick through because it's a new idea to me, but it's one I've been rolling around in my head for a while. Just wondered what you think.

I often can't help what I believe, but I can make a decision to become a part of a faith community, and maybe the faith of others will rub off on me. In Moshe Greenberg's case, he was part of a community that valued the Torah---that drew from its wealth of stories and lessons. Fundamentalist or not, he remained in a particular community, and had a religious life therein.

2. I read Joseph Blenkinsopp's introduction to his commentary, Isaiah 40-55. On page 120, Blenkinsopp states that an asam offering for the purpose of atonement could not be offered by the Israelites in exile, since they lacked a temple. Consequently, in exile, the suffering Servant "serves as a substitute for the sacrificial guilt offering..." Yet, on pages 76-81, Blenkinsopp's point seems to be that the Servant Songs were inserted into Second Isaiah (Isaiah 40-55) during the time of Third Isaiah (Isaiah 56-66), which is dated to Israel's post-exilic period. Blenkinsopp appears to identify the Servant as an apocalyptic community that was persecuted. Is his view that this post-exilic community was following an exilic Servant, whom it considered to be an offering for Israel's sin?

3. In Midrash and Literature, I read Michael Fishbane's essay, "Inner Biblical Exegesis". This sentence on page 34 stood out to me:

Exegesis arises out of a practical crisis of some sort---the incomprehensibility of a word or a rule, or the failure of the covenantal tradition to engage its audience.

There are many times when I read the Bible and wonder what it has to do with anything, especially my life! But that's why we have exegetes, especially ones with a spiritual, religious, or theological interest. They either make the text relevant, or (for the less cynical), they show how the text is relevant.