Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Heart and Soul

The longer title of this post is
“καρδα κα ψυχ κα νεφρς κα κεφαλ
(or “Heart and Soul and Kidney, and Heady Abstractions”)

Rhetoricians have refused to translate ἐν-θύμημα (one of Aristotle’s key terms of the Rhetoric) but rather, following Cicero, have abstracted it through transliteration as something like enthymeme. Classicists and Bible translators, nevertheless, have wonderfully translated the term into English as “heart” and “soul” and “mind” and “desire” and “purpose” and “[mental] conception” and “consideration” and “a bearing in mind” and “imaginations” and “devices” and “a doting” and “thought” and “a thinking.”

I think and believe, in my heart and soul, that the translators, not the transliterators, get this right.

But now we see that Bible translators are not all in agreement about the translation of other key terms in Greek literatures: καρδα and νεφρς and κεφαλ. The disputes revolve around whether a man (i.e., a husband) should be head over a woman (i.e., a wife) around the world today because that is what New Testament letter writers seem to have written to some early Christians around Europe around twenty centuries ago.

And the Bible translation disagreements revolve mainly around κεφαλ. Should it be translated “heady authority” only? Can’t it mean “fountain head” or “source”? And should it be translated “intellect” when the word νεφρς is much more clearly used for “mind” in the LXX and the NT as in apparent contrast with καρδα (or “heart”)?

Some of us have offered evidence that κεφαλ is not always a metaphor for “heady authority” and that κεφαλ is often a literal and sometimes a figural “source.” The funniest, most painful example is of the head (i.e., the part of the body with face, eyes, ears, mouth, and chin attached to the neck) for male humans as being the source of semen. This evidence is offered by Susanne McCarthy, who writes:

“We would, however, have to end up analysing the Greek belief that the physical head of a man contained semen, and that impotence was thought to be relieved by making an incision behind the ears to let it flow more easily.”


So let’s analyse. Lo and behold, we find Aristotle, and his teacher, again. Francis E. Peters writes:

Plato . . . in the Timaeus, locates the rational part (logistikon) of the human soul in the head (44d) and makes the brain [i.e., ἐν- κεφαλ] the source of the reproductive powers (73c-d . . . ). But even though the question continued to be debated (see SVF II, 885; Cicero, Tusc. 1, 9, 19), it was the view of Aristotle that prevailed. Aristotle knew, to be sure, the medical assertions of the connection of the senses with the brain, but he was not convinced by the evidence (Hist. anim. 514a). What he finds more persuasive is that there is no sensation in the brain itself (De part. anim. 656a).

I’ll give a fuller quotation by Peters below, but first I want to say it’s not all Greek men who were as logical as Aristotle.

Now let’s turn quickly to that other question. Should κεφαλ be translated “intellect” when the word νεφρς is much more clearly used for “mind” in the LXX and the NT as in apparent contrast with καρδα (or “heart”)? The careful answer Michael Kruse is giving so far is “No.”

I really think Michael’s on to something, but I also suspect that καρδα and νεφρς were connected together by the ancient Hebrews first (before they were ever contrasted by Hellenes). Michael Kruse rightly turns us to “Hebrew anthropology” as he shows us “Jesus” talking in Rev 2:23. But “John,” who authors Revelation, I would venture, is there alluding to Psalms (7:9 & 26:2 & 139:1) and to the prophet Jeremiah (11:20 & 17:10). There the writers use “lib(bah)” together with “kilyah”: יבלו יתוילכ (or “reins” [i.e., “kidneys”] and “heart”). They sing and write with elegant Hebrew poetic parallelism. “Kidney” and “heart” are parallel organs, or are the inner being to be searched by God. But when the LXX translators and John (and the Holy Spirit and Jesus) translate the two parallel Hebrew words into Greek, then Hellenistic readers, perhaps accustomed to contrast, read καρδα κα νεφρς not as closely related metaphors of the various internal parts of the psalmist (and Jeremiah) but as distinctive physical organs representing separate abstractions. In our century, in the West, we tend to follow the Greeks too. What will Michael say next? I’m looking forward to his future blogging on this topic!

Let me stop for now just to add the longer quotation promised. And in adding the longer quotation, I’d like to add this: that the Hellene conceptions of body parts, and what they represent, evolved substantially. Despite Aristotle’s attempts at locking down the concepts by his either-or method, there remained much wiggle room, much playfulness, in the language. For all of us translators – rhetoricians and Bible scholars – there remains such word play. We neither have to believe all of Aristotle's conclusions nor use his methodology blindly. The consequences of Aristotelianism to women (as simply "botched males") may be severe; and to men (as male humans with heads full) may be painful.


from Greek Philosophical Terms: A Historical Lexicon by Francis E. Peters
pages 96 – 97, 167:

psyche: soul

2. . . . In contrast there is the thymos, the spirit, located in the midriff (phrenes) whereby a man thinks and feels (see kardia [pages 96 – 97]).

3. The Homeric psyche was closely associated with motion in that its departure turned the aggregate of churning limbs that was the hero’s “body” into a soma or motionless corpse. The thymos too is connected with motion in a sense later explored by Aristotle; it is the promptings of thymos that impel the hero to activity.

kardía: heart

1. Behind the long-standing debate on the seat of the soul that was conducted in philosophical circles there stands a prephilosophical physiology that had, in effect, decided the question and that, supported by the massive authority of Homer, tended to dominate even the accummulating medical evidence to the contrary. The Homeric hero both feels (Il. IX, 186, XIII, 493; etc.) and thinks (Il. IX, 600, XIII, 296) with the phrenes or midriff, whence the later prhonesis, thought or wisdom.

2. A great number of thinkers went along the same path, encouraged no doubt by medical theories of vital heat carried through the system by blood. The thermal theory of thought finds its chief propagator in Heraclitus who identified the soul with fire (fr. 36) and connected it with consciousness (Diels 22A16). In Empedocles the blood appears a factor linked with perception, and the seat of perception is located in the heart (fr. 105). . . Aristotle calls the heart the arche of life, movement, and sensation (De part. anim. 666a-b), and though the Eupicureans dispersed the sould all over the body (see psyche [pages 166-167]), the rational faculty (Lucretius: animus) was in the breast (Lucretius III, 141-142), as it was for the Stoics (SVF II, 879).

3. The other school of thought, which located the seat of perception in the brain (enkephalos), had its origin in Pythagorean medical circles, specifically with Alcmaeon of Crotona (Theophrastus, De sens. 26; . . . ) who maintained that there were passages (poroi) connecting the senses to the brain, a position he was said to have arrived at by actual dissections on the optic nerve (Diels 24A11) and that reappears among the philosophers with Diogenes of Apollonia. Here the phisiological reasoning is crossed with more philosophical considerations, i.e., that air (aer, q..v.) is the divine arche of all things, the source of life, soul, and intelligence (frs. 4, 5). How perception occurs we are told by Theophrastus (De sens. 39-44). Man inhales air that travels, via the various senses, to the brain. If the air is pure and dry, thought (phronesis) takes place (. . . and compare the similar Hippocratic text in Diels 64C3).

4. Socrates had heard of the brain theory as a young man and was interested in it (Phaedo 96b). He must have passed his interest on to Plato who, in the Timaeus, locates the rational part (logistikon) of the human soul in the head (44d) and makes the brain [i.e., en-kephalos] the source of the reproductive powers (73c-d . . . ).

5. But even though the question continued to be debated (see SVF II, 885; Cicero, Tusc. 1, 9, 19), it was the view of Aristotle that prevailed. Aristotle knew, to be sure, the medical assertions of the connection of the senses with the brain, but he was not convinced by the evidence (Hist. anim. 514a). What he finds more persuasive is that there is no sensation in the brain itself (De part. anim. 656a).

6. Plotinus, however, following the Platonic tradition, continues to locate the arche of sensation in the brain, or as he carefully puts it, “the point of departure [arche] of the operation [energeia] of the faculty [dynamis], since it is the arche of the kinesis of the instrument [oragon]” (Enn. IV, 3, 23).

Monday, September 17, 2007

feminism(s) & rhetoric(s) & translations(s), oh my!

In a single sentence [the reviewer] reimposed the very dichotomies I had constructed the book in order to call into question, putting electrified fences around the categories “academy,” “criticism,” and “writing” to keep the various critters from intermingling, maybe interbreeding to create some nameless monster very like the one I aspire to be.
-- Nancy Mairs, Voice Lessons: On Becoming A (Woman) Writer

Gorgias undertakes to excuse [Helen] by arguing that if she followed Paris, she could only have done so for one of these four reasons: (1) she obeyed the gods' commands; (2) she was carried off by force; (3) she was persuaded by speech; (4) she succumbed to love.
-- Laurent Pernot, Rhetoric in Antiquity
as translated by WE Higgins

and so he stated this to them,
“Haven’t you figured out this story thrown beside you?
And so how about all the other stories thrown beside you?
How are you going to know them?”
καὶ λέγει αὐτοῖς
οὐκ οἴδατε τὴν παραβολὴν ταύτην
καὶ πῶς πάσας τὰς παραβολὰς
γνώσεσθε
-- יְהוֹשֻׁעַ (or Ἰησοῦς or Joshua, aka Jesus, the great feminist & rhetor)
as monstrously translated into the Hellene alphabet (or Mark 4:13)
by
מָרְדֳּכַי (or Μᾶρκος or Marduka, aka Mark, a great translator)
as monstrously translated into English-ish text

by me (aka J. K. Gayle)
I intend 3 things with this blog post:
1) to give a nod to the co-bloggers, who are Bible translators (readers, interpreters), who grapple with many fun and serious things (many rhetorical and feministic things).
a blogroll: Ancient Hebrew Poetry, Better Bibles Blog, Suzanne's BookshelfVoice of Iyov, Lingamish, Voice of Stefan.
2) to offer a shameless plug for the upcoming 6th Biennial Feminism(s) & Rhetoric(s) Conference. Several of my colleagues (and I) are making presentations there.
3) to talk some here about the pluralitieS, the positionS we feministS and rhetoricianS and translatorS may take. I know I won’t be the only man presenting at the conference, but as far as I know I’ll be the sole man taking the position of feminist, rhetorician, translator. We are about as excited as Dorothy, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Man, in the Land of Oz, approaching the (Cowardly) Lion and exclaiming “lions and tigers and bears, oh my!”
As for positionS, let me talk about 4. Why 4? Well, why does Jesus talk about 4 kinds of positions that thrown seed finds itself in?
Pro-positionS
(where making one's point is everything, and its falling by the wayside is disaster)
a proposition is the position feminists will take when they abandon their bodies for heady abstraction. some notable feminists, for example, have written an academic article (published by a usually-fine journal) entitled, “Beyond the Personal.”
a proposition is the position rhetoricians will take when making pronouncements and prescriptions about how one must speak or write. this is the “telling” strategy (according to Robert E. Quinn in his incredibly insightful book, Change the World.)
a proposition is the position translators will take when they say we must be most careful with what is literal, or what is original, or what is explicit, or what the author intends, or what the text says, or what is concordant between the source and target languages. this position assumes something epiphenomenal or a meaning that is contingent on, say, a lexicon or dictionary or some other root(ed) authority. (i’m getting the terms from literary critic George Steiner in his essay entitled “On Difficulty” in his book entitled On Difficulty where he notes that poetry readers often have the one-in-4 difficulty that is an epiphenomenal or contingency difficult. the solution? look up the words in the dictionary.)
Im-positionS
(where making my point is not enough so I force it on you, so that your view gets sunburned and stone stunted and dies)
an imposition is the position feminists will take when shouting about the noise shrilly. this position is why it’s called the f-word.
an imposition is the position rhetoricians will take when arguing continually about the meaning of Aristotle’s enthymeme or anyone’s different meaning of rhetoric and/or when forcing all philosophers to concede that they really don’t argue syllogistically but rather enthymematically. Quinn calls this the “forcing strategy.”
an imposition is the position translators will take when insisting that the preferred translations not read into the text subjectively (unless it violates something personal for me which I will not admit to you or perhaps even myself). Steiner says that poetry writers may often create tactical difficulties for readers, making reader speed bumps if you will; and I say translators often impose similar kinds of things on readers of their translations.
Trans-positionS
(where my mode as my mode counts most especially when mine chokes yours out, unless I can make your mode mine)
a transposition is the position feminists will take when co-opting male-ness. phallogocentrism becomes vaginocentrism but both centrisms, both as arrogant. or i may just use blatant logic against Aristotle and his blatant misogyny.
a transposition is the position rhetoricians will take when disputing about whether (or when controlling just how) the other rhetoricians, or the classicists, or the compositionists, or the lit crits, may appropriate rhetoric. Quinn calls this strategy “the negotiating, or win-win” strategy.
a transposition is the position translators will take when putting a verse to music or to rhyming limerick. Steiner says that poetry readers face a modal difficulty when reading something figural as literal, for instance. Of course, translators may do some zany things when turning a Beatles song into muzak for the elevator (or, as the Brits say, for the lift). (And I may just add that C.S. Lewis has a fine essay called "Transposition," getting at some of the problems. Remember when he expounds, "Let us construct a fable. Let us picture a woman thrown into a dungeon. . . . "?)
A-(p)positionS
(where who I am falls into the ground, dies, and becomes something and somebodies much more and much more alive)
an a(p)position is the position feminists will take when denying themselves for the equality of men, of men and women and children, of black and white and color.
an a(p)position is the position rhetoricians will take when finding themselves in various fields comfortably, whether comp studies, or feminism, or communication studies, or classics studies, or literature, or history. Quinn calls this strategy the “transformation” strategy.
an a(p)position is the position translators will take as translinguals, as scholars and experts who realize, with Lydia H. Liu, that “host language” and “guest language” are much better metaphors for translation than the propositional, or impositional, or transpositional metaphors of “source language” and “target language.” Personal and subjective positions confessed become much more signficant than cold objectivity. Steiner notes how a poem may be ontologically difficult, and then the reader and the poet are changed together.

Monday, September 10, 2007

Reflections Around an Embroidered Psalm

First, an acknowledgment of Bob’s, David’s, Iyov’s, John’s, Stephan’s, Suzanne’s blogs, posts, and comments on Psalm 68.

Second, a question inspired by Suzanne’s post, “Ps. 68: Part 7: Reflections,” and some of her wonderful comments around her rhetorical questions:

“Was Psalm 68 written by a woman? Does it matter?

Are men less musical, are men less interested in expressing themselves through music and language than women? In some way, yes, but in others, not at all.

Is my interpretation of the psalm actually feminine, or is something else going on?”

My question is this:

Does a woman writing make a difference?

No and Yes.

No: Women and men write equally.

We all can observe that women and men may write equally. That is, women and men are inherently equal in their capacity, in their ability, to write. We can see the equality immediately without having to turn to the academy or to anyone’s interpretations of any religious scripture. A man can write like a woman (if there’s a woman’s way of writing). And a woman can write like a man (if there’s a man’s way of writing). In this sense, therefore, it makes no difference in writing whether the writer is a man or a woman.

Despite the equality between men and women, some men such as Aristotle, Sigmund Freud, and perhaps Lawrence Summers have declared inequality between men and women (and, presumably, their writing). These men have written that women are different and presumably are therefore lesser than men physically and psychologically and perhaps in the society of the academy. The inference from Aristotle, Freud, and maybe Summers is that a woman’s writing is somehow fundamentally different-and-deficient when compared with men’s. These three men employ (an attempt at) logic, science, and cold unbiased observation to make such a conclusion.

Why can’t French postmodern feminists reason, then, that “phallologocentric” writers (such as Aristotle) will only pretend that there is no gendered writing when, really, “misogynistic” writers seem just to mark “womanly” writing as altogether different and leave all other [manly] writing as unmarked? In her Voice Lessons: On Becoming a [Woman] Writer (on page 4), we really can listen to Nancy Mairs saying in protest to her critic: “I am not a ‘real writer.’ I am a writer. Without modification.” So why can’t we also hear that writers are equal, male and female? Why can’t we see that male and female difference does not make for inequality? How can we not perceive this: that what de-scribes another’s writing as lesser are the imposed marks, the adjectives, the labels, and the modifications that a writer refuses to apply down on himself?

If we’re still having trouble seeing the sexism here, then analogies from racism may help. Let’s ask this: “Is African American literature lesser than other (American) literature?” Of course not! But the modification can “other,” can “marginalize,” and can “essentialize.” And a writer such as Jacqueline Jones Royster may respond, writing about what happens when others apply labels to her but not themselves; her responsive article is entitled,“When the First Voice You Hear is Not Your Own.”

If we’re still having trouble seeing the sexism, then analogies from ethnocentrism may also help. Let’s ask this: “Is ancient Chinese written instruction in communication a real ‘rhetoric’ on par with our (western european) rhetoric”? Of course we’d better at least imagine that Chinese rhetoric might be equal to ours. But look how we readers of rhetorical history tend to pass over the labels, unnoticed, when reading a book like Comparative Rhetoric: An Historical and Cross-Cultural Introduction by a reputable scholar such as George A. Kennedy. I pass over the ethnocentric modifications until coming upon something penciled in the margins of page 143 of my university’s library copy of the book. There, next to the author’s English (and the publisher’s transcribed pinyin) labels for Chinese terms, someone has unmarked the Chinese by marking the western writing with the following:





So by page 162, I really start wondering at Kennedy’s non-equal comparisons. There he writes: “The author of a Chinese work that most approximates a rhetorical handbook was Han Fei-tzu, probably born about 280BCE, ‘the Machiavelli of ancient China’.” And I ask now: “Might not a Chinese comparative rhetorician venture that Niccolo Machiavelli, perhaps born around the late to mid 1400sCE, is the Han Fei-tzu of sixteenth-century Europe”?

(It is absolutely no surprise to me that some readers reading my blog have not immediately been able to mark whether I’m a man or a woman. See the comments on Lingamish’s blog. Our gender and our race for that matter do not have to identify or to determine our writing. But won’t we do well first to acknowledge the differences our writing, our gender, and our race make before we start marking others as different and as different-and-therefore-lesser?)

Yes. A woman writing does make a difference.

Going beyond Aristotle’s mistaken observation that women are lesser than men, we can read writers who make a difference. They make a difference (though marked in the world of men as “women”). They make a difference by showing that men in history (especially men writing history) have not marked men and women equally. They show that, in the history of men written by men, usually the ones that count are men.

But women writing history have another history. And some write that history differently, more inclusively, with women equal to men. These writers include Laura Certa (writing to “Bibolo Semproni”); Cristine de Pizan (writing “The Book of the City of Ladies”); Elizabeth Cady Stanton (writing and reading “The Declaration of Sentiments” and The Women’s Bible: A Classic Feminist Perspective); Cheryl Glenn (writing Rhetoric Retold: Regendering the Tradition from Antiquity Through the Renaissance); Susan Jarratt (writing “Sappho's Memory” and, with Rory Ong, “Apsasia: Rhetoric, Gender, and Colonial Ideology”); and C. Jan Swearingen (writing “Plato’s Feminine: Appropriation, Impersonation, and Metaphorical Polemic”).

Such women’s writing is inclusive, not just of women with men, but is inclusive of methods and rhetorics that are not male only. Patricia Bizzell, for example, has written a wonderful article, which embraces traditional research methods (i.e., unmarked methods of men) but which also valorizes what get marked in our societies as less common methods (i.e., often suspect and marked-as-womanly methods). The article is "Feminist Methods of Research in the History of Rhetoric: What Difference Do They Make?"

For men reading women writers, there is an encouragement is not to settle for man writing that excludes women. There is the encouragement to men and women equally to use more inclusive methods (i.e., feminist methods) in writing. Let’s recall just a few. In contrast with Francis Bacon’s modernistic Essays, there’s Michel de Montaigne’s Essais with the self as the subject and method instead of mere logic. In contrast with Noam Chomsky’s and Morris Halle’s T-G linguistic theory of binary features, there’s Kenneth Pike’s, Evelyn Pike’s, and Eunice Pike’s Tagmemics, which places person above logic and which insists on acknowledging a language unit in a hierarchical perspective within its chosen context. In contrast with Aristotle’s logic, there are many other rhetorics and namely Jim W. Corder’s (which Keith D. Miller calls “Jim Corder’s Radical, Feminist Rhetoric”) which, perhaps, could be summed up fairly by one of Corder’s sentences (i.e., “On some days I’m pretty sure that there are five rhetorics, as intellect teaches me to speak in one way, while emotions tell another, and will insists on a third, and what’s left of soul whispers a fourth, and body comes with a fifth to dominate the others”) except just one sentence doesn’t quite include all the intellect, emotion, will, soul, or body of Corder or his works.

But I’ve gotten all academic in this blog again. I think a lot about the world in which my son and daughters live, the kind of writing they must write and read. As adults, they should be equal (as men and women) in their education, in their ability to write. And wonderfully different. I look forward to reading how they read, equally but differently, Psalm 68.

Saturday, September 8, 2007

How Aristotle Writes Psalm 68

:םיהלאל וידי ץירת שוכ םירצמ ינמ םינמשח ויתאי

ἥξουσιν πρέσβεις ἐξ Αἰγύπτου Αἰθιοπία προφθάσει χεῖρα αὐτῆς τῷ θεῷ

-verse 32


For readers keeping up with the commentary on Psalm 68, Suzanne McCarthy has written her Part 6: The heavens dripped (where she also kindly references the latest posts of others). I want to return to her Part 5: The barren woman, where Suzanne writes that “the psalmist” is a “she.”

We’re raising the question of authoring, of authority. Who wrote and who can (best) read Psalm 68? Let’s hear the Psalm: “the righteous / the just” – of course: “the fatherless,” “the widows,” “the prisoners,” “the women”: “back from Bashon” with “Benjamin, the youngest” in “Judah,” in “Zebulan,” in “Naphatali,” now “at the temple in Jerusalem” and “out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall hasten to stretch out her hands toward God.” (Aside questions: Where are the men? Why are women often classed in the societal margins? See: Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things and Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals?)

Now let me suggest how Aristotle wrote the Psalm.

It’s certainly not as he and other men intended. But acknowledge Aristotle’s authorial impact. Aristotle takes the lessons of Plato, who rails against the Hellene poets and their “so called rhetoric.” Aristotle formalizes such, with his unique cold objectivity. Aristotle teaches Alexander. Alexander conquers the world, setting up centers of learning and notably Alexandria, Egypt. Alexandria is a crossroads, rhetorically, linguistically, culturally, ethnically, religiously. Polytheistic Egypt hosts polytheistic Hellenes and monotheistic Arabs and monotheistic Jews. For the Israelites living there in this land of former slavery, this is a fantastic place at an incredible moment in history. As Sylvie Honigman suggests, it becomes a second Jerusalem, one in which there is “innovation.” The innovation has the most profound implications for the Greek and the Jew. For the Greek, there are the developments of the Hellenistic movement, away from Aristotle (a kind of post-Aristotelianism if you will). For the Jew, “the form is Greek, but the thematic material is Jewish” (Honigman, p. 16).

Now Aristotle writes Psalm 68 in this way. We track his hand (through Alexander) and those (Greeks-and-Jews) re-forming Aristotle(-with-Moses-back-in-Egypt). In Alexandria, Ptolemy Philadelphus commissions seventy scholars to translate the Hebrew Bible into Greek. How these post-Aristotelians read verse 32! How Aristotle writes. Had he forgotten Helen? No matter: “out of Egypt” they refuse to include his “eros” and his “rhetoric” translating instead with “agape” and “rhema” and “eulogos.” They (women and men) remember Helen and Hellenism and pave the way for Jew-and-Greek “fatherless” and “widows” to read (to read even more and more of one coming for Jews and Greeks out of “Judah,” “Zebulan,” “Naphatali”). It’s certainly not as Aristotle intended.

[addenda:]

1) for Aristotelianism (and likely for Aristotle himself):
- woman is a "botched" man
- rhetoric is "botched" logic
- translation is "botched" authority

but Aristotle cannot get around the rhetorical Helen, Hellenistic rhetoric, or their translation.

2) Is this too much of a stretch?

a) Why do the LXX translators begin Psalm 68 "with the finish" as with the final utterance (by the disciples' Hellenistic translation) on the cross?

b) Why do the LXX translators begin verse 2 with "νασττω" an imperative form of a verb used by Μωυσς (the alleged author of the book of ησος in Joshua 1 verse 2) for Moses and much more often for Joshua (i.e., ησος)? And why do the following disciples writing the New Testament use ναστς of ησος (i.e., resurrection of Jesus)?

c) Why do the LXX translators in Exodus 6:20 reference Miriam the sister of Moses and Aaron, when the Masoretic Text omits her altogether? Could that name Μαριαμ hold significance for the later disciples translating into Hellenism the Aramaic Hebrew words of their master and the names of the women he was around, even the one he came from?


Thursday, September 6, 2007

How Aristotle Reads Psalm 68

Others are doing a wonderful, masterful job of giving us insights into Psalm 68. Incredibly, through the new literacies of blogging, we read how Bible-language experts Bob, Dave, John, and Suzanne read. If you’re ready, you’ll find links below.

I had better start with Aristotle (especially since I’m working with him on a dissertation). We all know by reading his writings how Aristotle analyzed the lyric poetry of the Hellene ancients before him (namely Sappho, Hesiod, and Homer).

How then did Aristotle muse over the much older songs of the non-Greek Barbarians (and in particular the poetry of David the Hebrew and/or some woman writing of/to/for him)? How did Aristotle study תהלים (which we transliterate Tehillim)? How did he interpret that one Tehillim song of David’s which he would have called, in translation, ψαλμς εξήντα οκτώ (our Psalm 68)? Hmm . . . that’s a lot of speculation. And, besides, weren’t the Hebrew תנ״ך (or Tanakh) translated into Greek (as the Septuagint) long after Aristotle?

Maybe we had best just stick to how we read “Psalm” 68.

But can we, even with our 21st century literacies, really get around Aristotle? or beyond translation? I’ll come back to him, and to that. First this:

HOW WE (MUST) READ PSALM “68”

I remember (though it’s been 20 years now since I was sitting in that M.A.-in-linguistics, SIL-Dallas summer-course-in-Hebrew) when visiting Professor-of-Hebrew Robert Bergen said:

“I love listening to the children in the museum in Jerusalem reading aloud the psalms. They can hardly understand anything of the old texts they’re reading, but they pronounce it perfectly and effortlessly.”

A point we students of Dr. Bergen came away with is this: that the contemporary Yiddish-ish Hebrew we hear today is yet a far cry from what the ancient Jews tried to preserve, when singing and writing and then copying and copying and copying so faithfully so long ago. But even the Jewish traditions have split and still do splinter on just how to read תהלים. So how do we read that one “Psalm” (i.e., “68”) now?

John helps us get started, and more! Bob massages the text, and shows it to us. David (aka lingamish) reads it as a missionary prayer, with parts of it “yucky” and all of it “most difficult.” Suzanne kicked off the discussion and keeps it going with commentary, invitation to collaboration, and other important (feminist) issues (such as the explicit references to the equal care for “different classes of people” and the hint that the psalmist is an authoress); there’s a “precipice” up ahead, she advises.

HOW ARISTOTLE READS PSALM 68: THEORY A

How does Aristotle read ψαλμς εξήντα οκτώ? And who is this ριστοτέλης? Most would say this:

“Aristotle reads Psalm 68 in a way very very differently from how most Jewish and Christian Barbarians do.”

Joseph Priestly and Martin Luther would definitely say that.

First Priestly writes this thesis two centuries and three years ago (in The Doctrines of Heathen Philosophy, Compared with Those of Revelation):

What is peculiarly remarkable in Aristotle, is that though he reasons much, and disputes with wonderful subtlety, he seems to have felt nothing. He never expresses himself with any warmth, or any degree of sensibility, when he is treating of the most important subjects; but writes concerning God, and the soul, and of virtue and vice, with as much coolness as he describes his plants and animals.

So, on the one hand, we have Aristotle’s way, the cold unaffected observer. And, Priestly suggests, on the other hand, there’s another way of looking at texts (and we can imagine this other way applies even to Psalm 68):

How different, in this respect, as well as in many many others, are the writings of Aristotle from the Psalms of David, the writings of the prophets, and other devotional and moral articles in the books of scripture, penned by men of no uncommon ability of any kind, but deeply impressed with the importance of the subjects on which they write, and having more knowledge of them. They know infinitely more of God, and of his constant attention to the affairs of men, individuals as well as nations, and therefore they write as if they were really sensible of his presence with them, and his unremitted attention to them, as the proper author of all the good and evil that fell to their lot. They regarded him not only as their moral governor, and final judge, but as their father, and their friend; and thence were led to address themselves to him on all interesting occasions.

Just to be clear, then, we see from Priestly that David (and the other men and women with the Hebrew God’s revelation) will both read and write the תהלים with some subjectivity, with personal investment. But not the objective Aristotle. And Martin Luther writes, some five centuries (minus a decade or so) ago, in a similar but more damning way about Aristotle.

(A quick feminist aside is this: Luther hated the way Aristotle by his cold method concludes that woman is a “botched” man. Now, after Luther’s anti-Aristotelian feminist writings, there have come three twentieth century works which are very helpful: The Concept of Woman: The Aristotelian Revolution 750 Bc-Ad 1250 by Prudence Allen; Feminist Interpretations of Aristotle edited by Cynthia Freeland; Engendering Origins: Critical Feminist Readings in Plato and Aristotle edited by Bat-Ami Bar On. Luther, we’ll have to add, was not completely free of sexism, but that’s something for another discussion).

Luther, in a series of theses, wrote these statements against Aristotle (which I’m quoting in English translation, passages which can be found from several internet sources they way I did, by googling):


43. It is an error to say that no man can become a theologian without Aristotle. This in opposition to common opinion.


44. Indeed, no one can become a theologian unless he becomes one without Aristotle.


50. Briefly, the whole Aristotle is to theology as darkness is to light. This in opposition to the scholastics.


51. It is very doubtful whether the Latins comprehended the correct meaning of Aristotle.


53. Even the more useful definitions of Aristotle seem to beg the question.


Elsewhere, Luther derided the “religious scholars” whose cold, rational method was Aristotle’s and not the Scripture’s alone. In mimicking Paul’s authoritative “Hebrew of Hebrew’s” boast, Luther wrote:


I will go further with my boasting. I can expound psalms and prophets; they cannot. I can translate; they cannot. I can read the Holy Scriptures; they cannot. I can pray; they cannot. And to come down to their level, I can use their own dialectics and philosophy; and besides I know for sure that none of them understands their Aristotle.


Indeed Luther, as once an expert on Aristotle, could expound on Aristotelian methodology. But as one subsequently converted by and now given to the God of Scripture only, Luther could also expound the psalms. And Luther would have insisted that Aristotle, if reading Psalm 68 without allowing it to read him so to speak, could not really read it. Reading” requires “translation” and, in turn, “translation” requires much of the “reader.”


Luther’s reading of Psalm 68 got him into non-Aristotelian reading and translation:


No one should be surprised if here and in similar passages we occasionally differ from the rabbis and grammarians. For we followed the rule that wherever the words could have given or tolerated an improved meaning, there we did not allow ourselves to be forced by the artificial Hebrew of the rabbis into accepting a different inferior meaning. For this is what all schoolmasters teach, that words are to serve and follow the meaning, and not the meaning the words. We know this too, and St. Paul informs us in II Corinthians 4 [3:13-15], that the face of Moses is hidden from the Jews and that they seldom catch the meaning of the Scriptures, especially in the prophets. So at this point [Ps. 68:8] the Jews interpret “those who joyfully go out early and late” to mean the sun which rises in the morning and the stars which rise in the evening. Although this interpretation may be good, it has not appealed to us here.

Again in Psalm 68 we ran quite a risk, relinquishing the words and rendering the sense. For this many know-it-alls will criticize us, to be sure, and even some pious souls may take offense. But what is the point of needlessly adhering so scrupulously and stubbornly to words which one cannot understand anyway? Whoever would speak German must not use Hebrew style. Rather he must see to it—once he understand the Hebrew author—that he concentrates on the sense of the text, asking himself, “Pray tell, what do the Germans say in such a situation?”

Thus here in [Psalm 68] verse 13 we could also have rendered the Hebrew quite literally, like this, “If you lie within the marked boundaries, then the wings of the doves will be covered with silver and their pinions with gleaming gold,” etc. But what German understands that?


The non-Aristotelian method of Luther, the method of solo scriptura he and the following protestant reformers would use, involved translation.


In it’s purest form, this Lutheran method (as Luther applies it to Psalm 68) demands the perspective of the German Christian to the exclusion of the perspectives of the original Hebrew, and to the exclusion of the perspectives of the Roman Catholic scholars, and to the exclusion of the perspectives of Hellenes, and particularly of Aristotle. From our pluralist American twenty-first century perspective, we see that Luther missed much with such exclusion. He begins to sound like what he says Aristotle sounds like: like a bigot (an elitist and, perhaps, a racist -- if not an evangelical religionist or a sexist).


But, from our pluralist American twenty-first century perspective, we see that Luther found much: he is interested in reading folk, in empowering them from their subjective perspectives, in individuals meeting one another and their God as people.


HOW ARISTOTLE READS PSALM 68: THEORY B

I don’t want to defend Aristotle (or Luther) if it’s Aristotelianism I must defend. I do suspect we all are tempted to approach Psalm 68 with some cold objectivity. No doubt, many of us succumb to the temptation to read in an exclusionary way, that denies translation of the text and denies translation of ourselves in reading what the writer says.


I would like to advise that Aristotle’s “reading” has influenced our “reading” more than we know. I think there’s something Aristotle could not get around: let’s call it “rhetoric,” or “feminism,” or “translation.” The crucial aspect of that is this: Aristotle is a human being in society with personalities all around him. The ones immediately around him and before him and after him were called the Hellenes. They spoke a language named after a person (i.e., Helen) grappling with personalities here and above.

Aristotle and the Hellenes refer to “reading” (in Greek) as “top-knowing” or “knowing-from.above” or “knowing-again” or “re-cognition” or να-γινσκω, as if the knowing by reading comes from the sky, from the gods. (So John the disciple translates Jesus into Greek as saying to Nicodemus, “ἐὰν μ τις γεννηθ ν-ωθεν, ο δναται δεν τν βασιλεαν το θεο”; which we might translate further into English as “Should anyone not be born from.up-above, that person isn’t able to see the dominion of God.” If Jesus spoke Aramaic Hebrew, I still think it's highly likely that he read both that old dusty Hebrew of Psalm 68 and its less than 3-century-old translation into Hellenism, i.e., the Septuagint. John likely heard Jesus in Aramaic and read the תהלים, the Holy Scriptures, in Greek.)

There is humility and there is courage in this kind of subjective reading. It acknowledges someone above me (and us). It recognizes a wildness in that God above us (a characteristic which one of the bloggers on Psalm 68 noted above, and a personality that Psalm 68 itself suggests). It takes into account my (or our) place and others’. (John the blogger on Psalm 68 follows this method when writing this: “In my view, no one has the right to judge this psalm except from the perspective of a shocked nation which has just experienced a Pearl Harbor or a 9/11.” John is from the USA, and doesn’t hide it, but if he were from Japan he might have written, “just experienced a Hiroshima or a Nagasaki.” The Americans from the US feel the Psalm as from the attacked Israelite/Israeli perspective; the Japanese feel the Psalm from the Israel perspective, but as those once horrificly bombed by the Americans. The place, the perspective, the subjectivity of our bodies makes all the difference. You get the idea.) And this kind of subjective reading (i.e., of Psalm 68) requires deep change in me the reader because of the text read (from another's perspective not my own).

Let me segue to C.S. Lewis, who’s written one of the most helpful books (his only such book I think) on reading the Scriptures. It’s Reflections on the Psalms. And it’s a segue because his non-Aristotelian approach: Lewis is humble, is invariably aware of his subjective position, and is open to change because of others. From the opening page, Lewis tells he is not an expert in the scriptures or the Hebrew language; he admits he’s a learner, a mere literary critic, and one who’s become and is becoming a mere Christian as well. Thus, he reads the “psalms” from a Christian’s “love” perspective and from a scholar’s “literary” perspective. (He, more than once, discusses Psalm 68.) The “love” perspective would seem to constrain a text such as Psalm 68, a text about "judgment"; will the Christian reader "read into" the difficult "judgment" psalm by insisting that it really does advise the reader on a God who must be loving by the Christian standard and not an “unloving” God who "judges" as certain readings of the psalm might objectively require. For John the disciple, God is love; and for no disciple of Jesus is God basically judgment.

(For more on this “love” perspective, see William J. Webb’s Slaves, Women & Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis; James K. A. Smith’s and Henry Isaac Venema’s The Hermeneutics of Charity: Interpretation, Selfhood, and Postmodern Faith; and what Dallas Willard says is the acid test of any theology being whether God is lovable, in The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God.)

But the “literary” perspective takes allows for multiple perspectiveS. Lewis calls these “Second Meanings” in the chapter by that title. There, Lewis discusses: (1) a Greek lad who says more than he intended (and regrets it); (2) Virgil who writes a prophecy of Jesus Christ’s virgin birth (but would deny it); and (3) Plato who writes a prediction of “the passion of Christ” (and would acknowledge it). Lewis is trying to make a point that Plato can be really platonic in writing more than he intends. The shadows in his cave point to the reality of the loving Christian God.

But I think Lewis writes more than he intends. He’s using a method of reading that (A) connects him with others (namely the writer). And the methodology also (B) both demands and allows for his own readerly perspective which demands and allows that he change. (Concerning A: In the Shadowlands movie on Lewis, his character says, “We read to know we’re not alone.” There is the sociality that Nancy Mairs talks about when she publishes a piece book that says, “Publication of any sort is an intrinsically social act.” Concerning B: Lewis is an antimodernist, before any post modernist, and he comes to groundedness – to the Tao or to Joy if you know his works – by things very subjective in his body, such as the signposts of beauty that lead him to his God who is not that beauty.) Of course, beyond (Lewis’s Christ-predicting) Plato comes (our) Aristotle.

Aristotle reads Psalm 68. And if he reads it coldly, objectively, and it never translates him into something else, then Aristotelian wins but he loses. He never gets it. (And we let his Aristotelianism overcome his Hellenism.)

But if Aristotle reads Psalm 68, if he acknowledges his need (as a male reading a female; as a Hellene Greek reading a Barbarian Jew), then text (and author and he, the reader, himself) changes Aristotle. It really gets to him, and gets him.

WHO IS PSALM “68” FOR? HOW CAN ARISTOTLE THEN OR ANYONE NOW READ IT?

If Aristotle had to read the right answer to these questions, it would be the one answer that the hearers of Aramaic Hebrew had to settle for, a translation into Hellene text: ς χει τα κοειν κουτω. I’ll translate that into English for us: “for the hearer who has ears to hear.” And if we read it rightly, it will certainly translate you and me.

Saturday, September 1, 2007

Bible beginner's questions

I’m back just briefly. Blame it on Madame Guyon’s advice, to us beginners, to meet with Jesus Christ by “praying the scripture.”

The text I met this morning is Mark’s (chapter 13, 28-29; which sends me over to Matthew’s 24:32-33 and to Luke’s 21:29-31). Now, please remember I’m a beginner here. But how can we readers and we translators miss the word play?

I’ve copied/pasted the texts (from playful Mark and Matthew) below. Now I want to ask us readers and translators a few questions:

How can we readers and translators miss the word play?

Isn’t Jesus Christ having fun with his learners, telling them then and us now to “learn” from what a tree throws across at us (aka from a feminine-“she” tree’s “parable”)?

And aren’t Mark and Matthew having fun with translating the words of Jesus into Greek?

Isn’t there “room for discussion” that Peter Kirk calls for in his comment on my comment (on Suzanne McCarthy’s blog post)? Is the Greek we read from the disciples more authoritative than the Aramaic they heard from Jesus? (And I’m not suggesting we play the games of the “Jesus” Seminar, who doubt at all Jesus really said what Mark, Matthew, and Luke say he said. N.T. Wright responds to that silliness.)

Do we see their rhymes, the alliterations? And hear the differences in plays on words, in the responses to one another, of Mark and Matthew? (Could we have a word-play-to-word-play translation into English?)


(i.e.,
ὅταν ἤδη and ὅταν ἴδητε

γένηται and γινόμενα and γινώσκετε – for this is a feminine tree with feminine branches giving birth


the turn of punchlines in
τὸ θέρος [ἐστίν] and ἐστιν ἐπὶ θύραις)


Mark

28 ἀπὸ δὲ τῆς συκῆς μάθετε τὴν παραβολήν

ὅταν ἤδη ὁ κλάδος αὐτῆς ἁπαλὸς γένηται

καὶ ἐκφύῃ τὰ φύλλα

γινώσκετε ὅτι ἐγγὺς τὸ θέρος ἐστίν

29 οὕτως καὶ ὑμεῖς

ὅταν ἴδητε ταῦτα γινόμενα

γινώσκετε ὅτι ἐγγύς ἐστιν ἐπὶ θύραις


Matthew

32 ἀπὸ δὲ τῆς συκῆς μάθετε τὴν παραβολήν

ὅταν ἤδη ὁ κλάδος αὐτῆς γένηται ἁπαλὸς

καὶ τὰ φύλλα ἐκφύῃ

γινώσκετε ὅτι ἐγγὺς τὸ θέρος

33 οὕτως καὶ ὑμεῖς

ὅταν ἴδητε πάντα ταῦτα

γινώσκετε ὅτι ἐγγύς ἐστιν ἐπὶ θύραις