Race, psyche, body, the Bible, personal safety, and local ethos

I pen this postscript [in 2009] in Montpelier, Vermont, a fortuitous set of circumstances having brought me to this historic capital in a state, several of whose cities and towns were purportedly home to stations on the Underground Railroad....
      As I wander the streets immersing myself in the local culture of this unusually vibrant town, I appreciate how much has changed in more than two and one half centuries, how different our experience must be from that of my Africana forebears who came here in the early to mid-1800s on a different kind of journey.  The leader of the free world is now African American.  Vermont was a "Blue State" in the last presidential election.  Cars with "Obama-Biden" bumper stickers abound.  I am here voluntarily, rather than through forced exodus.  I am a citizen whose basic rights are protected by federal and state laws.  I have a choice in lodging.  I arrived by light of day, rather than under the cloak of darkness.  For the most part, local merchants have greeted me with warmth.  By and large, I am no different than any other tourist.
      Yet, from time to time I am conscious of palpable feelings of "otherness."  On some occasions I appear to be almost unnoticeable to [the] passerby; on others, the continuous "gaze" of the random onlooker makes me feel hyper-visible.  It could be that I am an obvious anomaly in a state with an overall population that is roughly 96.8 percent White and only 0.8 percent Black.  Perhaps it is because in a city of 7,760 any newcomer stands out, particularly if that woman or man is a person of color; or that at 52, I am twelve years older than the typical Montpelier resident.  Whatever the case, whether in clergy collar, business attire, or the urban bohemian garb de rigueur for so many, I seem to attract attention.  Blending in is difficult to say the least.  I have the occasional thought of perhaps retiring here.  Yet, as was the case with those Africans who sought liberty here and farther north long ago, I am conscious of how race and the experience of Diaspora have been written into my psyche and my physical body.  I wonder how such may have been etched, subtly or overtly, into the collective consciousness of Vermonters.  I realize that nearby cities like Jerusalem, Goshen, and Jericho reflect colonial American inscriptions of the Bible onto the state's landscape.  I wonder what subtle messages about person hood, derived from that same source, have been comparably inscribed, and to what extent they are in conversation with the ideals espoused in the state's Constitution and the tradition of political autonomy that continues to find expression in local Green initiatives and secessionist rhetoric.  I wonder why questions akin to these seem to arise whether I am at home or on the road.  I also wonder if such musings about the Bible, personal safety, and local ethos have been and remain a hallmark of life in Diaspora.
      Nonetheless, I recognize that by conjuring -- and refusing to relinquish -- memories of the Underground Railroad, Montpelier has become, at least for me, holy ground; and my trip here has taken on a special quality.  Consequently, this postscript has been transformed into a contemplative reflection on both The Africana Bible and the milieu from which it has come.  As far as my role in preparing these closing words, it has evolved.  I am, for the moment, far more than simply a general editor writing a concluding essay from a hotel situated along the Winoooski River.  I walk in the footsteps, and hold close the memory, of those passengers for whom that secret railway was the route to freedom.  I write realizing that The Africana Bible is, in fact, part of the cultural fabric they helped to write.
      Narratives of crisis, social dissolution, pilgrimage, exile, displacement, and restoration have been the primary texts through which many of ancient Israel's scriptures have been parsed and alongside of which they have been read in various Africana settings.  Every experience -- actual, imagined, or hoped for -- is a prism for interpretation, a canon for appropriation.....
---
above, an excerpt from the chapter "Notes from a Station Stop: An Editorial Postscript," by Rev. Dr. Hugh R. Page, Jr., Dean of the First Year of Studies, Associate Professor of Theology, and Associate Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Notre Dame, in The Africana Bible: Reading Israel's Scriptures from Africa and the African Diaspora.  (HT David Ker)

Your Personality: to Know Language, Your Lover, and the Bible

My claim in this post is that our epistemology (i.e., the way we "know" what we know when we think we know it) has much to do with our personality (i.e., the ways we and who we are in our souls).  Human psyche tends toward four types that seem to correlate with four ways of knowing.  Maybe we should call these four personal ways of being:

1) "the right way";
or 2) "any which way";
or 3) "why that way?";
or 4) the "significant way."

We may "know" a language, or a lover, or a text like the Bible. And as we get to "know" them, we do so significantly because of our own person -- because of who we have been, who we're becoming, and who we are. So check it out:

When you or I learn a language as an adult, we tend to approach the learning by our personality preferences. Likewise, when you or I fall in love, our personality and the personality of our lover tend to be huge factors. Similarly, when you or I read the Bible, we tend to read it through the lens of our own personality. And whether learning a language, falling in love with another person, or reading the Bible -- we are prone to do so by one of four personality types.

YOUR PERSONALITY: TO KNOW LANGUAGE

Adult learners of a language will usually have one of four learning focuses based on and profoundly rooted in one of four personality preferences. These are respectively a focus on:

1) "the right way";
or 2) "any which way";
or 3) "why that way?";
or 4) the "significant way."

When the focus is on "the right way," the learner feels guilty when "getting it wrong." And the person appreciates language "learning environments that include repetition and drills, memorization, workbook exercises and step-by-step presentations." The "right way" learner will "flourish in classroom settings that are friendly and foster cooperation, consistency and hard work."  A student or instructor who is a Guardian type will have "the right way" focus.

When the focus is on "any which way," the learner feels bewilderment when "getting locked into just one way." And the person appreciates language instruction "that include instructional games, role playing, media presentations, dramatic plays and challenging lessons." The "any which way" person is "inspired by hands-on and active learning situations – opportunities to construct, operate and manipulate objects."  A student or instructor who is a Artisan type will have an "any which way" focus.

When the focus is on questioning "Why that way?" then the learner feels fear not "seeing the deeper or hidden aspects of the language." And the person appreciates language teaching that will "include logical and well-researched lectures, independent projects, experimentation, invention, complex problem solving and discovery through intellectual exploration." The Why learner will "want to explore the 'whys' of everything – to be competent at knowing, understanding, explaining, predicting and controlling reality." A student or instructor who is a Rational type will have an "why-this-way" focus. 

When the focus is on the "significant way," the learner feels the shame of "irrelevance" if the language or the learning is not meaningful to her or him. And the person appreciates language teaching that can "include include group discussions, role playing, dramatics and small-group projects in a friendly and personal atmosphere." The "significance" learner needs "cooperative, harmonious, personal relationships with peers and teachers in order to optimize learning potential."  A student or instructor who is an Idealist type will have a "significance" focus.

Many of the above observations come from my work with adult language learners and teachers. Whether the students and professors are sophisticated or simple in their approach to acquiring a language as an adult, they share this in common: each tends to have one of four personality "learning styles." In the university where I run the programs for English as a second language (ESL) learning, learners and instructors alike identify their personality using a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) questionnaire. Then they look at how the personality Type tends to have them focus on one of four Keirsey temperaments that demonstrate a Learning Style. (Here's a web site that gives a fair overview of MBTI and Keirsey; and here's a site I've written for ESL learners and instructors to use; and here's a comparison of categories of fours I put together some time ago but might revise some today, for what it's worth).

YOUR PERSONALITY: TO KNOW YOUR LOVER

We tend to think of falling in love as something not very scientific at all.  But what if much of our coming to find and appreciate and "to know" our soul mate has much to do with our own personal way of being?

Earlier this year, Dr. Helen Fisher published a book to say as much.  Fisher, a "Biological Anthropologist, is a Research Professor and member of the Center for Human Evolution Studies in the Department of Anthropology, Rutgers University and Chief Scientific Advisor to the Internet dating site, Chemistry.com, a division of Match.com." And her website bio statement goes on to add: "She has conducted extensive research and written five books on the evolution and future of human sex, love, marriage, gender differences in the brain and how your personality type shapes who you are and who you love."

I'm particularly fascinated that Fisher is finding things that others in human history have observed. She says this in her book, Why Him? Why Her?: Finding Real Love by Understanding Your Personality Type:

Hippocrates, Aristotle, [Carl] Jung and [Isabel] Myers

....  Indeed, psychologist David Keirsey reports that these four basic personality types have been noted in Western history since the time of the ancient Greeks....

Aristotle (384-322BC) believed that humankind sought happiness in one of four ways: through sensual pleasure, what he called hedone; by acquiring assets, the propraietare; in logical investigation, or dialogike; or in expressing moral virtue, or ethikos. Aristotle perfectly described the core traits of the Explorer, Builder, Director and Negotiator.... (page 35)

Now, Fisher hasn't quite given us the source texts for Aristotle's writings on human motivations (they're his writings on ethics) nor has she noted his priorities (i.e., fine-tuning "logic" for "theoretical" knowing or absolute "epistemology" or science). But at least Fisher understands how Aristotle, in his epistemological mapping by logic, is trying to "get right" the tendencies of humans. Fisher has matched her four categories to what she sees as Aristotle's. And now she's beginning to match them to others' views of four personality ways of being. Fisher adds:

Why is the Myers-Briggs test so popular?

Because it works, thanks to biology. Although Isabel Myers was unaware of it, most of her types fit the same four basic biological profiles that I've identified. Then in the 1990s, a brilliant psychologist, David Keirsey, a protégé of Isabel Myers, simplified her schema to four basic personality types: the Artisan, Guardian, Rational and Idealist.

I was unaware of Keirsey's types when I outlined my own set of four personality styles while sitting at my desk that New Year's Day in 2005. Only later did I become aware of the striking similarities.

The four personality types are also represented in non-Western traditions. For example, several North American Indian tribes historically living on the Great Plains of today's Midwest believed in a sacred medicine wheel representing the circle of life. To the east soared the eagle, the symbol of vision and illumination. To the west was the bear, a steady, cautious creature that hunkered in caves and didn't roam. North was represented by the buffalo, the epitome of reason and wisdom. To the south was the mouse, symbolizing innocence and trust. Each of these creatures represents basic traits of either the Explorer, Builder, Director or Negotiator.

In short, animal behaviorists, physicians, philosophers and psychologists have been describing central aspects of these four personality types for over two thousand years. But I have had the advantage of twenty-first-century science, enabling me to link these four temperament constellations with their biological underpinnings.  (page 36)

If you're not a biologist or anthropologist like Aristotle or Helen Fisher, then you may still appreciate the personality types that they observe.  But then again, whether and how you appreciate these categories of ways of being might just depend on yours.  And I think, more or less, your tendency will be to go for one of these ways:

1) "the right way";
or 2) "any which way";
or 3) "why that way?";
or 4) the "significant way."

YOUR PERSONALITY: TO KNOW THE BIBLE

Some time back, Wayne Leman at the Better Bibles Blog posted on "Bible translation and personality types."  I think Leman is on to something.  He was trying to see whether personality type might correlate with preferences for particular English bible translations and versions.  At the time, I began to tabulate responses to his blog posts, and looked at Keirsey's four personality temperaments to come up with this correlation (noted in a comment at the post linked above here):

So far:

1 “so-what-can-I-do” Artisan has expressed a preference for NLT and TNIV.

7 “so-be-it” Guardians have most expressed preferences for ESV and NRSV.

9 “here’s the So-What” Idealists have most expressed preferences for NLT and NRSV.

10 “why, so why” Rationalists have most expressed preferences for NLT and TNIV.

The solution-prone Guardians do NOT seem to mention or to like NLT or TNIV.

The theorizing Rationals do NOT seem to mention or to like ESV.

Some meaningful Idealists will go for KJV (but not many of the solution-prone Guardians or the theorizing Rationals). But some of the solution-prone Guardians and some of the theory-prone Rationals will go for the NKJV (but none of the meaning-prone Idealists and not even that solo activity-prone Artisan will even mention that old KJV).

If there were more of us talking, then the patterns would likely be clearer. There do seem to be several patterns of four among us.

Wayne and I tried to keep up with this in email for just a bit.  But we got busy and lost interest.

Reading Willis Barnstone's three [3] possibilities for or tendencies in translation has inspired me to think about this a bit more. He says, on the one hand, there are "two extremes that can be satisfied happily: [1] a gloss for the reader who wants help with the source text [i.e., an interlinear], and [2] imitation for the ['translating'] writer who wants to collaborate with, adapt, or rewrite a precursor's [originally-authored] work." On the other hand, "[t]here is also [3] a middle ground between [1] gloss and [2] imitation, whose purpose is to hear the source author more clearly than the translator author"

I actually believe there's a fourth tendency in translation (especially Bible translation) that Barnstone doesn't get to. I may get to blogging about that some day. In the mean time, I've been noticing how some people like Dr. Jim West are ever concerned about "getting it right" (even with his Bible translation). And if you read the post I'm linking to where I mention West and his "getting it right," you'll see my personality tends to want a much different approach to translation (especially of the Bible).

What do you think my personality type is? And what's yours? And does it have nothing to do with how you "know" when knowing is a language or a lover or the Bible (in translation)?

What Bible Translation Looks Like

Above all we must keep in mind that narrative is a form of representation. Abraham in Genesis is not a real person any more than the painting of an apple is real fruit.
--Adele Berlin

I am deeply distressed by what I only can call in our Christian culture the idolatry of the Scriptures. For many Christians, the Bible is not a pointer to God but God himself… God cannot be confined within the covers of a leather-bound book. I develop a nasty rash around people who speak as if mere scrutiny of its pages will reveal precisely how God thinks and precisely what God wants.
--Brennan Manning

We find the Bible of the Jews in Greek, and even where it's in Hebrew and in Hebrew Aramaic, it's mostly in Greek. And we may even want that language not to be rhetorical. But where the Jewish bible is in Greek, it comes to us already translated. Translation is rhetorical, whether we'd like it to be something a-rhetorical or not-too rhetorical if possible.
--J. K. Gayle

Ὁ δὲ εἶπεν πρὸς αὐτόν, Ἐν τῷ νόμῳ τί γέγραπται; Πῶς ἀναγινώσκεις;
--Luke translating into Greek what
  Jesus is translating in the subjective Aramaic words of
  a Torah scholar, who is translating the Hebrew words of
  Moses (i.e.,
"Luke 10:26," which
  I am translating into
  (y)our English as

  "He, nonetheless, said to him,
         'In the Law what's the written re-presentation?
         How are  
              you reading it,
                     getting it,
                     interpreting it,
                     knowing it from above?'  How do  
              you read it?

          No, really, it's important what you think!")

beyond logic: language and discourse

"A particular language, of a particular culture, in relation to a particular person with [her or] his particular history constitutes an implicit theory for that person . . . . [T]he observer [whether a cultural insider or an outsider] universally affects the data and becomes part of the data."
--Kenneth Lee Pike,
Linguistic Concepts

"Using subject position as a terministic screen in cross-boundary discourse permits analysis to operate kaleidoscopically, thereby permitting interpretation to be richly informed by the converging of dialectical perspectives."
--Jacqueline Jones Royster,
"When the First Voice You Hear Is Not Your Own"

When we come to language, to discourse even, too often our temptation is to assume (as with Aristotle) that we ourselves are objective with no need to change because of anyone else.  Or we may read something written by someone like Aristotle or Saint Paul translated into our own language so (dynamically equivalent to their Greek) that we begin to think they've written to us or have something to say that sounds like Nature or nature's God so that to deviate from that would make us natural deviants, or something.

Here are three anecdotes from my experience to begin to illustrate.  One's a boring linguistics study; another is a poignant story from my doctoral studies in rhetorics and feminisms; and the third is from my work in adult language learning:

1

We don't always say what we believe:

As a linguist, I have used on occasion a technique for teasing out preferences and prejudices of people towards languages and speakers of those languages. (The technical name is the "matched-guise procedure" as developed by Wallace Lambert and Richard Tucker to get at attitudes in Canada towards speakers of French and English respectively). In one case, I was interested in how learners of English as a foreign language (in their own countries) might have attitudes towards native speakers of English (outside the learners' own countries). So, on a direct questionnaire, I asked scores of EFL learners, "Where is the best English spoken?". When the vast majority of this group declared either "the U.K." or "the U.S.A." - then I played for them tapes of native speakers of English talking about a benign topic. And then the EFL learners rated the speakers they heard in terms of intelligence, friendliness, clarity of speech, and so forth. (The guise, or the trick, was this: The English speakers were actors I had hired to speak in various varieties of the language. They talked using American English, they talked using British English, and they talked using other Englishes as well.  These actors, by putting on the different Englishes, had managed to fool not only all the members of the British Club in Dallas but also all of the professional linguists who listened to tapes of the actors played at a nearby US university as well). Here's the other bit of detail; all of the EFL learners were ethnically Chinese (from China, from Taiwan, from British Hong Kong, from Singapore, from Malaysia, and from Brunei). They'd all read or been told by someone that the best English was spoken in the USA or the UK.  (Aristotle and Saint Paul were not the ones who wrote the facts about the location of the best English, but someone or another on the Voice of America or the BBC had discussed the nature of good English within earshot of the Chinese listeners - and hearing they had believed).  Not surprisingly, all of the EFL learners from former British colonies (Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei) declared that people in the UK used the best English. But to my great surprise, this same group unanimously and anonymously did not rate English speakers from the UK nearly as high as they rated speakers from the USA. In other words, those persons of Chinese ethnicity raised in and around British school systems (and more likely to listen to the BBC than to VOA) were predisposed to public praise of the "Queen's English." And yet privately they betrayed a preference for the American superpower style of the English language.

The observer, the listener, may say they believe one thing but will, at times, contradict their statements with a more profound, more deeply hidden belief.  What is "objective" for these observers?  And are they being honest in the first place, or more honest in the second instance of confession?

2

We often want the privilege of hearing authoritative canonical texts as applying to us, especially when they authorize us to speak about those "others" whom the same text silences naturally:

Just weeks into "Composition Theory," in my first semester of doctoral coursework at Texas Christian University, the prof assigned Jacqueline Jones Royster's, "When the First Voice You Hear is Not Your Own." The essay is a call to scholarly subjectivity, to willingness to use one's own voice (and voices) when speaking about one's scholarly interests.  It's also a call to those who study and speak about groups of people they themselves are not members of.  For example, a white male scholar may write with some authority about black women who may not be as scholarly.  Royster, the author of the essay, researches and teaches using various voices.  These voices include those of the (1) expert in her discipline and of (2) the subjects she studies in her discipline. Her discipline is English studies, with particular focuses in rhetoric, composition, and literacy studies.  One of Royster's books she has titled, Traces of a Stream:  Literacy and Social Change Among African American Women.  By now, you may have guessed she's a researching, published and teaching scholar.  And you may have realized she's African American, a woman in the stream of the group that she studies.  Well, in the course I was taking, the prof had asked the class to write a response to Royster's essay.  And the prof had asked me to read my response aloud to the class.  To respond to Royster's essay calling for subjectivity, I had written some of my own story.  And, at the end of my response, reading aloud unrehearsed as instructed, I began to become emotional, because I was (in part) acknowledging a mentor whose sexual orientation is different from my own and was acknowledging his passing after nine faithful years with his partner, who had two years prior, died of AIDS.  My mentor died of AIDS too, so I was trying to read what I'd written of the influence that this former boss of mine had had on me.   And how his partner's death and his own dying had figured, also, into his enduring influence.  I could hardly read as tears edged their way past the mop of my own fingers on my face.  But to my great surprise, another student in the class took great offense.  He'd read (he said) that discussions of homosexuality (when our class was reading on race) was inappropriate; that my reading of my own paper was maudlin; that the professor by calling on me did not know how to profess; and that, frankly, Jacqueline Jones Royster was sentimental, unobjective, and ironically exclusionary.  (The reactionary classmate marched off to the English Department chair and filed a formal complaint.  He also sent an email to Royster, demanding that she clarify how his white male voice was any less valid than hers.  Unfortunately, and this is one of the lessons for me in all of that:  the dominant white male had heard from someone - maybe Aristotle, maybe Saint Paul - that his voice was objective, and was to be heard.  But, of course, as much as Aristotle taught objectivity to his elite Greek male students, and even though Paul urged λογικὴ or "logike" of some of readers (first Jews then Greek), my classmate seems to have understood this as applying directly to himself.  The Nature of Reality as Written was firm, and firmly coldly objective - to think otherwise would require a change or a mess of changes within oneself.  (And it was too close to qualifying exams for that nonsense).

3

We can't always predict how much change (and how quickly and how sustained) our subjective experiences will effect.

Every once and a while, those of us working in the university level program for learning English as an additional language will meet remarkable learners.  "Sasha" is one of the remarkable ones.  Having studied no English prior to arriving in the USA from her Eastern European home, she needed only 6 weeks to become proficient enough in English to pursue a degree program full-time using that new language only.  For most people beginning in English, it takes from 9 to 12 months to do what Sasha did in a month and a half.  Sure, we experts in language learning and acquisition and teaching gave all the students our best.  But what made Sasha do remarkably and measurably better than her classmates?  She fell in love.  And she would only speak in English with her new friend (and would only correspond in English writing with him).  She fell in love with her textbooks and the multimedia surrounding them too.  She'd read books that had been translated, sometime variously translated, into English from her Eastern European language.  She'd compose poetry, in English, English as she was growing to know it.  She'd speak with a flawless American English accent the last time I saw her, four years later at her undergraduate graduation before she left again for home.  She was an adult human convert.  (I did my best to get my staff of instructors to get the other English students paying attention to Sasha and her learning.  Based on all of our expert learning and research about language acquisition and learning, how could we have predicted what she did and who she was?  What's love got to do with it?  There have been other Sasha's and not all with a first language that's IndoEuropean.  And it sometimes is love of music, and love of dance, and love of sports, as much as love of that boyfriend or girlfriend that seems part and parcel of the deep change.  But really, what's love got to do with it?)

Listen? Look? Really?

Ἀκούετε. ἰδοὺ ἐξῆλθεν ὁ σπείρων σπεῖραι.
καὶ ἐγένετο ἐν τῷ σπείρειν
ὃ μὲν ἔπεσεν παρὰ τὴν ὁδόν,
καὶ ἦλθεν τὰ πετεινὰ καὶ κατέφαγεν αὐτό.
καὶ ἄλλο ἔπεσεν ἐπὶ τὸ πετρῶδες
ὅπου οὐκ εἶχεν γῆν πολλήν,
καὶ εὐθὺς ἐξανέτειλεν διὰ τὸ μὴ ἔχειν βάθος γῆς:
καὶ ὅτε ἀνέτειλεν ὁ ἥλιος ἐκαυματίσθη,
καὶ διὰ τὸ μὴ ἔχειν ῥίζαν ἐξηράνθη.
καὶ ἄλλο ἔπεσεν εἰς τὰς ἀκάνθας,
καὶ ἀνέβησαν αἱ ἄκανθαι καὶ συνέπνιξαν αὐτό,
καὶ καρπὸν οὐκ ἔδωκεν.
καὶ ἄλλα ἔπεσεν εἰς τὴν γῆν τὴν καλήν,
καὶ ἐδίδου καρπὸν
ἀναβαίνοντα καὶ αὐξανόμενα,
καὶ ἔφερεν ἓν τριάκοντα
καὶ ἓν ἑξήκοντα
καὶ ἓν ἑκατόν.
καὶ ἔλεγεν, Ὃς ἔχει ὦτα ἀκούειν ἀκουέτω.
--Mark and perhaps Peter the Rock (translating for Joshua of Nazareth)

πῶς οὖν χρὴ δίκαιον ἡγήσασθαι τὸν τῆς Ἑλένης μῶμον,
ἥτις εἴτ' ἐρασθεῖσα
εἴτε λόγῳ πεισθεῖσα
εἴτε βίᾳ ἁρπασθεῖσα
εἴτε ὑπὸ θείας ἀνάγκη ἀναγκασθεῖσα
ἔπραξεν ἃ ἔπραξε, πάντως διαφεύγει τὴν αἰτίαν
--Gorgias of Leontini (speaking for Helen of Troy)

It can be all Greek to me, and yet, and still, we all can see the play.

I've bolded and italicized and formatted the bits of text above to show some of the repetition, the variation on a theme, the parallelism even across parables.

Aristotle despised such play in language. Here's why: it didn't seem true to reality.

Reality has males above messy females, logic above messy dialectic and its counterpart rhetoric, and educated natural-born Greek men above all messy bar-bar-ians or slaves. End of story.

There is no need for fables, for parables, for others' stories. There is no need to change. No need to mess up reality.

When Aristotle at age thirty seven married Pythias his first wife, he that year declared that age thirty seven is the optimum age to marry for a man. He'd gotten his "virgin," as Hesiod said to:

Take to your dwelling a woman when you are ready to marry,
Not long after your thirtieth birthday is something behind you,
Nor when you're very much older, for that is the age to get married.
See that she's four years older than puberty; wed in her fifth year.
Marry a virgin to teach her all her respectable duties.
Most of all marry a woman who lives in your neighbourhood, nearby.
Looking about you, be sure no neighbour makes fun of your marriage.
Surely a man can obtain nothing better at last than a woman
When she is good; if she's bad, there is nothing more thoroughly tiresome;
Keeping her eye on her dinner she kippers her husband however
Strong without smoke. She'll bring him unwilling to early old age.
--Work and Days (697-705, trans by Daryl Hine)

So just guess how young Aristotle's virgin was when he got her so naturally?

When Aristotle went bald early, he observed the reality that "The front part of the head goes bald because the brain is there and man is the only animal to go bald, because his brain is much the largest and moistest. Women do not go bald." And he went on to observe "Again, one quality or action is nobler than another if it is that of a naturally finer being: thus a man's will be nobler than a woman's," something the men of Sparta with their hair - their long hair - and with their ignobly free women failed to grasp.

If life changes sometimes, that's only natural. And nature from time to time will need a helping hand. Why? Well, logically because females sometimes fail in the procreative act. And their failing nature leads to female babies (which are penis-less and otherwise botched males); sometimes a defective mother having sex defectively can even lead to male offspring that's defective, to dwarfs and to other mutations. Fortunately, logic allows female infertility and animal mothers producing defective offspring to be overcome. Why, even good horsemen know this nature:

Aristotle advises, "After an interval put the horse to the mare again because the mare cannot bear it continuously." Here he's talking logically, literally: "Ἴσως δὲ μᾶλλον ἂν δόξειεν ἀπόδειξις εἶναι πιθανὴ τῶν εἰρημένων λογική [“logic”]—λέγω δὲ λογικὴν [“logic”] διὰ τοῦτο ὅτι ὅσῳ καθόλου μᾶλλον πορρωτέρω τῶν οἰκείων ἐστὶν ἀρχῶν. . . . . οὗτος μὲν οὖν ὁ λόγος [“logos”] καθόλου λίαν καὶ κενός• οἱ γὰρ μὴ ἐκ τῶν οἰκείων ἀρχῶν λόγοι [“logoi”] κενοί, ἀλλὰ δοκοῦσιν εἶναι τῶν πραγμάτων οὐκ ὄντες. He's writing here on animal sex generally (i.e., Generation of Animals) but gets into the particular realities of geometry and of fixed, unchanging nature, by logic. Logic listens to nothing else but reality, nothing but nature, as the educated Greek male (not the Spartan man, mind you) so coldly and objectively sees it.

Krista Ratcliffe, in all her wonderful work on rhetorical listening, has correctly observed that Aristotle rejected "listening" in his canons of rhetoric.

Ratcliffe's is no small insight. Which may explain why Aristotle didn't hear Gorgias (whom his teacher Plato in the dialogue "Gorgias" has his teacher Socrates disparaging as mere Gorgias the "rhetorician"). Gorgias, in real reality, rather playfully was listening to Helen, giving her lots of wiggle room as to why she'd run off with a barbarian instead of staying home with an educated Greek man. Gorgias was listening to a woman. A vulnerable mess. This is listening rhetorically. Listening with intent for very personal, very subjective implications that are prone to make you soften your heart and change. You don't necessarily need to know educated Greek to hear.

If Mark had written and translated so that Aristotle could have read, then Aristotle wouldn't have listened to this nonsense either. Aristotle didn't listen to barbarians. Aristotle didn't change nature or his own nature.

biblical schmiblical

I'm stealing the title of Suzanne's post Biblical schmiblical and urging you to read it.

Now my Jewish neighbor tells me last night at sundown that he and his wife have had to go to three different stores in Fort Worth, Texas USA (the buckle or a major loop of the Bible belt) to look for kosher. The Walmart and Target managers both apologized, and the latter explained, "The demographics just don't allow us profitably to stock these items on our shelves anymore." And my friend just laughs that he's going to have to open his own store, "because that little section of passover preparations at Albertsons is just, well, it's just little." (I joked that we really should have voted Kinky Friedman as Governor of this Lone Star State. And I started thinking about whose book this Bible of our post-Christian nation really is).

Every Bible translator who is not a Jew would do well to read Jacqueline Jones Royster's little essay, "When the First Voice You Hear is Not Your Own." Of course, Royster is not a Jew. She's a different minority - with a majority of experts about her and about her kind all around her: she's African American. She's also a woman. A double minority. And she's also a scholar, an expert on African American women and their literacy practices. She doesn't say that you can't be an expert on African Americans if you're not African American. She doesn't say that you can't be an expert on women if you're not a woman. (She doesn't even say that you can't be an expert on literacy if you're not literate!) But she does tire of hearing others who are not her and are not her "kind" speak as if they are her and are her kind.

This is exactly the kind of tiresome affront bible bloggers and bible translators and bible experts who are not Jews can be to the Jews. I don't care if you know something about the New Testament because you're Christian (and one of the goyim). Now, I'm ranting. Read Suzanne's post, and read Jacqueline Jones Royster's essay. And, if you like, read my feminist rhetorical translating of the Jewish sexist text we call Numbers 5:1-4. I'm reading as a complete outsider, listening in, overhearing, eavesdropping, listening not just to the author's intent (not just to the authors' intents and not just to the other translators' intents) but also listening (as Krista Ratcliffe says Aristotle wouldn't) - listening with intent. Suzanne and Jacqueline and my friend having to visit three stores to prepare his family's passover are all suggesting subjectivity trumps Aristotle's aim for stand-offish and stand-above and stand-abstractly objectivity. The subjective personal counts more and counts for more than anything an objective expert on the bible can explain to you. "But but but it's Biblical!!" biblical schmiblical

The Silence of (Rahab and) the Joshuas

The majority of bible translators today know better than the first authors and initial translators of the texts of the bible. Or they think they do.

Most bible translators today don’t follow the Hebrew authors and translators of the Jewish scriptures. Instead, bible translators now tend to follow the philosopher Greeks: they follow Plato in idealizing and Aristotle in rationalizing. It’s a Western culture coup d'état.

In general, English translators today idealize not only (A) the texts (as The “Holy” Bible) but also (B) their own logical methods of translation (which they see as their obedient “faithfulness” to the “original” texts and authors, whom they idealize as “the Author”). They have been disciples of the semi-platonic Jerome or Martin Luther who tries to protest not only the Pope but also Aristotle. They have been much more recent followers of the platonic, neo-Aristotelian Noam Chomsky or Eugene Nida or Dan Sperber and Deidre Wilson or Wayne Grudem or John Piper or the various theo-logical committees of the big bible publishing houses.

Specifically, they can both (A) silence a woman (Rahab) who speaks in the Hebrew and (B) sacrifice the richness of Jewish history (in Joshua) for Christianized disambiguity.

(Oh, and the vast majority of bible translators today are men. They are not women. Women tend to be more open to different translation methods and necessarily alternative ways of looking at the texts. One woman even looks for evidence that the unnamed authoress of the book of Hebrews is a woman. But perhaps I digress; perhaps.)

Let’s look at two textual examples: Joshua 2:14 and Hebrews 4:8.

Joshua 2:14 goes like this:

וַיֹּאמְרוּ לָהּ הָאֲנָשִׁים נַפְשֵׁנוּ תַחְתֵּיכֶם לָמוּת אִם לֹא תַגִּידוּ אֶת־דְּבָרֵנוּ זֶה וְהָיָה בְּתֵת־יְהוָה לָנוּ אֶת־הָאָרֶץ וְעָשִׂינוּ עִמָּךְ חֶסֶד וֶאֱמֶת׃

The very first bible translators were Jews, true insiders to their own texts (unlike bible translators today). And yet, they were “commissioned” to translate by a goyish Egyptian king who was the lackey of a goyish Greek world conqueror. (I’m talking about the legend of king Ptolemy Philadelphus II and Alexander the Great and the translators of what has become known as the Septuagint, or the LXX). So they were more faithful to the Hebrew than to the Greek. And they still translated Joshua 2:14 this way:

καὶ εἶπαν αὐτῇ οἱ ἄνδρες Ἡ ψυχὴ ἡμῶν ἀνθ' ὑμῶν εἰς θάνατον. καὶ αὐτὴ εἶπεν Ὡς ἂν παραδῷ κύριος ὑμῖν τὴν πόλιν, ποιήσετε εἰς ἐμὲ ἔλεος καὶ ἀλήθειαν.

It appears that these original translators “changed” the text. But isn’t that what translators do? Let me step aside that rhetorical question just to explain. In English, the Hebrew was translated the following way by the “commissioning” of British emperor James I, whose translators also had access to the LXX and to Jermone's Vulgate and to Luther's Bibel:

“And the men answered her, Our life for yours, if ye utter not this our business. And it shall be, when the LORD hath given us the land, that we will deal kindly and truly with thee.”

But in English, the Greek LXX alone was translated this way by Sir Lancelot Charles Lee Brenton by himself:

“And the men said to her, Our life for yours [even] to death: and she said, When the Lord shall have delivered the city to you, ye shall deal mercifully and truly with me.”

Do you see the difference? The original Jewish translation of the Hebrew into Greek (or the LXX which Brenton turns to English) is different from the James I English translation. The Jews have “καὶ αὐτὴ εἶπεν” (for which Brenton has “and she said”) for the original, ambiguous Hebrew phrase “אמֶר.”

Now, to be fair to the King James Commission on The Translation of The Holy Bible, they may just be following Saint Jerome or the rogue Martin Luther, who fail to give the prostitute Rahab her say. Who do you think your favorite Bible’s commission is faithful to, which platonic idealist who silences the woman, that is? (Of course, the LXX Commission, and Sir Brenton, let Rahab speak in Joshua 2:14 in the original Hebrew text and in the Greek and in the English translations).

So let’s quickly run back to the New Testament and to the book of Hebrews and to Hebrews 4:8.

To be sure, all the writers of the New Testament (all men, except perhaps for that unnamed authoress of the book of Hebrews)—all of them really like the translators and the translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek. The New Testament writers without fail also write in Greek, and when they quote the Old Testament they quote the Greek translation. That’s not to say they don’t like the original Hebrew text; they do. It’s just to say, every single writer of the New Testament chooses to write in Greek, and chooses to read also the Greek translation when quoting from the ancient Hebrew scripture.

Not surprisingly, when recording what first century Jews said in Hebrew or Aramaic, the New Testament writers—every single one of them—translated the Hebrew speech into Greek. And when the speech was ambiguous, which Hebrew and most any language is from time to time, the New Testament writer-translators were good enough to let us readers sort things out.

So here’s what the writer of the book of Hebrews says in Hebrews 4:8:

εἰ γὰρ αὐτοὺς Ἰησοῦς κατέπαυσεν οὐκ ἂν περὶ ἄλλης ἐλάλει μετὰ ταῦτα ἡμέρας

Now, notice bible translators today have tended to split over the ambiguity here. But it seems that Saint Jerome and the protesting Martin Luther parted ways here too. And since, many bible translators follow either the one or the other, we get the split.

Here’s Jerome and then Luther (but go on to check how your favorite Bible translation gives way to the one or the other):

nam si eis Iesus requiem praestitisset numquam de alio loqueretur posthac die

Denn so Josua hätte sie zur Ruhe gebracht, würde er nicht hernach von einem andern Tage gesagt haben.

The quick thing to note is that Jerome makes Ἰησοῦς Iesus but Luther makes him Josua.

Now, of course Jerome can tell the difference between “Jesus” and “Joshua” and so can the writer of the book of Hebrews. But the unnamed, anonymous writer of the book of Hebrews wants to keep the language in Greek as ambiguous as it is in Hebrew. She gives the reader of her Greek and the earlier Hebrew quite a bit of credit. (Okay, I’ll give you that—there’s no rigid evidence that the writer of Hebrews is “she”; and yet “he” sure writes and translates as openly as a “she” might).

But Jerome and Luther have to disambiguate, which is what bible translators today do. They want the ideal text to say one thing and one thing only. And if there’s a choice left to the reader, well the translator gets to decide for her. (In this way, Jerome and Luther are not only Platonists, they are also Aristotelians. They want the ideal Text, and they want it to say One thing and NOT another thing).

So to be clear, Jerome turns Joshua into Jesus, and Luther turns Joshua into Joshua. Most bible translators today follow either the one or the other.

But the writer of the book of Hebrews lets Jesus be Joshua also. She trusts the early translators, you know, the ones who let Rahab speak in Joshua 2:14. She trusts us the readers to see the ambiguity, to interpret for ourselves, and to hear the various voices in the text, not just Jerome’s voice or Luther’s voice.

(Now I do know of two English translation teams who have decided to translate both Joshuas in the Greek text Hebrews as "Joshua." They are Jewish groups, and I'll not name them here because they do have bias that they confess, which may just distract from the point of this post. Their bias is not platonism or neo-aristotelianism, however. And, as mentioned before, the translator and translation theorist Willis Barnstone, who is a Jew, not a Christian, translates the Greek Ἰησοῦς as Yeshua).

Oh my! Opinions are subjective. Oh my!

"Opinions are subjective," complains a writer. And so she goes on:
"whenever an opinion is a wrong one, it typically defies the rules of logic."

What's your opinion about that?

"By contrast, interpretations of [a text] are potentially less subjective insofar as they are guided—and guarded—by the tools of historical and literary analysis."

So how do you interpret that?

But above all (and not to be confused with your subjective opinion or your wondering and wandering interpretations), there's "truth itself. . . [which has at the pinnacle] biblical truth which, of course, is inherently reliable and inherently authoritative since it is inspired by God.”

If you get your logic, and it's rules, and your history and literature, with their tools, and grab onto the set of texts given mother nature's nature which is Father God's CPR, then you cannot go wrong. Wrong, of course, is the very opposite of being right. But that's just Aristotle's opinion. What if he's sometimes subjective?

I'm glad the speaker and writer Sarah Sumner has some other opinions.