My Asian Stories, Feminisms, Bibles, Artworks

 

Here I am.  Yep, it's me you're looking at.  My Mom, one of my brothers, our friend Ông Siew, and then, on the right, me.  Well, it's me when I was younger.  Or, to be even more "accurate," and "precise," and "literal," and so forth and so on, it's just a picture of me, a photo graph, a digitized one now, on a blog on your PC or smartphone screen, or maybe printed on some paper or shined up on a screen.  So is it me?  Yes, there I am.  I'm the same person as in the re-presentation you're looking at above.

My Dad was telling me stories of Ông Siew as I spent this weekend with him and my Mom.  Many of the stories I hadn't heard.  Most I was a part of.  In fact, what got us looking at this picture was the fact that Dad was telling me a story of going to visit Mr. Siew's village in the highlands of central South Viet Nam.  And he told this particular story as if I wasn't there.  In fact, he'd forgotten how often he'd take us with him to the village, sometimes with Mom, most of the time without her.  The photo doesn't really "prove" anything to him or to me.  Except we were people who we still may be today.  And yet, we're different some too.  And we wouldn't be who we are today if we hadn't been where we were or who we were.  [I think you may want to hear that Ông Siew is what the French called "Montagnard."  Literally, that may mean to you that he is a "Mountain Person."  Figurally, that may mean to you that he is of an indigenous people of Viet Nam.  Doubtfully, you know something of the discriminations his people experienced and still experience because they have darker skin and different languages than those who are now officially Vietnamese by race and by language.  To call him Ông is just to refer to him by one of his two mother tongues.  So the stories get told and the representations go beyond western logic.  They are personal, and you can tell your stories too.]

The framing of the photo, the framing of the stories, is key.  I write at this blog oftentimes because I am this uncommon mix of the West and of the East, of what Edward Said reframed as Orientalism when having no idea really how he, then, was reframing his own Occidentalism, as a mixture.  This is very unlike Aristotle, whom many of us here in the West get our epistemology from, as if it's the only or at least the default way of understanding our world, and who we are.

While in my parents' home this weekend, I read the forward to the book, The Story Bible, by Pearl S. Buck.  Let me see if I can come to some point of what this blogpost might be about.  If you get it at all, then you might need to know how I always take too many books with me when I visit my parents alone (that is, without my siblings or without my nuclear family), because my parents are often interrupted by visitors making house calls to see Dad, who has cancer in its final stage.  They call him Mục Sư Gayle or Pendeta Gayle or Pastor Gayle because he is a missionary, or was when we in South Viet Nam and in Indonesia.  They don't care to see me, usually, and it's usually a mutual feeling.  So I do have a little time to read.  Maybe some day, here at this blog, I'll read more of the book Pearl wrote, and more from her forward.  Today, let me tell you how she starts it and finishes that forward, the last couple of paragraphs coming as if she's trying to let you know what the Bible as told in her Story Bible is about.  This isn't a difficult thing if you just go with it a little.  She recalls:

"When I was a child growing up in China in the household of my American parents, I was not encouraged to read the Bible."

"The Bible . . . may be read in many ways.  For some it constitutes divine teaching, and it does contain that element.  For others it is the purest literature we have in the English language.  For still others it is a compendium of information on suffering, struggling, rejoicing human nature.  For children, it is a story book.  May they read it as I read it long ago in a Chinese house on a Chinese hillside!

Yet stay--as I write it occurs to me that the bible has another meaning.  It is an Asian book, for Christianity [as the religion of my parents] came out of the East.  It seems a contradiction that today the West, facing conflict with the East, should nevertheless find its own source of spiritual life in a volume of Asia, centering about the Jews, who, though they have wandered far, nevertheless remain in many ways true to their ancient history which is Asian.  It may be that in this very fact we shall find the means of a common understanding, a basic agreement on the constitution for a peaceful world."

You may now be as surprised as I am at the Introduction to Sweetbitter Love: Poems of Sappho, A New Translation by Willis Barnstone.  Yep.  I took that book with me when visiting my parents this weekend.  Here's the way Willis starts his first two paragraphs, and we may want to notice his allusions to the East and the West:

"In Sappho we hear for the first time in the Western world the direct words of an individual woman.  It cannot be said that her song has ever been surpassed.  In a Greek dialect of eastern Mediterranean, she became our first Tang dynasty poet, akin to one of those Chinese of the eight century C.E. whose songs were overheard thought and conversation, in strict form, and who were said to 'dance in chains....."

"Time with its strange appetite has modernized these ancient voices, making the Tang writer Wang Wei and the Aiolic Sappho fashionable and intimate.  The East has preserved a ton of the Tang poets, or, as the Chinese would say, 'ten thousand' of those golden birds in the Middle Kingdom.  Despite early losses due to the fires of the book-burning emperor Qin Shi Huangdi (ruled 221-210 B.C.E.), China thereafter zealously preserved the work of its poets.  But Sappho suffered from book-burning religious authorities who left us largely scraps of torn papyrus found in waterless wastes of North Africa...."

Some other day at this blog we might read together how Willis turns to Chinese pinyinization for analogies to what we might do -- and some what he does -- with the Greek letters of Sappho and of her poetry burned and in fragments.  We might see how in the Glossary of his book he writes of HADES and of Tartaros (thinking of how Rob Bell and John Piper might differently think of these words in the Greek new testament written by Jewish writers, translating Jewish rhetors).  We might see how Willis characterizes HARAXOS and then HEKTOR (HECTOR) and then HELEN (Eléna), noting especially how the Sicilian poet Stisihoros (Stesichorus) writes lines as "counters to the story about Helen's venture to Troy" and how Plato, or at least his Socrates, "picks up on 'the false accusation of Helen'."  Sappho, we would hear Willis say, does something altogether different with Helen in her poetry.

The lines are not always so straight, or so sharply divided, in stories and in poetry and in art.  The lines of the East don't always seem so direct.  The women, whom we may call feminists, like Pearl S. Buck and Sappho, whether because of early lack of encouragement or because of later book-burnings or because they do get to what they want to say, do not always tell us what we first expect.  

In a book on my parents' shelf, I saw more of this.  It is Hidden Art, by Edith Schaeffer.  She starts in these ways:

"What is Art?  Authorities do not agree.  Definitions differ.
Who draws the line that separates
   Art from Design?
   Sculpture from Ornaments?
   Poetry from Jingle?
   Great Music from Pooh's Hums?
   Great Literature from Daily News?"

On her second page, Edith continues her questions.  Maybe some day at this blog we'll read more of them.   Today, I just want you to believe me when I tell you the story that she also goes on to talk about hidden art, of God as artist, of the Creation as art, of the Bible as art.

Today, I'd like to end here by pointing you to a Daily News piece, yes an op-ed essay.  It's something that one of my blogger friends pointed us all to:

"Theophrastus said...

Off topic: Lepore's Poetry, Medium and Message

August 1, 2011 5:38 PM "

What you shouldn't miss if you go reading that essay is this:  that there's this allusion to Aristotle, a great credit given to him:

"The main idea — that efforts at paraphrasing poetry into prose fail in ways that parallel attempts for prose do not — was not new. It has been generally agreed upon since Aristotle."

 Oh, but then I'd love for you to notice how the writer, Ernie, is trying to get us thinking about his thesis, which is how to answer this question, which appears as the up-front point of the whole essay:

"So what is your poem about?"

I hope you're gathering a bit what you think this blogpost of mine is about.

Think about this when you hear or read men saying things like "Rachel Held Evans is not writing Biblical blog posts" or "Well, at least she's not doing biblical scholarship at her blog" or "Oh, Come on.  You've got to at least agree that she isn't doing real scholarship.  Or else she'd be part of the biblioblogging Top community with us."   The logic of the West demands such parsing, doesn't it?  As if nature itself demands sharp distinctions and definitions that would exclude by rule.  What's not very clear to those propagating such logic is how there are hidden reasons which in public they don't very much like to admit.  And who can define poetry?  Who is the king of prose?

"So what is my blogpost about?"

Maybe stories another day can help us answer.  I believe I can say some of this gets very personal, but we shouldn't always be so afraid of telling such stories, should we?  For now, I'm out of time to tell any more.

Poetry and the End of Theology

After I posted "Our World Without Ambiguity, or humility" this morning, James K. A. Smith posted "Poetry and the End of Theology."

Smith is asking some dangerous questions again:

But how did a discourse so uncreative become the deputized voice of the Creator? How did a genre so flat and sober and unimaginative become the official mouthpiece of a God who created platypuses and larkspur? Frankly, how did the boring disquisitions of “systematic” theology emerge as the authoritative voice for a people who follow a story-teller like Jesus?

And he's making some dangerous comparisons:

The republic of [Christian] theology, like Plato’s city [i.e., The Republic], is built on the exile of the poets whose “fictions” are a dangerous distraction.

Smith sums up his own short story succinctly:

theology picked up some very bad habits in modernity.

What Smith hasn't yet done is to tell the story of where what he calls "modernity" has picked up its very bad habits from.  And yet Smith gives clues:

the language of propositions and syllogisms

Now, who invented such logic and refined the true systematic process of scientific knowing that we call "syllogistic reasoning"?  Who's the one who worked against "images and metaphors" and "fiction and poetry"?  Who's that one who railed against divine "revelation"? 

Yes, that's right.  It's the pre-modern, poetry-despising, anti-female, barbarian-(like-you-and-me)-hating, utterly-objective, father of modernity:

Aristotle.

one of our oldest arguments

I can tell by the way my mother chews her toast
whether she had a good night
and is about to say a happy thing
or not.

Not.
She puts her toast down on the side of her plate.
You know you can pull the drapes in that room, she begins.

This is a coded reference to one of our oldest arguments,
from what I call The Rules Of Life series.
My mother always closes her bedroom drapes tight before going to bed at night.

I open mine as wide as possible.
I like to see everything, I say.
What’s there to see?

Moon. Air. Sunrise.
All that light on your face in the morning. Wakes you up.
I like to wake up.

At this point the drapes argument has reached a delta
and may advance along one of three channels.
There is the What You Need Is A Good Night’s Sleep channel,

the Stubborn As Your Father channel
and random channel.
More toast? I interpose strongly, pushing back my chair.

Those women! says my mother with an exasperated rasp.
Mother has chosen random channel.
Women?

Complaining about rape all the time
I see she is tapping one furious finger on yesterday’s newspaper
lying beside the grape jam.

The front page has a small feature
about a rally for International Women’s Day—
have you had a look at the Sears Summer Catalogue?

Nope.
Why, it’s a disgrace! Those bathing suits—
cut way up to here! (she points) No wonder!

You’re saying women deserve to get raped
because Sears bathing suit ads
have high-cut legs? Ma, are you serious?

Well someone has to be responsible.
Why should women be responsible for male desire? My voice is high.
Oh I see you’re one of Them.

One of Whom? My voice is very high. Mother vaults it.
And whatever did you do with that little tank suit you had last year the green one?
It looked so smart on you.

The frail fact drops on me from a great height
that my mother is afraid.
She will be eighty years old this summer.

---

Samhita's post "The sleepwalking defense?" and David's "There’s no escape from your husband", made me think, again, of Anne Carson's poem "The Glass Essay", and the bit of encoded argument, recurring, excerpted above. I know a man, a family guy, who raped a woman while "sleep walking." The guy's walking around today, "awake." The rest of us? What comes in poetry? And who listens? Is it really much of an argument? However old it is, when will it stop. Like I said, some things make me think, but some things make me sink.

Two Poems -- worth our reading

Without much ado
(and yet, below, just a bit of commentary from Anne Carson on Paul Celan's poem
and only a link to commentary from Rachel Barenblat herself on her own poem),
Two Poems -- worth our reading, rereading, remembering:

----

Keine Sandkunst mehr / No More SandArt   by Paul Celan

Keine Sandkunst mehr, kein Sandbuch, Keine Meister.
Nichts erwurfelt. Wieviel Stumme? Siebenzehn.
Deine Frage, deine Antwort. Dein gesang, was weiss er? 

Tiefimschnee, 

iefimnee,
i-i-e.

No more sand art, no sand book, no masters.
Nothing on the dice. How many mutes? Seventeen.
Your question, your answer. Your song, what does it know?
Deepinsnow, 

eepinnow,
e-i-o.

(Carson on Celan's poem:

But suspended within the act of whitening is a terribly quiet pun. For one cannot help but think, watching "Deepinsnow" melt away, that if this poem were translated into Hebrew, a language in which vowels are not usually printed, it would vanish even before its appointed end. As did many a Hebrew.

In preparing his pun, Celan depends upon a very ancient Hebrew exemplar. It is in the book of Genesis (22:17) that God makes Abraham a promise: "That in blessing I will bless thee and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is upon the sea shore. And thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies." In his lifetime Celan saw the seed of Abraham lose possession of the gate of his enemies and exchange the innumerability of sand for a specific number that is usually put at six million. By the odd mathematics of that time the number six million came to be equal to zero. Celan sets up a parallel mathematics of reduction, but he has replaced sand with snow and zero with a letter of the alphabet. Here is a short answer to his own epistemological question: what a poet knows is how to imitate the human zero with a poetic 'O!' Poetry is an act of memory that carves its way between sand art and snow art, transforming what is innumerable and headed for oblivion into timeless notation. Excising all that is not grace. But I wonder if Celan is not negating this poetic act even as he executes it, when he turns the last verses of his poem into an inside-out Hebrew lesson: here--unusually--it is the consonants that have to be supplied from memory. Here it is the full that thinks the void. How else to refer to the losses implied in these consonants. Or to the grace that poetry claims as its rate of exchange?

from Economy of the Unlost: Reading Simonides of Keos with Paul Celan, pages 116-17)

---------

SILENCE (VAYERA) by Rachel Barenblat

Abraham failed the test.
For Sodom and Gomorrah he argued
but when it came to his son
no protest crossed his lips.

God was mute with horror.
Abraham, smasher of idols
and digger of wells
was meant to talk back.

Sarah would have been wiser
but Abraham avoided her tent,
didn't lay his head in her lap
to unburden his secret heart.

In stricken silence God watched
as Abraham saddled his ass
and took Isaac on their final hike
to the place God would show him.

The angel had to call him twice.
Abraham's eyes were red, his voice hoarse
he wept like a man pardoned
but God never spoke to him again.

(Barenblat on Barenblat's poem:

This week's portion: silence

at her blog Velveteen Rabbit)

Sweetest Downfall / Black As Ink

She did it again, left her iPod shuffle in my car. So here's what I overheard this time:

Regina Spektor singing her Samson. Sounds better than it looks. But have a look at her amazing lyrics. Don't you love her subjectivity, her keying in on the profound pathos in the story? Herstory?

Don't you remember when Larry Norman asked Would Samson razor with Gilettes? He too wanted change in America, in 1968.

Just keep scrolling because then you'll see Vachel Lindsay's ("negro sermon") which he called "How Samson Bore Away the Gates of Gaza." Watch the subjectivities there too. Deep tragic stuff in 1919 that resonates all the way from that bible story to 2008.

Samson
by Regina Spektor

You are my sweetest downfall
I loved you first, I loved you first
Beneath the sheets of paper lies my truth
I have to go, I have to go
Your hair was long when we first met

Samson went back to bed
Not much hair left on his head
He ate a slice of wonder bread and went right back to bed
And history books forgot about us and the bible didn't mention us
The bible didn't mention us, not even once

You are my sweetest downfall
I loved you first , I loved you first
Beneath the stars came falling on our heads
But there just soft light, there just soft light
Your hair was long when we first met

Samson came to my bed
Told me that my hair was red
He told me i was beautiful and came into my bed
Oh I cut his hair myself one night
A pair of dull scissors and the yellow light
And he told me that I'd done alright
and kissed me till the morning light, the morning light
and he kissed me till the morning light

Samson came back to bed
not much hair left on his head
Ate a slice of wonderbread and went right back to bed
Oh, we couldn't bring the columns down
Yeah we couldn't destroy a single one
And history books forgot about us
And the bible didn't mention us, not even once

You are my sweetest downfall
I loved you first


How Samson Bore Away the Gates of Gaza
by Nicholas Vachel Lindsay

Once, in a night as black as ink,
She drove him out when he would not drink.
Round the house there were men in wait
Asleep in rows by the Gaza gate.
But the Holy Spirit was in this man.
Like a gentle wind he crept and ran.
("It is midnight," said the big town clock.)

He lifted the gates up, post and lock.
The hole in the wall was high and wide
When he bore away old Gaza's pride
Into the deep of the night: —
The bold Jack Johnson Israelite, —
Samson —
The Judge,
The Nazarite.

The air was black, like the smoke of a dragon.
Samson's heart was as big as a wagon.
He sang like a shining golden fountain.
He sweated up to the top of the mountain.
He threw down the gates with a noise like judgment.
And the quails all ran with the big arousement.

But he wept — "I must not love tough queens,
And spend on them my hard earned means.
I told that girl I would drink no more.
Therefore she drove me from her door.
Oh sorrow!
Sorrow!
I cannot hide.
Oh Lord look down from your chariot side.
You made me Judge, and I am not wise.
I am weak as a sheep for all my size."

Let Samson
Be coming
Into your mind.

The moon shone out, the stars were gay.
He saw the foxes run and play.
He rent his garments, he rolled around
In deep repentance on the ground.

Then he felt a honey in his soul.
Grace abounding made him whole.
Then he saw the Lord in a chariot blue.
The gorgeous stallions whinnied and flew.
The iron wheels hummed an old hymn-tune
And crunched in thunder over the moon.
And Samson shouted to the sky:
"My Lord, my Lord is riding high."

Like a steed, he pawed the gates with his hoof.
He rattled the gates like rocks on the roof,
And danced in the night
On the mountain-top,
Danced in the deep of the night:
The Judge, the holy Nazarite,
Whom ropes and chains could never bind.

Let Samson
Be coming
Into your mind.

Whirling his arms, like a top he sped.
His long black hair flew round his head
Like an outstretched net of silky cord,
Like a wheel of the chariot of the Lord.

Let Samson
Be coming
Into your mind.

Samson saw the sun anew.
He left the gates in the grass and dew.
He went to a county-seat a-nigh.
Found a harlot proud and high:
Philistine that no man could tame —
Delilah was her lady-name.
Oh sorrow,
Sorrow,
She was too wise.
She cut off his hair,
She put out his eyes.

Let Samson
Be coming
Into your mind.

A Lesson One Sunday

"Females blurt out a direct translation of what should be formulated indirectly
. . . . since woman does not bound herself, she must be bounded. The celebrated Greek virtue of self-control (sophrosyne) has to be defined differently for men and for women,

Aristotle maintains.

Masculine sophrosyne is rational self-control and resistance to excess,
but for the woman sophrosyne means
obedience and consists in
submitting herself to the control of others."
--Anne Carson, a few years after age 11,
writing Men in the Off Hours

". . . My education, I have to admit, has been gappy.
The basic rules of male-female relations
were imparted atmospherically in our family.

no direct speech allowed.
I remember one Sunday I was sitting in the backseat of the car.
Father in front.

We were waiting in the driveway for mother,
who came around the corner of the house
and got into the passenger side of the car

dressed in a yellow Chanel suit and black high heels.
Father glanced sideways at her.
Showing a good bit of leg today Mother, he said

in a voice which I (age eleven) thought odd.
I stared at the back of her head waiting for what she would say.
Her answer would clear this up.

But she just laughed a strange laugh with ropes all over it.
Later that summer I put this laugh together with another laugh
I overheard as I was going upstairs. . . "

--Anne Carson,
writing a poem called "Thou" within "The Glass Essay"
and publishing it five years earlier,
in Glass, Irony, and God

UN SIMPLE MILAGRO / ORDINARY MIRACLE

UN SIMPLE MILAGRO

He llorado los días perdidos
cuando no logré nada de importancia.
Pero no últimamente.

Ultimamente, bajo la marea lunar
del océano de un mujer, busco
mi propio cambio en el mar:
transformar granos de arena en ojos humanos.
Sueño depierta después del desayuno
mientas el espíritu de huevos y tostadas
teje un largo de huseso
fino como espiga de trigo.
Más tarde, mientras aplazo desmalezar el jardin
haré dos manos
que cuiden cien jardines.

Necesito exactamente diez lunas llenas
para cumplir la promesa animal.
Me ofrezco, sin santidad, pero
transmutada de todas maneras
por el milagro más simple.
No soy nada en este mundo fuera de las cosas
que hace una mujer.
Pero aquí están los ojos que una vez fueron perlas.
Y aquí, un porvenir donde antes no hubo nada.


ORDINARY MIRACLE

I have mourned lost days
when I accomplished nothing of importance.
But not lately.

Lately, under the lunar tide
of a woman's ocean, I work
my own sea-change:
turning grains of sand to human eyes.
I daydream after breakfast
while the spirit of egg and toast
knits together a length of bone
as fine as wheatstalk.
Later, as I postpone weeding the garden
I will make two hands
that may tend a hundred gardens.

I need ten full moons exactly
for keeping the animal promise.
I offer myself up: unsaintly, but
transmuted anyway
by the most ordinary miracle.
I am nothing in this world beyond the things
one woman does.
But here are eyes that once were pearls.
And here is a second chance where there was none.

by Barbara Kingsolver and Rebecca Cartes
Another America / Otra América

Aristotle: "Avoid Ambiguities"

I. Aristotle’s Most Straightforward Word

Aristotle is sounding a lot like my linguist friend Richard Rhodes again. In Book III, Chapter 5, of the Rhetoric, Aristotle starts in on “correctness of language,” or “grammatical correctness,” or “purity” depending on who’s doing the translating into English. Then Aristotle (quite objectively mind you) gives five rules to make a speech or a written composition “easy to read and therefore easy to deliver.” (Aristotle also disparages five other people as examples of poor communicators who break the five rules). If I can make this post easy to read, then let me focus on just a single rule, Rule #3: “Avoid Ambiguities.” The questions we might ask are these: (a) whether we can meet Aristotle’s standards for “correctness of language,” (b) specifically whether we can even keep Rule #3 and “avoid ambiguities,” and (c) whether Aristotle really was better at communicating by his own standards than the people he names as bad communicators.

II. the outline

And let me spell out the intended outline for this blog post: I. (above) is my introduction with thesis statement at the end. II. (here then) I give this blog outline. III. (below) I’ll give all my blogger friend Lingamish needs to read (in English) first. IV. (then below that) I’ll give the clearest we’ve got from Aristotle in his Greek. V. (next) We’ll look at the word Aristotle uses for “ambiguities” so as to have his students avoid them. VI. (following that) We’ll look at how Homer and Hesiod used that word, and how the earliest Bible translators used that term. VII. We’ll foolishly conjecture about the difference an afrafeminist translation might make. VIII. Finally, we’ll offer some conclusions, hoping allthewhile we’ve avoided ambiguities and have been otherwise correct and have written something (again) that is easy to read, for that is the goal of all good writing and good translation of the Greek isn’t it?

III. the English translation (from Rhys Roberts)

Such, then, are the ingredients of which speech is composed. The foundation of good style is correctness of language, which falls under five heads…

The third is to avoid ambiguities; unless, indeed, you definitely desire to be ambiguous, as those do who have nothing to say but are pretending to mean something. Such people are apt to put that sort of thing into verse. Empedocles, for instance, by his long circumlocutions imposes on his hearers; these are affected in the same way as most people are when they listen to diviners, whose ambiguous utterances are received with nods of acquiescence –

“Croesus by crossing the Halys will ruin a mighty realm.”

[1407b] Diviners use these vague generalities about the matter in hand because their predictions are thus, as a rule, less likely to be falsified. We are more likely to be right, in the game of "odd and even," if we simply guess "even" or "odd" than if we guess at the actual number; and the oracle-monger is more likely to be right if he simply says that a thing will happen than if he says when it will happen, and therefore he refuses to add a definite date. All these ambiguities have the same sort of effect, and are to be avoided unless we have some such object as that mentioned.

…It is a general rule that a written composition should be easy to read and therefore easy to deliver.

IV. Aristotle’s Clear Greek (which you’d think should be τὸ ἑλληνίζειν )

ὁ μὲν οὐ̂ν λόγος συντίθεται ἐκ τούτων, ἔστι δ’ ἀρχὴ τη̂ς λέξεως τὸ ἑλληνίζειν : του̂το δ’ ἐστὶν ἐν πέντε,…

τρίτον μὴ ἀμφιβόλοις . του̂το δ’ ἂν μὴ τἀναντία προαιρη̂ται, ὅπερ ποιου̂σιν ὅταν μηδὲν μὲν ἔχωσι λέγειν, προσποιω̂νται δέ τι λέγειν: οἱ γὰρ τοιου̂τοι ἐν ποιήσει λέγουσιν ταυ̂τα, οἱ̂ον ̓Εμπεδοκλη̂ς: φενακίζει γὰρ τὸ κύκλῳ πολὺ ὄν, καὶ πάσχουσιν οἱ ἀκροαταὶ ὅπερ οἱ πολλοὶ παρὰ τοι̂ς μάντεσιν: ὅταν γὰρ λέγωσιν ἀμφίβολα, συμπαρανεύουσιν—

Κροι̂σος ̔́Αλυν διαβὰς μεγάλην ἀρχὴν καταλύσει

[1407b] --καὶ διὰ τὸ ὅλως ἔλαττον εἰ̂ναι ἁμάρτημα διὰ τω̂ν γενω̂ν του̂ πράγματος λέγουσιν οἱ μάντεις: τύχοι γὰρ ἄν τις μα̂λλον ἐν τοι̂ς ἀρτιασμοι̂ς ἄρτια ἢ περισσὰ εἰπὼν μα̂λλον ἢ πόσα ἔχει, καὶ τὸ ὅτι ἔσται ἢ τὸ πότε, διὸ οἱ χρησμολόγοι οὐ προσορίζονται τὸ πότε . ἅπαντα δὴ ταυ̂τα ὅμοια, ὥστ’ ἂν μὴ τοιούτου τινὸς ἕνεκα, φευκτέον.

…ὅλως δὲ δει̂ εὐανάγνωστον εἰ̂ναι τὸ γεγραμμένον καὶ εὔφραστον

V. Aristotle’s Word for “Ambiguities”

As we all can see, Aristotle’s word for “ambiguities” is clearly ἀμφιβόλοις (which we can transliterate amphibolois) or its variant ἀμφίβολα (which we can transliterate amphibola). And, indeed, George A. Kennedy translates Aristotle’s Rule #3 this way: “Third is not to use amphibolies.” Lest that’s not clear enough, Kennedy provides his English readers here his footnote 61: “An amphiboly (lit. ‘what shoots both ways’) is an equivocation based on a word or phrase with an ambiguous meaning, often creating a fallacious argument; see 3.18.5.” (So, for the sake of clarity, let’s pretend we don’t see the circularity in Kennedy’s footnote’s argument). Clear enough? Good.

VI.A. Ancient Poets’ Uses of His Word for “Ambiguities”

Don’t we wish the ancient poet Sappho had used the word, as ambiguous as the fragments of her writings to us seem today? I’ll have to admit to blogger friend Suzanne that the closest I’ve found is this fragment as quoted by Hermogenes and then by Demetrius long after she was gone: αμφὶ δ᾽ ὔδωρ. (And this doesn’t even explain why the variant text Anne Carson translates is instead this: ἐν δ᾽ ὔδωρ).

Not to worry, the writings of the ancient men are much better preserved! Here’s Homer first and then Hesiod.

The Illiad (17, line 742; and 23, line 97):

οἳ δ' ὥς θ' ἡμίονοι κρατερὸν μένος ἀμφιβαλόντες

ἀλλά μοι ἆσσον στῆθι: μίνυνθά περ ἀμφιβαλόντε

The Odyssey (6, line 178; 17, line 344; 22, line 103; and 23, line 192):

ἄστυ δέ μοι δεῖξον, δὸς δὲ ῥάκος ἀμφιβαλέσθαι,

καὶ κρέας, ὥς οἱ χεῖρες ἐχάνδανον ἀμφιβαλόντι

αὐτός τ' ἀμφιβαλεῦμαι ἰών, δώσω δὲ συβώτῃ

τῷ δ' ἐγὼ ἀμφιβαλὼν θάλαμον δέμον, ὄφρ' ἐτέλεσσα,

Work and Days (of Hesiod, lines 545 and 787):

ὑετοῦ ἀμφιβάλῃ ἀλέην: κεφαλῆφι δ' ὕπερθεν

σηκόν τ' ἀμφιβαλεῖν ποιμνήϊον ἤπιον ἦμαρ

So how to translate these (and still avoid ambiguities)? Well, Sappho is talking about the coolness “wrapped around” the waters, we infer. And that’s just not good enough. So here’s what the men of literature are saying.

The Illiad (17, line 742; and 23, line 97):

driving strength “thrown around” the mules;

an “embrace around” a brother by another brother.

The Odyssey (6, line 178; 17, line 344; 22, line 103; and 23, line 192):

clothing to be thrown around our hero by the queen;

hands thrown around a whole loaf and pork to eat;

hands thrown around helmet, a shield, and two spears;

a chamber compartment put around a make-shift shelter.

Work and Days (lines 545 and 787):

a raincoat thrown over one’s back to keep one dry;

a fence built around a sheep pen.

VI.B. 1st Bible Translators Uses of His Word for “Ambiguities”

Well, without further adu, let’s leave the silly poets with all their throwing around and over and all their putting around these “ambiguities.” They don’t have Aristotle to critique or to correct them yet.

Let’s get to the first Bible translators, who were commissioned in the great city that Aristotle’s great student established: Alexandria. Here’s how these Jews translated the old Hebrew (albeit some poetry) into newer Greek:

Psalms 141:10 (aka 140:10 for the LXX)

πεσοῦνται ἐν ἀμφιβλήστρῳ αὐτοῦ ἁμαρτωλοί κατὰ μόνας εἰμὶ ἐγὼ ἕως οὗ ἂν παρέλθω

Ecclesiastes (aka Qoheleth for the LXX) 9:12

ὅτι καί γε οὐκ ἔγνω ὁ ἄνθρωπος τὸν καιρὸν αὐτοῦ ὡς οἱ ἰχθύες οἱ θηρευόμενοι ἐν ἀμφιβλήστρῳ κακῷ καὶ ὡς ὄρνεα τὰ θηρευόμενα ἐν παγίδι ὡς αὐτὰ παγιδεύονται οἱ υἱοὶ το ῦἀνθρώπου εἰς καιρὸν πονηρόν ὅταν ἐπιπέσῃ ἐπ αὐτοὺς ἄφνω

Isaiah 19:8

καὶ στενάξουσιν οἱ ἁλεεῖς καὶ στενάξουσιν πάντες οἱ βάλλοντες ἄγκιστρον εἰς τὸν ποταμόν καὶ οἱ βάλλοντες σαγήνας καὶ οἱ ἀμφιβολεῖς πενθήσουσιν

Habakkuk 1:15, 16, 17

συντέλειαν ἐν ἀγκίστρῳ ἀνέσπασεν καὶ εἵλκυσεν αὐτὸν ἐν ἀμφιβλήστρῳ καὶ συνήγαγεν αὐτὸν ἐν ταῖς σαγήναις αὐτοῦ ἕνεκεν τούτου εὐφρανθήσεται καὶ χαρήσεται ἡ καρδία αὐτοῦ

ἕνεκεν τούτου θύσει τῇ σαγήνῃ αὐτοῦ καὶ θυμιάσει τῷ ἀμφιβλήστρῳ αὐτοῦ ὅτι ἐν αὐτοῖς ἐλίπανεν μερίδα αὐτοῦ καὶ τὰ βρώματα αὐτοῦ ἐκλεκτά

διὰ τοῦτο ἀμφιβαλεῖ τὸ ἀμφίβληστρον αὐτοῦ καὶ διὰ παντὸς ἀποκτέννειν ἔθνη οὐ φείσεται

And here’s how a couple of followers of Joshua (aka Jesus) used even newer Greek including Aristotle’s old word:

Matthew 4:18

περιπατῶν δὲ παρὰ τὴν θάλασσαν τῆς Γαλιλαίας εἶδεν δύο ἀδελφούς Σίμωνα τὸν λεγόμενον Πέτρον καὶ Ἀνδρέαν τὸν ἀδελφὸν αὐτοῦ βάλλοντας ἀμφίβληστρον εἰς τὴν θάλασσαν ἦσαν γὰρ ἁλιεῖς

Mark 1:16

καὶ παράγων παρὰ τὴν θάλασσαν τῆς Γαλιλαίας εἶδεν Σίμωνα καὶ Ἀνδρέαν τὸν ἀδελφὸν Σίμωνος ἀμφιβάλλοντας ἐν τῇ θαλάσσῃ ἦσαν γὰρ ἁλιεῖς

By now, it should be clear that the word Aristotle seems to use for “ambiguities” the straightforward term that beginning Bible translators use for “fish nets.”

VII. Foolish Ambiguous (Feminist) Conjecture

Now, let’s imagine. Let’s imagine that Pythias and Pythias (Aristotle’s first wife and their daughter) pick up a copy of Aristotle’s Rhetoric one day while he is off at the academy teaching the boys. Let’s imagine they read what we’ve read in our section IV above. Let’s imagine that Pythias says to her mother Pythias (in the Hellene mother tongue, of course): “Mom, why does Dad say ‘No Throw-Wraps’ when speaking or writing”? Would the girl be so foolish to imagine her mother might agree that Aristotle is using a word that poets have used to throw a wrap around a body? Isn’t there ambiguity here that they and the poets are creating? One single word is thrown around so many different bodies: 1) coolness wrapped around a body of water; 2) driving strength thrown around the body of beasts; 3) siblings’ arms thrown around one another in a hug; 4) the queen’s clothing granted around our hero’s tired physique; 5) hungry grateful hands on satisfying bread and sweet pig meat; 6) an entire warring wardrobe fit well on one mighty-fit warrior; 7) a room of one’s own (with furniture perhaps); 8) a London-Fog style overcoat; 9) a secure place to keep the sheep; and (with a great stretch of the imagination for the future) 10) a bunch of fish nets (and this is well before anyone imagined fish-net stockings).

VII. Conclusion

I wish I could conclude here the way Kenneth L Pike does: with a poem. But there’s too much ambiguity in that, and besides it was the poets who started all the confusion in the first place. I’m really afraid we’re going to have to end by saying Aristotle finds himself in a pickle here. No wonder the objectivist never showed his Rhetoric to the girls at home. No wonder he silences those females. No wonder he teaches the educated boys τὸ ἑλληνίζειν (or “pure correct Greek”) by μὴ ἀμφιβόλοις.

What I learned about gender

Just when I'd finished blogging for the year, just when I knew I wouldn't learn another thing, I read "What I learned about gender while excavating at Tell Qarqur (Part Three)" at Ancient Hebrew Poetry.

Warning:

It's learned (and difficult) comment by a very well-read John F. Hobbins, co-pastor of a Waldensian Church with Paola Benecchi.

If you dare, you'll watch gender constructed right before your very eyes: one "imp" becomes "a woman" and the other becomes a different kind of man. Ancient Hebrew poetry becomes English. The "gender-blind" domains of "three K’s (Kinder, Kuche, und Kirche: children, the kitchen, and church)" give way "to a reasonable hermeneutics of suspicion" by which "what passes for feminism in our world is ideological cover for market forces, or little more than impotent and reactionary resistance thereto." Karl Marx and Adam Smith become strange bedfellows. Hobbins himself becomes a qualified disciple of Luce Irigaray. Jewish culture and Christian culture are re-imagined as "positively gendered" with "families characterized by all manner of strains and stresses, but also, by mutuality in the giving and receiving of honor and respect."

And if you stay with it, you'll get a positively gendered invocation. Watch it, should you (and I) change.

Pythias Influencing Discourse

Long before George Lakoff's "embodied mind" was Robin Tolmach Lakoff's "third wave feminist linguistics." And long before that were the Gestalt psychologists with their "put together, figure and ground." But long before that was Phythias's "woman's discourse."

Nancy Mairs in Voice Lessons: On Becoming a (Woman) Writer reminds us:

[The dominant, objectivist, Aristotelian discourse is not] women’s language, since women, for a variety of reasons, live in a polymorphic rather than a dimorphic world, a world in which the differentiation of self from other may never completely take place, in which multiple selves may engage multiply with the multiple desires of the creatures in it. Some theorists would claim that all subjects function thus. But as Julia Kristeva points out, female subjectivity, traditionally linked to cyclical and monumental time rather than to linear time, lies outside “language considered as the enunciation of sentences (noun + verb, topic – comment, beginning – ending).” Possessing an “irreducible identity, without equal in the opposite sex and, as such, exploded, plural, fluid,” a woman may be driven “to break the code, to shatter language, to find a specific discourse closer to the body and the emotions, to the unnamable repressed by the social contract.”

The difference that emerges here is not the polarity intrinsic in the dominant discourse, which reduces “woman to man’s opposite, his other, the negative of the positive.” No, this is an absolute and radical alterity that enfolds the other, as in pregnancy a woman’s immune system shuts down in such a way that she shelters and nourishes, rather than rejects and expels, the foreign body within her: “Cells fuse, split, and proliferate; volumes grow, tissues stretch, and body fluids change rhythm, speeding up or slowing down. Within the body, growing as a graft, indomitable, there is an other. And no one is present, within that simultaneously dual and alien space, to signify what is going on.” Feminine discourse is not the language of opposites but a babel of eroticism, attachment, and empathy. (40-42)

Here's how Aristotle struggled with a poetic riddle in the Rhetoric. (He struggles with the same in the Poetics). And here's how Pythias reads that (with a few traditional English translations -- dominant discourse translations -- following).

Listening into Translation

It’s fascinating to hear what is important to Bible translators.

One of our problems, however, is that we academics all too often fail to listen to others outside our own little society of specialists. We feminists of all sorts don’t find particularly interesting what a bunch of Bible blogging men say to one another (especially when those guys diss “gals” using the F-word). We rhetoricians generally do get enjoyment out of contemplating the various lines of argument spewing out of the mouths and flowing down from the pens of religious types who must start and finish with a monolithic text that talks in one language (i.e., English, if they could ever settle on whose Anglo Saxon) despite the fact that what “the Word of God” says are as diverse as Kefa’s Pentecost long after Babel (making it imperative for the religious types to jump all over the “fact” that their singular subject “Word” does not agree with my “are”). We classicists eagerly translating Homer, Hesiod, and Sappho but more (reluctantly) Plato and Aristotle may be amused by the Bible translators’ clashes over their Greek Septuagint, which stands in the room centrally like an awkward rabbi - preacher of an elephant who, trying not to draw attention to himself, must pronounce to the most reluctant Hebrew scriptures of the Jews, “You may now kiss the bride,” when the unveiled turns out to be the Greek New Testament. (The Bible translators must, rightly, accuse me, right here, of mixing metaphors but that’s because they have a very hard time marrying poetry with prose, even though “The Bible” does. And they haven’t been able to see that LXX is the name of Little aleXander of aleXandria, the grandchild of Aristotle. But I digress, a bit).

Listen in. And learn a bit. Here’s Richard A. Rhodes (at Better Bible Blogs) and John F. Hobbins (of Ancient Hebrew Poetry) and David Ker (aka Lingamish) in snippets on just a few verses of Matthew 23. (If you’re patient, and still curious, I’ll link to their full posts below. And more, I’ll clip in what Willis Barnstone says about Matthew 23, inviting these three to get their own copies of his translation and commentary).

Rhodes writes:

In the Greco-Roman world the frame that goes with the piece of furniture we would call a chair includes power, wealth, and authority. In Matt. 23:2, the chair is mentioned as a way to convey the notion of Moses authority. It’s not about the furniture.

Matt. 23:2 "The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. 3So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. (NIV)

To communicate the same idea in English where there is no corresponding frame associated with chairs the passage has to rendered something more like:

Matt. 23:2 The teachers of the law and the Pharisees bear the authority of Moses. 3So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. (NIV modified)
If you fail to make the adjustment, it makes no sense to the English ear. The Koine speaker did the mental calculation from chair (καθέδρα) to authority (ἐξοθσία) as quickly, subconsciously, and wordlessly as you did in the Barbie text. To translate this reference to authority with the use of a Greek frame is utterly misleading to English speakers. It doesn’t matter that you can teach them to understand it. The fact that the connection between the wording and the concept is not instant and subconscious shows that the transparently literal translation is wrong.


Then Hobbins objects:

In settings like the one I spend my days in, in which the imparting of a global religious culture is a pursued goal, it does not make sense to read from a paraphrased Bible. To take Rich’s example (from Matthew 23:2), it makes sense to invite and expect readers to understand a phrase like “the seat of Moses,” rather than paraphrase it by something like “the authority of Moses.”

Too much inner-biblical resonance is lost if the paraphrase is adopted. People sit and teach in the Bible. People, God, sit and judge. People sit and pontificate. “The seat of Moses” connects up with passages which describe those things, such as Psalm 1:1; 9:7; Job 29:7; Luke 5:3; and Rev 4:2.

Rich’s paraphrase severs the one who adopts it from a rich series of associations far beyond the pages of the Bible. A phrase like “the seat of Moses” echoes through western and eastern literature with a biblical substrate. The elimination of what has become a literary topos by paraphrase cuts off the rivers of a tradition from its source.


And Ker maps out the battlefield before he takes his own shot:

But Matthew 23 is not a nursery rhyme. Jesus was speaking to be understood and so we should expect a Bible translation of this passage to be understandable. If he used idioms of his era, they were used to bring impact to his message not mystery. I can imagine that while Jesus was insulting the Pharisees and scribes there was a lot of laughter in the crowd. Jesus uses the same verb tense for “sat” that is used in Little Miss Muffet! And the order of the constituents in Matthew 23:2 is dramatically arranged for comedic effect:

On Moses’ seat sat… [This is the set-up]

…the scribes and Pharisees. [This is the punchline]

In this passage, going back to the end of Matthew 22, the idea of a seat is established information. Jesus has just finished quoting Psalm 110 and applying it to the Christ.

The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right until I put your enemies under your feet.”

So when Jesus goes on to say that the scribes and Pharisees have sat on Moses’ seat, the new, and shocking, information is that the scribes and Pharisees have sat down in a seat reserved for the Messiah. Such a transgression in a shame-honor culture is exceedingly embarrassing. He is not acknowledging their authority but rather accusing them of usurping authority that belongs only to God.

Jesus was a rebel. He saw the power structure in place and he sought to overturn it. Don’t let anyone call you teacher. For you have only one teacher. Don’t let anyone call you father. For you have only one father. Don’t let anyone call you leader. For you have only one leader. Jesus was a revolutionary. He was speaking to the common people and utterly rejecting anyone who would try to impose a level of hierarchy between Abraham’s descendants and Abraham’s God.

And it is for this reason that it’s appropriate for a debate about Bible translation to be fought on the battlefield of Matthew 23. For those who would try to impose “formal” translations on the populace are the scribes and Pharisees of our day. Jesus said, “You bar the door to the Kingdom of Heaven to others and you yourself don’t even go in.” This message is as appropriate to the formalists as it was to the religious leaders of 1st century Palestine. Why do scholars and preachers prefer a formal translation? Because then they decide what it should mean1. If the “riches of the original” are inaccessible to the illiterate then they must bow to the authority of those who claim that they understand the original. A nursery rhyme at least sounds nice even when it is incomprehensible. But formal translations are nonsensical without euphony. And so the average Joe votes with the remote. He shuts the Bible and switches on the TV. At least the sitcoms make sense.

In answer to my rhetoric, you might argue that relying on translators is just another form of turning over authority to someone else. But there is a difference between translators whose stated purpose is to be faithful to the original and those who want to communicate in natural language. Look at these versions of Matthew 23:4:

NASB: They tie up heavy burdens and lay them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger.

NIV: They tie up heavy loads and put them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.

CEV: They pile heavy burdens on people’s shoulders and won’t lift a finger to help.

NLT: They crush you with impossible religious demands and never lift a finger to help ease the burden.

While the wording of NASB, NIV and CEV is accurate to the form of the original, NLT communicates the meaning of what Jesus was saying. An average reader of Matthew 23 will not assume that it is talking about religious demands. It sounds like the scribes and Pharisees were putting people to forced labor. I think any of these translations is acceptable provided that they have a footnote. If you want to approximate the form of the original you should footnote the meaning. And if like the NLT you give the meaning, I think you should footnote a literal translation2.

But here’s the deal. People don’t read the Bible for a lesson in ancient history and language. They want to hear from God. And in the case of Matthew 23, Jesus is giving a liberating message to the oppressed. But asking people to read a translation full of bizarre vocabulary like “phylacteries” and “tassels” and “Rabbi” is a burden too heavy to bear.

Read the original posts here:

* Rich Rhodes: Do we think in words?
* John Hobbins: Do we think in words? A Reply
* and David Ker: Excuse me, I think you’re in my chair

Now, lest we care to hear more (otherwise), here’s Barnstone (a comparative literature scholar, a Jew, not a Christian translating the Bible but a Bible translator nonetheless). Here’s some of his commentary on Matthew in The New Covenant Commonly Called The New Testament:

YESHUA BEN YOSEF

There are and always will be many tones and ways, from Milton to Cole Porter, of making poems and writing down words. I prescribe to no single way but hope, in my own attempts, for plainness and lyrical clarity. Despite the dissuasions of missing line breaks, it is clear that one of the world’s major poets is and has been for two millennia Yeshua the Messiah. His pen was in the hands of others who recorded and translated his words into Greek.

We are accustomed to believe that poetry resides in the Hebrew Bible and that the New Covenant is a story and a play, a fabling narration and a drama, but that the only poetry in it are snatches from the Hebrew Bible, unassigned to a specific prophet, which are essentially cited in Greek from the Septuagint translation of the Bible. Yet Matthew, the gospel with the most dialogue, anthologizes the diverse wisdom talk and prayers of Yeshua from the other gospels into the Sermon on the Mount, a string of poems that includes the psalm of the Lord’s Prayer. Matthew is mainly poetry.

The poet of the New Covenant is invisible, obscured in prose. And we do not know the voice and identity of the recorder or recorders. Yet hear that voice and hear a poet. Few have recognized the poet, because they were not led, by the shape of the print of the page, to use their ears, although Yeshua’s voice (except in brief dialogue) came uniformly and sonorously in verse sayings. The poems remained confined to lucent and fluent English prose of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but no matter. So were Job and the Song of Songs until their release into verse in the English Revised Version (1885). Once released, the tradition of verse was settled. Now there is a sound of poetry in the air for the Greek scriptures. It has been slow and irregular in coming, but with new versions the sound will prevail. It is time to hear the poet.

The concentration of poetry in the New Covenant is commonly called “Jesus’ sayings,” a phrase that ignores or fails to recognize the poetry. The Jerusalem Bible, a Catholic translation, translates much of John and most of Yeshua into verse. Curiously, it does not render Apocalypse into verse, which is the single long, indisputable poem of the New Covenant. Where the Jerusalem version found poetry, however, is not astonishing. And yet, the translators failed to make it sing. By contrast, the Tyndale and King James prose renditions of the passages are charged with poetry. Other standard modern versions of the poetic speech in the New Covenant, with the marked exception of the Lattimore, are largely without brightness of word.

The poems in the gospels are clean and incomplete and their endings elusively open. Even the most gnomic couplets are concentrated wisdom sayings, which, though proverbial, do not limit by finality. They are not conclusions but a hint for further meditation. Some longer ones ramble magnificently in the form of parable narrations. Some aphoristically take a moment of nature, using only images and shunning abstraction, to give the metaphysics of life on earth and of eternity. . . (pages 29 – 30)

Barnstone cites particular examples of Matthew translating Yeshua and compares instances with Sappho’s poetic texts. But let’s hear Barnstone’s blank verse translation of the first of Matthew 23:

Then Yeshua spoke to the crowds and to his students, 2 saying,

On the seat of Mosheh sit the scholars and Prushim.
3 Do and observe all that they tell you,
But do not do as they do. They speak and do nothing.
4 They tie up heavy bundles
and lay them on the shoulders of other men,
but will not lift a finger to move them.
5 All they do is for show.
They spread their tephillin and lengthen their tassels
6 and love the foremost couch at the dinners,
the front seats in the synagogues,
7 to be greeted in the market places
and to be called rabbi by the people.

8 But you must not be called rabbi,
for you have one teacher and are all students.
9 On earth call no one father. You have one father
in heaven.
10 and do not call yourselves instructors.
You have one instructor, the mashaiah.
11 The greatest among you will be your servant.

12 Whoever raises himself high will be brought low
and whoever is brought low will be raised high.

Here, I’m inviting Rhodes and Hobbins and Ker to get their own copies of Barnstone’s translation. And I am inviting them to compare their own particular views on Matthew 23 with his.

(I do hope one of them will say the Barnstone needs footnotes. In fact, it does; and thankfully Barnstone provides a helpful note, in this passage, on Mosheh, on Prushim, and on tephillin.

I also want them to suggest that the Barnstone would best be published side by side with the Greek. In fact, it would be. Barnstone is refreshingly intent on bringing the poetic Hebrew voice of Yeshua back into the Christian text. Unfortunately, he looses the Greek voice of Matthew, a voice akin to that of the Septuagint translators, who speak both Hebrew and Greek, the Hellene of the poets who have been disparaged by Plato and Aristotle. A diglot would cure the ailment of the monotonish Hebrew-English. But let's all admit that monotonishness is the ill of most English versions of the Bible today: there’s no immediate interlation provided by translations side by side.

But, then, that would require our listening across our own small and special domains. And none of us is liable, at least not very readily so, to do that kind of very kind listening that makes a difference.)