Riddle me ree: Here's one for you

Let me just warn you that I'm writing very quickly this morning.  I almost entitled this one "Jesus: the feminist rhetorical translator" (since recently I finished Tom Thatcher's important book Jesus the Riddler:  the power of ambiguity in the gospels). 

But let me start this particular post by saying that, after very careful study of Aristotle in his own Greek writings, it's become apparent to me that he was neither feminist nor rhetorical -- that is, he rather despised females and denigrated ways of knowing and of communicating that were not "logic."  Aristotle wanted translation, but only in one direction:  his.  That is, he taught his powerful elite male students - such as Alexander the Great - to conquer, even by logic and by the Greek language.

Which is all very different (and maybe ironically opposite) from an odder and later figure in our histories:  Jesus.

The problem that many of us have in writing and reading history now is that we forgo the sort of methods Jesus used for Aristotle's logic.  (but to be clear, Aristotle never intended for any of us of any less-educated, un-Greek, or fe-male species to translate his logic as ours).  One method Jesus used, which needs substantial recovering, is "the riddle."  (to be clear, Aristotle taught his students very directly against riddling.)

As mentioned earlier, I was reading Tom Thatcher's book Jesus the Riddler while re-reading Mary Daly's book Gyn/Ecology and it occurred to me for the first time:  wordplay (i.e., the sophistry that ARistotle and Plato and Plato's Socrates rails against -- the "rhetoric" and the "riddling" they so dispise) is a sort of methodology or is a set of methologies that many poets, sophists, women, and rhetoricians have used down through the years.

And there is much resistance to if not just ignorance about the cross-cultural and historical uses of wordplay.  (A respected contemporary new testament Greek scholar, such as Bill Mounce, for example, confesses he isn't familiar with Dissoi Logoi, the pluralistic sophistic reviews of what goes on in various societies who construct knowledge and being by language in radically different - sometime ambiguous - ways.)

Let me leave this post, then, because i'm nearly out of time.  Let me leave you with just a quick example of the riddling of Jesus (from Thatcher's very careful but not yet exhaustive study).  Thatcher notes how Jesus (according tot he various gospel writers translating him into playful Greek) would mark a riddle with the statement:

"Whoever has ears to hear let him or her hear"

or would ask rhetorically, "having eyes, don't you see and having ears, don't you hear?"

[οἳ ἔχουσιν ὀφθαλμοὺς τοῦ βλέπειν καὶ οὐ βλέπουσιν καὶ ὦτα ἔχουσιν τοῦ ἀκούειν καὶ οὐκ ἀκούουσιν]

Through Aristotle's (non-sophist, non-rhetorical) eyes and ears, the contemporary translator would guess and speculate and suggest it means something like:

Let this be a word to the wise 

Thatcher rather playfully says this sort of logic has the Greek phrase [ος εχει ωτα ακουειν ακουετω] "as a functional synonym for the modern maternal admonition 'Pay attention!'" (page 31).  But when one listens for Jesus as a riddler telling riddles (a kind of dialectic of wise sophistry among Jewish rabbis) then you might hear the Greek translated phrase as "functionally equivalent to 'Riddle me ree' or 'Here's one for you,' although the subject matter [in the public conversation and teaching] is obviously more significant than the pub jokes [where] we [might] introduce those phrases today" (page 40).

Dissoi Logoi and What a Church Father May Have Known

WHERE WE ARE, WHERE WE'VE COME FROM, WHERE WE'RE GOING

Looks like there's a series of posts going here. So let me review and then preview.

The first post shows rhetorical wordplay in the bible that translation teams overlook as they get hung up in debates over which of their two "translation" methods (either "formal" or "functional" equivalence) is the better "solution" to their word problem, which is precisely that they do not "know—with precision—what it means." The second post shows rhetorical wordplay that the bible repeats although a "biblical Greek" educator (namely Bill Mounce) may overlook the power of the rhetoric of word repetition as he seems to repeat a particularly poor English translation of a certain Greek word, (namely "repeating," "repetition," "to repeat" and "repetitious, gossips, saying one thing and meaning another, saying one thing to one person but another to another person" for δί·λογος / dí-logos /).

This third post shows what early after-the-bible bible commentators said about δί·λογος / dí-logos / and what early before-the-bible sophists wrote in Δισσοι Λόγοι / Dissoi Logoi / that likely got to Paul.

The fourth post might just get into some (feminist rhetorical) motivations for the first three posts.

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MOUNCE'S COMMENTS; MY RESPONSE

At one of his blogs, Mounce kindly responded to comments from some of us, his readers. And likewise, I want to respond here to two of his points. He said:

* The argument from two early church fathers (i.e., Greek) that they understood it [i.e., the word δί·λογος / dí-logos / as Paul uses it to Timothy] to mean "deceitful" and another as "saying one thing to this man, and another to that" is significant. Greek was their language and their opinion linguistically (as opposed to theologically) is generally seen as important.
* I am unaware of Δισσοι Λόγοι, so I don't really have an opinion. We do know that Paul was very aware of their Greek culture of his day and often find, for example, uses of technical terms in Stoicism but given a Christian meaning.

To be sure, it is John Chrysostom who writes of Paul's words, "μὴ διλόγους," the following: "τουτέστι, μὴ ὑπούλους, μηδὲ δολερούς." Roughly, Paul's words mean something like, "not double-speaking," and Chrysostom comments something like: "that is, neither hiding pus under a scab, nor deceiving." To be clear, ὑπούλους is a metaphorical term, a word that Socrates (in Plato's dialogue "The Gorgias") uses a couple of times to disparage the sophistry of Gorgias, the "rhetoric" guy.  The word that Plato's Socrates uses more-or-less means "an infection under covered over."  And δολερούς is a term for beguilement and deceit that runs through Homer's epics.  The term is also what the woman Diotima of Mantinea tells the man Socrates (as he recounts her conversation with him to a bunch of other guys getting drunk on wine with him, in Plato's "Symposium"); Plato says that Socrates says that Diotima says: "Mighty-ful and deceitful is love, all of it!" (ὁ μέγιστός τε καὶ δολερὸς ἔρως παντί).

And to be more clear, Aristotle listens very carefully to his teacher Plato as he's listened to his teacher Socrates. They're all on the watch for sophistry, for rhetoric, for coverings of the infections of deceitfulness.  Aristotle is aware of how women are natural deceivers, so he says.

Aristotle is particularly concerned about the sophists's Δισσοι Λόγοι / Dissoi Logoi /. And we can read all about it in Owen Goldin's wonderful essay, "To Tell the Truth: Dissoi Logoi 4 and Aristotle's Responses" (pages 233-49 of Presocratic Philosophy," ed. by Victor Caston and Daniel W. Graham, Burlington, VT: Ashgate P, 2002). Aristotle is concerned with the truth values of one "logos," and with the deceptive problems of two. Of course, Goldin concedes that "there is no clear evidence that Aristotle [directly] knew the Dissoi Logoi itself," but he points to Aristotle's work that "shows he is aware of the sophistic puzzles concerning truth and falsity that are propounded in the first half of Dissoi Logoi" (page 240).

Fortunately, we can be sure to know Dissoi Logoi at least as well as Aristotle did. Maybe better. I have right here the Greek text, and two translations of it: Thomas M. Robinson's and Rosamond Kent Sprague's of 1979 and of 1972 respectively. Now I'm reading the 7th section where there's that discussion of human expertise and assigning slaves and electing leaders for the people and such. I notice the mention of horsemanship there. Hmmm, I'm thinking to myself remembering Xenophon's expertise with horsemanship and his treatise on the subject in which he stops to advise his readers on something else:

"If someone thinks that I am using sophistic double-speak [δι·λογεῖν / di-logein/] because I have referred to matters already dealt with, then know this: this is not sophistic double-speak [οὐ δι·λογία / ou di-logia/]."

I think Xenophon knew rhetoric. I think he knew his readers may think that the sophists (even in Dissoi Logoi) were covering up the pus of one statement by repeating it as another, that they would deceive readers. Clearly, nonetheless, he repeats something about horsemanship, and he also repeats that he is not engaged in dis-logia or di'-logia (δις·λογία or δι·λογία). He's not making two statements in his repetitions; he's not using double-speak as he repeats.

Now, this may sound like we're all beating a dead horse. But I think Chrysostom knew what Paul was doing. And I think Aristotle knew what Xenophon was doing. And everyone, it seems, was somehow or another familiar with how Dissoi Logoi so much sounded like the di(s)-logia that Xenophon and Paul were getting readers and deacons to avoid.

(Now one more little parenthetical thing. Mounce says that there's another Greek commentator, post-Paul, who claims that di-logia means "saying one thing to this man, and another to that." It would be nice if Mounce would at least tell who that is if he won't give us a text. I've looked and think that the alleged definition [i.e., "saying one thing to this man, and another to that"] is somebody's definition of δί·γλωσσος / di-glossos / as is found in the Septuagint's Wisdom of Jesus (Joshua) Son of Sirach, chapters 5 verses 9 and 14 and chapter 28 verse 13.)

Aristotle Hates Barack Obama

Aristotle's major premise:
"Men like the sophists are fools to embrace paradox and to get others to do so 
(and I hate them for that)."

Schaeffer's minor premise:
"Barack Obama is a person who embraces paradox and encourages us to do so.  (See more below)."

Aristotle's conclusion:
"I hate Obama 

(because he's like the sophists, and all such fools embrace paradox)."

Get Aristotle's logic, his chain of reasoning, his conclusion? 

Here's more from Aristotle, in his Nichomachean Ethics:

ἔτι ὁ σοφιστικὸς λόγος ψευδόμενος ἀπορία· διὰ γὰρ τὸ παράδοξα βούλεσθαι ἐλέγχειν, ἵνα δεινοὶ ὦσιν ὅταν ἐπιτύχωσιν, ὁ γενόμενος συλλογισμὸς ἀπορία γίνεται· δέδεται γὰρ ἡ διάνοια,ὅταν μένειν μὴ βούληται διὰ τὸ μὴ ἀρέσκειν τὸ συμπερανθέν, προϊέναι δὲ μὴ δύνηται διὰ τὸ λῦσαι μὴ ἔχειν τὸν λόγον. συμβαίνει δὴ ἔκ τινος λόγου ἡ ἀφροσύνη μετ’ ἀκρασίας ἀρετή·τἀναντία γὰρ πράττει ὧν ὑπολαμβάνει διὰ τὴν ἀκρασίαν, ὑπολαμβάνει δὲ τἀγαθὰ κακὰ εἶναι καὶ οὐ δεῖν πράττειν, ὥστε τἀγαθὰ καὶ οὐ τὰ κακὰ πράξει.

Again there's the difficulty raised by the fake-out argument of the sophists. The sophists wish to show their cleverness by trapping their adversary with a paradox, and when they're successful, their resultant chain of reasoning ends in a deadlock: the mind is shackled, being unwilling to stand still because it can’t approve the conclusion reached, and yet being unable to go forward because it can’t untie the knot of the argument. Didn't I already say these men are fools?

Here's more from Frank Schaeffer in his HuffPo blog post "President Obama: Bad News For the New Atheists and Other Fundamentalists":

Into the all or nothing culture wars, and the all or nothing wars between the so-called New Atheists and religion the election of President elect Obama reintroduces nuance. . . .

[Obama is saying:] "I think it's time that we join a serious debate about how to reconcile faith with our modern, pluralistic democracy. . . ."

President elect Obama has said, and I paraphrase: Strip the human race of our spiritual language and what do we tell each other about hope?

As President elect Obama has pointed out, a world of all math but no poetry is not fit for human habitation. If everything feels flat and dull, stripped of mystery and meaning who will bother to do the science? Why bother, if all we're doing is serving those selfish genes for another round of meaningless propagation?

So does this faith always make "sense?" No. Because our perspective is from the inside, something like paint contemplating the painting of which it's a part. We're all in the same boat, all stuck on the same "canvas."

So let's admit we all share the problem that was best articulated by Darwin in his dairy: "Can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animal, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions?"

As our new president recognizes, self-awareness and mortality are already such a mutually exclusive (and terrifying) contradiction that accepting a few more contradictions is par for the course! And President elect Obama has a generous enough spirit and a large enough intellect so that he can do with his spiritual life, what the Religious Right and the New Atheists have not done: understand that there is no shame in embracing paradox.

President Obama is about to make reasoned faith fashionable again. It's about time.