There is a television program in Australia called Top Gear. On this program, from what I am given to understand, a live audience gathers to congratulate an individual who spends his/her life driving around a circuit with the intention of breaking speed records. I know this because, while I have never turned our television on (I have, incidentally, turned it off more times than I can count), I have in the past sat before it and joined my two flatmates for some “quality time”. On one such occasion, I was priveleged to see an individual get congratulated for having survived a collision at something that approximated 200km/h. Congratulated! This man is an Australian hero and I was roundly condemned by my two open-minded flatmates when I casually suggested that it was a shame he didn’t die. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t believe that anybody (nor anything, for that matter) deserves to have its life brought to a premature conclusion. My point was merely that if his survival means that he is now a hero, elevated on a pixellated pedestal for people to admire and emulate, then there is a tragic element behind his otherwise good fortune. In fact, I find it amazing that (some) people spend their time debating whether or not we can use stem cells for medical research when here is a fully grown adult male, evidently eager to be recycled.
David and his Mum
18 01 2010This is too funny for words. N.T. Wrong has recently uploaded some information on a very exciting new archaeological find! I was alerted to this in the Agade mailing list and I can barely contain my enthusiasm for it:
Comments : 1 Comment »
Categories : Bible
Qeiyafa Inscription
10 01 2010Well, isn’t this exciting! Assuming that the text is actually Hebrew, the inscription discovered in the Elah Fortress at Khirbet Qeiyafa would be the oldest of its kind. Dating to the 10th century BCE, scholars have been quick to jump to all sorts of (exciting) conclusions, as regards the period in which various biblical texts might have been written. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves! Here is the clearest image of (a sketch of) the inscription that I could find:
Comments : 2 Comments »
Categories : Hebrew
And What Is…
4 01 2010Truth,
Although it did one time,
No longer lies in that direction:
Custom has smoothed flat the sharp
And wayward spike of revelation.
The element of spontaneity
Has been erased by repetition
And sudden moments of inspiration
Have ossified into the bones of ritual.
§
Is this the world of which our prophets spoke?
They can still be seen, their dull descendants
Standing on corners, wild-eyed and anxious
Holding up traffic with their bearded revelations
Still stopping passersby, doomsday and justice
Still criticising the world that rejects them
But they no longer preach with the authority of wisdom
Kings no longer listen to them
Armies no more go to war for them
No longer do the sages pass the time of day with them
Thank God, I say.
Our prophets now, with their moth-eaten raincoats
Are most holey. They no longer speak
In hendecasyllables,
No longer compose verse nor orate with passion
They only speak of their own sad failure
And, instead of delivering truth to power,
They accept small change and anti-psychotics.
Could this truly be the world that our sages promised?
The world for which they laid down their lives?
A world of bureaucrats and politicians,
In which the diplomat trumps the king?
Our temples now are marketplace museums:
Places to go to escape from the office
Or places where the past is put on display
Where the old books are worshipped, with letters reprinted
But messages, misread, decaying with age.
There is a part of me that thinks that things were different
It was not always the same sad Now
Was there ever a time when we stood united?
Tradition says so, but I have my doubts.
A time when we marched like a thunderous storm
And brought the earth under our dominion?
Our kingdom was an everlasting kingdom
But the north seceded and the south burnt down.
§
It’s a fool, said Qohelet, who worships the past
But it was easy to say that: things were better then.
Now, familiarity makes dull the knife of reason
Makes mantras of epiphanies
And slays the proverb with repetition.
I hold this Bible in my tired hands:
How I wish that I could read you
Again, for the first time.
Comments : Leave a Comment »
Categories : Poetry
Err… eligious
2 01 2010I have just returned from ConFest: an earthy festival in rural NSW. It was an interesting experience, camping in the bush with a large group of hippies, and there were certainly elements of it that grew on me. The festival was described as being “clothing optional”, although more people there exercised their right of choice to keep something on – at least at those times that they weren’t on the beach, covering themselves in mud or bathing. For my part, I enjoyed being around a group of people of all ages, all of whom were smiling and happy, and all of whom seemed utterly non-judgemental as regards the personal choices of others. If I were looking for an adjective to describe the general mood, I might choose “sweet”. Sure, there were several people there in desperate need of a non-ConFest education, and I also met more than one creep, but stupid and sleazy people exist in every demographic. The hippies are no worse than any other, are they?
Comments : 3 Comments »
Categories : Personal Reflections
Spelling the Season
12 12 2009I recently decided to type into Google every possible spelling of Chann Hann Hanu the name of the current Jewish festival, just to see how many respective hits each one received. Don’t ask me why, but this is what I got:
Can this please settle it? The overwhelming majority of sites favour graphemic representation of the final heh, and eschew (for the most part) representation of the initial het with “Ch”. I wonder if this is in order to better distinguish the word from “Christmas”, but I shall leave investigation of that question to one more bored than I.
Comments : 1 Comment »
Categories : Random Musings
On Refusing to Believe in “Atheism”
24 11 2009In addition to having possibly rankled a few people (to whom I apologise, if my remarks were misconstrued), a recent post demonstrated what some mistakenly thought was an atheist perspective. I have since removed the post – not because I am retracting my sentiments, but because I do not feel that they were adequately conveyed by my choice of words. As justifying myself in the comments thread was growing wearisome, I have decided instead to present my opinions on atheism in a separate post. While I do not believe in God, and am happy to publicise the fact, my being in agreement with some of the conclusions of this group does not make me a member. As my attitudes towards the biblical literature and my attitudes towards disbelief are so intimately connected, I would like to make a comment as regards my feelings for the former.
Comments : 14 Comments »
Categories : Bible
Bereishit
16 10 2009This week is Shabbat Bereishit : the week on which the first parasha of the Torah is chanted in synagogues around the world. I would like to take a moment to comment upon the first clause of the Bible – more specifically, the first word.
Comments : 2 Comments »
Categories : Bible, Hebrew, Jewish Tradition
Not in Heaven
13 10 2009My new post at Galus Australis deals with the difference between exegesis and eisegesis, with the example of a reappropriated Biblical quote. There are innumerable quotes that I might have chosen, but I picked this one for its non-tendentious nature. We’ll see how long that lasts.
Update: It has come out, in the last few comments, that I have been using the word “eisegesis” incorrectly. I was mistakenly under the impression that the word denoted the leading into a text, which is done by somebody who imports ideas derived elsewhere. It would seem, however, that the word has a narrower definition than that, that it specifically denotes importing ideas of one’s own construction, and that it has a mildly pejorative nuance.
If anybody is familiar with this word having been reappropriated in recent years with a more relativistic nuance (ie: that ideas might have been read into texts, but that they were derived from older oral traditions and were therefore equally valid), please do speak up – either here or on Galus Australis. It is entirely possible that I have been using the word incorrectly for years (I’ve done that often enough with others), but it would be lamentable if the only word I know to describe rabbinic hermeneutics was disparaging.
Comments : Leave a Comment »
Categories : Bible
The Illustrated
9 10 2009One of the few things that I remember about my grandfather was the fact that he did not like comic books. I remember this because, even though he died when I was six, my earliest aspiration was to be an illustrator. I used to wonder whether or not he would have enjoyed a comic book that I produced and was always certain that the medium could be more than people usually gave it credit. It’s therefore a curious fact that, with very few and scarce exceptions, I never actually spent my time reading comics. I cannot say precisely why that was, except that I may have inherited the very prejudice that I was so certain was unfounded. Comics are frivolous. Comics are lurid. Comics, by providing illustrations, promote laziness. Comics are for children; adults read books.
Comments : 3 Comments »
Categories : Literature
Echoes from the Ether: