“Cinema”

13 08 2011

That so many things I despise so deeply about the modern-day blockbuster should be listed within the one paragraph is truly astonishing. The following is a brief list of reasons as to why the folks at IMDB’s Summer Movie Guide think that Final Destination 5 won’t be absolute garbage:

One reason that this franchise is on its fifth installment is that audiences (of which we’re included) get an entertainingly visceral, now three-dimensional, thrill watching the innovative, grisly ways the filmmakers come up with to knock off most of the very attractive cast of up-and-comers.

Why is it always pretty young starlets that get killed for my ‘entertainment’? I can think of some producers whose last moments might be more interesting to watch.


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Categories : Random Musings

The Curious History of a Load of Crap

9 08 2011

Yiddish speakers are very polite. While English speakers might tell you to get stuffed, a Yiddish speaker only directs you to do a poo in the sea (גיי קאקן אויפן ים). While English speakers might tell you to drop dead, a Yiddish speaker will bless you that you should be like a lamp (זאלסט זיין ווי א לאמפ): hanging in the daytime, and burning through the night. In fact, even when you are speaking a load of crap, a Yiddish speaker won’t tell you so. Instead, they will most likely call it a boba-ma’aseh (באבע מעשה): an old wives’ tale.

Literally, the phrase boba-ma’aseh is understood to mean “a grandmother story”, the word ma’aseh meaning “story” and the word boba (or buba, etc) meaning grandmother. Some gender-sensitive people have even taken the added step of inventing a new genre of nonsense: the zayde-ma’aseh (זיידע מעשה), or “grandfather story”. After all, they reason, old women are not alone in their ability to spin webs of utter inanity. Unfortunately, however, this too is nonsense.

To understand the actual origin of this delightful Yiddish phrase, we instead need to cast our thoughts back to the beginning of the 13th century, with the composition of an Anglo-Norman metrical romance known in English as Sir Bevis of Butthead Hampton. His adventures, which are related in “Alexandrines” (whereby each of the 3,850 verses is comprised of lines with exactly twelve syllables), has much in common with older legends concerned with Beowulf, as well as later legends concerning Hamlet.

The son of a murdered Count, Sir Bevis finds himself an exile, sworn to avenge his father’s murder, in love with an Egyptian princess. As with the Hamlet legend, the murderer of Sir Bevis’ father is now his mother’s husband, but unlike the Danish tragedy, Sir Bevis’ mother was instrumental in facilitating her late husband’s death. Sir Bevis acts with purpose and direction, excels himself as a man of a valour, and even conquers the giant Ascaparte, whom he appoints to be his squire. He dies in the end, as all good heroes must, and there was no sequel.

The 14th century English translation of Boeve de Haumtone (“Sir Bevis of Hampton”) was made from various French versions of the epic, themselves written in decasyllables and with over 10,000 verses. The most popular version, however, was the Italian, which was titled Buovo d’Antona, and which went through over thirty editions in the 14th century. Focusing largely on the romance between Buovo and the princess, there named Druziane, it is fair to say that there is little about the story that might be deemed Jewish. Its protagonists are Christians, they pray both to God and to Mary, various individuals get baptised, and there is nary a herring in sight. And so it is a mystery, and perhaps one of the most curious things in all of Jewish literature, that this chivalric romance should have been translated from Italian into Yiddish.

Born in the second half of the 15th century, Elia Levita is best remembered today as a grammarian. He wrote a dictionary of the Talmud and Midrash (תשבי), a dictionary of Targum Onkelos (ספר מתורגמן), an alphabetical presentation of technical Hebrew words (שמות דברים), and a translation of the Torah, the haftarot and the five megillot into Yiddish. His version of Buovo d’Antona, entitled באבה ד’אנטונא, was the first non-religious text published in the Yiddish language, preceding the first Hebrew novel by almost 300 years. Known by many as the באבה בוך (Bovo Bukh, or “Bovo Book”), it is considered by some to represent the finest poetry in the Yiddish language. If you can read it, it is available as a free download here.

In Levita’s version of the story, in which he supplanted various Christological references for subject matter that would have resonated with a Jewish audience, it is the princess of Flanders with whom the exiled Bovo falls in love, and the wicked king of Babylonia who constitutes his nemesis. The Babylonian prince, Lucifer, is promised the beautiful princess, the King of Flanders is taken into Babylonian captivity, Bovo rescues him with the assistance of a magic horse, and the wicked Lucifer is put to death. Twice in the story do Bovo and his lover think the other dead, twice is she almost married to another, and in the midst of all of this excitement he finds the time to return to Antona, banish his mother to a nunnery, kill her murderous husband and become the new king. It’s a real page-turner, I am sure.

And yet, such tremendous excitement notwithstanding, it didn’t take long before many became critical of these sorts of stories. Already by the 17th century, Cervantes found much to ridicule about the chivalric urge, and while Sir Bevis’ giant might have really been a giant, the sober windmills of Quixote have received greater literary attention. Are we so fearful of the fantastic that we need to ground it in realism? Is it truly necessary for a story to be predicated on reason and logic for us to accept its premise? Cannot profound truths be disported within a nonsensical carriage?

For many, perhaps not. And so it is not entirely surprising that the very name by which Levita’s Yiddish translation came to be known in the 18th century – the Bovo Ma’aseh, or Bovo Tale – should have come to denote a piece of foolish nonsense. For my part, I think it time that its original nuance be restored. Had an exciting weekend? Found yourself subject to forces beyond your control, over which you managed to assert yourself in a manner deserving recount? Feel free to embellish it with all manner of extra, fantastical details, and be sure to hold your head up high. Let your listeners know that “it was a real boba-ma’aseh, I assure you”.

[Addendum: It is worth noting the phonological shift between באבה (= bovo) and באבע (= boba). Until a Yiddish expert can correct me, I am under the impression that Yiddish today disallows the representation of a non-aspirated /b/ with anything other than two waws (ie: bovo would be באווה). At the time when Levinas' באבה דאנטונא was first published, the typesetter employed a rafe (a horizontal stroke) above the second ב, thus indicating that it is not to be aspirated. I expect that the reference to this text being a באבה מעשה (bovo ma'aseh), spelt with a ב, contributed towards it being relexicalised as באבע מעשה (boba ma'aseh), on analogy with the English expression, "old wives' tale".]


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Categories : Translation

The Essence of Torah

3 08 2011

[Cross-Posted from Galus Australis]

It is no secret that the weight of our traditions, and the vast bulk of our legislation, derives not from an explicit reading of the Torah, but instead from the long and methodical distillation of rabbinic halakha. This halakha, while it is earlier given expression in various legalistic midrashim (the Midrash Halakha), is best exemplified in the 3rd century redaction of the Mishna. It is a most curious feature of this text that, unlike all other examples of Jewish literature before and since (with the exception only of the stylistically correlative Tosefta), the Mishna provides no reasons for its laws, all of which are predicated upon statements found within the Torah, but none of which are actually from the Torah itself.

It would be a mistake to assume that the earliest generations of rabbis were unaware of this problem. While many today are content with the traditional schema, which posits the origin of rabbinic legal methodologies, and even the origin of rabbinic halakhot themselves, at Sinai, the Mishna itself evinces a certain discomfort with the provenance of its own dicta. Consider the following pronouncement (Hagigah 1:8):

התר נדרים פורחין באויר ואין להם על מה שיסמכו הלכות שבת חגיגות והמעילות הרי הם כהררים התלוין בשערה שהן מקרא מעט והלכות מרבות הדינין והעבודות הטהרות והטמאות ועריות יש להן על מה שיסמכו הן הן גופי תורה

[The laws concerning] the annulment of vows are floating in the air, and have nought on which they can be based. The laws of Shabbat, festival offerings and transgressions [incurred through the misuse of consecrated goods]: these are like mountains suspended on a hair, for there is little scripture and a great many halakhot. Financial laws, sacrifical procedures, purities and impurities, and sexual transgressions have that on which they can be based. These ones are the essence of Torah.

The translation above, which is slightly idiomatic, is my own. Where the Hebrew notes that הן הן גופי תורה, I have understood the repetition of the demonstrative pronoun as noting that “these ones” – the latter category – are the essence of Torah, to the exclusion of those that came before. Support for this can be found within the Tosefta (Hagigah 1:11; also Eruvin 8:17), which in this instance is clearly a commentary upon the mishna in question. Consider its conclusion:

הדינין העבודות הטהרות והטמאות והעריות מוסף עליהן הערכין וחרמים וההקדשות מקרא מרבה מדרש והלכות מרבות יש להן על מה שיסמכו אבא יוסי בן חנן אומר אלו שמונה מקצעי תורה גופי הלכות

Financial laws, sacrificial procedures, purities and impurities, and sexual transgressions, to which can be added valuations [of people and property], that which is banned, and that which is consecrated – a great deal of scripture, a great deal of midrash and a great many halakhot – have that on which they can be based. Abba Yose ben Hanan says, “These are the eight corners of Torah, the essence of halakhot.”

It is evident in the Tosefta’s reformulation that these eight things mentioned last (which number only four or five in the Mishna’s formulation) constitute the essence of Torah, while that which came before, although important and constituting the bulk of rabbinic legislation, is not of the essence. Those are the areas of the halakha, concerning which the rabbis could find no justificatory basis within the explicit wording of the Torah itself, and concerning which they were aware of their inability to do so.

It goes without saying that while so radical an idea might have found expression within certain examples of early rabbinic literature, later examples of the same disavowed it. Consider the terse response of the gemara to this problem (Hagigah 11b):

הן הן גופי תורה הני אין הנך לא אלא אימא הן והן גופי תורה

“These ones are the essence of Torah”? [Meaning] these ones are and these ones aren’t? Rather, say that “these and these are the essence of Torah”.

In other words, rather than suggesting that only these latter examples (הן הן) are the essence of Torah, which is what the Mishna does suggest, declare instead that all of these examples (הן והן) are the essence of Torah, whether or not they have anything on which they can be based, or whether they have only very little on which they can be based, within the explicit phraseology of the Torah itself.

That the gemara finds the Mishna’s assertion so problematic only serves to underscore the philosophical rift that divides the two. Prof. Menahem Kahana of Hebrew University refers to the statement in the mishna as being one that “frankly reveals the problematic nature of finding biblical support for numerous halakhot in several realms of Jewish law”¹.

Nonetheless, the recognition of this problem is one that comes fraught with all manner of ideological baggage. Were one to suggest that certain realms of halakha indeed lack textual basis, might not the individual halakhot that they comprise be called into question?

*

Consider a recent guest post at Hirhurim. Rabbi Yonatan Kaganoff proposes a model for comprehending Orthodox Judaism (although the model applies beyond Orthodoxy as well), in which he divides it into two different philosophical approaches.

One of Rabbi Kaganoff’s approaches is the one that sees of Judaism a masorah, or tradition. By believing his practises (however erroneously) to be constitutive of historical practises, and by perceiving a clear line of development from the earliest texts to the most recent, the adherent of such a philosophy must surely feel uncomfortable with any indication that there might be discontinuation between one stage in the process and the next. That the earliest generations of rabbis may have been originating ideas, the better to derive practical halakha from the little that the Torah gives them, is anathema to such a perspective. As a result, the mishna’s assertion that the “real Torah” lies with those things that possess a scriptural basis is in need of the sort of emendation that the gemara provides.

The first of his approaches, however, and the one to which I assent, is the approach that sees of Judaism a system of legal exegesis. While we might remark upon the ways in which it operates, we seek to appraise it rather than to lend it justification. Or as I have heard Rabbi Raymond Apple note on a number of occasions, our objective is to understand the literature and not to judge it. Were the rabbis ever responsible for innovating halakhot? Both then and now, and throughout all of Jewish history, this has been the modus operandi. While innovation was and is conducted in line with both the content and the principles of the rabbinic literature, it stands to reason that the earliest examples of this literature testify to innovation made on a more subjective basis.

Indeed, the introduction to the tosefta that I quoted (Hagigah 1:11) makes this abundantly clear for itself:

היתר נדרים פורחין באויר ואין להם על מה שיסמכו אבל חכם מתיר לפי חכמתו

[The laws concerning] the annulment of vows are floating in the air, and have nought on which they can be based, but the wise one will permit things in accordance with his wisdom.

While later generations came to understand the Mishna as being the faithful representation of a memorised body of law, rather than the results of a dynamic process of creative legislation, so much of the information that we have at our disposal belies this assertion. The abundance of disagreements within the early rabbinic literature, the honest appraisal of this particular passage in the Mishna, and the assertion made by the corresponding tosefta that “the wise one will permit things in accordance with his wisdom” all testify to a certain state of elasticity in the earliest days of the halakha.

Jewish law may have become inflexible in many respects, permitting change and development when in line with a particular methodology only, but this has not always been the case. Recreating the rabbis of the past in our own image does nobody any favours: neither those earliest generations, so anachronistically represented, nor ourselves, divested of an appreciation as to our ideological roots.

–

¹ Menahem Kahana, “The Halakhic Midrashim”. Pages 3-105 of The Literature of the Sages (vol. II; ed. S. Safrai, Z. Safrai, J. Schwartz and P. Tomson; Compendia Rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum; Minneapolis: Fortress Press), 11 n36.


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Categories : Jewish Tradition

Masters of Language

4 07 2011

My hunch is confirmed: linguists make the best authors. Not only is Tolkien’s translation of Jonah superior to any other that I have ever read, but Geoffrey Pullum’s account of his stay in Sofia makes for some exceptionally gripping reading. I’m not sure how to relate his post back to the biblical and rabbinic literature, save to note that Joseph Caro also lived in Bulgaria for a bit.

So there you go. Relevant.


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Categories : Language

The Mob

24 06 2011

For some reason, I tend to discover things several years after the rest of the world does. Whether it’s first seeing George Lucas’ Star Wars trilogy in 2004, or only discovering Coppola’s The Godfather in 2005, it’s not strange for me to wait until the hype has completely died down about something, and all but the most hardcore of fans have stopped enthusing over it, before I give it a go. Such has certainly proven to be the case with television programs for, as an avid non-watcher of television, I can easily go for years without knowing about such excellent series as The Office (BBC) and The West Wing. Imagine my sheer and unadulterated delight when, some time ago now, I discovered The Sopranos. A longstanding fan of gangster films, from Donnie Brasco to Once Upon a Time in America, the premise of this 86-hour television series really struck a chord. From The Godfather to Goodfellas, there have been gangster movies that have inspired me, excited me, uplifted me and intrigued me, and yet The Sopranos beats them all.

I know that nobody has the time to sit down and watch an 86-hour long television series in anything briefer than half a year, but for those of you who have seen the genius that is David Chase’s creation, the following advertisement is stirring indeed. Made by the very talented Lyle over at exeterstreet.net, I cannot think of a better and more fitting tribute to this remarkable series.

And for those of you who, like me, find the conclusion to the last episode a real punch to the stomach, “MasterofSopranos” has composed a lengthy defence of his interpretation, which I think is well worth a read. His general conclusions are the same as mine were, but his observations as regard POV, smash-cutting and the types of visual imagery that David Chase employed were all new to me, and much appreciated. The first page of his lengthy analysis can be found here.


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Categories : Random Musings

Numb, Benign

14 06 2011

This is old news now, but some may not know it. John Lennon’s incredible 1971 interview with Rolling Stone magazine is available as a free podcast download from the Apple iStore. Over three hours in length, John speaks candidly (and shockingly) about his relationship with Paul, the life and death of Brian Epstein, his experiences with drugs, his feelings about music, his feelings about Yoko and his plans for the future, which were sadly to go unrealised. Occurring only shortly after the release of his greatest album, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, John was still employing the psychological techniques that he had learned with Dr Arthur Janov, the net result of which was a brutal, scathing honesty. Declaring Paul’s music to be pathetic and the Beatles in general to be utter garbage, John proceeds to alienate everybody who might have counted themselves amongst his former friends. Uncomfortable at times, and nothing short of genius at others, I encourage anybody who is interested in John Lennon to have a listen.

In the meantime, the following is an amateur recording by the fourteen-year old Jerry Levitan, who gained access into John’s hotel room in 1969. With artwork by James Braithwaite and Alex Kurina, the short film produced is as entertaining as it is provocative:

And as for the lesser Beatles, the upcoming third wedding of Sir Paul McCartney inspired me to look through the interwebs, and I was most shocked to discover a disclosure of his, when speaking with Uncut Magazine back in 2004. Are you ready for it? “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” was about LSD! While I couldn’t find the interview in question, BBC News commented upon it here. There’s a whole lot of the usual nonsense (cannabis, heroin, cocaine … smoking tea?), but you’ll find the relevant information in the fifth paragraph. And to think: all these years, I have been completely defending their continued insistence that it had nothing to do with LSD at all, like an absolute idiot.

I mean, they made no excuses for the fact that “Yellow Subarine” was about smoking cannabis, nor that “Doctor Robert” was about the man from whom they had obtained acid in the first place, so it seemed reasonable to assume that if they were going to insist that a particular song was not about drugs, then surely it was not. And now it turns out that they were lying all along. I feel scandalised.


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Categories : Random Musings

“Graphic vs. Linguistic Realism”

11 06 2011

[Hat-tip: Language Log]


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Categories : Language

Is This Going Too Far?

7 06 2011

Like most yidden I know, I am a big fan of the Coen Brothers. And like most fans of the Coen Brothers, I was very disappointed with True Grit excited with A Serious Man. But unlike most people who enjoyed that film, I keep coming back to various discrepancies between the fantasy that they concocted and the fantasy that undergirds its invention. For to riff on Jewish mysticism is one thing, but to get that mysticism wrong is another thing entirely. And when it’s as wrong as the Coen Brothers got it – well, I have to feel that their mistakes might have been deliberate.

Not everybody that I have spoken with enjoyed A Serious Man at all. A film so Jewish that it’s practically balding, you truly need to be familiar with the cultural iconography in which it is steeped in order to fully appreciate it. Like Blood Simple, Fargo, No Country For Old Men, and maybe even Miller’s Crossing and The Big Lebowski, this movie seems intent on staying just beyond the confines of any traditional genre. That alone makes it interesting and worthy of analysis, although the question always remains as to how far beneath the surface one is supposed to pick. Most people – most normal people – watch films a couple of times, enjoy them, speak about them, maybe even have an argument about them, and then walk away and live for another sixty years or so without them. I just can’t leave this one alone. Call me psychotic, but I have become convinced that there is something funny going on here, just below the surface…

Now I’m not about to tell you that I think the Coen Brothers are attempting to communicate with me personally, but I do suspect that they are trying to say something to Jews in their audience who, while not being Rabbi Marshak, “know… a thing or two about the Kabbalah.” And while this might be going a bit too far for the average cinema-goer, I’ve compiled a few examples of this phenomenon at play.

Witness the opening scene. While it’s still up on YouTube, you can observe it here. (Embedding was disabled by request: my apologies.)

While the Coen Brothers famously (and stupidly) declared this scene to have nothing to do with the rest of the film, it certainly sets the mood. An eeriness, familiar to viewers of their many movies, producing a lingering doubt as to which of the characters was wise and which was deceived. What is more, the opening quote (“Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you”) applies to the entire movie as a whole, and might even be seen as underscoring every one of the major characters’ personalities, each of whom suffers in some way for not being able to follow its advice. Is the quote really from something that Rashi wrote? It does not sound in any way familiar, and I would not put it past them to have made it up completely¹.

The opening scene is in Yiddish, and there are two lines in it that perplex me. They can be heard between 1:33 and 1:38 on the video’s timer, and I have included the screenshots below:

The problem is, if you listen to the video, this is not what he’s actually saying. While the subtitles state that Traitle Groshkover studied Zohar with the Krakow rebbe, the audio clearly says that what he studied was Talmud. And while the subtitles assert that he can recite any passage from the Mishna, it is of the Gemara that he is said to have photographic memory. Why the switch? Is it presumed that their audience may recognise the words “Zohar” and “Mishna”, but not “Talmud” and “Gemara”? In my experience, “Talmud” is the only word in that list that almost everybody I speak to, Jew and gentile alike, recognises as a text. Or are they trying to say two things at the same time? Trying to present something to a non-Jewish audience, while at the same time winking at Jews in the crowd and intimating that there is something else going on here?

Okay, okay, you say. Don’t put down to sly ingenuity what can easily be explained by a case of poor editing. Consider then the following scene. This is the best scene in the entire film, but as embedding here was also disabled by request, you are unfortunately going to have to view this one on YouTube too, for as long as it’s there.

The famous “Goy’s Teeth” scene, this segment of the film involves a story told by Rabbi Nachtner about a hapless dentist named Leon Sussman. Having discovered a Hebrew message inscribed into the teeth of one of his non-Jewish patients, Dr Sussman loses his ability to think about anything else. The message is הושיעני: “Help me. Save me,” as Rabbi Nachtner translates it. You can see it clearly in the following image:

So what does Dr Sussman do? Can Dr Sussman sleep? Dr Sussman cannot sleep. Can Dr Sussman eat? Dr Sussman doesn’t eat. Does Dr Sussman think of actually asking his patient? God forbid. Instead, he consults a mystical treatise and proceeds to write down the numerical value of each of the letters. The treatise that he removes from the shelf, as can clearly be seen in the following image, is the third volume of a five volume Zohar al-haTorah:

Now, the Zohar al-haTorah is traditionally printed in three volumes and not five, but that this is a five-volume set can be seen from the fact that the volume immediately after the one that he is taking has a ד on the bottom:

I can deal with this. As can be seen subsequently, the volumes that he owns feature commentary in the margin. This is sufficient to make of three volumes five, but he arranges them from left to right, and while that’s hardly the equivalent of hearing my neighbour’s dog telling me to kill people, I cannot help but feel that this is yet another clue.

What about the gematria that he employs? Aside from the fact that he is not going to learn gematria from any of the volumes of the Zohar at all, the numbers that he produces are absolute nonsense:

3744548? That would be the “gematria” (and I use the term loosely, given that he is only writing out the values of the individual letters and not adding them) of גזדדהדח – not הושיעני.

So, I am perplexed. I approached this film in good faith. I have tried to be a serious man, but I don’t understand what the Coen Brothers are trying to say to me. Are they trying to indicate that nothing within this film is real? That it is a metaphor for something else? The Book of Job, as some wry pundits have it, or a contemporary midrash about life in American exile?

The walking stereotypes that are the gun-toting neighbour, the Korean student, the Korean student’s father and the hapless patient of Dr Leon Sussman all nicely counterbalance the walking stereotypes that are every Jew within the movie. Whether it is the quick grimace on the face of the man doing hagbah, the bizarre paraphernalia in the study of Rabbi Marshak, or the sappy obsequiousness of the synagogue’s junior rabbi, the Coen Brothers have struck chords that will resonate with anybody familiar with Judaism in the 20th century. And yet the presence of such glaring incongruities must make us pause. Is the Orthodox Rabbi Marshak somehow affiliated with the Reform temple and its rabbis? Was the decision to bar-mitzvah their son in a non-Orthodox shul made by Prof. Larry Gopnik, whose wife demanded a gett before moving in with the bare-headed Sy Abelman? Does the Mentaculus work??

I must retire from this one defeated. The Coen Brothers work in mysterious ways. How do they communicate with us, indeed? That is a good question.

¹ Addendum: It turns out that the quote is from Rashi’s gloss on Deuteronomy 18:13: “תמים תהיה עם יהוה אלהיך”. With thanks to David Bassin for having pointed this out to me.


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Categories : Random Musings

A Theology of Revelation

4 06 2011

While it is certainly not like me to post (or speak at all) about theology, I must break with convention and share a rather insightful observation by none other than Rashi himself. I was surprised to have encountered it, for Rashi rarely divulges theological observations of any real sophistication or profundity. Nonetheless, this last week’s parsha, פרשת נשא, concludes with a curious turn of phrase. Moses is said to have walked into the “tent of meeting”, the אהל מועד, and to have heard the voice of God speaking to him. The clause reads as follows:

ובבא משה אל אהל מועד לדבר אתו וישמע את הקול מדבר אליו מעל הכפרת אשר על ארן העדת מבין שני הכרבים וידבר אליו

When Moses went into the tent of meeting to speak with the Lord, he would hear the voice speaking to him from above the mercy-seat that was on the ark of the covenant from between the two cherubim; thus it spoke to him. (NRSV)

- Numbers 7:89

We can ignore for the moment the strange and unusual phraseology of the NRSV in this instance, for the issue of interest is a particular verbal phrase, their translation of which (“he would hear the voice speaking to him”) strikes me as being right on the money. I am unsure, however, as to what the masoretes were doing when they vocalised it as they did.

Anybody who has ever engaged with the biblical text is aware that they are encountering at least three different texts, one superimposed upon the other. The naked consonantal text, whatever its own history might have been, underlies both the vocalisation and the accentuation, both of which were added to the Hebrew some time after its original composition, and both of which are likewise historically distinct from one another. Where I would have expected the verb to have been vocalised as מְדַבֵּר (ie: a pi’el participle), it is instead vocalised as מִדַּבֵּר, with a hireq under the mem and a dagesh in the first and second radicals.

Both Onkelos and (Pseudo-)Yonatan parse the verb as a hithpa’el with an elided tav (מתמלל, in their Aramaic), which makes a certain degree of sense. It is not the only time that √דבר occurs in this stem, with two occurrences appearing in Ezekiel as well (2:2 and 43:6). In those instances, as the text is written in the first person, the ensuing pronoun (אלי) demonstrates that, hithpa’el or not, the verb has a non-reflexive meaning. Perhaps Ibn Ezra is uncomfortable with this possibility (although it is embraced by the Radak, in situ), for he parses the clause in Numbers 7:89 as being a contraction of מן דַבּר אליו, the verb in which is a pi’el infinitive construct, attested also in Jeremiah 1:6. This would mean that Moses heard the voice of God “from (ie: as a result of) [God's] speaking to him”.

Rashi, on the other hand, has a hard time constraining the two occurrences in Ezekiel to fit his theory, which is that the word is a reflexive, and that the referent of the pronoun in Numbers (אליו) is God himself! Unless I am reading too deeply into his interpretation, he seems to be implying that God’s dialogue with a prophet occurs, not in the manner of direct speech, but as the result of the prophet’s being capable of tuning into the frequency at which God’s continual discourse to himself is occurring, and eavesdropping. As a manner of speaking.

I find this idea, to which the Hebrew text does not overtly lend itself at all, to be both subtle and provocative. I would not go so far as to assert that it is buttressed by the vocalisation of this word, but the word’s vocalisation does lend itself to this possible interpretation, and were one so inclined one might stretch this into a general theology of revelation that can be made to fit the hundred thousand other examples of God conversing with prophets.

Whether one does or not, of course, it is certainly interesting food for thought.


Comments : 1 Comment »

Categories : Bible

Listen to Yourself

4 06 2011

The above is an advertisement for a particular brand of condoms, which appeared at bus shelters recently in Brisbane, the capital city of Queensland, Australia. Following a coordinated campaign by the Australian Christian Lobby, the offending posters were removed, and a barrage of hateful, homophobic nonsense was given loud expression. Not everybody who objected to the advertisement had a problem with homosexuality (some of them merely had a problem with public displays of sexuality in general), but in an attempt to mock those of them who did, a group of actors put together a selection of the worst and most ridiculous statements that had been made and set it to film.

This video constitutes part of a counter-campaign to have the ads reinstated – successfully, I might add, as of the start of this month. For an overview of the brouhaha, the Brisbane Times features this article. It is certainly true, as interested readers may observe, that the video was not mocking everybody. Nonetheless, the opinions that it utilised speak loudly for themselves, and prove too well a useful adage: there is something more effective than arguing with idiots, and that is giving them a microphone.

A good friend of mine recently observed that such hilarity might be produced in all situations in which one sets textual online comments to film. While I am not meaning to have a go at Christians in particular, the following video is a comedy staple.

What can I say. Perhaps if there were a program that enabled our computers to read our comments back to us before we committed them to the internet, much stupidity might be avoided. I realise, of course, that I am not the first person to consider this…


Comments : 2 Comments »

Categories : Random Musings

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