Probable Impossibilities and Improbable Possibilities

προαιρεῖσθαί τε δεῖ ἀδύνατα εἰκότα μᾶλλον ἢ δυνατὰ ἀπίθανα:

Probable impossibilities are preferable to implausible possibilities.

(Aristotle, Poetics 60a (1460a); trans. Malcolm Heath)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book Note: Peter Schaefer's _Jesus in the Talmud_

I just finished reading Peter Schafer's new book, Jesus in the Talmud . Previous discussions on this theme have revolved around whether or not the rare appearances of Jesus in Rabbinic literature can contribute to our understanding of the "historical Jesus." Notable in this respect is the highly erudite and ultimately fruitless study by Johann Maier entitled, Jesus von Nazareth in der talmudischen Ueberlieferung . Schaefer seeks to move beyond such questions and discuss why Jesus is portrayed the way he is in the Talmud (basically, and to no one's surprise, in a very negative light). His thesis is that the Talmud's occasional discussions of Jesus--when Jesus usually is NOT the primary topic under discussion, but is merely used as an example for another point--provides a "devastating counternarrative" to the gospels. "Counternarrative," by the way, is Schaefer's favorite word in this book. To demonstrate this, he engages in close readi...
Read more

A Little Daily Hekhalot?: Hekhalot Rabbati §81a

One of the unfortunate consequences of completing graduate school and beginning to teach full time is that it is difficult to find a reading buddy. One of my memories of my late advisor, Alan Segal, is sitting around a table in his office with him and perhaps one or two other graduate students and working through some passages from the Hekhalot material. Alas, even if one is lucky enough to land in an institution where someone has the requisite language abilities, they may or may not have time, interest in that particular literature, or be willing to delve into some very difficult text with grammatical and literary difficulties and a great deal of disparity from manuscript to manuscript. So, seeking a reading partner, I am putting a reading--a short one--of the first lines of the "macroform," as Peter Schäfer calls it, of Hekhalot Rabbati (the "Greater Palaces"). I will be working from Peter Schäfer's Synopse zur Hekhalot , where he presents seven different...
Read more

Moses and Greco-Egyptian Practices: Contextualizing the Christian Moses

In an earlier post , I had noted Moses' importance in Greco-Egyptian magic, riffing off of a statement that John Gager made.  I wrote: The Moses of the magical papyri provides another piece of the puzzle of what Jews, Christians, and others on the ground thought, what they did, and, again, reasons for his exaltation and, just as often, suppression.  It is a clear example, here, of exaltation.  I wonder, what Christians did with this view of Moses as magician?  Does his exaltation here mirror his exaltation in contemporary Christian sources of the mid-second to fourth centuries?  How does it compare with contemporary Egyptian Christian sources of different opposing parties of the hierarchy, the monks, and the traditions of Nag Hammadi?  Indeed, it is fascinating territory into which the magical Moses takes us.  It is a messy, difficult terrain, but ultimately a fruitful one. In this post, I would like to delve a little deeper in the Mose...
Read more