The Christian Moses: Choosing a Path

The historian of ancient religion typically lives in a patchwork world.  The dearth of ancient evidence is a daily reality to which one submits oneself.  The study of Moses in antiquity, however, oddly presents itself as an embarrassment of riches.  In addition to the Hebrew Bible and Jewish sources, Christian, Muslim, and even “pagan” writers repeatedly retold stories of Moses, sometimes presenting an entire “life,” sometimes focusing on specific episodes or events, and sometimes referring to a general quality or ability of Moses.  Second Temple Jews revisited Sinai over and again, retelling how Moses received the Torah in new circumstances.  He was alternatively invoked as absolutely unique and a model for emulation.  Several events, tropes, roles, and images caught the ancient imagination:  the birth story; the burning bush revelation of the divine name; the signs and wonders he performed in Egypt; the Passover; the Exodus; standing on Sinai; meeting God at the Tent; holding hands up high in battle.  He was liberator, lawgiver, king, priest, magician, visionary, and, dare I say it, a "god."  Moses was and is central for Judaism, but also for Christianity and Islam.  As one historian, C. Umhau Wolf, noted, no other figure from the Hebrew Bible receives as much attention in both the New Testament and the Quran as Moses—outnumbering references even to Abraham!  

There is currently an upsurge in interest in early Christian mobilizations of Moses.  There is a recent monograph by John Lierman on Moses in the New Testament.  The Catholic University of America has recently held a conference featuring Moses in ancient and medieval Christian representation with a promised conference volume forthcoming.  With so much terrain to cover, what paths should one take?  Follow beaten paths, worn-questions and answers from other scholars—often an inevitable occurrence when faced with documents as over-scrutinized as the New Testament?  Seek new paths and questions, but risk being overwhelmed by the unknown?  How does one organize one’s evidence:  by author, corpus, historical period, or topic?  One must choose a path carefully:  one that is one’s own, but that crisscrosses others; one that is original but representative, related to others but coherent in scope.  One such path, I believe, is how ancient Christians represented Moses’ visionary abilities:  What exactly, if anything, did Moses see on the Mountain?  And why does it matter? 

Different early Christians would answer differently:  God, angels (because no one can see God and live!), darkness, the “pattern” of ultimate heavenly realities, and, yes, he saw Jesus.  New Testament writers, while making Jesus a prophet like (or greater than) Moses, tended to claim Moses did not see God (except in Hebrews 11).  Especially moving into the second through the fourth centuries, sometimes he “foresaw” Jesus (these are the “hindparts” Moses was vouchsafed); sometimes the eternal Christ was the being who met with him directly on the mountain; or, my personal favorite, when Jesus was on the Mount of Transfiguration with Moses and Elijah was when they ascended their mounts, making the mountain a trans-temporal hub of some sort as if early Christians were watching Doctor Who.  

Early Christian alternatively affirm and deny Moses' divine visions, and whether they demote or exalt Moses has an important social context:  the authority of Christ and authority of Christian leaders, especially bishops, as mediators of divine realities.  There are many subtle variations to explore on this theme of “who benefits?” by affirming and/or denying Moses’ abilities.  Overall, however, denying Moses’ visions of God was often used to claim Christ as ultimate mediator, even as Christ was a prophet like Moses; affirmations of Moses’ visions affirmed his place in society as analogous to Christian leadership, which, as Andrea Sterk has emphasized, reaches its apogee in the writings of Basil of Caesarea:  as Moses stood between God and the people, so does the bishop.  As bishops aligned themselves with Moses, they tended to emphasize his positive visionary abilities and references to Exod 33:20 (no one can see God and live) fall away to passages like Num. 12:8 (Moses sees the very form of God whereas no one else can).  This will start out as my operating hypothesis.  This project, therefore, dovetails quite nicely with the questions that generated my work on the Sabbath and the Tabernacle in Hebrews:  who can access and mediate access to the divine?

The Christian Moses: Getting Started

Today I had the opportunity to start working on outlining a new research project.  It is an exciting time, a time before my ideas crystallize, when they retain the flexibility of hypotheses.  It is when my flashes of insight have yet to become a sustained vision.  When there is the excitement of finding new things even in a field as overrun as New Testament and Christian Origins.  It is an important time, moreover, when I choose which direction I will go (even if the road winds, twists, and turns into new directions later).  It is an overwhelming time, since there are so many directions I could go.  My project, my passion at the moment is Moses.  Not just Moses, but Moses as interpreted by early Christians; how they represented him and why they represented him in the way they did.  It is about ancient exegesis and its social implications; interpretation and authority.  More to come!

Defining Jewish Difference by Beth Berkowitz

I just noticed that Beth Berkowitz's new book, Defining Jewish Difference, is available.  The book looks at the history of interpretation of Leviticus 18:3 ("You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you dwelt, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you.  You shall not walk in their statutes."), and how that verse has been reinterpreted throughout the ages in terms of the "ways of the Gentiles" as, sort of, a trump card in exegesis.

Here is the official description:

This book traces the interpretive career of Leviticus 18:3, a verse that forbids Israel from imitating its neighbors. Beth A. Berkowitz shows that ancient, medieval, and modern exegesis of this verse provides an essential backdrop for today's conversations about Jewish assimilation and minority identity more generally. The story of Jewishness that this book tells may surprise many modern readers for whom religious identity revolves around ritual and worship. In Lev. 18:3's story of Jewishness, sexual practice and cultural habits instead loom large. The readings in this book are on a micro-level, but their implications are far-ranging: Berkowitz transforms both our notion of Bible-reading and our sense of how Jews have defined Jewishness.

This has been long in coming.  I actually took a course from Berkowitz at Jewish Theological Seminary called "The Ways of the Gentiles," which was about this research.  That was probably...six or seven years ago...  My contribution to the class was to find echoes of this in the New Testament and early Christianity (I focused on the "walking" language in the Deutero-Paulines, especially Ephesians--if you look at Lev. 18:1-5 and the Holiness Code more generally, "walking" is the typical way of speaking of one's general comport--and the passage in Ephesians 4:17-24:  "no longer live as the Gentiles do" as potential resonances, though I recall being quite conservative in my conclusions).  If it is as good as her first book, Execution and Invention, it will definitely be worth the read.  At its current price, however, it looks like a library volume.

Jodi Eichler-Levine on Maurice Sendak

I good friend of mine, Jodi Eichler-Levine, has written an essay, "Where the Wild Things Aren't Just Jewish," in Religion Dispatches on Maurice Sendak and, I guess we could call it "inclusive chosenness" (don't blame her for such an infelicitous phrase).  Sendak, who died this past week, is most famous for the children's book, Where the Wild Things Are.  Jodi, by the way, researches the ways in which collective trauma (such as the Holocaust), holidays, and religious identity are expressed in children's books.  On her webpage (link on her name), she says this about her work, "In Professor Eichler-Levine’s current book project, which is under contract with New York University Press, she examines how Jewish Americans and African Americans incorporate traumatic pasts and religious ideals in stories young people."  Thus, it was a topical match made in heaven. 

Here is my favorite passage from the article:

"His response to the Holocaust was not material generativity, not the reproduction of Jewish children to spite Hitler; instead, it was a creative demand that we open up our humanity and transmit our imaginations through unsettling yet ravishing forms of media. The author whose illustrations first appeared in Atomics for the Millions forces us to rethink the imaginary “nuclear family.”"

It is an interesting article; take a look!

Hebrews and Ritual Studies: Abstract and TOC

So as I finish up readying a draft of my monograph to send to publishers, I have thought a bit about a potential future project that would be more patently methodological in nature:  what, if anything, can different scholarly frameworks of ritual tell us about Hebrews?  How might Hebrews help us to rethink those frameworks?  So, I toyed with this idea a bit here, spoken of it with biblicists, with people who study ritual or "ritual" in other contexts, etc., and with their feedback I have come up with this as a preliminary abstract and table and contents:

The Epistle to the Hebrews and Ritual Studies:  An Investigation

Jared C. Calaway

Visiting Assistant Professor

Illinois Wesleyan University

Abstract:

This study responds to the increasing interest in “social-scientific criticism” in biblical studies and its relative absence in the most cultically-interested work in the New Testament:  the Epistle to the Hebrews.  There have been some pioneers in this regard.  David DeSilva employs a socio-rhetorical approach when considering the Greek and Roman social context of Hebrews.  On the cultic side, John Dunnill has brought Hebrews into dialogue with structuralist anthropology of Claude Lévi-Strauss, Mary Douglas, and Victor Turner, that looks at the structure or system of symbols and how Hebrews re-presents and transposes the symbol system of the Old Testament covenant.  Dunnill’s monograph is an important trailblazer in bringing Hebrews into dialogue with important trends in anthropology that have had analytic usefulness, but anthropology and sociology as disciplines have continued to develop new lines of social analysis.  In this project, I propose to analyze Hebrews with shifting lenses of anthropology, sociology, as well as the history of religions school that have been developed for the study of “ritual.”  I investigate well-known theories and more recent developments.  Each chapter is dedicated to a particular approach, and analyzes the effects of that approach when brought into dialogue with the Epistle to the Hebrews.  By dedicating each chapter to a different approach, I hope to elucidate what difference using a distinct sociological or anthropological theoretical model makes, what benefits are accrued, and what drawbacks can be found.  Within each chapter, I will examine how these theories can help us understand Hebrews on a couple of levels:  how ritual or ritualized actions are represented in the text, or Jesus as ritual expert; and how these theories help us understand the sets of social relationships between author, community, received tradition, and other groups that create different pressures and contacts, or the author as ritual actor.  Biblical studies historically has been an important ground for debating social theories developed by sociologists, anthropologists, and historians of religion from William Robertson Smith, to Mary Douglas, to Jonathan Z. Smith, and to Nancy Jay.  What, if anything, can discussing Hebrews in this manner contribute to refining, redefining, or exploring the potentials and limits of social, especially ritual, theories?

Table of Contents:

1.  Introduction:  Social Sciences, Ritual, and Biblical Research

2.  Hebrews as Cosmogonic Reenactment:  Mircea Eliade, the Myth and Ritual School, and the Eternal Return

3.  Betwixt and Between:  Arnold van Gennep, Victor Turner, and Liminality in Hebrews

4.  The Symbolic System of the Heavenly Sanctuary:  Claude Lévi-Strauss, Victor Turner, Mary Douglas, and Hebrews

           

5.  Performance, Display, and Efficacious Speech:  Jesus and Author as Ritual Performers

           

6. Ritualizing Jesus’ Sacrifice:  Pierre Bourdieu, Catherine Bell, and Hebrews

7.  Conclusion:  Insights, Blind Spots, and Next Steps

The Bible and the Environment

I have been thinking about developing a course to complement, in some ways, my Sexuality and Christianity course, in which I bring in feminist and queer biblical criticism.  I thought one important critical hermeneutic which I am less familiar with and most interested in is ecological.  Since I have been largely ignorant of it, I asked a friend for some book ideas. 

The first I have read is The Bible and the Environment by David G. Horrell.  It is a nice slim volume that provides a good primer for who is out there debating the Bible's role, positively and negatively, on shaping people's perspectives when it comes to environmental policies and more private choices and interests, what reading strategies (hermeneutics) are used on the different sides, and what biblical passages are the primary ones typically used to oppose or promote environmental policies and actions.

Interestingly, ecological criticism has had a fairly similar trajectory as feminist biblical criticism.  Firstly, there have been claims for each that the Bible has been the primary obstacle either to women's equality (see Matilda Gage's "Woman, Church, and State") or for shaping the Western Christian perspective that seeks to dominate and exploit nature (Lynn White, Jr., "Historical Roots of our Ecologic Crisis").  For both, the creation stories have been primarily at issue (creation of the sexes and Adam and Eve story for feminist readings; the "dominion" issue for ecology).  Eschatology has played perhaps a stronger role for resisting environmental policies than for resisting gender equality.  There has been a response to recover positive images and passages for women or for earth interrelationships, or re-read passages showing that those that seem to be harmful do not have to be read as so.  Another response has been to expose, resist, and then reject problematic passages of women (Trible's Texts of Terror comes to mind) or that do not appear to be eco-friendly.  One of the major exposures for feminist biblical criticism has been the thoroughly androcentric bias of the Bible; for ecological biblical criticism, the anthropocentric bias (although there have been "recovered" passages that decenter humanity within creation; e.g., the end of Job, or the passages where all of the elements of creation praise God--not just humans).  And there has been a backlash that resists the feminist or ecological hermeneutic. 

Overall, I thought Horrell provided a balanced discussion of the potentials and limits of ecological readings of the Bible, introducing how the Bible has been used to form perspectives that have supported or opposed environmental programs, alongside his own ideas of how to develop a responsible ecological hermeneutic that takes the recoveries and resistances into account.  It would be useful to orient oneself or to assign to I'd say an undergraduate class--a class either directly on the Bible and the Environment, or a class on critical readings of the Bible, where one introduces students to the various types of biblical criticism.

I will be looking forward to my next ecologically oriented readings concerning the Bible. 

Appalled and Angry

I just discovered the lamentable firing of Anthony LeDonne from Lincoln Christian University here.  I met Anthony my first year at Illinois Wesleyan University when his co-biblicist at LCU Chris Keith came to IWU to talk about the demise of the criteria of authenticity through research employing memory studies (see a recent discussion of one of Keith's books here).  Anthony's firing appears to be due to pressure by donors and others because of his quite good popular book on the Historical Jesus.  Ironically, there is to be a conference concerning this research at LCU next fall, though it appears that the organizers are likely to move it in response to LeDonne's unexpected firing (here).

I am quite angry about this.  LeDonne's research is good, responsible, and creative.  He should be rewarded for his work rather than endure mistreatment.  I join with others who offer their hopes that LeDonne will quickly find an institutional home that values his important contributions and gives him the freedom to follow his arguments to their logical conclusions and to follow his creativity.  I already own a copy of the book that is at the center of this controversy; I assign portions of it in my classes.  I suggest that everyone else, too, buys a copy (link above) (1) to support this important scholarship and (2) to find out what good scholars are saying on the forefront of historical Jesus scholarship.  Then pick up his other book.

Valentinian Melons

April DeConick has been talking about Gnostic mushrooms, based upon a reference in Irenaeus, and it reminded me of the same writer's parody of the Pleroma in terms of vegetables:

There exists a certain royal Pre-principle, pre-unintelligible, pre-insubstantial and pre-prerotund, which I call Gourd.  With this Gourd there coexists a Power which I call Supervacuity.  This Gourd and this Supervacuity, being one, emitted without emitting a Fruit visible in all its parts, edible and sweet, which language calls Cucumber.  With this Cucumber there is a Power of the same substance, which I call Melon.  These Powers, Gourd and Supervacuity and Cucumber and Melon, emitting a whole multitude of Valentinus' delirious Melons.  For if one must accommodate ordinary language to the first Tetrad and if each one chooses the terms he wants, who would keep him from using these last terms, much more worthy of credence, in ordinary usage, and known by all? (Against Heresies 11.4; trans. Robert M. Grant).  

Say what you want about Irenaeus or his argument or his larger project; he's often quite funny.

In Memory of Jane Schaberg

I was saddened just now to discover the passing of Jane Schaberg, Professor of Religious Studies and Women's Studies at the University of Detroit Mercy, from Mark Goodacre's blog.  I had only met her once, but recall being quite moved by listening to James Tabor giving a talk on her behalf at SBL a few years ago.  I love her work, The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene: Legends, Apocrypha, and the Christian Testament, from which I regularly assign portions for my Sexuality and Christianity class.  She wrote brilliantly, challenging entrenched scholarly perspectives with good research and, something much rarer, creativity.

Update:  See now April DeConick's post addressed as a letter to Jane Schaberg.

Hebrews and the Social Sciences

Reviewing some works on Hebrews and the "social-scientific method," by which one usually means taking the insights of sociology and anthropology and applying them (or putting them in dialogue with) the biblical texts, I have been somewhat amused that, when discussing cultic aspects at least, the typical go-to's are still Victor Turner and Mary Douglas.  No one would deny their importance and influence.  And the latter is particularly understandable, since she did theorize using the Pentateuch, especially Leviticus and Numbers, to discuss ritual as a symbolic system.  Nonetheless, the social sciences move on and Bible scholars are often the last to know.  So, I had an idea perhaps for a future project in which one might be a little more overt about the the implications of the application of the social sciences and the Bible--that is, instead of making a particular thinker the background or general approach one has to the text, to see what happens when one makes the application the very topic under investigation.  Considering my own interest in the scholarly study of ritual (or ritualization), this might be an interesting, fun, and educational project to clarify the implications of using "this" thinker rather than "that" one.  I can just imagine the chapters (or sections for a smaller project).  So what would happen if you dedicated separate chapters or sections to different thinkers and how their thought related to Hebrews (Why Hebrews?  As the Doctor says, "Because it's cool."). 

Hebrews and Ritual Studies:

1.  Betwixt and Between:  Arnold van Gennep, Victor Turner, Liminality, and Hebrews

2.  The Symbolic System of the Heavenly Sanctuary:  Mary Douglas, Structuralism, and Hebrews

3.  Ritualizing Jesus’ Sacrifice:  Catherine Bell and Hebrews

Conclusion:  Insights, Blind Spots, and Next Steps

One could, of course, open it up beyond this as well with Geertz, Bourdieu, etc.

The Social Network of the Epistle to the Hebrews: A Proposal

There have been persistent problems when thinking about the intellectual, religious, social, and cultural backgrounds of Hebrews with various ones being postulated and rejected.  Different contexts arise in scholarship like a whack-a-mole, popping up, dropping from sight, and reappearing in new places.  Contexts are proposed through perceived similarities—oftentimes compelling, but always with a slight stretch, revealing new lights and truths concerning Hebrews but always concealing a lie.  Others will point out the differences in order to undercut such possible contexts, as if any two writers ever agree on all details!  (As a side note, how often does a pupil sound exactly like his/her teacher?  We would expect numerous continuities, to be sure, but also a great deal of development, alteration, and reworking as we find among early Christian texts where we cannot exactly place lines of influence).  It is an odd exercise in which parallels equal contact and differences undermine it.  Nonetheless, socially, one should expect similarities and differences as people pass on ideas from group to group and then adapt them to new audiences and new circumstances.  One should expect emphases in earlier works to be de-emphasized as they become less relevant and older obscure elements to be emphasized as they become more relevant.  These days the search for a single background to Hebrews has largely been abandoned, even as, I myself, have sought to include and “complexify” that background further in my dissertation and more clearly, I think, in my monograph.

I wonder if we could do a different type of analysis that can take all of these partial contacts into account to use the Epistle to the Hebrews as an example to illustrate the much broader social networks of early Christians.  In this case, the content of a document will be important only insofar as it shows intellectual contact and exchange (including the necessary and inevitable changes that occur as ideas are communicated from person to person).  Having been in conversation with April DeConick with her concepts of “Network Criticism,” in which she takes more cognitively than I am thinking of here, and with a friend of mine, Kevin Sullivan, who is writing a book on early Christian travel (one implication of which is that the dissemination of ancient Christian letters and texts need not take years or decades, which scholars inexplicably assume when trying to date documents, but mere months--think of Paul's letters!), I began to think about the communication networks of early Christians and how we might use texts as the evidence of communication, dissemination of ideas, including constant change and adaptation from locality to locality as each connected by a larger interactive network. 

Approaching the issue as a social network mostly downplays the importance of direct literary dependence:  if we see a couple texts as different nodes—say Hebrews and 1 Peter—along a network of ongoing communication and exchange, then whether one directly influenced the other is less of a question than how it can illustrate and unearth underlying social networks (there could be multiple mediating people or groups between them along the same network, for example).  In this line of thinking, the particular combination of similarities and differences and the values we assign to them (such as how unique the similarities are, etc.) indicate not “influence” vs. “no influence” but where they lie upon the vast, complex networks of communication and exchange.  In this case, we should NOT be surprised to see a work like Hebrews falling along very complex intersections of the network and having multiple strands of this network, both proximate and remote, interconnections in which it draws on several lines that resemble other “nodes” along that network but equals and completely fits none of them.

This, moreover, could be the initial mapping of the social network of the earliest Christians using the texts less as content describing such interactions (e.g., Acts) but as the material evidence of such interactions.

Of course, all reconstructions must necessarily be partial.  My primary operating assumption is that these are not the only things written by our authors.  Paul surely wrote more letters than have survived; the writings of his churches to him (which he refers to) have not survived; you don’t become as good a writer as the author in the Epistle to the Hebrews overnight—it would be miraculous if this were the first and last thing the author ever wrote.  Therefore, I am assuming that whatever reconstruction we have is just the skimming of the surface of a much vaster, intricate network of early Christians communicating to one another.  Moreover, this is only part of the written network; undergirding this would also be a more personal network of oral communication and personal interaction.

Moreover, just because an author has evidence of contact with certain forms of thought that are prominent in a particular locality does not mean the author was necessarily from that locality or that the author was writing to or from that locality at the moment of writing; it means that the author has some acquaintance with those forms of thought.  For example, I have read, absorbed, actively incorporated, and developed things that I have read from Russia, Germany, Greece, France, England, Canada, and all over the U.S.  I am not from all those places; I have not visited all of those places; I have not met every author I have ever read; but they are part of my broader intellectual network.  The author of Hebrews may have familiarity with Alexandrian thought, whether passing or more intensive, but it does not mean that he ever went there, that he was from there, or wrote to there.  It means it is part of his network.

Once we start pulling on the different threads of these interconnections, what might follow?  

God and the Senses (2): Hekhalot Rabbati §§163-164

I wanted to continue my discussion of God and the senses with Hekhalot Rabbati for a couple reasons.  Firstly, I have been sitting on this passage for a while and wanted a forum to discuss it.  Secondly, it contributes to two series of posts at once:  resuming (at least briefly) my "Daily Hekhalot" discussions from last summer and the series of posts on "God and the Senses," for which my primary concern has been and will be after this for the most part with early Christian texts.  Hekhalot Rabbati has many series of hymns set within various narrative frameworks throughout (though usually they are set within a series of other hymns).  If Michael Swartz's conclusions in his analysis of Ma'aseh Merkavah (another Hekhalot work) are at all transferable, then we might consider that the hymnic portions of the work are older than the other portions.  The passage I want to discuss is quite notable for several reasons:  (1) it engages at least 4 out of 5 senses; (2) it is really about communal instruction of worship; thus, (3) it is a hymn sung about communal practice of engaging (and as we shall see, embracing, with even erotic overtones) God. 

I will give the text in Hebrew; my translation; and then discuss the passage.

Text:

‎   ברוכים לשמים ולאר‫ץ יורדי‬ מרכבה
‎אם תאמרו ותגידו לבניי מה אני עושה
‎בת‫פילת שחרית ובתפילת המנחה וערבית ‬
‎בכל יום ובכל שעה ושעה שישר‫' אומ' לפני קדוש ‬
‎ולמדו אתם ואמרו להם
‎שאו עיניכם לרקיע כנגד בית תפילתכם בשעה שאתם אומ' לפני קד'
‎כי אין לי הנאה בכל בית עולמי שבראתי
‎באותו שעה שעיניכם נשואות בעיניי ועיניי נשואות בעיניכם
‎בשעה שאתם אומ' לפני קד'
‎כי הקול היוצא מפיכם באותה שעה
‎טורד ועולה לפני כריח ניחוח

‎והעידו לי‫/‬לו‫/‬להם מה עדות אתם רואים אותי
‎מה אני עושה לקל‫סתר פניו של יעקב אביכם שהיא חקוקה לי על כסא כבודי ‬
‎‫כי בשעה שאתם אומרים לפני קדוש ‬
‎‫כורע אמי עליה ומחבקה ומנשקה ומגפפה וידיי על זרועתיו שלשה פעמים‬
‎‫ שאתם אומרים לפניי קדוש  כדבר שנ' ק'ק'ק'‬

Textual Notes:
I generally used O1531 as a guide, but overall this is a conflation of mss.

Translation:
Blessed are you who descend to the chariot to the heavens and the earth.
If you will say and will proclaim to my children what I do:
During the morning prayer and the afternoon prayer and the evening one,
Every day and every hour when Israel says before me "Holy,"
You teach them and say to them:
"Lift your eyes to the expanse over against your house of prayer;
At the time you say before me "Holy,"
For I have no enjoyment in all the world that I have created
As at that time that your eyes are lifted up to my eyes
And my eyes are lifted up to your eyes
At the time when you say before me "Holy"
For the voice goes out from your mouths at that time
Stirs and ascends before me as a pleasing savor.

They testify to me (to/for me/it/them) what testimony you have seen.
What I do to the brightness of the face of Jacob you father that is engraved for me upon my throne of glory
For at the time you say before me "Holy"
I bow down upon it and embrace it and kiss it and clasp it
And my hands (rest) upon its arms three times
At the time you say "Holy."
As it is said, "Holy Holy Holy"

Commentary:
This hymn from Hekhalot Rabbati is a good example of a communal experience of the divine in which multiple sense are, throughout, engaged.  This experienced is reported back to the human community by the descender to the chariot, who acts somewhat like a messenger, or, better yet, a diplomat between God and Israel.  Here he reports what happens in heaven during the Qedushah, the recitation of the angelic formula from Isaiah 6:3:  "Holy, Holy, Holy is the LORD of hosts."  In the meantime, knowing what God does, Israel has actions to perform in response.  So, let's see how the sensual engagement plays out.

Firstly, I would say that the primary sense engaged in this is auditory.  It is a hymn, after all, about singing hymns.  One learns through the mediation of the mystic diplomat about the divine-human relationship through singing it and singing about the recitation of the Qedushah itself.  This auditory experience is not merely human either:  it is about divine senses and sensibilities as well:  it is hearing Israel say "Holy" that gives God pleasure. 

Next there are also visual cues throughout.  This is part of the instruction for communal practice:  the human community is instructed to lift their eyes to the expanse (or firmament) above and God will also look upon the people.  It is a moment of eye-contact, an interlocking gaze, between humans and the divine during worship. 

There is also smell, at least for God.  In this the human breath used to say "holy" goes forth and rises to God "as a pleasant savor."  This terminology is the same used in the Bible (particularly the P Source) for sacrifice--when sacrifices are offered, they are a pleasant savor before God.  It designates the divine acceptance of the offering.  Sacrificial language is being transferred here to the vocalization of the word "holy."  The human breath itself becomes the sacrifice. 

The last part is tactile.  This, again, falls mostly on the divine side of things; nonetheless, the embrace of God and Jacob or "Israel" on the throne has elicited a great deal of commentary (well, as much commentary as anything else in Hekhalot scholarship), noting its potential eroticism.  There are two words here that could be translated as embracing (and while the first is in Pi'el, in Hithpa'el it can be used to denote making love).  It is an ultimate "touching":  embracing and kissing.  The loving, erotic embrace between God and the crystalline image of Jacob, representing Israel (note: קל‫סתר‬ is likely from the Greek word κρὐσταλλος or "crystal" indicating here likely brightness or brilliance of Jacob's countenance) .  The lovers (God and Israel) show physical affection (almost like they're making out) during the moment of the Qedushah, embracing one another three times (one for each "holy"). 

The only sense missing is taste, unless it is implied in the kiss (or unnecessary due to the savor).  Nonetheless, this hymn stands out as a highly sensual account of the relationship between God and Israel as lovers who embrace during the recitation of the Qedushah:  firstly flashing flirting eyes to each other as they recite, then smelling, and finally touching and embracing.  The senses engaged, moreover, become ever-more intimate as one moves from sight (at a distance) to smell (in the presence of) to touch (the closest one can get to another without complete absorption).  All through the means of the delight of saying and hearing "Holy."

God and the Senses (General Suggestions)

As noted in my previous post, I think it would be helpful to think about the many different ways in which the sense are activated or engaged, whether physically or metaphorically, for Jewish and Christian (and Islamic) mysticism.  In that post, I discussed one of the hymns in the Acts of Thomas.  In the forthcoming posts, I have collated a few different Jewish, but primarily Christian works that engage multiple senses at once:  some of the hymns of Hekhalot Rabbati, Origen's Commentary and Homilies on the Song of Songs, and the Gospel of Philip.  A little further afield, I have also noticed this recurrence among Sufi poets, particularly in Rumi's poetry.  I will be hitting upon the ancient Jewish and Christian works in the next few weeks when I have some time after doing my research and teaching work for the day (so rather occasionally).  I wondered, however, if anyone had any other ideas for texts to investigate that engage multiple senses (if not all five) at once.

God and the Senses (1): Acts of Thomas

In an earlier post, I noted that while vision and audition are the predominant aspects of sacred or divine encounters (hierophany and theophany respectively) that there is a dearth of comment from a modern perspective on the engaging of other senses.  It is not just seeing God or hearing God, but also smelling, tasting, and touching.  Taste, indeed, will play an important role in Christian encounters, largely due to the Eucharist.  But Jewish, Christian, and Islamic works (and I limit myself to these since I am most familiar with them; not because I think it is lacking elsewhere) often engage multiple senses at once when speaking of the self and God.  Of these, perhaps smell is the most interesting:  it permeates and envelops but is not enveloped by you; it is evanescent but ever-present; it may surround you, but you cannot grasp it.  Touching often gives a sense of immediacy and intimacy, and tasting is perhaps most intimate, but also can be used to discuss transformation.  Indeed, seeing and hearing are important, but mystical works engage all the senses as a fuller expression of how all-encompassing the divine or sacred encounter can be for these authors. 

I plan to make note of several passages and authors, but here is a passage from the Acts of Thomas 1.6-7, a hymn (ed. Schneemelcher and Wilson):

The maiden is the daughter of light,
Upon her stands and rests the majestic effulgence of kings,
Delightful is the sight of her,
Radiant with shining beauty.
Her garments are like spring flowers,
And a scent of sweet fragrance is diffused from them.
In the crown of her head the king is established,
Feeding with his own ambrosia those who are set him.
Truth rests upon her head,
By (the movement of) her feet she shows forth joy.
Her mouth is open, and that becomingly,

Thirty and two are they that sing her praises.
Her tongue is like the curtain of the door,
Which is flung back for those who enter in.
,
Which the first craftsman wrought.
Her two hands make signs and secret patterns, proclaiming the dance of the blessed aeons
Her fingers the gates of the city.
Her chamber is full of light,
Breathing a scent of balsam and all sweet herbs,
And giving out a sweet smell of myrrh and (aromatic) leaves.
Within a strewn myrtle branches and
And the are adorned with reeds.

[There is a bit here describing this as a cosmic wedding ceremony with bridesmaids and a bridegroom; and then the wedding feast]

And [they] shall linger over the feasting
of which the eternal ones are accounted worthy,
and they shall put on royal robes
and be arrayed in splendid raiment,
and both shall be in joy and exultation
and they shall glorify the Father of all,
whose proud light they received
and were enlightened by the vision of their Lord,
whose ambrosial food they received,
which has no deficiency at all,
And they drank too of his wine
which gives them neither thirst nor desire;
And they glorified and praised, with the living Spirit,
The Father of Truth and the Mother of Wisdom.

I was reading this passage in class today for my Sexuality class--partly for how wedding imagery (most of which I dropped here) has been reworked and partly for the image of the divine feminine.  For my current purposes, however, I want to note how sensual this scene is.  We do have a lot of visual imagery:  the maiden is the daughter of light; thus, there is a lot of light imagery:  effulgence, radiance, shining beauty.  She looks like spring flowers.  There is also the movement of her feet, suggesting dancing and joy.  Visual imagery also shows up in the second part:  those who have a vision of their Lord receive enlightenment--this language also shows up for the "bridegroom" (those who see him are enlightened), identifying the bridegroom with the Lord.  There is also the engagement of the ears and hearing.  Firstly, this is a hymn so would have been sung and heard.  Secondly, within this hymn is mention of the maiden's praises and songs.  So we get light, beauty, dancing, praise, and songs: a very joyous scene.  But to stop there would be to miss half of the experience:  it is also about smelling and tasting.  There is the sweet fragrance of flowers, balsam, aromatic leaves, and myrrh.  It is an experience that engages the olfactory senses as much as any other.  Moreover, food is mentioned--ambrosia and wine--and, therefore, taste.  The ambrosia (the food of the gods) and the wine are the Lord's, which, one of my students perceptively suggested today, looks like a Eucharist reference (or easily interpreted as such in an early Christian document).  So we have seeing, hearing, smelling, and tasting:  the only thing missing is touching.  The smelling and tasting communicate something that seeing and hearing cannot:  immediacy and intimacy--one can see and hear from afar, but tasting and smelling (and touching if it were there) need greater proximity. 

Elaine Pagels "Revelations" Review

As April DeConick has noted at Forbidden Gospels, Adam Gopnik has rather whimsically reviewed Elain Pagels's new book, Revelations on the book of Revelation and other ancient revelations in the New Yorker.  It is quite an entertaining read.

Religion and Food

About a month ago, some fellow religion colleagues and I were having dinner and started bantering.  During the banter, I suggested a course on religion and food.  At the time, I was half-joking, but I have been occasionally thinking about it over the past month and increasingly think it would be an interesting course.  Anthropologists have long discussed food and culture, and so there is already a lot of theoretical material out there.  And different religious traditions have food laws, customs, etc.  There are the discussions of food and sacrifice, often looking at sacrifice as a meal or the ritualization of a meal at least.  There is, in Christianity, of course, the ritualized meal of the Eucharist.

So I have been trying to think of different types of course that could approach religion through food.  There could be a comparative course that discusses different religious traditions through food, meals, cuisine.  There could be a course in my own specialization of ancient Christianity and Judaism in its ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern contexts that focuses on food and religion in those contexts.  Perhaps a course on Food and Christianity through the ages form antiquity, medieval, to modern periods.  It seems, indeed, like a very flexible topic that could be quite fruitful as an upper level undergraduate course or perhaps a more advanced master's level course.

So, right now I am thinking about pitching such a course, but also wanting to compile a bibliography, either for background information for me (as the instructor) or for assignments.  Some initial thoughts that came to mind are as follows:


Theoretical (Mostly Anthropological and Sociological) Treatments:
Claude Levi-Strauss, The Raw and the Cooked

Claude Levi-Strauus, The Origin of Table Manners

Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger (which covers some food laws of the Hebrew Bible)

Carole Counihan, Food and Culture:  A Reader--this has a great deal of interesting essays including theoretical treatments, discussions of particular groups (such as Jean Soler's famous treatment on Jewish food laws; Douglas's famous analysis of the meal; etc.)

Courtney Bender, Heaven's Kitchen

Sacrifice and Food:
Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant, eds., Cuisine of Sacrifice

Christianity (in different periods):
Hal Taussig, In the Beginning was the Meal
Caroline Walker-Bynum, Holy Feast, Holy Fast

Food and Identity (including Jewish, Christian, and Muslim material):
David Freidenreich, Foreigners and their Food
David Kraemer, Jewish Eating and Identity Through the Ages

These are things that I thought of, but there has to be so much more out there on Christianity and Food, Judaism and Food, and especially religious traditions with which I am far less familiar.  If anyone has any suggestions on Food and Religion from a particular theoretical vantage point, a particular tradition, or a particular period of time, or a particular region, I would be very interested in hearing them.  Moreover, if anyone has actually taught such a course, I would be interested in hearing what you did, how it went, and what you might do differently. 

The Beauty of Moses

I have been working through the different references to Moses in the New Testament for an upcoming project.  While there are some well-worn topics discussed by scholars (Jesus as a prophet like Moses; which, from the other perspective, makes Moses a Proto-Christ; Moses as faithful servant; etc.), I was struck by a detail--one of the smallest of details--that shows up in the Acts of the Apostles in Stephen's speech and again in the Epistle to the Hebrews.  Acts 7 and Hebrews are often discussed together, particularly for their rather similar views of the temple and the notation of Moses making the tabernacle "according to the pattern" shown to him--used in both texts to suggest a temple not made with hands and that God does not dwell in hand-made temples.

But there is another detail that I had not previously considered about Moses they share:  his beauty.  When Stephen begins his discussion of Moses (which takes up about half of his speech), he states:

At this time Moses was born and was beautiful (ἀστεῖος) before God. (Acts 7:20)

Similarly, in the "hall of faith" chapter of Hebrews, one reads:

By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid for three months by his parents, because they saw that the child was beautiful (ἀστεῖον).  (Heb. 11:23)

I am not particularly surprised by its occurrence, in and of itself.  It appears to be merely a reference to the LXX version of Exodus 2:2:  "Seeing that he [Moses] was beautiful (ἀστεῖον) they sheltered/covered him for three months."  There it translates the Hebrew טוב.  To see where the NT authors found the tradition of Moses' beauty at birth, one need look no further than Exodus.  Nonetheless, I think it is worth stopping and considering.

First the terminology.  Both Acts and Hebrews have the same term as found in Exodus:   ἀστεῖος.  It literally means "of the city," much like "urbane."  It has a range of meanings relating to urbanity, such as well-bred, courteous, polite, refined, elegant, clever, pretty, and, as translated here, beautiful or lovely.  I also did a quick and dirty search, and, as far as I can tell, in the New Testament this term only shows up in these two places.  So, for at least these NT writers, it is something that is associated with Moses and not found with anyone else.

While considering use, we should also note that it always refers to his "beauty" at birth.  It is used, in fact, as the reason used for his parents' sparing him:  they spared him, hid him, covered him because he was beautiful.

But this is missing a bigger question, I think.  Of all the passages, issues, characteristics, events of Moses' life, why remember this?  Why bring it up?  Is this a fixed part of tradition?  Are there other traditions of Moses' "beauty"?  Are there competing traditions of other figures' "beauty" that are not necessarily in the canon?  This question of why to recall this at all may seem odd when considering Acts 7 as a whole, where half the discussion is Moses--perhaps it is bound to come up.  Stephen talks about all kinds of events in Moses' life: his life in Egypt, his Exile, the Exodus, his meeting with the angel on the mountain, Sinai (somewhat), the golden calf, and the Tabernacle.  The passage generally emphasizes how the people failed to understand Moses' divinely appointed role and how they continually rejected him (using him as a prototype for the later rejection of Jesus).  Oddly, with all of this detail, the Passover is absent.  The actual Sinai experience is also rather vaguely discussed.  So, one might just say Stephen's speech has it because it has so much of the tradition, but, really, some major aspects of the Moses tradition emphasized so greatly elsewhere are downplayed here (the giving of the Torah on Sinai, though the burning bush episode receives extensive treatment, and the downplaying of the Passover).  This suggests that what does show up is important.  What is more, Acts 7:20 has a little editorial shift not found in Exodus or Hebrews:  not only was Moses "beautiful," but he was "beautiful before God."  Other texts usually just indicate his beauty in the eyes of his parents; here it is divinely acknowledged beauty.  It is a heightening of Moses' beauty.

Stephen speaks of Moses' beauty in a string of attributes of and actions by Moses.  In fact, the text emphasizes Moses' great qualities stating, "he was mighty in his words and his deeds."  How much more interesting, then, is it that Hebrews, which discusses Moses much more succinctly, also mentions this quality.  There are only four events mentioned in Heb. 11:23-28:  (1) Moses beauty as a child and his parents hiding him; (2) his rejection of his Egyptian upbringing in which he becomes sort of a proto-Christian:  "He considered abuse suffered for Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt"; (3) his vision of God "seeing him who is invisible"; (4) and the Passover.  So, when it comes down to the four things to mention "by faith" Moses (or Moses' parents) did: hiding him due to his "beauty" made the cut.  While mentioned elsewhere in Hebrews, Moses' vision of the pattern of the tabernacle is not here (see Heb. 8:5).  Also mentioned elsewhere is Sinai (Heb. 12), but it is not here (not explicitly anyway).  So, we receive an emphasis on Moses' beauty, his suffering (something also suggested in Acts 7), his vision of the invisible (something actually denied in Acts 7, where he meets an angel and, even then, looks away), and the Passover (something again ignored in Acts 7).  Between the two passages (again, without mentioning other parts of Hebrews), the only things that overlap as worth mentioning, as deserving emphasis are Moses' beauty and his suffering--suffering in a way that foreshadows Christ and Christ-followers.

So, clearly his beauty was important enough to heighten it (before God) and mention it in the sketchiest of biographies.  So why recall this aspect of Moses?  Put another way:  why is this social memory pattern preserved?  Why Moses the beautiful, Moses the urbane, Moses the lovely, Moses "of the astu" for the earliest Christians?

Ancient Israelite Wine

As others have also posted, there is an article in the Jerusalem Post about ancient Israelite wine here.  It is a nice companion to last year's discussion of ancient Israelite beer here.