Readers Reply

004

Not Bare Bones

Thanks for the article “Fishers of Fish, Fishers of Men,” BR 15:03, by Jerome Murphy-O’Connor. I appreciated his putting some “flesh and blood” on the three fishermen.

Jesus the Jew

No Demonstration Needed

In his review of Geza Vermes’s autobiography, Providential Accidents (“Geza the Jew,” BR 15:03), Hershel Shanks relates an experience of his own that possibly helps clarify a curious remark he made in an earlier issue. Shanks reports that a group of people once almost walked out of a lecture he gave when he suggested that “Jesus lived and died a Jew.” Perhaps this has made him more cautious on other occasions.

In his December 1998 Insight, concerning David Noel Freedman’s suggestion that Jesus may have written in the dirt during the incident with the adulterous woman (John 8:6) in order to comply with Sabbath rules on impermanent writing, Shanks phrases Freedman’s comment this way: “Jesus was demonstrating to his attackers both that he was well versed in the law and that he was a good Jew.” Shanks writes as if Jesus were an outsider to Judaism. The simpler way to read the incident of the adulterous woman is that the people came to Jesus for his advice and judgment because they respected him. It was not an attack or a test.

But Shanks’s use of the word “demonstrating” is even more interesting. Was Jesus demonstrating his Jewishness, or was he simply being Jewish, being what he was raised?

If “Jesus lived and died a Jew,” as Shanks puts it, then he wasn’t demonstrating or pretending. He was simply being Jewish. And yet how difficult it is to maintain this view in the face of such hostility and fear as Shanks experienced in that near walkout.

Good Questions, No Answers

Anthony J. Saldarini’s “What Price the Uniqueness of Jesus?” BR 15:03, raises two crucial questions. The first is, “Why…have Christians…resisted admitting the obvious, that Jesus was a Jew?” According to Saldarini, the cause is “the pervasive problem of uniqueness.” But a more specific answer may be better. Christianity not only repudiated Judaism, it adopted a supersessionist theology that denigrated its predecessor. So in answer to Saldarini’s question, the specific cause is the anti-Semitism that has suffused the growth, and attended the spread, of Christianity.

The second question is, “Is Jesus’ Jewishness superseded by his role as Christ, the Messiah (the ‘Anointed One’), sent by God to save all nations?” Saldarini answers that since the role of the messiah is itself a Jewish concept, Jesus’ Jewishness cannot have been superseded by his Christhood. But the roles of these messiahs differ. One is a political and military messiah, like David; the other is a messiah of personal salvation. Saldarini elides the distinction, as do Christian polemics.

Jews have always known that Jesus was Jewish; for them, the fact is a trenchant irony used to defend against anti-Semitism. Since millions of Jews have been persecuted in his name for nearly two millennia, most Jews ignore what it may mean to them as Jews that Jesus was Jewish. A few find little heretical in his imputed sayings and doings. Only the admonition to “resist not evil, but turn the other cheek” is clearly contrary to the core of Jewish ethics, which is to act righteously. Even so, Jews could probably have tolerated Jesus and his pacifism if he had remained pacifistic while they continued to await a deliverer from a brutal and unbeatable Roman occupation.

Saldarini’s intent in stressing Jesus’ 006Jewishness is admirable. He wishes to minimize the distinction and moderate its tendency to create or perpetuate anti-Semitism. However, his effort embodies a paradox: Some distinction is required as a justification for Christianity as a separate religion, but any distinction must generate the Jew as the “Other,” with disastrous consequences for Christian and Jew alike (although not in the same way).

The fact of Jesus’ Jewishness challenges Christians and their faith. Somehow, Jesus must be distinguished from Jews and his message from Judaism. The challenge is very great for traditional Christianity and its defining moment, the realization of the Christ through the death of Jesus on the cross. Obliterating the distinction between Jesus and Judaism would eradicate this foundation of the faith. But the challenge is almost as great for nontraditional Christianity, especially in regard to efforts to reconstruct a Christian faith centered on the “historical Jesus.” The idea that in this defining moment Jesus had a special experience of God’s love or a vision of the kingdom of God might inspire kindly emotions, but it has little or no lasting moral import or social effect.

Jesus’ Jewishness must be considered in terms of an appropriate Christian response. Saldarini merely asserts and insists on this indubitable fact and warns against its denial or avoidance. But he does not answer the question that necessarily arises: What should Christians do about it?

Jonah

Jonah as Comedy

I enjoyed Chaim Seiden’s essay “Why Does Jonah Want to Die?” BR 15:03. Perhaps that enjoyment is partly a response to my understanding of the Book of Jonah as humor: Jonah speaks once and—good heavens—the people repent! What is he to do now? Well, stay tuned…

I am quite willing to enjoy a really serious lecture about Jonah. The Marx brothers had the Nazis and the horrors of World War I in mind in the 1930s when they created the character Rufus T. Firefly—think about that view—and they were very serious. But on the other hand, the Marx brothers made some of the best comedy ever. So why shouldn’t the Bible, which seems to include every other human emotion and failing, include humor?

I have to confess I am no biblical scholar, and I apologize if this is dumb. It is just what comes to mind, as best I understand things.

A Prophet with Honor

Chaim Seiden’s “Why Does Jonah Want to Die?” BR 15:03, was well done but much too short. The Book of Jonah may be dismissed because of its brevity and seeming simplicity, but it is much more complex than might be supposed. It lends itself to many interpretations, including that of a beautiful, effective and lasting children’s story, a study of social attitudes and customs of eighth-century B.C.E. peoples and a textbook description of several Freudian defense 007mechanisms, such as Jonah’s anger toward God displaced onto the gourd vine, with the unresolved anger turned inward, resulting in depression with suicidal feelings.

I like Jonah because he was so utterly human and therefore flawed. Best of all, Jonah became angry at God and argued with Him, yet his relationship with God was never in question.

Jonah is not without his followers. There are at least six locations that claim the honor of being his place of burial.

Nineveh Was Nowheresville

I found Chaim Seiden’s explanation of Jonah’s “death wish” intriguing. Certainly it’s the best I’ve heard. But can you resolve another problem I have with the story?

I have long believed that although Jonah may well have been a real person (2 Kings 14:25), the story itself is clearly fiction. Like the Book of Ruth, it may have been written to oppose the nationalist views of Ezra as expressed in Ezra 8:1. But there seems to be an anachronism in that Nineveh in 780 B.C.E. was a provincial town, almost insignificant, not “the most powerful capital in the world,” as Seiden says. Was not Callah the chief city in that area at that time? It is my understanding that it was not until Sennacherib established Nineveh as his royal residence almost a hundred years later that it grew in size and importance.

Why didn’t God send Jonah to Callah?

Chaim Seiden responds:

Jonah preached under Jeroboam II in about 785 B.C.E. The Assyrians exiled Israel 63 years later, in 722 B.C.E. Nineveh is said to have had 120,000 residents (Jonah 4:11) and excavations have revealed that a wall surrounded Nineveh with a circuit of 12 miles. That is a big city by ancient standards. Callah was the place of the royal residence even after Nineveh became Assyria’s political capital. Nineveh and Assyria were wiped out in 612 B.C.E., a century after Israel. But the real issue is the interpretation of Jonah’s wish to die. Is it because, as the Encyclopedia Britannica put it, “Jonah abhors the salvation of gentiles”? That is preposterous. Why would Jews write what you call a fiction that makes the Jews look bad? The real answer is that Jonah was aware that he had set the stage for Israel’s destruction. An intolerable burden to bear.

Hidden Bible Book?

How Good Is Friedman’s Translation?

In your unusually extended review of Richard Elliott Friedman’s The Hidden Book in the Bible (see “Friedman’s Thesis: An Overview,” BR 15:02), you pass over two questions that I should have thought inescapable in the discussion of a “hidden book” offered principally as literature.

The first involves the style of Friedman’s translation. Neither your reviewer nor your three panelists saw fit to address this question, though the translation fills 220 of his book’s 400 pages. Bible translation is becoming, in our day, performance art for soloists. What successive translators offer are not candidate texts for institutional adoption—there will never be another King James, and they know it—but simply, for private readers of this classic, the undernoticed nuance, the underappreciated aspect. Edwin M. Good has proposed the word “rendition” for what the newer kind of translator typically attempts. Just as successive Wagnerian sopranos offer successive renditions of, say, the Liebestod in Tristan und Isolde, so successive Bible translators offer successive renditions of David’s lament for Saul and Jonathan. All these renditions are correct, but some are more satisfying than others.

How satisfying is Friedman’s rendition of the famous opening lines of David’s lament?

The gazelle, Israel, is slain on your high places.

How have the mighty fallen!

Don’t tell it in Gath,

Don’t give the news in Ashkelon’s streets,

Or else the Philistines’ daughters will be happy,

Or else the uncircumcised’s daughters will rejoice.

2 Samuel 1:19–20

Without debating “gazelle” in the opening line, I note that “the uncircumcised’s daughters” (properly, “the uncircumciseds’ daughters”) contains a virtually unpronounceable zdzd consonant cluster (“-sed’s d-”). A poet can, of course, choose to slow a line in this way. In Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “The Wreck of the Deutschland,” a drowning woman addresses God as “world’s 008strand, sway of the sea, lord of the living and dead.” The cluster “-ld’s str-” is as difficult to say as “-sed’s d-,” but it is so for a discernible poetic reason. What is Friedman’s reason?

Poets care intensely about sound, and so must poetry critics. I realize, of course, that even a lengthy discussion of a translation cannot go line by line, but your discussion never offers even a representative example. Ronald Hendel says “It’s…very readable and very exciting,” apparently referring to the book as a whole but perhaps meaning only the introduction. Hershel Shanks replies cheerfully: “I think we can all agree that it’s well written,” and there the matter rests. As a review of work consciously offered as a recovered literary masterpiece, this kind of bland generality simply will not do.

A second literary question that your discussion slights is the place of taste in editing. In assembling his “hidden book,” Friedman honors its supposed author, most of the time, as an author, but occasionally he honors her as an editor. Of the Testament of Jacob (Genesis 49), for example, he writes: “This poem…was not composed by the author of the prose work.” Why, then, is it included? In Friedman’s judgment, “the author worked it into the narrative in such a way that it now provides the denouement” of other episodes that she did write. But then J itself, in the JEP epic that runs from Genesis to Joshua, is worked into the narrative in such a way that it has effects that its author never intended. How can a modern editor distinguish the work of the author who is J from the work of the editor who uses J—and yet is not R? Only by invoking a convergence of aesthetic considerations or, in a word, by the exercise of taste. Friedman is rather more aware of this than your panel seems to be.

He concedes via modern examples (Dumas, Heine) that intense commonality of subject matter and diction, though they may suggest a common author, need not imply a single work. His claim for the literary unity of his “hidden book” must rest, therefore, on its unitary aesthetic effect. But does it produce one?

In your discussion, Kyle McCarter objects that Friedman’s “hidden book” ends lamely at the accession of Solomon in 1 Kings 2. He notes that other, shorter episodes in the Deuteronomistic History do end decisively and satisfyingly, but he is loath to pit his own literary taste in this matter against Friedman’s, citing, instead, ancient Near Eastern parallels for the episodes he names. Doing this, however, merely transfers to those parallels the question of when, to use Frank Kermode’s phrase, we have “the sense of an ending.” Ultimately, McCarter—or any reviewer prepared to take this work on its own terms—has no alternative but to pit his subjective judgment about such questions against Friedman’s.

In this era of performance translation, translators do not wait until they have translated the entire Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) before going public. A book, a group of books or—as here—a suite from the Tanakh will suffice. But on what basis is the selection made? Theologically or historically focused commentary has always focused on theologically or historically interesting passages and has ignored the rest. Secular, literary commentary focuses on passages that are aesthetically interesting. A work like Friedman’s goes a step further and enacts its aesthetic preferences by prior edition and translation.

All this is perfectly legitimate on its own terms. The climactic generation of historicist commentary became, in effect, reader reception theory applied to the redactor as reader. There is no intellectual reason why this process may not now be reversed, allowing the receptive reader to become a redactor and then to comment on his own redaction. Efforts along this line can make the text, or at least parts of it, new again. Appraising them, however, will require an answering and unapologetic subjectivity on the part of the reviewer. The proof of the new pudding will not be in the menu but in the eating. It will not be in the “how I thought of it” and “why I did it” and “what evidence I considered most telling” but in the reading, pleasurable or otherwise, of the edited result. In brief, is the swift performance suite actually a better read than the draggy old original?

This is a question that can be answered seriously even if it cannot be answered objectively. My objection to your review is that, for practical purposes, you didn’t ask it at all.

The writer is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning God—A Biography (Knopf, 1995).

049

Potpourri

Not Role Models, But Heroes

Floyd Hale says that I treat Esther and Samson as though “the biblical authors were offering them up as role models” (Readers Reply, BR 15:03).

I beg to differ. They are first introduced to us not as inspiring spiritual or moral people. Esther the Favorite is known primarily for her looks, and Samson for his physical prowess.

What I found inspiring, and what I specifically focused on in my article (“Portraits in Heroism,” BR 15:01), was that window of time when each one, true to and consistent with his or her nature, transcends his or her role as mere youthful celebrity and rises to the level of hero.

In Esther’s case, she is determined to do all she can to save her people even if she loses her life in the process. Samson, blind and tortured, is determined to endow his life and death with purpose and meaning, namely, the freedom of his people.

My sole purpose was to focus precisely on the transformation in these young people’s lives that won them a place in the Hebrew Bible.

Twisting the Text of Esther

Floyd Hale’s letter should not go unanswered. The Jews at the end of the Book of Esther kill only their enemies, all of them men (Esther 9:5, 9:13, 9:15–16), not children and women, as Hale claims. The number killed, like everything else in the book, is probably exaggerated. The book also emphasizes that the Jews did not avail themselves of any booty (Esther 9:10, 9:15–16).

What Floyd Hale refers to—“the Jews massacring even ‘children and women’”—is a gross misunderstanding of Esther 8:11–12. As Robert Gordis explains in Megillat Esther: The Masoretic Hebrew Text with Introduction, New Translation and Commentary (Ktav, 1974), and as is more obvious in the Hebrew, the crucial part of Esther 8:11–12 is nearly an exact quote of Haman’s decree (Esther 3:13) and is an expansion of the phrase ha-tzarim otam (their [the Jews’] oppressors)—that is, the ones who want to destroy even the (Jewish) women and children and take their booty. That the Jews didn’t attack women and children or take any booty argues persuasively that Esther 8:11–12 recounts what the Persians were given license by Haman to do to the Jews, not what the Jews did to the Persians.

The Isaac Story as Masculine, the Ishmael Story as Feminine

While reading the article “Parallel Lives—The Trials and Traumas of Isaac and Ishmael,” BR 15:02, by Curt Leviant, I was struck by a comparison not mentioned. In terms of the traditional mythic symbolism in which everything—acts, objects, places and even events—is represented as masculine (active/intellectual) or feminine (passive/emotional), the story of Isaac is told in masculine and active terms and the story of Ishmael is told in feminine and passive terms.

Sarah is Abraham’s chosen (active) wife. Hagar is given (passive) to him by Sarah.

Abraham (masculine) takes (active) Isaac to the mountain (masculine). Sarah (feminine) instructs him to send (passive) Ishmael to the wilderness (chaos=feminine).

Isaac is accompanied by Abraham (masculine). Ishmael is accompanied by Hagar (feminine).

Abraham takes wood for a fire (masculine). Hagar takes bread and water (both feminine).

Abraham puts Isaac atop (active) the altar (masculine). Hagar puts Ishmael under (passive) a bush (feminine).

Abraham is going to stab (active) Isaac. Hagar leaves (passive) Ishmael to die. Isaac is to be sacrificed by burning (active) in fire (masculine). Ishmael is to die by lack of (passive) water (feminine).

Abraham raises his eyes (sight=intellect, masculine). Hagar raises her voice (voice=emotion, feminine).

God saves Isaac by presenting Abraham with a ram (masculine). God saves Ishmael by presenting Hagar with water (feminine).

Leviant states: “On an emotional level, the two accounts are remarkably different. Ishmael’s story is replete with feeling: We find Hagar desperately mourning what she sees as the inevitable loss of her only son. In Isaac’s story, however, there is not one iota of fatherly compassion.” In other words, Hagar (feminine) reacts (feminine) emotionally (feminine), and Abraham acts (masculine) intellectually (masculine).

Era Error

In her otherwise excellent review of The Jewish People in Classical Antiquity (Bible Books, BR 15:03), Sidnie White Crawford measures the time from 333 B.C.E. to 132 C.E. as 200 years rather than the obvious 465 years. Once again, the perplexing nature of the terms B.C.E. and C.E. has been illustrated.

Perhaps this is a small matter, but if scholars, editors and proofreaders get confused by this terminology, what hope is there for the rest of us? Incidentally, can anyone explain just what “Common Era” means?

If some members of the scholarly world are offended by B.C. and A.D., surely they can come up with a less confusing terminology than B.C.E. and C.E. Do your readers have any suggestions?

We introduced the error into the review. Our apologies to Sidnie White Crawford and to our readers.—Ed.

Kissing Cousins

I’m sure you’re getting lots of mail on this one. The caption to the picture in “The Fluid Bible,” BR 15:03, describes Jacob meeting his cousins Leah and Rebecca. In my Bible, Rebecca is Jacob’s mother and Rachel is his cousin-true love.

We regret our error.—Ed.

A Crucial Mistranslation

The Gallery piece “The Resurrection,” BR 15:03, perpetuates the mistranslation of Jesus’ command to Mary as “Don’t touch me,” as opposed to “Do not cling to me.” The case for the latter translation is made both by Raymond Brown in his classic commentary on John (The Gospel and Epistles of John 050[Liturgical Press, 1988]) and by Francis Moloney in his superb 1998 commentary (Glory Not Dishonor [Fortress, 1998]). This translation is not a trivial semantic distinction but a transparent vehicle for introducing the profound theology that Mary and the disciples should not attempt to reestablish the old relationship they had with Jesus. Jesus is ascending “to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God” (John 20:17). As a result of this new situation, Jesus’ followers will not simply be his “disciples” but will now be his “brethren.”

The Missing Years

Erica S. Brown (“In Death as in Life,” BR 15:03) quotes Deuteronomy on Moses: “And Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he died; his eyes were not dim, nor his natural force abated” (Deuteronomy 34:7).

Moses’ age at death, minus the 40 years in the wilderness, means he had to have been fourscore years old when he delivered the people out of Egypt. I’ve always had the impression that Moses was in the prime of life when he led the Exodus.

Is there a chronology of his age at the times of note in his life? All I’ve been aware of is his being a little baby in the bulrushes and a century plus 20 years of age at death. Can Erica Brown enlighten me?

Erica Brown responds:

I sympathize with your difficulty in determining Moses’ age at the apex of his leadership. This question is somewhat enhanced by the curious (and uncommon) placement of Moses’ name (Exodus 2:10) eight verses after the recording of his birth (Exodus 2:2). Immediately following his naming we read, “And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown up that he went out to his brothers and looked upon their suffering…” (Exodus 2:11). In other words, we are unsure how much time has elapsed between his entrance into Egyptian royalty and his early leadership initiatives. We are offered a similar chronology with the birth and sudden adulthood of Samson (Judges 13:24–25) and the child born of the Shunammite woman (2 Kings 4:17–18). We are not offered a complete biography of biblical characters. We are only granted privilege to the information relevant to their leadership. Moses was born a male child during the time of a death decree against male children. He was born the son of a Levite. His mother was the daughter of a Levite. He soon found his way to another home of leadership status. All this information foreshadows his own leadership. Thus, information about his birth is important, but perhaps dating the time of his leadership throughout his tenure is not as consequential. For example, we are given the ages of Abraham at various points in his life. We are told he was 86 upon the birth of Ishmael and 100 at the birth of Isaac. Again the age is reflective of the faith the patriarch had in the divine promise of progeny, even though it took decades to be fulfilled. Age is relevant to the story. For more information, you might find Nahum Sarna’s writing on the subject of age and chronology instructive in Understanding Genesis: The Heritage of Biblical Israel ([Schocken: 1972], pp. 80–86).

We live in an age when we know so much (perhaps too much) about political leaders and entertainment figures that we may expect such details to shed light on the personality of our biblical characters. However, we know little of their ages, the interiors of their homes, what they ate and how much money they had. When that information is given, it should prompt the careful reader to study the anomaly. More often than not, we must find the lost drama in what is not told to us and read between the lines.

Not Bare Bones
Thanks for the article “Fishers of Fish, Fishers of Men,” BR 15:03, by Jerome Murphy-O’Connor. I appreciated his putting some “flesh and blood” on the three fishermen.