And Abraham stretched forth his hand
Oct. 29th, 2018 11:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cincinnatus_c
If you'd told me back in spring training that Steve Pearce was gonna be the World Series MVP this year, I woulda been pretty OK with that.
Early on in the Hebrew bible, probably when I was trying to come up with estimates of population growth, I was struck by the fact that more or less no one dies in childhood--which, obviously, is striking because in those days (whether you're talking about the days in which the stories are set, or the days in which they were being told, or written, or, for a very long time, read) you would've expected, I guess, most people to die in childhood, many of them in infancy, many more at birth. I suppose you can partly account for that with conventions as to how long you have to wait after birth for an infant to officially be a person who has lived at all. Still, literally no one that I can think of in the Hebrew bible has to deal with the actual death of a child. Abraham may assume that he has sent Ishmael to his death in the desert, but actually he has not; Jacob mourns the supposed killing of Joseph by wild animals (which, that I can think of, is the only time in the Hebrew bible that the idea of wild animals being a specific threat to humans comes up--it is striking generally how very, very rarely wildlife of any kind, especially other than trees, is mentioned in the Hebrew bible) but Joseph has actually been sold into slavery. Judah's sons Er and Onan die relatively young, but old enough to have been married--though briefly, they have their own lives independent of their parents. [ETA: come to think of it, Onan dies because he asserts a claim to his own independent life.]
As the Hebrew bible goes on, I was struck by the fact that the one thing non-Hebrew peoples are repeatedly condemned for (that I noticed, anyway), other than worshipping the wrong things, is (apparently, because the references are not very explicit) child sacrifice. And then just now it struck me that on top of that there is the Abraham and Isaac story (which I've seen here and there has been interpreted as having to do with the Hebrew rejection of child sacrifice, although--and this is a big "although"--it seems that most serious bible commentators have taken Isaac to be more or less fully grown when he goes to Moriah (and so, as Howard and many others have said, fully capable of overpowering his elderly father), and some Jewish tradition (though, uh, not one followed by Leonard Cohen) has it that he is 37, apparently supposing that Sarah dies the year he goes to Moriah--but at the very least Isaac is not married; he is a child at least in the sense that he lives at home with his parents and as far as we can tell has no independent life of his own), which (if Isaac is actually, in whatever sense, a child) is the instance in the Hebrew bible in which the life or death of a Hebrew child is at stake--and the child lives. (Tangentially to that, Ishmael's life is less immediately at stake when Abraham banishes Hagar and Ishmael--who definitely is a child, because he has just been weaned--into the desert, and Ishmael is also rescued by God.) So there seems to be a pretty serious taboo on child death in the Hebrew bible, so much so that even the idea of children dying is hardly ever raised, except as a barely speakable thing that other peoples cause to happen, and there is no account of any particular young child actually dying--which makes it all the more shocking, I guess, that God would suggest to Abraham that he should kill his son (and, I guess, shocking enough in the first place that God would sanction Abraham's banishing Ishmael), and also that Abraham would simply set out to do it, even if you suppose that, like Howard was saying last year and many Christians maintain, Abraham never for a second believes he is actually going to have to go through with it. Which, come to think of it, maybe this says something for last year's interpretation of Howard's: Abraham's "merely" miming his willingness to sacrifice Isaac is a sufficient gesture if killing children is not just forbidden but strictly taboo. By way of comparison, imagine today being told by God to perform a sex act with your own child. Killing your own child is not strictly taboo for us in the way that having sex with your own child is; you might, if you are a normal member of our culture, be perfectly willing to mime killing your child but not to mime performing a sex act with your child. (The fact that I can write those words and not burst into flames might speak to a difficulty we have today even fully comprehending taboos. (Then again, there are some racial epithets that are more nearly fully taboo for us, by which I mean for me, though still not entirely fully.)) Merely miming the latter would be something you--not to mention the child--might never get over. Abraham's miming willingness to kill Isaac might have been like that, for both of them.
As of today I'm up to Mark 7, having started the New Testament a couple of weeks ago, and I must say this Jesus fellow is a pretty hard guy to love it turns out. Particularly in Matthew, Jesus is real mad a lot, and a lot of people are going to get burned in a fire as far as he's concerned, which is fine with him because they are, something like literally, the spawn of Satan. So, uh, one of the misconceptions that actually reading the bible might clear up for you is the popular one that once you turn from the Old Testament to the New, angry vengeful God is replaced by sunshine-lollipops-and-rainbows Jesus. Nope! But more about that when winter sets in, I suppose.
Last night B. and I went to see the original Suspiria, which I wanted to see because Jessica Harper (who is Phoenix in Phantom of the Paradise--about which I was thinking today that there is a subtle distinction between what I love about Phantom of the Paradise and what people love about Rocky Horror, which I have a kind of icky feeling about, which seems to hinge on something to do with camp) is in it. I've never seen any movie quite like Suspiria--it's at times operatic and balletic--it's a movie nominally about dancers and I felt at times that people were moving in a deliberately expressively dancerly kind of way; I don't know whether that was actually intended, but I love things in movies that try to express things visually in ways that defy the convention of realism--and aurally and visually spectacular, and the soundtrack is awesome (though, uh, just a bit repetitive). It's hard to call it a good movie; at times it's boring and at times it's silly--well, like operas often are, it's pretty much silly through and through, and succeeds when its silliness is overwhelmed and made irrelevant by the spectacularity of the spectacle.
Currently at the back of my shed: 2.9. This mid-fall is going a lot like last year's--lots of dull grey, never warm but not much in the way of clear nights where the plumbing's in serious danger, although tonight might be one. Yesterday was the first day of waking up with serious snow on the ground around here, which, given that there was serious snow on the ground in the second half of April (actually mostly ice, from the crazy mid-April ice storm), means that we had a remarkably short run of no serious snow on the ground this year.
Early on in the Hebrew bible, probably when I was trying to come up with estimates of population growth, I was struck by the fact that more or less no one dies in childhood--which, obviously, is striking because in those days (whether you're talking about the days in which the stories are set, or the days in which they were being told, or written, or, for a very long time, read) you would've expected, I guess, most people to die in childhood, many of them in infancy, many more at birth. I suppose you can partly account for that with conventions as to how long you have to wait after birth for an infant to officially be a person who has lived at all. Still, literally no one that I can think of in the Hebrew bible has to deal with the actual death of a child. Abraham may assume that he has sent Ishmael to his death in the desert, but actually he has not; Jacob mourns the supposed killing of Joseph by wild animals (which, that I can think of, is the only time in the Hebrew bible that the idea of wild animals being a specific threat to humans comes up--it is striking generally how very, very rarely wildlife of any kind, especially other than trees, is mentioned in the Hebrew bible) but Joseph has actually been sold into slavery. Judah's sons Er and Onan die relatively young, but old enough to have been married--though briefly, they have their own lives independent of their parents. [ETA: come to think of it, Onan dies because he asserts a claim to his own independent life.]
As the Hebrew bible goes on, I was struck by the fact that the one thing non-Hebrew peoples are repeatedly condemned for (that I noticed, anyway), other than worshipping the wrong things, is (apparently, because the references are not very explicit) child sacrifice. And then just now it struck me that on top of that there is the Abraham and Isaac story (which I've seen here and there has been interpreted as having to do with the Hebrew rejection of child sacrifice, although--and this is a big "although"--it seems that most serious bible commentators have taken Isaac to be more or less fully grown when he goes to Moriah (and so, as Howard and many others have said, fully capable of overpowering his elderly father), and some Jewish tradition (though, uh, not one followed by Leonard Cohen) has it that he is 37, apparently supposing that Sarah dies the year he goes to Moriah--but at the very least Isaac is not married; he is a child at least in the sense that he lives at home with his parents and as far as we can tell has no independent life of his own), which (if Isaac is actually, in whatever sense, a child) is the instance in the Hebrew bible in which the life or death of a Hebrew child is at stake--and the child lives. (Tangentially to that, Ishmael's life is less immediately at stake when Abraham banishes Hagar and Ishmael--who definitely is a child, because he has just been weaned--into the desert, and Ishmael is also rescued by God.) So there seems to be a pretty serious taboo on child death in the Hebrew bible, so much so that even the idea of children dying is hardly ever raised, except as a barely speakable thing that other peoples cause to happen, and there is no account of any particular young child actually dying--which makes it all the more shocking, I guess, that God would suggest to Abraham that he should kill his son (and, I guess, shocking enough in the first place that God would sanction Abraham's banishing Ishmael), and also that Abraham would simply set out to do it, even if you suppose that, like Howard was saying last year and many Christians maintain, Abraham never for a second believes he is actually going to have to go through with it. Which, come to think of it, maybe this says something for last year's interpretation of Howard's: Abraham's "merely" miming his willingness to sacrifice Isaac is a sufficient gesture if killing children is not just forbidden but strictly taboo. By way of comparison, imagine today being told by God to perform a sex act with your own child. Killing your own child is not strictly taboo for us in the way that having sex with your own child is; you might, if you are a normal member of our culture, be perfectly willing to mime killing your child but not to mime performing a sex act with your child. (The fact that I can write those words and not burst into flames might speak to a difficulty we have today even fully comprehending taboos. (Then again, there are some racial epithets that are more nearly fully taboo for us, by which I mean for me, though still not entirely fully.)) Merely miming the latter would be something you--not to mention the child--might never get over. Abraham's miming willingness to kill Isaac might have been like that, for both of them.
As of today I'm up to Mark 7, having started the New Testament a couple of weeks ago, and I must say this Jesus fellow is a pretty hard guy to love it turns out. Particularly in Matthew, Jesus is real mad a lot, and a lot of people are going to get burned in a fire as far as he's concerned, which is fine with him because they are, something like literally, the spawn of Satan. So, uh, one of the misconceptions that actually reading the bible might clear up for you is the popular one that once you turn from the Old Testament to the New, angry vengeful God is replaced by sunshine-lollipops-and-rainbows Jesus. Nope! But more about that when winter sets in, I suppose.
Last night B. and I went to see the original Suspiria, which I wanted to see because Jessica Harper (who is Phoenix in Phantom of the Paradise--about which I was thinking today that there is a subtle distinction between what I love about Phantom of the Paradise and what people love about Rocky Horror, which I have a kind of icky feeling about, which seems to hinge on something to do with camp) is in it. I've never seen any movie quite like Suspiria--it's at times operatic and balletic--it's a movie nominally about dancers and I felt at times that people were moving in a deliberately expressively dancerly kind of way; I don't know whether that was actually intended, but I love things in movies that try to express things visually in ways that defy the convention of realism--and aurally and visually spectacular, and the soundtrack is awesome (though, uh, just a bit repetitive). It's hard to call it a good movie; at times it's boring and at times it's silly--well, like operas often are, it's pretty much silly through and through, and succeeds when its silliness is overwhelmed and made irrelevant by the spectacularity of the spectacle.
Currently at the back of my shed: 2.9. This mid-fall is going a lot like last year's--lots of dull grey, never warm but not much in the way of clear nights where the plumbing's in serious danger, although tonight might be one. Yesterday was the first day of waking up with serious snow on the ground around here, which, given that there was serious snow on the ground in the second half of April (actually mostly ice, from the crazy mid-April ice storm), means that we had a remarkably short run of no serious snow on the ground this year.
