January 27, 2012
In Your Mouth And In Your ????
Claude Mariottini reminded me of an abnormally interesting paper by Nathan Wasserman and Michael Streck, “Dialogues and Riddles: Three Old Babylonian Wisdom Texts,” Iraq 73, 2011, 117-26. There are a lot of fun and colorful things on these tablets and some really hard problems.
Here is a riddle from IM 10836:5-8. The answer is indented here and apparently on the tablet.
i-na pi-ka ú ši-na-ti-ka
ib-tali-iṣ-ka
SÌLA be-li-ka
KAŠ!?
In your mouth and your urine,
constantly stared at you,
the measure of your lord.
Beer(?)
Do take a look at Wasserman and Streck. My translation is somewhat different than theirs. Also take a look at their notes. It just might be that on should translate the first line “In your mouth and in your teeth.” I think Wasserman and Streck prefer “teeth” but only by a small margin. Even the answer is unclear. Some would read MUMUx, “malt” but like Wasserman and Streck, I find KAŠ, “beer” somewhat more satisfying. The whereabouts of this tablet is unknown and neither it nor photographs of it are available for study. Too bad. We might be able to resolve the issue of the answer to the riddle if we could see the tablet.
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Posted by Duane on Friday, January 27, 2012 at 4:08 PM (UTC-08:00)
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January 25, 2012
The Semantics of Good (And Evil)
One of the many temptations in the high science fine art guess work of identifying intertextuality between ancient literatures involves cognate words. But cognate words seldom have the exact semantic range and occasionally they don’t even have obvious overlapping semantic ranges.
I’ve been worrying about this problem for a while with regard to Akkadian damqu and ṭābu and which, if either, is closer to Hebrew טֹוב. Even when written ideographically damqu and ṭābu are distinguished in Akkadian. Quite obviously, טֹוב and ṭābu are cognates and טֹוב and damqu are not. Damqu and ṭābu are used in parallel constructions in a few texts and at least one lexical series equates them (A I/4 C:24ff, for those keeping score at home, see CAD Ṭ, 19). Damqu and ṭābu also often show nuanced differences in meaning in various contexts. But even if the translator settles on something else, “good” is a reasonable first order English gloss for both of these Akkadian words. So my question is, under what conditions might טֹוב gloss damqu? I have the same question about lemuttu on the one hand and רָע on the other. I’m almost certain that there is some literature on this but my first efforts haven’t turned up anything beyond mere equations. I will continue to look.
Yes, I do have specific Hebrew and Akkadian texts in mind and there are other markers that lead me to think there is some sort of intertextuality involved. At the end of the day, it will be their specific, if differing, contexts that determine how I understand the words within them and their relationship. But the meaning of a word in context is surely related to something about that word.
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Posted by Duane on Wednesday, January 25, 2012 at 12:13 PM (UTC-08:00)
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January 24, 2012
Philosophy In Brazil: An Experiment In Democracy
While we in the US are cutting back on the humanities including philosophy at all levels, philosophy is a requited subject in Brazil’s high schools.
The official rationale for the 2008 law is that philosophy “is necessary for the exercise of citizenship.” The law—the world’s largest-scale attempt to bring philosophy into the public sphere—thus represents an experiment in democracy.
Read Carlos Fraenkel’s fascinating piece in the Boston Review. Fraenkel is an associate professor in McGill’s Departments of Philosophy and Jewish Studies. My only disappointment in this otherwise abnormally interesting article is that I never learn if "Canadian bacon is the best in the world." 
Via Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog – Brian says of Brazil, “An enlightened country, unlike the United States.”
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Posted by Duane on Tuesday, January 24, 2012 at 10:37 AM (UTC-08:00)
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January 22, 2012
Two Thoughts On The Commedia
I mentioned the other day that Shirley and I were rereading Dante’s Divine Comedy while we listened to a lecture series on it. The relationship between reader and literature is extremely complex. Except by committing what I think is a species of the use/mention error, one cannot simply say, this or that in a piece of literature somehow applies to me or to my time and place. But there is a process of absorption, of intellectually accommodation, that is undeniable. Simply put, reading great literature changes how one sees other literature and life itself. Of course, our secular world properly prevents the accommodation of many of the themes and motifs in the Divine Comedy. That said, there are two issues that struck me with this reading.
First, and at the risk of committing the use/mention error I just mentioned, a pervasive theme of the Divine Comedy is the evil of political factionalism, Florentine factionalism in particular. The prolonged struggle between the Guelfs and the Ghibellines had, in Dante’s view, devastated Florence, substituting one-upmanship for the good of the city. While here in the US we haven’t called in outside forces to help defeat our internal political opponents, much of our current political debate focuses on how to belittle those awful, terrible, really bad, folks with whom we disagree. Too often we'd rather do that than work through the complex issues that face us. Of course, it is easy to see this sin on the other side but one of the things that plagued Dante was the extent to which his own predispositions were part of the problem.
Second, and on a lighter note, I couldn’t help but think that many of those luminaries who presented themselves in the sphere of the Sun would have been happier in Limbo. I believe that if I were Thomas Aquinas I’d rather spend eternity in the company of Plato, Aristotle, Averroës (perhaps particularly Averroës), and other virtuous pagans then with most of the lot that occupied Paradise.
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Posted by Duane on Sunday, January 22, 2012 at 10:29 AM (UTC-08:00)
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January 20, 2012
Holy (Unsupported?) Snakes
I’ve been struggling to figure out if Greek ἱερά ever meant snake omen or even just some kind of snake. The exact focus of my concern is a passage in Xenophon’s Cyropaeodia that reads,
Παρὰ γὰρ ἱερὰ καὶ οἰωνοὺς μήτε σαυτῷ μηδέποτε μήτε στρατιᾷ κινδυνεύσῃς (1.6:44)
When I cited it before, I translated it “Never put yourself or your army in harm’s way contrary to a serpent and bird-omen” and then added “or something like that.” LSJ9, 820, renders ἱερά, “serpent” as its first meaning and directs us to Aristotle’s Historia Animālium, 607a31. But LSJ also refers us to ἱερός. This word in its several forms means manifesting divine power, holy, sacred, sanctified, or the like. It is with this meaning that the form ἱερά most often appears.
The Aristotle passage falls just short of being helpful in a couple of ways: “There is a certain very small snake (ὀφιδιον), which some call ἱερόν, which the really big snakes avoid.” I’m not so sure how to take this and despite some effort, I can’t find any examples where a ἱερά is unambiguously a snake or a snake omen. Every example I’ve found either clearly means or might mean sacred, sanctified, or the like. If you, abnormal reader, know of any clear examples where ἱερά means snake or serpent, please tell me of them.
This is somewhat outside my normal abnormal interests and expertise. But it is, or may be, part of a story concerning the ubiquity of certain specific kinds of ancient divination with likely Mesopotamian origins: a story I am trying to weave together.
By the way, if there really are clear examples where ἱερά is some kind of a serpent or snake, another quite intriguing issue comes to the surface.
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Posted by Duane on Friday, January 20, 2012 at 8:03 PM (UTC-08:00)
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January 19, 2012
A Slackers Apology Online
Morris Raphael Cohen’s near century old A Slacker's Apology still teaches. It begins,
Dear Friend: Your letter gently but unmistakably intimates that I am a slacker, a slacker in peace as well as in war; that when the World war was raging bitterly I dawdled my time with subjects like symbolic logic, and that now when the issues of reconstructing a bleeding world demand the efforts of all who care for the future of human race, I am shirking my responsibility and wasting my time with Plato and Cicero. Your sweetly veiled charge is true, but I do not feel ashamed of it.
And ends,
We hold the benefits of civilization not in fee simple, to heirs forever, but by knights' service. Much as we may leave to our successors we can never manage it so that they shall be entirely free from toil, pain and the agonies of death. Let us not, therefore, wilfully impoverish their life by throwing away any of the things which have served as consolations to so many since the ancient days—among which are the writings of the divine Plato and even of the altogether unheroic Cicero, who so tragically illustrates the failure of scholars in politics.
Yours, etc.,
PHILONOUS
Read the wonderful stuff in the middle. Not everything must be of practical value to be of great value.
Via Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog
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Posted by Duane on Thursday, January 19, 2012 at 4:08 PM (UTC-08:00)
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The Soncino Babylonian Talmud Online
If you haven’t read about it elsewhere a new very attractive PDF version of the Soncino English Babylonian Talmud is now online. If you need to consult the Aramaic/Hebrew version try Mechon.
I’m sometimes surprised how often I need to consult Rabbinic literature. Recently I spend some time with B. Talmud Sanhedrin 65b.
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Posted by Duane on Thursday, January 19, 2012 at 3:23 PM (UTC-08:00)
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January 17, 2012
No New Post For Wednesday, January 18, 2012
While I am not exactly blackingout today, Abnormal Interests is otherwise on strike to protest the so-called “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA) and “Protect IP” or “Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011″ (PIPA). If you're an abnormal reader from the US, please contact your Representative and Senators and tell them how you feel.
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Posted by Duane on Tuesday, January 17, 2012 at 9:58 PM (UTC-08:00)
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January 16, 2012
When You Have to Go All the Way Back To The Bible For Your Philosophical Underpinning . . .
your argument has issues.
I make serious fun of Jim West. I’m gathering my thoughts on Kenneth Atkinson’s paper from our Secular Biblical Criticism session at the SBL (now available on the Bible and Interpretation Website). Unfortunately, I was unable to hear it live at the SBL. I may post some of those thoughts tomorrow. For tonight, I hope my headline and first text line of this post will feed your abnormal interests.
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Posted by Duane on Monday, January 16, 2012 at 6:48 PM (UTC-08:00)
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January 15, 2012
Synthesizing Gods
Alasdair Livingston, 101, calls attention to the following lines from a hymn to Ninurta,
Your teeth are Sibitti, who fells the evil ones.
The area of your cheek, lord, is the appearance of the stars of [. . .
Your ears are Ea and Damkina, the sages of wisdom [. . .
Your head is Adad who [. .] heaven and underworld like an artisan.
Your forhead is Šala, the beloved spouse who makes rejoice [. . .
Your neck is Marduk, judge of heaven and earth, the flood [. . .
The text is from KAR 102 and STT 118 II:19-24. I follow Livingston’s translation. Of this text Livingston says,
Works such as this which equate parts of one god’s body with other gods must be understood in the context of theology which could synthesize diverse gods into single gods, or explain gods in terms of other gods. In the hymn quoted it is clear that characteristics of Ninurta are being expounded and praised. Not only are parts of Ninirta’s body equated with other gods, but the particular characteristic of the god in question which is being attributed to Ninurta is explained. According to the hymnographer Ninurta embraced the warlike character of Sibitti, the apperarence of the stars, the wisdom of Ea and his spouse, the role of Marduk as judge, and other attributes . . . The hymn also has a syncretistic aspect in endeavoring to see the various gods mentioned as parts of one single god.
I wonder of the extent to which at one time YHWY’s body parts might have been thought of as like those of Ba’al, Shamash and others. In other words, was YHWY every, even in part, conceived as a synthesis of other gods in terms of some perceived physical characteristics? We do hear of YHWH’s eyes, ears, face (all in Psalm 34:16-17[15-16]), mouth (e.g. Deuteronomy 8:3), and nostrils (Psalm 18:16[15]) plus a few other parts. In context all of these read as figures of speech. But, from a somewhat different perspective, so do the references to body parts in the Nimurta hymn. I don’t know of any convening evidence pointing in the direction of a tradition that equated YHWYs body parts with those of other gods. But this is my blog and the rules allow me to wonder about abnormal things.
Reference:
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Posted by Duane on Sunday, January 15, 2012 at 8:49 PM (UTC-08:00)
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