Thursday, November 29, 2012

Dr. Scott Hahn

Dr. Scott Hahn is one of the most eminent Catholic theologians in our country today. Discover what scholars now know about the shepherds, the mysterious Magi, and King Herod. Your Advent journey will take on new meaning as you prepare your heart for the birth of our Lord. This illuminating presentation is sure to help you grow in appreciation of the greatest gift ever given to mankind - Jesus Christ.

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Taken from: http://www.lighthousecatholicmedia.org/store/title/prepare-the-way-of-the-king

Other Recommended Titles:

Thursday, November 15, 2012

From the Foundation of the World (TBT version)

Curtis Martin

Curtis Martin - founder of the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS) and popular Catholic writer, speaker, and radio/TV host - speaks to thousands of college students about the heart of the Christian call.

Featured as the October edition of Truth be Told!

Available for purchase on the store on November 1st. To get it sooner, sign up now!

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Taken from: http://www.lighthousecatholicmedia.org/store/title/from-the-foundation-of-the-world-tbt-version

Other Recommended Titles:

Jesus Is... (TBT version)

Fr. Michael Schmitz

Suffering (TBT version)

Fr. Damian Ference

Why Do Women Do That? (TBT Version)

Lisa Cotter

Our Lives Change When Our Habits Change

Matthew Kelly

From Love, By Love, For Love (TBT Version)

Fr. Michael Schmitz

A Journey Through Advent: Reflections on the Sunday Advent Readings

Fr. Robert Barron

The Year of Faith

Dr. Michael Barber

Light of the World

Pope Benedict XVI

Unlocking the Book of Revelation

Dr. Michael Barber

Lectio Divina (TBT Version)

Mark Hart

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

O Israel, how vast is the house of God, how broad the scope of his dominion

Baruch
Chapter 3

1: "LORD Almighty, God of Israel, afflicted souls and dismayed spirits call to you.
2: Hear, O LORD, for you are a God of mercy; and have mercy on us, who have sinned against you:
3: for you are enthroned forever, while we are perishing forever.
4: LORD Almighty, God of Israel, hear the prayer of Israel's few, the sons of those who sinned against you; they did not heed the voice of the LORD, their God, and the evils cling to us.
5: Remember at this time not the misdeeds of our fathers, but your own hand and name:
6: for you are the LORD our God; and you, O LORD, we will praise!
7: For this, you put into our hearts the fear of you: that we may call upon your name, and praise you in our captivity, when we have removed from our hearts all the wickedness of our fathers who sinned against you.
8: Behold us today in our captivity, where you scattered us, a reproach, a curse, and a requital for all the misdeeds of our fathers, who withdrew from the LORD, our God."
9: Hear, O Israel, the commandments of life: listen, and know prudence!
10: How is it, Israel, that you are in the land of your foes, grown old in a foreign land, Defiled with the dead,
11: accounted with those destined for the nether world?
12: You have forsaken the fountain of wisdom!
13: Had you walked in the way of God, you would have dwelt in enduring peace.
14: Learn where prudence is, where strength, where understanding; That you may know also where are length of days, and life, where light of the eyes, and peace.
15: Who has found the place of wisdom, who has entered into her treasuries?
16: Where are the rulers of the nations, they who lorded it over the wild beasts of the earth,
17: and made sport of the birds of the heavens: They who heaped up the silver and the gold in which men trust; of whose possessions there was no end?
18: They schemed anxiously for money, but there is no trace of their work:
19: They have vanished down into the nether world, and others have risen up in their stead.
20: Later generations have seen the light, have dwelt in the land, But the way to understanding they have not known,
21: they have not perceived her paths, or reached her; their offspring were far from the way to her.
22: ¹ She has not been heard of in Canaan, nor seen in Teman.
23: The sons of Hagar who seek knowledge on earth, the merchants of Midian and Teman, the phrasemakers seeking knowledge, These have not known the way to wisdom, nor have they her paths in mind.
24: ² O Israel, how vast is the house of God, how broad the scope of his dominion:
25: Vast and endless, high and immeasurable!
26: In it were born the giants, renowned at the first, stalwarts, skilled in war.
27: Not these did God choose, nor did he give them the way of understanding;
28: They perished for lack of prudence, perished through their folly.
29: Who has gone up to the heavens and taken her, or brought her down from the clouds?
30: Who has crossed the sea and found her, bearing her away rather than choice gold?
31: None knows the way to her, nor has any understood her paths.
32: Yet he who knows all things knows her; he has probed her by his knowledge-- He who established the earth for all time, and filled it with four-footed beasts;
33: He who dismisses the light, and it departs, calls it, and it obeys him trembling;
34: Before whom the stars at their posts shine and rejoice;
35: When he calls them, they answer, "Here we are!" shining with joy for their Maker.
36: Such is our God; no other is to be compared to him:
37: He has traced out all the way of understanding, and has given her to Jacob, his servant, to Israel, his beloved son.
38: Since then she has appeared on earth, and moved among men.

Monday, November 12, 2012

Jewish Impact on Greek and Western Philosophy?

TOP- 150. Bible Verses about Wisdom.
Solomon's wisdom was greater than the wisdom of all the people of the East, and greater than all the wisdom of Egypt.

By Yehuda Shurpin

Question:
Is there any evidence that Jewish thought and philosophy had an influence on the Greeks?

Answer:

Contemplating your question, I thought that perhaps it would be best to begin by quoting Hermippus of Smyrna, where he accused Pythagoras of doing and saying “things imitating and transferring to himself the opinions of the Jews.”1
Or perhaps I would quote Clearchus of Soli, who related the following from an encounter between Aristotle and a certain Jew: “He conversed with us and with other philosophical persons, and made a trial of our skill in philosophy; and as he lived with many learned men, he communicated more information than he received from us.”2,3
Then there is the evidence of Jewish impact on many of the other advancements for which the Greeks are renowned, like their alphabet and architecture.
Much has been made of the architectural acuity of the Greeks, especially the Greek columns, with the Aeolic and Ionic capitals as examples of Greek creativity. However, there is hardly a mention of the Israelite architects who first incorporated, centuries earlier, the now-famous motif of a pair of scrolls spiraling out from a central triangle into the capital of a column.
These motifs have been discovered by archeologists in many “pre-Greek” capitals found in ancient Jewish cities, leading one renowned archaeologist to comment: “One can hardly believe it coincidental [that] not even one [of these motifs] has been found in an adjacent land until several hundred years later, yet we still refer to them as merely ‘Proto-Ionic.’”4
The impact on the Greek alphabet probably needs the least elaboration; after all, its very name is derived from the Hebrew letters “Aleph-Bet.” Even in the letters of the alphabet itself, there are remnants of its origins. For example, the letter Q, which in the Greek and Latin alphabets is a redundant letter and useless on its own, can be traced to the Semitic guttural Quf.5
These facts lead us to the glaring question of why we do not hear more about all this. Why, for example, do historians who rely so heavily on Josephus barely make mention of his account of the Jewish influence on Greek civilization?
Is there some truth to what Josephus writes, that this is “because they envied us, or for some other unjustifiable reason”?6 Perhaps. But, for some reason, I get the feeling that there is more to it than just that.
Sitting and pondering these thoughts, scanning the titles lining the bookshelves for something that might help, a thought suddenly hits me: I have been going about this all wrong! The answer is not to be found in some book of philosophy, ancient or modern; rather, it is sitting there right in front of me in the form of my Hanukkah candelabrum (the menorah). For isn’t the story of Hanukkah really about a battle between the Greek and Jewish philosophies, with the Jews being victorious? When we walk down the street on an average day, can one not still see the signs of this victory? But perhaps I am getting ahead of myself, and should start from the beginning . . .
While there were many different, and often opposing, schools of thought in Greek philosophy, what they all had in common was their focus on the role of logic, inquiry and reason, and the supremacy of human intellect. This is not only true of Greek philosophy, but of almost all Western philosophies, which are extensions of Greek philosophy. Even if we would be exaggerating by saying, as Alfred Whitehead did, that “Western philosophy is nothing more than a series of footnotes to Plato,” it is not a stretch to say that as a whole it has been shaped by the Greeks. This brings us back to the story of Hanukkah.
At the time of the Hanukkah story, the enlightening Hellenistic culture was spreading throughout civilization. It influenced a large percentage of the Jewish population, and led them to forsake their faith for rationalism, exchanging the supernatural for the natural and the spiritual for the physical.
The story of Hanukkah is not only about a physical revolt of the Jews against the Greek oppressors; it is the story of the revolt of faith from the place it was assigned as the domain of the gullible and uneducated. It is about the triumph of the supernatural over the natural, and the spiritual over the physical. (See Seeing Lessons for greater elaboration about this aspect of the story of Hanukkah.)
Over two thousand years later, are signs of the triumph of faith not apparent? To be sure, Western civilization and philosophy still thrive. Many still put their faith in reason and the physical. But when we walk down the street, drive a car, or ride the subway, do we not see and hear the expressions of faith and belief all around us? Do we not see the many institutions dedicated to faith and the spiritual rather than the physical?
If “Western civilization is but a footnote to Plato,” is it not equally true to say that the aforementioned expressions of faith in G‑d and belief in the spiritual are, in large part, thanks to Judaism and its faith in the One Creator?

Please see Why Couldn’t the Jews and Greeks Just Get Along? from our Jewish Holidays site.

Rabbi Yehuda Shurpin
Ask the Rabbi @ The Judaism Website—Chabad.org

FOOTNOTES
1.	Josephus, Contra Apionem I:22; Origen, Contra Celsum I:15. See also Porphyry of Tyre, Life of Pythagoras 11. The full paragraph in Josephus reads: “Then [Hermippus] adds after this the following as well: ‘And Pythagoras used to do and say these things imitating and transferring to himself the opinions of the Jews and the Thracians. For that man is in fact said to have transferred to many of the customs of the Jews to his own philosophy.’” While many scholars are very skeptical in attributing the last sentence (“For that man . . .”) to Hermippus, they see no reason to dispute the attribution of the previous sentence (“And Pythagoras used to . . .”) to him, as it matches the approach he takes toward Pythagoras in surviving passages of his biography (Bezalel Bar-Kochva, The Image of the Jews in Greek Literature: The Hellenistic Period, ch. V).
2.	Josephus, ibid.; Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata, Book I, ch. 15. Regardless of whether this incident took place, the fact that a student of Aristotle would write this is an indication of what his impressions of the Jews were. It is interesting to note that one of the aims of Clearchus’ work, On Sleep, of which only fragments have survived and from which the above quotation is taken, was to show that Aristotle himself believed in the immortality of the soul—i.e., that the body and soul are separable, and the soul lives on after death, as was the opinion of Aristotle’s teacher Plato—a view that the other students of his vehemently claim he abandoned. See Hans Lewy, “Aristotle and the Jewish Sage According to Clearchus of Soli,” The Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 31, No. 3 (1938), pp. 205–235.
3.	The meaning and ramifications of these quotes, as well as the degree of credence given to them, are matters of considerable debate between scholars. However, since the point of this article is about Jewish impact on Western thought in general (beyond the impact on any one specific person or philosophy), their purpose here is to draw attention to them and to the fact that these discussions do exist. It is for this reason that none of the other myths and legends of Greek philosophers having met, or learned from, Jewish sages are cited in this article.
4.	Yohanan Aharoni, Archaeology of the Land of Israel, trans. A. F. Rainey (Westminster Press, 1982), p. 215.
5.	Samuel Kurinsky, The Eighth Day—The Hidden History of the Jewish Contribution to Civilization; Joseph Naveh, The Origin of the Greek Alphabet.
6.	Contra Apionem, ibid.

Sunday, November 11, 2012

Persian Influence on Greek Thought

[AMAIC: Or is it rather exilic Jewish Wisdom (appropriated by the Greeks) influencing Persian thought?]

Taken from: http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/greece-iii

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The idea of Iranian origins of Greek philosophy had a legendary aura, either by declaring that Pythagoras had been Zoroaster’s pupil in Babylon, or by writing, as did Clement of Alexandria, that Heraclitus had drawn on “the barbarian philosophy.”

GREECE

iii. PERSIAN INFLUENCE ON GREEK THOUGHT
IRAN AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY

The idea of oriental, and especially Iranian, origins of Greek philosophy was endowed by antiquity with a legendary aura, either by declaring that Pythagoras had been Zoroaster’s pupil in Babylon (a city where neither of them had probably ever been), or by writing, as did Clement of Alexandria (Clement of Alexandria, 5.9.4), that Heraclitus had drawn on “the barbarian philosophy,” an expression by which, in view of the proximity of Ephesus to the Persian empire, he must have meant primarily the Iranian doctrines.
The problem, studied seriously since the beginning of the 19th century, has often been negatively solved by the great historians of Greek philosophy; but it seems, nevertheless, repeatedly to rise anew like the Phoenix from its ashes, as though the temptation to compare the two traditions and discover a bond of interdependence between them periodically became irresistible.
Pherecydes of Syros was one of the first Greek prose writers and may be considered, as the author of a theogony-cosmogony, to have been a precursor of the Ionian philosophers. He told of the marriage of Zās and Chthoniē. Zās, genitive Zantos, is a conflation of Zeus with the Luvian god Šanta, which points to a region in western Asia Minor from which Pherecydes’ father Babys or Babis originated (West, p. 243). A third god in Pherecydes’s narrative was said to have produced from his own seed, fire, wind, and water; he is called in some sources Kronos, in others Chronos. Both gods were later identified, but we do not know which of the two Pherecydes meant. If he meant Chronos, the question arises of a borrowing from Iran. Zurvan, mentioned as a minor deity in the Avesta (see Zaehner, p. 57; Gray, Foundations, p. 124), was ignored by Zarathushtra, perhaps on purpose, as Mithra was also omitted. Anyhow, Zurvan is attested in Elamite tablets (509-494 B.C.E.) in the name Izrutukma (i.e., *Zru[va]taukma “descended from Zurvan”; see Schwartz, p. 687). The myth of his giving birth to Ohrmazd and Ahriman as recounted by Eznik Kołb in the 5th century (q.v.; see Zaehner, pp. 60-61) and not attested, indirectly before Eudemus of Rhodes (4th century) may, however, have had Indo-Iranian roots, for in India Prajāpati, connected with time, offered sacrifice, like Zurvan in Iran, in order to get a progeny and, just like him, doubted once about the efficacy of his ritual. Pherecydes may therefore, if he wrote about Chronos, have borrowed him from the Magi who, perhaps under the threat of Cyrus, had emigrated to Asia Minor.
Anaximander, according to Hippolytus’ evidence (Refutatio omnium haeresium 1.6), taught that the spheres of the heavenly bodies followed one another in this order, starting from the earth: the stars, the moon, and the sun. The Avesta (Hādoxt nask 2.15; Yt. 12.9 ff.) teaches that the souls of the dead reach paradise through three intermediate stages: humata (good thoughts), huxta (good words), and huuaršta (good deeds). Now, according to the Pahlavi books (e.g., Mēnōg ī xrad 57.13), each of these stages is respectively identified with the place of the stars, the moon, and the sun. It is obvious that the stars, the moon, and the sun follow each other in the order of increasing light, and this progression is completed in a fourth and final stage, which is the destination point of the soul’s journey; one of the Pahlavi names of Paradise is, in fact, anaγrān “beginningless (lights)” (Frahang ī pahlavīk 28). To each stage there corresponds a category of living beings: to the stars, the plants; to the moon, the animals; to the sun, man; to the beginningless lights, the gods or God. The hierarchy between these beings is obvious. So we can explain, through Iran and by means of an organic body of beliefs, Anaximander’s doctrine on the spheres of the stars, the moon, and the sun (see also Panaino, pp. 205-26).
Everything that exists comes, according to Anaxi-menes (Diels, I, p. 22) from a single substance, aēr, which notably means wind. In Iran it is said in the Dēnkart (278.14) that “He who quickens the world and is the life of living things is Wāy, etc.” The existence of a great god Vayu, already Indo-Iranian, is warranted by similar testimonies in the Rig Veda (4.46 etc.).
Anaximenes’ explanation of eclipses as being caused by dark bodies has its counterpart in Dāmād nask, in Šāyest nē šāyest (12.5). These dark sun and dark moon are not mentioned in the Avesta, but, as writes West (p. 108), “One would not expect to find a theory of eclipses in the Avesta,” at least not in the extant, liturgical part of it.
The question of an Iranian origin of Heraclitus’s doctrines was raised by Friedrich Daniel Schleiermacher, whose work as well as that of his successors Friedrich Creuzer, August Gladisch, etc., have been reviewed by Martin Lutchfield West (pp. 166 ff.). There are several fragments which expound Heraclitus’s reflections on fire. “This cosmic order, which is the same for all, was not made by any of the gods or of mankind, but was ever and is and shall be ever-living fire, kindled in measure and quenched in measure” (Fr. 29); “the transformations of fire: first sea, and of sea, half is earth, half fiery water spout” (Fr. 32); “all things are counterparts of fire, and fire of all things, as goods of gold and gold of goods” (Fr. 28). According to Heraclitus, “fire lives the death of the earth, and air lives the death of fire, water lives the death of air, and earth that of water” (Fr. 76). Another fragment names lightning: “The thunder-bolt steers all things” (Fr. 64). And another one says that fire is to judge all things at the end of the world (Fr. 72).
In the Gāθās the role of fire is fundamental. Twice Zarathushtra calls upon “the fire of Ahura Mazdā,” either to make offerings to it (Y. 43.9) or to acknowledge its protection (Y. 46.7). In all the other passages, fire is an instrument of ordeal. Ordeal is found only once in the Gāθās (Y. 32.7) as an actual practice, but several times there is reference to a future ordeal which is to be made by means of fire to separate the good from the wicked. Here fire is the instrument of truth or justice (aṧa, q.v.), from which it derives its power (hence the epithet aṧa-aojah). This connection of fire with aṧa is constant, e.g, “I wish to think, insofar as I am able, of making unto thy fire (O Ahura Mazdā!) the offering of veneration for Aṧa” (Y. 43). And when each of the elements are placed under the protection of the Aməṧa Spəntas, who surround Ahura Mazdā (qq.v.), Aṧa is the patron of fire.
There was also a doctrine of cosmic fire. Fire penetrated all the six stages of creation. Although this is not attested before Zādspram’s Wīzīdagīhā (1.25), its antiquity is proven by the appearance, both in Iran and in India, of two equivalent classifications, one in three fires, one in five.
Parallel to the relationship of fire with Aṧa is Heraclitus’s doctrine that fire is ruled by Dikē “Justice” (not by the Logos as is the case in the Stoic interpretation of Heraclitus). As West writes (p. 137), “the sun’s measures are maintained, through the Erinyes, by Dikē, and since the sun’s measures cannot be isolated from the measures of the world at large, it must be possible to say that Dikē governs the whole process.”
Heraclitus’s god watches men the whole time, not only by day. Ahura Mazdā sees all that men do (Y. 31.13) and is not to be deceived (Y. 45.4). He is never asleep and never dulled by narcotics (Vd 19.20). “Heraclitus’ conception of the soul’s history is, from a Greek point of view, novel. It has a deep ‘account’ that increases it-self . . . According to the Pahlavi books [e.g., Mēnōg ī xrad 2.118 ff.], at death, the soul’s good and bad deeds are counted up, and determine its fate” (West, p. 184).
The fravašis (q.v.) are parallel to Heraclitus’s hero-spirits and to the immortals “that live the death of mortals.” “Heraclitus’ novel emphasis on the function of Eris or Polemos in determining the apportionment of the natural world, his conviction that opposition is the essence of the universe has long seemed to comparativists a counterpart of the Zoroastrian doctrine of agelong war between Ahura Mazdā and Aŋra Mainiiu. Heraclitus strikes a prophetic note that has reminded more than one reader of Zoroaster” (West, p. 186).
Pausanias attributed to the Chaldaeans and the Magi an influence on Plato’s teachings. And Aristotle at one time considered Plato the founder of a religion of the Good and therefore a continuator of the work of the ancient prophet (Jaeger, pp. 13 ff.). In the myth of Er, the souls must choose between two paths: on the left is the way to descend from heaven to hell, on the right is the ascent of the souls who rise from the Tartarus up to the stars (Replica 614 CD). The very idea of this ascension was quite new in Greece and must have come from the Zoro-astrian belief in the primeval choice and in the Činuuatō Pərətu (see ČINWAD PUHL) separating the good from the wicked. Plato may have heard of it through Eudo-xus of Cnidus, who was well aware of the doctrines of the Magi. In the myth of the Politic, Plato envisaged the idea of an alternate predominance of a good god and an evil god, an idea he may have learned from the Magi. But he decidedly refused it. In the Timaeus time is given as the mobile image of immobile eternity, maybe a Platonic transposition of the Iranian distinction between “time long autonomous” and “time infinite” (Av. zurvan darəγō.xᵛaδāta- and zurvan akarana-; see Air Wb., cols. 46 696). The Timaeus owed much to Democritus, whose relationship with the teachings of the Magi is well attested. In the Phaedrus, Plato, with reference to Hippocrates, views man as an image of the world, a microcosm, an idea propounded in the Dāmdāt nask, a lost part of the Avesta summarized in the Bundahišn and whose antiquity is proved by the Indo-Iranian myth of a primeval man sacrificed and dismembered to form the different parts of the world (Duchesne Guillemin, 1958, pp. 72 ff.).
Empedocles already shared the microcosm idea, which governed the conception of medicine he had inherited from the Cnidian school, influenced by Iran. He also declared that “the general law is widely extended through the ether of the vast dominion and the immense brightness of the sky,” (Fr. 38), which harks back to Heraclitus and, through him, to Zarathushtra proclaiming the coincidence of Aṧa with the light (Y. 31.7).
The Chaldaic Oracles, despite their fire-cult, probably owe nothing to Iran (contra: des Places, p. 13). Greek mágos, magikós, magía come from Old Persian maguš, but how to trace Iranian elements in Greek magic? The Zoroastrian pseudepigrapha were not written by Hellenized Magi, who may never have existed (R. Beck apud Boyce and Grenet, Zoroastrianism, pp. 491-565).
Three kinds of medicine were distinguished, through spells, the knife, or herbs, both in Iran (Vd. 7.44) and in Greece (Pindar, 3.47-55), not elsewhere; borrowing seems, therefore, plausible, either way (Dumézil, pp. 20 ff.).
Bibliography: Ruhi Muhsen Afnan, Zoroaster’s Influence on Greek Thought, New York, 1965. Joseph Bidez, Eos ou Platon et l’Orient, Brussels, 1945. Joseph Bidez and Franz Cumont, Les mages hellénisés, 2 vols., Paris, 1938; repr. 1973. M. Burkert, Iranisches bei Anaximander, Rheinisches Museum 106, 1963, pp. 97-134. Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 5.9.4. Hermann Diels, ed. and tr., Die fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 3 vols., 1922. Jacques Duchesne Guillemin, The Western Response to Zoroaster, Ratanbai Katrak Lectures for 1956, Oxford, 1958. Idem, “Persische Weisheit in griechischem Gewande?” Harvard Theological Review, April 1956, pp. 115-22. Idem, “Notes on Zervanism in the Light of Zaehner’s Zurvan, with Additional References,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 15, April 1956, pp. 108 ff. Idem, “D’Anaximandre à Empédocle: Contacts gréco-romano,” La Per-sia e il Mondo greco-romano, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Rome, 1966, pp. 423-31. George Dumézil, Le Roman des Jumeaux, Paris, 1994. Gherardo Gnoli, “Zoroastro nelle fenti classiche,” Studi Urbineti, B Sciense umani e sociali 67, 1995-96, pp. 281-95. Idem, “Zoroastro nelle nestra cultura,” ibid., 68, 1997-98, pp. 205-19. Louis Gray, Foundations of Iranian Religion, Bombay, 1929. Werner Wilhelm Jaeger, “Aristotle’s Praise of Plato,” Classical Quarterly 21, 1927, pp. 13 ff. Wilhelm J. Wolff Koster, Le mythe de Platon, de Zarathoustra et des Chaldéens, Leiden, 1951. Antonio Panaino, “Uranographia Iranica: The Three Heavens in the Zoroastrian Tradition and the Mesopotamian Background,” in Rika Gyselen, ed., Au carrefour des religions: Mélanges offerts à Philippe Gignoux, Res Orientales 7, 1995, pp. 205-26. Pindar, Pythionikai, 3.47-53. Edouard des Places, ed. and tr., Oracles chaldaïques, Paris, 1971. Martin Schwarz, “The Religion of Achaemenian Iran,” in Camb. Hist. Iran II, pp. 664-97. Henrik Willem J. Surig, De betekeris van Logosbij Herakleitos volgens de traditie en de fragmenten, Nijmegen, 1951. Martin Litchfield West, Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient, Oxford, 1971 (to which the present article owes a great deal). Robert Charles Zaehner, Zurvan. A Zoroastian Dilemma, Oxford, 1955.

(Jacques Duchesne-Guillemin)
Originally Published: December 15, 2002
Last Updated: February 23, 2012
This article is available in print.
Vol. XI, Fasc. 3, pp. 319-321

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Biblical Queens Roamin' Into Roman History (So-Called)

For full article, see:
http://prophetess.lstc.edu/~rklein/Documents/Zlotnick.htm

Helena ZLOTNICK

Biblica 82 (2001) 477-495

From Jezebel to Esther:
Fashioning Images of Queenship in the Hebrew Bible

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II. The Two Faces of Queenship

Casting an Esther as a Jezebel carried, potentially, dangerous connotations. The hostility of biblical narrators to queens who, like Jezebel, usurp the role of kings in a manner that highlights the limitations of kingly power and the breakdown of male authority within the home is undisguised. It finds an amplified echo in the annals of the early Roman monarchy (6^th century BCE) which chart the career of two queens, Tanaquil and Tullia, who bear curious similarities to the biblical female monarchs. Because Roman authors are considerably more expansive than biblical narrators they provide valuable insights into the process that molded queenly images in antiquity.
In the hindsight of several centuries, the history of early Rome emerges in the pages of the historian Livy (57-14 BCE) as a family narrative dominated by the ambitions of its female members and punctuated by their sense of honor and shame⁹. Of these, Tullia, like Jezebel, is a daughter of a king (Servius Tullius). Her husband, Tarquinius (Superbus), is likewise a son of a monarch (Tarquinius Priscus) who, however, had designated another man, a non-relative, as his successor. To win the stakes in the complicated game of succession

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483

the couple embarks on a career of crimes, including the murder of their first respective spouses and the killing of Tullia’s father, the reigning ruler. Although apparently a match made in heaven, Livy shows no hesitation in casting Tullia as the moving spirit behind the rocky ride to the throne of Rome.
Echoing what Jezebel might have said to Ahab, had the text been recorded and transmitted in full, Tullia addresses her husband as follows:
If you are the man I thought I was marrying, then show yourself to be a man and a king. If not ... you have compounded a crime with cowardice. What is the matter with you? You are not from Corinth or from Tarquinii, like your father, nor is it necessary for you to make yourself a king in a foreign land. The gods of your family, your ancestors, the image of your father, the royal palace, its throne and the very name Tarquinius make and proclaim you king. Why else, if your spirit is too mean to (undertake) this, do you deceive the city? Why do you allow yourself to be looked upon as a prince? Depart to Taquinii or Corinth where you can sink once more into oblivion...¹⁰.
Focusing on the interaction between the family and the state as two social entities Livy shows how the privileging of the family interest at the expense of public duty generates chaos¹¹. Tullia and Tarquinius base their claim to the kingship on kinship alone, thus reversing and subverting the principle of merit and of inclusion on which the Roman royal succession had been established from the start. Jezebel ‘vindicates’ the king who is also her husband, thereby undermining the foundations of the royal system of dispensing justice.
In Livy’s landscape of early Rome the palace is the focus and the symbol of the couple’s unbridled ambitions. From the seclusion of their domestic space Tullia and Tarquinius launch their criminal activities. When Tarquinius appears in the curia (= senate house) with an armed bodyguard, Tullia burst on the scene and hails him as king. Her action and gesture constitute a double transgression. Not only does she violate the physical boundaries of males’ space by intruding into male business in the forum, but she also crosses the frontiers of male authority by being the first to confer royalty on a man in public.
Responding to censure, not the least from her own husband, Tullia

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defends herself by appealing to another queenly model. She regards herself as a faithful imitator, if not an improved version of Tanaquil, her mother-in-law who had been instrumental in helping her own husband (Tarquinius Priscus) to become a king at Rome, and who had ensured the smooth transfer of power to a successor she herself had chosen (Servius Tullius, Tullia’s father).
Livy’s presentation of Tanaquil is ambiguous. In his words, she is ‘a woman of the most exalted birth and not of a character lightly to endure a humbler rank in her new [Roman] environment than the one she had enjoyed by birth’¹². To save the monarchy Tanaquil alters the deliberative process reserved for the senate and the people of Rome. When her husband falls victim to an assassination plot, she encourages Servius to take the reigns into his hands:
To you, Servius, if you are a man, belongs this kingdom, not to those who by the hands of others have committed a dastardly crime. Arouse yourself and follow the guidance of the gods ... Now is the time ... Rise up to the occasion. We, too, although foreigners, ruled over Rome. Consider who you are and not where you were born. If your judgement is numb in so sudden a crisis then follow my council ¹³.
The fact that Livy leaves the ultimate tribute to Tanaquil in Tullia’s hands reflects a deep-seated uneasiness with the assumption of male power by women, laudable as their intentions and ultimate results might have been. Although Tanaquil’s resourcefulness saves the dynasty that she had created she also violates male norms by claiming a higher authority than the traditional mos maiorum (custom) would have allowed any woman, queens included. By setting herself and her late husband as models for Tullius to be imitated, Tanaquil also paves the way to Tullia.
As the biblical narrative recreates Jewish queenship in the scroll of Esther, the leading female character undergoes the same kind of transformation that underlies the Tanaquil-to-Tullia process, but in reverse. To begin with, Esther is not only Jewish but a woman with impeccable royal (Jewish) blood in her veins. Jezebel is constantly branded a foreigner in a manner that reflects not only her ethnicity but also her proclivities¹⁴. In the redactional history of the Hebrew Bible

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the Deuteronomist antipathy to foreigners, and particularly to foreign queens, has been associated with a deep-seated fear of idolatry through contamination¹⁵. The elevation of foreigners to Rome’s throne, by contrast, reflects Rome’s greatness and her openness to strangers, while Tullia’s urging of her husband to seize the throne on the ground of his ‘nativeness’ is clearly misplaced.
The scroll depicts the decree of Ahasuerus-Haman ordering the elimination of the Jews as a writ of national emergency. The clash between Ahab and Naboth appears, at first, as carrying little import beyond the king’s petty desire to expand to plant vegetables. Yet behind the issue of the vineyard versus royal garden lurks the larger question of the legitimate scope of monarchical actions vis-à-vis the king’s subjects¹⁶. In the Esther scroll the queen reacts to a patriarchal call to action and only exercises her potential royal power to save her people, as Tanaquil does to save Rome from revolution. Jezebel, like Tullia, acts on her own initiative, subverting male standards of royal behavior.
Just how perilously close to each other are, nevertheless, constructs of royal women like Tanaquil and Tullia on the one hand, and Jezebel and Esther on the other, can be further gauged from the attitude of all the texts to the public appearance of queens. Roman and Jewish authors are unanimous in banning women from the public eye. Jezebel and Esther never appear in public. Tanaquil makes a single public appearance when there is no one else who can save the dynasty. Even then she remains standing at a window in the palace, shielded by its walls. Tullia’s venturing into the forum invokes censure by her husband, and by the historian Livy. But Tanaquil’s position near a top window, although emphasizing Tullia’s boldness in venturing outdoors, also signifies the female usurpation of male authority at home. Ultimately, both women embark on a course of action that contradicts male expectations of female royalty. Nevertheless Tanaquil garners praise while Tullia is condemned.
Jezebel’s sole ‘public’ appearance is made as a spectator standing at the window of the palace that another king is about to possess. Observing the approach of Jehu, she stands at the window as a visual

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reminder of the legitimacy of her royal position and of his usurpation. Her words reinforce the image that her presence conveys: ‘Is it peace, Zimri, murderer of his master?’ (2 Kgs 9,30). Her words, like Tanaquil’s to Tullius, are filtered through space and the conventions of official language as she faces the successor of her dynasty and her ultimate executioner¹⁷.
Esther is never seen or heard addressing directly any man besides her husband and cousin/father. In fact, no biblical narrator or redactor ventured to place either queen, Jezebel or Esther, outside the confines of the palace itself. Both women use messengers to gather information and agents to convey their commands and their threats. Yet, like Tanaquil and Tullia, the two biblical queens were destined for vastly disparate ‘after-life’. In collective memory Jezebel became a stereotype of shrewish and detestable queens¹⁸. Esther’s adventures are still celebrated.

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Thursday, November 1, 2012

Important Maccabean Connection of Spartans to Hebrews

According to the letter sent by the king of the Spartans to the High Priest, found in the 1st book of Maccabees, the Spartans are "of stock of Abraham" ?

"19 And this is the copy of the letter which he had sent to Onias:
20 Arius, king of the Spartans, to Onias, the high priest, greeting.
21 It is found in writing concerning the Spartans, and the Jews, that they are brethren, and that they are of the stock of Abraham.

22 And now since this has come to our knowledge, you do well to write to us of your prosperity.

23 And we also have written back to you, That our cattle, and our possessions, are yours: and yours, ours. We, therefore, have commanded that these things should be told you."

1 Maccabees 12:19-23

Now, Steve Collins claims that they were Simeonites:

The Spartans themselves declared that they were a fellow tribe of the Jews and corresponded with an ancient Jewish High Priest about their relationship. The book of I Maccabees14:16-23 records this correspondence, which includes this statement:

"And this is the copy of the letter which the Spartans

sent: The Chief magistrates and the city of the Spartans

send greeting to Simon, the chief priest, and to the elders

and the priests and the rest of the Jewish people, our

kinsmen." (Emphasis added.)

Notice the Spartans called the Jews "our kinsmen." The Spartans did not proclaim themselves to be Jews, but rather that they were "kinsmen" to the Jews (i.e. members of one of the other tribes of Israel). That the Spartans acknowledged a common ancestry with the Jews of the tribe of Judah gives powerful weight to the assertion that they were Israelites who migrated to Greece instead of the Promised Land. The Spartan culture is most like that of the tribe of Simeon, most of which apparently left the Israelite encampment in the Wilderness after a Simeon prince was executed by a Levite.

There is a third group of wanderers in ancient history which manifested a Simeonite/Israelite ancestry, but this column is now long enough. The story of another band of Simeonites who struck out on their own in the world will be told in a future column.

Shalom and Greetings to all,

Steve Collins

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Taken from: http://stevenmcollins.com/html/simeon.html

Collins tells of these interesting points by Professor Jones:

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The Book, Sparta, by A.H.M. Jones, a Professor of Ancient History at Cambridge University, noted several things about Sparta. He states the Spartans worshipped a "great law-giver" who had given them their laws in the "dim past" (page 5 of his book). This law-giver may have been Moses.

Professor Jones also noted the Spartans celebrated "the new moons" and the "seventh day" of the month" (page 13). Observing new moons was an Israelite calendar custom, and their observance of "a seventh day" could originate with the Sabbath celebration. Prof. Jones also notes, as do other authorities, that the Spartans were known for being "ruthless" in war and times of crisis. This sounds exactly like the Simeonite nature, which was given to impulsive cruelty, as the Bible confirms.

Interestingly, Prof. Jones writes that the Spartans were themselves divided into several "tribes" which constituted distinct military formations within the Spartan army (pages 31-32).

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Thursday, November 29, 2012

Other Recommended Titles:

The Body and Blood of Christ

The Four Marks of the Church - Part 2

The Four Marks of the Church - Part 1

The Lamb's Supper

Understanding The Lord's Prayer

Why Is There Hell? What You Should Know About It!

The Fourth Cup

Discovering the Biblical Significance of Mary

How to Bring Fallen Away Catholics Back to the Church

Understanding the Eucharist

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Other Recommended Titles:

Jesus Is... (TBT version)

Suffering (TBT version)

Why Do Women Do That? (TBT Version)

Our Lives Change When Our Habits Change

From Love, By Love, For Love (TBT Version)

A Journey Through Advent: Reflections on the Sunday Advent Readings

The Year of Faith

Light of the World

Unlocking the Book of Revelation

Lectio Divina (TBT Version)

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Footnotes

Monday, November 12, 2012

By Yehuda Shurpin

Sunday, November 11, 2012

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Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Thursday, November 1, 2012