For this Wednesday, Luke 6.12–49 and Green 257–81. Volunteers for giving a few comments on the following pages?
Please let me know by entering a comment below. Wednesday, I plan to talk about the position of the Pharisees, teachers of the law, feasting and fasting.
Commentators propose a number of explanations for the presence of the temptation scene in Luke 4. So François Bovon in his massive volumes, who sets it in the difficult, tense context of the pre-66 AD movements in Roman Palestine. As we know from Josephus, a well-informed and hostile witness, many of those movements were messianic and prophetic. It is difficult to distinguish between the two kinds of leadership. This is obvious when reading the gospels, which show evident unease, many years after the facts, when defining the respective roles of John the Baptist and Jesus. See Richard Horsley in numerous publications. The early followers of Jesus had to confront difficult political issues. We have echoes of them in texts from about 50 AD (Paul in his letter to the Galatians especially, as well as the hypothetical Q, and a proto-Mk?), from circa 80 AD (Mt and Lk), and 100 AD (John, Acts). Among these issues, a most fundamental one was display of fidelity, or faithfulness to a people, its institutions (the temple above all), its history (the Torah), its aspirations (to freedom, usually framed messianically). The early version of the story of the temptation was an answer to suspicions expressed regarding Jesus’ messiahship. The story in Q, with its three elements presumably arranged in the order we still have in Matthew, already dealt with the questions regarding the claims made by Jesus followers. It developed early on because it had become important and urgent to separate the understanding of Jesus’ messiahship from that which existed in Palestinian Jewish society.
One can give plausible explanations for why the Q story was kept by the Matthew and Luke gospels, whereas this tradition wouldn’t be interesting for the Mark community, supposing the author of the gospel of Mark had access to the tradition. One can also explain why the gospel of Luke transformed the story (re-arranging the order of the three temptations) in light of the concerns of a post-70 AD Judeo-Greco-Roman context in which political tensions had become even more exacerbated among the Jewish communities. The disaster of the 66–70 defeat was national, political, and religious. Messianic claims did not simply go underground, disguised in new apocalyptic colors, but they also became suspect. The intensity of the discussions is reflected in a passage among several from Josephus which describes the prophetic and messianic figures who arose in the period leading to the war. This well-connected priest had urgent survivalist’s reasons to please his imperial stoicizing, harmony-loving patrons after the Jewish revolt of 66–70. When he writes his account of the Jewish War, at about the time the gospels of Matthew and Luke were composed, he is quick to assume a take-no-prisoners approach:
Besides these there arose another body of villains, with purer hands but more impious intentions, who no less than the assassins ruined the peace of the city. Deceivers and impostors, under the pretence of divine inspiration fostering revolutionary changes, they persuaded the multitude to act like madmen, and led them out into the desert under the belief that God would there give them tokens of deliverance. [Jewish War 2.258–59]
The most suspect claim, from a Jewish community’s point of view in the post-70 period, one imagines, was that attached to Jesus. So, the defense of a messianic view of Jesus became even more concerned with the radical questioning Jewish communities couldn’t but direct at Jesus followers after the complete failure of all messianic movements.
All of this historical re-mapping, I admit, is fascinating but doesn’t get us one bit nearer the themes of the temptation story. It more or less satisfactorily explains its uses in the proximate context of later authors now called Matthew and Luke, or even its earlier context for its use in Q, but it remains a political, historicist analysis. It is story telling of a less inspired kind.
For a more appropriate literary view, better go to Amos Wilder or Gaston Bachelard, for instance the latter’s L’air et les songes. Essai sur l’imagination du mouvement (1943). Bachelard, in his third chapter on the imagined fall (“La chute imaginaire”), uses Edgar Poe to examine the knowledge of an ontological fall:
This sensibility, sharpened by the decrease of being, is entirely governed by material imagination. It needs a mutation that turns our being into a less earthly, more ethereal, more variable being, less close to drawn shapes.
= Cette sensibilité, affinée par la décroissance de l’être, est entièrement sous la dépendance de l’imagination matérielle. Elle a besoin d’une mutation qui fait de notre être un être moins terrestre, plus aérien, plus déformable, moins proche des formes dessinées. [Page 126]
Beginning with the spirit—like a dove a few verses before—, continuing with the movement in the desert, the in-a-blink lookover of all the kingdoms of the world, and ending at the top of the temple’s pinnacle and the proposed dream of an unending fall, everything flies in this story. The movement of the dreamy fall itself not only creates the abyss but reminds one of the verticality of things. Only saints know temptation and fall and verticality: isn’t that what defines them? As Caird says in his commentary on Luke, the person who goes to the gate of his garden when there is a bit of weather doesn’t know temptation as does the person who is travelling through the gale, and even more the person who climbs mountains. Speech itself in the story of temptation induces breath and the life-sustaining air to move in new ways.
So, for Edgar Poe who knew the state in which, in our dreams, we glide through the air and struggle with the spirit of the fall (ghost?) who wants us to sink, the power of speech is very near a material power, governed by material imagination.
= Aussi, pour Edgar Poe, qui a connu l’état où, dans nos rêves, nous planons dans l’air, où nous luttons contre l’esprit de chute qui veut nous faire sombrer, la puissance des paroles est bien près d’être une puissance matérielle, gouvernée par l’imagination matérielle. [L’air et les songes 126, his emphasis]
Here is a pdf of what I was talking about this morning in class. The readings for Monday are: Luke 5.11 to 6.11 and Green’s pages 227–257.
I mentioned the idea of asking you, the students, to take turns in briefly presenting a few pages of Green in relation to the Luke passage. I need five volunteers for this Monday to be responsible for one of the following passages:
My idea is to have everyone take turns to give their reading and understanding of Green and Luke (briefly, not a formal presentation). In regard to grading, it will be part of the participation in class, of course. Any volunteers for Monday? Please let me know by leaving a comment below.
— gildas
Werner Eck, who is professor emeritus at the university of Cologne, gave a talk yesterday at Stanford on the use of epigraphy in assessing the importance of the Bar Kochba war: “Rewriting history from inscriptions: new perspectives on Hadrian and the Bar Kokhba revolt.” He and other scholars in Germany and Israel (Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University) are working on an important epigraphic corpus, the *Corpus inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palaestinae*, which has a broad historical, geographic and linguistic scope. It collects inscriptions from the area limited by the southern Negev, northern Golan, the Jordan river, and the sea, in several languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Thamudic, Nabataean, Latin, Greek, Armenian, and probably one or two more that I forget), and spans the period from Alexander to the rise of Islam. The first volume appeared last summer, gathering 704 inscriptions from Jerusalem.
Before I go on about the talk on the particular question at hand and the on-going discussions on the causes of the revolt, its extent, length, intensity, and consequences both for Jews and Rome, let me draw the reader’s attention to the book edited by Peter Schäfer, *The Bar Kokhba War reconsidered: new perspectives on the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome*, volume 100, Texts and studies in ancient Judaism (Tübingen: Mohr, 2003). In it, there is a chapter by Werner Eck, “Hadrian, the Bar Kokhba revolt, and the epigraphic transmission”, pp. 153–70, which gives the detail of the arguments presented yesterday at the Stanford talk. See also W. Eck, “The bar Kokhba Revolt: The Roman Point of View”, *The Journal of Roman Studies* 89 (1999): 76–89. In the same book edited by Schäfer, however, there is also an interesting article by Glen W. Bowersock dowsing Eck’s fire: “The Tel Shalem arch and P. Naḥal Ḥever/Seiyal 8”, pages 171–80. Bowersock focuses mainly on the arch and monumental inscription Eck argues were set up in Tel Shalem or near after the war of Bar Kokhba (see below).
Yesterday’s presentation went something like this. Nothing monumental, architecturally or literarily, is left regarding the second revolt. No Arch of Titus (under Domitian), and no Flavius Josephus. The lone literary evidence from the victor’s side comes from Dio Cassius (2d-3d c.), via the 11th c. abridgment done by Xiphilinus:
> In Jerusalem he founded a city in place of the one razed to the ground, naming it Aelia Capitolina, and on the site of the temple of the god he raised a new temple to Jupiter. This brought on a war that was not slight nor of brief duration, for the Jews deemed it intolerable that foreign races should be settled in their city and foreign religious rites be planted there. While Hadrian was close by in Egypt and again in Syria, they remained quiet, save in so far as they purposely made the weapons they were called upon to furnish of poorer quality, to the end that the Romans might reject them and they have the use of them. But when he went farther away, they openly revolted. To be sure, they did not dare try conclusions with the Romans in the open field, but they occupied advantageous positions in the country and strengthened them with mines and walls, in order that they might have places of refuge whenever they should be hard pressed, and meet together unobserved under ground; and in these subterranean passages they sunk shafts from above to let in air and light. [13] At first the Romans made no account of them. Soon, however, all Judaea had been up-heaved, and the Jews all over the world were showing signs of disturbance, were gathering together, and giving evidence of great hostility to the Romans, partly by secret and partly by open acts; many other outside nations, too, were joining them through eagerness for gain, and the whole earth, almost, was becoming convulsed over the matter. Then, indeed, did Hadrian send against them his best generals, of who Julius Severus was the first to be despatched, from Britain, of which he was governor, against the Jews. He did not venture to attack his opponents at any one point, seeing their numbers and their desperation, but by taking them in separate groups by means of the number of his soldiers and his under-officers and by depriving them of food and shutting them up he was able, rather slowly, to be sure, but with comparatively little danger, to crush and exhaust and exterminate them. Very few of them survived. [14] Fifty of their most important garrisons and nine hundred and eighty-five of their most renowned towns were blotted out. Fifty-eight myriads of men were slaughtered in the course of the invasions and battles, and the number of those that perished by famine and disease and fire was past all investigating. Thus nearly the whole of Judaea was made desolate, an event of which the people had had indications even before the war. The tomb of Solomon, which these men regarded as one of their sacred objects, fell to pieces of itself and collapsed and many wolves and hyenas rushed howling into their cities.
> Many Romans, moreover, perished in the war. Wherefore Hadrian in writing to the senate did not employ the opening phrase commonly affected by the emperors: “If you and your children are in health, it shall be well: I and the armies are in health.” (Dio Cassius 69.12–14; translation from project Gutenberg.)
The quality of Dio Cassius’ report and judgment are often questioned by modern scholars, however, who think he exaggerated numbers and was poorly informed (without access to the senate archives?) on the conduct of the war and its relative importance. Other literary evidence, Christian or Talmudic, is relatively late and influenced by traditions and opinions which took shape after the events, over a long period (two to three centuries).
The main point of Professor Eck, yesterday and in his publications, is that inscriptions and archaeology, if interpreted *à nouveaux frais* in a systematic, cohesive, and careful fashion, paint a drastic picture which does support the views found in the abridgement of Dio Cassius.
First of all, extra troop levies occurred, and the manner in which they were done indicate the urgency and intensity of the need. Against the custom not to levy troops in Italy, it is clear that there were levies in two of its areas. The only explanation for this highly unusual act must be an emergency situation. So, we have CPL 117: writings by soldiers in the fleet (staffed with peregrines) in 150 reveal that they were originally peregrines who were granted Roman citizenship, presumably because they were transferred from the fleet to other forces (legions). Roman military diplomas are more specific. We know that citizenship was granted after twenty-five years of service in the legions and this was signified by a diploma. Thirty diplomas of this kind, dated circa 160, i.e. twenty-five years after the second Jewish revolt, have been found so far, which is a considerable number if matched to the known survivability rate of diplomas. It is estimated that from 0.5 to 1% of such diplomas have survived from the Roman period. One concludes that approximately 1,300 to 2,600 diplomas were issued. Add to this estimation that not all soldiers lived long enough to obtain the diploma: many more than the estimated number (average: 1,950) must have fought in this war. In conclusion to this kind of evidence regarding the diplomas issued to peregrines serving in the fleet: there must have been a very large gap in the fleet, leading to a large recruitment of *delecti* from one area (Italy). Furthermore, we know that diplomas were also issued for auxiliary troops from Lycia and Pamphilia.
What of command? Tineius Rufus (see Caesarea Maritima) was recalled. Was this because he failed to squelch the revolt? Regarding the recall or use of other officers, Dio Cassius uses the expression “his best generals”, which should be taken seriously, meaning that the plural is significant, though only one is named. Severus indeed was called back from Britain. After the war, *ornamenta triumphalia* were granted to several generals / governors. Scholars failed to relate this known fact, however, to the Bar Kokhba war. In reality, three generals received the triumphal ornaments from a Hadrian who was normally disinclined to give them. Another sign is that Hadrian himself didn’t accept imperatorial acclamations for many years (other emperors had many, Domitian for example). Hadrian eventually accepted an imperatorial acclamation, Eck argues, because he needed this to give in turn the *ornamenta triumphalia*.
Other evidence comes from the caves of Naḥal Ḥever and the coins of Bar Kokhba found in the area he controlled. There is also the question regarding the participation of neighboring peoples in the revolt: an inscription in Thamudic may indicate this, as do the texts found in the Judaean desert. So for instance there is a letter of Bar Kokhba addressed to Soumaios, a Nabataean (almost certainly), who was part of his army. Further evidence of the intensity of the war comes from the numerous hiding places revealed by recent archaeological surveys.
When did the war end? The usual answer is July or August 135, with the siege and fall of Bethar. The common opinion is that Hadrian became *imperator iterum* in the second half of 135 (see article by Eck, mentioned above). But an inscription from Lanuvium (CIL XIV 2088) shows that at the time of its engraving, in 136, the *imperator iterum* or *imp. II* mention is missing. So the war was not over at the end of 135. Eck is of the opinion that it was concluded at the beginning of 136. So, it lasted longer than previously thought.
There is also the matter of the change of name to Syria Palaestina, another sign of the importance of this war. But when did it happen, and at whose request or suggestion? The idea must have come from Greek cities, especially Scythopolis, Eck argues. In 1976, remains of a monumental inscription were found at Tel Shalem. The inscription, in Latin, is written in very large letters, whereas all inscriptions from Scythopolis are in Greek. The letters are 41 cm high and imply a total length of 11 m and height of 2 m. This is very unusual in the Roman world. This massive inscription must have been on an arch near Tel Shalem, 12 km south of Scythopolis. Was it near an army camp? Why there, and erected by whom? Eck proposes that it must have been by Leg X or SPQR, short in any case. According to Eck, this monumental inscription was part of a necessary demonstration by Rome that the disastrous and costly war was over. That it was found near Galilee perhaps means that the fight was even more intense in this area (hiding tunnels found in that area are another piece of evidence).
The demographic impact of the war was very significant (again going with Dio Cassius), and mostly affected the central area of Judaea. There would be a return of Jews eventually, especially to southern Judaea, by the end of the 2d c. but not massive. Jews would settle in other areas such as the coast and Galilee (as we know also from the Mishnah and the Yerushalmi). The economic loss, from the point of view of the Roman empire, must have been considerable also (Evidence??).
As usual, Bob Herbert puts the latest violence in Tucson, Arizona, in perspective. More than 150,000 murder victims in the US for the twenty-first century so far, one million since 1968, according to his NYT opinion piece. His last paragraph:
> For whatever reasons, neither the public nor the politicians seem to really care how many Americans are murdered — unless it’s in a terror attack by foreigners. The two most common responses to violence in the U.S. are to ignore it or be entertained by it. The horror prompted by the attack in Tucson on Saturday will pass. The outrage will fade. The murders will continue.
The FBI publishes annual information on US homicides. It reports 13,636 murder victims for 2009. But the Disaster Center reports 15,241 for 2009. See the 1960–2009 US crime rate table it puts out, based on FBI Uniform Crime Reports. There were 17,034 murder victims in 2006.
Here is the document I used this morning in class, but in a better format (PDF). At the end of it are the Josephus text from the Vita, as well as the song sung by Hannah in the story of Samuel’s birth at the beginning of the first book of Samuel, and texts from Exodus and Leviticus which help understand the background to the story of Jesus’ presentation at the Jerusalem temple. I will be adding my notes soon.
On Dec 29, 2010, the [*SFChronicle* made public the petition](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/28/MNDC1GUSCT.DTL%20) by 36 UC execs that their contracts be honored to the fullest. “To the fullest” meant that the exemption routinely (?) granted by the federal government to allow salaries of execs paid above 245K/annum to be used as a basis for pension calcs should be in effect at UC. Example: If you are paid 400K/annum and have worked for 30 years at UC, a ceiling of 245K for pension calculation means you’ll get about 183K per yr in retirement (75%), vs 300K if the cap is lifted by UC. I would like to see those contracts made public, and not reserved to lawyers.
UCSC faculty received a letter from [SCFA](http://ucscfa.org/) reporting the [comments](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fc%2Fa%2F2010%2F12%2F30%2FBA861H22EA.DTL) of one of the signatories (UCB Law School Dean Edley) and encouraging UC employees to sign a [petition to President Yudof](http://www.gopetition.com/petition/41718.html) telling him to hop on his white horse and resist the demands. It also recommends reading the [analysis](http://utotherescue.blogspot.com/2010/12/just-trying-to-say-that-we-dont-care.html) of the matter by Professor Newfield, of UCSB.
Since the salaries mentioned above are way out of my league, I’ll keep my moral powder dry, except to suggest that this snafu will make an excellent example for the next edition of [mandatory Compliance Briefing: UC Ethical Values and Conduct](http://news.ucsc.edu/2010/02/3561.html). I might consider doing this briefing then.
These are notes on software tools I use in writing and presentations. I’m posting them for anyone interested in writing, publishing, lecturing. Comments welcome.
I used to write in copybooks, on loose sheets, the back of envelopes, and wrapping paper. The scratching of the pen and the shaping of the ink on the paper helped in thinking, or so I thought. Now I do much of the writing directly on computer and screen. I learned to type when I began to use computers, in my thirties. I’m talking amber screens, a prompt and text only, with a non-visual editor (in spite of its acronym), vi, and mysterious Unix commands that one used to handle files and send them to the printer. Thirty years later, I still remember those commands, the vi ones in particular, and the strings of code I typed to obtain Greek and Hebrew. I also remember I couldn’t think at the screen. This inability to think increased when windows appeared on various machines, for instance the Mac and then on so-called Windows desktop machines. I found the commercial programs very constraining: they lined text up in ways one could do little about, hyphenated things without permission, and made you concerned above all about how things looked. And they cost dearly at every major re-issue, forcing the user to become a kind of renter on contract for an indefinite period of time. I don’t like to be on a leash. I also worried about the archival aspect: would the documents I cared about be readable ten or twenty years from now, given the inexorable change of operating systems and proprietary programs (.doc, .pdf, and others)? Of course one can use TextEdit on the Mac, or even better Bean, which allows you to work on .doc or .docx files without any problem. Spare program though, for the ascetically minded.
I looked for other ways to do things, especially after Unicode encoding became easily accessible, and found that there are tools which are powerful, entirely free, presently fairly easy to install, and highly configurable. They allow complex multi-lingual texts to be beautifully typeset or produced, which is what I’m interested in, while keeping them in the simplest possible original format (.txt or .tex files).
So here is a list of what I have been using for quite a while, with short explanations and examples.
Augustine in Confessions 7.3:
sed et ego adhuc, quamvis incontaminabilem et inconvertibilem et nulla ex parte mutabilem dicerem firmeque sentirem dominum nostrum, deum verum, qui fecisti non solum animas nostras sed etiam corpora,
Note the etiam, and before, in 6.16, his disquisition on the immortality of the soul: catholic in his sayings, but still in the traditional or platonic philosophical world: it is all about the soul, and the body is a problem. I take his mention of the etiam to be the mark of an effort to remember the body as part of his new belief (or renewed belief) in the transformation of bodies and souls, not only the purification of souls.
nec tantum nostras animas et corpora, sed omnes et omnia;
Again, manichaean belief in the background, in which the explanation for evil requires that the world we perceive is partly or completely evil, if not an illusion. The creation of the world by the same divinity that creates human beings, including their souls, introduces other problems, but sets the moral question at another depth (though the grandeur and stringency of Manichaean views and practices should be properly remembered.)
non tenebam explicitam et enodatam causam mali. quaecumque tamen esset, sic eam quaerendam videbam, ut non per illam constringerer deum incommutabilem mutabilem credere, ne ipse fierem quod quaerebam. itaque securus eam quaerebam, et certus non esse verum quod illi dicerent, quos toto animo fugiebam; quia videbam quaerendo, unde malum, repletos malitia, qua opinarentur tuam potius substantiam male pati quam suam male facere.[1]
This is the crux of the matter. A move towards an incomprehensible divinity (image: anchoring in the depth), which ipso facto grounds moral agency more firmly, though less visibly, and gives it a wider and more difficult compass. It becomes human agency, not celestial or otherworldly. See his page on luck and predictability of human destiny, in 7.6.
[1]Text from Knöll’s Teubner 1909 edition, copied from LCL