EfM at St. Alban’s Monday, March 14, 2016

EverybodyReading and Reflection Guide, Year C, Week 8, pages 38-50 and “Resources for Reflecting

Theologically,” pages 203-232Attached “cheat sheets,” below

“The TR Cheat Sheet (Rev)”“Theological Reflection Movement in Four Phases”“TR Process Chart”“Theological Reflections ‘Cliffs Notes’ per Martha”

Note that some of these use the old names of the sources: “Action” is now “Personal Experience.” “Position” is now “Personal Belief” or sometimes “Personal Position.” (Even

Sewanee isn’t consistent.) “Tradition” is now “Christian Tradition.”“Contemporary Culture,” however, is a misnomer. You can use Shakespeare or Plato

as well as Woody Allen and Oprah Winfrey as Culture sources. oxfordbiblicalstudies.com

The login ID is efm-sewanee and the password is ministry.

Year 1Reading and Reflection Guide, Year C, Week 6, page 30Genesis 25-36 “The Jacob Saga”http://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies/rlst-145#sessions

Lecture 6 “Biblical Narrative: The Stories of the Patriarchs (Genesis 12-36)” (from 39:12to the end)

Lecture 7 - “Israel in Egypt: Moses and the Beginning of Yahwism (Genesis 37- Exodus4)” (to 3:04)

Collins, Chapter 4 “The Patriarchs,” pages 51-54Genesis 37-Exodus 4 “The Joseph Novel” and Moses in Egypt

Lecture 7 - “Israel in Egypt: Moses and the Beginning of Yahwism (Genesis 37- Exodus4)” (3:04 to the end)

Year 2The Gospel According to Mark (to be read, preferably in one sitting, before you listen to the

lecture or read Powell)Or, instead fo reading it, watch a performance of the Gospel on DVD:

Alec McCowan, St. Mark’s Gospel: King James VersionMax McLean, Mark’s Gospel

http://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies/rlst-152#sessions Lecture 6 “The Gospel of Mark” Powell, Chapter 6, “Mark,” pages 125–145

There’s lots more information at the book’s companion website, www.IntroducingNT.com, arranged by chapter.

Reading and Reflection Guide, Year C, Week 7, pages 33-35

Monday March 14

Worship Steve

Snack Kay

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Page 3 “The TR Cheat Sheet (Rev)”

Page 5 “Theological Reflection Movement in Four Phases”

Page 7 “TR Process Chart”

Page 9 “Theological Reflections ‘Cliffs Notes’ per Martha”

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The Jacob Saga (Genesis 25-36)

Jacob was the son of Isaac and grandson of Abraham.

He was the twin brother of Esau (Edom). Gen 25:26 says Jacob was named for gripping hisbrother’s heel (aqeb), but Gen 27:36 and Hosea 12:4 give its meaning as “supplanter.” Mayactually be ya’aqob-el, “May Yahweh protect.” Esau/Edom is red (admoini) and hairy (se’ar)and destined to dwell in the land of Se’ir.

Jacob’s name appears 393 times in Old & New Testaments (plus numerous references to himas Israel). Among the Old Testament characters, only David and Moses get more ink.

Outline of the Story

25:19-34 Jacob wrestles with Esau in Rebekah’s womb, settles down among the tents whileEsau hunts, cheats Esau of his birthright.

27:1-28:5 Jacob obtains Esau’s blessing from Isaac by fraud, flees Esau’ wrath to Rebekah’sbrother Laban in Haran. Motif H.1242: youngest brother succeeds.

28:10-22 Jacob dreams of Jacob’s ladder, receives God’s promise of future land andomnipresent protection, sets up stone (of Scone?) at Bethel, promises to tithe.

29:1-30:43 Jacob arrives in Haran, meets Rachel at a well and falls in love with her, ischeated by Laban into 20 years’ labor, has 12 children plus Joseph, cheats Laban andbecomes rich.

31:1-32:3 Jacob realizes Laban’s sons are on to him, flees toward the land of his ancestors,Laban pursues, Jacob and Laban are reconciled.

32:4-33:20 Jacob sends messengers and gifts to Esau, wrestles with God (or is it an angel?),is renamed Israel, is reconciled with Esau, and finally arrives in Canaan.

34 Jacob’s daughter Dinah raped, her brothers Simeon and Levi commit genocide.

35 Jacob moves to Bethel, Rachel dies, Isaac dies.

37 Jacob gives son Joseph the coat of many colors, Joseph sold into slavery, Jacob thinkshim dead. Genesis 38-41 recounts Joseph’s adventures in Egypt.

42-50 Jacob sends sons to Egypt for food, they meet Joseph, Jacob moves to Egypt and diesthere, Joseph buries him in Canaan.

Genesis generally admires Jacob’s skill, but Hosea 12:2-5, “Yahweh will punish Jacobaccording to his merits and repay him according to his deeds. In the womb he sought to supplanthis brother, and in his manhood he strove with God. He strove with the angel and prevailed.”

Numbers 24:17 (Balaam’s prophecy), “a star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall riseout of Israel.” In addition to its use by David and the Magi, the star was used on the coins ofHerod the Great (ruled 39-4 BC) and by Simon bar Kokhba (“Son of the Star,” the leader of therebellion against Rome in AD 135).

Jacob’s stone pillow is said to have ended up in Scotland, where it became the Stone ofScone (“Stone of Destiny” to the Scots), on which British monarchs are now crowned. Byvarious accounts, it was brought to Scotland (then known as Caledonia and peopled by Picts andCelts) by the invading Scots from Ireland. It may be somehow connected to the Lia Fail, thecoronation stone of the High Kings of Tara.

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Some say the stone was used as a portable altar by St. Columba, others that it was the coronationstone of King Fergus, the first king of the Scots in Caledonia. With somewhat greater certainty, itappears that the stone was used in the coronation of Scottish kings as early as 847.

It was taken to London by King Edward I in 1296 and has been used ever since in the coronationceremonies of English and British monarchs. Since 1996, it has been kept at Edinburgh Castle,whence it will be moved to Westminster Abbey when needed for future coronations.

Supposedly, a part of the stone was given to King Cormac McCarthy of Munster by Robert theBruce in 1314. McCarthy installed it in the wall of Blarney Castle, where it became known as theBlarney Stone. By still other accounts, however, the Blarney Stone is actually the Stone of Ezel,where David hid from Saul (1 Samuel 20:19-42), or the water-bearing rock that followed Mosesin the desert (Exodus 17:5-7, Numbers 20:9-11, 1 Corinthians 10:4).

Notes on the Joseph Novel

Chronology

The sojourn in Egypt lasted 400 years (Genesis 15:13), 430 years (Exodus 12:40-41) or threegenerations (Kohath – born before the migration to Egypt – begot Aram who begot Aaron andMoses, Exodus 6:16-20, Numbers 3:17-30 and 26:57-59, I Chronicles 6:1-3 and 23:6-13). TheExodus account clearly assumes that the Egyptian capital is in the Delta, near the Hebrewsettlements, and that’s true during the Hyksos period (1648-1550 BC) or under Seti I andRamesses II (1291-1213).

The Hyksos rulers had Canaanite names, at least, so Joseph’s rise to power under their rulewould be understandable. Conversely, some scholars have surmised that the Hyksos included theIsraelites, a surmise which is hard to square with the Biblical account.

1838: (or 1868) The “Biblical” Date for Joseph. (All dates are BC)

1800 : “Adventures of Sinuhe” written.

1648: Hyksos – Canaanite or Amorite nomads with chariots – overrun lower Egypt and ruleas pharaohs of the XV and XVI Dynasties. As the Hyksos were a Semitic people, Josephfits well here.

1637: 430 years before Merneptah’s stele – the earliest date for Joseph, based on the Bible’scount of years.

1570: Ahmose I (reigned 1570-46) founds XVIII Dynasty.

1550: Ahmose I pushes Hyksos out of Egypt and pursues them into Canaan.

1491: Bishop Ussher’s date for the Exodus.

1479: Thutmose III defeats Syrian-Canaanite alliance at the Battle of Megiddo. (1457

This was the first of Thutmose III’s 17 campaigns in Syro-Palestine, which took placealmost every year for the next two decades. The Megiddo campaign may well havebeen the most significant, for it immediately reestablished Egyptian authority in thearea and showed the Canaanites that their overlords were there to stay. The Egyptianpresence in the southern Levant remained firm for the next 200 years. (Eric H. Cline,“In Pharaoh’s Footsteps,” Archaeology Odyssey, Spring 1998)

1451: Bishop Ussher’s date for Joshua’s conquest of Canaan.

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1438: The Exodus, working backwards from 1 Kings 6:1 “In the four hundred eightieth yearafter the Israelites came out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reignover Israel, in the month of Ziv, which is the second month, he began to build the houseof the LORD.”

1379: Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV) becomes pharaoh, imposes solar monotheism on Egypt.

1361: 9 year old Tutankhamen becomes pharaoh. His vizier Ay reestablishes old religion,while his general Horemheb pacifies restive Canaan.

1352: Ay succeeds to throne.

1321: Horemheb succeeds to the throne, rebuilds army devastated by plague.

1297: Three generations (of 30 years each) before Merneptah’s stele – the oldest possibledate for Joseph, based on Bibles’ count of generations rather than years.

1293: Ramesses I founds XIX Dynasty. Ramesses I and his successors Seti I and Ramesses IIall appointed Asiatics to high positions in their administrations, so Joseph fits well here,too.

1291: Seti I pharaoh (Gary Rendsburg’s prime candidate for Joseph’s Pharaoh). Although theofficial capital remained at Thebes in Upper Egypt, Seti spent much of his reigncampaigning in the Levant and seems to have used the old Hyksos capital of Avaris as aforward base or “capital in the field.”

1278: Ramesses II the Great (“Ozymandias” to the Greeks and Shelley) pharaoh.

1250: Ramesses II moves capital from Thebes to Pi-Ramesses, a new city built on the site ofthe old Hyksos capital of Avaris in the Nile Delta.

1250: (or so) Mycenae and other Greek cities burned; beginning of end of Mycenaeancivilization.

1274: Ramesses II checks the Hittites at Battle of Kadesh, securing the northern border ofCanaan against Hittite aggression.

1213: Death of Ramesses II, succeeded by his 12th son Merneptah. The old pharaoh hadoutlived his 11 eldest sons.

1207: Merneptah’s stele (“Israel is wasted, base of seed”) provides the latest possible date forthe Exodus. The stele’s hieroglyphic inscription identifies Israel as a nomadic people, notone living in cities within fixed borders, suggesting that Merneptah encountered thembetween the Exodus and the conquest of Canaan, a contact not mentioned in the Bible.

1200: Hittite empire (Anatolia) collapses.

1175: Philistines (Pelestet) settled along the southern coast of Palestine.

1185: Beginning of XX dynasty.

1184: Traditional date for the Trojan War (according to the Greeks).

The Adventures of Sinuhe

Also known as the “tale” or “story” of Sinuhe. Sinuhe is a palace official in the time of PharaohAmenemhat I (founder of the 12th Dynasty, ruled 1991-62 BC). Hearing of trouble in the royalhouse and fearing for his life, Sinuhe flees to Canaan, where he becomes a general in the serviceof a local lord named Amunenshi. Sinuhe marries one of Amunenshi’s daughters, has sons of his

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own, and defeats an enemy chieftain in single combat. In his old age, he is invited back to Egyptby Amenemhat’s son and successor Senusret I (or Kheperkare, ruled 1971-1926). The parallelswith the Joseph story are intriguing, says Edmund S. Meltzer:

Sinuhe is an Egyptian who flees to Syro-Canaan, ‘goes native' as a member of the local rulingelite (in the process acquiring a wife and having sons), then returning to Egypt and beingrecognized by the royal family. Joseph, on the other hand, is a Syro-Canaanite who, by whathe ultimately recognizes as an ‘act of God' (also Sinuhe's characterization of his flight), istaken to Egypt, where he ‘goes native' as a member of ruling elite, acquiring a wife andhaving sons, then being reunited with and revealing himself to his Syro-Canaanite family.

https://web.archive.org/web/20111007013806/http://www.ceae.unlugar.com/meltzer.htm

The names:

The Egyptian names in the form given in the Bible were not in use before the XX Dynasty (1185-1069), meaning that they are “products of the author’s erudition,” not artifacts of Joseph’s actuallife, says The Jewish Study Bible. (Alternatively, an 12th or 11th century editor might have“corrected” the names embedded in the ancient story to agree with the forms used in his ownday.)

Moses = “When the child grew up, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and she took himas her son. She named him Moses, ‘because,’ she said, ‘I drew him out of the water’”(Exodus 2:10). Yet another proof that “etymology based on sound alone is not soundetymology.” “Moses” is actually a traditional Egyptian name, or more properly part of aname. It means something like “son of” and is usually coupled with a god’s name: so Ra-moses (Ramesses) or Thoth-moses (Thuthmose). And how would a Egyptian princessknow Hebrew, anyway?

Potiphar = Pa-di-Ra, “gift of Ra.” Ra was the sun god.

Asenath = “she belongs to Neit.” Neit was a warrior goddess also associated with the primalwaters from which creation emerged.

Potiphera = an alternate (and feminine) form of Potiphar, “gift of Ra”

On = Heleopolis (“city of the sun” in Greek), home of Ra’s main temple.

Zaphenath-paneah = “The god (Pharaoh) speaks, and he (Joseph) lives.”

Other notes:

Genesis 38.14 “the entrance to Enaim” (NRSV) or “an open place’ (AV). Actually, theHebrew is “the entrance to two springs,” or “the gate of the town of Twin Springs.” Thephrase can also be read as the “opening of the eyes.” The Hebrew reader would take thisas a reference to Tamar’s veil (only her eyes would be visible, so Judah couldn’trecognize her), to the opening of Judah’s eyes to his own sin, which will come later, andto Tamar’s two marriages and/or the twins she will bear. It’s also an indirect play on the“woman at the well” type-scene.

Genesis 38:15,21,24: Hebrew has two words for “prostitute”: hnz zanah and, more rarely,hvdq kadeshah. Kadeshah is literally “set apart (feminine),” so – taking “set apart” tomean “holy” – kadeshah is often translated as “sacred” or “temple prostitute.” However,the two words are used interchangeably in this chapter: Tamar is a zanah in verses 15 and

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24 but a kadeshah in verse 21. Not everything which is “set apart” is sacred. In Leviticus21:14, a zanah is one of the sorts of women a high priest may not marry

Recent research has largely debunked the reality of temple prostitutes. Some excerptsfrom Helen Morales’ review of The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity by StephanieBudin (The London Times Literary Supplement, May 15, 2009, p. 11)

Stephanie Budin's thesis in The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity is not thatsome of this presents a distorted picture, but that in fact sacred prostitution neverexisted in the ancient Near East or Mediterranean. Instead, it is a "literary construct",a mirage. If she is right– and her arguments are compelling – then our picture ofancient history and religion has been scandalously and embarrassingly incorrect. Thiswill not be news to some, as the existence of sacred prostitution has been challengedsince the 1960s, by scholars of the Near East, notably Robert Oden and Julia Assante,and by classicists such as Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge, Fay Glinister, Mary Beard andJohn Henderson. However, the value of Budin's book lies in its systematic andmeticulous examination of each and every piece of "evidence", from classicalantiquity and the ancient Near East, and clear argumentation us to why none of itconvincingly demonstrates sacred prostitution. . . .

The book is a thrilling expose of historiography at its worst. It shows the mess thatcan result when disciplinary divisions work against multicultural understanding(allowing Assyriologists and classicists to claim that sacred prostitution waspractised, but on the others' turf, not their own) and how a scholarly myth can spread"like a computer virus" until it becomes accepted historical fact.

Genesis 38:25: “ "Take note, if you please, whose these are, the signet and the cord and thestaff” In Hebrew, but not in any English translation I can find, Tamar’s words are exactlythose that Judah and his brothers used when they presented Jacob with Joseph’s bloodycoat in Genesis 37:32: “take note, if you please, that this is your son’s coat.”

Genesis 38:26: “She is more in the right than I” (NRSV). The Hebrew is a piece of legalboilerplate meaning “Tamar has presented the preponderance of the evidence and winsthe case.” Jewish scholars tend not to like the NRSV translation; it implies that Judah wasat least partially right, but Tamar was righter. By their lights, only the Good News Bible –aided for once by its restricted vocabulary – gets it right: “She is in the right. I have failedin my obligation to her.”

Genesis 39:7-20: Joseph and Potiphar’s wife. The tale of an innocent man falsely accused ofrape is a common one. For the Egyptian “Tale of Two Brothers” (annotated), seehttp://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/texts/anpu_and_bata.htm. Homer tells a similar tale,that of Bellerophon and Anteia, the wife of Proteus (Iliad, Book 6, lines 155-203).There’s also the story of Phaedra and Hippolytus from Greek mythology, dramatized by Euripides, Seneca, Racine, and lesser authors too numerous to mention.

Genesis 41:8 “magician” is chartom in Hebrew and is perhaps better rendered as “scribe.”The root word is cheret, a stylus, the writing implement of the scribe and the symbol ofhis profession. Chartom is used only in the Egyptian passages of Genesis and Exodus andin Daniel. The Coptic Old Testament reads sesperonch, which is ancient Egyptian for“scribe of the House of Life.” The House of Life was the training school for the priestsand scribes, and it is there that Pharaoh would go to have his dream interpreted by theteachers.

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Egyptian scribes used “dream books” to interpret dreams. Elsewhere, magicians andseers consulted an oracle, gazed into crystal ball, interpreted the patterns of wine dregs orthe behavior of animals, rolled magical dice, or simply made something up to fit theoccasion. If there was no entry in the book for “if a man sees seven fat cows being eatenby seven lean cows,” the scribes would have been bound to say, “Sorry, your majesty, wecan’t help you on this one.”

Egyptian Dream Book Entries (samples)

If a man sees himself dead – Good. It means a long life.If a man sees himself looking out of a window- Good. It means the god has heard his cry.If a man sees himself falling off a wall- Good. It means the issuing of a favorable edict.If a man sees himself eating crocodile flesh - Good. It means he will become an officer.If a man sees himself bringing in cattle - Good. It means he will become a community

benefactor.If a man sees himself plunging into cold waters - Good. It means all his troubles will end.If a man sees himself copulating with his mother - Good. It means his clansmen will

cleave to him.If a man sees himself copulating with his sister - Good. It means he will inherit

something.If a man sees himself being made an official - Bad. It means death is close at hand.If a man sees himself in a pit - Bad. It means he will be put in prison.If a man sees his bed catching fire- Bad. It means his wife will leave him.If a man sees himself drinking warm beer- Bad. It means suffering.If a man sees himself looking after monkeys- Bad. It means change awaits.If a man sees himself with a dwarf - Bad. It means half his life has been taken away.If a man sees himself copulating with a female jerboa - Bad. It means the passing of a

judgment against him.If a man sees himself copulating with a pig - Bad. It means he will deprived of his

possessions.If a man sees his face in a mirror - Bad. It means another wife for him.If a man sees himself uncovering his own backside - Bad. It means he will become an

orphan.If a man sees himself putting his face to the ground - Bad. It means the dead want

something.If a man sees himself copulating with his wife in daylight - Bad. It means the god will

discover his misdeeds.If a man sees mice - Bad or Good. Bad if the man is rich. It means his slaves are stealing

from him. Good if the man is poor. It means he will soon be rich and have slaves whoare stealing from him.

Contemporary dreams and their interpretations are more prosaic:

Psychologist reveals the 9 most common dreams and what they mean

by Dina Spector

http://www.msn.com/en-us/health/wellness/psychologist-reveals-the-9-most-common-dreams-and-what-they-mean/ar-AAeC2K4?ocid=spartandhp#page=1 (Accessed September 22,2015)

Many psychologists have given up trying to interpret dreams, but we talked to one whohasn't.

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Psychologist Ian Wallace has interpreted over 150,000 dreams during more than 30 years ofpractice.

He helped us compile a list of nine of the most common dreams, their meanings, and whataction you should take in waking life.

9. Finding an unused room

What it means: The rooms in a house represent different aspects of your character. So,finding an unused room suggests that you’re discovering a talent that you weren't awareof before.

What you should do: The more time that you spend exploring your dormant talents, themore likely that you will find other doors opening for you in waking life, says Wallace.

8. Out-of-control vehicle

What it means: The car represents your ability to make consistent progress toward aspecific objective. In waking life, you may feel that you don’t have enough control overyour road to success.

What you should do: Instead of trying to over control the situation, Wallace says to relaxyour grip and allow your fundamental instincts and drives to steer the best path for you.

7. Falling

What it means: Feeling yourself falling in a dream indicates that you are hanging on tootightly to a particular situation in waking life. You need to relax and let go of it.

What you should do: Rather than being so concerned about losing control, sometimes youjust have to trust in yourself and others by allowing everything to fall naturally into place

6. Flying

What it means: Being able to fly suggests that you have released yourself fromcircumstances that have been weighing you down in waking life.

What you should do: Although you may regard this feeling of liberation as just luck orcoincidence, it is usually because you have managed to make a weighty decision or risenabove the limitations of a heavy responsibility, says Wallace.

5. Unprepared for an exam

What it means: Exams are how we judge our ability to perform, so this indicates that youare critically examining your own performance in waking life.

What you should do: Rather than immersing yourself in endless self-examination, the realtest of your character is being able to accept your talents by celebrating your knowledgeand achievements, instead of constantly judging them.

4. Naked in prublic

What it means: We choose our clothes to present a particular image to the people aroundus. Being naked in public suggests that there is a situation in waking life that is makingyou feel vulnerable and exposed.

What you should do: Although it might be potentially embarrassing, sometimes you justhave to open up to others so they can see your real talents.

3. Unable to find a toilet

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What it means: Toilets are what we use to cleanly respond to some of our mostfundamental needs, so there is an issue in waking life where you are finding it a challengeto clearly express your own needs.

What you should do: Spend more time looking after your own needs, rather than theneeds of others.

2. Teeth falling out

What it means: Your teeth symbolize how confident and powerful you feel, so somesituation is causing your confidence to crumble in waking life.

What you should do: Rather than seeing this situation as something that will leave youpowerless, just try calmly thinking over the facts and relish it as a challenge.

1. Being chased

What it means: There is an issue in your waking life that you want to confront, but youdon't know how to.

What you should do: This issue is often a great opportunity for you to pursue a particularpersonal ambition. Although they may seem scary, your pursuers are actually bringing yourattention to your unrealized talents in your own pursuit of fulfillment.

Genesis 41:14: Joseph shaves beforemeeting Pharaoh. Egyptians wereclean-shaven, while the Israelitesand other Semites wore beards.

Genesis 41:41-42

And Pharaoh said to Joseph,"Behold, I have set you over allthe land of Egypt." Then Pharaohtook his signet ring from his handand put it on Joseph’s hand, andarrayed him in garments of finelinen, and put a gold chain abouthis neck; and he made him to ridein his second chariot; and theycried before him, "Bow the knee!"Thus he set him over all the landof Egypt.

Compare with this, from the tomb of Rekhmire, vizier to Pharaohs Thuthmose III andAmenhotep II:

I was a noble, the second to the king . . . . It was the first occasion of my beingsummoned. All my brothers were in the outer office. I went forth . . . clad in fine linen . . .. I reached the doorway of the palace gate. The courtiers bent their backs, and I found themaster of ceremonies clearing a way before me. . . . My abilities were not as they hadbeen: my yesterday's nature had altered itself, since I had come forth in the accouterments[of the vizier] to be the Prophet of Maat [order, truth]. (cf. Genesis 41:38-43)

The same ceremony is depicted in the tomb of Vizier Paser at Thebes, c. 1240 BC, showinghim being vesting with the accouterments of office.

John Romer, Testament: The Bible and History, 1988

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Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveler from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal these words appear: “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Genesis 41:43 (NRSV): “Bow the knee” is ab-rake’, a reasonable Hebrew phonetic renderingof an Egyptian phrase ab-r-k meaning literally “heart to you!” The best Englishtranslation is probably something like “Hail!” or “Live long and prosper!”

Genesis 42-44: While there is no archaeological evidence of Hebrews per se in Egypt duringJoseph’s time – or, for that matter, Moses’ time – there is a late 13th century papyruswhich proves that such things happened:

(Papyrus Anastasi VI lines 51-61). (5x) The Scribe Inena communicating to his lord,the Scribe of the Treasury Qa-gabu – In life, prosperity, health to you! This is a letterto let my lord know: I have carried out every commission laid upon me, in good shapeand strong as metal. I have not been lax. We have finished letting the sashu[“nomadic” or “bandit”?] tribes of Edom pass the Fortress of Mer-ne-PtahHotep-hir-Maat which is in Tjeku, to the pools of Per-Atum [the biblical Pithom ofExodus 1:11?] of Mer-ne-Ptah Hotep-hir-Maat, which are in Tjeku, to keep themalive and to keep their cattle alive, through the great ka of Pharaoh – life, prosperity,health to him!– the good sun of every land, in the year 8, 5 days, Seth.

While the meaning of sashu is unclear, an inscription of Seti I dated 1291 BC tells ofsashu living in the hills of Canaan who had no regard for Pharaoh’s laws. Latercorrespondence refers to sashu serving as mercenaries in the Egyptian army, and there’salso a reference to a place called Ain-sashu near Damascus.

The ka is something like our “soul.” The Egyptians thought a living person consistedof five parts: the body, the shadow, the name, the ba, and the ka. According to Glenn S.Holland (in the Teaching Company’s “Religion in the Ancient Mediterranean World”),the body was the physical body. The shadow was the physical presence of the person inboth this life and the afterlife. The name expressed and summed up the person’spersonality. The ba was “the impression others receive of a person’s spirit through whathe or she does.” And the ka represented “the interaction of the mind and body that comesinto being at birth.”

A further proof of the possibility of Canaanite presence in Egypt is the 1997 discoveryof distinctively Canaanite/Hebrew four-room houses and a few shards of pottery from theSinai at Avaris. The houses date to the time of the Middle Kingdom pharaoh AmenemhatI (1973-1944 BC, founder of the XII Dynasty), which is by everyone’s count much too

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early for the people who built the houses to have any direct relationship with the Hyksos,Joseph, or Moses. The builders of the houses either did not stay long or quickly adaptedto local conditions, for within a generation or two, people began knocking down walls tojoin the houses into larger dwelling units. Soon they gave up that project and simply builtlarger, Egyptian-style houses on top of the old settlement.

A Historical Analogue to Joseph?

An Egyptian pharaoh was generally open to employing men of talent, regardless of theirorigins. A good example, whose career just happens to span the period of the Exodus, is theGreat Chancellor Bay (Ramesse Khamenteru, died 1192 BC). Bay was from Harran, a majorcity in northern Mesopotamia (near the modern town of Altinbasak on the southern border ofTurkey). It’s not clear when or how Bay came to Egypt, but he seems to have been serving asa priest-administrator in the time of Merneptah (reigned 1213-1204) or even Ramesses II(1279-1213). By the time Merneptah’s son Seti II (1204-1198) died, Bay held theJosephesque title of “Great Chancellor of the Entire Land of Egypt.”

An inscription of Seti II’s son and successor Siptah (born about 1207, reigned 1198-93)invokes

the spirit of the Great Superintendent of the Seal of the entire land, who established theKing in the place of his father; beloved of his lord, Bay

implying that Bay had somehow engineered Siptah’s accession in preference to unknownrivals. The fact that there was a three year gap between Seti’s death and the beginning ofSiptah’s reign suggests that it took some doing.

Tablets found at Ugarit, a city in northern Syria, identify Bay as “head of the bodyguard ofthe Great King, the King of Egypt.” In 1192, however, Siptah had Bay executed, perhaps forhaving seduced the pharaoh’s stepmother Twosret with an eye to having her take the throneafter the (to-be-induced?) death of her stepson. An ostracon (pottery sherd used as a writingtablet) found in the Valley of the Kings says “Year 5 III Shemu the 27th. On this day, thescribe of the tomb Paser came announcing ‘Pharaoh LPH, has killed the great enemy Bay’”(LPH represents the ancient symbols ankh - wedja - seneb, “life, prosperity, health”). Twosetherself survived the plot and took the throne as pharaoh when Siptah died – aged about 16 –the next year. She reigned from 1193 to 1190 and was the last pharaoh of the XIX Dynasty.Significantly, perhaps, Twoset dated her reign not to 1193 (the death of her stepson) but tothe death of Seti II.

According to the records of Twoset’s successor Setnakhte (reigned 1190-1187, founder of theXX Dynasty), there followed a period of anarchy in which a “self-made man” (Bay?) and hisAsiatic followers subjected the people to harsh taxation and denied offerings to the gods.Setnakhte drove the Asia out of Egypt, forcing them to abandon the gold and silver whichthey had stolen. Setnakhte defaced the inscriptions of Siptah and Twoset and took for himselfthe tomb prepared for the old queen in the Valley of the Kings.

Genesis 47:20-22: “So Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh. All the Egyptianssold their fields, because the famine was severe upon them; and the land becamePharaoh’s. As for the people, he made slaves of them from one end of Egypt to the other.Only the land of the priests he did not buy; for the priests had a fixed allowance fromPharaoh, and lived on the allowance that Pharaoh gave them; therefore they did not selltheir land.” Note that the Israelites thus have Joseph to thank for their eventualenslavement! Mark Twain puts it thusly:

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I do not find that Joseph made loans to those distressed peasants and secured the loansby mortgage on their lands and animals, I seem to find that he took the land itself – tothe last acre, and the animals too, to the last hoof. And I do not get the impression thatJoseph charged those starving unfortunates "only a fair market price for the food theyreceived." No, I get the impression that he skinned them of every last penny they had;of every last acre they had; of every last animal they had; then bought the wholenation’s bodies and liberties on a "fair market" valuation for bread and the chains ofslavery. Is it conceivable that there can be a "fair market price," or any price whatever,estimable in gold, or diamonds, or bank notes, or government bonds, for a man’ssupremest possession–that one possession without which his life is totally worthless–his liberty?

- letter to Edward M. Foote, 14 March 1906. Reprinted in Autobiographyof Mark Twain, Volume 1 (University of California Press, 2010)

Genesis 50:2-3: “Joseph commanded the physicians in his service to embalm his father. Sothe physicians embalmed Israel; they spent forty days in doing this, for that is the timerequired for embalming. And the Egyptians wept for him seventy days.” Both periodsagree precisely with what we know of the embalming process (the major portion of whichtook 40 days) and Egyptian funerary customs (which required burial on the 70th or 72nd

day – the classical sources vary on the exact count – following the death).

Genesis 50:22: “And Joseph lived one hundred ten years.” That is, to a ripe old age. ManyEgyptian proverbs begin “As a man of 110 might say.”

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Notes on Exodus 1-15

Though we know nothing about his career, save what the Bible tells us, the details of whichwe have no means of testing, there can be no doubt that he was, as the Bible portrays him, thegreat founder of Israel's faith. The attempts to reduce him are extremely unconvincing . . . Afaith as unique as Israel's demands a founder as surely as does Christianity - or Islam, for thatmatter. To deny that role to Moses would force us to posit another person of the same name.(John Bright (1908-95) History of Israel, John Knox Press, 2000, 4th edition; pp 126-7).

Verse 1:5 The MT reads “all the offspring of Jacob were seventy persons,” but the LXX reads“all the souls born of Jacob were seventy-five.” Scholars had long suspected that the LXXtranslators had worked from an older version of the Hebrew text than the MT, a suspicionthat was confirmed by the Dead Sea Scrolls (scroll 4 Q Exodus A), which also reads 75.

Verse 1:15: Considering that Exodus 12:37-38 gives the count of the Hebrews that came out ofEgypt as “about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides women and children” the twomidwives must have been very busy. The names – if they are Hebrew names – meansomething like "fair" (Shiphrah) and “splendid” (Puah). The Hebrew is ambiguous: they areeither “midwives to the Hebrews” or “midwives who were Hebrews.”

Verse 1:22: Pharaoh has given up trying to get the midwives to obey him. Now he enlists thewhole of the Egyptian population, “saying, ‘Every boy that is born you shall fling into theNile.” The Greek text qualifies Pharaoh’s order, reading “every boy that is born to theHebrews.” The Hebrew lacks the qualifier, so Pharaoh seems to have ordered that every boy –whether Hebrew or Egyptian – should be cast into the Nile. This may yet another indicationof how inept the Pharaoh is. Not only do his women – including his own daughter in chapter2 – disobey him, but he can’t even give a clear order to his people.

Midrash has it that Egyptian seers, familiar with the story of Noah, foresaw that Moses wouldbe big trouble. They thought it was safe to drown him, as God would be bound by hispromise to Noah not to retaliate in kind. Their attempt to drown Moses miscarried (thanks toPharaoh’s daughter), and God said to Moses, “As I promised, I will not bring a flood uponthe Egyptians. Instead, you will lead them into the sea, and I will drown them there.”

Verses 2:1-11:

Note that the Hebrew word for Moses’ basket (as the NRSV renders it) is tebah. Tebahappears 23 other times in the Bible, but all 23 of them name a single object: Noah’s ark(Genesis 8-9). The Ark of the Covenant (Exodus 25:10 et seq) is a completely different word,arown in Hebrew. Arown means a (money) chest or, as in Genesis 50:26, a coffin.

Some scholars think that Moses’ story was borrowed from Sargon the Great of Akkad(reigned c. 2270-15 BC):

My mother was a high priestess, my father I knew not. The brothers of my father lovedthe hills. My city is Azupiranu, which is situated on the banks of the Euphrates. My highpriestess mother conceived me, in secret she bore me. She set me in a basket of rushes,with bitumen she sealed my lid. She cast me into the river which rose over me. The riverbore me up and carried me to Akki, the drawer of water. Akki, the drawer of water, tookme as his son and reared me. Akki, the drawer of water, appointed me as his gardener.While I was a gardener, Ishtar granted me her love, and for four and […] years I exercisedkingship. [Neo-Assyrian inscription, 7th century BC]

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Incidentally, “Sargon” is a Greek mangling of the old emperor’s self-chosen throne nameSarru-kinu. It means “the king is legitimate,” so he, like Jack Worthing, obviously had someissues.

Lady Bracknell. . . . Now to minor matters. Are your parents living?Jack Worthing. I have lost both my parents.Lady Bracknell. To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; tolose both looks like carelessness. Who was your father? He was evidently a man of somewealth. Was he born in what the Radical papers call the purple of commerce, or did herise from the ranks of the aristocracy?Jack. I am afraid I really don’t know. The fact is, Lady Bracknell, I said I had lost myparents. It would be nearer the truth to say that my parents seem to have lost me... I don’tactually know who I am by birth. I was... well, I was found.Lady Bracknell. Found!Jack. The late Mr. Thomas Cardew, an old gentleman of a very charitable and kindlydisposition, found me, and gave me the name of Worthing, because he happened to havea first-class ticket for Worthing in his pocket at the time. Worthing is a place in Sussex. Itis a seaside resort.Lady Bracknell. Where did the charitable gentleman who had a first-class ticket for thisseaside resort find you?Jack. [Gravely.] In a hand-bag.Lady Bracknell. A hand-bag?Jack. [Very seriously.] Yes, Lady Bracknell. I was in a hand-bag - a somewhat large,black leather hand-bag, with handles to it - an ordinary hand-bag in fact.Lady Bracknell. In what locality did this Mr. James, or Thomas, Cardew come acrossthis ordinary hand-bag?Jack. In the cloak-room at Victoria Station. It was given to him in mistake for his own.Lady Bracknell. The cloak-room at Victoria Station?Jack. Yes. The Brighton line.Lady Bracknell. The line is immaterial. Mr. Worthing, I confess I feel somewhatbewildered by what you have just told me. To be born, or at any rate bred, in a hand-bag,whether it had handles or not, seems to me to display a contempt for the ordinarydecencies of family life that reminds one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution.And I presume you know what that unfortunate movement led to? As for the particularlocality in which the hand-bag was found, a cloak-room at a railway station might serveto conceal a social indiscretion - has probably, indeed, been used for that purpose beforenow – but it could hardly be regarded as an assured basis for a recognised position ingood society.Jack. May I ask you then what you would advise me to do? I need hardly say I would doanything in the world to ensure Gwendolen’s happiness.Lady Bracknell. I would strongly advise you, Mr. Worthing, to try and acquire somerelations as soon as possible, and to make a definite effort to produce at any rate oneparent, of either sex, before the season is quite over.Jack. Well, I don’t see how I could possibly manage to do that. I can produce the hand-bag at any moment. It is in my dressing-room at home. I really think that should satisfyyou, Lady Bracknell.Lady Bracknell. Me, sir! What has it to do with me? You can hardly imagine that I andLord Bracknell would dream of allowing our only daughter – a girl brought up with theutmost care – to marry into a cloak-room, and form an alliance with a parcel? Goodmorning, Mr. Worthing!

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[Lady Bracknell sweeps out in majestic indignation.]Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, Act 1

Other “baby cast adrift” stories include:

Perseus and his mother Danae cast adrift in the sea in a chest, rescued by a fisherman.Eumolpus, son of Poseidon, cast into the sea by his unwed mother and raised in EthiopiaRomulus and Remus cast adrift in a basket on the Tiber and rescued by a she-wolf. Scyld Scefing (Shield Sheafson), the great grand father of Hrothgar (of Beowulf fame)and, more recently, Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Gondoliers, Superman, Luke Skywalker,

and Harry Potter.

R.D. Fulk’s comments concerning the birth of Scyld Scefing represent the typical criticalperspective:

The motif of the hapless mother or child exposed in a floating vessel is common enoughin folk-tales — indeed, the folkloric sea-lanes are thronged with women and infantsdrifting helplessly in chests, casks, tubs, bins, baskets, and oarless boats.

In foundation myths, the “cast away baby” motif often serves to domesticate a foreigner whoplayed a key role in the nation’s formation. It makes a more satisfying story if the foreignbenefactor turns out to be “one of us” (and, better yet, to be named “Ernest”), even thoughneither he nor anyone else knew it at the time.

Verse 2:3: Moses is safe among the reeds (suph), but Pharaoh’s chariots and chariot drivers willdown in the Yam Suph (“the sea of Reeds”).

Verse 2:23: The conventional interpretation (reflected in both the NRSV and the Jewish Tanakhtranslations) is that Ramesses II (ruled 1279-13) is the Pharaoh who dies in this verse,meaning that it his son Merneptah (1213-03) whom Moses confronts in the followingchapters. Merneptah was Ramesses’ thirteenth son. His twelve older brothers had all diedbefore their father did, and Merneptah was sixty years old when he finally came to the throne.Merneptah’s stele, now usually dated to 1208 or 1207, claims victories over variousCanaanite peoples including Israel.

Canaan is captive with all woe. Ashkelon is conquered, Gezer seized, Yanoam madenonexistent; Israel is wasted, bare of seed

Verses 3:1-5 and 7-8 are from the J author, although a later editor seems to have changed J’sSinai to Horeb, the mountain’s name in the E and P traditions. The change ruined a pun:“bush” is seneh in Hebrew. Whether this mountain is in the southern or northern SinaiPeninsula is “much discussed.” Verses 6 and 9-15 are E. The P source’s version of the call ofMoses and the revelation of the divine name is in Exodus 6:2-13:

2 And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am the LORD [YHWH]: 3 And Iappeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty [ElShaddai], but by my name JEHOVAH [YHWH, the LORD in the NRSV: see note on v.3:14 below] was I not known to them. 4 And I have also established my covenant withthem, to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage, wherein they werestrangers. 5 And I have also heard the groaning of the children of Israel, whom theEgyptians keep in bondage; and I have remembered my covenant. 6 Wherefore say untothe children of Israel, I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the burdens ofthe Egyptians, and I will rid you out of their bondage, and I will redeem you with astretched out arm, and with great judgments: 7 And I will take you to me for a people,and I will be to you a God: and ye shall know that I am the LORD your God, which

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bringeth you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. 8 And I will bring you in untothe land, concerning the which I did swear to give it to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob;and I will give it you for an heritage: I am the LORD. 9 And Moses spake so unto thechildren of Israel: but they hearkened not unto Moses for anguish of spirit, and for cruelbondage. 10 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 11 Go in, speak unto Pharaohking of Egypt, that he let the children of Israel go out of his land. 12 And Moses spakebefore the LORD, saying, Behold, the children of Israel have not hearkened unto me; howthen shall Pharaoh hear me, who am of uncircumcised lips? 13 And the LORD spakeunto Moses and unto Aaron, and gave them a charge unto the children of Israel, and untoPharaoh king of Egypt, to bring the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt.

Verse 3:1: Moses’ father-in-law is usually referred to as “Jethro,” but Exodus 2:18 gives hisname as Reuel. Judges 4:11 says he was Hobab, and Numbers 10:29 refers ambiguously to a“Hobab, son of Raguel the Midianite, Moses’ father-in-law.” The Greek text of Judges 1:16adds “Hobab,” supplying a name the Hebrew text omits in the phrase “the children of theKenite, Moses’ father-in-law.” Liberal scholars attribute these discrepancies to thecompilation of different versions of the story by an editor who simply didn’t notice or didn’tcare about them. Conservative scholars speculate that “Jethro” was a title (a derivative ofyether, excellent), “Reuel” his personal name, “Raguel” a variant spelling of “Reuel,” and“Hobab” Moses’ brother-in-law.

Even Moses’ name – or at least its etymology – is problematic. Exodus 1:10 explains “And thechild grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son. And shecalled his name Moses: and she said, Because I drew [mashah] him out of the water.” ButMoses is a perfectly respectable Egyptian name, or at least a part of one. It means “son of”and appears in full or abbreviated form in names like Tutmoses (“Son of the god Thoth”) andRamesses (Ra-moses “Son of the god Ra”).

Verse 3:2: The “angel” here is probably a direct manifestation of God, rather than a heavenly butsubordinate messenger. Compare with Genesis 16, where “the angel of the Lord” speaks toHagar, but she reacts as if God had spoken to her directly.

Verse 3:2: Amy-Jill Levine (whose Teaching Company Lecture I have shamelessly cribbed formuch of what follows) suggests that, to the Israelites themselves, the bush represented Israel:it may at first seem small and insignificant, but it survives trails that would destroy larger andmore powerful nations, and you can’t ignore it.

Verse 3:5: “put off thy shoes” as a sign of respect.

Verse 3:6: “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God ofJacob.” The rabbis interpreted this to mean that each generation must choose for itself tofollow God and accept his laws.

“hid his face” In Exodus 33:20 God says “there shall no man see me, and live.” Hagar(Genesis 16:13 in the NRSV translation), Jacob/Israel (Genesis 32:30), Gideon (Judges 6:22),and Sampson’s father (Judges 13:22) all express surprise – and/or relief! – at having seenGod and lived. On the other hand, in Exodus 33:11 we read “Thus the LORD used to speakto Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.”

Verse 3:8: “a land flowing with milk and honey” Some scholars think the “honey” was “grapejuice reduced to a molasses-like syrup” and fermented. The Hebrew word (debash) used hereis elsewhere associated with honeycombs, so the more likely reading is bee-honey, not spikedgrape jelly. The ancient world had no sugar, so honey was the only sweetening readily

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available. Levine notes that milk and honey are about the only foods that can be harvestedwithout killing anything.

Verse 3:11: “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh?” Moses will return to this theme in chapter4: “people will not believe me” (so God teaches him some magic tricks) and “I can’t speakwell” (God promises to tell him what to say and eventually agrees to let Moses’ brotherAaron do the talking).

Verse 3:13: When the children of Israel ask the name of this God, “what shall I say unto them?”In a polytheistic society, “Which God are you?” is a reasonable and necessary question.Considering that Moses had been raised in Pharaoh’s court, one wonders how much he knewof Israelite religion to begin with.

Verse 3:14: God’s reply probably disappoints Moses. “I am what I am,” “I will be what I willbe,”“I am what I will be,” “I will be what I am,” “I am he who is,” are all supported by theHebrew ’ehyeh ’asher ’ehyeh. Biblical Hebrew has only two “tenses”: “perfect” forcompleted actions, usually translated using the English past tense, and “imperfect,” used forincomplete, on-going, or future actions, translated as either present or future tense dependingon context and other clues. The ambiguity of the Hebrew tense makes “I am what I am” anactive, eternal, and future-oriented God, who can take any form he wants, overtones that arelost in the English – as well as the Greek – translation. Thus Revelation 1:8 needs a lot moreletters to get the same thought across: “who was, who is , and who is to come, the Almighty.”The Septuagint translated YHWH as ego ami (“I Am”), which explains why Jesus’ “I am”discourses (John 6:35, 8:12, 8:58, 10:11, 11:25, etc.) got him into so much trouble with theTemple priests and the Pharisees.

“I am what I am” appears everywhere else in the third person. “He will be” is probably betterthan “the existing one” given in Strong’s lexicon. As the original text was written withoutvowels, it became the Tetragrammaton (“four letter word”), written YHWH in English andúïúé in Hebrew (read right-to-left). As the name was thought too sacred to pronounce, readerssubstituted a circumlocution such as Adonai (the Lord, a tradition the AV and NRSV andmost other English translations continue), ha-Shem (“the Name”), or Ado-Shem (combiningAdonai and Shem).

According to Jewish legend, during the Second Temple period, the name itself was pronouncedonly once each year, on Yom Kippur, and then only by the High Priest alone in the Holy ofHolies. And he waited until the choir was at its loudest, so that none but God could hear thename. Thus, by the time Jewish scholars got around to adding vowel points to the Hebrewtext in the 8th century AD, no one was sure how the Name should be pronounced.

Based on a Greek transliteration in the writings of Clement of Alexandria (c. AD 150-216),“Yahweh” seems to be at least close. More recently, excavations at Elephantini, Egypt, haveuncovered a fort occupied by a Jewish garrison dating from the 6th and 5th centuries BC. Thesoldiers were part of the Persian army, posted there to keep the Egyptians under control.These Jews worshiped many gods, but their chief god they called Yahu. Apart from having agoddess consort named Anatyah, Yahu seems to be identical to the God worshiped in post-exile Jerusalem and thus confirms at least the first syllable of the Name. Combining YHWHwith the vowels from Adonai and pronouncing the result with a German accent produced“Jehovah.”

In Jewish mystical tradition, the correct pronunciation is unknowable. One legend says that ifanyone ever gets it right, the Messiah will come, and the world will end. There are similar but

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less-sweeping legends about the secret name of Rome (Amor?), the apes of Gibraltar, and theravens of the Tower of London.

Since World War II, Egyptologists have unearthed hundreds of “magical papyri” dating from the1st and 2nd centuries AD. These papyri give spells and incantations for healing diseases,cursing enemies, winning the love of members of the opposite sex, etc. Some of these spellsinvoke a most powerful god named Pipi, who is represented as a chicken head with legs.Scholars were puzzled by this otherwise unattested god until someone realized that an ancientmagician who saw the Hebrew Tetragrammaton (written right-to-left) but thought he wasreading poorly written Greek (written left-to-right) would read ú ï ú é as ð é ð é – pipi. Pipi isthe onomatopoeic Egyptian word for “chicken,” hence the god’s name and iconography.(Like all southerners, Egyptian chickens seem to have dropped their final consonants.)

According to the E source, the deity formerly know as Elohim revealed his name as YHWH forthe first time in today’s reading. The J source says that it was in the time of Seth (Adam’sson) that “people began to call upon YHWH.” (Genesis 4:27). In Exodus 6:2-3, attributed toP, “Elohim said to Moses, I am YHWH. I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as ElShaddai [“God Almighty” in AV and NRSV, literally “God of the mountains” or “of thebreasts”] but my name YHWH I did not make known to them.” On the other hand, the nameof Moses own mother Jochebed (Exodus 6:20) means “YHWH is her glory,” so perhapsYHWH was known earlier. It is also possible, of course, that the P editor has assigned a goodYahwist name to what had been in Exodus 1 a nameless woman.

Perhaps the earliest Hebrew name for God was El, the generic term for God, as well as the nameof the Canaanite sky god. This name appears in names like Israel, Jael, and Ezekiel.Deuteronomy 32:8-9 seems to make YHWH a son of El:

8 When the Most High [Elyon] apportioned the nations, when he divided humankind, hefixed the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the gods; 9 YHWH’s ownportion was his people, Jacob his allotted share. (NRSV)

The Jewish Study Bible comments that the “own” in verse 9 does not appear in the Hebrew,which can be read as El (the most high god of the Canaanites; Elyon is one of his formaltitles) assigning the other gods of the pantheon to be the patron of the various nations or asYHWH retaining Jacob as his own particular share while assigning the other nations to othermembers of the heavenly court.

YHWH retained or picked up many of the Canaanite sky god’s attributes. “Canaanite textsdepict El as an elderly, bearded man enthroned in a divine council.” Compare 1 Kings 22:19-22, Psalm 29:10, Psalm 82:1, Psalm 102:12, Isaiah 6:1-5 and 40:22, Daniel 7:9-11, etc.

Some speculate that YHWH originally may have been the god of Moses’ clan, whose name andattributes absorbed those of the gods of other clans: the Shield of Abraham (Genesis 15:1),the Mighty One of Jacob (Genesis 49:24). A shortened from of YHWH, Yah, appears in theSong of Moses (Exodus 15:2). Other scholars offer the Kenite hypothesis, whereby theIsraelites were introduced to YHWH by Jethro, the priest of Midian.

At the risk of beating a dead horse, I must point out that there are scholars who, instead of takingYHWH as a sentence (“he will be”), think it may have originally derived from a word. Thethree leading contenders in this school of thought are (1) a root meaning “to be, become, ormake happen,” (2) a root meaning “to fall,” like rain, a meteor, or a lightning bolt, or (3)“Yah,” a battle cry, as in Exodus 15:2 “Yah is my strength and my song.”

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All these speculations – like all issues in Bible study, and, indeed, in all studies of ancientdocuments – are interesting and useful, but they all must ultimately fail to get us to the oneTruth behind the text. Obviously, Moses’ father-in-law had one name, not three, but short ofsummoning up an eye witness from the grave or finding his epitaph in some Midiangraveyard, that one name is forever lost to us. The Bible itself has no interest in the question.I suspect that, if, like the witch of Endor, we could summon up the Priestly redactor who gavethe text its final shape and put these discrepancies to him, we would get about the responsethat the editor of T. E. Lawrence’s Revolt in the Desert got to his queries in 1926:

Jeddah and Jedda used impartially throughout. Intentional? Rather!Bir Waheida or Bir Waheidi? Why not? All one place.Ruwalla, Rualla, or Rueli? Should have also used Ruwala and RualaThe Bisaita is also spelt Biseita. Good.Jedha, the she camel, or Jedhah? She was a splendid beast.“Meleager the immoral poet.” Immortal? Immorality I know. Immortality I cannot judge.

As you please: Meleager will not sue us for libel.

The Naming of Cats by T. S. Eliot (Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats)The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,It isn't just one of your holiday games;You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatterWhen I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.First of all, there's the name that the family use daily,Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James,Such as Victor or Jonathan, or George or Bill Bailey -All of them sensible everyday names.There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter -But all of them sensible everyday names.But I tell you, a cat needs a name that's particular,A name that's peculiar, and more dignified,Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum -Names that never belong to more than one cat.But above and beyond there's still one name left over,And that is the name that you never will guess;The name that no human research can discover -But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.When you notice a cat in profound meditation,The reason, I tell you, is always the same:His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplationOf the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:His ineffable effableEffanineffableDeep and inscrutable singular Name.

http://coral.lili.uni-bielefeld.de/Classes/Summer97/SemGS/WebLex/OldPossum/oldpossumlex/

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The Plagues

Exodus 7:14-12:36 Psalm 78:42-54 Psalm 105:25-39

darkness

water turned to blood water turned to blood water turned to blood

frogs frogs

gnats (“lice” in the AV)

flies flies flies

gnats

frogs

plague of cattle, horses, etc.

boils

caterpillars and locusts

hail hail and frost hail and frost

locusts

thunderbolts lightning

darkness

plague of humans

locusts

death of first-born death of first-born death of first-born

Verses 7:19-8:18. Note that Pharaoh’s magicians make matters worse: they make still moreblood and frogs. They cannot produce additional gnats (or lice, depending on how onetranslates the Hebrew ken), which Pharaoh must have regarded as blessing rather than afailure.

Verse 7:3 et seq. “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart.” For the Hebrews, the internal organs were theseat of strong emotions. For the Hebrews, the heart was the seat of the intellect and thepersonality. The liver and bowels were the seats of the emotions, and the kidneys were hometo the conscience. Thus the Hebrew for Jeremiah 4:19 reads “My bowels, my bowels, I writhein pain,” which the NRSV renders as “My anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain!” In theNRSV, Psalm 16:7 reads “in the night also my heart instructs me,” but the Hebrew is morelike “my kidneys afflict me.”

The rabbis taught that “Man has two kidneys, one of which prompts him to good, the other toevil; and it is natural to suppose that the good one is on his right side and the bad one on hisleft, as it is written, A wise man's understanding is at his right hand, but a fool'sunderstanding is at his left [Ecclesiastes 10:2].”

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For the Egyptians also, theheart was the seat of thepersonality. In their version ofthe final judgement, the heartof the dead was weighedagainst a feather. If the heartwas lighter than the feather, thedeceased entered into eternalbliss with Osiris in the Field ofReeds. But if the sins of thedeceased had made the heartheavier than the feather, thesoul was fed to Ammit theDevouress. With the jaws of acrocodile, the shoulders of a

lion, and the rear quarters of a hippopotamus, Ammit combined the three creatures whichpopulated the worst nightmares of the Egyptians.

The Book of the Dead (circa 1300 BC) gives the following script for the weighing of theheart. The deceased will say,

O my heart from my mother! O my heart from my mother! O my heart from my differentforms! Do not stand against me as a witness! Do not oppose me before the Assessors! Donot be belligerent to me before the One who keeps the balance! You are my ka which wasin my belly; the protector who strengthened limbs. Go forth into the joyous place. Do notmake my name stink before the officials who make men! Do not speak lies about me inpresence of the god!

Assuming that the heart passes its test, Thoth, the scribe of the gods, says

Thoth, judge of truth, to the great Ennead [the tribunal of nine gods] who are in thepresence Osiris: Hear this speech to notable truth. The heart belonging to Osiris has beenweighed, and his soul stands as a witness for him. His deeds are true in the Great Balance.No crime has been found in him. He did not withhold offerings from the temples. He didnot damage what he made. He did not deal in the lies of deceitful speech while he was onearth.

And the Ennead pronounces the final judgement: “No sin is found him; he has no evil to bewith us. Ammit shall have no power over him.”

Verse 10:2 “that you may tell your children and grandchildren how I have made fools of theEgyptians” (NRSV). The verb alal is also used in Judges 19:25 to describe what the men ofGibeah did to the Levite’s concubine. (“So the man seized his concubine, and put her out tothem; and they knew her, and abused her all night until the morning.”)

Verse 10:19 The sea is Yam Suph, the Sea of Reeds, not the Red Sea, as the LXX translated itinto Greek. The Egyptians knew the Red Sea as Kem-uer, “the black water,” and the Hebrewscalled it Yam Mitstraim, “the Sea of the Egyptians.” Suph (also transliterated as soof) may bean Egyptian loan word, as the Egyptian for “reed” was twfi. The same word (suph) appears inExodus 2:3 and 2:5, Isaiah 19:6, and Jonah 2:5, where in each case it clearly means “reeds,”not “red.” Only in 1 Kings 9:26 is Yam Suph clearly the Red Sea: “King Solomon built a fleetof ships at Eziongeber, which is near Eloth on the shore of the Red Sea, in the land of Edom.”Ancient Eloth is near present-day Eilat, Israel.

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Verses 12:37-38 gives the count of the Hebrews that came out of Egypt as “about six hundredthousand men on foot, besides women and children. A mixed multitude also went up withthem, and very many cattle, both flocks and herds.” Six hundred thousand men would suggesta total population of well over 1.5 million, a column which would take about thirty days topass any given point on its route. It’s hard to see how this host would have fled in terrorbefore the Egyptian army, which at the Battle of Kadesh (1274 BC) numbered something like20,000 infantry and 2,000 chariots. And Ramesses had scraped together every soldier andchariot he could find to put that number in the field against the Hittites. The entire populationof New Kingdom Egypt was somewhere between three and four million. Regardless of thenumbers involved, we know that Egyptian slaves sometimes escaped and that the armypursued them: see “The Pursuit of Runaway Slaves,” below.

Verses 14:4, 17-18 John E. Currid (“Why Did God Harden Pharaoh’s Heart?.” Bible Review, Dec1993, 46-51) notes

There is an interesting pun in these two passages from Exodus 14. Each refers to the glorythat God will gain from his hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. The root of the word for glory(or honor) is KVD (pronounced kavod); this is the same root as one of the threeinterchangeable words used for heavy—kaved. Indeed, the words are related. Honor lendsa certain weightiness to a person. When the same root is applied to the heart, it is madeheavy. And in Egyptian terms that meant sinful. Thus, the kvd (honor or glory) wasYahweh’s, while the kvd (the sinfulness of a heavy heart) was Pharaoh’s. And that, ofcourse, is the whole point of the Exodus story.

While Homer doesn’t use the phrase “harden the heart,” he says that, on Odysseus’ return toIthaca, the goddess “Athena would not let the suitors for one moment drop their insolence,for she wanted Odysseus to become still more bitter against them” (Odyssey 20.7)

Verses 15:1-18 (The Song of Moses) and 15:21(the Song of Miriam): The Israelites exult overthe death of the Egyptians. In the Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 39b, the rabbis said that theangels also began to sing a hymn of praise, but God rebuked them. “While my creatures aredrowning in the sea you would sign a hymn?!” In the Odyssey (22.11), Odysseus’ old nurse Eurykleia began to exult over the dead bodies of the suitors, “but Odysseus checked her, ‘Oldwoman,’ said he, ‘rejoice in silence; restrain yourself, and do not make any noise about it; itis an unholy thing to vaunt over dead men.’”

The Pursuit of Runaway Slaves (about 1200)

The Chief of Bowmen of Tjeku, Kakemwer, to the Chief of Bowmen Ani and the Chief ofBowmen Bakenptah:

In life, prosperity, health! In the favor of Amon-Re, King of the Gods, and of the ka of theKing of Upper and Lower Egypt: Userkheperure Setepenre [Seti II, ruled 1203-1197]–life,prosperity, health!–our good lord–life, prosperity, health! I say to the Reharakhti: "KeepPharaoh–life, prosperity, health!–our good lord–life, prosperity, health!–in health! Let himcelebrate millions of jubilees, while we are in his favor daily!"

Another matter, to wit: I was sent forth from the broad-halls of the palace–life, prosperity,health!–in the 3rd month of the third season, day 9, at the time of evening, following afterthese two slaves. Now when I reached the enclosure-wall of Tjeku on the 3rd month of thethird season, day 10, they told me they were saying to the south that they had passed by onthe 3rd month of the third season, day 10. When I reached the fortress, they told me that thescout had come from the desert saying that they had passed the walled place north of theMigdol of Seti Merneptah–life, prosperity, health !–Beloved like Seth." When my letter

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reaches you, write to me about all that has happened to [them]. Who found their tracks?Which watch found their tracks? What people are after them? Write to me about all that hashappened to them and how many people you send out after them. [May your health] be good!

Tjeku (Teku) was a frontier military outpost east of ancient Pi-Ramesses and modernIsmailia in the eastern Nile Delta. It has been identified with Succoth, a landmarkpassed by the Israelites on their flight from Egypt (Exodus 12:37).

“life, prosperity, health!” (ankh, wedja, seneb) is an Egyptian phrase added followingevery mention of or allusion to a pharaoh’s name or his household, just as devoutMoslems interject “peace be unto him” after every mention of a prophet’s name.Ankh, wedja, seneb is only three characters in hieroglyphics, and so it’s oftenabbreviated as “LPH” in English translations. Kakemwer even adds it after hismention of the palace, as “pharaoh”(literally “the great house”) and “the palace” wereinterchangeable terms in most contexts. And as dead pharaohs aren’t really dead, oneadds the epithet after their names as well, as here with Merneptah.

Userkheperue Setepenre ("Powerful are the Manifestations of Re, Chosen by Re”) wasthe throne name of Pharaoh Seti II (ruled 1203-1197), the son of Merneptah (ruled1213-03), of stele fame.

Migdol is a watch tower or a small fortress, a logical thing to encounter in a frontier areathrough which the slaves Kakemwer is pursuing – like the Hebrews before them inExodus 14:2 – were seeking to escape. The exact location of this one, which appearsto have been built by Seti’s father Merneptah and which may or may not be the sameMigdol as the one in Exodus, is unknown.

Seth was originally Osirus’ jealous and destructive brother, for all intents and purposesthe god of chaos, but Seth later became a powerful warrior god, the defender of Ra,the sun god. The warrior pharaohs of the XVIIIth Dynasty adopted Seth as theirpatron. Tuthmoses III and Ramesses II both styled themselves “Beloved of Seth,” andseveral of their successors were named Seti (“man of Seth”).

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Notes on Mark

Mark 1:2: Note that quote is actually a composite of Malachi and Isaiah – the scattering ofancient texts attributing the quote to "the prophets" are thought to represent scribal efforts to"correct" Mark's text.

Mark 1:10: the Greek says the Spirit entered into Jesus, making the Separationist's favoriteGospel (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.11.7). Separationists argued that Jesus the man andChrist the Son of God were separate beings, joined at Jesus’ baptism and separated justbefore crucifixion, in Mark 15.34.

Mark 6:3: "Is this not Mary's son?" implies an illegitimate or unknown father: "Is this notJoseph's son?" would be the more usual formulation. The later Gospels seem to sanitizeMark’s account: Matthew 13:55 read "Is not this the carpenter's son?", and Luke 4:22 makesJesus "Joseph's son." Anti-Christian Jews said Jesus was the child of a Roman soldier (orJewish lecher) named Panthera (= "panther") with whom Mary had an affair or by whom shewas raped.

Mark 6.6: Jesus was always amazing others, but he himself was "amazed" (Gk: thaumazo) onlytwice: once here and once in Matthew 8:5-13, at the faith of the centurion at Capernaum.

Mark 6:14-28: Neither Mark nor Matthew give the name of Herodias’ daughter. Josephus’Jewish Antiquities is our source for the name: Salome was the eldest daughter of Herodias andher first husband, Herod II (27 BC-AD 37). Salome (circa AD 14-after 62) was thus the step-daughter of Herod Antipas. All seven of Salome’s veils seem to be figments of Oscar Wilde’srather lurid imagination. Tori Bentley (Sisters of Salome, Yale: 2002) traces Salome’s salaciousdisplay to Wilde’s play Salome (1893). In a German translation, Wilde’s play provided thelibretto for Richard Strauss’ opera of the same name (1905). The dance was a popular subject formedieval artists, but their Salomes were always fully clothed.

Matthew refers to Salome as a korasion, a pre-pubescent girl (14:11). As not even thenotoriously depraved Herodias would have exposed her daughter to her husband’s courtiers indeshabille, one suspects that the real Salome’s dance was closer to a middle-school ballet recitalthan the ecdysiastic excesses of Mata Hari, Colette, Fanny Brice, Sally Rand, and a host of lessaccomplished exotics.

The decollation of John the Baptist was the least of troubles Herodias caused Herod Antipas. Herod’s first wife was Phasaelis, daughter of Aretas IV Philopatris, king of the Nabataeans(reigned 9 BC - AD 40). When Phasaelis learned of Antipas’ plans in AD 26, she fled to herfather’s court. Aretas was determined to avenge his daughter’s disgrace. As both he and Herodwere Roman clients, however, he had to bide his time. It was not until the winter of AD 36/7 thatAretas sensed that it was safe to invade Galilee. Herod appealed to Rome for help. The Romans,taking due care to wait until Herod had been thoroughly humiliated, sent an army south fromSyria to drive Aretas back into his own territory. Aretas withdrew before the Romans reached hiskingdom, and the death of the Roman emperor Tiberius in March 37 put an end to any furthermilitary action against the Nabataeans.

Mark 6:27: "soldier of the guard" ("executioner" in AV) = spekoulator, Mark's transcription ofthe Latin "speculator," originally army scouts but by Mark's time represented a pool ofdiscreet and reliable soldiers for special duties. Several such men were attached to aprovincial governor's staff, and each legion had its own contingent, too. They served ascouriers and intelligence agents. They were not "executioners" per se (those were the

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questionarii, who doubled as torturers and interrogators), but speculatores were oftenentrusted with sensitive missions outside of the scope of their nominal duties.

Mark, always in a hurry, has simply transliterated the Latin title into Greek (as he also doeswith kentureon, which the other NT authors translate as hekatontarchos, Greek for leader of100). Herod's order for John's execution is the just sort of a job which would have beenentrusted to the speculatores by a Roman governor of Mark's own day. Herod's guardsmanmay have had different titles, but the speculatores and the frumentarii (originally responsiblefor supplying the army with grain but from Domitian’s reign on the secret police) were wellknown to and greatly feared by ordinary Roman citizens as well.

Mark 6:45-52: William E Orchard (1877-1955) – trained as a Presbyterian but ordained as aCongregationalist minister and eventually converted to Roman Catholicism, once said “If Isaw a someone walking on the sea, I would not say, ‘This man is divine.’ I would say,‘Excuse me, do you mind doing that again? I didn’t see how you did it.’” (Quoted byTheodore Parker Ferris in What Jesus Did Oxford University Press 1963)

Mark 7:24-30: Tyre and Sidon once were Jewish territory, belonging to the tribes of Dan andAsher, but by Jesus’ day they were Greek cities and part of the Roman province of Syria.

The woman is a Greek (Hellenis) of Syrophoenician origin (i.e., from the coast of Syria). Theword translated “dog” (kynarion) is actually the diminutive of the normal Greek word for“dog” (kyon). Hilary of Poitiers (315-367) (followed by many later commentators) notes “Thedisparagement of ‘dogs’ was mitigated by the blandishment of a diminutive name.” ButKoine Greek often uses the diminutive form of nouns interchangeably with the base form, sothe “mitigation” may not have been deliberate. And in any case, as Amy-Jill Levine pointsout, being called a “little dog” is still an insult.

Jesus’ words may not actually need softening, for this story is but one of a number of similarstories circulating in both Greco-Roman and Jewish antiquity. These stories are invariablytold about an admired figure. They usually take the form of the great man, preoccupied withhigh affairs of state or policy, being reminded of his duty to the poor and powerless by one ofthe same. A few examples follow:

In his Life of Demetrius 42.5-8, Plutarch (AD 46-120) contrasts a bad king of Macedon(Demetrius Poliorcetes, reigned 294-288 BC) with a good one (Philip II, reigned 359-336BC):

Once when in some apparent fit of a more popular and acceptable temper he [Demetrius] was riding abroad, a number of people came up and presented their written petitions. Hecourteously received all these, and put them up in the skirt of his cloak, while the poorpeople were overjoyed, and followed him close. But when he came upon the bridge of theriver Axius, shaking out his cloak, he threw all into the river. This excited very bitterresentment among the Macedonians, who felt themselves to be not governed, butinsulted. They called to mind what some of them had seen, and others had heard relatedof King Philip's unambitious and open, accessible manners. One day when an old womanhad assailed him several times in the road and importuned him to hear her, after he hadtold her he had no time, "If so," cried she, "you have no time to be a king." And thisreprimand so stung the king that after thinking of it a while he went back into the house,and, setting all other matters apart, for several days together he did nothing else butreceive, beginning with the old woman, the complaints of all that would come.

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The Saturnalia by Macrobius (AD 395-423) tells of an old soldier who asked the EmperorAugustus (reigned 27 BC-AD 14) to appear as his advocate in a law suit. When the emperoroffered to send a representative to help the man, the soldier bared his scars and shouted,“When you needed help at Actium (31 BC), I didn’t send a substitute but came myself andearned these scars.” Whereupon the emperor complied with the man’s request.

Cassius Dio’s (AD 155-after 229) Roman History (LXIX.6) says that the Emperor Hadrian(reigned AD 117-138) was riding along on some urgent matter of state when he passed an oldwoman. She shouted “Emperor, hear my petition.” He replied “I haven’t time now.” “Thenstop being emperor,” she retorted. Whereupon the emperor got down off his high horse, satdown under a nearby tree, and heard her petition.

There’s also a story about Judah the Prince (2nd century AD), compiler of the first volumes ofthe Mishnah, which recorded in written form the “unwritten law” of the Pharisees and rabbis.Once there was a famine, and Judah had a store of food. He resolved to share it only withscholars. However, a poor and unlettered man pushed his way to the rabbi’s door and askedfor food. “Have you studied Torah, my son?” asked Judah. “No,” the man replied. “Then Ican give you no food,” said Judah. “But,” the man complained, “even a dog and a raven arefed.” Whereupon the rabbi fed the man.

And, finally, there’s the story of Judah and Tamar from Genesis 38:6-24

In his lecture for the Biblical Archaeology Society on “Honor and Shame: Core Values of theBiblical World,” Richard Rohrbaugh notes that Jesus engages in many honor/shame contestswith various people (Pharisees, lawyers, priests, Roman officials, and even the devil) in theGospels, but this is the only one he loses. At the very least, this puts the gentile mother in goodliterary company. In the Odyssey, Penelope is the only person who outwits the wily Odysseus,and of all Arthur Conan Doyle’s characters, only Irene Adler gets the better of Sherlock Holmes.

Regardless of all the foregoing, the gentile mother’s encounter with Jesus inspired one ofThomas Cranmer’s best-loved (and most despised) prayers, now an optional part of The Book ofCommon Prayer’s Holy Eucharist, Rite I:

We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our ownrighteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gatherup the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord whose property is always to havemercy. Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, andto drink his blood, that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us.

Mark 8:22-26: "I see men; but they look like trees, walking." Compare with this 3rd century BCinscription from the Asclepieum (temple of Asclepius) at Epidaurus, Greece.

Alcetas of Halleis. The blind man saw a dream. It seemed to him that the god came up tohim and with his fingers opened his eyes, and that he first saw the trees in the sanctuary.At daybreak he walked out sound. – Inscriptiones Graecae, 4.1.121 - 122, Stele 1.18

The process of obtaining a cure was called incubation. Incubation is derived from the Latinincubare, “to lie upon.” Enkoimesis is the Greek word for it. Persons in need of healingwould participate in a religious ritual, typically beginning with a cathartic ablution (bath), theoffering of a sacrifice: a bloodless cake for Asclepius and perhaps another offering forMnemosyne, the goddess of memory, so any healing dream would not be forgotten. One thenremoved all rings, girdles, and belts and put on a white robe and an olive wreath. One thenspent the night in the shrine’s abaton or enkoimeterion (“sleeping hall”), sleeping on a bundleof twigs or the hide of a sacrificed animal. If so inclined, the god would either heal the

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suppliant directly or appear in a dream and tell him what to do to be healed. Successful cureswere often commemorated with a votive inscription and gifts to the temple. Such gifts oftentook the form of a sculpture of the body part healed, rendered in the best material the gratefulperson could afford (see 1 Samuel 5-6?). There were many asclepieums in the ancient world,but the most famous was at Epidaurus, the birthplace of the god. While the asclepieums wereeventually suppressed by the Christian emperors, incubation survived in the Eastern Churchinto modern times, with the saint appropriate to one’s particular ailment being invokedinstead of Asclepius. For more, including some pictures of votive offerings, and links to much more on ancientmedicine, see http://www.hsl.virginia.edu/historical/artifacts/antiqua/healercults.cfm.

Mark 9:2-9 The Transfiguration

Verse 3 should read “such as no fuller on earth could bleach them.” Fullers were the “drycleaners” of the day. Their bleach was made from urine, often collected in public latrines that thefullers thoughtfully maintained outside their shops.

Many early commentators saw the Transfiguration as the fulfillment of Jesus' prophesy that"Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that thekingdom of God has come with power" (Mark 9:1). Other ancient sources saw it as prefiguringthe Second Coming.

Mark 9:30-37 “Who will be the greatest”

Passing through Galilee puts Jesus back in the territory of Herod and thus in danger of arrest. Inthe New International Version – which often opts for clarity over accuracy – verse 30 reads“Jesus did not want anyone to know where they were.”

By a “seductive myth,” the little child of verse 36 grew up to be St. Ignatius of Antioch,bishop and martyr.

Mark 9:38-50 “Whoever is not against us”

For verses 38-40 the parallel is Luke 9:49-50. Also compare with Numbers 11:24-29.

Verse 40 “Whosoever is not against us is for us.” Luke 9:49-50 is almost an exact parallel:same setting, different pronouns, “whoever is not against you is for you.” But . . .

In Matthew 12:22-37 and Luke 11:14-26, Jesus is accused of casting out demons throughBeelzebub. He replies “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather withme scatters.” Mark tells the same story in 3:22-34, but concludes that “whoever does the will ofGod is my brother and sister and mother.” Lest the faithful be confused, neither the old EpiscopalLectionary nor the current Revised Common Lectionary include the “Whoever is not with me isagainst me” passages in their Sunday propers.

Verse 41: Matthew 10:42 has the same quote, but in a different context.

For verses 42-48, the parallels are Matthew 18:6-9, 5:29-30, and Luke 17:1-2.

Verse 43: “hell” is Gehenna, the Greek transliteration of Hinnon, the valley outsideJerusalem where it is often said garbage was burned.

Verses 44 and 46 (omitted in most modern translations) appear in a few ancient manuscriptsand in the Authorized Version. They are identical to verse 48: “where their worm never dies, andthe fire is never quenched.” The allusion is to Isaiah 6:24's description of the Day of the Lord:“And they shall go out and look at the dead bodies of the people who have rebelled against me;

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for their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence toall flesh.”

For verses 49-50, the parallels are Matthew 5:13 and Luke 14:34-35.

Verses 49-50 “if salt has lost its saltiness”: this concept is “much discussed.” Mark, Matthew5:13, and Luke 14:34 all report this saying, although Matthew and Luke both put it in a differentcontext. Addressing the crowd in the sermon on the mount in Matthew, Jesus says “You are thesalt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer goodfor anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.” In Luke, the quote reads “Salt is good;but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?”

In real life (as opposed to proverb), of course, salt does not lose its saltiness, making Jesus’remark too Zen for many theologians. All sorts of fanciful explanations have been advanced,including that the “salt” Jesus mentioned isn’t really salt but some other sort of seasoning. Isuspect that if you’re worrying about the literal meaning of the words, you’re missing the point.Just as trying to parse the metallurgic technicalities of Chaucer’s “If gold rust, what will pooriron do?” is a waste of time.

Mark 10:1-9 The Question of Divorce

The Pharisees may be asking Jesus’ opinion of the “any matter” divorce. If so, his reply can beread as rejecting the “any matter” divorce, not divorce per se. The dispute over divorce was a hotbutton issue between the two great rabbinic schools of Shammai and Hillel. The dispute turnedon the interpretation of Deuteronomy 24:1-4, as outlined in the Babylonian Talmud:

Beth Shammai say: a man should not divorce his wife unless he has found her guilty of someunseemly conduct, as it says, because he hath found some unseemly thing in her. BethHillel, however, say [that he may divorce her] even if she has merely spoilt his food, since itsays, because he hath found some unseemly thing in her. R. Akiba says, [he may divorceher] even if he finds another woman more beautiful than she is, as it says, it cometh to pass, ifshe find no favour in his eyes. (http://www.come-and-hear.com/gittin/gittin_90.html)

Mark 10:17-31 The Rich Young Man

The parallels are Matthew 19:16-30 and Luke 18:18-30. There’s another parallel in the non-canonical Gospel of the Nazoreans, written about 100-160 and quoted by Origen (about 185-254). Origen knew it as the “Gospel of the Hebrews” and quotes its version of the encounterbetween Jesus and the rich man in his Commentary on Matthew 15.14. The Nazorean accountseems to involve two rich men, but we have no idea what the first rich man said or did, as thisfragment is all we’ve got of the story.

The second rich man said to him, “Teacher, what good do I have to do to live?” He said tohim, “Mister, follow the Law and the Prophets.” He answered, “I've done that.” He said tohim, “Go sell everything you own and give it away to the poor and then come and followme.” But the rich man didn't want to hear this and began to scratch his head. And the Lordsaid to him, “How can you say that you follow the Law and the Prophets? In the Law it says:‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Look around you: many of your brothers and sisters, sonsand daughters of Abraham, are living in filth and dying of hunger. Your house is full of goodthings and not a thing of yours manages to get out to them.” Turning to his disciple Simon,who was sitting with him, he said, “Simon, son of Jonah, it's easier for a camel to squeezethrough a needle's eye than for a wealthy person to get into heaven's domain.”

Verse 19: “do not defraud” = Leviticus 19: 11-13

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You shall not steal; you shall not deal falsely; and you shall not lie to one another. 12 Andyou shall not swear falsely by my name, profaning the name of your God: I am the Lord. 13You shall not defraud your neighbor; you shall not steal; and you shall not keep for yourselfthe wages of a laborer until morning.”

Matthew and Luke omit this “extra” commandment from their accounts of this encounter.

Verse 24: It was the Pharisees’ wealth that made it possible for them to live a righteous life(as they defined it), and worldly wealth had been traditionally seen as the reward for having liveda life pleasing to God. While we tend to interpret this incident as showing that wealth is anobstacle to salvation, the apostles were more likely thinking along the lines of “if the rich, whohave the means and the leisure to study and observe the Law can’t be saved, what hope do wewho are poor have?”

Verse 25: “easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.” The meaning of this phraseis “much discussed.” Some have speculated that the eye of the needle was the name of a gate tothe city that was so narrow that a camel had to be unloaded to pass through it. Unfortunately, nosuch gate exists, although Jerusalem tour guides will surely point one out to you if you ask.Others have noted that the Greek words for “camel” (kamelos) and “cable” (kamilos) are similar,and that “camel” may be a typographical error. Apparently both Greek words derive from theAramaic gamla, which means both a camel and “a large rope used to bind ships,” and some 9th

and 10th century texts of Matthew do read “cable” instead of “camel.” In English nautical usage, acamel is a pontoon used to lift a ship over shallow water or to refloat a sunken vessel, or a floatused as a buffer between a ship and the pier to which it is moored.

More to the point, however, the Babylonian Talmud contains several references to making“an elephant pass through the eye of a needle” as a metaphor for “doing the impossible.”Elephants were relatively well known in Babylon. The city had been the capital of the PersianEmpire and was later part of the Parthian and Sassanid empires, and elephants were a prominentpart of the armies of those empires. But pachyderms were rare in Palestine, where the camel wasthe largest land animal most people would have been familiar with. Other early Jewish sayingsinclude “A needle’s eye is not too narrow for two friends, but the world is not wide enough fortwo enemies” and “The Holy One [God] said, open for me a door as narrow as a needle’s eye,and I will open for you a door through which may enter tents and herds.”

Mark 10:35-45 John and James Ask a Favor

The parallels are Matthew 20:20-28 (for the whole story) and Luke 22:24-27 (for vv. 42-45 only).

Verse 35: James and John have been with Jesus from the first days of his ministry, and bothwere witnesses to the Transfiguration. With Peter, they seem to form the innermost circle ofJesus’ friends and companions.

Verse 37: in Matthew’s account, it is James and John’s mother who asks for them, althoughJesus addresses his answer not to her but to her sons. Luke omits the entire exchange betweenJesus and the brothers and attaches the gist of Mark 10:42-45 to his account of the earlier disputeamong the disciples as to which of them was the greatest (Mark 9:33-34). Jesus told the disciplesthat they would sit on thrones when he came in glory in Matthew 19:28 and Luke 22:30. JohnChrysostom (347-407) suggested that the brothers made their request because they assumed –despite what Jesus had repeatedly told them – that Jesus would establish an earthly kingdom inJerusalem.

Verse 40: “not mine to grant” Read by the Arian heretics to prove that “the Father is greaterthan the Son.”

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Verse 41: “When the ten heard this” Who told them?

Verse 43: “servant” The Greek here is diakonos. A slave as such was a doulos, a word theNRSV often translates as “servant,” or a pais, the primary meaning of which is“child.” In ancientGreece and Rome, just as in the antebellum United States, male slaves of any age were forever“boys.”

Greco-Roman social clubs were governed by elected boards of elders (presbuteros). They (orthe general membership) elected an overseer (episkopos) to manage the day-to-day affairs of theclub, and he appointed ministers (diakonos) to assist him. Paul used diakonos to mean a“servant” or “minister” in a general way. In Acts 6:1-6, the disciples asked their followers toelect “seven men of good repute” to serve (diakonia) the poor, freeing the apostles for prayer andpreaching. By the time 1 Timothy 3:8-13 and Philippians 1:1 were written, the word had acquireda technical ecclesiastical meaning. As late as the time of Clement of Rome (died c. 101), theWestern Church was using episkopos and presbuteros interchangeably, while Ignatius ofAntioch (c. 30-115), was already distinguishing between them. This suggests that the emergenceof the three orders of ordained ministry (bishops, presbyters, and deacons) occurred earlier in theEast than in Rome. Although now freighted with divisive theological overtones, the Englishwords “bishop” and “priest” are no more than the result of a long and unequal struggle betweenAnglo-Saxon tongues and the Greek words episkopos and presbuteros.

In 595 the Patriarch of Constantinople adopted the title “Ecumenical Patriarch” – “Patriarchof All the World.” Pope Gregory the Great complained that this usurped Rome's traditional placeas first among the five original patriarchies. When his eastern counterpart refused to compromise,Gregory retaliated by styling himself servus servorum dei, “servant of the servants of God.” Readin the context of today’s Gospel, this was indeed a two-edged sword: By putting himself last,Gregory reclaimed first place. He also strongly implied that those whom he did not serve – i.e.,those who did not accept his leadership – were not the servants of God.

Mark 10:46-52 Blind Bartimaeus

Jericho is about 15 miles northwest of Jerusalem. It was on the road from Jerusalem to Jerichothat Jesus set the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37).

The parallels are Matthew 20:29-34 and Luke 18:35-43. The discrepancies among the threeaccounts of what is clearly (by its setting and dialogue) a single incident have much disturbedcommentators. Matthew says there were two blind men (neither of whom he names), while Lukesays the healing occurred as Jesus approached Jericho. The exposition of John Gill (1697-1771)is typical of literalist befuddlement:

Mark and Luke make mention but of one; which is no contradiction to Matthew; for theyneither of them say that there was but one. A greater difficulty occurs in Luke's account; forwhereas Matthew and Mark both agree, that it was when Jesus came out of Jericho, that thiscure was wrought, Luke says it was "when he came nigh unto it"; which some reconcile byobserving, that that phrase may be rendered, "while he was near Jericho"; and so onlysignifies his distance from it, and not motion to it; but this will not solve the difficulty,because we after read of his entrance into it, and passing through it. Some therefore havethought, that Christ met with, and cured one blind man before he entered the city, and anotherwhen he came out of it and that Matthew has put the history of both together: but to me itseems, that there were three blind men cured; one before he went into Jericho, which Lukeonly relates, and two as he came out of Jericho, which Matthew here speaks of; and one ofwhich, according to Mark, was by name Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus; for so Bartimaeussignifies.

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More to the point, perhaps, is that Matthew is famous for “seeing double.” His account of theGerasene demoniac (Matthew 8:28-34) features two possessed men while Mark 5:1-20 and Luke8:26-39 only report one. And Matthew 21:1-11 has Jesus riding two animals – a donkey and herfoal – into Jerusalem; in Mark 11:1-11 and Luke 19:28-40, Jesus makes do with one.

Verse 46: It is unusual for Mark to name the person cured, but here he does so. This has alsoaroused much speculation, but as Mark does not explain why he gave the name, we’ll neverknow. Bartimaeus is “the son (bar in Aramaic – ben is the Hebrew equivalent) of Timaeus.”

Verse 47: “son of David” is a messianic title (2 Samuel 7:12-16, 1 Chronicles 17:11-14, allPsalm 89:28-37 promise that the throne of David’s son “shall be established forever.”). In Mark,the epithet appears only twice: here and 12:35-40, where Jesus asks “How can the scribes say thatthe Messiah is the son of David? . . . David himself calls him Lord, so how can he be his son?”Peter at the Transfiguration and Bartimaeus are the only sane humans who identify Jesus as themessiah in Mark’s account, and Peter seems to have promptly forgotten his flash of insight.

Verse 50: Chris Haslam notes that Mark often uses the abandonment of garments to “indicatethat someone was leaving behind the old order . . . . Mark probably uses the word ‘cloak’ here tosymbolize this . . . However [The New Oxford Annotated Bible] says the ‘cloak’ is Bartimaeus’outer garment.” Sometimes a cigar is only a cigar . . . more significant, perhaps, is Bartimaeus’leap of faith: if Jesus can’t or won’t heal him, how will the blind man find his coat again?

Verse 51: “My teacher” is rabbouni in Mark’s text, the same word used by Mary Magdalenein John 20:16. Oddly, the NIV renders it as “rabbi” in Mark and “rabboni” in John.

Verse 51: “My teacher, let me see again”: in another of his more Zen footnotes, ChrisHaslam says “Bartimaeus makes his intent clear: he wishes to understand Jesus’ teachings and tobe healed of blindness; he is not seeking the political independence of Israel.” Greek is aremarkably concise language, but to cram all that into a three word sentence – particularly as oneof the three words is rabbouni – is a bit of a stretch!

Dennis R. MacDonald’s The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark suggests that Mark“transvalued” the Homeric epics, trading on certain basic similarities to underline the superiorityof Jesus to the ancient heroes. Both Mark’s Jesus and Homer’s Odysseus “sail seas withassociates far their inferiors.” Both stories feature gods stilling storms at sea and walking on thewater, “meals for thousands at the shore, and monsters in caves.”“Both oppose supernaturalfoes . . . and prophesy their own returns in the third person.” Both descend to the dead and returnalive, and both find their father’s house infested with thieves.

MacDonald pairs the healing of Bartimaeus with Odysseus’ encounter with the blind seerTiresias. While admitting that the parallels between the two stories “are not particularly dense orsequential,” MacDonald asserts “they are distinctive and interpretable.”

Mark usually follows an Aramaic term like Bartimaeus with its explanation, but here (v. 46)he gives the explanation first: the Greek reads, “the son of Timaeus, Bartimaeus” (everyEnglish translation I checked has inexplicably reversed Mark’s Greek), paralleling Homer’s“the soul of Theban Tiresias.”

In Mark 10:47, Bartimaeus addresses Jesus as “Son of David, Jesus” (in the Greek, but not inthe NRSV’s English). In Matthew Bartimaeus says, “Lord, son of David,” and in Luke it’s“Jesus, son of David.” But Mark’s order does match Tiresias’ greeting to Odysseus, “Son ofLaertes, of the seed of Zeus, Odysseus.” (This would be more convincing if Tiresias’ form ofaddress were unique to him, but nearly all of Tiresias’ fellow ghosts address Odysseus withthat same formula.)

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The cloak Bartimaeus threw off in v. 50 was a himation, “the very garment ancient artistsmost often draped over Tiresias.” (This, too, would be more convincing if himation were notMark’s every-day word for a man’s outer cloak or coat!)

Both Tiresias and Bartimaeus are blind men who see what others – Odysseus and his crew,and Jesus’ disciples, respectively – cannot. In fact, even Odysseus’ mother’s ghost cannotrecognize her son until Tiresias tells the hero how to restore her sight by letting her drink theblood of the bull Odysseus has sacrificed. Both, too, were apparently not born blind: Tiresiaswas struck blind by Hera, and Bartimaeus asks “Let me see again.”

Even MacDonald must admit, however, that Mark has “crafted a strong contrast with theepic, an emulation.” After giving his prophecy, Tiresias disappears back into the underworld,“still blind and dead,” while Bartimaeus receives his sight and follows Jesus to Jerusalem.

MacDonald is not the first to see Christian prophesy in Homer. The Church Father Clementof Alexandria (about 150-215) also mentions Tiresias in his Protrepticus (Exhortation to theHeathens XII), although he draws no explicit parallel with Bartimaeus:

Come thou also, O aged man, leaving Thebes, and casting away from thee both divinationand Bacchic frenzy, allow thyself to be led to the truth. I give thee the staff [of the cross] onwhich to lean. Haste, Tiresias; believe, and thou wilt see. Christ, by whom the eyes of theblind recover sight, will shed on thee a light brighter than the sun; night will flee from thee,fire will fear, death will be gone; thou, old man, who saw not Thebes, shalt see the heavens.

Mark 13:24-37 Mark’s Apocalypse

Compare with Daniel 7:9-14, Matthew 24:29-42, and Luke 21:27-36.

Seneca the Younger (4 BC-AD 65) offers a similar vision by way of consolation to his friendMarcia on the death of her son:

For, if the common fate can be a solace for your yearning, know that nothing will abidewhere it is now placed, that time will lay all things low and take all things with it. And notsimply men will be its sport - for how small a part are they of Fortune's domain! - but places,countries, and the great parts of the universe. It will level whole mountains, and in anotherplace will pile new rocks on high; it will drink up seas, turn rivers from their courses, and,sundering the communication of nations, break up the association and intercourse of thehuman race; in other places it will swallow up cities in yawning chasms, will shatter themwith earthquakes, and from deep below send forth a pestilential vapour; it will cover withfloods the face of the inhabited world, and, deluging the earth, will kill every living creature,and in huge conflagration it will scorch and burn all mortal things. And when the time shallcome for the world to be blotted out in order that it may begin its life anew, these things willdestroy themselves by their own power, and stars will clash with stars, and all the fiery matterof the world that now shines in orderly array will blaze up in a common conflagration. Thenalso the souls of the blest, who have partaken of immortality, when it shall seem best to Godto create the universe anew - we, too, amid the falling universe, shall be added as a tinyfraction to this mighty destruction, and shall be changed again into our former elements.Happy, Marcia, is your son, who already knows these mysteries!

Mark 15:34: Both the Aramaic and the Greek can be read as "why have you left me behind?" Itwas therefore a favorite proof-text for the Separationists, the early heretics who believed thatJesus was a mortal man on whom the Christ Spirit or an angel descended at his baptism and fromwhom it departed just before he died. Some extreme anti-Separationsists among the earlycommentators quote this verse as "why have you mocked me?"

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Mark 15:38: || Mark 1:10: Mark frames his story with these passages, which mark thebeginning and end of Jesus' earthly ministry. The curtain of the temple is torn in two when Jesusdies, just as Jesus saw the heavens torn open at his baptism. According to Josephus (Jewish War5.5.4), the curtain, which hung outside the doors of the “holy house” in the inner court of thetemple,

was a Babylonian curtain, embroidered with blue, and fine linen, and scarlet, and purple, andof a contexture that was truly wonderful. Nor was this mixture of colors without its mysticalinterpretation, but was a kind of image of the universe; for by the scarlet there seemed to beenigmatically signified fire, by the fine flax the earth, by the blue the air, and by the purplethe sea; two of them having their colors the foundation of this resemblance; but the fine flaxand the purple have their own origin for that foundation, the earth producing the one, and thesea the other. This curtain had also embroidered upon it all that was mystical in the heavens,excepting that of the signs [of the Zodiac], representing living creatures.

Mark 15:39: As always, Mark in a hurry. He doesn’t bother to translate “centurion” into itsGreek equivalent hekatontarchos (“leader of 100") as the other Gospels do. He simplytransliterates it as kenturion. This adds weight to the suggestion that he’s writing for a Romanaudience, or at least one located in western parts of the empire where Latin predominated, whilearguing against Syria, the scholarly consensus’ second guess after Rome for the target audience.

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