Sara(h) / Abra(ha)m

The following question was put to Dr Massey:

Q:  A colleague who goes by her birth-certificate name Sarah recounts that she was accosted by a fellow who admonished her to identify as (that ill-omened coinage)  “Sara”, the initial designation of Abraham’s wife, on the grounds that the -h conferred later was “honorific”. --  Now indeed the name patriarch himself, originally Abram,  likewise later achieved an extension, honoris causâ.
Question:  Is it alphabetically the same h in both cases?  And is there any sense in describing it (assuming they be the same) as an “honorific affix” (the way -ón in Spanish can be an augmentative affix), or is there nothing morphosemantically lofty about the names themselves, which merely happen to have been conferred for the purposes of honor?

The good doctor replied by return of post:

A: The person who told her this was simply wrong across the board. First off, the Matriarch's original name was not Sara, but Sarai. When her name is changed to Sarah is is simply moving to the Hebrew version of her original Aramaic name, both of which mean something like "princess."

I don't read the name changes as conferring honor at all. In the case of Abram --> Abraham, we have an actual semantic change, Exalted Father --> Father of a Multitude. In the case of Sarai--> Sarah, it might be similar to a man named Mohamed changing his name to Muhammad, i.e., making the name more purely Arabic.

The Hebrews seemed aware that, while they spoke their own distinct Semitic language, their origins had Aramaic swirling around. Deut 26:5, "My father was a wandering Aramean," referring to the Patriarchal age. NB also Gen 31:47, in which Laban, Jacob's uncle, calls a memorial stone by an Aramaic name, but Jacob gives it a Hebrew name.

The final h in feminine names and nouns in Hebrew is vocalic, not consonantal. It's equivalent to the taa' marbuta. As a result, it is added by convention in English transliteration, but unnecessary. Sara and Sarah are the same name, basically.

All’s for the best, in this best of all squirrely worlds

There is a parable somewhere, probably among the Muslims, concerning one small helpless creature -- let us posit:  a mouse -- who got trapped somewhere on a lofty cliff;  yet survived, and lived to an old age, because each day, without fail, winging its way across hundreds of miles  of depthless chasms and fearsome crags, a bird came, bearing in its beak  the daily sustenance of that grateful mouse.

And thus we learn, O ye faithful, that God  the maker of all things, who raised the firmament upon the pillars of the Earth,  doth provide, in weal and in ill, for all his creatures.

(So endeth the lesson for today.)

~

The other day, expecting company, I finally swept the deck.  Yet between the planks, little bits of things were wedged, which the broom could not dislodge.  I considered fetching a knife or a screwdriver to try to pry the things out;  but then thought, de minimis.

Now, this morning, this sweet silent Sunday, to my surprise and delight, that gentle little squirrel (smallest of all her kind) whom I wed last week  while in a state of sciurine metempsychosis (for I am far too old-fashioned to contemplate cross-species matrimony), returned to our back deck.  (You can read all about our nuptials  here.)  Now, the deck had been swept, whereon she might browse at ease and nibble her fill :  Yet lo!  From out those very cracks, her tiny paws did daintily dig  a sufficiency of tasty seed, preserved there faithfully from the wind or from consumption by larger creatures,  to keep her coat fluffy, her tail frisky, her black eyes bright!  --  My belovèd!  My bride!

 

[Theological update]   Biblical scholars have pointed out that the above anecdote, and its moral, ratify the wisdom of the Torah:

And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not make clean riddance of the corners of thy field when thou reapest, neither shalt thou gather any gleaning of thy harvest: thou shalt leave them unto the poor, and to the squirrel.

-- Leviticus 23:22 (my own translation)

 

This Puts Matters in an Entirely New Light

For days now, heart-wrenching tales of furloughed feds have been pouring in.  I myself have had to sell my mother-in-law into slavery to raise money to buy brandy, and we have been reduced to burning our sèvres in the hibachi to keep warm.

Yet now, we read, Congress is considering offering back-pay in full to federal workers for the time missed -- exempt and non-exempt alike.  A remarkable application of the lesson from the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard!

Les ouvriers de la onzième heure, se rendant à la caisse

And this (ahem ahem) changes matters considerably.  Upon mature reflection, I have come to the realization that the Teabaggers are right:   This shutdown needs to go on, and on, and on…

Herewith, then, a revised list of our Minimum Demands, before a Continuing Resolution can be brought to a vote:

(1)  Further analysis has made plain that the key to runaway medical costs is not Obamacare (after all, such inflation has been going on for years), but the practice of medicine itself.  Solution:  Abolish all doctors, and return to a system of cupping and leeches, applied by barbers.

(2)  Too long have simple folk suffered under the paternalist East-Coast elitist insistence that two plus two equals four!  This has got to stop.

Some of our hardliners have been holding out for “five” or even higher;  but in the spirit of irenic compomise, the Republican Caucus offers an official figure of “four and a smidgeon”.

(3)  Effective immediately, the National Bird shall be the dodo.  (The appropriateness of this symbolism is obvious.)

Detective Special: the Case of Potiphar’s Wife

We all recall the story of Joseph in the Torah, retold (or told independently, depending on your theological point of view) in Surah XII of the Koran:  how Potiphar’s wife did lust in her heart after the shapely, youthful, clean-limbed body of Joseph (his rich Semitic chevelure glistening brilliantly as sapphire);  how she (her heated breath coming in snatches now), her matronly breast heaving -- enfin bref, you know the story.  She made a pass at him, he refused her advances and ran from the room;  she clutched at his cloak as he fled.

(Me, I woulda been tempted.  But that's me.)

Later she accused him of having assaulted her (the only instance in recorded history of a woman falsely accusing a man of impropriety).  Things begin to look grim for our virile young Hebrew, whose powerful loins and unslaked stallion energies -- but no need to repeat what we all learned long ago in Hebrew school (bzw. Sunday school bzw madrasa).  

(Notice the little doggie, taking it all in.  Nice touch.)

 Anyhow:  He was about to be lynched, when a courtier, one Thutmose Holmes, cannily observed:

“If his cloak be torn at the front, he is guilty;

 if torn at the back  -- she lies.”

(Dayy-um!  Mrs. Potiphar is a MILF ! )

[ ©God, 3000 BC.  All Rights Reserved for the movie version, 

 y compris en URSS, and in Taliban-controled regions of Afghanistan.]

Nay, prithee, unhand me!

(A little lower, please.)

Afternote, to restore  the Biblical balance:   For an OT story with the gender roles reversed, recall "Susanna and the Elders".  In this case, the canny detective is Daniel.

Here, purely for comparison purposes, is a portrait of that ancient outrage:

Actually, we cannot but note, though the gender roles are reversed as regards solliciation and false testimony, sartorially, nothing is different:  in both cases it is the young lady, and not the gentlemen, who has omitted to put on her blouse.

Indeed, in the following instance (here added for scholarly background), the lass appears to have mislaid her knickers as well:

~

Such Bible memories  thronged anew to my mind, as I read the reports of the notorious case of the recent French train derailment, in which many were injured and seven died.   An éclisse (a splicebar or fishplate that joins sections of rails)  had somehow broke loose from its moorings despite four strong bolts.  

Many suspect the cause as being sabotage;  alert readers comment:

Une éclisse bien conçue est capable du service normal avec un boulon cassé le temps entre deux inspections et supporter le passage de nombreux trains.
Pour que les différents boulons d'une éclisse cassent ensemble il faut bien qu'il y ait une cause extérieure.
Il y a deux possibilités :
- tassements du sol
- sabotage

Marion Delgado -- "Live Like Him!" (-- the Weathermen)

---

Pour moi il est évident que c'est un sabotage.
Ayant personnellement travaillé au démontage de rails à une époque ou tout juste sorti
d'apprentissage je travaillais pour une société de montage ou nous démontions des voies désaffectées afin de récupérer les traverses de chemin de fer,
il fallait pour parvenir à démonter les éclisses chauffer les écrous pour les desserrer et parfois même les découper au chalumeau.
Il est impossible que quatre écrous d'éclisse ce soit desserrer tout seul et soient sortis de leur logement simultanément.

----

Les rails de la gare de Brétigny ont été vérifiés le 4 juillet.
Neuf jours après, quatre gros boulons de 35 mm, boulonnés très fort sur d'énormes rondelles anti desserrage grower se dévissent tout seuls et l'éclisse qui pèse plus de 10KG vient par malchance se loger dans l'aiguillage qui est plus loin.
Des boulons derviches-tourneurs, une éclisse sauteuse : c'est nouveau,
ça vient de sortir.

All this should have been cleared up in the subsequent investigation.   Yet it looks to be a whitewash -- a cover-up:

Scène du drame non protégée, scellés judiciaires non conformes, pièces à conviction égarées… Dans des documents, que Le Figaro a consultés, les juges d'instruction déplorent un certain nombre d'anomalies au cours de l'enquête préliminaire menée par le parquet d'Évry après l'accident du train Paris-Limoges le 12 juillet.

l'accident qui a coûté la vie à sept personnes

«constatons que sur l'un des rails (observations réalisées après le débâchage de l'aiguillage, NDLR) une fiche cartonnée plastifiée de scellé judiciaire a été fixée par des scotchs portant la mention “Police nationale. Scellé. Ne pas ouvrir”». Exemple encore: la numérotation SNCF des wagons accidentés «ne correspond pas à la numérotation des scellés».

http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2013/09/11/01016-20130911ARTFIG00480-accident-de-bretigny-les-anomalies-de-l-enquete-preliminaire.php?m_i=lIilVHUqJTAo7aYfjxSuFQxQLD6jEEUhFu7UL8FDL7D926hli

Sabotage would be bad enough;  but the government claims it was all an accident, allez circulez nothing to see here;  yet its “investigation” is a farce.   And it is left to a Reader’s Comment to ask the crucial, Thutmose-Holmesian question:

Le saut de l'éclisse vers la pointe de l'aiguillage s'est-il fait :
dans le sens de la marche ?
ou en arrière ?
Si quelqu'un sait, merci.

Was the splicebar found forward, or aft of the train ?  Voilà le hic!

At once the air’s aswarm with urgent questions:

* Who was behind the dastardly attack?

* Who was behind the attackers?

* Whom is the government trying to protect?

* When will an outraged public begin demanding answers?

* Which shadowy tycoon made drastic last-minute changes to his investment portfolio, just minutes prior to the “accident”?

* Why would the préfecture be so tight-lipped -- are they hiding something, or are they just scared?

* What does the Prime Minister know, that he’s not telling?

* And is al-Qaeda involved -- or is that just what they want you to think ???

If these questions and others yet darker  are causing your cortex to broil in its brainpan,  , then you are ready to begin the Adventure.  Click here -- if you dare !!

 ~ The Riemann Conspiracy ~

(La conspiration Riemann)

There’s got to be a connection here somewhere.

*

Si cela vous parle,

savourez la série noire

en argot authentique d’Amérique :

http://www.linguasacrapublishing.com/justiceexcerptdivorce.html

*

[Update]  Since this disjointed series of thinkings-aloud  seems to lack any central point (other than the covert one of selling more Murphy books), I might as well free-associate some more.

The Joseph-and-Potiphar’s-wife scenario reappears in the picaresque novel of Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews (1742), whose eponymous hero flees the erotic attentions of Mrs. Booby.  But more than recalling that Biblical prototype and homonym, Joseph Andrews is intending as a parody of Pamela in Richardson’s wildly successful sugary-weepy novel of the same name.

-- Well.  I’d better cut my fancy short, lest it wander ever farther afield -- on this blog, all roads lead to hamsters.  (By the way, did you ever notice that they are remarkably cute?)

Cute.  QED.

~

Ah!  Another.

Joseph managed to dodge the bullet, thanks to some clever detectival reasoning;  it went less well with chaste Hippolytus, slain by the wiles of a woman scorned.

Je le vis, je rougis, je pâlis à sa vue

[Update May 2016]  And now this, from the American Bar Association:

Wise-cracking, hard-boiled Supreme Court Justice  cracks the case !!!
http://www.abajournal.com/mobile/mag_article/solving_mysteries_lawyers_play_detective_in_legal_writing

Word of the Day: “shibboleth”

Since most of you have pretty much memorized your Bibles (right?), you hardly need me to remind you of the origin of -- well, not the word, but the political significance of the word, shibboleth.

The word is Hebrew.  It denotes an ear of grain, as does the Arabic cognate, sunbulah (which itself figures in the Koran).  Noticing the Hebrew sh- versus Arabic s-, you can already guess where this is going.

Turns out that the Gileadites and the Ephraimites  (hey, not knocking either of them; some of my best friends are Ephraimites)  pronounced this word differently, sort of along the lines of thhrrrrrrty-thhrrrrrd street  versus  toity-toid street.   Let the Old Testament tell it:

Gilead then cut Ephraim off from the fords of the Jordan, and whenever Ephraimite fugitives said, 'Let me cross,' the men of Gilead would ask, 'Are you an Ephraimite?' If he said, 'No,' they then said, 'Very well, say "Shibboleth" (שבלת).' If anyone said, "Sibboleth" (סבלת), because he could not pronounce it, then they would seize him and kill him by the fords of the Jordan. Forty-two thousand Ephraimites fell on this occasion.

    —Judges 12:5-6

Since that time, the word has passed into common usage -- not (obviously) denoting an ear of corn,  nor even with phonetic reference  (Wikipedia is here misleading in suggesting that the original “Judges” scenario is still foremost in people’s minds):  but rather referring to some meme or catch-phrase, to which obeissance must be paid, in certain self-defined groups.

Yet it turns out that there is a much more contemporary (by a couple of millennia) version of this, in which life or death really did turn upon the articulation of a phoneme:  the “Parsley Massacre” of 1937, where over ten thousand Haitians were slaughtered by Dominicans -- not in the context of any upheaval, but  apparently  simply on a whim. 

It earned the moniker Parsley Massacre because some soldiers carried a parsley sprig and asked suspected Haitians to pronounce the Spanish word for it, perejil. Mispronunciation of the “R” in the word – difficult for native creole speakers – was enough to get you killed.

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2012/1009/Haitians-Dominicans-try-to-move-beyond-Parsley-Massacre-s-long-shadow

Linguistically interesting -- actually, for speakers of Parisian French both the Spanish “r” and the  Spanish “j” present articulatory problems.   But psychopolitically interesting as well, in that (note):

(a)  Many more people died that day  than died on 9/11.

(b)  As a proportion of the Haitian population, way more.

(c)  You’ve never heard of this.

(d)  You don’t care.

Just sayin’…

“Revelation” revealed

My least-favorite book of the Bible -- by far, by far -- is Revelation.  A provocative, well-written article on the subject, by the always-interesting and wide-ranging author Adam Gopnik, can be consulted here:

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2012/03/05/120305crbo_books_gopnik?currentPage=all

Aldaily also links to it today -- but in a very odd way.  Here is their come-on:

Who but Elaine Pagels can drain the melodrama from the Book of Revelation, turning the climactic confrontation between good and evil into an anti-Christian polemic?...

As a Christian, I am certainly no shill for anti-Christian polemics.  But this aldaily blurb is truly off.   All I’ve read of Pagels so far is The Gnostic Gospels;   scholarly, non-polemical.   The new book, don’t know, though from Gopnik’s summary, more along those same lines.  But the real problem is, these ALD blurbs normally summarize the attitude of the article itself -- in this case, the one in The New Yorker, and not the book that is there mentioned (and indeed, the article is more than just a review).  And Adam Gopnik, in his sympathetic account,  in no way whatever  accuses Pagels of “draining the melodrama” from the Book of Revelation.  -- A revealingly stupid phrasing, btw.  “Draining the drama”, passe encore;  the problem with Revelation is precisely that (to this finite mind at least) it is mostly (mere) melodrama.

[Note:  Although I value Aldaily for its links,  in its blurbs  it does perpetrate stupidities  with more than chance frequency: compare here:
http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-neuroscience-porn.html  ]

~

Well… une précision.

It is certainly possible that Revelation is divinely inspired, but in a way  simply not proportional to our understanding:  like a book in a language  we cannot read.  In that case, it were wise to demote its place in the canon, on the grounds that, ourselves being who we are, it is likely only to work mischief.

As always when in a quandary, I turn to my spiritual advisor, Dr. Massey.  He explains the position of his own denomination thus:

The Orthodox Church does not specifically reject the Apocalypse as uncanonical. It does not, however, include a reading from it in any of her liturgies. The result is that, while the Orthodox technically accept the canon of the wider historical church, the book is virtually uncanonical in the sense that it does not, by definition, have any authority within the church.

~

Pagels’ book apparently contains a lot of scholarly euhemerism;  Gopnik compares “Revelation”, in this regard, to a political cartoon.

Pagels was not the first to notice the historical background  to this or any other book of the Bible; nor is there anything anti-Christian about publishing whatever scholarship can afford.  Thus, in the Catholic Bible de Jérusalem (translated as The Jerusalem Bible, a new and heavily annotated recension), we read, in reference to Rev. 8:2,

The rider on the white horse (symbol of victory) represents the Parthians, identified by the bow, their favourite weapon.  They were the terror of the Roman world in the 1^st. cent.

Make ... my ... day ........

These are the ‘wild beasts’ of v.8 (i.e. victorious pagan nations; cf. Dt 7:22; Ezk 34:28; Jr 15:2-4 …) The Parthian invasion is described in the vision of 9:13f.  One tradition identified the rider with the Messiah, as in 19:11-16.

Thus the wise and clear-eyed comments of the Historical Church.

Parthian, scaring the bejazus out of the Romans

~

The panoply of Christian denominations and currents of thought  can scarcely be reduced to a linear formula.  But it’s fun to try.   Here is an attempted bijection between styles of thought  and books of the Bible.

(1) Old Testament Christians.

These, originally, were the grim, dour Chapel folk who founded America.

In a completely different incarnation, there is the LDS, whose Book of Mormon is reminiscent of nothing so much as the OT.  (Which is rather the problem, for ordinary Christians.  It’s not as though More O.T. -- more tribes and begats -- was what we needed….)

(2a) Gospel Christians

[by this I mean:  those taking inspiration principally from the four gospels]

Sterling examples:  G.K. Chesterton;  St. Francis.

(2b) Pauline Christians

Mainline Protestants, mainstream go-to-Mass Catholics.

(2c)  Book-of-Revelation Christians.

These folks are dangerous.  These are the ones who think it’d be just swell if Israel went off and nuked somebody -- Iran or whoever -- thus touching off Armageddon, a necessary step towards the Rapture, in which every parishoner in the (Paris, Texas) Good-is-Gold Two-Seeds-in-the-Spirit by-gum Holy Jesus Baptist Church (a split-off from the Silver-Spirit three-strikes-and-you’re-out My Messiah Anadunking Chapel), and no one else, is going straight to the good place, and y’all others  straight to the bad place, Aye-MEN.

And so.  Of the true meaning, and the true value, of the Book of Revelation, I know nothing, or less than that.  But verily, verily, I say unto you: it should not be put into the hands of children and Teabaggers.

*

Travaillant au noir,

le détective  se trouve aux prises

avec le Saint-Esprit

C’est quoi, le péchéirrémissible ???

*

[Note:  I am fudging a bit, in ascribing (or, rather, merely, matching-up) Chestertonian and Franciscan views -- those I most admire, those closest to my own -- to the Gospels.   The souce of such visions as theirs, I imagine, is not so much Biblical as personal, experiential.   Certainly I myself can cite no chapter-and-verse  to justify such effusions as these:  Ducks; Penguins; Woodchucks.]

Ask Dr. Massey (II)

If you want water, you must go to the well.

Q (from Dr J): Belloc claims that Justification by Faith Alone was an afterthought, and that Luther's prime motivation was the denial of priestly power.
Comments?

A (from Dr K): I really can't go along with that. First, Luther and the movement after him continued to have a role for an ordained minister of the Word *AND* Sacrament. And abundant writings by the man confirm his overarching focus on the heresy of Sola Fide, to include adding the word "alone"  (allein) where the Greek does not have it in Romans 3:28. So it wasn't a mere afterthought. It was the lens through which he viewed everything else.

Interestingly, the sermon I delivered on Sunday at my Church was on Luther and this point. I had read from Galatians 2:15ff which states that we are saved by Faith and not by works of the Law. Then the priest read from the Gospels about the soil that fell on various qualities of soil. And the visual I used in the sermon was to hold up to the congregation the seemly though simple green hard bound book of the Apostolikon (the book of the epistles for readings at Church) and then showed the book the priest had read, three times the size and gilded. And I made the point that any casual observer would certainly not assume that our community considers anything in the Apostolikon to outrank what is in that Gilded book. But yet that is exactly what Martin Luther did, and then even interprets Jesus in light of St. Paul. (For instance, the story of the Sheep and the Goats in which salvation is meeted out "according to what each has *done* in way of acts of charity flies in the face of the quietist tendencies of a dogmatic Sola Fide community.)

(I have penned a meditation upon this subject, lightly disguised as a detective-story, in “Lost and Found”, collected in I Don’t Do Divorce Cases.)