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you
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I must tell you I'm so pleased that the
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interdisciplinary Humanities Center the UCSB Arts & Lectures my own department
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religious studies and congregation B'nai B'rith where I'm a member the Jewish
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Federation of Santa Barbara and the Santa Barbara Hillel have joined the Talmud Foundation to sponsor this event
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all of us know that the Bible is a foundational document for who we are and
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it can be read and understood in so many ways it will tell us about the history of ancient Israel it will tell us about
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the politics of ancient Israel will tell us about the economies of ancient Israel and it will reveal something of the
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material culture of ancient Israel and of course Israel's long wrestling
1:20
with the sacred Robert alter his professor of Hebrew and comparative
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literature at UC Berkeley where he has taught and written for 40 years he is
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arguably one of the most influential scholars writing on the Hebrew Bible as
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a literary text he is the author of a huge number of influential scholarly in
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popular books among those books of so so
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much importance are the art of biblical narrative which he published in 1983 and
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then four years later the art of biblical poetry both of these works have
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revealed new understandings of the biblical of biblical hebrew prose and poetry his genesis translation and
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commentary which he published in 1997 has been universally received with the
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highest praise his literary guide to the Bible which he published in 1990 which
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he edited with Frank Kermode is now one of the standard scholarly works that we
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use day in and day out in biblical studies to understand the literary dimensions of the Hebrew Bible
2:37
professor alter has been described by the New York Sun as one of the best literary scholars
2:45
alive and thanks to our friends at borders several of Professor alters
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books are available for purchase and for signing immediately after his
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presentation but I must tell you that we've invited him because of this the
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five books of Moses translated by Robert alter which he published in 2004 this is
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stunning it's absolutely beautiful too I mean the feel of it has this wonderful slipcover the type and the font is just
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stunning it is a stunning translation and it contains a commentary which is
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the synthesis of traditional sources and literally decades and decades of
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scholarly commentary in this translation
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he resolves some of the most difficult passages in the Torah but always altar
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allows the beauty of the text and it's human dimensions to shine forth I think
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that Rob Robert alters translation will be widely respected as one of the
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greatest translations of the Torah in the 20th century tonight professor alter
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will speak on the Bible through literary eyes please welcome Robert alter
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you
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thank you very much professor Hecht very generous words I'm delighted to be here
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and I will plunge into my subject immediately now a question which may
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occur to at least some of you out here is what really does literature have to
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do with the Bible after all the Bible is a collection of religious texts and to
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the extent that you talk about it as as literature you might be doing something rather frivolous imposing a merely
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aesthetic character category on these texts the fact that matter is that that
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there's no split there's no contradiction between literature and
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anything else the greatest spiritual seriousness the greatest philosophical
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probing if you look at the texts that are assembled in the Hebrew Bible the
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vast bulk of them are cast either in narrative or poetry and it's my
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contention that in order to see what's going on religiously in order to see
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what the precise nature of the monotheistic revolution affected by the
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biblical writers you have to be able to understand the literary form in which
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they work by that understand you get a more nuanced perception of how they saw
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human nature how they saw society how they saw history and so forth now the
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next question that might occur is why does anyone need a guide to a literary
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understanding of the Bible after all just to think of narrative if you read a
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story you understand the story you appreciate it it moves you or it doesn't
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move and that's it some people would say and of course in to a certain degree this
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has to be true of the Bible or all of us Jews Christians and seculars wouldn't
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have continued to read it with such avid Ness the durations I mean to to take a
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kind of obvious example when David is informed of the death of his son Absalom
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in 2nd Samuel most of you will remember
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that he goes up to the the the tower
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overlooking on set in the wall of the city muffin I am where his made his
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headquarters and he says Absalom Absalom Absalom my son Absalom would that I had
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died in your stead and to anyone who has been a son or has had a son you or a
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daughter forever for that matter this immediately speaks you it's
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heart-wrenching and you don't need any complicated understanding analysis to
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understand it nevertheless I think something has happened in our relation
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to the Bible which I'll sketch out very briefly that has caused problems there
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was I believe a set of conventions and techniques that were second nature to
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people in the ancient Hebrew culture that in the course of time were
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forgotten I think there's an obvious reason by their work and forgotten I'll
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just say this about convention it's so much part of our second nature when we
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read the body of literature that's native to us that we don't even have to be told it's a convention for example
8:36
you open a book and the first line of the story says
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once upon a time in a land far away now we immediately know because we've grown
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up in this culture maybe if you came from Bangladesh you would not make this
8:58
happen we immediately know that a story that begins with these words is not a
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realistic story it's not going to read
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like a novel by Margaret Atwood or Philip Roth but as a fairy tale and so
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we won't be surprised if a fairy godmother appears if there are three
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sons and the third son turns out to be the one who has a great destiny if
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pumpkins turn into carriages and so on and so forth because that's all part of
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the baggage of the fairy tale and the formulaic signal once upon a time in a
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land far away tells us the this that's to us as we begin to read now I think
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what happened and when I began working on biblical narrative over 20 years ago
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I wouldn't really twenty-five years ago I wouldn't have quite described this in
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these terms but this dawned on me with the passage of time as the centuries
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wore on once these works had become part of religious Canon both Jews and
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Christians came to regard these works as
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divinely inspired and also as sources of inspiration for the reader as sources of
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moral guidance in the case of Jews as the sources of proof texts for the
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articulation of the law and as a body of
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theology and with all those considerations
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we underwent a kind of cultural amnesia so that the ways in which the poems and
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the stories worked as poems and stories that were pretty well understood by the
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ancient audience we ceased to understand so what I am proposing is that is
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necessary is a kind of labor of literary archaeology that is if at least if you
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think of this loose analogy just as the archaeologists digs through the layers
11:30
in the archaeological tale and finds the shards and fragments and carefully
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brushes away the accumulated soil and then fits the pieces together and in
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doing that reconstructs the material culture of 3,000 years ago I think that
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we have to do to the best of our abilities something analogous in the
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case of the Hebrew Bible now what I'd like to do here is to propose one
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principle obviously this is a little too simple you can't reduce any body of
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literature to a single principle but I'd like to propose one principle that does
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have many different manifestations in both the pros and the poetry and this
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has to do with the use of repetition that is repetition is all over the place
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in biblical writing and it's a little surprising that it should be so common
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in the prose narratives because the prose narratives are famous for being
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economical being breathlessly terse and yet even there things get repeated all
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the time so what I would like to propose is this as a general rule of thumb
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whenever you encounter repetition in the Bible you have to not only register the
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fact that something is being repeated you have to ask yourself what is changed
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in the seeming repetition what has changed in the seeming repetition even
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though I'm going to focus chiefly on the stories I'd like to begin with an
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example of how this principle works in poetry now biblical poetry we've
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understood at least for the last three centuries is based on a principle of
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parallelism parallelism of meaning coupled actually by parallelism of
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stressed syllables and often parallelism of syntax - between the two halves of
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the line that is the typical line of biblical poetry has - more or less equal
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components there are some lines that have three components I promise not to get too technical that will suffice so
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here is a schematic illustration from I think it's actually the second piece of
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poetry that appears in the book of Genesis there's a mysterious character
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about whom we know almost nothing except this poem who chants this poem as a kind
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of victory song to his two wives who are named odda and Sela and this is the
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first line of the poem odda and Cielo hear my voice a wives of Lamech give ear
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to my utterance now this is very very neat illustration you have first the two
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women addressed by their primary names auda and Silla and so in the second half
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of the line instead of calling them by their name James he calls them o wives of Lamech
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and then he says hear my voice Sh'ma and Koli and then in the second
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half of the line he says give ear or hearken Isaiah emeriti let her give give
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ear to my utterance so everything is exactly parallel but the wives and their
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names AG listen give ear voice utterance
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but this although it's a schematic illustration of how the system of poetry
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works is not typical what is typical is
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that as things seem to be repeated in
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the second half of the line they are I would estimate in maybe 80% of the lines
16:07
85% of the language is enough to make a rule things are stepped up they are
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intensified their focus they become more
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concrete and I'll give you three brief examples I'll begin with numbers now if
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in fact the system of repetition in between the two halves of the line we're
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based on actual synonym 'ti as it is in the example that just gave you from
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lummox chant you would expect if in the case of numbers that the same number
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would appear in the first half and the second half that is if you said 6 in the
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first half of the line you would say even though you can't say this in Biblical Hebrew half a dozen in the
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second half of the line but that never happens the invariable rule is that if a
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number is introduced in the first half of the line it has to be increased
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either by a decimal place or by the the
17:19
decimal place plus the number something of that sort or simply going
17:24
from adding one number to the number that appears so here is a line of verse
17:30
from surat yzi new from the song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32 how could one
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pursue a thousand and two give chase to
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ten thousand so you go from one to two and from a thousand to ten thousand now
17:53
let me give you a different kind of illustration does not involve numbers
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also from the same text and Deuteronomy 32 he suckled him honey from the rock
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and oil from the flinty stone now this
18:16
is a verse that describes God's sustaining Israel in the wilderness so
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honey from the rock oil from the flinty stone well to begin with honey from the
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rock is a kind of natural event that as you could find honeycombs on a rocky
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slope but oil from flintstone is if you
18:45
don't get oil out of a stone so it's totally miraculous but what's more interesting and this is absolutely
18:51
characteristic if you have in the first half of the line a general term occurs
18:58
it's the the term sewer rock and then in
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the second half you have a specific instance of that turn which is often a
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more intense instant so you have calmest soil but by the way the first term is
19:18
selamat my memory slipped and then Halmi soother the flinty stone now a flinty
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stone is the hardest kind of rock you can imagine so the the the mere stone enos in the first
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half turns into something more intensified in the second half of the
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line now a third thing that happens and with this we will move on from poetry to
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prose which may be a relief to some of you there is often narrative development
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from the first half of the line to the second half of the line and I'll give
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you just one instance from the book of Proverbs chapter 7
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now that's an instance where the whole chapter is a single poem is it's
20:15
actually an amusing poem even though it's in a didactic poem it's a warning
20:21
to the foolish young man to stay away from the temptress because if she
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catches you in the streets she's going to lure you to her home and then there's
20:33
a delightful erotic scene where she tells him that she's laid out sheets of
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imported Egyptian linen and she's set up a feast for him and he doesn't have to
20:49
worry about her husband is her husband gone off on a business trip and he won't be back for quite a while and the
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speaker in this poem the mentor wants to warn the young man to stay away from from this kind of woman so at the
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beginning of the poem we have this line he goes out into the street when at
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twilight at the eve of day in pitch-black night and darkness now a
21:17
number of biblical scholars well how could this be this is a contradiction so something must be wrong with the second
21:24
half of the line and let's delete it as a scribal interpolation it's a wonderful
21:31
illustration for me of where before you start tinkering with the text you have
21:36
to have some understanding of how the text is assembled a literary artifice because if you
21:45
understand that it's very common to have narrative movement from Part A of the
21:52
line to Part B the line then this line makes beautiful sense at Twilight at the
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eve of day and bam at pitch pitch-black night and darkness and those of you who
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have been either in Israel or in any place with its latitude know that
22:12
nightfall happens very quickly so the this line is a way of dramatizing the
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danger into which the gullible Youngman is stepping one moment it's Twilight the
22:26
next moment it's pitch-black dark and she's really going to get you if you don't watch out so I start with poetry
22:35
because I think it provides an instructive illustration of this general
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principle that poets are not content just to say the same thing again in
22:48
different words but they exploit the repetition to do something more to focus
22:55
to move something along a narrative line to make things more concrete or more
23:02
intense and we'll find analogous phenomena in the prose okay to begin
23:10
with in here I will be quoting a few texts from Genesis using my translation
23:20
the the biblical writers develop what as
23:26
far as I can tell is basically an original literary convention and it's a
23:33
convention which I'll call the convention of near verbatim repetition
23:39
that is again and again in biblical narrative you have the sense that the
23:47
same thing is being said over again in the same words that is
23:53
a kind of schematic sketch of this character a says to be go down to the
24:03
river and there you will meet a man and you will greet him and tell him I am waiting in the tent and then B goes down
24:14
to the river and he in carry encounters the man and he says you know a said to
24:19
me I should go down to the river and I will meet a man and I tell you that a is
24:25
waiting in the tent so at first superficial reading you might say this
24:31
is a very inefficient way to tell the story just to recycle things but in fact
24:36
it's a very sophisticated literary technique because it's very very rare
24:44
for one to encounter a complete verbatim
24:50
repetition it seems to be verbatim but as phrases and clauses and even whole
24:57
sentences are repeated little adjustments are made their little
25:03
swerves away from the verbatim and it's those swerves and as readers of biblical
25:10
narrative I encourage you to begin to look for them it's those swerves that
25:15
open up little windows of meaning so I'll give you one simple example and
25:23
then a more complicated example we have
25:29
in the stealing of the blessing in
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Genesis 27 when as you recall Jacob
25:40
steals his older brothers Esau's blessing the story begins this and it happened
25:49
when Isaac was old that his eyes grew too blurry to see and he called to Esau
25:55
his older son and said to him my son and he said Here I am and he said look I
26:02
have grown old I know not how soon I shall die so now go take up pray your gear your quiver in your bow and go out
26:09
to the field and hunt me some game and make me a dish of the kind that I love and bring it to me that I may eat so
26:16
that I may solemnly bless you before I die okay now first as a translator of
26:23
the Bible I have to confess that there are certain moments when you come to
26:30
something in the original and you say there's no way to do that in English and
26:35
this last little phrase happens to be one of those instances and I need to
26:40
explain it because what I'm going to go on to say is contingent on the impact of
26:48
this phrase Biblical Hebrew has an intensive form of the personal pronoun
26:57
that is the word nephesh that word that the older translations incorrectly
27:04
translate as soul means life breath but
27:09
it also means by extension my essential self the real me so instead of just
27:19
saying I will bless you before I die old dick says up so that my essential self
27:26
bless you before I die but that sounds ridiculous in English so what I did was
27:33
let me assure you the translation is full of painful compromises I opted for
27:40
the compromise of using an adverb
27:46
solemnly to get something of the effect of emphasis of that intensive form of
27:54
the first person pronoun so that I may solemnly bless you before I die okay now
28:01
now that you've all had that phrase
28:08
act as a whole Clause lodged in your ear
28:13
we jump down a couple of verses in the story you remember that mother Rebecca
28:20
who favors Jacob has eavesdropped on this whole conversation and she rushes
28:27
off to Rebecca and says - I'm sorry Rebecca rushes off to Jacob and she says
28:34
to him look I've heard your father speaking - II saw your brother saying
28:39
bring me some game and make me a dish that I may eat and I shall bless you in
28:46
the Lord's presence before I die now she does two things with the speech
28:54
she's overheard first she bridges it and by and large abridgement is not
29:00
necessarily that significant in other words she says bring me some game of the
29:07
sort that she deletes the face of the sort that I love because I don't think that's that important the crucial change
29:16
here is so that I shall bless you in the Lord's presence before I die now let's
29:23
stop and ask ourselves what's the difference between saying that my essential self might bless you or that I
29:29
may solemnly bless you and I may bless you in the Lord's presence or you could
29:36
also translate that as before the Lord I think it has to do with the theological
29:44
weight of the substitution that she makes now when she decides to put in her
29:51
husband's mouth the words in the Lord's presence of Nia deny she is reminding
29:59
her son this is going to be an irrevocable vow if you don't get in
30:06
there follow my instructions and grab that blessing for yourself it's gone
30:11
forever because it's lift narrow nights and the Lord's Prayer so her decision to switch terms I think
30:21
is part of a calculated motivation of her son who might well hesitate is in
30:29
fact he does hesitate he's fearful that he will be found out now this phrase
30:37
rolls by a third time in the story when
30:44
Jacob comes in with his mock venison
30:50
stew that he's made out of lamb and brings it to his father Jacob said to
31:00
his father's verse 19 of chapter 27 I am Esau your firstborn I have done as
31:08
you have spoken to me rise pray sit up and eat of my game so that you may
31:15
solemnly bless you blessed me as something funny is happening here right
31:22
Jacob reverts to the first version of the of
31:30
his father's words not to the version that was reported to him how was it that
31:36
he kind of hops over his mother's words and seems to get back to the original
31:42
version I I don't think it's that anything to do with accuracy his having
31:48
some kind of intuition of what his father really said it seems to me that
31:54
at the moment that he's repeating this
31:59
whole business and he's repeating it as
32:05
part of a lie remember what heads up this little speech is I am Esau your
32:11
firstborn the the theologically fraught
32:16
phrase in the Lord's presence sticks in his throat he doesn't want to make it
32:23
part of the lie so he reverts to a more secular
32:28
version of the statement where the statement is not a solemn blessing
32:34
pronounced before the Lord but it's what we in our Terms would call a
32:39
performative speech act but still a secular action so it seems and here
32:48
we're talking about a difference of two words you have version a version B and
32:55
then we revert it to version a but if you pay attention to the difference in
33:02
the repetition the psychological and the
33:07
theological dynamics of the story becomes much more sharply defined now
33:15
I'd like to give you a more complex example of that which is the story
33:25
that's often referred to as the wooing
33:33
of Rebecca in Genesis 24 I'll begin it's
33:45
a very long chapter and I promise not to read all the way through it but I'll
33:50
read a chunk at the beginning then we'll skip to a crucial point in the middle of
33:56
the story and Abraham was old advanced in years and the Lord had blessed
34:03
Abraham in all things again let that
34:08
Lodge in your ear because it will come back with a surprising elaboration later
34:13
on see I should say this that this pattern of verbatim near verbatim
34:19
repetition can occur not only between two different speakers of more or less
34:26
the same dialogue but it can also occur in an interaction between a speaker of
34:34
dialogue and the narrator so the narrator says the Lord had blessed Abraham in all things
34:41
and Abraham said to a servant elder of his hassle who ruled over all things
34:46
that were his put your hand pray under my thigh that I may make you swear by
34:51
the Lord God of the heavens and god of the earth that you shall not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the
34:58
Canaanite in whose midst I dwell but to my land and to my birthplace you
35:04
shall go and you shall take a son for a wife for my son for Isaac just a little
35:11
gloss here if you're wondering what the servants hand is doing under Abraham's
35:18
thigh probably the thigh is a euphemism for the testicles which makes it worse
35:25
but actually as even in the Middle Ages I've been as are one of my favorite
35:31
commentators observed there are other cultures in which when somebody exacts a
35:39
vow from somebody else he asks that person to hold his testicles not not as
35:46
a sexual gesture but as if to say I am placing myself utterly in your trust so
35:53
the most tender and vulnerable part of me is in your hands and you're the
36:02
fulfillment of this vow is in your hands as well but in any case one notices the
36:10
grand monotheistic ring of God the Lord God of the heavens and God of the earth
36:16
and then we have that little echo to my
36:22
land and in my birthplace you shall go it's the echo of God's first words to
36:27
Genesis 2 Abraham at the beginning of Genesis 12 go you from your land and
36:40
your birthplace in your father's house and go to the land that I will show you
36:46
notice that in the first iteration here the father's house is not mentioned
36:53
and the servant said to him perhaps the woman will not come after me would not
36:58
want to come after me to this land shall I indeed bring your son back to the line
37:03
you left and Abraham said to him watch yourself lest you bring my son back there the
37:09
Lord God of the heavens who took me from my father's house and now we have the
37:15
third term from Genesis 12 as first we had land and birthplace in that we have
37:21
father's house and from the land of my birth place now we have all three of them together and who spoke to me and
37:28
who swore to me saying to your seed will I give this land he shall send His
37:35
Messenger before you and you shall take a wife for my son from there and if the
37:41
woman should not want to go after you you should be clear this valve mine only my son you must not bring back there
37:49
okay the servant sets out the the the
37:54
journey which would take many weeks remember he's traveling from present-day
37:59
Iraq to present-day Israel the other way
38:05
around I'm sorry from present-day Israel to present-day Iraq the journey is
38:11
affected in one breathless verse and then he meets Rebekah at the well I will
38:18
not take time to read that section but you remember he prays to the Lord of his
38:26
master that if the young woman whom I
38:31
meet at the well should offer me to drink and also offer to water my camels
38:38
she is the right girl and this immediately happens it was beautiful and
38:45
absolutely virginal Rebekah and
38:50
immediately the servant rushes up to her puts a gold ring on her nose and gold
38:57
bracelets on her arm and then ask her asks her whose daughter she is so he's hustled
39:06
off and of course she's a cousin and he's hustled off to her brother's
39:13
household our brother Laban and here's what happens when the servant
39:21
repeats the story of his mission using
39:26
more or less the same words and in a really quick reading you might think
39:32
they're exactly the same words first he says I will not eat until I've spoken my
39:38
word they offer him food and he said speak and he said I am Abraham's servant
39:45
the Lord has blessed my master abundantly which is pretty much an
39:53
echoing of the narrator's first words and the Lord had blessed Abraham in all
40:04
things with a minor difference we have abundantly here but then look what he
40:09
goes on to say and he has grown great he has given him sheep and cattle and
40:15
silver and gold and male and female slaves and camels and donkeys and Sarah
40:21
my wife's my Master's wife bore a son to my Massa after she had grown old and he
40:27
has given him all that he has and my master made me swear saying you shall
40:34
not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanite and whose land I dwell but to my father's house
40:40
you shall go into my clan and you shall take a wife for my son now the servant
40:48
does a number of shrewd things first the most obvious is that he does his own
40:54
little midrashic elaboration of the Lord had blessed my master
41:02
abundantly or the Lord at best Abraham in all things he starts talking about
41:10
male slaves and female slaves and camels and donkeys and so forth which of course
41:16
are all embodiments of wealth in the ancient world as if to say yes my my
41:24
master has done very well you know he has so many thousand shares of Microsoft
41:30
and real estate in downtown Los Angeles and so on and so so in other words you
41:37
have to know that his son is a very good catch that this is the right kind of
41:45
should look for your sister Rebecca and then he does something else
41:52
interesting instead of to my my land and
41:58
my birthplace which were Abraham's first
42:03
words the first term he chooses introduced which Abraham only used in a
42:11
second speech was my father's house and to this he has a word that Abraham did
42:17
not use my clam mish bhakti again if you
42:24
ask yourself and I find it repeatedly instructed to ask yourself why the
42:30
substitution what why is the the repetition being manipulated if you have
42:36
to ask yourself why this substitution it's because he's now back at the site
42:45
of the Abraham's original father's house which is a sociological term in biblical
42:52
here it's a sociological unit and he's at the homestead of Abraham's clan so by
43:01
choosing these terms and putting them upfront in his report he
43:07
conveying a kind of subliminal message to the familial audience don't think
43:14
that because Abraham went to this wild land to the west and we became an expat
43:21
that he's forgotten the family he still has a sense of the father's house and
43:27
the clan and he's somebody you want to be connected with and but but now as
43:34
still more interesting substitution happens on what I would call the
43:42
theological level and he said to me the
43:47
Lord now the Lord I follow the King James Convention when
43:54
they come across the Tetragrammaton you'd have of hey they use you may have
44:02
noticed if you scrutinize the King James printing they use a large uppercase L
44:10
and then smaller font but still uppercase Ord for Lord to indicate that
44:18
this is a kind of strange feature in the Hebrew and the Hebrew process as most of
44:25
you know is odd because you it's written you'd have ave but Jews always
44:31
pronounced it as Adonai as though it were a different word which means
44:37
derived from the Hebrew word master a different name for God so but this the
44:44
name uses the name that biblical scholars think I have some reservations of if it's entirely to be dependable
44:50
yahwah that is it's the the proper name
44:58
of the God of Israel is not a general God name so I mean to their ears it
45:05
would be like like Baal or
45:10
or a stove it or some other Canaanite or
45:17
Mesopotamian term as a name for particular God so that's what's behind
45:24
the Lord so he says perhaps and I said to my master perhaps the woman will not
45:29
come after me notice that in his original speech she said will not want to come after me
45:36
it's a tiny change here he drops the not want Justin he makes it not because he
45:42
doesn't want to draw too heavy attention to the possibility that Rebecca might
45:48
not want to do this thing so he abbreviates that strategically I think but then here's what I want to focus on
45:56
and he Abraham said to me the Lord in whose presence I have walked shall send
46:02
His Messenger with you and he shall grant success to your journey and shall
46:07
take a wife for my son from my clan and my father's house again he hits those
46:14
two buttons of Clan and father's house rather than saying land and birthplace
46:21
but what's especially interesting here is that you will recall since you heard
46:28
it before that what Abraham actually said was the Lord God of the heavens and
46:35
God of the earth and then again he said the Lord God of the heavens who took me
46:40
from my father's house and for the land of my birthplace and who spoke to me and swore to me saying to your seed will I
46:46
give this land all of this is deleted and in place of the deletion we have in
46:54
whose presence I have walked well what's going on here I think what's going on is
47:00
that this very shrewd servant is aware of the fact that he's speaking to
47:06
polytheists so he speaks to polytheists in their own lingo that is it would
47:13
perplex them for him to say the Lord that is yahwah god of heavens and god of the earth
47:20
because that's nonsense to Apolo theists that is the fundamental supposition of
47:29
polytheism is that each realm of nature has its own deity there's a sky god and
47:36
a land god and a sea god or goddess a fertility goddess and so on and so forth
47:42
so he doesn't want to confuse them about that you know what kind of crazy stuff
47:48
has our cousin Abraham gotten into and the second thing that he deletes is
47:56
covenantal promise to whose see who swore to your seed I will give the this
48:03
this land because again they're likely to say well nobody promised us any new
48:12
territories to the west or to the east or anywhere else why does Abraham think it isn't he
48:18
suffering from delusions of grandeur so all this is quietly edited out even as
48:25
the servant goes with the main thrust of his master's speech now there is one
48:34
other kind of amusing switch that is
48:41
what when I say that that changes are made in the pattern of verbatim
48:48
repetition the changes can be of the following a substitution of one verbal
48:57
item or one idea for a different one a
49:02
deletion and we've seen both of these here in the servant speech and then of
49:08
course there can be an elaboration or an addition as in all the business about
49:14
camels and slaves at the beginning of his speech but there's also another kind
49:20
of adjustment that can be made which is to change the order of items reported
49:28
and this happens in the following way let's see if I have
49:34
this yeah the servant then goes on after having
49:39
reported the story of the vow that his
49:45
master exact it from him he goes on to report the story of encountering Rebecca
49:51
at the well and as we would expect his account of it repeats whole phrases and
50:00
sentences from the actual story as we've just heard it you haven't just heard it
50:06
but I'm sure many of you are quite familiar with it but in his repetition
50:14
here is an interesting difference after she water gives him water to drink and
50:22
also volunteers to water the camels I asked her the servant says saying whose
50:31
daughter are you and she said the daughter of Bethuel son of Nahor Milka
50:38
bore him and i put the ring in her nose and the bracelets on her arms and I did
50:44
obeisance and bowed to the Lord and bless the Lord God of my master Abraham who guided me on the right way to take
50:52
the daughter my Master's brother for his son okay now all these phrases appear in
50:59
the middle of the story the part that I didn't read out loud which reports the encounter at the well but the swerve
51:07
from the verbatim here is not in the terms but in the order of events because
51:14
as I didn't mention this without reading it what happens in fact is that he meets
51:22
Rebecca at the well she does her stunts ttan stunts and stint with the watering
51:28
and immediately rushes up there and puts the the nose ring on her and the
51:35
bracelets on her arm and then he asks whose daughter she is now he is well
51:40
aware that if he reported that to her kinsman
51:45
he would look like a fool because they all understand that the the gold jewelry
51:55
amounts to betrothal gifts and you don't give betrothal gifts as until you know
52:03
what the girls pedigree is I mean that's a crucial part of the betrothal because
52:08
remember in the ancient world really I think until the 18th century a marriage
52:14
was not primarily a union between two individuals but between two families or
52:20
two households so a betrothal emissary has to know what what family she comes
52:26
from in what actually happened because
52:32
he has considerably belief in the power and efficacy of the Lord his masters God
52:41
as soon as the prayer is fulfilled he knows that's the right girl there's no question about it so he gives
52:48
her the gifts and then just for informational sake he clarifies and
52:53
finds out not at all to a surprise that she's a kinswoman of Abraham so you see
53:00
that psychologically so sociologically
53:06
and theologically there are all kinds of
53:11
things going on in the story which you wouldn't entirely grasp unless you you
53:19
were keyed into this expectation that
53:25
when things get repeated they also get changed and if you look for the change
53:31
that then you begin to see more of what it's all about now in the last few minutes I will spare
53:40
you any more close readings I think I can do this effectively enough just by
53:47
summary I'd like to go from the microscopic level of the tack
53:53
to the macro scopic level of the plot of
53:58
the story there's another odd kind of repetition that people have observed and
54:06
probably most of you in this hall in reading the Bible have noted this and
54:12
maybe been slightly perplexed by it then approximately the same story seems to be
54:21
told with different characters the for
54:29
example that there are half a dozen different stories that's not the one I'm
54:36
going to deal with in which a young man in a foreign land comes to a well and
54:45
encounters a young woman or in one case it's seven young women and somebody
54:50
draws water and and then news is rushed
54:57
home of the arrival of the stranger a feast is laid out that happens by the
55:03
way in the wooing of Rebecca's story and at the end of the feast or not long
55:10
after the feast betrothal conditions are agreed on now what's going on here
55:16
when I first worked on biblical narrative back at the end of the 1970s I
55:23
found a little structuralist book by man named Robert Cully where he had done
55:30
some reading in studies of West African
55:35
oral storytelling and he had discovered that that the same story was told but as
55:44
it was repeated the names got changed and some of the details got scrambled
55:49
and then he proposed that something similar happened in the Bible and even
55:54
laid out a table of repeated stories to show
56:00
the preponderance of repetitions when I looked at the repete Bly said he's on to
56:06
something and he didn't see what it was on to because well to begin with I should stress that every evidence
56:14
indicates these stories were literary productions that is in the sense that there's a consequence of writing there
56:21
may be an oral tradition that stands a few centuries behind them but they are
56:27
the work of a literary called literate and literary culture and what struck me
56:36
and I'm still persuaded of this and over
56:41
the years since I've written this out I think good many people in biblical studies have become persuaded is that
56:47
there's an actual convention it's again a convention that we forgot and groping
56:54
at the time for a name I I borrowed a term from Homer scholarship and called it type seen that is I won't trouble you
57:04
with a Homeric side of it which is a little bit different at certain crucial
57:11
junctures in the life of the hero the a
57:16
scene occurs in which the audience and the storyteller or the writer I really
57:23
should say understood that a sequence of
57:28
narrative motifs was going to be followed out only what happens is that
57:36
in each specific instance of the type scene modifications of the schema are
57:45
made that are strictly appropriate to the particular story and the particular
57:51
character that's very abstract I'll try to illustrate it not with the example I
57:58
used years ago my book and biblical narrative but with another what I'm going to call the Annunciation type
58:07
scene now I call it Annunciation not only whereas
58:12
would say in Hebrew like East it to be provocative but because we're all
58:20
familiar with the Annunciation as a an
58:26
iconographically defined topic in Christian painting where the elements
58:33
are pretty much the same the angel Gabriel is comes in from the upper left-hand corner Mary is music kneeling
58:42
or sitting and almost always wearing a blue gown etc well the repetition of
58:49
elements that you get an iconography I think it is a an interesting if loose analogy with what goes on here so here's
58:58
the schema of the Annunciation type scene motif one you have a long barren
59:07
wife optional motif one a there could be
59:15
a fertile co wife which would make the wife's dilemma all the more painful
59:23
motif to an Oracle or an angel or a man
59:30
of God comes to the woman and says something to the effect in here there is
59:37
usually a verbal formula at this time next year you will be embracing a Sun
59:45
motif 3 it seems breathtakingly simple it is and so-and-so knew his wife in the
59:54
sexual sense of course and she conceived and bore a son and she called his name
1:00:00
John Doe or whatever now the first instance I don't say it's
1:00:08
the instance on which the others are modeled it's just the first instance in sequence in the stories is Sarah and
1:00:16
Abraham and now there are a number of ways in which this
1:00:23
instance of the Annunciation scene differs from the others the first is
1:00:29
this is the only Annunciation in which the the future mother is not only long
1:00:38
barren as it turns out I would guess three-quarters of a century but she's 90
1:00:45
years old she's many decades postmenopausal so to begin with this
1:00:51
signals to us that the miraculous character of the event here is
1:00:57
absolutely spectacular two other features of this version of it there
1:01:05
were mentioning the first is that since this is a matriarchal scene the
1:01:13
revelation is always to the woman but not here that is here God as it turns out himself speaks to
1:01:20
Abraham and Sarah listening at the tent tent flap eavesdrops on her own
1:01:28
Annunciation maybe there was some sense that in this story is a founding father
1:01:34
of the nation the father had to be front and center also perhaps it's a way of
1:01:41
highlighting Sarah's bitterness which comes out when she says after being
1:01:47
shriveled shall I know pleasure and my husband is an old man the third
1:01:55
difference of this version from all the others is it's interrupted by three
1:02:02
longest narrative episodes before the fulfillment motif and she bore a son
1:02:10
called his name Isaac and that postponement first is a story of Sodom
1:02:16
and Gomorrah then there's a story of lots daughters and then there's a story
1:02:22
of Ivy Malika and Abraham and Sarah and grah I think among other things
1:02:28
heightens the suspense from chapter 12 on in Genesis we've been waiting and
1:02:33
waiting when is this divine promise of seed Abraham and a
1:02:39
great nation will come forth for me when is it going to be fulfilled and we're still waiting with bated breath for it
1:02:45
for another three chapters now the next version of the story is Rebekah and
1:02:53
Isaac and they're Rebekah has been
1:02:59
barren a long time and we learned at the end of the story it's 20 years which is a frightfully long time and Isaac
1:03:08
entreats the Lord on her behalf and he's answered and she comes pregnant
1:03:14
halfway through pregnancy or maybe a little more than halfway with the twins
1:03:20
she feels that this clashing in her womb and she goes to an Oracle to find out
1:03:29
what it's all about and the Oracle says that there are two peoples in your womb
1:03:37
two nations will emerge from within you
1:03:44
etc now here and only here the
1:03:52
Annunciation comes not before conception but in mid pregnancy and it has to do
1:03:59
not with the fact of conception but with the fate of the the children who are
1:04:07
going to be born and I think that has to do with the Jacob Esau story that is
1:04:12
what's paramount there is the destiny of struggle between the twins so the
1:04:19
Annunciation is directed to that rather than to conception okay two more
1:04:25
instances and then I will conclude hannah and elkanah at the beginning of
1:04:32
first samuel that's an instance where there's a fertile co wife pnina who
1:04:40
actually provokes makes fun of Hannah because she she's childless
1:04:46
and you you remember she comes to the temple at Shiloh the Shiloh and prays
1:04:54
silently something that was not generally done in the ancient world and
1:05:00
the priest l cannot seize her and the first with her lips moving mumbling it's sort of like the way we
1:05:08
react until we got used to to handless cell phones you know you will see somebody walking down the street
1:05:14
seemingly talking to herself or to himself and he says how long are you
1:05:20
going to be drunk get rid of you your liquor and she says I'm not drunk I'm a
1:05:27
woman with a hard fate an embittered
1:05:34
woman and I'm requesting something of the Lord and he immediately says the
1:05:39
Lord will grant your request there's something really strange there in this instance the Annunciation comes through
1:05:48
a kind of man of God Elkanah who's I'm sorry a li who was the priest at the the
1:05:56
sanctuary at Shiloh but there are two things wrong with this man of God this
1:06:02
priest the first is he totally misconstrued what she's doing at the beginning unjustly accuses her of
1:06:11
drunkenness and then he says the Lord will grant your request but what is a
1:06:17
request he didn't even ask her so what you have is an ignorant conduit of the
1:06:25
divine promise of seed now why well if you think about the story this the main
1:06:33
thrust of the story is a displacement of the authority of priesthood by the
1:06:39
authority of prophecy that is Eli is not doing so well as the preaching is to
1:06:46
crooked sons as it turns out and he will be displaced by the child who's to be
1:06:52
born Samuel who as prophet becomes leader of Israel so the fact that we have a kind of blind
1:07:03
and imp recipient annunciator in the
1:07:08
Annunciation motif or the story is beautifully tuned to the story my last
1:07:14
example the Annunciation of the birth of Samuel now there a woman who has never
1:07:23
given a name and I believe it's not out of sexism but in order to give the
1:07:31
writer the opportunity to refer to her every time that he mentions her as the
1:07:37
woman Ayesha because I think the genders are extremely important in this whole
1:07:43
story and in the unfolding story of Samson so she meets somebody whom she
1:07:49
takes to be a man of God in fact he's a divine messenger an angel and he tells
1:07:56
her she's childless that according to the formula she will conceive and bear a
1:08:04
son and meanwhile he's she the angel
1:08:09
gives instructions both for her and the child says stay away from all wine and
1:08:14
hard drink and the son who is born will
1:08:20
be a nazia to God he will taste no wine
1:08:26
and he will a no razor will go up on his
1:08:34
head no razor will touch his head so she rushes home she tells Munno of her
1:08:39
husband and he says I gotta see this guy take me to him but again the way the
1:08:44
story set up the angel again reveals himself to her rather than to him and
1:08:50
she has to lead Manoah out to the confrontation and manoa says
1:08:57
well what's this all about what are we supposed to do with this kid and the angel says patiently I think heaven I
1:09:04
said this team were already more or less in paraphrasing the Hebrew but something like that he says
1:09:10
he will be a nazir to God and he will drink no wine or hard liquor and he
1:09:20
doesn't mention the business about the razor as that's another interesting
1:09:25
instance of repetition with variation it's a this ultimate secret which will
1:09:31
eventually be a secret that a woman obtains and then will destroy Samson is a secret shared by the divine
1:09:39
messenger and the future mother and not imparted to the husband well at that
1:09:47
point the husband says well coming offer you something to eat and he says no I
1:09:53
won't touch a thing and then they prepare little stone altar
1:10:00
in the field and in a pyrotechnic display the divine medicine goes whoosh
1:10:06
as in a comic strip up into the heavens in a column of flame at that point the
1:10:14
husband flings himself all the while they've been referring to him as a man
1:10:19
of God not as an angel at that point the husband flings himself on the ground and
1:10:25
he says you know we will surely die because we have seen the face of God and
1:10:30
how can we live and the woman I was imagined her poking him with her elbow
1:10:37
says him come on if he were going to put us to death but he's given us this
1:10:43
instruction and would have shown us all these things and of course it's perfectly right now why is this
1:10:51
particular pitching of the Annunciation type scene an apt opening to the story
1:10:58
of Samson I believe that it's a virtually comic version of the
1:11:05
Annunciation type scene and the comedy comes from exposing male stupidity and
1:11:13
this and again that's the tactical advantage of constantly referring to her
1:11:19
as the woman the woman the very next thing that will happen is that Samson will be born and in half a
1:11:27
verse will grow up and he will see a woman a Philistine woman and get himself
1:11:32
into deep trouble so we have a guy who
1:11:37
is a superhero on the muscle level but
1:11:44
who lacks something on another level and and I think the behavior of his father
1:11:50
the virtual comic behavior of his father in the Annunciation scene is a clue in
1:11:57
to this so I hope these examples both the microscopic and the macroscopic one
1:12:04
have given you some sense of the liveliness and the I think both human
1:12:13
and ultimately theological complexity of what's going on in the stories only you
1:12:21
have to learn how to tune into the particular wavelength of biblical
1:12:26
literature so I believe very strongly not in somebody telling you what a story
1:12:33
or poem means but in somebody giving you a little toolkit which you can work with
1:12:39
to figure out the meanings yourself so I would strongly encourage you to do a very simple thing the next time you read
1:12:46
something in the Bible whether it's poetry or prose narrative whenever you
1:12:52
see something being repeated ask yourself well is that a strict
1:12:57
repetition and it is not a strict repetition why the difference and where
1:13:03
does the difference lead thank you
1:13:14
professor professor alter is willing to take questions or respond to your
1:13:21
comments but we must use these microphones so we'll start over there anyone want to ask a question you can
1:13:29
start over here if you like okay there go ahead thank you for this very
1:13:36
enlightening expose I was wondering whether in your feeling the common
1:13:43
occurrence of these stylistic patterns suggest a common authorship or would it be like your modern fairy tales where
1:13:50
many authors use the same kind of formulas and that would be recognized no I think it's pretty clear that it's
1:13:58
the the latter I mean although I don't make much of it in my work wrongly
1:14:05
rarely I'm certainly don't debate the scholarly consensus that the Torah
1:14:11
itself is a composit well maybe the word that I prefer to use is of weaving
1:14:18
together of four different strands that were originally independent literary
1:14:25
documents and then it would be very far-fetched to imagine that the book of
1:14:35
Judges was written by the same author as or authors as Genesis even though
1:14:43
Richard led Friedman who used to be down the coast in a book called the hidden
1:14:50
book in the Bible has kind of made an argument to that effect so I think it's just different writers working with the
1:14:57
same sets of conventions yes with reference to Isaac's blessing of Jacob
1:15:05
I'm wondering if the mother's words of blessing in the presence of God might
1:15:13
be a commentary or an explanation of the current meaning of blessing from my
1:15:20
essential self well I wouldn't exclude that as a
1:15:29
possibility but here's what I would respond to that even if it's a kind of
1:15:37
let's say a gloss or interpretation of the first phrase the fact of the matter
1:15:44
is is you know linguist foot will tell you this not just literary scholars
1:15:50
there there are no true synonyms in any
1:15:55
language well let me give that go back
1:16:00
to that kind of silly example I gave an extreme case six and half a dozen now of
1:16:08
course on one level if you're doing arithmetic six and a half a dozen are
1:16:13
absolute synonyms but you know if you're speaking and you were say you say
1:16:19
there's six people in the room or they're half a dozen people in the room it's not quite the same thing that that
1:16:26
is the half a dozen doesn't quite commit to the same standard of numerical
1:16:32
precision it has a certain relaxed character or informality so I would say
1:16:40
this that even if on some level Rebecca
1:16:46
may be explaining or unpacking the
1:16:51
meaning of my essential self will bless
1:16:57
you she chooses a term that has a particular theological weight I guess
1:17:08
I'll go left to right this right here thank you so much for being here it's really fascinating my question is
1:17:16
um I've heard that the Septuagint and the Coptic and the Syriac are kind of an
1:17:24
agreement whereas the Mazarin text is different so with the subdued to
1:17:31
know which other one the Coptic and the Syriac the Coptic are kind of all in
1:17:37
agreement and other versions as well and the Masoretic is not in agreement with
1:17:43
with those and my question is how accurate and valid do you feel the Mauser okay that's a good that is really
1:17:52
behind this question lies a fundamental methodological issue when you're doing
1:17:59
literary analysis of the Bible especially if it involves my new textual
1:18:07
details how confident can you be that the Masoretic text of the Bible that
1:18:14
said the received text of the Bible is the actual text that the the original
1:18:24
writers composed now I don't know much about the Coptic text the the Septuagint
1:18:35
of but let me explain for those who were not into this kind of thing that the
1:18:41
Septuagint is the very first translation done on the Bible in the 3rd century BCE
1:18:48
it was done in Alexandria and it was a Jewish translation even though it then
1:18:53
became the Christian Bible for a while it was and the reason why I was done was
1:19:01
because the Jews the substantial Jewish community of Alexandra had lost Hebrew
1:19:07
now from time to time I mean I owe it when I work with the text I always
1:19:13
checked to see what the Septuagint reading is and for from time to time you
1:19:20
see that it's pretty convincing that they had a more reliable version at that
1:19:25
point but you have to be very careful because it because we don't have the
1:19:31
Hebrew that they had in front of them we can only infer it and any translator as
1:19:36
I can tell you from experience is liable to solve
1:19:44
textual cruces textual difficulties by in some way or another simplifying the
1:19:53
text and imagining something that wasn't there and I think that this often does
1:19:59
happen with the Septuagint so I certainly would not say that the
1:20:04
Septuagint as a rule is more authentic than the Masoretic text but occasionally
1:20:12
it is and I'll give you one example from Genesis in the Cain and Abel story
1:20:17
there's one of the few instances in my translation of the Torah which I adopted
1:20:23
Septuagint reading instead of the Masoretic at the beginning of the Cain enables story the Masoretic text says
1:20:30
and Cain said to Abel and then BAM he
1:20:36
kills him now there is no other place in the entire Hebrew Bible where we have
1:20:42
the formula for introducing speech and then no speech follows it the the way
1:20:49
the Septuagint reads is and Cain said to Abel let us go out to the field and that
1:20:57
that seems to be just utterly convincing in terms of the way speech is always introduced in the Bible so there I think
1:21:04
that aright I'll return to their
1:21:09
tradition of this side of the room and return to your simple example of the
1:21:15
stealing of the blessing when you said am I talking the microphone okay yeah your phone okay um when you said that
1:21:23
the omitted text was less there are no mission was less significant and I kind
1:21:30
of wonder what the justification of that was in the example was that um Isaac had said to prepare the meat in the way that
1:21:37
I like it or something like no detail about the preparation and Rebecca had not repeated that
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to Jacob and I'm thinking she could have been cleverly omitting that for a
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similar kind of reason meaning that for example that Jacob would have been too
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intimidated there's no way I can convince him if it has to be in that referred to me okay thank you
1:22:02
did everybody now let me say this in
1:22:10
literary interpretation I didn't want to give you the sense that that you have a
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kind of Open Sesame device and that as
1:22:22
soon as you use this device you automatically get the right interpretation
1:22:28
so there are judgment calls and I think
1:22:34
there there certainly are instances when things are repeated where it seems the
1:22:42
writer just wanted to speed it up a little bit but that's a it's certainly a
1:22:48
distinct possibility that since he he
1:22:55
knows or we'll know in a moment as his mother continues to speak that he's going to have to substitute lamb stew
1:23:02
for game if that's the more thing about
1:23:08
the boy I think it's kind of plausible that if his mother mentioned the kind
1:23:13
that I know yeah that the tangy taste of Tennyson venison that will put him off
1:23:21
thank you well the efficiency thing um the issue I was thinking why would it
1:23:26
why would they say it the first time if the words weren't that important you know it yeah you know I really enjoyed
1:23:34
the talk I'd like to just follow this up with one more kind of general principle
1:23:43
when the kind of narrative that most of us read for our pleasure and our
1:23:51
illumination of course is a novel and let's say a novel might run a short
1:24:01
novel would run to 250 pages which already really considerably longer than
1:24:07
the Hebrew text of all the book of Genesis and many novels will be 400 500
1:24:14
600 pages in that kind of large
1:24:21
quantitative verbal scale the individual
1:24:27
word has to have a little bit less weight I don't say it's it's inconsequential but you you read novels
1:24:35
fairly fast I think most of us do you know we get into the narrative momentum and move on rapidly whereas I I think
1:24:43
that biblical narrative as church and economical as it is was fashioned in
1:24:50
such a way that precisely what the last questioner asked why was the phrase as I
1:25:00
love the kind I love stuck in there and then why was it left out it's not a
1:25:06
silly or an over ingenious question to ask so that's another thing you can keep
1:25:13
in mind as you read the Bible thanks