This entry is part of the Blogging-the-Bible series. To see a list of passages, covered so far click here.
Just Who Was Ruling Over Israel?
The book of Samuel now takes an interesting turn and sorta pulls the rug out from under you. Chapters 1-12 depict a relatively independent Israel that has just chosen Saul for itself as king. Now, it turns out that all this time, the Israelites were also subjugated by their old enemy the Philistines, and the Philistines were the real overlords of the land. To be fair, the previous book (chronologically) is Judges, and the last judge it describes is the famous Samson. Samson is — ironically enough — the world’s first suicide bomber (more on that in a future post). He used his immense strength to collapse the Philistine temple he was being showed off in when he was captured, thereby killing himself and more Philistines than he had killed previously in his life. (Which is a lot.) In any case, it does not say that this ended the Philistines’ subjugation of Israel and nothing more is spoken from the start of Samuel up to this point.
Still, the fact that a new book does not mention that the Philistines were overlords brings up a curious thing about the historical/narrative books of the Hebrew Bible (Joshua, Judges, 1+2 Samuel, 1+2 Kings). At the end of the Deuteronomy, when the Israelites are about to go in and capture Israel, YHWH keeps exhorting them to utterly wipe out the seven nations living in the land, destroy their altars, spare nobody etc etc. Time and time again, the Bible gives the impression that this or that nation has finally been defeated, tens of thousands slaughtered and the Israelites have finally secured another part of the promised land. And yet, some time later, the same nation pops up again. It’s not a definite contradiction (eg. saying “the Philistines were utterly wiped out” and then the Philistines coming back a book later) but there’s a definite impression. It looks like the Israelites’ failure to conquer the entire land and kill everyone else was an embarrassment to the authors, so perhaps they’ve given themselves some fake victories over tens of thousands as a breather before the same nation pops up and must be genocided again.
Saul’s Stuffup
In any case, this whole time the Philistines were overlords. Saul’s son Jonathan strikes down a Philistine prefect and thereby arouses the wrath of entire Philistine army, who decide to teach Israel a lesson. The Israelites flee and hide in every nook and cranny they can find in anticipation of a massacre. However, Saul, driven on by his previous victory, wants to take Israel into a campaign against them. He waits for Samuel for 7 days to make a sacrifice but when Samuel is slightly late, he performs the sacrifice himself*. Samuel shows up minutes later, and he’s not impressed:
You acted foolishly in not keeping the commandments that the LORD your God laid upon you! Otherwise the LORD would have established your dynasty over Israel forever. But now your dynasty will not endure. The LORD will seek out a man after His own heart, and the LORD will appoint him ruler over His people, because you did not abide by what the LORD had commanded you. (v13-14)
Problems With Saul’s Stuffup
I think the silliness speaks for itself, but let’s look at a the fairly extensive list of problems with Samuel’s pronouncement.
The whole passage sets Saul up as a failed king who is to be shortly replaced by the “hero” David (I assume this is well known enough not to need a spoiler alert). Of course as we’ll find out later David also “acts foolishly in not keeping the commandments of the LORD,” even according to the authors of this very book of the Bible! So there’s some confusion here.
According to the Rabbinnic commentaries, Saul as a non-priest could perform this sacrifice because it was on a high altar (private altars being allowed in this period as the Temple not having been built yet). Leaving the details of this law aside, this appears to show that Samuel is simply being petty about a perceived personal slight on Saul’s behalf. Like many other times when someone in the Bible is blamed for something, nowhere does the text does not spell out that Saul waiting for Samuel was more than a common courtesy, one which (as Saul explains to Samuel) was overruled by the urgency of the pre-battle sacrifice.
As with other pronouncements of establishing a dynasty “forever”, does this mean Orthodox Jews should blame Saul for causing the exile of the Jews from Israel? After all, if his dynasty was established forever, presumably it would have meant no dispersal of Jews by the Babylonians and then the Romans, no 2000 year stint in the diaspora, no pogroms, no massacres, maybe even no Holocaust? And to think, all of this happened because Saul didn’t have the patience to wait an extra five minutes!
This seems to be another case of YHWH changing his mind. In any case, does it even make sense to have an “if/then” type prophecy coming from omniscient deity? Of course the natural answer is that from the text, the YHWH of Samuel is anything but omniscient.
The individual doesn’t exist. A clan, a tribe, a family is a single organ. It seems this really was believed which is why people were genuinely ok with collective punishment, punishing whole families etc. This is still the norm for many people today, who see others almost entirely in terms of ethnicity — including what “your” ancestors did to “mine”.
Now as for the military campaign—[to be continued]
*This chapter has quite a few errors in the text, the most interesting one is where Rashi himself (the classic Orthodox Jewish Bible commentator) admits the error. This is the verse: And he waited seven days, to the appointed time which Samuel [had set], and Samuel did not come to Gilgal, and the people scattered from him. Rashi’s comment on this verse is: This is a short verse, with one word missing. ([We must explain:] to the appointed time which Samuel had set, or to the appointed time of Samuel.
If you want to skip the rambling, click here to jump to the list of 5 things you can do to help.
Consider a conversation between an evangelical Christian [EC] and a non-Christian [NC]. It’s hypothetical but I have heard many conversations follow the same route, including in public debates:
NC: So if someone rejects Jesus, they are going to hell. What about the people who have never heard of Jesus — isn’t it grossly unjust that they be condemned through no fault of their own?
EC: Everyone is judged according to their capacity. If they have never heard of Jesus, it will not be held against them. Rather, they’ll be judged by (say) their commitment to natural law and morality.
NC: Right — and yet you support going to countries where people have never heard of Jesus and evangelising there?
EC: Of course!
NC:…Well don’t you see? By telling them about Jesus aren’t you then condemning a lot more of them to hell than otherwise would have been condemned since they will no longer be judged just on morality will now ALSO have to accept your message?
The Christian might answer that the message of the gospel is so powerful that everyone needs to hear it even if they are damned because of hearing it.
Now I think when talking about eternal torture being caused by non-belief in the divinity of a person, this is abominable. But I’ve realised some things are so important to let people know about, even if it damns them they need the information.
The conflict in the Eastern Congo is one such example. I recently introduced the topic leaving the causes of action aside. However, for a bit more clarification on how YOUR electronic purchases are helping fuel the deadliest and most brutal conflict since WWII, see this video summary:
The problem with this is a classic diffusion of responsibility. Individually, none of our phones contain more than the smallest particles of the titanium, tin and tantalum that was mined in the Congo (often with slave labour) for the profit of the most brutal gangs in the world. However together, 100% of the power to stop the rapes, murders and mutilations lie with us – the electronics consumer.
After researching the Enough Project and their sister site Raise Hope For Congo, I can see five things we all must do immediately. The last 2 points are probably the most important and will only take 2 mins of your time.
Get informed: visit the Enough Project and Raise Hope. Learn more about the situation. Sign up to the newsletter.
Limit spending: Save non-essential electronics purchases for the first company that has proper verification to ensure they’re not buying from warlords.
Use shame: No electronics manufacturer has a proper, traceable process to ensure they don’t fund genocide. What they do is ask their middlemen suppliers who tell them they don’t use conflict minerals. That’ll work! Tell others. If you have a site or blog, write about it and raise the profile of the campaign. [This is the stick]
Sign the pledge: Tell Apple, Microsoft, Nokia etc that the first ones to go conflict free will receive your preferential business. It takes 1 min online. [This is the carrot]
Now, I respect all readers enough not to resort to the carrot of describing the positive nature of taking action. I will however use the stick and say this: for the Congo I agree with the evangelical Christian from the start of this post. If you somehow believe taking the 5 steps above is wrong or counterproductive then I understand. Otherwise, those who have read up to this point and do not do anything truly are damned.
I think most of us wonder why there isn’t more of an outcry during genocides. If only during the Armenian genocide (that made it to the back pages of newspapers) there was more of an outcry, tens of thousands could have been saved. Oh well, next time…If only during the Holodomor…oh well, next time. If only during the Holocaust…oh well, next time. If only during Cambodia…oh well, next time. If only in Rwanda…oh well, next time.
This is the next time. As it has been for the last 4135 days. But I’m starting to despair. I think we just don’t care. We may condemn German civilians at the time of WWII because not enough of them helped hide Jews, Roma, gays and lesbians etc from Nazis. But we won’t change our spending habits, or even send an email to a company for the chance to save tens of thousands in a conflict that’s already killed almost as much as the Holocaust. We’re distressed when tales of such woe grace our TV screens on the news but that’s only because we have no alternative at that moment other than paying attention. When the TV is off, the rationalisations begin (that we’re not ultimately responsible).
Ultimately I think 99% of us don’t really give a shit if 5 million more die and the same amount are raped and tortured. They’re just jpeg files on our screens…ooh, shiny new gadgets! And so, damned we are.
This entry is part of the Blogging-the-Bible series. To see a list of passages, covered so far click here.
Classic texts are often portrayed as timeless, as something that can be related to beyond the specific context their author wrote them in. Shakespeare is the best example, with many an English teacher swearing that the portrayals of, say, despair, grief and betrayal speak to the world of today just as much as to the fictionalised pre-Christian England of King Lear.
The Bible gets a similar treatment — its themes are supposed to be timeless and its stories meant to explore archetypes that are still relevant now. Like Shakespeare, I think this is often true but not nearly as much as people think. It’s very easy for someone to get a skewed view of the Bible from the stories they’re told about in Sunday school or even in references in popular culture. These suffer from an obvious sample bias. The more ordinary stories often highlight just how different and alien the world of the Bible is compared to our world.
Chapters 11 and 12 from 1Samuel are a perfect illustration. They don’t form a very glamorous story but every aspect of the story revolves around some form of violence or brutality. None of it is particularly eggregious — no child sacrifices or mass genocide — but if anything this highlights the banality of evil in a violent ancient society. The story’s just one damn bit of mayhem after another:
Nahash the Ammonite besieges the Israelite town of Jabesh-gilead and threatens them with destruction unless they gouge their right eyes out as a violent form of humiliation. (11:2)
Saul hears about this and as the new king decides to save the town. He “motivates” the Israelites to help their fellow citizens by threatening them: cutting an ox into pieces, he sends a piece to each Israelite tribe saying such dismemberment will happen to the cattle of all who don’t follow him into battle. (11:7)
The Israelites crush the Ammonites. (11:11) It’s a sad story when the warfare is the most sane part of the story: a country acting in self-defence against an invading force.
The Israelites now appreciate Saul as king. How do they show their good feelings? By wishing to put to death those who questioned his kingship. (11:12) Samuel says no because nobody should be put to death on a day of victory. The idea that this is not an appropriate response on any day is completely alien to the Israelite culture (and probably most cutures of the time).
Samuel then reminds Israel that if they don’t follow YHWH’s orders he will smite them like he did earlier (in the book of Judges) and threatens them that their request for a king to lead them in battle was evil. (12:1-15)
YHWH then makes a sound-and-fire show to demonstrate that he really can kick ass and that he really IS displeased. The Israelites don’t want to die and repent of having requested a king. (12:19) It’s repentance at the barrel of a gun which is a-ok with YHWH.
I’ve discussed the binding of Isaac before (part 1|part 2) as a classic example of Biblical brutality. However, I think from a certain perspective a blander story like the one above is even worse. A religious student studying the binding of Isaac is is likely to have some questions about the moral and emotional nature of the events. But if you read over the points of this story from the perspective of someone religious, there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s actually a great candidate for a positive feel-good story of Saul being a righteous king and everything going very well. The background of brutality is so pervasive once you get desensitised you stop noticing it and only sit up at the “really” disturbing things like children being killed. Such is the true banality of evil.
Looks like three Guantanamo Bay prisoners were tortured to death, and this was in 2008 AFTER the media scandal on torture. Looks like you missed the story because for “some reason” the mainstream media has not paid it much attention.
Internet drama: are the Skepchicks too sexy? Does being overtly sexual diminish their skepticred and feministcred? Lots of different posts but this one is pivotal
Don wrote a comment that I thought deserved its own post. Here’s the comment:
I don’t have a comment as of yet, but I do have a question. You have described yourself as a “Jewish athiest”. I know exactly what you mean by “Jewish”, but what do you mean by “athiest”? Which one of the following statements would you say describes your position?
a. I am somewhat confident that there is no God.
b. I am very confident that there is no God.
c. I have a feeling that there is no God.
d. I don’t think there is a God.
e. There may be a God, but I am not convinced.
f. I absolutely know that there is no God.
If none of these statements describes your position, could you put it in your own words? Please keep in mind that this is a very emmotionally charged issue, and that emmotion must not be a factor when applying pure logic.
In a purely mathematical sense, if the statement (f.) does not describe your position, then logically you are open to the possibility that there is a God. If you feel that this is a trick, then you have exited pure logic, and entered an emmotion. Whether or not this is a trick is irrelevant. The reasoning that I have presented is precise and logical.
I would most definately enjoy hearing a response. Thanks.
Let’s ignore the subtext(s) for now and first take a quick look at what is meant by an atheist. Typically most times I’ve seen a description from self-identified atheists (ie. those who call themselves atheists), it goes something like this: “one who lacks a belief in a god or gods”. This would make it the opposite of theist and would also make virtually all who call themselves agnostics into atheists as well. If you don’t know whether something is true you can’t have a belief in its existance, so you lack this specific belief*. This broad definition of an atheist is the one I think is most useful and this is what I mean when I use the word.
Now, this leads to 2 interesting things: (1) from the above, we can see that this definition can lead to some overlaps, for instance an agnostic who is an atheist and (2) sometimes people can assume a stronger definition of atheism (eg. the positive belief that a god/gods do not exist) in order to try and make the position seem less defensible. Both are relevant to answering the question above. Because I (and probably most atheists) can answer yes to pretty much all the statements. Let’s see:
I am somewhat confident that there is no God – “somewhat confident” is pretty subjective but it sets a low bar so I’d say yes. This is separate to a lack of belief in a deity since it is a positive belief that there’s [probably] no deity, but since all our beliefs are qualified with something like “probably” I don’t have a problem answering yes to this one.
I am very confident that there is no God – a bit tougher since “very confident” is stronger, and subjective too. If say 80% confidence is the bar to pass then maybe I can answer yes, but it’s a bit hard to judge how confident you are to that degree of accuracy.
I have a feeling that there is no God – well certainly if I have some confidence say over 50% then you could classify it as a feeling. The only alternative is having an intuitive “feeling” that there is a god but then believing the opposite based on reasoned argument, but I don’t think this is what I’ve got.
I don’t think there is a God – yes, as this is the same as the definition I wrote out above.
There may be a God, but I am not convinced – yes since this is exactly the same as the one above.
I absolutely know that there is no God – this is probably the only one that I’d say no to. However, it may be a red herring since I almost never see anyone claiming absolute knowledge of anything (except some rare cases of religious belief).
Now, the subtext seems to be getting me to say that I’m “open” to the possibility of a god — which I don’t think matters that much. The problem may be in the supposed difference between not thinking there is a god and saying there might be but you’re not convinced. When people talk about belief, they are talking about their own reasons for saying something’s true or false, and this may or may not be related to reality. For all statements we make there’s a gap between what we can say with justification and what’s really out there, since we could always be inside a computer simulations or some such place.
If you’re an atheist, did you get a different answer to any of the questions to me? (Obviously for a theist they would all be different). More good stuff on the topic in a recent Blag Hag post, but hopefully this addresses how sometimes the categories can get mixed up when dealing with non-exclusive definitions.
*Of course there are be agnostic theists, but in most situations when someone says “agnostic”, this is not what they mean.
If you’ve missed the original story, a few months ago a plane had mechanical troubles very soon after it took off and was set to crash land in a reasonably populated area until the pilot skillfully set it down on the Hudson River, amongst dramatic TV rescue footage. As can be expected, the event generated a lot of commentary on how this was a “miracle” and how “God himself” intervened (there are too many stories to link to). Now when there’s a natural disaster and people praise God for the few survivors the natural response is why wasn’t God with the vast majority who perished. But this doesn’t apply here because — thanks to the crew — nobody was killed. So the most annoying thing left about those kinds of comments is that they take away from the pilot. The real cause for celebration was some human being using his brain to skillfully do his job — and I think that’s more meaningful than any miraculous magic-carpet landings provided care of The AlmightyTM.
But this video brought it home even further — and gave me a serious lump in my throat. How much more of a real miracle is the organisation of brains, planning, intention and technology that pulled out the plane! It reminded me of just how trivial and petty most miracle claims are, for instance the sun dancing around to the ooh-ing and aah-ing of the devoted. The best response to that from a theist is I think to point to the other kind of everyday miracle (eg. the “miracle” of childbirth) — but those are precisely the ones for which there is no need for a miraculous explanation, and that’s where the wonder comes from.
In any case, if ever a video had some real teleological imagery this is it. There’s the cold water, representing the unfriendliness of the cosmos and the forces of time, decay and entropy working to kill us. There’s the fluttering of people hither and thither, before a situation that would seem hopeless for 99.99% of human history. And then the triumph of resurrection. When it really is done right, it really is meaningful in a way that faith healing could never be.
And of course this is just a preview of what’s to come. For one day we will achieve real immortality and resurrection. And once again because it will be founded in organisation, wits, science and humanity, it — unlike the petty miracles YHWH has stooped to — really will be a jaw-dropping, throat-lumping, world-shattering thing to behold.
About time I wrapped up this super-long review of The Noose and the Stone in the Green Grass, no? So here’s the last part (part 1 here, part 2 here), dealing with outcasts and lepers.
One kind of lepers referred to in the book are the institutionalised. Mental institutions do not escape the scourge of state control and are routinely used as political instruments. At the start of the novel, Alyosha’s sister in law relates how she’s damned because she is a nurse in a mental institution in the middle of Moscow where a very large number of inmates are perfectly healthy and have just been placed there to keep them out of the way. Later on, a key character (I’m trying to avoid at least the major spoilers!) becomes incarcerated there for this very reason.
Mental illness has always been about social control, and social consensus about what’s considered acceptable and what’s meant to be kept away. This isn’t necessarily bad of its own accord — but a mental health system tends to reflect wider society. If you’re in the USSR in the 1970s and you’ve been institutionalised because you’re not willing to go along with some social norm or other, from a certain sick perspective you really are crazy.
Onto the second type of leprocy. A lot of the book deals with the “Jewish question” of the Soviet Union. As Alyosha’s father, the former all-powerful special ops man jokes (paraphrased): “Anti-semitism is an insiduous uncommunist condition that goes against international solidarity. It is therefore suffered only by a few hundred million people in the USSR”.
A small but symbolic event is the doctoral dissertation Ula is working on for much of the novel. She is a literature major and is focussed on a little-known Jewish poet. And he’s not a poet who happens to be Jewish, he really is a Jewish Poet. Naturally, her dissertation is rejected (although some of it is for reasons other than her subject). As mentioned before, she sells the manuscript to an academic from another town who will rewrite it substituting a “native” Russian poet as the subject. The university will just see a brilliant analysis of an important cog within Russian Heritage and will give him the doctorate. The Jewish poet will be forgotten — almost nobody in the country other than Ula is interested in him. The best he can do is serve as the skeleton for a dissertation about someone else.
The novel deals with emmigration from the USSR, namely the Jews who started applying to move to Israel in the 70s. Throughout the book they are referred to as lepers. To fill out a form requesting to be “released” to live in another country is your first mark as a leper. Especially if that country is Israel, which is deliberately mispronounced by all government officials placing the stress on the second syllable (in Russian the stress is on the first). It is also the only country referred to by its full name in governmentese. France is called “France”, Greece is “Greece” but Israel must always be “the Republic of Isra-El” [wrong stress] to the officials.
The number of documents to be gathered is mind-boggling. You need to account for your entire life before you can begin it elsewhere. You must pay an administrative fee that’s pretty much a year of your salary. From the moment you apply you are a leper. Those who know what’s good for them will avoid you. Your friends risk being placed under investigation if they continue to socialise with you. Your life will be monitored, the surveillance on your phone that’s standard for all citizens stepped up, letters to and from overseas opened and read twice instead of once.
If you’re like Ula, a meeting will be called at work so that all your colleagues get the chance to publicly express their cricitism and outrage for What You Did. Some will be pretty much in tears — genuine tears — that a fellow worker and former friend, a member of the Saved, had Fallen so much with her Traitorousness. You will then be fired from your job for, yes, unethical conduct. In the meantime, the giant administrative fee will continue to beckon, taunting your leprocy. It will take many months, sometimes years, for a decision to be given. In that time, your entire life is in hybernation. In return for the possibility of release, all they ask is that you sit it out, cease participation in society, try to avoid contaminating others with your disease. And you comply, because you live in the country where everyone agrees.
I’m pretty wary of looking at accounts of oppressive regimes and trying to read too many lessons for today from them. When I bought 1984 in a second hand bookshop in about 2002, the checkout guy said something like “this book is more important than ever”. I looked at him funny. Sure, I think it was around the time the “PATRIOT” Act was signed in the US, but still, more important now than the last few decades?
And then there are all the slippery slope arguments — the idea that if X happens, it’s only a matter of time before we’re in a world like 1984 (or The Noose and the Stone). Of course books like these should serve as reminders of the importance of liberty and sanity. But I found the Noose to be similar to a story of, say, children in a war. In such a story the book is often more about suffering and resilience of people rather than some external message like “war is bad”. The Noose and the Stone would be belittled if all that’s extracted from it is “murderous dictatorships are bad”. It is about an all-pervasive non-supernatural hell and the myriads of ways that people have gone about surviving it — whether it’s writing novels, emigrating, becoming cynical and oblivious, profiteering or drinking.
Because I think it’s healthy to laugh at such tragedies, I’ll end with a very poignant transcript of a sketch from Episode #15 of the wonderful Geologic Podcast by George Hrab. I was listening to it whilst listening to this book on audio and it made it a lot more bearable:
RUSSIAN VOICE: Is new, from Ex-Soviet State Propaganda Films Registry. For to be marketing of movie film in home and to be using on deevd players.
GROUP: Nyetflix!
RUSSIAN VOICE: Making feature of best Soviet movies of all time.
GROUP: Nyetflix!
RUSSIAN VOICE: Available now on deevd.
GROUP: Nyetflix!
RUSSIAN VOICE: Nyeflix. Stay home. No talking. Watching movie.
USA VOICE: Wow, what a service. So I…get to choose the movie?
GROUP: No!
USA VOICE: But I can select when it gets shipped to me, right?
GROUP: No!
USA VOICE: Do I get to keep the movie as long as I want?
GROUP: No!
USA VOICE: Are these movies any good?
GROUP: No!
USA VOICE: So, why exactly would I wanna use this service?
RUSSIAN VOICE: Is Nyeflix. Stop asking questions.
USA VOICE: Ok ok, so how does this work?
RUSSIAN VOICE: Using secret timeline known only to select members of Party, we send you very perfect transfer of deevd version of most prestigious Soviets movie ever to be making. All pre-Berlin-Wall-tumbling. We sending you such famous Soviet supertitles like…
VOICE 1: Moscow Town
VOICE 2: Standing In Line In The Rain
VOICE 1: Mr Sementovich Goes To Leningrad
VOICE 2: BorschtWars
VOICE 1: BorschtWars Episode 5 — The Empire Is Totally In Control And Is Actually Good For You
VOICE 2: Cool Hand Gregory
VOICE 1: Butch Petrovich And The Pierogi Kid
VOICE 2: Night Of The Living Politburo
VOICE 1: Novosibirsk Jones And The Temple Of Zionist Propaganda
VOICE 2: It’s A Miserable Life
VOICE 1: ET, The Extra Toilet Paper
VOICE 2: The Failure Of The Great Escape
VOICE 1: 2001, A Date When You Will Get Your Car
VOICE 2: The Legend Of Voting
VOICE 1: The Magnificent Seven Year Plan
VOICE 2: Some Like It In Siberia
VOICE 1: It Never Happened One Night
VOICE 2: The Longest Line
RUSSIAN VOICE: All of these great titles and many many more. Well ok, two more.
GROUP: Nyetflix!
USA VOICE: Wow, can I get Nyetflix?
GROUP: No!
RUSSIAN VOICE: I-I mean, yes!
USA VOICE: How do I do it?
RUSSIAN VOICE: Is simple. Stand in kitchen and speak clearly into toaster saying: “I wanting Nyetflix and am agreeing to be member of Party”. And in 10 to 65 months, you will receiving first deevd. Watching this. Tell no-one what you are having seen. After viewing, go to living room and speaking clearly into ashtray saying: “the blue rabbit is in the cow barn”. And if all checks out, you getting next deevd within again 10 to 87 months. Is simple.
USA VOICE: Great.
RUSSIAN VOICE: Nyeflix. Stay home. No talking. Watching movie.
This entry is part of the Blogging-the-Bible series. To see a list of passages, covered so far click here.
–[continued from previous post] choose the first king of Israel. This is the unfortunate (as we’ll learn later) lad called Saul, the precursor to the book’s main protagonist.
The story of Saul becoming king is very well written, reminding me of the story of Samuel’s first prophesy. There is a very nice buildup of dramatic tension. First, we see a shepherd who has lost some donkeys. He sends his lad Saul to look for them along with a servant [ie. slave?]. Like all modern Hollywood action movies about those about to get into leadership positions, Saul is presented as completely naive and unready — essentially a boy. He looks for the donkeys for a few days and when they pass near a town where Samuel is meant ot be, Saul’s servant suggests they visit the prophet. So there they are asking about lost donkeys, whilst that same night YHWH spills the beans to Samuel that the boy who visits him is the one to be made king.
The story is very weird but child rulers probably weren’t unknown in the world of the ancient Near East. The difference is that the author is now [cleverly] turning the Israelites’ expectations of their king on their head. They wanted a testostoroney warriour just like “all the nations” so YHWH is giving them a child, thereby delivering Israel’s success through “humble” means.
Samuel declines to answer Saul’s question about the donkeys but wines and dines him and keeps him overnight. The shock comes to Saul hard and fast and Saul is accosted with a flood of information. The prophet is comically specific in his instructions:
Samuel took a flask of oil and poured some on Saul’s head and kissed him, and said “The LORD herewith annoints you ruler over His own people. When you leave me today, you will meet two men near the tomb of Rachel in the territory of Benjamin at Zelzah, and they will tell you that the asses you set out to look for have been found, and that your father has stopped being concerned about the asses and is worrying about you saying: ‘What shall I do about my son?’ You shall pass on from there until you come to the terebinth of Tabor. There you will be met by three men making a pilgrimage to God at Bethel. One will be carrying three kids, another will be carrying three loaves of bread, and the third will be carrying a jar of wine. They will greet you and offer you two loaves of bread which you shall accept. After that, you are to go on to the Hill of God, where the Philistine prefects reside. There, as you enter the town, you will encounter a band of prophets coming down from the shrine, preceded by lyres, timbrels, flutes and harps, and they will be speaking in ecstasy. The spirit of the LORD will grip you, and you will speak in ecstasy along with them; you will become another man. And once these signs have happened to you, act when the occasion arises for God is with you. After that, you are to go down to Gilgal ahead of me, and I will come down to you to present burnt offerings and offer sacrifices of well-being. Wait seven days until I come to you and instruct you what you are to do next.”(10:1-8)
I don’t know about you, but that reminds me of the movie Spy Game with Brad Pitt and Robert Redford, or any similar spy thriller, where an old wise spy tests his protege by telling him: “See that building over there? I want to see you outside the third floor window in 2 minutes, picking up some chloroform. After that, there is a trapdoor in the floor that you should enter. Go through the corridor, knock thrice on your left. Drug the guard with the chloroform, then start crowing like a rooster for that disables the security system. Now, this is where it gets really weird…etc etc”
Anyhow, Saul is scared by this whole thing so comes back to his family and doesn’t tell. Samuel engages in the “proper” searching for a king by gathering the heads of all the tribes of Israel and casting lots thereby letting YHWH “choose” the tribe, then the clan etc. So, the lots point to Saul’s tribe of Benjamin, then his clan, then his family, then his self — the boy-king is revealed to Israel! Of course at the time, Saul has run off to hide, still scared shitless by the whole thing, and must be searched for and retrieved before the whole thing can continue. Again, good to see some actual skillful employment of drama: Saul is like Millhouse in the Simpsons when he ran away from not wanting to play Fallout Boy.
The fact that Saul is chosen twice makes me suspect Samuel might be doing something fishy here. If the boy was revealed to him by YHWH, why not just announce it straight to the people? Of course the possible answer is that the nation would have said something like “This boy? How do we know it’s not just you chosing him to rub our faces into it since we wanted a king contrary to your wishes?” So perhaps for the sake of the public, Samuel needed to show that there is something supernaturally special about Saul, such that it really is YHWH’s choice and not Saul’s. Which once again highlights that the Biblical people were more skeptical than you might think. Of course the lot itself could have been done with sleight of hand, but at least the expectation of some sort of public evidence is there.
Of course in all probability none of these events actually happened so it’s a bit of a moot point. The humble child-king is inaugurated in spite of the Israelites’ macho-fantasies of a marauding king. Which is just as well, since as soon as Saul’s made king–[to be continued].
The Argument From Religious Need: 1. Human beings really need God 2. What humans really need, probably really exists 3. Therefore, God really exists Seriously.
Just what else are Catholic priests buying? Check out this Amazon product and scroll to Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought. Via Andrew Sullivan.
A nice outline on how imprecise the creationist definition of information is
For many decades, creationism has been associated with opposition to the theory and fact of evolution. It has undergone many mutations, and the latest species to emerge is the Intelligent Design gambit (or it’s often called, “creationism in a cheap tuxedo”). Some of the central canards of ID are:
The materialist theory of evolution is not enough to account for the forms of life on earth. How can “mere”, unthinking matter organise itself to produce [the diversity of life/something about information/something about irreducible complexity]?
The only way to explain the missing step is to invoke the input from an Intelligent Designer.
As a result, materialist biology is bankrupt and is due to be overturned any time now.
Evolution is atheistic dogma and tries to suppress debate by censoring us brave critics.
These are of course complete rubbish and have been refuted trillions of times throughout the scientific, skeptical and atheist blogospheres. However, I have a prophecy to make. With legal setbacks (from the 2005 Dover trial and beyond), at some point the precedents will accumulate and creationists will look on to a new strategy beyond ID to advance their beliefs. I think creationist neuro-”science” and creationist claims about the brain and mind are the next major frontier after Intelligent Design. This idea’s not original, and indeed the Discovery Institute (the vehicle behind ID) has Michael Egnor whose specialty is making creationist claims about a mind. What I want to note is how easily the above canards of Intelligent Design are transformed into canards about the mind and brain:
The materialist theory of mind is not enough to account for the human mind. How can “mere”, unthinking neurons organise themselves to produce [consciousness/subjective experience/free will]?
The only way to explain the missing step is to invoke some nonmaterial consciousness (ie. a soul), created by an Intelligent Designer.
As a result, materialist mind science is bankrupt and is due to be overturned any time now.
Materialist brain science or philosophy of mind is atheistic dogma and tries to suppress debate by censoring us brave critics.
I think more and more creationists will follow Michael Egnor’s footsteps and go for these talking points more and more over the “pure” anti-evolution points listed above. One of the reasons is that arguing about minds, they have a large number of advantages over arguing about evolution.
Compared to consciousness, evolution is relatively easy to understand. After only a bit of reading, you can visualise and get an intuitive grasp for most of the processes. With consciousness, the mind-body problem (or how it is that our brains, essentially made of trillions of non-conscious moronic robots, can have conscious experience) is something at the cutting edge of genuine debate in many academic fields.
When you mention topics like subjective experience, feelings of (say) pain or love or the colour blue, our feeling of free will and that we’re in control of our actions, our introspection, memory and so forth — here, unfortunately even many scientifically minded people start to falter and speak of something “beyond” the “mere” atoms of our brain.
Finally, as Dennett says, this is a murky field because everybody thinks they’re an expert on consciousness just because they’re conscious. This of course doesn’t follow — everyone digests food but that doesn’t make them an expert in the physiology of digestion. So it is the nature of theories of mind (and that they are constructed with the same organ that’s the object of study) that makes this an easy field for creationists to sow confusion.
We need to start getting prepared for this, to familiarise ourselves with the fallacies and misrepresentations of creationist and anti-materialist claims about the mind. At the moment, a very good percentage of those in the non-religious blogosphere (and many in the religious blogosphere too!) are equipped with dealing with anti-evolution fallacies. The same should happen for the brain.
I’m currently doing a grad diploma in the mind-body problem, philosophy of mind etc, so this is of considerable interest to me. This year, I hope to dedicate a lot more time to the project of discussing these as pre-emptions of future creationist claims. It’s a very heady topic — I’ll do my best to make as many crude analogies and fart jokes as I can for smoother reading. In the meantime, the main resource I can recommend for now is almost anything Dan Dennett including online papers and the book Consciousness Explained. As an example of an anti-materialist argument that will surely be made by more creationists, I suggest the Chinese Room Thought-Experiment, which I’ll discuss later, along with others.
Are there any particularly good resources on mind that you can recommend? Any particularly ridiculous creationist statements about mind? Or even interesting ones made by “regular” people? Please share them in the comments.
The book of Samuel now takes an interesting turn and sorta pulls the rug out from under you. Chapters 1-12 depict a relatively independent Israel that has just chosen Saul for itself as king. Now, it turns out that all this time, the Israelites were also subjugated by their old enemy the Philistines, and the Philistines were the real overlords of the land. To be fair, the previous book (chronologically) is Judges, and the last judge it describes is the famous Samson. Samson is — ironically enough — the world’s first suicide bomber (more on that in a future post). He used his immense strength to collapse the Philistine temple he was being showed off in when he was captured, thereby killing himself and more Philistines than he had killed previously in his life. (Which is a lot.) In any case, it does not say that this ended the Philistines’ subjugation of Israel and nothing more is spoken from the start of Samuel up to this point.
