November 2013 – Page 2

al-Harizi's superlative self-touting in Tahkemoni

Early thirteenth-century Hebrew author Judah al-Harizi introduces his book Tahkemoni with praise for wisdom, God, and intellect. That praise concludes with a prayer to God for protection:

Protect us from the arrogant, we who revere You, shine Your countenance upon us, draw us near You; number us among the souls who truly love and fear You. [1]

Al-Harizi then describes himself to be divinely ordained as his nation’s poet. That commission comes from “my Intellect,” which al-Harizi also calls “the Intellect” and “the Divine Mind.” The Intellect purifies al-Harizi’s lips with a burning coal, just as did an angel for the great prophet Isaiah. Al-Harizi figures his words as gold for princes’ and courtiers’ necklaces and bracelets:

The Lord has gifted me with a skilled tongue and lifted me above my kin that I might place within the Intellect’s palm the gold of my thought, subtly wrought, long sought-after and too precious to be bought, that he might make thereof bands for princes’ necks and dear companions’ hands.

Al-Harizi’s fear of the arrogant and fear of God didn’t stop him from giving himself high praise.

Al-Harizi’s Tahkemoni is a distinguished work. It’s an original literary composition in Hebrew, the sacred language of Jewish scripture. Hebrew was not commonly used in non-religious Jewish writing from at least 2000 years ago. With Tahkemoni, al-Harizi sought to demonstrate the suppleness and power of the Holy Tongue Hebrew in non-religious literary writing. Tahkemoni encompassed all of life:

I tell of teetotallers and drinkers, of warriors and thinkers, spin tales of journeys, of kings and poets’ tourneys, prayers and supplication, praise and protestation, the rebuke of the wise and good fortune’s demise, the role of Love’s gazelles and the cool of desert wells, stint’s harsh breeze and beggars’ pleas, wind and water, sword and slaughter, harts’ hunt and heart’s want, travellers’ treks and slippery decks and vessels’ wrecks, slandering, pandering, and Youth’s meandering, Nazirites’ vows and drunken carouse, paramours, ills and cures, blockheads and boors, guile’s school and the gulled fool, gibe and jeer and snub and sneer, song enchanted, wine discanted, witty invention, brazen contention — all this that this book might be Song’s manse and garden, wherein every seeker might sate his quest, every petitioner gain his behest: herein shall the weary rest.

After finishing that long sentence, the weary reader rests and marvels. Al-Harizi recommends his book for the God-fearing and the God-forsaking, and for the dimwit and the wise. He describes his book as a feast. It will also beautify lips:

well shall this feast serve our people from west to east, for too often is their Hebrew mangled, their phrases tangled, their clauses jarred and jangled. Let the limp, the halt, the twisted, the unsightly read this work and speak rightly.

Al-Harizi was completely serious about his purpose. He sought to instruct in Hebrew literary entertainment.

Al-Harizi’s work required material support. Al-Harizi worked hard to secure patronage:

from the Euphrates to the Nile I sought a patron’s smile, a champion of Generosity’s camp to lend my work his stamp. Long I looked that I might seize and bind him: I sought him, but I did not find him. I searched until appalled: no one answered when I called.

Al-Harizi finds a patron in his introduction to Tahkemoni. He pays the patron with lavish praise:

I found him whom my soul loves and God approves, for He has set him Prince above his generation, a lion whom we roar in acclimation, Probity’s girdle and Kindness’ glove, Wisdom’s tiara and the sceptre of love, a rising sun, a Joseph for awe, a David guarding godly law, a leaping stag, discernment’s crag, and eagle soaring proud and lone, a Solomon seated on Wisdom’s throne. He strums on sapience’s lute — rhetors and sages fall mute; before his lineage all nobles are ashamed, and when he gives, all givers are defamed. … He is the great prince of blazing merit, Israel’s wall and turret, the great Maecenas, that shining soul, Rabbi Samuel son of Alberkol

Al-Harizi finds another patron in the first gate (chapter) of Tahkemoni. He praises that patron lavishly:

Two witnesses attest to his renown: Solomon his seal and David his crown. With them for chariots and cars, he rules the stars. Before him angels peal. Lo, the age’s prince — kneel, kneel, O Israelites: thus shall be done to the man in which the king delights! He is praise’s walls and ground, his virtue knows no bound, his speech no flaw; his heart is an endless ocean of God’s law. His mouth is Wisdom’s gushing fountain; his mighty arm, Salvation’s mountain. … He is our master of bright renown, our God-fearing crown of piety, agate and coronal of our society, seed of kings and our prince and lord, our outstretched arm, our bared and gleaming sword, our pillar of fire, dispelling darkness for us, the Ark of the Covenant journeying before us, our holy throne, our song and our refrain, who turns the hills and twisted ways to a level plain, our rabbi, teacher, lord, and king, Wisdom’s signet-ring: Josiah

In various manuscripts, Tahkemoni was also dedicated to at least three other notables. Two manuscripts exclude the above dedication to Josiah. According to a leading scholar of Tahkemoni, those manuscripts were “doubtless copied from a manuscript meant for a different patron.” [2]

Al-Harizi’s self-interested puffing and flattery seem to me to be part of his larger program of entertainment. Elaborately praising different patrons in the introduction and in chapter one probably isn’t mistaken double-dressing. Out-doing the praise in the introduction, the praise in chapter one deploys direct figures of idolatry: the patron is “our pillar of fire” and the “Ark of the Covenant.”[3] That’s too outrageous not to be meant as entertainment. Both al-Harizi’s praise of himself and his expansive valuation of his book are similarly outrageous. Elaborate praise of patrons is a feature of the Arabic literary tradition. Al-Harizi knew that tradition well. He humorously capped the Arabic tradition with all the serious resources of the Hebrew language.

Amid bountiful opportunities and rights, what writing today is as daring, path-breaking, and entertaining as al-Harizi’s Tahkemoni?

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Notes:

[1] Judah al-Harizi, Tahkemoni, Introduction, from Hebrew trans. Segal (2001) p. 9. Subsequent quotes are from id. pp. 9, 15-6, 17, 19, 19, (26, 28, from Ch. 1). The reference to companions in “dear companions’ hands” probably translates the Arabic term nadim, a courtier who is a close associate of the ruler.

[2] Segal’s textual analysis, id. p. 432, ft. 12.

[3] God manifested himself as a pillar of fire and protected the Hebrews as they fled from captivity in Egypt. Exodus 13-21-22, 14:24. The Ark of the Covenant held the Torah and physically represented the contract between God and the Hebrews.

[image] Sinagoga del Tránsito (Synogogue El Transito) interior, Toledo (Spain), constructed about 1356. Image thanks to Windwhistler and Wikipedia.

Reference:

Segal, David Simha, trans. and ed. 2001. Judah al-Harizi. The book of Taḥkemoni: Jewish tales from medieval Spain. Portland, OR: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization.

Zaleucus gouged out eyes as punishment for adultery

In the ancient world, public laws declared severe punishments for men who committed adultery. Under the ancient Mesopotamian Code of Hammurabi, if a married woman had sex with a man other than her husband, that man would be executed through drowning.[1] Under ancient Egyptian law, such a man would be flogged with one thousand blows with a rod.[2] The book of Deuteronomy, a sacred text of Jewish law, declares that a man who commits adultery shall be killed. The context suggests execution by stoning, while some Jewish legal authorities have interpreted the execution to be by strangulation.[3]

Law from the celebrated ancient Greek lawgiver Zaleucus reportedly imposed a significantly different punishment for men who committed adultery. The earliest source for the story of Zaleucus’ punishment for adultery is the Roman Valerius Maximus, writing about 30 GC. Valerius recounted:

Zaleucus protected the city of Locri with very salutary and useful laws. His son was convicted on a charge of adultery and according to a law constituted by Zaleucus himself was due to lose both eyes. The whole community wished to spare the young man the necessity of punishment in honour of his father. For some time Zaleucus resisted, but in the end, overborne by the people’s entreaties, he first gouged out one of his own eyes, then one of his son’s, leaving the faculty of sight to them both. Thus he rendered to the law a due measure of retribution, by admirable balance of equity dividing himself between compassionate father and just lawgiver.[4]

A text from no later than the second century BGC tells a similar story of Locrian law, but concerns theft rather than adultery:

If anyone is caught stealing, his eyes are gouged out. The son of Zaleucus was caught {stealing} and when the Locrians let him go, Zaleucus did not allow this, but he gouged out one of his own eyes and one of his son’s. [5]

These are sensational stories.[6] For theft, a physical punishment more directly fitted to the crime would be cutting off hands. For example, the Code of Hammurabi declared: “if a son strike his father, his hands shall be hewn off.”[7] Gouging out a thief’s eye suggests a more abstract association with covetousness. Valerius’ account recast the crime from theft to adultery, but retained the underlying idea of the eye motivating illegal desire.

The story of Zaleucus gouging out eyes for adultery drew upon important physiological and poetic literature. Cupid shooting love arrows was a well-established figure in Greek and Latin literature 2000 years ago. For example, Ovid’s Metamorphoses tells of Cupid shooting an arrow of love that pieced Apollo’s heart. Apollo, thus lovesick, exclaimed:

Sure are my arrows, but one surer still
Has struck me to the heart, my carefree heart.
The art of medicine I gave the world
And all men call me “healer”; I possess
The power of every herb. Alas! that love
No herb can cure, that skills which help afford
To all mankind fail now to help their lord! [8]

Apollo, well-known for outrageous behavior, thus appropriated the origin of medicine. In physiological writing, Aristotle described visual spirits entering the eye and traveling to the heart.[9] Under the law of the ancient Greek lawgiver Zaleucus, gouging out adulterers’ eyes would prevent future danger from Cupid’s arrows to the eyes. The danger of glances and Cupid shooting arrows into eyes subsequently became a theme in Islamic and medieval European literature.[10]

Other than in legends of the ancient Greek lawgiver Zaleucus, known laws have never specified gouging out of men’s eyes for adultery. Modern, harsh penal regulation of male sexuality isn’t specifically rooted in classical Greco-Roman law or in medieval European Christianity. It has arisen from more general features of human social nature.

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Notes:

[1] Code of Hammurabi (c. 1780 BGC), trans. L.W. King, law #129. Under that law, a husband could pardon his wife for adultery, but only the King could pardon the man. In modern legal terms, criminal law concerns law for which the sovereign governs prosecution. In that sense, men were criminalized for adultery, but women weren’t. The code of Hammurabi and similar codes appear to be mixtures of statutory and case law.

[2] Diodorus Siculus reported of the ancient Egyptians:

Severe also were their laws touching women. For if a man had violated {by force, i.e. raped} a free married woman, they stipulated that he be emasculated, considering that such a person by a single unlawful act had been guilty of the three greatest crimes, assault, abduction, and confusion of offspring; but if a man committed adultery with the woman’s consent, the laws ordered that the man should receive a thousand blows with the rod, and that the woman should have her nose cut off, on the ground that a woman who tricks herself out with an eye to forbidden licence should be deprived of that which contributes most to a woman’s comeliness.

Library of History (Bibliotheca historica) Bk. I, Sec. 78, para. 4. Attacks on men’s genitals feature commonly as informal, private punishment in Old French fabliau. Marie de France included in her romance Bisclavret the cutting off of a woman’s nose. A punishment of men for adultery in Athens in the 5th and 4th century BGC reportedly was forcing a radish into the man’s anus (rhaphanidosis).

[3] Deuteronomy 22:22. According to the Jewish Encyclopedia:

The punishment for Adultery according to the Mishnah (Sanh. xi. 1) was strangulation; the rabbinical theory being that wherever the death penalty was mentioned in the Bible, without any specific statement of the manner of its infliction, strangulation was meant (Sifra, Ḳedoshim, 4, 9).

The Jewish Encyclopedia also notes that Jews abolished the death penalty in the year 40. The Roman Empire throughout its existence continued to punish persons with death, including by crucifixion. High-status Romans sentenced to death were able to choose their own means of death. The Roman Emperor Augustus “forced Polus, a favourite freedman of his, to take his own life, because he was convicted of adultery with Roman matrons.” Suetonius, Life of Augustus, 67.

[4] Valerius Maximus, Memorable doings and sayings (Factorum et Dictorum Memorabilium), Book VI.5 ext. 3, from Latin trans. Shackleton Bailey (2000) p. 65. Id. Bk. I.3 ext. 4 states:

Zaleucus was accounted wisest of men among the Locrians acting in the name of Minerva {Athena}.

Valerius introduced the story of Zaleucus with admiration, “Nothing could be braver than the following examples of justice.” The subsequent example concerns Charondas of Thurii. Charondas made a law stating that anyone who entered an assembly armed would be put to death. Charondas inadvertently attended an assembly armed. Informed of that mistake, Charondas immediately fell on his sword on his own initiative. Id. Bk. VI.4 ext. 4. Valerius rose from poverty and social obscurity to join the Roman literary and political elite (Gagarin (1986), p. 58; an Aristotelian text describes Zaleucus as originally a non-free shepherd). Valerius’ Memorable doings and sayings celebrate and disseminate elite Roman knowledge and values. The Locrians under Zaleucus were also known for requiring anyone proposing a law to do so with a noose around his neck. Claudius Aelianus (ca. 175 – ca. 235) included the story of Zaleucus gouging out eyes for adultery in his Varia Historia, 13.24.

The story of Zaleucus gouging out his eye was widely disseminated in the medieval story-collection Gesta Romanorum, Tale 50, from Latin trans. Swan & Hooper (1876) p. 86; Tale 49 in the Anglo-Latin Gesta Romanorum, Bright (2019) pp. 306-9. James Yonge added that story to his translation of the Secret of Secrets in 1422 in Ireland. For text, see Steele (1898) p. 128. Yonge attributed the story to “the wise scholar Valerius.”

[5] Heraclidis Lembi, Excerpta Politiarum, from Greek trans. Dilts (1971) p. 35, frag. 61. Scholars generally believe that Arisotle or his immediate pupils wrote the Politeia. Heraclidis Lembi excerpted the work in the second century BGC.

[6] Mittica (2008) reviews some surviving texts about Zaleucus （Ζάλευκος). In Cicero, De Legibus 6, Quintus says that Timaeus the Historian (c. 345 BGC – c. 250 BGC) denied that Zaleucus ever existed. Plutarch describes Lycurgus, another ancient Greek lawgiver, as having lost one eye. Parallel Lives, Lycurgus 11. Such a story may have contributed to the story of Zaleucus gouging out eyes as punishment for adultery. Even if Zaleucus actually existed, the story of him gouging out eyes almost surely is a literary construction.

[7] Code of Hammurabi, L.W. King translation.

[8] Ovid, Metamorphoses, Bk. I, ll. 463-530 (story of Apollo and Daphne), from Latin trans. Melville (1986) p. 16. Apollo’s response to Daphne is highly visual: “Apollo saw her, loved her, wanted her.” Trans. id. p. 15. That somewhat loose translation plays with the well-known reported declaration of Julius Caesar: “I came, I saw, I conquered.” Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica (3rd century BCE), Bk. 3, ll. 275-98, describes Eros (Cupid) shooting a love arrow into Medea’s heart.

[9] Stewart (2003) pp. 15, 89-92, describing Aristotle’s account of intromission in De Anima and De Sensu.

[10] In Islam, the hadith reported by al-Tirmidhi, 2701, warns of a “second glance.” See also the Qur’an, Surah 24 (Al Nur), 30-31. On shooting arrows of love into men’s eyes in medieval Europe, Stewart (2003). Id., p. 13, describes a shift from the classical figures of Cupid’s arrow to the heart to the medieval figure of Cupid’s arrow to the eye. That account seems to be overdrawn. Heliodorus, Aethiopica 3.8, describes love shooting through the eye and into the heart. Similarly Achilles Tatius, Leucippe and Clitophon, 1.4.4, describes love striking the soul through the eye. Valerius’s account is consistent with that trajectory of love.

[image] Eros (Cupid) with bow, Roman copy after Greek original by Lysippos, marble sculpture in the round, 2nd century GC. In Capitoline Museums, Italy. Image thanks to Ricardo André Frantz and Wikipedia.

References:

Bright, Philippa, ed. and trans. 2019. The Anglo-Latin Gesta Romanorum: from Oxford, Bodleian Library, Douce MS 310. Oxford Medieval Texts. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dilts, Mervin R., ed. and trans. 1971. Aristotle. Heraclidis Lembi; excerpta politiarum. Durham, N.C.: Duke University.

Gagarin, Michael. 1986. Early Greek law. London: University of California Press.

Melville, A.D., trans. 1986. Ovid. Metamorphoses. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Mittica, M. Paola. 2008. “Le tradizioni su Zaleuco. Storia politicosociale di un codice e di un legislatore leggendari.” Sociologia Del Diritto. 35 (3): 83.

Shackleton Bailey, D.R. trans. 2000. Valerius Maximus. Memorable doings and sayings. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

Steele, Robert, ed. 1898. Three prose versions of the Secreta secretorum. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner.

Stewart, Dana E. 2003. The arrow of love: optics, gender, and subjectivity in medieval love poetry. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press.

Swan, Charles, and Wynnard Hooper, trans. 1876. Gesta romanorum: entertaining moral stories. New York: Dover Publications Inc. (reprint edition of 1969).

representing others in medieval Iberian & modern academic literature

The conclusion to Michelle Hamilton’s Representing Others in Medieval Iberian Literature begins with an epigram from another scholar. Read it with philosophical seriousness:

Three ingredients, then, are necessary to make Europe: Rome, Greece and Christianity.

— Rémi Brague, Eccentric Culture

Hamilton then begins in her own words:

Rémi Brague’s provocative assertion that the only traditions that contributed to the formation of contemporary Europe are Western ones reflects contemporary critical views of European identity and history. [1]

Hamilton thus rewrites “are necessary to make” into “the only traditions that contributed.” That’s passive-aggressive symbolic violence to the other scholar.[2] Such deliberative acts, not the totalizing view, sadly reflect contemporary critical practice in discussing European identity and history.

Welcome to the New Middle Ages. It’s producing cartoon literature that outdoes this-for-that didactic allegory. It’s re-chanting academic ideology. The whole enterprise is less humorous than medieval theology or modern medicine.

Where is now Jaume Roig? What happened to the French Revolution? Why has intellectual life sunk into a sea of lies?

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Notes:

[1] Hamilton (2007) p. 147. Id. contrasts the “Roman/Greek/Christian construction of identity” with the “Arab/Andalusi/Jewish” identity. The construction of these constructions of identity depends heavily on the constructions of contemporary academic medieval Iberian studies. Juan Ruiz’s Libro de buen amor shows them about as much respect as it does for Aristotle. Hamilton’s book has received laudatory reviews from her fellow scholars of medieval Iberian history and culture.

[2] Rémi Brague himself seems to be exceptionally precise in his use of words. That’s not the only way to participate fruitfully in intellectual life. But that way deserves at least a minimal level of intellectual respect.

[image] Scary clown thanks to Graeme Maclean and Wikipedia.

Reference:

Hamilton, Michelle. 2007. Representing others in Medieval Iberian literature. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Wednesday's flowers

flower fireworks

Sirach, emphasizing God's primacy, ambivalently praised physicians

Sirach placed God over Galen

While many persons served many gods within the ancient Mediterranean world, Jews served a jealous god. From a Jewish perspective, and subsequently Christian and Islamic perspectives, no other god was higher, greater, or stronger than the god of Abraham, the Lord. No other god was truly the creator of heaven and earth. No other god cared as well for those who served him. To a sick person, a human physician providing healing and deliverance from suffering might seem like a god. Ancient Jewish literature shows concern about physicians usurping the position of the Lord. That concern did not prevent Jews from acquiring medical knowledge and seeking the help of professional physicians.

The description of the Jewish King Asa’s death highlights the mistake of appealing to physicians rather than to the Lord. King Asa made a deal with the Syrians to help him defeat an enemy within Israel. Asa’s mistake, according to a prophet, was not treachery among human tribes, but failure to appeal to the Lord. The prophet thus declared that Asa would face further war. Immediately following that story is an account of the cause of Asa’s death:

Asa was diseased in his feet, and his disease became severe; yet even in his disease he did not seek the Lord, but sought help from physicians. [1]

Asa thus died. In this account, seeking help from physicians parallels seeking help from a foreign army. Both are betrayals of the Lord.

Sirach, a “sage of Israel” writing about 2200 years ago, praised physicians while implicitly recognizing god’s jealousy. Sirach offered this wisdom:

Honor the physician with the honor due to him, according to your need of him, for the Lord created him; for healing comes from the Most High, and he will receive a gift from the king. The skill of the physician lifts up his head, and in the presence of great men he is admired. [2]

This wisdom is full of ambivalence toward physicians. Advice to “honor the physician” is immediately qualified with “with the honor due to him, according to your need of him.” Honor is thus immediately reduced to practical need. Moreover, the ability of the physician is credited to the Lord: “for the Lord created him; for healing comes from the Most High.” The reference to a gift from the king suggests a reward from a deputy of the Lord to the physician for administering the Lord’s healing. The physician seems to be vainly proud and falsely admired for healing skill that came from the Lord.

Sirach continued with similarly ambivalent wisdom about physicians. Sirach credited the Lord with creating physicians’ medicines. He advised the sick to “pray to the Lord, and he will heal you.” Sirach supported physicians in the context of prayer:

give the physician his place, for the Lord created him; let him not leave you, for there is need of him. There is a time when success lies in the hands of physicians, for they too will pray to the Lord that he should grant them success in diagnosis and in healing, for the sake of preserving life. [3]

According to Sirach, physicians’ prayers to the Lord are the source of success in diagnosis and healing. Immediately after invoking “preserving life” is a line that modern scholars have struggled to understand:

He who sins before his Maker, may he fall into the hands of the physician. [4]

This verse concludes what is commonly considered to be Sirach’s section on physicians. A highly knowledgeable scholar explained that verse:

The final verse is difficult {linguistically}, but reiterates the traditional view that sin, as the cause of sickness, requires God’s healing discharged by his agent, the physician, with the medicines of his {God’s} creation. [5]

The difficult verse can thus be interpreted consistent with Sirach’s praise of physicians.

The difficult verse can also be interpreted more punishingly. The phrase “fall into the hands of the physician” could mean care and protection. It also could mean capture and harm. The latter interpretation connects to the subsequent section on death. The subsequent section on death otherwise seems to have little relation to what textually comes immediately before and after. The difficult verse may be a scribal interpolation associating physicians with death. Perhaps Sirach himself made that association. In any case, physicians as causes of death was a well-known topos in the ancient world.

Concern about godly jealousy did not prevent Jews from acquiring medical knowledge and seeking the help of professional physicians. Writing roughly about the year 1000, the Jewish physicians Asaph and Shabbethai Donnolo strove to integrate highly regarded Greek medicine into Jewish thought and practice. Ideological debate about medicine’s place in Jewish life extended for more than a millennium. So too did acquiring apparently useful medical knowledge and treating sick persons. Among Jews, Christians, and servants of other gods in the ancient Hellenistic world, divine and human healing were regarded as largely complementary.[6] Symbolic battles can have little relation to actual practices.

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Notes:

[1] 2 Chronicles 16:12.

[2] Sirach 38: 1-3.

[3] Sirach 38: 12-14.

[4] Sirach 38: 15. Life, more life, is a fundamental Jewish value. The translation above is based on the Greek text of Sirach. The Greek text is apparently more readily interpretable than is the Hebrew text of Sirach at this line. The Greek text gives an ancient interpreter’s understanding of the Hebrew text.

[5] Allan (2001) p. 391, discussing the Hebrew text.

[6] Nutton (2013) Ch. 18. Jews, as well as Christians, became leading physicians in the early Islamic world. The Jewish physician Masarjawaih and the Bakhtishu, a Syro-Persian Christian family of physicians, were active in ruling circles in eighth-century Baghdad.

[image] Portrait of Galen, adapted from the Vienna Dioscurides (Juliana Anicia Codex or Codex Vindobonensis), completed in Constantinople c. 512, folio 3 painting. Adapted by T.L. Poulton, as published in Charles Singer (1925) The evolution of anatomy: a short history of anatomical and physiological discovery to Harvey (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner) p. 47, via Wellcome Images.

References:

Allan, Nigel. 2001. “The physician in ancient Israel: his status and function.” Medical History. 45 (3): 377-94.

Nutton, Vivian. 2013. Ancient medicine. 2′nd ed. London: Routledge.