savage

Who should we be?

Posted on May 14, 2012 Written by savage Leave a Comment

This Sunday, our pastor spoke on womanhood, as per Proverbs 31. That makes perfect sense, as it was Mother’s Day, of course, and he had a lot of very positive (and instructive) things to say. Next week will be a sermon on manhood, which makes sense as a followup and because next Sunday’s the last day of our church’s men’s retreat.

He said out that Proverbs 31 wasn’t necessarily calling out every woman to be like this one woman, in all characteristics; such women would be dead by 30 from exhaustion. But instead, he pointed out the characteristics and their results, such as trustworthiness, honesty, industry, her relationship with God and her husband.

After the sermon, I told him I was looking forward to the men’s retreat next weekend, and he said that the next sermon was a tie-in with the women’s sermon – because part of what made being a proper woman difficult was the lack of proper men.

That got me thinking: what is the proper role of man?

I know I could always wait until next weekend to find out his thoughts, but I don’t like being that passive; I’d rather think it through for myself, and compare and contrast once I have further information.

I’ve always had to fight the tension between being an alpha male and a follower, a beta male; the alpha in me is the traditional “I am man, fear me” personality, and the more gentle side of me is (hopefully) kinder and gentler, more accepting, more of a peacemaker.

Yet many situations call for the warrior, the less gentle side; I’m supposed to defend my family and its desires. Yet how do I balance that with the desire to be gentle and loving to all around me?

More importantly, how do I gauge which aspect to emphasize in order to witness to others most effectively?

If I coerce others into doing right, whether by force or by dint of personality, that sends a negative message about God – it says that not only are His followers forceful, but they’re unbending.

If I yield to others, accepting their error and offering grace to them, then I run the risk of seeming weak and compromising.

For me, it goes back to the schools of Pharisaism, Hillel (הלל) and Shammai (שמאי). They were two rabbis in Jerusalem, a few decades before Jesus’ ministry, and they typically took opposing views of how to live.

Shammai was demanding; he expected full and strict compliance with the Law.

Hillel was milder; he advocated a liberal understanding of the Law.

Let me be clear: neither one discounted Torah. Neither one was “less of a rabbi” than the other; they just had different interpretations of how the Law was to be applied.

The way I see it, one should look at others through the eyes of Hillel: understanding of human flaws, kind, gentle in remonstrations.

At the same time, one should see himself through the eyes of Shammai: expect and demand the best from yourself, and brook no personal compromise.

It’s very difficult for me to find the correct balance between being accepting of others and yet offering a firm stance on what is good and right. I try, but I have not succeeded to my own satisfaction.

I don’t know how to compromise with others’ behavior without compromising my own. The tension between Hillel and Shammai is not easily resolved.

Eastern and Western Thought

Posted on May 7, 2012 Written by savage 1 Comment

A friend this morning told me about a friend of his who recently lost faith, because of the contradictions in the Bible, and the various perceived cruelties of God.

I totally sympathize, but honestly, the “there are contradictions” meme is tired and inaccurate. Understandable, but inaccurate.

The problem is mindset. I live in America, where a western mindset is very much the norm.

In fact, I’d dare say that in most of the world, the western mindset is the norm.

It’s a Greek mindset. It wants to see the world as geometry, mechanics. The world looks like this and acts like that. Est ipsum – a thing is itself.

In this world, if Napoleon died while on his horse, then he died while on his horse and there’s no debate; no discussion is required, because the story is complete and fixed.

The Eastern mindset – a Hebrew mindset, although I don’t think it’s limited to Hebrews – is different. It wants to see the world as a story, or a flower, a growing thing.

In this mindset, a cloud is a rabbit, or a unicorn, or a bicycle – or a cloud.

In the Hebrew mindset, there’s no contradiction, because it all serves the larger story, or the larger picture – this is the top of a leaf, that is the bottom of the leaf, and they’re different, yet they’re the same leaf.

The story is the thing, to paraphrase Stephen King. What serves the story – meaning the larger narrative, not a fable – is what is truth for that story. It may not be literal truth from the Greek mindset, but it is truth – and to the Hebrew there’s little that’s “literal” in the purest sense.

This means the contradictions are localized – and irrelevant to the larger narrative. This also frees us from the absolute edicts handed out at random (“Judge not!” “Judge!”) because those edicts are part of their narrative, and part of the underlying narrative, but they are not the narrative themselves.

Shalom.

Art and Noise

Posted on May 2, 2012 Written by savage Leave a Comment

I’ve been thinking more about the role of art and self-control (as referenced by Self-Control and Art, if you can imagine.)

I thought to myself, “I wonder if this can be illustrated somehow?” and the answer, of course, was “yes.” As an artist and musician, there’re countless ways to illustrate such a concept.

Since I’m primarily a musician, I thought of cranking up a MiniMoog and recording a sine wave (as an example of “full control”) – such a sine wave would be a horribly dull sound. Then I’d introduce other things, like perhaps a LFO that affected the note or the wave (creating warbles or beats), with the variations eventually degenerating into pure noise.

That’d work, but to really illustrate the point I’d need to introduce some other toys into the mix, and by the end of it you’d have a soundtrack that evoked Wolfram Alpha’s music generator.

The problem with that is that Wolfram Alpha is exactly contrary to the point I’d like to focus on: Wolfram Alpha generates music that sounds random and is certainly complex, but is actually deterministic in nature – it’s fully and tightly controlled, and can sometimes sound beautiful, but it’s not art.

So then I got the idea that I’d use something a little more visual – which would be more appropriate for the web, in any event.

That means I got to play with a tool I’ve used only in passing: gnuplot.

So let’s see what we get, trying to illustrate self control and art as a mixture.

It’s not going to be perfect – and I wouldn’t call it beautiful (or, really, “art”) but it certainly gives a better idea than just a rough explanation.

First, let’s look at total control. Here we have a rather ingenious graph, which plots y as a function of the square root of the absolute value of x. (In gnuplot, the command was plot sqrt(abs(x)).)

Now, is this “beautiful?” Well, it’s certainly sort of… regular. It has some aspect of beauty, especially to mathematicians.

Now let’s look at something where the control is less managed – or, well, not managed at all:

This was created with a gnuplot command of plot rand(0) which means there’s no correlation whatsoever between… anything. It’s a line where the vertical point is entirely random.

This is “irregular.” It may qualify as “beauty” to some, especially those who find beauty in randomness.

But it’s not “art” either.

Let’s try one more, and with this one, let’s use some imagination:

Here we have a bit of a mix between the two original processes. The gnuplot command was plot rand(0)/sqrt(abs(x)); this means we’re following our original (“controlled”) formula, except adding a bit of a jagged edge to it. (And inverting it, to boot.)

Now we have something… unique, at the very least. And if you wanted to see something in it – the Tower of Barad-dûr, for example – you could see it as a tower reigning supreme over a mountain range.

It may not be good art, but I’d dare say it’s more artistic and meaningful than the random noise image, and more meaningful also than the “fully controlled” image.

The use of control gives it structure and the ability to have meaning.

Political structures of Judea, around the time of Christ

Posted on May 1, 2012 Written by savage Leave a Comment

This is something I wrote up to summarize four of the political groups that were in Judea at the time of Christ.

Herod

Herod the Great took power in roughly 40 BCE, promoted by the Romans after he killed his father’s murderer. An Idumean, he was a practicing Jew, but Judaism looked down on proselytes in the first place (as can be seen in the constant admonitions to treat the proselyte as a Jew and not “as a convert”), and Herod’s tendency to brutality would have earned enmity in any case. Further, he cooperated with the Romans, seen as a foreign invader in Judea.

The Zadokim (Sadducees)

The Zadokim (Sadducees; Zadok was the high priest during the time of King David, and they traced their organization from that time, for a reason I will get to in a few paragraphs) were the priestly organization, made up primarily of Levites.

Their role in society was to maintain the Temple and sacrifices, those things required by Torah.

Their religious movement is marked by extreme conservatism; they believed literally in what the Torah said, with no additions and no subtractions except where required by clear circumstances. For example, the tabernacle was no longer maintained, nor was manna supplied by God, therefore the laws pertaining specifically to the tabernacle or the gathering of manna had no bearing.

The reason their conservatism was so strict? Josiah.

The biblical transmission loses a “chain of custody,” if you like, after King Mannasseh. The Torah was recognized but canon was fluid; there were competing traditions and canons, especially after the “evil kings.” When Josiah (“Yoshe-yahu,” another modern form would be “Joshua” or “Y’shua”) was made king at eight, the scriptures were found by priests behind the throne, if memory serves, along with the sword of Golyat (“Goliath,” which in English is “go-LIE-ath,” but in Hebrew “GOL-yat”); the Torah was canonized at this time, as were parts of the Nevi’im and Ketuvim (“Prophets” and “Writings,” respectively).

With the loss of this chain of custody, the Zadokim saw the Torah as a valid axiomatic base for their religion, but everything post-Mosaic was questionable (written and formed by man). The Deuteronomic code was acceptable, therefore, but everything else was Aggadah (“telling”), or pilpul (“foolish talk,” as you might describe the more fanciful of the prophets, even where such talk was beneficial to the Zadokim.)

I do not know why they took this reasoning, to be honest. If you applied this logically, you’d be stuck going back to Nechemyah, not Zadok; perhaps they felt Nechemyah was too recent, and needed more historical basis than the more contemporary rebuilder of Yerushalmi.

Perushim (Pharisees) and the Sanhedrin

The Perushim were “pure ones,” Hasids (not in the modern sense of Hasidism, but Hasid means “separated one”). They were a religious sect in Judaism, originally formed as a response to the Zadokim and the Roman occupation; in this sense, they were inheritors of the roles of the prophets in the life of Judea, and they took this role seriously (as well as accepting the prophets’ writings.)

Politically, they were seen as the people’s representatives, the “congress,” if you will, to the Zadokim “executive branch.” They weren’t populists, not in the sense that they catered to the will of the people, but they represented the people where the Zadokim and Herodians represented and preferred structures that preserved their position.

As a result, they were far more respected by the people than Herod or the Zadokim.

They formed a school, referred to as a synod; the school was headed by two rabbis, the “tannaim,” who were voted into position and could be deposed (which happened to even well-respected rabbis; it was a political position.) The school’s role was to interpret Jewish law; it could sentence men to death but not execute them, although they far preferred to avoid the death sentence (“if there is any reason to preserve life, one should take it,” which was a corollary of another law, itself derived from “thou shalt not lie in wait to murder,” or – if you like – “thou shalt not kill.”)

As the school gained respect and writings, it became more and more important as a governing body, and went from “a synod” to “the synodrion,” or “Sanhedrin.”

The Sanhedrin was not limited to the Perushim, although they dominated it; I’m not sure how many Zadokim would have been part of it, but it would have been a low number given the extreme conservatism of the Zadokim and the role of the Sanhedrin in applying Torah to new circumstances (i.e., “changing the law” by reinterpreting it in modern lights.) Zadokim were priests, not rabbis. “Rabbi” was a title whose beginnings were in the Perushim.

Religiously, as stated, they accepted the writings and prophets as canonical. As a result, their belief systems and writings were far more productive than the Zadokim; they believed in the resurrection of the dead, they believed that the people were chosen and made the Temple valuable to God. (This was a reaction to the Temple having been destroyed, after all; if the Temple was the point, why would Judaism not have ceased when the Temple was destroyed?)

The problems the Pharisees had were political and temporal.

The Romans had the power to shut down the processes of Judaism (which had happened more than once); this was acceptable to the Zadokim as appeasers, but not to the Pharisees, for whom God was sovereign and not Caesar. Politically, then, their goal was to restore autonomy to the region.

Temporally, they survived too long without actually inculcating their philosophy to the laity. As reformers, they had a credibility problem, therefore they were pressured into proving their validity; this was external validation, so they had to “practice what they preached,” and practiced it until the practice was all that they preached. Thus you saw the Perushim graduate from emphasizing personal worship of God to external worship of God, to the point where it was more important to appear worshipful than it was to actually be worshipful. “Practice what you preach” turned into “preach what you practice,” a curious inversion.

Jesus was a Hasid. He echoed very much what some of the influential Tannaim said; “do for others what you would have them do for you,” for example, is a positive form of Gamaliel’s “do not do to others what you would not have them do to you.” (This isn’t to diminish Jesus at all. It’s merely to illustrate how closely aligned early Christian social attitude was with early Pharisaic attitudes. The positive form, by the way, was an entirely new thing as far as I am able to determine.)

As I understand it, Jesus’ issue with the Pharisees was almost exactly what their problem was with the Zadokim; they felt the Zadokim had abandoned what Judaism was supposed to mean, and emphasized true reform. As they calcified, Jesus came and told them they, too, were abandoning what Judaism was meant to be.

Since they always had a credibility problem (and did until the Temple was destroyed), this was a severe blow to them, on a personal level.

Politically, remember, they wanted autonomy for Judah. Jesus, as a valid son of David, fit the requirements for the moschiach; however, they saw the political issue as the primary issue from which Israel needed salvation, so naturally they couldn’t understand a reformer who was telling them to reform, and in addition wasn’t willing to go along with their political goals.

What’s more, a reformer with popularity was asserting that political reform was not even the point! This would have been very much a threat to them, “from the inside,” if you will.

Where are the scribes?

Oh, yeah. The scribes. The scribes were historians, people who could write, duh. They were concerned primarily with the Sanhedrin (recording the Sanhedrin’s decisions and rulings, eventually forming the Talmud.) With Judaism having such an emphasis on history, one who recorded history was abnormally relevant. The scribes would have been mindful of anything that drastically changed history; their basis for conflict with Jesus would have been identical to the Pharisees. Their basis for discussion with Jesus would have been historical in nature (“what happened?”) as opposed to philosophical (“what does it mean?,” as the Sanhedrin would have asked.)

So what happened?

Much of this is well-known; the Pharisees and Sadducees turned Jesus over to Pontius Pilate, a bloody-minded governor much in line with Herod (Pilate was eventually relieved of duty over his fondness for crucifixions). The Sadducees did it because he threatened the Temple; the Pharisees did it because he didn’t threaten the Romans.

Eventually, revolts and rumors of revolts happened. Bar Kochba was proclaimed Moschiach by Rabbi Akiva (one of the Tannaim of the Sanhedrin, who had been deposed and restored into position; Akiva was martyred by the Romans, reciting the Sh’ma ecstatically as he was flayed to death, which creeped out the Romans quite a bit.) They threw out the Romans; Vespasian and his army came down to restore Judea to Rome (as a valuable trade route, in addition to the political aspect that says “you can’t leave us, we own you”). Vespasian was recalled to Rome to become Caesar, Titus took over his army and sacked Jerusalem in 70 CE, dispersing the people and destroying the Temple.

The Sanhedrin was destroyed as well; one Rabbi escaped (Yochanan ben Zakkai) in a coffin, and rebuilt religious Judaism in Jamnia. With the destruction of the Sadducees’ raison d’etre, as a religious body they had no purpose, and as a political body their tendency toward appeasement had obviously failed (which might be blamed on the Zealots, of course, but that doesn’t change the failure.) The Sadducees effectively disappeared from the face of Judaism at this point.

Modern Judaism owes almost everything it is today to the Perushim, from flexible interpretation of Torah to emphasis on personal religion, all the way to encoded behavior (which is why you can have practicing Jews who are atheists, for example.)

Shalom.

Originally published on January 17, 2012.