Exploration of John 4:19-26

On the temple and the spirit.

http://www.patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/Temple-or-Spirit-William-Hamblin-02-28-2011?offset=0&max=1

Reading Nibley 4b: Cult of Hospitality (113-124)

The giving of gifts was a form of casting lots, where the recipient receives a gift because the gods chose him to receive the lot (113-4).  Thus, the Roman dole was in part practical gift giving, and in part religious ritual.

Nibley’s last topic in this chapter is the Roman ideal of client.  Ritual meals were taken reclining on grass or couches (118-122).  Nibley believes that the Roman client derives from the Latin cliens, meaning reclining or leaving.  Hence, a client was one who reclined with the patron at a ritual meal.  The sharing of food was symbolic of all the goods of life, which the patron shared with the client (122-124).

 

Reading Nibley 4a: Cult of Hospitality (91-124)

Nibley first observes the importance of giving and hospitality.  The one who gives acts, in a small way, like the gods who give life and fertility (86).  This is reflected in the grain and bread dole of Rome.  Those who give were considered noble and qualified for office, and were remembered or memorialized by the people.  Roman giving, however, always required a gift in response, a quid pro quo (“this for that”) [Hamblin: and do ut des (“I give so you give”)].  Plunder from campaigns were distributed as part of a victory feast (86-90).

Romans had a tradition of common meals at times of games and religious festivals.  Funerals also included a public funeral meal (92), along with weddings and coming-of-age ceremonies.

Nibley next examines a number of Latin technical terms associated with Roman hospitality.  These include hostia, lautia, munera, tessera and client.  Gifts were given related to all sorts of public and private occasions.  Sacrifice was in one sense giving gifts to the gods (in return for the gifts they give us) (96).

Nibley next discusses the Roman tesserae, small tokens or tickets of admission, or for eligibility for a feast or gift.  Tesserae were used as means of identification, and are related to seals in the ancient Near East (= stamping a piece of clay with your seal), and with signet rings.

[Hamblin:  It is likely that the “sealing” on the forehead of temple worshippers is related to this; Ex 13:9, 16; Dt 6:8, 11:18; Isa 44:5; Ezekiel 9:4; Rev 2:17, 7:2-3, 9:4, 14:1, 22:4.]

Nibley goes on at some length about seals in the ancient Near East and Egypt.  (See D. Collon, First Impressions: Cylinder Seals in the Ancient Near East (2006))  Nibley looks at reeds and arrows as forms of identification tokens.  [Hamblin: this is the nucleus of Nibley’s idea about arrow divination in Since Cumorah CWHW 7:255-9.]   He also examines dice as tesserae for divination (which only later became gambling–a way of determining the will of the gods on distribution of wealth) (105).  Playing dice with the gods as divination (105).   It is also linked in with knuckle-bone games (105).  [Hamblin: I played knucklebones with wolf bones in Mongolia once!]  Coins are another variation of tesserae and seals (106).  Coins derive from tesserae.  Coins were likewise sealed or stamped.

Nibley then discusses a number of dicing divination temples (108).  [Hamblin: This practice survives in Tibet, where I had a Tibetan Buddhist monk blow on dice and throw them as a means of divination for me.  He told my fortune in Tibetan, so, alas, I have no idea what he said.  (Tibeti yaputu!)  It could have been highly accurate.  Blowing on dice for gambling derives from this rite of infusing the dice with the divinatory spirit before casting them.]  Dice divination may be related to using pebbles for divination (109), and choosing lots by marked pebbles (or seals).  [Hamblin: note parallels to the Urim and Thummim as divinatory rocks.] This divination occurred at New Year, when the future of the year was prophesied.  These tokens are related to sortes or lots by which the will of the gods could be determined (110).  He looks at the practice of scattering tokens, coins, candy or gifts as sparsiones (111).

[Hamblin: This chapter of his dissertation was expanded into his second published article, “Sparsiones” (CWHN 10:148-194) which appeared in 1945.  Note also the throwing of tokens at Carnivale, and scattering rice at weddings.]

Nibley then discusses the same type of practices in India (112-113).  [Hamblin: Throughout his dissertation, Nibley’s main Indian parallels are drawn from the Aśvamedha (अश्वमेध), which is described in the Yajurveda (यजुर्वेदः) 7.1-5, and the Śatapatha Brāhmana (शतपथ ब्राह्मण) 13.1-5.  See S. Fuchs, The Vedic Horse Sacrifice in its Cultural-Historical Relations, (1996).]

I’ll finish discussing the rest of the chapter in the next couple of days.

Notes on Augustine’s Confessions

Here are my notes on my what I found particularly interesting from a recent reading of the Confessions.

Bibliography

Augustine, Confessions, tr. H. Chadwick, (Oxford, 1991) {397-400}

Augustine, Confessions, tr. W. Watts, 2 vols. (Loeb 1912), LCL-26-27

Brown, Peter.  Augustine of Hippo: A Biography, 2nd ed. (2000)

Fitzgerald, A. (ed.) Augustine Through the Ages: An Encyclopedia (1999).

 

Notes

3.18-4.7, 4.3-13, 5.19-25.  Augustine was a Manichaean for a number of years.  He eventually rejects Manichaeism, and wrote an extensive critique of the religion (Against the Manichaeans, available in translation in NANF and on line).

4.4-7, 7.8-10.  Augustine toyed with astrology, but ultimately rejected it on philosophical grounds.

4.7-8.  Reading Cicero’s Hortensius (On Philosophy) turned Augustine’s mind towards philosophy.  (Unfortunately Cicero’s dialogue is now lost.)

5.19, 24-25, 6.18.  Augustine was influenced by Academic philosophy (Skeptics, Academicians), but ultimately rejected it and wrote Against the Academicians (tr. P. King, 1995)

6.3.  Augustine is amazed that Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan, could read silently: “When he was reading, his eyes ran over the page and his heart perceived the sense, but his voice and tongue were silent.”  I believe this is the first recorded example of reading silently rather than aloud.

6.3-6.  Augustine initially rejected Genesis and Christianity because he thought they could not be reconciled with contemporary science and philosophy.  Only when he learned the art of allegorical interpretation of scripture and scriptural anthropomorphisms did he accept Christianity.  This and related topics have been extensively studied by David Paulsen:

Carl W. Griffin and David L. Paulsen, “Augustine and the Corporeality of God,” Harvard Theological Review 95/1 (2002): 97–118.

David L. Paulsen, “Early Christian Belief in a Corporeal Deity: Origen and Augustine as Reluctant Witnesses,” Harvard Theological Review 83/2 (1990): 105–116.

David L. Paulsen, “The Doctrine of Divine Embodiment: Restoration, Judeo-Christian, and Philosophical Perspectives,” Brigham Young University Studies 35/4 (1995–96), 6–94.

David L. Paulsen, “Divine Embodiment: The Earliest Christian Understanding of God,” in Noel B. Reynolds (editor), Early Christians in Disarray: Contemporary LDS Perspectives on the Christian Apostasy (Provo, Utah: FARMS, 2005), 239–293.

7.12-27.  Augustine is introduced to Latin translations of the “Books of the Platonists” (that is, the Neoplatonists Plotinus and Porphyry), which he accepts as essentially truthful, but not having the fulness of the Gospels.  (He integrates their teachings with John 1).  His integration of Neoplatonism and Christianity was one of the key factors in his ability to accept what he originally saw as absurdities of Christianity.  Paradoxically, Augustine’s conversion is to a Neoplatonized interpretation of Christianity.  See B. Dobell, Augustine’s Intellectual Conversion: The Journey from Platonism to Christianity (Cambridge, 2009).

7.23-24.  Part of Augustine’s conversion process was an interesting neoplatonic/mystical vision, in which he bemoans the transitory nature of the divine vision.  This is part of the of the broader mystical phenomena going on in late antiquity.

8.14-15, 29.  Augustine was greatly moved and influenced by a reading of the life of the desert father and first monk Antony, and by his ascetic ideals.  Augustine became involved in some ascetic quasi-monasticism in Milan.  The Life of Antony was written by Athanasius of Alexandria (of Nicene Creed fame), and is translated in Athanasius: The Life of Antony, tr. R. Gregg, (1979).

8.29-30.  Augustine’s conversion in part involved bibliomancy–seeking revelation by randomly opening the Bible and reading a verse.  He hears some children singing “tolle lege–pick up and read.”  He interprets this as a sign to perform bibliomancy, which he does, reading Rom. 13:13-14, which he sees as a sign to “put on Christ.”

9.23-26.  Augustine gives a fascinating account of a dual mystical vision of he and his mother Monica had simultaneously in a garden in Ostia.

In his last four books Augustine shifts from a personal spiritual biography into a theological-philosophical discussion of memory, knowledge, time, eternity and creation.

10.  A rather tedious philosophical speculation on the nature of memory.

10.17, 29-30.  Augustine advocates the doctrine of anamnēsis which maintains that learning is really remembering of things already known by the soul, implying either a preexistence of the soul, or reincarnation.  This idea is influenced by Plato’s Meno and Phaedo, and later Neoplatonists.

11.  Book 11 is a speculative philosophical discourse on time and eternity, in which Augustine posits that God exists in a timeless state.  Augustine discusses the question of whether time can exist before creation.  It includes the famous joke: “What was God doing before he made heaven and earth? … He was preparing hells for people who inquire into profundities.” (11.14).

12.  Books 11-13 is one of Augustine’s five different interpretations of creation and Genesis, a topic that greatly interested him.  Sine if there were literal commentaries, and others highly allegorical, such as Books 11-13 in Confessions.  Three of these works can be found translated in Augustine, On Genesis, tr. B. Ramsey, (2004); the other two are Confessions 11-13, and City of God 11-12. Augustine disagrees with the Neoplatonists concerning creation, rejecting their emanationism.

12.7, 13.28.  Augustine believe in ex nihilo creation, but believes that formless matter was created ex niliho, and that the account in Genesis is describing the creation of the earth from this formless matter.  In a sense he is trying to reconcile different contemporary philosophical and theological interpretations of creation.

12.27, 41-43.  Augustine argues that there are multiple true meanings to any passage of scripture, in a sense arguing for his allegorical method of interpreting Genesis.

13.  An extensive allegorical reading of Genesis 1 which compares the Church to creation.

 

Book of Mormon Prophecies on the Gathering of Israel

Latter-day Saints frequently assume that the foundation of the State of Israel in 1948 represents the fulfillment of Book of Mormon prophecies of the gathering of Israel.  A careful examinations of these prophecies, however, demonstrates that gathering unto Christ is the essence of the the Book of Mormon gathering, and that this entails a knowledge that Jesus is the Messiah, not a messianic expectation in general.  This spiritual gathering to Christ must precede the physical gathering to the Land of Israel.  There are a number of Book of Mormon passages that clearly make this point.

1 Ne. 10:14

And after the house of Israel should be scattered they should be gathered together again; … or come to the knowledge of the true Messiah, their Lord and their Redeemer.

2 Ne. 6:11

11 Wherefore, after they [the Jews] are driven to and fro, for thus saith the angel, many shall be afflicted in the flesh, and shall not be suffered to perish, because of the prayers of the faithful; they shall be scattered, and smitten, and hated; nevertheless, the Lord will be merciful unto them, that when they shall come to the knowledge of their Redeemer, they shall be gathered together again to the lands of their inheritance.

2 Ne. 10:7-8

7 But behold, thus saith the Lord God: When the day cometh that they shall believe in me, that I am Christ, then have I covenanted with their fathers that they shall be restored in the flesh, upon the earth, unto the lands of their inheritance.

2 Ne. 30:7

7 And it shall come to pass that the Jews which are scattered also shall begin to believe in Christ; and they shall begin to gather in upon the face of the land; and as many as shall believe in Christ shall also become a delightsome people.

3 Ne. 5:26

26 And then shall they know their Redeemer, who is Jesus Christ, the Son of God; and then shall they be gathered in from the four quarters of the earth unto their own lands, from whence they have been dispersed; yea, as the Lord liveth so shall it be. Amen.

These passages clearly teach that the physical gathering of the Jews to the land of Israel is preceded by coming to a knowledge that Jesus is the Messiah.  The contemporary state of Israel therefore cannot be the fulfillment of this prophecy, since, by and large, the Jews have not accepted Jesus as the Messiah.

 

Five Perspectives on the Atonement.

1- Anthropological. From this perspective you can observe how different peoples throughout the world and throughout history have offered sacrifice, and practices that accompany those sacrifices. From the anthropological perspective, we can observed that sacrifice is probably the most universal form of religious ritual throughout history. All ancient peoples throughout all times and all places have offered sacrifice. Sacrifice involves several different inherent human instincts. First is the instinct to eat. After breathing, eating is the most instinctual human act. (OK, maybe crying is second.) Very soon humans come to recognize that they must kill in order to go to eat. The sacralization of this killing is the essence of sacrifice. The second anthropological fact we need to consider is that of food sharing. Human infants cannot survive without food sharing, and food sharing is instinctive among all humans. Another anthropological foundation of sacrifice is that the food from the sacrifice is shared both with God and the community. Finally there is gift-giving. There is an instinctive human sense that giving a gift and exchanging gifts creates bonds of mutual trust and responsibility. There is an almost universal sense throughout all primordial and ancient cultures that sacrifice involves the giving of a gift to God, and the exchanging of gifts between God and God and humans. If we look at the way tribal societies create systems of justice from an anthropological perspective, we find that the law of retaliation (the lex talionis of the Hebrew Bible) is almost universal. That is to say, just as gift-giving creates bonds of mutual obligation, so acts of offense, stealing and violence creates bonds of mutual retaliation. When a gift is given to you, it creates an obligation in you to return a favor to the gift-giver (As Cicero put it, Do ut des–”I give so you will give”). On the other hand, when an offense is given to you, it creates an obligation for you to retaliate. In the most primordial sense, this retaliation involved returning the same offense to the offender– Blow for blow, and life for life.  As we see in the Bible, this retaliation could be avoided by gift-giving, thus returning to the sense of mutual obligation to as opposed to mutual retaliation. In practice what this means is, if someone steals a camel from you, that that camel must be returned with an additional gift (Ex. 22). Gift giving is thus a means to avoid retaliation, and also a means to create create mutual obligation. Sacrifice is widely understood anthropologically as gift-giving to God. When you give a gift to God it creates an obligation in God to bless you with rain, fertility, etc. When you have offended God, on the other hand, giving God a gift can defer the obligation God has to retaliate for the offense given him. This anthropological concept is reflected in the sin offering in the Hebrew Bible. If you offend someone in a very serious way, the proper retaliation is death (Num. 35:9-30). Death can be avoided only if a very large blood-money offering is made. You can see this in the Hebrew Bible where the death of someone can be forestalled for by a monetary payment (Lev 27).

2-Historical. From this perspective you take one of the sacrificial traditions and try to analyze its practices and mythos as it changes throughout time. You can see this clearly in the Bible, where there are different interpretations of the meaning of sacrifice, and the mythos of sacrifice changes and develops through time, culminating in the sacrificial atonement theology of the New Testament. In the Old Testament we find all of the different anthropological forms of sacrifice manifest, as well as a distinctive Israelite mythos. But the essence of the matter is that if you sin against God, God will retaliate in a completely appropriate fashion by causing your death. That death can be avoided only by an appropriate gift giving, that is to say, by sacrifice. Sacrifice, understood as an exchange of gifts with God, thus serves serves as a means to atone (“cover”) for a sin against God, and restore proper relationships and reconciliation. Without a proper exchange of gifts, such a reconciliation is impossible. What if you were to poor, and unable to pay the atonement fine yourself? In that case someone else could step in and pay the fine for you. This was generally a wealthy relative, who is known as is the redeemer, one who redeemed the life of his relatives by paying the fine himself (or purchasing him from debt-slavery, etc.). This creates the possibility for a substitution sacrifice, where one person pays the fine and offers the sacrifice on behalf of another. Thus, in the case of Jesus and the New Testament atonement, God himself becomes the Redeemer, paying the fine and making the substitutionary sacrifice himself, indeed, offering himself.

3- Theological. This is the way that most Latter-Day Saints approach the question. Indeed, the vast majority of LDS writings on the topic approach the issue with theological questions in mind. In my opinion this is exclusively theological approach needs to be tempered with analysis from all five different perspectives.

4- Historical theological. This approach examines the question of theologies of the atonement of a particular tradition, culture, or religion, and examines the development of these ideas through time. I believe this helps us understand that many of the theological interpretations and theories of the atonement are in fact allegories, metaphors, and parables. A that is to say, they don’t tell us about the cosmic nature of the atonement, but rather help us understand the importance and meaning of the atonement through culturally determined allegories. These allegories must be understood within the historical context in which they were originally given (2 Ne. 25:1-6).

5- Cosmic. Here you ask the big metaphysical and meta-historical questions about the meaning of the atonement from the perspective of God and the infinity of time and space and creation. Mormons love to speculate about these types of questions, but in reality we have very little information about them, and some rather explicit statements in Scripture saying that basically humans can’t understand it (DC 19:13-19; 76:45-48). In my opinion all we can know about the cosmic nature of the atonement is that God says it was necessary.

Reading Nibley 3b: Feasting

In the rest of Chapter 3 Nibley reviews the same list of cultures as before, this time examining feasting practices.  The pattern that emerges is:

1- gathering at year-feast

2- all bring offerings and sacrifices

3- sacrificed meat is distributed equaling

4- king supervises the feasts

5- strangers must be fed (law of hospitality)

The culmination is a great feast where all the people in the kingdom share a sacrificial meal with God, king, priests, and people.  Nibley looks at the Jewish annual pilgrimage feasts (Passover, Pentecost/Shevu’ot, and Tabernacles/Ingathering/Atonement/New Years), and sees how they fit this widespread pattern.

(Note: Nibley doesn’t discuss this, but these ideas are background to Solomon as the new King of the Age, offering sacrifice of 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep at the dedication of the temple (1 Kgs. 8:62), enough for all of Israel to participate in the feast.  In other words, Solomon feeds the nation, just like the feast Nibley is describing.)

(Note: Again Nibley doesn’t discuss it, but this sacrificial shared meal between God and mankind likewise forms the background to the Last Supper/Passover meal of Christ and the disciples, with Christ as the Anointed Great King, bringing the meat, wine and bread of life.)

Nibley cites several ritualist works in this chapter (Harrison, Themis; Hooke, Labyrinth).  One of Nibley’s major ancient sources is Athenaeus’ Deipnosophistai (“The Banquet of the Learned/Sophists”), book 4, which is now available in a Loeb edition and translation.  It discusses Greek ritual feasts.

Another work that takes the “king of the age” (75) ideology in a different direction is Traditionalist Rene Guenon’s The King of the World (1958, trans. 2001), which examines the “king of the age” mythos as it relates to the sacred center.

Nibley ends this chapter with the following statement: “The full validity of the parallels cited cannot be seen until the annual celebrations of the various regions are considered each in its entirety, a task beyond the scope of the present study. But it is the belief of the writer that the little said so far will cast some light on certain aspects of the games at Rome which generations of intenSive local study have failed to explain” (85).  It is an interesting reflection on his recognition of the limits and strengths of the parallelism methodologies.

John Commentary on 3:22-36 and 4:1-16

On Patheos.

http://www.patheos.com//Resources/Additional-Resources/Jesus-John-the-Baptist-and-the-Waters-of-Life-William-Hamblin-02-18-2011.html

Reading Nibley 3a: Feast

Chapter three describes the Feast of the Roman festivals.  His first section (55-61) describes the animals brought for sacrifice, and the distribution by the king of food for a great feast.  Thus the festivals included sacrifices and shared meals.  He sees parallels with this with the Christmas dinner and Pentecost and the year-festivals of the Christian emperors (60).

His major sources are 1- Zosimus Historia Nova (tr. Buchanan and Davis, 1967) 2.1-8. Zosimus was a pagan who believed the coming of Christianity and neglect of the old gods caused Rome to fall.  2- Plutarch “Roman Questions” in Moralia (Loeb, vol. 4).

Bestseller?

The novel I co-authored (with Neil Newell) is currently the #7 bestseller in the general (non-religion) category at Deseret Book.  The fact that the price has been reduced 30% may have something to do with it.

http://deseretbook.com/Book-Malchus-Neil-Newell/i/5046910

There is a recent review in Mormon Times.

http://www.mormontimes.com/article/19686/Book-Review-The-Book-of-Malchus