What I Learned From Aristotle

Posting at BLTnotjustasandwich.com

2011-09-04T09:46:00.001-07:00

I have started a group blog with J. K. Gayle, Suzanne McCarthy, and Craig smith over at BLTnotjustasandwich.com. I have a post up about the forthcoming Oxford Jewish Annotated New Testament and racism in translation.

Here is my introductory post on that blog:

Welcome to the blog named BLT. It is not just a sandwich. It stands for a set of topics that we hope to discuss: Bible, Literature, and Translation. We’ll talk about the Bible as literature and the literature of translation and the translation of Bibles and the translation of literature and literature of translation and Bible as a translation and literary translations of Bibles and so on. And we are certain to throw in the arts, the sciences, philosophy, mysticism, religion, and pretty much everything else.

The initial crew of bloggers represents a diverse set of viewpoints but one that is unified in our openness to new ideas and a fundamental belief in the dignity of all humans. This blog is open to all: Jews, Catholics, Mainliners, Evangelicals, Eastern Christians, Atheists, Theists outside the Judeo-Christian tradition, etc. For me a strong underlying theme of this blog is that everyone has a voice — especially people that have been traditionally marginalized.

I’ll let my co-bloggers (currently J. K. Gayle, Suzanne McCarthy, and Craig Smith) introduce themselves, but I’ll simply mention that I am a professor at a US university with strong interests in applied issues in linguistics.

There won’t be any bacon or other treif meat in my posts, but there will be lots of substance. I look forward to hearing from you.

No girls allowed

2011-08-08T23:05:00.001-07:00

If you read the so-called “Better Bibles Blog”, then you simply must look at Kurk Gayle’s important documentation at his brilliantly named “Better Better Bibles Blog.”

The situation over that the BBB is that all male-blogging team has decided on a secret rule that issues of gender cannot be discussed in blog posts. However, this rule is inconsistently enforced – it is particularly enforced on women who try to comment on that blog.

Making people stupid

2011-05-01T16:13:00.001-07:00

Making people stupid

Philistines (in the original French)

(And, from the right-wingers: The perfect wedding gift)

Norton does King James

2011-04-28T11:54:00.001-07:00

Although I have not seen it yet, I am cautiously optimistic about the new Norton Critical Edition of the English Bible (KJV) forthcoming later this year (ISBN 039397507X and 0393927458). Perhaps you are familiar with the Norton Critical Edition series — it is a standard series of annotated volumes used in literature classes. The editors working on these volumes are top-notch, and the blurbs are impressive at least:

Robert Alter: “The Norton Critical Edition of The English Bible, King James Version, appearing on the four hundredth anniversary of the great translation, is a real gift to the English-reading world, making this classical version freshly accessible. The introductions to the different biblical books are apt and often illuminating; the generous annotation clarifies archaic terms, corrects translation errors, and provides insight into the texts; and the appended critical and historical materials give readers a wealth of relevant contexts for both Old and New Testament.”

Harold Bloom: “Herbert Marks demonstrates in this work that he is now the foremost literary exegete of the King James Bible and of the Hebrew Bible that it translates.”

If the work is up to the standard of the better volumes in the Norton Critical Edition series, I expect this will become the standard secular teaching text on the King James Bible, and because of its explanation of archaic terms and phrases, may prove useful for ordinary readers as well.

(I should mention that additional materials and notes included in the Norton Critical Edition of the Writings of St. Paul [ISBN 0393972801] make it the best secular one-volume guide to the subject, although it uses the TNIV translation of the Epistles and Acts and Elliott’s translations [ISBN 0198261810] of the apocryphal works related to Paul.)

Quote of the day

2010-09-07T23:35:00.001-07:00

From The Novel: An Alternative History by Steven Moore:

“Can you imagine a Jane Austen heroine declining an invitation to dance because she’s having her period? Can you imagine how much saner our society would be if she had?”

A fun poem

2010-09-07T23:28:00.001-07:00

“The Waste Land” by John Beer

Easily the most fun I’ve had in – oh, who can say how long – at least the last 20 minutes or so.

In honor of Rev. Terry and his used furniture business

2010-09-07T23:02:00.001-07:00

I cannot brook neo-Nazis. So when news came of the for-profit used-furniture e-Bay church called “the Dove World Outreach Center” (someone with a sense of irony chose that name) burning Talmuds and Qur’ans, I felt I had to do something.

I’m not a big fan of Koranic studies. Worse, the most popular English translations of the Qur’an are financed by the Saudi government (often with wildly anti-Semitic commentary) – so it is not easy to find decent translations. But Rev. Terry pushed me over the edge – I decided to order the recent shiny nice new bilingual translation published by Oxford (with a revised translation). I trust it will be a nice supplement to my other translations (my current favorite) the bilingual Princeton Qur’an translation, the Arberry Koran, and the liberal American translation by Laleh Bakhtiar.

Plus, as a bonus, I decided to get Oliver Leaman’s encyclopedia (because who can’t love a Qur’an commentary edited by a Jew?) to supplement my copy of the “Westerner contributors only” of the Cambridge Companion.

So thank you, Reverend Terry. Without your ravings and ability to attract an incredible amount of publicity for acting like a fool, I’d have more space on my bookshelf.

Condolences on Frank Kermode’s death

2010-08-19T17:32:00.001-07:00

From the New York Times:

Frank Kermode, who rose from humble origins to become one of England’s most respected and influential critics, died Tuesday at his home in Cambridge, England. He was 90.

A story of two Rashi Tehillim

2010-04-26T02:33:00.000-07:00

There are now at least two major editions of the Psalms with commentary by the medieval master Jewish commentator Rashi. One is published by the Jewish Publication Society (reprinted by Brill) and is by Mayer Gruber of Ben-Gurion University. It is a 900 page paperback volume and you can buy it from Amazon for $34. The second is also 900 pages but in two hardcover volumes in a slip case published by the Feldheim published by Rabbi Yisrael Isser Zvi Herczeg (who teaches at two traditional yeshivos in Israel: Yeshivos Yesodei HaTorah and Lev HaTorah. You can buy this set from Amazon for $36.

Physically the Herczeg volumes are much nicer -- they have better and larger paper and they are larger, smyth-sewn bindings with dust jackets, in a nice case. On the other hand, they are much larger, as these photos show (please click on the photos to see larger images -- and click on the magnifying lens to read the individual text):


Lying side by side -- the R' Herczeg volume is much larger.

The R' Herczeg boxed set is almost twice the thickness of the Gruber, even though both have about 900 pages.

But the biggest difference is with the format of presentation. In Gruber, the texts of the Psalms is not presented (in English or Hebrew.) The Rashi is given in block format at the end of the book (here is the Rashi to Psalms 1 and 2, and the first part of Psalm 3) (remember to click to see a larger, more readable image):

And here is his English translation of Rashi, followed by notes:

Now in contrast, here is Rabbi Herczeg's text for the same psalm -- you'll notice that the Hebrew psalm, the English translation, the Rashi in Hebrew, the Rashi in English, and the notes are all on one self-contained page (again, click to see a zoomed in view.)

A couple of notes:

The most obvious difference is formatting. The R' Herczweg volumes integrates Rashi (in both pointed Hebrew and English), the super-commentary, and the actual text of the Psalms (again, in both pointed Hebrew and English) on a single page. Gruber omits the text of the Psalms, separates Hebrew Rashi (unpointed), and even separates notes and translation. There is little doubt that R' Herczweg has both more beautiful typesetting and the more useful layout.

The versions of Rashi's manuscripts used is slightly different in places. For example, Gruber has Rashi making a comment on Psalm 118:5. In the case of R' Herczweg, he demotes the comment to his supercommentary notes -- making full note of the source of it, and and its exegesis, before explaining why it is probably spurious. In general, R' Herczweg treats his Rashi text critically and applies it to integral whole psalms, while Gruber is content to split up psalms with "Interpretation A" and "Interpretation B" (e.g., see pp. 671-675).

R' Herczeg provides full pointed text for the Psalms and for Rashi -- and gives a phrase-by-phrase translation (sometimes with explanatory interpolations, clearly marked typographically). As opposed to Gruber who is willing to shift around Rashi's text (and make a note in the footnotes), R' Herczeg respects the integrity of Rashi's text.

Gruber has some 170 pages of introductory material; in contrast, R' Herczberg's introductory material consists of approbations, a brief preface and Introduction, and the traditional prayer (presented side-by-side in both Hebrew and English) before reciting Psalms.

For some reason Gruber does not often address the Old French terminology used by Rashi -- for example, in Psalm 1 above, Rashi uses three old French phrases: Gabors, Fleistre, and Come bale. R' Herczeg deals with all three; Gruber only with Fleistre (and then, only in Modern French.)

In general Gruber has a less literal translation of Rashi than R' Herczeg.

Gruber has some much longer notes than R' Herczberg, but they do not necessarily contain substantially more information. As an example, here is the supercommentary note to Rashi's תשובת המינים (translated as "heretics" by R' Herczeg and "Christians" by Gruber. Recall that the former has the actual Hebrew on the page, so there is no possibility of missing it.

R' Herczeg: That is, to Christians, who interpret the psalm as referring to their false messiah.

Gruber: Heb. tesubat hamminim; so correctly Signer, p. 274; see the extensive evidence that in Rashi's commentaries minin (or minim) means "Christian" in Awerbuch, Christlich-judische Begegnung im Zeitalter der Fruhscholastik, pp. 101-139. E. Touito, "Concerning the Meaning of the Term tesubat hamminim in the Writings of our French Rabbis," Sinai 99 (1986) pp. 144-48 (in Hebrew) demonstrates on both linguistic and historical grounds that in the writings of Rashi and his disciples tesubat hamminim often means "a challenge to the Christians" rather than "a reply to the Christian". The rendering here "Jewish converts to Christianity" found in Hailperin, Rashi and the Christian Scholars [sic., Gruber does not properly format the title name], p. 60 is no longer tenable. Solomon Zeitlin, "Rashi," American Jewish Yearbook 41 (1939-1940), p. 124 writes as follows: "I examined a manuscript in the library in Moscow in which the reading of this passage is as follows: 'Many of the disciples of Jesus apply this passage to the Messiah, but in order to refute the Minim this passage should be applied to David.' " This version of Rashi demonstrates conclusively that Heb. minim here can only mean "Christians". Moreover, it supports the idea tha thte search for the literal meaning [pesuto] by Rashi and the real, original meaning [pesat] by Rashi's disciples was motivated by the belief tha the Bible understood on its own terms would demonstrate that Judaism rather than Christianity is the only legitimate heir to the legacy, which is commonly called "the Old Testament"; see, in addition to the important literature cited by Signer, p. 273, n. 3, Touito, "The Exegetical Method of Rashbam Against the Background of the Historical Reality of His Time," pp. 48-74; Sarah Kamin, Rashi's Commentary on the Song of Songs and the Jewish-Christian Polemic," SHNATON 7-8 (1984), pp. 218-48 (in Hebrew); Shereshevsky, Rashi: The Man and His World, pp. 119-32. Rashi here suggests that it was not science for science's sake that led him to point out that in Biblical Heb. masiah is not an allusion to the eschatological "King Messiah" of late Second Temple era and later Judaism but simply a synonym of the noun melek "king"; see Rashi also at Ps. 105:15. That Rashi should have found it necessary to differentiate the Christian belief that mesiho in Ps. 2:2 refers to "His Messiah" can be explained as follows: in the LXX masiah, lit., "Annointed One is christos (similarl in the Vulgate, christus). Moreover, the New Testament Book of Acts 4:25-27 declares explicitly that Ps. 2:1-2, which asks, "Why did the Gentiles rage ... against the Lord and his christos," refers to there having been "gathered together against ... Jesus ... both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the People of Israel" (Acts 4:25-27; RSV). While a comparison of eisegetical tradition may be serviceable in interfaith dialogue, the defense of the contention that Jewry rather Christendom was the legitimate child of Hebrew Scripture made it necessary for Rashi and his disciples to seek out the primary meaning of the biblical word and to show that this supported the Jew's adherence to the ancestral faith rather than the adoption the Christian faith. Note that Rashi's demonstration that mesiho in Ps. 2:2 denotes "HIS ANNOINTED KING" resets upon 2 Sam. 5:17, which refers to David's having been "anointed ... king."

As this example shows, Gruber is rather expansive in his comments (although they are riddled with serious and not so serious typographic errors -- I found two or three on every page). Herczeg just gives a more basic comment that let's you understand what Rashi is saying.

However, if you desire to read Gruber, I strongly suggest reading Gruber in conjunction with R' Herczeg -- since this allows you to at least follow the Hebrew wording of Rashi.

The books are nearly the same cost, and I think there is no contest in terms of physical quality or content -- R' Herczeg's is the one to get.

Happy studying of the Tehillim.

No comment necessary

2010-04-13T16:44:00.001-07:00

Bishop Giacomo Babini blames Jews for attacks on Pope

A retired Italian bishop has provoked fury by reportedly suggesting that “Zionists” are behind the current storm of accusations over clerical sex abuse shaking the Vatican and the Catholic Church.

Monsignor Giacomo Babini, the Bishop Emeritus of Grossetto, was quoted by the Italian Roman Catholic website Pontifex as saying he believed a “Zionist attack” was behind the criticism of the Pope, given that it was “powerful and refined” in nature.

Bishop Babini denied he had made any anti-Semitic remarks. He was backed by the Italian Bishops Conference (CEI), which issued a declaration by Bishop Babini in which he said: “Statements I have never made about our Jewish brothers have been attributed to me.”

However, Bruno Volpe, who interviewed Monsignor Babini for Pontifex, confirmed that the bishop had made the statement, which was reported widely in the Italian press today. Pontifex threatened to release the audio tape of the interview as proof.

Monsignor Babini’s reported comments follow a series of statements from senior Vatican cardinals blaming a “concerted campaign” by “powerful lobbies” for accusations that Pope Benedict XVI was involved in covering up cases of clerical abuse both as Archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982 and subsequently as head of doctrine at the Vatican.

None has explicitly blamed Jews or any other group. However Bishop Babini, 81, said Jews “do not want the Church, they are its natural enemies”. He added: “Deep down, historically speaking, the Jews are deicides [God killers].”

He was quoted as saying that Hitler was “not just mad” but had exploited German anger over the excesses of German Jews who in the 1930s had throttled the German economy.

Rabbi David Rosen of the American Jewish Committee said Monsignor Babini was using “slanderous stereotypes, which sadly evoke the worst Christian and Nazi propaganda prior to World War Two”.

Giovanni Maria Vian, the Editor of L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, said there was a media campaign against the Pope but suggestions that Jews were behind it were ridiculous.

Speaking to the foreign press corps in Rome, Mr Vian pointed out that L’Osservatore Romano had reprinted remarks made in the Jerusalem Post by Ed Koch, the Jewish former mayor of New York, in which he said that continuing attacks by the media on the Roman Catholic Church and Pope Benedict XVI were “manifestations of anti-Catholicism”.

Mr Koch said that he disagreed with the Catholic Church on abortion, homosexuality, divorce and contraception. But the Church had a right to hold such beliefs, and “much of the attack on it today stems from opposition to those teachings”.

He added: “Many of those in the media who are pounding on the Church and the Pope today clearly do it with delight and some with malice.

“I believe the Roman Catholic Church is a force for good in the world, not evil. Enough is enough.

“Yes, terrible acts were committed by members of the Catholic clergy. The Church has paid billions to victims in the US and will pay millions, perhaps billions, more to other such victims around the world. It is trying desperately to atone for its past by its admissions and changes in procedures for dealing with paedophile priests.”

There were Jewish protests at Easter when Father Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher to the papal household, compared attacks on the Pope to the “more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism” in his Good Friday reflections before Pope Benedict in the Vatican.

The Vatican later said the Pope had not been aware in advance of Father Cantalamessa’s remarks, which did not represent the Vatican’s views.

Today Mr Vian said Father Cantalamessa’s observations had been innocent in intention, though whether it had been prudent to make them in the current climate was another matter.

Pope Benedict, who visited the Rome synagogue in January, has sought to mend Catholic-Jewish relations since last year, when he offended Jewish groups by rehabilitating Bishop Richard Williamson, an excommunicated ultra-conservative prelate who denies that six million Jews died in the Holocaust.

The Pope said he was unaware of Bishop Williamson’s views and demanded that he rescind them.

However, the pontiff has also angered Jewish leaders with his continuing support for the beatification of Pope Pius XII, the wartime Pope who is charged by critics with having turned a blind eye to the Holocaust. Beatification is the step before sainthood.

On Friday Benedict watched a preview of a forthcoming programme to be shown by RAI, the state broadcaster, which praises Pius XII for his role in helping to save Jews behind the scenes in wartime Rome, and is said by aides to have expressed his approval.

Is blogging dead?

2010-03-23T01:20:00.001-07:00

I don’t plan to stop blogging, but I can certainly sympathize with those who do. Chaim Rubin writes:

I started blogging in 2003. Which, in online years might as well be 50 years ago. I’ve had a good run, and I loved posting my thoughts. Sadly, (or maybe not so sadly …) over the last couple of years Facebook and Twitter have really taken over the apple of the online world’s eye.

In my own personal and humble opinion I think blogging as we all once knew it, is dead.

It’s not as easy to write openly and honestly what you feel about things any more. Back in the glory days of blogging people were so excited to see fresh and honest opinions they flocked to blogs. But today there are consequences for every word written and people will hound you and take you to task for your opinions.

Joel Hoffman’s “And God Said” (preliminary thoughts)

2010-02-03T20:37:00.001-08:00

I received my copy of Joel Hoffman’s well-intentioned And God Said: How Translations Conceal the Bible's Original Meaning today (I had ordered it before Amazon started boycotting all Macmillan products) and opened it up to a random page – p. 234 as it turned out, and spotted errors immediately (Hoffman appears to be ignorant of that both Everett Fox and Robert Alter translated Shmeul [the books of Samuel] into English). And no footnotes. Not a good sign. Sigh.

Harold Bloom gravely ill

2010-01-26T21:37:00.001-08:00

79-year old Harold Bloom has cancelled all his classes; he is described as “gravely ill” and has been in the hospital since December. I have a love-hate relationship with Bloom – his writings are sometimes insightful, although more often than not I disagree with him, particularly on his comments on Biblical sources.

I hope he makes a full recovery and returns to writing and teaching.

Hitler’s Bible

2010-01-19T11:19:00.001-08:00

HT: Tzvee

Pravda: Hitler rewrote the Bible and added two commandments

An institute, founded on Hitler’s command, rewrote Bible texts, eliminating all mentions of the special role of the Jewish people. According to Hitler’s version, Christ was an advocate of Aryan ideas. Sections from the Nazi Bible will be published by German publication Bild on Thursday.

In May 1939, on the Furher’s command, a theological institute was founded in Eisenach with the purpose of contributing to “dejewification”. Its employees edited biblical texts, removing non-Aryan passages. Dozens of works printed by the institute were published in over 100 thousand copies of the new Holy Scripture. It was assumed that this work would become a standard household book amongst Germans.

For a long time, almost nothing was known about Hitler’s Bible, since believers burnt almost every copy. However, a few copies were discovered in German churches at the end of the 1980s, but this was kept hidden from the general public at the time, writes Izvestia.

German biblical archivist Hansjorg Buss has summarized the dubious achievements of Hitler’s myrmidons for Bild newspaper.

“Germans with the Lord – the German book of faith”: the renewed version of the Holy Scripture contained 12 edited commandments instead of 10, as follows:

Honor your Fuhrer and master.

Keep the blood pure and your honor holy.

Honor God and believe in him wholeheartedly.

Seek out the peace of God.

Avoid all hypocrisy.

Holy is your health and life.

Holy is your well-being and honor.

Holy is your truth and fidelity.

Honor your father and mother -- your children are your aid and your example.

Maintain and multiply the heritage of your forefathers.

Be ready to help and forgive.

Joyously serve the people with work and sacrifice.

In the new edition of the psalms, words of Jewish origin, such as messiah and halleluiah, were altered and the city of Jerusalem was referred to as Eternal City of God. The crucifixion of Jesus Christ was presented as resulting from a battle he fought against the Jews.

In the 1940 edition, the following words can be found: “The Evangelical Jesus can only become the savior of our German people, because it does not incarnate the ideas of Judaism, but fights against them mercilessly.”

“The German people fought against the destruction of their life and essence by the Jews”, wrote the director of the institute Walter Grundmann. Hitler personally signed the decree on the appropriation of the awarding of the title of professor to him.

And finally, Jesus’ ancestors, according to the Nazis, came from the Caucuses, therefore there was no way that the savior could have been Jewish.

Meir Shalev on the love stories in Bereishis

2009-12-10T19:20:00.001-08:00

I think that anyone interested in literature would enjoy novelist Meir Shalev’s discussion of the Genesis love stories – quite different than conventional Biblical analysis.

Other speakers in the SFJCC speaker series who may be of interest to those interested in religion include Rachel Elior and Moshe Idel. You can find the complete list here.

From Bruce Hodges: This week’s TV tip

2009-10-19T21:21:00.001-07:00

From Bruce Hodges:

On Wednesday night at 8 (as they say, check your local listings), Great Performances on PBS will feature Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic in their opening night concert, taped on October 8 at Walt Disney Concert Hall. The program includes a new piece by John Adams, City Noir, and Mahler's First Symphony.

I have already spoken with a number of people who were in the Los Angeles audience that night, and in the wake of their overwhelming enthusiasm I'd say, don't miss it.

Robert Alter likes Crumb’s Genesis, mostly

2009-10-19T20:48:00.001-07:00

Read about it here.

(Although he claims to be unbiased, he must be flattered by the use of his translation, so Alter’s claim “whatever I have to say about it reflects nothing but my considered response to its images” does not ring completely true.)

It certainly looks better than that awful Manga Bible.

(HT: Tzvee)

Strange allies

2009-10-17T19:09:00.001-07:00

I like the KJV too (although I like Tyndale more).

But I just don’t feel tempted to attend this pastor’s (and what a nice touch to be interviewed in his overalls) barbeque – even with the promise of meeting most of his 14 church members.

You see, I’ve never done [and never plan to do] the Fahrenheit 451 thing – too many bad memories.

(HT: Craig Smith)

PS: This is the first time I’ve broken my design rule and posted in color. So you know the clip must be worth watching.

Bloggers: fess up on freebies, or be fined $11,000

2009-10-05T12:02:00.001-07:00

Did you get a free book for reviewing? Did you get any other sort of gift? Do you get an Amazon affiliates kickback?

Fess up, or the FTC will fine you $11,000.

Barnstone’s “Restored New Testament”

2009-10-01T00:11:00.001-07:00

I wish to bring to your attention Willis Barnstone’s Restored New Testament. I have ordered, but not yet received this book, so I cannot personally comment on it, but I think some of you may be interested in it (particularly those of you familiar with Barnstone’s translations, including his Other Bible and Gnostic Bible).

Here is the review from Library Journal:

The Restored New Testament: A New Translation with Commentary, Including the Gnostic Gospels, Thomas, Mary, and Judas. Norton. Oct. 2009. 1152p. index. trans. from Greek by Willis Barnstone. ISBN 978-0-393-06493-3. $49.95.

In an achievement remarkable by almost any standard, and surely one of the events of the year in publishing, renowned poet and scholar Barnstone has created a new and lavish translation—almost transformation—of the canonical and noncanonical books associated with the New Testament. In part a continuation of his work in The New Covenant, Commonly Called the New Testament (2002) and The Other Bible (2005), and in many ways the completion of the pioneering efforts of other modern translators like Robert Alter, Reynolds Price, and Richmond Lattimore, The Restored New Testament offers a completely new version of familiar and unfamiliar texts, restoring the likely Hebrew forms of names, and strongly emphasizing the poetic and almost incantatory passages that have been obscured within the New Testament. Barnstone also substantially reorders the traditional arrangement of books for reasons he ably expounds in an extended and learned yet accessible preface. The high bar Barnstone has set for himself is the creation of an English-language Scripture that will move poets much as the 1611 King James Version moved Milton and Blake. Only time will tell if Barnstone has achieved his goal, but his work is fascinating, invigorating, and often beautiful. Essential.

Here is an interview from Library Journal:

Readers may be familiar with your work as a translator, poet, and editor, but it seems that in the last several years, more of your attention has gone toward religious texts. What accounts for the change?

I don’t want to abuse the catch-all word “spiritual,” but there is a spiritual or metaphysical obsession with most of the work I’ve done. In the early Sixties, I translated The Poems of Saint John of the Cross, who was Spain’s and the world’s foremost mystical poet, whose work is based on the biblical Song of Songs, which I also translated into English. I began The Restored New Testament (RNT) nearly two decades ago, and in the last several years I’ve been doing these monstrous editions and translations of diverse Biblical literature, from The Other Bible, a book of intertestamental scriptures including Dead Sea Scrolls, Gnosticism, and Apocrypha, to Poetics of Translation: History, Theory, Practice in which the Bible is the main paradigm of translation. We live in a world of impossible-to-answer questions about all the great ideas, beginning with consciousness. So begins the meditation. I think there is a common thread in my work, and less change than may appear.

What was the field of New Testament translation like when you began your project? What differences should we expect from your version?

Oh gosh! A revolution. Briefly: a restoration of the probable names of persons and places to their Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew originals; a book that avoids Biblespeak, the half-lovely archaized speech that most translations fall into after the King James Version, or really infelicitous lowbrow talk that floats like lead when the scripture is gold. I attempt to translate the Bible as others have translated Homer or Virgil. Why not? I also show that the name changes—Elizabeth for Elisheva, James for Yaakov, Mary for Miryam—are an attempt to mask the fact that all the characters, big and small, except for the Romans, are Jews. Jesus was a circumcised rabbi who died during the Passover days of the seder. I also show by translating much of the book into verse that like all the world’s religious scripture the book was meant to be chanted as it is today in Greek Orthodox churches. We read the Song of Songs, Psalms, Job, Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, and many of the prophets as lineated poetry. We should do the same with the New Testament, which, like the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), was half in poetry, including Revelation, the epic poem of the Bible which I did in blank verse. As prior translator Richmond Lattimore did, I change the order of the gospels, making them chronological by beginning with Mark, then Matthew, then Luke and John.

What sort of reader do you picture for the RNT? The scholar in the tower? The family in the pew? The poet under the tree?

I hope for a general reader, lowbrow, highbrow, even nobrow. Conservative Christians took to my New Covenant, a translation of the four gospels and Revelation, because they are interested in the meaning of Biblical words and they saw my work as about as faithful one can be to the original words, which cast the Bible in its morning light. I surely hope for literary readers too, who esteem Hemingway or Twain (so much like the Gospel of Mark’s racing plain narrative) or Whitman (who reminds us of Ecclesiastes). I hope for church and synagogue readers—it’s the last great biblical work by a Jew, about Jews, for Jews, as bishop John Shelby Spong points out. It should speak to the general reader, as did the earliest—and in my opinion best—translation into beautiful demotic English by William Tyndale in 1525. He wrote his Bible for the ploughboy of the fields, and even for Scots, women, Saracens and Turks. Where he translated Greek correctly into the equivalent for his time, as in “He was a luckie fella,” the King James Version pumps it up to “He was a fortunate gentleman.” I have also taken out the artificial pomp by translating student as student rather than Latin disciple, and messenger as messenger, not apostle. An apostle stays at home and admires his robes, but Paul’s apostles, many of them women, hit the road for the cause.

What could or should a restored New Testament mean for today’s world? How could it be put to use?

In a world of hatred, especially tribal religious hatreds everywhere, I hope that the book may bring peace, or further peace among Jews, Christians, and Moslems. I hope the reader feels that the restored scripture reveals the commonality of the Abrahamic sects of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. I hope the faithful and secular see a work closer to the original scripture and not bathed in the propaganda of bias and willful persuasion, a fascinating read, with verve and freshness. Unlike most scripture it has whimsy and humor for a world drowning in gravity and fear and misunderstanding. Surely laughter is part of our life and not a sin against seriousness.

R. Soloveitchik on innovation in liturgy

2009-09-20T21:23:00.001-07:00

Haganos HaRav 67 (Soloveitchik RH Machzor):

The Rav objected in general to the introduction into the service of new prayers not included in the traditional liturgy, noting that Chazal, well aware of the paradox inherent in insignificant man approaching God to pray for his comparatively trivial needs, were thus determined to confine the performance of prayer to rigid, standardized texts based upon Biblical sources (Community, Covenant, and Commitment, p. 115)

He stressed that man’s entire right to pray to God for anything is based upon the fact that the Bible is replete with examples of people praying and petitioning god for various needs, and their actions therefore serve as a precedent for us (Divrei Hashkafah, p. 122). Consequently, no ordinary person can have temerity to compose his own formula of prayer, given that he lacks the necessary רוח הקודש, the Divine inspiration, which the Biblical figures had. The Rav further explained that it is for this reason that the Gemara in Megillah (17a) points out that the אנשי כנסת הגדולה, the Men of the
Great Assembly, who established the texts of our prayers and blessings (see Berachos 33a), included several prophets, because a level of Divine inspiration is necessary in order to properly formulate prayers. The Rav stated that he was unimpressed with various prayer texts composed by contemporary authors (MiPeninei HaRav, pp. 127-128).

Indeed, he held that no contemporary author has all the qualities that are indispensable for writing prayers. Nobody today has the inner ability, the depth, the breadth of experience, and the purity of soul that would authorize him to compose a prayer (The Lord is Righteous, pp. 298-299.)

The Arden Shakespeare empire expands

2009-09-03T02:59:00.001-07:00

When Cenage (which was spun off from Thomson which had acquired Routledge) bought Houghton-Mifflin, there was great fear in the Shakespeare book-lover community that it would spell doom for the Arden Shakespeare – volumes that contained deep commentary and annotations on Shakespeare editions. Houghton-Mifflin already had its own set of preferred Shakespeare textbooks – works that were far more pedestrian than the Arden editions.

And, that prognostication turned out to be partly correct – Cenage dumped Arden as quickly as it could – selling it back to Metheun (its publisher through from 1899 through 1980). And back in its rightful home, the Arden Shakespeare is doing exciting things.

One of the most exciting is the release of a new Early Modern Drama series, with Arden-style commentary and annotations of Everyman and Mankind, Philaster, and The Duchess of Malfi on the way in less than two weeks and (reportedly) The Renegado coming out next year.

So hooray. Unable to handle a unit of true quality, the mega-publishers actually spun off the Arden Shakespeare to a small publisher – its original home – that seems to take some pride in its publications.

(By the way, while I strongly recommend the Arden for their critical commentary, I cannot recommend them as a reading edition of Shakespeare. You should take Kevin Edgecomb’s advice and buy a nicely printed multi-volume edition.)

Bible revision madness

2009-09-03T02:38:00.001-07:00

I’m only maintaining a few subscriptions to Bible blogs – a large number have become irrelevant to my current interest. But I still read a few, and the big news this week is: the NIV is being revised again.

In a very real sense this is completely irrelevant to me: I did not like, read, or trust the NIV or the TNIV. I found the translations biased, simplified, and (in the case of the TNIV) ungrammatical. My opinion is that popular modern Bible translation theory is in a rut (as is, sadly, much discussion about it) – the only translations in the last decade or so I can get excited about are those of Craig Smith, Robert Alter, and Everett Fox.

And, after all, translations wars are small beer anyway. (Ignoring source text criticism issues) the original text says what it says. Any serious discussion needs to refer back to the original text. (However, I admit to finding English translations of the Targums and Septuagint useful.)

Furthermore, there are already a wealth of translations into English representing reading levels ranging from grammar school to moderately sophisticated and a variety of different belief systems. It is hard to believe that a new translation could have a real impact with readers – at best it could merely hope to jostle some other “flavor of the month” recent translation in sales rating.

Perhaps the death of the TNIV is a blow for those Evangelicals who hoped to for their translation to have an impact on secular educational materials (currently, the NRSV and RSV [and in literature, the KJV] are dominant here). The TNIV looked to be one of the few translations that had some impact outside the Evangelical world – for example, the TNIV was used in an(outstanding) secular textbook: the Norton Critical Edition of Writings of St. Paul.

One reaction among biblio-bloggers surprises me. Many people are saying: “what shall we do until the new edition is out” as if the TNIV were somehow rendered unacceptable by the decision to revise it. It reminds me of the pitches given by publishers when a new edition of a dictionary or cookbook comes out – one is hardly required to buy the new edition.

Indeed, the old editions remain on the market for a long time (and, in the used market, continue to be available even longer.) Thus a reader who desires a copy of the “out-of-date” editions such as the RSV, Living Bible, Confraternity Bible, JPS 1917 Holy Scriptures, RV, Geneva translation, etc. has a wide variety of choices both on the new and used market).

As a reader, you can read, cite, use, and study any translation you want. And if you are worried about there being a dearth of supplementary materials, you are welcome to use any translation you want with any commentary you want.

If you visit a university bookstore, you will find that instructors – even in the hard sciences and mathematics – regularly use textbooks from the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s (and sometimes even back to the ‘30s) – indeed, one popular publisher, Dover, specializes in reprinting these volumes.

As far as the merits of the NIV 2011 are concerned, we’ll have to wait and see – it is absurd to begin to judge it before work has even begun on it. Since the NIV took 13 years (1965-1978) for the first edition and the TNIV took at least 9 years (1996 [publication date of the NIVi] – 2005) , I’m a bit surprised that the translators feel they can do an adequate job with only a two year timeline. But let’s wait and see.

In the meanwhile, there is little need to gnash teeth. The ideas that inspired the changes from the NIV to the TNIV cannot be erased with the announcement of a new translation.

Philip Davies on Jewish knowledge of the Bible

2009-07-15T11:18:00.001-07:00

From an essay by Philip Davies:

. . . A recent National Biblical Literacy Survey in the UK carried out by the Centre for Biblical Literacy Communication at St John’s College, Durham (http://www.dur.ac.uk/codec/about/cblc/) found that as few as 10 per cent of people understood the main characters in the Bible and their relevance. Figures such as Abraham and Joseph were unknown: hardly anyone could name even a few of the Ten Commandments. . . .

I know a lot of secular Jews . . . . Very few of them can demonstrate the degree of ignorance of the Bible that Christians do. For them, being Jewish means knowing the Bible, even if not accepting its religious authority. Secular Jews are nearly all proud to be Jewish and know that their Jewish identity is defined by the Bible. There is no equivalent commitment among Christians because they share no ethnic identity. . . .

(HT: James Davila)

FTC to enforce disclosure in blogging

2009-07-07T15:58:00.001-07:00

Practical ethics requires that a blogger disclose when he has received a gift or compensation from a firm that he subsequently blogs about.

For example, consider the case of a blogger recommending a book that he received as a gift from a publisher or an author; or a blogger selling a book and receives a kickback from an online bookseller; or a blogger promoting Bible software in exchange for a chance to receive a luxury leather Bible. Such bloggers are ethically required to disclose the gift, kickback, or lottery chance. To do otherwise would be to deceive the blogger’s readership, who otherwise would expect a disinterested opinion.

These ethical guidelines will soon be legally enforced in the US by the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC’s guidelines are available here and it is expected to become final this summer.

Deborah Yao of the AP writes: “It would be the first time the FTC tries to patrol systematically what bloggers say and do online. The common practice of posting a graphical ad or a link to an online retailer — and getting commissions for any sales from it — would be enough to trigger oversight.”

(By the way, this blog does not receive compensation or commissions from any posts that it makes. This blog does not receive free books or other gifts that it subsequently blogs about.)

Codex Sinaiticus

2009-07-06T11:32:00.001-07:00

From Arts Beat (quick summary – much of the Codex Sinaiticus published at codexsinaiticus.org):

The pages of a Bible more than 1,600 years old have been published on the Internet, The Associated Press reported. Nearly 800 pages from the Codex Sinaiticus, a Christian Bible dating to the 4th century, written in Greek and containing the oldest complete copy of the New Testament, were posted Monday at the Web site codexsinaiticus.org, coinciding with a conference on the book at the British Library in London. The original manuscript, containing about 1,460 pages written on prepared animal skin, was discovered in 1844 at the Monastery of St. Catherine, a Greek Orthodox shrine in the Sinai Peninsula, by the German Bible scholar Constantine Tischendorf. Its pages were split among Britain, Egypt, Russia and Germany. Scholars from the four nations worked on the restoration of the Bible, which also includes substantial portions of the Old Testament and Apocrypha. Forty-three pages of the manuscript are at the University Library in Leipzig, Germany, and six fragments are at the National Library of Russia in St. Petersburg.

The economic meltdown – should you be concerned?

2009-07-01T01:44:00.001-07:00

By the brilliant Jorge Chan:

Leo Strauss notes online

2009-06-28T13:12:00.001-07:00

From Hanoch Was Not:

The University of Chicago is publishing all of Leo Strauss’ surviving lecture notes online at the Leo Strauss Center. A bonus is that they will be including any surviving audio of his talks that they can dig up. You can sample one of his classes on Plato's Meno here. . . .

As Hanoch Was Not notes, the project is just beginning.

It’s Time to Learn from Frogs

2009-06-27T21:21:00.001-07:00

From Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times column:

Some of the first eerie signs of a potential health catastrophe came as bizarre deformities in water animals, often in their sexual organs.

Frogs, salamanders and other amphibians began to sprout extra legs. In heavily polluted Lake Apopka, one of the largest lakes in Florida, male alligators developed stunted genitals.

In the Potomac watershed near Washington, male smallmouth bass have rapidly transformed into “intersex fish” that display female characteristics. This was discovered only in 2003, but the latest survey found that more than 80 percent of the male smallmouth bass in the Potomac are producing eggs.

Now scientists are connecting the dots with evidence of increasing abnormalities among humans, particularly large increases in numbers of genital deformities among newborn boys. For example, up to 7 percent of boys are now born with undescended testicles, although this often self-corrects over time. And up to 1 percent of boys in the United States are now born with hypospadias, in which the urethra exits the penis improperly, such as at the base rather than the tip.

Apprehension is growing among many scientists that the cause of all this may be a class of chemicals called endocrine disruptors. They are very widely used in agriculture, industry and consumer products. Some also enter the water supply when estrogens in human urine — compounded when a woman is on the pill — pass through sewage systems and then through water treatment plants.

These endocrine disruptors have complex effects on the human body, particularly during fetal development of males.

“A lot of these compounds act as weak estrogen, so that’s why developing males — whether smallmouth bass or humans — tend to be more sensitive,” said Robert Lawrence, a professor of environmental health sciences at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “It’s scary, very scary.”

The scientific case is still far from proven, as chemical companies emphasize, and the uncertainties for humans are vast. But there is accumulating evidence that male sperm count is dropping and that genital abnormalities in newborn boys are increasing. Some studies show correlations between these abnormalities and mothers who have greater exposure to these chemicals during pregnancy, through everything from hair spray to the water they drink.

Endocrine disruptors also affect females. It is now well established that DES, a synthetic estrogen given to many pregnant women from the 1930s to the 1970s to prevent miscarriages, caused abnormalities in the children. They seemed fine at birth, but girls born to those women have been more likely to develop misshaped sexual organs and cancer.

There is also some evidence from both humans and monkeys that endometriosis, a gynecological disorder, is linked to exposure to endocrine disruptors. Researchers also suspect that the disruptors can cause early puberty in girls.

A rush of new research has also tied endocrine disruptors to obesity, insulin resistance and diabetes, in both animals and humans. For example, mice exposed in utero even to low doses of endocrine disruptors appear normal at first but develop excess abdominal body fat as adults.

Among some scientists, there is real apprehension at the new findings — nothing is more terrifying than reading The Journal of Pediatric Urology — but there hasn’t been much public notice or government action.

This month, the Endocrine Society, an organization of scientists specializing in this field, issued a landmark 50-page statement. It should be a wake-up call.

“We present the evidence that endocrine disruptors have effects on male and female reproduction, breast development and cancer, prostate cancer, neuroendocrinology, thyroid, metabolism and obesity, and cardiovascular endocrinology,” the society declared.

“The rise in the incidence in obesity,” it added, “matches the rise in the use and distribution of industrial chemicals that may be playing a role in generation of obesity.”

The Environmental Protection Agency is moving toward screening endocrine disrupting chemicals, but at a glacial pace. For now, these chemicals continue to be widely used in agricultural pesticides and industrial compounds. Everybody is exposed.

“We should be concerned,” said Dr. Ted Schettler of the Science and Environmental Health Network. “This can influence brain development, sperm counts or susceptibility to cancer, even where the animal at birth seems perfectly normal.”

The most notorious example of water pollution occurred in 1969, when the Cuyahoga River in Ohio caught fire and helped shock America into adopting the Clean Water Act. Since then, complacency has taken hold.

Those deformed frogs and intersex fish — not to mention the growing number of deformities in newborn boys — should jolt us once again.

Museum exhibits as a commercial endeavor

2009-06-27T20:58:00.001-07:00

I think that this criticism is well-posed (I saw this show in Los Angeles, and found it to be pure hucksterism):

Among people with a professional interest in the arts, Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs, which opens today at the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, will merely deepen the tarnish on the reputation of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Although FAMSF curator Renee Dreyfus has swapped out four objects presented at other venues for four of her own choosing, the show in bulk comes here prepackaged by National Geographic and Arts and Exhibitions International, a subsidiary of corporate impresario AEG Worldwide, which also owns the San Francisco Examiner.

Critics have hammered every art museum that has hosted Tutankhamun. (A parallel exhibition, Tutankhamun, the Golden King and the Great Pharaohs - same size, same sources, same organizers - opens today at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis.) But here, as elsewhere - except Dallas, where attendance fell about 40 percent short of projections - a vast audience probably will eat it up, even at $27.50 a head for general admission … the enveloping stagecraft will encourage no one to reflect on the reasons why these things fascinate.

A large dedicated shop connected with the show incites visitors to spend as little time as possible outside the fog of consumer desire. The commercial spirit of the affair shows even in the presence of large-type labels at the top of each case, to inform viewers of what they can only glimpse through a crowd….

Unfortunately, hard times have lent traction to the bottom-line thinking behind Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs. With museums across the world - even the Met - trimming staff and programs, and sometimes taking artworks to the auction block to raise cash, the sate-the-gate approach of the Fine Arts Museums' John Buchanan … looks almost prudent….

But what will we not be seeing that we might have in the de Young's special exhibitions galleries during the nine-month span of Tutankhamun? What projects did FAMSF curators have to postpone or scrap altogether for the sake of the costly Tut gamble?…

Note that in New York, a new space has opened in Times Square that is purely commercial for the purpose of putting on these “blockbuster shows” – including Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs:

… Two years after The [New York] Times left its longtime headquarters on West 43rd Street in Manhattan, the basement of that building is being converted into a 60,000-square-foot space for large-scale exhibitions of art and historical artifacts. Called Discovery Times Square Exposition, it will open June 24 with two shows, Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition and Lucy’s Legacy: The Hidden Treasures of Ethiopia, featuring the 3.2-million-year-old fossil remains of the female hominid known as Lucy. Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs, an expanded version of the show that has been touring North America since 2005, is to open next spring….

The enterprise is a partnership between Running Subway — a New York production company whose projects have included the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Annex NYC — and the Discovery Channel…. Running Subway has taken out a 20-year lease and spent “tens of millions of dollars” on construction since spring 2008, Mr. Sanna said…. Shows will be installed in two basement rooms, each with 30-foot ceilings, and a cafe and gift shop will also be underground.

Shows like Titanic and Tutankhamun, which have been blockbuster hits, are often organized by for-profit companies instead of museums, and in some cases they have bypassed New York because no appropriate spot could be found, organizers say.

“We’ve always wanted to bring Titanic to New York, but there wasn’t really a suitable venue until this time,” said Chris Davino, chief executive of Premier Exhibitions, whose other shows include Bodies: The Exhibition. Presented in museums, science centers and casinos elsewhere around the world, in New York Bodies has been mounted in converted retail space at South Street Seaport.

The new Times Square space will also allow exhibitors to avoid the restrictions of museums. The King Tut exhibition was turned down by many museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, because its organizers wanted to charge additional admission fees. Each show at the Discovery Times Square Exposition will cost $19.50 for adults and $17.50 for children….

This brings to mind a snarky quote I read long ago from Gore Vidal to the effect that, in America, education was now a branch of the entertainment industry.

Why I don’t like most study Bibles

2009-06-27T20:19:00.001-07:00

I became interested in contemporary study Bibles because of my interest in pedagogy. I wondered if a study Bible could be used as a self-study tool or as a resource used by a teacher.

Here, I make a distinction between a merely annotated Bible (e.g, the celebrated [RSV] New Oxford Annotated Bible – which explains difficult passages and includes summary of the pericopes, but makes for a reading text – not a teaching or study text) and a true “study Bible” intended to serve as a full teaching presentation of the Bible with commentary as well as annotations.

My conclusion is that all contemporary study Bibles I have seen are poor for teaching without substantial – often very substantial – additional materials. They may or may not be useful as reference works, but by and large they are poor for pedagogy.

Most contemporary study Bibles suffer from the following pedagogic problems:

(a) They attempt diversity in their selection of annotators and essayists, but if the Bible is read chapter-by-chapter, the reader has no chance to directly compare views on a single book (or even a single topic). In this way, they are far weaker than a typical Norton Critical Edition volume which will typically include an anthology of essays which directly debate each other, providing a plurality of views that enriches the student. In contrast, contemporary study Bibles are both wildly uneven (because of the different commentators) and also present opinions, often contentious opinions, as fact.

(b) The physical dimensions of a study Bible necessarily limit the depth of commentary. This is not necessarily a disadvantage for a lightly annotated Bible, but it makes for a reading text – not a teaching or study text. (To be fair, the classic editions of the New Oxford Annotated Bible, as the title clearly indicates, claimed to be “annotated” and not “study” texts.) In this way, I regard the Oxford Jewish Study Bible as slightly stronger than its Oxford cousins The Catholic Study Bible (2nd ed.) or the contemporary (ecumenical) New Oxford Annotated Bible (3rd Augmented ed.) – since it the JSB covers only the Hebrew Bible, it covers about 3/5ths of the material in roughly the same total dimensions (and, most promisingly, has room for much more essay material). But the JSB still suffers from the many of shortfalls of its cousins.

(c) Evangelical study Bibles, in particular, are largely produced by a single company, the Livingstone Corporation, which has most recent apologetic study Bibles (including almost all of the recent study Bibles published by Zondervan, Tyndale, Broadman and Holman, and Thomas Nelson). This has imposed a level of uniform mediocrity of these volumes (although they are often magnificent specimens of modern computer typesetting).

(d) With a few significant exceptions (scholarly commentaries, most Orthodox Jewish study volumes, and the NET New Testament diglot), most study volumes include no or only superficial engagement with original language materials.

(e) Similarly, with a few significant exceptions, most text critical issues are avoided. In this way, most study Bibles are significantly inferior to a typical single-volume annotated teaching text for Shakespeare.

(f) Even “academic” study Bibles often include substantial apologetic material. The New Interpreter’s Study Bible is, perhaps, among major “academic” study Bibles the worst offender, but it creeps into all of them. While this is is not necessarily a bad thing, it should be noted and the student should be given a perspective of different views.

What I wish is that we could see a study Bible – in multiple volumes if necessary – where different commentators could directly engage with and debate each other, in the fashion of the Rabbinic Bible. Such works are common in English literature (e.g., the Cambridge Companions, the Norton Critical Editions, Bloom’s Modern [or Classic] Critical Views, among many, many others). Some of these are only mediocre, but the best of these are outstanding.

Moreover, anthologies of different opinions they can easily be found for classic interpretation of Scripture (e.g., the Rabbinic Bible, the Catena Aurea). I fail to see why it is so difficult to produce a study Bible with contemporary opinion focused on pedagogical principles.

I have seen a (mostly successful) attempt to do this with a study edition of the Jewish prayer book; where ten different commentaries (from a full spectrum of opinions) are included with full engagement of the Hebrew. A completely different style which also succeeds is the Norton Critical Edition Writings of Saint Paul (first edition, second edition) which includes a wide array of extra-Pauline materials as well as ancient, 19th century, and modern criticism.

For the time being, I am unable to recommend a self-study volume for serious engagement with the Bible. This strikes me as odd given that many excellent examples exist for secular literature.

Japanese Gregorian Chant

2009-06-26T17:43:00.001-07:00

Psalm 141 in Japanese chanted in Gregorian style, by the monks of Trinity Benedictine Monastery, Fujimi.

Thursday’s tragic death of a great musician

2009-06-26T02:37:00.001-07:00

On Thursday, one of the great musicians of our time died. No, I am not thinking of Michael Jackson.

I am thinking of the amazing Ali Akbar Khan, who I was fortunate enough to see many, many times, who was named as a “national treasure” by the Indian government. He was a great classical North Indian composer and performer. He was the leading virtuoso of the lutelike sarod, and he often performed together with his brother Ravi Shankar.

Here is a brief obituary.

Here are links to some albums:

Pre-Dawn to Sunrise Ragas (1967)

Morning and Evening Ragas (1955)

The Emperor of Sarod, vol 1 (1970)

This is a man who touched my soul and intellect through his music. I am sorry he is gone, but happy that we have such a rich legacy of memories and recordings.

Correction: Khan died Thursday – last week (June 18)

The emotional weight of quantum mechanics

2009-06-24T13:05:00.001-07:00

From SF Chronicle:

(06-24) 10:56 PDT REDWOOD CITY -- A homeless man is on trial in San Mateo County on charges that he smacked a fellow transient in the face with a skateboard as the victim was engaged in a conversation about quantum physics, authorities said today.

Jason Everett Keller, 40, allegedly accosted another homeless man, Stephan Fava, on the 200 block of Grand Avenue in South San Francisco at about 1:45 p.m. March 30.

At the time, Fava was chatting with an acquaintance, who is also homeless, about “quantum physics and the splitting of atoms,” according to prosecutors.

Keller joined in the conversation and, for reasons unknown, got upset, authorities said. He picked up his skateboard and hit Fava in the face with it, splitting his lip, prosecutors said.

Fava also fell and broke his ankle, although how this happened wasn't exactly known, authorities said.

The attack was witnessed by two other people who told police that Fava had done nothing to provoke Keller, authorities said.

Keller is expected to take the stand at his jury trial in the Redwood City courtroom of Superior Court Judge James Ellis.

Five books meme

2009-06-23T20:48:00.001-07:00

I want to acknowledge some excellent responses to the five book memes taggings that I made:

These posts are worth reading.

Nixon on abortion

2009-06-23T20:17:00.001-07:00

From New York Times:

WASHINGTON — On Jan. 23, 1973, when the Supreme Court struck down laws criminalizing abortion in Roe v. Wade, President Richard M. Nixon made no public statement. But privately, newly released tapes reveal, he expressed ambivalence.

Nixon worried that greater access to abortions would foster “permissiveness,” and said that “it breaks the family.” But he also saw a need for abortion in some cases — like interracial pregnancies, he said.

“There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white,” he told an aide, before adding, “Or a rape.”

Social networking + blogpost-by-email = evil

2009-06-23T18:22:00.001-07:00

This is funny. The spamming MyLife social networking system is asking Kevin Hoffberg’s former blog if it knows Kevin Hoffberg.

More embarrassing examples (and an explanation) given here.

My favorite:

“I’m sure excited about this! Imagine — I’m Hervey’s friend now! Boy, things are gonna start popping for me now, you betcha!”

I am going to have my genomes sequenced

2009-06-23T11:25:00.001-07:00

The price has been plunging for genome sequencing; Knome offers genome sequencing (at various levels of completeness) at prices starting at $25,000; 23andMe offers it for a mere $400.

I’ve decided to have my genomes sequenced by 23andMe. There are quite a few genetic personal mysteries I hope to resolve in the process. Merely comparing my ancestry with different regions alone will be worth it to me; the genetic screening for over a hundred different traits will be bonus.

Steven Pinker discusses his experience here.

A tale of pain in URLs

2009-06-23T01:15:00.001-07:00

Notes from the Academic Meltdown, Part 1

Notes from the Academic Meltdown, Part II

Look for the reference to "biding my time"

KJV in sermons, redux

2009-06-22T17:14:00.001-07:00

(Post deleted)

The KJV in sermons

2009-06-22T11:24:00.001-07:00

(Post deleted)

Books that influenced my reading of the Bible

2009-06-17T18:26:00.001-07:00

There is one of those memes going around in which people volunteer a list of books that influenced their readings of the Bible. The rules say that works are not limited to Biblical studies literature, but can include religious works or works of literature. The list is nominally set at 5 books, but that is obviously an arbitrary number, and I have more than 5 books to list here.

Now, no one has actually nominated me for this meme, but I am going to nominate myself.

Ramban (Nachmanides) - Commentary on the Torah – by far my favorite medieval commentary – one that directly engages the commentaries of Rashi and Ibn Ezra and treats mysticism as a first class return. My preferred edition is here. A fantastic older translation is this one. A translation with more support and matching Hebrew is here. See also Michael Carasik’s beautiful presentation; Exodus and Leviticus are now (or soon will be) available.

John Milton – Paradise Lost – a poem that creates an entire world, and that comments intelligently on esoterica drawn from Jewish and Christian tradition. My favorite edition is here (which I greatly prefer to the Riverside Milton.) A very clean presentation is here. There are a vast number of commentaries on Milton – I like the older (Elledge) Norton edition (the newer Norton Teskey edition is inferior but still useful) and Fish’s first book on Milton (presenting a powerful reader-reception approach) shows his young genius; his later works have less attraction to me.

Dante – Divina Commedia – another poem that comments on everything in the world, in the process, revealing a great deal of the author’s approach to Scripture. There are many fabulous translations to choose among; Hollander’s (Inf, Pur, Par) is a nice bilingual diglot presentation; one of my friends did a nice translation of Inferno (in a bilingual diglot presentation); Ciardi’s is highly poetic and easy to read (but does not include the Italian text); Laurence Binyon’s translation is probably the most faithful (but hard to read); Singleton has the most detailed commentary in English as well as the Italian and literal translation; and the California Lecturis Dantis (Inf, Pur) series is my favorite extended discussion in English.

Augustine – Confessiones – a profound meditation on the personal response to Scripture. I recommend O’Donnell’s Latin edition for its excellent commentary (Amazon has it listed currently out of print, but you can find this for about $100 if you look around). If you want an English translation, Chadwick’s is standard (try to get it in the original handsome but unpretentious hardcover). There are many other translations to choose among; I thought Gary Wills four volume translation was well done (1, 2, 3, 4) (this has been republished in a one volume edition but missing some of Wills extra material).

Rambam (Maimonides) – Moreh Nevuchim (Guide of the Perplexed);
Averroes (Ibn Rushd) – Tahāfut al-Tahāfut (The Incoherence of the Incoherence); and
Thomas (Aquinas) – Summa Theologiæ – a great trio of deep works, discussing the links (and, the absence of links) between religion and theology, with many illuminating discussions and excurses on Scripture. The first two works also inspired me to study Arabic. The standard edition of Moreh Nevuchim is available online (vol. 1, 2, 3); my favorite English translation is by Shlomo Pines (with an intriguing long introduction by Leo Strauss) (vol. 1, 2). Standard editions of Tahāfut al-Tahāfut are here and here; the leading translation of Tahāfut al-Tahāfut is Simon van den Bergh, available online here (be sure to refer to the translation notes here). There is a nice bilingual edition of the book Tahāfut al-Tahāfut refutes, al-Ghazali’s Incoherence of the Philosophers. For Thomas there are many editions available; my own preference is the bilingual diglot Blackfriar’s edition because of its extensive notes and commentary.

Thomas (Aquinas) – Catena Aurea – Thomas’s standard collection of early Church fathers on the meaning of the Gospels – a rich and often allegorical set of meditations. I have only read this in Newman’s English translation. See also Toal’s Sunday Sermons of the Great Fathers for a more recent and somewhat similar approach. Kevin Edgecomb brought these books to my attention.

Schneur Zalman – Torah Ohr and Likkutei Torah – A collection of the great 18th century Chassidic teacher’s kabalistic explanations of Torah parshos (as well as the Song of Songs and Esther) as collected by his grandson, the Tzemach Tzedek. Hebrew editions of Torah Ohr and Likkutei Torah (vol. 1, 2) are readily available. I am unaware of English translations.

Shimon bar Yochai and his school – The Zohar – a vast collection of mystical exegesis on Torah written at the start of the Common Era. Some scholars claim this is a 13th century work by Moses de Leon. This is easily available in Aramaic from any Judaica shop. My friend Danny Matt has been establishing a critical text and his translation (in progress) is fascinating (although, in many ways, the Zohar is not translatable.) The Tishby anthology (which I have only read in English translation) is a standard introduction with many passages translated.

Louis Ginzburg – Legends of the Jews – I am a bit embarrassed by this book now, but as a child, this was one of the first books I read on the aggadic Torah. While I now think there are better introductions, it is still valuable for non-religious Jews and gentiles.

Alter & Kermode – The Literary Guide to the Bible – by far the best college level introduction to the Bible I have seen – taking a literary approach to understanding Scripture.

Gerald Hammond – Making of the Hebrew Bible – a wonderful, careful examination of 16th and 17th English translations of the Bible – reminding us of all the important points that are missed in modern translations.

James Kugel – Traditions of the Bible: A Guide to the Bible as it was at the Start of the Common Era – a wonderful modern presentation of different interpretative traditions of the Bible – both Jewish and Christian. I think this work is much stronger than Kugel’s more general work (which I do not care for) on how to read the Bible.

OK, now the fun part – picking individuals who can continue this meme. I nominate Tzvee, Kevin, Judy, David, Rachel, and Craig.

Michael Drout proves “redrawn” version of “But Not the Hippopotamus” is fraudulent

2009-06-14T20:50:00.001-07:00

Faithful readers will recall that I previously reported that Boynton expert Michael Drout, English Chair at Wheaton College in Massachusetts, proved that Hippos Go Berserk was a fraudulent work.

Prof. Drout has been at work again with his expert eye and criticism. This time, he has proved that the “redrawn” edition of But Not the Hippopotamus is fraudulent.

From the master himself:

I recently purchased a copy of But Not the Hippopotamus at the Blue Bunny bookstore in Dedham, Mass. In this copy I found the following opening lines:

A Hog and Frog
cavort in a bog.
But not the Hippopotamus.

Something did not seem right, so I consulted my personal copy of But Not the Hippopotamus. Sure enough, the opening lines are:

A Hog and a Frog
do a dance in a bog.
But not the Hippopotamus.

This variation, “cavort” for “do a dance” is an editorial hyper-correction, probably based on an attempt to force Boynton the Great's artistically flawless meter into a straightjacket of perfect regularity.

Note that in the original version, “do a dance” is a straightforward anapest. I scan the lines as:

a HOG and a FROG (iamb plus anapest)
do a DANCE in a BOG (two anapests)

Pseudo-Boynton forces both lines to be iambs followed by anapests, but examination of the rest of the poem shows that Boynton only once uses the 2 / 3 pattern in the line:

a HARE and a BEAR (iamb anapest)
have BEEN to a FAIR (iamb anapest)

In the other two stanzas we see:

are TRYing on HATS

and

toGETHer have JUICE

These two parallels, “are TRYing” and “toGETHer” are amphibrachs, also three-syllable feet. So there is no need to assume that the iamb in the fourth stanza needs to be followed slavishly by forcing a two-syllable foot (“cavort”) into the first stanza.

From this analysis of the forgery, we can conclude that Pseudo-Boynton is a highly trained scholar, but one for whom Boynton’s brilliant verse is not a native idiom. We can also note that as well as lacking Boynton the Great’s attention to detail (in that Pseudo-Boynton forgets to deal with the six distressed hippos who have never left in his/her version of Hippos Go Berserk), Pseudo-Boynton has a predilection for hippos. Scholars should thus re-examine the Boynton corpus to determine which other texts may have been interfered with by Pseudo-Boynton, looking for editorial hypercorrection, subtle contradictions, and hippos.

And the “Cavort” Recension of But Not the Hippopotamus must be athetized from the corpus.

Be sure to bring this vital issue to the attention of your school and public children’s libraries and librarians.

Recreating those quaint days of the last decade

2009-06-14T14:31:00.001-07:00

The New York Times reports on a shocking anachronism – a CD store:

Boston Early Music Festival: As in Days of Yore, CDs in a Store

BOSTON — At an early-music festival, you expect to see antique instruments: pegless cellos, gambas with ornate scrolls, wooden recorders and tranverse flutes of every size, and perhaps an occasional shawm, rebec or vielle. And you expect to see re-creations of ensembles that composers no longer write for (although a few composers seem to be gravitating toward the gamba now).

But the Boston Early Music Festival has taken museumlike recreation a step further. Just outside one of the exhibition spaces at the Radisson Hotel, it has recreated a physical CD shop, called, in fact, the BEMF CD Store. You may remember those: they could be found almost everywhere as recently as two or three years ago but are quickly going extinct.

Like the historically informed ensembles that thrive on the festival’s stages, the BEMF CD Store actually works: you can browse the bins, arranged handily by composer or (for discs with mixed composers) soloist or ensemble, just as you could in CD shops of yore, and you can take some home with you in exchange for cash or plastic: another lifelike touch. The cash-register player said the shop was doing a brisk business; quite often, the instrument’s blue lights flashed totals in the hundreds of dollars.

Gender and gadgets

2009-06-14T02:38:00.001-07:00

There is, I fear, quite a bit of resonance with stereotypes in this typically witty Maureen Dowd piece. I wonder if it is true. (By the way, Defining Vision is a wonderful book.):

Pixilated Over Pixels

By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

Women are faking it in bedrooms all over America.

“When my husband says, ‘Can you believe how much better this is?’ I say, ‘Yes, honey, it’s amazing,’ ” one woman told me. “I really don’t see that much difference, but he’s so happy, I just pretend to.”

As an explosion of pixels hits our TV screens this weekend, with the digital and high-def revolution, my unscientific survey shows women are less excited about high-def than men.

I prefer life and TV to be a little gauzy. I don’t want to see every blemish in a harsh light.

Joel Brinkley, the author of Defining Vision, says HDTV technology was developed totally by men. Alfred Poor, author of the HDTV Almanac, says men drove its success, too. “Men are all about the bigger, better, more,” he said. “And sports are infinitely better in high definition.”

The advent of sleek flat screens began to shrink the gender gap. “Women went, ‘Ah, now it’s not just high-def, it’s a stylish piece of furniture,”’ said Phillip Swann, founder of the Web site TVPredictions.com, which features lists of HDTV “horribles” (Cameron) and “honeys” (Angelina).

Everywhere I look, products are being pitched for a world in keener focus.

At my eye exam last week, Dr. Jay Klessman used “Wavefront” technology, which he said could “make sort of like high-def glasses, with sharper, crisper vision.” (It was originally used to fix blurry images from the Hubble Space Telescope in 1993 and has also led to more precise Lasik.)

At the Georgetown Sephora, a big sign in the window hawks high-def makeup to use with the Sephora High Definition Air Brush. The point, said a Sephora “product expert,” Jei Spatola, is to look “like you literally have nothing on.”

In a high-def culture, we have to wear more makeup to look like we have on no makeup.

Armani offers “Lasting Silk” foundation, “a new high-definition cosmetic textile.”

“Obviously, if you are on HDTV, that’s great,” said Mara Stimac of Armani. “But we’re of the mind that there’s no more true HD than real life.”

Yet concealing can not keep up with revealing.

“The red carpet looks different,” said Jeffrey Cole, the director of the Annenberg School’s Center for the Digital Future at U.S.C. “Actresses in particular have come to hate HDTV.”

Don Malot, a top L.A. makeup artist who works with television and movie stars, says that high-def is turning Tinseltown topsy-turvy.

“People who thought they looked younger on camera than in real life see themselves in high-def and say, ‘Oh my God!’ ” he said. “We can’t use the heavy makeup that used to cover flaws like a drinker’s broken capillaries any more.”

He said that television actresses in their 40s and over are starting to insist that their contracts say they have to be shot slightly out of focus.

“It’s getting rarer to see tight shots of a woman’s face,” he said. “Now the camera guys shoot from the waist up.”

He said that “sadly” women are going to their doctors for more cosmetic fixes and gallons of Botox, but that high-def acts almost like an X-ray to show the slightly bluish tinge of some fillers or the lumpy bumps and ripples from fillers and surgery.

MSNBC’s luminous Norah O’Donnell went to New York to do a promo in high-def, in advance of unveiling new sets designed, colored and angled with HD in mind.

“I was wearing a nice dress,” she recalled, “and standing there saying, ‘MSNBC is the place for politics’ when the production had to be stopped because there was a spot on my dress that was invisible to the naked eye or the wardrobe guy with the lint brush or the director who didn’t have an HDTV set.

“The promotion folks saw it looking through the HD camera at the HD screen,” she said. “It’s impossible to achieve that level of perfection. But people like authenticity. And if it means they see more of my wrinkles and freckles, and where I tried to wipe clean where my kid spit up on my shoulder, so be it.”

David Shuster, another MSNBC anchor, says the growing prevalence of high definition is disorienting for men, too. When he started shooting his HD promo, he was asked to take his pants off so they could steam the creases. And they dulled his shiny shoes, which were picking up green tones from the green screen. Now he’s dreading high-def five o’clock shadow.

As the CBS White House reporter Bill Plante said, “You go in knowing every mole and random facial hair will be visible to somebody watching closely.”

I didn’t get the high-def glasses. I don’t want more acuity. I’m keeping it fuzzy.

Criticism made easy

2009-06-12T19:10:00.001-07:00

If you look at a contemporary New Testament translation, you’ll see numerous footnotes on textual variants. These range from 500-1000 (with the NKJV and New Jerusalem Bible having the most such textual notes.) Unfortunately, these footnotes are nearly useless, since there is no explanation of the relative merits of the different versions.

And thus readers are the victims of textual criticism. In other literary contexts, text criticism (the often quixotic search for the “perfect original text”) has gotten a bad name; with parties now preferring diplomatic texts to critical texts. In Shakespearean studies, for example, the great synthesized plays, incorporating features from both the quartos and the folio, are on the way out – the Arden Shakespeare has now expelled the Jenkins critical Hamlet in favor of three versions: folio and the 1603 and 1623 quartos; the Oxford Shakespeare has two King Lears; while the Norton Shakespeare has three. Similarly, who can forget the “scandal” of the Gabler Ulysses as it was played out in the pages of the NYRB (e.g., here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here). Today, we can buy the Gabler critical edition, the 1934/1961 edition, the 1922 edition, and a first edition facsimile (my favorite). (With Bloomsday right around the corner, now is the time to complete your collection.)

But for New Testament studies, there is a certain snobbery from some advocates of the latest critical editions (currently the 27th edition of Nestle-Aland [NA27] and the 4th edition of the United Bible Societies). There are many reasons one may wish not to use these: (a) many of the decisions behind these editions seem arbitrary; (b) the German Bible Society has expressed its intention to enforce its copyright on these editions and disallow their use in web sites (I suspect these copyrights are not enforceable, but someone who challenges the German Bible Society must be prepared to fight it out in court); (c) one may interested in variants that reflect versions known to the ancient Christian authorities, e.g., to match up quotes with the Patristic literature; (d) one may just want to understand what those 500-1000 footnotes mean.

The problem is that until recently, there was no work in English that explained the critical choices; one could refer to the apparatus of UBS4 or NA27, but these were in Greek; and Metzger’s guide also presumed prior knowledge of the Greek variants.

Well, fortunately, there is a solution for that now – Philip Comfort has written an amazing resource, the New Testament Text and Translation Commentary. This is, without a doubt, the best book I’ve ever seen published by Tyndale House Publishers. The bulk of Comfort’s 944 page tome is a verse-by-verse listing of every contested passage in the New Testament – some three thousand entries. For each entry

Comfort gives all variants (in both Greek and English).
He lists the manuscript evidence for each reading.
He lists which readings are found in which manuscripts, the Textus Receptus (basis of the KJV and NKJV); Westcott and Hort (the earliest and arguably the best of the critical editions); or Nestle-Aland and United Bible Societies (currently the favorite of most translators, but a flawed critical edition).
He lists which readings are found in major translations (ESV, HCSB, KJV, NAB, NASB, NEB, NET, NIV, NJB, NKJV, NLT, NRSV, REB, RSV, and TNIV).
He also lists which readings show up as alternatives in the notes of translations.
In places, he also comments on the readings in the GNT-TEV, RV, Goodspeed, Moffat, Phillips, and Williams translations.
He then gives at least a paragraph long explanation (sometimes much longer) discussing the relative merits of the different readings.

He also has an extensive introduction (which is an introduction to text criticism), a glossary, a number of useful appendices, and a bibliography.

This is such a useful work that I hope it is widely used and consulted. With this work, even a non-Greek reader can meaningfully understand the different textual variants, can decipher footnotes in Bible translations, and can receive an excellent overview of the textual issues with the Greek Testament. Perhaps its only drawback is that the book is quite large – the size of a large history book.

If you own Comfort’s book, you can be your own critic. Or, alternatively, you can justify the readings of your favorite diplomatic text. I recommend it.

People who hate pseudonyms

2009-06-12T14:44:00.001-07:00

Case 1: Here, here, here, here

Case 2: Here, here, here

Well, I like being pseudonymous. If I used my pseudonymity (ala April’s Mom) to exploit others, then I would be in the wrong. But I ask all those who figure out my identity to keep it to themselves.

Judge me

2009-06-12T12:44:00.001-07:00

In Psalm 26:1, David asks God to judge שפטני him.

In Psalm 143:2, David asks God not to enter into judgment במשפט with him.

The tension between these two requests has been the source of interesting exegesis, (e.g., see Rashi and Midrash Tehillim; see also Augustine on Psalms). Those who argue for translations which use different root words in Latin (judicare, vindicare) have missed the tension entirely.

Isaiah Berlin’s voice

2009-06-11T14:49:00.001-07:00

While I would rather read Isaiah Berlin than listen to him, I must take note of the following MP3 lectures now hosted at Oxford:

Freedom and its Betrayal: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1952)

Berlin lectures on Rousseau’s The Social Contract and discusses Rousseau’s anti-intellectualism, idealism of Nature, the worryingly authoritarian implications of his philosophy. Originally broadcast by the BBC's Third Program in 1952

Alexander Herzen: His Opinions and Character (1955)

Lecture on Alexander Herzen, philosopher and founder of Russia’s first free press. He discusses Herzen’s passionate belief in individual liberty and his distaste for the new violent radicalism in Russia in his time.

A Fire at Sea (1957)

Isaiah Berlin introduces and reads his translation of Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev’s short story; 'A Fire at Sea' in which Turgenev recounts an embarrassing episode from his youth. Originally broadcast by the BBC’s Third Program in 1957.

From Communism to Zionism: Moses Hess (1957)

1957 Lucien Wolf Memorial Lecture. Lecture on the Jewish philosopher Moses Hess, one of the founders of Zionism and a committed Socialist. Berlin also discusses Hess’s evolution as a philosopher, from International Socialism to Zionism.

Alan Ryan’s very personal impression of Isaiah Berlin

This talk by Alan Ryan was given at Wolfson College on May 28 2009 as part of the Lives and Works series of lectures.

Some other interesting links:

Quotations Berlin made of others

A good starting anthology of Berlin

Crooked Timber of Humanity by Berlin

Russian Thinkers by Berlin

Tom Stoppard’s Tony Award winning trilogy based on Berlin’s book

Wright says “Jews” keeping him from Obama

2009-06-11T11:41:00.001-07:00

From AP:

HAMPTON, Va. (AP) -- President Barack Obama's controversial former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, is blaming "them Jews" for keeping him from speaking to the president. Wright, the former pastor of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, said he hasn't spoken to Obama since he became president.

"Them Jews ain't going to let him talk to me. I told my baby daughter that he'll talk to me in five years when he's a lame duck, or in eight years when he's out of office," Wright told the Daily Press of Newport News following a Tuesday night sermon at the 95th annual Hampton University Ministers' Conference. "They will not let him to talk to somebody who calls a spade what it is. ... I said from the beginning: He's a politician; I'm a pastor. He's got to do what politicians do."

Obama was a longtime member of the church but resigned from it and cut ties with Wright after videos surfaced during the presidential campaign showing Wright's sometimes provocative sermons. Wright's incendiary comment included shouting "God damn America" and accusing the government of creating AIDS.

Update: If you want to hear the recording of Wright’s comments, click here (it is less than two minutes long.)

Esteban’s new home

2009-06-11T10:09:00.001-07:00

You certainly should not miss Esteban’s new home. Esteban has a keyboard now, and has promised to post from to time.

Esteban is running a contest:

1. First, that you announce my change of address and this giveway on your own blog, and provide a link to your announcement in the comments to this post.

2. Second, that in your comment you provide your most creative theory regarding the identity of the Qumran community (if there was one, according to your theoretical construct). Obvious things like the Essenes and the Golbian Hasmonean fortress are out of the question.

My theory: The Qumran-ites were jokers with a vision -- who realized that with a bit of preparation, they could really throw Bible studies into a tizzy some two millennia hence.

Translating poetry

2009-06-10T23:43:00.001-07:00

After a long series of polemical and political posts, our friend John Hobbins has begun examining Biblical poetry again.

John’s argument in brief is that poetry is best read in the original (not so easy to do when the original, Classical Hebrew, is a dead language). Drawing apparently on a commentary (I notice a striking similarity with several recent multi-volume commentaries on the psalms, but John did not share his reference sources. The good news is that several major commentaries share similar features – and I am able to especially recommend the Jerusalem Commentary on the Psalms, which covers all the points that John presents and more.)

John points to additional meanings of words, speculation (with varying degrees of support) about nuances associated with words, and about literary references. It’s all a bit dazzling, but I hardly think John has succeeded in his goal of “thoroughly discredit[ing] KJV.” John himself ends up showing how close the KJV is to many of the meanings he indicates; and he further asserts that other translations (he explicitly mentions the ESV, NLT, and the TNIV – all popular translations amongst Evangelicals) have equally serious problems (here, perhaps, I would disagree – those translations have worse problems). John intriguingly asserts that “It remains possible to produce better Bible translations than those that currently exist,” but he has yet to put forth a candidate.

John’s article reminds of about John Skelton, a contemporary of Tyndale, a character, according to N. Dale, who was happy, in his translation of Poggio’s Bibliotecha Historica, to expand eight words in his original into a paragraph of nearly two hundred words.

I would say that concision is a key element of translation: to reflect the original precisely, literally, but with stylistic features (including length) that match the original.

It is against this approach towards understanding poetry that I read with interest Jane Reichhold’s recent new translation: Basho: The Complete Haiku. This edition is handsome – it is typeset beautifully, and illustrated with elegant line drawings by Shiro Tsujimura. Tsujimura is a major artist; his work appears in a local Asian Art Museum as well as at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The book is beautifully laid out, with plenty of white space and sexy black end papers.

As befits the material, the presentation is unrushed, with plenty of white space. For the first time, all 1012 of Basho’s contributions are translated, together with a brief description if it is given by Basho in his original work. In the second major section, Notes (still beautifully laid out) give the poems in Japanese, romanized Japanese, and using a word-for-word precise translation of each Japanese word, along with the date of composition, and notes explaining the poems.

What a beautiful layout. The aesthetic experience of reading the poems in translation is presented to the audience directly – the reader understands and appreciates the poems. As he wishes to delve deeper, he turns to a later section to read the Japanese, and if is confused by a word, a word-for-word translation is apparent. Then, any necessary factual information is given. What is missing here is that insidious style of Bible teachers everywhere: “I am going to explain this poem to you and then you will understand it.” Different people may pick up on different aspects with poems as sublime as these (or of the psalter.) If you are explaining poetry, it is no longer poetry. The primary reaction here is that the poem speaks to something to in our intellect, or in our soul. Such a touching feeling disappears when the pedant shows up eager to explain each word by itself.

What would you rather do – go to a fun movie or listen to a lecture where someone points out all the points you may have missed in a fun movie?

Should you wish to learn more, the volume also contains nice stylistic and historical essays on Basho; the classic list of 33 different techniques that can be used by Haiku; a life chronology of Basho; a glossary with more 300 technical terms defined, an English bibliography, and an index of first lines.

This book, while not expensive, is a book of art (much like a beautifully typeset edition of the Hebrew Bible is, much as a few very elegantly typeset editions of the KJV are.)

The advantage is that one can enjoy the poems as poems (without footnotes or commentary) or change the page and dig deeper. This is really the best of both worlds.

I cannot imagine a reader of this blog who would not be delighted by this book of Basho’s poetry. I give it a strong recommendation.

Cheap Matthew’s Bible facsimile coming

2009-06-02T10:10:00.001-07:00

Hendrickson is continuing its program of publishing excellent editions of facsimile Bibles: in addition to its outstanding Geneva 1560 Bible facsimile (an excellent value) and its 1526 Tyndale New Testament facsimile, it is publishing a facsimile 1537 facsimile Matthew’s Bible.

The new Matthew’s Bible is available in both leather and hardcover; although I have not seen the editions yet, I usually recommend the hardcover (if only because limp leather bindings were not used in the 16th century). In my experience, the paper without gilding is of slightly higher quality in Hendrickson publications.

One person even had his Hendrickson rebound to give it a more antiquarian look. But I don’t think there was anything wrong with the original Hendrickson binding.

The Matthew’s Bible was printed in Gothic script (sample text), so it takes a few minutes to orient oneself to read it, but it should be a wonderful resource. In many ways, facsimile editions are better than original editions – you can never find an original edition in the find condition of a good facsimile.

Here are some of my other favorite facsimiles:

Facsimile Leningrad Codex

Facsimile Shakespeare First Folio

Facsimile Luther Bible (out of print, but a fantastic value when it was in print given the quality of illustrations)

Taschen publishes a wide variety of relatively inexpensive illustrated facsimile editions (e.g., check out this forthcoming version of Matisse’s Jazz or the high quality reproduction of Theuerdank.)

Ordaining women

2009-05-25T11:26:00.001-07:00

The Christian tradition of a male priesthood would seem to be well established. In the cases of the Catholic and Eastern churches, this is now orthodox practice. Among the Western Protestant churches, a wide variety of stances toward women clergy have been adopted. (Sadly, one need not search hard to find ill-informed preachers eager to blog wildly complex theories of Scriptural translation that, cleared of the fog of incoherence, present despotic fantasies of the husband as autocrat with rod close at hand.)

With some controversy, Gary Macy, a professor of theology with a named at Santa Clara University (a Jesuit university where Frederick Copleston once taught), has apparently been for some time been presenting what he claims is historical evidence of a well-established tradition of ordaining women in the Medieval Church. He begins his recent book, The Hidden History of Women’s Ordination (published by Oxford University Press) with the following provocative introduction:

In 1997, I gave an address at the Catholic Theological Society of America that suggested that women in the Middle Ages had presided over ceremonies during which they distributed the bread and wine consecrated during the communion ritual. It wasn’t a very radical suggestion but seemed to touch a nerve with some people. My talk, along with the addresses of my colleagues John Baldovin and Mary Collins, earned the disapproval of Cardinal Avery Dulles in an issue of the Catholic journal, Commonweal. There was a bit of a kerfuffle that seemed to be fading when a colleague of mine, Evelyn Kirkely, stopped me in the hallway and remarked, “I heard you proved that a woman had been in ordained in the Middle Ages.” I was perplexed and a little annoyed. No, I protested, I had proved no such thing, and further, women never had been ordained in the Middle Ages.

Kirkley, not being Catholic, had not followed closely the minor uproar over papers given at the CTSA. She was suggesting, nevertheless, a possible conclusion that could be drawn from the examples I had given. She was herself an ordained minister and an accomplished scholar. She doesn’t voice opinions lightly. On the short trip back to my office, I reconsidered my hasty response. I had never checked the evidence. Maybe women were ordained. Maybe, as Kirkley intimated, women distributed communion because they were ordained to do so.

There is no point in rehearsing the fascinating hunt that followed. As so often happens in scholarship, one small clue led to another and yet another. Slowly, a pattern emerged. There was no shortage of evidence about ordained women and of secondary studies analyzing this evidence. But the sources were dismissed as anomalies, and the studies that argued that women had been ordained were attacked or marginalized. Mostly, though, both were ignored. Few historians questioned, as I had not, the assumption that women had not, and could not have been, ordained in the Middle Ages. The memory of ordained women has been nearly erased, and where it survived, it was dismissed as illusion or, worse, delusion. This was no accident of history. This is a history that has been deliberately forgotten, intentionally marginalized, and, not infrequently, creatively explained away.

Macy further explains his historical discoveries in a May 11th lecture he recently gave at Vanderbilt. (Here is the referring page.) This lecture is currently the most popular on Vanderbilt’s site. (No wonder Macy’s book is back-ordered from Amazon; I have ordered it, but see that Amazon says 2 to 4 weeks are required for delivery.)

Now this topic is far, far away from my own expertise, and I must confess that Macy’s tone seems more than a bit politicized to me; still, I did think his lecture was interesting I am find myself looking forward to reading his book. If I have something intelligent to say after I have read his book, I may post it here.

Why do we uplift the reader of Dante and put stumbling stones in the way of the reader of Scripture

2009-05-25T10:36:00.001-07:00

If you want to read Dante’s Divine Comedy in English translation, you have it good. There are any number of outstanding translations to choose among. You can expect, as a standard feature that most volumes you will choose among will present the text bilingually in the original Italian (although they sometimes republished as single omnibus volumes without the Italian, e.g., Ciardi, Mandelbaum). All translations contain a running commentary (which in some cases is simply outstanding, e.g., Singleton’s commentary (Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso), and in some cases highly accessible to a novice reader, e.g., Robert Hollander’s commentary to his joint translation with Jean Hollander (Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso). Editions almost always include diagrams and sometimes illustrations, in some cases by brilliant artists such as Barry Moser, William Blake (see also here), Gustave Dore, Botticelli, Salvador Dali (see also here and here), Giovanni di Paolo, and Sandow Birk. And most important, editions are usually made by single translators or a team of two translators rather than a ecclesiastical committee with little ability to write English. In many cases, translators are poets, with an interest in reproducing Dante’s effects in English: e.g., Robert Pinsky, John Ciardi, Jean Hollander (Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso), Longfellow, Laurence Binyon, or even omnibus volumes that show the different styles of many different translators; as well as literal text translations; e.g., Singleton (Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso).

In contrast, unless you are reading a (the best of) scholarly or a Jewish translation or commentary of Scripture, you are probably reading work by a committee, diglots are the exception rather than the rule, and illustrations (if they are to be found at all) are insipid.

But even more wonderful is the tradition of Lectura Dantis. This tradition dates back to 1373, when the Commune of Florence asked Giovanni Boccaccioto give public lectures on the Divina Commedia – each one an exposition of a single one of Dante’s 100 cantos. Since then, we have been graced with many outstanding Lectura Dantis series, and in modern times we have been seen Lectura Dantis Newberriana, Lectura Dantis Romana, Lectura Dantis Scaligera, Lectura Dantis Turicensis, Lectura Dantis Neapolitana, and Lectura Dantis Virginiana. One fascinating example of this series is the wonderful Lectura Dantis California: Inferno and Purgatorio. (We eagerly await Paradiso.) The strength here is the collection of studies by individual scholars – each quite different in approach. Not only do we learn something about Dante in the process, but we see the entire range of modern approaches to text.

Why do we have so many works and translations that take Dante seriously, while so much of contemporary Biblical scholarship and translation is mediocre? I suspect it has to do with simple fact of audience: in the effort to make the Bible as accessible as possible, we have tolerated scholarship designed to reach out to those without education; and a glance at the demographic figures for different denominations indicates that those denominations most eager to make a large show of studying Scripture are often the weakest in educational achievement; while perhaps most of those reading Dante have a strong taste for serious study of literature. Our Bibles bear a curse: being divine, they are treated as often as not with intellectual disdain; while the Divine Comedy, being merely great literature, can receive serious treatment.

Download horrors

2009-05-22T15:34:00.001-07:00

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Original sources: Jack Zaientz, Jewishsoftware.com

Download delights

2009-05-22T12:59:00.001-07:00

Three wonderful albums offered free under Creative Commons by SHSK’H; see these insightful comments on the site by Elliot Cole.

Television 1: Firing Line

2009-05-13T13:32:00.001-07:00

When I was a child, there were three television shows that I watched faithfully:

Firing Line with William F. Buckley
The Prisoner
Monty Python’s Flying Circus

Now that I’ve grown up and become a college teacher, I find that many of my nerdy American colleagues shared with me the love of The Prisoner and Monty Python. But it seems I am the only one who watched Buckley as a kid. And that’s a pity.

Firing Line was a very plain interview show which featured a discussion between Buckley and his guests about important cultural, political, artistic, and social issues of the day. The show fascinated me, because it was a television show about ideas in a way that no other television was. I had seen two different types of talk shows before: the “Dick Cavett” style in which the host would engage in polite, somewhat shallow banter, often about entertainment. (A modern version of this is the Charlie Rose Show.) A different style was a political talk show in which party hacks would present the party-line views to querying journalists (e.g., Face the Nation). These shows suffered from shallowness (the dialogue rarely soars above the intellectual level one sees at cocktail hour and a certain conventionality: rarely does one walk away from these shows with a fundamentally new perspective.

Buckley’s show was different. He chose genuinely interesting guests, often with views that could not easily be categorized. Buckley himself was rather far to the right, but he was also an iconoclast and original thinker. Verbal precision was honored on these shows. The shows were truly American in their diverse contrast of class (this is particularly true in Dame Rebecca show mentioned below.) These shows went further than the typical “junior high civics class” view of the world that prevails even on American public television. The focus is on the disagreement, but there is no attempt to understand nuances – and the entire matter comes off as rather simplistic. Firing Line shows often were amazingly sophisticated, in some cases reaching the level of discourse of our better political journals (e.g., Foreign Affairs).

Recently, Firing Line recordings have begun to emerge on DVD (all selling for $8-$10 at Amazon); so far, fewer than 80 out of the 1504 broadcast have been released in this format. I have included the synopses provided at the Hoover Institutions’s Firing Line Archives (these synopses are little gems and I think that you will enjoy reading them). I wrote this list to help navigate the paucity of information on Amazon, and also for my own purposes. I’ve bought all of these DVDs (I have the “collecting gene”), but I can’t claim to have watched them all yet:

Poverty: Hopeful or Hopeless?
1) Harrington, Michael, 1928- - author of The Other America

Taped on Apr 4, 1966 (New York City, NY)

President Johnson had just declared war on poverty, and Mr. Harrington, an avowed socialist who had started out on the staff of Dorothy Day's Catholic Worker, had been among the first to enlist. On this show (the first Firing Line taped, though not the first aired), Mr. Harrington begins by describing the despair and consequent lack of initiative engendered by poverty; WFB engages him on the issue of whether we can hope to alleviate either material or emotional poverty through government action. MH: “Being kicked around and being pushed down, living in dense, miserable housing, and dealing with cockroaches and rats are not the kinds of things that make one a balanced, content, normal, and adjusted healthy personality.” WFB: “I couldn't agree with you more. But I'm trying to raise the following question: To what extent... can we count on [a poverty program] to alleviate all these concomitant miseries?”
Prayer in the Public Schools
1) Pike, James A. (James Albert), 1913-1969. - The Right Rev., Episcopal Bishop of California

Taped on Apr 6, 1966 (New York City, NY)

Summary: Bishop Pike was thought of as the wild man of the Episcopal Church (by this time he had been put on trial for heresy, though he had emerged still wearing the Episcopal purple), but on this show he is genial and persuasive on the subject of school prayer specifically and the First Amendment generally. JAP: “I think [the Supreme Court Justices] use the First Amendment in a way it was never intended to be used. [The Founding Fathers] talked about establishment of religion. And they meant, really, establishment like the Church of England is. ... It was forbidding the federal agency, the Congress, from interfering with the existing states’ establishment.... I personally do not see the value of state-prescribed prayer or of the reading of the Bible, for instance, without study of the background, the context, the thoughtful criticism of the passages, in school. And I think it’s a disservice to the Church, too, because it gives parents the illusion that this side of life is being covered by the public agency when, in fact, it’s very trivial and perfunctory.”
Vietnam: Pull Out? Stay In? Escalate?
1) Thomas, Norman, 1884-1968. - Chairman of the Socialist Party of the United States

Taped on Apr 8, 1966 (New York City, NY)

Summary: Mr. Thomas-the grand old man of the American Left, six-time Socialist Party candidate for President-was by this point focusing all his energies on opposition to America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. This often fierce exchange, which places both men on the firing line, begins with WFB’s asking why his guest supported the Korean War but opposes the Vietnam War and goes on to explore whether it is realistic even to aspire to “contain” Communism. NT: “Mr. Buckley, you seem to believe in cruelty as a necessary adjunct to this kind of war. Your main point is that somehow we're going to contain Communism this way, and we aren’t. We may delay certain events in Communism. We’re not going to contain it. We-“ WFB: “Excuse me, was the war in Greece cruel? Did we contain the Communists in Greece?”
Capital Punishment

1) Allen, Steve, 1921- - entertainer and author
Taped on Apr 11, 1966 (New York City, NY)

Summary: The death penalty was under heavy attack in the courts and in public forums, and polls indicated that it was the issue that most sharply divided liberals from conservatives. Messrs. Buckley and Allen begin by discussing why this should be a touchstone issue, and progress to considerations of whether the death penalty in fact deters, and whether, even if it does, it can be morally defended. SA: “I think there are probably various reasons why conservatives generally favor capital punishment. I think one of them may be so obvious there is the traditional risk of overlooking it, and that is simply that it exists and that it has existed for a long time.”
Should the House Committee on Un-American Activities Be Abolished?

1) Faulk, John Henry. - radio and television personality, author of Fear on Trial
Taped on Apr 21, 1966 (New York City, NY)

Summary: Mr. Faulk “is primarily known,” WFB begins, “as a certified victim of an anti-Communist organization called Aware,” which had brought him to the attention of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Mr. Faulk had sued Aware and been awarded “the most colossal judgment in libel history”; he was now seeking the abolition of the committee. On this show, Mr. Faulk begins, in his down-home sort of voice, by quoting the then-Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan as having said that “the committee’s program so closely parallels the program of the Ku Klux Klan that there is no distinguishable difference between them,” and we’re off to the races.
The Prevailing Bias
1) Susskind, David, 1920- - television producer and personality

Taped on May 2, 1966 (New York City, NY)

Summary: The tone is set in the first few minutes, when Mr. Susskind responds to the introduction (in which WFB had said, among other things, “Mr. Susskind is a staunch liberal. If there were a contest for the title Mr. Eleanor Roosevelt, he would unquestionably win it”) by saying: “I must say that I regard that introduction as somewhat rude and insulting, Mr. Buckley. I had hoped, on the occasion of your having your own television program, you would abandon your traditional penchant for personal bitchiness and stick to facts and issues; but evidently your rude behavior is congenital and compulsive. And so I forgive you.” But among the billingsgate there is serious discussion of the current offerings on the airwaves, the tendency of the Jewish community to resist the anti-Communist movement, and more.
The New Frontier: The Great Society
1) Goodwin, Richard N. - sometime speechwriter for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, currently a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies at Wesleyan University

Taped on May 6, 1966 (New York City, NY)

Summary: Mr. Goodwin was present at the creation-as WFB reminds us, he is credited with supplying “that ominous phrase, ‘The Great Society’ ”-and he defends the Johnson program ably in this good-tempered session. RG: “Well, I think the Great Society ...represents a change or a breaking point from the ideas of the New Deal. I think the essential idea behind the New Deal was that rising prosperity, more equitably distributed among the people, would solve most of the problems of the country.... Now, having succeeded-not completely, but to quite a degree-in that effort ... we find it doesn’t solve the major problems, the kinds of problems you talked about in your campaign [for Mayor of New York] ...and that now we have to turn our attention, not only ... to relief of the poor or dispossessed, but to the quality of life of every American .…”
McCarthyism: Past, Present, Future

1) Cherne, Leo, 1912- - Executive Director of the Research Institute of America, Chairman of the Executive Committee of Freedom House
Taped on May 16, 1966 (New York City, NY)

Summary: Mr. Buckley seeks, with his old friend and adversary Mr. Cherne, to explore, as he puts it, why Joseph McCarthy’s “oversimplifications were judged to be almost unique and highly damaging ... whereas the contemporary oversimplifications of, say, a Harry Truman, or, before that, of a Franklin Roosevelt, or subsequently of a Lyndon Johnson, are not seen as that offensive.” A rich conversation, full of detail. LC: “Well, to suggest, for example, that General Marshall lied about his whereabouts on the morning of Pearl Harbor, and to suggest, as Senator McCarthy did, that in fact he was meeting Maksim Litvinov at the Washington airport when in fact this was not true--this is not oversimplification in the normal language of political discourse.”
Vietnam: What Next?
1) Lynd, Staughton. - Assistant Professor of History at Yale University, anti- Vietnam War activist

Taped on May 23, 1966 (New York City, NY)

Summary: Mr. Lynd had recently visited Hanoi – to “propagandize for the Vietcong,” Mr. Buckley suggests; to “clarify, if we could, the approach to peace negotiations from the other side,” Mr. Lynd insists. A spirited exchange with a scholar whose specialty is “the Radical Tradition in America before 1900.” WFB: “Listen, Professor, let’s stop dropping these little statistical gems around the place. What Eisenhower said when he used the term 80 per cent was that 80 per cent of the [Vietnamese] people would have joined in any war against the French. He didn't say that 80 per cent were in favor of Ho Chi Minh….” SL: “Well, what President Eisenhower said, in fact, ... is that at the time of the end of the war against the French, in 1954, ... 80 per cent of the people of Vietnam as a whole would have voted for Ho Chi Minh in an election.” WFB: “As an alternative to Bao Dai. Ho Chi Minh had not started his rather systematic euthanasia of people who disagreed with him, however, as of 1954. He was considered the George Washington of that area.”

Note: transcript available here.
The Future of States’ Rights
1) Golden, Harry, 1902- - journalist, radio and television commentator, editor and publisher of a weekly paper, The Carolina Israelite

Taped on May 23, 1966 (New York City, NY)

Summary: A lively discussion that begins with the “states’ rights” movement in Mr. Golden’s adopted South and deepens to cover the origins of our federal system and the way it has evolved. WFB: “Aren’t you going to acknowledge at least this much tonight: that there are people who bear no ill will whatsoever to the Negro, who nevertheless believe that Jefferson and Madison ... had something interesting to say when they devised the federal system? ...” HG: “The Founding Fathers could be forgiven, Mr. Buckley, for not having known that we would ... turn an agricultural society into an industrial society.…” WFB: “They can be forgiven for not predicting Earl Warren, for that matter.” HG: “But, however, they were wonderful men ... because the Constitution they devised was not statutes, it was a pattern of behavior. And a pattern which in their tremendous wisdom they figured that maybe things will come about that will require constant change.”
Bobby Kennedy and Other Mixed Blessings
1) Kempton, Murray, 1917- - veteran newspaperman

Taped on Jun 6, 1966 (New York City, NY)

Summary: The first Firing Line appearance of Mr. Kempton, of whom WFB says that he “is the finest writer in the newspaper profession,” but “his specialty is not, in this critic’s opinion, logic.” On the subject of Bobby Kennedy’s motivations in attacking Lyndon Johnson, however (Johnson “cannot win with Robert Kennedy because he’s William of Orange”), these two old friends and adversaries see pretty much eye to eye. As Mr. Kempton puts it, “[RFK] lacks his brother’s real appreciation for people who were a little older than he was and a little more stable and a little more serious. It seems to me that his radicalism is a total hangup on the young.... And what his brother would have regarded as nonsense in conduct, he refuses to regard as nonsense as long as it isn't done by somebody who is older than 25 years of age.”
The Future of the American Theater
1) Merrick, David, 1911- - theater producer

Taped on Jun 6, 1966 (New York City, NY)

Summary: Mr. Merrick is not just any producer but, as WFB puts it, “the most successful producer on Broadway” - and one whom the critics have accused of “inveigling audiences into going to [his shows] ... and the audiences are thereupon so ashamed of their gullibility in succumbing to Mr. Merrick’s publicity, they will laugh at bad jokes, allow their hearts to break at the sight of a valentine, and leave the theater humming untuneful songs.” (Mr. Merrick asks to correct the record: “I can’t recall that I’ve ever had a bad joke in one of my plays, or an untuneful song, or that I’ve ever produced a bad play.”) The conversation, rich with anecdote, winds up being less about the future of the theater than about the relation of the critic, on the one hand, to the theater company and, on the other hand, to the audience - “sort of a necessary evil,: says Mr. Merrick. “... So, I bark at the critics and snipe at them, that’s part of the game, because I think I have the right to criticize them if they have the right to criticize my product.”
The Future of Conservatism
1) Goldwater, Barry M. (Barry Morris), 1909-1998. - Republican former (and future) Senator from Arizona

Taped on Jun 9, 1966 (New York City, NY)

Summary: Under Arizona law, Mr. Goldwater had had to give up his Senate seat to run for the Presidency, and so at the moment he was a private citizen - though still, even after his disastrous defeat, the acknowledged leader of the conservative wing of the Republican Party. This rich conversation ranges from the specific and immediate (Medicare, the prospects for the 1968 election) to the general (Has too much power accrued to the Presidency? How can it be curbed?). BG: “I think the country has become pretty much a two-term country. So I think it’s pretty much up to the President. If he decides to run again, the chances of the Republicans beating him are not excellent. However, if he keeps on with his lack of success in Vietnam, the downfall of NATO, ... the growing cost of living in our country, the chances get better. But we don’t like to win on those kinds of chances.”
The Role of the Church Militant

1) Coffin, William Sloane. - The Rev., Presbyterian minister, Chaplain of Yale University
Taped on Jun 27, 1966 (New York City, NY)

Summary: WFB and his guest - an old friend and adversary from undergraduate days and now a Presbyterian minister - agree that the Christian Church in all its denominations is in trouble, increasingly ignored by the young and regarded as irrelevant. Mr. Coffin, however, argues that this is largely because the churches have not taken up the cause of civil rights for black Americans; Mr. Buckley maintains that it has more to do with their ignoring the oppression behind the Iron Curtain. One sample: WSC: “I'll tell you, Bill, why James Baldwin is down on the Church. And Louis Lomax and also many of the rest of [the black leaders]. Because they have told me, ‘Every time we see that cross we think, There’s a place where they call us niggers.’ The primary problem of the Church in our time is not that people don’t believe in God, it’s that the prosperous Church in our time has failed to make common cause with the sufferers of this world.”
Why Are the Students Unhappy?
1) Bikel, Theodore. - actor, folk singer

Taped on Jun 27, 1966 (New York City, NY)

Summary: Student unrest was not yet at its most virulent, but many campuses had seen sit-ins and other disruptions. WFB posits that a chief cause of the problems is adult unwillingness to enforce discipline. Mr. Bikel, who had grown up in a kibbutz in Israel but quickly rebelled against its strictures, posits that the younger generation must be left free to develop its own values-even if these do not include what the older generation would call civility. TB: “Do you really think that we live in the kind of an age where ... a parent can obstinately cling to the belief that the values of today are not substantially different from the values of yesterday?” WFB: “But the parents are right.” TB: “I knew that you would say that.”
Senator Dodd and General Klein
1) Dodd, Thomas J. (Thomas Joseph), 1907-1971. - Democratic Senator from Connecticut; sometime prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials

Taped on Aug 22, 1966 (New York City, NY)

Summary: Senator Dodd had been accused by the muckraking columnist Drew Pearson of having had improper dealings with one General Julius Klein, an agent of the West German government - as WFB paraphrases the Pearson charge, “instead of serving his constituents in Connecticut and the nation as a whole, Senator Dodd has been primarily concerned to serve the interests of General Julius Klein.” This old controversy doesn’t wear as well as some, but along the way we get interesting insights into the propriety of Americans representing foreign countries (as WFB points out, John Foster Dulles and Dean Acheson each did at one time or another) and into how a newspaper columnist with an axe to grind and a Senate investigating committee can work hand in hand. TD: “Unfortunately, the terminology ‘foreign agent’ has an ugly connotation, I think, for most people -the two-peaked-hat character who’s spying on Washington. The truth of the matter is that there are many distinguished, celebrated lawyers and citizens who are representatives of foreign governments, and they serve a very useful purpose.”
Extremism

1) Schary, Dore. - playwright, theater and film producer, sometime head of MGM Studios; National Chairman of the Anti-Defamation League of B‘nai B‘rith
Taped on Aug 22, 1966 (New York City, NY)

Summary;A crackling debate on political extremism, Right and Left. It is our host’s contention that Mr. Schary and his organization are rather more alert to the former than to the latter: “It’s awfully hard to discuss these questions, Mr. Schary, because you have been, I think, so amiable and so reasonable and so soft-spoken; but when you get on the typewriter, it sort of comes out different.” Why, for instance, do Mr. Schary and the ADL regularly attack the John Birch Society and the Ku Klux Klan (and point out that some of their members actively supported Barry Goldwater's campaign) but not attack the equal and opposite extremism of Women’s Strike for Peace or the Fair Play for Cuba Committee or the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee? DS: “Nobody's ever asked me to write anything about it ... Not everything I say, you see, gets into print.”
Civil Rights and Foreign Policy
1) McKissick, Floyd B. (Floyd Bixler), 1922- - Executive Director of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)

Taped on Aug 22, 1966 (New York City, NY)

Summary: Mr. McKissick had taken over the leadership of CORE from James Farmer and had led the organization in a more militant direction, and not only concerning race relations within the United States. As WFB puts it, his guest proceeds on the assumption “that there is a nexus between” civil rights and America’s foreign policy. Hence, for example, Mr. McKissick had visited Cambodia and had determined that American bombing there was unjustified. This often heated exchange begins with the Henry Wallace movement of 1948 and goes on from there. WFB: “The point is whether you are going to exercise the kind of prudence that will keep CORE from perhaps becoming what the Progressive Party of 1948 became, which is simply a pawn of the Soviet Union.” FM: “Well, I know a lot of people who worked in that campaign for Wallace who were not Communists, and ... there were many good people. I think to put a label on people, I’ve never been one who wanted to put a label on people....”
The President and the Press
1) Salinger, Pierre. - Press Secretary to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson; briefly Democratic Senator from California; author of With Kennedy

Taped on Sept 12, 1966 (New York City, NY)

Summary: A masterly performance from Mr. Salinger, who reacts smoothly, very smoothly, to Mr. Buckley’s attempts to get him to admit that the press generally gave President Kennedy a free ride. PS: “The objective of a Presidential Press Conference is not, in my opinion, for reporters to have the opportunity to embarrass and harass the President, but rather to elicit from him the information which is of value to the country.... I’m getting a new vision on my ability at the White House, and I must say that I’m indebted to you for it, because if I was as successful as you say I was, then, obviously, my services should be sought by others who have not quite come around to see me since the days of the ’64 debacle [when he lost his Senate seat to George Murphy].”
The Playboy Philosophy

1) Hefner, Hugh M. (Hugh Marston), 1926- - Editor and Publisher of Playboy

Taped on Sept 12, 1966 (New York City, NY)

Summary: Between these two antagonists one might have expected a heated debate, but what we get instead is a serious discussion of sexual ethics in the latter part of the 20th century. HH: “The philosophy really I think is an anti-Puritanism, a response really to the puritan part of our culture....” WFB: “I’m not worrying about whether you reject Cotton Mather's accretions on the Mosaic Law, but whether you reject the Mosaic Law. Do you reject, for instance, monogamy? Do you reject the notion of sexual continence before marriage? ...” HH: “Well, I think what it really comes down to is an attempt to establish a ... new morality, and I really think that's what the American ... sexual revolution's really all about. It’s an attempt to replace the old legalism. It’s certainly not a rejection of monogamy as such, but very much an attempt- In the case of premarital sex, there really hasn't been any moral code in the past except simply that thou shalt not. And-“ WFB: “Well, that’s a code, isn't it?” HH: “Well, perhaps. I don't think it’s a very realistic one.”
Should Labor Power Be Reduced?

1) Riesel, Victor. - syndicated columnist specializing in labor affairs

Taped on Sept 19, 1966 (New York City, NY)

Summary: Mr. Riesel, as Mr. Buckley recounts in his introduction, “considers himself... a militant unionist”; despite, or because of, this, he is relentless in his exposure of union corruption, which is what led one of the corrupted, in 1956, to throw acid in his face, blinding him but by no means putting him out of action. An illuminating discussion of the history and present of trade unionism in this country. VR: “Bill, the whole business of using the word ‘metaphysical’ with George Meany has so discombobulated me, I'm going to have to recollect all my thoughts. But no, seriously, the fact is that when you're talking about new laws, I mean the Sherman Act, the Clayton Act ..., you're going back 85 years to an era when ... the robber baron had the power ... Sure, you have a parallel now, there's enormous industrial power in the trade-union movement, but we have laws, and I say, enforce those laws.”
Civilian Review Board: Yes or No?
1) Kheel, Theodore Woodrow. - lawyer specializing in labor-management relations

Taped on Oct 7, 1966 (New York City, NY)

Summary: The hottest of many hot issues in New York City in the first year of the Lindsay administration - and in a period when the major cities of America were erupting with race riots - was whether there should be a civilian-dominated review board overseeing the police. Mayor Lindsay had made establishing such a board an important part of his mayoral campaign and had instituted it in July; Mr. Kheel ably defends it as affording protection (especially for minorities) against police brutality without hampering their legitimate law-enforcement capability. Mr. Buckley, who had made opposition to the board an important part of his campaign against Mr. Lindsay, quotes J. Edgar Hoover as saying of Rochester, N.Y., a city with a civilian review board, that “the police were so careful to avoid accusations of improper conduct that they were virtually paralyzed.” Note: A month after this show, New York City's voters rejected the board 2 to 1.
The Failure of Organized Religion
1) Weiss, Paul, 1901- - Sterling Professor of Philosophy at Yale University

Taped on Nov 14, 1966 (New York City, NY)

Summary: When Mr. Buckley meets his old philosophy teacher on Firing Line, it's thrust and parry from the start: WFB: “Tonight, Professor Weiss seeks to inform God that it was a mistake to organize religion. Organized religion, he will argue, has failed.” PW: “I don’t remember when God organized religion. Is there any time when God organized religion?” WFB: “Well, the situation was like this: There was God and there was Peter, you see-” PW: “I thought they were distinct.” WFB: “They were.” PW: “Oh, good! Now-then what?”
Sports, Persecution, and Christians
1) Lunn, Arnold Henry Moore, Sir, 1888-1974. - author, sportsman, inventor of the slalom

Taped on Nov 28, 1966 (New York City, NY)

Summary: Sir Arnold was campaigning to persuade the Western world to stop engaging in sports contests (principally the Olympic Games) with Communist countries. This deep and rich conversation engages Christians’ failure of nerve, as Sir Arnold sees it, in confronting what we would come to know as the Evil Empire. WFB: “Sir Arnold, the saying is that sports and politics don't mix. Do you agree?” AL: “Well, it depends what you mean by politics. The old classical Olympic Games were restricted, in the words of Herodotus, to those of common temples and sacrifices and like ways of life. The barbarians were excluded. The classical Greeks didn’t regard that as a political difference, but the difference between civilized people and barbarians. When I broke off relations with the Nazis in skiing, I didn’t consider the difference between myself and Hitler was a political difference. It was a difference between a civilized man and an assassin.”
The Warren Report: Fact or Fiction?

1) Lane, Mark. - lawyer, author of Rush to Judgment
Taped on Dec 1, 1966 (New York City, NY)

Summary: While many people had been skeptical of the Warren Report’s conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the assassination of President Kennedy, Mr. Lane’s book was the first to lay out the argument seriously. He defends himself ably in this spirited exchange. ML: “I take really the same position Alfreda Scoby, one of the lawyers for the Warren Commission, takes, and that is, had Oswald lived, he could not have been proven guilty, had he faced trial, based upon the evidence the Commission was able to secure.” WFB: “And of course Warren says that he was a practicing district attorney for ten or twelve years and he could have gotten a conviction in 48 hours with the evidence. You simply disagree with him professionally.” ML: “That’s nonsense. It would take longer than that to pick a jury, of course.” WFB: “Do you think Warren should be impeached?” ML: “I don't think he should be impeached. I think the report should be impeached.”
LBJ and the Intellectuals

1) Morgenthau, Hans Joachim, 1904- - Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago

Taped on Jan 12, 1967 (New York City, NY)

Summary: A rich discussion of our political culture, starting with the Johnson Administration’s confused objectives in Vietnam (HM: “Does it want self-determination for South Vietnam at the risk of a Communist takeover, or does it want to stop Communism at any price, even at the price of self-determination?”) and ranging far and wide. WFB: “Well, then, how do you account for the enthusiasm of the intellectuals for Mr. Kennedy, when in fact it could be demonstrated that his own rhetoric and actions were at least as schizophrenic as President Johnson’s?” HM: “It’s a very good question. I addressed myself to that question in ‘61.... The intellectuals ... had been in the wilderness for eight years and all of a sudden, here comes Mr. Kennedy, Harvard-educated, surrounded by members of the Harvard faculty-there were a few from Yale, in order to satisfy you, but very few, so you were not very much satisfied. And of course many intellectuals, not myself included, thought this was the golden Augustan age for intellectuals.”
Academic Freedom and Berkeley

1) Taylor, Harold, 1914- - former President of Sarah Lawrence College; sometime Professor of Philosophy and Aesthetics at the University of Wisconsin

Taped on Jan 16, 1967 (New York City, NY)

Summary: We eventually get to Berkeley-where the Free Speech Movement and associated radicalisms had completely broken down academic discipline-but before that, we have a never-the-twain-shall-meet discussion of which views might and which might not, under the tenets of academic freedom, disqualify a scholar from being hired by a university. WFB: “You, despising racism as much as I do, are prepared to assert that no one who is a racist actually would get into a college of which you were president, but that in fact people can be well-qualified Communists.” HT: “... there is a sharp distinction to be made between a philosophy of racism, affirming the notion that there is one race superior to another, ... and a political philosophy which one identifies as Communism. I think you have to talk about those in different categories.”
The Role of the Advocate
1) Bailey, F. Lee (Francis Lee), 1933- - criminal defense lawyer

Taped on Jan 19, 1967 (New York City, NY)

Summary: An often surprising exploration of criminal jurisprudence with a guest who, as Mr. Buckley puts it, “if any of you should commit a murder ... is your man.” WFB: “Do you believe that the right to refuse to testify is a right that is integral to the whole process of the presumption of innocence?” FB: “Yes, it’s as integral as it is illogical.” WFB: “... And why is it illogical?” FLB: “The most efficient way to try a man is to put him on the stand first and ask him what he knows about the case; then if more evidence is needed, put that on, too. The defendant always knows, except in very rare cases of clear insanity, whether or not he is guilty or at least whether or not he committed the acts charged. His degree of guilt may be fixed with some inference or some judgment by the jury, but he would be the easiest source of information, and in some countries he's called first.” WFB: “Well, do you understand yourself to be an advocate of the cause of defendants?” FLB: “Just an advocate. I could try a case from either side of the fence.”
The Future of the UN
1) Plimpton, Francis T. P. (Francis Taylor Pearsons), 1900-1983. - lawyer with Debevoise, Plimpton; until recently Deputy U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations

Taped on Jan 19, 1967 (New York City, NY)

Summary: The United Nations had been energetically debating the right of Rhodesia to declare independence unilaterally and the right of South Africa to continue to exercise its League of Nations mandate over South West Africa. But was anybody listening? A serious discussion with a man whose public career began with the Reconstruction Finance Corporation in 1932. FP: “In the case of South West Africa you have that very unfortunate decision of the International Court of Justice, which after six years of deliberation, decided that it didn’t have jurisdiction over the South West Africa case.” WFB: “Rather, the plaintiff didn't have standing.” FP: “That’s right. They once held four or five years ago that there were very fine distinctions here. One has to dance on the point of a pin to get them entirely.”
LBJ and Vietnam

Guest(s)
1) Hartke, Vance. - Democratic Senator from Indiana

Summary: As WFB introduces him, Senator Hartke “is perhaps best known, at this point in his career, as one of the leaders in the growing army of former friends and admirers of Lyndon Johnson.” This crackling exchange focuses on the main source of his and the others’ disaffection, Vietnam. VH: “I don’t know whether you can say that or not [about the previous November's elections in Vietnam].... If you have some special information source that I do not have available to me-“ WFB: “You have the U.S. Government.” VH: “The government’s been wrong on so many things it’s hard to tell. The colossal blunder that they made in the cost of this war, for example, when they tried to ridicule my statement in front of the Finance Committee ... Well, they come back to this in January and they admit that this is true.”
Black Power
1) Hentoff, Nat. - journalist, author of Our Children Are Dying

Taped on Mar 7, 1967 (New York City, NY)

Summary: Mr. Hentoff had, Mr. Buckley tells us, written that “We must have black power to overcome white power.” What exactly is meant by black power? Does it matter whether the person talking about it is the Harlem teacher who is the subject of Mr. Hentoff’s book, or Elijah Muhammad? And why are the New York Times and the New York Post so chary of it? NH: “I suppose they think of the doctrine as a racist doctrine and the corollary concern seems to be that thereby the Negroes will alienate their good white friends and make things much more difficult for the coalition - that luminous coalition of labor, the Church, and civil-rights groups and the like which is apparently about to end the final verse of We Shall Overcome.” In fact, suggests Mr. Hentoff, what black power is properly about is the power of blacks to have some say in the running of their own neighborhoods and their own children’s schools.
Is There a Role for a Third Party?

1) Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano) Jr., 1914-1988. - Manager of the Fiat-Roosevelt Automobile Company; unsuccessful Liberal Party candidate for Governor of New York
Taped on Mar 8, 1967 (New York City, NY)

Summary: Despite his own defeat, Mr. Roosevelt answers the title question with an emphatic “Yes.” “I think that the role of the third party has been, especially the Liberal Party - It has been often said in jest that its role in New York politics has been to keep the Democratic Party honest and the Republican Party more liberal. Now, I suppose you could turn that to say that the Conservative Party, on whose line you ran for Mayor a year and a half ago-their role, I suppose, would be to make the Republican Party more the party of McKinley, or Adam Smith, and-” WFB: “Are you against Adam Smith?” FDR: “I think that he’s a bit out of date.”
The World of LSD
1) Leary, Timothy Francis, 1920- - founder of the League for Spiritual Discovery

Taped on Apr 10, 1967 (New York City, NY)

Summary: We all remember Dr. Leary as a proselytizer for LSD; we’ve mostly forgotten that he had started out as a doctor of clinical psychology and that he had made LSD the basis of a “new religion.” On this show, he makes his opening statement before he ever says a word, by appearing not in a business suit but in a flower child get-up-ruffled shirt, no jacket or tie. He argues that WFB is confusing psychedelic drugs, which Dr. Leary says “intensify consciousness,” with opiates and alcohol, “something that is an escape, something that takes you away from reality.” WFB: “Let’s go ahead and agree that LSD seems to be in some particulars different from other opiates or drugs or chemicals, at the same time agreeing that LSD is a departure from the normal world-” TL: “But what do you mean by ‘normal world’? You mean Harry Truman! Is that normal?”
Censorship and the Production Code

1) Preminger, Otto. - veteran film producer

Taped on Apr 10, 1967 (New York City, NY)

Summary: A discussion of artistic freedom and censorship with a leading producer, one of whose films (The Moon Is Blue) had run into trouble with the Motion Picture Production Code. A spirited discussion with a man who, despite the modern-Americanness of his films (including Anatomy of a Murder and The Man with the Golden Arm), retains, however unpresciently, an Old World sense of the order of things: “I have said that an immoral film could not be successful. I think there is morality built into any dramatic medium, whether it's a play or a television show. You cannot mention one successful play or film where the bad principle won.”
The Regular in Politics
1) De Sapio, Carmine. - former Democratic official in New York City

Taped on May 1, 1967 (New York City, NY)

Summary: Mr. De Sapio was the Tammany Hall “boss” defeated in 1963 by a young “reform Democrat” named Edward Koch. WFB attempts in this hour to explore how party leaders actually wield their power, but Mr. De Sapio is wary and can’t be drawn. WFB: “Suppose I had been a district leader and said, ‘Mr. De Sapio, I love you like a brother, but, in fact, I want Adlai Stevenson nominated [as opposed to JFK].’ What happens to me? Do I get thrown in the East River?” CDS: “You are applauded for your candor.” WFB: “You are not suggesting that you wouldn’t put-pressure on me? Unless you were in a position to put pressure on me, Mr. Kennedy wouldn’t be so concerned to get your support-isn’t that the way it works?” CDS: “Not necessarily.” WFB: “I’m not necessarily against pressure, I just want to know more about the mechanics-” CDS: “I don’t think that’s the proper word; I think that a better word would be an understanding.”
How to Protest

1) Macdonald, Dwight. - journalist, critic, columnist for Esquire, author of Memoirs of a Revolutionist

Taped on May 1, 1967 (New York City, NY)

Summary: Mr. Macdonald had recently been an organizer of the
Step Out Movement”-i.e., to step out of a hall where Vice President Humphrey would be speaking, in protest against the Vietnam War. This show offers a fast-paced duel between two longtime adversaries. WFB: “Well, Mr. Macdonald, why don't we try to isolate those forms of protest that you disagree with? You would disagree with, let’s say, shooting the President?” DM: “Yes.” WFB: “Would you disagree with forming the equivalent of an Abraham Lincoln Brigade to go to North Vietnam to fight on the side of the Vietcong?” DM: “Yes, I would.” WFB: “Would you disapprove of discounting from your income tax that sum of money we have roughly spent on defense?” DM: “I approve of that. I haven’t done it, however, because it occurred to me that the net result would be that they would get the money anyway plus a certain amount of penalties, which in effect would amount to more.”
Is It Possible to Be a Good Governor?

1) Reagan, Ronald. - Republican Governor of California
Taped on Jul 6, 1967 (Los Angeles, CA)

Summary: This first appearance of Ronald Reagan on Firing Line took place six months after he had been sworn in as governor. “There is much speculation,” WFB begins, “on the subject of his future, speculation which I intend to avoid, because the purpose of this program is to ask whether it is possible to be a good governor. By that I mean this: Are we now so dependent on the Federal Government that the individual state is left without the scope to make its own crucial decisions?” A meaty discussion ranging from the way the states in turn squeeze the local communities, to comparative welfare payments in different states, to a favorite subject of WFB’s: as Mr. Reagan puts it, “I know I’m accused of oversimplifying, but it doesn’t make sense to me for the Federal Government to ... insist that the only solution to our local problems is for them to take the money and then dispense it back to you in grants in which they tell you how to spend it from Washington, D.C. And of course, like an agent for a Hollywood actor, there's a certain carrying charge that’s deducted in Washington before you get it back again.”
Vietnam Protests

1) Spock, Benjamin, 1903- - MD, author of the perpetually best-selling Baby and Child Care, currently a full-time protestor against nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War

Taped on Jun 26, 1967 (New York City, NY)

Summary: Dr. Spock, Mr. Buckley begins by recounting, has said that the threat to our children from “nuclear annihilation” is “a thousand times greater than all the dangers from the usual children’s diseases.” So, “I’d like to begin by asking Dr. Spock whether he carries in his head a comparison of the number of people who have died during this century from disease in contrast to those who have died, not from war, but from persecution, for instance the 6 million Jewish dead in Nazi Germany.” (The answer is, No, he doesn't.) There is sometimes more heat than light generated here, but whether one views Dr. Spock as specimen or hero, the exchanges are fascinating. BS: “I don't know Bettina Aptheker but I have met Stokely Carmichael on a number of occasions, and I got the feeling he is a very sincere and America-loving person, even though he says things that distress some people from time to time.” WFB: “He’d be incensed if you called him an America-lover. I mean that quite seriously. For the last two years he’s been going around the country begging people to believe that he hates America, and here you are accusing me of taking him seriously.”
The Decline of Anti-Communism

1) Schwarz, Fred, 1913- - MD, lecturer against Communism

Taped on Jun 29, 1967 (New York City, NY)

Summary: WFB introduces his guest as a full-time anti-Communist who “has never made it easy for his critics. He is infuriatingly sober and ... he has shown an understanding of the humorous dimension of it all.” This show offers a rich discussion between two deep students of the subject, starting with Dr. Schwarz’s brilliant account of Nikita Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin in 1956. FS: “What it revealed about Khrushchev and his allegiance to Communist doctrine is possibly more significant than what it revealed about Stalin.... Now, how did [Khrushchev] discuss their [Stalin's victims’] guilt or innocence? He didn’t mention one of them by name ... He got right to basic Communist fundamentals: he said, I investigated their class of social origin, and 60 per cent were working class ... therefore it is inconceivable that there could have been 70 per cent treasonable.... And in that one statement, Khrushchev revealed that he was a fundamental Marxist-Leninist in exactly the same mold as Stalin ...”
The Future of the GOP

1) Nixon, Richard M. (Richard Milhous), 1913-1994. - former Vice President of the United States, presidential candidate

Taped on Sept 14, 1967 (New York City, NY)

Summary: Mr. Nixon, attempting to come back after losing the presidential election in 1960 and the California gubernatorial election in 1962, casts his remarks so as to hold onto conservatives who had voted for Goldwater without losing the many Americans who had not voted for Goldwater. The result is mostly bland, but there is considerable historical interest in encountering the pre-presidential Nixon: “Naturally I'm a prejudiced witness... But I believe that as this campaign in 1968 unfolds, that the nation will see that the new Republican Party is one which advocates change, but advocates change in a different way from the irresponsibles. And I mean by that, that in changing those things that are wrong in America, we must not destroy the things that are right. That to me is the essence of true conservatism.”
The Wallace Crusade
1) Wallace, George C. (George Corley), 1919-1998. - former Democratic Governor of Alabama

Taped on Jan 24, 1968 (St. Louis, MO)

Summary: WFB had sharply criticized Mr. Wallace in print, both for his once-adamant attachment to segregation and for his New Deal statism, and Mr. Wallace came on Firing Line determined not to give an inch. GW: “Name one thing in Alabama that I have supported on the governmental level that you are against.” WFB: “You want the state to take care of hospitalization, you want the state to take care of old people, you want the state to take care of the poor.” GW: “Are you against caring for the poor and the old? ... I might say that no conservative in this country who comes out against looking after destitute elderly people ought to be elected to anything.” WFB: “You call yourself a populist, right?” GW: “If you mean by a populist a man of the people, yes, I’m a populist. Let’s get back to the old-age pension. Let’s see, you’re against Alabama's looking after the elderly destitute citizens of the state?” (The following month, Mr. Wallace would declare his third-party candidacy for President.)
Philby and Treason
1) West, Rebecca, Dame, 1892- - Dame, historian, novelist, journalist

Taped on Feb 26, 1968 (Savoy Hotel, London, England)

Summary: Dame Rebecca, who had recently published The New Meaning of Treason, was invited on Firing Line to discuss Kim Philby and his spectacular defection to the Soviet Union. For connoisseurs of a certain sort of British intellectual, this show is hard to beat. RW: “... you see, it is historically interesting that he wasn’t really of a very important family. He was of a very charming family. But he wasn’t of a very important family.” WFB: “If he had been important, he wouldn’t have been discovered yet, do you mean?” RW: “No. What I mean is that Philby had all the slight thrill that his father gave people. You see, his father was pro-Arab. And the British Establishment, the British upper class, has always been pro-Arab-I think because the British upper class has always been very fond of horses-” WFB: “No, come on.” RW: “-and it all works together. Yes, that’s quite true.... A great many of the English upper-class people approved of Philby because he was on the right side with those Bedouin chaps.”
The Culture of the Left

1) Muggeridge, Malcolm, 1903-1990. - journalist, author, gadfly

Taped on Feb 26, 1968 (Savoy Hotel, London, England)

Summary: “He calls himself,” says WFB in his introduction to the first of Mr. Muggeridge's several appearances on Firing Line, “a man of the Left... His apostasies from the Left are, however, so numerous as to leave him a member of the Left in the same sense that, say, Bishop Pike is a member of the Episcopal Church.” But let Mr. Muggeridge speak for himself: “Well, Bill, I think you must distinguish between being a member of the Left and being a liberal. I regard liberalism as the great disease of our society, and when I said that people like Mrs. Roosevelt, admirable though they were in intentions, would be seen to have done more damage than people like Hitler and Stalin, I meant precisely that. Hitler and Stalin got a lot of people killed and precipitated the great war, but they are now discredited. But liberalism, which has been the dominant philosophy in the most influential and powerful nations of the West, continues to thrive despite the fact that every time it's been applied, the consequences have been disastrous.”
The Avant Garde
1) Ginsberg, Allen, 1926- - poet, hippie

Taped on May 7, 1968 (New York City, NY)

Summary: Some installments of Firing Line would not lose much if the video faded out, but this one is an exception: Mr. Ginsberg’s hair (as WFB puts it, “he will wear his hair long until everybody else does; then he will cut it”), his glittering eyes, and the little harmonium with which he accompanies his chant of Ommm are half the story. But, agree with him or not, the words are worth hearing too, as an encapsulation of this time: “One of the problems is, critically speaking, no one can understand the problem of police brutality in America, or the police-state we are going through as I see it, without understanding the language of the police. The language that the police use on hippies or Negroes is such that I can’t pronounce it to the middle-class audience. So the middle-class audience doesn't have the data or some portion of the data to judge the situation between the Negroes and the police.”
Armies of the Night
1) Mailer, Norman. - novelist, anti-Vietnam War activist

Taped on May 28, 1968 (New York City, NY)

Summary: This surprisingly genial conversation starts with the subject of Norman Mailer-as most conversations with Norman Mailer do-and goes on from there. WFB: “Oh, sure, I'm very anxious to discuss [Mr. Mailer's latest book, Armies of the Night]... [which] I think everyone should read, because I think it’s an extremely interesting and enjoyable book, if that's the right word for it.” NM: "Well, I wish someone on the right wing would write a book that would be as good, because it would be a great help to us on the Left. I wanted to help the right wing understand-” WFB: “You wouldn’t notice it if it were written.” NM: “No, I would notice it. You know I'm a lover of literature.” WFB: “Yes.” NM: “I think Evelyn Waugh is a marvelous writer.... Unfortunately, he’s not an American.” WFB: “Yeah. Unfortunately, he's dead.” NM: “That too.”
The Hippies

1) Yablonsky, Lewis. - Chairman of the Sociology Department at San Fernando State College in California, author of The Hippie Trip
2) Sanders, Ed. - poet; musician with the group The Fugs; author of the The Family
3) Kerouac, Jack, 1922-1969. - icon of the Beat Generation, author of On the Road; now a novelist

Taped on Sept 3, 1968 (New York City, NY)

Summary: Hold onto your hat for this free-for-all among four men who aren’t simply coming from different directions-they're in different universes. ES: “The problem with terms like ‘hippie’ is that they have a definition forced on them by the media …. And you know, you can’t rely on the name ‘hippie’ to include a human being, you know, everything about a particular human being. You know? …” LY: “I kinda disagree with that. I spent last year traveling around the country, various communes and various- Haight-Ashbury, Lower East Side, various city scenes, and there was an identifiable … people trying, searching for some loving solutions to society's ills, trying to tune in to the cosmos, whatever that means." … WFB: "To what extent do you believe the Beat Generation is related to the hippies ... ?" JK: "I'm 46 years old, these kids are 18, but it's the same movement, which is apparently some kind of Dionysian movement, in late civilization, which I did not intend, any more than, I suppose, Dionysus did, or whatever, his name was. Although I’m not Dionysus to your Euripides, I should have been."

See clip here.
Muhammad Ali and the Negro Movement
1) Ali, Muhammad, 1942- - once and future heavyweight boxing champion

Taped on Dec 12, 1968 (New York City, NY)

Summary: When Mr. Clay joined the Black Muslims, his draft board reversed its earlier determination (made in order to keep him out of the Armed Forces so that he could continue to box) that he was not sufficiently intelligent to serve. When he was reclassified, he pleaded conscientious objection, was refused, and was about to begin a term in jail. CC: “I have to be real cool and not savage and radical, because it makes me angry when I think about it - when I see the white boys, who really are the number-one citizens, the future rulers, when I see them, by the hundreds, leaving the country, and I see the white preachers breaking into draft-board houses in Wisconsin and Baltimore, tearing the files out of the walls and making a bonfire out of 45,000 draft cards, pouring blood on them, and I see them go to court and the juries say two years, and I get five years for what’s legal?”
Reflections on the Current Scene

1) Luce, Clare Boothe, 1903-1987. - journalist, playwright, former Republican Congressman from Connecticut, former U.S. Ambassador to Italy
Taped on Dec 6, 1969 (Honolulu, HI)

Summary: A high-energy conversation ranging from conservatives’ views on environmental pollution, to population control in the Philippines, to Middle Americans’ embrace of Spiro Agnew, to the Church’s understanding that even saints are also sinners. An ominous moment, in the light of developments just a few years away, is Mrs. Luce’s working out of her theory of what constitutes greatness in Presidents: “I think there‘s no evidence whatsoever as of now that President Nixon is or will become a great President. But you know I take a rather simplistic view of what a great man is. I think a great man is always the author of a unique and significant action. So far there is no unique action of which Mr. Nixon is the author.”
Abortion Laws: Pro and Con

1) Noonan, John Thomas, 1926- - Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley
2) Lucas, Roy. - Executive Director of the California Population Law Center

Taped on Jul 25, 1972 (Los Angeles, CA)

Summary: The most visible abortion battleground was New York State, where the legislature had voted to repeal the extremely permissive law it had passed two years before, and Governor Rockefeller had vetoed the repeal. But the case challenging that veto would probably never make it to the Supreme Court, Mr. Lucas explains, for there were others ahead of it in line; in retrospect, we know that one of those, Roe v. Wade, was decided in January of 1973. This show covers familiar ground, but often from angles that are still fresh thirty years later. RL: “Would you favor legislation requiring a woman to submit to strong medical treatment to stop spontaneous abortion and penalizing her accordingly if she didn't? ...” JTN: “No, I think you're again committing what I would say was a fault in moral reasoning. Because you're bound to avoid doing some injury to a person does not mean that you're bound to do everything possible in the world to help him.”
Sex Education

1) Fort, Joel, 1929- - MD, Lecturer in Psychiatry at the University of California at Berkeley, author of The New Sexuality and The Pleasure Seekers
2) Calderone, Mary Steichen, 1904- - MD, public-health specialist, President of the Sex Information and Education Council
3) Van den Haag, Ernest. - psychoanalyst, Adjunct Professor of Social Philosophy at New York University
Taped on Oct 3, 1972 (New York City, NY)
Broadcast Date: Oct 15, 1972

Summary: Dr. Calderone was widely regarded as the principal pioneer of sex education in the schools, although she insists that her interest is in sex education for “everybody; all of us.” The two sides in this debate can agree that, as Professor van den Haag puts it, “even if you present five different value systems and present them, so to speak, neutrally, the major effect on the student would be, ‘It doesn't matter,’ which is another value system.” But as to the place of sex education in the schools, never the twain shall meet. EvdH: “I agree with Dr. Fort that there is a great deal of learning, if not formal education, about sex going on from all kinds of sources. Under the circumstances, why is it necessary also to teach it in schools?” MC: “As a corrective.” JF: “Because most of that is not good information.” EvdH: “Well, why do you assume that teachers have good information to give?” JF: “I don’t assume that either.” MC: “I don't assume the parents have good information either.”
Hate America

1) Rader, Dotson. - veteran of the Columbia riots in 1968, author of I Ain't Marchin’ Anymore!
2) Beichman, Arnold. - journalist, trade union man; currently Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, author of Nine Lies about America

Taped on Oct 3, 1972 (New York City, NY)
Broadcast Date: Oct 22, 1972
Summary: “We are discreetly removed from the madness of yesterday on the campuses,” WFB begins, “though an apostolate survives and is perhaps regrouping to strike again. At what? ‘At America’ is the easiest way to put it.” Mr. Rader is emphatically of that disposition; Mr. Beichman emphatically is not. The conversation sometimes spins into outer space but never slows down. AB: “ ‘All power to the people’ is your signature line. What people were you talking about?” DR: “It’s basically a populist position.” AB: “What people-not the hardhats, obviously. You wouldn't want them to have power.” DR: “No, I think the basic thrust of the New Left... We always make a mistake because we assume the New Left is Marxist, which it's not.” AB: :Is it Leninist?” DR: “... No, I think in spirit it is basically 18th century. That's how it began-18th-century constitutionalism.... This, coupled with disillusionment with American institutions, coming largely out of the response of those institutions to what were rather good-natured, traditional protests of grievances, the war-” AB: “Wait a minute. ‘Good-natured’-you lost me there.” DR: “I think they were good-natured.”
The Young
1) Burgess, Anthony, 1917- - novelist, teacher, currently a visiting professor at the City College of New York

Taped on Dec 21, 1972 (New York City, NY)Broadcast Date: Dec 31, 1972

Summary: A splendid conversation with the author of A Clockwork Orange, who had just infuriated what Mr. Buckley calls “the militant student community” by publishing an open letter urging them to “think harder and learn who Helen of Troy and Nausicaa were and, for God's sake, stop talking about relevance.” One sample from Mr. Burgess: “What have I, a person of a very ancient generation, a person who’s already 55, to say to young men and women in their late teens and twenties? I think I have something to say, but this is contested, and not only by the young. It’s contested also by people who should know better-the professors, the lecturers who put themselves beside the young deliberately, hoping thereby when the revolution comes, if it does come, that they’ll get some sort of special preference, discounting the fact that they’ll probably be the first to be put up against the wall and have to face the firing squad.”
A Conservative Look at Marijuana
1) Bryant, Thomas E. - MD, President of the Drug Abuse Council
2) Greenway, John. - Professor of Anthropology at the University of Colorado at Boulder, author most recently of Down among the Wild Men

Taped on Dec 21, 1972 (New York City, NY)Broadcast Date: Jan 7, 1973

Summary: “Once again,” WFB begins, “marijuana is in the news.” California voters had just rejected a ballot initiative to ease the marijuana laws; but many organizations had come to favor changes ranging from outright legalization to decriminalization of possession. Are changes in public attitudes prompted by new research? Not really, according to Dr. Bryant: “We have a number of ongoing research projects, trying to get at the physiological, biochemical, psychological changes,” but “I’m not sure that there have been any major breakthroughs.” Nonetheless, he has come to favor decriminalization. Mr. Greenway, whose specialty is being a curmudgeon, spends several minutes fencing (“I don’t care for sincerity, either”), but then settles down to recounting experiences both as a professor and as a member of the Boulder Police Department: “What makes marijuana, to me, particularly dangerous is that it’s represented as not being dangerous.”
Texas Politics

1) Dugger, Ronnie. - Editor of the Texas Observer
2) Farenthold, Frances. - unsuccessful candidate for governor in 1972; leader of Texas
3) Milburn, Beryl. - Past President of the Texas Federation of Republican Women, Director of the women
Taped on Jan 23, 1973 (San Antonio, TX)
Broadcast Date: Feb 25, 1973

Summary: “More attention,” WFB begins, “is given to the politics of Texas than to those of practically any other state of the Union. There is, of course, the matter of the hugeness of Texas; but there is also the tradition of Texas-rich, powerful, self-assured, demanding, cocky, impenitent.” Mrs. Farenthold is a Democrat who has fought the Democratic establishment on the grounds of its corruption (“We don't have clean-cut bribery any more. It’s all with stock manipulation or sale of ranch lands at inflated prices or disposition of oil leases”)-although she is evidently shocked when Mr. Buckley asks whether “the Federal Government ought to intervene in Texan affairs in order to set things right.” To Mrs. Milburn, the problem is that Texas has “a one-party monopoly and it breeds corruption ... You may change some of the players but the plays remain the same.” Mr. Dugger admits that “I would prefer an honest Republican to a dishonest Democrat”-but instantly carries the fight back into the enemy’s camp over the way Texas primaries are run. A hard-fought, entertaining hour in this larger-than-life state.
The Equal Rights Amendment
1) Schlafly, Phyllis. - National Chairman of STOP ERA
2) Scott, Ann. - Vice President for Legislation for the National Organization for Women

Taped on: Mar 30, 1973 (Washington, DC)
Broadcast Date: Apr 15, 1973

Summary: The Equal Rights Amendment was on its way to ratification, when a funny thing happened: one of the states (to be followed by others) that had ratified it rescinded its ratification. The rescission had been mobilized, as WFB puts it, not “by sexist males but by women, many of whom on second blush are discovering in the amendment implications they regard as inimical to the best interests of American women.” Like what? Like, replies Mrs. Schlafly, the draft. Wait a minute, says Ms. Scott: “if women are to be citizens and citizens are to be subject to the draft, then women should take the responsibilities as well as the rights of citizenship.” Swords flash as we move from the draft to employment opportunities to child support. Whether or not our two guests will ever agree on anything, we do learn where the battle lines are drawn.
The Implications of Watergate
1) Powell, James O. - Editorial-Page Editor of the Arkansas Gazette
2) Murphy, Reg, 1934- - Editor of the Atlanta Constitution
3) Clark, Robert P. - Executive Editor of the Louisville Times and the Courier-Journal

Taped on May 16, 1973 (Louisville, KY)
Broadcast Date: Jun 3, 1973

Summary: The semi-annual occasion on which the guests put their host on the firing line-in this case, mostly on the subject of Watergate, which had been simmering since just a few days after the break-in the previous June but had only become the daily staple of our front pages when Gordon Liddy, Howard Hunt, and five others were put on trial in January. WFB and his guests mostly remand the details of what happened at the Watergate and who ordered it to a time when more evidence is in; instead, the crackling discussion ranges from the possibility of changing the presidential tenure to a single, six-year term, to how Congresses have historically dealt with a President who has been repudiated but is still in office (e.g., Herbert Hoover in 1931), to the continuing war in Vietnam. WFB: “If you live in a society in which lawlessness becomes intellectually fashionable, as it was in this country during the last ten years, you beget, I think, a counter-countercultural lawlessness of which Watergate is an example.”
Has America Had It?
1) Muggeridge, Malcolm, 1903-1990. - journalist, author, gadfly

Taped on Aug 20, 1973 (London, England)
Broadcast Date: Sept 16, 1973

Summary: Mr. Muggeridge is disinclined to be apocalyptic about America’s future, although he has to concede that the current situation - with Watergate roiling away and the bitterness over Vietnam by no means assuaged - gives America-bashers grounds for Schadenfreude. WFB: “It is widely assumed that there was a terrible collapse of English statecraft before the First World War and before the Second World War. Was there the equivalent gloating in America that you know of?” MM: “I wouldn’t have said in America so much, but certainly on the Continent, and in my lifetime I’ve seen this attitude. When I was young, the Empire was at its maximum strength and I felt this incredible hatred that everybody had for the British. I think the only difference ... is that the British rather liked that-it rather pleased them to be regarded as absolutely unspeakable wherever they went-whereas the Americans have no taste for it.”
Jews and American Politics

1) Isaacs, Stephen D., 1937- - national correspondent for the Washington Post, author of Jews and American Politics
2) Cuddihy, John Murray. - Assistant Professor of Sociology at Hunter College, author of The Ordeal of Civility: Freud, Marx, Levi-Strauss, and the Jewish Struggle with Modernity
Taped on Dec 2, 1974 (Washington, DC)
Broadcast Date: Dec 8, 1974

Summary: General George Brown, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had set off an avalanche of criticism by referring publicly-in the context of emergency aid to Israel following the Yom Kippur War-to the extraordinary influence of Jews on our foreign policy. He had been quickly defended, not in every particular but on the main point, by the Jewish journalist Stephen Isaacs. This lively discussion, full of detail, ranges from the Holocaust, to voting patterns of Jewish intellectuals, to the emotional effect of the 1967 Mideast War: SI: “Well, the Jew, up until that time, was this impression of a desk-bound, cowering sort of individual, who was led off, unprotesting, to a cattle car to be taken to his death. Well, '67 changed all that. Suddenly the Jew became a very strong person...When I was a kid growing up in Louisville, Kentucky, and I was a 230-pound tackle, the people there who had never met a Jew couldn't believe I was really a Jew...It just didn't fit with the image.”
Who Killed Bobby Kennedy?

1) Lowenstein, Allard K. - former law professor, former Chairman of Americans for Democratic Action, former Congressman from New York
Taped on Apr 11, 1975 (Columbia, SC)
Broadcast Date: Apr 20, 1975

Summary: The Warren Commission report was still being hotly debated, and Jesse Jackson had just announced that it was the FBI and the CIA that had killed Martin Luther King Jr. Mr. Lowenstein, in his fourth appearance on Firing Line, passes along his wife’s worry that instead of being known as “former congressman” he will become known as “current kook,” but he has come to believe that Sirhan Sirhan may not have fired the bullet that killed Bobby Kennedy. The problem arises, as Mr. Lowenstein explains, because “the trial... didn't deal with these [ballistics] issues because Sirhan’s attorney announced that he had murdered Kennedy and that the issue was his sanity.... So none of this evidence was entered in the trial at all.” Why does it matter? As Mr. Buckley works through it, “It strikes me as unlikely, given the fact that everybody agrees, including yourself, that Sirhan Sirhan was trying to kill Kennedy, that merely identifying somebody else who was also trying to kill him is going to excite the sort of inquisitive appetites of our people. But if that other person is himself just the tip of an iceberg .…”
Deep Throat and the First Amendment

1) Reems, Harry. - pornographic movie actor
2) Dershowitz, Alan M. - Professor of Law at Harvard University, lawyer leading Mr. Reems's defense

Taped on Dec 13, 1976 (New York City, NY)

Summary: Harry Reems, one of the participants in Deep Throat, had been arrested on charges of commerce in obscenity; Mr. Dershowitz, rising to the First Amendment challenge, was leading his defense. (When Firing Line invited Mr. Dershowitz to discuss the case, he insisted on bringing Mr. Reems with him; Mr. Buckley intended to pretend Mr. Reems was not there, though good manners eventually got the better of him.) To Mr. Buckley’s questions about the effect of pornography on society (does it foster illegitimacy, rape, abortion?), our guests, the one rather more eloquently than the other, offer a slab of First Amendment absolutism. AD: “I think that there have been major changes in the last ten years, brought about by a complex of factors.... For example, Playboy magazine has probably had more of an influence on the sexual revolution than any hard-core porno films.... You would have to ban Playboy magazine. You would probably have to ban Cosmopolitan magazine .… The point is, if you want to achieve the result, then you have to have much more censorship. If you want to have free speech, then you have to include Deep Throat.…” WFB: “I think you are right. You have to sort of revitalize a whole central view of man, which is not easily done by the suppression of anything. But the suppression of certain things is an aspect of one's concern. Just as we suppressed the circulation of racist literature in Germany after the war.”

The Guilt of Alger Hiss

1) Weinstein, Allen. - Professor of History at Smith College, author of Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case
2) Theoharis, Athan G. - Professor of History at Marquette University
Taped on Mar 21, 1978 (Washington, DC)
Broadcast Date Apr 7, 1978

Summary: An absorbing exploration of the Hiss-Chambers case with two scholars, one of whom, before he started work on his monumental book, thought that Alger Hiss had been framed and that Whittaker Chambers had perjured himself; the other of whom still believes Hiss innocent. WFB: “I should like to begin by asking Mr. Weinstein is there a survivor who was involved with both Hiss and Chambers who, having remained silent, might now under the prodding of your book speak out with the truth?” AW: “I think there are several who could, Mr. Buckley. I would be very surprised if any did.... Although it should be said that it surprised me when some of the people who spoke to me for the book did. For example, in his own memoir, Witness, Whittaker Chambers calls upon a man he mentions only by the name Paul and ... says he’s hoping this man will come defend him... - an old, old, friend. Well, Paul did not at the time. He was a Communist. Paul later broke with the Party and was- I prefer not to mention his name now; he enjoys a certain measure of privacy now. But he confirmed every aspect of Chambers’s story insofar as it concerned him.”

Note: transcript available here.
Resolved: That the Price of Oil and Natural Gas Should Be Regulated by the Federal Government

1) Galbraith, John Kenneth, 1908-2006. - For the Affirmative. Professor Emeritus of Economics at Harvard University, sometime Chairman of Americans for Democratic Action
2) Buckley, William F. (William Frank), 1925-2008. - For the Negative.

Taped on Mar 30, 1978 (Los Angeles, CA)
Broadcast Date Apr 14, 1978

Summary: This show might be called a mini-debate: it follows the formal procedures-opening statements, cross-examination, rebuttals - but with a single combatant on either side. The two old adversaries go at it, as always, with good-humored ferocity. Mr. Galbraith begins by contending that a free market in oil and gas has not existed for some time: “The market has been extensively superseded by planning, and this planning ... has been planning not by the Federal Government, not by other units of government, but essentially by the large and powerful enterprises which bring these products to us.” Mr. Buckley counters: “It is of course his thesis, now as always, that the market has been superseded-superseded by natural events rather than by synthetic events. He refers to his kinship with reality and reason by contrast with my own with romance and nostalgia. I do remember nostalgically when an agent of the Federal Government reported in 1885 that under no circumstances would any oil ever be discovered in California.”

Lifting the Trade Ban on Rhodesia

1) Lowenstein, Allard K. - lawyer, activist, sometime U.S. representative to the Commission on Human Rights in Geneva
2) Solarz, Stephen J. - Democratic Congressman from New York
Taped on Jun 15, 1979 (New York City, NY)
Broadcast Date Jun 24, 1979

Summary: In 1966, following Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence, the United Nations had imposed trade sanctions in an attempt to bring down Ian Smith's all-white government. There had now been elections-of which Mr. Lowenstein had been an observer, and Mr. Solarz had declined to be an observer-in which blacks were allowed full participation (cf. the Firing Line with Bishop Muzorewa, #S331), but President Carter had announced that the sanctions would continue against the country that its white rulers still called Rhodesia but the black majority called Zimbabwe. Although both guests want, as Mr. Lowenstein puts it, "a democratic government which would not be racist in its composition and which would be achieved with the least bloodshed possible," they disagree, often heatedly, on the best means to that end. (in the event, "Zimbabwe Rhodesia" reverted to transitional British rule at the end of the year and the UN Security Council lifted the sanctions.)
Muggeridge Revisited

1) Muggeridge, Malcolm, 1903-1990. - journalist, gadfly
Taped on Jun 27, 1978 (London, England)
Broadcast Date Aug 4, 1978

Summary: The last time Mr. Muggeridge was on Firing Line, Mr. Buckley reminds us, it was to comment on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s first television interview; a few weeks before today’s show was taped, Solzhenitsyn had again made waves, this time with his Harvard commencement address. Solzhenitsyn, with those great burning eyes, speaks like a prophet. Muggeridge, with his twinkling eyes, speaks like a benevolent grandfather - but the two men wind up saying much the same thing, whether speaking of the City of God or the City of Man. MM: “Every courageous man in the West who believes in freedom and equality will have a go at them [the South Africans], because that’s very easy. But-” WFB: “Or Chile.” MM: “Chile, not quite so easily, because there aren't many black people there, and it’s not within the orbit much of the West; but South Africa is the absolutely favorite thing. In order not to have to do or say anything about the Gulag, it’s perfect.... I’ve been reading Spengler in these dark days. Do you ever read it?” WFB: “I’ve managed to avoid it.” MM: “You won't avoid it for long.”

Note: transcript available here.
Three vs. William F. Buckley Jr.
1) Pilpel, Harriet F. - feminist, civil-libertarian; lawyer, Senior Partner at Greenbaum, Wolff & Ernst
2) Burden, Carter. - Democratic congressional candidate in New York; former New York City Councilman, former owner of The Village Voice
3) Lowenstein, Allard K. - Democratic congressional candidate in New York; former U.S. Commissioner on Human Rights

Taped on Jul 21, 1978 (New York City, NY)
Broadcast Date Jul 27, 1978

Summary: In this installment of the semi-annual turning of the tables, the guests question their host on everything from government spending, to the Equal Rights Amendment and abortion, to aid to authoritarian regimes. Two samples: HP: “I think what we can agree on in disputes of this kind is that the role of the government, in a culturally diverse, pluralistic society, is to be neutral.” WFB: “My God! You want to pass a law [ERA] forbidding me to hire a female nurse for my mother, and you’re telling me the law has to be neutral in matters of such gravity as abortion!” ... CB: “But if life is sacred, if that is a basic moral premise, then how can you in any case justify taking life [via the death penalty]?” WFB: “By reading the Bible.” CB: “An eye for an eye? You subscribe to that?” WFB: “No, I don’t subscribe to that. But there are many instances in the Bible where, given due process, and given the gravity of the crime, the taking of life is authorized.”
The Rising Tide of Islam
1) Vatikiotis, P. J. - Professor of Middle East Studies at the University of London, author of Nasser and His Generation
2) Warburg, Gabriel. - Professor of Middle East Studies at the University of Haifa, author of Islam, Nationalism, and Communism in a Traditional Society
3) Ben-Dor, Gabriel. - Professor of Political Science at Haifa University

Taped on Mar 16, 1979 (Tel Aviv, Israel)
Broadcast Date Apr 15, 1979

Summary: Mr. Buckley begins by saying, “The general ignorance in the Western world concerning Islam ... is widely deplored and generally cultivated.” This is demonstrated over and over again in this productive discussion, in which our guests-none of them Muslim, all of them deeply knowledgeable about Islam-lead us into this very different worldview. One sample: WFB: “The fundamentalist-” PJV: “Excuse me, I refuse to use the term fundamentalist for Islam. That is a very Christian, canonical, theological proposition. There's no such thing as fundamentalism in Islam. There is orthodox in Islam.” WFB: “There is such a thing as a metaphor everywhere.” PJV: “All right. Thank you. The problem is that this is the only native idiom they have.” WFB: “Cutting off hands is fundamentalist, isn’t it?” PJV: “Well, even the cutting off of hands-” GB: “You could call it puritan.” PJV: “Puritan, yes.” WFB: “Puritanical.”
Resolved: That the United States Should Refuse Recognition to the PLO (Part I, Part II, Both Parts)

Moderator: Roche, George Charles, President of Hillsdale College

1) Buckley, William F. (William Frank), 1925-2008. - For the Affirmative
2) Solarz, Stephen J. - For the Affirmative. Democratic Congressman from New York
3) Weinstein, Allen. - For the Affirmative. Historian, author of Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case
4) Jackson, Jesse, 1941- - For the Negative. The Rev.; founder and Executive Director of Operation PUSH (People United to Serve Humanity)
5) Findley, Paul. - For the Negative. Republican Congressman from Illinois
6) Jabara, Abdeen. - For the Negative. Co-chairman of the Palestinian Human Rights Campaign
7) Cooley, John. - Panelist. Defense correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor
8) Johnson, Thomas. - Panelist. Minority-affairs reporter for the New York Times
9) Kirk, Russell. - Panelist. Conservative critic, columnist
10) Ledeen, Michael. - Panelist. Executive Editor of the Washington Quarterly

Taped on Nov 28, 1979 (Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, MI)

Summary: Light as well as heat on a topic of passionate interest to many Americans. WFB: “U.S. Air Force intelligence, in testimony before Congress, links terrorists from 14 countries with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Representatives of these organizations specialize in achieving their velleities by blowing people up, or kidnapping them, torturing them, shooting them in the knee –t hat sort of thing.... But what some people call terrorists other people call soldiers or freedom fighters. Isn’t that correct? It certainly is, even as it is correct that East Germany calls itself the Democratic Republic of Germany.” ... JJ: “The Apostle Paul emerged as a terrorist killing Christians, but God kept a ‘let’s talk’ policy, confronted him on the Damascus Road, and changed his mind, his heart, and his life.” ... AJ: “The Palestinians who were displaced and dispossessed in 1948,... Israel was called upon to allow their return to their homes and lands. Have they been allowed to return?” AW: “In a period, sir-” AJ: “Answer the question, yes or no?” AW: “No, you’re not a trial lawyer here, sir, you’re a debater. I will answer the question in whatever fashion I choose.”
The Year That Was

1) Greenfield, Jeff. - critic, author, frequent Firing Line examiner
2) Pilpel, Harriet F. - lawyer, feminist activist, frequent Firing Line examiner
3) Lowenstein, Allard K. - lawyer, liberal activist, sometime public servant, frequent Firing Line guest

Taped on Dec 13, 1979 (New York City, NY)
Broadcast Date: Dec 30, 1979

Summary: This discussion with three extremely articulate liberals ranges from the crisis in Iran (it was just a month earlier that radical students had seized our embassy in Teheran, demanding that the United States hand the Shah over to them) to the foreign-policy obtuseness of Ted Kennedy to selective indignation about foreign dictators. JG: “There has been a kind of laziness ... on the part of liberals that what one assails when it comes to human rights is Chile, which certainly deserves it in my judgment, or Paraguay, which deserves it-” WFB: “Don't forget Argentina.” JG: “Argentina. Yes, these are wretched governments. But the Soviet Union, with 250-plus million people, is a government that is unbelievable.” AL: “Well, what is ‘the Left’? I’m not sure what that means. I think that there's a laziness on the part of some people, left or right, whatever those labels mean, in selective denunciations.” JG: "” was coming to that. I find the same laziness in the Reagans and Connallys of this world, that one must endorse the Somozas of this world as a way of preserving American allies.”
Presidential Hopeful: Ronald Reagan
1) Reagan, Ronald. - former Republican Governor of California

Taped on Jan 14, 1980 (Los Angeles, CA)
Broadcast Date Jan 20, 1980

Summary: The wish was father to the thought: instead of asking Mr. Reagan conventionally worded questions about his candidacy, as he had done Messrs. Dole and Anderson and Crane, WFB addressed his guest (without advance warning) as if the inauguration had already taken place: “I should like to begin by asking President Reagan: What would you do if, say, one afternoon you were advised that a race riot had broken out in Detroit?” RR: “Well, I would be inclined to say that that was a problem for the local authorities in Detroit, unless those local authorities were unable to control the situation....” A discussion full of substance-on topics ranging from Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, to the way government bonds should be issued, to the still-ongoing energy crisis, to the still-high unemployment - but also a delicious dress rehearsal: WFB: “Mr. President, the CIA has complained to you that it cannot discharge some of the recent directives that the National Security Council has given it as a result of its having been hamstrung by a number of provisions insisted on by Senator Church three or four years ago. How would you handle that dilemma?” RR: “Why, I’m surprised that they're complaining, because one of the first things I did when I took office was ask Congress to repeal those restrictions that were put on by Senator Church.”
Allard Lowenstein on Firing Line: A Retrospective
1) Lowenstein, Allard K. - lawyer, liberal activist, sometime public servant, frequent Firing Line guest

Taped on April 22, 1980

A memorial to, as Buckley describes him, "in our time, the original activist," shot dead at age fifty-one by a former associate. The program - the first such retrospective on Firing Line (others would be done for Clare Boothe Luce, Michael Harrington, Malcolm Muggeridge, and Barry Goldwater) - is composed of excerpts from Lowenstein's nine Firing Line appearances, framed by the eulogies given at his memorial service by Buckley and Senator Edward Kennedy. Kennedy: “He was a person of impassioned political conviction, but personally he loved so many who so often disagreed with his politics. Who but Al Lowenstein could claim among his best friends both Bill Buckley and Robert Kennedy?” Buckley: “Of all the partisans I have known, from the furthest steppes of the spectrum, his was the most undistracted concern, not for humanity - though he was conversant with big-think idiom - but for human beings.”
How Does One Find Faith?

1) Muggeridge, Malcolm, 1903-1990. - journalist, author
Taped on Sept 6, 1980 (Mr. Muggeridge)
Broadcast Date Oct 5, 1980

Summary: The edited 30-minute version, with an added introduction by William F. Buckley, that was rebroadcast annually at Christmas for the rest of the life of Firing Line. A radiant session with the former left-wing atheist, become one of the century's leading Christian apologists. Mr. Muggeridge on how he was drawn to faith: “Now why did this longing for faith assail me? Insofar as I can point to anything, it is to do with this profession which both you and I followed of observing what’s going on in the world and attempting to report and comment thereon, because that particular occupation gives one a very heightened sense of the sheer fantasy of human affairs - the sheer fantasy of power and of the structures that men construct out of power - and therefore gives one an intense, overwhelming longing to be in contact with reality. And so you look for reality, and you try this and try that, and ultimately you arrive at the conclusion - great oversimplification-that reality is a mystery. The heart of reality is a mystery.” WFB: “Even if that were so, why should that mystery lead you to Christian belief?” MM: “Because it leads you to God.”
Do We Need Religion or Religious Institutions?

1) Muggeridge, Malcolm, 1903-1990. - journalist, author

Taped on Sept 6, 1980 (Mr. Muggeridge)
Broadcast Date Oct 12, 1980

Summary: This show suffers from comparison with the one above, but by any other standard it is a wonderful exploration of modern man and his discontents-starting with the fact that Mr. Muggeridge, although a leading Christian apologist, was unchurched. MM: "I've, believe it or not, longed to be a Catholic.... I've longed for it as though it were the most marvelous thing ... The truth is, I think, that I take a very pessimistic view of the Catholic Church, despite the very brilliant Pope you've now got. It seems to me that it's dropping to pieces; and of course it had a severe blow after the Vatican Council. Therefore, I would be joining something of which I was enormously critical, and this isn't really an honorable thing to do." WFB: "That's never bothered you before." MM: "I've never contemplated anything so serious as joining a church. I mean, even if you were to turn to mundane things-joining a club-if you were to join it quite confident that you were going to challenge all its rules and have rows with all its members, it would be rather a foolish step to take...." WFB: "Well, I'm, to put it lightly, stupefied that you would make a decision whether or not to extend your loyalty to an institution based on the behavior of some of its communicants. I can't imagine any time in history when anybody would have become a Catholic if he had been so easily put off." (Malcolm Muggeridge and his wife, Kitty, eventually submitted to Rome, in 1984.)
Is Modern Architecture Disastrous?

1) Wolfe, Tom. - author most recently of From Bauhaus to Our House

Taped on Oct 1, 1981 (New York City, NY)

Broadcast Date Oct 18, 1981

Summary: A rip-roaring attack on the shibboleths of modern architecture-and with a Firing Line rarity, visual aids (illustrations from Mr. Wolfe's book). TW: “The irony of this is all these forms were created for the workers in the ruins and rubble of Germany after the First World War under a Socialist government, and somehow, as if they had bounced off Telstar, landed on Sixth Avenue, Park Avenue-practically any avenue you want to name in any large American city.... Far from housing workers these structures ... are housing the corporate giants of America.... And they are all in worker-housing forms.”
Was Gandhi for Real?
1) Grenier, Richard. - foreign correspondent, script writer, critic
2) Rudolph, Lloyd Irving. - political scientist, co-author of Gandhi: The Traditional Roots of Charisma

Taped on Jun 9, 1983 (New York City, NY)
Broadcast Date: Aug 19, 1983

Summary: The movie Gandhi had met with wildly differing reactions - stemming largely from the reactors’ views of Gandhi himself. Was he primarily a religious and ethical figure, or was he a political figure in karma yogi’s clothing? Mr. Rudolph takes the more positive view of the Mahatma, though Mr. Grenier also acknowledges that “for the Hindus he is a holy man.” RG: “The iron law of Satyagraha, which I think we will try to translate as non-violence - civil disobedience - is the following: Its success is strictly proportional to the high moral level of the opponent.... It has to operate in a free society. It had its greatest triumph, far greater than in India, in the United States of America under the leadership of Martin Luther King.”
Are Liberal Vulnerabilities Now Apparent?
1) Limbaugh, Rush H. - talk-show host extraordinaire

Taped on Sept 16, 1992 (WFB's apartment, New York City)
Broadcast Date: Oct 4, 1992

Summary: Mr. Limbaugh’s career was skyrocketing; the radio show had led to the launching of a television show, and his latest book was a runaway best seller. This show affords a fascinating look at two utterly different personalities that have placed themselves in service to, mostly, the same goals. One sample: WFB: “Style means a lot to me. I’m waiting for the day when people would be laughed out of the campus who use the word ‘freshperson.’ It’s an idiotic attempt at hermaphroditic excess.” RL: “It is, but if you oppose it, you’re the one laughed at.” WFB: “You oppose it.” RL: “Oh, I do. But I’m brave, I’m courageous.”

Jewish prayerbooks

2009-05-13T10:35:00.001-07:00

John Hobbins is a Methodist preacher with polymath interests, so it is not surprising that he has turned his attention to Jewish prayerbooks. John writes in an opinionated, and sometimes provocative and hyperbolic fashion, so rather than paraphrase his opinions, I will simply quote him:

The first thing you will want to do after reading the review is pre-order the about-to-be-published KorenSacks siddur, a great alternative to ArtScroll provincialism. I fail to see how one can read Lockshin’s comments without taking that step, if one cares to daven with all one’s mind, soul, and strength. To be sure, I find Sacks’ apologetics and rhetorical strategy sappy-sweet and unconvincing often enough. But it is not nearly as mind-numbing as ArtScroll’s approach tends to be. With Sacks’ siddur in one hand and Tabory’s JPS Commentary to the Haggadah (great price here) in the other, I will soon be in seventh heaven.

I wish to mention that other than Sack’s new prayerbook (which is not yet published), I own and have read all of the books listed in this post.

About Jewish Prayer

I wish to give my own discussion of Jewish English prayerbooks here. First, let me discuss how Jewish prayer is different than Christian prayer. Normative Jewish prayer occurs in groups of ten or more (a minyan). It occurs three times a day; and more often on most holidays and on the Sabbath. Orthodox Jewish prayer is long – a Saturday morning service may take 4 hours; regular morning prayers take 1 to 1.5 hours. On some days, e.g., Yom Kippur, the entire day is spent in prayer. Prayer is not lead by a rabbi (but by a chazzan or cantor – in some congregations, this is not a fixed position but rotates through all of the regular attendees), and no rabbi is necessary to conduct the prayer service. Each praying member prays almost the entire service himself. The service is prayed entirely in Hebrew (and Aramaic). (However, prayer in English is considered valid.)

As this brief description makes clear, Jewish prayer services are rather unlike typical Christian Sunday services or masses. In a traditional Latin Catholic mass, the service is conducted by the clergy and the audience watches the service. In a Protestant megachurch setting, the audience may sing some songs, but the focus is on the sermon and Bible lesson. Neither of these match well with Jewish prayer.

If one had to find a Christian analogue to Jewish prayer, it would be the liturgy of the hours in religious communities (e.g., Benedictine) where long sessions of prayer happen multiple times a day. But even this analogy is loose, and Jewish prayer contains many unique features.

Before attempting Jewish prayer, it is helpful to understand more about the intricate structure of Jewish prayer. There are a number of books that survey this: two books that I like are Adin Steinsaltz’s Guide to Jewish Prayer and Elie Munk’s World of Prayer. John mentions annotations in his post, but in fact, reading one of these overviews will serve one much better than reading the footnotes in a prayerbook.

ArtScroll prayerbook

Today, among Orthodox synagogues in the US with substantial English-speaking membership, the most popular prayerbooks (siddurim) are editions by ArtScroll and by Kehot (the latter are particularly widespread in Hassidic and Chabad synagogues).

25 years ago, before the arrival of ArtScroll, the situation in Hebrew-English prayerbooks was a bit sad. The main problem was merely typography. The reprints over the years had worn out the type and the Hebrew was difficult to read and sometimes completely unintelligible. A second problem was that instructions (to stand up, sit down, etc.) were often omitted or written in Hebrew only, making it difficult for many newcomers to follow. A third problem is that there are many liturgical songs and special prayers called piyyutim that were included or omitted in prayerbooks on a somewhat arbitrary basis.

ArtScroll addressed all of these problems and became a huge success as a result. The Hebrew type in their prayerbooks is crystal clear; instructions are written out in English, and there is a wide variety of piyyutim included all carefully marked as optional. It is because of the latter that ArtScroll prayerbooks are so much thicker than other Hebrew-English prayerbooks.

Beyond this, ArtScroll heavily innovated. ArtScroll, which comes from the more haredi-oriented wing of Orthodox Judaism, published an edition for modern Orthodox, the RCA ArtScroll. It is interesting to note that ArtScroll’s excellence was so striking that even their main intellectual opponents (the Modern Orthodox) in the Jewish world turned to ArtScroll to produce their standard prayerbook.

ArtScroll proceeded to publish Ashkenazi and Sephardic editions of their prayerbooks; to publish a full set of machzorim (again both in Ashkenazi and Separdic editions); and then produced interlinear editions (for those learning Hebrew) and transliterated editions with Roman characters (for newcomers unable to quickly sight-read prayerbooks) and corresponding editions of the machzorim and the psalter.

To date, I have seen no plans for anything close to ArtScroll program of prayerbook publications. Merely on the basis of the included piyyutim, and the large variety of editions for Hebrew-learners, I think ArtScroll’s dominance in the prayerbook world is unlikely to be challenged.

Now, let me turn to the most controversial part of the ArtScroll prayerbooks – their annotations. First, let me say it is easy to ignore these annotations since they are unobtrusive. The annotations reflect a classical Talmudic view of prayer from a haredi perspective. John calls this perspective “provincial” but I think that word misses the right nuance; I would instead call them “traditional.”

Annotated Prayerbooks

If one wishes a more scholarly annotated prayerbook, an excellent choice is the ten volume set (which won the National Jewish Book Award) called My People’s Prayer Book. These comprehensive volumes include about nine independent running commentaries on the prayers, examining the prayer from a variety of perspectives. The publisher’s blurb says (and mostly holds true to this promise): “most respected scholars and teachers from all perspectives of the Jewish world. They explore the text from the perspectives of ancient Rabbis and modern theologians, as well as feminist, halakhic, medieval, linguistic, biblical, Chasidic, mystical, and historical perspectives.”

Individual volumes include:

There is a matching Haggadah as well, described below

For Machzorim, a very special and highly idiosyncratic (and advanced) commentary on the machzorim can be found in editions that incorporate lessons from Joseph Soloveitchik. Since the Rav often talked at length about the High Holy Days, there is a wide variety of excellent material available. Because these volumes are actually printed and distributed by ArtScroll, they maintain the advantages of superior typography common to all ArtScroll editions.

Finally, I wish to again recommend Steinsaltz’s and Munk’s books mentioned above for a general overview of prayer.

Sack’s prayerbook

Jonathan Sacks is the head of the United Synagogue, one of many Jewish groups in Britain. He is thus accorded the title “Chief Rabbi” (somewhat misleadingly). He is a prolific author, and has published a number of excellent works. In particular, he oversaw the preparation of the 2005 Authorized Daily Prayerbook, which is fine, although lacks many of the advantages of the ArtScroll. Sacks has reportedly prepared an annotated edition of this book which will be published by Koren (which, like ArtScroll, is famous for beautiful typesetting of Hebrew books.) Amazon reports this new prayerbook will be distributed this week, and I eagerly look forward to reading comments on it.

In the meanwhile, you can read two reviews from people who actually saw preliminary editions of this: Elli Fischer (who is active in the conservadox egalitarian prayer movement) and the unique “Mississippi Fred MacDowell”. Both of them illustrate their points with quotes.

John sharply criticizes Sacks, as quoted above, “I find Sacks’ apologetics and rhetorical strategy sappy-sweet and unconvincing often enough.” I’m not sure if John actually saw the as yet unpublished siddur or if he is referring to some other work by Sacks; but his praise for the new siddur seem faint. But it seems that I appreciated Sacks considerably more than John does. Based on my reading of a similarly styled work; Sacks’ annotated Hagaddah, I have high hopes that this new siddur will be an excellent addition to Jewish libraries. We will have to see though – I don’t want to review a book before I read it.

Nonetheless, if only because the number of editions is so sharply limited compared to the many dozens of editions available from ArtScroll, I doubt that Sacks’ siddur will make much headway at first.

Annotated Hagaddah

In passing, John also mentions the JPS Haggadah; and he is the first person that I’ve seen praise that work (although it has its merits). I think there are many better choices, though. I would not directly compare the Haggadah text (which is primarily talmudic in style) with a prayerbook, but as long as he raises the issue, I suggest these annotated Haggados instead:

The Schechter Haggadah: Art, History, and Commentary (historical presentation)
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’s Haggadah (general coverage with extensive essays)
Exalted Evening (the best of the hagaddahs containing Joseph Soloveitchik’s commentary)
My People’s Passover Haggadah (two volumes: volume 1 and volume 2; similar to the ten-volume prayerbook mentioned above with multiple running commentaries)
Kol Menachem Haggadah (with commentary based on technical and difficult lessons from the previous chief Chabad Rebbe.)
Haggadah of the Sages (from Carda, critical and Talmudically focused)

On the other hand, there’s nothing wrong with the Maxwell House Haggadah – it is, after all, free.

Translations of Paul

2009-05-13T08:55:00.001-07:00

Tim (at Catholic Bibles) raises issues of translations of Paul. In Tim’s post NT Wright + NIV = Not Friends, Tim notes that in N. T. Wright’s Justification: God’s Plan & Paul’s Vision (I have just received this book and have not started reading it yet) that Wright pans the NIV translation of the Pauline epistles.

Here is Tim’s account:

[Wright] begins by stating that he had recommended use of the NIV early in the 1980's, believing that it injected "no extra paraphrasing or interpretative glosses (51)." However, over a two year period, while lecturing with the NIV and the Greek text, he discovered that "the translators had had another principle, considerably higher than the stated one: to make sure that Paul should say what broadly Protestant and evangelical tradition said he said (52)." He follows that up by saying: "I do know that if a church only, or mainly, relies on the NIV it will, quite simply, never understand what Paul was talking about (52)." Ouch! He sites the NIV translation of Romans 3:21-26 & 29 as a major problem, particularly in its use of dikaiosu.

As an example, Tim quotes Wright:

In other words, "the righteousness of God" in Romans 3:21 is only allowed to mean "the righteous status which comes to people from God", whereas the equivalent term in Romans 3:25 and 3:26 clearly refers to God's own righteousness-which is presumably why the NIV has translated it as "justice", to avoid having the reader realize the deception. In the following paragraph, a similar telltale translation flaw occurs, to which again we shall return. In Romans 3:29, Paul introduces the question, "Is God the God of Jews only?" with the single-letter word "e", normally translated "or"; "Or is God the God of Jews only?"- in other words, if the statement of Romans 3:28 were to be challenged, it would look as though God were the God of Jews only. But the NIV standing firmly in the tradition that sees no organic connection between justification by faith on the one hand and the inclusion of Gentiles within God's people on the other, resists this clear implication by omitting the word altogether (52-53).

I was well aware of Wright’s criticism of the translation of the Pauline epistles from minicourse Romans in a Week at Regent College.

I note further that these errors have not been corrected in the TNIV.

Finally, I note that N. T. Wright himself has translated and annotated most of the New Testament in his For Everyone translation series.

I think that Wright’s points are well taken. However, it is interesting to contrast his decision with my preferred textbooks for introductory study for Paul. I prefer the Wayne Meek’s Writings of St. Paul (published in the Norton Critical Edition) for its inclusion of pseudo-Pauline sources and wide set of reactions from Jews, pagans, church fathers, Marcionites, gnostics, and gentiles across the spectrum, together with later commentary from across the spectrum of thought. This work appeared in two editions, both of which are still in print (and both are worth buying). I note that the second edition (co-edited by John Fitzgerald) uses the TNIV translation (although with copious notes); the first edition sticks with the RSV translation.

These volumes are useful for a critical study of Paul, especially in a secular setting. They are a fine purchase choice as our Catholic friends wrap up their Jubilee Year of Paul.

Bad news on the beverage front

2009-05-11T10:44:00.001-07:00

A new trend: Restaurants charging for water

My question – is there a corkage fee if one brings in his own canteen?

Star Trek

2009-05-10T16:56:00.001-07:00

Like all other good Americans this weekend, I went to see the new J. J. Abrams’ Star Trek movie. I didn’t actually expect the movie to be good – I hoped it would be entertaining, and the action-filled sequences did satisfy. As art, this certainly can’t compare with Tarkovsky’s Solaris (or even Steven Soderbergh’s). But people don’t go to movies like Star Trek to address big philosophical problems – they go because they enjoy seeing certain character types interact (and, of course, save the universe.) However, I must confess I got more entertainment from Anthony Lane’s review than the actual film.

I did enjoy the Spock character – in the original Star Trek series, Spock was a super-stoic character that thrived on cold rational (or, as he puts it, “logical”) thought. In the new movie, Zachary Quinto plays Spock more like Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry character: a man with a constant seething sneer and absolute sureness in himself. Indeed, no fewer than five of the characters in the movie are uber-reasoners: Spock, who can instantly calculate the probability of success of any particular sequence of actions; Chekov, a late pubescent math-whiz who; Scotty, who can out-invent Edison; Uhura, who knows every language in the universe; and Bones, the physician who can both induce and cure all illnesses. Naturally, the least competent of the bunch, Chris Pine’s Kirk (a over-the-top pastiche of Tom Cruise’s Top Gun character) is ultimately put in charge.

(In the original series, the name “Uhura” was reportedly based on a Swahili word, but in this film, blacks are apparently so strange that Kirk assumes she must be of non-Earthly origin.)

In the television series, none of the characters ever changes – each week they start out the same. In the movies, the one time this rule was broken was in Ricardo Montalban’s Wrath of Khan movie – a movie in which Spock dies (regrettably, even something seemingly as permanent as Spock’s death is reversed for subsequent issues from the franchise; not unlike Sherlock Holmes’ miraculous resurrection after his death at Reichenbach Falls.) In this film too, there is no change except the one transition that happens in each Star Trek episode – Spock learns to appreciate Kirk’s virtues. The great strength of the Star Trek movies – the outrageous performances and speeches by the villains – is unfortunately subdued here by Eric Bana’s California-style “Nero” who greets his adversaries as if he were meeting them in a twelve-step meeting.

But to judge the film on aesthetic terms is a bit misleading. I saw the film in IMAX (something of a waste of money, as I subsequently learned that the flick was only photographed on standard Kodak 35mm film) and the special effects were suitably wowing, and the acting was different, but just as hammy, as I remember from the original series. I didn’t expect to be challenged and I was not – and I cannot even say that the plot was compelling, but I found it a fun diversion for a few hours.

The Amazon (girlfriend) HD experience

2009-05-08T16:54:00.001-07:00

Spoiler alert – this post contains some general remarks about a forthcoming movie, The Girlfriend Experience. If you might see this movie, please return to this post after you’ve seen it.

Last night, I experienced multiple layers of simulacara – I downloaded a movie from Amazon that has not yet been released; a movie that is all about artificial experiences.

The movie, Steven Soderbergh’s, The Girlfriend Experience, has attracted note for giving a star role to Sasha Grey, an apparently well-known pornographic actress. (I had not seen Sasha Grey before this movie, although I had heard of her.) In the movie, she plays an escort who temporarily pretends to be a girlfriend – showing “true” affection, attention, and emotional involvement with her clients; only then to leave them in the morning. There was no sex in the film (although there are some brief nude scenes, and this is not a film appropriate for children.) I won’t go further in my description except to say that the irony builds in the film, which sharply questions the foundations of interpersonal relationships.

This film has attracted a great deal of buzz, and Soderbergh, who has experimented with different models of film distribution in the past, is apparently eager to capture the buzz by offering the film before its theatrical release as an Amazon download in two versions: standard and HD. I downloaded the HD version, which was not very HD – it was a mere 3.008GB (about the size as a single-sided, single-layer DVD). I started downloading the movie yesterday morning; I’m not sure how long it took but it was ready by the time I returned.

Now, to me, this very medium – a pre-theatrical Amazon download – is an ironic comment on the subject of the movie itself; here is a “release-level” download, replacing the experience of seeing a premiere movie in a cinema house; the film itself discussing the difference between real experiences and those designed to imitate them.

On preferring grape soda to grape juice

2009-05-08T16:36:00.001-07:00

Today I had a first experience – for the first time I found myself preferring an art catalogue to an actual exhibition.

The exhibition has already displayed at the Honolulu Academy of Arts, is currently at the Asian Art Museum (San Francisco), and thence to Musée Guimet (Paris), Museum of East Asian Art (Cologne), and finally the Museum Rietberg Zürich. I saw in San Francisco. Some highlights of the exhibition can be found here; see also the entry point here.

An example of the problem can be found with this piece, one of a series of 12 18-19th century thangkas showing scenes from the Jātaka Tales, stories of the Buddha’s previous life. Take a quick look at the link, and ask yourself what you are looking at. It is almost incomprehensible to a Westerner. In fact, there is a central of the Śākyamuni surrounded by 10 different stories. The charm of the painting is improved by a knowledge of the stories, but the museum signage for the thangka is not annotated with an explanation. Even worse, the exhibit had poor lighting (perhaps to protect the thangkas, but more likely out of a casual disregard for how art was displayed, since other thangkas were well illuminated). (I have read portions of the Jātaka Tales in the Pali text society edition; but the explanation in the exhibition’s catalogue was concise, well illustrated, tasteful, and clear.)

Another example – an important part of the exhibition is the recording, apparently for the first time, of a type of tantric yoga dance: “cham.” This is represented in the catalogue by a 40 minute DVD containing highlights of more than 300 hours of recorded dances. The DVD itself is particularly well annotated and is one of the most gripping examples of religious dance that I can remember seeing. In the museum, these dance sequences were represented by LCDs hanging all over the museum, blasting out music – creating an effect midway between going to a children’s science museum and one of those tourist trap Times Square stores (e.g., M&M World).

In fact, the catalogue, which was printed and bound, allows for many of the pieces a better view than possible in the museum – for sculpture, the illustrations are usually enlarged in the catalogue, and with a magnifying glass, it is possible to discern far more detail than one could see in the poorly-lit exhibit.

This experience has made me think more about the advantages of simulacra. My next post is about more levels of simulara.

Blogs as weapons

2009-05-05T11:56:00.001-07:00

It’s all a bit over the top (and likely to be ruled unconstitutional as well), but here is a link to proposed legislation regulating blogs. This is a bill which seems unlikely to ever make it out of committee.

Still, one can fantasize. Most of us have too much respect for free speech to ever consider supporting something like this, but it is amusing to consider what would happen, for example, if legislation regarding bloggers who post book reviews required that the bloggers have actually read the books they review.

Frozen pizza and Bible commentaries

2009-05-05T01:53:00.001-07:00

There is something slightly miraculous to me about the frozen pizza one can buy at the store. One simply unwraps it, heats it in an oven (convection ovens work particularly well) and in 10 minutes one has, in most cases, an exceptionally delicious pizza. I’ve actually cooked bread. While the local pizzeria may be able to produce an even more delicious pie (although, the best of the frozen pizzas I’ve had can hold their own), by the time I bring such a pizza home, it’s cooled slightly and can’t compete with the crisp, super-delicious taste treat that comes out of my oven. So despite its drawbacks, frozen pizza is frankly pretty good.

The disturbing aspect of frozen pizza is that it is just too easy. Right now it is 12:15 on a Tuesday morning; while I undoubtedly could find some pizza parlor to which I might schlep over and order pizza, it certainly does not compare in convenience to the frozen pizza in my freezer – a variety of delicious tastes, available in 10 minutes –anytime I desire it.

And so, there is something slightly wicked about frozen pizza. It has taken the ceremony out of eating pizza. No longer am I going out with friends and sitting in the pizzeria, waiting for the pizza to come out and be served. The aspect of locality of space is gone (the pizza is cooked in my house, with me in my bathrobe, rather than at the restaurant where it is formally served by waiters); the aspect of ceremony is gone (I cook the pizza because I enjoy it, and not for the ambience of the pizza parlor and to chat with friends); the aspect of locality of time is gone (whenever I am peckish – at 3 in the morning or at 2:30 in the afternoon, the pizza is available when I need it.)

Consider the Saturday Matinee Broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera of New York. Of course, in the highest society (if one were living in New York), actual attendance – locality in space – was preserved. This was an event, one dresses up for it, brings in a libretto – and enjoys a magnificent performance. But America – at least outside of New York and the wealthy circles – soon learned to love the Texaco broadcasts. They were magnificent, and live (thus preserving the locality of time). Moreover, the supplemental features soon learned to take on their own life (indeed, Father M. Owen Lee’s witty intermission commentary has been anthologized in a number of volumes, such as this one.) This was pure middle-brow joy – performances where all America was democratic – all America was constructing mental images of the staging, listening to the live Met broadcast. Even listening on my own as a kid growing up, I felt I was a member of the Metropolitan Opera.

Of course the Metropolitan Matinee Broadcasts still continue (you can find the details here). And, of course, you can always listen to a streaming station, such as WQXR in New York, to listen to the broadcast – a little less “live” after Internet latency, but perhaps sufficiently close in time to count as a shared group experience with the other listeners across the US.

But things are a bit different now. The frozen pizza level of convenience has begun to emerge. You can sign up for the Met Player and watch, on your computer, 20 high definition television broadcasts, 42 ordinary television broadcasts, and 150 radio broadcasts. These are available anytime you wish. (Many of these are available on DVD and CD should you prefer to avoid using a computer). And now the MET rebroadcasts live performances in high definition in movie theaters across the country. I must confess I have not attended one of these – my home projection system is better than many theaters, and is certainly more convenient. And now there is a permanent Sirius XM radio station (indeed, as I am typing this, I am listening to Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis on XM satellite radio.)

Now in many ways this far more convenient, and not just as a way of watching opera anywhere and anytime. I can pull out my opera commentaries (there are a vast number – more than you likely imagine) and follow along with a written lecture teaching me about the salient features of the opera to which I am listening to. But in another sense, a cord has been broken – I have moved to the frozen pizza model – I am no loner sharing space, time, and ceremony with others listening to an opera.

Now, I wish to speak about Bibles. For me, listening to the Bible is a fixed even in time and space. According the story, the Torah was given to Moses at Sinai, and entire books (e.g., Deuteronomy) are records of speeches by prophets. There can be little doubt that both oral and written transmission figured heavily. But for the synagogue, the oral transmission happens when the cantor lifts the Torah and reads the words, off of the ancient sheets of animal skin parchment, written in the classic way. And it seems to me the same in other congregations – when the Bible is read from the grand lectionary volume or chanted in Latin, Greek, Slavonic, or any other language – when the preacher opens his leather bound volume and says “let us turn to this book at this chapter” and starts reading aloud – these all create strong holy moments for us bound up in space and time and community and ceremony. We can listen to an MP3 reading of Scripture on our iPod, but it is not at all the same. It’s the frozen pizza level.

But for me, the most remarkable thing is the Bible class. Here, we have seen some remarkable commentary forms that truly bring to the reader much of the experience of such a class. There are hundreds of different study Bibles, each with advantages and disadvantages, but at the end of the day, I think the most serious ones recreating the experience of a secular or mainstream religious classroom share these characteristics: long book introductions that introduce the theme of individual books, detailed annotations addressing individual phrases of interest and larger sections in the text, and then detailed essays addressing points of interest. Such a volume is, in many ways, a course in a volume – ready to replay in the reader’s head as he reads the Bible.

Notable in particular are the excellent Oxford Study Bibles;

The RSV-based New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha, expanded edition still regarded as the academic conservative standard bearer of study Bibles. The commentary and introductions are terse and intelligent, and the 45 pages of essays are brief but useful.
The NRSV-based New Oxford Annotanted Bible with the Apocrypha Augmented Third Edition is perhaps the most popular text used in college courses today. It features considerably longer book introductions, somewhat longer commentary (and, its critics claim, more liberal commentary) and the essays have been expanded to 100 pages (and because of the way they are printed, actually represent closer to 150 pages). This is a book that one can actually sit down with and learn from directly.
The NJPS-based Oxford Jewish Study Bible represents an attempt to put secular commentary on the Hebrew Bible in a standard format. The typesetting is beautiful, but the greatest value comes from the long 300+ pages of highly intelligent essays (again, printed densely – probably closer to 500 pages in they were printed in standard format.) Because of those essays and the extended commentary, this book has quickly become (according to an unscientific survey I conducted) the leading text for courses in the Hebrew Bible in secular institutions.
The rather different NAB-based Oxford Catholic Study Bible, 2nd edition. Because the NAB translation includes extensive notes and book introductions as part of its standard text, this volume includes an entirely separate 525 page long commentary, which is indexed in the Biblical text. The introductory commentary is useful, but the experience is a bit like using a single volume commentary, and perhaps there are better choices (such as the Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible discussed below.) Still, one cannot but help sense the enthusiasm of one Amazon reviewer who wrote about it being a supplement for RCIA classes.
Now we move into non-Oxford Bibles, the first being the Society of Biblical Literature-sponsored NRSV-based HarperCollins Study Bible, 2nd edition (with Apocrypha). Similar in many ways to the New Oxford Annotated Bibles (but without the supplementary essays), I am less fond of this volume with its poor production values sloppy editing, and heavily redundant notes. It is less a guide to broader themes in the text, and more a commentary on individual verses. Still, the actual contributors are known for their high pedigree and this is a useful reference volume for me.
Abingdon’s NRSV-based New Interpreter’s Study Bible (with Apocrypha) is especially useful because it mixes scholarly commentary with a generally liberal outlook on scriptural and pastoral issues. The notes here are long and look more like mini-lectures in some cases, and short explanatory essays (as well as book introductions) are scattered throughout the book. Someone dissatisfied with the dry tone of the above volumes will find this book to be the most like a lecture course.
It does not contain a Bible translation, but the single volume Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible deserves special mention – it is perhaps the closest to a careful set of analytical lectures on the Bible, and as a separate single-volume commentary can be used with your favorite translation.
An unusual and highly intelligent stand-alone single volume commentary that deserves special mention is Rober Alter and Frank Kermode’s Literary Guide to the Bible (Harvard University Press). This work surveys the entire length of Scripture with highly opinionated comment on literary features of the Bible (a fact often underplayed in most commentaries) It is not a verse-by-verse or section-by-section as with the above commentaries, but rather is a book-by-book discussion of literary techniques from the word and phrase level to broad thematic themes. This book has, more than any other, influenced my thinking about the Bible, and I found it to be revelatory in a way that few other commentaries are. This book also very much feels like a series of long lectures – I can smell the chalk dust as I read it.

To me, these volumes are a bit like frozen pizza. They are incredibly convenient – you can pick one up at any time and enjoy it, and while they may fall short of a full lecture-based course, they are nutritious and provide the next best thing. If one works through one of these study Bibles, one will have an excellent grasp of Scripture.

These volume reproduce well enough the experience of sitting in a secular or mainstream seminary classroom, but what about different forms of teaching. For example, in Judaism, shiurim and chavrusa study, together with great use of medieval commentaries, provides a fundamentally different type of learning experience. In my next entry, I will consider the “frozen pizza” of Jewish study Bibles – works that help to simulate the unique form of Jewish pedagogical method.

Chinese Internet Censorship – See it for yourself

2009-04-28T10:56:00.001-07:00

From Freedom to Tinker:

You probably know already that the Chinese government censors Internet traffic. But you might not have known that you can experience this censorship yourself. Here's how:

(1) Open up another browser window or tab, so you can browse without losing this page.

(2) In the other window, browse to baidu.com. This is a search engine located in China.

(3) Search for an innocuous term such as "freedom to tinker". You'll see a list of search results, sent back by Baidu's servers in China.

(4) Now return to the main page of baidu.com, and search for "Falun Gong". [Falun Gong is a dissident religious group that is banned in China.]

(5) At this point your browser will report an error -- it might say that the connection was interrupted or that the page could not be loaded. What really happened is that the Great Firewall of China saw your Internet packets, containing the forbidden term "Falun Gong", and responded by disrupting your connection to Baidu.

(6) Now try to go back to the Baidu home page. You'll find that this connection is disrupted too. Just a minute ago, you could visit the Baidu page with no trouble, but now you're blocked. The Great Firewall is now cutting you off from Baidu, because you searched for Falun Gong.

(7) After a few minutes, you'll be allowed to connect to Baidu again, and you can do more experiments.

Sugawara and the Secrets of Calligraphy

2009-04-27T19:52:00.001-07:00

One of the miracles of our age is the ability, through recorded material (the DVD in particular) to witness extended performances that one would normally never have access to.

Do you wish to watch the complete Shakespeare War of the Roses series? Do you want to watch all of Shakespeare? Do you want to watch all of the Mozart operas? Do you want to watch an orchestra perform the complete Beethoven symphony cycle (or a second Beethoven symphony cycle?) Do you want to watch the full Wagner Ring cycle? Do you want to watch a second Ring cycle? A third Ring cycle? A feminist Ring cycle?

This list could be continued for a very long time. I am fortunate to live in a cultural center, so I have had a chance to see Ring cycles, Shakespeare cycles, and Beethoven cycles with my own eyes – but those were frankly once in a lifetime events. (And some cycles are simply impossible – even if one were in Salzburg in 2006, it was simply logistically impossible to watch all 22 Mozart operas performed in his 250th year.)

Now, if this is true for Western performances, it is even more true for Eastern performances. Major Chinese and Japanese dramatic works are typically from 6 to 24 hours long, and thus in an evening out, one will only get scenes from a performance. While these can be quite satisfying, they simply do not reflect the genius of the author.

A particular wonderful and hard-to-see type of performance is Japanese bunraku – the Japanese puppet theater. This is quite different from Western puppet theater – the puppets are half-sized representations of human and each is manipulated by a team of three performers, which will often be present on stage. A shamisen player performs music while a singer chants the dialogue. Because the performance is small, even the two large bunraku theaters (the Osaka Bunraku National Theater and the bunraku stage at the Tokyo National Theater) can only seat a few hundred attendees – and these performances are sporadic. Still, bunraku theater is something special – whenever I visit Japan, I try to attend a performance, even if I have to substantially alter my schedule to attend. I have never been disappointed. A single ticket to an afternoon matinee performance can easily cost $100 to $200. Most of the kabuki repertoire is adapted from the Japanese puppet theater (and thus come the famous scenes where the human kabuki performers mimic puppet characters.)

One of the more famous plays in the bunraku repertoire is Sugawara and the Secrets of Calligraphy. This script has been translated into English (and I can recommend that translation). Scenes from the play can be found in a cheap Dover volume and in an older Oxford anthology. There is a synopsis of the play here; it is loosely based on a real historical character, Sugawara no Michizane (845-903). Sugawara was a calligraphy master and one of the two leading ministers in the royal court; and the play discusses the manuevers – it concerns the political machinations as his rival Fujiwara no Tokihira tricks the emperor into exiling Sugawara. Sugawara was a leading poet, and the 1746 play is a masterwork of Japanese writing, with long poetic sections.

Now, I’ve not come across a complete performance of this play – even one spread over several days or weeks. Indeed, several parts of the play – including the first scene and especially the fifth scene are almost never performed. So you can imagine my excitement when the Japanese public broadcaster NHK released a complete nine and half hour DVD set of the performance. (If you want to shop around, the Japanese DVD code is NSDX-13208.) Amazon Japan sold me a copy – with overnight shipping from Japan, for $140 – less than I have paid for some single bunraku tickets (the box set was released on April 24th, and it was mailed via FedEx from Amazon on April 23rd at 3PM, so that its buyers could have their copies on the next day. My copy arrived in the US on April 24th – just before 10AM). But my real delight came when I started watching.

This is no ordinary DVD set – it is a compilation of performances drawn over a period of five decades – including a few classics in black and white:

Act I Scene 1
The Imperial Palace
(filmed in May 1972)
Act I Scene 2
The Bank of the Kamo River
(filmed in September 1996)
Act I Scene 3
Transmission of the Secrets
(filmed in September 1996)
Act I Scene 4
Outside the Gate
(filmed in September 1996)
Act II Scene 1
Sweet Words on the Journey
(filmed in May 1972)
Act II Scene 2
Awaiting the Tide at Yasui
(filmed in May 1972)
Act II Scene 3
The Chastising
(filmed in April 2002)
Act II Scene 4
Rosy Breaks the Dawn
(filmed in January 1983)
Act II Scene 5
Sugawara’s Farewell
(filmed in January 1983)
Act III Scene 1
Breaking the Carriage Apart
(filmed in 1959)
Act III Scene 2
Sake from a Tea-whisk
(filmed in April 1989)
Act III Scene 3
The Quarrel
(filmed in April 1989)
Act III Scene 4
The Death of Sakuramaru
(filmed in April 1989)
Act IV Scene 1
Mount Tenpai
(filmed in April 2002)
Act IV Scene 2
North Saga Village
(filmed in May 1972)
Act IV Scene 3
The New Student
(filmed in April 1989)
Act IV Scene 4
The Village School
(filmed in April 1989)
Act V
Extraordinary Events at the Palace
(filmed in May 1972)

This extraordinary juxtaposition of filmings from 1959, 1972, 1989, 1996, and 2002 not only allows one to see a complete play that is almost never performed complete, it allows us to compare classic performances from across three generations. The effect is intoxicating.

The box set includes a full copy of the script – in Japanese. Fortunately, the DVDs include full English subtitles. The box set is region-free and NTSC, so it can play on any American DVD player. Because of the age of the films, all footage is in 4:3 format.

Most likely, this box set will be too expensive for casual purchase, but it is bound to appeal to aficionados. But I do encourage you to ask your library to acquire a copy – watching this set allows you to experience something you are unlikely to ever encounter – a complete performance with expert troupes of this classic play.

Edmund Wilson’s Bible translation advice

2009-04-26T21:52:00.001-07:00

Edmund Wilson, the 20th century’s most influential American literary critic, wrote about Bible translations. You may have read one of his comments about the language in the King James Version, because it was cited by Alter and Kermode and in their Literary Guide to the Bible:

that old tongue, with its clang and flavor

(I am amused by the many bloggers who insist on adding a “u” to flavor in this quote – seemingly forgetting that Wilson was born in New Jersey and educated at Princeton – an unnecessary Anglicization!)

I reproduce below the entire paragraph in which this quote appears, from Wilson’s A Piece of My Mind. Because it is a long paragraph, I have broken it up into smaller paragraphs here:

A similar revelation comes out of the Hebrew Bible.

The Hebrew religious conceptions, the imagery of the Hebrew scriptures have been an element of literature in English from the King James translation on. This is, of course, especially strong in Milton, who knew Hebrew at first hand; but the pregnant phrases of the Bible, its apocalyptic visions, are a part of the texture of our language.

The culture of no other Western people seems so deeply to have been influenced by these: something in the English character, something mystical, tough and fierce, has a special affinity to Hebrew. Yet the strong Hebrew strain in English is to some extent at variance with influence of the Greek and Roman tradition. In proportion as one inclines toward this latter, one is likely to the resent the other.

In my own case, I followed, in my youth, the line of reaction then common against old-fashioned Bible-worship, the recoil from the rigors of Calvinism. Yet my grandfather on my father’s side was a Presbyterian minister, though a very moderate one, and when my parents went to church on Sunday, they would leave me with my formidable grandmother, who undertook my instruction in the Scriptures. These bleak and severe Sunday mornings, though they left me with a respect for the Bible, had the effect of antagonizing me against it, and this attitude was tacitly encouraged by the moral sabotage of my mother, whose family, once rigorous New Englanders, had scrapped the old-time religion and still retained a certain animus toward it.

At college, I was enchanted by classical Greek, and, though I made a point of reading through the Gospels, I told myself how immeasurably I preferred Socrates to Jesus. Later on, I elected the second half of a course in Old Testament literature. I already admired Ecclesiastes, and – though finding Ezekiel tedious – I tried to do justice to the Prophets.

It was not til much later, in my fifties, that I acquired a little Hebrew, and for a third time, I had the experience of finding myself in contact with something in its pure and original form that I had previous only known in compounds or adaptations. The strangeness of this element in English became a good deal more comprehensible when was able to take account, not only of the structural differences between the Semitic languages and the Teutonic and Latin ones, but also of the difference from our of the oriental way of apprehending the world that these structural divergences reflected.

I have written about this elsewhere at length, so I merely want here to note that an acquaintance with the Hebrew bible is at once to make the biblical narratives sound a good deal more simple and natural – the archaic Jacobean English still today partly screens them from us – and to compel us to pay attention to certain fundamental discrepancies between the Hebrew way of thinking and ours. The language of Jehovah and his worshippers, which seems in English grandiose and mysterious, may not, even in Gesenius’ dictionary, become to us readily intelligible and render itself in familiar terms; but here at least we can meet at first hand this vocabulary and these locutions, try to form some idea of their meaning to the men who first coined and employed them to deal with their objective and subjective worlds – or rather, with the moral continuum that embraced the phenomena of both.

It is useful to approach the Bible with a scholarly dictionary and commentary – for otherwise it is bound, more or less, to remain an esoteric text, a repository of tales for children, a dream book, a compendium of incantations. The Jews – who have lost touch with the original text – have been interpreting it for a couple of thousand years in even more far-fetched and fantastic ways. The Christians have been equally fantastic – beginning with the extravagances of Justin Martyr – in reading back into it the coming of Christ; and the old lady who was infinitely grateful for that blessed word Mesopotamia was only an extreme case of the Christian dependence on Scripture for this sort of consolation.

Some of the oddest features of the bible, as we get it through our Jacobean version, are simply due to mistranslations. So Joseph’s coat of many colors was in reality a coat with long sleeves; so Moses had sprouting from his head, not horns, but rays of light. Yet the horns of Moses and the many-colored coat are as hard to get out of one’s head, unless one sees what they are in the original, as the images in nursery rhymes.

Many mysteries, of course, remain. Some are puzzles of vocabulary or grammar: there are, in the text of the Bible, something like five hundred words that do not occur anywhere else, and the copyists have made mistakes. But it is difficult, also, to adjust oneself to certain fundamental features of the Hebrew way of looking at things, and, though there is constant speculation on these matters, they are now so remote from our habits of though that some scholars believe we must give them up.

In any case, we find here – with the language they have minted – the religio-legal codes and the lofty prophetic poetry, the wisdom derived form experience and the permanently significant legends, the influence of which, refracted by the organisms of other mentalities, have reached distant countries and distant times.

Here it is, that old tongue, with its clang and its flavor, sometimes rank, sometimes sweet, sometimes bitter; here it is in it concise solid stamp. Other cultures have felt its impact, and none – in the West, at least – seems quite to accommodate it. Yet we find we have been living with it all our lives.

Happy Birthday

2009-04-23T19:19:00.001-07:00

2009 is the 400th anniversary of the publication of Shakespeare’s nasty little poems (all with twisted barbs) known as his Sonnets, and many organizations are celebrating the anniversary today, on this day celebrated as Shakespeare’s (unknown) birthday: St. George’s Day.

Google UK has celebrated this convergence of celebrations with one of its clever doodles; this one reprising the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet:

(You can see this in color here)

To celebrate the day, here is one of the less nasty poems, although it still has its bitter thorn:

Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took,
And each doth good turns now unto the other:
When that mine eye is famish'd for a look,
Or heart in love with sighs himself doth smother,
With my love's picture then my eye doth feast
And to the painted banquet bids my heart;
Another time mine eye is my heart's guest
And in his thoughts of love doth share a part:
So, either by thy picture or my love,
Thyself away art resent still with me;
For thou not farther than my thoughts canst move,
And I am still with them and they with thee;
Or, if they sleep, thy picture in my sight
Awakes my heart to heart's and eye's delight.

Bill Nye and the Fundamentalists

2009-04-23T16:07:00.001-07:00

From the Waco Tribune (April 2006):

Audience members who expected to see Bill Nye “The Science Guy” conduct experiments and wow their children received quite a surprise Wednesday when Nye spoke at McLennan Community College. . . .

The Emmy-winning scientist angered a few audience members when he criticized literal interpretation of the biblical verse Genesis 1:16, which reads: “God made two great lights - the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars.”

He pointed out that the sun, the “greater light,” is but one of countless stars and that the “lesser light” is the moon, which really is not a light at all, rather a reflector of light.

A number of audience members left the room at that point, visibly angered by what some perceived as irreverence.

“We believe in a God!” exclaimed one woman as she left the room with three young children.

Nye also was critical of what he said was governmental agencies’ lack of action, even lack of understanding, in protecting the Earth from global warming and wasted resources.

Nye’s educational science show won 28 Emmy awards during its television run from 1992-98. . . .

How an Iranian Diplomat to the UN World Conference on Racism celebrated Holocaust memorial day

2009-04-22T19:55:00.001-07:00

By shouting “Zio-nazi” at Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel:

Article

You tube footage

My life (part 2)

2009-04-19T10:15:00.001-07:00

Here is my dream from which I have only recently awakened:

I was serving on the tenure committee evaluating St. John Chrysostom (archbishop of Constantinople).

Now, this dream was, as academic dreams go, a real humdinger, with many twists and interesting moments. On waking, I wanted to blog all about it – but then I had a thought – the proceedings of a tenure committee are sealed – they are highly confidential. So, I then find myself wondering – am I bound by a privacy oath that I took in a dream? I haven’t exactly resolved that one yet.

So, you’ll all need to wait until a little later to see if I can release the committee’s recommendation.

This is my life

2009-04-14T19:43:00.001-07:00

From alarm clock to leaving for work in five minutes. Just like Tomonori Jinnai.

(Note: even if you don’t follow all of Jinnai’s techniques, note his superior tie knotting technique.)

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qin4UptOEsI

We would be as happy as Larry if it were not for the rats

2009-03-31T21:59:00.001-07:00

This is favorite April Fool’s post so far.

Another good one.

Mathematical models for brain tumors and divorces

2009-03-31T11:49:00.001-07:00

James Murray at Oxford describes two mathematical model exercises: one to model brain tumors and one to model the success of marriages based on a 15 minute interview.

The description of the talk is here. The official stream page is here. The actual real media stream (if you wish to download the lecture) is here.

Resurrection

2009-03-30T22:36:00.001-07:00

From the Washington Post:

Accepting a plea bargain that her attorney described as unprecedented in American jurisprudence, a 22-year-old Maryland woman yesterday agreed to cooperate in the prosecution of other defendants in the death of her son under the condition that charges against her be dropped if the child rises from the dead.

“It also is specifically noted,” Baltimore Circuit Court Judge Timothy Doory said in court as he described the plea bargain to the boy's mother, “that if the victim in this case, Javon Thompson, is resurrected, as you still hold some hope he will be, you may withdraw the plea, and the charges will be nolle prossed [withdrawn] against you.”

The boy's mother, Ria Ramkissoon, is shaping up as prosecutors' star witness against a 40-year-old Baltimore woman named Queen Antoinette. Prosecutors allege that Queen Antoinette led a small cult, called One Mind Ministries, based in a West Baltimore rowhouse. In early 2007, prosecutors say, Queen Antoinette instructed Ramkissoon and others to deprive Javon of food and water because he didn't say “amen” before breakfast. . . .

Online stopwatch

2009-03-30T13:33:00.001-07:00

Here is a simple, but quite useful, stopwatch web page.

Shakespeare on DVD news

2009-03-30T12:06:00.001-07:00

IAN MCKELLAN’S KING LEAR

The Trevor Nunn/Ian McKellen King Lear (shown last week in the US) is coming out on DVD in the US on April 21 (current Amazon price $22.49). The work is currently available both on DVD and Blu-Ray in the UK (the Amazon price for both is £12.98, minus the VAT refund if you are ordering from the US). I liked this production quite a bit, but Louise Kennedy (in the Boston Globe) states that it is merely “pretty decent”:

For better and worse, this isn't a film of the live performance, but an adaptation made especially for television. It’s better because codirectors Trevor Nunn (who helmed the stage version) and Chris Hunt can use the strengths of TV, such as closeups and intimately pitched conversational tones - ideal for the intrigues and family quarrels swirling around Shakespeare's aging king. But it’s worse because it robs us of the chance to see McKellen as a stage actor, rather than as the familiar filmic presence of, say, Lord of the Rings. More troublingly, it also transforms Lear from one of the world's great plays into a pretty decent TV movie. . . . That tradeoff, along with some fairly heavy cutting in key scenes and some odd choices in others - showing us the Fool’s hanging, for example, though Shakespeare has Lear mention it only late in the day - diminishes the power of this performance. Still, it’s better than not having McKellen's Lear at all.

AGE OF KINGS

The classic BBC Age of Kings series (15+ hours presenting the Richard II, Henry IV (parts 1 and 2), Henry V, Henry VI (parts 1, 2, and 3), Richard III is being released tomorrow on DVD in the US (Amazon price $34.99). J. Hoberman in the New York Times gives a review and a personal memory of watching the series as a child:

A 15-part chronicle that drew upon Richard II, the two-part Henry IV, Henry V, the seldom staged three-part Henry VI and Richard III, the project was conceived by Peter Dews, a 30-year-old stage director and former schoolmaster, who persuaded the BBC to embark upon its first extended Shakespeare series. Mr. Dews’s production would be additionally remarkable for being broadcast live, with a continuing cast of young, largely unknown players, including Sean Connery as the fiery Hotspur, Robert Hardy (known these days as Harry Potter’s minister of magic, Cornelius Fudge) as Prince Hal and Judi Dench in the role of his flirtatious future bride, Katherine of France.

Mr. Dews divided the cycle into 75-minute episodes, each with a dramatic title — The Hollow Crown, The Band of Brothers, Uneasy Lies the Head — and an opening fanfare composed by the master of the queen’s music, Arthur Bliss. Cuts were made, particularly in Henry VI, the actors’ delivery was rapid and prompted by a percussive score, even a bit rushed. The mise-en-scène was modest, if not frugal; the action was staged on an artfully cramped set that served variously as royal bedchamber, battlefield and Eastcheap tavern. There seems to have been only two cameras. Close-ups were common, and a number of scenes were shot as if through a window or against a grille.

In short, An Age of Kings was quintessential early television, immediate and intimate. (“Great men in small rooms,” was Mr. Dews’s motto.) The shows were broadcast live in Britain, beginning in the spring of 1959. If this was Shakespeare as soap opera, the British critics did not complain. On the contrary: reviews were supportive, praising both the acting and the direction. (“You are certain to have seen far, far less good at the Old Vic,” a reviewer for The Observer wrote.) The first BBC series imported to America, An Age of Kings would be telecast in the United States in a somewhat more cinematic form as a series of edited kinescopes, black-and-white 16-millimeter films shot off the original television monitor. . . .

Viewed today An Age of Kings bears little resemblance to public television as we know it. There’s nothing genteel about Mr. Dews’s production; there are no elegant drawing rooms or scenic locations. The series’s success may have made television safe for Masterpiece Theater, but its true successors are Mad Men and The Wire, serial dramas that strain the confines of the small screen with their large characters, compelling situations and narrative density, if not the power of Shakespearean English.

On the same day, there is a US DVD release of Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II (Amazon price $13.49) starring Ian McKellan, filmed from the 1969 Edinburgh Festival production. This production was notorious for including the first kiss between two men on British television. (This is not to be confused Derek Jarman’s affected 1991 film version.

JOHN BARTON’S PLAYING SHAKESPEARE

The DVD set of a legendary set of acting workshops is coming out on June 2 (Amazon price: $71.99). Previously, the sessions were available in video tape in very expensive editions (it did have a showing on educational television in the early 80’s). The workshops are lead by John Barton of the Royal Shakespeare Company and featuring actors such as Peggy Ashcroft, Judi Dench, Ben Kingsley, Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, and David Suchet. An edited transcript of the sessions was released as a book.

DAVID TENNANT’S HAMLET

The Telegraph is reporting that David Tennant’s aborted Hamlet will be coming out on DVD:

The 37-year-old Dr. Who actor and the entire cast of the RSC production are preparing to make a film version of the play in June to record for posterity his portrayal, which was described by some as the greatest Hamlet of his generation. Speaking at a lunch held at the Haymarket Hotel, Oliver Ford Davies, 69, who was nominated for his portrayal of Polonius, tells me: “We are intending to film it over two or three weeks in June. It won’t be a full feature film as there isn’t time but it will certainly be more than just the filming of the stage. It will be fantastic to work together again.”

(HT: Shakesepare Geek)

David Tennant also participated in a reading of some of the Sonnets recorded by Naxos. The CD is coming out shortly (Amazon price $11.01) or via download for £6.00. Here is an audio sample: Sonnet 2.

Keeping things real

2009-03-27T03:46:00.001-07:00

Microsoft has just launched a particularly powerful advertisement (click on the link to see it) against its foe Apple – a very real presentation by a woman who – being limited to a $1000 budget, says “I’m not cool enough to be a Mac person.” Ouch, that line completely deflates the Mac pretentiousness. (Me, I run a combination of Windows, and Linux, and if I could, I want to run all Linux, the operating system I most love.)

It’s important to keep things real. Some of us take pleasure in having computers with a cool logo – and some of us take pleasure in playing a role playing something we aren’t. I’ve recently been watching someone who desperately wants to play the role of the scholar, and he has been duly generating posts on a short book in the Bible – drawing heavily from the Anchor Bible commentary and a few remarks by celebrated Harvard professor written in a Study Bible. There’s nothing at all wrong with that: but it is important to remember that typing an idea doesn’t make one the discoverer of an idea. I value most those who bring something new to the table, some originality, some creative thought. Those are my heroes.

The Apple computer is nothing short of brilliant. However, choosing to use it does not make one brilliant. Shakespeare was a brilliant author – watching one of his plays does not make us brilliant. The Bible is full of many deep truths and profoundly beautiful language – but reading it does not make us wise or eloquent. For me, it is only by fighting, fighting, fighting with the text, with ideas – but fighting honestly – not playing childish one-upsmanship games – that I can truly learn something and prepare myself to bring something new to the table.

So rather than spewing out cliches, I want to read, understand, argue, and come up with deeper insights. So much of what I see on blogs is prejudging – as if one could measure the quality of a book without reading it – and in the end, that sort of posing comes off as so much stoogery.

These Microsoft commercials will powerful because they are honest. I hope we can all be as honest. That’s the first step towards real scholarship.

Das Kapital on stage

2009-03-20T13:40:00.001-07:00

There are numerous productions of Das Kapital coming to a stage near you.

In Beijing (see also here):

Drawing inspiration from a best-selling Japanese manga adaptation of Das Kapital, Chinese theater producers are planning to bring Marx's masterpiece to the stage.

Yang Shaolin, general manager of the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center, told the Wen Hui Bao that, together with Fudan University economics professor Zhang Jun and other experts, he is preparing a dramatization of Das Kapital. They've already decided on a director: He Nian, who directed the stage adaptation of the hit martial-arts spoof My Own Swordsman (武林外传).

He Nian says he will combine elements from animation, Broadway musicals, and Las Vegas stage shows to bring Marx's economic theories to life as a trendy, interesting, and educational play.

In Tokyo:

Delivering this timely staging is the cutting-edge Berlin-based Rimini Protokoll company, beloved of audiences at last year's Tokyo International Festival (TIF) for its searing exploration of the lives of model-train obsessives in Mnemopark. This time, as TIF morphs into Festival/Tokyo, the troupe is back with its 2007 masterpiece, Karl Marx: Capital, Volume I.

But there is more – look for revivals of this classic 1931 version:

As bizarre as this may sound, a theatrical Das Kapital is not an unprecedented undertaking. Japanese writer, translator, and civil servant Sakamoto Masaru (阪本勝) wrote a mammoth stage adaptation of Marx's masterpiece (戯曲資本論, 1931) that was translated into Chinese by Fei Mingjun and published in 1949 as A Dramatic Capital (戏剧资本论).

In comic books, Das Kapital is on top of the charts in Japan (see also here).

(If you are interested in experience Das Kapital in the old fashioned way – and in English translation, I recommend this volume.)

Quoted (another reason people hate professors)

2009-03-20T11:16:00.001-07:00

From a New York Times story on controversial Joseph Biederman who violated ethical guidelines:

In a contentious Feb. 26 deposition between Dr. Biederman and lawyers for the states, he was asked what rank he held at Harvard. “Full professor,” he answered.

“What’s after that?” asked a lawyer, Fletch Trammell.

“God,” Dr. Biederman responded.

March 17: Speaking up for snakes

2009-03-17T12:02:00.001-07:00

Today is a traditional day to honor the contributions of Ireland – and surely, they are many. I salute the many Irish writers who have deeply influenced my thinking, among them:

John Banville
John Bell
George Berkeley
Samuel Beckett
George Boole
Robert Boyle
William Congreve
Oliver Goldsmith
William Hamilton
Seamus Heaney (my friend!)
Chaim Herzog
James Joyce
Iris Murdoch
Edna O’Brien
George Bernard Shaw
Laurence Sterne
Bram Stoker
Jonathan Swift
John Millington Synge
John Toland
Oscar Wilde
William Butler Yeats

But I want to speak up for snakes. I disagree with Patrick’s decision to drive them out of Ireland. Snakes are a marvelous creature of God, and not to be treated as something to be discarded or harmed.

Now of course, there is the historical fact that there were no snakes in Ireland – so the story of Patrick is really a story of religious intolerance: perhaps Patrick launched a mission of ethnic cleansing against the Druids of the time, who often used snake symbols.

And if this is the case, then we must admit that in many quarters of America, we are not much further advanced than Patrick. Those who launch invective against free-thinkers are miniature Patricks, spreading a message of intolerance. I am thinking in particular of a set of messages urging individuals to launch a jihad against Unitarians (which in this case is broadly interpreted – really it is a message of intolerance against free thinkers).

The first use of “free thinker” was, according to some accounts used by the Irish philospher George Berkeley to describe the Irish philosopher John Toland, who was, in fact, what we might call a Unitarian – in his dramatic and important works Christianity Not Mysterious and Letter to Serena.

So, on this marvelous anniversary, I side with the snakes, the free thinkers, the great Irish intellectuals, and the Irish people. And may our modern intolerant Patricks be enlightened.

Photograph of the auteurs

2009-03-15T16:39:00.001-07:00

Wim Wenders describes how he came to took a photograph of the Francis Ford Coppola family together with Akiro Kurosawa. As a bonus, Wender’s feet themselves appear. Even better, the photo is in black and white.