misc quotes I

I'm going to add some additional texts here that may or may not be interesting or useful to the project, but I thought it'd be good for them to be available in one central place. Here's something that I thought may be useful in thinking about Clement and the embedding of ideas of exile into the Christian journey:

They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them.

Hebrews 11: 13-16

Eumaeus and Emmaus

This is turning into a day of frenzied posting but it suddenly struck me that there is an interesting coincidence in the names Eumaeus (the swine-herd who looks after the disguised Odysseus when he first arrives back in Ithaca) and Emmaus (the village on the road to which Jesus appears after the crucifixion). In both cases, the story turns upon non-recognition and the debt of hospitality owed to a stranger.

This coincidence has been noted before and you can actually watch a conference presentation on the subject by Kasper Bro Larsen here. It's the second embedded video on the page. I haven't watched the whole of it yet but Larsen's concern seems to be to read the Emmaus story (which appears in Luke 24, 13-35) in relation to a longer tradition of recognition stories, an early example of which is the story of Eumaeus.

ghost towns/sirens

On the one hand, this may be obvious, and, on the other, it may not be useful, but I just thought I'd post something about the fact that there is a connection between the thread on ghost towns and the thread on sirens. That connection lies in the fact that, on a number of occasions, the Septuagint presents ruined cities and destroyed communities as the haunts of sirens. This happens in Isaiah 13, 21-22, where the city is Babylon (see here), Isaiah 34, 13, where it is Edom (see here), Jeremiah 51, 39, where the reference is to the Chaldeans, again in Babylon (see here), and Micah 1, 8, where it is to Samaria (see here). So the ghost towns and the sirens potentially form one larger complex of imagery. (I ran into Hugh in the cafe the other day and mentioned these Biblical passages to him - he had some ideas about them and we said we'd get together for a chat about it soon. We haven't done that yet, so I must remember to drop him a line...)

serpent on a pole

OK, I may be showing my ignorance here but I wasn't entirely clear about the reference to the 'brazen serpent on a pole' in the hymn I've just quoted. For the record, it's a reference to the story in Numbers 21, 8-9, where God tells Moses how to protect the people from serpents:

And the LORD said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live.
And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.

There is a reference to this passage in John 3, 13-14, where the serpent on the pole is identified with Christ on the cross. It is the sequence where Jesus speaks with Nicodemus, the Pharisee:

And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up:
That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

So the hymn that I quoted alludes to two exilic experiences, one Jewish - the wandering of the Israelites in the wilderness - and one Greek - Eurydice's exile in the underworld. This makes me think of Levinas and Derrida, but let's not go there this morning :o)

Biblical Sirens: Micah 1, 8

And the last of those Biblical passages is Micah 1, 8, which is obviously another prophetic text. Here it is the destruction of Samaria that is prefigured:

She will mourn and lament and go about naked and without a garment and making a howling like the jackals and a mourning like the daughters of the sirens.

The Greek phrase is:

Biblical Sirens: Jeremiah 50, 39

For the sake of completeness, I'll post the last two passages of the Septuagint in which Sirens appear. The first is Jeremiah 50, 39, which is another prophecy of destruction, this time relating to the Chaldeans of Babylon:

False images shall appear upon these islands and the daughters of the sirens shall dwell there.

The relevant phrase in Greek is:

Biblical Sirens: Isaiah 43, 20

The fourth appearance of sirens in the Septuagint is particularly interesting for us, I think:

Behold I will do a new thing;
now it shall become visible:
I will even make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert.
Then shall the beasts of the field praise me
the sirens and the daughters of the ostriches,
because I give waters in the wilderness.

It's the combination of the sirens and the river that struck me particularly! The river here is a blessing (as it is in Gilfillan's quotation from Isaiah - well, actually, it's used there to figure the peace that would have followed from obedience to God's commandments). And this river waters the wilderness which is home to the sirens.

Biblical Sirens: Isaiah 34, 13

The Sirens appear a third time in Isaiah 34, 13. Here, as usual, is Rahner's translation:

Thorns grow up in their cities
and in their strong places.
It will be a dwelling-place for sirens
and a fold for ostriches.

Like the last one, this text comes from a prophecy of destruction - in this case, the destruction of Edom. Again, the Vulgate does not mention Sirens at all:

et orientur in domibus eius spinae et urticae et paliurus in munitionibus eius et erit cubile draconum et pascua strutionum

And the King James version has this:

And thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and brambles in the fortresses thereof: and it shall be an habitation of dragons, and a court for owls.

And the Greek phrase is:

Personally, I'm finding these images of destroyed cities interesting - but wait till you see the next passage! :o)

Biblical Sirens: Isaiah 13, 21-22

The second mention of Sirens in the Septuagint is in the book of Isaiah (13, 21-22) and Rahner translates it like this:

Now beasts make their homes there
and an empty echo is heard in the houses.
Sirens have their habitation there
and demons dance.
Ass-centaurs dwell there
and hedgehogs breed in the halls.

This comes from a passage of prophecy in which Isaiah describes the destruction of Babylon by the Medes - this is Babylon after its ruin. Again, other versions are interesting. The Vulgate has:

sed requiescent ibi bestiae et replebuntur domus eorum draconibus et habitabunt ibi strutiones et pilosi saltabunt ibi et respondebunt ibi ululae in aedibus eius et sirenae in delubris voluptatis

According to Rahner, this is the only passage in the Latin text that mentions Sirens (sirenae). He says: 'with one exception all these passages in Jerome avoid the Greek mistranslation, so that the Bible hardly brought the Roman Christian into direct contact with the Siren myth at all'. The King James version has:

But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces: and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged.

The relevant phrase in Greek is:

And, of course, we've talked about Isaiah before, again in connection with Gilfillan's visit to Itasca. (It was a passage from Isaiah that Gilfillan took as his text for the first sermon to be preached at the source of the Mississippi.)

Biblical Sirens: Job 30, 29-30

So, the first passage in the Septuagint to mention Sirens is in the book of Job (30, 29-30). This is Rahner's version of the text:

I am a brother to sirens
and a companion of ostriches.
My skin is black and falleth from me
and my bones are burned with heat.

Here Job is lamenting the afflictions he has suffered and the terms he uses suggest that his estrangement from God is a figurative exile in the desert. I notice that in the King James translation, we have 'a brother to owls', and in the Latin Vulgate, 'frater ... draconum'. The relevant phrase in Greek is:

I've mentioned Job on this blog before. It was when Gilfillan was writing about the shape of Lake Itasca and suggesting that it was an image of the Trinity, written into the heart of the North American continent. The quotation he uses comes from Job 19, 24 and my post is here.

Sirens in the Bible (oh yes!)

Having discussed the dual nature of the Sirens in Greek mythology, Hugo Rahner goes on to talk about the use of the word seirēnes in the Septuagint:

The reason why the symbolism developed around these figures continued for so long a period of time to be a living influence was that, when reading the Scriptures in his own tongue, the Greek Christian could find certain words there which acted as entry ports through which the imagery of profane mythology merged with the Christian interpretation of the Bible.

The Alexandrine translators who produced the Septuagint found six places in the ancient Hebrew books where there was a mention of mysterious beasts referred to as tannîm and benôt and ya'anâh, terms which mean literally "jackals" or "hen ostriches". They render these words by the
Greek Seirēnes (Sirens). What inspired this gross but most interesting mistranslation in the minds of these Hellenistic translators is a mystery which has hitherto remained unsolved. The result, however, is plain enough: for over a thousand years Greek Christians read the word "Sirens" in the passages concerned, and the association of ideas connected with these mystical beings, so universally familiar in the folk-lore of antiquity, was sufficiently strong to arouse in the Christian Greek much the same horror that these deadly creatures had inspired in pagan forerunners and contemporaries.

So, where do these mentions of Sirens appear? More on that later, but - by way of preview - we need to look at the books of Job, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Micah.

John 9

I'm still trying to find an electronic version of James Alison's essay but, in anticipation, here is the text it discusses - chapter 9 of the Gospel of John:

9:1 And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. 9:2 And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? 9:3 Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him. 9:4 I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work. 9:5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world. 9:6 When he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay, 9:7 And said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, (which is by interpretation, Sent.) He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing.

9:8 The neighbours therefore, and they which before had seen him that he was blind, said, Is not this he that sat and begged? 9:9 Some said, This is he: others said, He is like him: but he said, I am he. 9:10 Therefore said they unto him, How were thine eyes opened? 9:11 He answered and said, A man that is called Jesus made clay, and anointed mine eyes, and said unto me, Go to the pool of Siloam, and wash: and I went and washed, and I received sight. 9:12 Then said they unto him, Where is he? He said, I know not.

9:13 They brought to the Pharisees him that aforetime was blind. 9:14 And it was the sabbath day when Jesus made the clay, and opened his eyes. 9:15 Then again the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. He said unto them, He put clay upon mine eyes, and I washed, and do see. 9:16 Therefore said some of the Pharisees, This man is not of God, because he keepeth not the sabbath day. Others said, How can a man that is a sinner do such miracles? And there was a division among them. 9:17 They say unto the blind man again, What sayest thou of him, that he hath opened thine eyes? He said, He is a prophet.

9:18 But the Jews did not believe concerning him, that he had been blind, and received his sight, until they called the parents of him that had received his sight. 9:19 And they asked them, saying, Is this your son, who ye say was born blind? how then doth he now see? 9:20 His parents answered them and said, We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind: 9:21 But by what means he now seeth, we know not; or who hath opened his eyes, we know not: he is of age; ask him: he shall speak for himself. 9:22 These words spake his parents, because they feared the Jews: for the Jews had agreed already, that if any man did confess that he was Christ, he should be put out of the synagogue. 9:23 Therefore said his parents, He is of age; ask him.

9:24 Then again called they the man that was blind, and said unto him, Give God the praise: we know that this man is a sinner. 9:25 He answered and said, Whether he be a sinner or no, I know not: one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see. 9:26 Then said they to him again, What did he to thee? how opened he thine eyes? 9:27 He answered them, I have told you already, and ye did not hear: wherefore would ye hear it again? will ye also be his disciples? 9:28 Then they reviled him, and said, Thou art his disciple; but we are Moses' disciples. 9:29 We know that God spake unto Moses: as for this fellow, we know not from whence he is. 9:30 The man answered and said unto them, Why herein is a marvellous thing, that ye know not from whence he is, and yet he hath opened mine eyes. 9:31 Now we know that God heareth not sinners: but if any man be a worshipper of God, and doeth his will, him he heareth. 9:32 Since the world began was it not heard that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind. 9:33 If this man were not of God, he could do nothing. 9:34 They answered and said unto him, Thou wast altogether born in sins, and dost thou teach us? And they cast him out.

9:35 Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when he had found him, he said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God? 9:36 He answered and said, Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on him? 9:37 And Jesus said unto him, Thou hast both seen him, and it is he that talketh with thee. 9:38 And he said, Lord, I believe. And he worshipped him. 9:39 And Jesus said, For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind. 9:40 And some of the Pharisees which were with him heard these words, and said unto him, Are we blind also? 9:41 Jesus said unto them, If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth.

It's the language of inclusion and exclusion that Alison's interpretation particularly focuses on.

James Alison

I don't know if you've ever come across James Alison, Eve? He's a Catholic theologian whose writings, amongst other things, develop a sympathetic theological account of homosexual experience. I'm not just referring to him because you and I share an interest in religion and sexuality, although that's obviously relevant. It's because I've just been exploring his book Fragments Catholic and Gay, the first chapter of which develops a reading of chapter 9 of St John's Gospel in which the ideas of inclusion and exclusion are very important. Alison's discussion of the story of the 'Man Blind from Birth' reminded me of some of what we've said about how productive it is to be 'out of place' and yet how seductive it can be to imagine oneself 'out of place' when, in fact, one is comfortably 'at home'.

I'll try to find a way to get the relevant material to you but, in the meantime, this is a website that provides access to what of Alison's work is available online:

http://www.jamesalison.co.uk/

sketches

These are some sketches - experimental and strictly preliminary! - in which I've had a bash at 'curating' some, by now, very familiar river texts. I've used the tag 'layering' because I'm finding more and more to think about in the basic observation that the history of the Mississippi headwaters is richly layered with one layer often obscuring or obliterating another completely. I've gestured towards this idea here.

gilfillan at itasca

Today I've been going through the Gilfillan material at the MHS library and found a short article that Gilfillan himself published in The Minnesota Missionary in July 1881, describing his visit to Lake Itasca. It doesn't incorporate the text of the sermon he preached there but it does include this comment:

The lake itself is not remarkable for beauty, there being many much more beautiful lakes in Minnesota, and it would not, therefore, but for its being the source of the great river, attract the tourist. But in another way it is very remarkable, namely, in that in shape it is a very striking emblem of the Holy Trinity. It is composed of three long and narrow arms, nearly corresponding in length, width and volume, and meeting at a central point. Roughly speaking, it may be described as a three pointed star. There is no other lake, of the 7,000 in Minnesota, so far as a perusal of the map shows, anything like it in shape, and the first thought of any one who looks upon it is, that here God had stamped Himself and His own mysterious nature on this, the fountain head of the great river of the continent. Here, one is almost tempted to exclaim, is the baptismal formula graven, not as Job wished, with an iron pen, but with the finger of the Almighty Himself, in the heart and centre of this continent.

I thought the reference to Job was interesting. It's actually to a passage that is well known because Handel set part of it in the Messiah:

Oh that my words were now written! Oh that they were printed in a book!
That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever!
For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth:
And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God:
Whom I shall see for myself,and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my veins be consumed within me.

I think it's quite sweet that he thinks 'the first thought of anyone who looks upon it' will be that the shape of the lake is an emblem of the Trinity!

Jonathan Carver (part the 1st)

Moving back in time from the era of the Eastmans at Fort Snelling and the Pond brothers' mission to the Dakotas, I've been reading about Jonathan Carver, who spent six months among the Sioux in the late 1760s. I have access to a digital edition of Carver's book, Travels through the Interior Parts of North America, which is very interesting indeed!

In it, he discusses the 'origin' of the indigenous peoples of North America and considers the views of one James Adair, who, as Carver puts it, 'resided forty years among the Indians , and published the history of them in 1772'. Adair thought the Native Americans were 'descended from the Israelites, either whilst they were a maritime power, or soon after their general captivity'. This kind of speculation is very typical of the age, but, even in its 18th-century context, the latter idea makes the mind boggle! After the 'general captivity', by which I take it Adair means the exile in Babylon, one group of Israelites, rather than making their way back to the Holy Land, went into some new kind of exile in North America?

Carver runs through the evidence that Adair cites for this view and - very interestingly from my point of view - he includes some discussion of language:

The Indian language and dialects appear to have the very idiom and genius of the Hebrew. Their words and sentences being expressive, concise, emphatical, sonorous, and bold; and often, both in letters, and signification, are synonimous with the Hebrew language.

Carver himself does not agree with Adair's view and I'll write more about that later :o)

joseph gilfillan

Just did a little research on the Joseph A. Gilfillan whose sermon is commemorated in Itasca State Park and who you mention here. Between 1873 and 1908 he also served as a missionary but to the Ojibwe rather than the Dakota. He apparently learned the Ojibwe language and was particularly interested in place names, publishing a paper on the subject with the title 'Minnesota Geographical Names Derived from the Chippewa Language'. (I gather that the standard work on Minnesota place names is Minnesota Place Names: A Geographical Encyclopedia by Warren Upham.) The Minnesota Historical Society, who - I have to say - seem incredibly active, own an archive of his papers which includes all kinds of material on the language of the Ojibwe. I really may have to go through all this stuff at some point!

There are many layers of irony in play here, I think!

biblical quotations

I'm noticing that various Biblical references are coming up, so I'm going to take the liberty of tagging some of your posts to connect those references, and here's another one...

In Nick Lichter's book about his journey down the river, The Road of Souls, he describes a plaque in Itasca State Park that commemorates the first sermon preached at the headwaters, in May 1881, by a Reverend Joseph A. Gilfillan, who had traveled "through sixty miles of wilderness from White Earth, Minnesota to conduct the ceremony." Lichter, page 6

The text he preached on was "then had thy peace been as a river." (from Isaiah 48:18)

The idea of speaking about PEACE in the context of the history of Native Americans in this region for the previous fifty years (at least?) is pretty ripe, no?!

The Bible in Dakota

Just another detail: an important goal for Gideon and Samuel Pond was to translate the Bible into Dakota. What's interesting, though, is that the first portion of the text that they published - in 1842 - was the story of Joseph, which explains how the Israelites came to be in exile in Egypt. I have no idea why they chose that particular story.

Dyson: Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster (2006)

• the Deltaic Plain and the Chenier Plain are two wetlands fed by the Mississippi River that are undergoing profound shrinking and deterioration, which makes hurricanes more substantially more dangerous and destructive (p.84)

The perils and possibilities of exile and migration are painfully familiar moments in the collective memory of black America. (p. 116)

Black folk have been a pilgrim people, a wayfaring group, a folk who are rarely ever really at home, unsettled, always uprooted, forever migrating from place to place, exiles in their own country, their movements spurred as much by tragedy as opportunity. (p. 198)

On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that the men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. MLK, Riverside Church, "A Time to Break SIlence" A Testament of Hope, p. 241

Charity is no substitute for justice. (p. 152)

Justice is what love sounds like when it speaks in public. (p. 203)

• Nas, the hiphop guy with his father Olu Dara: a song called Bridging the Gap.

• Wade in the Water: the spiritual that talks about "trouble the waters"

• MLK quoting Amos: "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."

Robert P. Moses and Charles E. Cobb, Jr. Radical Equations: Civil Rights from Mississippi to the Algebra Project