Class Summary for 10/27/09

Assignment: TERM PAPER

1. Way in which the Bible relates to The Slave
2.  What I know now that I didn't know before, and the difference that makes. (There needs to be at least two Great Code references)
3. Whatever you would like to write on that Dr. Sexson has approved.

CLASS

• Natalie's Blog, Alex's Blog, Eric's Blog, Jessi's Blog
• The Year of Living Biblically
• We are all thieves, stealing from someone who stole.
• Joni Mitchell, "The Sire of Sorrow"
• A Serious Man, the Coen Brothers
• The best part of Job?
• The middle.
• The prologue is: there's a man named Job, he's a good guy, but he suffers.
• The epilogue: he's patient, and he is rewarded.
• The middle is the best (Job 3).
• You get the frienimies, and all the false hope, the idea of retributive justice is presented, and Job curses the day he was born.
• Job is very similar to a Greek tragedy. (Prometheus Bound)
• People come and talk to him.
• My Dinner with Andre
• According to Job, the first best thing is to have never been born, and the next best is to die.
• Job 4:7
• Retributive Justice -- God only punishes the wicked, rewards the wise and good.
• WRONG!

 

Class Summary for 10/15/09

• Deuterotomy is a book of law. (2nd Law, to be exact)
• D 6:4, "The Lord our God is one Lord.
• Moses's mythical authorial power.
• Law has a story element, it's a subset of literature.
• Michelangelo's sculpture of Moses has horns. (Likely from seeing God's backside)
• Because the bible says it, it obviously must be true.
• There are three versions of the Ten Commandments.
• http://www.stallman.org/dr-laura.html
• The Year of Living Biblically
• Lev 18:22, (The hot button issue, gay marriage)
• Deuteronomy 23
• New assignment--be less boring.
• Epiphany - a manifestation of a divine or supernatural being.
• You cannot remarry, the woman is defiled.
• Theodicy - The vindication of divine goodness and providence in view of the existence of evil.
• This is what Job is all about.
  

Class Summary for 10/13/09

Assignments: Read the Book of Susannah (1637), read the poem on Rio's blog.

• Dialectic arguments combined with tradition.
• The old stories are the best stories.
• Plotz's problem?
• He applies a modern sensibility to a book of stories.
• Moses
• Superman? Superman comes from a destroyed people (Jews) and leads humanity.
• Moses is an archetype, he's paradigmatic.
• His name means to be "drawn from the waters".
  
• Lord Raglan 
• The 22 points of the typical hero story.
• Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces
• Once again, stories are important.
• The Israelites were just as cruel to their slaves as anyone else.
• They also didn't intermarry.
• "Go Down Moses"
• Louis Armstrong
• Paul Robeson 
• Ralph Stanley, "Take Your Shoes off Moses"
• Iconoclasm - rejection of religious icons as heretical.
• "God cannot be made into an image!"
• Passage where Moses sees God's backside: Exodus 33:23
  

Test!

FOR THE TEST

• Genesis
• Classroom Discussions
• Frye, Ch. 1 & 2
• Women In the Bible Lecture
• Plotz - Genesis

QUESTIONS
1. Who are the two writers of the creation story?
P and J. (Remember JEDPR)
2. What are the first five books of the bible?
Pentateuch, the Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy)
3. TNK?
Torah (Law) Nevi'im (Prophets) Ketuvim (Writings)
4. Who are the three patriarchs?
Abraham, Issac, Jacob
5. How many sons did Jacob have?
12, Rachel had Joseph and Benjamin.
6. What did Linda think of women in the bible, compared to David Plotz?
Linda: "Plotz is an idiot, women are a metaphor."
7. What does Hosea's marriage represent?
Israel, and the country's straying from God.
8. Linda's view of Lot's daughters?
They did the right thing, continued the bloodline of their father.
9. What are the 7 most important parts of the bible?
Creation, Exodus, Law, Wisdom, Prophecy, Gospel, Apocalypse.
10. Vico's 3 phases? 
Gods/Heroes/Men
11. Frye's 3 phases?
Metaphorical/Metonymical/Descriptive
12. What is Mythos?
Story, myth, etc.
13. What kills education?
Answers
14. What is repetitive parallelism?
"Joseph is handsome and good-looking."
15. What is the biblical meaning of circumcision?
It is a physical reminder of the covenant between God and man.
16. What is the difference between Homer and the Bible?
Homer has no lacuna!
17. What is kerygma?
Revalation
18. What is logos?
Fact, truth, history, etc., for a while it was the same as mythos.
19. What is the psyche?
Before it came to its modern definition, it meant "soul".
20. What is an example of etiology?
"How did the leopard get his spots?" "Why do snakes crawl on their bellies?"
21. What is an archetype?
A "model narrative", Carl Jung - Cain (archetype of the fugitive)
22. What is Gnosticism?
Places salvation in knowledge/individual (The Man Who Fell to Earth)
23. Critical approach vs. Traditional?
Literary approach vs. a faith based approach.
24. What is hubris?
Excessive pride, wishing to be like the gods.
25. What is the documentary hypothesis?
The Bible was written by multiple authors.
26. What blogs should we study?
Jason's (Occam's Razor)
27. What were the writing prophets concerned with?
Cultic purity and Social Justice.
28. Eve and Mary are both archetypes.

Class Summary for 10/1/09

Guest Lecture!

 "Women in the Bible"

• Women are a metaphor in the Bible
• humans that are designated female by culture; no biology.
• There is a difference between social and literary conditions.
• Eve is a metaphor.
• Menstruation in the Bible is a social condition.
• Patriarchy, Chauvinism
• Gender asymmetry
• Male metaphors are on top. Women are deceptive.
• The culture was worried about controlling the women.
• The Patriarchs: Abraham, Issac, and Jacob.
• "Man and Wife". Wife is the appendage of man.
• Women are ambivalent in a patriarchy.
• Teraphim (household gods)
• Lev 15:19 - Why menstruation is "unclean".
• "Test"ament - this is where vows are made in a patriarchy, circumcision is a vow.
• Judges 11:29: Jephthah's daughter dies to preserve the vow.
• Prophets
• Hosea 1:2
• Marries a woman with a social stigma.
• Women are metaphors for Israel, trying to worship Canaanite and Mesopotamian gods.
  

Class Summary for 09/29/09

1st Exam, 8th of October
Read to Chapter 3 in Northrop Frye.

• Cheat Sheet for Odysseus Scar.
• Hermeneutics
• "Cities of the Plain" (Sodom and Gomorrah, Gen 19)
• Marcel Proust, Cormac McCarthy
• Kierkegard - Fear and Trembling
• NEVER SAY "JUST"
• Abraham talks down God!
• Lot's Wife!
• Orpheus, Actaeon
• Literalism in the bible?
• Issac isn't really that exciting (Gen 24).
• James Joyce: "Bland old Issac."
• Jacob gets the "bed trick" pulled on him.
• Gen 32.22
• Joseph is kinda of a dork; he is one of the round characters (complex)
• Joseph and Potiphars wife (Gen 39)

Little tired, hopefully will get a good blog post in soon.

Class Summary for 09/24/09

• Read Odysseus' Scar here.
• The question was raised, why does God do things the way he does, if He is all-knowing and all-seeing?
• God loves mythos!
• Stories need conflict.
• Dr. Sexson says that we are all required to have a terrible day, and a perfect day.
• What is the lesson we learn from Joseph's brothers?
• Is there a "lesson"?
• Why does God always hurt the good people? 
• Because it makes a good story!
• Northrop Frye, and many other good teachers forever ask questions. They never give answers.
• pg. VX, "To answer is to consolidate the mental level"
• TNK
• Torah
• Nevi'im
• Ketuvim
• We break from myth and enter history in Genesis 12.
• Hubris - the greek "soulmate"; the Tower of Babel.
• Women in the bible: Woman and the snake are always found together.
• What's the deal with circumcision? 
• Covenant?
• The Alphabet of Ben-Sira
• Assignment for next class: write in the lacuna for Abraham and Issac.
  

Class Summary for 09/21/09

• The three patriarchs of the Torah: Abraham, Issac, and Joseph.
• Remember, the boring parts of the bible are important too.
• Jeanne Dielmann (a movie about boring things)
• Mythology once again, we follow it because we always have; tradition.
• The Serpent
• The serpent has not always been associated with evil.
• The Epic of Gilgamesh (Sumerian)
• Gilgamesh goes after a plant that will make him immortal, he gets it, then decides to rest before eating it. A snake comes along, and eats it up, shedding its skin.
• The snake has the knowledge of good and evil.
• WISDOM!
• Gnosticism 
• Lilith, Adam's first, extrabibilical wife. 
• Lacuna
• Cain and Abel!
• Cain brought Yahweh fruits and vegetables, Abel brought firstling sheep. God likes Abel better.
• JEALOUSY!
• Cain is marked for killing his brother, becoming a "fugitive and a wanderer" (Gen 4.14)
• Other fugitives: Jean Valjean, Harrison Ford in The Fugitive.
• The story of Joseph is the first great novella.
• Thomas Mann, Joseph and His Brothers
• The Great Code: Every text is a commentary on a previous text.
• Catholics are into Angelology.

Change: Oct 1st, guest speaker, "Women in the Bible"

Class Summary for 09/17/09

• CHANGE: The final exam will be on Friday, December 18th, from 2pm-2:45pm in our normal meeting place.
• Logos, once again: the power of words to create, i.e. fact, truth, reality.
• Mythos: Myth, story, fanciful.
• One of these is "false", the other is "true".
• Mythology joins the two together, as wikipedia says, "the academic use of the term generally does not refer to truth or falsity."
• Dr. Sexson: "In effect, mythology is true stories."
• The Great Code Cracked!
• Chapter 1 focuses on language.
• Translation
• "langage" (the parts of language that are actually translatable.)
• 3 Stages (Vico)
• Age of Gods - Metaphoric/Hieroglyphic/a god/Heraclitus
• Hieroglyphic age is poetic.
• Little emphasis on separating subject and objects.
• Warrior "boasts" (Genesis 4:23)
• Vow (Judges 11:35)
• All words are concrete, intensely physical.
• Homer: soul, mind, time, courage are embodied.
• Kairos, a crucial moment in time; the "notch in an arrow" (Frye pg. 7)
• Age of Heroes - Metonymic/Hieractic/God/Plato
• Language becomes individualized, words become outward expression of thoughts. Intellect and emotion split.
• Plato is a 2nd phase thinker.
• Words are put for thought, thought is superior to nature.
• Concepts, allegories, commentary.
• Age of "Man" - Ironic Distance between subject and object/Demotic/No God/Locke, Bacon, Hume
• Began in 16th century.
• Fact gathering, language as description of an objective order.
• Extreme 3rd phase thinker dismiss all religious questions; words are words; Deconstruction. (WOO Lit 300)
• Distrusts figurative language consciousness modulates from soul to mind.
• Science takes precedence over faith.
• Kerygma
• The linguistic idiom of the bible does not coincide. (p. 29)
• Poetry keeps the metaphorical use of language alive.
•  Remember, Carl Eats Little Whiny Puppies with Gravy and Asparagus. (Creation, Exodus, Law, Wisdom, Prophecy, Gospel, and Apocalypse)
  
• Thomas Moore's Care of the Soul
•  "True itself is fact," "The truth itself is made" (Vico).
• Finally, a drawing by my 4-year-old-alter-ego, Tommy, representing the ages of language.

P.S., you can view all the class notes if you go to the sidebar, and click categories. All the notes (so far) can be found there.

Class Summary For 9/15/09

Sorry it took me a day to get these up!

• Sources of the Pentateuch (The Torah, the first 5 books)
• J - (Yahwist) - Storyteller
• Has a vivid, concrete style, anthropomorphic view of the deity. Wrote the story about Mt. Sinai.
• E - (Elohist) - "Elohim" for God.
• Located somewhere (in terms of writing style) between P and J. Uses Elohim (divine powers) for God. Begins with the story of Abraham.
  
• D - (Deuteronomist) - Wrote Deuteronomy. 
• Reflects the literary style and religious attitudes of Josiah's reform (621 BCE); insists that only one central sanctuary acceptable to Yahweh.
  
• P - (Priestly) - The statistics, rules, and ritual guy.
• R - (Redactor) - Came in and changed stuff.
  
• Once again, the documentary hypothesis rears its ugly head.
• Harold Bloom's points in the Book of J:
• Essientially a comic writer. (25)
• An "ironist" (disassembler). (25)
• King James version is "one of the handful of truly sublime styles in English".  (27)
• Her stories are not holy tales. (31)
• No heroes. Only heroines. (32)
• Talking animals, lustful Elohim, deceitful patriarchs, murder, drinking, etc. The stuff shrugged off by rabbis. (35)
• When script becomes scripture, reading is numbed by taboo and inhibition. (35)
• WTF? God's attempt to kill Moses in Exodus?
• J has no explaination.
• Etiology: Why things happen! The investigation of why things happen, from a mythological or religious standpoint.
• Mythos: "story", a net of experience.
  

Class Summary for 09/10/09

Well, here we go, today's class in a nutshell.


Class Discussion

• Repetitive Parallelism - Commonly used in Hebrew poetry, a technique in which one term is balanced/repeated by another (typically in the next verse)
• Vico, an Italian secular philosopher, who hypothesized the "stages of language" as
1. Metaphorical (pictures, images)
2. Metonymy (one thing stands for something else)
3. Demotic (vulgar, descriptive, ironic language)
• Vico also organized the 3 "ages" of civilization: the divine, the heroic, and the human.
• You can read more about it here (it starts in about the second paragraph)
• We talked about the Critical approach to the bible (A more scholarly, studious approach, obviously, Moses didn't write the first five books).
• And we also talked about the Traditional approach to the bible, which isn't interested in critique, more of a literal application.
• Dr. Sexson actually brought up an excellent point that there is a difference between taking the bible literally, and using it as a metaphorical tool to help us with problems in our lives, and with things that we can't explain. Awesome stuff. I believe he said, "We must relativise our traditions to furnish in a larger context."
  
• The Documentary Hypothesis:  The bible wasn't written by one person, rather a series of redactors.
• Ovid and Claude Lévi-Strauss were mentioned.
• Logos=words.

Additional Stuff

• Rio shared a link to an online King James bible: bartleby.com/108
• Here is a YouTube link to the Miserere, by The Kings College Choir. (The song is the right one, I don't know if the video is actually Roy Goodman) You can buy it off iTunes as well as an individual song (.99 for this beautiful music!).

I hope I've done well.