This one at least had most of the letters in mostly the right order, if left to right. When I got to the 11th floor and looked at the elevator door, well, see for yourself.

 

Sometime in the last five years someone decided that cleaning staff should close the drain stopper in sinks and tubs, presumably to indicate that they had, in fact, interacted with the bathroom enough to push the drains closed. Ridiculous. All this means is that when I first brush my teeth the sink fills up before I realize I need to unplug it. I start running the shower and step into ankle deep water and have to bend over and unplug it… Yes, I am whining.

More substantially, I would like to complain on behalf of those of us vertically challenged. The middle of my back is always well within the range of the shower head, but more often than not I have to contort myself to wash my hair. Why not simply makes the shower head suitable for tall people? There is no (or marginal) cost to doing so and it would not adversely effect those below 6 feet tall. Please consider this simple gesture?

By the way, otherwise the Blackwell Hotel at Ohio State University is outstanding. A really beautiful and well maintained environment.

 

It is inherent in biblical thought generally that a person’s actions and words offer a true picture of the person’s character. Hebrew stories do not have characters with hidden motives and concealed agendas, or if they do, the audience is explicitly told about it.

Todd argues something similar, but different (yet does not cite Campbell, is that part of the journal Interpretation‘s style? there are very few notes) that biblical characters motivations are only ever made clear through their actions or words (“As a rule, it is the actions and the dialogue of the characters that leads to the readers’ judgments about them, rather than explicit commentary or moral evaluation on the part of the narrator.” Page 118), but their inner thoughts are never made clear.

To my mind, one of the most important consequences of the convention in biblical narrative of rendering the inner lives of characters opaque is that it tends to leave open, in a literarily fruitful way, the question of character motivation. Page 121.

What I think is the really clever bit is that “literarily fruitful” means that we can play with the text quite freely, albeit in a somewhat restricted manner. We have room to ask, as I did earlier (and rejected our ability to answer with any certainty) why Boaz waited to reach out to Naomi and Ruth. We are free to speculate as to why Ruth went with Naomi back to Bethlehem in the first place. Could it be that Ruth was not being altruistic, but that she had a horrible home that she left when she married into Naomi’s family and that she knew that no matter how bad Bethlehem might be it could not be worse than returning to a family who had rejected her for marrying an Israelite? Tod is quite right, the possibilities are wide open and quite ripe for our creativity.

But just in case some readers have forgotten, my complaint about such approaches is that we often do not show restraint and have a tendency to argue with a certainty that my reading of Boaz’s motivations is the correct one. When in fact, in absence of any guidance from the text, it is impossible to say that there is a “correct” reading of the character’s motivation.

Tod goes on to explore the two passages in Ruth that he (rightly) views as poetry, Ruth 1:16-7 and 1:20-1. In poetry, unlike biblical prose, we find motivations revealed, he argues. See, for example, the expressions of inner feelings and convictions in the psalms and Song of Songs. It is for this reason, according to Tod, that the author uses poetry here since:

the author wants us to know that Ruth’s primary commitment and motivating factor for her actions is her allegiance to Naomi

Except I don’t see “motivation” being revealed in Ruth 1:16-7. This is Tod’s translation.

And Ruth said.
Do not press me to leave you,
to turn back from after you.
For wherever you go, I will go.
And wherever you lodge, I will lodge;
your people shall be my people,
and your God shall be my God;
wherever you die, I will die,
and there I will be buried.
Thus may the Lord do to me and more, if anything but death separates me from you.

In this passage Ruth reveals what she will do (go where Naomi goes, die where she dies, etc.) but she never says why she will stay with Naomi unto death. She confesses that she will remain with her (her “allegiance”) but she does not reveal anything about why she will do so. The argument is a bit circular then.

All in all, I think Tod is fully correct in his observations, both in general about prose and poetry in Ruth and our inability to discern and yet the necessity of considering the characters’ motivations. He is also certainly right in stating that the fact that only Ruth and Naomi both have these poetic utterances serve to highlight them as the primary figures in the story. Poor old Boaz is reduced to archaic and confused utterances at the threshing floor.

 

What a great set of posts and resources! Thanks for sharing this, it is very useful and I wish I had some guidance like this 20 years ago when I started reading manuscripts.

So You Want to Read Handwritten Hebrew Manuscripts, part II.

This post is a continuation of two earlier blog entries here and here.  Its purpose is to help facilitate the reading of handwritten Hebrew manuscripts for intermediate students of the language.  Psalm 113 serves as the subject of this comparison.

Read them all here: משלי אדם.

 

I am originally from Port Talbot in South Wales, a town that has lived through very hard times. Once intended as the cutting edge of European industry in the 1950s, Port Talbot became a classic boom town, at its peak employing some twenty thousand at its gargantuan steelworks. By the 1980s, though, that industry collapsed, leaving behind a rustbelt world that would be instantly familiar to any American who knows declining cities like Johnstown PA or Gary Indiana. It is a depressed and depressing place.

Philip ends his post by noting the attention that was brought not just to Port Talbot but the passion story itself in the media.

 

Journalist Allison Pearson wrote powerfully about the original play:

“Well, last weekend, Christ came to stay in Port Talbot, even if the embarrassment of our secular age meant that, in this performance, his name was never spoken aloud. God the Father himself – a roofer in a blue boiler-suit surveying his creation from scaffolding attached to a council house – was known as Dad. If that seems timid or dumbed down, just consider that there were people on that miles-long procession to the Crucifixion on a roundabout [rotary] by the seafront who have never been taught the greatest story. They think the meaning of Easter is a caramel rabbit. ‘Why is the sad man carrying that big log?’ one child asked his mother as Sheen, in his crown of thorns, passed by.”

Pearson participated in the mass procession to the cross, but flagged under the pressure of heat and numbers. She wanted to give up and leave, but her daughters refused strenuously, declaring:  “We can’t leave Jesus now. His cross is so heavy. If he can do it, so can we.”

 

via THE GOSPEL OF US.

 

Originally uploaded by Targuman

In looking at my flickr account I noticed that this picture from 2007 was receiving a lot of hits. It was my second trip to DC since moving to Penn State.

Via Flickr:(Best viewed at a larger size.)

I happened upon this gorgeous church during my walkabout. They were rehearsing for a boys/mens choir recital that night. Wonderful acoustics in this church. It was burned down in 1905 (the church, not the choir) so the vast majority of it is rebuilt.

It was interesting to see the people who came in. One woman came, knelt in the pew in front of me, crossed herself, a presumably prayed for a few minutes then left. There were the requisite tourists, mostly Scandihoovian as near as I could tell, but there was also the young businessman, in his late 20s, no coat just shirt and tie, who stopped in for a few minutes and then left. Was it devotion? TIme of prayer? A need for a cool stop on this rare 87 degree October day? Whatever it was, it made me feel better about humankind.

It was odd for me too, sitting there in suit and tie, having just been ordained a priest 70 hours earlier, yet there by happenstance, on a business trip for the uni. I was going to do afternoon prayer, but they had the old 1928 Book of Common Prayer in the pews and the words did not come fluently to me. The rabbis say that is a sure sign something is amiss. So I just enjoyed the music, took a few photos, and ambled down to the Apple Store.