This week's free blog.

Good morning!  I'm just gonna dive right into the post today, so yeah.

One thing that I am seeing in class is the lack of some people to realize that back during David's time, there was no freedom of religion.  There was no, as Professor Smith put it, "smorgasbord" to pick and choose from.  And doubly so for the Israelites.  And I think it's hard to talk about religion back then, with people really knowing that what religion you were made ALL the difference.

The idea is that a common belief gives the group strength.  And let's be honest, after the Israelites trounced the Canaanites, they've been pretty much shafted as a group.  It is through their common faith that the Israelites have been able to hold themselves together, and stay alive.  And with that in mind, you can't have any kind of non-believers.  All that would do is create weak points within the group, and the society would collapse, either from external means or on its own.  So joining into the ranks of the Jews was not a choice, it might not have been exactly right, and sure there may have been some doubters.  But with such a strong religious link to their culture, there was no room for it.

Alright, I'm done.

First blog for week four/ About ethics in the Psalms/ Ten Commandments, right?

Yes, the title is in haiku.  So what?  I still think it's an effective title.

It's hard to place exactly what the ethic is.  I'd like to think it was the Ten Commandments, but I never saw certain commandments within the psalms.  So clearly, the psalms are emphasizing certain commandments over others.  I do think that this question is an especially tough one, because I remember last week in class, we talked about the ethics, and how they aren't in the psalms themselves  The psalms make references to a code of ethics, but never explicitly state them.  But you don't have to explicitly state things to get your point across.

The first commandment is "you will have no other God before me".  And you can clearly see that in the fact that there is a book of psalms, praising God.  And the fact that most of the psalms were written with the intention of being first-person plural, a "we", makes it clear that the Israelites were a group with not only a strong connection as a group, but strong connections to God as a group.  And in Psalm 14, it's written "The scoundrel has said in his heart,/ 'There is no God.'  They corrupt, they make loathsome their acts./  There is none who does good."  Clearly, non-believers were held in high esteem, to say there least.

Both Psalms 5 and 12 make references to the the wickedness of liars, a relation to the 9th commandment of "do not bear false witness".  In Psalm 5, it is written that "You destroy the pronouncer of lies,/ a man of blood and deceit the Lord loathes" (7) and in Psalm 12, he writes "Falsehood every man speaks to his fellow/ smooth talk, with two hearts they speak.  The Lord will cut off all smooth-talking lips,/ the tongue that speaks of big things" (3-4).  Obviously, any form of lying, whether a full "false witness" in court, to "smooth-talking", is not taken lightly, and it appears that lying is one of the worse offenses.

But probably the best example of a code of ethics in the psalms is Psalm 15, which literally opens with the question of "who will dwell on Your holy mountain?"; who is righteous in the eyes of God?  And then the Psalm goes on to explain who is.  He who "does justice/ and speaks the truth" (2), doesn't do evil against other men, and honors his family (Fourth Commandment?!), and doesn't extort money from others.  The Psalm ends with the line "He who does these/ will never stumble" (5).  If that's not an ending for a code of how to live, I don't know what is.

This is definitely a livable ethic.  It's been lived by for thousands of years, by good Christians and Jews alike.  It's quite clear, between the 4-syllable sentences of the Ten Commandments, to the upfront-ness of Psalm 15.  I do wish that they had mentioned the Sixth Commandment, but that might have conflicted too much with all of the violence in the other psalms.  But for the most part, the Psalms are straight-up Judaic (and later, Judeo-Christian) ethics.

Man, I'm just not up for my usual conclusions this early in the morning, sans cigarette.  Peace.

"Psalm" New Post This Is

Again with the pun-titles.  And I can't even feign apologies.  Puns are, in fact, too good.  Also, a happy April 20th to all of you.  I think that is as much as I need.  So, POST:

During our time reading the psalms, I can't help but think of why we aren't reading the usual translation.  I do understand the ideas behind it, like the having a clearer understanding of how it would have sounded, and to get away from loaded words, but THOSE translations are the ones used to build Christianity in Europe.  I feel like by not studying the original translations, we are somehow cheapening them, by saying how these others are how the psalms "should have sounded".  I think that maybe we should have to try looking past those loaded words, and get a sense of the normal translations, if only for the weight that they carry historically, in their original (translated) form.

At the least, I feel like we should have taken more psalms than one, and looked at them side-by-side.  Because again, while the psalms do keep the same meanings between translators, they end up different in most other regards.  So it's all well and good now, in class, but when actually hearing the psalms, they sound so different, that its like their not even the same base psalm.  Without the frame of reference that is the "normal" translation, it is easy to get lost.

On a complete and utter digression, I got a whole big box of new contacts, and I feel like a king.  Yes, those statements are codependent.

fin.

"Psalm"ing It Up

I apologize for that horrible pun in the title.  Well, I do half-heartedly, anyway.  This is the first post in a while, isn't it?  Man, already slacking.  Time to pick it up, so on to the meat of the post.

One of the major differences I notice between the Bay Psalm Book translation and ours was the absence of the use of the "statement and reply" style of Poetry.  It's like instead of translating each line individually, they translated the entire double line, and then put that into English, giving us a very eloquent, but very different psalm.

While the meat of the lines didn't change much, and at the time, their translation didn't change much about the psalms, but by them translating them like this, and what happened in the 1600's to religion, we ended up with the loaded words that we have today.  It wasn't the translation itself that changed it from the original, it was what happened to the actual faithful that ended up loading the words.

And so without much more fanfare, this post ends.

I raise my glass for him.

First and foremost, as I type this I received an e-mail informing me of the passing of Dave Golub.  My sympathys go to all his friends and family.  My prayers are with you.

(moment of silence)

I think that the differences between the Indian mounds and the Lascaux cave shows an important distinction we have to make:  art is not always religious.  While much of the old art is religious in nature, there is a fine line we have to walk.  While the art in Lascaux cave is very much commemorating something, it is not overtly religious, whereas the Indian mounds are obviously symbolic for something of larger importance.  Collin said it well when he said "These could be drawings/paintings of an example like Mickey Mouse: they could be just pictures, no real significance.".  There are many symbols that are important, but not religious.  The Lascaux caves would have to fall in to that category.

I'm not even sure how the argument that the Lascaux caves are religious can even be made.  Using the definition of religion that we came up with in class, it doesn't really meet any of the criteria.  One of the biggest things we came up with was that religion was a social thing, and Lascaux doesn't have that.  The only psuedo-religious picture in the caves was in a room that was scarcely used.  Also, there is no set of symbols.  There is one picture.  No repeated patterns, no nothing.  Finally, and most tellingly, there is no evidence of a system of belief that gave them a view of the world.  And even if they did have the other two things, if the third part is not in there, then it is not a religion.  Lascaux can't really account for any of the major things needed to be a religion.

And so we conclude the fourth posting.  It's not so difficult to write, once you really know what you're writing.  On a side note, I'm quite curious as to how many people read this.  But, eh, I doesn't really matter.

Have a pleasant end to your weekend.

Onward, to a glorious Third Post

Welcome back.  I hope your weekend was as restful as mine.  If it wasn't, well that's quite a shame, as I feel quite refreshed.  But enough idle small talk, I know you all just want to hear my opinion on those effigy mounds, and I won't delay you any longer.

The effigy mounds are some of the most peculiar, and coolest, things in the United States.  From the earliest time Europeans arrived, the mounds had already been built, and the builders dead, but the questions surrounding them lives on, like, who built them? what was their purpose?  etc....  I, personally, really do like these mounds, and I think that these mounds distinguish themselves from the Lascaux caves quite easily.  Whereas the Lascaux cave paintings were in a dark, dingy, isolated room, and the paintings themselves quite ambiguous, the effigy mounds are built around the best hunting spots.   While many people believe that the effigy mounds have multiple uses, for burials, dances, and multitudes of other ceremonies, no one really knows what exactly went on in that room in Lascaux, and so were left clingly eagerly to the belief that there is religion in the paintings when clearly, we just have no idea as to what's going on in Lacaux.

I do think that the effigy mounds differ greatly from our usage of animals as sports teams names (though I was always the Melonheads in Backyard Baseball).  When we name a sports team something, we are naming it because either A) the animal has strong competitive qualities, like the Chicago Bears or Philadelphia Eagles, or B) because the animal is indigenous to the area, i.e. the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.  But the effigy mounds don't fit into that.  The effigy mounds are used to celebrate the earth, with the animals not actually meaning animals, but different parts of the earth:  birds mean air, land creatures mean earth, and wavy lines and such mean water.  The effigy mounds aren't even clear animals, so we couldn't tell whether they were building it for any specific kind of animal, or if the person who died has qualities of the animal.

Yet, there are religious connotations that you just can't deny.  Sure, we don't know for sure what the true meaning behind the effigies are, but between their symbolism, and the fact that many people gathered at these mounds, they fit within our definition of a religion as a cultural phenomenon.  And I think that we can assume a certain amount of spirituality in the people who made the mounds, because of no only what they symbolize, but because of the ceremonies, like burials, that went on at the mounds.

That about wraps up my third post; a glorious mix of mounds, caves, religion, and opinion.  I ask you, can it get any better?!

The Second Post (NOW WITH BEARS!)

It's interesting that when we were talking about the definition of a religion, even though we all agreed that devotion is an important component, it wasn't what made a religion a religion.  I think that that says something about what has become of the faiths of the world.  That actual belief isn't the defining characteristic.  What has become the defining characteristic are the symbols of a religion, whether or not you believe in it.  Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, I do not know.

On an almost entirely unrelated note, I found almost nothing worthwhile in "GrizzlyMan".  I understood the point of asking "were we ever 'one' with animals?", but I don't think that watching half an hour of a half-crazed man flip out over bears with a heavily accented narrator was the way to go.  The most worthwhile part of the movie (especially for what we were talking about), came when the Alaskan man talked about how there has always been a boundary between the bears and man.  But I guess that's just how it is, you gotta wade through the junk to find the good stuff, eh?

And so this concludes the second post (and first week), of the blog.  Anyone actually read this?

The Geertz Definition

A toast to the new blog.  To enough updates for a passing grade!

(clink)

As for Geertz's definition, a paraphrase is:

Religion is a collection of items and traditions that can evoke a particular mood and behavior in people.  These items and traditions do this by creating answers to the unexplainable, and that while there can be many different sets of items and traditions, each can believe that their answers are the correct ones.

I like and I dislike Geertz's definition.  I dislike the trivialization of religion that he appears to do, but at the same time, it's accurate to the point where any religion can fit under it.   As much as I hate to admit it though, I have to agree with his putting of "symbols" before actual belief, because I think that now its the aura of being religious that is important, not any actual devotion to a faith.  Because of that, it would be more important to have the symbols of faith (a Crucifix, a Star of David, etc...) than to actually follow it.  And I know, I know, that YOU are quite devout.  This is for all of those other heathens.

And that's it for the first post.