Rising and Falling

HUM 2051: Civilization IFall 2013

Dr. PerdigaoAugust 22-25, 2014

Structural Unity• Hebrews—semi-nomadic pastoral people, left no work except

Bible itself

• Bible means “Little books”

• Shifts from prose: poetry

• Hebrew: Torah (“instruction” or “guidance,” “law”); Pentateuch; Old Testament

• Narrative account of creation of world, sojourn in Egypt, Israelites’ exodus from Egypt, wandering led by Moses, Moses’ death before entry into the Promised Land (34)

• Laws given by God to Moses

Design• Genesis—2 parts: first=etymological account; Chapter 11, the story of

Hebrew people as began with Abraham and descendents; difference from Mesopotamian and Greek stories is the focus on human beings (35)

• Good/evil here—Greeks=chaos/order, strife/peace (no moral judgments)

• Biblical stories—the Flood, Cain and Abel, Tower of Babel—stem from Mesopotamian antecedents (Perry 28); Hebrews and Greeks borrowing themes

• Narrative shape of book as single document that begins in Genesis with origins and ends with apocalypse in revelations

• Chronicles creation of this world, replacement of this world with next

Design• Humanity created in perfect union with God, humanity sins,

falls, God offers covenant, renews that union (climaxes with the story of Moses and the Promised Land, Jesus, and stories written in the wake of the Bible)

• With covenant, God takes care, no labor, no pain, no death; the demand side is obedience to rule

• Redemptive rise—story of Moses’ people who fall into captivity, are led out of captivity, and rise into independent nation

• Fall of Adam and Eve into sin, rise of Christianity, resurrection, thereby defeating sin and death in New Testament

• Patterns of 6, 7; fall; mark; covenant

A Broken Covenant?: Three Days of Fay

http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/usa/features/article_1425772.php/In_photos_USA_Tropical_Storm_Fay?page=4

http://www.cfnews13.com/News/Sidebar/2008/8/21/fay_viewer_photos_page_5.html

Alligator, Catfish Walk Onto Airport Runway During TS Fay MELBOURNE, Fla. -- Melbourne International Airport workers had to clear away two gopher tortoises, four walking catfish, an alligator and a blue indigo snake that had washed onto the active runway during Tropical Storm Fay.

The menagerie was discovered on Wednesday.

Airport officials said the tortoises were moved to the airport's designated gopher tortoise relocation area and the walking catfish and snake were tossed into a nearby pond. The gator walked into a drainage ditch.

Walking catfish use their pectoral fins to get around on land and can breathe out of water as long as they stay moist.

http://www.nbc6.net/newsnet/17252134/detail.html

From the Fall to Reunion• Garden of Eden—utopia

• Tree of life, tree of knowledge of good and evil

• Innocence: knowledge

• Connections to Prometheus, Pandora

• Humans—one with God and nature, then with fall, expulsion from garden, drought and storms

• At odds with one another—Cain kills Abel after expulsion

• Cover selves in shame—alienated, self-conscious yet “fortunate fall” into knowledge

• Covenants are made, broken, and restored as in the flood

Murder, Redemption• Eve bore Cain and Abel

• Abel’s offering accepted, Cain’s jealousy

• “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (43)

• Mark of Cain

• Noah—blameless, 600 years old

• Rain for forty days and forty nights

• Ark, rested, 150 days later—17th day of 7th month, forty days later—lets out raven, then dove

• Seven days waiting to let the dove out of the ark, returns with olive leaf (45)

• Bow set in clouds as sign of the covenant

From the Fall to Reunion• “The Origin of Languages”

• First one language, one set of words (46)

• Built city, tower to heavens

• Ziggurat

• Connection to Icarus story

• Tower of Babel, “new beginning” (35), but scattering

To Bruegel’s Babel (1563)

http://www.slu.edu/x32907.xml

Bruegel’s The Fall of Icarus (1558)

http://traumwerk.stanford.edu/philolog/2005/11/ekphrasis_ovid_in_pieter_breug.html

Framing the Text• “sacred text” as revealed truth

• J: Yahwist (Jehovah) c. 1000 BCE “I AM”—Yahweh• E: Elohist 8th c. BCE “Elohim” or El

—“God”• P: “priestly writer” 7th c. BCE

• 3 main strands of text—3 writers—influence the organization of the text—J—oral tradition—brought together. Genesis added late but makes sense of later pieces.

History of Translations»Jerome—Latin Vulgate (tongue known by most of

the people—later “vulgar”)

»Wycliffe—English; early Renaissance

»Tyndale—16th c. printing press—Protestant Reformation

»King James—1611—assigned task to translator, most influential form of

literature