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Today's Document

titsay

❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
Misplaced Lens Cap
Peter Solarz
d e v o n
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH

Origami Around
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her

shark vs the universe
trying on a metaphor
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
Aqua Utopia|海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
Jules of Nature

Kaledo Art

No title available
noise dept.
Sade Olutola
No title available
will byers stan first human second
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@theologie
Here it is. The Best Tweet.
Oh my god
Reflections on Brandon Hester’s Euthyphro’s Dilemma: A Historical Approach
It may by now be apparent how much I love the Euthphyro dialogue. Hester’s historical treatment of the circumstances of the dialogue and the implications thereof is interesting and well executed. Here is a tl;dr with mild commentary.
First, the Greek cultural-religious setting: polytheistic, saw the gods as part of the human world (dwelling on a known mountain, possessing human personalities and failings associated therewith). The universe on the whole is mechanical and material and eternal (or as far as we can tell, at least). In response to this materialism, Sophism developed, which swung back to the ethereal, mystical elements. Sophists viewed morality as relative, believing men were the measure of all things. Socrates did not agree with the relative morality of Sophism, but likewise found something lacking in the Atomist materialism. A particular point of interest for Socrates were ‘excellences of character’ and their ‘forms’ or universal definitions. Therefore, he sought a universal on which to base ethics – open to the idea of a transcendental or supernatural form of morality.
In the Euthyphro dialogue, Socrates is trying to find the nature of morality (its ‘form’) – he specifically asks Euthyphro to provide him this form so he may use it as a model by which to determine whether an action is moral or immoral. Euthyphro responds that the gods are the basis for morality. Socrates first points out the conflicting views on what is moral among the gods themselves –for instance, Zeus thinks his philandering is perfectly acceptable, whereas Hera no doubt considers it immoral. This is not a critique of polytheism as an insufficient basis for ethics, but rather lamenting the results of theistic relativism. Socrates is more accurately “questioning whether material beings can be the basis for morality due to the fact that this leads to contradictory relativism” (Hester) – and the conclusion which is logically drawn from that doubt is that “the basis for morality must extend beyond the material world.” (Hester) Socrates is primarily attacking ethics that arise from moral relativism under materialist views – he did not find a transcendental basis for morality and solve the puzzle, however. Socrates’ pupil and successor, Plato, developed an ethical theory which bases itself on a universal constant – the ‘Good’, the form of morality. All individual actions and instances of morality are reflections of the form of morality – which thereby “extends beyond the material world and any individual’s perception.” (Hester)
Christianity, centuries later, aligned morality to the character and nature of God (as Hester puts it) and claimed it was therefore neither arbitrary or autonomous. This is where Hester and I diverge. In so claiming, he and Christian ethicists fall into the same trap as Euthyphro and his materialism – basing their morality on God, however sovereign and absolute this group believes him to be, is entirely arbitrary. Christianity is by definition materialist, and allusions to the greatness and goodness of God do not defeat this – that he is apparently defined as supernatural is not the same as a true transcendental universal, it is simply a more mystical version of the Greek pantheon. Hester states that using Euthyphro’s dilemma against theism is contradictory, that Plato would thereby refute his own theory. But there is a distinction between a supernatural source and a transcendental universal.
Dear ex-Christian Atheists,
Not every religion is the Christianity you rejected.
AGAIN, LOUDER
I cannot even fathom how much I laughed at this
im catholic and thats hilarious
Hey! Can you solve this PUZZLE for women and gays getting into church leadership?
http://nakedpastor.com/2014/05/can-you-solve-this-puzzle-for-women-and-gays-getting-into-church-leadership/
This is so true that it really hurts deeply.
I couldn’t have described it better.
Sad that this is still so applicable almost 2 years later. Come on, Anglican communion, get your act together. It’s 2016, this is embarassing.
Shaun King on Twitter
Semantic Evolution of PSUCHE in Greek Philosophy and Literature Pre-600 BCE.
Homerian Era (evinced primarily in Homer's writings....) 8th Century BCE The soul is two (separate?) things: the thing which is risked in battle and lost in the event of death; the thing which departs the body at the moment of death and dwells thereafter in the underworld. It is possible, though not established, that these two definitions apply to the same 'shade' of a person that remains after death and is somehow separate from the whole person that walks around, living. It is clear that with a soul, someone lives; without a soul, the body is just a corpse. In this period, the soul has no activity or operation actually attributed to it, but is discussed only in the event of actual or potential/imminent death. Pre-Platonic Era 5th & 6th Centuries BCE The intrinsic connection to death dimishes in the evolving usage, now having a soul is equivalent to being alive and used in common speech. The term empsuchos (ensouled) appears around this time - meaning that the possession of a soul is what makes someone alive. That definition is implied by Homer's use, but since he doesn't speak of the soul except in relation to death, it is not actually used thusly. The soul still distinguishes the living from the dead, but now also actions can be attributed to the soul. The idioms of satisfying the soul's desire for food, drink or sex become common; and intense emotions like love, hate, joy, grief are said to act on the soul. For instance, Ajax and Oedipus both lament their souls under various psychic duress. This in turn leads to the attribution of moral qualities to the soul - the courage and boldness in battle of Homer, but also temperance, justice and endurance. In some contexts, the soul is equivalent to moral character in describing a person (or fictional character). It is likely this moralization of the soul is connected to the prior poetic connection of the soul to battle, and the courage to risk the soul therein. The soul leads to how someone acts (at least with regard to morally significant behavior), because actions are thought to express and make evident the soul's quality/qualities. Naturally this leads to the soul also being evoked in thinking & planning, beyond just being the holder of attributes: if the soul is responsible for acts of X type, then the soul must be recognizing the situation(s) calling for X type of act. Antiphon combines the Homeric soul being that which leaves at death and this idea of the soul as a responsible agent of sorts, in a speech tasking a jury with "tak[ing] away from the accused the soul that planned the crime." By the time Platonic philosophy starts to interact with the concept of the soul, it is already commonly referred to as not only the seat of a person's moral quality/qualities, and the thing that makes them alive and will be lost if they are made dead, but also responsible for practical & moral cognition. The stage is well set for Pythagoras and Heraclitus to discuss the soul and provide the groundwork for Plato and later Socrates.
Kant on the Most Real Being (Ens Realissimum)
Kant’s best known objection to the theological proofs for God’s existence is the adage “existence is not a predicate”, which essentially means that existence is not an attribute that can be attached to something as a predicate. He has another objection in much the same vein, that it is a faulty move from concept to existence to take the idea of God conceived as the ontological proof does as “That than which nothing greater can be conceived” and declare that it must necessarily exist in reality. Kant calls that God conception ens realissimum, the most real being.
All the traditional proofs (ontological, cosmological, physico-theological, et al.) rely on the presupposition that this ens realissimum exists at least as a concept, and proceed from there. But Kant, true to form, is not willing to just accept such a proposition without due investigation.
An object is completely and particularly determined, it has specific attributes like size, color, etc. A concept is less than fully determined, that is, the concept of a horse includes many possible colors and sizes. It is possible to have a very specific concept – what Kant terms an archetype- which has a set of specific attributes, but remains still to some extent not completely determinate. For example, the archetype of the ideal horse one seeks to purchase may include a color, breed, size, age and the like but may not include specific attributes like tail hair length or nostril color. The fully determined actual horse one eventually owns, however, does have those attributes determined completely.
Ens realissimum is a concept completely determined through reason alone: normally an ideal or archetype is a combination of empirical observations/experiences and subjective interest – but ens realissimum is an aggregate of only fully positive content predicates (that is, no predicts with negative or derivate only content), e.g. the formal application of the principle of complete determination.
To Kant, the construct of ens realissimum is acceptable under Transcendental Idealism, and so he is willing to entertain the ontological proof and its cousins. But when ens realissimum is moved beyond the status of concept to a metaphysical grounding of all things, as those arguments seek to do, he deems this an incorrect substation of concept for metaphysical reality, which leads to a transcendental error of subreption, and cannot therefore stand. Thus is it not the form of the arguments with which Kant takes issue, is it the false leap from concept to reality.
Kant Doesn’t Hate Faith
Kant’s writings address religion and God in two main modes. The first, and less common, deals with religious content and function, or God as an object of worship. This includes Kant’s concept of an inner moral consciousness or conscientiousness being fundamental to religion, the result of his Lutheran Pietist upbringing – which is likely the source for his disdain for external ritual & devotional practice as well. The second, better known and more frequently and deeply considered mode is Kant’s lifelong project of locating God within a system of philosophical principles which account for the order of the world. The latter must necessarily exist, and the locus of God within such a system is the project. The main conflict for Kant here is between the standard rationalist account (God is the supreme constitutive element ordering the world as the ultimate causal ground of the universe) and a concept of God as a regulative or limiting principle in the causal spatio-temporal ordering of the universe.
It should be obvious that no one work fully encapsulates Kant on religion; unfortunately what might be the best source, his Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (1793), is often overlooked or cherry picked only on the topic of evil. Kant’s 1763 “One Possible Basis for a Demonstration of the Existence of God” introduces his well-known objection to the ontological argument (existence is not a predicate) which is more fully explored in the Critique of Pure Reason. In “One Possible Basis”, Kant deals with the ontological argument in one category; and groups the cosmological and physico-theological (his term for the argument proceeding from the order and harmony of the world necessarily indicating a wise creator of same) arguments, deeming them invalid.
It is that kind of negative content (denials of premises and dismissals of arguments, etc.) that are traditionally used characterize Kant on religion. In fact, much of his works that deal primarily with religion have a great deal of positive content – such as “Theodicy” (1791), Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (1793), “The End of All Things” (1794), “Conflict of the Faculties” (1798) and even the three Critiques. Much of the perceived negativity results from Kant’s denial of the existence of “religious knowledge”. Given how much Kant addresses types of knowledge and their workings, it is crucial to recognize that his dismissal of religious knowledge is necessary to protect the separate concept of faith. For Kant, faith is the only proper mode of religious assent and necessarily distinct from knowledge. Kant is merely establishing the limits of knowledge so that he may “make room for faith” as he says in the Preface to the Critique of Pure Reason.
It is this contrast of knowledge and faith, and which one can be used in speaking of religion and religious concepts, that I want to discuss; I will therefore skip the discussions of the arguments for God’s existence and Kant’s objections thereto (since I’ve already delved into that a few times before!).
From the most ‘real’ to the least, Kant’s hierarchy of categories of mental activity looks something like this: knowledge -> cognition -> thought. Faith is on a separate plane. There is no knowledge outside of experience and the spatio-temporal-causal order. There is no cognition of objects which are outside of experience or the spatio-temporal-causal order. Without possible experience, anything supersensible cannot be known; likewise, if cognition is a semantic concept, denying the cognition of the supersensible is denying the intelligibility of religious concepts. But Kant is not saying this – cognition is thinking of an object or proposition in relation to spatio-temporal-causal order. It is not semantic, but epistemic – a mode of thinking, directed at objects whose reality can be determined (whether or not already done). The only thing required for thinking is that the object or proposition being thought about is not self-contradictory. Cognition on the other hand engenders thought with Real Possibility and is therefore not possible once the object/proposition goes beyond the bounds of possible experience. Therefore, there cannot be cognition of God because there is no viable experience of his existence. This does not carry on down the chain, though, to mean that there can be no thought of God. On the contrary, Kant believes that religious concepts and doctrine, and indeed God, are thinkable – but their truth or falsehood cannot be determined. This is where faith comes in.
For Kant, faith is another method of “holding to be true” (Furwahrhalten) alongside knowledge and opinion/persuasion. Like these, faith is a mode of justified assent – not based on experience or argument, but in practical reason and the demands of the practical life. Unlike knowledge, faith is tied to the will – making it “free assent” to the truth or falsehood, rather than one which relies on proof. In this way, Kant assigns boundaries to knowledge and cognition, preserving faith from the attacks and requirements of those modes of thought. Faith is grounded in the objective, like knowledge, rather than the subjective or theoretical like persuasion. Faith is therefore a legitimate mode of conviction. The basis for faith, the ‘needs of practical reason’, may not be as easily understood as the basis for knowledge (experience), but Kant attributes those needs to an objective determining ground of the will – that is, an a priorinecessary object of the will. The distinction between the practical assent of faith and the theoretical assent of persuasion is free will; knowledge is a movement of the intellect grounded in experience, persuasion is a theoretical assent based on subjectives, but the free assent of faith is a determinate act of will. Faith is a first-person act, rather than one initiated by a third-party - an apt compassion might be to Descartes’ cogito. Kant might have rephrased that famous principle as credo ergo sum – for Descartes means to capture that willed act of thought Kant terms faith rather than the Kantian concept of knowledge or shallow thinking alone.
For Kant then it is not that the supersensible cannot be thought of or accessed, instead he delegates those matters to faith. Religious matters, including the concept of God, can be discussed as rationally and fully as any others – it is simply an issue of faith, of free willed assent to concepts, their attributes, and their truth or falsehood, rather than of knowledge (which depends upon objective experiential bases). I have discussed here the concept of faith in terms of Kant’s hierarchy of brain activity – the faith he terms ‘pure rational faith’ or in later works ‘moral faith’; it is important to note that he also uses faith in the more traditional sense of Glaube (belief or faith) in his corpus – for instance, when he speaks of specific religions’ traditions and rituals, he uses the term historical faith. In works dealing more in depth with religion(s), the terms “saving faith”, “servile faith” and “ecclesiastical faith” appear as well. These are species and relatives of the rational faith we have explored above. The historical faiths, or established religions with doctrines and rituals, act as vehicles by which we reach a pure rational system of religion (which has principles derived from reason alone, e.g. the Highest Good). For Kant, the path to God and/or immortality is obtained through morality being prioritized over self-interest – the various dogmas or observances one uses to achieve such an inner order can vary in outward appearance (that is, can be Hindu or Christian or none of the above). For Kant, it is possible to remain agnostic about the rituals and miracles and claims of specific religions while still following a path toward rational faith; he admits that the a priori path is harder for the average person and that much of humanity benefits greatly from the ‘arbitrary’ and ‘contingent’ external features of religion – he would hope we can someday eliminate the need for such trappings. This again has been overwrought as negative and agnostic or atheistic, when in fact Kant simply a very logical Lutheran. The excesses of worship and the decoration of ritual do not comport with his Pietist upbringing, and they play no role in the essential quest for God, which can be conducted entirely with reason and the will. Kant is, in fact, quite a theologian and to dismiss his valid philosophy of religion simply because of some slightly heretical or dismissive views is unfair and improper. Kant’s conception of faith is highly useful, and grows even more ecumenically useful as the years pass – if all religious persons could agree that faith is grounded in the will and in pure reason, discussions about the differences in the outward manifestations of it could be reduced to ways of improving the faith at the center of all these.
Translation Problems
Having heard of my interest in Biblical translations, someone recommended to me Claude Mariottini, claiming he wrote an interesting analysis on Scot McKnight’s Politics of Bible Translations. I already disliked McKnight's Politics of Bible Translations as founded on shaky ground and aiming for immaterial goals. McKnight’s premise is that the translation of the Bible one carries is a political and theologically charged act. The theology and politics of the translator(s) influences the contents of the Bible itself, and McKnight provides a generalized categorization of the major translations and what they imply about their advocates:
The NIV is the Bible of conservative evangelicals. The NLT is the Bible of conservative evangelicals. The TNIV is the Bible of egalitarian evangelicals. The ESV is the Bible of complementarian conservative evangelicals. The NASB is the Bible of conservative evangelical serious Bible students. The NRSV is the Bible of Protestant mainliners. The RSV is the Bible of aged Protestant mainliners. The CEB is the Bible of Protestant mainliners. The KJV … fill in the blank yourself. The Message is the Bible of those who are tired of the politics (and like something fresh). Claim to be above or beyond the politics of denominations. (my edit)
Mariottini alleges that “most people in the pew will seldom, or may never, notice these biases. This bias will not affect their love for God, their devotion to Christ, or their commitment to the Bible as the word of God.” And while this is true, and many do not realize that any English Bible has already endured several translations from the truly original Word before it is then altered for meaning and modern English, I would hope modern Christians are at least aware of the issues of translation. At least one sermon in their lives should have touched on the discrepancies surrounding some of the more major terms, or on the progression from Hebrew and Aramaic to Greek to Latin to middle languages to English to modern translations.
Mariottini then discusses whether translation problems arise because of the translator’s desires to avoid contradiction among the passages, or for personal theological motives, or another reason altogether. He cites one example from 1st Samuel where the versions differ as to whether Goliath or Goliath’s brother was killed. Mariottini says it is his view that “no one has the right to change the biblical text by adding words which the translator thought should be there in the first place,” but he does not acknowledge the fact that many translators alter the words themselves with different possible synonyms and different possible translations of foreign words.
The fact of the matter is that the Bible is currently available in no less than 438 languages. The specific minutiae of each phrase cannot possibly have been preserved between original recording and now, much less after each of those additional translations into languages which may or may not possess the words required at all. Without delving into the different methods of translation (dynamic equivalence, formal equivalence and idiomatic/paraphrastic), it is folly to categorize the translations or the people who love them. Without analyzing why a person has chosen a translation (for those who do consciously choose, not those who simply adopt the book left in the pew), McKnight’s generalizations are baseless. Moreover, since I grew up between the NIV and NRSV and after engaging in study selected the KJV as my preferred devotional, I feel completely left out of both Mariottini’s and McKnight’s world of worshippers. As usual the evangelical bent of the authors has steered the discussion away from the highly interesting topic of translations into a mere attempt at categorizing for convenience.
James Grissom’s A Source for Morals begins with a discussion of J.L. Mackie (atheist ethicist) who conceded that if an ultimate/absolute moral truth exists (e.g. that morals are not relative and a product of social evolution, which is Mackie’s position), then that absolute morality must have a supernatural source. What Mackie really believes though is that morality came about through social evolution - that certain ethical mandates were, one by one, incorporated and perpetuated because they benefited humanity as a group/society and therefore became desirable traits to be passed down through generations.
The rest of Grissom’s article is not compelling and leaves much to be desired. He cites the shame of Adam & Eve at having errantly eaten the fruit and realized their nudity as evidence that “humanity knew there was a right and a wrong” from their very beginning which is unexplained by ‘natural order’. First, there is the facetious idea that in modern ethics we can talk of humanity as truly having started so recently from two lone progenitors. It is preposterous to claim that Adam and Eve are historical truth and that their shame, as reported to us untold generations afterwards, is evidence of morality. And yet Grissom goes on, claiming that the ‘morality’ demonstrated by Adam and Eve is itself evidence that “there is a God, and that this God has morals which He Desires His creation to follow.” This naturally leads to the free will theodicy, the claim that God gave us choice which leads to evil when we stray from the morals he sets. This poses the question of the old Euthyphro dilemma – Grissom seems to believe that things are moral because God declared them moral, rather than for their own nature. He states that “what God deems good, is good and what He deems evil is sin”. That, to my mind, is overly simplistic since it is grounded only in the concept that because of the behavior of fictional characters, a supernatural source for absolute morality is self evident.
This is not my biggest qualm with Grissom’s article, however. His “bottom line” as he calls it is unexplored and not elaborated upon, yet is it the most novel and thereby contentious element of the post. His “static morality” idea, that God determines morality, is rendered hugely problematic by the idea of “progressive revelation”. Grissom’s contention is that the law was revealed piece by piece throughout time, such as the prophetic laws of the OT, and that Jesus is the “fullest revelation” of God’s morality and standards of living. He claims that the humans as originally made were perfectly moral until the ‘fall’, and have since “worked back towards perfection”, enabled by prophets and Christ. I dispute whether morals can be revealed in a process. If you are to claim that morality is absolute and categorical, it seems axiomatic that a progressive revelation would be impossible. Why would moral edicts evolve and change, as God’s clearly does – from a total prohibition on some things to later acquiescing certain types to full sanction by Jesus . Grissom seems to be arguing that morals are revealed not to individuals, but over the centuries. If the moral absolute was formed at the origin of life as contended, why would God both to obscure it and only slowly reveal it? If He has determined what is good, He knows what is good and right – so why would he purposefully mislead and withhold knowledge from creation? The idea of progressive revelation of morals also has problematic implications for the morality itself – it now seems arbitrary, and disputes that it was fully formed at inception. Grissom seems to think that God, when he created the world, also created a whole moral absolute. Yet the idea of a progressive revelation makes it seem as if the morality was not fully formed, but was rather being pieced together, tested out, and subject to trial and error.
Is that not how social evolution works? Would a progressively revealed morality not, in fact, be one that develops over the course of human history as a social factor which evolves because of its inherent benefit for the population? In trying to award God these powers and retroactively fit a moral absolute into the fictional parts of Genesis, Grissom has essentially argued FOR Mackie and his social evolution of morality. A progressive revelation implies growth and change to the material being revealed, which is by definition an evolution.
Research Idea #23
Comparing the Effects of Colonialism versus Globalisation on Adaptive Polytheism
In identifying the effect of colonisation on indigenous religion, one progression is this: polytheistic or pantheistic culture/religion is colonised by a monotheistic (Christian, usually) power (citation needed). In acceding the colonial authority but retaining their identity, the indigenous peoples often adapt a form of polytheism which more or less absorbs the monotheists’ deities and dogmas into the existing pantheon and doctrines (citation needed).
Thereafter, pockets remain of these adaptive polytheist belief systems/cultures.
How is modern day globalisation affecting these? Are they growing ever more pantheistic? (e.g. Santa de los Meurtos rising to prominence due primarily to the sociocultural and political crises in Mexico) And what effect has globalisation had on the original monotheistic groups? How many Christians also believe in karma and yogic principles (not part of their existing doctrine) and in not just a communion of saints of every item and cause, but ‘gods’ such as money and information?
Most cultures are first-half-of-life cultures, and even sadder, most organized religion almost necessarily sells a first-half-of-life spirituality. In the first half of life it is all about me. How can I be important? How can I be safe? How can I make money? How can I look attractive? And, in the Christian scenario, how can I think well of myself and go to heaven? How can I be on moral high ground? These are all ego questions. They are not the questions of the soul. I’m sad to say, I think many Christians have never moved beyond these survival and security questions. Even eternity is securing my future, not even a common future, or a future for humanity; religion becomes a private insurance plan for that future. It’s still all about me, but piously disguised. Any sense of being part of a cosmos, part of a historical sweep, that God is doing something bigger and better than simply saving individual souls (my soul in particular) is largely of no interest. This becomes apparent in the common disinterest of so many when it comes to Earth care, building real community, and peace and justice issues. For many Christians—stuck in the first half of life—all that is important is my private moral superiority and spiritual “safety,” which is somehow supposed to “save” me. Once God and grace move us to the second half of life, however, religion becomes much more a mystical matter, rather than a mere moral matter. Then it’s all about union and our participation in and with God, while also seeing my actual moral weakness. Indeed, this is the work of true religion, to help us transition from stage to stage, toward ever-deeper union with God and all things.
Richard Rohr (via notalwaysluminous)
Joseph Novak - The Minimum Bible | Old Testament
THE MINIMUM BIBLE is a graphic design collection by Joseph Novak. In an age of information overflow, sometimes we need to strip away the many words which obfuscate meaning and rely on simple symbolic shapes to introduce us to themes beyond the text. THE MINIMUM BIBLE is one attempt to portray biblical themes and texts visually using a minimalist style with a found-item overlay.
via Co Design
A person who is passionately fond of music may quite well be a perverted personbut I should find it hard to believe this of anyone who thirsted for Gregorian chanting.Simone WeilIs there any such thing as a distinctly sacred sound? Can any single sound summon us to the divine? Does any particular one convey the essence of holiness? Lead to the depths?
I don’t know if this has already been done, but I think about it a lot.
this has always bothered me...
I've always admired the covered women - Muslim, Jewish, Christian, anyone else who takes on a visible sign of piety liket his - any such person does so with intent. And it is the intent we ought to recognize in these women - the reason she covers herself is what's important, not what creed it falls under.
Deuteronomy's use of Near Eastern treaty elements has become central to a new debate about the formation of the text. This paper points out anachronistic assumptions about Mesopotamian and Judahite scribal techniques shared by both sides of the debate, arguing that a more careful use of contemporary evidence may stimulate new models and solutions. The placement of treaty-curses with striking late Iron-Age cuneiform parallels at different compositional layers of Deuteronomy has made the question of the status of Dtr 13 and 28 important to any historical account of Deuteronomy’s formation. The crux is the debate about whether they are a) deliberate and subversive reuse of the Vassal Treaty of Esarhaddon, as Otto and now Levinson argue (or deliberate but not subversive, as Stackert argues) or b) unconscious uses of a common ANE or West Semitic treaty-curse tradition with no direct connection to VTE, as Morrow and now Crouch argue. But a historical comparison of Mesopotamian scribal text-building techniques with parallel evidence attested in Judahite literature suggests that neither subversion nor independence are likely explanations. The first-millennium cuneiform analog to canonization is serialization--the collection of culturally central texts of one genre into standardized, numbered series. VTE was never a canonical text—it was neither serialized nor standardized for scribal training. Instead, it was monumentalized. As the new evidence from Taynat shows, it was presented as a pragmatic ritual artifact independent of any textual collection. By contrast the Judahite analog was narrativization--the collection of culturally central texts of different genres into extended prose narratives, including the Deuteronomic history and the Priestly work (and perhaps E and the Covenant Code), each with embedded law collections and covenants. By contrast with Mesopotamian serialization (and the modern scholarly expectation of verbatim textual quotation) relevant inner-biblical strategies of narrativization do not typically work through the direct incorporation of prior texts but more fluidly, through allusion and complex citation. Considering the empirical evidence for these three very different late Iron Age scribal text-building strategies gives us a more historical basis for interpreting the relationship between Dtr 13 and 28 with VTE. On the one hand the different Iron Age scribal text-building strategies explain why certain patterns expected by Morrow et al. failed to materialize. And on the other hand the expectations of extended verbatim duplication shared by Otto et al. are based on assumptions that the ancient scribal evidence tend to refute: treaty-curses were never treated as canonical, serialized textual material, but monumentalized in cuneiform and their elements narrativized in Judah.
Seth L. Sanders, Associate Professor of Religion, Trinity College
The Abstract of his paper entitled "Placing Scribal Culture in History: Deuteronomy and Late Iron-Age Text Production"