Transcript Rising and Falling HUM 2051: Civilization I Fall 2013 Dr. Perdigao August 22-25, 2014

Rising and Falling
HUM 2051: Civilization I
Fall 2013
Dr. Perdigao
August 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.cfnews13.com/News/Sidebar/2008/8/21/fay
_viewer_photos_page_5.html
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/usa/features/article_1425772.p
hp/In_photos_USA_Tropical_Storm_Fay?page=4
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_br
eug.html
Framing the Text
• “sacred text” as revealed truth
• J:
• E:
• P:
Yahwist (Jehovah)
Elohist
“priestly writer”
c. 1000 BCE “I AM”—Yahweh
8th c. BCE “Elohim” or El—“God”
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