The Beloved Disciple: Part 3

[Part 2 is in a comment to the original post. Part 3 would have been as well, but it is too long and Blogger won't accept it as a comment.]

I have a guess at which Papias fragment Witherington is referring to as 10.17, from which he concludes that John was killed early like his brother James. I found this webpage:

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/jackson/excursus1.html

This page argues for the early death of John the son of Zebedee. It gives six citations for external testimony, plus two from the Bible. The citations from the Bible are Mark 10:35-40 and Matthew 20:20-23. From these two passages, it sounds like James and John will both die martyrs' deaths. Indeed, James was martyred early, according to Acts 12:2.

The six external citations are as follows:

1) Georgius Hamartolus (10th century) writes that "John the Apostle after he had written his Gospel suffered martyrdom, for Papias in the second book of the λογια κυριακα says that he was put to death by Jews, thus plainly fulfilling along with his brother the prophecy of Christ regarding them, and their own confession and common agreement concerning him". Note that this passage implies that Papias was still extant in the 10th century, or that Hamartolus was refering to an earlier witness to Papias, such as in the next citation (below). It also plainly states that John was martyred *after* he had written his Gospel.

2) Philip of Side (5th century) writes that "Papias says in his second book that John the Divine and James his brother were slain by Jews". This is clearly referring to the same passage as Hamartolus, and if the two are not independent witnesses, it is possible that Hamartolus was referring to Philip. Note that Philip calls the the son of Zebedee "John the Divine", while Hamartolus calls him "John the Apostle". Philip does not claim that John Zebedee wrote the Gospel before his martyrdom.

3) Clement of Alexandria (2nd century - about the time of Irenaeus), in his Stromata (iv.9), cites one Heracleon who, when speaking of confession, names "Matthew, Philip, Thomas, Levi, and many others". The webpage where I found these citations claims that Heracleon/Clement is listing those who had not been martyred, and finds it strange that John Zebedee would not have been mentioned. To this I must reply, first, that to conclude from this alone that John Zebedee *was* martyred is purely an argument from silence; and second, that I don't read Heracleon's statement the same way that the webpage does. Heracleon is saying that there are two confessions, one by word and one by one's life, and that the former proceeds from the latter, and is not sufficient without it. He claims that "the hypocrites" have made confession by word. Then comes this statement: "for all the saved have confessed with the confession made by the voice, and departed. Among whom are Matthew, Philip, Thomas, LEvi, and many others." The word "departed" and that fact that he calls these "the saved" in opposition to "the hypocrites" who only confess by word, makes me think this is a list of martyrs.

4) The apocryphal Martyrdom of Andrew. In Schaff's Ante-Nicene Fathers there is such a Martyrdom. I haven't read it carefully, but skimming it a few times I don't see the reference made by the website, which claims that James and John were given "Anatolia" to be their mission field. On one hand, this is a known apocryphal work, so we must give it less credence than an authentic one. The webpage acknowledges this, but maintains that the reference to Anatolia is "in the very teeth of the tradition as to a departure to and prolonged residence in Asia Minor in the case of the Apostle John." I suppose he means that "Anatolia" from a Palestinian perspective would be east of the Greek Anatolia (which was Asia Minor). But in the Maryrdom in Schaff's collection the writer claims to be in Achaia - Greece! So it seems to me that "Anatolia" should refer to Asia Minor, and the argument of the webpage is not valid.

5) The Syriac Martyrology (early 5th century), which commemorates James and John together on the same liturgical day.

6) Aphrahat (4th century) writes as follows: "Great and excellent is the martyrdom of Jesus. He surpassed in affliction and in confession all who were before or after. [Aphrahat had previously listed a large number of martyrs before Jesus.] And after Him was the faithful martyr Stephen whom the Jews stoned. Simon (Peter) also and Paul were perfect martyrs. And James and John walked in the footsteps of their Master Christ. Also (others) of the apostles thereafter in divers places confessed and proved true martyrs." On the surface it looks like Aphrahat claims some of the apostles were martyred after John was. I haven't found a Greek copy of this yet, but I wonder if the "thereafter" simply continues the "after Him". Alternatively, the thereafter may refer (strictly) only to Stephen, Peter, Paul, and James, while John is named with his brother as he often was in the Gospels.

In any event, I don't see why any of this requires an early death of John, even if it suggests a martyr's death. If Papias really did say that John was killed after writing his Gospel, that seems like strong evidence that John was not killed early.

The Beloved Disciple

I've recently had some very stimulating conversations with my friend A. One topic that recurs for us is text-criticism of the Old and New Testaments. The latest installment of our discussions included the question "Who wrote the Gospel of John". A told me that Ben Witherington III has argued that the author of the Gospel of John, and hence "the beloved disciple", was in fact Lazarus, whom Jesus raised from the dead. I have just read Witherington's blog entry about this from January 29, 2007, along with all the comments. I've also been doing some digging around of my own into the Early Church witness relating to John. This entry is meant to organize my thoughts about the topic.

First, the Early Church witness. I have always thought that the John whom Polycarp knew was the apostle John, the son of Zebedee. I'm less certain about this now. It appears to be a distinct possibility that there were two Johns - the apostle John, and the presbyter John. Eusebius specifically highlights this in his History of the Church when discussing Papias (Book III, Chap. XXXIX). According to Irenaeus (Against Heresies, Book V, Chap. XXXIII, Sect. 4), Papias was "a hearer of John, and a companion of Polycarp". Papias had written 5 books called "Expositions of Oracles of the Lord", apparently a collection of oral traditions from eyewitnesses to the Gospel events or the disciples of the eyewitnesses. This books are no longer extant, but Eusebius apparently was familiar with them, as he quotes from them in several places. Notably, when Irenaeus says that Papias was "a hearer of John", Eusebius understands him to mean the apostle John. But Eusebius quotes Papias himself: "If, then, any one came, who had been a follower of the elders [apparently he means the apostles or other eye-witnesses], I questioned him in regard to the words of the elders - what Andrew or what Peter said, or what was said by Philip, or by Thomas, or by James, or by [the apostle] John, or by Matthew, or by any other of the disciples of the Lord, and what things Aristion and the presbyter John, the disciples of the Lord, say." Eusebius deduces that Papias was a hearer of the presbyter John himself, on the basis that he mentions him frequently by name and cites them in his books. One possibility, then, is that Irenaeus was mistaken when he called Papias a hearer of the apostle John. Another possibility is that Eusebius misunderstands Irenaeus, and that Irenaeus is himself referring to the presbyter John rather than to the Apostle. Eusebius also quotes a letter from Polycrates (Bishop of Ephesus during the Paschal controversy) in which both Polycarp and someone names John are named (Church History V.XXIV): "For in Asia also great lights have fallen asleep, which shall rise again on the day of the Lord's coming [...] Among these are Philip, one of the twelve apostles [...]; and, moreover, John, who was both a witness and a teacher, who reclined upon the bosom of the Lord, and , being a priest, wore the sacerdotal plate. He fell asleep at Ephesus. And Polycarp in Smyrna [...]." This quote could be taken in two ways. The John mentioned could be the apostle. The statement that he "reclined upon the bosom of the Lord" would then line up nicely with the Gospel accounts that the beloved disciple sat next to Jesus at the Last Supper - if the beloved disciple is the apostle John. Alternatively, it could be the presbyter John who, as an eye-witness but not one of the twelve, could have been present at the Last Supper. This would explain why Philip is specifically called "one of the twelve apostles" whereas John is simply called "a witness and a teacher". The upshot to this idea is that it forces at least one other disciple, not one of the twelve, to be present at the Last Supper, and his name was also John, and moreover the beloved disciple and the author of the Gospel would then be the presbyter, not the apostle. There is a third possibility - that the John mentioned by Irenaeus and also by Polycrates is in fact the apostle, and Papias, though referring to two different Johns, was a hearer of the apostle (as well as of the presbyter) toward the end of the apostle's life and therefore could learn only so much from the apostle himself, and must afterward have learned what he could from those who had known him better. In this case, Eusebius misunderstands Papias' statement. Something like this is made more likely by Irenaeus' comments about Polycarp (Against Heresies III.III.4):

But Polycarp was not only instructed by apostles, and conversed with many who had seen Christ, but was also, by apostles in Asia, appointed bishop of the Church in Smyrna, whom I also saw in my early youth, for he tarried a very long time, and, when a very old man, gloriously and most nobly suffering martyrdom, departed life, having always taught the things which he had learned from the apostles, and which the Church has handed down, and which alone are true. To these things all the Asiatic Churches testify, as do also those men who have succeeded Polycarp down to the present time [only a generation later] [...] He it was who, coming to Rome in the time of anicetus caused many to turn away from the aforesaid heretics to the Church of God, proclaiming that he had received this one and sole truth from the apostles, - that, namely, which is handed down by the Church. There are also those who heard from him that John, the disciple of the Lord, going to bathe at Ephesus, and perceiving Cerinthus within, rushed out of the bath-house without bathing, exclaiming, "Let us fly, lest even the bath-house fall down, because Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is within." And Polycarp himself replied to Marcion, who met him on one occasion, and said, "Dost thou know me?" "I do know thee, the first-born of Satan." [The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.] Such was the horror which the apostles [John] and their disciples [Polycarp] had against holding even verbal communication with any corrupters of the truth [...] Then, again, the Church in Ephesus, founded by Paul, and having John remaining among them permanently until the times of Trajan, is a true witness of the tradition of the apostles.

Here Irenaeus clearly states that Polycarp knew at least one of the apostles. He is also said to have "conversed with many who had seen Christ" but were presumably not apostles. This mention of non-apostolic eye-witnesses is the only such in this chapter, which otherwise relies heavily on the authority of the apostles themselves. John is mentioned twice, and associated with the apostles both times. In the first case, Irenaeus draws a parallel between John and Polycarp (John takes an extreme position toward Cerinthus, and Polycarp his disciple takes a correspondingly extreme position toward Marcion), and then uses these two instances to claim that both the apostles (illustrated by the story of John) and their disciples (illustrated by the story of Polycarp) were horrified by heresies. He thus makes John one of the apostles, and not simply one of the eye-witnesses. In the second case, Irenaeus recognizes the Paul as the founder of the church in Ephesus, but makes John the long-time shepherd of that church. He does this in order to claim that "the Church in Ephesus [...] is a true witness of the tradition of the apostles." Again, he makes John an apostle, along with Paul. Ireneaus, then, appears truly to believe that Polycarp was a hearer of the apostle John, whom he however calls "the disciple of the Lord". Finally, the fact that Irenaeus makes Papias the companion of Polycarp seems to imply that Polycarp was older than Papias, and this would be consistent with the notion that Papias knew the apostle only at the end of his life, whereas Polycarp was apparently better acquainted with him and for a longer time.

Eusebius quotes Papias once more (in the same place): "This also the presbyter [not the apostle] said: Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately, though not indeed in order, whatsoever he remembered of the things said or done by Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor followed him, but afterward, as I said, he followed Peter, who adapted his teaching to the needs of his hearers, but with no intention of giving a connected account of the Lord's discourses, so that Mark committed no error while he thus wrote some things as he remembered them. For he was careful of one thing, not to omit any of the things which he had heard, and not to state any of them falsely. [...] So then Matthew wrote the oracles in the Hebrew language, and every one interpreted them as he was able." Eusebius then adds that "the same writer [Papias] uses testimonies from the first Epistle of John and from that of Peter likewise." Eusebius also states (regarding Mark) that Mark was asked to write his Gospel by the hearers of Peter, who "was pleased with the zeal of the men, and that the work obtained the sanction of his authority for the purpose of being used in the churches. Clement [...] gives this account, and with him agrees the bishop of Hierapolis named Papias" (Church History II.XV). My point in bringing up this last quote is that Eusebius is clearly acknowledging apostolic sanction of Mark's Gospel (as he does later of Luke's by tying him to Paul and reporting that "they say that Paul meant to refer to Luke's Gospel wherever, as if speaking of some gospel of his own, he used the owrds, 'according to my Gospel'."), and he cites Papias as a supporter of this sanction. It seems likely, then, that in the first quote (about the Gospels of Mark and Matthew, and the Epistles of John and Peter) Eusebius' use of the word "likewise" implies that Papias claims apostolic authority for the two Epistles, as Eusebius understands it. But Eusebius (and by extension Papias as well) apparently considers these Epistles to be not only sanctioned, but also written by apostles themselves. If Papias had thought that the Epistle of John, for instance, were not written by the apostle but only sanctioned by him, we would presumably have indicated this in his book and Eusebius would have grouped it with his account of Mark. In any event there does not appear to be any other opinion in the Early Church than that the apostle himself wrote the Epistle.

Irenaeus claims that "John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon His breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia" (Against Heresies III.I.I). And again, we have seen that Papias appears to claim that the Epistle is by the apostle, or perhaps the presbyter under the sanction of one of the apostles. In either case, if the Gospel and the Epistle are by the same author, then the author must be either the apostle John or the presbyter John. If the former, then the beloved disciple was the apostle, and the title "the disciple of the Lord" may be in reference to this; otherwise the beloved disciple was the presbyter. In either event, it seems likely that the question was clear to Papias and Irenaeus. If the apostle is the beloved disciple, then Polycarp was his disciple, and Papias might have met him before his death. Papias would have learned either directly from the apostle or from Polycarp what the origin of the fourth Gospel was, and Irenaeus would have known it from Polycarp or Papias. Similarly if the beloved disciple was the presbyter, Papias and Irenaeus would have known it. That they both attribute the Gospel/Epistle to a man named John is strong evidence that the author's name was actually John.

Eusebius clearly believes that "the disciple of the Lord" is the apostle (see Church History III.XXIII). He speaks of the apostle but cites Irenaeus' phrase "the disciple of the Lord". But Irenaeus himself appears to equate the two (Against Heresies II.XXIII.5): "[..] even as the Gospel and all the elders testify; those who were conversant in Asia with John, the disciple of the Lord, [affirming] that John conveyed to them that information. [...] Some of them, moreover, saw not only John, but the other apostles also. [...] Whom then should we rather believe? Whether such men as these, or Ptolemaeus, who never saw the apostles [...]?" The context of this statement is much doubted since Irenaeus claims that Jesus was 50 years old when he died, rather than 30. Be that as it may, he clearly groups John "the disciple of the Lord" with "the other apostles also", as an apostle among them. In the same place he refers to "the Gospel". Is he referring specifically to John's Gospel? If so, then he explicitly links the fourth Gospel to the apostle John.

So from very early times John is referred to as an apostle, as "the disciple of Jesus", and also as the one "who reclined upon the bosom of the Lord" (Polycrates), apparently in reference to the Last Supper.

But maybe this is all a mix-up. This is essentially the first part of Witherington's thesis. Specifically, he supposes that the beloved disciple who wrote both the Gospel and the Epistle was Lazarus. Why are they called after John's name? He supposes that John of Patmos (the author of Revelation - whether he is supposed to be the presbyter or a third John, I don't know) was the collector/editor of Lazarus' work, and Papias among others began referring to them by the collector's/editor's name. For internal evidence of Lazarus' authorship of the Gospel, his strongest point is that Lazarus is specifically called one whom Jesus loves (John 11:3), and all references to "the disciple whom Jesus loved" occur after this. From here, he pieces together a plausible story. Ultimately, though, I'm not convinced. Here are a few reasons:

First, it seems unusual that a collection of writings by Lazarus would become known by the collector's name. This is opposite to the Documentary Hypothesis' claim, for instance, that the books of Moses are named for Moses but collected and edited by later scribes. If the earliest Christians knew that Lazarus wrote the Gospel and Epistle (or at least the core of them), why would they not have attributed them to him? It stretches the imagination too much to think that John could have been merely a collector (of only two to five documents!) or slight editor (adding only the appendix to the Gospel?).

Second, Witherington's complaints about the lack of Galilean presence or episodes specifically about the apostle John are not convincing, and they have been dealt with consistently since as early as Eusebius. The basic points are that John focused his Gospel specifically around the gathering crisis in Jerusalem, and that he didn't need to tell about the Galilean ministry or the episodes involving himself, since the Synoptic Gospels had already covered that ground. To Witherington's rejoinder that "the way eyewitness testimony worked in early Judaism is that you testified to the important things you saw, especially the one's [sic.] that changed your life", we might ask why did the Synoptic writers omitt the stories that are unique to John, such as the story of Lazarus himself? Or again, it is clear from the final sections of the Gospel that the author could have told us about more events, but did not (John 20:30, 21:25). Along these lines, Witherington himself says the author "had to be constantly condensing his material, as is so often the case with an eyewitness account that is rich in detail and substance." So why can't this same principle apply to the question why episodes reported elsewhere are not reported in the fourth Gospel?

Third, and finally, internal evidence suggests to me that the beloved disciple is the apostle John. Witherington claims that chapters 14-17 contain "discourses given at several junctures during that last week." I don't know what evidence he would marshal in support of this claim, but on the surface I don't think this is plausible. For one thing, chapters 14-16 are one continuous quote. If this was an combination of discourses I would expect now and then to see an occasional "eipen de" or some other authorial interjection. For another thing, the end of chapter 13 has Jesus telling Peter "the rooster will not crow till you have denied me three times." Chapters 14-16 are a continuation of this statement, which if they occurred over several days, would require that the rooster crowed several times before the early morning of Peter's denial. I can imagine chapter 13 being a combination of two events - the first supper in which Jesus washed the disciples' feet, and the second (beginning with the authorial interjection "After saying these things ...."), or Last Supper, during which Judas is revealed as the betrayer. In this case, 13:21 is the beginning of the Johannean Last Supper, and the beloved disciple is sitting close to Jesus and asked Jesus who the betrayer was. Jesus demonstrates who the betrayer is by giving Judas bread. In Luke's Gospel, Peter and John (the apostle) are sent ahead to prepare the Last Supper meal (in Mark the two disciples are not named, and in Matthew the number of disciples preparing the meal is not given at all). When it was evening, Jesus "came with the twelve" (Mark), He "reclined at table with the twelve" (Matthew), and He "reclined at table, and the apostles with him" (Luke). Mark and Luke do not record a disciple asking Jesus who will betray Him, and Matthew simply says that they all were asking if they were the betrayer. The fourth Gospel singles out the beloved disciple. But how many disciples were present? All internal indications are that the twelve were the only ones present with Jesus. In each Gospel except the fourth, it is stated that Jesus supped with the twelve, and immediately he says "one of you will betray me".

*******

Well, unfortunately I need to wrap this up now before I am *really* finished. Perhaps I'll write more later. In the meantime: I find the internal evidence as well as the external evidence in favor of the apostle John as the author of the Gospel and the Epistle that bear his name.

A very roughly-hewn thought

There's a big question these days among phoneticians and speech scientists about the variability in speech utterances vs. their discrete representation as individual sounds. The sound "d" is not pronounced in a single way, but it varies from person to person and from utterance to utterance. Does it therefore make sense to talk about discrete, individual sounds as real entities, or are they simply a figment of our imagination, useful for writing and organizing our knowledge of speech and language, but ultimately unfounded and misleading in fact?

It seems to me there might be an interesting parallel to draw between this problem and the problem of creation itself. When we speak, whatever it is we have in our minds, the outcome is a real, physical signal involving movements of our articulators and pressure waves through the air. On the other hand, God Himself spoke creation into being. Whatever was in His mind took real form in the newly-real world as soon as He spoke it, and of course we know that there is overwhelming variation in the world, so that even some finches have short beaks and others have long beaks. The result of our own speech is much less phenomenal, but no less real. And perhaps we could go even further: When we speak to someone, the real signal that we create conveys the knowledge of itself. That is, as listeners we sense the acoustic speech signal and interpret/understand it itself as an intermediate step to understanding the speaker's mind. By analogy, we could perhaps agree with Paul that the knowledge of God is seen in the creation itself.

Does this line of thinking help us out in any way? Does it help our understanding of creation, or speech production, or salvation? Not sure, but I thought it was intriguing enough to write down.

Some observations on Genesis 38

It has always puzzled me why in Genesis the story of Judah and Tamar appears in the middle of the story of Joseph. In the book of Genesis, there are several sections that are partitioned by the phrase "These are the generations of ...". As I recall, there's some controversy whether this phrase indicates the end or the beginning of the section. I'm going assume it indicates the beginning of the section. It first appears in 2:4 - "These are the generations of the heaves and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens." The next appearance is in 5:1 - "This is the book of the generations of Adam." Next is 6:9 - "These are the generations of Noah." Next is 10:1 - "These are the generations of the son of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth." Next is 11:10 - "These are the generations of Shem." Next is 11:27 - "These are the generations of Terah." Next is 25:12 - "These are the generations of Ishmael, Abraham's son, whom Hagar the Egyptian, Sarah's servant, gore to Abraham." Next is 25:19 - "These are the generations of Isaac, Abraham's son." Next is 36:1 - "These are the generations of Esau (that is, Edom)". This is repeated in 36:9 - "These are the generations of Esau the father of the Edomites in the hill country of Seir." Finally, 37:2 - "These are the generations of Jacob.

Ok..... Still with me? Genesis 37:2 until the end of the book of Genesis is one long section. It is principally the story of Joseph. 37:2 continues: "Joesph, being seventeen years old..." Joseph dreams two dreams, he is sold by his brothers, and winds up in Egypt as a servant to "Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard" (37:36). This part of the story is continued not in chapter 38, but in 39: "Now Joseph had been brought down to Egypt, and Potiphar, an officer of PHaraoh, the captain of the guard, an Egyptian, had bought him from the Ishmaelites who had brought him down there." The rest of the book continues to tell the story of Joseph in a very linear fashion. So why does chapter 38 come between 37 and 39? Wouldn't it make sense for 38 to come before 37? That way, the story of Joseph would be completely linear and uninterrupted from beginning to end. And why bother making such a big deal of Judah and Tamar (chapter 38) anyway? It's a weird story, end as abruptly as it began. In the middle of the Joseph story, we are told that "It happened at that time that Judah went down from his brothers and turned aside to a certain Adullamite, whose name was Hirah." While apparently living in the town of Adullam, Judah married "a certain Canaanite whose name was Shua." She bore him three sons: Er, Onan, and Shelah. Judah arranged for the marriage of Er to Tamar, but Er died without children. The custom at the time was for the nearest male relative to marry the dead man's wife. In this case, it was Onan, who also died without children. To make a long story short, Tamar should have then been married to Shelah, but Judah didn't allow it. It seems that Shelah must eventually have married, and Judah's wife died in the meantime, so that now Judah himself was the nearest relative able to marry Tamar. She tricked him into sleeping with her (pretending to be a prostitute, whom Judah did not recognize), and as a result she bore him twin sons: Perez and Zerah. The end. Back to Joseph. Abuptly. What about Perez and Zerah? We don't hear much about them ever again, except in the genealogical records.

What seems to me at this point as the most interesting reference to them is in Ruth 4:11-12: "Then all the people who were at the gate and the elders said, We are witnesses. May the Lord make the woman [Ruth], who is coming into your house, like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the house of ISrael. Mayyou act worthily in Ephrathah and be renowned in Behlehem, and may your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah, because of the offspring that the Lord will give you by this young woman." It seems that the story of Judah and Tamar was well-known, and even viewed favorably, by the people in Ruth's time. But still, why is it in the middle of the Joseph story?

Well, I have an idea now. But first, two more notes about the story: 1) When Judah finds out that Tamar is pregnant, he still doesn't know that he himself is the father, and he says "Bring her out, and let her be burned." Later, under Moses, this punishment was codified specifically for daughters of priests who had prostituted themselves (Leviticus 21:9), in contrast to women who were not daughters of priests and who were stoned (Deuteronomy 22:21) for sexual immorality. Now, Moses was some 400+ years after Judah, but if we assume a similar custom in the time of Judah, the implication is that Tamar was a priest's daughter, or something like that. 2) Before this, when Judah sends a goat to her (still thinking she is a prostitute), his friend can't find her, and asks the people if they have seen "the cult prostitute". Now, we don't know anything about Tamar's father, whether he was a Canaanite priest or not, but the language used in this chapter suggests that we should be thinking of Tamar as if she were a priest's daughter, whether she really was or not. Judah and this pseudo-priest's daughter have two sons in a way reminiscent of Jacob and Esau. Namely, Jacob and Esau were twins, as were Perez and Zerah; both pairs of twins were born with one trying to get out before the other - Jacob was holding on to Esau's heel, and Perez was born first in spite of his brother's hand first coming out. Because Zerah's hand was out first, he was recognized as the firstborn: "This one came out first" (38:28), but Perez became the more important of the two, just as Jacob was more important than Esau.

Ok... Now what about Joseph? I wonder now if Judah and Tamar don't interrupt the story of Joseph in order to serve as a contrast to Joseph. Joseph has been sold to Egypt, yes. The next part of the story involved Joseph refusing to sleep with his master's wife, and eventually being married to a priest's daughter and having two sons. See the parellels? There is another parallel: Joseph was separated from his brothers by being sold into Egypt, and Judah also "went down from his brothers" (38:1). Judah and Joseph both were living away from their brothers, in foreign lands (Joseph among the Egyptians, Judah among the Canaanites. Both of them married foreign women (Judah married the daughter of Shua the Canaanite, Joseph married Asenath the Egyptian). But Judah contrasts with Joseph in his methods. Judah was the one who suggested to sell Joesph into slavery (37:26); Judah left his own brothers of his own will and married a Canaanite, where Joseph left his brothers unwillingly and married an Egyptian; my guess is that Judah was trying to become an important man on his own efforts (there's more to this than just a wild guess, but I won't discuss it here), whereas Joseph became an important man through faith in God; Judah loses his first two sons and has twins in a rather bad way - and in the process, when he can't find Tamar who has his signet and cord and staff (items indicating his importance), he says "Let her keep the things as her own, or we shall be laughed at" (38:23), whereas Joseph has two sons (perhaps even twins???) in an honorable way - and in the process, when he resists the advances of Potiphar's wife, he is accused by her of coming "to laugh at" her (39:14, 17).

As I am working on this entry, I'm thinking about chapters 37 and 38 as a parallel to 39-41. You have, basically, two stories that parallel each other - perhaps the first story is primarily about Judah (as himself, and as the representative of his brothers), and the second story primarily about Joseph. In broad strokes, the first story can be thought of as the following four episodes: 1) Joseph is the favorite in the Jacob's house, 2) Joseph has dreams which Jacob interprets, 3) Joseph is sold into slavery by his brothers (at Judah's suggestion) and his robe is used as proof of his death, 4) Judah departs from his brothers and has twin sons from (presumably) the daughter of a priest. The second story has four parallel episodes: 1) Joseph is prosperous in Potiphar's house, 2) Joseph ends up in prison and his garment is used as proof of his crime, 3) Joseph interprets dreams, and 4) Joseph rises to power and has two sons from the daughter of a prist. (Note that the 2nd and 3rd episodes are in the opposite order in the two stories). Judah meant to profit from selling his brother, and to become a great man by leaving his brothers. In the end, Joseph becomes the great man and Judah, who has become the head of the house of Jacob (except for Jacob himself), must come to him for food. It is Joseph who receives a double portion of the inheritance because Jacob adopts Joseph's two sons - Jacob does not adopt Judah's two sons.

So the book of Genesis from Abraham on is a study of contrasts between two brothers in each generation. In each case, one brother believes the promises made to Abraham while the other does not. First you have Isaac and Ishmael. Ishmael is the older, but he is not the son of the promise. Then you have Jacob and Esau. Esau is the older, but he does not believe in the promises and therefore Jacob recieves the birthright and the blessing. Of Jacob's sons, we have Judah and Joseph in particular. Joseph is the firstborn of Rachel, and Judah is the 4th of Leah. The first three sons of Leah (Reuben, Simeon, Levi) all got themselves into trouble so that Judah is the effective head of the family after Jacob. So, Judah is older than Joseph, but... Like Esau, Judah does not appear to take the promises seriously, whereas Joseph does, and the result is that Joseph receives the blessing and the double portion. And again, each of them has two sons, in which the birth order is not the order of importance - Ephraim is preferred before Mannasseh, and Perez is preferred before Zerah.

Perhaps this helps shed some light on the popularity of the Judah and Tamar story in Ruth. The people seem to consider it a blessing for Ruth to be like Tamar. In fact, Ruth's Israelite family was from the tribe of Judah, so from a Judah-centric perspective this would seem to make great sense - Abraham, Isaach, Jacob, and Judah all had two sons (well, Jacob had 12, but we are representing them as two), and it was through this line that the family was built up.

In the meantime, Joseph is contrasted with Judah in Genesis, and yet it is through Judah (and Tamar) that the line of David is traced, and through David the line of Jesus.

So there we go. Some thoughts about Genesis 38 and how it fits into the general structure of the Joseph story and of the book of Genesis as a whole.

Of the Breaking of Marshall

We were getting ready to go see "Meet Me In Saint Louis" with some friends today, and there were some emails going back and forth about it, some sillier than others. One of our friends said he was ready for a break; another replied that we would be glad to break him; I replied with the following:

Of the Breaking of Marshall
--------------------------------------
Full firm he planted both his feet
Against his mortal foe,
Nor would he yield for he would wield
The White Wuten of woe.
There stood the fiend that he would rend,
And bring the villain to an end.

The Great Faug, how his teeth a-burned
With blood and bits of flesh and gore,
His eyes they glowed and glowered red
For hunger for still more.
He strode apace and closed the space
To eye him in the face.

Then with a flash he loosed his lash
And hail came tumbling down,
But he who bore the White Wuten
Would not be overthrown -
He raised his shield and gained the field
And pressed the beast to yield.

Great Faug he laughed a crackled growl -
Full terrible the sound -
Then shook the land and, sword in hand,
Gained back the anguished ground.
But he who bore the White Wuten
Would not surrender then.

Long time they fought, and many scars
Upon the land they wrought -
The battle harried back and forth,
Nor peace was ever sought -
For Faug was cruel and merciless;
The hero strong and tireless.

At last the fiend repaired a ways
As seeming to need rest,
Then shook his head and ground his teeth
And hurled forth the Hest -
The Hest of legend he did hold,
The Hest of Grammelking the Old.

He laughed to scorn the White Wuten -
The Hest had found its mark,
And broke brave Marshall where he stood -
And all about was dark.
Great Faug his foe had overpow'red
And broken him that hour.

But Marshall bore the White Wuten
And fain he would not yield -
He stood again and shouting ran
Across the broken field -
And Faug yet laughing felt the sting
The White Wuten alone could bring.

So fell his foe that very hour,
And dreadful were its throes.
But he who bore the White Wuten
Scarce knew it for his woes.
And there he lay, and there still lies,
Until the with'ring world dies.

Research Update

I've talked a lot recently about how I've been learning to cook a few things. It's time for a research update... Research tends to feel kind of spurt-y to me. There are periods that seem intensely fruitful, and others when I feel like I'm just treading water. Fortunately, the current period is one of the fruitful ones. I recently wrapped up teaching a course this semester on Speech Acoustics via webcast to the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. The experience was great, and a small handful of the students put together a nice conference paper based on one of the lab assignments (it's going to be presented at the upcoming Interspeech conference in Brighton, UK). One of the final papers for the class was a very well done research project which I hope the student is going to submit to the upcoming ICASSP conference, or another similar conference. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I finally wrote up the paper based on a poster I presented at the ASA conference back in November and submitted it for publication in the conference proceedings (online only). The ASA proceedings are a new ASA publication, and this was the first paper I had submitted to it. I was very happy to find out in only one week that the paper was accepted. In the meantime, I've been working on another paper based on a poster I co-presented at the ASA conference in May. This paper is closely connected with the previous one, as well as with the final paper of my student in Budapest. I am hoping to submit this paper by the end of this week, but we'll see. And finally, I've also started writing a full journal paper with my May ASA co-presenter and my Budapest student, combining the results of all three projects into one, streamlining it, systematizing it, and adding some new findings. It will take a substantial amount of work, but it should be a nice paper when all is said and done.

One thing that I have discovered in the last week (when all this writing has been taking place) is that it is much easier now for me to write my papers than it used to be. Specifically, it is getting to be very easy to write Introduction and background sections. Methods sections are generally straight-forward, and it's getting easier to write Discussion and Conclusion sections. Presenting the new results is still a bit challenging. I just think it's interesting how easy it has become to write Introductions, in particular. I guess it's because I've written enough Introductions on this topic (my specialty), and as I learn more and collect more data and write more papers, there's more to say and it just comes more naturally. It's nice. :-)

I'm now starting to think about writing a paper specifically for phonologists/phoneticians. Most of my papers so far have been a little outside the scope of what a linguist would typically read. But I think that linguists would be interested if it were presented to them appropriately. So I'm thinking of trying to get a small number of people from a wide range of langauge backgrounds to record, and write a paper about the vowels and consonants with respect to subglottal acoustics in a cross-linguistic study. We'll see how far I get with that any time soon. :-}

Oh, I also need to write a proceedings paper based on a second poster that I co-presented in May. That paper will be more difficult to write.

I don't plan to attend any more conferences this year (too expensive), but the ASA next November (2010) is in Cancun.....Hmmmmm..... Might be a nice place to visit. :-)

So that's it. Research is going well. Can't wait to have my own lab with my own students some day...

Greek!

M & C are a couple in our community group at church. C needs to translate a certain amount of Plato (yes, in Greek) to fulfill degree requirements, and both of them have done some NT Greek in college. And I am very rusty in classical Greek and looking for a way to brush up on it a bit. So I joined them today for our first meeting to translate a section of the Republic. Now, we were supposed to do as much of the translation as we could ahead of time, but it seemed that our initial assignment was too much - in fact it was a bit overwhelming for me and I just didn't do as much as I probably really had time for. But that's just to say that we went rather slowly today. And it was great fun! It's been almost 8 years since I last translated classical Greek with any degree of seriousness. Let's just say that there was a lot of rust. Fortunately for all three of us, I think we are all at about the same level - I was afraid I would end up being a drag on the conversation/translation. And our strengths are all a bit different, so it's a nice complementarity. One of the fun things about translating Plato with M & C is that they both have some real background in philosophy (whereas I only pretend now and then to know something about philosophy). So the discussions about how best to translate a certain clause, what's the main verb, is that a participle?, and so on - these discussions were punctuated with revelations about the philosophical implications and how great it is to read Plato in Greek. So I learned some things about Plato's system, shook off a little bit of rust, and over all had a great time. I think it was decided after today's session that we really want to start at the beginning and translate all of the Republic. At the rate we're going that's probably a multi-year project, but even if we never finish it will be great fun and very educational. :-)

In other news, I got to teach a Speech Acoustics course this semester via webcast between here (St Louis) and a group of grad students in Budapest. That was also a lot of fun, and a lot of work. I'm afraid I started stronger than I finished, but my teaching has definitely improved since the first time I taught a version of this course (a year ago at MIT), and I have plans for improving the course for its third iteration, whenever and wherever that may be.

And finally, at long last, I have been reading Tolkien. All through college and grad school my friends would tell me I needed to read Tolkien, but I never was interested enough to put it very high on my To Do list. But after moving to St Louis I read the Silmarillion, and then M and I read The Hobbitt together, followed by The Fellowship of the Ring, and we are currently reading The Two Towers. Once we finish that, we will of course read The Return of the King. Then... We might return to the Silmarillion, since M has never read it. Anyway, I am now a Tolkien fan.

The weather in St Louis has been awesome this week. I find that each time I go outside in this weather, I feel like reading Milton or Pope, or something similar. It stems from my time living in Cambridge, when I was reading Paradise Lost (spread out over a couple of years) and found that it was very pleasurable to read it outside in a little park on a sunny day. A few weeks ago when I was reading a few pieces by Pope, I did go out to Forest Park and found a nice bench to sit on and read - on sunny days. But that only happened two or three times (Pope's stuff is much shorter and easier than Paradise Lost). Anyway, apparently sunny days (without humidity!) are Milton/Pope reading days for me...and Milton/Pope are best read outside. :-)

Various

I've been meaning to write down some thoughts and observations I've been making in my personal Bible study times. Since M is working tonight and I'm done working for the day, I thought this might be a good time to do so. So......

I've been trying to get a better handle on the book of Job. It's been kind of slow in coming. One of the things I was curious about is how the tone and content of each of Job's friends' speeches change over time. But between the first and second speech of Eliphaz, for instance, there are three other speeches, so that I've found it hard to keep the first one in mind by the time I get to the second. So I decided to skip the intervening speeches and just read all three of Eliphaz' speeches one right after the other; then do the same for Bildad, then for Zophar, etc. Here are just a few observations:

1. Language Describing Visions and Textual Criticism

In Eliphaz' first speech, he says the following (4:12-14):

Now a word was brought to me stealthily;
my ear recieved a whisper of it.
Amid thoughts from visions of the night,
when deep sleep falls on men,
dread came upon me, and trembling,
which made all my bones shake.

In Elihu's speech, he says the following (33:14-):

For God speaks in one way,
and in two, though man does not perceive it.
In a dream, in a vision of the night,
when deep sleep falls on men,
then he opens the ears of men
and terrifies them with warnings...

These two passages use very similar language to describe visions from God, and they are also similar to another passage (Genesis 15:12-13a):

As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram.
And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him.
Then the Lord said to Abram...

As far as I'm aware, this kind of language ("deep sleep", "dread") to speak of visions and revelations from God is not used anywhere else in the Bible (the closest is Genesis 2:21 - "So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man..."). This similarity of language between Job and early Genesis seems like one more piece of evidence that the story of Job occurred around the time of the patriarchs - that this kind of language was typical of that time period but not of later times.

For that matter, my pet theory is that Moses was largely the editor of Genesis rather than the actual author - I wonder whether Joseph himself might not have written/edited much of the book. It seems reasonable that he could have written the accounts of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, being only the 4th generation of patriarchs, being well educated in Egypt, and clearly demonstrating the faith of Abraham (Genesis 50:22-26). Furthermore, the accounts of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Genesis 10-35) have some continuity with each other and some contrast with the story of Joseph (Genesis 37-50). First, both Abraham and Jacob have their names changed by God, but this does not happen to Joseph or anyone else in the Old Testament. Second, God appears to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and speaks directly to them, sometimes in dreams, whereas Joseph has dreams that must be interpreted. Third, the two sections are separated by the genealogy of Esau. On the other hand, the story of Joseph might have been written by Joseph as well, or by someone close to him - it includes details that presumably only Joseph would know, such as Genesis 43:31, as well as the conversations between Jacob and Joseph, and Jacob's final blessing of his sons and then his death. Joseph could have had something to do with Genesis 1 as well, since he lived around the time that similar "creation epics" were being written in Mesopotamia. ...But all of this is pure speculation.

One last observation on Jacob and Joseph: he was 17 when Jacob lost him, but then Jacob got another 17 years with him in Egypt before he died. The story of Jacob has similarities to Job: i) Both of them are wealthy men with many children, ii) both of them lose everything (from drought in Jacob's case), including children (only Joseph in Jacob's case), iii) both of them get everything back twofold in the end (in the case of Jacob, he not only gets Joseph back, but also claims Joseph's two sons for his own).

2. To the Third and Fourth Generation...

Several times in the Bible, God says that He will "visit the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me" (see, for instance, the 10 Commandments: Exodus 20:5). This brings us back to Job. At the very end of the book, we find out that (Job 42:16-17)

Job lived [another] 140 years, and saw his sons, and his sons' sons,
four generations. And Job died, an old man, and full of days.

Back to the Pentateuch (Genesis 25:7-8):

These are the days of the years of Abraham's life, 175 years.
Abraham breathed his last and died in a good old age,
an old man full of years, and was gtathered to his people.

Furthermore, (Genesis 50:22-23a):

So Joseph remained in Egypt, he and his father's house.
Joseph lived 110 years. And Joseph saw Ephraim's children
of the third generation.

Once you get to Abraham, people are generally living long enough that their grandsons and great-grandsons are born before they die, perhaps even their great-great-grandsons, but then they die. Before Abraham, people lived much longer and saw many more generations (if you do the math in chapter 11, you'll find that Abraham was born before Noah died - and there's 10 generations in between!). But by the time of the patriarchs, it seems that three or four generations is about as long as people lived. So I wonder if "to the third and the fourth generation" is an idiom meaning "all your life".

Again, note the common phraseology of Job and Genesis, further supporting the notion that they were written in the same general time period.

3. Job and the Anthropic Principle

The anthropic principle comes in few varieties. The strongest version states that the universe exists precisely because humans exist who are able to observe it. The weak version states that we know the universe exists because we observe it. Both versions are meant to address the question "Why is there something instead of nothing?", or "Why is the universe such that we can exist?" The universe is "tuned" so precisely that if any one of its basic parameters were tweaked ever so slightly, life would not be possible. On one side, one might argue that the perfection and balance of creation proves that God created it (or at least strongly suggests it, since the probability of a universe like ours coming together by pure chance is amazingly small). On the other hand, if you don't want to concede that God even exists, you can deal with this amazingly small probability by making it much less small - this is where the anthropic principle comes in. Since we obviously exist, our universe must exist in the special way it does, and that means that it did in fact come together, whether by amazingly small chance or not. The fact is that the universe is as it is, and this essentionally makes the probably equal to 1. Alternatively, you can get into theories about multiple universes and oscillating universes and the like, in which case you have any number of universes to choose from, and whatever the amazingly small chances, an amazingly large number of universes makes up for this small probability and here we are. (The problem is that we have no way to verify or falsify any of these theories. In fact, if I may accomodate Stephen J. Gould's notion of "Non-Overlapping MAgisteria" (NOMA, his description of faith vs. science), it might be equally applicable to science vs. theories of multiple universes.)

...But I digress. Theories of multiple universes deal with the weak form of the anthropic principle. The strong form is, well...different. It is akin to giving "No" as the answer to the age-old question: "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to witness it, did it make a sound?" In fact, one might go so far as to say the tree didn't fall if no one was there to witness it. It's like Schroedinger's cat - it is neither alive nor dead until you open the box and observe it. The cat would not even exist unless you observed it - and for that matter, the universe would not exist until it was observed.

God's answer to Job (Job 38-41) clearly comes out against the anthropic principle (in any of its varieties). I highlight only one stanza (Job 38:25-27):

Who has cleft a channel for the torrents of rain
and a way for the thunderbolt,
to bring rain on a land where no man is,
on the desert in which there is no man,
to satisfy the waste and desolate land,
and to make the ground sprout with grass?

The highlighted words are, of course, my own emphasis.

4. Zephaniah

M and I read Zephaniah two nights ago. Zephaniah 1:2-3 sounds an awful lot like the Flood of Noah's time. But Zephaniah must have known about God's promise to Noah never to destroy the earth in a flood again. Zephaniah therefore begs the question, I think, what God will do in order to keep His promise. But he seems to answer the question a few verses later (Zephaniah 1:7):

Be silent before the Lord God!
For the day of the Lord is near;
the Lord has prepared a sacrifice
and consecrated his guests.

The question is raised again in Zephaniah 1:14-18 - which seems reminiscent of the Israelites' experience at Mt. Sinai (Exodus 19) - ending with the threat that "all the earth shall be consumed; for a full and sudden end he will make of all the inhabitants of the earth." On Sinai, too, the people were saved by God's institution of the Mosaic covenant, in which sacrifice was the central ingredient. The threat is again repeated in Zephaniah 3:8b: "for in the fire of my jealousy all the earth shall be consumed," but now it is followed immediately by a very different tone (Zephaniah 3:9):

For at that time I will change the speech of the peoples
to a pure speech,
that all of them may call upon the name of the Lord
and serve him with one acord.

This echoes Jeremiah 31:33-34:

But this is the convenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.

Jeremiah, of course, is also hearkening back to the Mosaic covenant.

Zephaniah never really answers the question "How?" How can he go seamlessly from 3:8 to 3:9 (from threats of destruction to making a new covenant)? At this point I think 1:7 is the key - "the Lord has prepared a sacrifice." The answer to the question "How?" is not made explicit until Jesus' death and resurrection, but Zephaniah had a glimpse of it.

*************************************************************

So there you have it. Some of these ruminations are more speculative than others, but they are the things I've been observing and mulling recently.

Two - count 'em - two food successes in one day!

Today was a good cooking day. :-) It actually started two days ago... I took our ~2 lbs of chuck roast out of the freezer and put it in the fridge to thaw. The next evening (last night) I trimmed the fat away and cut it into medium-sized pieces, M made a batch of "Big Daddy Rub" (from Aaron McCargo Jr's recipes on Food Network), and we marinaded the beef with the rub and some olive oil in the fridge overnight. Then, early this afternoon I cooked the beef on the stove top in a little more oil just for a few minutes so the outside would be cooked. The remaining marinade was put in the bottom of our slow cooker, and then I added the beef. I made 3 cups of beef broth from buillion cubes, and sauteed two crushed garlic cloves, a chopped small yellow onion, a few chopped carrots and a couple of chopped russet potatoes in the pan with the beef "drippings". I meant to add some celery, but forgot. Then all the veggies along with the beef broth went into the slow cooker at high heat for several hours before turning down to low heat. I think it was cooking about 5 hours before I had my first bowl (yes, I had more than one bowl). The meat was falling-apart tender, and the flavor was great. (Big Daddy Rub is pretty spicey, but it also has some brown sugar in it for sweetness.) Next time I might cut back a little on the rub spices, but not much. I think I'll also cut back on the amount of beef broth, but add another potato and some celery. All in all, though, it was quite good! :-)

Then, tonight I made eclaires! (M helped at several stages.) It turns out that making eclaires is very easy. You start by making a pate-a-choux, which is a type of dough, and then squeeze it through a piping bag (aka, a ziplock back with one corner cut off, in our case) onto the baking sheet (actually, onto parchment paper). Then bake at 425 for 15 minutes, then reduce heat to 350 for another 10 minutes. When they come out of the oven, as quickly as reasonable you should poke a hole in each eclaire to let excess steam out, then they can cool. Meanwhile, we made pistachio pudding (it was the only mix we had) for the filling, and I had melted some semi-sweet chocolate chips with a little milk earlier in the day (to dip pretzels in - also a success). After the chocolate was reheated and the pudding was done, we piped the pudding into each eclaire through the little hole we had made. Then we dipped the eclaires upside-down in the warm chocolate, and had a little desert. Mmmm-Mm! We're thinking of bringing some to our church Community Group tomorrow, but that will require some self-control to make sure they are not all eaten before they have a chance to get there...

I'm now looking forward to making some homemade bread. M makes very good oatmeal bread and cornbread, but I think I need to start with something a little simpler... Will let you know how it turns out!

Asparagus Soup!

Well, in the end, my previous soup experiment had plenty of flavor, just not the right kind. :-} Daikon turns out to have a rather distinct and strong flavor which neither M nor I were too fond of, at least in this preparation. Without the daikon, the soup was just ok. M didn't really care for it either way. So.....chalk that one up to a vote in the "No" column.

But fear not!!!! I am back at it, this time following recipes again. :-) This time, partially inspired by an excellent lunch at Boudin Bakery in Santa Ana on Sunday, I decided to try making asparagus soup using a recipe from M's new cookbook. It's really very simple, and I admit I was a little dubious for a while. You chop up asparagus (1 lbs) and onion (1/2 c) and heat them in a pan with some chicken broth (1 c). Then, once the asparagus is tender, you puree at least part of the asparagus/onion mixture. With that on hold, you make a roux (2 T butter + 2 T flour) in a sauce pan and add more chicken broth (1 c), salt (2 t) and pepper (dash), stirring constantly until it just begins to boil (that's about the time it starts getting thick). Then, the asparagus puree and whatever asparagus you had not pureed, plus some milk (1 c), some sour cream or yoghurt, (1/2 c - I used sour cream) and some lemon juice (2 t). Voila! Both the prep time and the cooking time are pretty short, and the soup is good! In the end, I think I put a little too much sour cream in, and a few pieces of asparagus were a tad bit crunchy (I prefer it to be completely soft). Next time I might try the yoghurt substitute for sour cream, just because.

It doesn't make the biggest quantity of soup out there, but the whole thing probably cost less than $2.50, with enough for three or maybe four bowls. And did I mention it tastes really good?

My Latest Soup Invention

Ok, so M and I went shopping about a week ago and got some fennel and daikon to try out in our cooking. We also got some carrots and onions, some of which were used in my attempt to repeat the Stoup (not to great success), but some of which still needed to be used. Also left-over from the last soup, some celery. So, we had a fairly large supply of veggies that needed to be used. Thus was born my latest soup invention:

- Heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a large pot.
- Add 1 and a half chopped medium onions, three chopped medium/large carrots, 1 chopped fennel bulb (plus the stems), and 1 chopped medium daikon.
- Add the following spices:
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon celery seed
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
- 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander seed
- 1/2 teaspoon thyme
- 1/2 teaspoon comino cumin seed
- 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
- a pinch of crushed bay leaf
- 1/2 teaspoon garlic cubes
- fresh ground pepper to taste
- 2 cinnamon sticks
- Cook on high heat for about 5 minutes.
- Remove the cinnamon sticks.
- Add 4 cups chicken broth (or vegetable broth), 28 oz diced tomatoes, 1 small can tomato paste, ~3 tablespoons ketchup, 1 and a half cups of dried lentils, and 1 cup of fusilli pasta.
- Bring to a boil, then simmer for 30-40 minutes, or until daikon is tender.

That's the soup, it's cooling a little now, we'll see how it turns out.........

:-)

Stoup

I decided to take another cue from the Mennonite girls who can cook... This time, a lentil and sweet potato chili. ...And we have another winner! :-)

It's a very colorful dish, visually, and it has a lot of flavor. We decided that it's really more like a soup or a stew than a chili, however (although you can taste the chili element, too), so we decided to compromise and call it "stoup". We would have called it "stewp", but that already exists in the Lulich family.

Basically, you start with oil in a large pot - then add chopped up onions, celery, and carrots (a "mirepoix") with a bunch of spices (cumin, cinnamon, nutmeg, chili powder, red crushed peppers, salt & pepper). Then add the chopped up sweet potatoes, lentils, diced tomatoes and tomato paste, black beans, and broth (we used chicken broth). Bring to a boil, then let it simmer about half an hour until the potatoes are nice and soft. Voila! Guten Appetit! We think it will make 6 or more bowls-full.

Soup!

Chef Steven back at it again! This evening I found a recipe for "creamy potato leek soup" that sounded good, and since we had most of the ingredients already I decided to try it. I had to get some leek and onion at the store, but that's pretty inexpensive.

So.... First, I melted butter in a large pot, then added two cinnamon sticks (yes, cinnamon sticks), a whole chopped leek and a medium chopped onion. Let those cook together a little bit. Meanwhile I cut up most of our remaining potatoes (which were growing sprouts and needed to be used), then added those to the pot, along with two cans of chicken broth. Let that boil, then remove the cinnamon sticks and let the soup simmer and cook down a while. When the potato pieces were getting pretty soft, I used a mashed potato masher to mash them a make the soup more creamy. I was surprised at how much effect this had on the soup's thickness - it was rather thin to begin with but then seemed thicker after the potatoes were mashed. I added some sour cream to help the creaminess, plus a pinch of marjoram, basil, and rosemary. Plus salt and pepper of course. In the end I decided I needed to add a little more dairy, but since I was out of sour cream I used milk - about a quarter cup, I think.

The result was a very tasty creamy soup. I was afraid I had gone overboard with the rosemary/basil/marjoram, but M liked the spiciness of the soup. :-) And it made quite a bit. We each had one and a half rather large bowls, and I think there are another 3 or 4 large bowls left. I'm not that good at estimating such things, however....so there might be even more! :-9

Our garden is starting to grow! We planted some serrano chili plants in a pot on the windowsill, and about 7 or 8 of those have sprouted. We also planted 5 kinds of herbs in two pots on the window sill - one of the herbs is sprouted and doing really well - we don't remember which one it is, though! :-} When it grows up I think it will become clear. I think this was the herb that was planted at half the depth of the others, so perhaps we'll start getting some other herbs in the next few days. :-) Looking forward to using them in our cooking! It will especially be fun when B & R come out in June and we can use the herbs in our Iron Chef competition.... :-)

Anyway - creamy potato leek soup. Good stuff.

p.s. I got the recipe (and then tweaked it) from a blog that I found when googling things to cook - it's called "Mennonite girls can cook".

Houston, We Have a Winner...

And the verdict is in.... This coconut milk white sauce over homemade pasta and spiced chicken is really good. :-)

Special Pasta Sauce

Chef Steven here again and back in action! Tonight's challenge: A pasta sauce to go over the last of the homemade pasta. We have no milk, no tomatoes, no tomato paste, etc. What we do have is butter, flour, coconut milk, and frozen boneless chicken. :-)

So, we'll see how it turns out. First, I heated some olive oil in a sauce pan, then added garlic cubes, salt, pepper, some marjoram and rosemary. After thawing the chicken in the microwave, I added it to the oil & spices and cooked both sides until a nice golden brown. :-) I then put the chicken in the oven at 375 degrees for 25 minutes. I might need to leave it in another 5 or 10 minutes longer.

In the meantime, I made a roux (don't know if that's spelled right) - butter and flour, right? Well, that's what I did. :-) I think I saw someone add milk to make a white sauce, but since I didn't have milk I added a small can of coconut milk. Turns out that coconut milk is pretty potent, and relatively thick. So I stirred in some water until it got to a nice thin consistency. Once it was thin enough, it was ready for me to add some parmesan cheese (from a can) and melt it in. I also added some salt and pepper. It's now waiting on low heat. It smells really good, but it's pretty rich. Good thing it's going over pasta! And the chicken, when it was on the stove top, smelled pretty light, so that might help cut some of the richness.

When the chicken is done, I'm going to slice it up and toss it with the sauce and some pasta. Then I'll see how it turned out! :-)

Up Next, on Iron Chef Steven....

This afternoon M and I watched another Iron Chef America episode. This time Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto made a waffle with the secret ingredient: curry.

Intrigued, I decided to try making my own curry waffles. So I did! I took the recipe for whole grain waffles that M and I have been using, and substituted a little flour with some curry and cinnamon. Then I made the waffles in the usual way. Also following in the Iron Chef's footsteps, I made my own syrup to go with it. Well, sort of. I combined a little water, some imitation maple syrup, and some honey in a small pot and cooked it down a bit on the stove top. This was way too sweet, so I added a little curry powder (Iron Chef Morimoto had also put curry powder in his syrup). I also sprinkled some powdered sugar on top of the waffle. When all is said and done, it's actually a pretty good dish. A little different for waffles, but not too different. Morimoto served ice cream on the side, and I bet that's a pretty good combination. I'm thinking in particular of cinnamon ice cream... Mmmmm... :-)

Pasta!!!

This evening I made pasta. Fetticine, to be precise. Home-made. From scratch. M and I had been talking a few days ago about making pasta from scratch. I really wanted to do it (I've been watching too many Iron Chef America episodes lately :-P), and we were curious if we could save money by making our own pasta vs. buying dried pasta in the store. One thing we weren't sure about was how many meals we could get out of a single batch - just how much pasta could we make with a certain amount of flour and eggs (that's all it is). So while M is on overnight call tonight, after I cleaned up the kitchen (which I had let get into a sorry state) I decided to make my first attempt at pasta this evening.

So, armed with Iron Chef Mario Batalli's pasta recipe, a will to put my (non-existent) culinary talents to the test, and a grumbling stomach (not the best way to begin making pasta, it turns out), I set to it. 3.5 cups of flour, 6 large eggs. Mix it together, kneed it, kneed it some more, kneed it a little more. Let it rest for 20 minutes (good thing, I was tired of kneeding). Then start rolling it out and shaping it. We don't have a pasta roller, so it was the old fashioned rolling pin for me! ...and I thought kneeding was hard! I spent about an hour getting the pasta rolled out and cut into strips of linguini (that's what I thought I was making). When that was all done, I put some water on to boil. Then I realized I didn't have any tomato sauce or diced tomatoes or in fact any thing with which to make a tomato sauce. Oh no! Not deterred by this ginormous mountain of a roadblock, with heroic vim I turned to the only place a hero can turn to in a situation like this. Google. And there I found my solution! I found a recipe for no-tomato pasta sauce that featured cauliflower. Suddenly remembering that we have frozen bags of veggies in the freezer, including some with cauliflower, I whipped out a sauce pan and heated some olive oil. Then I added some garlic cubes and finally dumped the veggies in. Then some salt and pepper and tamoline chili powder (my current favorite experimental spice). I decided my "white sauce" wasn't white enough, or voluminous enough, so I added some milk. Brought that to a boil and then reduced the heat and let it simmer. (Actually, I was distracted for a moment and didn't notice that the sauce pan began boiling over - so now I have to clean the kitchen again. :-)) Then I started cooking the pasta! In the end, I had fetticine (not linguini) and way too little sauce for it all. Let's just say this: 6 large eggs and 3.5 cups of flour makes a lot of pasta. So I put a healthy helping in a bowl and then poured all the sauce on top, mixed it up, and this is my dinner. :-)

All in all, I have learned two important lessons from this adventure, and two very important lessons:

1. The first important lesson is that making pasta entirely by hand and with a rolling pin is hard work. And it's the rolling and cutting that takes the longest amount of time (I spent about 90 minutes making pasta - not counting the cooking), and of that 20 minutes were spent letting the dough sit, and about 60 minutes were spent rolling it out and cutting it).
2. The second important thing I learned is that pasta is actually pretty darn easy to make. There were moments when I really didn't think this pasta was going to turn out.

1. The first really important lession is that you shouldn't put all your cut pieces of pasta into a dry bowl while you cut up the rest. By the time I got to the cooking part, it had all stuck together pretty badly. This was one of those times when I thought it wasn't going to turn out, but in the end the stuck-together chunks seem to have become unstuck during the cooking.
2. The second really imprtant lession is that fresh home-made pasta is awesome. It tastes really good even plain and doesn't need any kind of sauce! Granted, I am eating my healthy helping with sauce, but that's partly because the sauce was already made. I will probably try a small bowl later tonight or tomorrow and see if I think it needs sauce or not.

So that's that, ladies and gentlemen. Today I took on Iron Chef Mario Batalli at his own game and came out the winner!

Poetry!

It's been a while since I last wrote a poem. I've been trying to write something for a while now, but nothing has been forthcoming. Well, as you know from my other entries, I'm reading Alexander Pope - and loving it! It has inspired me to try again - and this time I have something to show for it (a sonnet)!

An Allegory on Speech

Each one the image of his Language bears,
Which must by slow degrees be waked from Death:
The child must learn that speech begins with Breath,
As life itself, and ends with One who hears;

Then learn the sounds, in syllables arrayed,
Forgetting, too, the foreign sounds he knew.
Behold! He speaks! The syllables were true:
"Aga hateepoo" and "tagee dalate"!

Poor child! Vain sentences devoid of sense!
They have the form of words, yet not the power.
The Father coaxes gently, hour by hour,
Not lacking grace for childish innocence,

Until he learns the tongue of God for men,
And - full of meaning - whispers thus: "Amen."

A Hymn from a Poem?

There's a well-known hymn (And can it be that I should gain?, by Charles Wesley) with the following verse:

Long my imprisoned spirit lay,
Fast bound in sin and nature’s night;
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray—
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.

It was written in 1738. Now compare this verse with a section of Alexander Pope's (1717) poem Eloisa to Abelard:

In these lone walls (their days eternal bound)
These moss-grown domes with spiry turrets crowned,
Where awful arches make a noonday night,
And dim windows shed a solemn light;
Thy eyes diffused a reconciling ray,
And gleams of glory brightened all the day.

The context is quite different - Eloisa is describing her convent with and without Peter Abelard being around, whereas Wesley is describing man's slavery to sin until God intervenes - but the language is remarkably similar!

Transitions from Medieval to Modern Thought

I read C. S. Lewis' book The Discarded Image some time ago and have found it very interesting and very useful ever since. For instance, I have recently read Marlowe's play Doctor Faustus, a couple of Shakespeare plays (with M!), I've been slowly working my way through Dante's Divine Comedy, and now I've been reading some poetry by Alexander Pope, including Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady, and selections from Cavlin's Institutes of the Christian Religion. In each of these, I have run across statements that I would not correctly understand if I had not read Lewis' book.

For instance, when Calvin makes his argument for the immortality of the soul, he explicitly relies on the science of his day - that the earth is fixed and the spheres of the moon, sun, planets, and fixed stars are concentrically arranged about the earth; that heaven is beyond the sphere of the fixed stars; that below the sphere of the moon all things are corrupted and mortal, whereas above the sphere of the moon there is perfection and unchanging; that there are a few basic elements which have their natural places in the universe, either in the earth (the element "earth"), or on top of the earth ("water"), or above that ("air"), or above that ("fire"). Finally, above all these things comes "spirit", which has its natural place in heaven with God. As I understand it, Calvin basically argues that conscience is a flight of the soul to the judgement seat of God. If the soul flies upward to God in the heavens, it must be of an incorruptible, immortal nature since all corruptible and mortal things remain closer to the earth.

Almost 200 years later, Pope declares basically the same thing: "As into air the purer spirits flow, /And separate from their kindred dregs below; / So flew the soul to its congenial place". He describes the flight of the soul to its natural ("congenial") place as a process of chemical distillation, in which the body is left behind much like a residue in a chemical reaction.

Pope also, in Windsor Forest, describing the paradisical British Empire at peace, claims that "For me the balm shall bleed, and amber flow, / The corral redden, and the ruby glow, / The pearly shell its lucid globe infold, / And Phoebus warm the ripening ore to gold." What I want to point out here is the last line. Whether in an alchemical sense or a mythical sense, the medievals associated various planets (and the sun and moon) with various minerals in the earth. The moon was associated with silver, Jupiter with tin (I think), and so on. The sun (Phoebus) was associated with gold. It was thought by some that the sun would turn ordinary metals into gold if the conditions were right. Pope didn't necessarily agree with this, but he is happy to use the then-well-known imagery.

Another example from Pope comes from the Essay on Criticism (it's actually a poem), when he states "In some fair body thus the informing soul / With spirits feeds, with vigor fills the whole, / Each motion guides, and every nerve sustains; / Itself unseen, but in the effects, remains." Here now is an example of medieval physiology. There is a soul which forms in ("informs", not meaning "to give information" in this case) and sustains the body. It was thought that only humans have a soul; rather, that there were three aspects of the soul, and only humans have all three. The lowest aspect which animals and plants have is called the vegetable soul. The second part was the sensitive soul. The third part was the rational soul. Since I still don't know enough about these on my own, I will simply quote Lewis:

"The powers of Vegetable Soul are nutrition, growth, and propagation. It alone is present in plants. Sensitive Soul, which we find in animals, has these powers but has sentience in addition. It thus includes and goes beyond Vegetable Soul, so that a beast can be said to have two levels of soul, Sensitive and Vegetable [...]. Rational Soul similarly includes Vegetable and Sensitive, and adds reason. [...] The Rational Soul is sometimes called simply 'Reason', and the Sensitive Soul simply 'Sensuality'. [...] All three kinds of soul are immaterial."

So Pope says that the soul "informs" the body, feeding it with "spirits" and "vigor", guiding each motion and sustaining each nerve. The body was thought to contain several fluids which acted on the body to make it move and sense (these might be what Pope has in mind when he speaks of "spirits" and "vigor", or he may be referring to the Vegetable and Sensitive Souls, or there could be some mixture of both). For example, the four "humors" of the human body were blood, choler, phlegm, and melancholy.

As interesting as all this is, I have been surprised to find so much of this Medieval way of talking in Pope. Why? Because Pope lived in the generation after Newton. Pope was 40 years younger than Newton, and of course Newton is a pivotal figure in the history of science and how we look at the world. Newton can be thought of as the major transition from Medieval science to modern science. And yet old habits die hard, it seems. It takes some time for the new understanding to sink in, and even longer for the old verbal habits to die out. For instance, by demonstrating that the moon orbits the earth by means of the same force of gravity that causes an apple to fall from a tree, and that the same gravity causes the planets to orbit the sun - by demonstrating these things, Newton essentially declared that the nature of things in the heavens and the earth are the same. This completely exploded the notion that corruption was beneath the sphere of the moon and perfection above it. (Actually, this change in thinking was already underway 100 years before Newton, when Galileo observed the heavenly bodies with his telescope.)

And yet Pope can still say "So flew the soul to its congenial place."

This is interesting by itself, but I have another point... Well, its more of a question, or a hypothesis, or a suspicion. I haven't read a lot of Kant, but what I have read leads me to think that perhaps it is worth thinking of him as a transitional figure - bridging the Medieval and Modern worlds of philosophy. Granted, Kant lived another generation after Pope, but still close enough in time to Newton that I think he must have been very familiar with the Medieval way of thinking, or at least talking. I'm curious to try reading Kant from this perspective - to see if it makes him any easier too understand. (So far, he's hard.)

Anyway, those are just some thoughts. :-)

A Musical String and a Joke

The credit for this one goes to Meredith:

Q: What would a pirate from Boston say?

A: (see below)

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There's a series of books being published that I like a lot. It's called the "Great Discovery Series" and is basically a collection of biographies about certain great discoveries in the history of science and the people who made them. The twist on that theme is that the authors of these books are often novelists by trade, so it makes for very good reading. Of course, in a series like this one of the books has to be about Einstein. I read it recently, and enjoyed it a lot. One of the things that the author talks about (in terms of modern developments in the search for a Theory of Everything) is strings and superstrings. These are multidimensional objects that obey a wave equation, just like electrons orbiting a nucleus, or sound being emitted from a speaker. Apparently one of the goals of string theory is to derive elementary particles from these strings in such a way that the different particles are strings vibrating at different frequencies and dimensions - or something like that (if one of my physicist friends reads this, they can set the record straight). :-} Under this scenario, the whole universe is a great symphony of vibrating strings combining in one great melody and harmony. It made me think of the medieval idea that the universe was singing and making music in praise of God. That's what we mean when we talk about "the music of the spheres" - the spheres in which the planets and stars were embedded were goverened by "Intelligences", angelic beings, who moved the spheres in circular (aka "harmonic") motion by their love toward and praise of God. Thus, the whole universe wall filled with beautiful music, if we could only hear it. And why can't we hear it? Because it's constantly going on in the background around us since before we are born, and our ears are very good at tuning out "background" sounds. Anyway, I thought it was a cool coming back around "full circle" (pardon pun), that now the major theory of elementary particles and gravitation is so "musical". We're back to a singing universe!

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Answer: "Aaaaahh!!!!"

;-)