The English adverb totally is an interesting study. My guess is that most dictionaries would define it along the lines of "not partially," and it is certainly not uncommon in this meaning, as in the following instances (all citations are from the COCA corpus):
1. He wanted to have it totally reconstructed. (= He wanted all of it, not part of it, reconstructed.)
2. Totally paralyzed patients require artificial ventilation. (=Partially paralyzed patients may not need artificial ventilation.)
However, many of the uses of totally these days use it as a near-synonym of very, with gradable adjectives:
3. It was totally gross. (=It was very gross, not "All of it was gross.")
4. He is totally creative. (=He is very creative, not "He is creative in every way.")
5. I think to focus on that is to totally do a disservice. (= To focus on that is a big disservice, not "To focus on that is not just a partial disservice.")
There is a third use of totally that is gaining ground, at least in informal speech, which utiizes totally as a modal expression expressing certainty or obligation:
6. I totally have to go on a diet. (= I must go on a diet.)
7. I can totally, totally, totally explain this. (= I am definitely able to explain this.)
8. I totally didn't ever hear it. (= I assure you, I didn't ever hear it.)
9. I totally felt violated. (=I definitely felt violated.)
10. Q: It makes you more relaxed, right? A: Totally. (=I definitely agree.)
A trademark of the third use is that totally usually precedes the verb phrase instead of an adjective or adjective phrase. (Note that no. 5 above could be interpreted as an example of the third type: I think to focus on that is definitely to do a disservice.) You can feel the difference if we move the position of totally in no. 9: I felt totally violated (= either I felt very violated or I felt violated in every way, but not I definitely felt violated).
My interest in this is that the so-called tautological infinitive absolute (TIA) in Biblical Hebrew has some interesting features in common with the forms in #6-10, in that the infinitive preposed to a verbal phrase often has modal meaning:
kol asher yedabber bo yavo (I Sam 9:6) "All that he says will certainly happen"
mot tamut (Gen 2:17) "You must die"
mahor yimharennah (Ex. 22:15) "He has to pay the marriage price for her"
In fact, I would go so far as to say (with a recent study by Scott Callaham) that the vast majority of the uses of the TIA fall into this category. The standard grammars don't convey this, and in fact several of them, while noting the modal use of the TIA, also suggest its use as a adverb with a gradable notion (as in #3-5). For instance, van der Merwe et al. (see Bibliography) state that the use of the TIA is sometimes "to define more clearly the nature and scope of the verbal idea" (p. 158). Examples they give are:
ki barekh abarkhekha "I will bless you richly" (Gen 22:17)
mikkol es haggan akhol tokhel "you may freely eat of every tree of the garden" (Gen 2:16)
However, it seems clear to me that both the cited forms should be interpreted modally: "I will certainly bless you" and "you may indeed eat from any tree of the garden." But perhaps it is possible that there is a development here from a "gradable" adverbial use, as in #3-5 of totally to a modal use, as in #6-10. Cross-linguistically, it might make sense.
In the meantime, maybe we should experiment with translating by totally: "If you eat that fruit, you will totally die!" "I will totally bless you." Call it Today's Bible, and it will totally be a best-seller.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Van der Merwe, C. H. J., Naudé, J. A., & Kroeze, J. H. (1999), A Biblical Hebrew reference grammar (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press); Callaham, S. N. (2010), Modality and the Biblical Hebrew infinitive absolute (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz).
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
C. S. Lewis's Conversion Revisited
I notice that Alister McGrath has recently moved up the date of C. S. Lewis's conversion. I wholeheartedly concur with his reasoning and I would only note that I proposed the same thing a few years ago.
Thursday, March 07, 2013
Did Josephus Call Jesus the Messiah?
There is a famous passage in the Antiquities of the Jews by Josephus, which speaks of Jesus of Nazareth — the so-called Testimonium Flavianum (Antiq. 18:63 [18.3.3]). In general, scholars now think that at least some of this passage (available here with background) is authentic, although it contains Christian interpolations.
One of the agreed-upon interpolations is the sentence ho Christos houtos en, translated as "he was the Christ" or "he was the Messiah." It is felt, and rightly, that this sentence, so understood, would have been impossible coming from the pen of a Jewish writer, and therefore it must be a later interpolation. However, I want to suggest that Josephus did not construe the adjective christos as the title "Christ/Messiah," but as the proper name "Christos."
In general, outside Christian circles, the title "Christ" was understood as a proper name. The reference in Tacitus's Annals refers to Christians as having their name from "Christus." Suetonius likewise may have referred to the founder of Christianity as "Chrestus." In the Book of Acts, the Gentile residents of Antioch call the followers of Jesus "Christianoi," i.e., followers of Christos (Acts 11:26). The Bauer-Arndt-Gingrich-Danker lexicon of New Testament Greek suggests that the construal of the title as a name began among Gentiles because they would not have understood its Jewish background, and took it for the proper name Chrestos (which would have sounded like Christos in spoken Greek).
Josephus only uses the adjective christos in three places: in the Testimonium, at Antiquities 20:200, which deals with James the brother of Jesus "who is called Christos" (Iesou to legomenou Christou); and in Antiquities 8:137, where he refers to a building being "plastered" (christon). He never uses it to refer to the office of the Messiah, or any religious office or rite connected with it. (Philo does not use the adjective at all.) However, if the citation at 20.200 is accepted as legitimate, with most scholars, it seems likely that the word was previously mentioned.
Hence it seems possible to me that we should construe the sentence in Antiq. 18:63 as "this was Christos" — identifying for Josephus's Gentile audience the figure under discussion as the Jewish teacher who might have been known to them as Christos or Chrestos. If so, then this sentence is part of the original text and not a later interpolation.
One of the agreed-upon interpolations is the sentence ho Christos houtos en, translated as "he was the Christ" or "he was the Messiah." It is felt, and rightly, that this sentence, so understood, would have been impossible coming from the pen of a Jewish writer, and therefore it must be a later interpolation. However, I want to suggest that Josephus did not construe the adjective christos as the title "Christ/Messiah," but as the proper name "Christos."
In general, outside Christian circles, the title "Christ" was understood as a proper name. The reference in Tacitus's Annals refers to Christians as having their name from "Christus." Suetonius likewise may have referred to the founder of Christianity as "Chrestus." In the Book of Acts, the Gentile residents of Antioch call the followers of Jesus "Christianoi," i.e., followers of Christos (Acts 11:26). The Bauer-Arndt-Gingrich-Danker lexicon of New Testament Greek suggests that the construal of the title as a name began among Gentiles because they would not have understood its Jewish background, and took it for the proper name Chrestos (which would have sounded like Christos in spoken Greek).
Josephus only uses the adjective christos in three places: in the Testimonium, at Antiquities 20:200, which deals with James the brother of Jesus "who is called Christos" (Iesou to legomenou Christou); and in Antiquities 8:137, where he refers to a building being "plastered" (christon). He never uses it to refer to the office of the Messiah, or any religious office or rite connected with it. (Philo does not use the adjective at all.) However, if the citation at 20.200 is accepted as legitimate, with most scholars, it seems likely that the word was previously mentioned.
Hence it seems possible to me that we should construe the sentence in Antiq. 18:63 as "this was Christos" — identifying for Josephus's Gentile audience the figure under discussion as the Jewish teacher who might have been known to them as Christos or Chrestos. If so, then this sentence is part of the original text and not a later interpolation.
Monday, March 04, 2013
Call to Action
(This is the beginning of a short story based on life in a Cincinnati branding agency. Loosely, but not currently, autobiographical.)
He sits in a rectangular room, not a cubicle. It has a door, and usually it is closed. He likes it closed, so that people can't see what he is doing, which usually is reading a book or surfing the net or writing on a pad of paper. He is afraid that others might think he is not working, and in fact most of the time he is not — that is, not doing the work they pay him for.
No, he isn't neglecting his job — it's just that there isn't enough to keep him busy all the time. When he first discovered this, he was nervous, and kept asking people if there was anything he could do. Usually there wasn't, so he began to fill up the time with other activities, especially reading. Now he counts on having lots of time to read and resents it if he doesn't.
His "desk" is a kind of table built into the wall, whose surface is covered with a plastic that reminds him of the lunch counters in cheap diners. At one end of it rests the computer monitor; the keyboard sits on a movable tray bolted to the undersurface of the "desk." To the right of the monitor sits a stereo in the shape of a cube: it contains a CD player, radio, and cassette player. The cube's face is liberally outfitted with buttons, toggles, knobs, plugs, and controls, most of which he doesn't use. Then comes a phone, then a rubber sleeve made for holding cold drink cans, but now holding pens and pencils; then a row of books, including novels, dictionaries, the Chicago Manual, three or four old magazines, some plastic file boxes with a collection of old memos, a binder of Ingredient information. The row slants lazily to the right and is kept from falling by a cardboard box of slides and transparencies that he is expected to catalog, a task he has been meaning to do for several months.
The foreground of the desk is occupied by pads of paper, a scattering of CDs, a stapler, a coffee cup, tape dispenser, various binders, a time sheet, and a little plastic box with a hole in the top to shake paper clips out of. Now the hole holds a small chocolate egg wrapped in bright foil.
On the wall is a poster advertising a book he wrote years ago, now out of print, and a calendar of castle pictures, hung by a push tack. A thin black wire stretches up from the back of the music cube across the calendar and winds around the push tack: the antenna. This improves reception.
On a pad in front of him, a list of words: Attention. Customer. Benefits. Differentiate. Prove. Credibility. Value. Call to action.
He sits in a rectangular room, not a cubicle. It has a door, and usually it is closed. He likes it closed, so that people can't see what he is doing, which usually is reading a book or surfing the net or writing on a pad of paper. He is afraid that others might think he is not working, and in fact most of the time he is not — that is, not doing the work they pay him for.
No, he isn't neglecting his job — it's just that there isn't enough to keep him busy all the time. When he first discovered this, he was nervous, and kept asking people if there was anything he could do. Usually there wasn't, so he began to fill up the time with other activities, especially reading. Now he counts on having lots of time to read and resents it if he doesn't.
His "desk" is a kind of table built into the wall, whose surface is covered with a plastic that reminds him of the lunch counters in cheap diners. At one end of it rests the computer monitor; the keyboard sits on a movable tray bolted to the undersurface of the "desk." To the right of the monitor sits a stereo in the shape of a cube: it contains a CD player, radio, and cassette player. The cube's face is liberally outfitted with buttons, toggles, knobs, plugs, and controls, most of which he doesn't use. Then comes a phone, then a rubber sleeve made for holding cold drink cans, but now holding pens and pencils; then a row of books, including novels, dictionaries, the Chicago Manual, three or four old magazines, some plastic file boxes with a collection of old memos, a binder of Ingredient information. The row slants lazily to the right and is kept from falling by a cardboard box of slides and transparencies that he is expected to catalog, a task he has been meaning to do for several months.
The foreground of the desk is occupied by pads of paper, a scattering of CDs, a stapler, a coffee cup, tape dispenser, various binders, a time sheet, and a little plastic box with a hole in the top to shake paper clips out of. Now the hole holds a small chocolate egg wrapped in bright foil.
On the wall is a poster advertising a book he wrote years ago, now out of print, and a calendar of castle pictures, hung by a push tack. A thin black wire stretches up from the back of the music cube across the calendar and winds around the push tack: the antenna. This improves reception.
On a pad in front of him, a list of words: Attention. Customer. Benefits. Differentiate. Prove. Credibility. Value. Call to action.
Sunday, February 17, 2013
Ninth Annual Ralphies, Better Late Than Never
This year's Ralphies will be a bit different, as I'm introducing some new categories:
Worst Computer Company: Apple. Every time I upgrade the operating system, some of the software stops working. Plus, Unicode still does not work that great on many Mac applications. Plus, Steve Jobs, may he rest in peace, was kind of a jerk. (Wait, aren't all the 1% jerks? Well, Bill Gates at least is a philanthropist.)
Best Summer (or Winter) Blockbuster: I saw several major motion pictures, including Lincoln, The Hunger Games, and The Avengers. The Avengers was the most enjoyable, although I deeply regretted that they did not include Kang the Conqueror. (Also, let me get this off my chest: Lincoln was clearly conceived as a play, not a movie [the screenplay was by Tony Kushner! Hello!], and the acting was hammy and theatrical. I'm looking at you, Tommy Lee Jones and Sally Field.) But my summer blockbuster was not a movie, but a book: Planesrunner, by Ian MacDonald. Exciting, original, and the special effects were awesome. Can't wait to read the sequel, Be My Enemy, which just came out.
Goodbye, Television: Pretty lousy. Fringe, the only show I watched faithfully, has ended. It was always worth watching. Olivia and Walter, I will miss you. Peter, not so much. Joshua Jackson did an adequate job, but only just. Plus, chemistry between him and Anna Torv? Zero. What will replace this show? So far, nothing.
Favorite Sports Team: The last time I rooted for a baseball team, it was 1988, and the Dodgers were winning an improbable World Series with Orel Hershiser and Kurt Gibson. Then we moved and baseball entered a dark age of strikes and steroids. Then came the miraculous summer of 2012, and the Washington Nationals reignited my interest in baseball and made me care again. Thanks, Nats.
Live Music: For me, I rediscovered concerts in 2012. DC has some nice small venues for the kinds of music I like. I saw Tennis and Real Estate at the Black Cat, and WIld Flag and Sufjan Stevens at the 9:30 Club. Wild Flag in particular showed themselves to be a superb live act. For at least a month after the concert (here's a clip), all I wanted to listen to was WIld Flag or music that reminded me of Wild Flag (and that means lots of punk and indie rock). I hope that Carrie Brownstein, one of the leading members, doesn't let her TV stardom put a damper on her musical creativity.
Books : I already mentioned Planesrunner (which would also make a great TV series; hello, BBC?). Also recommended on the fiction list is Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, dealing with the English Reformation from Thomas Cromwell's point of view. Although her perspective is quietly secularist (and clearly anti-Catholic), she paints a vivid picture of that time, and her dry and austere style fits the subject matter. I read a lot of non-fiction last year, although at the moment nothing stands out. But here's one I'm dying to read.
Pie: Lemon meringue, and it's not even close.
Worst Computer Company: Apple. Every time I upgrade the operating system, some of the software stops working. Plus, Unicode still does not work that great on many Mac applications. Plus, Steve Jobs, may he rest in peace, was kind of a jerk. (Wait, aren't all the 1% jerks? Well, Bill Gates at least is a philanthropist.)
Best Summer (or Winter) Blockbuster: I saw several major motion pictures, including Lincoln, The Hunger Games, and The Avengers. The Avengers was the most enjoyable, although I deeply regretted that they did not include Kang the Conqueror. (Also, let me get this off my chest: Lincoln was clearly conceived as a play, not a movie [the screenplay was by Tony Kushner! Hello!], and the acting was hammy and theatrical. I'm looking at you, Tommy Lee Jones and Sally Field.) But my summer blockbuster was not a movie, but a book: Planesrunner, by Ian MacDonald. Exciting, original, and the special effects were awesome. Can't wait to read the sequel, Be My Enemy, which just came out.
Goodbye, Television: Pretty lousy. Fringe, the only show I watched faithfully, has ended. It was always worth watching. Olivia and Walter, I will miss you. Peter, not so much. Joshua Jackson did an adequate job, but only just. Plus, chemistry between him and Anna Torv? Zero. What will replace this show? So far, nothing.
Favorite Sports Team: The last time I rooted for a baseball team, it was 1988, and the Dodgers were winning an improbable World Series with Orel Hershiser and Kurt Gibson. Then we moved and baseball entered a dark age of strikes and steroids. Then came the miraculous summer of 2012, and the Washington Nationals reignited my interest in baseball and made me care again. Thanks, Nats.
Live Music: For me, I rediscovered concerts in 2012. DC has some nice small venues for the kinds of music I like. I saw Tennis and Real Estate at the Black Cat, and WIld Flag and Sufjan Stevens at the 9:30 Club. Wild Flag in particular showed themselves to be a superb live act. For at least a month after the concert (here's a clip), all I wanted to listen to was WIld Flag or music that reminded me of Wild Flag (and that means lots of punk and indie rock). I hope that Carrie Brownstein, one of the leading members, doesn't let her TV stardom put a damper on her musical creativity.
Books : I already mentioned Planesrunner (which would also make a great TV series; hello, BBC?). Also recommended on the fiction list is Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, dealing with the English Reformation from Thomas Cromwell's point of view. Although her perspective is quietly secularist (and clearly anti-Catholic), she paints a vivid picture of that time, and her dry and austere style fits the subject matter. I read a lot of non-fiction last year, although at the moment nothing stands out. But here's one I'm dying to read.
Pie: Lemon meringue, and it's not even close.
Thursday, February 07, 2013
A Suggestion About I Enoch 90:15
"And I saw until the owner of the sheep came against them in wrath and all who saw him fled and they fell away from him into his shadow."
This verse from the "Animal Apocalypse" of I Enoch has been taken to be corrupt, especially the words "into his shadow." Patrick Tiller says "the phrase is peculiar." In his translation, R. H. Charles places it between brackets.
Nevertheless, I think the phrase may have originated in an overly literal translation of Aramaic בטלל, bitlal. This phrase, literally "in the shadow," comes to mean "because of, on account of," in the Aramaic of Qumran, as in these phrases from the Genesis Apocryphon:
שביק ארזא בטלל תמרתא, "the cedar was spared because of the date-palm" (19:16)
ואחי בטליכי, "I will live because of you" (19:20)
Therefore the original of Ethiopic wa-wadqu kwellomu westa selalotu would be something like ונפלו כלהון בטללה, "they all fell because of him."
—Enoch 90:15
This verse from the "Animal Apocalypse" of I Enoch has been taken to be corrupt, especially the words "into his shadow." Patrick Tiller says "the phrase is peculiar." In his translation, R. H. Charles places it between brackets.
Nevertheless, I think the phrase may have originated in an overly literal translation of Aramaic בטלל, bitlal. This phrase, literally "in the shadow," comes to mean "because of, on account of," in the Aramaic of Qumran, as in these phrases from the Genesis Apocryphon:
שביק ארזא בטלל תמרתא, "the cedar was spared because of the date-palm" (19:16)
ואחי בטליכי, "I will live because of you" (19:20)
Therefore the original of Ethiopic wa-wadqu kwellomu westa selalotu would be something like ונפלו כלהון בטללה, "they all fell because of him."
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Deconstructing Dylan's Rant
All the world knows by now that the following exchange between Mikal Gilmore and Bob Dylan is soon to appear in Rolling Stone:
Gilmore: I want to ask about the controversy over your quotations in your songs from the works of other writers, such as Japanese author Junichi Saga's Confessions of a Yakuza, and the Civil War poetry of Henry Timrod. In folk and jazz, quotation is a rich and enriching tradition, but some critics say that you didn't cite your sources clearly. What's your response to those kinds of charges?Ha ha! Just kidding. What Dylan actually said was the following. I've provided a speech-act translation for each section so that his thought patterns can be clearly seen.
Dylan: [Laughs.] Yes, I have gotten inspiration from these sources and re-used words from them in my songs. But I didn't feel the need to cite the sources. As you say, it's part of tradition to freely borrow words from others. I don't really see a problem with that, do you? I don't think people should be disturbed by it.
Dylan: Oh, yeah, in folk and jazz, quotation is a rich and enriching tradition. That certainly is true. It's true for everybody, but me. There are different rules for me.[Everybody does it, why not me?] And as far as Henry Timrod is concerned, have you even heard of him? Who's been reading him lately? [Besides me.] And who's pushed him to the forefront? [Me, that's who.] Who's been making you read him? [Me again.] And ask his descendants what they think of the hoopla. [If Henry Timrod were alive today, he woud thank me for getting him some press time, even if I never actually mentioned him.] And if you think it's so easy to quote him and it can help your work, do it yourself and see how far you can get. Wussies and pussies complain about that stuff. [It's just as hard to borrow somebody else's words as it is to write your own. Seriously. I mean it.] It's an old thing – it's part of the tradition. It goes way back. [Everybody does it, why not me?] These are the same people that tried to pin the name Judas on me. Judas, the most hated name in human history! If you think you've been called a bad name, try to work your way out from under that. Yeah, and for what? For playing an electric guitar? As if that is in some kind of way equitable to betraying our Lord and delivering him up to be crucified. [If you really want to know, all my enemies have always been anti-Semites.] All those evil motherfuckers can rot in Hell. [Golly, am I mad!]Wow. So, you think maybe Bob is just little bit touchy about people noticing his habit of using the work of others without attribution? Yikes. Nobody will ever say "chillin' like Dylan" again.
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