Sunday 28 April 2019

TL:DR: The Genesis Question part fifty-one

Hi, Everybody!

So, two things:

1, the bizness:
There's a Indiegogo live if you missed the Kickstarter for the birthday card.

The remastered Volume 1, digitally for $9.99.


No word on the postcard Kickstarter, or a Star code for the remastered Jaka's Story, but I'll add 'em to the list when I get 'em!
2, I ran out of pages from issue 289/290 to run in front of Dave's Genesis Question commentaries. Dave suggested I use Jewish, Christian or Muslim religious images. But then, Superman's Frenemy: David Birdsong sent in a bunch of (so far) unused Cerebus in Hell? images and now I'ma gonna run them. So:
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image by Doré, Sim & Birdsong
16 January 15

Hi Troy & Mia!

Mr. Ross then cites Psalms 98:2-3:

The YHWH hath made known his salvation: his righteousness hath he [KJV: openly showed; alternative translation: revealed] in the sight of the heathen.

He hath remembered his mercy and his truth toward the house of Israel: all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.

Coincidentally, my Torah reading this morning was Deuteronomy 2 to 11which consists of Moshe's best summing up of "Our [that is, the Hebrew people's] story thus far…" preparatory to their passing over Jordan -- without him -- into the promised land, conveying what are, presumably, the YHWH's own most accurate sentiments as dictated to him.  Which are a good deal more qualified than David's sentiments as expressed in Psalm 98. 

Of particular (particular to me, anyway) note:

Deuteronomy 9:5-7:  Not for thy righteousness, or for the uprightness of thy heart dost thou go to possess their land: But for the wickedness of these nations, the YHWH thy god doth drive them out from before thee, and that he may perform the word which the YHWH swear unto thy fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Understand therefore, that the YHWH thy god giveth thee not this good land to possess it for thy righteousness; for thou a stiff-necked people.

Remember, forget not, how thou provokedst the YHWH thy god to wrath in the wilderness: from the day that thou didst depart out of the land of Egypt, until ye came unto this place, ye have been rebellious against the YHWH.

This definitely seems to me to point in the direction of the YHWH's consistently and generally avowed low opinion of men:  The people of the land are wicked and the Hebrew people are rebellious and stiff-necked.  I find it impossible, personally, to rationalize this with David's assertion: "his [the YHWH's] righteousness hath he openly showed/revealed in the sight of the heathen.  He hath remembered his mercy and his truth toward the house of Israel." 

The YHWH seems to me to be pretty explicit on the point:  the Hebrew people aren't being rewarded with the promised land, the inhabitants of the land are being punished by having it taken away:  "And he shall deliver their kings into thy hand, and thou shalt destroy their name from under heaven: there shall no man be able to stand before thee, until thou have destroyed them." (Deuteronomy 7:24)

Of particular note, I think, is Dt. 6:22 as part of the instruction that is supposed to be conveyed between generations of the Jewish peoples, what "thou shalt say unto thy son" about the Exodus out of Egypt:

And the YHWH showed signs and wonders great and evil upon Egypt, upon Pharaoh and upon all his household before our eyes

The KJV translators shy away from this -- translating it as "great and sore"  -- but there it is in the margin:  "Hebr.: evil".  This is, specifically, what Moshe is instructed to say ABOUT the actions of the YHWH BY the YHWH.

Addressing  Psalm 98:2-3 particularly seems to me to present the problem inherent in psalms generally (the problem that I see, anyway) when you examine what's left:

O sing unto the YHWH a new song, for he hath done marvellous things: his right hand and his holy arm hath gotten him the victory.

On the one hand, it's a "song of praise" so it's easy to give it a pass based strictly on apparent motivation.  How can you fault someone for praising God (given that everyone besides me thinks that YHWH and God are the same being)?

 "Who love to be praised for what they have not done" -- a Koranic phrase -- comes to mind. 

If the YHWH was showing "signs and wonders great and evil upon Egypt" and is then doing the same thing to the goyim in the promised land, all while seeing the Hebrew people as being "stiff necked" and "rebellious",  it's hard to see where "his right hand and his holy arm hath gotten him the victory".  Which is the problem I always have with commentaries, which is what I see the Psalms as being.  Songs of praise that David wrote that, to me, don't reflect the sense of Scripture itself and -- to me, consequently -- muddy, rather than clarify, that sense.

David's further observations...

Make a joyful noise unto the YHWH, all the earth: make a loud noise, and rejoice and sing praise. 

Sing unto the YHWH with the harp: with the harp and the voice of a Psalm.

With trumpets and sound of cornet: make a joyful noise before the YHWH the King.

 …seem to me to illustrate the extent of the problem.  What David, it seems to me, is counselling is to erect a facade of noise, song, harp, voice, trumpets and cornets between man and God's scripture and, consequently, between man and God. As a musical individual this, apparently, seems wise to him.

Self-excitement and self-incitement by musical means into a rapturous state seem to me an unhealthy motive and an unhealthy program, theologically speaking.  Sheer narcissism.  David is, himself, a King as he's composing this material so it's hard not to infer that he is viewing himself as a "co-King" with the YHWH and praising himself -- and urging the Hebrew people, his citizens, to praise him and arouse themselves into a rapturous state matching his own -- even as he's praising the YHWH.

[It's worth noting, I think, that The Koran is a recitation of God's Word which -- at the time of its sending down -- was frequently mistaken for poetry of the Epic Poem sort by those who wanted to disparage it.  But if you listen to Koranic recitations today, they're very musical.  Far more like songs than like recitations.  I read somewhere that almost all recordings of the Koran are made in Egypt and are always quasi-musical in this way.  I'm listening to it right now.  I would prefer, personally, to have a NON-musical Koran to listen to for the reasons cited above.  I think you have to be very cautious about incorporating music and musicality into worship of God. Although I don't think most religious people are at all cautious about that.]

Of course, God appears to take a much wider and broader view:   

Let the sea roar, and the fullness thereof: the world and they that dwell therein.

Water being God's chosen medium, He appears here to incorporate Himself into David's psalm, suggesting that the roar of the sea is, in itself, a species of Divine music -- the sea's means by which it praises God, its own "joyful noise".  "The fullness thereof" seeming to suggest further depths to that music inaudible to men but serving their part in the same purpose. 

And then incorporating the world -- the YHWH -- into that same construct and appearing to suggest, by juxtaposition, that "they that dwell therein" (mankind IN the world) as being analogous to and bearing the same relationship TO the sea's roar of the "fullness thereof" OF the sea's roar.  The "joyful noise within the joyful noise".  

Let the floods clap [interpolated: their] hands: let the hills be joyful together

suggests that music is inherent in all forms of Reality and is just part of God's creation -- while having, as I read it, a certain arch quality in expression:  which I infer is God's way of saying "There really isn't any need to TELL the floods to clap hands or (by inference) to TELL the hills to be 'joyful together.  It was a given that they would do so when I created them and when I created their progenitors before they existed in their present form.  And THEIR progenitors and THEIR progenitors back before the earth existed in its present form, all the way back to the Big Bang…"

"…BUT, in the spirit of what David AND the YHWH are engaged in here, by all means, 'Let the floods clap hands: let the hills be joyful together.'"

But following this with the larger idea at issue:

Before the YHWH, for he cometh to judge the earth: with righteousness shall he judge the world, and the people with equity.

"Before the YHWH" in the sense of "in front of/before the YHWH" but also I think in reference to "prior to the YHWH" before "the YHWH's own progenitors" in a cosmological sense, the stellar body -- our sun -- from which the YHWH came out in the form of an undifferentiated mass, and the stellar bodies from which our sun itself came out in the form of an undifferentiated mass. 

The point isn't, I infer, praise, per se.  Musical or otherwise.  The point is judgement, righteousness and equity as the "end points" and inherent purpose of enactment.  Presumably,  David was musically praising the YHWH to a fare-thee-well even as he was lusting after Bathsheba, committing adultery with her and then plotting her husband's death to cover for the resulting pregnancy.  

What the YHWH has done, is doing and will do is of greater importance than from where the YHWH came and how the YHWH got here.  Likewise with David and all of God's creations.  

Next week: God willing Psalm 104

Best,


Dave
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Next Time: Ya know what they say, "April Posts bring May Posts..."

1 comment:

Damian T. Lloyd, Esq. said...

Hm. Not as many laughs in this installment as in recent ones.

-- Damian