So, two things:
1, the bizness:
There's a Indiegogo live if you missed the Kickstarter for the birthday card.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:
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!
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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
____________________________________________________________________________Next Time: Ya know what they say, "April Posts bring May Posts..."
1 comment:
Hm. Not as many laughs in this installment as in recent ones.
-- Damian
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