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11. Cf. Segal (2007), 251–56.
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12. It may be that Jubilees here is contrasting the fate of Israel-the-nation, which will be the object of Belial’s “bringing charges” against them on high, to the acts of individual Israelites “go[ing] along in the error of their minds,” perhaps suggesting that these individuals’ actions are what will ultimately lead Belial to accuse the nation as a whole. (Note that throughout, “Beliar” is a variant form of “Belial.”)
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13. Note the comparison of this passage to two other Qumran prayers as well as b. Berakhot 16b and 60b in Nitzan (1996), 250–52.
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14. Even in the latter case, however, it is not clear that this is altogether an internal event. Even the passage cited earlier from the “Testament of Asher”—an apparently clear example of the “internally generated” explanation for human evil—seems a little less clear in its larger context: “There are two ways, of good and of evil, and along with them two impulses within our breasts that differentiate them. Thus, if the soul chooses the good [impulse], everything it does will be [done] in righteousness, and [even] if it sins, it will repent right away. For when a person’s thoughts are set on righteous things and he rejects wickedness, he immediately overthrows what is evil and uproots the sin. But if [the person’s soul] opts for the [evil] impulse, then its every action will be in wickedness, and, having driven away the good, [it] will take hold of the bad; it will eventually be ruled by Beliar. [Then,] even if [the person] does something good, he [Beliar] will convert it into something bad. For, should it [the soul] start to do something good, he [Beliar] arranges for the upshot of the action to work evil for him, for the [evil] impulse’s storage chamber is now filled with the poison of an evil Spirit” (T. Asher 1:5–9).
Here, an initially independent, internal choice ultimately leads to the soul being taken over entirely by an outside actor: that is, having opted for the bad, the soul “will eventually be ruled by Beliar. [Then,] even if [the person] does something good, he [Beliar] will convert it into something bad” and so forth. What is more, the passage asserts that the evil impulse has a little warehouse, a “storage chamber,” inside the person that can be filled with poison from an apparently external evil spirit.
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15. Note the discussion of leb ra’ in Najman (2014), 73–93. Various senses of “spirit” in classical, biblical, and extrabiblical sources are surveyed in Levison (1997) and (2009). Note in the latter the Stoic pneuma: “By the first century C.E., one of the foundational conceptions of of Stoicism was that pneuma pervades a living and rational cosmos . . . This distinctive view of the cosmos as pervaded by pneuma drew its inspiration, by way of analogy, from Stoic anthropology . . . In this way, the view that pneuma unifies both cosmos and psyche would become regnant in Stoic thought” (137–40).
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16. Perhaps the most discussed instance of this ambiguity is the famous “Two Spirits” passage of the Serekh ha-Yahad (1QS Community Rule III:13–IV:26). Among many recent treatments: Lange (1995), 121–43; Metso (2007b), 26–27; Duhaime (2003), 103–31; Hempel (2010); Stuckenbruck (2011).
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17. Defining the self (and, although it is different, the sense of self as well) is not a task to be disposed of in a sentence or two. My starting point—the common starting point, I believe—is the work of William James; see in particular James (1892), 151–216. Among many later treatments building on James, see Flanagan (1992), in particular 177–211. Discussion of the self and of the sense of self crosses disciplinary lines, and the focus of research, as well as the terminology, sometimes changes. Some psychologists and anthropologists thus speak of the sense of self as self-representation, “the individual’s mental representation of his own person.” See Spiro (1993); Ewing (1990); Quinn (2006). What I intend by offering the rather limited definition of “sense of self” here is to suggest the variety of ways in which this or that “defined group of people” may differ in their most basic assumptions about their own minds and how they interact with all that is not “me.” Note that James’s definition distinguished (here I am citing Flanagan’s restatement of it) “a range of things that can be appropriated into the ‘me,’ into the self-conception, into the thought or set of thoughts that constitute the model of one’s self. James distinguishes among a ‘material me,’ a ‘social me,’ and a ‘spiritual me’”: Flanagan (1992), 180.
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18. Some scholars refer to this mental picture as the “anthropology” that a certain culture or society may have, including “biblical anthropology.” See thus Di Vito (1999); Janowski and Liess (2009); cf. Heelas and Lock (1981). The obvious problem with this term is that it is also used to describe all sorts of other things, particularly the study of ancient or modern societies and cultures. To add to the confusion, “anthropology” itself is sometimes used in this sense as synonymous, or nearly synonymous, with “ethnology” or “ethnography,” though these two more frequently refer specifically to the reporting aspect of social anthropology, usually accomplished by living in a given society and reporting on its members’ way of life, customs, beliefs, and so forth. “In anthropology, or anyway social anthropology, what the practitioners do is ethnography . . . From one point of view, that of the textbook, doing ethnography is establishing rapport, selecting informants, transcribing texts, taking genealogies, mapping fields, keeping a diary, and so on. But it is not these things, techniques and received procedures, that define the enterprise. What defines it is the kind of intellectual effort it is: an elaborate venture in, to borrow a notion from Gilbert Ryle, ‘thick description’”: Geertz (1973), 5–6. In any case, in this book I have preferred “sense of self” over any other term to mean specifically the mental picture that a given individual or culture or society has of what a person consists of, the assumptions about what a person is that a defined group of people carry around in their heads, while “anthropology” herein usually refers to the study of all aspects of human existence in past or present-day societies. I use the terms “ethnography” and “ethnology” to refer specifically (when such specification is necessary) to the fieldwork and gathering of information about contemporary peoples and cultures, generally different from those of the modern West.
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19. This is, in turn, part of the larger study of the whole phenomenon of consciousness. It may be pointless to single out one work or another in this huge field, especially one with so many competing approaches and theories. Nevertheless: a good introductory volume is the anthology of Block et al. (2002); note especially therein Güzeldere (2002); Dennett (2002a); and Dennett and Kinsbourne (2002). See also Dennett (1991), a fuller exposition of his “multiple drafts” model. Also: Churchland (1986) and (2002). Finally, with regard to “embodied cognition,” see Lakoff and Johnson (1999) and Shapiro (2011).
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20. This subject has been explored in the context of psychoanalytic theory by Heinz Kohut; see Kohut (1977) and (1978–81). Note also Ewing (1990), 261. In this connection Noam Chomsky relates: “I read my grandchildren stories. If they like a story, they want it read ten thousand times. One story that they like is about a donkey that somebody has turned into a rock. The rest of the story is about the little donkey trying to tell its parents that it’s a baby donkey, although it’s obviously a rock. Something or another happens at the end, and it’s a baby donkey again. But every kid, no matter how young, knows that that rock is a donkey, that it’s not a rock. It’s a donkey because it’s got psychic continuity, and so on. That can’t be just developed from language, or from experience”: Chomsky (2012), 27.
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21. The very idea of such a clearinghouse has been rejected by Daniel Dennett and others, who refer to it as the “Cartesian theater” model of the brain’s workings (because the philosopher René Descartes had hypothesized that the pineal gland was the brain’s central clearinghouse; nowadays we know that the p
ineal gland’s main function is the production of melatonin). Dennett’s alternative, the “multiple drafts” model, has been put forward in his various books and essays; see Dennett (1994) and (2002a). (For the similar proposals by Kenneth Craik [1943] and William Calvin [1990], see Flanagan [1992], 41.) Nevertheless, other scholars have suggested that the prefrontal cortex may exercise such a clearinghouse role: see Kane and Engle (2002), Coolidge and Wynn (2009), 14. Yet others have suggested that this executive center is to be located in the medial temporal area, in or around the hippocampus: see Flanagan (1992), 17–18. (By now these references are probably out of date; I mention them nevertheless, if only to show that not long ago, the physical-clearinghouse question remained unresolved.)
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22. Feinberg (2009), xi. Note as well the sources cited above, note 17, and Daniel Dennett’s claim that the human self is, in biological terms, “just an abstraction, a principle of organization.” He continues: “Like the biological self, th[e] psychological or narrative self is not a thing in the brain, but still a remarkably robust and almost tangible attractor of properties”: (1991), 414. See also: Bennett and Hacker (2013), 241–63.
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23. See among others the essays collected in van Huyssteen and Wiebe (2011), esp. 33–49, 104–22, 319–37; also Hallam (2009) and Rose (1996) and in particular Dennett (this chap., notes 19 and 21) and Pinker (1997). I have discussed some of these in Kugel (2011a).
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24. W. T. Anderson (1997), 3.
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25. Markus and Kitayama (1991), 18–48.
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26. General discussions of the phenomenon: Bourguignon (1976) and Lewis (1979); note in particular the sympathetic treatment by Leavitt (1993).
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27. Lambek (1981), 40.
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28. Messing (1958); see also Torrey (1967) and Boddy (1988) and (1989).
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29. Boddy (1988); this was followed by a longer study, Boddy (1989).
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30. Grisaru and Witztum (2014), 329.
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31. For this reason, I feel some reservation about the excellent study of Ishay Rosen-Zvi (2011), which attributes Israelite possession to, specifically, Persian demonology.
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32. See further, chapter 5.
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33. These inscriptions were called katadesma (“binding spells”) in Greek and defixiones (“enchantments”) in Latin; see Faraone (1991), 13–14.
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34. See for example Burkert (1985), 82–84.
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35. See on this Bohak (2008).
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36. Some sources listed in Kugel (2003), 222–23; see also Sommer (2009), 19–24 and 183–84.
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37. This phenomenon has been extensively surveyed in Sommer (2009), esp. 12–57.
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38. “Back then” is precisely what the French classicist Paul Veyne referred to as in illo tempore or le temps des anciens, a period disconnected in time from our own: Veyne (1988). By the same token, how can we properly appreciate the gap between the Joseph story and those other tales in Genesis if we cannot recognize how different Joseph’s “sense of self” is from his bedfellows in that book?
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39. For Philo’s understanding of the spirit as a hypostasis or an “invading angel,” see Levison (1997), esp. 27–54 and 238. One might simply attribute this to the influence of Platonic ideas, an influence reflected as well in his account of actual prophetic possession: referring to Gen 15:12, for example, Philo writes: “When the light of God shines, the human light sets; when the divine light sets, the human light rises. This is what regularly befalls the fellowship of the prophets. The mind is evicted at the arrival of the divine Spirit, but when that departs, the mind returns to its tenancy. Mortal and immortal may not share the same home” (Heres 264–65). But surely this is not mere lip service: note in particular Philo’s description of his own experience of a kind of possession, Migr. 34–35.
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40. Lienhardt (1961), 149–50. Note also D’Andrade (1995), 158–69.
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41. Geertz (1983), 59.
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42. “Porous” is a fine term for what Taylor is describing, but in this book and earlier writings I have preferred the term “semipermeable.” Veterans of high school biology will recognize “semipermeable” as having been coined to describe cell structure: a semipermeable cell membrane is designed to let certain molecules or ions pass through it, but not anything else. I think this model better represents the sense of self I am describing: it recognizes that some of what the self perceives or decides is altogether autonomous, but not everything; some external things do get through. On this phenomenon in Abraham and Homer, see below.
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43. Taylor (2007), 35–38.
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44. Snell (1960), 31.
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45. “In Homer, the narrator is wholly dependent on the Muses for his knowledge of the events of the story, but the pay-off for this subordination is omniscience (Il. 2:485–86). He does not have to make inferences about the motivations of his characters in the manner of the Apollonian narrator, because he has privileged knowledge [i.e., the Muses’—JK] of the workings of their minds”: Morrison (2008), 278–79.
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46. Particularly helpful in conceptualizing these differences is the schematic graph developed by Andrew Lock (1981). I owe this reference to C. Newsom (2012a). See also Newsom (2012b).
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47. For the origin and development of this exegetical motif see Kugel (1998a), 245–51, 259–64.
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48. Note that Josephus has merged two departures—the first from Ur, the second from Harran—into one: “the Chaldeans and the other peoples of Mesopotamia rose against him,” these “other peoples” being the inhabitants of Harran. In so doing, Josephus not only accounted for the otherwise inexplicable contretemps in Harran, but attributed both departures to a single cause, Abraham’s monotheism (and not to any divine command).
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4. ADAM AND EVE AND THE UNDIFFERENTIATED OUTSIDE
1. See Kugel (1998a), 98–100, 121–25.
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2. A tradition reflected even in Matt 10:16, “See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” See D. Smith (2015), esp. 44–46.
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3. See Exod 20:23, some Bibles 20:26; 28:42, Deut 23:15, Isa 6:2.
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4. To palliate this shock, the Bible’s earliest interpreters created the notion that Adam and Eve were slightly clothed, enveloped in “garments of light” or “garments of glory.” See Kugel (1998a), 114–20, to which I should have added a reference to Ps 49:13, “A man [Heb. adam, understood here as the first man, Adam] will not long abide in glory,” understood as a reference to Adam’s glorious clothing. Note that this verse is reflected as well in the Aramaic translation of Gen 2:24 found in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: “And the two of them became wise, Adam and his wife, and they did not abide long in their glory”; that is, they did not continue to walk about in the near-nudity afforded by their flimsy “garments of glory.”
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5. For this purpose, the anthropologist Clifford Geertz’s synthetic definition of religion is instructive. According to Geertz, religion is “(1) a system of symbols (2) which acts to establish powerful, pervasive and long-lasting moods and motivations in men (3) by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic”: Geertz (1973), 87–125.
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6. First attested in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, in 1960, Homo habilis was distinguished from the various species of genus Australopithecus (“southern ape”) not only by having larger
brains, smaller teeth, and bigger bodies overall, but by hands better suited to toolmaking and other tasks.
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7. The validity of distinguishing these two as separate species remains a disputed topic among scholars. Both have been proposed as the species of the remarkable skeleton of “Nariokotome,” an approximately eleven-year-old youth who died 1.6 million years ago near the Kenyan town whose name paleoarchaeologists chose to use for the skeleton as well. The discovery was described and analyzed in Walker and Leakey (1993).
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8. Based on the presence of burnt animal bones and crude hearths at H. erectus sites. The site at Gesher Benot Ya’akov in northern Israel, containing clearer evidence of hominin control of fire, has been dated to 790,000 years ago. Some attribute the site to Homo heidelbergensis, but there is no actual proof of this identification.
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9. The lower jaw of Homo heidelbergensis was first discovered near Heidelberg, Germany, in 1908 and described by Otto Schoetensack (“Der Unterkiefer des Homo heidelbergensis aus den Sanden von Mauer bei Heidelberg”) in 1908. See Coolidge and Wynn (2009), 151–79.
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10. Ibid., 151.
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11. This term was apparently first used by the comparatist Mircea Eliade, not, however, as an actual species in human development, but as a generalized, ideal type.
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12. Neandertals have suffered from bad press over the years; nowadays the name conjures up in many readers a towering and violent ancestor whom humanity is better off without. Actually, this descendant of Homo heidelbergensis was rather short (five feet, six inches on average) and stocky (80 kilograms, or 176 pounds for a male); judging by cranial capacity, his brain was actually bigger than that of modern humans, though differently shaped (and crucially so). His great technological achievements include Levallois knapping (see below) and hafting (attaching a blade to a wooden handle or shaft, such as that of an ax). Though the point is contested, his anatomical remains may indicate some sustained form of speech. See on all these Coolidge and Wynn (2009), 180–206. The old picture ended with the Neandertals being driven out of Europe by Homo sapiens, but recent genetic research suggests that Neandertals interbred with Homo sapiens until relatively recent times, perhaps until around fifty thousand years ago; see Sankararaman et al. (2012).
The Great Shift Page 45
