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24. Bentall and Slade (1985).
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25. Sommer et al. (2010).
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26. Beavan, Read, and Cartwright (2011).
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27. See further:Corstens et al. (2014); also Thomas et al. (2014).
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28. Luhrmann et al. (2014).
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29. It is striking that the authors of this study went on specifically to single out the very different sense of self prevailing in the three locales as responsible for the different ways in which voice hearing was treated: “Outside Western culture people are more likely to imagine [a person’s] mind and self as interwoven with others. These are, of course, social expectations, or cultural ‘invitations’—ways in which other people expect people like themselves to behave. Actual people do not always follow social norms. Nonetheless, the more ‘independent’ emphasis of what we typically call the ‘West’ and the more interdependent emphasis of other societies has been demonstrated ethnographically and experimentally many times in many places—among them India and Africa . . .” The passage continues: “For instance, the anthropologist McKim Marriott wanted to be so clear about how much Hindus conceive themselves to be made through relationships, compared with Westerners, that he called the Hindu person a ‘dividual’. His observations have been supported by other anthropologists of South Asia and certainly in south India, and his term ‘dividual’ was picked up to describe other forms of non-Western personhood. The psychologist Glenn Adams has shown experimentally that Ghanaians understand themselves as intrinsically connected through relationships. The African philosopher John Mbiti remarks: ‘only in terms of other people does the [African] individual become conscious of his own being.’” Further, see Markus and Mullally (1997); Nisbett (2004); Marriot (1976); Miller (2007); Trawick (1992); Strathern (1988); Ma and Schoeneman (1997); Mbiti (1969).
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30. Note that a related study of visual and auditory hallucinations supports the same general conclusion, that while such hallucinations are apparently a widespread phenomenon evidenced in at least some segment of different populations, the hallucinations themselves are conditioned and shaped by the society in which they occur. In some environments, people are more likely to believe that they will be addressed by disembodied voices, and they react to the intruding voice less negatively than in other societies. In the words of this study: “Thus, we can speak of the ‘cultural conditioning’ of hallucination experience . . . What visionaries see and hear, when they do so, and how the experience impacts their bodies, especially when onlookers are present, all evolve over time, an indication that the visions are quite vulnerable to expectations and suggestion”: Laroi et al. (2014) .
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31. See in particular the work of H. Huffmon and the collection of articles in his honor in Kaltner and Stulman (2004).
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32. Wilson (1980), 51–52.
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33. Overholt (1989), 22.
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34. Ibid., 23. Overholt went on to suggest an ongoing dynamic between deity, prophet, and audience: (1) revelation from the deity leads to (2) a proclamation by the prophet, which is met by (3) the reaction of his audience, which may or may not confirm the would-be prophet’s standing; on the basis of this confirmation, the prophet may (and often does) communicate his/her (4) feedback to the source of revelation, that is, the deity; there may then come (5) additional revelations (since prophets are often active over a period of time), which lead to (6) additional proclamations, and (7) supernatural confirmations—miracles or confirming signs. Finally, a prophet may sometimes have or acquire (8) disciples as a result of his or her prophetic activity. See Overholt (1989), 24–25.
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35. As scholars have long noted, Jeremiah’s speech at the Jerusalem temple is, according to this third-person account of it (Jer 26:4–6), much shorter than the version of this speech in Jer 7:3–15. Is the shorter version a summation of a well known event, or is the longer version a later elaboration?
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36. Although his listeners’ response, “Why have you prophesied in the name of the LORD . . .” would seem once again to indicate that a prophet’s rephrasing of the divine message, prophesying “in the name of the LORD,” was what a prophet actually did.
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37. See: Caroll (1981), 107–30, and Caroll (1986), 71–96; Polk (1984); Diamond (1987); K. M. O’Connor (1988).
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38. Scholars see this image as connected to the one cited earlier, in the book’s opening account of Jeremiah’s being chosen as a prophet: “Then the LORD put out His hand and touched me on the mouth, and the LORD said to me, ‘Now I have put My word in your mouth’” (Jer 1:9).
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39. On the textual problems associated with this passage: Bezzel (2009), 48–73.
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40. This is a notoriously difficult verse. The traditional text has Jeremiah being “a shepherd after You,” but this makes little sense; among other things, when used metaphorically, “shepherd” is traditionally said of kings—there is no other place in the Bible in which a prophet is so described. See on this Stulman (2005), 173. The same consonants of “from shepherd” can be equally well construed as “from evil,” which seems a more likely choice. True, this still leaves the word aḥarekha, “after You,” unaccounted for, but that word certainly does not fit any better with “shepherd.”
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41. Two common renderings differ sharply from mine: “Most devious is the heart; It is perverse—who can fathom it?” (NJPS); “The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse—who can understand it?” (NRSV). But ’akob isn’t necessarily devious, just convoluted, full of twists and turns—and that’s Jeremiah’s point: the human mind is truly unfathomable—at least to other people, but not to God. It is, by the way, the mind that Jeremiah is talking about; the translation “heart” is literal but misleading, since both the “heart” and “innards”—sometimes along with kidneys and intestines—in Hebrew are the functional equivalent of mind in English. The mind is also said here to be anush: again, “perverse” also seems to miss the point. Here the Hebrew term means something like “very deep” (said elsewhere of a deep pain or wound). Finally, the parenthetical question “Who can know it?” is here, as so often, a negation, i.e., “No one can know it”; see Kugel (1981), 7. If I have preserved the interrogative form, it is only because the next words propose the answer: “I, the LORD.”
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42. As many scholars have suggested, this stylized dialogue may have started with Amos 8 (see below) and was created here as a way of establishing Jeremiah’s credentials as a true prophet. But from the perspective of our subject, it matters little; this was one thing that came to be expected of a prophet. (See previous note.)
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43. Lindblom (1962), 122–41.
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44. Probably pronounced qeṣ in northern Israel, hence indistinguishable from the word for “end.”
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45. In this respect it is different from the late-biblical “Heavenly voyage,” on which see Himmelfarb (1993) and below, chapter 15; these texts represent biblical figures like Abraham, Levi, Moses, and others physically entering heaven.
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46. This account may have been the source of a similar passage, 1 Kings 22:19–23, though no clear conclusion can be drawn. The phrase “Who will go for us” seems to indicate that the setting is the divine council on high; see Mullen (1980), De Moore (1990), Handy (1994), Smith (2002), 41–53. On these narratives of prophetic visions see P. D. Miller (2000), 184–86.
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47. I have left aside the question of the potential relatedness of prophets and various sorts of mental disorders, but certainly one aspect deserves mention: what Western societies generally label as psychotic or schizophrenic behavior is, while recognized as such outsi
de the West, not necessarily dismissed as disqualifying someone from functioning as a shaman or other intermediary. On the contrary, the display of symptoms of such disorders may be construed as confirmation of the person’s fitness to function in such a special role. Some societies, it seems, reserve the social niche of divine intermediary for such people, and this social encouragement and integration can in turn have a positive clinical effect on the divine intermediary. The phenomenon is documented in some detail in a book by an Israeli psychiatrist stationed in Ghana starting in 1991, where he drove from village to village to treat patients diagnosed as suffering from various psychiatric ailments, including schizophrenia. What he found was that even extreme forms of hallucinations and other ailments were not, as in the West, treated altogether negatively; in fact, they were felt to fulfill a positive role on behalf of society as a whole: “In African cultures, one can speak as well of the concept of schizophrenia as exercising a certain function. These cultures do not only grant legitimacy to the disease, but they also grant it a unique role, one that is quite exceptional . . . The spectrum of reported psychotic symptoms is rich and seductive. Patients see a breath-taking array of visions: a flock of antelopes goes up in flames; cobras shoot forth a river of poison; ancient warriors appear from the tribe’s mythology; a shower of semen comes down like rain. Or else there is the hearing of mysterious voices: the moans of boulders as they come apart in water; seductive words whispered by invisible women; curses that spread out into the universe on the rays of the rising sun—all these are just examples gathered from the traveling clinic. This incomprehensible richness has led many Africans to believe that these symptoms actually contain fateful messages, and that mental illness itself serves as a messenger between spiritual entities and ordinary human beings. Hence the villagers’ appreciation of their chief, who obeys these mysterious voices, ejaculates and fructifies with his seed parcels of land that lie waste, so that the cassava and corn will sprout up again . . . From the villagers’ standpoint, these strange symptoms, even if they are not normative, carry within them a mysterious coded message, perhaps comprehensible only to the gods. This notion does not, of course, nullify the pathology of schizophrenia, but it does provide it with a significance in the cultural context, and what is still more essential, it grants a unique and respected function to those stricken with the disease”: Shwarzman (2007), 122.
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48. Lindblom (1962), 173–74.
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8. THE BOOK OF PSALMS AND SPEAKING TO GOD
1. A measure of the Psalms’ early popularity is evidenced in our oldest collection of biblical and related manuscripts, the Dead Sea Scrolls, where more manuscripts have been found containing parts of the Psalms than of any other biblical book; see Flint (1997), 22. On the editing of the book of Psalms, Westermann (1981), 250–58; G. H. Wilson (1985); and more recently the essays collected in McCann (1993), esp. 100–103.
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2. See Kugel (1986a).
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3. Rendsburg (1990) and (2003); also Holladay (1993) H, 26–36.
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4. Sarna (1979), 350–51.
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5. A. Pietersma has highlighted the fact that the “David” headings in the Greek Psalter are more numerous (and often explicitly “of David” [τοῦ Δαυιδ]); see Pietersma (1980). Note also van der Kooij (2001). As is well known, some headings (for example, those of Psalm 18 or Psalm 51) actually mention the occasion on which “David” might have been moved to compose the psalm. Such headings, long believed to clinch the case for the Davidic origin of the psalms, have been demonstrated to be a late attempt to match up a verse or phrase in the psalm in question with a specific scriptural narrative in David’s (or Moses’s or Solomon’s) life—actually, a rather early case of midrashic-style narrative expansions. See Childs (1971).
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6. Briefly: Kugel (2007a), 463–65 and sources cited there.
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7. See further Mowinckel (1962), 5–8.
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8. Sarna (1979), 281–300.
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9. On the prophetic character of the Asaphite psalms, H. Nasuti (1988); also Hilber (2005), 128–66.
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10. On Psalm 29, see chapter 9.
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11. See Kugel (1986a).
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12. Hurvitz (1988), 42–44.
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13. P. D. Miller (1983), 34.
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14. On this psalm’s changing meaning, Holladay (1993), 6–14.
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15. Among many others: G. H. Wilson (1985); Christensen (1996); Beckwith (1999). The Qumran manuscript 11QPsa has played an important role in current theories; see Sanders (1967) and (2003).
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16. Of course, one might look for such interaction in other parts of the Bible as well, but accounts of past events, or speeches uttered by Israel’s prophets, are often designed to drive home some ideological point, telling us about God’s miraculous doings or otherwise presenting some doctrine or general principle or a specific bit of teaching. But a person in trouble—even if the trouble is sometimes, as we have glimpsed, framed in general terms designed for reuse—ultimately wants one thing, God’s intervention on his or her behalf. The words of these psalms may exaggerate the speaker’s own needs or flatter the deity to whom they are addressed; still, examined carefully, they have a straightforward and single-minded purpose—getting divine help right now—of a sort not usually found in other sorts of compositions.
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17. Further: Kugel (2007a), 243–49, 528.
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18. There too, when He was there, He was literally on the other side of the curtain (Exod 26:31–33 etc.).
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19. For a fuller discussion of this phenomenon, see Kugel (2003), 109–36.
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20. Ibid., 120–25.
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21. Ibid.
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22. See Knohl (1995), 148–49. Speaking of P’s conception of God, Knohl writes: “Such a conception leaves no room for petitional prayer, in which humans request fulfillment of their needs from God; nor does it allow a role for songs of praise in which humans thank God and recount God’s wonders and mercies. The structural model of prayer, a direct address by humans to their God, as well as the frequency of anthropomorphic images in the language of prayer and song, is at odds with [P’s] aim in emphasizing God’s loftiness.”
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23. For a précis of prayer in Hinduism, see Dhavamony (1982), 204–42. Prayer in Buddhism is notoriously different from the Western tradition, but see Kapstein (2007) on the Prayer of Great Power, “recited daily by tens of thousands of Tibetans”; Lopez (2007) (on the triskhandaka, the three-part liturgy, of Mahayana Buddhism and its later transmission), 133–38; and Gyatso (2010), 231–33. Other studies: Headley (1966); in general: Dupré (1975), esp. 250–51. Though not a systematic survey of different societies, many cross-cultural examples are found in Zaleski and Zaleski (2005).
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24. The supplicant is always humble, even if he himself happens to be a king; after all, there is no point in asking for divine help if one does not need it. Since the nineteenth century some scholars have suggested that petitionary psalms were intended for those who could not afford to bring sacrificial animals to the temple: see Rahlfs (1891). But this is quite wrongheaded. The whole idea that “prayer was the poor man’s version of temple-worship; since he could not afford the only proper tender of homage to God—animal sacrifice—he offered a prayer in its stead” is still cited, but not for praise, by Greenberg (1983a), 42.
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25. This is generally true of deities in the ancient Near East—in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Ugarit, and elsewhere. On the interrelatedness of divine and earthly kings, see Eaton (1986).
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26. The kingship of the gods is certainly an ancient theme;
Thorkild Jacobsen located its Mesopotamian emergence in the third millennium BCE, replacing the fourth-millennium “gods as providers” metaphor: Jacobsen (1976). (Note, however, A. Leo Oppenheim’s sharp critique: Oppenheim [1977], 171–83.) For human and divine kingship in ancient Egypt, still valuable is Frankfort (1948). To be sure, kingship has long been held to be somewhat attenuated in ancient Israel, but this applies principally to the “law of the king” in Deut 17:14–20 and its offshoots; see Nicholson (1967), 49–50. On divine kingship in Israel: Brettler (1989); M. S. Smith (2002), esp. 22–26, 55–60; Kratz (2015).
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27. Greenberg (1983a), 17.
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28. Robert North rightly explained references to a person’s “heart” alone (leb in biblical Hebrew) not as a precise reference to that particular organ, but as “a vaguely known or confused jumble of organs, somewhere in the area of the heart or stomach”: see North (1993), 596.
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29. Many modern adherents of Judaism and Christianity may find this notion difficult to swallow, since divine omnipresence is a fundamental belief in both religions. But biblical scholars have long been aware of the evidence confuting divine omnipresence (as also divine omniscience): God walks about in the Garden of Eden (Gen 3:8)—walking is not something you do if you are omnipresent; He likewise “goes down” from heaven to inspect the tower of Babel (Gen 11:5) and the people of Sodom (18:21). In many biblical texts God is said to “dwell” in heaven, “sitting” on a heavenly throne, which He sometimes leaves to fly away on a “swift cloud” (Isa. 19:1) or on the winds (Ps 104:3). As for divine omniscience, He certainly can find things out—among other ways, by entering our semipermeable minds—but this is different from knowing everything all the time. Sometimes, in fact, He consults human beings directly: He asks Adam where he is (Gen 3:9), Cain where his brother Abel is (Gen 4:9), and Balaam who the people with him are (Num 22:9). See further: Carasik (2000).
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30. A more precise instance: the above-cited (late, Deuteronomistic) description of Solomon’s temple and its transmission of requests to God on high might be compared to the much earlier temple (or temples) of the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar, who resides simultaneously down here and up there. See above, chapter 5.
The Great Shift Page 49
