The Effect of Jewish Studies on Judaism

A friend of mine sent me a link to this older article where the inimitable Jacob Neusner, who taught Jewish Studies for years at a secular university, discusses how Jewish Studies has tended to undercut Judaism.

One very important point he makes in the essay is this:

When believing and practicing Jews decide who will teach what to whom, they take for granted that some things are more important than others. They affirm the cogency of the subject and know how things fit together. The Judaic system governs the things that are learned. To teachers and students, the classical texts convey truth. What follows? The Talmud is more important than a cookbook. The Jewish sponsors of Jewish learning derive the scale of values from the received canon and tradition.

Universities, by contrast, have no stake in according to Scripture or Midrash and Talmud a superior position in the curriculum. Learning in every topic and discipline defines its own priorities, and reason is not governed by revelation. So the curriculum is a mishmash of this and that — discrete details of a main point that does not register. Anything that is Jewish is as worthy of study as anything else that is Jewish. At my own college, the history of the bagel and the status of women in Jewish law have served equally well as topics of graduation essays.

Substitute "Mormon" for "Jewish" and "General Conference" for the "Talmud" and you probably have an apt description of Mormon Studies.

Neusner's point, of course, is one of the frustrating things about studying ancient Egyptian religion. Any inscription or text is taken as equally important with any other inscription or text. No system governs what is learned or studied and we do not know how things fit together. What is valuable and what is not? How are we to know? I have made the argument that the things that the Egyptians endlessly repeated to the point that modern scholars see them as "banal" are probably the most important things. Without an ancient Egyptian informant, that is an educated guess. One has to wonder if all the outpouring of writings of Egyptian religion is as valid as the outpouring of writings in Mormon Studies.

General Orders

Every so often some ancient letters bring a particular matter into focus. A set of three letters by the general Piankh is one such group of documents. The first letter runs as follows:

Pharaoh's general to the necropolis scribe Tjaroy, saying: I heard every thing about which you sent me, what you said about this matter of the two policemen, how they are talking about these matters. Get together with Nudjmet and Payshuweben. Send and have these two policemen brought in to the house. Get to the bottom of things quickly. If you find out that what they say is true then put them in a couple of baskets and dump them in the river at night, but don't let anyone find out about it at all.

On another matter: How is Pharaoh going to attack this land? Who is Pharaoh still the boss of? Three months ago I sent a barge but you have not sent me a single tiban of gold or a single tiban of silver. It is okay. Don't worry about it. As soon as this letter reaches you scrounge up a tiban of gold and one of silver and send it to me on a barge.

(P. Berlin 10487 = LRL 21)

We have another letter that deals with this scandal:

Pharaoh's general to the agent Payshuweben, saying: I heard every thing about which you sent me, what you said about this matter of the two policemen, how they are talking about these matters. Get together with Nudjmet and Tjaroy. Send and have these two policemen brought to my house. Get to the bottom of things quickly. Kill them and dump them into the river at night, but don't let anyone find out about it at all.

(P. Berlin 10488 = LRL 34)

The two letters are almost identical for a bit but differ in places. So Payshuweben was to do the actual killing, while Tjaroy was to bring some baskets to dump the bodies into the Nile.

But three people were involved and we have the third letter as well:

Pharaoh's general to the chief of the harem of Amonrasonter Nudjmet in life, prosperity and health, and the favor of Amonrasonter. I ask every god and goddess whom I pass by that you may live and be healthy and I may see you when I return and fill my eyes every day with the sight of you.

I heard every thing about which you sent me, what you said about this matter of the two policemen which you said. They are talking. Get together with Payshuweben and that scribe Tjaroy. Send and have these two policemen brought to my house. Get to the bottom of things quickly. Have them killed and dumped into the river at night.

Write to me about how you are doing. Be well. Be healthy.

(P. Berlin 10489 = LRL 35)

This last letter has the same author and subject matter as the other two letters but is much more polite. It begins with the standard niceties. If anything, it contains more of them than the typical letter of the time. It also ends with pleasantries that seem sincere.

What accounts for the difference? The recipient of the third letter is a woman and the recipients of the other two are men. That accounts for some of the difference. Piankh does not have a woman get her hands dirty with any of the nasty business that he has the other men do. From her title, Nudjmet has a high position in the religious hierarchy. But this does not explain everything. As it so happens, we know from other records that Nudjmet is Piankh's mother. The other two are Piankh's subordinates. As a general he is used to giving orders and so he does.

All three letters ended up in the archive of Tjaroy. So the three individuals apparently did get together.

In an interesting twist, Nudjmet's copy of the Book of the Dead mostly survives split between three museums: P. BM EA 10541 + P. Louvre E.6258 + P. München ÄS 825. (The portion in the Munich museum was destroyed during World War II.) In Nudjmet's negative confession she includes the passages "I have not slain; I have not ordered a murder" (BD 125 A 14-15) and "I have not slain any person" (BD 125 B 5).

We sometimes wonder if the ideals of ancient Egyptian religion actually had an impact on the actual actions of individuals. In some cases it is clear that they did. In this case, we can see that they apparently did not or at least Piankh did not think they should.

And yet, if we wanted to make a case that Piankh was simply irreligious, we might make a case from the first two letters but not the third. In the third letter, Piankh certainly expresses the normal pieties. A few year later, Piankh became the High Priest of Amun and even received an oracle from the god.

Situating a Book in Context

Several years ago, I published a review of a work by an eminent scholar, who generally seems to be a decent individual and whose work I normally like. The book was a commentary on a text of a religion (Mithraism) that flourished a thousand years ago but has long since perished and no living adherents survive. The work was erudite and about as exhaustive a commentary as could be done on the particular text from the particular point of view favored by the author. I thought, however, and still think that the author had situated the text in the wrong context. As I demonstrated at length:

We have a text found in Egypt, coming from an Egyptian temple archive, dealing with an Egyptian subject, in an Egyptian fashion, in an Egyptian format, using Egyptian offering

lists, invoking Egyptian deities, employing Egyptian words, and calquing Egyptian grammar that poorly matches Mithraic material. Nothing in the text is necessarily Greek or Mithraic, but several of the subjects dealt with in the text are definitely not Greek or Mithraic; on the other hand, there is nothing in the text that is not Egyptian. The simplest explanation is that that the text is Egyptian, not Mithraic.

Of course the native Egyptian religions have gone the same way as Mithraism. The point was, in a sense, purely academic. I concluded from this that the particular

book demonstrates that it is possible to provide a highly learned and seemingly plausible commentary for a work while still setting that work in the wrong contextual framework. The result, while neither useless nor worthless, is ultimately irrelevant.

Context of a work matters. If you situate the so-called Mithras Liturgy as written by Greek stoic adherents of Mithraism, you will end up with a very different reading of the subject than you will if you suppose that it is written by Egyptian priests in Thebes. The context makes a huge difference. This is why biblical scholars fight over when to place the various books of the Bible (and they are all disputed) and why there are scholarly arguments about when and where to place the Book of Mormon in history. The context is basic and makes a huge difference, which is why one can never say that the issue can (or should) go away.

A Bibliographic Notice

I see that my colleague, Alexandra van Lieven's very important article, "Book of the Dead, Book of the Living," has finally been published:

Alexandra von Lieven, "Book of the Dead, Book of the Living: BD Spells as Temple Texts," Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 98 (2012): 249-67.

This is an extremely important paper for understanding the Book of the Dead in the context of Egyptian religion. Though many of those engaged in research on the Book of the Dead have known about the article for some time, it deserves to be more widely known

Words Without Context

One of the biggest problems in understanding Egyptian religion is not lack of texts but lack of contexts. My colleague, Martin Stadler, writes perceptively about problems with certain types of research:

Die bisherige Forschung zu Thot wird dominiert von einer eher additiven Nebebeinanderstellung der Belege ohne analytische Ordnung oder dem Versuch, einen Zusammenhang zu finden, wenngleich einzelne Arbeiten das Material thematisch gliedern und dabei einen zentralen Wesenszug indentifizieren möchten, aus dem alle anderen Zuständigkeiten des Gottes hergeleitet werden. (M. A. Stadler, Weiser und Wesir [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009], 36.)

Although his purpose was not such, he has identified one of the problems with computerized research in the humanities. It is the same problem that often plagues philologists, like those who have preceded him in researching aspects of Egyptian religion.

While today we can gather large amounts of data, we can digitize books and have the computer turn them into text, and have the computer search them for words, we still may not know what is in the book. Our philological analysis will consist, as Stadler points out, of merely a continuous stream of passages without any analytical system or the attempt to find a context. The computer is great at finding words or phrases in a work but the mere ability to do so does not give the researcher any sense of context unless the researcher already knows the work. Thus the computer can only help to a certain extent and does not relieve the researcher of the burden of reading the text.

On Egyptian Apocalyptic Literature

Recently there has been an increase in interest in Egyptian apocalyptic literature. The Egyptian apocalyptic literature "creates the picture of the evil into which Egypt has fallen" (Roberto B. Gozzoli, The Writing of History in Ancient Egypt during the First Millennium BC (ca. 1070-180 BC) (London: Golden House Publications, 2006), 301.) In Roberto Gozzoli's treatment of the subject, he notes the following features of the genre:

Glorification of pharaohs immediately preceeding a foreign invasion, or fighting against an invader.

Demonisation of any foreign invasion.

The pharaoh's return

The glorious warrior of the past. (Gozzoli, The Writing of History in Ancient Egypt, 302-304.)

He observes that

it was unbelieveable for the ancient Egyptians to accept that their country might have been occupied by foreigners, unless the political situration in Egypt was weakened by some misconduct of a bad pharaoh. (Gozzoli, The Writing of History in Ancient Egypt, 303.

Yet for all its emphasis on the rottenness of the situation in Egypt, Egyptian apocalyptic literature is not necessarily dreary:

The destruction of a country and in this particular case, Egypt, is never an end, but only a representation of a fallen reality which will be some day restored to the pristine glory, once the original conditions of religious respect will be reinstated. (Roberto B. Gozzoli, The Writing of History in Ancient Egypt, 304.)

 In that sense, apocalyptic literature could actually be described as hopeful.

Khoiak

The ancient Egyptians did not have Christmas but they did have a festival at this time of year that lasted most of the month. It was called the Khoiak festival. It coincided with both the winter solstice and the end of the inundation of the Nile and beginning of planting season. It celebrated the death of Osiris and the birth of Horus. For Egyptian Christians it commemorated the death of Abraham and the birth of Jesus.

An Outside View

In the early years of the Twentieth Century Theodor Hopfner assembled a massive, five volume, collection of all the Greek and Roman sources discussing Egyptian religion.[1] Looking through his compendia it is hard not to be impressed with Hopfner’s diligence and erudition. He seems to have read and extracted everything conceivable on his subject. Not only are all the major classical authors included but even the most obscure authors are as well. His thoroughness is daunting. Yet for all his effort, his work gathers dust on the shelf. The only time I can recall it ever being cited is in Hugh Nibley’s works. It is not because Hopfner is not accurate or encyclopedic but for another reason.

Classical authors writing about Egyptian religion are outsiders, not insiders. We have thousands of documents written by insiders who knew their religion better and actually understood it. There is thus no reason to rely on accounts written by outsiders who clearly did not understand the religion correctly. Hence Hopfer is neglected because his work is largely irrelevant. Outsiders rarely get details correct. One of the few outside accounts given any credence is Plutarch’s De Iside et Osiride. One cannot help wondering why this fanciful tale is trusted because it is not corroborated by native sources. It is probably because Plutarch spins a good yarn even if it isn’t accurate.

Plutarch is a sympathetic source. Other authors were downright hostile. One Egyptologist, for example, dismisses one such by saying: “Juvenal . . . is not relevant to the present discussion, since . . . he is a satirist for whom ridicule — directed indifferently toward Roman, Greek or Egyptian —was an occupation, . . . he was . . . not disposed to be particularly charitable, and . . . he had been expelled from Rome precisely for his propensity to compose offensive remarks.”[2] These remarks, coming from a source well-known for directing ridicule and offensive remarks indifferently, is ironic, but it is still wise counsel. In looking at religion we do well to avoid paying heed to those for whom ridicule is an occupation, who are not disposed to be charitable, and who have a propensity to compose offensive remarks.

These considerations should apply not just to ancient Egyptian religion but to the study of all religions, and particularly to Mormon studies. In looking at Latter-day Saints, with so much insider information are outsider accounts really necessary? Are those who are not disposed to be charitable relevant? Studies giving preference or even credence to such accounts seem less interested in characterizing Latter-day Saints as in caricaturing them.

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[1] Theodorus Hopfner, Fontes Historiae Religionis Aegyptiacae, 5 vols. (Bonn: A. Marus and E. Weber, 1922-25).

[2] Robert K. Ritner, Jr., “Implicit Models of Cross-Cultural Interaction: A Question of Noses, Soap, and Prejudice,” in Life in a Multi-Cultural Society: Egypt from Cambyses to Constantine and Beyond, ed. Janet H. Johnson (Chicago: Oriental Institute, 1992), 290.