Middle Management in 2 Esdras

In 2 Esdras 16 (= Nehemiah 6) we see the effects of middle management in the Persian Empire.

The Persian rulers had allowed the Jews to rebuild the temple at Jerusalem. The Jews at Jerusalem wanted to build the temple. Even though those on the top and those on the bottom wanted the same thing, the middle management had other ideas. In this case, the middle management was the governors located in Samaria. They accused those who were building the temple:

It is rumored among the Gentiles that you and the Jews are considered apostate . . . and you have set up prophets for yourself (2 Esdras 16:6-7).

Nehemiah and those building the temple were not apostate, just rumored to be among the Gentiles. Nehemiah did not really care what the Gentiles thought. The middle management did not care that Nehemiah was carrying out the orders of the Persian emperors; they did not care that Nehemiah was following the dictates of his own conscience. They did not care to find out what was actually going on. They only wanted to listen to the Gentiles and declare Nehemiah in the wrong. Nehemiah said as much:

It did not happen according to this account, which you are claiming, because after your own heart you are lying to them (2 Esdras 16:8).

The middle management, however, got an ecclesiastical leader to denounce Nehemiah, but Nehemiah

 recognized that God had not sent him, because the prophecy was directed against me, and [the middle management] bribed him to set the crowd against me so that I would be afraid and would act this way and I would sin and get an evil reputation among them so that I could be censured (2 Esdras 16:12-13).

Nehemiah had previously done two things to protect himself:

We prayed to our God and we set a watch against them day and night (2 Esdras 14:3).

and

I sent them messengers (angels) saying. I am doing a great work and I cannot come down lest the work cease (2 Esdras 16:3).

At least in 2 Esdras (Nehemiah), middle management is likely to try to further their own petty self interest and thwart the work of the Lord.

Today's Maxwell Quote

From this talk:

To remind of the linkage between the Church and this university is unnecessary for almost all. It is why most of you came here in the first place! To remind, as well, of the need for the enlivening of personal scholarship is unneeded by most. Likewise, to remind of how many other worthy projects could use the millions and millions of dollars of tithing that support BYU would be redundant for the truly appreciative, who make up nearly all of this audience.

Today's Maxwell Quote

From Lord, Increase Our Faith (1994), 23-24:

It is our giving heed to temptations by dallying over them and by anticipating, savoring, and recycling them that get us into trouble. Jesus' character is such that He was consistently decisive and dismissive as to temptation and sin. There is no equivocation in Him regarding evil. He and His Father can make no allowance for sin (see D&C 1:31)—because of the terrible toll sin exacts from the happiness of all those they love.

We mortals, on the other hand, tend to tolerate our own little clusters of sin. We rationalize that we can dismiss these whenever we really want to. The trouble is that these "squatters" come to have "rights," too. By means of their persistent presence, they take over more than we ever intended; whereas to give no heed means to give no foothold, however small. To delay their eviction is, in effect, to "heed" and accommodate the temptation.

A Flash in the Pan for Sippar

Few people today have ever heard of Buntahtun-ila, probably only slightly fewer than four millennia ago when he lived. He was the ruler of Sippar and his reign lasted for only about a year. His story, what we know of it, is an interesting tale and was pieced together by Rivkah Harris in her illuminating study, Ancient Sippar (pp. 4-5).

The local rulers of Sippar, after the collapse of the Ur II Dynasty, functioned much like kings, but did not claim the titles. That changed with Buntahtun-ila, who seems to have usurped the office, supplanting the earlier ruler Immerum about 1865 B.C. Buntahtun-ila, having deposed or at least replaced Immerum, made himself king. His rule, however, was short lived as the Babylonian king, Sumu-la-ila, took over in his twenty-ninth year. and was thereafter ruler of Sippar. Sippar's nearly half century of independence came to an end. Thereafter Buntahtun-ila has scarcely been thought of.

Today's Maxwell Quote

From A Wonderful Flood of Light (1990), 44:

Since God is "lending [us] breath... from one moment to another" (Mosiah 2:21), how wrong it is to use any of that precious breath to lie or to bear false witness, or to use that vital energy to "dig a pit for [one's] neighbor"! (2 Nephi 28:8.)

Today in the Mormon Odditorium

Another worthwhile quote from today's Mormon Odditorium:

I have learned one thing to a demonstration since I became a member of this Church, that if a man is determined to be damned, nothing can hinder it. I have argued with men for hours, for weeks, for months, and for years, to prevail on them to serve the Lord; but my labours have generally been spent in vain on persons who needed so much persuasion to do good. The Spirit of the Lord does not inspire me to trouble myself any more about men who will do wrong. It is enough for me to do the will of the Lord my God, even those things I am dictated to do by my President; and let every other man act as I do, and be perfectly independent whether to serve God or Mammon. I would not now step one step out of my way to head a man's course that is determined to go to the Devil; but I will say, Go into the fire, that you may be burned out. He will be saved when he comes to himself; but he never will come to himself, until he is burned out like an old pipe that has become impregnated with filthiness. (Heber C. Kimball, April 6, 1854, JD 6:323.)

Today's Mormon Odditorium

From today's Mormon Odditorium comes this thought:

There is a class of persons that persecution will not drive from the Church of Christ, but prosperity will; and again, there is another class that prosperity will not drive but persecution will. The Lord must and will have a company of Saints who will follow him to the cross, if it be necessary; and these he will crown. They are the ones who will wear a celestial crown and have dominion, rule and government. These are they who will receive honour of the Father, with glory, exaltation, and eternal lives. They shall reign over kingdoms, and have power to be Gods, even the sons of God. Those other classes will take different stations and possess inferior glories, according to their works in the flesh. That class who will altogether serve the world and disregard the cause of truth will become servants to the sons of God and be in servitude throughout eternity. What shall we do? I say, Cleave to 'Mormonism,' work with all our might for the Lord, and love him better than any other earthly or heavenly object. And if he requires us to sacrifice our houses, our horses, our cattle, our wives, and our children, let them remain upon the altar; but let us follow him to salvation and eternal life. (Brigham Young, April 7, 1852, JD 6:322.)

Today's Maxwell Quote

From That Ye May Believe (1992), 74-75:

In Sodom they probably had absolute free speech, but nothing worth saying! On the other hand, an otherwise permissive society, which tolerates almost everything, usually will not tolerate speech that challenges its iniquity. Evil is always intolerantly preoccupied with its own perpetuation.

Ezra Prays

2 Esdras 9:5 provides a description of Ezra when he prays:

I will kneel upon my knees and spread my hands to the Lord God.

This description of prayer is interesting because, with one exception, it matches depictions of prayer in pictures surviving from the ancient world. It was typical to depict people praying standing with hands stretched apart and lifted up to heaven. What is different about Ezra's description is that he is kneeling.

The position of prayer is something of a cultural thing. In Egypt, the hands would face in for prayers of petition and face outward for prayers of praise. In Mesopotamia, the position of prayer was either with the hands uplifted or with the hand touching the nose. In modern times, a variety of positions are used depending on cultural or religious preference: palms together, or hands clasped, or arms folded, sometimes kneeling. The exact position might be cultural, but assuming a position is important. As C. S. Lewis has his devil Screwtape explain:

One of their poets, Coleridge, has recorded that he did not pray "with moving lips and bended knees" but merely "composed his spirit to love" and indulged "a sense of supplication." That is exactly the sort of prayer we want; and since it bears a superficial resemblance to the prayer of silence as practised by those who are very far advanced in the Enemy's service, clever and lazy patients can be taken in by it for quite a long time. At the very least, they can be persuaded that the bodily position makes no difference to their prayers; for they constantly forget, what you must always remember, that they are animals and that whatever their bodies do affects their souls. (C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, chapter 4).

So while the exact form may be culturally determined, for most of us, it cannot be dispensed with altogether.

Today's Maxwell Quote

From That Ye May Believe (1992), 161:

One of life's toughest interpersonal challenges involves our tender concern for an offending friend who deserves reproof. Yet because of friendship we are reluctant to reprove, fearing that only further distance will develop. We fret over how to help, but unfortunately we often end up by not "interfering." It's a mistake I've made a few times.

A wider sense of proportion would sensitize us much more to the needs of those being offended as well as to those of the offender. The offended and their feelings matter too. These individuals, however, are sometimes under-represented as compared to our immediate and intense concerns for the offender. A sensitive inventory of all those being adversely affected might evoke a little more democracy of sympathy. Usually we resist reproving lovingly "early on," as the scriptural word betimes directs (see D&C 121:43). But we are not someone's enemy just because we tell him the truth.

Today's Maxwell Quote

From A Time to Choose (1975) :

Finding my father and mother kneeling together in sincere and agonizing parental prayers made me realize they really believed in God and loved the children over whom they were praying. Tactical errors by such parents are dissolved in the warmth of the realization of their love and in the presence of their faith. The young will often be able to understand that adults really do believe—long before they fully understand what the adults believe in!

Three on the Fourth Century

I recently finished three books that happened to deal with Christianity in the Fourth Century.

Ramsay MacMullen, The Second Church: Popular Christianity A.D. 200-400 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009), is one of those books that completely changes the way you think about a subject. He examines the archaeological and architectural evidence for Christianity in the third and fourth centuries. This leads him to a number of worthwhile observations, some of which bear on the issue of the growth of Christianity. His arguments seem to show that Rodney Stark has grossly overestimated the number of Christians at the end of the fourth century.

Philip Jenkins, Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1,500 Years (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2010), is an examination of how the Council of Chalcedon came about. Jenkins accepts Chalcedon and views the situation of how the council arrived at the conclusions it did and how they stuck as providential. But all the palace intrigues and dirty dealing that he recounts about how things arrived where they did, make it hard to see how most of it was related in any way to the workings of the Holy Spirit. In Jenkins' telling, most of those involved in deciding the creeds were more corrupt than Christian.

Adam C. English, The Saint Who Would Be Santa Claus (Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2012) is a hagiography of Nicolas of Myra from an evangelical perspective. Drawing on late Catholic and Orthodox hagiographies, English wants to make Nicolas into a good modern evangelical saint. He recounts most of the legends, accepting those that make Nicolas look like a good evangelical and rejecting those that do not. He also tries to situate them into a fourth century context (though some of what he says is contradicted in MacMullen). Along the line, English drops occasional tidbits of information that show that even the earliest of the legends about Nicolas are late and probably invented, and that Nicolas was probably never at the Council of Nicea (he is not on any list of participants), so alas, he probably did not punch anyone in the face at the council.

Recognizing Turkeys

In Sandra Boynton's classic book, The Compleat Turkey, she gives five rules that you are dealing with a turkey:

Rule Number One:

A turkey spends a great deal of time improving others.

Rule Number Two:

A turkey takes its work very seriously.

Rule Number Three:

A turkey considers itself exempt from any rules.

Rule Number Four:

A turkey's beliefs are determined not by principles but by situation.

Rule Number Five:

A turkey never gives up.

 Of course, this is Boynton and so you simply have to look at the illustrations which I will not reproduce.

Today's Maxwell Quote

From That Ye May Believe (1992), 161:

It is certainly more popular to exhibit mercy than to apply justice, isn't it?

Thoughts on Parallelomania II

Yesterday I looked at the accusation of parallelomania as a form of ad hominem argument. Today, I would like to look at it as it pertains to the way Latter-day Saints read their scriptures.

The English term parallel comes from a Greek term meaning "beside each other." It is the placing of two things side by side to compare them. Comparison is one of the basic tools that scholarship uses, whether placing two manuscripts side by side or two texts or two cultures. Usually doing so allows one to see similarities and differences. When the differences vastly outnumber the similarities scholars might subjectively determine that the parallel is stretched, or far-fetched, or non-existent. What the parallels mean can be discussed, or even debated. For example, both the ancient Egyptians and the ancient Mayans depicted victorious kings trampling enemies under their feet. The parallels are clearly there, but what they mean is something that is perhaps worth discussing. (Personally, I have not found additional evidence that suggests that this particular parallel could be anything more than an interesting coincidence, but I might be missing something.)

When it comes to scripture, however, Latter-day Saints are encouraged to draw parallels:

for I did liken all scriptures unto us, that it might be for our profit and learning. (1 Nephi 19:23)

Nephi encourages his readers to liken what they read (or what he reads to them) to themselves as something that is profitable and has a potential to learn from. One could argue that Nephi encourages parallelomania as a scriptural hermeneutic. Thus there is a disconnect between those who would forbid Latter-day Saints the drawing of parallels between sources and situations and what the scriptures themselves tell Latter-day Saints they should do. Cries of parallelomania in LDS scripture study are inappropriate and bear an extra burden of proof on those making the accusation.

Today's Maxwell Quote

From Wherefore, Ye Must Press Forward (1977), 9:

Among the hard realities about societies is the reality that liberty, if it is abused too much, will destroy itself. A society that continually permits anything will lose everything. To be sure, drawing lines is admittedly difficult, but once society shrinks from drawing any behavioral lines simply because to do so is difficult, it has surrendered. To confuse tolerance with permissiveness can be fatal, since it is like not knowing the difference between a mushroom and a poisonous toadstool.

Thoughts on Parallelomania I

Parallelomania is a curious phenomenon. Like most such battle cries, it is rarely defined. It is typically used to dismiss an argument that one does not want to deal with, either because one lacks the patience or expertise to do so. For example, parallelomania is often used to dismiss the work of Hugh Nibley without actually dealing with his arguments, usually by an individual possessing only a tiny fraction of the intellectual candlepower that Nibley had. As such the invocation of parallelomania is usually a form of ad hominem argument in the following sense:

In twentieth-century [and now twenty-first-century] usage, an ad hominem argument is a device intended to divert attention from the critical examination of the substance of an argument, and to discredit that argument by dragging in irrelevant considerations having to do with the character or motives of its author. (Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 219.)

(There is, of course, the use of a classical ad hominem argument which is a legitimate argument having nothing to do with impugning motives and not necessarily fallacious; those interested can read about it here.) So when someone accuses someone else of parallelomania, the accuser is merely diverting attention from the critical examination of the substance of an argument by claiming that there is nothing to the parallel or that the accused who made the argument has been guilty of some unspecified error. What the accuser is doing is arguing that one should not waste time on the argument of the accused because it is not worth dealing with. What the reader should often conclude is that the accuser is too lazy or incompetent to deal with the actual argument.

Today's Maxwell Quote

From Things As They Really Are (), :

When people are wrong they are reinforced in their wrong by being part of a like multitude. Perhaps it is the seeming anonymity. Perhaps they somehow feel less responsible. It was irritating and unsettling to Herod to have an articulate John the Baptist around who would not practice "if you want to get along, go along." But plain people as well as prophets irritate incorrect majorities. No wonder there is scorn and shame heaped upon those who will not go along with that which is wrong, especially when evildoers become rigidly proud of their patterns of living.

Making the Path Straight

In 2 Esdras 8:21, Ezra talks about fasting and seeking that the Lord would make the road straight. At first we might be inclined to think of Matthew 7:13, but Esdras talks about the ὁδὸν εὐθεῖαν (Hebrew derek yešārāh) whereas Matthew talks about the στενῆς πύλης. Esdras' road is straight while Matthew's gate is strait.

As it turns out the parallel is to Matthew 3:3 which quotes Isaiah 40:3 using the same vocabulary (in both Greek and Hebrew) as 2 Esdras 8:21 (= Ezra 8:21). In the parallel, John the Baptist is sent to make straight the way of the Lord before his face. Ezra discusses the need for fasting and prayer to make the path straight. John the Baptist discusses repentance as a necessary prerequisite for making the path straight. While Matthew (and the other gospel writers) explicitly refer to Isaiah, the use of the same language as Ezra was probably also in the hearers' mind.

Today's Maxwell Quote

From Things as They Really Are (1978), 20:

In a moral malaise, society comes to tolerate certain things that would have been intolerable years before, whether these be violence or shoddiness in education. Why do so many lack the capacity to be aroused, to be stirred over such declining standards? Part of the explanation, of course, is ignorance. Part of it is indifference. But there is a new dimension to this failure of many to be aroused: intimidation growing out of the very momentum that evil has achieved. There are many mortals who fear, genuinely fear, to speak up and to lead out! It is as if a flagship were sending signals to other ships of war in a convoy, warning them, "Beware of pirates who may try to board," only to have such signals read by the sneering faces of pirates already in command on the bridges of those ships.