On Christian Teaching ... of Psalms

Augustine's scheme of the seven stages from fear to wisdom struck a chord in me. Each one has merit and a purpose in his scheme, and each one offers a unique way to look at the scriptures at hand. The interpretation yielded by a reading based on fear, for example, will me different from that which comes from a reading based on fortitude or compassion. Each stage, in addition, seems to represent a real stage in human emotional development. Every person, at some point, experiences fear, holiness, knowledge, fortitude, compassion, love, and wisdom, some perhaps in more abundance than others. If each passage of the Bible can be interpreted differently according to the stage of the reader, as Augustine suggests, then each of these qualities can help us understand a different part or aspect of a particular passage or psalm.

This point of view could also be helpful in relating to other interpretations of texts. If we can see where a person in coming from when he or she approaches a text, then it is more likely we will be able to make sense of his or her viewpoint. If we can look at an interpretation and say "Hm, it looks like this person was coming from the first stage," we can make certain assumptions about the interpretation and figure out which parts seem to be more subjective than others. This reflection on another person's interpretation quite logically leads to reflection on our own interpretation-- an in-depth look at which parts of our ideas seem to be really there in the text and which may come out of some inner feelings of our own. That in turn can lead to a more careful consideration of viewpoints prior to sharing them with the world, which can only be good.

If we each take just a little time to perhaps examine where we might be in Augustine's seven stages before stating an opinion about a particular text, we could see that there are probably infinite ways of construing each passage in any book, not just the Bible or other religious texts. We could also find ourselves more open to accepting others' interpretations relative to their places in the seven stages. Now, this is not the only way to achieve a more open, tolerant, and accepting environment for the discussion of religious texts, but it will surely help if put into practice.

Acrostic Psalms

So some of these psalms that we've been reading follow an acrostic pattern, where the first letters of lines go through the Hebrew alphabet one by one. Some are imperfect, skipping letters and/or using the same letter for two or more verses while others are used for only one. Others are known as Short Acrostics, where each verset starts with a new letter, rather than using one for each whole verse or line of poetry. Then there are those like Psalm 119, which uses each letter as the beginning of eight consecutive lines, repeating much of the same text or ideas and going on for 176 verses. What could be the purpose of these acrostics? Perhaps it is a device meant to stimulate the memory and make it easier to remember for recitation or instructional purposes.

It is undoubtedly much easier to remember something that has a specific pattern, whether it be rhyme, meter, or what-have-you. The alphabetical beginnings of lines in the psalms mentioned (in the original Hebrew) would surely make them catchier and more likely to stick in the memory. This may have been the intent of the authors, or it may not have been. Either way, acrostic psalms sort of lend themselves to memorization and recitation. The acrostic sort of serves as a mnemonic, an aid to memory for children or anyone not prone to quick memorization. This is especially useful in an instructional situation, where children are to learn certain verses and repeat them when asked, much like a catechism. The repetition in particular psalms like 119 would also be quite useful in recalling the poem; for the most part, each lettered section dwells on one particular thing, repeating and rephrasing it over and over.

Such incessant repetition serves another purpose as well. The more times a person has to read or repeat the same basic idea, the more likely that person is to remember, think about, and reflect on that idea. This comes through to some extent in most of the acrostics, where just one line or possibly two is devoted to each idea; the second verset, as in most Hebrew poetry, reinforces the first. The point is inescapably driven home in a Long Acrostic such as Psalm 119, though. Eight verses, each composed of two or three versets, all saying the same thing is bound to make some sort of impression. Even the most recalcitrant child could almost not help but understand what the psalm is saying. Whether or not the author of the psalm intended this instructional advantage, however, is another matter for another time.

Psalms Ethic

When you read through the book of Psalms, you get a sense that everything will be made right by God and his vengeance. The ethical stance that seems to lie behind the Psalms is one fueled by vengeance, praise, and repentance. That is, if you are clean and virtuous you will be rewarded. If you sin but truly repent you will be rewarded. If you praise God he'll be happy to wreak vengeance upon those who have wronged you in some way and more likely to reward you. Psalm 20 shows this idea of reciprocation: "May He recall all your grain-offerings, and your burnt-offerings may He relish. / May He grant you what your heart would want, and all your counsels may He fulfill." The first verse quoted here is a reminder to God of all that the speaker has done for God to deserve good treatment and help. This sort of "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" philosophy is quite different from what comes to mind when we think of a Christian or Jewish ethic.

The typical Jewish ethic that comes to mind is one much concerned with rules and guilt, at least to some extent. There are rules for what to say, do, eat, wear, and so on, which don't seem to be reflected in Psalms, although they may make an appearance in other parts of Jewish holy texts. The guilt for past wrongdoings is evident here, however. There are many passages, for instance in Psalm 32, that reflect this idea of repentance and guilt: "My offense I made known to You and my crime I did not cover. / I said, 'I shall confess my sins to the LORD,' and You forgave my offending crime." The speaker is concerned with the confession and open acknowledgment of sins and with God's forgiveness. This seems to be pretty much in line with what I think of as a Jewish ethic.

The Christian ethic, however, is a little farther from this sometimes violent, vengeful Psalms ethic. Christian ideas are mainly about love and turning the other cheek; it is a very peaceful way in which Christians are supposed to live. There is a strong emphasis placed on forgiveness and repentance for sins, and God is thought to favor his people for no reason other than His love for them: there is no required sacrifice or requisite praise or anything. All this is very different from the Psalms ethic of reciprocation and vengeance. Much of this love philosophy comes from other parts of Christian scriptures, most notably the New Testament, which could explain the disparity. All the same, it is a little strange that Christian ethics should be so different from that expressed in part of their holy texts.

help and thanks

In many of the psalms, there is some combination of several different types. A psalm will start out with a cry for help from God, fitting the "supplication" type, but then halfway through the language changes to that of thanksgiving. The first section will go on and on, detailing the ways in which God has forsaken or disregarded the people, leaving them on their own to fight off whatever enemies may arise. These passages are filled with metaphors for abandonment, with talk of being flung from God's presence and similarly desolate images. The first part of each of these psalms berates God for forsaking the people while simultaneously asking for help and rescue from dire straits.

It is not unusual, however, for these psalms to turn later to poems of thanksgiving. There is often a rather abrupt change from the pleas for help to delineation of God's goodness and beneficence. The second half of the psalm often waxes eloquent on the things God has already done for the people, from previous rescues to the creation in the first place and several places in between. From the desolation of the first part, the psalm has turned into a litany of praise for what seems to be an ever-loving God. These two main ideas seem to be at odds with one another.

Perhaps they are not so far off, though. In many of the psalms the speaker expresses a vote of confidence in either God's ability to overcome adversity, his willingness to do so for the help of his people, or both. This confidence seems to arise out of the need for supplication-- as the speaker remembers past dangers, God's help in such dangers is also brought to mind. It is an easy step from the mere remembrance of this help to the praise of God for such actions. The plea for help itself leads directly into the affirmation of thanksgiving by way of memories of past kindnesses. Although supplication and thanksgiving may seem like two emotions that lie on opposite ends of some spectrum, the two seem to be in fact fairly closely related, one giving rise to the other.

Psalm Number Two!

As we read Psalm two in Alter's translation, it seems to be a plea for help triggered by some conspiracy of other nations to attack Israel. From supplication, however, it quickly turns into a story about what God will do to the wrongdoers and how he will smite them fully. Most of the middle of the psalm has to do with how the writers of the psalms are God's chosen people and how God will protect them from outside enemies. There is a sense of confidence in God's will and protection throughout this part. The last part of the psalm is a caution to those reading it to fear and worship God as best they can. If not, the psalm warns, God's wrath will be transferred to those who go astray from his word. The psalm is mostly a message of assurance mixed in with a plea of supplication.

The second psalm as it appears in the Puritan psalter is a little different. The view here is one of supplication, too, but mostly of joy and exultation at the escape from the tyranny of intolerant Europe. God confers his choice and blessing upon the people, saying that they will be the recipients of much both in Heaven and on Earth, including "utmost coasts abroad," which are taken to mean the shores of America. The Puritans, reading this psalm in the context of their lives, would be inclined to read it as a blessing on their way of life and a good omen for their future in this new strange land. The message of defeat for their enemies would be welcome indeed-- escape from religious persecution, the freedom to worship as they saw fit, would seem a very heaven on earth. The triumph predicted in the psalm is seen as being borne out by their success in the new world. God had indeed chosen them above all others, and this was cause for praise indeed. The psalm ends, however, with the caution to fear and revere God, not getting too cocky or self-assured in their success. It is in effect a reminder for them that they did not succeed by themselves alone, but had the help of God to establish them and keep them alive through the hard winters.

These two interpretations of the same basic text show some startling differences. While the first version (the one in our book) focuses on the smiting of enemies that God will execute, the Puritan version focuses on the fact of being the chosen people of God. Both versions have elements of each, but there is a discrepancy of emphasis-- the stripped-down version Alter gives us goes into a fair amount of depth regarding the damage God will do to the foes, such as smashing of their forces and so on, while the more elaborate version of the Puritans passes over foe-smashing with a glancing mention and dwells on the rewards the Puritans will reap by virtue of being God's chosen. This difference may have a fair amount to do with the context in which each version was printed or written or translated. The Puritans, newly settled in a strange land, sought to reassure themselves that they could and would survive and that they were doing the right thing by fleeing Europe. Alter, however, seeks to strip away as many contextual additions as possible, getting back to the original Hebrew as much as he can. In short, the differing purposes in these two versions account for much of the differing focus and emphasis we find.

Although I mentioned something in my last post about the shapes of the effigy mounds being visible from above, the shapes are really only coherent in the minds and ideas of the community that built them. This leads to an interpretation of a more spiritual, inner monologue-type of interaction with the spirits and animals represented in the mounds. The builders had some image of the animal they wanted to represent, but it was not necessary to make this image inescapably clear to casual viewers or even other people looking for shapes in the mounds. The indistinctness of the shapes is a clue towards how the builders of the mounds felt and thought about the spirits represented-- the actual building may have been a symbolic gesture, a reminder of some thought processes and beliefs that were already in place or beginning to form in the minds of the builders. It points to a religion that tended towards the spiritual, personal end of the spectrum.

The builders of giant temple mounds like the Mississippians, however, seem to have something else on their minds. Unlike the low, indistinct effigy mounds, the temple mounds of places like Cahokia are hugely tall and sharply shaped into ziggurats and pyramids. The effort involved in making these structures is necessarily larger than that involved in making effigy mounds, and they seem to serve a more ceremonial purpose-- that is, ceremonies seem to have been conducted atop them. This, as opposed to the imagination and spirituality of effigy mounds, leads one to lean toward a very community-based, group-oriented religion. On the scale from spiritual to cultural that we discussed in class, the effigy mound builders seem to be on the spiritual end, while the temple mound builders seem to occupy the opposite end of the line.

Despite this seemingly/possibly large difference in use or purpose of mounds, we tend to group them all together, which is part of what led me to assume that effigy mounds and such were on the same general size as those of the Mississippians. There is probably a multitude of reasons leading to this sort of clumping together, but a big reason likely has to do with our separation from all of the mound building cultures in time and sometimes space-- the farther away something is or seems, the more similar to other things we perceive it to be. I guess you could call it a sort of cultural short-sightedness, but without the egocentric implications.

Effigy Mounds

The overwhelming impression we get when confronted with effigy mounds is one of impressive size. The amount of dirt and space taken up with these mounds is immense and invokes a sense of awe in the viewer, in part because of the vast effort that must have been involved in making such monuments. These effigy mounds must have taken a fantastic amount of organization and concerted effort on the part of the entire community responsible for them. Something like the paintings at Lascaux, on the other hand, could have been executed by a single person or small group of people. Although the effort of selecting the cave, planning the paintings, and reaching up to the ceilings and higher parts of the walls is significant, the mounds required an effort orders of magnitude larger and more communal. I am therefore inclined to think that the importance of the animals represented in effigy mounds are of greater importance to the community than those in the cave paintings.

Something of such magnitude must be of great importance to the community for whatever reason, whether it be religious, social, or political. The effigy mounds, in particular, seem to have a more intangible purpose than those used as platforms for ceremonies or living quarters. As was mentioned in class, the animal shapes are only really visible from an aerial point of view, suggesting perhaps a celestial (in the sense of "in the sky") audience. This point suggests that the mound builders did not see themselves as the only beings that mattered, perhaps hinting at a belief system involving superhuman or supernatural beings. We cannot know the true purpose of these mounds merely from their shapes, but it does not seem far-fetched to interpolate some abstract purpose satisfying a more impractical need than those of shelter and social hierarchy.

Contemporary use of animals in naming things like sports teams serves a purpose both similar and different. The name or mascot of a particular sports team is often chosen to intimidate opposing teams, which is why there are so many teams called the "cougars" or "panthers" or "eagles," all of which are powerful and somewhat frightening animals. Some team names are chosen to represent something about the city or place from which they originate, like the Pittsburgh Steelers. The first of these two reasons seems to be similar to the ideas expressed about the effigy mounds -- they are meant to evoke some particular emotion or idea in the perceiver-- while the latter is a different sort of purpose.

How do we know if something is a remnant of a religion or not? How can we, now, with our ideas about the world, say if something from ages ago (say the Lascaux Cave) is a leftover from some ancient religion? How could people thousands of year from now, unearthing a church, determine if the place had religious meaning or not? There must be some hard-and-fast way of figuring out ... but what does it entail?

One clue might be the art on the walls-- how it is done, what sort of composition it has, and if there are recurring figures of any kind. The main thing is to look for something that might be representing a deity or object of worship. The cave at Lascaux doesn't seem to have such objects of worship-- there are many animals of several kinds, but no animal seems to be more important than the others, at least from a visual point of view. The bulls, horses, and deer are for the most part drawn in groups, with no particular reigning figure. The composition of the images is also fairly uniform-- that is, most of the figures are of similar sizes and similarly distributed throughout the paintings, with no special treatment for any one being. There really doesn't seem to be an object of worship in these caves, so perhaps the purpose of the paintings was more spiritual (in the sense of general reverence) or cultural (in the sense of "these are the things we like to kill and eat") rather than precisely religious.

The frequency of use is another clue to the purpose of these caves. They weren't the popular hang-out spots, but rather a place visited seldom by few people. This points to a rite of passage, perhaps, or some sort of inner sanctum. This could be religious, but the group worship aspect of traditional religions is contradicted by the lack of evidence of large groups. It is quite possible that the caves were the retreat of the priest figures, and they came out to minister to the masses -- but not particularly likely. It seems to me that it is much more likely that these cave paintings had a connection to some rite of passage, becoming a man or woman, rather than a strictly religious purpose.

Response to Definition of Religion

In his definition of religion, Clifford Geertz claims that religion is made up of symbols only, symbols that propose a certain view of the world and make such a view seem real though in fact it may not be, all of which works together to produce particular mental states (or "moods and motivations") in the people who follow the religion in question.

Religion, it seems to me, is far too strong a force to be simply made up of symbols. Symbols are a big part of religion, yes, but there has to be something behind the symbols. There must be some underlying idea, represented on the surface by the symbols. In Christianity, for example, the underlying idea is that Jesus Christ was the son of God and died to save humans from hell. Each religion has its own basic idea or set of ideas, which can be called to mind and represented by certain symbols (such as the cross for Christians), but the symbols themselves are not the powerful agents that produce these moods and motivations. The symbols become merely reminders of what the practitioners of the religion believe, a sort of shorthand for the stories, mythology, and tenets of belief that are the true backbone of a religion.

Then, too, symbols serve to identify one's religion. A person wearing a six-pointed star on a necklace is assumed to be Jewish, and one with a cross is assumed to be Christian. Each symbol, in this case, is both a token of the ideas of its respective religion and a way to identify those who share the same beliefs. Early Christians used a simple drawing of a fish to identify one another in times when to be openly Christian meant persecution and likely death-- they could not loudly proclaim their beliefs on street corners, so they surreptitiously sought each other out through the use of symbols. The symbols were not themselves the important point in an exchange, but rather what they represented, the ideas in the minds of their users. That is to say, while symbols are important in religion, they are not all-important. The symbols are more a device or tool than an active agent in the formation of religious beliefs or states of mind, tools that help this formation but do not entirely drive it.

Geertz's "system of symbols" is a somewhat useful jumping-off point for a discussion of a definition of religion, but it is hardly comprehensive or entire. While the symbols and the system they inhabit do much to promote, identify, and recall religion and religious beliefs, they are not themselves they creators or generators of such beliefs. There must be some underlying idea or set of ideas behind the symbols that infuses them with meaning-- for without meaning, a symbol is just a pretty picture, without power or influence.