[NGFP-BookClub] On-line course

[Maurus Glenn]

Dear Professor Kugel

Thank you for offering this course. Although I am not
Jewish, I find many beautiful prayers and concepts of
Judaism in my own Catholic faith, and if I may say so
I am very happy and intrigued at the many positive
ways in which our faiths intertwine.

In reply to your question about the "truth issue":

What is TRUTH?   Did the people of Ur throw Abraham
into the fiery furnace?  Maybe not.  But, is Abraham
our beloved Ancestor an example of a person some
people would want to throw into the furnace because of
who he is and what he stands for, and who is saved
because of his Faith?   Most certainly, I think. After
all, the Torah does tell us that Abraham was tested
and that he was found to be faithful.

I don't know if this is pertinent here, but the
Holocaust is "a truth". Perhaps the idea of the fiery
furnace at Ur serves as a prefiguration of the truth
of the Holocaust. Is not the Torah a Living Document? 


I do not think that it matters that interpreters have
been the sources of some of the "truths" that the
Torah speaks about. For when the little children learn
that Abraham was thrown into a fiery furnace by some
wicked people, are they not learning the "real
truths", such as the truth that Abraham himself was
not wicked and the truth that if you will not
cooperate with the evil of others you may have to
suffer for it. 

I am enjoying your book and your questions.

Peace

Br. Maurus
 




--- James Kugel <jlkugel@fas.harvard.edu> wrote:

> Dear Mr. Schulman,
>  
> Thanks for your answer. You may be right: the whole
> point might be that
> Abraham had not yet left Ur psychologically, even
> though he was not
> there physically when God spoke to him. But I don’t
> know of any ancient
> interpreters who say that. In fact, the reason why I
> asked this
> particular question is that it troubled all sorts of
> ancient
> interpreters, and there was no generally agreed upon
> answer:
>  
> Some people, like Philo of Alexandria, said Abraham
> was still in Ur when
> God spoke to him (in Gen. 12:1-3). Then how do you
> square this with the
> fact the previous chapter of Genesis says he had
> already left Ur (Gen.
> 11:31)? Simple, Philo said. The whole thing was a
> kind of flashback (he
> doesn’t use that term, of course, which I think is a
> creation of
> Hollywood). First the Torah tells you that he left,
> then it goes back
> and gives you all the details of how it happened.
>  
> This idea – that things in the Torah are not
> necessarily related in
> chronological order – is found in a lot of ancient
> interpreters.
> Eventually, Jewish interpreters created a phrase in
> Hebrew to sum up
> this notion: ein muqdam um’uhar ba-Torah, “there’s
> no earlier or later
> in the Torah” (a curious turn of phrase in Hebrew –
> it doesn’t really
> sound right – that may be based on a Greek
> expression). That might help
> explain why, for example, Gen. 1:27 says that God
> created human beings,
> “male and female He created them,” but then the next
> two chapters
> (Genesis 2-3) go on to narrate in greater detail how
> the first two human
> beings, Adam and Eve, were created. There are a lot
> of other things in
> the Torah that also seem to violate chronological
> order, so this was a
> useful principle to have.
>  
> Other ancient interpreters disagreed, however. They
> thought that when
> God spoke to Abraham in Gen. 12:1-3, Abraham had
> already left Ur and was
> living in Haran. Why then does He say to Abraham
> “Leave your homeland”?
> Perhaps He meant homeland (eretz) in the broad sense
> of all of
> Mesopotamia (today’s Iraq) – “leave this whole area
> and go to Canaan.”
> This is apparently what Josephus thought that
> sentence meant.
>  
> And then there’s the book of Jubilees. Its author
> had a novel solution:
> Abraham was in Haran, but asked God whether he
> should stay there or go
> back to Ur, since the people of Ur were now asking
> him to return. God
> replied: “Leave your homeland and your kindred”
> (that is, don’t go back
> to Ur) “and leave your father’s house” (here in
> Haran), ”and go on to
> the land of Canaan.”
>  
> What do I think? I think Abraham was already in
> Haran. After all, Gen.
> 12:4 says he departed from Haran. That doesn’t prove
> that Philo was
> wrong, but it strongly suggests it. What’s more,
> Abraham later uses the
> same expression, “my homeland and my kindred” (in
> Gen. 24:4), and it
> turns out that he meant by this not Ur but the city
> of Nahor (Gen.
> 24:10), not far from Haran. That pretty much cinches
> it.
>  
> _____________
> James Kugel
> 11 Efrayim St.
> 93621 Jerusalem
> Israel
> Tel. 972 2 672-2197
> Fax. 972 2 673-3027
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ngfp-bookclub-admin@lists.ngfp.org
> [mailto:ngfp-bookclub-admin@lists.ngfp.org] On
> Behalf Of Philip Shulman
> Sent: Wednesday, March 30, 2005 1:04 AM
> To: ngfp-bookclub@lists.ngfp.org
> Subject: Re: [NGFP-BookClub] On-line course
>  
> A few random thoughts. Thank you, Professor Kugel,
> for offering this
> course, a tasty kugel indeed, if you will forgive
> the culinary metaphor.
> In true Jewish spirit, I respond first to the last
> question (the last
> shall be first). I suggest that Abraham, though in
> Haran, had not yet
> left Ur psychologically i.e. you can take the man
> out  of Ur, but you
> can't take Ur out of the man, at least not easily.
> When God said  "Go
> forth, to the land which I will show you..."  he
> does not say where
> Abraham was going, so it seems that the whole
> emphasis was not on the
> destination, but on the act of leaving i.e. of
> transcending the habits,
> mentality and conditioning of his father and
> countrymen, rejecting the
> alienation (idol-worship) of his upbringing.  (Erich
> Fromm equated
> Marx's concept of alienation with biblical
> idol-worship".) I think of
> Proust's comment: "Le vrai voyage de découverte ne
> consiste pas dans la
> découverte de nouvelles terres
> mais de regarder avec des yeux nouveaux".
> (The real voyage of discovery consists not in
> discovering new lands but
> in
> seeing with new eyes). The Greeks were on to this
> too: Plato has
> Socrates raise the question: Is something good
> because the gods love it,
> or do the gods love it because it is good - his
> answer is that the gods
> love it because it is good. To me this represents a
> rejection of
> arbitrary divine power in favour of humanistic
> values, another example
> of overcoming alienation. 
> As to Abraham's monotheism deriving from astronomy,
> could there be here
> an insight like Shakespeare's: "The fault, dear
> Brutus, is not in our
> stars, but in ourselves" (Cassius) i.e. a taking
> back into ourselves of
> a faulty projection? Jews are good at introspection,
> perhaps starting
> with Abraham.  Another quote comes to mind:
> "On ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur. L'essentiel est
> invisible pour les
> yeux."
> (It is only with the heart that one can see rightly;
> What is essential
> is
> invisible to the eye.) - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in
> "The Little
> Prince".
> As to ancient interpreters interpreting Josh. 24:2-3
> and did they really
> believe what they said - I think they believed it
> and I find it quite
> plausible. "Eyes they have and they do not see -
> ears and they  do  not
> hear. Those that make them are like them".  Enough.
> 
> I am enjoying the book. Sorry for the overlong
> ramblings, but I didn't
> have time for a short e-mail.
> Best regards,
>             Philip Shulman                          
>               
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> on 3/29/05 1:56 AM, James Kugel at
> jlkugel@fas.harvard.edu wrote:
> 
> > Dear Course Participants:
> > 
> > I hope everyone has had a chance to read through
> the Introduction to
> > "The Bible As It Was" as well as chapter 7,
> "Abraham Journeys From
> > Chaldea." 
> > 
> > If you haven't managed to get a copy of the book,
> well, 
=== message truncated ===



		
__________________________________ 
Do you Yahoo!? 
Yahoo! Personals - Better first dates. More second dates. 
http://personals.yahoo.com