Aristotle's Feminist Subject

More Cultural Sources of Paul's "Sarx"

2009-11-10T16:38:00.001-06:00

This post is a continuation of the last. In the earlier post, I began asking a couple of questions:

How did other writers other than Paul use the Greek word σάρξ [sarx]?

(How) might this have colored and shaped and otherwise influenced exactly what Paul meant by the word?

I considered (1) the LXX translation of the Genesis creation story, the earliest use of the Greek word σάρξ [sarx] for translation of Torah by the Jews. And I considered (2) the play Hecuba by Euripides, because it uses the same Greek word for a blinding episode, which may have reminded Paul of his own. We saw that in both instances the word σάρξ [sarx] is gendered, that the contexts have allusions to "flesh" as female, whether in their creation and procreation or in their disparagement and denigration.

So in this post, we'll consider (3) Aristotle and (4) a first-century novelist.

(3) Aristotle

This is by far the longer of the two sections of this post. I'm wanting us to look at how Aristotle used σάρξ [sarx] because he had such a profound effect on how Greeks after him used language in general and the Hellene language in particular. Aristotle disparaged and denigrated playwrights such as Euripides. And he absolutely despised females. It wasn't just that his objective, logical, scientific epistemology told him that in Nature females and poets were lesser than males and philosophers. It was also the fact that women and poets just were not objective or logical or scientific -- and if they could know anything, then it was the stuff that weakened Greek politics and the rule of the Greek household (i.e., economics), elite male politics and exclusively male-run households.

Aristotle also hated barbarians, such as Jews. The hatred seems to have backfired on him to a certain extent, however. When Jews translated their scriptures into Greek, they did not use an Aristotelian paradigm nor an Alexandrian paradigm; they didn't even use an "Exodus paradigm" although commissioned by the lackey King Ptolemy II Philadelphus of Egypt, in Alexandria, Alexander the Great's namesake city. Rather, according to Sylvie Honigman, they followed the Homeric paradigm, the paradigm of the epic poet, no logician or philosopher by any stretch.

It's fascinating to see what Aristotle does with σάρξ [sarx] and to consider whether Paul follows him or someone else perhaps. To be sure, Aristotle is the king of the use of σάρξ [sarx]. In the extant writings we can read today, he or someone claiming to be Aristotle used the word more times than the LXX translators and the New Testament writers did combined. Aristotle used the word some 445 times, whereas the Greek bible book collection has just under 370 uses. The Septuagint (LXX) has around 215 uses, and the New Testament nearly 155 uses with Paul (or someone claiming his name) writing the word around 100 of those times. (And if anyone cares, Euripides only used the word 27 times in his extant plays). Aristotle used the word mostly for his biologies and some for his Metaphysics. If anyone by his corpus and by his careful science and logic defines the word, it's Aristotle.

We have time to carefully consider the most interesting use of σάρξ [sarx] by Aristotle. It is in his book that we call Generation of Animals. It's a book mostly about the sexual intercourse and offspring conception and generative births of animals and of human beings. It's one of the books in which Aristotle objectively observes females as lesser than males, as defective or mutant beings caused by mothers who did not get the sex act right (or else, of course, they would have generated a male offspring).

The passage below is my translation of Aristotle's Greek. I want us to eavesdrop, to listen in, to overhear. I want us to imaging what it might have been like to be Aristotle's daughter and his slave, reading the text although it's not meant for us. (Rather it was written for the natural-born free elite boys of Aristotle's academy). I want us to hear the wordplay, certainly not intended by Aristotle, the author.

I'd like us to see how certain words disparage females, and how these are associated with a lump of flesh that is neither human nor alive outside the womb. (If you want other translations, they are readily available. And I'll link to two right after my translation. And then we'll get to that first-century novel and say something in summary before we go). Here, from Generation of Animals pages 775b-776a, is the most interesting use of σάρξ [sarx] by Aristotle:

On the subject of what is called the “maid’s millstone” [μύλης mýlēs], let us speak. It is generated [γίγνεται gígnetai] in just a few women [γυναιξί gynaiksí] in the birthing process. This thing is generated [γίγνεται gígnetai] in the passion, the suffering, of pregnancy. This offspring, in fact, is the so-called “maid’s millstone” [μύλην mýlēn]. It has, in fact, already happened as the birth woman [γυναικὶ gunaikì] has intercourse with the man, even gaining the opinion that she has conceived as certainly, first, there is the large expansion of the belly just as with a typical generation, according to stated facts. Afterwards, however, at the time for the offspring, she neither gives birth to the offspring nor does her largeness diminish. Instead, she continues on three or four years without finishing what she started until she gives birth [γενομένης genoménēs] to dysentery, and so endangers herself, until birthing this offspring:

flesh [σάρκα sárka], which is what is called a “maid’s millstone” [μύλην mýlēn].

Some women, however, will grow old with this passion, this suffering, and may even die with it. Coming out of the door of birth generation [γίγνεται gígnetai], it is hard – hard so much so that even iron is insufficient [μόλις mólis] to cut through it. – insufficient like a “maid.” On the subject of this passionate suffering, we have already said things in [my other book], The Problems. There is, in fact, passionate suffering with respect to this “fetus” in the mother, just as there is with the “maid’s measly meat-boil” [μωλυνόμενα mōlynómena] in the under-warmed pot. And the problem is not because of heat, as some would claim, but it is more because of its own sickliness and weakness of heat. It is, in fact, like its own nature, sickly and weak and neither able to finish what it starts nor able to conclude what the generative birth [γενέσει genései] should put forth. Therefore, she grows old with it or stays with it a long time. She does this, in fact, since it neither finishes what is started nor does it altogether have the nature of something different from her. The cause of its hardness, in fact, is her lack of expelling it. This cause, in fact, is somewhat also that of the “maid’s measly meat-boil” [μώλυνσίς mōlynsís].

Now, I hope we've all been able to hear the gender of sound, the sounds of certain words that Aristotle (probably here unconsciously) connects with "woman" or "wife." They are the Greek words for "generation" or "birth." And then there are the words for "millstone" and for "under-cooked meat" -- these are words also associated in Greek culture with "maid," a female who grinds grain or cooks meat for men in the epics of Homer and in the plays of the others. The word for "insufficient" has a similar sound. And in the middle of all that is Aristotle's use of σάρξ [sarx]. By this, he clearly means "flesh," but it's useless flesh, a lump, the mother's fault and something this womb-woman carries with her into her dysentery, into her old age, and to her death. It's not a male child, not even a mutant called a female child. It's hard because of the woman and as undesirable as a scalded lump of meat, undercooked by the maid.

So let's say this again: Aristotle didn't intend for us to read this, and he didn't mean for the words to sound similar in this context or association. We're not trying to read into the text. And we're not doing Freudian psychology, where we'd read into Aristotle's sub-conscious motives. Rather, we're just listening with our bar-bar-ian ears and remembering contexts in other earlier Greek texts in which the sounds of females were placed, like appositives and adjectives, alongside women.

I do want to take a long, full paragraph to talk about some of the traditional translations. We should feel free to investigate as many translations as possible. The unfortunate thing is this with typical translations: the translator usually wants to be faithful to the author's intention, and many times this means making words technical by transliteration, so as to keep the original author's original sounds. The translator may ignore the cultural context, or the translator may be following an earlier translator who transliterates and ignores the playfulness of language and the cultural contexts. Arthur Platt, for example, in 1910 just transliterates Aristotle's μύλης as "mola" and to the Greek word elsewhere he adds a bit of Latin to make it sound more technical, as with "mola uterus," which in his footnote he calls "uterine mole." Much more well done (please pardon my pun), for μωλυνόμενα Platt uses "half-cooked meat," and for σάρκα he has "lump of flesh." Here's Platt's English - if you scroll down to his Chapter 7 of Book IV, and if you go to your library, you'll find the published version with footnotes. My guess is that Platt, in translating Aristotle into English, followed Jules Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire, who translated many of Aristotle's works into French in the mid and late 1800s. Saint-Hilaire also transliterates. He has "une môle" for μύλης ; and he gives two footnotes to explain, the latter getting at what he considers uncertain etymologies: "Cette formule, répétée deux fois dans ce paragraphe, semble indiquer que l'observation était alors peu connue. L'étymologie du mot dans les trois langues se rapproche beaucoup, et est presque identique; il serait assez difficile de la justifier, puisqu'elle fait allusion à la forme d'une meule de moulin." Please understand what Saint-Hilaire is confessing by saying "'elle fait allusion à la forme d'une meule de moulin"; he is confessing that he's not translated even though the word "refers to the shape of a millstone" (i.e., the sort of millstone that maids used to grind grain for men in Homer's epic stories). Saint-Hilaire transliterates the Greek sounds of Aristotle's letters as if to preserve the original. He does not make the connection that Aristotle's daughter can if she reads the text; Aristotle's daughter would read it understanding that the "millstone" is the domain of the woman servant for men, and that this is the metaphor that Aristotle uses for the mutant thing inside the ostensibly pregnant women. To his credit, Saint-Hilaire does have "nos aliments quand ils sont à moitié crus" and "la coction incomplète" for μωλυνόμενα, even if the Greek alliterative connection to μύλης gets lost. And for σάρκα, Saint-Hilaire has "Un morceau de chair." Saint-Hilaire's French translation with Aristotle's Greek can be found here.

What I'm more than hinting at here is that Paul perhaps follows Aristotle when using the Greek word σάρξ [sarx]. In Aristotle's context, there is the use of the word to indicate something awful, something related to women.

So let's move on, then, to a first-century novelist who uses the Greek word σάρξ [sarx]. Perhaps by Paul's century, the word is used differently from how Aristotle used it some three or four centuries earlier.

(4) Chariton, a First-Century Novelist

We could argue whether Paul would have ever read a novel. It is highly plausible, however, that people to whom Paul wrote in the assemblies of Greekish Jews and Jewish Greeks would have read a novel if such had been available. It is quite likely that the place where a Greek novel would have the most appeal is at the center of the empire, Rome. The Romans were pushing official Latin but the push wasn't working very well during Paul's day. It's no accident that the entire New Testament is not originally composed in Latin but in Greek. And as these scriptures were being written, so was Chariton's novel. English translator and Greek scholar G. P. Goold makes the strong case that "Chariton's Callirhoe, subtitled 'Love Story in Syracuse,' is the oldest extant novel," composed and read in the first century.

Just a bit of background for those who've yet to read the novel. The protagonist is the beautiful woman Callirhoe, whose name means "fine" or "beautiful" or "good form." She is wanted by various men through the course of the plot, and she from time to time has to go into hiding.

How did Chariton use the Greek word σάρξ [sarx]?

Here's a snippet from Goold's English translation with my insertion of Chariton's Greek word:

Though Callirhoe was reluctant and unwilling, Plangon managed to get her to the bath. After she had gone in they had rubbed her with oil and wiped it off carefully, and marveled at her all the more when undressed, for, whereas when she was dressed they admired her face as divine, they had no thoughts for her face when they saw her hidden beauty. Her skin gleamed white, shining just like a shimmering surface, but her flesh [σάρξ sarx] was so delicate as to make one afraid that even the touch of one's fingers might cause a serious wound. They whispered to one another, "Our mistress was famed for her beauty, but she would have seemed this girl's maidservant." Their praise troubled Callirhoe and she had a foreboding of what was to come. When she had had her bath and they were fastening up her hair, they brought her clean clothes. But she said that this was not proper for one who had just been bought: "Give me a slave's tunic, for even you are my superiors." So she put on an ordinary dress, but this too suited her and in reflecting her beauty seemed an expensive one.

Aren't we picking up a theme here? The Greek word, again, in another context is associated with a female. More than that, the "flesh" or "sarx" of this female is strange, is dangerous to those who would look at it or touch it.

(How) might this have colored and shaped and otherwise influenced exactly what Paul meant by the word?

And what exactly did Paul mean by the Greek word σάρξ [sarx]? (The precise answer, of course, must wait until we have more time).

Two Cultural Sources of Paul's "Sarx"

2009-11-08T07:52:00.006-06:00

Before claiming to understand exactly what Paul meant by the Greek word σάρξ [sarx], an English language translator does well to consider Paul's sources and how they used the word. Paul (or someone using his name) wrote the word nearly 100 times in the extant texts we call the New Testament. This same Paul quoted from the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures (the Septuagint or LXX), which uses sarx well over 200 times. And Paul - in Luke's history (Acts 17) - quoted out of his verbal working memory the sayings of various Greek poets and playwrights. And Paul writing in Greek - to Jews and Greeks in Rome (Romans 12) - is the only New Testament writer to use Aristotle's logical-method word, λογικη [logikē, or "logic"). And Paul - if it's not too much of a speculation - may have read popular Greek works of his day.

In this post, I want to look at some examples of writings that Paul may have read. Let's consider (1) the LXX and (2) a poet / playwright in this post. If we have time, in another post, then, we'll consider (3) Aristotle and (4) a first-century novelist .

How did other writers use the Greek word σάρξ [sarx]? (How) might this have colored and shaped and otherwise influenced exactly what Paul meant by the word?

(1) LXX

The very first use of sarx in the Septuagint (by the Jews in Egypt, in Alexander the Great's namesake city, translating their scriptures into the language of the new Greek empire) is in Genesis 2:21 -

καὶ ἔλαβεν μίαν τῶν πλευρῶν αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀνεπλήρωσεν σάρκα ἀντ’ αὐτῆς

Roughly, it's conveying this,

that God took a rib from the first human being and closed up the "sarx" in its place.

The story goes on quickly to make clear that this human being has out of him, formed by God, a new human being. And the first says of her (in Greek-translated Jewish language):

τοῦτο νῦν ὀστοῦν ἐκ τῶν ὀστέων μου καὶ σὰρξ ἐκ τῆς σαρκός μου

In essence, he's saying the following:

"This now is bone out of my bone and 'sarx' out of my 'sarx'."

And he goes on reasonably to call her γυνη "gunē" (or "woman" or "wife") - which is funny in Greek, because the word rhymes with the Greek words for "Genesis" and for "birth" and for "generations" and for "ground." There is an ambiguous, playful set of meanings here. And I want to emphasize that from the get-go the LXX uses sarx in gendered ways, that semantically (to get at all the meanings) there has to be some understanding of "woman" and there has to be a bit of an appreciation for "womanly" ways of meaning making and of language.

It is funny in another way too: the first human being looks at the second human being and declares, in Greek, ἐκ (ek "out of"). This preposition in this context is something that connotes a conception and a birth. The preposition is used when talking about a newborn coming "out of" the mother. So the first human being (a male) is like the mother (a female) of the second human being, is like that in Greek in the beginning. The second human being is actually the female in the story. And she becomes the first mother, of course. And in Matthew's genealogy where he includes some females in the patrilineage of Jesus, Matthew writes "out of Tamar" and "out of Ruth" and so forth using this same Greek preposition. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

So then the writer of Genesis (and the translators too) will do something even funnier. In a sentence a little later, the father and mother (and the idea of mother and father in conception and in birth) get left behind:

ἕνεκεν τούτου καταλείψει ἄνθρωπος τὸν πατέρα αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν μητέρα αὐτοῦ καὶ προσκολληθήσεται πρὸς τὴν γυναῖκα αὐτοῦ καὶ ἔσονται οἱ δύο εἰς σάρκα μίαν

More or less, this means:

"Therefore, this human will leave his father and his mother, and he will stick together with his woman (womb-man, birthing wife, baby generator), and the two will become merged into a single 'sarx'."

The LXX uses sarx in other startling ways we don't have time for. The consistent thing is that the referents are things that are, as we say in English, fleshly: skin, muscle and sinew, as mixed with blood and bone in a carcass or body. But the gendered beginnings of the word (in the beginning, in Genesis) is how this all starts.

(2) A Greek Poet / Playwright

We could laugh all day reading funny Greek poetry and plays in which the Greek word σάρξ [sarx] is used. I just want to look at one example. I've chosen it because I think Paul at a particular point in his life might have been drawn to it. It's the play Hecuba by the writer Euripides. The antagonist Polymestor gets blinded. This is not too different from Paul's getting blinded on his way to Damascus, where he's going to arrest and kill or otherwise "persecute" some of the earliest Messianic Jews (as noted in Luke's history, Acts 22).

Let's read the E. P. Coleridge English translation around line 1056 (and I'll drop in sarx and some other Greek words, bolding the pertinent English references to females)." Again, here's Polymestor talking immediately after getting blinded by the woman protagonist Hecuba:

Woe is me! where can I go, where halt, or turn? shall I crawl like a wild four-footed beast on their track, as my reward? Which path shall I take first, this or that, eager as I am to clutch those Trojan murderesses that have destroyed me? You wretched, cursed daughters of Phrygia! to what corner have you fled cowering before me? O sun-god, would you could heal, could heal my bleeding eyes, ridding me of my blindness! Ha! hush! I catch the stealthy footsteps of the women [γυναικῶν gun-] here. Where can I dart on them and gorge on their flesh [σαρκῶν sark-] and bones, making for myself a wild beasts' meal, inflicting mutilation in requital of their outrage on me? Ah, woe is me! where am I rushing, leaving my children unguarded for maenads of hell to mangle, to be murdered and ruthlessly cast forth upon the hills, a feast of blood for dogs?

Of course we can only imagine that Paul might have read this. We only conjecture that if Paul had read or seen or heard Euripides's play Hecuba that he would have identified Hecuba's blinding Polymestor with Jesus Christ's blinding Paul. But, if he did, then perhaps we could also speculate that sarx as Euripides used it made some impact on Paul.

I want to consider again how gendered this Greek word is. As with the first uses of sarx in the LXX, Euripides's use of sarx (in the mouth of the sexist antagonist Polymestor) is gendered. Specifically, it refers to women, to females, and their bodies.

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When we look at Aristotle's uses of sarx, we'll look at how gendered the word is by the objective scientist. Likewise, when we look at how one of Paul's contemporaries -- a Greek novelist -- used the word, then we'll also see sarx making statements about a woman and her beauty and the desires of men for her because of that. But the look at these two other cultural sources for Paul's sarx will have to wait for another post if there's time.

To reiterate some of the things shown in this post, there's gendered reference to sarx in some of the texts Paul was familiar with. Certainly Paul knew and quoted the LXX, and perhaps he heard, watched, read, or was otherwise familiar with the play Hecuba. The ways females and women are associated with the Greek word σάρξ [sarx] is not, I would say, lost on Paul. When Paul starts writing to Greeks and to fellow Jews in Rome in particular, exactly what he means by the word can be seen in this light. (So again, if there's time for another post, we may get to that).

Paul's "Sarx" and Malik Nidal Hasan's "Pound of Flesh"

2009-11-06T06:38:00.006-06:00

Soon I'd like to post on "Exactly What Paul Meant by Sarx." But Malik Nidal Hasan has caused a profound tragedy, and we need to assign blame or otherwise to make sense, so I'm coming back to Paul's precise intention more precisely another day.

Today's post has 2 Parts.

Part 1: Paul's "Flesh"

When I was a kid, my parents and my other evangelical Christian teachers used to warn me about The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. The World included tv where one could watch Flip Wilson's character Geraldine confirm "The Devil made me do it." And The Flesh was one of a three-parter in The World, as in the Bible (the leather-bound thin-paper red-letter NRSV I was made to read and memorize):

Do not love the world or the things in the world. The love of the Father is not in those who love the world; for all that is in the world—the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches—comes not from the Father but from the world. And the world and its desire are passing away, but those who do the will of God live for ever. I John 2:15-16

But God was ironic if I wasn't to love The World or to have the desire of The Flesh. He was as ironic as Geraldine in The World talking like a Christian blaming The Devil. (Here's how I got that as the kid of missionaries in a war zone, Việt Nam, where I was made to go to Vietnamese church every Sunday where I'd hear this: "Đức Chúa Trời yêu thương thế gian" and "Ngôi Lời ở thế gian" and "Ngôi Lời đã trở nên xác thịt.") In other words, God got to love The World, and Jesus was in The World, and Jesus became Flesh. That's what John (aka Giaêng) also said about God and Jesus in my NRSV (John 3:16, John 1:10, and John 1:14).

God loves The World; but we must not. Jesus was in The World in The Flesh; but we must avoid the desires of The Flesh. But of course, we are not God or Jesus. So John comes along to make that crystal clear. He comes along, after Paul, to keep us from doing what God and Jesus did. Don't love The World and especially don't have the desire of The Flesh. John (in I John) was listening more precisely and more carefully to Paul; and Paul (as the NRSV and the Vietnamese Bible arranged it) had already written a few books and chapters and pages earlier to confirm with precision and with sense, this very sense:

"For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it." (Romans 7:18)

Nobody yet had the (New) Living Bible or (Today's) New International Version (2011) to flesh out the understanding that "thịt" and "flesh" mean "sinful nature." And that's what Paul may mean, and may mean exactly by "sarx." So Douglas Moo is making decisions -- now with bibliobloggers and translationbloggers making decisions about his decisions.

What are the consequences of Paul's "Sarx"? What's the sense you make of it?

Part 2: Making sense of a "Pound of Flesh"

The terrorism of Malik Nidal Hasan is arresting to so many of us, directly injurious to thirty of us and murderous to thirteen of us. How do we make sense of it?

Top biblioblogger Dr. Jim West jumps in early asking for "the faithful to pray for all involved" and wondering about "a war without an end in sight and being waged for no clear objective" and saying that Hasan "snapped" and that that does "show just how much pressure our military personnel are under."

And Polycarp, at his blog "The Church of Jesus Christ," responds to the early reports that Hasan was killed (although now we know he was shot by a female officer but now is alive, stable, and refusing to answer questions). Polycarp says "let us remember the example of the Amish and while we pray for those afflicted by this tragedy, the families left behind, let us too remember his family"; and the example of the Amish that Watts links to is this: to forgive the dead terrorist with concern for "the welfare of the killer's family."

Feminist blogger Phyllis Chesler says "Call me 'Islamophobic,' call me 'psychic,' call me what you will." And she says that most may call Hasan the victim. She says that in her post entitled "The Jihadist Is Always the Victim."

And a blogger who calls himself "Improvable" asks a rhetorical question with respect to Hasan. The blogger says: "So he decides to take out as many infidels as he could to get his pound of flesh for the jehad?"

Now we in the West hear Shakespeare, and we hear Shylock saying of Antonio: "The pound of flesh which I demand of him Is deerely bought, 'tis mine, and I will haue it."

The Bible, the Koran, the words of William Shakespeare. These are texts that demand interpretation, texts and interpretations that we may use for hope and healing and for terror and death. What does it matter exactly what "sarx" and what "pound of flesh" mean if they're mostly tools of terror?

What are the consequences of Malik Nidal Hasan's "Pound of Flesh"? What's the sense you make of it?