Monthly Archives: July 2015

I Samuel Chapters 8-14: Israel’s Demand for a King

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In the first book of Samuel, we find the Israelites in demand of a new form of governance. Recall the chaos and waywardness of the Israelite people in the book of Judges, as well as the failed rulership of the judges. Now, prophets like Samuel are no longer sufficient, and instead, the Israelites demand a single ruler: they request a king. What is the cause of the people of Israel suddenly demanding a king?

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Saul and David by Rembrandt (1651-1658)

Throughout the Torah and the History Books, Israel has been ruled by either 1) The Lord as he travels with them in the Ark of the Covenant, or 2) the Judges (such as Samuel). However, Samuel bears two children: Joel and Abiah, and neither “walk in his ways.” They chase after riches and bribery, rather than judging people with wisdom.

Therefore, the elders of Israel gather with Samuel to remind him that he is old, and they command him to appoint a king, “…now make us a king to judge us like all the other nations” (8:5). The people notice that their method of enacting justice is abnormal, when considered in contrast to other nations, and they want to be like all other nations. They have lost their desire for uniqueness appointed by The Lord in the early books of Genesis and Exodus. Curiously, in acknowledgement to Samuel, The Lord tells Samuel to hearken unto the voice of the people because they have rejected The Lord to reign over them.

Meanwhile Samuel’s father, Kish, loses his asses and sends Samuel to find them. Upon arrival, The Lord speaks in Samuel’s ear that Saul should reign over the Israelite people. When the tribe of Benjamin is awarded the lot, they raise up Saul who is taller than all the men from his shoulders up. Samuel announces that Saul is chosen by The Lord and there is none among them who can rival Saul, and the people chant ‘god save the king.’ This selection of a new king approaches the heart of a difficult matter in the ancient world: how to appoint a ruler. The democratic masses choose silly people (i.e. Saul is chosen based on his height) but for some reason God also chooses Saul, as well, only to later select a gentle sheepherder-turned-harpist named David.

Saul immediately justifies his kingship by defeating the Ammonites who threaten his power. He musters an army by instilling fear. Saul cuts up an ox and sends its pieces throughout Israel as a warning to those who rise up against him. “And the fear of The Lord fell on the people, and they came out with one consent” (11:7). Saul views his rulership jointly with Samuel, as there is no ‘wall of separation’ between church and the ship of state. Upon victory Samuel reminds the people of The Lord and to follow his ways, rather than the ways of politics. In the Bible, we discover a conflict between the city of man, and the city of God, best exemplified in Augustine’s seminal work. However, Augustine attempts to make a compromise with politics by urging Christians to become like “pilgrims” on earth by following the laws (i.e. ‘give unto Caesar what belongs to him’), but to have full faith and loyalty in the celestial kingdom which is unending, unlike the city of man which, though it endures, ultimately rises and falls. Samuel does not make these same capitulations in the books of Samuel. 

Unlike Samuel, Saul leads as a warrior king. He wars with Moab, Ammon, Edom, Zobah, and most notably against the Philistines. He also destroys the Amalekites and brings Agag, their king, out before the people and cuts him into pieces. After this, Samuel visits Saul no longer. Saul has apparently chosen a dark and ungodly path.

The Lord calls Samuel to travel to Bethlehem to find a new king as Saul has displeased Him. This time, The Lord commands Samuel not to appoint a king based on physical stature, like Saul’s height, but rather to look at his heart. The Lord rejects all of Jesse’s children except the youngest sheep herder, who is a ruddy and pleasing boy to to look at named David. David is sent to the court of Saul as a harpist in order to ease an evil spirit that is plaguing Saul. As David remains at Saul’s court, and during the Philistine wars, David is ultimately chosen to kill the warrior Goliath of the Philistines, in the now classic tale. Upon victory, he is praised by the people and Saul becomes jealous of David and tries to kill him. However David is loved by the people and he eventually marries Saul’s daughter.

David becomes a captain in the army and Saul eventually repents and reconciles with David until he and his three sons are killed at the hands of the Philistines. The book of I Samuel ends with the death of Samuel and also the death of Saul, who falls on his own sword rather than being taken by the “uncircumcised” Philistines.

For this reading I used Robert Alter’s masterful translation as well as the King James Version.

Notes on Hesiod

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There is a popular ancient story about a contest between Homer and Hesiod, imagined from the contest recounted by Hesiod in Works and Days. In it, both poets choose their best passages from their works -Hesiod chooses his section on the rising of the Pleiades constellation from Works and Days. Ultimately, the round of aristocratic judges chooses Hesiod as the superior poet over Homer because they are determining which poems will be of more value to the masses in the polis. It is determined that Hesiod’s practical advice on farming, astronomy, and wealth will be more beneficial than Homer’s tales of War and Return. Even in his day, Pausanias recounts a story of seeing Hesiod’s winning tripod on display at Mt. Helicon for travelers to see.

However, other imagined sources suggest that Hesiod must have performed his other poem, on the genesis of the gods, called Theogony. Unlike in the Works and Days, wherein Hesiod (or “he who emits the voice”) speaks directly to Perses (or the “destroyer”) and in doing so speaks to the common citizen of the polis, in the Theogony the voice is directed toward an explicitly more aristocratic audience. This is evidenced by his rebuke of power-hungry kings in the former poem, but praise of strong kingly leadership in the latter poem.

In contrast to the book of Genesis, the Theogony is a considerably different account. In Genesis the birth of the earth and living things is brought by about by the single booming voice of God. However, in Hesiod the primal being is Chaos and Gaia, and the cosmos is filled with struggle and strife between the gods. The world is without order before anything else. Take, for instance, the revolt of Cronus (Zeus’s father) against his father Uranos. He castrates his father, throwing his severed testicles into the ocean giving birth to Aphrodite who floated and arrived on the island of Cyprus.

Chaos, earth, Tartarus, and Eros are all primal things in existence. Next, black Night comes from Chaos Erebus (the “darkness” of the underworld), and out of Night and Erebus comes Aether and Daylight. Earth gives birth to the mountains and seas, sleeps with Uranos and gives birth to the Oceans and eleven other children, including Cronus. Earth gives birth to the Cyclopses. Earth also gives birth to the vengeful Furies.

Cronus and Rhea become one and give birth to the gods, including Zeus. However Cronus is afriad of being overtaken so he swallows his children, much to the sadness of Rhea. Earth feeds to Cronus a stone wrapped like a baby but it is not Zeus, and he throws them up and Zeus overtakes Cronus. Zeus makes Atlas stand at the ends of the earth with the sky on his head and the earth on his shoulders, releases Pandora, and punishes Prometheus in chains by making an eagle eat his liver each day, later released by Heracles. Zeus tames the itans in Tartarus. The poem ends as it began, with a plea to the muses, only this time to sing of the mortal humans.

For this reading I used the Daryl Hine translation.

Two Myths in Hesiod’s Works and Days

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In his poem, Works and Days, Hesiod writes a letter addressed to his brother, Perses, encouraging him to embrace the practical attitude and let Discord spur him to plow his fields and yield abundant crops. His purpose is to encourage strong values in Perses, ones that combat the impetus for laziness. However, he tells Perses that “the gods keep secret from humankind the means of survival” (42), thereby challenging Perses to discover the means of survival; to uncover the secrets. Similarly, Sir Francis Bacon will make a claim about the processes of nature being hidden by God for humans to discover in his anti-Aristotelian “New Organon” thousands of years later.

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Hesiod and the Muse by Gustave Moreau in 1891

Why do the gods hide these secrets from humans? Hesiod responds, appropriately, with a myth. Zeus was angry that Prometheus so carelessly gave away the gift of fire to humans by deceiving the mind of Zeus. Laughing, in repayment to mankind, Zeus employs the lame Hephaestus to fashion a woman, with the help of the other Olympians, and he calls this “bane to industrious mankind” Pandora. Before Epimetheus accepts the gift of Pandora and forgets Prometheus’s command to deny any gifts from Zeus, mankind lives peacefully and with little strife. However, Pandora opens her great jar releasing miseries upon humankind, only Hope stays behind to hide in Pandora’s jar.

Hesiod then gives an “alternate story” if it is preferable, recalled later by Plato in the Republic. First, the immortals fashioned a race of articulate men, Golden, living when Cronus ruled (Zeus’s father). They lived well and peacefully, with many banquets and easy crop yields, until they were buried. Second, the Olympians fashioned a Silver race, which was inferior. They lived like children and committed violence on one another, never worshipping Zeus and making him angry. Third, Zeus fashioned a Bronze race, the offspring of ash trees. Their tools and armor were bronze, and they killed each other with them, sending them down to the cold underworld. Fourth, Zeus created a “new” generation who superior and lovers of “justice” (152). they were Demigods, the last prior to our own generation.

Hesiod laments this “iron” generation and all their suffering, though “there will always be good mixed in with the evil” (177). Zeus will destroy this race when children rise up against their fathers, and when the gods are not followed. Hesiod beckons Perses to pay attention to Justice, for whole cities can be lost with the actions of one evil man, and Hesiod also commands Princes to practice just deeds. In the first account the existence of strife and discord is justified, but hope is given space, as well, for Perses. In the second account, Justice is deemed a worthwhile pursuit, for the fate of mankind.

Following the myths at the outset, the remaining poem is composed of a series of instructions and advice to Perses who is to become a farmer. We are led to believe that he is somewhat feeble minded, contrasted with Hesiod’s great victories as a poet.

For this reading I used the Daryl Hine translation.

Scarface: The Shame of the Nation (1932) Film Review

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Scarface: The Shame of the Nation  Director: Howard Hawks (1932)

“The World Is Yours”

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★★★☆☆

Scarface is one of the great United Artists gangster films. Following in the trail blazed by Little Caesar and The Public Enemy, Scarface presents the rise and fall of Chicago gangster (modeled on the life of Al Capone). It opens with a title that reads:

“This picture is an indictment of gang rule in America and of the callous indifference of the government to his constantly increasing menace to our safety and our liberty. Every incident in this picture is the reproduction of an actual occurrence, and the purpose of this picture is to demand of the government: ‘What are you going to do about it?’ The government is your government. What are YOU going to do about it?”

The plot follows Tony Camonte (played by Paul Muni) and his boss Johnny Lovo (played Osgood Perkins) as they kill one of the top crime bosses on Chicago’s Southside. Tony chases after Johnny’s girl and then also angers Johnny by conducting a number of drive-by shootings against the Irish gangs on the Northside (a version of the notorious Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre in Chicago). Tony tells Johnny’s girl that he believes a message on the giant sign reading: The World Is Yours. Eventually, Johnny arranges for Tony to be killed in a drive-by, but he escapes and kills Johnny, claiming himself to be the leader of the gang. However, he pays a visit to his sister who has been recently married to a close comrade of Tony’s, unbeknownst to Tony. Johnny kills his comrade and appears to fall into a depression as his gang begins falling apart. The police close in on his headquarters, a stray bullet kills his sister, and Tony is shot and killed beneath his idealized sign reading: The World Is Yours.

Scarface is based on Armitage Trail’s novel of the same name. It was a highly controversial film that had to be heavily edited to minimize the violence, and the sub-header (“The Shame of the Nation”) was also added to tamp down accusations of glamorizing the violent mob life.

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Scarface is a terrific film –Paul Muni gives a great performance (wonderfully capturing Al Capone’s awkward mannerisms) and the film takes its influences from earlier gangster films, as well as elements from German Expressionism.

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Credits:

  • Directed by: Howard Hawks
  • Screenplay by: W.R. Burnett, John Lee Mahin, Seton I. Miller, Ben Hecht
  • Based on: Scarface by Armitage Trail
  • Produced by: Howard Hawks Howard Hughes
  • Starring:
    • Paul Muni…..Antonio “Tony” Camonte
    • Ann Dvorak…..Francesca “Cesca” Camonte
    • Osgood Perkins…..John “Johnny” Lovo
    • Karen Morley…..Poppy
    • George Raft…..Guino “Little Boy” Rinaldo
    • Boris Karloff…..Tom Gaffney
  • Cinematography: Lee Garmes, L.W. O’Connell
  • Production Company: The Caddo Company