When the king of Babel falls to Sheol, he will be covered with worms and worms will spread out beneath him (Isaiah 14:11). Two words are used for “worm,” and the most commonly used of them is most often used not to describe worms per se but the scarlet coloring that comes from the . . . . Continue Reading »
Isaiah 14 moves forward by a series of puns on the Hebrew mashal . The noun form means “proverb” or “parable,” and describes the poem that Israel will take up on the day when Babel is overthrow (14:4). The mashal is about the fall of those with rods and scepters of rule. The . . . . Continue Reading »
Fir and cedar were among the materials for the temple (1 Kings 5:8, 10; 6:15), as well as Solomon’s other building projects (1 Kings 9:11). Elsewhere in Kings these trees refer to the great and mighty of the land, the ones that Assyria intends to cut down (2 Kings 19:23). The two uses are . . . . Continue Reading »
The Hebrew word for parable/proverb/allegory ( mashal ) is first used Numbers 23-24 for the “parables” of Balaam. The word is used seven times in that passage, and the verb associated with it in every case is nasa , “lift up” or “carry.” A proverb is a burden . . . . Continue Reading »
Isaiah predicts a day of judgment against Babel (13:6, 9, 13; cf. 13:22)l but that same day will be rest for the people of God (14:3). When Yahweh judges Babel, Israel will enjoy Sabbath ( shabat , “cease,” is used twice in v. 4); they will be Noahs, resting ( noach , 14:3) after the . . . . Continue Reading »
Pickstock still: Plato notes the sensory associations of various arts. Painting renders the visual, music the sound. But language is synaesthetic. A word or combination of words combines the senses, and engenders thought and so, Plato says, gets to the “essence” iof a things that is . . . . Continue Reading »
Pickstock points to this passage on the Cratylus, where Socrates connects heroes with desire through an etymological connection with Eros: “All of them sprang either from the love of a God for a mortal woman, or of a mortal man for a Goddess; think of the word in the old Attic, and you will . . . . Continue Reading »
Pickstock, same article, arguing that the linguistic turn requires Cratylism: “If the signifier is arbitrary, then the stable element of language is excarnated and language is reduced to thought after all, because its essence consists in a series of abstract relations, combined according to a . . . . Continue Reading »
Pickstock again, same article. She examines Socrates’ use of etymologies, and argues that this is not a crude effort to take words back to some fixed starting point. Rather, Socrates “analyzes words by supplementing, removing, exchanging or bending letters or syllables according to . . . . Continue Reading »
In an article on the Cratylus in the current issue of Modern Theology , Catherine Pickstock asks whether Socrates/Plato is/are Cratylists, whether they believe that words are linked, perhaps onomatopoetically, to the things they signify, or if they argue for a purely conventional understanding of . . . . Continue Reading »
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