Ben Hur,, the novel, part 13

We are up to Book II chapter 5 of Ben Hur and you stayed with me!

I’m skipping chapter 5 because you would be better off spending your time reading your Bible and reading real history, not Wallace’s faked hash, and going to chapter 6 we meet a new character, Tirzah, the daughter of the house. 

And her clothing is all wrong. Jewish women did not expose their bodies, even at home. Her arms should be covered at least from shoulder to elbow.  And you should be going “say what?”

I just said a couple of posts ago that when a man dies and leaves a widow, sons and daughters, the mother and sons can join to marry off an underage daughter. They can’t do this for a grown daughter, but she must be supported from the income of the man’s property. The son gets a job or goes begging to have an income.

Except.

Judah’s father could have written a deed of gift to Judah either before his death or while on his deathbed. The deed was valid in either case, except that on his deathbed the father had to reserve some of the property to himself. Then if he recovered he had an income.

A prudent man should write three deeds of gift: one for his widow; one for his daughter(s); and one for his son, with the reservation of property in this last. All three should say “after my death” or “from now and after my death”. In this second case, they all have an income and it’s not tied up into a will, which only takes effect after death. But stuff happens.

If Ithamar wrote a deed of gift, Judah isn’t running a business for the benefit of his mother and sister; he’s running it so he has his own income. He may be managing the property covered by the other two deeds, or a relative is managing it.

But the real issue in this chapter is, both Tirzah and Judah should be married. In a world without scientific medication, where doctors functioned on anecdotal evidence, few infants reached the age of 5 and another tranche didn’t reach the age of 15. If Judah’s father was alive when Tirzah was 13, he would at least have started the search for a husband and written a deed to cover her dowry. Judah would have been 15 to 18 at the time, and Mishnah Pirkey Avot 5:21 says marriage happens at 18. Judah is 21. He should have a wife and at least one child, or one on the way.

Tirzah would be living with her husband, even if she’s 16 and just married.

The mother would be living in a dower house on the property covered by her deed of gift.

So again, Wallace is committing the fallacy of Presentism. He’s writing the classic Victorian melodrama where the widow and her children stay together. And it wasn’t so. Not in those times; not in Judea; not in Rome, so Messala should also not be a bachelor at this point. Oh, sure, he probably left his wife home with the paterfamilias, especially if there were children already. But his wife, like Agrippina, might follow the drum and bring the children along.

Ben Hur the novel, part 12

We are up to Book II chapter 4 of Ben Hur and I forgot something in chapter 3.

Amrah would not have a bowl of milk on the tray she brings to Judah. That’s not kosher. It was decided before 10 CE. She would have a goblet of vin ordinaire on the tray. Wallace wrote as the Temperance movement was gaining steam and members of that movement would be sure to approve and recommend his book if the only people who drank liquor were dissolute characters or at least those who were not on track for conversion.

So this is post 12 and you can bail here if you want. You could get some of the same information on this thread, from my Fact-Checking thread. It’s up to you whether to keep on or ditch me. If you leave, take with you the lesson that if you’re not Jewish and you’re not an educated Jew, you shouldn’t write fiction about Jews because you are sure to get something wrong.

But if you’re seeing this paragraph, you stayed. And immediately Wallace makes a mistake.

What language does he think Judah’s mother speaks?

If he thinks it’s Biblical Hebrew, he’s wrong. Jews stopped speaking it on the street during the Babylonian Captivity. Aramaic, aka Neo-Babylonian or Akkadian, became the Jewish street language.

Because of that, in my opinion, the elder Jews realized that their oral tradition was dying out. It was the basis for their entire culture. They decided to put it into writing. They got their experts together and transcribed the oral tradition.

Then they took down the words of the prophets which, in Jewish canon, starts with the book of Joshua and goes through Jeremiah. All these materials are also in Biblical Hebrew. The importance of these books is that they provide later confirmation of Torah law under new behavioral examples.

And finally, the Jews wrote down things like Psalms and Proverbs, which gave further examples of how Biblical Hebrew used words; historical books like Ruth and Chronicles; and the most important material that they knew in Biblical Aramaic like Ezra, Nehemiah, and Daniel.

The Jews learned Greek, no doubt, after the conquests of Alexander; they knew Latin after the conquests of Caesar. They claimed there were 72 languages stemming from the descendants of Noach, plus an “Aramaic without a spoken version” which I assume shows that they had seen cuneiform and knew it recorded Neo-Babylonian, but they learned the Aramaic square script for the language they spoke.

Now the next question. Who was Judah to be? I already said: he had taken his father’s position in business and in public affairs. The question is nonsense. Judah already had responsible employment and a public role. His father raised him to be a responsible Jewish adult, not an adrenaline addict like Messala. And so another false and nonsensical chapter goes into the record.

And the final blunder: the First Temple was burned down by the Aramaean rulers of Babylon. The Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom and were in turn conquered by the Aramaeans. This is in the Bible. Wallace is messing with the facts.

Knitting -- leftovers, a new stitch, and a plan

So I had leftover cotton yarn in fingering weight and there was a new stitch I wanted to try, plus I wanted to invent a frame for houseware projects.

So the stitch was the Eye of Partridge stitch, which is the traditional name for Johnnie Vasquez' "double knit". EoP was used on Arne and Carlos' video showing how to make a reinforced toe and heel to go with Dovrekofta socks, which are a lot like Fair Isle knitting.

Suzanne Bryan's video shows how to work EoP in one and two colors on the flat and I got two ideas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZAF6-7Qc3M

What if I use it with the fine cotton to make washcloths for the bathroom? It would provide a little texture to exfoliate my face, the same as the texture on my Dishie washcloths helps get food off plates.

I have that nice selvage pattern for the sides of the washcloth, but what do I do about the bottom and top? Can I do something that looks like the selvage? So I charted and experimented and here is the result. This makes a 14 x 14 washcloth from 3 25-gram packets of Cotona fingering.

1. do a long-tail cast-on for 100 stitches besides the initial slip knot.

2. K2, do seed stitch across, K2

3. P2, do seed stitch across, making sure to purl into what look like knit stitches and vice versa, P2

4. K3/P2, K across, P2/K3

5. P2/K1/P2, seed stitch across, P2/K1/P2

6. K3/P2, seed stitch across making sure to purl into what look like knit stitches and vice versa, K3/P2

You will do rows 2-6 at the top, binding off in the last row of seed stitch.

turn, do the purl side selvage, PURL across, and do the selvage on the other side.

EoP rows.

a. K3/P2, K1, slip 1 purlwise, repeat these two across, P2/K3 selvage. RIGHT SIDE

b. P2/K1/P2, purl across, P2/K1/P2. WRONG SIDE

c. selvage, slip 1 purlwise, K1, repeat across, selvage

d. selvage, purl across, selvage

It is VERY easy to get out of whack and then you ruin the EoP patters. Here's how you find out what to do first on a right side row. 

i.  Do your selvage.

ii. undo the first stitch, which you purled on the last row. 

iii. if the stitch below that is knitted, put the purl stitch back and slip that first stitch. If there's a floater below it, put the purl stitch back and knit that first stitch.

iv. the other way is when you purl the last 4-5 stitches, remember, where you slipped a stitch there is a floating thread in that place. You will knit that stitch on the next round, so count as you go Knit-Slip-Knit-Slip and then remember whichever you end up with before you do the selvage, because that's what you do after you turn the selvage. But if you forget, get interrupted, whatever, do steps i-iii as a backup.

Suzanne's video also shows how to work EoP in two colors, which could be kind of pretty.

The other idea from Suzanne's video is that if you use bulky yarn in EoP, you would end up with a waffle blanket like that thermal fabric. So there's another houseware. 

Ben Hur the novel, part 11

We are up to Book II chapter 3 of Ben Hur and I want to finish off something I said last time because it probably hasn’t occurred to most readers.

In chapter 3 we get to the exclusive services contract. I already said that a man could pay off a theft by getting somebody to buy his contract. The contract lasted 6 years, or 50, or ended when a yovel year came.

If the man refused the 6 year term limit, an awl was punched through his ear lobe. ONCE. He did not have to put an earring in it to keep it open. He did not have to get it punched again when it healed up. Those of us with piercings know that they do heal up and then we either try to re-open them ourselves or go get them punched again. Just went through this with a pair of favorite earrings.

The ear-punch rule did not apply to non-Jews. If a non-Jew took out a contract, he got paid the money as soon as he agreed to be circumcised. Then he became a Jew, and he had to learn to live Jewish for the smooth operation of the contract holder’s home. The contract terminated when this holder decided; he could bequeath the contract to his son. But if the holder hit the contractor and knocked out a tooth or his eye, THEN the contract ended.

No Jewish woman could be sold into one of these contracts. If you think it’s possible, you haven’t read your Bible. The case of Rebekah is instructive. First her father waffled about her marrying Isaac; he said let’s leave it overnight. We never hear from him again. The next day Rebekah’s brother and mother bargain for the marriage. Why?

Because in the culture that transmitted that story, if a man died leaving unmarried daughters, those daughters had to be supported from his property. It had to be kept together to provide the income for their support. The widow could not collect her jointure; the sons could not split the property up amongst themselves and, if the income wasn’t enough to support them and the daughters too, the sons went out to work or even to beg.

Meanwhile the husband was responsible for the girl’s food and shelter, and for clothing that reflected his status. If she was an adult, she could agree to take her conjugal rights but if she said “no” the husband had to leave her alone.

An underage girl was taught to say “no”. A pregnancy could kill her. Once she reached puberty, she could repudiate the marriage completely, if it was her mother or brother who married her off. And she was taught that she had this right. From then on she could never marry without her own free consent.

So when Wallace says that the female servant in Judah’s household had her ear punched, he shows his ignorance of what the Bible says, as well as what Jewish law says. Jewish law prohibits taking out an exclusive services contract on a Jewish woman. Jewish law also does not require punching the ear of a non-Jew who refuses to leave in the 6^th year, because his contract does not expire in the 6^th year. It can be terminated by the contract holder, or it can be terminated by the court for cause – battery. 

Amrah does not have a hole punched in her ear.

Ben Hur, the novel, part 10

We are up to Book II chapter 3 of Ben Hur and I want to finish off something I said last time because it probably hasn’t occurred to most readers.

There was no reform or conservative Judaism in the Roman Empire. There were no Chassidic Jews or Reconstructionists. You had the P’rushim like Rabbis Hillel and Shammai; you had the Ts’dukim who evaporated after the destruction of the Second Temple. You had the Samaritans who were on a downhill slide because you had to be born a Samaritan, you couldn’t convert. And you had the common people who couldn’t afford the time to get a solid Jewish education and might not know about new enactments of the Sanhedrin. In a good edition of Mishnah there will be an index of rabbis linked to sections that report their decisions, so you can go through and see what they ruled and get an idea of when it happened from their biographies.

Everything in Mishnah that isn’t cited to an individual rabbi is an agreed position of the Sanhedrin by 50 CE. At least 50% of Mishnah falls into this category. And because Judaism is a culture, everybody grew up living by these rules. So you didn’t have to stop in the middle of the day and say, now, what did my teacher say about – let’s say, finding a dead bug on the greens I just sprinkled with water to keep them fresh. You knew from growing crops every year that you had to throw out the greens that the bug touched.

Judah ben Hur, a rich boy, should have been brought up first to read Torah and live by it. Judah should have accompanied his father Ithamar in his business dealings and also, since the father was a rich and important man, in his attending Jewish courts.

That’s because he was eligible to be a witness in business cases, such as testifying to signatures and seals on documents. (Judah was eligible to testify to his father’s signature and seal even before bar mitsvah.) He was also eligible to be a judge. In a civil case, each of the two parties chooses a judge and then they agree on the third, which gets them part way to agreeing about the case.

If a case reached an impasse, anybody observing the case could speak up about it. If what he said was relevant, probative, and exculpatory, he joined the judges’ bench and then another person was chosen to make sure there was always an odd number of judges. The father would have wanted Judah to be ready to join the judges’ bench as an adult, and he would have taken the boy to court with him every time he attended.

Judah was minimally eligible for a witness or a judge as soon as he passed the age of bar mitsvah, 13 years and one day. He was not running around with a Gentile boy or reading Greek philosophy; he was living his culture, learning or running the family business, and attending the courts where he learned and maybe participated in applying or formulating Jewish law. There was no 8 years of idly waiting for his majority before Book II opens.

Judah running wild with a Gentile boy is a plot device Wallace needs to carry out his work. It is not realistic, any more than the idea that Judah was a self-hating Jew, uneducated and vulnerable to conversion. So a major component of Wallace’s plot dissolves in the face of reality.

Ben Hur, the novel, part 9

I apologize for last week but we had a power bump and my router crashed. It took all morning to get somebody on the phone to tell me what to do. But at least I did get somebody.

We have finished Book I of Ben Hur and almost nothing that Lew Wallace said about Jews, their beliefs or customs, has been true. Onward.

We are now past the reign of Augustus and into the reign of Tiberius. Tiberius was nothing but a soldier; he didn’t want to rule. His wiser brother Drusus died of a fall from a horse before Tiberius came to the throne. His nephew Germanicus, says gossip, was poisoned in Syria about 19 CE. Germanicus’ sons died, except for little Gaius, who became Tiberius’ heir.

Herod’s grandson was raised in Rome by Augustus, one of several ethnic princes raised in Roman ways so that if they get to go home and rule, they will impose Roman ways on their homelands. Agrippa will later marry his second or third cousin Cypros, a love match, with four surviving children. One will become the mistress of the man who destroys the Second Temple.

And in Book II chapter 2 we get more false history. Hillel and Shammai were dead by this time. Rabban Gamliel ben Hillel followed him, and then Shimon b. Gamliel. And we get a false evaluation of Jewish logic.

Jewish logic is very like modern American legal reasoning. It has stare decisis in the form of gezerah shavah, when two phrases are alike, cases using them should be judged similarly. Also when cases are alike enough, the new case should come out the same as the old one.

It had a fortiori, known as qal va-chomer, and Jewish law also reasoned in the reverse direction.

It had due process for all.

It had fines for civil cases as well as compensatory and punitive damages for battery. Lex talionis is not part of Jewish law. You can’t award damages in a culture where some people don’t have money. It is a given that all Jews have or can get money for civil damages, or for the poll tax at Purim, or to buy meat for Shabbat.

The man who does not have enough money to pay compensation for a theft can take out an exclusive services contract on himself. Under this agreement, the buyer of the contract has to support the contractor, his wife, and his children at the buyer’s own level. He can’t assign menial tasks. He has to give up the contract at six years or at 50 or whenever the yovel year comes. He can’t destroy the sanctity of marriage. If he commits battery, the damages he pays go toward paying off the contract.

In European culture with its serfdom, serfs didn’t have money. If they committed crimes, they were punished corporally and sometimes capitally. When jails were instituted for the commonalty, they went to jail, sometimes along with their families. The only jails in Jewish law were places where you kept somebody on trial for a capital crime, while you waited for a witness to come forward who could exonerate him.

Jewish law did not allow ex post facto. The law was documented in Torah, exemplified in Prophets, and explained in Mishnah.

A person was innocent until proven guilty, part of a presumption that a condition persists without proof that it has changed. Thus safek tahor tahor, if you have no evidence that an object has been rendered tameh, it is considered tahor and so too a person is innocent until proven guilty.

Civil cases for damages required 3 judges, capital cases required 23; these were bench trials at the hands of experts in Jewish law. If they couldn’t decide, they added two judges. If the town wasn’t large enough to increase the bench, the venue changed to a larger town, the whole way up to the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem.

Evidence required witnesses who were Jews, not under exclusive service contract, and of known probity. They were questioned to make sure that they knew what they were talking about, and that they were talking about the same incident. But if somebody could stand up in court and say that the witnesses couldn’t have seen the incident because they weren’t present at the place and time of the incident, the accused was acquitted.

He was also acquitted if all the judges voted to condemn. That was “a bloodthirsty” court and its judgments were not acceptable. The only judges allowed to speak on the case were those who gave reasons for acquittal. If there weren’t enough, the case was recessed 24 hours (or over Shabbat if necessary) and then the only judges who could speak were the ones who had not yet spoken for acquittal.

Jewish law is a civil code that allows judges to create new law, as long as it does not overturn Torah prohibitions or requirements. It is a common law system which accommodates local custom: “all goes according to the custom of the land” as long as it does not contradict Torah. After the Talmudic period, there would not be another civil code or common law system until Henry II of England, which is the basis of American law.

And in Judah ben Hur’s time, Jews were not allowed to learn Greek philosophy as a consequence of the Seleucid persecutions.

It would take an uneducated self-hating Jew to think that Jewish reasoning wasn’t as good as Greek reasoning. I know that Maimonides insisted you had to learn Aristotle to understand Maaseh Breshit or Maaseh Merkabah but that is irrational. These two concepts dig into the heart of Jewish mysticism. Aristotle knew nothing about Jews. And Maimonides specifies Aristotle’s Physics, to boot, which we know is not even a valid description of the material world let alone of Jewish mystical belief. Maimonides’ antagonists, the Mutakallim, believed in atomism and that a vacuum could exist; both are part of modern physics. Maimonides’ idea is the same fallacy as thinking that translations are valid representations of their source documents: a strawman argument.

So Wallace gives Judah ben Hur an unrealistic attitude for a Jewish hero. It’s the one Wallace needs for his denouement; missionaries to Jews start with the ones who don’t know much about their culture and are therefore vulnerable to misrepresentations about it.