Thoughts on a Shrinking World, Mass Migration, and Changing Customs

Under the Mongol dynasty in China, the Yuan, unprecedented numbers of Westerners -- Uyghurs, Tibetans, Turkestanis, Persian, Arabs, Russians, Ossetians, Armenians, and even the odd Frank, like Marco Polo -- migrated to the country. Once they migrated there, receiving high position in the Mongol-run administration, many, if not most, stayed, and their sons and grandsons began adopting Chinese customs.

The attitude of Chinese to this differed. Leaving aside a small cranky minority in South China who still maintained loyalty to the defunct Song dynasty, most Chinese scholars were proud that people were coming from all over the world and converting to Chinese ways. But what about those who changed their surnames and customs to adopt those of China? Was that a good thing? Some thought that truly filial and Confucian Westerners would not change their family name and hence insult their ancestry as something to be gotten over. Others thought it was natural for people to change their name and customs when entering a new world.

Here is a sample of viewpoints on this phenomenon drawn from Chinese-language essays of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The source is Chen Yuan's Western and Central Asian in China Under the Mongols, translated by Qian Xinghai/Ch'ien Hsing-hai and L. Carrington Goodrich. (I have modernized the spelling, but I haven't necessarily referred to the original Chinese to check, so I cannot vouch for the correctness of each phrase or terminology.)

Wang Li in his Linyuan ji, thought it showed how the Mongol Yuan dynasty has expanded the brotherhood of man.

The language and tastes of the people of the Western Regions differ from those of the Chinese. Although since the days of Han and Tang intermarriage has occurred, still each retained his own racial allegiance and could not live permanently in the other's domain. How could those born in the lands of the West be interred in Jiangnan [the lower Yangtze area]. Now under our imperial house of the Yuan, when the foundation of the empire was being laid, the people of the Western Regions rendered valuable service. By the time of the Renovating Founder [that is, Qubilai/Kubla Khan], the land with the Four Seas had become the territory of one family, civilization had spread everywhere, and no more barriers existed. For people in search of fame and wealth in north and south, a journey of a thousand li was like a trip next door, while a journey of ten thousand li constituted just a neighborly jaunt. Hence among Western people who served at court, or who studied in our south-land, many forgot the region of their birth, and took delight in living among our rivers and lakes. As they settled down in China for a long time, some became advanced in years, their families grew, and being far from home, they had no desire to be buried in their fatherland. Brotherhood among peoples has certainly reached a new plane (p. 252).

Liu Yin in his Jingxiu wenji thought the custom of changing one's surnames to fit Chinese models a sign of bad morals. The Guli family of the Jurchen (a people of Manchuria, ancestors of the later Manchus) had taken on the Wu surname, and Liu Yin comments:

When I heard this, I said that this was a great mistake. The family surname had been received by the clan's forefathers and handed down to posterity, and the lineage should not be confused in the slightest degree. . . . They have of their own volition cut off their own roots, and allied themselves with another family. This is indolence and drifting with the current (p. 236).

Other critics like Wu Hai in his Wengaozhai ji, blamed this on careerism. Officials would receive surnames from the government and would not refuse them, lest doing so impede their careers:

The idea was that the new family name, bestowed by the Son of Heaven, could not be refused; while the old name had been handed down by his ancestors and should not be discarded. [A friend of his had showed him his genealogy, where he had listed both family names, old and new, side by side]. Hence both were retained. The moral sense of the people at present is enfeebled. People are bent on acquiring official position and wealth. Some have willingly sacrificed their ancestral heritage and adopted that of this country in order thereby to gain promotion in their careers. Is there one who has accepted a surname bestowed on him and yet is reluctant to give up the old one? On glancing over this genealogical record I could not but feel regretful. One may hope that people who have given up their forefathers may take a look at this record, be moved by it, and change their course of action (p. 237).

Others, like Song Lian in his eulogy of Pu Bo, a Muslim whose family settled in S. China, argued that when situations change, culture should change too:

The people in countries of the Western Regions had no family names; they were known rather by the tribes to which they belonged. They were unsophisticated and their affairs simple; as a consequence, it was easy for them to get along in this way. As to Master Pu [Pu Bo, a man of the Muslim Arghun people of Inner Mongolia], his family lived for three generations in regions of China known for their culture [i.e. in the Lower Yangtze]. He equipped himself with understanding of the History and the Odes [books in the classical Chinese canon] and put into practice the principles of our rites and rules of propriety. His old name he kept, however, which is not as it should be. On consultation with fellow officials and scholars he adopted Pu as his surname. In former times when the people of rank of northern Dai [northern Shanxi, on the northern edge of China proper] followed the rulers of the Northern Wei [a early Mongolic dynasty of the fifth-sixth century AD] and pushed down into Henan, they all followed Chinese customs, changing their three and four syllable names to those of one syllable, and in other respects adopting Chinese ways. The step taken now by Mr. Pu coincides with ancient principles and current practice. Were he not a man of unusual insight, he would not have seen this. Those who abide by ordinary practice might say that their forefathers did not introduce the change. That is because they are unqualified to talk about accommodation [or changing to conform]
(p. 240).

Wu Chen praised Shadi, with the courtesy name Xingzhe, for the adoption of the Chinese system of given names (ming) and courtesy names (zi), the later bestowed by respected colleagues or teachers. He was a member of a sayyid (descendant of Muhammad) family from Central Asia which settled in Yuan China and achieved high position, :

In remote antiquity, people had given names, but no courtesy names -- a sign of their simplicity. In ancient times people had both given names and courtesy names -- a sign of their culture. Within the nine provinces [of China], civilization was emphasized, as it was in medieval times and thereafter. Outside the nine provinces simplicity was stressed, just as it had been in remote antiquity. This difference in practice has existed throughout the ages. The domain of the reigning [Mongol Yuan] dynasty is the most extensive one of all times. All countries, both those within and without the nine provinces are in this domain and form one household. Each having its own customs, it has not been possible to unify them . . . . [Wu Chen then describes how he was given a courtesy name by his fellow officials] What is commendable in this Chinese custom is that the rules of what is right and proper, as laid down by the Duke of Zhou and Confucius, are admirable. Whoever esteems the rules of the Duke of Zhou and Confucius should follow them. Those who think highly of them but fail to follow them are untrue to civilization; they esteem culture, but are false to it. This is not like the genuineness of esteeming simplicity . . . (p. 228).

For others, the answer was to adopt a surname that had some connection with one's ancestry, thus preserving both a justifiable loyalty to one's ancestry and a fitting appreciation of culture. The Xie family of Uyghurs, for example, chose a rare form of this name due to its use in the Chinese transcription of Selengge, the river in Mongolia where his ancestors had come from centuries earlier. Xie Chaowu's name was based on the Mongolian cha'ur "warrior." So Wang Deyuan wrote about him in a eulogy thus:

Xie Chaowu, courtesy name Angfu, was a Uyghur. His given name was Mongol and his courtesy name Chinese. Men spend their life in different regions. As he continued to use the name of his tribe and did not forget his ancestor, he was filial. As he served in a glorious period of the house of Yuan and continued to use his given name not forgetting his country, he was loyal. In studying the standard literature of the Chinese, he freed himself from the charge of illiteracy. In continuing to use his courtesy name he did not forget his teacher, which indicates his sensibility. Being dutiful, loyal, and wise, his moral foundation was laid (p. 143).

For some adaption was a difficult process in which they had to try to find some common moral principles between their ancestral principles and their adopted country's mores and ethics. Xu Youren records the ambivalence of Heshu, another Muslim migrant to China -- and also reminds us that many immigrants made no effort to adapt:

When our house of Yuan launched expeditions against the countries of the northwest, the Western Regions were the first to become part of our realm. Accordingly, many more natives of the West were accorded high positions than those of other lands. Great merchants monopolized advantages in operating profitable enterprises on land and sea. They occupy key places in well-known cities and regions throughout the empire, and enjoy their large incomes, but few are successful in adapting themselves. They live in this country, are clothed and fed here, but they still cling to the customs of their own countries. Heshu, however, declared: 'I do not dare to alter our customs, and thereby become estranged from my own people. I wish only to change what is contrary to moral principles. I have lived in this country, been clothed and fed here, and shared the life of its people. I take no pleasure in altering our ways in order to conform to the customs of this area. But when I reach a decision about them, I wish to conform to that which is right. One of my ancestors came to China as an ambassador and his bones lie buried here. Can I afford to ignore the Odes, History, Rites and Music? [These are books in the Chinese classical canon.] When customs are dissimilar due to differences in underlying principles, should I follow them?' Ah! Heshu was certainly good at adapting himself in the way Mencius proposed [a reference to where Mencius tells the story of people who reformed non-burial of the dead simply by natural feeling, without ever being taught to conduct burials]. According to their mores [that is, Muslim ones], they did not erect monuments at the tombs of their ancestors, but he did so (p. 243).

These are the cultural options still today, in a shrinking world of mass migrations. Perhaps the most distinctive element is the sense of attachment to a particular land, in which the migrants are "fed" and "clothed" by the land, and hence owe something to it.

Framing Stories in I-II Kings

It's been over a month, I know, since my last post. Apart from being just busy, somehow I don't feel like any of my thoughts (and I do have them still!) are really in a shape to be blogged. But since I just got a prod from a loyal reader (hello, Eric R!) , let me give my readers some new content.

Yesterday, I finished I and II Kings (very delayed, I know). The more I read it, the more I believe the kind of reading I've been giving it in previous posts, one which focuses on irony, on disjunction between the narrative voice and the author's, is not a figment of the imagination, but an essential reading.

Notes for the future: the Elijah-Elisha cycle is introduced by a mother and child story (the widow of Zarephath and her son), just as the Samuel-David cycle (Hannah seeks a child), and the Solomon cycle (the two prostitutes quarreling over a child). In each case this is a metaphor for Israel and her king. How does this story reposition our reading of the Elijah-Elisha cycle? Elijah saves the widow's child, after she reproaches him for having given her hope of a child when she didn't even think of it, and then letting her darling die. So what is the implicit story then? God and His prophets save the kingship, when Israel reproaches God for first giving her a king when she hadn't even thought of it, and then letting her darling monarchy die. The framing story and my reading of it thus highlights Elijah and Elisha's implicit symbiosis with the kingship, their "pulling their punches" and ultimate support of it in the struggle with Damascus. Reread the whole thing -- you'll see it works out.

The systematic repetition of the Elijah and Elisha stories (almost everyone is a doublet) is worth noting (just like the Isaac-Abraham doublets). If we don't accept the source critical explanation (that there were a series of standard prophet-legends, some with Elijah's name on them, some with Elisha's, and the two were combined without recognizing them as the same), we need another explanation.

It should be noted, though, that the notorious bear tearing the kids episode is a good lead into Elisha's role as the one who promotes (despite his tears), the massacre of Jezreel (Jehu's ascension, cf. Hosea 1:4). Stories involving children seem to have a key framing role everywhere in the Deuteronomistic History.

Another point I noticed is how the message of the Rabshakeh (=field commander) of Assyria to Zion is strikingly parallel to the prophetic messages: idols will not keep you safe, your kings cannot protect you, siege and exile is coming, but if you accept this as judgment it won't be so bad and you will sit under fig tree and vine. When the king hears it he tears his robes. It is of course rejected by Hezekiah, and Isaiah, and God, but it is an important reflection of the Deuteronomistic History's theme of the ambiguity of prophetic utterance: prophets lie all the time. Here is a prophecy that is entirely true, and is not a prophesy of smooth things, but of judgment and woe -- and it's all a lie too! But when Josiah (a sort of second Hezekiah) finds a book that prophesies woe and exile, and tears his clothes: this is true prophecy.

I can't help but note here the reading of Richard Polzin, that the prophet of Deuteronomy 18 is the author of the Deuteronomistic History itself, and the insight of Richard E. Friedman that Josiah is described in the Deuteronomistic History as the best king bar none, the only true leader since Moses, and that the Deuteronomistic History was written by Jeremiah or an associate, first in the time of Josiah, with the rest added after. (The close association of the Deuteronomistic History with the language and concerns of Jeremiah is widely acknowledged.) Put them together and the two go together: the Deuteronomistic History is leading up not just to the rediscovery of Deuteronomy's Law but also the apprehension of the course of Israel's history by Jeremiah (or Baruch) as author of the Deuterenomistic History.

But the interpretation of Friedman's, dependent as it is on a two-fold compilation process, first under Josiah, and then an epilogue, so to speak, written in exile, would then leave the post-Josiah history of Israel hanging. It would be more satisfying to see the whole as a single story, with the end envisioned from the beginning. What's the point, then? That even when, through the Hegelian mission of the prophets to describe to Israel her story, the truth is set forth before Israel, the truth is not accepted. The moment of insight -- does nothing, and destruction follows.

Ever Wonder What Happened to Naaman after He Went back to Damascus?

Well, if you haven't, I have. There is that passage in 2 Kings 5:

And Naaman said, "Shall there not then, I pray thee, be given to thy servant two mules' burden of earth? For thy servant will henceforth offer neither burnt offering nor sacrifice unto other gods, but unto the LORD. In this thing the LORD pardon thy servant, that when my master goeth into the house of Rimmon to worship there, and he leaneth on my hand, and I bow myself in the house of Rimmon: when I bow down myself in the house of Rimmon, the LORD pardon thy servant in this thing." And [Elisha] said unto him, "Go in peace." So he departed from him a little way.

Needless to say, a strong current of interpretation says that we need to be angry at Naaman for "compromising with idolatry" and wonder that Elisha permitted it.

I'd rather read this along with the story of King Hakon the Good. He had come from England, where he had been baptized in A.D. 934. Going up to Trondheim, the richest district in the kingdom and the chief place of sacrifice in pagan Norway, he made an address,

to freeholders and husbandmen alike, of high and low estate, and so to all the people, young men and old, rich and poor, women as well as men, that all should let themselves be baptized and believe in one God, Christ, the son of Mary, and stop all idolatry and heathen worship; that they should keep holy every seventh day, abstaining from work, and fast every seventh day. (Heimskringla, p. 108).

The farmers grumbled against this because a Sunday rest would cut their income, and the working men and thralls thought they couldn't work on Friday without food. A farmer then gave a long speech (as cited by Snorri Sturluson), that emphasized how they wished Hakon to rule according to the inherited usages of the kingdom and not force them to abandon the customs they had from their fathers:

"But now we don't know what to think, whether we have regained our liberty or whether you are going to make us thralls again with the strange proposal that we should abandon the faith our fathers had before us, and all our forefathers, first in the time when the dead were burned, and now in the age when the dead are buried. And they were better men than we, and yet this faith has served us very well. . . . We all want to follow you and to have you be our king so long as one of us farmers who are at the assembly now is alive, if you, sir king, will observe moderation and ask only that of us which we can give you and which is within reason.

"But if you mean to pursue this so high-handedly as to contend against us with force and compulsion, then all of us farmers have made up our minds to desert you and chose another leader, one who will help us freely to have the faith we wish to have" (Heimskringla, p. 109).

The farmers all cheered this.

Earl Sigurd of Trondheim then negotiates between the two sides to delay a decision. But it couldn't be avoided.

In fall, at the beginning of winter there was a sacrificial feast at Hlathir [the temple seat on the other side of the Nidharos river in Trondheim], and the king attended it. Before that, if present at a place where heathen sacrifice was made, he was accustomed to eat in a little house apart, in the company of a few men. But the farmers remarked about it that he did not occupy the high seat when there was the best cheer among the people. The earl told him that he should not do that; and so it came that the king occupied the high seat on this occasion.

But when the first beaker was served, Earl Sigurd proposed a toast, dedicating the horn to Odin [chief of the Norse gods], and drank to the king. The king took the horn from him and made the sign of the cross over it.

Then Kar of Gryting said, "Why does the king do that? Doesn't he want to drink of the sacrificial beaker?"

Earl Sigurd made answer, "The king does as all do who believe in their own might and strength, and dedicated this beaker to Thor. He made the sign of the hammer over it before drinking." People said no more about it that evening. Next day when people had seated themselves at the tables, the farmers thronged about the king, saying that now he must eat the horse meat [the horse was sacrificed to Odin]. That, the king would not do under any condition. Then they asked him to drink the broth from it. He refused to do that. Then they asked him to eat the dripping from it. He would not do that, either, and they came near to making an attack on him. Earl Sigurd said he would help them come to an agreement, asking them to cease their tumult; and he asked the king to gape with his mouth over the handle of the kettle on which the smoke of the broth from the horse meat had settled, so that the handle was greasy from it. Then the king went up to it and put a linen cloth over the handle and gaped with his mouth over it. Then he went back to his high-seat, and neither party was satisfied with that (Heimskringla, pp. 110-11).

Later, the men of Trondheim even got together and sailed south to other parts of Norway and burned three churches and killed three priests.

But when King Hakon and Earl Sigurd came to Maerin with their troops, the farmers were there in very great numbers. The first day at the banquet the farmers thronged in upon him and asked him to sacrifice, or else they would force him to. Then Earl Sigurd mediated between them, and in the end King Hakon ate a few bits of horse liver.

Earl Sigurd tried to calm the king, but in the end, he left Trondheim swearing vengeance:

The king was so enraged that no one durst speak to him (Heimskringla, p. 112).

The conflict is cut short by an invasion of rivals for the throne, sons of his half-brother Eirik. He drives them out, but they harry Norway for the rest of his reign. In year 961, they invade again, and King Hakon is wounded.

King Hakon boarded his warships and had his wound bandaged. But the blood flowed so profusely that it could not be staunched. And as the day wore on the king became faint. . . . .Then he called his friends to his side and told them his wishes about the disposition of the kingdom. His only child was a daughter, Thora by name. He had no son. He requested them to send word to the sons of Eirik that they were to be kings over the land, but that they should exercise forbearance to his friends and kinsmen. "But even if I be granted to live," he said, "I would leave the country to abide among Christians and do penance for what I have sinned against God. But if I die here, among heathens, then give me such burial place as seems most fitting to you."

And a short while afterwards, King Hakon died on the same slab of rock where he was born. King Hakon was mourned so greatly that both friends and enemies bewailed his death and declared that a king as good as he would not be seen again in Norway. His friends moved his body north to Saeheim in North Horthaland. There they raised a great mound and in it buried the king in full armor and in his finest array, but with no other valuables. Words were spoken over his grave according to the custom of heathen men, and they put him on the way to Valhalla (Heimskringla, pp. 124-25).

Observations:

King Hakon attempted to winsomely represent the Christian faith in a position of leadership and was a greatly admired king -- and was for his pains even denied a Christian burial by the men who loved him.

It's not enough to let the men of Trondheim have their religion while you have yours. If you rule them, you have to eat the horse liver -- or at least gape your mouth over the greasy handle.

Eventually, Olaf Tryggvason did Christianize Norway. In the Heimskringla, his chapter entries read like this: "The King Has the Warlocks Burned"; "The King Forces the Farmers to Accept Christianity"; "King Olaf Destroys the Idols"; "Eyvind Kinnrifa [a die-hard pagan] Is Tortured to Death by King Olaf"; and so on. Of King Olaf it was said:

King Olaf was of a most cheerful disposition and full of fun. He was friendly and affable, impetuous in all matters, exceedingly generous, and a fine dresser. He exceeded everyone in bravery when in battle. When angered he was very cruel, inflicting tortures on his enemies. Some of them he had burned with fire, some he let wild dogs tear to pieces, others he had maimed or cast down from high cliffs. For these reasons he was beloved by his friends and feared by his enemies. And he had such success, because some out of friendship and good will did what he wanted done, and some, because of fear of him (Heimskringla, p. 218).

So which of the two gained the world and lost his soul? Or both? Or neither?

How Norway Was Founded

I've asserted before that all states -- without exception -- are founded on either conquest or rebellion. What is very peculiar is that traditional political theory is both more aware of this fact than democrat-republican theory, and also more insistent on the ethical obligation to obey the successful conquerors/rebels.

But is it really true that sovereign kingdoms are found on rebellion or conquest? What about, for example, Sweden or Denmark or Norway? They never conquered anyone, and they've never had a revolution. Surely they must be governments that are legitimate and violence-free, not just in their operations, but also in their founding. Well, leaving aside Vikings, and the break up of the Union of Kallmar and so on, Snorri Sturluson in his Egil's Saga gives us a very interesting picture of how the Kingdom of Norway was first established:

By this time Halfdan the Black's son, Harald, had come into his inheritance to the east in Oslofjord, and had sworn a solemn oath never to cut or comb his hair until he'd made himself sole ruler of Norway. That was why people called him Harald the Shaggy [Harald Finehair in other translations].

First of all he fought and put down the kings nearest to him, and there are long stories about that campaign. After that he conquered the Uplands and traveled north from there to Trondheim, though he had to fight many a battle before he was able to get control of all Trondheim Province. . . . . (p. 23)

There follows a description of his conquests of the kings in Namdalen, More, Romsdalen and elsewhere, partly by overawing them, and partly by military force. Solvi Splitter, son of the defeated king Hunthjof rallies a neighboring King Arnvid this way:

'We may be in trouble now,' said Solvi, 'but it won't be long before the same happens to you. Take my word for it, Harald will be turning up here at any moment, just as soon as he's got all the people of North More and Romsdale where he wants them and made slaves of them. You're going to have the same choice on your hands as we had. Either you'll have to defend your freedom and your goods with every man you can muster -- and I'll help you fight this tyranny and injustice with all the forces I have -- or else you can choose to place yourselves under Harald's yoke and become slaves, like the men of Namdalen. My father preferred to die with honor like the King he was, not to spend his old age as another King's hired man, and I think you'll be minded to do the same as anyone who still has some pride and ambition' (pp. 23-24).

King Harald's exactions didn't stop once he'd unified the realm:

Once he'd gained full control of the provinces that had just come into his hands, Harald kept a sharp eye on the landed men and rich farmers, and anyone else he might expect trouble from. He gave them a choice of three things. They could swear loyalty or they could leave the country, but if they chose the third, they could resign themselves to the most savage terms, perhaps even death. There were cases where Harald had people's arms and legs hacked off. In every province, Harald took over both farming land and estates, whether they were inhabited or not, even the sea and the lakes. Every farmer and every forester had to become his tenant, every salt-maker and every hunter on land or sea had to pay taxes to him. Many a man went on the run from this tyranny and many a wilderness became inhabited, both east in Jamtaland and Halsingland [in modern-day Sweden] and west, in the Hebrides, as well as in parts around Dublin in Ireland, Normandy in France, Caithness in Scotland, Orkney, Shetland and the Faroes. And that's when Iceland was discovered (p. 26).

What always struck me as so unrealistic about Daniel Larison-style paleo-conservatism is its pretension that somehow the idea of conquest and bigger units and centralization and state power was invented by crazy New Englanders sometime around 1820. Or maybe by evil Henry VIII. (Depending on whether the paleo-con in question is Southern or Catholic.) Before then, you get the impression from that that local rule was a universally respected principle and all traditional peoples abhorred the idea of just waking up one day and deciding "I'm the king of a single fjord in Norway, but I'd like to be king of the whole thing. I think I'll conquer all the rest and make this a reality." Well, obviously this is pretty much how Snorri Sturluson, an Icelander and descendant of those who fled Harald's rule, pictured it: long before nominalism, or the Reformation (Harald the Shaggy was a pagan), or the Yankees with their -isms.

More interesting is the comparison of this with the Deuteronomistic History. Snorri Sturluson also wrote the Heimskringla, which is a history of the Yngling kings of Norway (including Harald Shaggy/Finehair and his ancestors and descendants). We often talk about Biblical genre; of course genre is simply a concise way of specifying the other books against which one intends to read and compare the one you are reading with. Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla is not a bad work to read the Deuteronomistic History against, with one big caveat: Jeremiah's history ends with a exile, while the ending of Snorri Sturluson's history is less clear-cut. But both have this (to modern ears) strange juxtaposition of a very unenchanted view of the origin of monarchy with an acceptance of the prerogatives of the monarch and his position.

Where the Division of 2 Samuel and 1 Kings Ought to Have Been Made

From the very beginning of 1 Samuel, the theme of the Deuteronomistic History is replacement; replacement of one priest by another, of one king by another. And more specifically that God replaces those who disappoint Him, and enthrones those with whom He is pleased to place in power. (I was about to say "seek to please Him" but that's definitely a wrong reading of the text, as I will show later). At some point, this replacement has to end, correct? After all, Jerusalem will get a Davidic line and a permanent temple, so one would say that under David this replacement is no longer the main theme.

But that is not correct; in fact the theme of replacement ends with a bang, but only in 1 Kings, chapter 2, where the true permanent king is installed. Not David, but his son. The chapter ends: "And the kingdom was established in the hand of Solomon." But if there is ever a demonstration that openness to irony (that is, any disjunction between what is stated and what is meant), is necessary equipment for reading the Deuteronomistic History, it is this passage. Contrary to the naive reading, the narrative voice is not God's voice. Rather God's voice is heard by listening to the man of God, who is the author of the book, as he weaves the narrator's voice as only one among the many voices here.

1 Kings 1 and 2 recap almost too perfectly the themes set out in 1 Samuel 1 and 3. Or rather I should say, recap it in a way that sounds too good to be true; because it certainly is.

1 Samuel 2 prophesied the deposition of the house of Eli from the priesthood and their replacement. Well, Eli's sons were killed at the end of 1 Samuel 4, when the ark was captured. But just as the ark reappears, so Eli's family reappears under Saul in 1 Samuel 14:3, and again under David in 1 Samuel 21 (the key genealogical link is in 1 Sam. 22:9-12). But in 1 Kings 2, the final displacement of Abiathar, the last of the Elid priests takes place and the prophecy is (or so the narrator tells us) consummated (v. 27). What was his crime? He backed the wrong horse in the succession struggle, supporting Adonijah, not Solomon. Here, if we believe the narrator's voice, is the fulfillment of the song of Hannah. No more injustice, Israel has a king, and there will be no more replacement, and no more loss of the ark. The sons of Eli will beg bread from the new priests, the sons of Zadok, for ever.

Shortly thereafter, in chapter 2, Solomon succeeds in fulfilling David's death-bed mandate to make a clean sweep of all those who had backed Abijah, killing Adonijah, Joab, and Shimei. As if to emphasize the end of the replacement theme, these lines are not just displaced, but killed off -- no descendants to come back and possibly replace the new order.

So in chapter 3, we have a new world, new themes, new phrases: the author introduces in this chapter all the themes that will dominate the history until the end of 2 Kings. We have the house of God and the high places (the first place in the whole history that this is introduced as a problem) and the house of the king and the Pharoah's daughter, introducing the whole theme of alliance with the powers. And in 3:16-28 we have the famous story about how the real mother of a baby is known: she would give him up rather than see him chopped in two. A story of Solomon's wisdom? Yes, but more importantly a prefiguring that Hannah's prayer has not finished its work.

Hannah was a mother who gave her child up; now we have another true mother, a prostitute, who does the same. But we have seen that Hannah as mother is Israel and her son the king. And we will see later kings like Jeroboam and Rehoboam splitting Israel and Judah rather than giving way. So what is the conclusion? That Israel and Judah fall well below the standard of the prostitutes in the story; they would each rather see the kingship and the nation divided rather than give up dominance. So the story of the judgment of Solomon is as much to say, Israel and Judah are not true mothers but lying whores (named Oholah and Oholibah, no doubt).

But there is the dream, right?, in which Solomon asks only for wisdom? and all the fantastic things happening under Solomon as a result? Donald Redford calls these stories, in contrast to the gritty realistic details of David's kingship childish fantasies. Actually, he's not far off. Where I would disagree is his assumption, common enough among exegetes both pro- and anti-, that the historian himself was unaware of the difference. Solomon's reign is indeed a fantasy, a dream, a fantastic dream. And the historian knew it to be such.

What is striking is how account of Solomon's reign explicitly tops the Torah and reverses its rules. In Exodus 38, the Torah carefully lists the gold, silver, and bronze used. But in 1 Kings 7:47, the amount of bronze used by Solomon is explicitly said to be too great to be numbered. And in Numbers 7, the dedicatory sacrifices of the 12 tribes are listed, but under Solomon, the number here, too, is countless (1 Kings 8:5; later a fantastic -- pun intended -- number is given, v. 63). Top that, Moses -- if you can!

Solomon is certainly trying very hard to please God -- This is rather unlike his father David, who is never said to be going out and seeking God, but instead is just "a man after His own heart" (1 Sam. 13:14). It is characteristic of David, that he is approved of as one who passively endures God's choice (cf. 1 Sam. 16:7), not that he is "passionate for God" or any other such thing. In fact what David's heart seems to desire is the pleasures of kingship -- and God has no problem with that as long as he stays within the law (2 Sam. 3:21, cf. 12:8). But Solomon is always striving for God, seeking him

And of course Solomon explicitly reverses the rules about multiplying horses and wives: compare Deut. 17:16 to 1 Kings 10:28 and 17:17 with 1 Kings 11:13. Well, since Sunday school we all know, Solomon started off great, but then married strange women, and so in the end of his life went a little crooked. Early Solomon good, late Solomon bad. Isn't it curious how this resembles the excuses ordinary people offer after the guy they enthusiastically supported turned out to be a disaster. He started off good and we only found out how bad he was after he fell.

But what if this was just a dream? A fantasy? from the very beginning? It is strange, for example, that Solomon only turns bad when he was old (11:4), but that the Lord stirred up an enemy against him for "all the days of Solomon" (1 Kings 11:25; cf. 4:25). And did Solomon put the people of Israel to forced labor or not? 1 Kings 9:20-21 paints a reassuring picture: Solomon only put the Canaanites to forced labor; the Israelites are the captains and armed men. Indeed v.22 is a nice negation of the bad predictions Samuel had made about the kingship in 1 Sam. 8:11. See? this passage says, kingship's not so bad. But 1 Kings 5: 13-14 says "king Solomon raised a levy out of all Israel; and the levy was thirty thousand men. And he sent them to Lebanon, ten thousand a month by courses: a month they were in Lebanon, and two months at home: and Adoniram was over the levy." That sounds not so fun for Israel. Especially when we see the Israelites stoned Adoniram to death as soon as they thought they could get away with it.

And if indeed Israelites were never put to levy, where did this come from? "And Jeroboam and all the congregation of Israel came, and spake unto Rehoboam [Solomon's son], saying, 'Thy father made our yoke grievous: now therefore make thou the grievous service of thy father, and his heavy yoke which he put upon us, lighter, and we will serve thee.'" (1 Kings 12: 3-4). Huh? I thought the Israelites were eating, drinking, and being merry "all the days of Solomon"? (4:25). There's something screwy here, and it's not the result of our historian suddenly going senile.

When the congregation of Israel addresses this demand to Solomon's successor, the old men counsel him: "If thou wilt be a servant unto this people this day, and wilt serve them, and answer them, and speak good words to them, then they will be thy servants for ever." But the young men say, "Thus shalt thou speak unto this people that spake unto thee, saying, 'Thy father made our yoke heavy, but make thou it lighter unto us; thus shalt thou say unto them, My little finger shall be thicker than my father's loins. And now whereas my father did lade you with a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke: my father hath chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions.' " Rehoboam followed the young men's advice and the rest was history: Adoniram, the chief of forced labor, was stoned and the chopping in half of the baby -- something only threatened by Solomon, but done by Israel -- became a reality in the kingdom.

As anyone reading the Bible in a Presbyterian church knows, this is the point: old men are always wise, and calm, and right. Young men are impetuous and wrong. But what is less noticed is what the old men are actually saying. Stripped of the gloss, their advice is: "Lie to them this day like your father did, promise them the moon, and you will fool them into serving you for the rest of your life." The young men's advice was a problem, only because it was too honest: "Tell them the truth: Solomon was worse than David, and I'll be worse than Solomon."

Truthfulness is the issue here: the truthfulness of history. In Solomon's reign, Jeremiah for the first time appeals to the famous unimpeachable sources that ritually conclude the account of each reign: "And the rest of the acts of Solomon, and all that he did, and his wisdom, are they not written in the book of the acts of Solomon?" and the book of the kings of Israel? and the book of the kings of Judah? Usually this is read as a naive appeal to royal documents. "See? I'm not making this up!" But it is curious that the content of the book thus summarized, even when the king is painted by Jeremiah in the most savagely negative terms, is always positive: "all his wisdom . . . and his might . . . and his wars . . . and his buildings" and so on. Again, I emphasize: this disjunction is not the result of a senile, aphasic author who can't remember what he wrote.

What's the problem? That people lie. And especially lie about what the word of God is. Like in 1 Kings 13, a man of God comes to denounce Jeroboam for making golden calves (Solomon took them back to Egypt for horses, Jeroboam for idols). He was told to go straight home without eating or drinking. But an old prophet (one of those old men again), came to the man of God* and cleverly said that God had changed his mind. The young man was fooled by the old man's worldly cleverness: "'I am a prophet also as thou art; and an angel spake unto me by the word of the LORD, saying, Bring him back with thee into thine house, that he may eat bread and drink water.' But he lied unto him." He LIED -- and the man of God died.

This is the whole point of the reference to the annals of Solomon: they LIE. "You want to know why I wrote all about this stuff about carefree happiness under Solomon, when the people were groaning under the forced levy (and it's the same word used of Pharoah's levy)? Because I read it in the king's own propaganda, THAT's why." These annals tell a lie, a fantasy, a dream about the carefree life under Solomon. Just as they tell lies about the wonderful kings and their might and their wars and their monuments, all the way to Zedekiah and exile. A lie that a king could break every law of the king in the Torah and God would approve. And they write that lie into their histories. Jeremiah was well aware of the lying pen of the scribes: "How can you say, 'We are wise, and the law of the LORD is with us'? But behold, the lying pen of the scribes has made it into a lie." (Jer. 8:8).

And why do these annals suddenly get mentioned under Solomon and not under David? Especially when the annals of Solomon are all fantastic boasting compared to the true story under David? Crucial to interpreting this question is the fact that the very author of the Deuteronomistic History, either Jeremiah or his scribe Baruch, was a priest of Anathoth, the home town of the descendants of Abiathar, last of the Elid priests (cf. 1 Kings 2:26 and Jer. 1:1) . Under David, the family of Eli was there to tell the truth, and the result is the extraordinary narrative of 1 Samuel 1-1 Kings 2. With their exile in Anathoth, the way is free for the lying pen of the scribes, and the result is pure fantasy. When Jeremiah refers to the annals of the kings of Israel and Judah, his aim isn't to back up his own history; his aim is to contrast his Torah-true history with the propaganda of the kings and the Zadokite priests. And that's why the theme of replacement is suddenly replaced: because no one as honest and humble as Jeremiah's ancestor Eli is there to hear the Lord's Word prophesying it.

And yet --, and yet --, there it is in 1 Kings: Solomon's extraordinary prayer of 1 Kings 9. And the presence of the Lord in the temple, just as it was in tabernacle (cf. 1 Kings 8:10-11 to Ex. 40:34). And Solomon's recognition of the possibility of exile, and the need for a mediating place between man and God. Solomon's striving and searching creates this thing. Just when you think Jeremiah is a straight forward partisan paleo-conservative, railing against Lincoln and Roosevelt in the name of preserving the old constitution that kept a sharp distinction between armed Israelites and Canaanites doing forced labor, he makes it impossible for you to read him that way. He who gives us Samuel's speech against kingship also sums up the age of Judges by saying, "In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit." I can't sum up Jeremiah's "point," his "application," his "take home message" -- apart from saying that all these things happened to Israel, and things often aren't what they seem, and the histories often lie.

*In the Deuteronomistic History, a "man of God" is always good, but a "prophet" is frequently very bad.

Joab

To continue on with my reflections on the Deuteronomistic history, I finished 2 Samuel, with the coda of 1 Kings 1, on Monday. After reading it, I read Matthew Henry's commentary as a representative of typical Christian interpretation. All of which confirmed my existing impression that 1) Joab gets an incredibly bad rap in typical Christian commentary; 2) that David is a highly ambivalent figure (and no, I don't mean just with the standard Uriah-Bathsheba story, the only aspect of David's history ever paid attention to by Christians today); and 3) the whole thing is a lot more like Three Kingdoms (which I finished for the third time on Saturday) than the Gospels.

(Interestingly, Jewish midrash on Joab is much more favorable than Christian commentary. Compared to them, the "critical" position discussed at the end simply assumes a flat-footedly unironic reading of the history).

Quick version: Joab is Zhuge Liang, David is Liu Bei, and the killing of Abner is like the occupation of Sichuan and the seizing of Liu Zhang's land.

In Three Kingdoms, the turning point comes when the brilliant, single-minded advisor Zhuge Liang insists that his leader Liu Bei follow the entreaties of the local officials and by betraying his host and kinsman, Liu Zhang, seize Sichuan as a base. Liu Bei's acquiescence marks the end of Liu Bei's political innocence and his realization that full integrity is in reality incompatible with founding a new regime. David's acquiescence in Joab's murder of Abner has the same significance. And in both cases, the ruler's tears of regret, however sincere, are secondary to his acceptance of the fruits of the betrayal.

The idea that Abner's survival would have been compatible with David ruling in actuality is simply absurd; having disposed of Ishbosheth, Abner would have soon disposed of David the same way. And of course the fact that Abner humiliating Ishbosheth by taking one of Saul's concubines is the very same thing that Solomon executed his half-brother Adonijah for merely proposing only confirms it. Joab's betrayal by David (who slyly waited to have his son Solomon do deed) is only the mirror image of the betrayals Joab had to commit to build David's kingdom.

What is the archetypal image of David's rise and rule, almost from the beginning? It is him mourning over the immensely convenient death of every rival, and so winning over the rival's people. The pattern starts with Nabal and Abigail, continues with David mourning the death of Saul and Jonathan that brought him to power in Judah, continues with him mourning the death of Abner, and Absalom, and Amasa. While it was the Philistines who do the job on Saul and Jonathan, and Joab who was the man stuck with the job of whacking Abner, Uriah, Absalom, and Amasa, God Himself was the hatchet man in the first archetypal case, that of Nabal. Regardless of the mechanics, Joab is a man who has identified himself with God's purpose as He founds the Davidic dynasty: that while David will keep his hands clean, all those who stand between him and the throne are doomed. (Not to speak of that opponent's wife and people being made over to David.)

Another facet is Joab's position (along with the priest Abiathar) as the leader of the old Israelites, as opposed to the purely royal and heavily non-Israelite establishment coalesced around the David's royal establishment, with his Cherethite and Pelethite guards, the mysterious Jerusalem priest Zadok, and Bathsheba, the former wife of the Hittite Uriah and her son Solomon. It is thus no accident that it is Joab alone, not Nathan or any other prophet, who speaks against David's plan to conduct a census and hence to tax Israelite and non-Israelite together without any reference to the old tabernacle tax. (The coronation of Solomon was the nightmare come true for the palaeo-conservatives of ancient Israel -- an alliance of immigrants, alien mercenaries, new-fangled big-city religion, and royal taxation agents.)

So who was right? Joab or Benaiah, Adonijah or Solomon? Abiathar or Zadok? Well, I prefer what the reactionary Ariq-Böke said when his defiance of his progressive brother Qubilai Qa'an reached its bankruptcy:

When he arrived at the Court of the Qa'an orders were given for a large body of troops to be stationed there, and the Qa'an ordered him [i.e. Ariq Böke] to make his submission. Now it is their custom in such cases to cast the door of the tent over the shoulders of the evil-doer. He made submission covered in this manner and after a while was given permission and entered. He took his stand among the bitikchis [scribes]. The Qa'an looked at him for a time and was moved with brotherly feeling and sorrow. Ariq Böke wept and tears came to [his brother] the Qa'an's eyes also. He wiped them and asked: "Dear brother, in this strife and contention were we in the right or you?" Ariq-Böke answered: "We were then and you are today" (Successors of Genghis Khan, p. 261).

The dynasty must be founded, and Joab has do wield the hatchet necessary to found it, so that the founder David may have clean hands. And the dynasty once founded must evolve beyond the narrow rural provincialism, and the hoar head of Joab and his militiamen must go down in blood before the Jerusalem temple-state. He was right then and Solomon is right now. And Jeremiah, descendant of the rejected priest Abiathar, who wrote the book, weeps for him and for Judah.

But it will not surprise anyone familiar with the political style preferred by those Protestant pastors who like to talk politics that their commentaries are always written in a pile-on delight in partisanship, and never in tears.

I doubt any one will read this, but it helped clarify my thoughts. The fact that Joab's story, utterly absorbing in the Bible, is unknown, is a testimony that the Deuteronomistic History, Jeremiah's story of the rise and fall of a kingdom, is today read as anything but that of the rise and fall of a kingdom.

"Israel, why weepest thou? and why eatest thou not? and why is thy heart grieved? am not I better to thee than ten kings?"

The Advent season is always misplaced for me. The period from Thanksgiving to about a week before Christmas is always filled with the finals and decisions that come from the end of the semester. Nor do we do big decorating in my house.

But on the first Sunday of Advent, I found myself reading 1 Samuel, and realized that this time I had stumbled on powerful Advent reading. (Now why haven't I written about this before? Go read that first paragraph again, please.) As many know, Hannah's song is the model for Mary's Magnificat:

And Hannah prayed, and said,
My heart rejoiceth in the LORD, mine horn is exalted in the LORD: my mouth is enlarged over mine enemies; because I rejoice in thy salvation.
There is none holy as the LORD: for there is none beside thee: neither is there any rock like our God.
Talk no more so exceeding proudly; let not arrogancy come out of your mouth: for the LORD is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed.
The bows of the mighty men are broken, and they that stumbled are girded with strength.
They that were full have hired out themselves for bread; and they that were hungry ceased: so that the barren hath born seven; and she that hath many children is waxed feeble.
The LORD killeth, and maketh alive: he bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up.
The LORD maketh poor, and maketh rich: he bringeth low, and lifteth up.
He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes, and to make them inherit the throne of glory: for the pillars of the earth are the LORD's, and he hath set the world upon them.
He will keep the feet of his saints, and the wicked shall be silent in darkness; for by strength shall no man prevail.
The adversaries of the LORD shall be broken to pieces; out of heaven shall he thunder upon them: the LORD shall judge the ends of the earth; and he shall give strength unto his king, and exalt the horn of his anointed.

A few years ago, I read Robert Polzin's reading of 1 Samuel, Samuel and the Deuteronomist. In one way it's a very typical inter-testamental exegesis delighting in irony (that is, any disjunction between surface meaning and deep meaning), but in another way it's very UN-inter-testamental, preferring ambiguous characters to clearly good or evil, and deeply involved in questions of narrative voice. (More on these features of inter-testamental Bible reading here.) In his reading Samuel emerges as a profoundly ambiguous figure, responsible for Saul's destruction. I don't agree with all his readings -- in part because as a Christian I read it all in the context of a different canon, that includes the Gospels -- but as the blurb for another volume of his says, having read his work, I can't read 1 Samuel the same way again.

Let's go back to Hannah. Did you notice the part at the end? About the king and the anointed? The odd part of that is of course Hannah is singing this at the time of the Judges, when Israel has no king. Higher critics explain this, of course, by saying that this psalm is a monarchic-era psalm retrojected to the time of Hannah. Or that the song is actually about Saul: Hannah says in 1:27 that she "asked for" (sha'ul) a son, and sha'ul is the Hebrew of Saul. So "really" the song is about Saul.

Polzin follows an entirely different tack -- a literary one. What is the author trying to say here? Remember the context: traditionally Joshua to 2 King (minus Ruth which was part of the Writings) were all one book. Polzin follows Noth's identification of this as one work with Deuteronomy, a single history beginning with Moses and concluding with the destruction of Judah. The book is unified by language and themes that form a history and a meditation on the Israel's experience with the Word of God and the monarchy.

So back to Hannah: this song is a foreshadowing of monarchy, of Israel's desire for a king. And why? To have triumph over her enemies, to be able to sing: Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child: for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the LORD (Is. 54:1). Her enemy is Penninah because Penninah had children and Hannah had none, just as the nations had kings and Hannah had none.

Hannah's lord tried to comfort her, saying "Hannah, why weepest thou? and why eatest thou not? and why is thy heart grieved? am not I better to thee than ten sons?" but she would not be comforted. She must have sons; she will not bear to be bested by her rival. And so the theme of the work from 1 Samuel to 2 Kings is set: Israel must have a king, she will not bear to be bested by the rival nations. And all along the Lord speaks to her "Israel, why weepest thou? and why eatest thou not? and why is thy heart grieved? Am not I better to thee than ten kings?" And Israel's stubborn refusal to listen to this gentle persuasion is the beginning of the Messianic promise. (Just as Israel was right when she protested: "Let me not hear again the voice of the LORD my God, neither let me see this great fire any more, that I die not" Deut. 18:16).

And so she bears Samuel. One might think (with the higher critics) that there
has been a mistake here, that Samuel is not a king. But no mistake has been made here. For we soon see the theme: the priest Eli has two evil sons, and God pronounces judgment on him to condemn his sons and overthrow the priestly dynasty of Eli. Israel had been ruled by a priest with at the ark. And in 1 Samuel 4, the promise is fulfilled. The priest's family is struck down, and the "glory has departed from Israel." After comic adventures among the Philistines, the ark ended up in a family of Judeans, Abinadab and Eleazer his son, while Israel mourned the absence of the Lord (1 Sam. 7:2-3).* Who then takes up the mantle of authority? Samuel, son of Elkanah, who is an Ephraimite, who judges Israel, holding both religious and political authority simultaneously.

In other words, literarily, 1 Samuel has cued us to respond to Samuel's exaltation as a proto-kingship, a simultaneous exercise of priestly, prophetic, and political authority. And so when Samuel makes his sons rulers after him (1 Sam 8:1-3), we can hardly be surprised -- he is already a dynastic ruler.

And we know what will happen: he too will be replaced, just as Eli was replaced. And the new replacement is introduced in just the same way Elkanah was introduced (compare this passage: Now there was a man of Benjamin, whose name was Kish, the son of Abiel, the son of Zeror, the son of Bechorath, the son of Aphiah, a Benjamite, a mighty man of power: And he had a son . . . to this: Now there was a certain man of Ramathaimzophim, of mount Ephraim, and his name was Elkanah, the son of Jeroham, the son of Elihu, the son of Tohu, the son of Zuph, an Ephrathite: And he had two wives . . .)

Now we have all been primed by everything we read outside the text to see the people's demand for a king as unequivocally bad, when they demand of Saul, "now make us a king to judge us like all the nations." Samuel then is unequivocally good. After all, as Americans we know that monarchy is bad, and that knowledge is essential to reading Scripture. And after all as heirs of the Greeks we know that the "regime question" (i.e. what's the best type of government, in the abstract) is the most important question we can ask. This passage MUST be about republic vs. monarchy, because that's what we want to know.

But is that what the text is cuing us to hear? After all the people once before demanded an intermediary, in Deuteronomy 18, and the Lord approved. And Hannah asked for a king, and she received one. And when Samuel as a small boy told Eli that his family was rejected, he said quietly "It is the LORD: let him do what seemeth him good."

But Samuel refuses to accept this! He is angry with the people! God tells him "Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them. According to all the works which they have done since the day that I brought them up out of Egypt even unto this day, wherewith they have forsaken me, and served other gods, so do they also unto thee." Well, we can read God in two different ways here, as a passive-aggressive figure who says one thing but means another, or we can see Him as a figure who, while knowing the people's hearts, has determined before hand what He would do. So how does Samuel read him? The first way!

And Samuel heard all the words of the people, and he rehearsed them in the ears of the LORD.

And the LORD said to Samuel, Hearken unto their voice, and make them a king. And Samuel said unto the men of Israel, Go ye every man unto his city.

God doesn't really mean what he says! He's just complaining! He not actually expecting me to do anything about it! So Samuel sends the people away. Not until he meets Saul, is he willing to anoint his successor, and even then, only secretly.

Well there is much more to say here, but suffice it to say that in listening to 1 Samuel he hear Hannah singing the carol:

O Come, O Come Emmanuel and ransom captive Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here until the Son of God appear.

But we will also hear the doubts: will the existing dynasty accept the voice of the people? Or use the sins of the people to ignore their voice? And will this new dynasty, born of a mother-to-be's triumphant receipt of a child-king, become a corrupt worldly kingship (whether it has the name like Saul's or doesn't like Samuel's)? And will we then wish there had never been kingship in Israel?

* One can see here the narrower sense of Israel excluding Judah, the biggest of the tribes, which was always somewhat separate.

A Curious Passage from Joshua on the Environment

A Christian discussion of the environment will usual start with Genesis 1-3, make copious use of the word "steward" and move on from there. It is curious, though, that there is only one passage I know of which gives specific, hand's on advice on how to deal with an problem in a way that takes account of the environment. I've never seen it referred to in that context, so I'll talk about it here.

Here was the problem: the tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim were given land in the forested hills and in the lowlands of Canaan. The uplands were hard to farm because of the trees, while the lowlands were the richest lands and had long been farmed. But, the Canaanites (with, historical research suggests, their Egyptian garrisons) occupied the lowlands and were hard for the Hebrews to dispossess. (A big irony is noted by Barry Beitzel in his Moody Bible Atlas, that distribution of Jews in Israel today and in the Judges period is almost exactly inverse. With the exception of the Gaza Strip, the Jews of modern Israel settled almost entirely the Canaanite/Philistine/Egyptian lowlands, while the Jews of pre-Davidic Israel settled almost exclusively the Palestinian lands of the West Bank, the Nazareth area of Galilee, and Jordan.)

So much of their allotment was inaccessible. What to do? Here is Joshua's advice from Joshua 17:

And the children of Joseph spake unto Joshua, saying, "Why hast thou given me but one lot and one portion to inherit, seeing I am a great people, forasmuch as the LORD hath blessed me hitherto?"

And Joshua answered them, "If thou be a great people, then get thee up to the wood country, and cut down for thyself there in the land of the Perizzites and of the giants, if mount Ephraim be too narrow for thee."

And the children of Joseph said, "The hill is not enough for us: and all the Canaanites that dwell in the land of the valley have chariots of iron, both they who are of Bethshean and her towns, and they who are of the valley of Jezreel."

And Joshua spake unto the house of Joseph, even to Ephraim and to Manasseh, saying, "Thou art a great people, and hast great power: thou shalt not have one lot only; But the mountain shall be thine; for it is a wood, and thou shalt cut it down: and the outgoings of it shall be thine: for thou shalt drive out the Canaanites, though they have iron chariots, and though they be strong."

So here's Joshua's answer: first clear the hill country by cutting down the forests. Then you will get stronger and can eventually subdue the Canaanites (as happened during the days of the monarchy).

This is also a nice illustration of the peculiar mix of confirmation and incongruities that reading the Bible against archeology gives. As I mentioned before, the Late Bronze-Iron Age transition (what I would correlate with the Deborah age of the Biblical record) is marked by a dramatic increase in dispersed settlements in the upland areas, establishing the Israelite distribution pattern. This reference to clearing the upland forests and then dominating the lowlands is archaeologically confirmed; that is indeed how Israel grew (The upland nature of Israel was observed by those around: see 1 Kings 20:23 And the servants of the king of Syria said unto him, Their [i.e. Israel's] gods are gods of the hills; therefore they were stronger than we; but let us fight against them in the plain, and surely we shall be stronger than they. Cf. Judges 1:19: And the LORD was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.)

But as Donald Redford would undoubtedly note, the "Canaanites" here are, if this account is to be fitted into any plausible historical framework, ruled by the Egyptians of the New Kingdom. So how come Egyptians aren't mentioned? Huh? And the iron chariots seem anachronistic as well. What we seem to have is an account in which real historical realities are being phrased in language that makes sense to the writers, probably in the seventh century.

But back to the environment. Here is a case where clearing forests is seen as a proper response to lacking farmland. Presumably, if we wish to turn to the Bible for teaching on environmental issues, this passage should be front and center.

Cintamani Government, Christian Style

The only ruler to whom the sixth century French historian Gregory of Tours gives unmixed praise is Emperor Tiberius (ruled 574-582) -- the ruler in Constantinople. He introduces him thus: "Tiberius was a just and charitable man, equitable in his dealings, successful in war [no word on whether these successes fit "just war theory"] and, what is more important than all his other good qualities [take that, "wise Turk" afficianados!], a true Christian" (p. 234-35).

Later on, Gregory describes in more detail his rule:

He distributed among the poor much of the treasure which [the previous emperor] Justin had amassed, and the Empress frequently rebuked him for reducing the state to bankruptcy. 'What I have taken so many years to save,' she used to say to him, 'you are busy squandering in a prodigal way, and without losing much time about it, either.' 'As long as the poor receive alms and those whom we capture are ransomed,' Tiberius would answer, 'our treasury will never be empty. This is the great treasure, as our Lord explained: 'But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal.' Let us indeed lay up for the needy in heaven a share of what God has given to us, so that the Lord may deign to give us increase in this world.' As I have told you, Tiberius was a great Christian and a faithful one: as long as he continued to take pleasure in distributing alms to the poor our Lord went on providing him with more and more to give.

One day when he was walking through the palace he noticed on the paved floor a marble slab carved with the Cross of Christ. 'Your Cross, O Christ,' he cried, 'is marked on our foreheads and on our breast as a sign of protection, and here we are walking on it.' He ordered the flagstone to be dug up immediately and removed from where it was. When they had prised it up and it stood on end, they found a second one underneath, marked with the same sign. They told Tiberius what had happened and they had the second flagstone lifted. Underneath they found a third one, and Tiberius made them that up, too. Beneath it, they found a vast hoard of treasure, amounting to more than a hundred thousand pounds of gold. This was taken out of the ground and, as his custom was, Tiberius was able to make even more generous contributions to the poor. Because of his humane charity, the Lord did not ever suffer Tiberius to be in want (pp. 283-84).

High-octane prosperity gospel among sacramental Catholics, taking the politics of Jesus seriously, refusing to water down the Sermon on the Mount -- the possible titles of this little snippet are endless. But I chose to highlight this tale's exact structural identity with a similar Buddhist story of reckless generosity, which soon leads to the problem -- the supply of money dries up -- and the supernatural solution.

Unfortunately, the historians of the East Roman Empire know nothing of this story. Somehow the rulers are always more Christian on the other side of the fence.

Father and Ruler: Twin Foundations of Human Life?

There is no life without a father, no supports through life without a ruler. Yet for generations people say, "Loyal duty and filial piety are not equally perfectible." How can this possibly be true? Ruler and father provide the grand foundation for human ethics, loyalty and filial devotion constitute cardinal principles for vassals. How inconceivable that the two, rather than complements to be practiced together, might actually prove mutually harmful! The problem lies, quite simply, with whether the motivation is selfish or selflessly righteous: when acting selfishly, both virtues are diminished; when acting righteously, both virtues can be attained.

Should a son, if his father deploys armies against his ruler, follow his father or follow his ruler? I say, "It is enough that one's physical being honor its dwelling place, while one's ethical will abide by righteous principle." A person who physically dwells with the monarch should abide by the monarch; one who physically dwells with the father should abide by the father. The follower of a ruler must then decline his ruler's charge, indicating, "A son cannot injure his father, so I wish not to receive a command." He should protest to his father as well, "Can you not relinquish your army and revert to our ruler?" Then, if his ruler suffers defeat, the subject dies honorably for him; if his father falters, the son completes mourning duties for his father before resuming service to his monarch. The person who follows his father, on the other hand, must warn him, "As my ruler cannot be targeted for assault, can you not leave your army and revert to our ruler?" Then, if the ruler suffers defeat, he dies honorably for him; if his father fails, he submits to punishment and awaits the pardon of his ruler, resuming service after completing mourning for his father.

No person in ancient times understood filial devotion like Shun, none understood righteous principle like Confucius and Mencius -- men meticulous about ruler/subject, father/son relations. Had they tragically confronted such dilemmas, they would have acted only in this manner. With reference to Congjing and the Zhuangzong emperor, the former accepted death as the cost of abiding by his ruler -- an event to lament! (Ouyang Xiu, trans. Richard Davis, Historical Records of the Five Dynasties, p. 151).

This short essay encapsulates in brief form so many themes, I can only briefly touch on two of them here.

1) Are there real moral dilemmas? Is public virtue and private virtue the same thing? Here Ouyang Xiu states his emphatic belief that no, there are no real moral dilemmas and no there is only one virtue, which is appropriate for both public and private life. "Only after a man serves his parents with filial piety can he serve the ruler with filial devotion," he says elsewhere (p. 233). Can we dismiss this as merely the "Chinese" view? Can we say that not having ever heard the Machiavellian insight that private virtues can be public vices and vice versa, he was simply a dogmatic thinker put forth his ideas without any vivid experience of opposition. Obviously not since, the whole point of the essay is that many practical Chinese of his day were convinced that private and public morality did not coincide, that sometimes to be a good public official or general, one had to be a bad son (a rather extreme example of that is here).

As I've written before, Ouyang Xiu is typical of the Neo-Confucian in the intensity of his belief in the complete congruence of morality at all levels and his resulting emphasis on duty. (One of the most arresting examples of this is the life of Lian Xixian, from which a tidbit can be found here.) Sima Qian, on the other hand, is much more willing to admit the idea that public and private morality might not be totally congruent, or that what is right might be adjusted to some degree according to circumstances.

2) Is government something that appeared late in the history of humanity, an invention or formation of the bronze age, or is it something as fundamental as fatherhood? Ouyang Xiu expresses here the assumption that government is necessary for life and equally fundamental. Ibn Khaldun, the famous fourteenth century Arab historian thought the same:

Consequently social organization is necessary to the human species. Without it the existence of human beings would be incomplete. God's desire to settle the world with human beings and to leave them as His representatives on earth would not materialize. This is the meaning of civilization . . .

When mankind has achieved social organization, as we have stated, and when civilization in the world has thus become a fact, people need someone to exercise a restraining influence and keep them apart, for aggressiveness and injustice are in the animal nature of man. The weapons made for the defense of human beings against the aggressiveness of dumb animals do not suffice against the aggressiveness of man to man, because all of them possess those weapons. Thus something else is needed for defense against the aggressiveness of human beings toward each other. It could not come from outside [the human race], because all the other animals fall short of human perceptions and inspiration. The person who exercises a restraining influence, therefore, must be one of themselves. He must dominate them and have power and authority over them, so that no one of them will be able to attack another. This is the meaning of royal authority*.

It has thus become clear that royal authority is a natural quality of man which is absolutely necessary to mankind. The [Greek] philosophers mention that it also exists among certain dumb animals, such as the bees and the locusts . . . . However, outside of human beings, these things exist as the result of natural disposition and divine guidance, and not as the result of an ability to think or to administer (Ibn Khaldun, trans. Franz Rosenthal, The Muqaddimah, pp. 46-47).

It is one of the major changes in modern thought since the nineteenth century that very few would no assert that royal authority (=sovereignty) is a "natural quality of man which is absolutely necessary to mankind." Ibn Khaldun recognized, as Ouyang Xiu would as well, that there were places where sovereign authority was weak or even virtually absent, yet he did not think that such places were the remnants of mankind's original condition (the legendary "hunter-gatherers" that are our touchstone of natural humanity) but aberrant examples under unusual conditions. One can only speculate about the immense importance of this assumption, that government is some late appearance on the human stage, not part of essential human nature, to the nineteenth and twentieth century libertarian and insurrectionist theories of government.

Ironically, the notions of the eons of government-less "hunter-gatherer" existence defining human nature was first created by anthropologists, and yet the whole enterprise of such deductions about human society in the prehistoric period (for that is what they are -- deductions) has been declared to be an illusion by more than one prominent anthropologist. If that is the case then the viewpoint of Ouyang Xiu and Ibn Khaldun may be worth a new look.

*That is, sovereignty (which Ibn Khaldun knew only in the monarchic form).

In Honor of Trinity Sunday

Yesterday was Trinity Sunday, and the Athanasian Creed was read. Now as has long been known, the Athanasian Creed was not actually written by St. Athanasius (AD 293-373). Actually it probably first was used in Gaul around AD 500.

Gaul? AD 500? As you may have guessed, then, it has something to do with Gregory of Tours and his History of the Franks. He does not mention the creed itself, but he illustrates the environment in which it was made. The Franks made their mark in post-Roman history by converting to Orthodoxy/Catholicism. Based around modern Paris, their king Clovis then used that orthodox catholic confession to win support from the Gallo-Roman elite for driving out from southern France the Gothic kings of Spain who professed the Arian faith. So Gregory of Tours was a supporter, at least nominally, of the Catholic and Orthodox Frankish kings against the Arian Gothic kings based in Spain. Arianism may have been kaput among the Latin speaking populations of the West, but among the new barbarian monarchs and their supporters among the native Latins it was still a going concern.

Gregory records a number of theological debates, including one with an Arian and another with a Frankish king who had a new "compromise" position. Here is one debate, in honor of Trinity Sunday:

As envoy to Chilperic [a Frankish king], King Leuvigild [of Spain, a Goth] sent Agilan, a man of low intelligence, untrained in logical argument, but distinguished by his hatred of our Catholic faith. Tours was on his route and he took advantage of this to attack me [i.e. Gregory, as the bishop of Tours] concerning my beliefs and to assail the dogmas of the Church.

"The bishops of the early Church made a foolish pronouncement," he said, "when they asserted that the Son was equal to the Father. How can He be equal to the Father, when He says: My Father is greater than I? It is not right that the Son should be considered equal to he Father when He Himself admits that He is less, when it is to the Father that He complains about the miserable manner of His death, when at the very moment of His death He commends His spirit to the Father, as if He Himself were completely powerless. Surely it is quite obvious that He is less than the Father, both in power and in age!"

In reply to this, I asked him if he believed that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and if he admitted that He was the wisdom of God, the light, the truth, the life, the justice of God. Agilan answered, "I believe that the Son of God was all those things."

Then I said: "Tell me now, when was the Father without wisdom? When was He without light, without life, without truth, without justice? Just as the Father could not exist without these things, so He could not exist without the Son. These attributes are absolutely essential to the mystery of the Godhead. Similarly the Father could hardly be called the Father if He had no Son. When you quote the Son as having said: My Father is greater than I, you must know that He said this in the lowliness of the flesh, which He had assumed so that He might teach you that you were redeemed not by His power but by His humility. You must also remember, when you quote the words, My Father is greater than I, that He also says in another place, I and my Father are one. His fear of death and the fact that He commended His spirit are a reference to the weakness of the flesh, so that, just as He is believed to be very God, so may He be believed to be very man."

Agilan answered, "He who does what another commands is less than the other; the Son is always less than the Father because He does the will of the Father, whereas there is no proof that the Father does the will of the Son."

"You must not understand," I replied, "that the Father is the Son and that the Son is in the Father, each subsisting in one Godhead. If you want proof that the Father does the will of the Son, consider what our Lord Jesus Christ says when He comes to raise Lazarus
-- that is, if you have any faith in the Gospel at all: Father I thank thee that thou hast heard me. And I know that thou hearest me always, but because of the people which by I said it, that they may believe that thou has sent me. When He comes to His Passion, He says: And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. Then the Father replies from Heaven: I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again. Therefore the Son is equal to the Godhead, and not inferior in anything else. If you admit that the Son is God, you must agree that He is perfect and that He lacks nothing. If you deny that He is perfect, then you do not admit that He is God."

Agilan answered: "It was after He was made man that He began to be called the Son of God; there was a time when He was not."

"Listen to David speaking in the name of the Lord," I replied, "Out of the womb have I borne thee, before the morning star.* John the Evangelist says: In the beginning was the Words, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, by whom all things were made. You are so blinded by your poisonous heresy that you do not understand the Godhead."

Agilan answered: "Do you believe that the Holy Ghost is God and do you maintain that He is equal to the Father and the Son?"

"In the Three there is one will, one power, one action," I replied, "one God in Trinity and three Persons in unity. There are three Persons, but one kingdom, one majesty, one power, one omnipotence."

Agilan answered: "The Holy Ghost, who is equal to the Father and the Son, according to you, is clearly less than either, for we read that He was promised by the Son and sent by the Father. No one promises anything which is not in his power, and no one sends any person who is not his own inferior. Jesus himself says in the Gospel: If I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you."

I replied, "The Son does well to say before His Passion that if He does not return in victory to His Father, having redeemed the world with His own blood and having prepared a habitation in the heart of man, the Holy Ghost, which is God, cannot come down from Heaven into a heart which is idolatrous and spotted with the stain of original sin. As Solomon says: The Holy Ghost will flee deceit.** As you hope for resurrection, do not speak against the Holy Ghost. As the Word of God puts it: Whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come."

Agilan answered, "God is He who sends; he who is sent is not God."

Then I asked him if he believed the doctrine of the Apostles Peter and Paul.

He answered: "I do believe."

"When the Apostle Peter accuses Ananias of behaving fraudulently over the field which he sold," I replied, "he asks: Why hath it seemed good to thee to lie to the Holy Ghost? Thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God. When Paul is differentiating between the dogmas of spiritual graces, he says, But all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to each man severally as he will. The man who achieves what he has set out to do is under an obligation to no one. [i.e. if the Holy Ghost has the freedom to distribute spiritual gifts as He wills, then he is not under obligation to the Father or Son.] As I have said already, you are absolutely wrong about the Holy Trinity and, what is more, the way your founder, Arius, met his end shows just how perverse and wicked your sect is."

Agilan answered, "You must not blaspheme against a faith which you yourself do not accept. You notice that we who do not believe the things which you believe nevertheless do not blaspheme against them. It is no crime for one set of people to believe in one doctrine and anotehr set of people to believe in another. Indeed, it is a proverbial saying with us that no harm is done when a man whose affairs take him past the altars of the Gentiles and the Church of God pays respect to both."

I realized what a fool the man was. "You are, I perceive," said I, "at once a defender of the Gentiles and a champion of the heretics. You not only defile the dogmas of the Church, but you also advocate the worship of pagan abominations. You would do much better to arm yourself with the faith which Abraham found near the oak tree, Isaac in the ram, Jacob in the stone, and Moses in the bush; the faith which Aaron wor in the ephod, which David knew when he danced with the timbrel, and which Solomon proclaimed by his wisdom; the faith which all the patriarchs and prophets, and the very Law itself, have celebrated in their oracular pronouncements and represented symbolically in their sacrifices; the faith which our own Martin, as is witnessed still today, possesses in his heart and manifests in his miraculous power. If you were converted to Catholicism, you would believe in the indivisible Trinity, you would be able to receive my blessing, your heart would be cleansed of the poison of false belief, and your sins would be washed away."

Agilan lost his temper and ground his teeth, almost as if he was going off his head. "May my soul leave the confines of my body," he muttered, "before I ever receive a benediction from a priest of your religion!"

"May the Lord never permit my religion or faith to grow so tepid," I answered, "that I waste His blessing upon dogs, or cast the sacredness of His precious pearls before filthy swine!"

At this Agilan gave up the discussion, rose to his feet, and marched out.

Some time later, when he was back again in Spain, he fell seriously ill: as a result he felt a compulsion to accept conversion to our religion (pp. 307-310).

This last note is crucial to understanding Gregory's point. What convinces heretics? The Bible? No, because even though all our arguments are based firmly on the Bible, the heretics are blinded and like Agilan will not listen to truth. What convinces heretics is Pentecostal power -- the direct and miraculous intervention of God. Arius seems wrong according to the Scriptures, but what really makes the case decisive is that how he died: his guts spilled out his anus in the lavatory (p. 135). He must be a heretic! After Agilan hears and denies all the arguments, he gets sick and has to believe. That is why of the witnesses of the Trinity, it is St. Martin who is placed in the last and best place: his miracle-working power is alive as Gregory speaks, through the relics in his church.

*An alternative reading from Psalm 110.
**In the Wisdom of Solomon, a deutero-canonical work.

"A Great Many Things Keep Happening"

A great many things keep happening, some of them good, some of them bad. The inhabitants of the different countries keep quarrelling fiercely with each other and kings go on loosing their temper in the most furious way. Our churches are attacked by the heretics and then protected by the Catholics; the faith of Christ burns bright in many men, but it remains lukewarm in others; no sooner are church buildings endowed by the faithful that they are stripped again by those who have no faith. However, no writer has come to the fore who has been sufficiently skilled in setting things down in an orderly fashion to be able to describe these events in prose or in verse.

Thus St. Gregory of Tours begins his History of the Franks, and it is, for my money, the most engaging beginning to any history book I have ever read. And despite the dull moments to be expected in 604 pages of small print, the rest of the book mostly lives up to this beguiling beginning.

Quoting from memory here, C.S. Lewis once began an essay like this (more or less).

Some people say that while the pagan finds no meaning in history, the Christian historians knows that all history has a direction, that it is going from Creation, and Fall, through Incarnation, Crucifixion, and Resurrection, to full and final Redemption. For the Christian historian, history has a purpose and a direction. To which I respond (says Lewis, if I remember aright), that most Christian historians aren't nearly that bad.

He goes on to point out that while the biggest possible picture may be plain to the Christian, getting from that to the hear and now, to the events actually recorded is something not at all plain. C.S. Lewis didn't mention him, but Gregory of Tours knew that long ago.

One barrier to proper appreciation is the widespread idea, rightly debunked by Walter Goffart, that Gregory is only telling the story of "barbarians." All those bad things keep happening, the conventional-minded historians say, because Rome has fallen. Implication: normally things don't fall apart. Gregory would not agree. All those bad things happen because that's what always happens. That's the way kings act. That's the way soldiers behave. And the rich -- that's what they do. And the poor -- well, what can you expect? But there's also normal life, which can be pleasant -- as long as you don't expect any moral improvement.

People talk a lot about "Constantinianism" and its pernicious effects. What about Gregory of Tours, bishop two centuries after Constantine? He's a man of influence and social power, scion of an old Senatorial family most of whose relatives were called saint this or that, confidant of kings on numerous occasions, and extoller of Clovis as Catholic against the Arian Goths. Isn't he a natural "baptize the current social order, bless the king's wars" kind of guy?

Not at all. In fact, he is shockingly "irresponsible," taking absolutely no responsibility for the continuance of government, and praising virtually none of its functions. Support the death penalty? If Gregory had his way all the prisons would all be emptied:

One night in the gaol at Clermont-Ferrand the chains holding the prisoners came undone by the intervention of God, the gates of the lock-up were unfastened, and they all rushed out to seek sanctuary in a church. Count Eulalius had them loaded with fresh chains, but no sooner had these been placed in position than they snapped asunder like brittle glass. Bishop Avitus pleaded for his prisoners to be released, and they were given their liberty and sent home (p. 553).

Torture is routine in every criminal investigation. Does Gregory ever speak against it? Of course not. But does he ever think releasing any criminal would be a bad idea? Of course not again.

As for taxes, he's always against them.

At the request of Bishop Maroveus King Childebert sent tax inspectors to Poitiers: Florentianus, Mayor of the Queen's Household, and Romulf, Count of hi own Palace. Their orders were to prepare new tax-lists and to instruct the people to pay the taxes which had been levied from them in the time of Childebert's father. Many of those who were on the lists had died, and, as a result, widows, orphans, and infirm folk had to meet a heavy assessment. The inspectors looked into each case in turn: they granted relief to the poor and infirm, and assessed for taxation all who were liable (p. 515).

Well that sort of responsible collaboration with the king was not Bishop Gregory's style -- and elsewhere his portrait of Bishop Maroveus shows a man seemingly uninvolved in the properly religious functions of his diocese. Here's Gregory's approach:

After this they came to Tours. When they announced that they wre about to tax the townsfolk, and that they had in their possession tax lists showing how the people had been assessed in the time of earlier kings, I gave them this answer: 'It is undeniable that the town of Tours was assessed in the days of King Lothar. The books were taken off to be submitted to the King. Lothar had them thrown in the fire, for he was greatly overawed by our Bishop, Saint Martin [dead by the way for about a 150 years, but throughout a living presence and the real hero of Gregory's history]. When Lothar died, my people swore an oath of loyalty to King Charibert, and he swore in his turn that he would not make any new laws or customs, but would secure to them the conditions under which they had lived in his father's reign. He promised that he would not inflict upon them any new tax-laws which would be to their disadvantage (pp. 515-16).

Well, some one of the townsfolk produced tax rolls for Tours, but by the power of Saint Martin, the malefactor died of a fever and

an official letter came back almost immediately, confirming the immunity from taxation of the people of Tours, out of respect for Saint Martin (p. 517).

Just war? Well, the Bretons keep raiding and sacking Frankish cities.

In this year the Bretons ravaged Nantes, Rennes, and the neighborhood. They stole the wine-harvest, destroyed the cultivated fields and carried off as slaves those who lived on the country estates. They kept none of the promises which they had made. Not only did they break their pledges, but they even stole property belonging to our Kings (p. 512).

Crusade time? No quite.

While these things were happening, the Bretons were busy ravaging the open country around Nantes and Rennes. King Guntram put Duke Beppolen and Duke Ebrachar in charge of an army, and ordered them to march against the Bretons. Ebrachar had an idea in his head that if he and Beppolen were to win a victory Beppolen would usurp a dukedom. He therefore started a quarrel, and the two enlivened the whole march by abusing, taunting, and cursing each otehr. Wherever they passed they burned, slew, and sacked, committing every crime in the calendar . . . . (p. 556).

With the ambiguous help of Bishop Regalis peace was patched up between Ebrachar and the sly Breton leader Waroch, and the Frankish army retreated.

As they passed through the Tours region they are said to have collected a great deal of booty and to have robbed a great number of people, for they caught the local inhabitants unawares.

But just when you thought justice unattainable, some else keeps happening:

Many of those who took part in this expedition went to King Guntram and alleged that Duke Ebrachar and Count Willachar had been bribed by Waroch to lead their troops to disaster. When Ebrachar appeared at court the King reproached him bitterly and ordered him to leave his presence. Count Willachar fled and went into hiding (p. 558).

Slavery? Taken for granted; not a word of abolitionism. But one time, two Frankish kings took hostages from the senatorial families. Some escaped, but Attalus the nephew of Saint Gregory (another saint and bishop, this time of Langres, great grandfather of our historian friend) was enslaved to a Frankish nobleman around Trier (in today's Germany) and made a groom. With the help of another slave, Leo, he escaped and after thrilling adventures got to Rheims:

They went in and found a man, whom they asked to tell them where the priest Paulellus lived. He gave them the necessary directions. As they crossed the city square, the bell rang for morning prayer, for it was the Lord's Day. They knocked at the priest's door and went in. Leo explained whose servant he was. 'My vision has come true, then,' said the priest. 'This very night I dreamed that two doves flew in and perched on my head. One was white and the other black.' Leo said to the priest: 'May the Lord grant us indulgence for [eating before communion on] His holy day. We beg you to give us something to eat. The fourth day is now dawning since we last tasted bread or meat.' The priest concealed them and gave them some bread soaked in wine. Then he went off to morning prayer. Later the Frank [i.e. the owner] put in an appearance, still looking for his two slaves. The priest told him a lie, and he went off once more. The priest was an old acquaintance of Saint Gregory. When they had eaten, the two slaves felt stronger. They stayed two days in the priest's house. Then they went on again and were brought before Saint Gregory. The Bishop was delighted when he saw them both. He wept on the neck of his nephew Attalus. He made Leo a freedman, and all his progeny, too, and he gave him a piece of land of his own on which he lived in freedom with his wife and children all the days of his life (p. 179).

And while Gregory hails King Clovis as a Catholic champion against the Arians, he concludes with such a story of hypocrisy, greed, and treachery on the part of the newly baptized king that makes it impossible to take unironically his concluding assertion that Clovis

walked before Him with an upright heart and did what was pleasing in His sight (p. 156).

But then again, Clovis always made sure to stop his ravages on the borders of Saint Martin's bishopric.

Gregory of Tours truly took no responsibility for Caesar: and that lack of responsibility included abdicating any responsibility whatsoever for social reform or melioration. His church advocated no positive social change, or progressive reform of the laws. That would come later, with the great reforming movements of the eleventh century to the present.

But he and his fellow bishops with few exceptions would harbor just about any escaped slave, plead with the King for just about any prisoner, argue if possible to have just about any community spared of taxes, and expect nothing but the worst whenever the King took up arms against marauding Bretons or peaceful Gothic heretics. This was his version of "Constantinianism". Because he took no responsibility for reforming the kings, he had no compunction about supporting any of their victims, and always told the truth about them, even of those whom he more or less liked (such as Guntram).

It was the earnest reformers who got slavery abolished and torture banned -- it is hard to say that the bishops of the early Middle Ages used all the opportunities they could for doing good. But abjuring reform had one attractive by-product -- it meant abjuring the hypocrisy that earnest reformers always embrace when the progressive regime they've have fought for finally becomes law. By accepting his world entirely as it was, he could tell the truth about it, not in bitterness but in love, indignation, and pity.