WOLD LIT MIDTERM ENG 230 I’m sorry this is so long. I was going to make a crossword puzzle out of it but ran out of time. Because it is so long, I eliminated the essay question. Please use another sheet of paper to record your responses in a column. Like this: 1. Answer 2. Answer I’m going to use Excel to help me to grade. Not all of the words are used. You are starting off with a bonus of 20 points. Good luck! Please email me if you find errors. Aegis Deus Hebrew Mimetic Purification Agonistic Decalogue Heel Monotheistic Ransom Anachronistic Deplorables Historicity Morality Rhapsodes Aniconic Diction Homer Muses Redactors Apologists Documentary Honey Oedipus Sheol Ark Dystopian Interiority Orality Shield Artifact Economy Idolatry Original Sin Similes Backside Elohim Ion Suppliants Bibles Elohist Iron Overdetermin ation Blood Enthusiasm Iron Age Blood atonement Blood money Babylonian Captivity Bronze Epic Israelites Epithets Jehovah Exodus Jesus Genesis Jews Gifts Kleos Golden Laws Golden Calf Levant Glory Literature Canaan Graven Manna Covenant Hamartia Meter Dark Ages Hebraisms Milk Bronze Age Bronze Age Collapse 1 Pagan Parataxis Paris Pathos (2x) Patriarchs Pentateuch Phoenicians Polytheistic Priestly Proem Prose Promised Tabernacle Tablets Theophanies Thetis Torah Trojan War Wrath Writing Yahweh WOLD LIT MIDTERM ENG 230 The Old Testament is also known as the ________ 1 Bible. In this collection of books, the Hebrew people are also known as _________ 2, because they descended from Jacob (and Abraham and Adam) who was renamed after Jacob brawls with a stranger (I imagine he looks like Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler) all night long on the road back to Canaan. The man turns out to be an angel of God, so Jacob is renamed “struggles with God.” All of his descendants, who are also the descendent of Abraham and Isaac, are referenced by this name. In the Hebrew Bible, God repeatedly promises his Chosen People the land of _________3, also known as the land of “________ 4 and _________ “5, an area which includes present day Israel, Palestine and parts of Syria and Lebanon. We see this promise made in both Genesis and Exodus, and throughout the OT, as part of God’s ______________ 6 with Abraham. Unfortunately, the “________ 7 land” was already inhabited by another people who in the Bible are the Israelites’ sworn enemies. Inherent wickedness and ___________ 8 are attributed to these people, who are, according to Genesis, descended from a cursed grandson of Noah (via Ham) by this same name. In Genesis and Exodus, Yahweh appears to dislike these people far more than the Egyptians (After all, why not give Egypt, also idolatrous pagans, to the Hebrew people?). In the OT there are numerous battles against these people, who occupy the land which God wants Israel to have. Their demise is all part of God’s plan. Interestingly, archeologists believe that these two Semitic peoples, the Israelites and the Canaanites, were once one and the same; only the Israelites, who were not initially _________________ 9 (think: “Thou shalt not have other gods before Me”), worshipped an invisible god by the name of _____________ 10 above all others, which set them apart from their Canaanite neighbors. Indeed, it is thought at one time both worshipped a supreme god named “El,” who was father of other gods, related to another name for “god” in Hebrew, ________. 11 This related name in the Hebrew Bible often appears in its plural form—“gods”---even though it is understood to be singular (The text in Genesis literally reads: “In the beginning gods created the heaven and earth . . . “). The portions of the Bible which reference God by this name are believed by scholars to be the oldest, and this is referred to as the ______________ 12 source (E for short). There are other indications in the Bible that the Hebrews originally believed in the existence of many gods, as with their pagan counterparts, the Greeks and the Canaanites, and only gradually over time came to believe in the existence of just one universal God. It might be argued that much like how the story of the __________ 13 functioned as a founding myth for the Greeks and also helped them to account for “what happened” to the ruined cities of Mycenae and Troy (_______ 14 lived close to Troy, and if he wasn’t blind he might have even seen them!). Similarly, the first part of the story of the __________ 15 depicts Egypt’s demise as a great power by successive plagues, loss of its slaves, and drowning of the Egyptian army in the Red Sea. Just as with the Iliad, it features a prolonged military campaign waged against enemies whose cities were--at least on paper-destroyed or occupied in accordance with a divine plan (archeologists say that these Canaanite cities were already destroyed and/or empty when the Israelites showed up on the scene, so the battles might not have actually happened). The OT served a similar purpose of a founding myth for the people of Israel--who were not referred to as _______ 16 until about the 6th century or later (which is also when “Yahweh” as the name for god fell out of use; you never hear anyone talking about Yahweh. . . ). Archeologically, it was in the power vacuum of a mysteriously diminished Egypt and the ruins of 2 WOLD LIT MIDTERM ENG 230 decimated cities of Canaan that the Israelites emerged as a nation. So too with the rise of the Greek city-states, who emerged out of the ruins of the Mycenaean Greek empire and its network of palacecities. When you understand the historical context, there is more similarity between these two “_______ 17 of the ancient world” than meets the eye. The ________ 18 of the Iliad indicates that the theme of the epic is the _________ 19. of Achilles but many its “books”---a book corresponds to a “scroll”---have nothing to do with Achilles at all. We also learn from this introductory section that there is a connection between the wrath of Achilles and plan of Zeus, but this connection is not explained in the poem. Indeed, the whole mythic backstory for the Iliad, including the Wedding of Peleus and _______ 20 and the Judgment of _______21--the prophesy given to Zeus that the offspring of Thetis and a god become greater than his father, and would dethrone him --are referenced only in passing. Why Zeus would want to kill Greeks and Trojans—his plan—is not explained either, but his desire to depopulate the earth as a motive for the Trojan War is mentioned in the materials that form the Greek ______ 22 Cycle , a collection of fragments of epic poems thought to have pre-dated the Iliad. In the OT, Yahweh is characterized as a wrathful God. Sin against his laws makes him angry, and the punishment is almost always death. In Exodus, Moses, who is quite old at the time of the Exodus, has moments of wrath as well, such as when he smashes the __________ 23. upon which the Ten Commandments have been inscribed by God’s own hand. Moses/Yahweh administer the death penalty to many of the people for breaking laws, such as for worshipping the Golden Calf or gathering wood on the Sabbath. It some cases it is not even clear that the people even knew they were violating the law at the time they committed their transgressions. Death by stoning or being driven through with a sword or spear is not uncommon in the OT. God kills or sickens many of his chosen people through plagues and battles, just as Zeus’s plan kills thousands of Greeks. Like the Greeks and the Trojans, the Israelites and the Canaanites are drawn into a war through divine interference. Now, just as archeologists assert the Israelites were actually former Canaanites, or descended from them after the latter’s culture collapsed at the end of the Bronze Age, there is no conclusive archeological evidence of millions of Hebrews having ever been enslaved in Egypt to build the great pyramids, of a slave uprising and a mass migration of millions out of it--which does somewhat throw into question the whole ___________ 24. of the Exodus story. However, it is believed by many archeologists, Egyptologists and scholars that the Hebrews may have been subjugated into farming and building projects in Canaan, which was a colony of Egypt at one time. There was a dramatic decline in political and economic power in Egypt as a result of the __________________25., and the Egyptians lost control of this area. In the Greek-speaking areas, an advanced and long stable Mycenaean civilization was so decimated by this same phenomenon that knowledge of writing was lost. This resulted in a period known as the Greek _____________ 26, which corresponds to the early Iron Age. Cultural knowledge was kept alive by traveling __________ 27, who preserved sacred history, the deeds of heroes, and religious myths in the form of songs, like the Iliad and Odyssey. These singer-poets had the ability to commit to memory tremendous amount of material and perform it back in a kind of rap or rhythmic beat known as ___________. 28. Without belief in an afterlife, being immortalized in a rhapsode’s song was a kind of eternal ______, 29 fame beyond the grave. 3 WOLD LIT MIDTERM ENG 230 Just as a kind of sacred history of men interacting with gods was preserved in song among Greeks, scholars have long searched for a Yahwehist epic which contains antecedents to Exodus account. They look for this because while it is believed that, just as with the Homeric epics, the oldest stories of the Bible reference events and places from the Bronze Age, but it was not written down until much later. There is no precedent for an oral tradition or literature being preserved in the ordinary ____________ 30. style which comprises Genesis and Exodus. In Exodus, the Ten Commandments are spoken by God to Moses on Mt. Sinai, but when God speaks the terrified people hear only thunder peels and horns blowing. The Ten Commandments are also known as the ______________ 31. Some of the Ten Commandments we read in Exodus may not be all that familiar to us, as they appear elsewhere in the Bible in slightly different form. Many translators modernize them, preferring to leave out the stuff about the sins of the fathers being visited upon the children, and lumping wives in with livestock and other possessions that “thou shalt not covet.” You might also be surprised to find differences between them in different religious denominations (Catholic vs. Protestant). You might also be surprised when reading Exodus that these Ten Commandments are followed up by many other divine commandments or ordinances, things like “You shall not boil a kid in his mother’s milk” or allow a witch to live; there are injunctions against wearing clothing of two different yarns, against tattoos, rules for how to compensate a slave for loss of a tooth or an eye, how to compensate a man if he or a family member is gored by an ox, how to compensate a man for injury to his wife that causes a miscarriage, emphasis on the fact that all first born males belong to (in terms of sacrifice) God--but sons can be redeemed (that is, compensation can be paid) to avoid sacrifice. Civil, criminal and religious laws are mixed together here. A huge part of the Books of Moses are just ______ 32. and not literature at all. Much of this legalistic and cultic material which comes after the Ten Commandments is attributed to later addition by P, the ___________ 33. Source. The first five Books of Moses, which are the first five books of the Bible, are also known as the __________, 34. meaning “five scrolls” in Greek, into which it was translated. They are also called “the first five books of Moses” because they are attributed to Moses. However, that attribution is highly unlikely, for one reason that Moses would have had to narrate his own death (in Numbers). One of the many challenges of teaching the Old Testament as_____________ ,35 rather than as sacred scripture, is impressing upon students, many of whom are familiarized with the Bible through Church, to approach the Hebrew Bible as a text that is complete in itself, rather than a prequel to the New Testament--which is a product of an entirely different culture, language and time period; to get students to “peel away the theology” and see what the text actually says, rather than layering it with received interpretations and doctrine, much of which was formulated by early Christian ___________, 36 who after the fall of Rome, struggled to reconcile the Old Testament with the New, and by doing so created Church doctrine. A few examples of this kind of theological understanding of the Hebrew Bible are: placing Jesus in the Garden of Eden, attributing the Fall of Man to the influence of a Fallen Angel named Satan who appears in the Garden as snake (in the Hebrew Bible, the snake on the garden of Eden is just one of God’s creatures, but is given no particular metaphysical importance), seeing the Fall as the cause of ____________ 37 (ancient Hebrews have no concept of that kind of sin), downplaying the OT’s emphasis on the need for ________________ 38 to purify/eliminate sin, and turning the whole Exodus story of wandering through the desert into an allegorical narrative about spiritual struggle/salvation, even 4 WOLD LIT MIDTERM ENG 230 though ancient Hebrews didn’t believe in, or have any concept of, an immortal soul or an afterlife in Heaven at the time Exodus was written. (To the ancient Hebrews ________ 39, not an immortal soul, is the sacred animating force of living things.) These approaches are not considered authoritative when it comes to Old Testament scholarship, which seeks to uncover the original meaning of the Hebrew text. Indeed, when an earlier text is interpreted in light of a later text, that approach is considered to be __________. 40. A similar error occurs when people inadvertently read back into the Iliad the story Achilles’ “immortality,” or his famous _________41, which came about in a later Greek myth. In the Iliad, Achilles is quite mortal, and as such, won’t venture out onto the battle field unless under the protective __________42 of a goddess, or else wearing his divine impenetrable armor. He knows he is fated to die young and isn’t in any hurry to realize this fate. Studying the Bible from a purely academic perspective, either as literature or as a literary ________ 43 (think of a pottery shard dug up out of the earth), also means being open to the idea that the Bible was written by many people over many time periods, and trying to place each piece into its historical context. Scholars believe that, at different points, newer material was woven into the old and blended into it. Those who took material from different sources and wove it into the fabric of existing material of the Bible are referred to as ____________. 44 The ______________ 45 hypothesis postulates that there are at least four distinct sources or documents (hint) which comprised the bulk of the material on which the first five books of the Hebrew Bible are based. They sources are identified as J, E, P and D--and sometimes R. So widely referenced is this theory that scholarly articles on the Bible often refer to J and E or JE without any explanation. According to this hypothesis, J stands for _____________________ 46, the Germanized name for Yahweh, and all of the source material which features him. Yahweh’s name is sometimes translated as “I am who I am.” Usually, when we speak of literature in the modern sense, we are speaking of a work by a single author; but in the case of the Hebrew Bible, even the oldest parts, Genesis and Exodus, appear to have had multiple authors whose priorities were not necessarily of a literary nature. While the ____________ 47 of the Hebrew Bible (that is, the extent to which it was intended to be read out loud or heard by audiences) is another area of scholarly exploration, the Iliad, was clearly composed to be performed in front of an audience. With the Iliad, the rhythm or meter, and poetic language employed---for example Homer’s use of ______________ 48 (example: Hector, “Tamer of Horses”), passionate speeches full of __________ 49 (attempts to move an audience to pity and tears), and long Homeric ____________ 50 (as with this comparison between Hector and a venomous snake) But as a snake waits for a man by his hole, in the mountains, glutted with evil poisons, and the fell venom has got inside him, and coiled about the hole he stares malignant, so Hector would not give ground but kept unquenched the fury within him and sloped his shining shield against the jut of the bastion.) give us a sense that Homer was trying to be poetic. We know from various accounts that the Greeks responded to the Iliad on an emotional level, crying at the end of it, which is what they enjoyed about it. (________, 51 in Plato’s Dialog by that name, suggests that his goal as a Homeric rhapsode is to get the audience to cry, and the more he got the audience to cry the more money he made). They enjoyed its 5 WOLD LIT MIDTERM ENG 230 excessive sentimentalism. Similarly, the storyline and deep meaning of Greek tragedies often seem subordinate the emotional response it is intended to produce (crying in sympathy), which Aristotle in his Poetics called a ______________52. That a doomed tragic hero such as __________ 53 “cannot escape his fate”, for example, is not intended to be a moral or the message—for who really knows his fate, or the will of the Gods, but a purely fictional character in a fictional world?—but is a literary device meant to evoke a mixture of “fear and pity” from aristocratic Greek audiences, who probably feared a fall from prominence themselves. What was good to a Greek audiences, who experienced the play in the moment, was the emotional release it afforded, not necessarily a moral message or sophisticated plot or deep philosophical meaning. Those who are led to ponder the “tragic flaw” (or what Aristotle named the ____________________ 54) of Greek protagonists and heroes must contend with the seeming lack of emphasis on personal responsibility in Greek literature. Kings and heroes such as Oedipus and Achilles are often portrayed as sympathetic victims of fate, even if they are in some way, by modern or even Greek standards, morally defective or culpable (such as, for example, killing a bunch of people in an act of pride and/or rage, and then forgetting all about it), whenever the fate which they are already fated to catches up with them. If they were doomed no matter what, and fate cannot be avoided, then what is the point? The outcome will be the same. Multiple causes (meddling gods, fate/destiny or bad behavior) resulting in the same outcome in Greek literature is a feature called ___________________ 55 Even “self-delusion” (see “ATE” in Greek) can and is often attributed to divine interference, making characters often seem rather puppet-like, and therefore more pitiable. Greek literature is full of _____________ 56 (pity-inducing scenes) 56, from where we get the word “pathetic.” Along with frequent attribution of emotional states to the influence of gods, the Greeks adhered to a belief in _____________ 57 (the god inside = en theos), so one’s “ecstatic” response to great song or music really is a kind of religious experience, which comes from lesser gods called ____________. 58 Aesthetic responses to beauty in music, poetry, craft and art is culturally valued among the Greeks as being closely connected to the divine. Not so much in the Hebrew culture, where there is an emphasis on ritual, purity and law as pathways to the divine. Hebrews never developed what archeologists call a “rich material culture.” In Hebrew culture, an object like the ____________ 59 of Achilles would not have been permitted, with all of its representations from life and nature. Prohibition against graven images of things in nature, particularly in metal, probably carried over into all sorts of ___________ 60 (Hint: What Aristotle described as the act or art of representing the real world in art and literature; imitative) activity, and may have retarded the development of both the visual and literary arts in Hebrew culture. Which leads to a second problem approaching the Bible as literature, which is that, on the face of things, it isn’t even all that literary, especially when read in translation (in all honest, the most literary or mystical parts of it—wordplay and puns, or double meanings—do not translate well into English). Intellectuals as far back as the 4th century Christian theologian St. Augustine, who read the Bible in Greek or Latin translation, complained, asking “Why is the Bible not more literary?” Why is it not a poem or written in meter (considered to be in a language more fitting for things divine or important), or written in a more formal or elevated _________ 61 (hint: synonym for speech)? Why is it not more like the Homer or Virgil? Why is its language so plain? Why is the OT not more like an epic? 6 WOLD LIT MIDTERM ENG 230 The character of God in Exodus was also questioned in antiquity. Many pagans preferred the character of Zeus to that of Yahweh. They questioned, for example, why a good God not want his creatures to have knowledge, and why he would try to lure his creatures into sin by placing into the garden trees that they could not eat from. Interestingly, “Zeus” morphed into ___________ , 62 the Latin word for God in the Latin Vulgate, the Christian Bible used for hundreds of years. Even modern scholars have complained about the Hebrew Bible’s lack of literary qualities. Why is it not more descriptive? Why is it repetitious (using the same word over and over, like “face” in the example by Linefelt) and sometimes contradictory? Linefelt, an Old Testament scholar and theologian, describes this phenomenon as the Bible’s __________ 63 of style, which a nice way of saying “paucity” (In the Hebrew Bible’s defense, there are many __________, 64 or Hebrew idioms, which have entered the English language—for example, "by the skin of one's teeth," to "the ends of the earth," "out of the mouths of babes"--and its plain style and symbolism have influenced authors through the centuries, including modern writers like Hemingway, who adopted the Biblical method of “anding” sentences and clauses together called _____________.) 65 Also from a literary perspective, many of the characters in the Bible seem two-dimensional or not well developed. Considering all the time Moses spends with God in the Tent of the Presence, and with God in the thick darkness on the mountain, all we get are more laws and detailed blueprints for building projects. When in Exodus the 70 elders go up the mountain and eat with God and see him, so the text tells us, what do they see? The blue pavement under his feet. Unlike the Iliad, we don’t know what characters are thinking, and the main character (Yahweh) won’t allow himself to be seen or described or represented in any tangible form; no one can hear him but Moses, making him seem rather remote. The literary or stylistic quality where the inner thoughts and feelings of the characters are made known to the audience or reader is called ________.66 Greek literature has this in abundance: we know exactly what characters (including gods) are thinking and feeling because they give long speeches or think out loud. Even when slaying others or dying they never stop talking. I for one would love to have known what was going through Eve’s mind when she decided to eat the forbidden fruit, for example; or how Moses felt about spending so much time with God--whether he was afraid or got used to it. Most of the first five books are laws or commandments, including detailed instructions for the ritual slaughter of animals and other parts never included it liturgy or Sunday school. So, another challenge in approaching the Bible as Literature is that it wasn’t meant to be literature at all, something read or recited for popular entertainment like in the Greek world. In the Hebrew tradition, the Books of Moses, which includes ___________, 67 ____________, 68 Numbers, Leviticus and Deuteronomy, are law books primarily. Jews refer to these books as ___________, 69 meaning “law.” It was intended to document history and law, and serve as a kind of reference book stored inside the Ark and inside the Temple. It wasn’t meant for the masses. It isn’t a Gospel written to persuade others to believe. Judaism never sought converts and didn’t want them because of a belief in blood descent—you are born into the religion and the burden of the law was your inheritance. Despite its boring sections, one cannot help but be intrigued by a text that promises first hand accounts of God, or manifestations of the Divine Presence, called ___________. 70 We often read Exodus for these dramatic appearances of God in the Burning Bush or on top of Mt. Sinai, not for all the laws and commands it contains; although admittedly many of these are quite famous. . . . like “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” which justified the Salem Witch Trials. We read because we want to know more 7 WOLD LIT MIDTERM ENG 230 about God, especially what he looks like. Despite all the time they have spent together, Moses wants to know too, and in Exodus 33:18 Moses asks if God can reveal himself (his “glory”) to him. God only shows Moses his _____________. 71, which may be a play on words in Hebrew; God flies over, covering Moses with his hand, and Moses either sees God’s behind (still not described) or evidence that god was there (that is, what was left behind, evidence that he had been there). Yahweh doesn’t want to be described or depicted in any physical or concrete form. He manifests and clouds or fire (burning bush) or something which lacks hard edges and it always changing. Despite his reluctance to be depicted or seen, Yahweh seems nonetheless to be actively pursuing a campaign to increase his fame, as much as any Homeric hero or warrior pursued ________. 72(GK word). Yahweh wants fame too, but not fame from just anyone. He wants to be recognized by important people. He cares a lot about what Pharaoh thinks of him, for example. He seems to respect Pharaoh, who remains nameless throughout the Exodus account. Although he bids Moses go talk to Pharaoh, and ask him to let the Hebrew people go . . . to sacrifice and worship Yahweh in the desert; each time Yahweh hardens Pharaoh’s heart and drags out suffering on both sides—reminds me of the Iliad a way—in order that Yahweh might have the opportunity to demonstrate his might to the Egyptians, but mainly to Pharaoh. After the Golden Calf incident, God only keeps from killing the Israelites because Moses says, “What would Pharaoh think if you brought all these people to the desert only to kill them?” (Why should Yahweh care what Pharaoh thinks of him?) Almost to rival Pharaoh, Yahweh demands the construction of a litter of gold called an ________ 73 to be carried through the desert as they wander from place to place, and a _________ 74 built out of the finest materials, despite the fact that his Chosen People are, raggedy half-starved slaves in the middle of a desert living on a diet of protein powder called __________ 75. Where are they going to get gold and other precious metals, gemstones, fine dyed woolens and acacia wood? They plundered Egypt on the way out. When the Land of Milk and Honey doesn’t materialize soon enough—they’ve been wandering the desert for a year--his servants become increasingly discontented and they complain. Complaints are met with punishment, such as biting venomous snakes, instant leprosy, or the death penalty (stoning, impaling). Meanwhile, more laws keep being issued. By Numbers things really turn quite ugly, which is why it isn’t quoted much. It is very dark. God’s Chosen People wish they had never left Egypt, and wish they were dead—God says so be it! That whole generation dies in the wilderness. I tell you the ending because it is very difficult to get the arc of the story as such without reading to the end of Numbers. . . and because you might want to know this when thinking about parallels with the Iliad. Scholars have long debated whether there is morality in the Iliad, or argued that the Hebrew Bible is obviously moral but the Iliad is not. From my own standpoint, I don’t see a lot more morality in one than the other--but I guess a lot depends on how one defines “morality.” As mentioned above, in the Greek literature at least it often seems that personal responsibility for one’s actions--one basis for morality--is deemphasized, but this to heighten our sympathy for the plight and suffering of characters. (If we regard Oedipus as a murderer and a bad man who simply gets what he deserves, he is no longer “tragic”). The OT gives us laws and commandments dictated from God to Moses. In either one, there is not a lot of altruism, genuine compassion for others (yes, maybe between Achilles and Priam, but even that isn’t crystal clear), or concern for fellow man, women or children, outside of one’s household, clan or tribe. In 8 WOLD LIT MIDTERM ENG 230 Greece, there are religious laws to protect beggars, guests and ___________ 76 (Greek favor seekers. Thetis approaches Zeus as one, Priam approaches Achilles as one, and they appear in the opening of Oedipus the King). Hospitality customs are mentioned in the Bible too, practiced by the Israelites, Philistines and other groups. But it is all ritually observed, observed out of fear of sin against the gods, not motivated by love of fellow man or desire to make another person happy. It seems that nothing is done that does not involve some degree of self-interest: ________ 77 must be paid to get an abducted daughter or body back or to persuade an injured party not to hold grudge. People give or exchange _________ 78 to obligate the recipient (usually for protection)--there are always strings attached. People make sacrifice to the gods to obligate them as well. They do this because the gods, being gods, are not all that concerned about the lives of mortals or ameliorating their suffering, but they do sometimes favor those who have made sacrifice to them. There is a similar lack of deep concern of Yahweh for people, even his own people. After hearing their suffering and cries over a certain time period, Yahweh remembers “I made covenant with these people’s forefathers. . . ” Each time he sends Moses to ask that the slaves be released, he hardens Pharaoh’s heart. At various times he sends deadly plagues against the Israelites, orders the sacrifice of first born livestock and sons (yes, that is what the text says. . .), demands that children be punished for the sins of their fathers to the 3rd and 4th generation, and he seems generally to not be a nice guy. In the Iliad, Zeus at least cries tears for Sarpedon. Yahweh sheds no tears for Moses or Aaron’s sons, who got punished with death for seemingly slight infractions (They didn’t mix the incense perfectly or something like that). Moses, God’s faithful servant and greatest prophet, is unceremoniously buried by God without even a grave marker. Moses is punished because he drew water from a rock with his staff, which he had been instructed to before when the Israelites were thirsty. This time, God had instructed him to talk to the rock to get the water from it, and Moses used his staff to draw water out of it. This is how Moses dies. In both religions, sacrifice of perfect (blemish-free) young bulls (calf-bulls) is common—they taste best when about a year old--but in the Greek tradition the people and the gods eat the offering—a sacrifice is followed by a feast. The people are happy, the gods are happy. In the Hebrew tradition, God doesn’t eat the offering, and the people don’t either. The purpose is ritual _________ 79 or cleansing: to transfer the sin from the blood of the person making the offering into the blood of the dying animal. In both religions, there is no better afterlife for the righteous or punishment for the wicked—all (shadows or shades) go to Hades or _________.80 Greeks of the Hellenistic period adopted a belief in an immortal soul, and Jews a belief in physical resurrection of the body; this was about 200 years before Jesus. Jewish emphasis blood sacrifice for ritual purification of sin combined with Greek belief in an immortal soul contributed to the evolution of Christianity. 9