by
Damien F. Mackey
The view of
certain of the Fathers of the Church, that much of Greek philosophy was
borrowed from the Hebrews, has led me - with the benefit of a revised history -
to be able
to propose that
sages who are traditionally regarded as Ionian and mainland Greek
(and Italian)
philosophers may have been, in their original guise, Hebrews (Israelites,
Jews).
Introduction
From the details given in the Book of Daniel it
may be argued that Daniel’s floruit
as the governor of Babylon extended from the early reign of Nebuchednezzar II
until the early reign of Cyrus. In conventional terms, this would be, in round
figures, from 600 BC to 540 BC – approximately 60 years. King “Nebuchednezzar”,
in awe of Daniel’s wisdom after the Jewish sage had recalled and interpreted
the king’s dream, had made Daniel the ruler of Babylon (Daniel 2:48): “Then
the king placed Daniel in a high position and lavished many gifts on him. He
made him ruler over the entire province of Babylon and placed him in charge of
all its wise men”. V. 21: “And Daniel remained there until the first year of
King Cyrus”.
The last date that the Book of Daniel gives us for
its hero is the third year of King Cyrus (10:1): “In the third year
of Cyrus king of Persia, a revelation was given to Daniel (who was called
Belteshazzar). Its message was true and it concerned a great war. The
understanding of the message came to him in a vision”.
Considering Daniel’s significance to
Babylon and Medo-Persia, it should be possible to find
in the Neo-Babylonian records a governor of Babylon of long duration, who had
continued until the early reign of Cyrus. Such, at least, is my view.
Less optimistic about the possibility of finding
any such sort of account of Daniel (Belteshazzar)
in the historical records , however, is Robert D. Wilson (Studies in the Book of
Daniel, Vol. 2) http://www.biblicalresearch.info/page9d.html
Was Daniel An Historical Character?
There are those who doubt the historicity of Daniel
upon the grounds that his name does not appear in the records of the period of
the exile. One noted critic stated the case thus: "It is natural that we
should turn to the monuments and inscriptions of the Babylonian, Persian, and
Median Empires to see if any message can be found of so prominent a ruler, but
hitherto neither his name has been discovered, nor the faintest trace of his
existence."
Dr. Wilson discusses this phase of the question
thoroughly, looking at the various types of inscriptions that have come to us
and showing that it is most unreasonable to base an argument upon the kind of
data that we have, especially upon the lack of evidence. After setting forth
the case in an impartial manner and discussing pro and con every possibility,
Dr. Wilson draws this conclusion:
"Inasmuch, then, as these inscriptions mention
no one filling any of the positions, or performing any of the functions or
doing any of the deeds, which the book of Daniel ascribes to its hero
Belteshazzar; how can anyone expect to find in them any mention of Daniel, in
either its Hebrew or its Babylonian form? And is it fair, in view of what the monuments
of all kinds make known to us, to use the fact that they do not mention Daniel
at all as an argument against his existence?
"What about the numerous governors, judges,
generals, priests, wise men writers, sculptors, architects, and all kinds of famous
men, who must have lived during that long period? Who planned and supervised
the building of the magnificent canals, and walls, and palaces, and temples of
Babylon? Who led the armies, and held in subjection and governed the provinces
and adjudged cases in the high courts of justice, and sat in the king's
council? Who were the mothers and wives and queenly daughters of the monarchs
who sat upon the thrones of those mighty empires? Had the kings no friends no
favorites, no adulatory poets or historians, no servile prophets, no
sycophantic priests, no obsequious courtiers, who were deemed worthy to have
their names inscribed upon these memorials of royal pride and victory; that we
should expect to find there the name of Daniel, a Hebrew captive, a citizen of
an annihilated city, a member of a despised and conquered nation, a stranger
living on the bounty of the king, an alien, a slave, whose very education was
the gift of his master and his elevation dependent on his grace? Let him
believe who can. As for me, were the documents multiplied tenfold, I would not
expect to find in them any reference to this humble subject of imperious
kings."
[End of quotes]
Let us not give up so easily.
A Possible Candidate for Daniel
If my recent revision of Neo-Babylonian history
is correct, then this should affect somewhat - but also assist, hopefully - the
search for the historical Daniel. Given my argument that some of the
Neo-Babylonian kings have been duplicated, and perhaps even triplicated:
this
series being supplemented by another article:
“Nebuchednezzar” of the Book of Daniel
then one might expect the potential 60 years of floruit for Daniel as governor of
Babylon to be somewhat reducible.
Whilst there may not be any known governor of
Babylon from the early reign of Nebuchednezzar II until the first few years of
Cyrus - as I’d anticipate from the Book of Daniel that there should be - with
my new identification of Nebuchednezzar II (and Daniel’s “Nebuchednezzar”) with
King Nabonidus, then such an official comes right into view.
He is Nabu-ahhe-bullit, who was governor of Babylon
from at least Nabonidus’s 8th year until the 3rd year of
Cyrus. Thus we read in the following article
From the contemporary cuneiform contract tablets, we
know that Terike-sarrutsu was the governor (shakin mati) of Babylonia in Year 1
Nabunaid [Nabonidus] (555/4 BC).
Nabu-ahhe-bullit succeeded him as office holder by
Year 8 Nabunaid (548/7 BC). This man remained in office down to Year 3 Cyrus
but became a subordinate of the governor Gubaru, the appointee of Cyrus, when
Babylon was captured by the army of Cyrus in 539 BC. He is not to be confused
with Ugbaru.
[End of quote]
Rather than Daniel’s having at this stage become “a subordinate” of
Gubaru’s, though, he may have departed (one way or another) from the political
scene.
By now Daniel would have been in his 60’s or 70’s.
This is how I would tentatively reconstruct the chronology of his
governorship:
Daniel, as Nabu-ahhe-bullit, had been appointed
governor of Babylon close to the third year of Nebuchednezzar II (= Nabonidus),
who reigned for 43 years. That is a service of four decades.
He continued on through the 2-3 years of Belshazzar,
son of Nabonidus, envisaging himself in Susa (Daniel 8:1-2): “In the
third year of King Belshazzar’s reign, I, Daniel, had a vision, after the one
that had already appeared to me. In my vision I saw myself in the citadel of
Susa in the province of Elam …”.
He was still in Babylon in the 1st year of
Cyrus, but then moved to Susa, Cyrus’s capital, and served the king until his 3rd
year.
The Name
It is thought that the Babylonian name that
“Nebuchednezzar” gave to Daniel, Belteshazzar,
is not actually a Bel name, as definitely is Belshazzar (Bel-sarra-usur), “Baal protect the
King”.
That Belteshazzar
is more of a balatu (“life”) type of
name.
Correspondingly, we read at (http://biblehub.com/commentaries/expositors/daniel/): “Thus
the name Belteshazzar seems to be connected in the writer’s mind with Bel
[sic], the favourite deity of Nebuchadrezzar; but it can only mean Balatu-utsur
, "his life protect," which looks like a mutilation”.
That does not mean that the name given to Daniel
would have lacked reference to a deity. For “Nebuchednezzar” specifically said
(Daniel 4:8): “Finally, Daniel came into my presence and I told him
the dream. (He is called Belteshazzar, after
the name of my god, and the spirit of the holy gods is in him.)”. From this
it might be expected that Daniel was given the name of the god whose name was
held likewise by the king (Nebuchednezzar/Nabonidus): namely, Nabu.
Appropriately, in the name of the long-lived
governor of Babylon, Nabu-ahhe-bullit, we have both the Nabu element and
the balatu-like element in bullit. This element, bullit, at least, is an appropriate one
for the first part of the name, Belte-shazzar.
However, there is also the Nabu-ahhe-bullit like name,
Nabu-bullitsu (e.g. in Sir W. Budge’s Babylonian
Life and History, Index, p.
159), that comes yet closer to Belteshazzar, which is, after all, a foreign
transliteration of an originally Babylonian name.
Finally, now with my revised Neo-Babylonian history,
we have virtually a perfectly matching chronology for Daniel and his proposed alter ego, Nabu-ahhe-bullit.
* * * * *
There are various articles written according to
which Plato’s views were based upon, now Babylonian, now Egyptian concepts.
There is, for instance: “On
the Babylonian Origin of Plato's Nuptial Number”, by George A. Barton, Journal of the American Oriental
Society, Vol. 29 (1908), pp. 210-219. On p. 210, the author goes so far as
to write: “The passage in which Plato introduces this mystic number is
said to be the most difficult passage in his writings”.
Put yourself into Plato’s shoes in the 4th Century BCE [sic]. What was
the paragon of political perfection? Egypt of course, which was ancient even to
Plato. Egypt was ruled by philosopher kings of a sort. The priest-class was
said to have had tremendous influence over the Pharaohs. Who was the Pharaoh,
but the highest of the philosopher/priests (a god even perhaps to them). It is
my belief that Plato’s ideal state was based on Egypt. Several times during the
Platonic works, references to Egypt are made and all paint the ancient kingdom
in the light of a wise and mature state. As he writes in the Timaeus from the
Egyptian perspective, “You Hellenes are ever children”. Keep in mind that Egypt
had been around for thousands when Plato was writing this. A remarkable feat
for any culture. And even more remarkable was the fact that Egypt remained
conservative and traditional throughout this time. Egypt was the place to go
for learning and spiritual initiation. Plato must have believed that Egypt’s
longevity was because of their love of wisdom (Greek: philosophos). Alexander
the Great choose Egypt as the location for Alexandria for good reason. Plato
was said to have visited Egypt seeking knowledge [McEvoy, James (1984).
"Plato and The Wisdom of Egypt" Irish Philosophical Journal (Belfast:
Dept. of Scholastic Philosophy, Queen's University of Belfast)] and then
returned to Athens many years before writing the Republic. ….
[End of quote]
I found an interesting article about Plato on David
Livingstone’s site while reading about the roots of alchemy for something that
came up in the comments section of your latest show. The part I found
particularly intriguing was this tidbit: “The subject of Persian or Babylonian
influences had been a contentious one in the earlier part of the twentieth
century. The subject currently continues to receive attention from several
leading scholars, including Walter Burkert, and M. L. West. On the whole,
however, the idea has yet to penetrate into mainstream circles, because of a
xenophobia which insists on the unique “genius” of the Greeks. The most
detailed examination of the matter had been conducted by the greatest of the
last century’s scholars, Franz Cumont. His work, Les Mages Hellenisees, or the
Hellenized Magi, a compendium of ancient sources on the subject, has received
little attention in the English world, due to the fact that it has not been
translated. This continues to mar criticism of his theories, as most critics
have not read the brunt of his work. Scholars have usually dismissed the
possibility of Persian influence in Greece, because of the lack of similarity
between Zoroastrian and Greek ideas. However, what these scholars have failed
to see, as Cumont has pointed out, is that those Magi the Greeks came into
contact with were not orthodox, but heretics. The only way to reconstruct their
doctrines is by accumulating the numerous remnants of comments about them in the
ancient sources. By reconstructing these pieces, we find that Magian doctrines
are far removed from, or even inimical, to orthodox Zoroastrian ones. Cumont
discovered that these Magi practiced a combination of harsh dualism with
elements of Babylonian astrology and magic, which composed a Zoroastrian heresy
known as Zurvanism. It is in this strange recomposition of ideas that we find
the first elements that characterized Greek philosophy.
[End of quote]
‘Plato’ was almost certainly a non-historical ‘composite’,
like Buddha and Mohammed were, and based on various biblical (and perhaps
other) characters. but I think that a ‘cosmopolitan’ also well fits ‘him’. Continuing
with the last quoted article above, we find the author now arguing for “a
Jewish influence”, with reference to Daniel himself:
Another component which Cumont failed to identify
though, was that of Jewish influence. The Magi cult of astrology and magic
emerged in Babylon in the sixth century, precisely that era during which a
great and prominent part of the Jewish population was there in exile. We cannot
ascertain who was responsible for the introduction of these ideas, but the
Bible itself identifies Daniel with one of the “wisemen”. Whatever the case may
be, these ideas do appear in a recognizable Magian form initially among the
Essenes, and more particularly in Merkabah mysticism, which scholars identify
as the beginnings of the Kabbalah. There is little to examine the character of
Jewish literature prior to the third century BC. Before that, it is in Greece where
we find the elaboration of these ideas.” “Plato the Kabbalist” http://www.thedyinggod.com/node/105
[End of quote]
Let us consider some possible Danielic and other
Hebrew influences upon what are now regarded as the writings of Plato. What
follows (see Part Three) will be
basically in line with previous articles of mine such as:
Plato and Hebrew Wisdom
The writings of
“Plato”, whoever he may have been, were undoubtedly influenced by Hebrew
wisdom. Here we consider some likenesses to the Book of Job, for instance,
before passing on to the Book of Daniel.
Introduction
To presume to translocate so-called ‘Greek’ philosophy, to
Babylonia, or to Egypt, or to Palestine, are moves that are probably not going
to go down well with many. A reader immediately responded to an early effort of
mine along these lines (e-mail of 25 March 2010):
…. I have not
had much of an introduction before to your other theses on the identities of
various historical personages. I must admit to being somewhat sceptical of the
Plato theory. I think you would need more than a few parallelisms to make such
a case. I think the historical evidence would be in favor of the fact that
Plato and Aristotle were living breathing Greeks, the latter being Alexander’s
tutor in Macedonia ….
In an article
written at this time I had supported:
(i) St.
Clement of Alexandria’s view that Plato’s writings took their inspiration from
the Hebrew Moses, and
(ii) St.
Ambrose’s belief that Plato had learned from the prophet Jeremiah in Egypt; a
belief that was initially taken up by St. Augustine, who added that
(iii) Greek
philosophy generally derived from the Jewish Scriptures.
And, though St. Augustine later retracted his acceptance of St.
Ambrose’s view, realising that it was chronologically impossible for Jeremiah
(c. 600 BC) to have met Plato anywhere, considering the c. 400 BC date
customarily assigned to Plato, I had, on the other hand, looked to turn this
around by challenging the conventional dates, and by proposing an
identification of ‘Plato’ as (in part) Baruch, a Jew, the young priest-scribe
contemporaneous with Jeremiah. This reconstruction - which I have not been able
properly to develop - would have, if it had proved legitimate, enabled me to
take the testimony of the Fathers a positive step further. From the Book of
Jeremiah we learned that Jeremiah and Baruch went together to Egypt.
‘Plato’ - a ‘composite’ character, anyway, according to my
estimation - may have both Daniel and Baruch likenesses. Baruch, after all, is
sometimes considered to have been another great sage of antiquity, Zoroaster.
Later I learned that St. Justin Martyr had, even earlier than the
above-mentioned Church Fathers, espoused this view of the Greek philosophers
borrowing from the biblical Hebrews. And Justin Martyr too, had, like Plato,
written an Apology, in Justin’s case also apparently (like Plato) in regard to
a martyrdom.
Plato Stole
his ideas from Moses: True or False ….
The belief
that the philosophers of Greece, including Plato and Aristotle, plagiarized
certain of their teaching from Moses and the Hebrew prophets is an argument
used by Christian Apologists of Gentile background who lived in the first four
centuries of Christians. Three key figures who presented this thesis are Justin
Martyr “The most important second century apologist” {50. Grant 1973}, Titus
Flavius Clemens known as Clement of Alexandria "the illustrious head of
the Catechetical School at Alexandria at the close of the second century, was
originally a pagan philosopher" (11, Robert 1857) and is renowned as being
possibly the teacher of Origen. He was born either in Alexandria or Athens
{Epiphs Haer, xxii.6}. Our final giant who supports this thesis is Eusebius of
Caesarea known as the father of Church history. Each of these in their defense
of the Christian faith presented some form of the thesis that the philosophers
of Greece learned from the prophets of Israel. Our interest in this paper is on
the arguments of the earliest of these writers, Justin Martyr. He represents
the position of Christian apology in the middle of the second century, as
opposed to the later Clement of Alexandria and the even later Eusebius of
Caesarea.
In light of
the stature and the credibility of these three Church Fathers even if the idea
that Plato learned from Moses seems far fetched we would do well to take a
closer look at the argument and the evidence presented by such men of stature.
Justin was a philosopher who came from a pagan background. He issued from
Shechem in Palestine. He was a marvelous scholar in his own right well read and
well qualified to make informed judgments in the arena of philosophy.
Our purpose
is to briefly look at the theses presented by Justin Martyr and to try to
discern the plausibility of the thesis.
Justin Martyr
and the line Plato took from Moses.
Justin Martyr
was a prolific second century Apologist. He was born in Flavia Neapolis
(Shechem) in Samaria. Well known for the local Samaritan temple on Mount
Gerizim and a temple built by Hadrian to Zeus Hypsistos. He later passed
through Stoicism and the way of Aristotle’s disciples the Peripatetics and was
rejected as unqualified to study Pythagoreanism and finally he met a Platonist
with whom he advanced in his studies. To him the goal of Platonism was
"the vision of God". One day he met a Christian on the beach and was
converted to the faith. He did not become a priest or bishop but took to
teaching and defending the faith.
Text
He wrote many
works and many more bear his name. However modern scholarship has judged that
of the many works that bear his name only three are considered genuine. These
are 2 Apologies and the Dialogue with the Jew Trypho. They are preserved in one
manuscript of the year 1364 (Cod Par, gr. 450).
Language
Justin wrote
in Greek, and right in the middle of the period of philosophy called Middle
Platonism. The book in which he outlines his thesis that Moses and the prophets
were a source for the Greek Philosophers is his first Apology. It is dated to 155-157 BC and was
addressed to "The Emperor Titus Aelius Hadrianus Antonius Pius Caesar
Augustus, and the sons Verissimus, philosopher, philosopher, and Lucius"
Grant (52, 1973).
Context
Grant (1973)
believes the reason which triggered the Apology was the martyrdom of Polycarp
in 156 AD and the injustice of it during the bishopric of Anicetus. Even as
this martyrdom and its report may have spurred Justin on to write so it had
been that it was on seeing the fortitude of the Christian martyrs which had
disposed him favorably towards the faith (Ap 2.12.1). ….
In the
Apology 1 Justin gives the reason for his writing
“I, Justin,
the son of Priscus and grandson of Bacchius, natives of Flavia Neapolis in Palestine,
present this address and petition on behalf of those of all nations who are
unjustly hated and wantonly abused; my self being one of them" (Apology 1
chap).
The Apology 1
is divided into 60 chapters. The translation we are using is that of the Ante
Nicene Fathers and can be seen at www.ccel.org
The topics covered are many. He starts in chapter 2 by demanding justice, he
requires that before the Christians are condemned they should be given a fair
trial to see if they have committed any crimes or not. They should not be
condemned merely for being Christian. He covers many subjects including: the
accusation Christians were Atheists, faith in God; the Kingdom of Christ; God’s
service; demonic teachings; Christ's teachings and heathen analogies to it; non
Christian worship; magic; exposing children, the Hebrew prophets and their
prophecies about Christ, types of prophetic words from the Father, the Son and
the Holy Spirit. This brings us to about chapter 38. At this point Justin
begins to cover the issue of determinism and free will. He argues that although
the future was prophesied it does not mean every thing is determined according
to fate and man has no responsibility for he has no choice. Rather he points to
Moses revealing God's choice to Adam "Behold before thy face are good and
evil: choose the good”. (Apol 1 44) And he quotes lsaiah's appeal to Israel to
wash and be clean and the consequences of doing so or not doing so. The
consequences of disobedience are that the sword would devour Israel. Justin
picks up on the statement regarding the sword and argues that it is not a
literal sword which is referred to but “the sword of God is a fire, of which
those who choose to do wickedly will become the fuel” (Apol 1 44). Justin
having appealed to Moses and Isaiah as a warning to the Roman rulers now
appeals to one with whom they are more familiar, Plato the philosopher, to
support his case that man is free to choose good or evil. It is here that
Justin makes a most interesting and intriguing statement rallying Plato to the
side of Moses and Isaiah, in the eyes of the sons of the Emperor whom he calls
philosophers.
And so, too,
Plato, when he says, “The blame is his who chooses, and God is blameless” took
this from the prophet Moses and uttered it.
For Moses is
more ancient than all the Greek writers. And whatever both philosophers and
poets have said concerning the immortality of the soul, or punishments after
death, or contemplation of things heavenly, or doctrines of the like kind, they
have received such suggestions from the prophets as have enabled them to
understand and interpret these things. And hence there seem to be seeds of
truth among all men; but they are charged with not accurately understanding
[the truth] when they assert contradictories.
….
He appears to
be making the claim that Plato who has “exerted a greater influence over human
thought than any other individual with the possible exception of Aristotle”
(Demos, 1927.vi} was dependent for his understanding of freewill and
responsibility on Moses. The saying "the blame is his who chooses, and God
is blameless (Aitia helomenou Theos d' anaios) {Joann. Mdcccxlii,224}" was
taken from Moses by Plato and uttered it {eipe}".
[End
of quote]
I shall continue with this commentary later in this article, when I
come to discuss one of Plato’s famous Myths.
Plato and Likely Borrowings
from the Book of Job
There can be a similarity in thought between Plato and the Jewish
sages, but not always a similarity in tone. Compared with the intense
atmosphere of the drama of the Book of Job, for instance, Plato’s Republic, and his other dialogues, such
as the Protagoras, brilliant as they
are, come across sometimes as a bit like a gentlemen’s discussion over a glass
of port.
W. Guthrie may have captured something of this general tone in his Introduction to Plato. Protagoras and Meno (Penguin,
1968), when he wrote (p. 20):
… a feature
of the conversation which cannot fail to strike a reader is its unbroken urbanity
and good temper. The keynote is courtesy and forbearance, though these are not
always forthcoming without a struggle. Socrates is constantly on the alert for
the signs of displeasure on the part of Protagoras, and when he detects them,
is careful not to press his point, and the dialogue ends with mutual
expressions of esteem. ….
[End
of quote]
Compare this gentlemanly tone with e.g. Job’s ‘How long will you
torment me, and break me in pieces with words? These ten times you have cast
reproach upon me; are you not ashamed to wrong me?’ (19:1-3), and Eliphaz’s
accusations of the holy man: ‘Is not your wickedness great? There is no end to
your iniquities [which supposed types of injustice on the part of Job Eliphaz
then proceeds to itemise]’ (22:5).
In Plato’s dialogues, by contrast, we get pages and pages of the
following sort of amicable discussion taken from the Republic (Bk. 2, 368-369):
[Socrates]
‘Justice can be a characteristic of an individual or of a community, can it
not?’
[Adeimantus]
‘Yes’.
[Socrates]
‘And a community is larger than an individual?’
[Adeimantus]
‘It is”.
[Socrates]
‘We may therefore find that the amount of justice in the larger entity is
greater, and so easier to recognize. I accordingly propose that we start our
enquiry …’.
[Adeimantus]
‘That seems a good idea’, he agreed.
….
Though Protagoras is a famous Sophist, whose maxim “Man is the
measure of all things, of those that are that they are, and of those that are
not that they are not” (Plato’s Theaetetus
152), I have often quoted in a philosophical context {– and also in}:
The Futile Aspiration to Make ‘Man the Measure of All
Things’
this Protagoras, however, may actually be based upon - according to
my new estimation of things - the elderly Eliphaz of the Book of Job. Whilst
Eliphaz was by no means a Sophist along the Greek lines, he was, like
Protagoras with Socrates, largely opposed to his opponent’s point of view.
And so, whilst the God-fearing Eliphaz would never have uttered
anything so radical or atheistic as “man is the measure of all things”, he was
however opposed to the very Job who had, in his discussion of wisdom, spoken of
God as ‘apportioning out by measure’ all the things that He had created (Job
28:12, 13, 25).
Now, whilst Protagoras would be but a pale ghost of the biblical
Eliphaz, some of the original (as I suspect) lustre does still manage to shine
through - as with Protagoras’s claim that knowledge or wisdom was the highest
thing in life (Protagoras 352C, D) (cf. Eliphaz in Job 22:1-2). And Guthrie
adds that Protagoras “would repudiate as scornfully as Socrates the almost
bestial type of hedonism advocated by Callicles, who says that what nature means
by fair and right is for the strong man to let his desires grow as big as
possible and have the means of everlastingly satisfying them” (op. cit., p. 22).
Eliphaz was later re-invented (I think) as Protagoras the Sophist
from Abdera, as a perfect foil to Socrates (with Job’s other friends also
perhaps emerging in the Greek versions re-cast as Sophists). Protagoras stated
that, somewhat like Eliphaz, he was old enough to be the father of any of them.
“Indeed I am getting on in life now – so far as age goes I might be the father
of any one of you …” (Protagoras 317
C). That Eliphaz was old is indicated by the fact that he was the first to
address Job and that he also referred to men older than Job’s father (Job
15:10). Now, just as Fr. R. MacKenzie (S.J.) in his commentary on “Job”, in The Jerome Biblical Commentary, tells of
Eliphaz’s esteem for, and courtesy towards, Job (31:23):
Eliphaz is
presumably the oldest of the three and therefore the wisest; he is certainly
the most courteous and the most eloquent. He has a genuine esteem for Job and
is deeply sorry for him. He knows the advice to give him, the wisdom that lays
down what he must do to receive relief from his sufferings.
[End
of quote],
so does Guthrie, reciprocally (I suggest), say: “Protagoras – whom
[Socrates] regards with genuine admiration and liking” (op. cit., p. 22).
But, again, just as the righteous Job had scandalised his three friends
by his levity, according to St. Thomas Aquinas (“Literal Exposition on Job”,
42:1-10), “And here one should consider that Elihu had sinned out of
inexperience whereas Job had sinned out of levity, and so neither of them had
sinned gravely”, so does Guthrie use this very same word, “levity”, in the
context of an apparent flaw in the character of Socrates (ibid., p. 18):
There is one
feature of the Protagoras which cannot fail to puzzle, if not exasperate, a
reader: the behaviour of Socrates. At times he treats the discussion with such
levity, and at other times with such unscrupulousness, that Wilamowitz felt
bound to conclude that the dialogue could only have been written in his
lifetime. This, he wrote, is the human being whom Plato knew; only after he had
suffered a martyr’s death did the need assert itself to idealize his character.
[End
of quote]
Job’s tendency towards levity had apparently survived right down
into the Greek era. Admittedly, the Greek version does get much nastier in the
case of Thrasymachus, and even more so with Callicles in the Gorgias, but in the Republic at least it never rises to the dramatic pitch of Job’s
dialogues with his three friends. Here is that least friendly of the debaters,
Thrasymachus, at his nastiest (Republic,
Bk. I, 341):
[Socrates]
Well, said I, ‘so you think I’m malicious, do you Thrasymachus?’
[Thrasymachus]
‘I certainly do’.
[Socrates]
‘You think my questions were deliberately framed to distort your argument?’
[Thrasymachus]
‘I know perfectly well they were. But they won’t get you anywhere; you can’t
fool me, and if you don’t you won’t be able to crush me in argument’.
[Socrates] ‘My
dear chap, I wouldn’t dream of trying’, I said ….
Socrates and Plato are similarly (like the Sophists) watered down
entities by comparison with the Middle Eastern originals. Such is how the
Hebrew Scriptures end up when filtered through the Greeks, [and, in the case of
Plato, perhaps through the Babylonians before the Greeks, hence a double
filtering]. Even then, it is doubtful whether the finely filtered version of
Plato that we now have could have been written by pagan Greeks. At least some
of it seems to belong clearly to the Christian era, e.g. “The just man … will
be scourged, tortured, and imprisoned … and after enduring every humiliation he
will be crucified” (Republic, Bk. 2,
362).
I submit that this statement would not likely have been written
prior to the Gospels.
“Plato and Porphyry each made certain statements which might have
brought them both to become Christians if they had exchanged them with one
another”, wrote St. Augustine (City of
God, XXII, 27).
What is clear is that the writings of Plato, as we now have them,
had reached an impressive level of excellence and unparalleled literary
sophistication.
Thus we read in The
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Macmillan and Free Press, 1967, V. 6), article
“Plato” (p. 332):
Plato As a Writer
Greek prose
reached its highest peak in the writings of Plato. His flexibility, his rich
vocabulary, his easy colloquialism, and his high rhetoric, his humor, irony,
pathos, gravity, bluntness, delicacy and occasional ferocity, his mastery of
metaphor, simile and myth, his swift delineation of character – his combination
of these and other qualities put him beyond rivalry. …
[End
of quote]
Much may be owed here, however, to the Hebrew books, such as Job,
which appears to have exerted a heavy influence upon Greek literature. See e.g.
my article:
Similarities to The Odyssey of the Books of Job and Tobit
Plato and Images From Daniel
Could the
mysterious name, “Plato” - he probably being a ‘composite’ character –
be actually
derived from the first element (Belte-) in the prophet Daniel’s Babylonian
name, Belteshazzar?
It is inconceivable, I would suggest - and certainly Justin Martyr
seems to have been of this opinion - that it was a pagan Greek who was the
first to argue strongly for the immortality of the soul, as is sometimes
accredited to Plato’s Socrates.
Or to have been the first one to have discovered the four cardinal
virtues.
As noted earlier in this article, Daniel’s given name, Belteshazzar, is of course “a foreign transliteration of an
originally Babylonian name”. That Babylonian name, as I suggested there, may
have been Nabu-ahhe-bullit,
the name of the governor of Babylon, which Daniel was.
What I intend to do primarily in this article is to take some of the
most picturesque and famous images from the Book of Daniel, and see if we can
find an echo of these in the life and writings of Plato. I refer to such images
as King Nebuchednezzar’s Statue of Four
Diverse Metals representing kingdoms (Daniel 2); King Belshazzar and the ‘Writing on the Wall’ (Daniel 5); and
Daniel’s Vision of the Four Beasts
(Daniel 7).
Let us now try to re-locate ‘Plato’ to what may well have been his
proper Near Ancient Eastern environment, as Belteshazzar,
in Babylonia.
Plato’s Usage of Key Images
from the Book of Daniel
‘Plato’ Derived from a Babylonian Name
Though ‘Plato’ is generally considered to have been the real name of
the great philosopher, historian Julia Annas, who entirely accepts this, tells
however of a “surprisingly substantial minor tradition” that (and this is more
in accordance with our own view) “‘Plato’ was a nickname which stuck”.
Thus she writes (Plato. A Very
Short Introduction, Oxford, 2003, pp. 12-13):
Name or
nickname?
Plato’s name
was probably Plato. The ‘probably’ may surprise you; how can there be any
doubt? Plato’s writings have come down to us firmly under that name. But within
the ancient biographical tradition there is a surprisingly substantial minor
tradition according to which ‘Plato’ was a nickname which stuck, while the
philosopher’s real name was Aristocles. This is credible; Plato’s paternal
grandfather was called Aristocles, and it was a common practice to call the
eldest son after the father’s father. We have, however, no independent evidence
that Plato was the eldest son. And ‘Plato’ does not appear to be a nickname; it
turns up frequently in the period. Further, the explanations we find for it as
a nickname are unconvincing. Because ‘Plato’ suggests platus, ‘broad’, we find
the suggestion that Plato had been a wrestler known for his broad shoulders, or
a writer known for his broad range of styles! Clearly this is just guessing,
and we would be wise not to conclude that Plato changed his name or had it changed
by others. But then what do we make of the Aristocles stories? We don’t know,
and can’t tell. And this is frustrating. A change of name is an important fact
about a person, but this ‘fact’ slips through our fingers.
Our ancient
sources about Plato often put us into this position. There are plenty of
stories in the ancient biographies of Plato, and frequently they would, if we
could rely on them, give us interesting information about Plato as a person.
But they nearly always dissolve at a touch.
[End
of quote]
This is quite telling. One so often finds that the textbook
historians have to conclude on a disappointing note like she does, because,
owing to their pursuit of someone in the wrong era, or in the wrong country,
they end up chasing ghosts through mists; exactly as this writer describes it
here, “they … dissolve at a touch”. I claim instead, through a revision that
corrects dates and finds the ‘other halves’ of historical people, to be
rendering full-blooded characters, with substantial (auto)-biographical
information; people who produce deeds and writings of zeal and passion.
The name ‘Plato’ did, I suggest, come about by the philosopher’s
having his name “changed by others”, as the writer has said above, but which
she rejects as an option. Here, I believe, is the original historical account
of it: it is the beginning of the Babylonian Captivity.
(Daniel
1:3-7):
Then the king
[Nebuchednezzar] commanded his palace master Ashpenaz to bring some of the
Israelites of the royal family and of the nobility, young men without physical
defect and handsome, versed in every branch of wisdom, endowed with knowledge
and insight, and competent to serve in the king’s palace; they were to be
taught the literature and language of the Chaldeans. The king assigned them a
daily portion of food and wine. They were to be educated for three years, so
that at the end of that time they could be stationed in the king’s court. Among
them were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah [not of the tribe of Judah as
the NRSV has it but] of the sons of Judah. The palace master gave them other
names: Daniel he called Belteshazzar, Hananiah he called Shadrach, Mishael he
called Meshach, and Azariah he called Abednego.
These were, I believe, real historical people. And I have identified
Daniel as the long-serving governor of Babylon: Nabu-ahhe-bullit.
Professor William Shea claims also to have identified Shadrach,
Meshach and Abednego, Daniel’s friends, in ‘a five sided clay prism found in
Babylon and now housed in the Istanbul museum. It gives a list of men and their
titles. Three men listed on the prism have pronunciations which Shea thinks are
very similar to the names of Daniel’s three friends. (http://www.biblehistory.net/newsletter/meshach_shadrach_abed-nego.htm).
No doubt this is a sincere attempt on the part of Shea.
This biblical era is in fact extremely well attested historically -
against the constant assertions that the Bible is not historical - by the
abundance of seals and inscriptions naming many of the characters who appear in
the Book of Jeremiah; not least of which being a seal of ‘Baruch son of Neriah’
(cf. Jeremiah 36:11; Baruch 1:1).
The name Plato, I have suggested, was taken from one element in
Daniel’s given name, Belteshazzar. We
might expect now that there was at least a double filtering of the original
Daniel, from firstly the Semitic (Hebrew or Aramaïc) recording of him through
Mesopotamia (Babylon), then, secondly, from Mesopotamia through Greece. And we
could possibly add a further one, from pagan Greece to Greece of the early
Christian era. So, while we could no longer expect the now highly processed and
much refined Plato to be a dazzling reflection of Daniel, we might still,
nonetheless, expect to find a discernible echo of this Daniel in Plato.
From the above scriptural text of Daniel 1 we learn that the young
Jew and his confrères were either of the royal line, or aristocratic (possibly
how Plato’s other name, Aristocles, and that of his father, Ariston, arose).
The young men comprised a highly educated, skilled and wise élite. And their
experience would now be vastly augmented in their new culture, with a different
language and mythology, in the intense atmosphere of a tyrant king’s court.
{No wonder that the Republic of Plato is filled with discussions of
tyranny and tyrant kings! (E.g. Book 8, § 8 and Book 9, § 9)}.
Note the emphasis, too, on education, which is also a major feature
of the Republic; especially in the
context of the Book of Daniel, as education for effective rulership, for
competency in the king’s court – i.e., the education of the philosopher
statesman.
It has been said that Plato may have had kings David and Solomon in
mind when writing about ‘the Philosopher King’. More chronologically proximate,
though, would be this incident of the brilliant young Daniel and his friends being
educated towards governorship, to which Daniel managed fully to attain.
Who better than Daniel, anyway, would have qualified for Plato’s
philosopher-statesman!
Here is the account of his marvellous statesman-like ability in
Daniel 6:3-4:
Now Daniel so distinguished himself among the administrators and the
satraps by his exceptional qualities that the king planned to set him over the
whole kingdom. At this, the
administrators and the satraps tried to find grounds for charges against Daniel
in his conduct of government affairs, but they were unable to do so. They could
find no corruption in him, because he was trustworthy and neither corrupt nor
negligent.
IMAGE ONE: NEBUCHEDNEZZAR’S STATUE
OF VARIOUS METALS (Daniel 2)
Daniel was, like Joseph in Egypt, an interpreter of dreams (another
Platonic feature). But, whereas the seemingly benign ‘Pharaoh’ had actually
told Joseph of what his dreams had consisted, King “Nebuchednezzar” had
demanded that his wise men both recall the Dream and then interpret it: a seemingly
impossible task, and one well beyond the powers of the Chaldean sages. But
Daniel was up to it (Daniel 2:31-33):
‘You were
looking, O king, and lo! there was a great statue, its brilliance
extraordinary; it was standing before you, and its appearance was frightening.
The head of that statue was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its
middle and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and
partly of clay. …’.
Such was the Dream. Daniel then interpreted it for the king as
representing successive kingdoms, with Nebuchednezzar’s present Chaldean
kingdom being the head of gold.
Similarly Plato, but in far less dramatic circumstances once again,
proposes this very same sequence of metals; but he applies them to classes of
men, not kingdoms. Plato does not actually call this a Dream, but “a fairy
story like those the poets tell about”. Here is how it goes (Republic, Bk. 3, 415):
‘You are, all
of you in this land, brothers. But when God fashioned you, he added gold in the
composition of those of you who are qualified to be Rulers (which is why their
prestige is the greatest); he put silver in the Auxiliaries, and iron and
bronze in the farmers and the rest. Now since you are all of the same stock,
though children will commonly resemble their parents, occasionally a silver
child will be born of golden parents, or a golden child of silver parents, and
so on. Therefore the first and most important of God’s commandments to the
Rulers is that they must exercise the function as Guardians with particular
care in watching the mixture of metals in the characters of their children. If
one of their own children has bronze or iron in its make-up, they must harden
their hearts, and degrade it to the ranks of the industrial and agricultural
class where it properly belongs: similarly, if a child of this class is born
with gold or silver in its nature, they will promote it appropriately to be a
Guardian or an Auxiliary. For they know that there is a prophecy that the State
will be ruined when it has Guardians of silver or bronze’.
[End
of quote]
Surely King Nebuchednezzar himself was being entirely Platonic in
his command for the selection of the ‘golden boys’ of Israelite youth for
education towards their holding a position in the king’s court! Similarly, too
(cf. use of “promote” and “degrade” in Plato above), Nebuchednezzar “honoured
those he wanted to honour, and degraded those he wanted to degrade” (Daniel
5:19).
Perhaps Plato derived the classes of descending order of metal
refinement from an interpretation of Nebuchednezzar’s statue that would suggest
that the lower down the statue one goes, the less superior the kingdom. But
what is sometimes translated as “inferior” may not necessarily be the correct
interpretation, given for instance the might of the later Persian Empire. So
perhaps the Dream should be interpreted as meaning, not inferior, but lower
down on the statue, and thus pertaining to chronology. This would be a tactful
way to explain it to King Nebuchednezzar, at least, who would assuredly not
want to have heard that any subsequent kingdom might turn out to be superior to
his own. But note the “prophecy” in Plato above (Nebuchednezzar’s Dream
entailed a prophecy of future history) that “the State” - currently the golden
head - can “be ruined” by the “silver” and “bronze” entities.
Daniel, but also Plato according to his biography, had contact with
a succession of powerful kings. These they tried to influence for good, with
greater or lesser success.
Daniel’s kings, real historical characters, belonged to the
successive Chaldean, Median and Persian empires that featured as metals (yet to
be conclusively identified, I think) in Nebuchednezzar’s statue.
Plato’s kings were, typically in relation to the Greeks, situated
further westwards on the Mediterranean, in Sicily. Arguments might be advanced
for Plato’s kings, Dionysius I and II, and the chief minister, Dion, to
represent either the Judean or the Mesopotamian rulers (Dion being an official)
of Daniel’s era. Their similarity of names could perhaps suggest the Judean
succession of similar names: Jehoiakim and his son, Jehoiachin, and the
relative Zedekiah (= Jehozedek). But it might be rather hard to identify
amongst these Chaldeans Plato’s Dion, who quite enthusiastically, apparently,
embraced Plato’s blueprint for rulership, and who, according to Guthrie,
“invited [Plato] to come and train Dionysus II … as a philosopher-statesman” (op. cit., p. 16).
Or the Platonic succession of rulers could represent Nebuchednezzar
and Belshazzar, with perhaps Darius the Mede included. For example, Dionysius
I, from whom Plato “learned something of tyranny at first hand”, might well
stand for Nebuchednezzar, “an unjust king, the most wicked in all the world”
(Daniel 3:32). The brother-in-law, Dion, may have been a Median king, such as
Darius the Mede, with whose nation the Chaldean line had intermarried. Darius,
like Dion, was favourable to Daniel. Dionysius II, of whom Plato completely
despaired, could then be Belshazzar of the ‘Writing on the Wall’ notoriety,
whom Daniel took to task for not learning from his father’s mistakes.
What’s in a Name?
So far, I have historically identified Daniel in
Babylon as the long-ruling governor of that city, Nabu-ahhe-bullit, with
Daniel’s Babylonian name, Belteshazzar, having been derived, in part, from the bullit element in that name.
And, taking that first element of Belteshazzar, Belte-, I have suggested that this might be from where was
derived the mysterious name (likely a given name) of “Plato”.
And I am in the process of showing that some of the
key images of Plato’s dialogues are reminiscent of some of the most famous
incidents in the Book of Daniel.
Daniel’s given name, Belteshazzar,
which is not in fact a Bel- name, appears to me to
be a very poor foreign reconstruction of an original Babylonian name. Just like
in the case of St. Paul’s Jannes and Mambres,
in which it is very hard to discern the original
Egyptian names.
IMAGE TWO: KING
BELSHAZZAR AND
THE WRITING ON
THE WALL (Daniel 5)
The Chaldean rulers of Babylon, as they are presented in the Book of
Daniel, are a most interesting psychological study. The autocratic and
tyrannical Nebuchednezzar eventually goes mad (4:28-33), but later returns to
his senses and is said to have exalted the Most High God (vv. 34-37). His son,
Belshazzar, however, is a ne’er do well from beginning to end, whom Daniel
reprimands for his stubbornness and pride.
Plato’s Meno
It seems to me that the evil Chaldean king, Belshazzar, might find
an echo in the person of Meno, in Plato’s Meno. He is not a king there,
but a man of some power, nonetheless, a friend of the ruling family of
Thessaly, and he has connections interestingly with the king of Persia (read
Media?).
Guthrie tells of Meno as follows (Introduction to Plato. Protagoras and Meno, Penguin, 1968, pp. 101-102):
… The
character of Meno, as a wealthy, handsome and imperious young aristocrat,
visiting Athens from his native Thessaly, is well brought out in the dialogue
itself. He is a friend of Aristippus, the head of the Aleuadae who were the
ruling family in Thessaly, and his own family are xenoi (hereditary
guest-friends) of the Persian king, a tie which must have dated from the time
of Xerxes, who made use of Thessalian hospitality on his expedition against
Greece. He knows the famous Sophist and rhetorician Gorgias, who had stayed at
Larissa in Thessaly as well as meeting him in Athens. From Gorgias he has
acquired a taste for the intellectual questions of the day, as seen through the
eyes of the Sophists, whose trick question about the impossibility of knowledge
comes readily to his lips.
Xenophon
tells of his career as one of the Greek mercenaries of Cyrus and gives him a
bad character, describing him as greedy, power-loving, and incapable of
understanding the meaning of friendship. This account is probably prejudiced by
Xenophon’s admiration for the Greek leader Clearchus, a grim and hardly
likeable character, whose rival and personal enemy Meno was. There were rumours
that Meno entered into treacherous relations with the Great King [of Persia],
but he appears to have been finally put to death by him after the failure of
the expedition, though possibly later than his fellow-prisoners.
[End
of quote]
‘Bad character’, ‘greedy’, ‘power-loving’ ‘unloyal friend’,
‘connected with a Persian (Median) king’, but then ‘slain and replaced by the
king of the Persians (Medes)’, all of this fits King Belshazzar and his
replacement by Darius the Mede (Daniel 5:30-31). Belshazzar’s greed and his
love of power and flattery is clearly manifest in this description of his great
feast, one of the most celebrated feasts in history and in the Old Testament
(Daniel 5:1-4):
King
Belshazzar made a great festival for a thousand of his lords, and he was
drinking wine in the presence of the thousand.
Under the
influence of the wine, Belshazzar commanded that they bring in the vessels of
gold and silver that his father Nebuchednezzar had taken out of the Temple in
Jerusalem, so that the king and his lords, his wives, his concubines might
drink from them. So they brought in the vessels of gold and silver that had
been taken out of the Temple, the House of God in Jerusalem, and the king and
his lords, his wives, and his concubines drank from them. They drank the wine
and praised the gods of gold and silver, bronze, iron, wood, and stone.
Obviously Meno could not match this sort of opulence and grandeur;
but Socrates does say of him – and this is immediately before Socrates begins
to write in the sand: “I see that you have a large number of retainers here” (Meno,
82).
We can gain some impression of King Belshazzar’s treacherous nature
from Daniel’s pointed address to him (vv. 18-23):
‘O king, the Most
High God gave your father Nebuchednezzar kingship, greatness, glory, and
majesty. And because of the greatness that He gave him, all peoples, nations,
and languages trembled and feared before him. He killed those he wanted to
kill, kept alive those he wanted to keep alive, honoured those he wanted to
honour, and degraded those he wanted to degrade. But when his heart was lifted
up his spirit was hardened so that he acted proudly, he was deposed from his
kingly throne, and his glory was stripped from him. He was driven from human
society, and his mind was made like that of an animal. His dwelling was with
the wild asses, he was fed grass like an oxen, and his body was bathed with the
dew of heaven, until he learned that the Most High God has sovereignty over the
kingdom of mortals, and sets over it whomever He will. And you, Belshazzar,
have not humbled your heart, even though you knew all this! You have exalted
yourself against the Lord of heaven! The vessels of his Temple have been
brought in before you, and you and your lords, your wives and your concubines
have been drinking wine from them. You have praised the gods of silver and
gold, of bronze, iron, wood, and stone, which do not see or hear or know; but
the God in whose power is your very breath, and to whom belong all your ways,
you have not honoured.
Daniel would on this occasion have had the full attention of the
whole company since these words of his were spoken just after King Belshazzar
and his court had witnessed the terrifying apparition of the ‘Writing on the
Wall’ whilst in the midst of their blasphemous celebration. Here is the
description of it. And does it have a resonance anywhere in Plato? (vv. 5-9):
[As they were
drinking the wine and praising their gods]:
Immediately
the fingers of a human hand appeared and began writing on the plaster of the
wall of the royal palace next to the lampstand. The king was watching the hand
as it wrote. Then the king’s face turned pale, and his thoughts terrified him.
His limbs gave way, and his knees knocked together. The king cried aloud to
bring in the enchanters, the Chaldeans, and the diviners; and the king said to
the wise men of Babylon, ‘Whoever can read this writing and tell me its
interpretation shall be clothed in purple, have a chain of gold around his
neck, and rank third in the kingdom’. Then all the king’s wise men came in, but
they could not read the writing or tell the king the interpretation. Then King
Belshazzar became greatly terrified and his face turned pale, and his lords
were perplexed.
This fascinating life and death encounter I think may have inspired
the whole drama of the (albeit pale by comparison) Meno.
Instead of the miraculous ‘Writing on the Wall’ of the Chaldean
king’s palace, though, we get Socrates writing in the sand. Instead of the
words that name weights and measures indicating the overthrow of a great
kingdom, we get a detailed lesson in geometry. Instead of the stunned and
terrified Chaldean king, we get Meno, who tends to be similarly passive in the
face of the Socratic lesson. Instead of the exile, Daniel, we get Meno’s slave
boy seemingly providing a confirmation of the matter, under the skilful
prompting of Socrates.
Daniel enters the palace’s banquetting hall preceded by his
reputation, though now somewhat faded from memory (as in the case of Joseph
with the Oppressor Pharaoh). And Meno is aware of the legendary reputation of
Socrates.
Let us compare the two accounts, taking firstly the biblical one
(vv. 10-16):
The queen,
when she heard the discussion of the king and his lords, came into the
banquetting hall. The queen said, ‘O king, live forever! Do not let your
thoughts terrify you or your face grow pale. There is a man in your kingdom who
is endowed with a spirit of the holy gods. In the days of your father he was
found to have enlightenment, understanding, and wisdom like the wisdom of the
gods. Your father, King Nebuchednezzar, made him chief of the magicians,
enchanters, Chaldeans, and diviners, because an excellent spirit, and
understanding to interpret dreams, explain riddles, and solve problems were
found in this Daniel, whom the king named Belteshazzar. Now let Daniel be
called, and he will give the interpretation.
Then Daniel
was brought in before the king. The king said to Daniel, ‘So you are Daniel, one
of the exiles of Judah, whom my father the king brought from Judah? I have
heard of you that a spirit of the gods is in you, and that enlightenment,
understanding, and excellent wisdom are found in you. Now the wise men, the
enchanters, have been brought in before me to read this writing and tell me its
interpretation, but they were not able to give the interpretation of the
matter. But I have heard that you can give interpretations and solve problems.
Now if you are able to read the writing and tell me its interpretation, you
shall be clothed in purple, have a chain of gold around your neck, and rank
third in the kingdom’.
Now Meno, supposedly focussing on the subject of virtue, tells of
what he knows of Socrates’ enigmatic reputation, and it, too, like Daniel’s,
has connection with “magic” (see quote above and 4:9), and Meno himself feels
numb and weak, just like Belshazzar, so lacking in virtue (or “moral goodness”
as in quote below) (Meno, 80):
Meno.
Socrates, even before I met you they told me that in plain truth you are a
perplexed man yourself and reduce others to perplexity. At this moment I feel
that you are exercising magic and witchcraft upon me and positively laying me
under your spell until I am just a mass of helplessness. If I may be flippant,
I think that not only in outward appearance but in other respects as well you
are exactly like the flat sting-ray that one meets in the sea. Whenever anyone
comes into contact with it, it numbs him, and that is the sort of thing that
you seem to be doing to me now. My mind and my lips are literally numb, and I
have nothing to reply to you. Yet I have spoken about virtue hundreds of times,
held forth often on the subject in front of large audiences, and very well too,
or so I thought. Now I can’t even say what it is. In my opinion you are well
advised not to leave Athens and live abroad. If you behave like this as a
foreigner in another country, you would most likely be arrested as a wizard.
Socrates.
You’re a real rascal, Meno.
On the occasion of Socrates’ writing in the sand, which I think must
have originated from the ‘Writing on the Wall’ in the Book of Daniel, we have
as the audience, Meno (whom I am equating with King Belshazzar), and his “large
number of retainers” (Belshazzar’s large court), and the writing about to be
effected due to a query from Meno. And, in a sense to interpret it, we get, not
Daniel a former exiled slave, but Meno’s own slave boy, a foreigner (like
Daniel) who however speaks the native language (like Daniel). The issue has
become the immortality of the soul and whether it pre-exists the body, as
manifest in someone’s being able to recall knowledge. Socrates will attempt to
demonstrate this supposed pre-knowledge using the young slave boy – but perhaps
this, too, is built upon Daniel’s God-given ability to arrive at entirely new
knowledge without any human instruction (as in the case of his recalling
Nebuchednezzar’s Dream).
Anyway, here is the dialogue (ibid.):
Meno. …. If
in any way you can make clear to me that what you say is true, please do.
Socrates. It
isn’t an easy thing, but still I should like to do what I can since you ask me.
I see you have a large number of retainers here. Call one of them, anyone you
like, and I will use him to demonstrate it to you.
Meno.
Certainly. (To a slave-boy). Come here.
Socrates. He
is a Greek and speaks our language?
Meno. Indeed
yes – born and bred in the house.
Socrates.
Listen carefully then, and see whether it seems to you that he is learning from
me or simply being reminded.
Meno. I will.
Socrates. Now
boy, you know that a square is a figure like this?
(Socrates
begins to draw figures in the sand at his feet. He points to the square ABCD)
Boy. Yes.
Socrates. It
has all these four sides equal?
Boy. Yes.
Socrates. And
these lines which go though the middle of it are also equal? (The lines EF,
GH).
Boy. Yes.
….
And so on.
Such apparently is how the life and death biblical account becomes
gentlemanly and tamed, and indeed trivialised, in the Greek version! Daniel is
not a passive slave, like the boy, supposedly recalling pre-existent knowledge,
but a Jewish wise man, a sure Oracle to kings under the inspiration of the holy
Spirit of God.
The ‘Writing on the Wall’ contains, like Socrates’ writing in the
sand, division, and measure, but adds weighing. There is nothing Protagorean or
Sophistic here. God, not man, is indeed the measure of kings and kingdoms
according to the biblical account (vv. 24-28):
‘So from
[God’s] presence the hand was sent and this writing was inscribed. And this is
the writing that was inscribed: Mene, Mene, Tekel, and Parsin. This is the
interpretation of the matter: Mene, God has numbered the days of your kingdom
and brought it to an end; Tekel, you have been weighed on the scales and found
wanting; and Peres [the singular of Parsin], your kingdom is divided and given
to the Medes and the Persians’.
….
The yearning
for Goodness has been with us through the recorded history of humanity. In the
words of Plato, Good, “is that which every soul pursues and for the sake of
which it does all that it does …”. (Republic 505 …). Men have been striving to
do what is good, and not always selfishly what is good for them. Every new
philosophy tried to market itself by appealing to some universal good to be
achieved. And yet the result of all our intense labors has horrified us in the
twentieth century, and the twenty-first one is up to no good start. Good
appears to be other than sovereign in our hearts. And if not there, can it find
refuge anywhere in a godless world?
Murdoch
writes that “the chief enemy of excellence in morality … is personal fantasy:
the tissue of self-aggrandizing and consoling wishes and dreams, which prevents
one from seeing what is there outside one” …. This personal fantasy, or in
patristic terms, logos fantastikon, also and perhaps most importantly, prevents
one from seeing what is there inside one. And if we humble ourselves enough to
see our true state, then would we not cry out with Apostle Paul: “Wretched man
that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Rom. 7:24 NRSV) If
Good is merely a concept, a creation of the human mind, then there can be no
hope. If man is the measure of all things, then “mene, mene, tekel u-parsin”
(Dan. 5:25).
One thinks that King Belshazzar, who was apparently incapable of
humbling himself to recognise his true state, as Daniel had said of him, ‘You
have exalted yourself against the Lord of heaven!’, would have been perfectly
at home therefore with man, and not God, as the measure. Hence, when he was
weighed, he was found wanting.
Now, could the very name Meno have arisen from the Mene, ‘God has
numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end’? Certainly Fr. L.
Hartman (C.SS.R), commenting on “Daniel” for The Jerome Biblical Commentary (26:22),
connects the Mene (or half of it) to King Belshazzar (on whom I think this Meno
was based):
…. Daniel
must first say what words were written on the wall; evidently no one else could
even decipher the script. His interpretation involves a play on words that is
possible only in a purely consonantal script, such as Hebrew or Aramaic. The
three words that were written in the consonantal script would be mn’, tql, and
prs, which could be read, as Daniel apparently first read them, menê’, teqal,
and peres – i.e., as three monetary values, the mina (equivalent at different
times to 50 or 60 shekels, and mentioned in Lk 19:12-25), the shekel (the basic
unit of weight), and the half-mina. Daniel, however, “interpreted” the writing
by reading the three words as verbs, mena’, “he counted”, teqal, “he weighed”,
and peras, “he divided”, with God understood as the subject and Belshazzar and
his kingdom understood as the object. Thus, God has “numbered” the days of
Belshazzar’s reign. (Things that can be counted are few in number). God has
“weighed” the king in the balance of justice and found him lacking in moral
goodness. (The idea of the “scales” of justice, which goes back to an old
Egyptian concept, is met with elsewhere in the OT: Jb 31:6; Ps 62:10; Prv
16:11, etc.). God has “divided” Belshazzar’s kingdom among the Medes and the
Persians. For good measure, there is an additional pun on the last of the three
words, prs, which is also read as pãras, “Persia”, “Persians”.
Fr. Hartman
continues speculatively, and he concludes by equating King Belshazzar to the
half-mina:
An older form
of the conundrum may also have connected the word mãday, “Media”, “Medes”, with
the root mdd, “measure”. The conundrum seems to have existed in an older form,
independently of its present context. The statement that Belshazzar’s “kingdom
has been divided and given to the Medes and the Persians” does not fit well
with the statement at the end of the story, according to which Belshazzar’s
whole kingdom was handed over to the Medes, with no mention of the Persians.
Ginsberg even opines that the conundrum was originally applied to the only
three Babylonian kings who were known to the Jews of the Hellenistic period:
the mina would stand for the great Nebuchadnezzar, the shekel for the
insignificant Evil-merodach, and the half-mina for Belshazzar.
According to my revision of the Neo-Babylonian dynasty,
Evil-merodach was Belshazzar.
A Beastly Comparison
IMAGE THREE: THE FOUR
BEASTS – THE LION MAN (Daniel 7)
The scribal Daniel tells of the Dream (his own) that he wrote down
(Daniel 7:1-4):
In the first
year of King Belshazzar of Babylon, Daniel had a dream and visions of his head
as he lay in bed. Then he wrote down the dream: I, Daniel, saw in my vision by
night the four winds of heaven stirring up the great sea, and four great beasts
came up out of the sea, different from one another. The first was like a lion
and had eagles’ wings. Then, as I watched, its wings were plucked off, and it
was lifted up from the ground and made to stand on two feet like a human being.
….
Needless to say these “four great beasts” are up to no good.
Now Plato seems to have absorbed this lion-man image and located it
in his ‘imperfect societies’ (Republic,
Bk. 9, 588):
‘Let us show
him what his assertion really implies, by comparing the human personality to
one of those composite beasts in the old myths, Chimaera and Scylla and
Cerberus and all the rest’.
‘I know the
stories’.
‘Imagine a
very complicated, many-headed sort of beast, with heads of wild and tame
animals all around it, which it can produce and change at will’.
‘Quite a feat
of modelling’, he replied; ‘but fortunately it’s easier to imagine than it
would be to make’.
‘Imagine next
a lion, and next a man. And let the many-headed creature be by far the largest,
and the lion the next largest’.
‘That’s
rather easier to imagine’.
….
Ezekiel, whose vision also, like Daniel’s, was preceded by a great
rush of wind, or whirlwind, opens with (Ezekiel 1:5, 10):
… four living
creatures. This was their appearance: they were of human form. …. As for the
appearance of their faces: they four had the face of a human being, the face of
a lion, on the right side, the face of an ox on the left side, and the face of
an eagle; such were their faces. ….
Here is that lion-man (‘leonine’ man) combination again, plus the
eagle.
The Church in Germany must revise its synodal plans in line with the pope’s leadership and the universal Church, Cardinal Rainer Woelki told the plenary session of the German Episcopal Conference Tuesday morning. Woelki, who is Archbishop of Cologne, told the bishops that Pope Francis had offered
