The Most Precious Possession: The Ring of Polycrates in Ancient Religious Narratives PDF
Preview The Most Precious Possession: The Ring of Polycrates in Ancient Religious Narratives
S A M E R I C A N U N I V E R S I T Y S T U D I E S e g Finding a precious object—a gem, a ring or a coin—inside the belly of a a l fish is a favorite motif in western literatures that can be traced back to the Greek historian Herodotus. In Herodotus’ account of the rise and fall of the tyrant Polycrates of Samos, the hero cast his beloved ring, his “most precious possession,” into the sea in order to appease or fend off the gods’ envy of his unstoppable successes, but was ultimately disappointed to discover that same ring inside a serving of fish that was placed before him to eat, thereby signaling the beginning of his tragic downfall. The Most Precious Possession: The Ring of Polycrates in Ancient Religious Narratives examines variations on this motif as they appear in ancient religious T texts, including the Gospel of Matthew, Jewish Midrash and Talmud, and h Augustine’s City of God. It explores how the theme functions in relation to e the authors’ respective religious outlooks and literary objectives and what M we can learn from these examples about the processes of transmission, o interaction and cultural adaptation that occurred among the diverse s t religious communities of the ancient Mediterranean basin. P r e c i o u ELIEZER SEGAL holds degrees from McGill University (B.A. in philosophy s and Jewish studies) and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (M.A. in Tal- P mud; Ph.D. in Talmud). Since 1986 he has been a member of the Religious o Studies Department at the University of Calgary where he holds the rank s s of Full Professor, teaching courses in Western religions, especially Juda- e s ism. His principal research interests are in Rabbinic Judaism and Jewish s scriptural interpretation. He was awarded the Helen and Stan Vine Annual io Canadian Jewish Book Award for 2005. n Eliezer Segal is the author of seventeen published volumes, including scholarly monographs such as The Babylonian Esther Midrash (1994) and From Sermon to Commentary: Expounding the Bible in Talmudic Babylonia (2005), textbooks such as Introducing Judaism (2008) and Reading Jewish Religious Texts (2012), as well as collections of articles for non-specialist The Most audiences and a children’s book. He has also contributed dozens of v articles and book reviews to scholarly journals and collections in addition ii Precious Possession to numerous oral presentations. • 3 4 3 The Ring of Polycrates ISBN 978-1-4331-2614-7 in Ancient Religious Narratives P E T E R L A A M E R I C A N N G U N I V E R S I T Y ELIEZER SEGAL S T U D I E S www.peterlang.com S A M E R I C A N U N I V E R S I T Y S T U D I E S e g Finding a precious object—a gem, a ring or a coin—inside the belly of a a l fish is a favorite motif in western literatures that can be traced back to the Greek historian Herodotus. In Herodotus’ account of the rise and fall of the tyrant Polycrates of Samos, the hero cast his beloved ring, his “most precious possession,” into the sea in order to appease or fend off the gods’ envy of his unstoppable successes, but was ultimately disappointed to discover that same ring inside a serving of fish that was placed before him to eat, thereby signaling the beginning of his tragic downfall. The Most Precious Possession: The Ring of Polycrates in Ancient Religious Narratives examines variations on this motif as they appear in ancient religious T texts, including the Gospel of Matthew, Jewish Midrash and Talmud, and h Augustine’s City of God. It explores how the theme functions in relation to e the authors’ respective religious outlooks and literary objectives and what M we can learn from these examples about the processes of transmission, o interaction and cultural adaptation that occurred among the diverse s t religious communities of the ancient Mediterranean basin. P r e c i o u ELIEZER SEGAL holds degrees from McGill University (B.A. in philosophy s and Jewish studies) and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (M.A. in Tal- P mud; Ph.D. in Talmud). Since 1986 he has been a member of the Religious o Studies Department at the University of Calgary where he holds the rank s s of Full Professor, teaching courses in Western religions, especially Juda- e s ism. His principal research interests are in Rabbinic Judaism and Jewish s scriptural interpretation. He was awarded the Helen and Stan Vine Annual io Canadian Jewish Book Award for 2005. n Eliezer Segal is the author of seventeen published volumes, including scholarly monographs such as The Babylonian Esther Midrash (1994) and From Sermon to Commentary: Expounding the Bible in Talmudic Babylonia (2005), textbooks such as Introducing Judaism (2008) and Reading Jewish Religious Texts (2012), as well as collections of articles for non-specialist The Most audiences and a children’s book. He has also contributed dozens of v articles and book reviews to scholarly journals and collections in addition ii Precious Possession to numerous oral presentations. • 3 4 3 The Ring of Polycrates in Ancient Religious Narratives P E T E R L A A M E R I C A N N G U N I V E R S I T Y ELIEZER SEGAL S T U D I E S www.peterlang.com The Most Precious Possession SERIES VII THEOLOGY AND RELIGION Vol. 343 This book is a volume in a Peter Lang monograph series. Every volume is peer reviewed and meets the highest quality standards for content and production. PETER LANG New York ∙ Washington, D.C./Baltimore ∙ Bern Frankfurt am Main ∙ Berlin ∙ Brussels ∙ Vienna ∙ Oxford ELIEZER SEGAL The Most Precious Possession The Ring of Polycrates in Ancient Religious Narratives PETER LANG New York ∙ Washington, D.C./Baltimore ∙ Bern Frankfurt am Main ∙ Berlin ∙ Brussels ∙ Vienna ∙ Oxford Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Segal, Eliezer. The most precious possession: the ring of Polycrates in ancient religious narratives / Eliezer Segal. pages cm. — (American University studies. Series VII, Theology and religion; Vol. 343) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Literature, Ancient—History and criticism. 2. Religious literature— History and criticism. 3. Religion and literature—History—To 1500. I. Title. PN621.S44 809'.01—dc23 2013046477 ISBN 978-1-4331-2614-7 (hardcover) ISBN 978-1-4539-1299-7 (e-book) ISSN 0740-0446 Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de/. The cover illustration is reproduced from an original quilt created by Dr. Marilyn Samuels (Calgary, Alberta, Canada). © 2014 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York 29 Broadway, 18th floor, New York, NY 10006 www.peterlang.com All rights reserved. Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm, xerography, microfiche, microcard, and offset strictly prohibited. Preface I have now been employed for more than a quarter century in a department of “Religious Studies,” and yet to the best of my awareness, the present volume marks my first published venture outside the boundaries of my specialized field ofJewishRabbinicliterature.True,myteachingobligationshavealwaysencom- passedabroadrangeofWesternor“Abrahamic”religions,andinrecentyearsI havebeen offeringcourses thatspanthemajoroccidentalandorientalreligions, alongside seminars in theory and methods for the general study of religion. I have long since cured myself of my former reluctance to admit that I study “comparativereligion.”Indeed,thoughImightnotalwaysacknowledgethefact as clearly as I should, my ongoing involvements with diverse religions, assisted by my free access to the learning of my generous colleagues, have enriched my understandings of Judaism in profound ways. Nevertheless, this is the first re- search project in which I am proposing a comparative investigation that encom- passes Greek pagan, Christian and Jewish texts. Inrecentyears,Ihavebeen growingincreasinglyaware—withconsiderable trepidation and regret—that the kind of humanistic research that underlies this book is on the wane. The professors of “talmudic philology” with whom I did mygraduatestudiesattheHebrewUniversityofJerusalem regardedthemselves asthebearersofaEuropeantraditionofscholarshipthatwasdevotedtoametic- ulous sifting of literary and other historical evidence in order to emerge with as complete and precise an interpretation as is humanly possible of the relevant data.Crucialtothatmissionisthedisciplineofphilology—initsEuropeansense of studying the creation, redaction and transmission of texts with a view to re- constructing their original forms and meanings. For a project that compares a Greek historian, a Christian Gospel, Jewish rabbinic works from the land of Is- raelandBabyloniaand aLatinChurchFather,considerablelanguage trainingis required.Itseemsthatuniversitiesnolongerhavethewillortheresourcestoin- vestinthiskindoftime-consumingandcostlytrainingthatproducesnoobvious VI THE MOST PRECIOUS POSSESSION economicbenefitstotheagenciesuponwhosefundingtheydepend.Wearecon- cerned that coming generations of scholars will be deprived of the necessary skills, and substitute for them obscure theoretical constructions that are not solidly rooted in the original documents. InotefromaperspectiveofpersonalhindsighthowfortunateIhavebeen,as choices and circumstances that seemed frivolous in my formative years were somehow converging into a constellation of language abilities and cultural liter- acy that was ideally suited for comparative studies of ancient civilization, thought and beliefs. Growing up Jewish in Montreal, I enjoyed (as I discovered inlater years)whatwasarguably thefinestHebrewelementaryschooling avail- able outside of Israel, which providing me with a solid grounding that I could later build upon during my extended stay in Jerusalem during the 1970s and 1980s—whereIalsowasabletostudytherelevantdialectsofAramaic.Myhigh school education took place at a time (the 1960s) when the humanistic cur- riculum in Canada was equated with the study of Latin. That tradition that was clearly anachronistic even then, and I sometimes muse about how many of my classmates ever found any useful purpose that could justify being put through that ordeal; though a few of us at least felt comfortable enough with the Latin languagetosignupforanotheryearofitatMcGillUniversity.MyLatinstudies weresupplementedlaterwithGreekinconnectionwithmyundergraduatemajor in philosophy; and when I eventually decided to pursue graduate degrees in Talmud at the Hebrew University, Greek was strongly encouraged as an almost indispensable component of academic Talmud studies. Aside perhaps from the Hebrew and Aramaic, I cannot claim fluency in the classical languages, but I can stumble through texts and learned scholarly discussions with the help of translations, dictionaries and reference grammars. I do not believe that the re- searchIconductwouldbecrediblewith anythinglessthanthat.Ihaveasimilar satisfactionwithrespecttomypersonalpredilectionforGreekclassics(intrans- lation), especially comedies, with which I “wasted” many pleasurable moments during my student days. Details thatcome to mind from those long-ago leisures readings still come to mind at unlikely instances to shed light on texts that are part of my “serious” research. The choice of the research topic for the monograph also owes much to the sort of serendipitous circumstances that are far less likely to occur to future re- searchers. If I remember correctly, I happened upon the entry about Polycrates’ ring in a worn old tome of the Pauly-Wissowa Realencyclopädie in the reading room of Jerusalem’s Jewish National and University Library while looking for something entirely unrelated (a kind of event that is becoming increasingly rare thanks to our technologies of carefully focused digital searches). Hitherto unfa- PREFACE VII miliar with the passage in Herodotus, I did notice its intriguing similarity to the talmudictaleaboutJoseph theSabbath-honorer,so I jotteddownthe listofpas- sages for future investigation. Several years later I was in search of a research project for an approaching academic sabbatical, so I pulled out those old jot- tings.Now,severalyearslater,theresultsofthatchancetextualencounterliebe- fore you, Gentle Readers, and I hoped that you will find something of value in my attempt to elicit some insights into how this trope was adapted by the re- spective authors representing their diverse religious outlooks: what they shared, wheretheydifferandwhatwecanlearnabouthowsuchmotifsweretransmitted and developed among different communities in the ancient Mediterranean world. The core sections of the book were researched and written during the latter halfofthe2008academicyearwhichIspentinJerusalemasaguestoftheFac- ulty of Humanities of the Hebrew University. I am most grateful to them for providing me with access to their excellent resources, particularly the fine col- lectionsoftheMountScopuslibrary.DuringthattermIwasinvitedtopresenta preliminary outline of my research before the departmental colloquium of the Goldstein-Goren Department of Jewish Thought at Ben-Gurion University of theNegevinBeersheba,andIbenefitedfromsomeoftheparticipants’aptcom- ments and suggestions. I have continued to work on the project since that time, andIhopethatitisreadytobeofferedtothescholarlypublicasacompleteand mature product. Iammostappreciativeofthepatienceshownbymyfamilyandfriendswho put up with my enthusiastic and long-winded replies whenever a hapless inter- locutor made the mistake of asking the innocent-looking question “what is the subject of your current research?” Ialsoappreciatethesympatheticglancesofdiningcompanionsduringthose years, as they observed the subtle disappointment that clouded my visage whenever my fork reached into a serving of fish to bring forth...alas! Nothing but fish. Eliezer Segal, University of Calgary
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