The Odd Couple

I am so far behind in my blooking that I shall probably never catch up, but hackneyed hyperbole aside, I shall crank out a few easy ones while I have a moment.

Leviticus

I expected this to be a boring read, having only pretended to read the Bible in the past, but I actually got a little out of it. It may one day be interesting to study the different types of sacrifice the Israelites were commanded to offer--elevation offerings, burnt offerings, atonement offerings, sin offerings, far to many to remember at present. One particular thing I noticed is that the Bible--at least the Hebrew Scriptures portion--does not seem to mean what we think it might when it speaks of "sacrifice". I have always assumed that the Israelites took their sacrifical animal up to the altar, threw it to its fate, and returned home. Having read Leviticus now, I think otherwise. They seem to have led their animal up to the altar, slaughtered it, and returned home with most of the meat. Sacficial offereing seems not to have been sacrifice as we think of it so much as ritual butchering. They kill the animal, throw a few pieces on the fire, and eat the rest. I'm not sure what significance this clarification has, except to say that sacrifice is indeed not so much about giving something up, but about living a certain way--ritually even. Also, The Witnesses insist that the prohibition against eating blood in Leviticus is grounds for refusing blood transfucions today, but they neglect to notice that the Israelites were also prohibited from eating fat. Put that in your fondue, why dontcha?

Mencius

I like to think of this as "Confucianism for Dummies". This is nothing against Confucius, but Mencius followers seem to have kept a bit better track of what he actually said than Confucius' followers did. "The Analects" reads like a random assortment of quotes, many of them completely inscrutable. Mencius' works, on the other hand, have at least some narrative line and seem to form a more cohesive ideology. The gist of this ideology is that "Human Nature is good just as water seeks low ground" (VI.a). Although a man can be made bad just as water can be held in an artificial container, it is not man's natural state, just as it is not natural for water to be still. This is why, as Mencius observes, no matter how terrible and debased a man is, when he sees a child about to fall into a well his first instinct is of concern. He may or may not act on that instant of alarm, but he experiences it instinctively.

None of which I find particularly revolutionary, but Mencius is at times delightfully idiomatic. Allow me to share some of my favorites:

"One accepts willingly only what is one's proper destiny . . . it is never anyone's proper destiny to die in fetters" (VII.a).

"You can never succeed in winning the allegiance of men by trying to dominate them through goodness" ( IV.b).

"Only when a man will not do some things is he capable of great things" (IV.b).