Semiotics, Stoicism and...Sports? Say it Ain't So...

Semiotics is the study of signs. To some, this may seem a bit silly. Why would anyone want to study signs? Are we talking about stop signs? Speed-limit signs? Or are we talking about billboards and advertising? In a way, the answer to these questions is yes. Semiotics is, in fact, concerned with these types of signs, but also a multitude more signs that exist in culture and in the universe. While I am unable to go at into a proper introduction to semiotic theory, I will give a brief introduction by way of introducing the real topic which is modern day Stoicism in professional Sports.

I see this...

To begin, the study of signs is the study of things that "signify." By this I mean that a sign is something that points to a reality that is beyond itself (Augustine, De Dialectica). The classic example of this is smoke and fire. When a person sees smoke, the logical assertion is that there is a fire. In this example smoke is the sign, and fire is the "signed" - or, to use the 19th century French father of semiotics' (Ferdinand de Saussure) terminology, the smoke is the signifier, the fire is that which is signified.

So I think this.

Another classic example is that of a weathervane. When a farmer looks to the top of his/her barn and see the weather vane pointing north, the conclusion that farmer reaches is that the wind is blowing north. Thus the weathervane signifies a signified truth - the wind's direction.

Once we understand what signifiers and signifieds are it is easy to see them everywhere. Rain signifies clouds; a sonic boom signifies a passing jet; a siren signifies an emergency vehicle. Things become more interesting, though, when we realize that our words themselves are signifiers. There is, for example, no inherent meaning to the English word "dog." It is simply the signification of the animal that I have in my backyard that goes running about when I throw a bone. If we took the same animal, a dog, but said the Spanish word "perro" instead, it would be nonsensical to those who didn't know Spanish. In fact, I could take the Spanish word "perro" and, because I knew not that it meant "dog," use it to refer to, say, a table. And so, we must conclude, language is fundamentally semiotic in nature.

So happy to be a semiotician...

Once we grasp these fundamental semiotic truths is becomes readily apparent that the whole world is full of semiotic connections. The fun stuff, in my opinion, is looking at how semiotics gets used (and abused!) in pop culture. I can think of three television shows that I watch avidly whose foundational premise is built on semiotic theory. The first my good friend Gregory House. House employs semiotic theory to his patients by looking the signs of their symptoms. By observing signs, House postulates what causes them (like the smoke/fire example) then sets out to be rid of the cause.

 

She IS happy to be a semiotician

Another is the charming, but sometimes obtuse, Dr. Temperance Brennan. You may know her better as Bones. Bones is a forensic anthropologist. She examines skeletal remains to determine gender, ethnicity, lifestyle, and cause of death. Utilizes her skills in the same way House does, looking for signs that point to known signifieds - e.g. de-calcification of bone structure may indicate a certain type of diet.


  
There are others, but I am sure that these are enough to get your brain going. Now on to the juicy stuff.

As I was preparing for my semiotics class, I noticed a remarkable convergence of Stoic semiotic philosophy in modern professional sports. This cannot, I think, have been intentional, but the result is still the same. Bear with me as I explain a little bit.

The Stoics were a philosophical school that lived in Classical Greece. They philosophized as a group alongside Plato and Aristotle all the way down until classical philosophy was subsumed under Christianity in the 5th and 6th centuries C.E. The Stoics' foundational belief was that there was nothing beyond the physical senses. They were non-dualistic in that they rejected Plato's understanding of a bifurcated universe where "real" things only existed as ideals somewhere in "heaven." The practical implications of this were that Stoics didn't believe in anything that didn't have solid grounding in the physical world. This is why they were often taught to be without emotion, since emotion had no grounding in reality.

You can imagine, then, that when confronted with the notion of a sign - something that is not grounded in reality - they were not impressed. There very convincing (and complicated!) answer is basically as follows: if, say, we take the smoke/fire example used above and say the smoke signifies a fire is had. The problem with this is that a signifier (the smoke) precedes our knowledge of the signified (the fire). That is, in theory we have no knowledge of the fire until we see the smoke (hence signified and signifier). But this cannot be so since you must already have knowledge of a signified to have a signifier - in other words, I must have knowledge of fire before I can recognize that smoke = fire. But if I have simultaneous knowledge of smoke and fire then there cannot be a signifier since the very definition requires that it a signifier precede knowledge of the signified.

And so, the Stoics claimed that there was no secret behind reality, that everything simply, "is what it is." And this little bit of Stoic philosophy has crept into modern professional sports.

I am an avid fan of professional basketball. I watch a lot of games and play a good deal of fantasy basketball so I know a lot of players and their statistics and abilities. Basketball is different than football in that individual performance can be graded very easily. If a person's stats fluctuate outside accepted parameters then a player is often questioned by the media as to "why" such fluctuations occurred.
~Shawn Marion on the occasion of the Dallas Mavericks loss to the San Antonion Spurs (1/14/11)
"when you’re losing. Everybody is looking at this and that. Everyone has red flags to throw up. It is what it is and we just got to find a way to stick together as a team and pull this out." 

~Jerry Stackhouse on the Buck playing without their star Center
"It is what it is, but hopefully he can come back healthy, but I think he is the key and the centerpiece to everything the Bucks do.”

~Suns coach Alvin Gentry on getting walloped by the Raptors
"their pressure bothered us and they continued to do it throughout the whole game even when they were up 50, 40 or whatever it was. It is what it is. The great thing about it is that Friday we get to lineup and play again."

Now since I first heard this some 4-5 years ago I have been extremely frustrated with it. It seemed like a cop-out to me, a sound bite for the media to deflect having to answer a difficult question. "It is what it is, huh? Well what the hell is IT?" I would ask aloud. After my work for my semiotics class, though, I realized that, in some way, the NBA players were mimicing a Stoic response to the media hounds. Rather than see their performance as a sign of some underlying issue, they chose to combat the relentless semiotizing of the media with a Stoic-esque denial of sign theory! As a fan, I am still frustrated, but as a semiotician, I say "Bravo" and "Well done!"

Demons of Ancient Mesopotamia: Lamaštu

For one of my classes I had to do a textual analysis of 30 lines of incantaion(s) that dealt with a deity or demon. I chose to do my analysis on two incantations involving the demon Lamaštu. For those of you who are fluent in Judaic history, Lamaštu is the demon upon whom a similar being Lilith is based in later Judaism. In Judaism, Lilith was the first wife of Adam and didn't take kindly to certain sexual presuppositions that Adam had. After fighting, Lilith vows that she will cause harm to the children of Adam and any other "wife" he takes. Thus in Jewish tradition, Lilith is a demon that causes harm to infants and childbearing women, as was Lamaštu several thousand years before.

General Introduction to the Deity

                Despite her apparent demon status in Mesopotamia, Lamaštu was the daughter of Anu and thus not in the same category as other demons (Black and Green, 116). Her primary targets, according to the various texts of Mesopotamia that deal with her, were infants and pregnant mothers. It was thought that Lamaštu caused miscarriages and stole babies from their beds (Black and Green, 116). The texts give no information about why Lamaštu has taken this role but they seem to indicate that her maleficent activities are a product of her own desire to do harm.

Two Lamashtu Statues

Description of Lamaštu’s Nature and Character Profile

Both texts describe Lamaštu as the “daughter of Anu,” indicating that the demon was, in some sense, a divine being. With Lamaštu’s ignominious exit from the divine court she also acquired a “function” among humans and, presumably, an altered visage. We are not told of Lamaštu’s looks or function before her “fall,” but these texts do describe her appearance as a demon, that is, as wholly unhuman.

The first magical text describes her as having an “awful glamor,” perhaps a radiance or general visage that inspired fear (ln. 1). She is a “she-wolf” and has the “face of a ravening lion,” characteristics of predators than can inflict a great deal of damage upon their prey. Likewise, in the second text the magic describes Lamaštu as having long hands, long nails, and forearms covered in blood (lns. 4-5; also in text 1, ln. 4). These all seem to be characteristic traits not only of a lion or carnivorous predator but of one who gorges on it prey frequently enough to have blood still staining it skin. This is an important characteristic when speaking about Lamaštu’s “function,” as will be discussed below. The animalistic nature of Lamaštu is further encapsulated in the observation that she no longer wears clothes (first text, ln. 3), indicating that the demon is totally outside of the realm of human society and thus non-human.

Lamashtu

Furthering the notion of Lamaštu being an animal, both texts transition from depicting the demon as a large predator, to a smaller, more elusive creature: the snake. Both texts describe Lamaštu as entering the house in snake-like ways. In the first text, Lamaštu slithers like a “serpent” through the window (ln. 5), and leaves “at will,” suggesting either some sort of transitory state of being (e.g. mist, fog), or at least the quality of slipperiness that characterize snake movement. In the second text, Lamaštu is depicted more concretely as a snake, “slithering over the doorpost” to attack its victims (lns. 6-7).

Function of Lamaštu

Partial Tablet Carving Possibly of Lamashtu

The function of Lamaštu is not difficult to ascertain, though the texts give no indication of how the demon came to possess this function. Lamaštu’s function is, quite simply, causing the death of infants and complicating childbirth. In the first text this is less obvious as the magician merely mimes a typical Lamaštu saying, “Bring me your sons that I may suckle them, and your daughters, that I may nurse them” (ln. 7). Combined with the image of Lamaštu being first a lion and then a serpent, Lamaštu’s statement is clearly a menacing one intended to convey her intention of, perhaps, suckling/nursing on the children, rather than providing sustenance for them.

In the second text Lamaštu’s intention is stated more clearly for the audience. The text narrates Lamaštu’s movements as if observing them from afar,

                She slithered over the doorpost casing,

                She has caught sight of the baby!

                Seven seizures has she done him in his belly! (lns. 7-9)

Lamaštu causes the infant pain in an attempt to kill it. Seizures are specifically mentioned but the magic calls on Lamaštu to “pluck out” her nails and “let loose” her arms suggesting that the infant is under some severe distress.

                The way in which Lamaštu is treated by the ašipu is different in each text and may reflect the severity of the situation that the ašipu is dealing with. There is no indication in the first text that Lamaštu has done anything negative to the infant, just indications of intent to do harm – perhaps via an omen or portent. This suggests that the demon has not yet arrived and that the magic intended is apotropaic in nature. This might explain why Lamaštu is encouraged to leave with gifts of jewelry (ln. 14-15), gems (ln. 16), clothes (ln. 13), and cosmetic apparel (ln. 17). Perhaps underlying the conception of Lamaštu behind this text is that these things will beautify her, helping her regain some sense of her original form and thus pacify her desire to cause the infant harm. The second text, however, appears to be meant for an instance where Lamaštu has already negatively affected the infant. In this case, the ašipu enjoins the demon to depart in the name of Ea and casts her out into the “open country” with sand in her mouth and dust on her face (lns. 15-16).

The reason for the two different treatments is not immediately clear. Perhaps the ašipu reasons that, in the first instance, any attempt at command or manipulation would focus the demon’s wrath on him instead, and thus attempts to pacify or distract Lamaštu with gifts. Why a different approach is used in the second text can only be speculated upon but two options come to mind. 1) The danger to the child is no longer a possibility but a reality, and thus forceful measures must be taken despite any potential backlash against the ašipu; or, 2) since in the second text the demon has already attacked the infant, it has effectively shown itself. That is, Lamaštu can no longer slither like a snake unbeknownst to anyone. Having seen the demon, the ašipu has no fear of being attacked in secret and can forcefully drive Lamaštu away.

Philosophy and the Ancient World

In chapter one of Before Philosophy: The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man, Henri Frankfort makes a really good attempt at understanding the rational mindset of ancient humans, particularly inhabitants of Mesopotamia. Frankfort does not do this lightly, realizing that there are no extant treatises on philosophy like the Greeks leave us in Aristotle, Plato and Socrates. In fact, there are virtually no discussions in extant texts from the Ancient Near East describing any sort of philosophical understanding of deities, creation, and humans. However it is presumptuous of us to believe that the Ancients did not think about such things or even that they lacked a so-called “rational” mindset that has so dominated Western thinking for the last 2500 years. The fact is, philosophical questions are, at their core, a way of “speculating” about the nature of the world around us. Greek philosophy has an excellent example in Aristotle and Plato who argue about the “thingness” of objects. In the modern world, philosophical forays into the nature of cosmology and the physical world has largely been taken over by the sciences. Yet even the scientific method is a “speculative” exercise as it has postulates and hypotheses that theorize a reason behind the workings of the world.

The Ancients engaged in similar postulating but their mindset was different than that of the Greeks. Like the Greeks, the Mesopotamian Ancients knew that the world functioned and events occurred because certain forces acted upon other forces. Yet the Mesopotamians (and early Greeks) expressed this not in the form of treatise but of myth. Myth, in this context, is a poetic form of truth and reasoning that attempts to enact truth, rather than simply comment on it. Evidence of speculation concerning cosmology appears in Egypt (e.g. Atum created Geb and Nut: Earth and Sky), Meospotamia (e.g. Marduk rends Tiamat and uses her corpse for the earth), and Greece (Geia mates with Ouranos). The source of these speculations is observation, but also dreams and hallucinations. Through these “visions” ancient man would often see people who were not present or even dead. Symbolism is also a large part of the Ancients’ “speculative” understanding of the world. The coalescence of these parts of a symbol is foundational for ancient societies. When an action was performed on a symbolic object, that action was thought to have real consequences. This leads the author to discuss the notion of causality. The author posits that the Ancients had no way of viewing cause and effect in the same scientific way that we do. They observed an event, such as the rising or lowering of a river, and sought answers through some medium – usually the actions of a god. These divine actions may or may not be an effect of another cause, and so further speculation is needed. This logic also applies to notions of sin/illness and forgiveness, ultimately the place of the cult and religion.

Several preliminary observations can be made based on the Frankfort’s work. The first is a realization that ancient people’s had a complex way of relating to their environment. They sought answers for the many diversified experiences of life and, more importantly, sought a way in which to express their thoughts in a rational and ordered way. They used mythic texts to construct worlds and beings of which they likely had no physical contact. This was done so that events, like the rising of a river or the appearance of a plague, might be explained, and then be dealt with. The second is that speculation about creation gave rise to the types of society, economics, and ethics that these cultures had. Hierarchies of society, both noble and ordinary, were formed on the basis of cosmological speculation.  Economic issues, such as what plants could be harvested at what time of year, or how meat was to be processed and cooked, were all part of a larger understanding of the interactions between deities and creation; humans and nature. Even the ethics, religion, and morality of ancient societies were founded on speculation about illness, disease, and prosperity. Ultimately, mythic texts help the modern reader to see how peoples of the ancient world used their own forms of logic to understand the world and speculate about their surroundings. Indeed, though they are markedly different than the scientific nature of the modern discussion, they are nevertheless a valuable contribution to our understanding of humanity as a whole.

Textual Criticism - Exodus 1:1-7

There are several textual issues in play in Exodus 1:1-7 that make it difficult to ascertain what the "early" text was. I say "early" because it hard to say in this instance what the "earliest" version of this text was. Because of this, I should quickly sum up my intent in this critical exercise.


I have no illusions that what I am doing is arriving at an "original" text. Textual issues and recensions abound and make any judgement that would call a text "earlier" almost impossible to make with any academic integrity. What I am looking for in these verses is a version of the text that might be called "early," but what I am content with calling "whole." That is, I am looking for a text that is prior to the MT and has little complex 
history behind it that we, with our extent MS evidence, can prove. With this in mind, I go to the text.


Exodus 1:1-7
The MS found in BHS is as follows. (each line is a verse)

ואלה שמות בני ישראל הבאים מצרימה את יעקב איש וביתו באו

ראובן שמעון לוי ויהודה

יששכר זבולן ובנימן

דן ונפתלי גד ואשר

ויהי כל נפש יצאי ירך יעקב שבעים נפש ויוסף היה במצרים

וימת יוסף וכל אחיו וכל הדור ההוא

ובני ישראל פרו וישרצו וירבו ויעצמו במאד מאד ותמלא הארץ אתם

1 Now these are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob; they came each one with his household:
2 Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah;
3 Issachar, Zebulun and Benjamin;
4 Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher.
5 All the persons who came from the loins of Jacob were seventy in number, but Joseph was already in Egypt.
6 Joseph died, and all his brothers and all that generation.
7 But the sons of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly, and multiplied, and became exceedingly mighty, so that the land was filled with them.

Extent manuscript evidence from the LXX, Targumim, DSS, and Peshitta reveal several differences but I will focus on one in particular that I believe has the most significance. In one instance in the DSS (4QExodus), the discernable text reads the name Joseph between what appears to be Benjamin and Zebulun.

[...] יששכר זבולון יוסף ובני [...]
The text is broken after this including the part in 1:5 where the MT mentions that Joseph was already in Egypt, thereby explaining his absence in such an important list. 4QExodus does, however, contain the first word from verses 6, ימת, which, in the MT, is connected with a statement concerning the deaths of Joseph, his brothers, and all "that" (הדור ההוא) generation.

The question now is which reading is preferred. Since, as I have stated, I am looking for a reading of the text that seems "whole" or without known recension, there are several options available to me.

1) The MT is earlier and the DSS reading is based on a variant edition that is not extant - presumably disposed of because of its errors.

2) The MT is later and based on a version that has already moved Joseph from his place beside Benjamin and Zebulun to a mention in verse 5.

3) Neither is earlier but each is based on separate traditions that develop in different places.


After a great deal of thought I decided to go with #2 and my explanation is as follows. While #3 might be preferred it is nearly impossible to prove with the extant mss. Therefore I cannot posit this as a viable option at this time. Option #2 is a good option and the LXX agrees with it in regards to Joseph. Yet there is also a difference between the two in verse 5 where the MT states that the number of people going down to Egypt was 70 (שׁבעים נפשׁ), and the LXX states there were 75 (πεντε και εβδομηκοντα). The LXX here shows an interesting Hebraism in how is forms the number 75, evincing that this text was copied from a Hebrew source (this is to be expected). However it seems unlikely that the LXX and the MT should have the same parent tet for one verse (1:3) and an entirely different one for a different verse (1:5). Thus we can posit yet another source which is not extant that serves as the parent for the LXX in Exodus 1:1-7. In other words, that the LXX and the MT agree on verse 5 is only secondary evidence since their agreement cannot be linked to a common text.


The main question is why a text WOULD include Joseph in a list with his brothers and NOT include Joseph in verse 5. The answer, I believe, is that the text that 4QExodus is copied from does not know the Joseph stories where he is already in Egypt. That version of the text might have been written before the Joseph stories coalesced and were placed into mainstream Judaic tradition. 4QExodus seems based on a source that only knows Joseph as a son of Jacob and, thus, one who entered Egypt with his brothers to escape a famine. Using common text critical rules we can assume that the text went from less complicated (with Joseph merely appearing in a list of Jacob's sons) to more complicated (with the scribe/source seeking to emend the text to show Joseph in Egypt).


Take up the issue. What does common sense tell you? What is a good read on this text?