On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears (53 page)
Read On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears Online
Authors: Stephen T. Asma
7
. When vacationing in Europe in the early 1990s I chanced to flip on the TV in my pensione. The scene haunted me for years afterward and I unsuccessfully quizzed film buffs relentlessly to help me identify the film. Fifteen years later I finally discovered that the scene was from an obscure Danish television version of
Medea
by director Lars von Trier (originally aired in Denmark in 1988). Von Trier reportedly once said, “A film should be like a rock in the shoe.” His
Medea
has been like a rock in my shoe for almost twenty years, and counting.
8
. One is reminded here of William Congreve’s famous passage in
The Mourning Bride
(1697), “Heaven hath no rage like love to hatred turned, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.” The quotations from Euripides’
Medea
are taken from Ian Johnston’s translation.
9
. In Euripides’ tragedy
Hecuba
we see the same sort of descent into inhuman monstrosity, but the injury that provokes Hecuba’s vengeance—betrayal by a supposed friend who murders Hecuba’s son—makes her more sympathetic in her outrage and her response. Sometimes one must meet monstrosity with something similarly frightening in order to return balance to justice. The metaphor of Hecuba’s transformation is that, by sinking to animalistic retaliation, she will become a dog, a hapless hound. In
The Fragility of Goodness
,
chapter 13
, Martha Nussbaum argues that the whole play is “an assault upon our fondest thoughts about human safety and human beneficence.” The play is a rare recognition, in an otherwise much less vulnerable ancient literary culture, of the external uncontrollable factors in human happiness.
10
. Scylla was the horrifying sea monster who, together with Charybdis, formed a legendary gauntlet of doom for sailors traveling between Italy and Sicily.
11
. See
chapter 2
of Dodd’s still impressive
The Greeks and the Irrational
(University of California Press, 1951).
13
.
Alastor
is a Greek term that means “avenger” and was personified as a demon that surrounded family feuds in particular. Alastor is the demon that avenges blood crimes, even if he must visit the sins of the father upon the sons.
14
. Interestingly, Jason interprets his own sin not as betraying Medea, but as knowing that she was evil (murderer of her own brother, etc.) and still going ahead with their romance. He is being punished because he didn’t get out when the going was good.
15
. Socrates’ famous theory that people never
knowingly
do wrong but only make cognitive mistakes about the good is here undermined by Medea. Socrates’ notion that proper understanding clears away immoral action looks rather naïve next to the subtler psychology of Euripides and even Socrates’ student Plato.
16
. See book II of the
Republic
.
17
. Julia Annas,
Ancient Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction
(Oxford University Press, 2000),
chapter 1
.
18
. Aristotle, both in his embryology and his ethics, is perhaps the best exception to this generalization.
CHAPTER19
. Christianity came along later and removed this escape plan by making it a sure doorway to more severe and eternal monster harassment.
5
1
. Timothy K. Beal,
Religion and Its Monsters
(Routledge, 2002), introduction.
2
. Satan is widely accepted as the engineer of Job’s misery, and he unambiguously colludes with Yahweh to begin the torture of Job. But, as many commentators have pointed out, the term translated as Satan is
ha-satan
and means generally “the adversary” or “the accuser”; it is not a proper personal name. In any case, the mainstream exegetical tradition has interpreted the adversary as Satan.
3
.
Consurrexit autem Satan contra Israhel et incitavit David ut numeraret Israhel
(Chronicles 21:1). Unless otherwise noted, Bible passages are from the Latin Vulgate Bible.
4
.
Intravit autem Satanas in Iudam qui cognominatur Scarioth unum de duodecim
. Of course, the relatively recent discovery and publication of the Gospel of Judas has redefined Judas along Gnostic lines. In that suppressed and then long-lost gospel, Judas is more positively rendered. He delivers the body of Jesus to the high priests, but it is with Jesus’ full knowledge and blessing. Judas is characterized as a catalyst for ultimate redemption, not an enemy of goodness. See Elaine Pagels and Karen L. King,
Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity
(Viking, 2007).
5
. Luther Link,
The Devil: Archfiend in Art from the Sixth to the Sixteenth Century
(Harry Abrams, 1996).
6
. Book of Job, chapter 40.
7
. See
chapter 3
of Beal’s
Religion and Its Monsters
for a nice discussion of these various meanings of Leviathan.
9
. Christian philosophers such as St. Anselm (1033–1109) and St. Aquinas (1126–1198), but also the Muslim scholar Averroes (Ibn Rushd; 1126–1198) all considered some form of the “paradox of omnipotence.” Was God bound by logical consistency, or could he violate the laws of rationality? Could God make a square circle or create a stone so heavy that he could not lift it? In general, Western monotheists opted for a rational omnipotent God, one that observed the laws of logic and maintained some level of coherence to our human minds.
10
.
Baghavad Gita
, translated by Ramanand Prasad (American Gita Society, 2004),
chapter 11
, available at
http://eawc.evansville.edu/anthology/gita.htm
.
11
. For an opposing viewpoint, see Partha Mitter,
History of European Reactions to Indian Art
(Clarendon Press, 1977). Mitter argues that Western interpretations of Indian art assume, unsurprisingly, a hierarchy of quality that places a premium on more Western-looking representations (such as the Ghandharan styles). But he also argues that Westerners overemphasize the “metaphysical” and “spiritual values” of Indian art. “I would suggest,” Mitter says, “that a more effective and fruitful way of studying the nature and quality of Indian art and the entire relations between art and religion would be in concrete and human terms and not by presenting collective notions or metaphysical generalizations” (286). But while Mitter is certainly correct about the dangers of generalizing, it seems disingenuous to suggest (for the sake of his argument) that metaphysics and spiritual values
are
not
concrete human concerns. The argument that we should divorce Indian depictions of the Buddha or Vishnu or Ganesh from metaphysics seems more like an ordnance volley in the academic battle between cultural materialists and symbolic anthropologists. More trenchant, Mitter never really delivers on his promise for an alternative (nonspiritual) analysis of Indian art. Thanks to my colleague Joan Erdman for referring me to Mitter’s interesting discussion of monsters.
12
. Myths of Babylonian dragons were well known, and the extended Book of Daniel refers to such a creature in
Bel and the Dragon
. In this version of the Daniel story (originally included in the 1611 King James Bible, but not subsequent versions) Daniel kills a dragon revered by Babylonians by feeding it cakes made from pitch, fat, and hair. The dragon’s belly explodes.
13
. Historians are divided as to whether Domitian’s reign was really marked by Christian persecution. See L. L. Thompson,
The Book of Revelation: Apocalypse and Empire
(Oxford University Press, reprint edition, 1997).
14
. Most scholars agree that the infamous number 666 is a coded way of referring to the Roman emperor (a numerological breakdown of his name), though which emperor, Nero or Domitian, is still contentious.
15
. The date of the composition of the Book of Daniel is a highly contested business. Most believers, particularly those of a literal bent, date its composition to the sixth century and see its various prophesies validated by the historical events of the second century (namely, the persecution of Jews during the reign of Antiochus IV Epiphanes). In this reading, Daniel’s visions come to pass centuries later and help to recommend the Bible as a source of supernatural truth. Others date the work much later, claiming that it was actually written during the second-century persecutions but posing as a much earlier work of prophesy.
16
. Most conservative Christian exegetes dubiously interpret the fourth beast as a prophecy about the coming terror of the Roman, rather than Greek, Empire. Among other implications, this move brings Daniel and Revelation into even greater parallel.
17
. Among other passages, see
chapter 12
, part 2 of Maimonides’
Mishneh Torah
and also his
Yemen Epistle
in
Maimonides Reader
, edited by Isadore Twersky (Behrman House, 1976). Martin Luther originally argued that there was “no Christ” in the strange text of John’s vision, and he downgraded its importance, considering it a dangerous apocryphal text.
18
. The biblical monsters, originally articulated long before the medieval period and properly belonging to the ancient era, are nonetheless highly animated in the literary and pictorial traditions of medieval Europe. Biblical monsters inform medieval thinking about cosmology, geography, anthropology, and theology. For that reason I have chosen to introduce them in this, rather than the previous, chapter.
19
. See
chapter 3
of Andy Orchard’s excellent book
Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the Beowulf-Manuscript
(D. S. Brewer, 1995).
20
. Western mainstream Jewish and Christian traditions now consider the Book of Enoch to be an apocryphal work, but it had a significant influence on early and medieval biblical culture. Even canonical scripture, for example Jude 14 and 15, refers unapologetically to the Enoch story. Up until the fourth century Enoch was a respected text, seen as genuine by patristic writers such as Origen and Tertullian. Discovery of Dead Sea Scroll fragments of Enoch at Qumran led scholars to treat the scripture (or parts of it) as originating sometime before the second century
BCE
. The Book of Giants, also found at Qumran, is another influential apocryphal text (based on Enoch and Genesis); it was recomposed and championed by Mani (216–276
CE
) as a Manichaean text that describes, among other things, how God killed the giants in the Flood.
CHAPTER
6
1
. “We cannot deny that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, left some divine writings, for this is asserted by the Apostle Jude in his canonical epistle. But it is not without reason that these writings have no place in that canon of Scripture which was preserved in the temple of Hebrew people by the diligence of successive priests; for their antiquity brought them under suspicion, and it was impossible to ascertain whether these were his genuine writings.” Augustine,
The City of God (De civitate Dei
), book XV, 23. This and other quotes from Augustine’s text are from Marcus Dod’s translation (Modern Library, 1993).
2
. Augustine,
City of God
, book XV, 9. One suspects that Augustine, like so many other pre-Victorians, actually stumbled on an extinct creature’s fossilized part, but he did not have a theoretical paradigm that included dinosaurs.
3
. Ibid., book XV, 23.
4
. Isidore of Seville,
Etymologiae
, book XI.
5
. Isidore’s list, and that of every other medieval monsterologist, is heavily influenced by Pliny the Elder’s
Natural History
.
7
. This sort of pantheism is hinted at in the doctrines of many ancients, including Heraclitus, Parmenides, and the Stoics, but doesn’t get its fullest expression until Spinoza’s
Ethics
(1675) and his notion of the
deus sive natura
.
8
. Plato’s
Timaeus
articulates a well-known version of this cosmology.
9
. Augustine,
City of God
, book XV, 23.
10
. The Greek word for cubit is
pygme
.
11
. All these monstrous races could be read as moral inspirations or warnings: Pygmy races were symbols of humility, giants were symbols of pride, and dog-headed races were symbols of slanderous lying. See Wittkower, “Marvels of the East.”