I have yet to write at any length about this intriguing and inspiring book ...
Unfamiliar Selves in the Hebrew Bible: Possession and Other Spirit Phenomena
Reed Carlson
DeGruyter, 2022
ISBN 978-3-11-066934-3
or the earlier
dissertation form of the work Carlson has done but I did, belatedly, discover a panel discussion that has been published as a set of pages I commend to you for reading this weekend.
https://www.ancientjewreview.com/read/2023/4/19/sbl-2022-review-panel-unfamiliar-selves-in-the-hebrew-bible
https://www.ancientjewreview.com/read/2023/4/19/the-critical-potential-of-spirits-hebrew-philology-the-poetics-of-relation-and-unfamiliar-selves
https://www.ancientjewreview.com/read/2023/4/24/possession-and-relational-moral-agency
https://www.ancientjewreview.com/read/2023/4/26/selves-spirits-and-the-usefulness-of-comparison
Lambert's observation that Carlson reads moral injury as the basis for King Saul's affliction by tormenting spirit is indicative of 21st century interpretation rather than the text itself stands out. That was a reservation I had about Carlson's approach to the Saul narratives, too. When the text tells us Yahweh afflicted Saul with a harmful spirit after Saul showed himself disobedient by not killing enough Amalekites we can't really propose that war trauma was what catalyzed King Saul's erratic spirit afflicted behavioral changes. There is a lot about Carlson's work I like and liked but this point from Lambert is a substantial one.
Carlson's clarifying caveat that he wasn't actually trying to diagnose Saul as to point out that moral injury catalyzing altered states of consciousness that are bad is known in contemporary counseling literature. Carlson, if memory serves, is ex-Pentecostal or ex-charismatic and might also know that the idea of moral injury as a catalyst for demonization is fairly rampant in popular level spiritual warfare self-help books. Carlson's response (see below) suggests to me he's trying to triangulate three bodies of study (research on psychological trauma, theories of spirit possession in biblical literature, and anthropological/cultural analyses of porous concepts of selfhood).
https://www.ancientjewreview.com/read/2023/5/1/jewish-spirits-and-christian-specters
Schwartz raised a fantastic point about how ritual cleansing through sprinkled water in Ezekiel precedes the new heart and spirit. Having finished John Kleinig's book on the role of choral music in 1 & 2 Chronicles I have been thinking about how within the Jewish scriptures music does not have an intrinsic or automatic capacity for epiclesis, to put this another way, music doesn't catalyze "trance' or "possession" states as a matter of course.
The observation that a diachronic rather than synchronic approach to defining what "spirit" is is necessary precisely because scholars can see how dramatically concepts of ruah shifted was (and is) worth making. There's a big gap between saying the breath of Yahweh hovered over the waters and seeing the text as a reference to the Third Person of the Christian Trinity, a gap that can be understood if we bear in mind that terms in the Hebrew texts (and LXX) came to have divergent meanings across time and within textual traditions.
https://www.ancientjewreview.com/read/2023/5/3/response-to-the-forum-on-unfamiliar-selves-in-the-hebrew-bible
For me what sticks out as a hobbyist musician and composer (and Christian, with an interest in theology and biblical studies) is that music does stick out in a couple of narrative episodes. King Saul became another person after encountering a guild of musical seers/prophets. Elisha summoned for a minstrel before giving an oracle. The biblical narratives grant that music was used as a catalyst for mantic states but I think Schwartz' observation that the new spirit/breath is preceded by ritual cleansing highlights an element that musicians often want to ignore. Musicians would rather let music be a "magic" or "wizardry" that has its effects intrinsically and not on the basis of working conditionally and only after proper purificatory rites have been completed. For instance, it's one thing to say that Saul encountered a musical guild of prophets and suggest music had the effect of making him into a different person, it's another to consider that Samuel gave an oracle and had told Saul he was chosen king. The ritual context and prophetic oracle context within which the transformation was predicted are inextricable from the musical guild that briefly made Saul into another person. As Zwingli pointed out, the Lord was with David and had departed from Saul, so what David's music on the harp did is not something intrinsic to David's music itself.
Fans of music tend to want their music to be an unconditional and automatic catalyst for epiclesis. Every time I feel the spirit moving in my heart I will pray ... .
I've got that book Demons, Angels, and Writing in Ancient Judaism by Annette Yoshiko Reed and I have to finish it. I've read enough of it, though, to get what she means by the efforts of contemporary scholars to exorcise spirits from the texts. Judit Blair's De-Demonizing the Old Testament couldn't be more overt just from its title alone.
... One of the things I have learned about spirits from reading the ethnographic literature for this book is that apparently they do not leave you alone even after you diagnose and treat them. Rarely can they be exorcised completely. ...
This is commonly attested within Christian traditions apart from scholarly discussions of the same.
So, maybe you'll have some fun reading this. I had fun reading it, at least.
Oh, wait, we're in 2024 but Blogger's not counting this as a 2024 post so, eh ...
