{"id":11641,"date":"2008-11-15T11:10:21","date_gmt":"2008-11-15T16:10:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2008\/11\/15\/11641.html"},"modified":"2018-06-11T09:57:12","modified_gmt":"2018-06-11T14:57:12","slug":"pirke-avot-verse-three-antigon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2008\/11\/15\/pirke-avot-verse-three-antigon\/","title":{"rendered":"Pirke Avot, verse three: Antigonus of Socho"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We are on the third verse of Pirke Avot<\/I>, moving very quickly indeed, I think:
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Antigonus of Socho received the tradition from Simeon the Just. He used to say, Be not like servants who minister to their master upon the condition of receiving a reward; but be like servants who minister to their master without the condition of receiving a reward; and let the fear of Heaven be upon you.<\/blockquote>
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Antigonus? Antigonus<\/i>? What the hell kind of name is Antigonus for a nice Jewish boy? Why didn’t the rabbis who put this stuff together give him a nickname or just change his name altogether? Is it particularly important that this topic, or this generation, gets linked with the Greeks? How does a guy with a Greek name get to be chief of his generation anyway? He couldn’t have been a proselyte, could he? Seriously, before we can talk about what he said, don’t you get an impression of the guy himself, either taking a little shit for his name or (more likely) getting on pretty well with the outside authorities because he doesn’t have a goofy and barbaric local name, but an civilized name like an honest man? Because the third century BCE or so (which is more or less when we seem to be able to place him, as best we can) is a pretty good time to have a Greek name.
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And when we look at the rabbis who put the book together, they were working under the rule of the Romans and by their permission. By glorifying this fellow with a Greek name, I have to think they were indicating (or perhaps hinting) that it is permitted for the chiefs of the Jews to have commerce with the occupying forces. That the correct relationship between the Jews, as a conquered if not yet truly dispersed people, and the Empire that encompasses them is … complicated.
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And we can take the idea of Antigonus himself, and our wholly fictional but persuasive imaginings of his life and his relationship with the Greeks, and we can take this idea of the sages under Roman rule and their<\/I> relationship with their Imperial overlords, and we can keep them in mind when we look at his choice of metaphors. This metaphor of servant and master is meant to stand in for the pious individual and the Divine, but can also be read as the People Israel and the Divine, and also as any combination of servant-and-master pairs that come naturally to mind, including subject and sovereign. Or servant and master, for that matter. We aren’t restricted to a single meaning, as if it were a code. It can have multiple meanings all at once, and the different meanings can play off each other, and be affected by things like the name of the High Priest.
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Well, I think that’s enough to start a conversation about Antigonus, yes? And although his saying is technically a triple (and we can talk about that), I suspect we’ll only need two more threads: the servant-master metaphor<\/a>, and the fear of Heaven<\/a>.
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Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Which Your Humble Blogger can’t describe how strange the name Antigonus rendered in Hebrew looks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[207],"tags":[212],"class_list":["post-11641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scripture","tag-pirkeavot"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11641"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18585,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11641\/revisions\/18585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}