- We're delighted that
so many of you are here today,
and we hope very much
that you will find this
an interesting and instructive
and fun session
connected with the exhibition
that we have just opened:
"Byzantium and Islam:
Age of Transition."
It's on view upstairs
on the second floor
in the Cantor Gallery,
and we hope very much
that you will all go to it
during the course of its run
through July 8.
Today we're going to have
three distinguished speakers,
who in varying ways
have been very involved
in the exhibition, or in events
connected to the exhibition.
And then a performance
by Alan Gampel,
who is researching the origins
of musical notation
that reach back
into this period,
and who is also a very
distinguished classical pianist.
I am going to try to keep
everything more or less on time
so we can get all
the interesting material in
by minimizing the length
of my introductions.
You've come,
so you must know
these people
that are going to speak
are extremely interesting.
And the first of our speakers
today is Father Justin,
of the Monastery
of Saint Catherine
at Sinai, in Egypt.
Father Justin and I met
when he came in 1997
to the end
of "The Glory of Byzantium,"
my first exhibition,
and we have grown
to know each other
over the years
in which he has served
at the holy monastery,
in particular in charge
of their library,
one of the greatest repositories
of manuscripts related
to the Orthodox world,
and in a special context
of trying to arrange
for very sophisticated digital
images of all the works.
In his role at the monastery,
he is very involved
with the icons.
And although they were unable
to come to the exhibition,
because of the situation
in Egypt,
we look forward
to his remarks today
on the icons at Sinai.
Would you join me
in welcoming Father Justin?
(applause)
It's a great joy to be here at
The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
and to be a part
of these presentations.
I'll be speaking on the theme,
"The Icons of Sinai:
Continuity at a Time
of Controversy."
The eighth and ninth centuries
witnessed an intense debate
over the very principles
of Christian imagery.
This was the Iconoclast
Controversy,
which lasted over 100 years,
from the beginning
in the year 726
to its final resolution in 843.
But the issues
that were then in conflict
were not new.
We will better understand them
if we begin by looking briefly
at the earliest surviving
examples of Christian art.
These are to be found
in the Roman catacombs,
vast underground cemeteries
that surround the city of Rome.
Epitaphs and tomb paintings
from the catacombs
date principally from the second
to the fourth centuries.
The first example,
now in the Lateran Museum,
is dated to the fourth century,
and is thought to have come
from the catacomb
of St. Callistus...
It reads, "Aurelius Castus,
who lived eight months.
Antonia Sperantia made this
for her son."
Below is a depiction
of a shepherd.
He bears a lamb
on his shoulders,
and two sheep recline
at his feet.
These early Christians expressed
their faith instinctively
in both text and images.
But inscriptions are accessible
in a way that imagery is not.
Depictions such as this
are for the initiate,
and require explanation.
Jesus told a parable
about a shepherd
who sought out the sheep
that had gone astray.
Bearing it on his shoulders,
he returned it
to its place in the fold.
He also said,
"I am the Good Shepherd.
The Good Shepherd giveth
his life for the sheep."
The "Gelasian Sacramentary,"
which preserves
some of the oldest
Latin liturgical prayers,
includes a prayer
for the burial service
that refers to the dead as
"carried home on the shoulders
of the Good Shepherd."
Other recurring Christian
symbols are the anchor,
or the dove bearing an olive
branch in its beak.
On later epitaphs, we find
more overt Christian symbols:
the chi-rho monogram
or the alpha and omega.
The catacomb of Commodilla
contains an image of Christ
dating from the late
fourth century.
In the catacomb
of St. Priscilla,
one finds a depiction
of the Virgin Mary
dated to the second century.
Here also,
in the third century,
Christians painted
the Good Shepherd
and doves bearing
olive branches.
They also painted
the three children
in the fiery furnace of Babylon:
examples of courage
and perseverance,
and reminders
of God's protection
at a time of persecution.
The epitaphs
of these early Christians
reveal much about their faith.
We read: "To dear Kyriakis,
sweetest son,
mayest thou live
in the Holy Spirit."
"Regina, mayest thou live
in the Lord Jesus."
"Matrona Matrona, who lived
a year and 52 days,
pray for thy parents."
"Anatolius made this
for his well-deserving son,
"who lived seven years,
seven months, and 20 days.
"May thy spirit
rest well in God.
Pray for thy sister."
The catacombs' inscriptions
are ill-composed,
ill-written,
not infrequently ill-spelled,
half Latin, half Greek.
But neither bad grammar
nor defective orthography
condemn or distort the light
with which the consciousness
of an immortality
floods and glorifies
these subterranean vaults.
Such inscriptions are popular
expressions of the same hope
that we find
in a theological treatise,
"De Mortalitate,"
written by Cyprian of Carthage
in the year 252.
He reminds his flock
that death is not an ending
but a transit, and, this journey
being traversed,
a passage to eternity.
The dead are not lost,
but sent before.
He writes: "We regard paradise
as our country.
"We already began to consider
the patriarchs as our parents.
"Why do we not hasten and run,
that we may behold our country,
"that we may greet our parents?
"There, a great number
of our dear ones is awaiting us,
"and a dense crowd of parents,
brothers, children
"is longing for us, already
assured of their own safety,
and still solicitous
for our salvation."
In this spontaneous expression
of their faith
through words and images,
had Christians gone too far?
The Roman world was filled
with paintings and statues
of the pagan deities.
The Jews had always been careful
to distance themselves
from this idolatry.
There were those who felt
that such Christian depictions
were an unguarded
appropriation
from the pagan world.
Eusebius of Caesarea,
in the fourth-century
church history,
relates that the woman
with an issue of blood
who was healed by Christ
made a bronze statue
to commemorate this miracle.
Christ was depicted standing
and blessing her,
and she was portrayed kneeling
and looking up to him
in gratitude.
Eusebius writes that he has
seen this statue for himself.
Yet we cannot miss the note
of criticism in his voice
when he goes on to write:
"Nor is it strange
that those of the Gentiles
"who, of all, were benefited
by our Savior,
"should have done such things,
"since we have learned, also,
that the likenesses
"of the apostles Paul and Peter,
and of Christ himself,
"are preserved in paintings,
"the ancients being accustomed,
"and, it is likely, according
to a habit of the Gentiles,
"to pay this kind of honor
indiscriminately
to those regarded by them
as deliverers."
One would want to know what
these fourth-century paintings
of Christ and the apostles
Paul and Peter
looked like.
But paintings are fragile,
and in general,
they have not survived from
the world of late antiquity.
The exception to this is Sinai.
This remote desert monastery
with its dry and stable climate,
and an unbroken history
extending back
to the early fourth century,
holds what is today
the most important collection
of panel icons,
36 of which have been dated
to the sixth or seventh century.
The icon of the "Sinai Christ"
is the most famous.
It was painted in the wax
encaustic technique,
which uses wax as the medium
for the pigments.
The gold halo is set off
by alternating
four- and eight-petalled
punched rosettes.
Christ's mantle and tunic were
rendered in a saturated purple.
He blesses with his right hand.
In his left,
he holds the Gospel,
a thick volume
closed with two clasps.
The cover is adorned
with a cross
executed in precious stones
and decorated with pearls.
The formal frontal depiction
of Christ
conveys a sense of timelessness,
yet the many intentional
departures from strict symmetry
add a naturalistic effect.
In this subtle manner,
the artist has attempted
to convey
both the divine
and human natures in Christ.
A second icon depicts
the Virgin Mary
and the Christ Child
enthroned.
Here, also, Christ blesses
with his right hand
while, with his left,
he holds a scroll.
The Virgin wears red shoes,
an imperial prerogative,
and holds Christ tenderly.
She gazes off into the distance.
A soldier saint stands
to either side,
wearing the ceremonial robe
of the imperial guard.
These are identified
by later iconographic types
as St. George
to the viewer's right
and St. Theodore
to the viewer's left.
Above, two archangels
holding scepters
look up towards Heaven.
The hand of God extends
from an orb,
and a ray of light descends
to the halo of the Holy Virgin.
The two archangels,
rendered in a continuation
of the Hellenistic tradition,
contrast with the enthroned
Virgin and Christ Child
and two soldier saints,
which reflect the splendors
of the imperial court,
giving the icon a complexity
and richness.
The third icon shows
the apostle Peter.
In his right hand,
he holds three keys,
the keys of the Kingdom
of Heaven.
In his left, he holds a staff
surmounted by a cross.
The artist has painted
the garments of the apostle
in shades of olive,
using crisscrossing highlights
rendered in bold brushstrokes.
The gaze of the viewer is drawn
to the calm and pensive eyes,
the face set off by whorling
tufts of hair and beard.
The apostle has the face
of the sunburned fisherman,
but he also has
the aristocratic demeanor
of the leader of the church.
The three medallions above
depict Christ in the center.
Kurt Weitzmann identified
the other two
as depictions of the Virgin Mary
and St. John the Theologian,
though it has been
recently suggested
that they may be, instead,
ex voto images included
as an expression of thanksgiving
by those who commissioned
the icon.
All three icons are thought
to have been painted
in Constantinople,
and may have been sent to the
monastery in the sixth century
as gifts of imperial patronage
when the Emperor Justinian
ordered the construction
of the Great Basilica and
the surrounding fortress walls.
As such, they are examples
of the icons
that would have been
in Constantinople
at the outbreak of iconoclasm,
which the emperor
Leo III the Isaurian
began to institute
in the year 726.
There were two phases
of iconoclasm.
The first came to an end
under the Empress Irene in 787.
An iconoclast policy
was instituted again in 815
by the Emperor
Leo V the Armenian.
The second phase
was brought to an end in 843
by the Empress Theodora.
The origins of iconoclasm
have been much debated.
The seventh century was
very much an age of transition
for the Byzantine Empire.
It was a culmination
of a long process
of centralization,
by which Constantinople emerged
as the dominant center of power.
In the same century,
the empire lost Syria, Egypt,
and North Africa
to the Arab world,
while Slavs threatened
its hold in the Balkans
and Lombards became
more assertive in Italy.
The Arab forces attacked
Constantinople itself
in 674 to 678,
and again in 717 to 718,
the Greeks famously defending
their city with Greek fire.
All of these far-reaching
changes and conflicts
caused a reassessment
of the Byzantine polity.
This brought into the open
issues concerning
the place of Christian imagery
that have remained unresolved.
One must look to these conflicts
for the origins of iconoclasm
more than to any infiltration
of the church and the empire
by alien ideas.
God commanded Moses:
"Thou shalt not make unto thee
any graven image or any likeness
"of anything
that is in Heaven above
"or that is in the earth beneath
"or that is in the water
under the earth.
Thou shalt not bow down thyself
to them nor serve them."
The central charge brought by
the iconoclasts again and again
is that of idolatry.
Any image that has been created
for use in worship
draws attention to the visible,
material creature
rather than the invisible deity.
St. Paul, in his Epistle
to the Colossians,
refers to Christ as the image,
the icon of the invisible God.
In the language of the creed,
Christ is one in essence,
homoousios, consubstantial
with the Father.
For the iconoclast, in order
for an image to be true,
it must be the same in essence
as that which it represents.
There must be a formal identity
between a model
and its archetype.
A portrayal differs
in its very nature
from that which it represents,
and is therefore insufficient,
if not deceptive.
Jesus said, "God is a spirit,
and they that worship him
must worship him
in spirit and in truth."
Created images could not be
allowed to intrude in worship,
which must remain
entirely spiritual.
In a number of churches,
iconoclasts removed
icons of Christ
and replaced them
with a depiction of the cross.
The cross, being a symbol,
did not detract from the worship
that is due to God alone.
St. Stephen...
was insistent
in his veneration
of the holy icons.
He was brought before
the Emperor Constantine V,
who asked him, "Do you imagine
that Christ is trampled upon
when we trample
upon these images?"
St. Stephen had expected this
and had brought with him a coin.
He showed it to the emperor
and asked,
"Whose is this image
and superscription?"
"It is mine,"
answered the emperor.
The saint placed it on
the ground and trampled on it.
The emperor's guards
were outraged
and ready to avenge this affront
to the imperial dignity,
but the emperor called them off.
The saint had made his point.
And yet, while everyone knew
that there had been icons
in the church for centuries,
in many ways,
they had been taken for granted.
There were
passing references to them
in the writings of the fathers,
but there was no formal
theology of the icons.
What could be said
in their defense?
Those who reverenced the icons
pointed out
that God had indeed forbidden
the making of graven images,
but at the same time,
he had commanded Moses:
"And thou shalt make
two cherubims of gold,
"of beaten work
shalt thou make them,
in the two ends
of the mercy seat."
The second commandment
was thus not a prohibition
against representational art,
but it was a prohibition
against attempting
to portray the deity,
for God had revealed himself,
but not in any form.
Moses said
to the children of Israel:
"For ye saw no manner
of similitude
"on the day that the Lord
spake unto you in Horeb
out of the midst of the fire."
But in the fullness of time,
"the Word was made flesh
and dwelt among us."
The word of God,
who was un-circumscribable,
condescended to be circumscribed
by time and place,
and he who was indepictable
became depictable.
St. Theodore the Studite
wrote that "In Christ,
"the divine nature
and the human nature were united
into a single prosopon"--
person--
"and a single hypostasis"--
a subsistent entity--
"which has
individual characteristics
and can be portrayed."
And St. John of Damascus wrote:
"I do not venerate the creation
"instead of the Creator,
"but I venerate the Creator,
created for my sake,
"who came down to His creation
"without being lowered
or weakened,
"that He might glorify my nature
"and bring about communion
with the divine nature.
"I do not depict
the invisible divinity,
but I depict God
made visible in the flesh."
Icons are a witness
to the historical Christ.
A refusal to accept icons
was a refusal to accept
the full implications
of the incarnation.
Courts of Roman law
had an image of the emperor,
and this image was honored
as if the emperor himself
were present.
Basil the Great,
in the fourth century,
pointed out
that this does not mean
that there are two emperors,
because the honor
offered to the image
crosses over to the archetype.
An image conveys the likeness
of the original person.
Image and archetype are thus
said to share the same likeness.
St. Dionysius the Areopagite,
in his "Ecclesiastical
Hierarchy,"
had written: "For the truth
is shown in the likeness,
"the archetype in the icon,
each in the other,
with the difference of essence."
This was quoted by Patriarch
Nikephoros of Constantinople
in the early ninth century,
who himself wrote: "Likeness is
an intermediate relation
"and mediates
between the extremes.
"I mean the likeness and
the one of whom it is a likeness
"uniting and connecting by form,
even though they differ
by nature."
And yet, a traditional icon
was not a simple portrait.
The likenesses conveyed
in the icons
were those of Christ
or the saints,
who lived in Heaven.
Here, St. John appealed
to the example of the tabernacle
that had been constructed
for the worship of God
in the Sinai wilderness.
God said to Moses:
"And let them make me
a sanctuary
"that I may dwell among them.
"According
to all that I shew thee,
"after the pattern
of the tabernacle
"and the pattern
of all the instruments thereof,
even so shall ye make it."
The tabernacle on Earth
shared the likeness
with the tabernacle in Heaven
that had been revealed to Moses.
Because of this correspondence,
the ministry of the priests
within the tabernacle
was "unto the example
and shadow of heavenly things,"
as we read in
the Epistle to the Hebrews.
St. John of Damascus writes:
"And this whole tabernacle
was an icon.
"'And look,'
said the Lord to Moses,
"'that thou make everything
after their pattern,
which was shewed thee
in the mount.'"
The tabernacle
is called an icon
in that it is a reflection
of the heavenly prototype.
Icons of Christ and the saints
are also reflections,
each corresponding
to an archetype in Heaven.
As St. Theodore the Studite
wrote: "The copy shares
"the glory of the prototype
as a reflection shares
the brightness of the light."
Christ said to his disciples:
"Blessed are your eyes,
for they see,
and your ears, for they hear."
St. John of Damascus
invoked this verse
as he stressed the parallels
between hearing
the Holy Scriptures
and seeing the holy icons.
Our hearing is
sanctified and blessed
when we hear Christ's words
in the Holy Gospels,
even as we also rejoice
and are assured,
beholding in the holy icons
his bodily form, his miracles,
and all that he endured.
Both scriptures and icons
are distinct
but complementary means
of knowing the Gospel narrative.
Where iconoclasts had
created a dualism,
depreciating the material world
in their reverence
for the spiritual,
those who venerated the icons
pointed to a material world
sanctified by the incarnation
and the means of our ascent
to the spiritual.
We read
in St. John of Damascus:
"For since we are twofold,
fashioned of soul and body,
"and our soul is not naked but,
as it were, covered by a mantle,
"it is impossible for us
to reach what is intelligible
apart from what is bodily."
And St. Theodore wrote:
"So whether in an image,
"or in the Gospel,
or in the cross,
"or in any other
consecrated object,
"there God is
manifestly worshiped
"in spirit and in truth,
"as the materials are exalted
"by the raising of the mind
towards God.
"The mind does not remain
with the materials,
"because it
does not trust in them:
"that is the error
of the idolaters.
"Through the materials, rather,
"the mind ascends
towards the prototype:
this is the faith
of the orthodox."
The theology of icons
championed
by John of Damascus,
Theodore the Studite,
and a multitude of other saints
was formally proclaimed
by the bishops
who assembled in 787
at the Second Council at Nicaea,
the seventh ecumenical council.
Sinai became a part
of the world of Islam
in the year 633.
Even so, both monks and pilgrims
continued to come
to this remote wilderness,
attracted by its austerity,
its biblical associations,
and its reputation
as an established center
of monasticism.
The area was thus
outside the Byzantine Empire
in the eighth
and ninth centuries
and remained unaffected
by iconoclasm.
14 panel icons of Sinai
have been dated to this time.
They are of special importance
in that they show the continuity
of the ... tradition
during the period of iconoclasm.
An icon of the crucifixion has
been dated to the eighth century
because of many similarities
with a fresco
at Santa Maria Antiqua in Rome
that can be dated to 741 to 752.
Christ is depicted
affixed to the cross,
wearing a red-brown colobium.
Streams of blood and water
issue from his side.
To his right stands
the Virgin Mary.
She points to Christ
with her right hand,
and with her left holds
a handkerchief to her cheek.
Above are the monograms
for Hagia Maria,
the Holy Mary.
To Christ's left is
a youthful John the Theologian.
His depiction is inscribed
simply Ioannis-- John.
Above, angels look on in wonder,
while the sun and the moon
are darkened.
Below, three soldiers
divide Christ's garments.
This is the earliest icon giving
the names of the two thieves,
Gestas, to Christ's right,
and Dismas, to his left.
Earlier icons invariably portray
Christ with his eyes opened
before his death.
An important example
is the Fieschi Morgan
Staurotheke,
which also dates
from the eighth century,
kept here in The Metropolitan
Museum of Art.
The Sinai icon
is the first to depict Christ
with his eyes closed
and bearing the crown of thorns.
This was done to emphasize
his human nature.
Anastasius of Sinai,
in the "Hodegos,"
the guidebook
written in the 680s,
notes the importance
of depicting
the reality of Christ's death.
This and several
stylistic details
make it possible that this icon
was painted at Sinai.
An icon dated to
the eighth or ninth century
depicts St. Irene.
The inscription above
gives her name:
"Hagia Eirene"-- St. Irene.
She stands in a frontal pose.
In her right hand,
she holds a cross,
emblem of her martyrdom,
while in her left,
she holds a handkerchief.
She is dressed in a chiton--
originally of blue,
which has turned green--
a maphorion of carmine,
and red shoes.
The figure of the saint
is disproportionate,
the emphasis given to her face.
At the base of the icon,
the donor has been depicted
venerating the saint.
He wears a light brown tunic
and a black mantle.
An inscription above gives
his name...
The icon shares the likeness
of its prototype in Heaven,
as we have learned
from the passages quoted above.
The donor has caused
his own likeness
to be included in the icon.
The likeness of the saint
and the likeness of the donor
meet on the plane of the icon,
the donor in veneration
of his beloved saint.
Concerning the veneration
of saints,
John of Damascus wrote,
"The saints are the sons of God,
sons of the kingdom,
and coheirs of God
and of Christ."
And in this case, we should say
daughters of God,
and daughters of the kingdom,
and coheirs of God and Christ.
"Therefore, I venerate
the saints and glorify them,
"slaves and friends
and coheirs of Christ.
"Slaves by nature,
friends by choice,
sons and daughters and heirs
by divine grace."
He also said,
"From the time that He
"who Himself is life
and the author of life
"was numbered among the dead,
"we do not call dead
those who have fallen asleep
in hope of the resurrection
and faith in Him."
Sinai has an icon
of the three children
in the fiery furnace of Babylon.
It was executed
in the encaustic technique
that has been dated
to about the seventh century.
Enough of the inscription
survived to identify the three.
From the viewer's left:
Hananias, Azarias, and Mishael.
They are depicted wearing
Persian garments.
An angel has descended
into the fiery furnace.
He places his left hand
comfortingly
on the shoulder of Hananias,
and with
a cross-surmounted staff,
he annuls the burning
of the flames.
The panel icon fits
into a frame,
which has been inscribed
with verses
from the Book of Daniel.
"An angel of the Lord
came down into the furnace
"to be with Azarias
and his companions
"and made the inside
of the furnace
as if a moist breeze
were whistling through."
The three children
in the fiery furnace
inspired the early Christians.
They were no less an inspiration
to the monks of Sinai
in the seventh, eighth,
and ninth centuries,
examples of courage
and steadfastness
and reminders
of God's protection.
In the isolation
of the Sinai Desert,
icons continued to be painted
even during the eighth
and ninth centuries,
the time of iconoclasm.
These icons form a link
to earlier iconography
that can be traced back in time
to the Roman catacombs,
where Christians expressed
their faith instinctively
in both inscriptions and images.
St. John of Damascus justified
the place of icons
in Christian worship
and veneration.
In his writings, we also find
the same consciousness
of an immortality
that was so pronounced
in the epitaphs
from the Roman catacombs.
It is not only the imagery
that has continued
from those early centuries,
but the faith and hope, as well,
that placed the images
and epitaphs
in the Roman catacombs long ago.
Thank you.
(applause)
- Father Justin came to us
by way of Texas and Sinai.
Our second speaker,
Professor Steven Fine
of Yeshiva University,
comes to us
from California and Manhattan.
He is an expert
on Jewish art and history,
and has present--
done an award-winning book
that's on sale
in the exhibition gift shop,
"Art and Judaism
in the Greco-Roman World."
We very much appreciated
that he expanded the definition
of Greco-Roman
through to the ninth century
in his essay for our catalogue.
Please join me
in welcoming Dr. Fine.
(applause)
- When Helen Evans
calls up and says,
"We're doing an exhibition
"about material
that you know something about,
"but we know
that you don't know so much
"about the part afterwards.
Do you think
you can try it anyway?"
That's one of those challenges
that many of us can't miss.
And so I'm really very grateful.
The reason that we can't miss it
is because,
for all of our fields,
this period between the seventh
and ninth and tenth centuries
is what--
in Jewish studies, at least--
is called the Great Black Hole:
that transition point between
things that we think we know,
those of us
who do late antiquity--
which are in Hebrew and Aramaic
and Greek and some Latin--
and that other side where they
do Arabic, which we don't know.
On the other hand, the folks
who do Arabic on the other side
don't know the things
that we know,
and so we're left
with a period
where, because everything is
in transition,
where we go from people
writing on scrolls
to writing in codices,
and from writing
in a homiletical format
to writing philological studies,
from writing the Bible in a way
that doesn't have
punctuation in Hebrew
to writing it in a way that does
have punctuation in Hebrew.
We've come from such a long
distance that Jewish history
becomes a kind of canary
in the coal mine.
Because after all, the Jews were
the smallest of all the nations,
not exactly the ones who were
causing this transformation--
as opposed to Byzantium
or Islam--
but were in between
and participating
in this transformation.
Now, if the Jews were
"ham-at mik-kal ha-am-mim,"
the smallest of all the nations,
then even smaller than the Jews
were the other Israelites,
the descendants of the ten
lost tribes of Israel,
the Samaritans, of which
there are about 750 today.
And so what I'd like to do with
you in the next little while
is go through and talk about
just two of the artifacts
in our exhibition,
and use them as exemplars
of two different things.
Number one, we're going
to look at this mess
on the right of the screen,
this palimpsest,
this rewritten piece
of manuscript,
to talk about all the different,
culturally sophisticated,
and interesting and messy things
that went on in the period
between the glories
of late antiquity
and the rise of Islam.
And number two,
we're going to look at a plate
which might be Samaritan.
It might not be Samaritan.
But no one ever asked
if it were Samaritan
until we began to ask these
questions about transition times
and the liminality,
the force of being
neither in the world
of Byzantium
nor in the world of Islam,
that might lead to us
interpreting
the material differently.
And so there are two issues:
one is the physicality
of the transformation,
which is visceral in this
small piece of parchment--
which really is rather small,
you can see it upstairs--
and the conceptualization,
the new way of thinking
scholars have developed
because of the kind of research
that this exhibition has caused,
and that a whole change
has developed
within the scholarly community
over the last decade,
this exhibition being one
of those great catalysts
for that change
that we'll be reading about
for generations to come.
Now, number one,
"A Palimpsest Culture
in an Age of Transition."
Now, a palimpsest
is a piece of parchment
that someone had written on,
somebody else came and scrubbed
off what was underneath
and written something else.
The only reason you would do
that is because a parchment
is very expensive because
it's made out of animal skin,
and it's not simple.
This particular one,
you can see,
has... was found
in the Cairo Geniza in Egypt.
Now, the Cairo Geniza,
the great repository
of the Ben Ezra Synagogue
in Cairo,
was a place where Jews
in this city,
in this central, Fatimid place,
threw anything they had
that vaguely looked
like a holy book
into the attic.
Why did they do that?
Because holy books in Judaism
are to be preserved and buried
and maintained and not burnt,
as they are in other traditions.
So in this attic in Cairo,
the Jewish community,
over a 500-year period,
threw all sorts of stuff.
Now, I can tell you
that at Yeshiva University,
all sort of things end up
in this hidden place,
in these boxes,
that shouldn't.
Because I'm the one
who puts them there.
And so whether it be my Xeroxes,
or whether it be the receipt
that falls
between the Xeroxes,
or whether it be
the piece of paper
that I didn't mean
to be between the Xeroxes
of all of these holy texts,
it all gets thrown into a box
and goes to the cemetery 
and gets buried, okay?
The same thing
happened in Cairo.
All of these wonderful things,
whether they be love letters
or whether they be magical texts
or whether they be
biblical texts
that weren't hardly known
before in Hebrew,
like the Book of Ecclesiasticus,
Ben Sira,
or whether they be
trade documents
or whether they be
Talmudic texts
or whether they be
medieval letters
or even texts
written in Yiddish,
found their way into this
collection of documents
that began to dribble out
in Cairo
at the end of the 19th century
and which Solomon Schechter,
the great scholar of Cambridge,
came and bought en masse
and brought back to Cambridge.
Now, this was a mess.
I would love to have
been in this room.
(laughter)
Right?
'Cause each piece
that you see there is valuable.
Whether it be a love letter,
whether it be
a magical incantation,
whether it be a new commentary
by Maimonides--
all those things
are sitting in those piles
waiting for someone
to read them, okay?
Now, this thing is one
of those documents.
And it was noticed really early
because of the Greek
that you can see underneath.
Now, what is it?
Well, it's a sixth-century
or so manuscript
written in Greek in very large
and profound letters,
which somebody purchased
in Cairo in the 11th century--
it's a long time later--
and scratched-- with all
of the writing scratched off,
and wrote something else on.
Now, again,
that was not mal-intent.
It was just reuse of resources.
Who used Greek in Cairo
in the 11th century
other than Christians?
They were not
the majority interest
for Jews and Moslems
at that point.
Greek was a declining language,
even among Christians
in part of the Near East.
And so here we had
a Greek document
that somebody scratched off,
but there's a real problem
with the iron-based gall-nut ink
that was used
in these inscriptions.
You can scratch it
all you want, but eventually,
it's gonna oxidize
and pop back again, right?
That's why one of the
Talmudic rabbis once said
that it's better to be...
to learn when you are young,
when you are like new paper,
as opposed to when you are old,
when you are like reused paper,
because the older information
from your childhood
is going to come back up
to the surface.
So it's a wonderful metaphor
of a palimpsest.
Now this is the kind of scroll
that Jews used
in the ancient world--
that's the Great Isaiah Scroll
on the right.
That grimy-looking thing on
the-- excuse me, on the left.
That grimy-looking thing
on the right
is a piece of
the Song of Songs,
beginning of Exodus--
let me see if this works,
there it is--
that happens to now be
at Duke University,
from the seventh century.
It's the oldest Jewish
biblical text in Hebrew
between the Dead Sea Scrolls
in the first centuries
and the Cairo Geniza documents.
Jews wrote on scrolls,
down to writing
Talmudic text on scrolls
in the years
before the coming of Islam--
but a scroll, it may be holy,
it may be the one that came
from Mount Sinai,
it may be the ultimate
Jewish icon,
but it is not
a very convenient book.
A codex is far more convenient.
And Jews rather early,
starting in the eighth century
with the First Gaster Bible
on the right,
which you can go see upstairs,
written in Palestine--
it's a very nice document--
or the great Aleppo Codex
on your left,
which was finished
in the tenth century--
and by the way,
Maimonides considered
to be the standard
for all Torah texts,
biblical texts,
two-thirds of which
is now in Jerusalem,
one-third of which was burnt.
You can see Jews taking on
a new technology,
taking on a codex form,
which was common to Christians,
common to Moslems,
not common to Jews.
By writing on the entire page...
oops-- go back.
The folks of the Gaster Bible
were very much in the tradition
of Qur'an script
and the construction of the--
or of the organization
of the page into three columns.
Jews were very much similar
to what Christians were doing
in their manuscript
organization.
But Jews started
writing like this,
except for Torah scrolls
that were used in synagogues
on the Sabbath and holidays.
And so, our fragment
comes from this tradition,
and you can see it up close.
It is a true mess.
Underneath are texts
from 2 Kings 23:11-27,
and that's what immediately
caught everyone's attention.
So in 1897,
soon after Schechter returned
with these materials
from Cairo to Cambridge,
Charles...
a biblical scholar,
looked underneath
these manuscripts,
started to read the undertext,
followed by a fellow named
Charles Taylor around 1900,
and started publishing them,
and realized that they had
before them
were biblical text in Greek
that we know about
from Origen's great Hexapla--
Origen of Caesarea
and Palestine,
who collected biblical texts.
And what we had was a text
by a fellow named....
Now, ... was
a convert to Judaism
in the second century
who associated himself
with the great--
one of the great
founding fathers
of the religion of the rabbis,
a fellow named Akiva
son of Joseph.
Now, Rabbi Akiva had a principle
in biblical interpretation,
which was that every letter
matters in the Hebrew text.
You know how when you translate
things from any language,
there's always going to be some
form that doesn't transfer well?
Otherwise it feels
like a clunky translation?
Well, Akiva's translation,
the translation that he wanted
into Greek,
must present every jot and
tittle of the original Hebrew
'cause every jot and tittle
matters,
and that's what ... created.
Now, we find it here
for the first time,
sort of.
Now, this is
a Christian manuscript
of about the same time.
This is the Sinai manuscript
of the New-- of the Bible,
which is
from the fourth century--
which, unfortunately,
is no longer at Mount Sinai,
but spread through four museums
and libraries in the West--
just to give you a sense
of what was underneath.
Now, Jews used Greek quite a bit
in the ancient world,
going back
to the first centuries.
But in the seventh century,
in a synagogue at Ashkelon,
we see a very good example
of how Greek and Aramaic
lived side by side
in this synagogue at Ashkelon--
Jews using both languages,
sometimes and often using
the translation of ...
And this is an even better one.
This is a stone
in a baptismal pool
in a place that
used to be called Nicaea
and is now called Iznik
in Turkey, in northern Turkey.
Now, this stone was reused
in the eighth century
as part of the city walls--
that's what the inscription
above is about--
but you can see how, later on,
the stone was taken
and the stone,
with this nice menorah,
was set into the side
of a baptismal pool.
And this is what
it looks like vertically.
Now, in 1943 in Berlin,
this inscription down below
was published,
which I'll come back to
in a minute.
And the guy in Berlin
with a book
that had a swastika
on the cover,
didn't mention much about
this thing up here.
Now, I don't think it's because
he was writing in Nazi Germany.
I think it's because epigraphers
often don't see the things
that their objects, their texts,
are next to.
And that's pretty common
to this day,
that you'll find books
that will tell you everything
to know about this,
but nothing about this,
which is probably the nicest
menorah ever found in Turkey,
but that's a different story.
Now, down below is a Greek text
which translates from Psalm 136:
"He who gives bread
to all living things,
for his abundant love,
endures forever."
Which is a quote in
the translation of ...
So we know, then,
that the Jews in Asia Minor
in the sixth century
were using this translation
that we found on the back
of our palimpsest.
Let's go one step further.
This is a piece found
at Nahal Hever,
which is one of the canyons
near the Dead Sea,
where documents were found
from the second century
from the Jewish revolt
against Rome of 132 to 135
of the prophet Habakkuk.
And you notice
the name of... oops.
The name of God here
is written
in an ancient Hebrew script.
It's hard to see, I know.
Especially since whoever copied
it probably didn't know
that ancient Hebrew script.
But, in fact, ...
in his text,
as preserved
by this Geniza document,
also writes God's name
in an ancient Hebrew script,
a way of presenting
the antiquity of the holiness
of the tetragrammaton,
which Protestants
often pronounce Jehovah,
as a sanctified object
within the manuscript.
And so this is another one
of those ties
between ancient Jewish texts
and our palimpsest.
And by the way,
this script is still used
by the Samaritans to this day,
and we'll come back to that.
Let's go back to our mess.
On top of the Greek
was written
all that beautiful Hebrew,
right?
Which is very shiny
and very nice and easy to see.
And no one paid
any attention to it,
because there's so much Hebrew
found in the Cairo Geniza.
Now, imagine what happened.
Solomon Schechter looked at it
and said,
"Oh, it looks liturgical."
Great-- that's sort of
like saying it's a cult object
when you deal with archaeology,
right?
"It looks liturgical."
In the Cairo Geniza,
that's not too hard.
Number two: They published
an image of this
in the Jewish Encyclopedia
of 1901.
In front of God and anybody,
and anybody
who wanted to read it
without being
in a technical journal.
But no one bothered
to read the Hebrew,
because we were interested
in the text of ...
underneath.
It wasn't until the period
right after World War I,
when a scholar at
the Jewish Theological Seminary
in New York,
named Israel Davidson,
sat down and started reading
the letters of the Hebrew.
And he realized
that what was before him
was a poem by
a guy named Yannai,
spelled yod, nun, yod, yod.
How do we know that's how
it's spelled?
Because he signed his name
down the side of the poems,
which is similar
to what Byzantine authors
were doing at the same time.
He lived in the fifth century,
fifth, sixth century
in Palestine,
and he was a synagogue
liturgical poet.
And folks knew about him,
because, after all,
the tenth-, tenth-,
11th-century scholars
had written about him
as an ancient author
of liturgical poetry.
And one of his poems
was preserved
in the Passover Haggadah,
a poem called
"It Happened At Evening,"
"Vayehi bahatzi halayla."
And so one of his poems
was preserved.
Thanks to the Cairo Geniza,
we now have, oh, more than 264
of them.
Well-published,
among the most important
Hebrew liturgical poetry
ever discovered.
Now in two editions, and
a third book recently published
by Laura Lieber
of Duke University
that translates
just his commentary on Genesis,
which takes about 700 pages.
(laughter)
Just to give you a sense, okay?
Let me give you a sense--
let me go on with it.
Okay, it's an ancient synagogue
in Galilee,
just for atmospherics.
Let me give you a sense
of one of his poems.
"The nation called Jews
(Yehudim)
"Because they thank
the name of God, (Yah modim).
"In truth, they are called one
"Because they constantly
unify the One.
"Rejoice in fear and trembling
"Serve him with awe
and quivering.
"Come forth with praise
and thanks
"Call out to Torah
and to testimony.
The multitudes will not say
'Holy' above"--
meaning the multitudes
in Heaven--
"Until the believers say
'Blessed' below"-- on Earth.
"And when they stand and whisper
in their mouths below
"Standing, the angels will
slacken their wings above
and recite 'Holy, holy, holy
is the Lord of hosts.'"
And that's just
one little paragraph
out of poems of at least
four or five pages each,
260-something of them.
Now, that's one of the ways
that an object
can give you a sense
of the transitional nature
of community:
how the text went from being
a Jewish translation
of the second century
to a text preserved
by Jews and Christians
into the third, fourth, fifth,
sixth centuries,
to be a piece of manuscript
that no one needs anymore,
and hence is scraped off
to be reused
for a completely different
purpose in the 11th century,
which was to preserve
Jewish traditions
of the sixth century.
That cool?
Now... you find that a lot.
Let's take a look at this plate,
which you can also see upstairs.
It's from the Louvre.
We used it in "Sacred Realm:
The Emergence of the Synagogue
in the Ancient World"
in 1996 at Y.U. Museum.
It's a very nice plate.
The importance of having it here
is, for me, astonishing,
'cause in these photographs,
you can never see
how thick these things are.
And you can't get your nose
into them
and really understand
these objects
until they're together,
which, for all of us who were
involved in the exhibition,
and I hope for you
who are coming to it,
that's an important factor:
putting your nose up to it
and seeing what it is
before the guards stop you.
(laughter)
Now, let's take a look.
If you look close up
on this plate,
you can see a very nice menorah.
Right here, you see it?
Right? Little bulbs.
A piece going across the top
to hold it together.
Some little flames.
Over here, it's more rubbed,
but you can see another object,
which is a Torah ark, right?
Which I'll come back to
in a minute.
Oop, there it is.
That's my drawing--
don't take it seriously.
Um...
Here you see the ark.
You can see a little conch shell
up above inside the arch.
Right? There it is down there
in my decrepit drawing.
Here you see the panels
of the doors, right?
And there are some olive
branches on either side.
You see those? Right?
That comes through
a little bit better.
And when you see the object,
you'll have to squint
to see all of this.
Now, this object was found
at a place called Naanah,
next to what's now Kibbutz Naan,
south of Lod
in the Judean Shfela,
while a train was being built
between Jerusalem and Jaffa
in the late 19th century.
And a British explorer
and archaeologist
named Charles Clermont-Ganneau
was looking around,
looking for Jewish and Christian
and all sorts of antiquities,
which he eventually brought
back to the Louvre
along with the plate
that you just saw.
And he found that plate
along with this very nice column
up above.
And the column says on it,
...
"One God."
Now, ... "one God,"
hardly ever shows up
on Jewish inscriptions
and has never yet,
of the hundreds of synagogues
found in Israel
and the pieces of synagogues
found in Israel,
shown up on a Jewish object,
except maybe this one.
It's pretty common
in church contexts.
But pictures of Torah arks and
menorahs are less common there.
Now, Clermont-Ganneau knew
that just a few years before,
this piece
had been discovered
at a place called Emmaus,
which is famous
from the New Testament,
which is on the road
to Jerusalem
heading into the Judean Hill
country.
And this stone from Emmaus
is written in Samaritan script,
the same stuff that
the name of God was written on
in our palimpsest
in Samaritan script here.
And it says,
"Baruch shemo l'olam,"
"May his name
be blessed eternally."
And on the back-- in Hebrew--
and on the back, "One God."
...
And he said, "Gee, maybe this
stone up above from Naan
"and this stone down below
"can help explain each other.
"Maybe if this one's Samaritan
and it says, 'One God,'
"maybe this stone is Samaritan
and it says, 'One God,'
that means maybe the plate
is Samaritan."
And then everybody more or less
forgot what he said
because no one really thought
much about Samaritan anything
at the end of the 19th century.
And both of these objects,
minus the stone from Emmaus,
were assumed to be Jewish.
Now, just to give you a sense
of what we're talking about,
here you see the area
of Kibbutz, of Naan, of Naanah.
Here you see the area
of Emmaus, right?
Just to give some context.
Over here is Jaffa,
over here is Jerusalem.
So we're in this region
right here,
near the D in Judea, okay?
Now, not surprisingly, in 1949,
Eleazar Lipa Sukenik,
the Israeli archaeologist,
found another Samaritan
synagogue in this area,
here, at a place
called Sha'alvim,
which has a lovely stone mosaic
with a picture of the
Samaritan holy mountain--
they don't face
toward Jerusalem,
they face toward Mount Gerizim,
which is in Nablus, here;
there's Mount Gerizim,
Neapolis, otherwise
known as Nablus--
with nice
Samaritan script on it.
And what does it say?
"God will rule
forever and ever."
"Hashem yimloch l'olam va'ed."
Great, so more Samaritan
evidence never put together.
Now, if you don't know,
these are the Samaritans.
On the right is a high priest
of the Samaritans,
claims to be a descendant
of Aaron the high priest.
The Samaritans claim
to be descendants
of the ten lost tribes.
There's no reason to think
that they're not descendants
of ancient people from this
region of Israelite background.
Here you see a Torah scroll
of the Samaritans
written in Samaritan,
meaning Paleo-Hebrew script.
This is the Abisha Scroll,
which they believe was written
soon after the exodus
from Egypt,
which we know is
an 11th-century manuscript,
but don't tell them I said so.
Over here, you can see
a Samaritan synagogue
in, near Tel Aviv in Holon.
You can see the menorah
on the front of the synagogue.
Again, menorahs and Samaritans,
a pretty common thing.
Up above, "Baruch atah b'voecha,
baruch atah b'tzetecha."
"Blessed are you
when you're coming,
and blessed are you
when you're going,"
another quote
from Deuteronomy.
And down below, to prove
that I'm really not colonialist,
here you see a Samaritan scribe,
ritual slaughterer,
and artist
in his home.
He made these lovely pictures,
which contain Samaritan script,
and they call them mezuzot.
They put them on the doorposts
of their homes,
and inside their homes,
in the same way
that Jews put little pieces
of parchment on their doors.
And the book in the front--
which is a Bible book,
a book of the Pentateuch--
he copied it.
Now, going back
to the Samaritans,
here you see our object
with its very nice--
once again--
conch up above
and its one, two panels,
three, four, and its little feet
right down here, right?
Okay, great.
It's a good reason people would
say that these were Jewish.
After all,
it looks just like this one
from a synagogue
near Tiberias,
where you see similar panels
and a similar conch.
Gee, if that's Jewish,
why shouldn't that be Jewish?
Right?
Or these, the synagogue
at Dura-Europos in Syria,
with its conch,
are from the third century.
Or the Roman glass,
which happens to be
in the collection of
The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
with its Torah ark.
Or this Torah ark found
in the Upper Galilee,
complete with conch and place
for suspending lamp down here,
which today they call
a ner tamid, an eternal light.
Why shouldn't anybody think
it was Jewish?
Except...
that these things started
coming out of the ground
in the 1980s.
This floor from Khirbat Samara
in the West Bank,
from a Samaritan synagogue,
where you see exactly
the same imagery
that we saw on our plate.
And so, now we have it
that Jews and Samaritans are
using exactly the same imagery.
And that makes it even harder
for people like me
to figure out who and what
belongs to whom and where.
Or this really great one,
which is from a place
called El-Hirbe, also
in Samaria in the West Bank,
with this lovely Torah ark
with its conch,
this table in the middle
set for dinner.
Notice the little dots
on the table.
We'll come back to those.
This menorah right here
with an incense shovel
and a horn, a shofar.
Right?
Very nice thing.
There are people
who want to say
that this table in the middle
is the table
of the showbread
in the temple,
except I don't think they had
dinner in their temples,
so I don't know
what that table does
in a Samaritan context.
Now, notice again, our object
in comparison to the Samaritan
object from the floor,
the mosaicist's depiction.
They are really very close,
down to the little conch up here
and the little conch up here.
Okay.
Now, this floor was found
in the 1960s
in Beit She'an Scythopolis,
just north of the city.
And it's a very nice floor,
and I use it
for all sorts of purposes,
because of its delicious colors.
But notice, once again,
our gable here,
our conch here.
But what's most interesting
to me is
that here you have what looks
like an olive twig
and another olive twig.
And down here you have a shofar.
And over here--
you have to believe me--
is a incense shovel.
But what's missing
that you'd expect
there to be
is the paramount Jewish symbol
of the festival of Sukkot,
that appears
on almost every object
representing the biblical
Festival of Tabernacles--
the lulav.
Here you see a palm frond,
complete with willows,
complete with myrtles,
complete with a...
Where's my light?
Is it on? Is he on?
Did I lose him? Oh, I had
figures in front of him, huh?
Complete with a citron.
Standard Jewish stuff
that the Samaritan object
simply doesn't have.
Samaritan floors,
as you see down below,
may have a incense shovel,
and may have a shofar,
but it is not going
to have this,
because Samaritans
do not use this
for the Festival of Tabernacles.
It is a Jewish invention.
It's an old Jewish invention.
In fact, Simon bar Kosiba,
in the midst of the war,
wrote a letter to his officers
and said, "Make sure
that you provide palm fronds
and citrons and willows and..."
And what's the other one?
And hadassim.
"And myrtles to your armies,
"because we need them.
The camp requires them
for the festival."
Jews had used this
for a very long time,
but Samaritans never did.
And so, Ruth Jacoby of the
Hebrew University realized,
in looking
at all of these images,
that one of the ways to identify
a Samaritan object
was by its not having a lulav.
Now, that's a very
subtle difference.
But it is a difference
between these communities.
Now, none of us had paid
much attention to that fact,
and so, it's a good bet--
there it is again,
our table and our plate--
that this plate was used
in a Samaritan context.
I can go you one step better.
You see this plate has nice
little flowers decorating it?
Look at my nice
little flowers here.
Now, I'm not making
too much of this.
I'm just suggesting
that it's a very similar plate
illustrated on this mosaic
to the one
that was discovered atNaan.
The point being that,
through careful detective work,
it is possible
to take apart the pieces
to figure out
the complex identity issues
that appear in the literature
and in the art of this period.
To imagine a world
which is in transition.
To imagine a world
where a document like that
could exist,
with all of the
complexities involved.
Or that a plate like this
could be misinterpreted
for about 100 years,
because we didn't have eyes
to see differently.
And so, thank you very much,
and I hope
you'll enjoy the exhibition.
(applause)
- What I thought
was very interesting
about this series of talks,
and not totally expected,
was the degree
in which the speakers encouraged
the idea of coexistence.
So, before we start this,
I would like
to thank the Coexist Foundation,
which I hope is pleased
with its funding of today.
(applause)
What I'd like
to ask each of you is,
do you think that the idea
of your talks and the exhibition
really do encourage us
to think of these communities
living together and interacting,
more than being a structure
in which one imposes itself
on the other?
(laughter)
- You're looking at me,
aren't you?
- Well, there are lots of...
Here.
- Yeah, we have lots
of these things.
- It's hard-- when I was putting
together the talk,
one of the things I had
most difficulty with was title,
because I didn't want
to talk about influence
and I didn't want to talk
about different communities.
(audience murmuring)
- I don't think you're on.
- Bring your mic
closer to your mouth.
-Oh, okay-- is that better?
Sorry.
I didn't want to speak
about influence.
I didn't want to speak
about different communities,
because that prejudges
the issue.
That assumes
that they are separate
and that they need to cross
lines that we have imagined.
And I think it's an interesting
way to look at the material
without starting
with the assumption
that there are such lines
that need to be crossed.
And late in the process of this,
Fred Donner
from the University of Chicago
published a book called
"Muhammad and the Believers,"
which takes
a very similar point of view--
that it's not so clear that,
at least,
in the seventh century,
that these confessional
divisions
were already firmly established.
- Steven?
- I always tell my students
that...
- Can't hear you.
-(louder): Can you hear me now?
Perfect!
I always tell my students
that...
I start with the premise
that Jews are more or less
the same as everyone else
until they're not,
which gives me the sense
of the shared culture
for a minority community,
which is obviously different
than for the Byzantine
community--
Byzantine Christian community--
or for the Moslem community,
because I'm dealing
with this little tiny group.
And so sometimes
they're persecuted,
and sometimes
they're not persecuted,
but they were really happy
when Islam came along
and made them
into subservient people
as opposed to hated people.
That was a major moment.
It was better to be subservient
and not be able to ride a horse
than it was, in their minds,
to live
under Christian Byzantium,
which they had all sorts
of difficulties with.
- Now, when we talk
about Christian Byzantium,
we're actually talking
about a variety
of Christian communities,
not all of whom are liked
by the state.
So, Father Justin's monastery,
Saint Catherine at Sinai,
is part of the official church
from Constantinople.
Would you see that
tremendously different
than the Coptic or the Syriac
or the Church of the East,
these other communities
who are also,
like Steven's community,
not legal under the empire
in the fullest form?
- Sinai was a part
of the Holy Land,
and that's why it remained
ecclesiastically
a part of Jerusalem
and a part of Constantinople,
when many Christians in Egypt
left that center.
Sinai had existed for centuries
before the coming of Islam.
And it's extraordinary
that you have a center
that has retained its link
to the world of late antiquity,
the Greek-speaking world,
which has continued
to this very day,
but, at the same time,
has managed to live
in peaceful relations
and harmonious relations
with the new Islamic rulers.
- One of the things we're trying
to do in the exhibition--
and I think it does come through
in these talks--
is, there's not
just one community
of any one thing that...
Even within the small community
of Judaism,
we have inscriptions upstairs
in Aramaic,
in Greek, in Hebrew.
We would have--
if the floor mosaics
from Hammam-Lif's inscription
survived,
it would be in Latin.
So, obviously, that limited,
small community has diversity.
Certainly, the elite
of the empire in 600
are appointed to their offices
from the capital
and need to be orthodox
to be appointed.
But then they are surrounded
by very learned communities
that are arguing--
I think
one can never underestimate
or fail to repeat often enough
that these religious debates
that are happening in the area,
from Syria through Egypt
to North Africa,
are among people
that would be the equivalent
of Cambridge and Oxford
and N.Y.U. today.
They are not people who are
making up their own religions
because they don't know
connections.
It's because they are so very
sophisticated in their argument
about the nature of the holy,
and the holy is
always so difficult to describe.
Is that a fair statement?
- Well, one of the things
that I...
Oh, can I-- oh, that's better,
okay.
When I started looking
at this material,
I was...
(sighs)
I was supposed to teach a course
on the arts
of the Islamic world,
which suggested one.
And there are just many.
When you read the documents
from the seventh century,
there's very little about
the Christians and the Jews.
There's a great deal about the
rivalry between different clans.
Should the tradition follow--
should the caliph be chosen
from the family
of the Prophet Muhammad,
or chosen by the elders
of the community?
Should, you know...
How should we run the taxes?
What's the point of prayer?
What, actually, is the Shahada,
the confession of faith?
Does it mention Muhammad
as the Prophet or not?
And that the notion of a
kind of monolithic Christian...
We've known better, I think,
about that for a long time
because of the language and
other distinctions in the East.
But it's true, also, I think,
in the Jewish material,
that there are rival groups
and sects
and they're just arguing
among themselves all the time.
And that's true in Islam.
- What we're really seeing is
that our idea
that you have these units
and that they all agree
with each other
and, in some way,
have a nice wall around them,
increasingly, as we study it,
just cannot be supported.
And I think
Larry made the point--
even if the work is made
for one community,
it's perhaps made by people from
another religious community.
There is much less solidity
than the easiest description
offers.
And so now, in this generation
of scholarship,
we are trying to understand
how communities argued,
did not argue,
worked together,
did not work together.
Is it true that in Muslim...
In areas where Muslims
had taken the town,
you have no large mosque,
did they use synagogues
and churches for worship
in the first generation
before they were ready
to build a Friday mosque?
A Friday mosque is where
all the Muslim community
comes together to both pray
and to hear what is happening.
And in the first generation,
you may have had
relatively few people there
compared to the larger
population of the area.
Syria is supposed to have been
predominantly Christian
into the 13th century.
And yet the great center
of the Umayyads,
the first important
and ruling dynasty
of the Islamic world,
is in Damascus.
It doesn't mean everybody
in Greater Syria became Muslim
as the Umayyads were there.
And Sinai is, to me,
a particularly important place
because it's one
of the first religious sites
with great sanctity
over many centuries
that the armies of the Prophet
would reach.
I don't know of ones,
particularly, south of there.
But do you, Father Justin?
- We know that the area came
under the jurisdiction of Islam
in the year 633, so quite early.
And it is that shared veneration
for Sinai
that has ensured
the peaceful coexistence there
for so many centuries
of Christians and Muslims.
- I hope all of you have a
chance, when you can go there...
I am being waved at.
If you will stay, Alan Gampel--
who has been sitting very nicely
at the end--
is doing research
in terms of music
that extends what we've
been talking about today,
because he's looking in early,
in early hymns and early texts
of a number
of religious communities
for signs of how and when
musical notation develops.
And that has grown out
of his own career
as an eminent classical pianist
and someone who,
since he was a,
at 16 at the White House
performing,
has been interested both
in the beauty of the music
and in the logic behind it.
So if you'll give us a minute
to get the piano set up,
we're gonna hear from him.
(applause)
- Music, in the form
of liturgical chant,
was an integral part of
all three monotheistic religions
in the early Byzantine period
from the third
to the seventh centuries.
All three religions insisted
that their scripture be sung
and not just read aloud,
as can be seen in these quotes
from the New Testament,
the Talmud,
and the Islamic Qur'an.
During this formative period,
the liturgical
and musical relationships
between early Christianity
and Judaism were quite strong.
Many early Christians
were recent Jewish converts,
and they were comfortable
with Jewish liturgical music
in spite of their changed
theological faiths.
The Old Testament Psalms
were the centerpiece
of the liturgy
of the early church,
and for several centuries,
Jewish cantors were hired
by certain Christian communities
to teach the cantillation
of the Old Testament
and the singing of the Psalms.
In the fifth century,
the Christian bishop of Menorca
wrote about a procession
of Christians and Jews.
"We began to sing
the ninth Psalm,
"and the throngs of Jews
also began to sing it
with a wondrous sweetness."
Obviously, if the two groups
were singing simultaneously,
the melodies must have been
somewhat similar.
Some earlier followers
of the Islamic faith
also shared musical
liturgical elements
with Christians and Jews.
One of the many hadiths
attributed...
quotes attributed to Muhammad
reads,
"Recite the Qur'an in the tunes
and songs of the Arabs
and beware the tunes of
the People of the Two Books"--
the "Two Books"
obviously references
to the Jewish Old Testament
and the Christian New Testament,
and this quote affirms,
on the one hand,
that the Qur'an was musically
chanted and not just read.
It also suggests
that some Islamic communities
had adopted Jewish
and Christian chant styles.
Textual references like these
help to understand
the musical liturgical culture
in the early Byzantine period.
However, only musical notation
may shed light
on the music itself.
What do we know about notation
2,000 years ago in this region?
The ancient Greeks had invented
a very complex system
of musical notation
around 400 BC
that used Greek letters--
sometimes inverted,
turned around, chopped in half--
to represent notes or pitches.
Of the 75 examples
of this ancient notation
that still exist today,
all are pagan except
for a single Christian hymn.
Here is an image of
the papyrus of this hymn above,
"The Hymn to the Trinity"
found in Oxyrhynchus,
with a transcription
of the ancient notation below
on the left--
if this pointer does
what it's supposed to do.
Doesn't seem to be doing
what it's supposed to be doing.
In any... Oh, there-- well...
I don't know.
Hmm.
I'll try this one...
There we go-- so, here,
we see the musical symbols
above the Greek text,
and, on the right side,
a transcription
into modern musical notation
with the same text
and the modern musical notes
above.
Let's listen to a short excerpt
of this hymn
sung by the ensemble Kerylos.
(ensemble singing soft hymn
on recording)
(recording stops)
Oh-- that's enough.
This ancient notation fell out
of use in the fourth century,
after this hymn was written.
Perhaps the close association
with paganism
offended the Christian clergy.
The musical explanation
for the disappearance
of ancient Greek
musical notation
is that Christian chant
was improvisational,
unlike Greek and Roman
pagan music.
Some words were sung
with modal, melismatic motives
that would have been difficult
to notate
using the ancient Greek system.
A similar thing happened
recently in the 20th century,
when jazz musicians invented
a new notation system
because standard notation
didn't work
for their improvisational music.
A completely different type
of notation also existed
during this ancient period.
Every word
in the spoken Greek language
had a pitch accent,
which meant that the voice
went up or down
a specific amount
on a specific syllable.
If the musical inflection
was incorrect--
pronounced incorrectly--
the meaning of the word
might change.
This musical element of Greek
was called "prosody,"
from the Greek words pros,
meaning "for,"
and ode, meaning "song";
"for song."
Greek became the standard
administrative language
throughout the Eastern
Mediterranean Basin
when Alexander the Great
conquered the region
around 330 BC.
People who spoke
local languages,
such as Aramaic or Syriac,
weren't accustomed
to these pitch accents.
Aristophanes of Byzantium,
in about 180 BC,
who worked in the Great Library
of Alexandria, in Egypt,
formalized a system
of written prosodic accents
in an attempt to save
the old pitch pronunciation
for Greek-speaking Egyptians.
However, the oral prosody
in Greek gradually disappeared
and was replaced by the more
common syllabic stress accents.
Prior to the ninth century,
there are very few traces
of Aristophanes' accents,
although they became used,
standard...
as standard accents
from the ninth century onward.
Here are four examples
of their use
prior to the ninth century.
In a small passage
on a papyrus
of Romans,
from the New Testament,
from the fourth century,
we can see a circumflex accent
over the letter eta.
Here, from the Dakhla Oasis
in Egypt,
"A Teacher's Dipinto"--
an inscription
on a classroom wall--
we can see many
of these accents:
acute, grave, and circumflex.
And here, on part of Homer's
"Iliad," from the sixth century,
we can also see a variety
of accents.
Finally, a sixth-century papyrus
with verses
from the Book of Matthew.
Again, all three of the accents
can be found here.
All four of these examples
follow the rules of accentuation
in the choice and placement
of the accents,
the rules established
by Aristophanes
for where to place them and
which accents were to be used.
Let's listen to Christos
Chalkias chant, or cantillate,
the first verse of Matthew
on this papyrus.
(man cantillating on recording)
(recording continues)
(recording stops)
Many Greek manuscripts
of Christian hymns--
Christian hymns--
also contain accents.
However, for the hymn texts,
which were not cantillated,
but sung,
the accents don't follow
the accent rules.
Here is a fifth-century papyrus
of a hymn to Mary
with three accent marks,
and they're all
in the wrong places.
You can see up here,
here, and here.
The word...
The accent, a circumflex,
is here.
It should be over the upsilon
earlier in the word.
Here is a sixth-century ostracon
that's actually here
at The Met,
of a Christian hymn
with 13 accents,
again, all in the wrong places.
Why did the scribe choose
the wrong accents
and put them
in the wrong places?
Hymns were an important part
of the early Christian liturgy,
and some Byzantine
hymnographers,
instead of composing
their own melodies,
wrote texts to be sung
to standard, well-known tunes.
The accent marks in these hymns
didn't represent
specific notes or intervals.
They indicated musical changes
to a well-known melody
to accommodate a different text.
For example, to highlight
an important word
and add a melisma.
Over the next few centuries,
this new musical use of accents
in hymn texts increased,
and other signs were added,
as well.
Here, for example,
is an eighth-century papyrus
with a hymn
by Cosmas of Maiouma,
one of the great
Byzantine hymnographers
of the eighth century.
It's still sung today
in the Byzantine rite.
In this papyrus,
we see a far more developed
system of accents.
Let's listen
to Christos Chalkias
sing an excerpt of this hymn,
and notice the difference
between his biblical
cantillation
from a few moments ago
and this melodic singing
of a hymn.
(man singing on recording)
(recording continues)
(recording stops)
The Byzantine accents
for chanting
Greek biblical texts
served as the basis
for a system of neumes
for singing
Greek liturgical hymns.
And both systems were used
simultaneously
for several centuries.
This chart... Oh, sorry.
That was supposed to be up
during the singing.
(chuckles)
This chart by the musicologist
David Hiley
shows the close relationship
between the prosodic accents
on the left,
the Byzantine ecphonetic accents
in the middle,
and the neumes
that were used for hymn singing
on the right.
A system of signs
for the Hebrew cantillation
of the Old Testament,
called ta'amim,
appeared about the same time as
this complete Byzantine system.
Some scholars claim
that the ta'amim also evolved
from Aristophanes'
prosodic accents.
Here is the oldest extant
example of the ta'amim
from the ninth century
"Cairo Codex."
We don't know what these signs
originally represented,
but over the past millennium,
the musical motives
associated with each ta'am
have been transformed
to correspond
with local traditional music.
For example,
the same ta'am sign
might represent
one musical motive in Kiev,
a different one in Madrid,
and a third in Prague.
You can see this passage
has been taken
from this lower middle...
middle column.
The earliest Western manuscripts
with musical signs
also appeared
in the ninth century.
These signs in Latin liturgical
texts are called neumes,
either from the Greek word
neuma,
which means "sign"
or "direction,"
or the Hebrew word ...
which means "tune."
Here is an example of
the earliest written neumes,
also ninth century,
the manuscript from Saint Gall.
French monks in the 19th century
demonstrated the evolution
of these signs
by comparing manuscripts
of identical texts
with slightly changed
musical signs
over the course
of several centuries.
They were able to show
how these neumes
developed into modern standard
musical notation
that we use today.
Here is a Hebrew manuscript
from the 11th century
that illustrates
an intermediary stage
in the evolution
of Latin neumes.
Many of the notes are distinct,
as in today's notation,
and they are written around
three horizontal lines
that you may be able to see
more clearly here.
These horizontal lines show
the relative pitch of the notes.
This Hebrew version of a portion
of the Old Testament,
with Latin notation,
provides
yet another illustration
of the frequent exchange
between Christianity and Judaism
in the musical
liturgical domain.
As a final demonstration
of the ongoing relationship
between the liturgical music
of the three religions,
let us move
to three modern examples
of Christian-, Jewish-,
and Islamic-based music.
First, a short cello
and piano piece
that evokes Byzantine
psalm chanting,
"Psalmodia."
Then, a cello and piano
rendition
of the Jewish prayer Kaddish
by Ravel,
who was French, Basque,
half-Jewish, and half-Catholic.
(chuckles)
And last, "Islamey,"
a solo piece by Mili Balakirev,
who was
an Orthodox Russian composer,
very nationalistic,
born in Nizhny Novgorod,
the capital of the Volga region,
which has a very strong Muslim,
and had a very strong Muslim
history and population.
(off mic):
We're missing a cello.
(laughter)
Here.
(applause)
(playing somber music)
(piano joins in)
(piece continues)
(tempo increases)
(original tempo resumes)
(tempo increases)
(original tempo resumes)
(piece continues)
(tempo slows)
(piece ends)
(applause)
(piano chord plays)
(cello plays wistful melody)
(piano plays
soft, high-pitched chords)
(piece continues)
(piece continues)
(piece pauses)
(tempo increases)
(piano plays rolling notes)
(piano plays lower notes)
(tempo slows, tone softens)
(piece continues)
(piano plays darker tones)
(volume increasing)
(volume decreasing)
(piece continues)
(tempo slows)
(piece ends)
(applause)
(piano playing
rapid series of notes)
(tempo increases)
(volume increases)
(volume decreases slightly)
(playing ascending notes)
(volume decreases slightly)
(volume increases slightly,
then decreases)
(repeats increase and decrease
in volume)
(playing rapid series of notes)
(playing progressively ascending
lines)
(piece continues)
(playing intensely)
(tempo slows dramatically)
(playing more gently)
(piece continues)
(tempo increases slightly)
(tempo slows)
(piece continues)
(tempo slows)
(faster tempo resumes)
(piece continues)
(piece continues)
(plays rolling notes)
(tempo and volume
increase slightly)
(tempo and volume increase)
(volume decreases slightly)
(tempo increases)
(volume decreases slightly)
(playing descending notes)
(playing low rolling notes,
then higher melody)
(tempo and volume increase)
(playing intensely)
(volume decreases)
(volume gradually increases)
(piece continues)
(playing low rolling notes,
gradually ascending)
(tempo slows slightly)
(playing heavily)
(playing more lightly)
(notes descending quickly)
(playing more lightly)
(playing intensely)
(volume decreases)
(volume increases progressively)
(piece continues)
(piece ends,
cheering and applause)
(applause continues)
