Dominion Built of Praise. Jonathan Decter
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in no hidden matter can anyone compare to you. By your shrewd understanding you have gained riches, and amassed gold and silver in treasuries.” This “praise,” of course, is only a setup to expose the haughtiness of the sovereign who had claimed divine status yet structurally parallels the performance of panegyric in the ancient Near East.48
The first Hebrew praise for a man outside the Bible, and here in poetic form, emanates from the Book of Ben Sira, authored by a priest in Jerusalem circa 180 BCE. The book contains a long and well-known section that begins, “Let me now hymn the praises of men of piety (ḥesed), of our fathers in their generations.” The text selectively rewrites the lives of Israel’s biblical heroes and culminates with praise for Simon the Just, the high priest and Ben Sira’s contemporary, including a description of his offering of sacrifices in the Temple on Yom Kippur. The work blends the values of Torah-centered Judaism and Greek paideia; in fact, the work bears the imprints of the traditions of classical biography and the encomium.49 The praise of Simon combines his ritual functions in the Temple with certain municipal king-like functions such as protecting the people from brigands and defending Jerusalem against enemies and also secures his authority as one who receives commandments and teaches statutes and judgments.
The structure of the praise for Simon is abundantly simple. Following mention of the municipal functions, the appearance of the radiance of the high priest exiting the Holy of Holies is elaborated with a series of similes: “How splendid was he looking out from the Tent and leaving the House of the Curtain: like a bright star among clouds, like a full moon on the holidays [Passover, Sukkot], like the sun shining on the king’s temple, like a rainbow in a cloud, like a bud on the branches in the days of the holiday [Passover], like a lily by watercourses, like the blossoms of Lebanon in summer, like the fire of frankincense at the offering, like a vessel of beaten gold adorned with precious stones in the house of a powerful man, like a verdant olive tree abundant with fruit, like a tree whose branch runs with oil.”
The similes draw primarily upon the semantic fields of heavenly objects and flora with occasional references to sacrifice, covenant, holidays (especially Passover), and powerful men. Although Simon is a man of power, he is not the king; yet the poem is careful to associate him with kingship by portraying him as the source that illuminates the king’s Temple, which had been recently rebuilt. Associating his appearance with the priestly office, the covenant, central holidays, and kingship is hardly haphazard; the similes combine to create a full portrait of the high priest as the embodiment of core values of Jewish life and hence as a legitimate political officer.
As was shown by Cecil Roth, Ben Sira’s praise for Simon the Just became the template for a host of liturgical poems (piyyutim) inserted into the ‘avodah service of the Yom Kippur liturgy, which, as in Ben Sira’s poem, describes the rituals of the high priest in the Holy of Holies.50 These poems utilize the same incipit and follow the structure of presenting similes in a simple list.51 They enjoyed many expansions during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages and are key texts for documenting the representation of power through the similes selected by poets. Although many elements of this genre remain stable over time (especially comparisons with heavenly bodies and flowers as well as allusions to Ezekiel’s vision), the precise selection of similes varies in different cultural contexts through the adoption of synchronic images of power. In a version attributed to Yosi Ben Yosi (fifth century), the priest is described “like a garland placed on the forehead of a king,” which maintains the association with monarchy and reminds us of the practice of Roman officials appearing wreathed in public processions. In the same poem, the priest is likened to Moses, an angel, and a warrior, “like one clad in the garments and helmet of triumph”; the helmet is another key symbol of power from Late Antiquity.52
In Islamic al-Andalus during the eleventh century, Mosheh Ibn Ezra depicted the high priest “like the radiance of a king appearing before the masses, before him the land was like the Garden of Eden” and “like a king in his troop among the longing [i.e., Israel], like the wisdom of an angel of God.” Yiṣḥaq Ibn Ghiyat wrote: “How wondrous was the high priest … when he went about in his vestibule with the splendor of a king, justice went before him; when he tread upon a pavement of marble, a star rose.”53 Although there are obvious references to Temple rituals, the poets also incorporate elements of caliphal pageantry such as his appearing before the masses, surveying his territory, and moving in a military entourage. The Temple, too, is made into a kind of royal palace replete with a marble floor.54 These fascinating changes in representation within the fairly fixed corpus of the ‘avodah liturgy is a telling measure of shifting cultural ideals about power. The liturgical poems were only about an imagined priest and not a particular person; the high priest was a screen upon which historically contingent and culturally specific images of power were projected.
Rabbinic literature continues the biblical practice of emphasizing God’s praise over man’s. Praise for God is presented as a contractual requirement, given the great miracles that God had performed for Israel, an idea captured in a famous passage introducing the hallel (praise) service of the Passover seder. Immediately after commending God for having freed “our ancestors” and “us” from Egypt in order to “bring us to and give us the land that He swore to our ancestors,” the seder participants recite (with an exceptionally long list of verbs): “Because of this, we must thank, praise, honor, glorify, exalt, magnify, bless, elevate, and celebrate the One who performed all these miracles for us and our ancestors.”55 Further, rabbinic Jews set laudation of the ruler as the operative metaphor in treating praise for God. As David Stern notes, following a study by Ignaz Ziegler in the early twentieth century, “features of the king-mashal [allegory] are modeled upon those of the Roman emperor…. The many references in the meshalim to the larger world in which the Rabbis lived certainly show how profoundly familiar the sages were with that world and its culture.”56
There are points in rabbinic literature wherein a man is praised with a short phrase or epithet: a few sages of the Talmud are given the Aramaic sobriquet gavra rabba (“great man”); after Rabbi Yoḥanan had made an astute comment, Rabbi Ḥizqiyah exclaims (also in Aramaic) that “he is not a [mere] mortal” (leit dein bar inash). It is reported that Yoḥanan Ben Zakkai “used to recount the praises” (hayah moneh shivḥan) of five students, but the text merely illustrates ideal types and does not suggest that he praised the students directly.57 In fact, rabbinic writing expresses reservation toward direct praise and further demonstrates, as Seth Schwartz argues, that the rabbis largely opted out of the euergetic system of their day.58 An illustrative text is b. Eruvin 18b, wherein Yermiyahu Ben El‘azar expounds upon a discrepancy between Gn 6:9 and 7:1. The narrative voice of the Flood story (i.e., God, in Yermiyahu’s view) introduces Noah as a “righteous and upright man in his generation; Noah walked with God.” However, when God addresses Noah directly, He calls him “righteous” only. From this, Ben El‘azar concludes, “one speaks little of a man’s praise before him but all of it when not before him.” Even in death, the sages warned against excessive praise for the deceased.59
The dramatic shift in the place of praise in Jewish society in the medieval period is illustrated with the following text, an unpublished Geniza manuscript (TS 8 J 16.18r; Figure 2), which is an address to a certain Ovadiah. Following a brief wish for success, the text praises the recipient in a mixture of Judeo-Arabic and Hebrew (Hebrew in italics):
All that reaches a man with respect to praise [al-madīḥ] and sincere thanks [al-shukr al-ṣarīḥ] falls short with regard to the lofty lord, confidant of the state, security of kingship, our lord and master Ovadiah the minister, the noble, the wise, the intelligent, may God extend his grace, elevate his status, and give him abundant fortune in the eyes of kings and ministers. May he bless his brothers and his sons the ministers and may they be a blessing in the midst of the land. All that they address before him [of praise and thanks] is but a fraction of what is said when he is not present according to what the rabbis [al-awā’il], may God be satisfied with them, made clear in their saying, “One says little of a man’s praise before him but all of it when not before him.” They said this because we have found