![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Books Read in 2021 # 43 & 44 - God Stuff
Aug. 25th, 2021 07:18 pm43. Mablbim: The Patriarchs translated (with notes) by Tzvi Faier - Malbim was a 19th century rabbi and his commentary was mostly pretty great. However, I'm remembering the one about how Esav absorbed Rivka's menstrual blood. It's one of those awful commentaries that you are going to get when you are primed to note the "scientific" perspective. Ramban had a book on how the Torah is super intelligent, but his main examples were how the Torah knew all the bullshit scientific facts of the 12th century. So what else about this thing? Well, it's the parshas from Lech Lecha (Abram going off to his calling) to Toldot (Jacob leaving to escape Esav). Text was in HEbrew and English with commentary on almost every line.
The story that really grabbed me this time was Sodom. Holy fuck, that's a rapey story. Doesn't help that Malbim and Faier are both pretty cool with Lot's oldest daughter raping him. I'm even more annoyed with my confirmation pastor telling us that Sodom was a city of homosexuals BUT there were serious hospitality issues (and then he stole stories from one of those monsters that Theseus encounters before the Minotaur with everyone being stretched or cut up to fit on a bed). Was also annoyed with the Biblical Hebrew professor who also read this story as homophobic. Do these people think that Oz is a gay romance with all the prison rape?
So I was more impressed with the pshat. The only commentary that stood out for me was the really dumb one about menstrual blood but the commentary was still generally solid.
44. The Godmakers by Frank Herbert - The very first Borges story I ever read was one where he goes into the future and meets himself on the brink of suicide. His future self tells him that he tried to write under a pseudonym but every called those books bad Borges ripoffs. The main point that every writer eventually ends up plagiarizing himself. Which is still better than the late stage of the scientist who starts spouting off stupid shit in a field that is not his own. (including Judy Mikovits who went from celebrated AIDS researcher to shit antivaxxer - https://timlieder1.medium.com/the-tragedy-of-judy-mikovits-fc1721855499)
Even though the plot initially is about a short tempered man checking out a potentially rebellious planet, it quickly turns into Herbert's greatest hits. Every planet is full of hidden soldiers. He has magical healing powers. His mother is part of a secret society of women who actually run the empire (through their husbands of course - a lot of "classic" science fiction could imagine interplanetary travel but not women leaders or in many cases women with actual personalities). Oh yeah, he's got psi powers that come from another branch. There's a major intergalactic religion that is just Islam with the serial number barely scratched off.
We even get the "deep thoughts" chapter headers. Mostly quotes from characters, but unlike when I read Dune I recognized a bunch of those quotes from Pirke Avos. Maybe if he studied it more the last couple Dune books where suddenly JEWS show up. That's another matter and if I ever reread Heretics of Dune I will go on and one about how silly it is that every other religion in this future is an amalgamation of current faiths as they would look in thousands of years but suddenly JEWS show up. Just long enough for a rabbi's daughter to totally join the bene gesserit.
By the time our hero becomes a god I marveled at how lazy Frank Herbert was getting. Had someone else wrote it, he would have tested that "you can't copyright an idea" standard.
The story that really grabbed me this time was Sodom. Holy fuck, that's a rapey story. Doesn't help that Malbim and Faier are both pretty cool with Lot's oldest daughter raping him. I'm even more annoyed with my confirmation pastor telling us that Sodom was a city of homosexuals BUT there were serious hospitality issues (and then he stole stories from one of those monsters that Theseus encounters before the Minotaur with everyone being stretched or cut up to fit on a bed). Was also annoyed with the Biblical Hebrew professor who also read this story as homophobic. Do these people think that Oz is a gay romance with all the prison rape?
So I was more impressed with the pshat. The only commentary that stood out for me was the really dumb one about menstrual blood but the commentary was still generally solid.
44. The Godmakers by Frank Herbert - The very first Borges story I ever read was one where he goes into the future and meets himself on the brink of suicide. His future self tells him that he tried to write under a pseudonym but every called those books bad Borges ripoffs. The main point that every writer eventually ends up plagiarizing himself. Which is still better than the late stage of the scientist who starts spouting off stupid shit in a field that is not his own. (including Judy Mikovits who went from celebrated AIDS researcher to shit antivaxxer - https://timlieder1.medium.com/the-tragedy-of-judy-mikovits-fc1721855499)
Even though the plot initially is about a short tempered man checking out a potentially rebellious planet, it quickly turns into Herbert's greatest hits. Every planet is full of hidden soldiers. He has magical healing powers. His mother is part of a secret society of women who actually run the empire (through their husbands of course - a lot of "classic" science fiction could imagine interplanetary travel but not women leaders or in many cases women with actual personalities). Oh yeah, he's got psi powers that come from another branch. There's a major intergalactic religion that is just Islam with the serial number barely scratched off.
We even get the "deep thoughts" chapter headers. Mostly quotes from characters, but unlike when I read Dune I recognized a bunch of those quotes from Pirke Avos. Maybe if he studied it more the last couple Dune books where suddenly JEWS show up. That's another matter and if I ever reread Heretics of Dune I will go on and one about how silly it is that every other religion in this future is an amalgamation of current faiths as they would look in thousands of years but suddenly JEWS show up. Just long enough for a rabbi's daughter to totally join the bene gesserit.
By the time our hero becomes a god I marveled at how lazy Frank Herbert was getting. Had someone else wrote it, he would have tested that "you can't copyright an idea" standard.
