In Memory of George Carlin
Posted by Kushana Torumekia at 6/25/2008 6:06 PM 
Categories: Al-Hallaj, Aramaic, History of Religions, Mark Twain, Bible, Theology, Gospels, Coptic, Heresy, Greek, Petronius, William James, Luke, mysticism, New Testament, George Carlin, Latin, Naughty Words, Hebrew, Dead Langauges, Ancient Novels, Book of Acts
Categories: Al-Hallaj, Aramaic, History of Religions, Mark Twain, Bible, Theology, Gospels, Coptic, Heresy, Greek, Petronius, William James, Luke, mysticism, New Testament, George Carlin, Latin, Naughty Words, Hebrew, Dead Langauges, Ancient Novels, Book of Acts
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And now, the seven famous words:stercus, urina, concubitus, pudenda, mammae.
Or rather, five of them – I only have a student dictionary with me, designed to make looking up naughty words difficult. I’d consider the Oxford Latin Dictionary (ISBN 978-0198642244) the last word and Adams' Latin Sexual Vocabulary (ISBN 978-0801841064) to get the exact nuance of ancient slang, but I don’t have either at my desk.
It used to be the custom to translate the risqué passages of any text into Latin – I never quite understood why: 1) this made them easier to find 2) most schoolboys knew Latin. (I suppose this kept the passages from casual readers, women, and men of lesser social standings. But not, necessarily, from children. Odd.)
The fact that we know dirty words in any dead language depends greatly on what’s left of the language and what kind of books were preserved. Biblical Hebrew can be very earthy — but it speaks in metaphors and euphemisms. Ancient Aramaic preserves some anatomical terms, but it would be a difficult language to truly curse like a longshoreman in. Greek has such a long written history that suppressing all its vulgar vocabulary would be a monumental act of censorship: even the Greek of the New Testament has a few colorful words. (Which are usually softened in most translations.) Roman humor, satire, popular novels, political pieces, graffiti, and medical texts preserve nearly the range of vocabulary found in English. I have not read all the preserved literature of Coptic but between the literature on daily monastic life, recorded fulminations against sinners, and magical texts that had both medical and romantic intentions (including jealously, i.e. wishing ill on the parts of a straying lover), there is a good start on that language’s off-color words.
All these languages preserve enough religious vocabulary to resurrect religious oaths, including my favorite (straight from an ancient novel by Petronius), “Iuro per deos deasque!” "By all the gods!", a very Roman sentiment: they took care never to leave any deity out. (Must of Roman religion rested on not creating offense.)
I also wanted to take a moment to speak in praise of heresy. Carlin was an atheist and outspoken critic of absurdities, wherever he saw them:
‘‘The whole problem with this idea of obscenity and indecency, and all of these things — bad language and whatever — it’s all caused by one basic thing, and that is: religious superstition,’’ Carlin said in a 2004 interview. ‘‘There’s an idea that the human body is somehow evil and bad and there are parts of it that are especially evil and bad, and we should be ashamed. Fear, guilt and shame are built into the attitude toward sex and the body. ... It’s reflected in these prohibitions and these taboos that we have.’’
http://www.suntimes.com/news/obituaries/1019509,CST-NWS-xcarlin23.article
Heresy is necessary even for religion, itself. Many word religions owe their existence to unacceptable departures from the dominant religions of their day: Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity (and every Monophysite and Protestant form of that same faith), and Islam. The mystic Al-Hallaj was hung for saying what came unacceptably close to pantheism, but a historian of religion sees in it the mysticism that occurs in every religion and often says doctrinally unacceptable things. To quote William James' famous remarks, mystics feel:
1. Ineffability.- The handiest of the marks by which I classify a state of mind as mystical is negative. The subject of it immediately says that it defies expression, that no adequate report of its contents can be given in words. It follows from this that its quality must be directly experienced; it cannot be imparted or transferred to others. In this peculiarity mystical states are more like states of feeling than like states of intellect. No one can make clear to another who has never had a certain feeling, in what the quality or worth of it consists. One must have musical ears to know the value of a symphony; one must have been in love one's self to understand a lover's state of mind. Lacking the heart or ear, we cannot interpret the musician or the lover justly, and are even likely to consider him weak-minded or absurd. The mystic finds that most of us accord to his experiences an equally incompetent treatment.
2. Noetic quality.- Although so similar to states of feeling, mystical states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge. They are states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance, all inarticulate though they remain; and as a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority for after-time.
These two characters will entitle any state to be called mystical, in the sense in which I use the word. Two other qualities are less sharply marked, but are usually found. These are:
3. Transiency.- Mystical states cannot be sustained for long. Except in rare instances, half an hour, or at most an hour or two, seems to be the limit beyond which they fade into the light of common day. Often, when faded, their quality can but imperfectly be reproduced in memory; but when they recur it is recognized; and from one recurrence to another it is susceptible of continuous development in what is felt as inner richness and importance.
4. Passivity.- Although the oncoming of mystical states may be facilitated by preliminary voluntary operations, as by fixing the attention, or going through certain bodily performances, or in other ways which manuals of mysticism prescribe; yet when the characteristic sort of consciousness once has set in, the mystic feels as if his own will were in abeyance, and indeed sometimes as if he were grasped and held by a superior power. This latter peculiarity connects mystical states with certain definite phenomena of secondary or alternative personality, such as prophetic speech, automatic writing, or the mediumistic trance. When these latter conditions are well pronounced, however, there may be no recollection whatever of the phenomenon and it may have no significance for the subject's usual inner life, to which, as it were, it makes a mere interruption. Mystical states, strictly so called, are never merely interruptive. Some memory of their content always remains, and a profound sense of their importance. They modify the inner life of the subject between the times of their recurrence. Sharp divisions in this region are, however, difficult to make, and we find all sorts of gradations and mixtures.
("Lectures 16 and 17", The Varieties of Religious Experience. I thank Dr. Nielsen for letting me borrow his copy of the book.)
None of this makes for the kind of rational analysis that goes into any tradition's orthodox systematic theology.
I would say that heresy is also necessary for any form of study. If you want to read the Book of Acts in a literary light — presuming that the author of the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts had complete freedom to portray Paul as he liked (Acts 16:9-10), to put any words in his mouth that best suited the literary standards of his time (Acts 22), to move him about on the map of the story as he liked (as Luke does with Phillip in Acts 8:39-40) — then you will reach conclusions that might not always sit well with seeing the Book of Acts as a wholly accurate, thoroughly divinely inspired text. (What, then, would be the purpose of trusting Luke with two books of the Bible and the first history of Christianity? Why not have these texts fall from the sky if his humanity, experience, education, and literary skill would be so totally set aside?)
The first requirement for any kind of thought or inquiry is an open mind. No education can exist without it. This process requires that dangerous, offensive, unacceptable, and unspeakable ideas must be open topics. Traditional posits of the power and greatness of the divine present something that cannot be harmed by human doubts or questions. People feel protective of their own ideas, practices, and doctrines but I have never seen anyone’s spiritual or ethical life grow without the presence of questions and difficulties – no more than a child grows when they are sheltered from everything confusing or difficult.
Blasphemy, heresy, and atheism are vitally important things. In the history of ideas, suppressing one person or group’s blasphemous suggestions is often futile: the same idea will occur to others, independently, whether they another generation or place’s mystics, thinkers, or satirists. Every idea invites its alternatives: someone will eventually ask if X must be so, if it was always so, if it could ever change, and if it is the whole truth of the matter. Every successful religion has learned that it has neighbors who ask inconvenient questions, saints who see strange and transcendent realities, and comedians who will find in the status quo an ideal straight man.
(Carlin did live long enough to learn he would receive the Mark Twain Prize, this Fall. For those who think Carlin did something new and shocking, I warmly recommend Twain’s complete works.)
-Kushana
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