Cultural appropriation

One aspect of McCloskey's comment I did not deal with yesterday is what might be called the cultural appropriation argument. I didn't do that because I think cultural appropriation, while a high crime to the modern intellectual class, is no offense at all.

It occurred to me while I was waking up this morning that this will not seem as obvious to others as it does to me so I will explain. First, here is where McCloskey made a cultural appropriation argument,

Christians (starting it appears, with Jesus himself but certainly including the writers of the Gospels) mined the Hebrew Bible (called so by people who do not want to insult the Jews by calling their book the "old" testament) for anticipations of the coming of Christ, especially for example the book of Isaiah."

Note the possessive above: "their book." Short version, I don't think it is any insult to anybody for Christians to use Jewish scripture or to call it the Old Testament. (I have another factual objection to "old testament". As Benedict 16 says, the covenant between God and Israel was never revoked; it is still active and, therefore, there is nothing "old" about the old testament.)

But, to return to the more general argument about cultural appropriation, I have three kinds of objections here. I have an historical objection: given what we know of the historical origins of Jewish scriptures, objecting to cultural appropriation is not a cogent argument. I have a moral objection: I think most of our piety about cultural appropriation is misplaced. And I have a pragmatic objection: one of the markings of a healthy, thriving culture is that it freely makes use of good cultural ideas it can acquire from other cultures it comes into contact with.

I'm going to focus only on the historical aspect here (although the other two arguments will be hinted at).

Every thing we know about the archeology of the region where the scriptures were written tells us that these scriptures were created by wholesale borrowing of tales and concepts from other nearby cultures. The book of Genesis, to take an example that, as McCloskey put it, even slightly sophisticated biblical students know about, appropriates and rewrites the Babylonian epic Enuma Elish.

Archeologists digging up ancient Canaanite temples have discovered that these were built to the same layout and rules as described in the Bible. And there is no doubt whatsoever about which came first. The ancient Israelites appropriated much of their religious thought and practice from others. The beloved psalm that the King James beautifully, but inaccurately, renders as "If I forget they O Jerusalem. may my right hand lose its cunning," began life as a Canaanite hymn.

Further, there is no reason to think that the great warrior tales that make up the story of the David are anything but common tales of heroic behaviour that were brilliantly put together to make up the books (originally just one book) of Samuel. This process was not unlike the way similar tales were put together to compose the Iliad.

And "compose" is the right word. Just as the great classical composers did not invent new melodies but composed existing materials into great symphonies, the Jewish scriptures take religious concepts and stories from all over the ancient middle east and compose them into a new vision.

This composition was done, I believe, under the inspiration of God and he used this moment to give the world, which already knew him imperfectly, a new and better idea of who and what he is. Exactly how novel is an open question. There is certainly foreshadowing of the new vision in the elements these ancient scribes put together (how could there not be) to make up the new scriptures. But there is also something special that does not exist before.

To take a well-known argument, the first of the two creation stories in Genesis borrows the structure and cosmology of Enuma Elish but it changes crucial details of the moral theology of the earlier tale. In Enuma Elish, Marduk the great warrior who defeats the older generation gods, finishes the story by creating humans. He does so in order that these humans can be slaves to his bother and sister gods. In Genesis, God has no predecessors and creates human beings as an act of love. He creates us so that we may flourish and be happy.

That Christians would appropriate and read Isaiah in a new way— in a way that fills out our understanding of God and his interaction with the world—strikes me as entirely acceptable.



To anticipate some questions. Yes, I there there are limits on appropriation. We should adhere to copyright law. (Although I think current copyright law is excessive: Mickey Mouse should have been in the public domain for decades now and it is insane that initialisms can be copyright.) It would also be wrong for me to take the life events of one of my neighbours and make a novel out of them, unless I disguise them so well that no one can figure the origins out. On the other hand, I think public figures surrender much of this right to privacy. Joni Mitchell might, for example, feel a little peeved at the way her life and character were apparently used to create Jane in the movie Laurel Canyon—I say "apparently" because the makers deny this—but, however peeved she may be, I think she should not have any moral or legal argument against it. Likewise, I think it was a travesty that a British court sided with Stephen Spender against a novelist who had used Spender's life as a basis of his fiction. By extension, I think that the culture of any people becomes public property.