From: Jim West (jwest@Highland.Net)
Date: Thu Jul 02 1998 - 15:21:59 EDT
At 02:53 PM 7/2/98 -0400, you wrote:
>
>Not to belabor a point, but since I don't have anyting better to do[**]:
>
>Jim, how in heaven's name do you get Eglon into a privy??!? The text says
>explicitly that he was sitting in his "cool upper chamber" (NRSV & NJPS;
>KJV: "a summer parlor").
These are all common ANE euphemisms for the toilet! (The KJV is just wrong
here). The kindly translators have, once more, put the meaning of the text
in silence in order to keep it to tradition.
> The only thing at all scatlogicial in the
>passage is the "filth" that "spilled out" after Eglon was eviscerated.
Even more disgusting when you realize that that is why he went into the
little room in the first place.
>Setting aside the fact that --as the NJPS notes-- the meaning of the
>Hebrew of the term is uncertain, the emergence of such "filth" certainly
>does not, under the circumstances, require a privy.
The Hebrew term is not uncertain- the translators are uncertain as to
whether or not they want to spell it out. Small wonder they didn't want to!
>
>Likewise, the presence of a chamber-pot doth not a privy make.
I'm afraid it did in the ancient world- people didn't collect pots for the
heck of it then as mementos of better days!
>(Again in
>her younger days my grandmother slept with a chamberpot under her bed;
>and --trust me on this one-- you would have been taking your life in your
>hands had you compared her bedroom to a privy!) cf. Leopold Bloom's trip
>the --outdoor-- privy and Molly's late-night use of the chamberpot.
>
>
>In any case, to restate the initial point, this is an *archaeological*
>question. Did dwellings of this time and place have privies indoors?
>Does anyone here actually know?
Ed Krentz indicates that in Roman houses, the toilet was often in the
kitchen! (on graphai, where I also posed the question).
>
>(Quite frankly, given 1] the climate of the region and 2] given the
>relative scarcity of this building practice elsewhere, I would be rather
>surprised if they had!)
Climate has nothing to do with it. And about building practice? How do we
know?
>
>Nichael
Best,
Jim
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Jim West, ThD
Pastor, Petros Baptist Church
Adjunct Professor of Bible,
Quartz Hill School of Theology
jwest@highland.net
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