RC
11th Jan 2005, 14:13
You can get a pretty good education about Middle Eastern history in Tom Robbins' Skinny Legs And All. How about this?
The country of Palestine, which had been called Canaan, was named for Pales.
Pales was a diety. The ass-god. Or the ass-goddess. Usually he was male, but sometimes she was female, and sometimes its gender was a tad ambivalent.
The name Pales was Arabic, having come out of Libya, but the Hebrews loved the long-eared bisexual no less than the Arabs. Tacitus, the Roman historian, wrote that the Semites fell into venerating the ass because had it not been for wild asses, they never would have survived in the desert. It was probably more complicated than that.
The ass was a saviour who provided milk, meat, shoe leather, and transportation (what the Bible calls the "golden calf" was actually the golden ass, since there were never many cows in the Levant).
The ass was also obstinate silly, and sexually crude.
Embodying all of those characteristics, Pales was a trickster, fertility spirit, and sacred clown, presiding over humankind's unruly passions, giving mortals what they needed,but not before having some fun with them.
(I find this quite ironic given current mid-east intolerance toward gender-type human variations.)
The country of Palestine, which had been called Canaan, was named for Pales.
Pales was a diety. The ass-god. Or the ass-goddess. Usually he was male, but sometimes she was female, and sometimes its gender was a tad ambivalent.
The name Pales was Arabic, having come out of Libya, but the Hebrews loved the long-eared bisexual no less than the Arabs. Tacitus, the Roman historian, wrote that the Semites fell into venerating the ass because had it not been for wild asses, they never would have survived in the desert. It was probably more complicated than that.
The ass was a saviour who provided milk, meat, shoe leather, and transportation (what the Bible calls the "golden calf" was actually the golden ass, since there were never many cows in the Levant).
The ass was also obstinate silly, and sexually crude.
Embodying all of those characteristics, Pales was a trickster, fertility spirit, and sacred clown, presiding over humankind's unruly passions, giving mortals what they needed,but not before having some fun with them.
(I find this quite ironic given current mid-east intolerance toward gender-type human variations.)