[Extracted from a letter to a friend]
But now, as they say, for something completely different. Clicking on that link to your dreams tag, I ran across quite a few that I don't recall having read before—one of these days, I'm going to have to go back and read from the beginning: I seem to have missed quite a lot during my '04-'05 absence—but while I haven't had a chance to read all of them, one in particular did stand out to me. Not the dream part, so much, but the comment about the Bird in the ancient world. This, as my perverse nature would have it, is something I've investigated in the past, so I thought I'd close with a little ramble on the same. Hopefully it will lend itself more to humor than annoyance!
Beginning, as I so often do, in the Bible, there's a line in Isaiah 58:9 that, though some modern translations (like, sadly, the JPS Tanakh
) render it as a "menacing hand", Jerome translated "digitum extendere", and some have interpreted that extended finger to be the same "shameful" sign seemingly known throughout the world and history. Jerome himself, in one of the letters to Marcella (27), makes a remark about causing "everyone to point at me the finger of scorn" (admittedly, I'm using that popular translation for effect; literally, he only wrote "cunctorum digitis notor", which could just as easily mean he was being pointed out or talked about around town—though the context of both his letter and the City would support that they probably were giving him the gesture [and that Jerome goes on just a couple of sentences later to begin quoting Horace and referring to his "two-legged asses" (bipedes asellos), suggests, at least to me, that it's likely what he had in mind]). A browse through the literature will turn up several references to the digitus impudicus, digitus infamis, digitus lasciuus or digitus tribadis, among others. Juvenal, the tenth satire, lines 51–53 read "ridebat curas nec non et gaudia uolgi, | interdum et lacrimas, cum Fortunæ ipse minaci | mandaret laqueum mediumque ostenderet unguem."—"He would laugh at the cares and pleasures of the crowd, sometimes even at their tears, while for himself he gave ill-Fortune a noose and the finger." Martial opens II.28 with "rideto multum qui te, Sextille, cinædum | dixerit et digitum porrigito medium." ("Heartily mock who calls you catamite, Sextillus, and give them the finger.") Suetonius claimed that Augustus expelled the entertainer Pylades when the latter flipped off a heckler, and there's a tale in Gestures (Morris) that says Caligula got a kick out of making people kiss his digitus lasciuus. But these lads are far from the oldest references. The Greeks have a specific verb for giving the finger, σκιμᾱλίζω, which (who else) Aristophanes enjoyed (it appears in "Peace", alongside Hermes remarking on flatulence, for example). There's also the incident in "Clouds", between Strepsiades and Socrates, ll. 645–656 or so, where Socrates is trying to educate him on the matter of metre, and having mentioned the dactyl, is interrupted thus by Strep., "The dactyl? By god, I know that one!" (κατὰ δάκτυλον; νὴ τὸν Δί', ἀλλ' οἶδ'.) Soc., "Tell me, then." (εἰπὲ δή.) Strep., "What else but this? [showing a finger, Greek dactyl] | On the other hand, I've used this one [showing another] since a boy." (τίς ἄλλος ἀντὶ τουτουὶ τοῦ δακτύλου; | πρὸ τοῦ μέν, ἔτ' ἐμοῦ παιδὸς ὄντος, οὑτοσί.) Soc., "You're a stupid bore!" (ἀγρεῖος εἶ καὶ σκαιός.) [Oddly, given the terms used, Socrates could just as easily be calling him a left-handed farmer—I suppose that gives us an idea of what the Greeks thought of sinister rustics.] But going back to our Isaian passage, while it seems the thing to avoid even the hint of "vulgar" meaning in a "holy" passage, the language would seem to support it, and it's not unknown—the same word used here for "finger" is attested in Middle Hebrew, Ugaritic, Aramaic, Arabic, Ge'ez, Akkadian and possibly others: there's an old Babylonian passage even, including an occurrence in the Hammurapi code, úbanum eliša itariṣma (ú-ba-nu-um e-li-ša it-ta-ri-iṣ-ma), meaning to point or extend the finger in an insulting or accusatory way, with sexual connotations from the extant examples (in the Law Code it seems to have been an accusation of adultery), where úbanum is considered to be related to the Hebrew term used in Isaiah (אצבע). Apparently the Egyptians (from the Hebrew telling) thought this was equivalent to sending a plague of lice, since Exodus 8:19 has the pharaoh's magicians declaring "This is the finger of God!"
Thankfully, he'd mellowed out rather a lot by the time he gave Jesus the bird at his baptism.
You're right, I think, that it does sound like a great topic for a class. For the humanities, maybe, you could do a bit on The Role of Gestures in the Ancient World, and use it as an excuse to let the students know how you feel about them.
I imagine it would become an immensely popular thing—for instructors if not for students!
For sourceworks, de Jorio's Gesture in Classical Antiquity (HB
or paper
) touches on it (along with many other gestures, from friendly to foul), including citing another bit of Martial [VI:70, "ostendit digitum, sed impudicum"]; Corbeill's Gesture in Ancient Rome
also touches on it, often conjoined to the ficus, where it can both be taken as a threat or insult as well as a means of warding off the evil eye ("fuck you, evil eye!"?) or chasing off unclean spirits ("a figo for thee, satan!"—alternatively, "PISTOL: Art thou his friend? HENRY V: And his kinsman too. PISTOL: The figo for thee, then! HENRY V: I thank you: God be with you!", Henry V, Act IV, scene I.) In Daniel Matt's edition of the Zohar (volumes I
, II
, III
, IV
, V
), he discusses how tradition holds that when Moses raised his hands to defeat the Amalekites in Ex. 17.8-16, he was actually giving them the finger—"Take that, Amalekites!" If so, given that he held up his hand in that fashion, according to the passage, the whole day till the sun went down, even, after tiring, having Aaron and Hur hold up his arm for him, and given that the place was, on that account, named YHWH nissi, or the banner, or sign, of YHWH, does that mean that the YHWH nissi is actually the Finger, not the magen Dawid? That would be some national flag, wouldn't it?
