purple motes

Persons who consider a book to contain the words of God read those words very carefully.  But a human being, even a fashion-besotted English professor (Discourse! Discourse!), makes sense of words with more than words.  Consider this story:

Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon. And behold, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and was crying, "Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely oppressed by a demon." But he did not answer her a word. And his disciples came and begged him, saying, "Send her away, for she is crying out after us." He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." But she came and knelt before him, saying, "Lord, help me." And he answered, "It is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs." She said, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table." Then Jesus answered her, "O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire." And her daughter was healed instantly. [Mt 15:21-28, ESV]

Reading books today can provide insight into the situation of the Canaanite woman in this story.  The House of Israel regarded Canaanites as accursed, sexual idolators fit to be pushed aside or destroyed.   A woman of this time would not normally come, without men of her family or tribe, into the company of men of another tribe.  Being oppressed by a demon was generally considered to be retribution for evil acts.  A normal reaction of persons of the House of Israel to the Canaanite woman in this story would be not to speak to her, to tell her that she does not belong there, and to disparage her.  In this story, Jesus, son of David of the House of Israel, displays each of these reactions to the woman.

The put-down Jesus directs to the Canaanite woman is witheringly de-humanizing:  "It is not right to take the children's bread [the bread of the persons of the House of Israel] and throw it to the dogs [to persons like the Canaanite woman]."  Those words hurt.  Jesus, as described in most of the words of the Bible, doesn't seem like a person who would say that.   Persons today disagree significantly about who Jesus was or is.   But almost everyone agrees that Jesus was a gentle, nice guy.  Many might also add that Jesus perhaps showed more personal interest in women than might be thought appropriate for a normal man.

I think that Jesus knew the value of play and that he had a godly sense of humor.  In the above story, Jesus  mocks the normal reaction of his disciples from the House of Israel.  He's probably caricaturing them with gesture, facial expression, and posture.  Jesus's disciples, other than the unnamed ones in the story, probably relished acting and telling this story.   If a Sunday-school teacher presents it with severe earnestness, the story is nearly incomprehensible.  To understand it, you have to start with laughing at the foolishness of persons like yourself.

The Canaanite woman would not have enjoyed the first part of her experience in Jesus's play.  But enduring a trial as a plaything of a god was not considered at the time to be unusual or degrading.  Odysseus, a hero in the intellectually dominant Greek culture of the time, experienced many such trials.  The Canaanite woman addresses Jesus as Lord and master, receives healing for her daughter, and emerges as the hero of the story.  A fair sense of this story excludes believing that the woman was treated unfairly.

Human performance incarnates words.  Without a sense of performance, you lose the fullness of words.

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A great way to study the ancient Greek trireme is to build one. Frank Welsh, a trireme enthusiast and funder, John Morrison, an ancient historian, and John Coates, a former British naval architect, established in 1982 the Trireme Trust with the following objectives:

1. To resolve a long-standing controversy about the design of this historically important type of ship
2. To discover its true performance at sea
3. To enable the realities of sea power at that time to be understood
4. To draw attention to the maritime and technical skills which were the keys to the cultural achievements and lasting influence of ancient Athens.

The Trireme Trust and Greek shipbuilders worked together to build an ancient Greek trireme. In 1987, the full-scale, fully functionally trireme Olympias was ready to be commissioned into the Greek navy and taken out for its first sea trials around the island of Poros.

I was part of the crew that rowed the Olympias in its first sea trial in the summer of 1987. The crew was collected mainly from British universities. We stayed for a couple of weeks in the Greek naval officers school on Poros. Being on the crew of an ancient Greek warship undoubtedly included great hardships and suffering. But by 1987, that job made for a very good time.

The trireme has 170 rowers arranged in three tiers: thranites (top tier), zygians (middle), and thalamians (bottom). I was a thalamian. Because the seats were fixed wooden benches, the effort of rowing was shifted towards the arms and back compared to boats with slides (rolling seats). From where I sat I couldn't see the water nor feel any breezes coming across the boat. The rowing section leaders and master would shout out instructions, and I could see and feel the rhythm of rowers both in front of me and above me.

Being down in the boat has advantages and disadvantages. It was hot. I drank a lot of water and sweated it out. Arranging fresh water supplies must have been a major challenge. Being a thalamian wouldn't be a good position for being rammed by another trireme. But it would be a great position in winter, or in battle with projectiles flying.

The boat itself is an engineering marvel. John Coates, the architect, would climb around the boat, fixing various broken parts, and talking with rowers. You can find more pictures of the boat here. That the Greeks could build hundreds of these boats 2500 years ago is amazing. That the Greeks and the Brits could together rebuild one based on scraps of archaeological and textual evidence is astonishing. I remember Mr. Coates saying that the design constraints implied much of the design.

We rowed the boat through a variety of test maneuvers. One was was to accelerate to full speed and hold that speed for a short period. Another was to reverse direction quickly and turn sharply. Given that no one had any experience, and given the difficulties of coordinating 170 rowers, the boat performed amazingly well.

A recent study has analyzed the power output of trireme crews. The study found:

rowers of ancient Athens – around 500BC – would had to have been highly elite athletes, even by modern day standards.

Says Dr Rossiter: “Ancient Athens had up to 200 triremes at any one time, and with 170 rowers in each ship, the rowers were clearly not a small elite. Yet this large group, it seems, would match up well with the best of modern athletes. Either ancient Athenians had a more efficient way of rowing the trireme or they would have to be an extremely fit group. Our data raise the interesting notion that these ancient athletes were genetically better adapted to endurance exercise than we are today.”[1]

This is an interesting finding. The historical record seems diverse enough and clear enough to rule out performance exaggeration or misreporting, an issue that always should be considered carefully. Perhaps some subtle difference in ship design made a huge difference in performance. That seems highly unlikely.

Were the ancient Greeks genetically better adapted to endurance exercise than persons around the world today? Note that "persons around the world" is the relevant comparator, because the market for athletic performance today is globalized. No negative selection for endurance seems plausible for all human beings around the globe over the past 2500 years. Genetic differences, it seems to me, isn't a plausible explanation.

Trireme crew performance is puzzling. I personally believe in the potential of modern athletes.

[1] Quote from Leeds University Press Release. These findings are also reported in Stephanie Pain, "When men were gods," New Scientist, Feb. 10, 2007, pp. 46-7. That article provides a few additional details. It notes that ancient writers consistently indicate that triremes crews could row at 13-15 kilometers per hour for 16 hours or long. Modern measurements indicate that 30% of the crew's power output is lost. But even with 100% power efficiency, the crew could not achieve ancient performance. The New Scientist article is not scholarly documentation of the study. Such documentation apparently is not yet available.

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