The Christian Hebraism of John Donne: Written with the Fingers of Man's Hand

NOTES

177 NOTES Notes to Introduction 1. The term “Chaldeans” designates members of an ethnic group that became the ruling class of the Neo-Babylonian Empire and southern Mesopotamia in the middle of the first millennium BCE. In the Book of Daniel this name “appears as a technical term for astrologers” (Anson Rainey, “Chaldea, Chaldeans”). 2. The prophet Daniel explains this phrase as follows: “MENE, God hath numbered thy kingdome, and finished it. TEKEL, thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting. PERES, thy kingdome is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians” (Dan. 5:26–8). For his part, Donne develops this into the following explanation: “Thou art waighed, Thou art found too light, Thou art divided, separated from the face of God” (Sermons 5:361). For an explication of this Aramaic phrase, see Daniel Boyarin and Moshe Zeidner, “Mene, Mene, Tekel, U-farsin.” 3. The citation from Habakkuk 2:2 is noted by Simpson and Potter in their edition. The two marginal notes on Daniel are not evident in the XXVI Sermons, but do appear in various manuscript versions (e.g., The St. Paul’s Cathedral Manuscript; Sermons 3:410). 4. 1 Timothy 3:16 reads: “And without controversie, great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seene of Angels, preached unto the Gentiles, beleeved on in the world, received up into glory.” 5. Paul Stanwood suggests that “Donne probably preached a series on the penitential psalms, of which we possess only about one-half of the whole course” (“Donne’s Earliest Sermons” 366). There is thus extant only a single sermon on Psalm 51, while no sermons on Psalms 102, 130 and 143 are extant. 178 Notes to Pages 3–5 6. Stanwood argues for the earlier dating (“Donne’s Earliest Sermons”), while the emphasis on the parochial (re-)preaching is a recent contribution made by The Oxford Edition of the Sermons of John Donne. The discussion of these particular sermons will appear in vol. 9, “Parochial Sermons: St. Dunstan’s-in-the-West,” ed. Arnold Hunt. During her long discussion (1913–62) concerning the dating of the series on the Penitential Psalm 6, Evelyn Simpson changed her mind at various times. Throughout, she accepts the 1628 dating from LXXX Sermons (“Preached to the King at White-hall, upon the occasion of the Fast April 5. 1628”; 535) for the sermon on verses 6:6–7. In the first phase (Spearing, “A Chronological Arrangement”) Simpson uses this to date the entire series to 1627–1628. In the second phase (A Study of the Prose Works 1924, 1948), she dates the sermons on verses 6:1–5 between 1615 and 1619, based on intertextual connections with the (pre-1615) Essayes in Divinity (leaving the sermon on verses 6:8–10 undated). In the third and final phase (Sermons: 5:30; 6:1–2), she dates all the sermons (except for the one on verses 6:6–7) to 1623, based on intertextual connections with Donne’s 1623 letter to Ker (following a letter from I. A. Shapiro; OSB MSS 90, Box 2, Folder 68; see also I. A. Shapiro, (“Donne’s Sermon Dates” 55). 7. The first five sermons have been dated to the spring of 1618, while the final one has been tentatively redated to winter 1620. These datings are recent emendations (compare the dating of the final sermon in Sermons 2:13–14) suggested in the Oxford Edition of the Sermons of John Donne. The discussion of these particular sermons will appear in vol. 4, “Sermons Preached at the Inns of Court,” ed. Emma Rhatigan. 8. This dating is a recent emendation suggested in the Oxford Edition of the Sermons of John Donne. The discussion of these particular sermons will appear in vol. 12, “Sermons Preached in St. Paul’s Cathedral,” ed. Mary Ann Lund. 9. The fifth sermon is undated in LXXX Sermons; Janel Mueller dates it between May and June of 1627 (Donne’s Prebend Sermons 331–37), while Evelyn Simpson dates it between November and December of 1627 (Sermons 8:11). 10. Mueller acknowledges that “I owe much to Professor Coert Rylaarsdam of the Divinity School of the University of Chicago for his assistance with Donne’s Hebrew” (“Preface” xi). 11. This essay was first published in 1913 under Simpson’s birth name of Spearing, and then reprinted in revised form in both editions of The Prose Works of John Donne (1924...