When Passion of the Prophet Overrules the Law

IN not a few cases, there are to be found pronouncements of the prophets, rendered, "Thus saith the Lord," when it is shockingly to be seen that something in the Law is being dismantled, abrogated.

Most immediately coming to mind is Isaiah 1:11 . . .

"To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the LORD: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats."

And lest any should allow themselves to be beguiled by some furious parsing of the text into supposing this is not addressed to his own people, let his own people observe the very first verse of this mighty, prophetic shout, to wit, "The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah" -- then one need only turn the ear to hear how this shout of Isaiah is really, like radiation yet pulsing from the Big Bang) a distant echo from David, in Psalm 50:12 . . .

[12] If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof.
[13] Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?
[14] Offer unto God thanksgiving; and pay thy vows unto the most High:
[15] And call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me.

It is indeed the men of Judah, the Daughter of Zion being addressed by Isaiah, as they are--in their error--compared by the mighty prophet of God to the long gone sinners of Sodom and Gomorrah . . .

[9] Except the LORD of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah.
[10] Hear the word of the LORD, ye rulers of Sodom; give ear unto the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah.
[11] To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the LORD: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats.
[12] When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts?
[13] Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting.
--

Now! What are Jews to make of this? It is as if the whole towering edifice of the sacerdotal liturgy for sacrificial ritual is here torn down by this Prophet (with his ancient rebel chief, David) and beaten to bits, right along with the entire broad rampart of the Sabbath law, in its every block of hard, unyielding stone--the very rocks that, being broken, had been thrown at the heads of some of these prophets, and at those who thrilled to hear their words.

What then? Which is to be taken for the word of the Lord? The Law of sacrifices or the Word of the prophet? And what good, what sense can there be in having these prophetic pronouncements on the books, if they are not to be judged as ruling so far as how Torah is to be read?

Isaiah asks, "Who hath required this at your hand?" Therein stands a mighty question. It is a question that must have gone forth to shake the very walls of the Temple, and set those priests to trembling, because it is really asking, Whose hands are those which have been writing in your Torah, adding things to change and corrupt it? Are they original, authentic-- of Moses? Or did some laws come only from pen of lust and ink of sin from a priestly bottle of black greed, conceit and tyranny, as Samuel was heard to lament?

Isaiah and David say, That is not Torah, it is corruption. Hear our words, and by simple subtraction, know what the Torah IS, as it really was, in the beginning.

There are biblical scholars who discern a presence of more than one text in the Pentateuch (Torah) the first five books of the Old Testament--as they detect a presence of three different and distinct hands (scribal traditions) at work in the 'authorship' of these texts. But there is one author, say the religious, he is God, and him you will recognize from the original text, as from no other.

All I know as I read and meditate, is how I am seeing an original "unhewn stone" of scripture upon which much was later being laded. This became most apparent in a comparison of, as I recall, three succeeding expositions of the Sabbath Law. There was a first, in Exodus, then a more expanded one, also in Exodus, and a third (as I seem to recall) in Deuteronomy--although that may have been in either Leviticus or Numbers. One way or the other, the striking thing is this . . .

In the first exposition of the Sabbath Law, it is made VERY PLAIN, it is stated very simply that in essence, the sabbath is--as one unrecognized prophet of Judah put it--"made for man, not man for the sabbath." God would demand of man that he should give himself, and his workers, his servants rest. What perfectly wonderful sense this made for a nation of people freshly come out of slavery. What else would God have had to say to his children as they stood before him about the flanks of Horeb at Sinai?

What else indeed! But as time progressed, and as priests and scribes got busy, man was made slave to the Sabbath, as by their own priests and scribes the children of Israel were put once again into bondage to be marched right back to slavery in Egypt. Man turned God's purpose around and made the sabbath about God, and not about Man.

But it was not really about God at all. Had it been about God in truth, it would have been about God making it NOT about himself, but about his children, to give them rest. It was not about God taking his children prisoner on the Sabbath! Not about God putting his people through every manner of run around to make every human need, to eat, to get up and walk around, to adjust a thermostat or start a fire an absurdly complicated task that in the end comes to the enormous hypocrisy of making the institution of the Sabbath slave, i.e. of the "Shabbos Goy" an absurd necessity which absolutely contradicts the very law of Sabbath, in its most basic meaning, purpose and essence which is to give REST to all one's servants, right down to the slaves. It is the ridiculous spectacle of slaves making slaves of others to violate the original intent which was to free a slave to a day of rest.

God's most beautiful gift was thus despised! Idolatry. That's all it is. It is idolatry in the worst, most subtle, hardest to discern form, where the nature of God is distorted into the image of a tyrant, and a vain one at that, who demands to be worshiped day and night (only for show of the vain worshiper), raised up like some Goliath and clothed in raiment of gold-plated temples, when nothing by him is more despised.

Make unto me an altar of unhewn stone! He said. And lift no tool upon it.

Whose God is God?

Moses in the third chapter of Exodus, upon having come before the Burning Bush was ordered by "God" to stand right where he was, to come no closer and take the shoes from off his feet, for he had entered upon holy ground . . .

[13] And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?
[14] And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

Consider the nature of that answer from "God". Think of the millions who have puzzled over the meaning of it. "I am that I am"--? What's that? Or what's with the "that"? As Thomas Aquinas observed it, he thought to translate it, "I AM WHAT AM". But what if you were to do a little mixing and matching between the two to come up with "I AM WHAT I AM"--what do you wind up with then? Is it the retort of rather a churlish god who doesn't like his business being looked into so closely? Or would it be more like a sort of crash course in theological instruction being sternly stated to the effect of saying, "Don't hang any of your silly man-made names on me! I am what I am. Take your names, Moses and stick 'em where this Burning Bush don't shine."

But because that would seem to be the most obvious, most plain, most literal interpretation (which takes no interpretation at all) of this text, it incensed the vanity of the priests from generation to generation who came to read it, holy men who place a whole lot of superstitious stock in whatever pretended powers they imagine may come of name invocation, conjuring, oath swearing and the like. Thus in order to preserve such idolatrous traditions intact, they instate and enforce a prohibition against making utterance of that phrase at all. And they call it the sacred or secret "name of God" when in fact it is nothing of the kind at all! When in fact it is the direct opposite, and no name at all, at God's insistence--and note that I have kept the quotes off God this time because this and only this is the nature of a god that such a one as myself can believe in: the kind of God who would refuse to be named, and therefore be owned, by any particular people of this tongue or that, this tradition or that.

And now, what would be the consequences of this for the ontology (philosophy that investigates Being, nature and kinds of being, supreme, mundane or otherwise) that might be understood from this? In another place, at the scene of the giving of the Ten Commandments, the children of Israel receive there the heretofore unrecognized Eleventh Commandment--in Exodus, the 20th chapter . . .

[25] And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it.

Think how relevant that is to God's refusal to be honored with any raiment, decoration or engraving of names. But man being what he is, soon finds a way to get around the commandment and soon contrives a sort of Talmud full of ways to devise a complex of interpretations to get around it. In the 27th Chapter of Deuteronomy . . .

Deut 27

[4] Therefore it shall be when ye be gone over Jordan, that ye shall set up these stones, which I command you this day, in mount Ebal, and thou shalt plaister them with plaister.

But why would not their understanding of God's 11th Commandment have been perfectly clear to them? How very devious of man, as always, to suppose that by pouring plaster over the stone or stones (as they take it from stone to 'stones' in case their lusts, greed for advertising and making large their piety should drive them toward the building of a temple), in this way they can avoid the prohibition by raising their tools upon the plaster that is poured over the stone, and avoid cutting into the stone.

Think of what the consequences of this has been for the preservation of a Hebrew archaeology! Think of what rain does to plaster. See the peculiar fact that of all the bronze age and later ancient cultures of the world, it is the Hebrew that is most bereft of all in the catalog of discovered artifacts. Observe also the peculiar anthropological or sociological result in the manner that man lays a trap for himself the moment he complicates what should have been so simple, literal and clear. What originally had been nothing more than an abolition against idolatry, of engraving images to represent the divine being, no sooner is that perverted from stone to plaster, than it is by overreaction extended to any sort of art work altogether. And you might well wonder how that works, except one is to understand that man is all the while conscious of the fact that he is messing with the 11th Commandment, is going against the will of God in the pouring of that plaster; underneath it all he knows this, and in one more effort to get around it and feel real righteous all the while he's going about it, what does he do? He goes God one better, so he would suppose, to declare in all reverence and piety that all art is forbidden.

That's how it works. That's how crazy man is. That's how his guilt works on him as he remains unavoidably under the consciousness of his original sin in pouring that damned plaster because he so wanted to gussy up the one thing that demands not to be prettied up and that is God. Deuteronomy goes on . . .

[5] And there shalt thou build an altar unto the LORD thy God, an altar of stones: thou shalt not lift up any iron tool upon them.
[6] Thou shalt build the altar of the LORD thy God of whole stones: and thou shalt offer burnt offerings thereon unto the LORD thy God:
[7] And thou shalt offer peace offerings, and shalt eat there, and rejoice before the LORD thy God.
[8] And thou shalt write upon the stones all the words of this law very plainly.

You may say that these people are hardly to be blamed for wanting to preserve to their posterity the words of the Law that was given of God. But of course! And God had said nothing to prohibit it, that they might pour all the plaster they liked over the tablets upon which they may raise their tools to inscribe the Law. God was cool with that. But as to any altar they should be moved to build for the offering of sacrifices--don't mess with it, God said.

And why? What's the big deal about that with God? Look at the very ritual of blood sacrifice itself and see, that by this God was saying, "Look at what you're doing! What on earth causes you to think I would order anything like that? No! Don't you DARE dress it up with gold and all manner of finery to make yourselves feel better about the barbarity you practice. Leave it plain, so the stain of blood is the only terribly smelly kind of painting that stone will ever receive. Maybe then the point will get across, after you've lived with the stench long enough? (See the accounts of Diaz, of his experience in the temples of the Aztecs, where the mighty conquistadors were throwing up all over the place.) Not with the gold or plaster to make a slippery surface to which this bloody business will not adhere.

There's something quite crazy about it. There has to be. Because it's through the crazy things that the will of God to uncomprehending man, most often would become known. Moses (or some later priest writing in the name of Moses) for some crazy reason cannot shake this voice from his head that is saying, "Don't dress up the stone. Don't do that!" THAT'S AS CLOSE as he can get to discerning what really is the will of God. What do people think? That God actually speaks to man with an audible voice? Nonsense! But something somehow moves a man to get but the vaguest glimmer what the will and wisdom of God might really come down to . . .

That at first in Ex.3, God is saying, "And IF thou wilt make me an altar of stone . . ."

But as time and the centuries have worn on, so late as in Deuteronomy 27, it has come now to, "And there shalt thou build an altar unto the LORD . . ."

How did it get from "if" to "shall" except SOMEBODY messed with the word of God? Note the earthshaking importance in the difference between the two. In the first and most original text, God is saying, "Well, IF you are going to indulge yourselves in this absurd bloody business, then keep it just as ugly as it is: no decoration! Got that?"

In the latter text, not only is the bloody ridiculous nonsense being commanded but the words change from "altar of stone" to "altar of the LORD"! To the altar of WHAT? How did the sloppy, gooey plaster of that NAME "Lord" get in there? How did it go from 'stone' to 'Lord'? I'll tell you how it got there. It got there by disobedience to absolutely the most fundamental teachings that the religion of Moses owns; it comes by wearing your damned shoes in the presence of the Burning Bush; by calling God a name he won't have because he is no damned earthly lord or king, and WILL NOT be compared to such. Worse! it comes by pouring the plaster of new scripture over the stone of the old.

Every instance of that name as applied to God in the Bible is a slap in the face to God, and a violent, all too obvious contradiction to what he commanded man, back toward the very beginning of the Bible, where thank God it yet remains; where fear of God at least has worked to preserve it, despite the dogmatic nonsense that has attended that phrase, JHVH to change it in doctrine to a superstition and a false understanding, even an out and out misrepresentation, to a "sacred and hidden name" of God.

There is no "Lord" in heaven, no fat rich king. There is God who would have to be known that if he is like anything upon the earth, then he is as one unhewn stone, like a rock whose beauty is all its own.
--
END PART ONE

*The above painting, Exodus Burning Bush by Marc Chagall

Complimentarity

"How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress." --Niels Bohr


SOLOMON once said,"Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou be made like unto him."

But in the aphorism directly following, oddly enough, he is found to be saying, "Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be made wise in his own conceit." Proverbs 26:5

And what is anyone to think--or do, if one were minded to be taking advice of Solomon?

As to the first of the two, it serves to affirm the view (mythologically speaking) that anything given to the Devil is a charity not contemplated by Virtue. A person could save a lot of time and misdirected attention adhering closely to the teaching of Solomon in this, but only for so long as it would take to move on to that next proverb, where you are faced with perhaps the most mystifying paradox (or glaring contradiction) to be found in the entire text of the Hebrew Scriptures.


One can hardly, with respect to reverence, argue for the superior wisdom of the one aphorism over the other, to suggest that if there is anything that characterizes the nature of a fool it is that he is already "wise in his own conceit" and no answer could make him the moreso. On the other hand, if you were of a mind to follow after the wisdom of the second proverb--do you then not make of yourself a "fool" according to the wisdom of the first?

The dilemma would seem to be insurmountable, until upon closer contemplation of the phrase, "according to his folly" it begins to hint of a resolution.

When you don't answer a fool "according to his folly" this does not mean you are giving no answer at all. Rather, it allows for the answer that is not "according to folly."

What the fool in his conceit expects is for you to accept the terms of his foolhardy (negative, churlish, slanderous, born-in-a-barn) characterization as the terms for your answer. Take him up on that and it buries you in his folly, to the foolish, futile, onerous, distasteful task of vainly trying to dig your way out with the dull, shoddy tool he lends you--his terms. Though the temptation is great to return coarseness for coarseness; to be quick to deny, refute or return in kind any low, no class remark--this is precisely what is meant by "answering a fool according to his folly," and he's got you down in the muck right with him, just where he wants you.

Foolishness is obvious to any eye that beholds it, it is self-evident, just as any pile of trash needs no sign posted in it, saying "pile of trash." To waste your time and effort trying to expose the obvious is to insult the intelligence of anyone looking at it. They know what it is, and only wait to see if you know any better than he who has dumped it, not to be jumping in and thrashing about in it, all the time shouting, "This is not me! Not what I said! What a lie! Not what I meant!" Do that and you have answered the fool according to his folly, to be made like unto him.

As the first proverb stands forever to teach, so long as you are not answering according to the folly of the fool, you are not pausing from forward, positive motion, long enough to take hold of his mucky tools, and in this way only may you win, by driving the fool all the more to his folly, until it is revealed in its extremity, perhaps even to the fool, to be nothing else.

True to the second proverb, the fool is thus deprived of feeling wise in his own conceit, being denied the triumph of claiming your silence as victory for his folly. Indeed the second wise saying is here to show that there is always at least one answer you can give that is not according to the fool's folly, but strictly, magnificently, if even miraculously according to the wisdom of the wise, as it acknowledges, in compassion that even a fool deserves some sort of answer, though it need be nothing other than telling him this . . .

"Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou me made like unto him."

To offer that, the first proverb for your answer resolves the seeming contradiction, as it satisfies the requirement of the second . . .

"Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be made wise in his own conceit."

He is given an answer completely in accord with his folly because just like the effect of his folly upon another, it has the effect on him of addressing no part of what he would have expected for his answer, or any comment. And the tit for tat could not be more soundly accomplished.

This is the revelation of the wisdom of Solomon in both proverbs, how they can seem to be perfectly in contradiction one to the other, and yet not be more highly complimentary.


"The opposite of a trivial truth is false; the opposite of a great truth is also true."
--Niels Bohr

After the Flesh

Contrary to the knowlege or opinion of some, there is strong textual evidence in the New Testament that the Greek church at Corinth of the Pauline persuasion most surely did have, previous to publication of the synoptic gospels, some familiarity with that tradition in some form, either minimally written in letters or by oral transmission. This evidence is to be found in Paul's own letters . . .


Gal.1 [6] I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: --

Without question there was current during Paul's time some form of the Gospel, such "another gospel" as hated by Paul . . .

Gal.1 [8] But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.

But the most telling evidence that Paul's so-called "gospel" had come into sudden competition (in Paul's bitter view) with another is to be found in his verbatim quotation of a phrase from that very gospel just then gaining currency (at II Cor. 1:17) and this is in context of a larger veiled reference to a doctrine he hated; a commandment of Christ from that Gospel about "swearing" as contained in a passage which now in our contemporary recension is preserved in the 5th chapter of Matthew and in the 5th of the Letter of James. As it appears in that Gospel . . .

[33] Again, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths:

[34] But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God's throne:

[35] Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King.

[36] Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black.

[37] But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil. --

Commenting upon this in II Corinthians "Paul" has this to say . . .

[17] When I therefore was thus minded, did I use lightness? or the things that I purpose, do I purpose according to the flesh, that with me there should be yea yea, and nay nay?

[18] But as God is true, our word toward you was not yea and nay.

"As God is true" as any reasoning mind will recognize is an OATH. And most especially as used in context of Paul giving his "word" to say, "our word toward you was not yea and nay."

[19] For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us, even by me and Silvanus and Timotheus, was not yea and nay, but in him was yea. -- Somewhat further along in the 5th Chapter of the same Letter, Paul says . . .

[16] Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more.

Paul is green with envy over the news he gets of "another gospel" having been received at the church in Corinth, and purporting to transmit the actual teachings of Jesus, "after the flesh." In his anger and distress, again in defiance of what he has heard from that "other gospel" Paul, in blasphemy, forswears himself, again in this 5th chapter, to say . . .

[23] Moreover I call God for a record upon my soul, that to spare you I came not as yet unto Corinth. --

He calls "God for a record" upon his soul. But this commandment of Jesus was a matter of settled doctrine in the 'church' at Jerusalem, in the Nazarene, so-called "Ebionite" synagogue of Jesus' brother "after the flesh," James the Just. From the 5th Chapter in the Epistle of James . . .

12] But above all things, my brethren, swear not, neither by heaven, neither by the earth, neither by any other oath: but let your yea be yea; and your nay, nay; lest ye fall into condemnation. --

It can readily be argued that Paul was talking not about any early written transmission of the Nazarene Gospel but about this letter of James when in the same letter to the Corinthians in which he mentions "another gospel" he mentions also this . . .

2Cor.3 [1] Do we begin again to commend ourselves? or need we, as some others, epistles of commendation to you, or letters of commendation from you?

It is most decidedly the case, as some insist, that Paul was teaching a Jesus, not "after the flesh" not after history, not after the Law, nor the oral tradition of sermons and miraculous acts of Jesus, but a Jesus of his own invention, "after the spirit" in which Jesus becomes the "Christ", an icon, a demigod, a risen Dionysus meet only to be a mere sacrificial offering of flesh and blood and wine and bread for the propitiation of sin. Pure paganism.

The Mystery Guest

Belief is only half of faith--if even so much as that. What if it so happens that I am the sort of ever-loving angel on earth that never has and never will cheat on his wife? Then I will be known as a "faithful" husband. Now what on earth has fidelity to one's wife or husband to do with "belief"?

Clearly, a faithful person is no mere "believer" but far, far more than that; this is the kind of intrepid soul who Kierkegaard has dubbed a "Knight of Faith," who is in short, a lover. Oh, yes! and at that, one who in truth actually can't believe the thing that he would like to accept or know to be true--really, really is so. Faith is not to 'believe' the unbelievable, but to skip that as impossible and just throw your arms around it.

This person is quite simply beside himself, and though he still can't believe it, he would so absolutely adore for his desire to be true that there is no reason or logic or evidence on earth that can prevent him from making his move as though it were all so, because just maybe it is. On the other hand, he could remain loveless, or which is the same, 'faithless'. He could shove his hands in his pockets, turn aside and go home, alone, because why take the chance on the answer being, "No"?

This "movement" described in K.'s existentialist opus, Fear & Trembling is at first an act of love, a "leap" over an abyss of unknowing toward the object of adoration. This devil-may-care act of reckless abandon is a rebellious embrace of the wildest irrationality, just because we are so gloriously free to do that!

And so faith, like any other kind of love, is at once a devotion, even a vow, a promise, a pledge, a prayer; a discipline of fidelity which turns out to have a thoroughly unanticipated pay-off: you feel the love you gave, leaping right back to you over the abyss in a vision of that Beautiful Knowing described by the Apostle as the Knowing of being Known.

"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child,
I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face:
Now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known."

And here is where a Webster's definition so hits the conceptual nail right on the etymological noggin, in its definition of "belief" . . .

1: a state or habit of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing.

2: something believed; especially : a tenet or body of tenets held by a group.

3: conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon especially when based on examination of evidence.

Like as not however, there's a lot of people who just don't really think of 'belief' as having much, if anything, to do with *evidence*. People tend to think that when you've got evidence, you've got knowledge, or something getting mighty close to 'proof'--so who needs belief?



Then you get people like me who think that *logic* has to do with knowing, not believing. I take logic as more than evidence, but for *proof*. If I see something as logical, I'm feeling like I'm knowing something, seeing something, trusting and feeling so totally confident about something that I'm shocked to see that this which fits my definition for knowledge only rises to what some say is "belief".

But maybe that's just me, as I know there are those who believe, or who have been taught in classes on Logic, to take it on faith, to trust the professor when he says that something can be logical without its being valid. I say they don't know what they're talking about, and that their education in Logic has been only to the half of it.

When you have what appears to be a logical proposition, based on some hackneyed syllogism that can be proven invalid, what you really have is proof that there is a lot more to govern the rules of logic than mere mathematical manipulation of the deductive apparatus of the syllogism. Except the syllogism is used in context of that which governs it; with all that *used to be taught* (hundreds of years ago) about Topics and Categories, you are like a person at the carnival, driving in circles in a Dodge-Em car called "Syllogism," while the real logicians are out zooming down a highly regulated straightaway in a 1936 Packard Speedster hitting on all Ten Categories--or i.e. cylinders: 10 categories;12 cylinders.