In Search of the Philosopher's Stone
INTRODUCTION TO ALCHEMY
The Ageless Wisdom is experiencing another revival. Throughout human history, the hidden Truth persists through times of decline, obscurity, and renewal. There is always a small group of people who preserve it and pass it on through dark periods, and in other enlightened eras, whole societies are inspired by this systematic and comprehensive account of the evolution of Spirit in man and Nature, how the universe came to exist, how it operates, and man’s place within it. Though rumor spread of covert Masters who could transform common minerals into gold, the real work of alchemy is the art of Self-realization, defined as the growth of the soul as anthropod and redemption of the world. Ignorance and error becomes enlightenment and freedom through Sincerity and Detachment.
This teaching was last shared widely for about fifty years after the American Reconstruction, and it was distorted by inflated style and old Hollywood glamour. Many of the ideas remain in corrupted variations. Some contemporary scholars noticed the eternal return of this oftentimes secret knowledge and foresaw a recovery around 2012 that they predicted would endure for about 20 years. The visionaries of the last Hermetic Age also noted this natural cycle and hid a treasure for a quest hero whom they expected would be active in the world seven generations after their 1893 meeting.
This treatise is divided into two parts. “The Hidden History of the World” outlines the first principles and goals of Hermeticism. This is followed by a mythic history and legendary origin of the Ageless Wisdom, a description of its central figure, and the requirements of the Art. “The Quest for the Grail” includes special consideration of the object, the textual record, a mythopoeic rendering of the plot, and the quest hero compared to the Fool of the Tarot. It concludes with a cross-cultural study of minerals and the rumors of the late activities of the Guardians of the Gemstone of Paradise.
In the Biblical tradition, mankind was born ignorant, lived in confusion and chaos, and ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Joy and Suffering. Though hidden, the Tree of Life could be found. In the Hermetic tradition, there are two more trees, with seven flowers and eight fruits. The enduring seeker will discover they are the Tree of Wisdom and the Wish-Fulfilling Tree. These trees give extrasensory perceptions and extraordinary mind-powers; they provide body powers and effortless perfection. But they are surpassed by a fifth tree: the Tree of Truth, and its boons of mercy, integrity, and generosity. These are the incomparable treasures of the Hermetic tradition, whose fantastic chronicle now appears among the world of men and encourages them to seek the Treasure Hard-to-Attain.
THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF THE WORLD
Now popular among scholars and in the marketplace, Hermeticism is an ancient school of geometry, astronomy and its influences, rhetoric and music, and knowledge of medicine, herbs, stones and metals, and birds, fish, and reptiles. Hermetic thought tends to be nondiscursive, that is, communicated through symbols and cryptography; the Hermetic cosmos is one of signs, systems of relationship and analogical thinking (a is to b = c is to x). Hermeticism posits a hylozoistic cosmos, one which is alive and sentient with a close and harmonious relationship between macrocosm and microcosm; the Tabula Smaragdina, the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, states it clearly: “As above, so below.” The goal of the Hermeticist’s work is to know God and gaze aesthetically in contemplation of beauty; or, as Dr. Carl G. Jung tells it, the Opus Magnum is the rescue of the human soul and salvation of the cosmos. Hermetic life privileges scribal virtues, mastery of dialectics and discernment, the student-teacher relationship, and an attitude of regret and repentance. Suffering and error are obligatory. Hermetic texts posit both 1) a pessimistic dualism and 2) an optimistic monism, ultimately complementary. Ancient clarity and precision degenerated in time into deliberate obscurity and an inflated style; in the medieval period, Hermetic science was regarded as maliciously manipulative and injurious, and Hermeticists were condemned and persecuted. Throughout history, the tradition has also been hidden or silenced for financial and political advantage.
Hermeticism was widely revived and radically reinterpreted to Enlightenment ideals by Freemasonry and the Rosicrucians, and American history is essentially an occult movement toward the appearance of an enigmatic apocalyptic Christ; the oracle of Hermes, not for the diabolically blind, is written on the windpipe of a goose (Ebeling 17). Masonry itself is as old as architecture; Dame Frances Yates writes, “at some point, operative masonry, or the actual craft of building, turned into speculative masonry, or the moral and mystical interpretation of building, into a secret society with esoteric rites and teachings” (266). The Bible traces Masonry back further, to the exile in the Land of Nod, where Cain built a city for farmers, shepherds, musicians, and smiths of bronze and iron. The Masonic tradition supposedly preserves a pre-diluvian original knowledge corrupted, lost, and partially recovered; Masons claim an oral tradition that passed from Noah to the Egyptians, Chaldeans, Ethiopians, Indians and Chinese. “In Greece Orpheus, who acquired his knowledge from the Egyptians, founded the first ‘fraternity.’ Even Plato’s Academy was a lodge” (Ebeling 129). In the Arcana Arcanissima (The Most Secret Secrets of Pious Chemical Hercules), the first king of Egypt, Ham, son of Noah, secretly transmits a written description of alchemy to his Son Migraim, or Mizraim, [Osiris] and advisor Thoth [Hermes], who teaches it to Isis (Ebeling 116).
Marie-Louise Von Franz tells it differently. Transmission was from the angels to Isis who passes it to her son Horus. In the Bible, it is interpreted as a corrupting incident, but in the Hermetic tradition, it is a marvelous achievement. When the angel first appears to Isis, he is lustful. “She puts him off, because she wants to get the alchemical secret out of him; she makes a bargain with him and will only give herself to him if he firsts tells her all he knows about that” (Von Franz 45). Isis refuses his desire until he shows her the sign on his head and knowledge of the great mystery, which comes with an oath of secrecy. Von Franz suggests this is an example of the relationship between instinct and archetype and illuminates the role of Eros in creating higher consciousness through ethical tension: “The libido irruption of the unconscious presents itself on a relatively animal or low level first. We always have to decide whether that is genuine sex or a disguised unconscious impulse, which really implies knowledge or a progress of consciousness. To delay is wise” (57). Von Franz says, “If you go into the history of Eros, you will find that he is a variation of Hermes; the Eros of antiquity is similar to Hermes Kyllenios [Priapic Mercury]” (118).
The central figure of Hermeticism, Hermes Trismegistus, is a fusing of the Egyptian god Thoth and Greco-Roman Mercury as the god of writing, astronomy, math and magic. This character is a syncretic fiction. Thoth worship was centered in the Egyptian Hermopolis Magna, named by the Greeks; he is the eldest son of the solar deity Ammon-Ra and credited as the inventor of writing and math, god of wisdom and administration, patron of scribes, ruler of the calendar and stars, scribe who measures, friendliest god to man, and messenger of the gods whose magic shields against serpent’s bite and evil eye. For Homer, Hermes is the God of thieves and trade, a soul conductor. For Hesiod, he is a god of chance and cunning. According to medieval Christians, Hermes was the name adopted by Enoch after traveling to China (Ebeling 7). In the Hermetic kabbalah, it is said Enoch walked with God then traveled to Heaven. An apocryphal record describes his appointment as guardian of celestial treasures, chief of archangels, and scribe of God; in the ancient occult tradition, he is the keeper of the secrets and the “voice” of God, the lesser YHWH called Metatron or Metator, meaning guide, messenger, or measurer.
Von Franz’s account of the apprenticeship of Isis by angels resembles Genesis 6 and the legend of the Flood. It is told that when mortals began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that they were fair; and they took wives for themselves from the daughters of men. Their children were the heroes of old, warriors of renown. Also, the Nephilim, the Giants, were on the earth in those days--and afterward--the Anakites, the Rephaim, Emim, Zamummim, Anakim, Horim and Avvim. But the earth was corrupt, and the Council of Immortals agreed that the land was filled with violence. Humans were arrogant, ambitious and murderous fools. God’s Creation was wicked, overpopulated and noisy. First, the world was nearly destroyed by flood; then Noah cursed his grandsons into slavery to their Uncles. Among Egypt, Cush, Sheeba, Rama, and Nimrod of Persian Babylon, Canaan served the Smiths, Masons, and Arabs. With one language and the same words, they spread across the face of the earth and built upon the Plains a city with a tower reaching for Heaven. The God of Black Arts and Immortal Most Hateful, Lawless, and Mad came down to see the city and tower that the mortals built. He said, “Look, they are one people, and they all have one language. This is only the beginning of what they will do. Nothing that they propose to do now will be impossible.” With the help of the Council of Immortals, Hermes Kriophorus frustrated understanding and co-operation among men by confusing the language.
The immortals fled an Egypt in chaos and are expected to return to the West after a catastrophe (Ebeling 7). As John Allegro tells it, six-thousand years ago, a king and priests managed a city built by Masons and Smiths for Traders and Organized Labor, and arts and crafts became the specialist industries of scholars and professionals (8). Experiments with plants and astronomical correspondences became the privileged knowledge of the elders, who were strict guardians of their secrets. Writing was a late development in evolution and originated out of an economic necessity. Writing came to be regarded as an instrument of magic power. Words represent objects, and perception of objects and human identity is in part conditioned by words by which perceptions are nested (Ong 68). Plato regarded writing as an alien tool. Knowledge was first written only to survive war and oppression and then employed much punning in a coded hoax.
In agreement with the fanciful scribes of the Hermetic tradition, contemporary linguists and lettered scholars have also proposed that the different languages of Earth are variations from a common source. The etymological evidence suggests that the ancient Sumerian tongue is the origin of both Semitic (Hebrew, Aramaic) and Indo-European (Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and English) languages. For example, the Latin scala is ‘ladder’; in Sanskrit skan is ‘going up’; in Sumerian zig an is “rise up’. (Allegro 4-5). In his classic study of orality and writing, Walter Ong asserts, “Every alphabet in the world—Hebrew, Ugaritic, Greek, Roman, Cyrillic, Arabic, Tamil, Malayalam, Korean—derives in one way or another from the original Semitic development, though, as in Ugaritic and Korean script, the physical design of the letters may not always be related to the Semitic design” (Ong 89). In Figuring Poesis: A Mythical Geometry of Postmodernism, Evans Lansing Smith shows how Sanskrit letters, a golden vibration in the formless realm of pure ideas, and Mother Kali correspond to the Hebrew letters aleph – mem – shin, also linked to Egyptian, Islamic, Aztek, Navajo, Hopi, Dogon and Nordic cosmogonies, and the buffalo maiden legend (63-5). The English word wisdom is derived from the German word wit which has its origins in the Latin vid, the root of words like video, and in turn, is traced back to the Sanskrit word veda, which means knowledge taught by beings other than men.
Biblical revelation was intended for all people but Hermetic revelation was secret except to select initiates; Ebeling suggests that “the principal narrative is not the Exodus, but the story of the primeval knowledge of all men, which was spread throughout the various cultures and was the common basis of many cultures and religions” (86). Even Moses is supposedly a student of Hermes Trismegistus. The knowledge passed from Egypt to the Greeks to the Arabs to the Germans. According to Von Franz, the Templars associated with Druses who were subject to the Order of the Elders and the secret tradition of the Imam (42, 165). Khalid ibn Yazid tells how Wise Men have partly concealed and partly revealed Geometry and the Secret Art of God, a mystery to scholars that is impossible for the ignorant (Linding 72).
The occult alchemist Paracelsus, the more familiar name of the Renaissance physician Theophrastrus Phillippus Aureolus Bombastus von Hohenheim, also posited a common origin of the religions of the Chaldeans, Hebrews, Persians and Egyptians in The Aurora of the Philosophers (Linden 163-4). The controversial and argumentative botanist asserts that all of them had “the same knowledge of the secrets of nature and the same Religion, the names only being changed” (Linden 164). Later, the German Philosophical-Romantic Hermeticists interpreted history as a process of unfolding the unity between the ideal and the Real, and imagined Hermes as the father of discursive thought and symbolic-intuitive thought. Moreover, positing the origins of the alchemical tradition, they suggested that “in the beginning, there were only four books of Hermes; these were the four Vedas of the Indians” which multiplied with various orders of priests as the knowledge spread to Egypt (Ebeling 132). In India, alchemy was known as rasayana, the science of immortality, and like the Byzantium sophistry of Alexandria, Tantric practices sought the perfected man and eternal life as its end (Linden 7).
Marie-Louise Von Franz defines alchemy as Greek natural philosophy with Egyptian Secret Science, a practical craft tradition (80). She also suggests Greece idolized India and its naked and wise Brahmins (94). Von Franz also links alchemy to the tradition of the smith and medicine man: “Originally, the art of the smith at the forge and that of the alchemist were regarded as being the same and held the same tradition” (Von Franz 49). Amplifying the typology, the smith is often married to a weaver, who fosters an immature hero from chaotic animal potentiality to a mature persona and fulfillment of vocation and the burden of fate. The hero cannot fulfill his role without the initiation and nurturing of the smith.
In Libellus de Alchimia, Albertus Magnus, Master to Thomas Aquinas, counsels on various errors in the Hermetic art. In addition to faulty tools, impatience, cheaters, doubters and lacking resources (advising paupers that one must have enough for two years of costs and a special laboratory apart from others), he also cites failure to grasp the fundamentals. After Jesuit alchemy, the Renaissance produced such characters as Cornelius Agrippa, editor of most famous academic handbook of magic, and John Dee, advisor to Queen Elizabeth I. They were followed by the Rosicrucians, a socio-political movement originating from a Lutheran pastor and Mason, and claiming a method for transformation of man into a compassionate, socially-aware individual committed to service for the common good. The Rosicrucian Manifesto is based on two documents. In Fama (1610), it is related that wisdom is an infinite and good treasure that provides more perfect knowledge of nature. The pride and greed of academics opposes the Librum Naturae. The Fraternity, for which no formal habits are required, agrees only to heal the sick out of love. In Confessio (1615), the Rosicrucians admit no wicked purpose against worldly government; members confess knowledge of Jesus Christ, and accept the Roman Empire. In the seventeenth century, Oxford, Harvard, and Yale were home to alchemists and magicians, and Hermetic virtuosi included Francis Bacon (father of the Scientific Method), Johannes Kepler (mathematician), John Locke (political philosopher), Issac Newton and Gottfried Leibnitz (inventors of calculus). In America, John Winthrop Jr, son of the Massachusetts Bay Company emigrant, had 275 Rosicrucian texts in his library.
Hermeticism has been interpreted in works like Shakespeare’s Tempest, Marlowe’s Faustus, and Mozart’s The Magic Flute. The Elizabethan love of occult magic and fantasy is given example as Prospero aided in his Hermetic work by elves, nymphs, fairy and mushrooms. His tools include a rod, book and invocations. He controls the elements, causes weather and astronomical anomalies, and opens graves. Another example of tools and ends is Faustus using lines, circles, signs, and letters for pranks on the Pope, conversations with the dead, and to make gold. John Milton sums up the Hermetic virtues in his poem “Il Penseroso.” He first scolds inappropriate happiness and false consciousness of vain deluding fancies and the folly gained hold of idle minds by gaudy toys and gross conforming stupidity. Milton first invokes, then transforms through literary rituals: he calls upon the God of Renunciation to transform the poet from a brute to a moral soul and mind, and he imagines escaping the crust of name and form by fasting, solitude, silence, and contemplation. The bells of the city are faint in the distant high-tower, where he is mystagogue and Lord of the Forest; instead of nymph is Nun, devout and demure. Away from the crowd and frivolity, in a holy land of courtly chivalry, most pleasing is the perfect song of the Nightingale. The blessings of mirth are Classical learning and arts; the gifts of Hell granted to Love is the immortal mind, the Platonic ideal; the tragedies and satire the only home of demons in a lived dream of the cloister. The music is devotional: “as I wake, sweet music breathe/Above, about, or underneath,/Sent by some spirit to mortal good,/Or th’ unseen Genius of the Wood’ (around Line 150). Far from the mirth of the city, born again by the Lamp of the midnight hour in study, the ecstasy and passion of divine union is man’s highest joy, and after many years of melancholy and discipline, the Prophetic strain brings all of Heav’n before the seer and gently lays him to rest.
Von Franz describes how Jung rescued the despised field of alchemical study when others had abandoned it as too difficult to read and requiring tremendously complex technical knowledge (13). The foundation of alchemy is the seven liberal arts and science: grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. In Anatomy of the Psyche, Edward Edinger describes the 7-step alchemical sequence as calcinatio (fire), solutio (water), coagulatio (earth), sublimatio (air), mortificatio (defeat and failure), separatio (order from chaos), and coniunctio (reconciliation and unity). The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkruetz presents the seven steps beginning with a Royal Wedding, the Journey to the Castle (with topos problems), Assembly and Rank in the Castle of Marvels, the Play within the Play, the Castle Vault, the Alchemy Lab, and finally, the Seashore. Indian Yoga describes seven chakras and their qualities and practices: the first chakra of food and the life of the body, the second of instincts and sexuality, the third of social life and the props of society, the fourth of duty and devotion, the fifth as the Song of Truth, the sixth of science and the Buddha potential, and the seventh as our soul in harmony with Spirit. The goal is the fulfillment of the human condition and illumination of the veil of Creation.
THE GRAIL QUEST
To find the Treasure Hard-to-Attain requires first a survey of the legend of the Grail and also special consideration of the object. From tracing the origins of the legend in medieval Europe to consideration of the three primary works by various authors in the literary tradition, it will be shown how a fairy tale was transformed through accretion and elaboration then gains socio-political and religious themes within a cosmos of connections and symbolic interrelations. The main character is Perceval, or Parsifal, whose heroic transformation suggests not only the psychological process of the immature ego’s first step toward Self, but also a cosmological constant: as above, so below. The kingdom in peril—devastated by war, crop losses and famine—can be renewed if the aging King finds an heir and passes on his property; the redemption of the kingdom is more important than the winning of the Grail, which may only be found by one who does not shed blood and may only be spoken of by a priest (Jung 271). The hidden relic is ripe to renew the kingdom, if the right questions are asked; after retelling the legend and comparing Perceval to the Fool of the Tarot, the focus will then turn to the Grail itself and the various objects and correlative legends of the Grail as a shining stone, found as widespread as India, Tibetan Buddhism, and esoteric Judeo-Christianity. This survey will offer tentative answers to the questions to ask of the Grail and clues to winning the enigmatic prize.
In Gemstone of Paradise, G. Ronald Murphy proposes the quest for the Grail must consider the object, what it is and whether it exists, and also the legend, an alchemical syncretism drawing from Celtic-Arthurian and medieval Islamic-Christian origins. The founding texts were produced in a creative and experimental fifty-year period, from around 1180 to 1230 CE. In the first half of the twelfth century, Arthurian legends were adapted by Geoffrey of Monmouth to create a national epic of the Anglo-Welsh-Norman-Breton kingdom, and the original Latin was translated into French couplets then into Middle English alliterative style. The legend of the Grail first appeared unfinished within the tradition, then gains an ending by later authors, then gains an epic frame.
Between 1160 and 1230 in France, Chrétien de Troyes added to the Arthurian legends with “Yvain,” “Knight of the Cart,” and “Perceval, le Conte du Graal.” These works emphasized courtly love and chivalry, and “Perceval, the Story of the Grail” was unfinished at the time of the author’s death. Robert de Boron shifted the social concern to a more explicitly religious and Christian context when he changed the Grail from a gem-encrusted platter to the chalice of the Last Supper brought to England by Joseph of Arimathie. Clerical authors between 1215-1230 link the Celtic and Christian traditions in L'Histoire del Saint Graal, where the Grail is identified as a dish or a bowl, and monks long-steeped in study of Augustine interpreted the quest for the Grail as a pilgrimage from the City of Man to the City of God. Wolfram von Eschenbach expanded the legend with a family backstory and emphasized both a political and theological concern within a larger cosmology of connections and influences; in Parzival, he adds an ending tied to astronomical correspondences and shows an ideal reconciliation of fighting Muslim and Christian brothers, a comic fantasy amidst the tragic fratricide of the Crusades. Chrétien de Troyes claimed to work from a fictitious Latin text, whereas Wolfram von Eschanbach claimed he was retelling an oral tradition originating from a character called “Kyot.”
The core of the legend is as follows: Perceval is a child of the Forest, kept ignorant of chivalry by his widowed mother. He mistakes an Arthurian knight for God, and against his mother’s pleading, he hurriedly vows to serve ladies and maidens then departs to King Arthur’s castle. When he meets the damsel called Lady Jeschute by Wolfram von Eschenbach, Perceval forces a kiss from her and takes the ring given by her lover. Perceval next meets the Red Knight, cousin of King Arthur who sends Perceval with a challenge to the throne. Perceval, upon arrival at court, demands to be knighted; the butler mock challenges him to the Red Knight’s armor. This displeases the King, and causes the Queen’s assistant to laugh for the first time in many years. The butler strikes her and the court jester, who prophesied she would not laugh until she sees the supreme lord of knights.
Meanwhile, Perceval slays the Red Knight with a javelin to the eye; he takes only the armor, and retains his own hemp tunic. He returns Arthur’s stolen cup, and the court jester is heartened. Perceval next meets a gentleman in white robes, who teaches him the ideals of chivalry: avoid gossip, keep quiet, console women, go to church, and do not admit you were taught by your mother. Perceval is suddenly concerned for his mother, who fainted when he left, and leaves to find her. Instead, he meets a damsel-in-distress whom he invites to sleep next to him. They spend the night kissing and cuddling, and in the morning, he adds to her comfort with a promise to bring peace to her land. Perceval battles the butler of the evil King, whom he sends to serve King Arthur’s niece who laughed, then defeats the evil King’s knights. The evil King’s plan to starve the land is disrupted by an unexpected arrival of wheat; he is defeated in combat with Perceval and sent to serve the maiden who laughed.
Perceval departs again in search of his mother, and after meeting clergy, is offered lodging by two fishermen anchored at an impassable river. Perceval accepts and meets the grey-haired Fisher King, who is unable to rise from bed to greet Perceval due to a hip injury. A procession brings Perceval a bleeding lance, and the room is suddenly illuminated when the grail is brought into the chamber. Perceval is quiet through a miraculous feast, and the next morning, the hall is deserted. He meets a maiden who scolds him for failing to ask why the lance bleeds, who the Grail serves and how it works. She also tells him his mother is dead, and the suffering and terror in the kingdom will increase due to his silence. Perceval defeats many more knights and the butler from Arthur’s court, and he resolves to find the Grail castle again and ask the right questions. After five years of searching, he meets his hermit Uncle Trevizent, who tells him the sorrow of his mother cursed and sabotaged his Grail quest.
Perceval is the foolish child of the forest who can accomplish great deeds despite being immature and idiotic. According to Wolfram von Eschenbach, finding the Grail—the gemstone of gemstones engraved with the names of all its guardians past and future—and becoming one of the Keepers of the Grail is a sociopolitical drama of loyalty and fidelity (Murphy 17). The Grail is an anima treasure, impossible to find without solving the twisted riddles that transform a naïve youth of anxiety and inhibition into a graceful Master (Neumann 206, 212). In the legend, the brash boy flees his treacherous mother as a passionate and idealistic knight errant, yet he never truly separates from the matriarchy to a mature and sovereign masculinity. According to Emma Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz, the theme of the legend is the integration of autonomous and unconscious emotional instincts and unresolved problems of sexuality. For them, the Grail is an alchemical symbol, which they suggest as either a meteorite, a table of emerald with amethyst legs, or a stone with a soul. They interpret Perceval as at first nothing more than a crude and covetous son who is unfairly expected by his mother to achieve what his father did not fulfill, and only later the lone knight who can win the Grail and renew the kingdom.
Perceval’s theme can be compared to that of the Fool in the Tarot. The Hermetic Fool is more than a simple buffoon, beyond the bounds of convention and a comic façade of a tortured conscience. His is neither the privileged folly of the jester nor the irreverence, ridicule and absurdity of the clown. Instead, he is a culture hero representing a complete cycle from no autonomous power to mastery through surrender; the dependent boy becomes a sovereign and self-sufficient man. The Fool’s small pouch indicates renunciation of all but the necessities of travel. The detachment from the world is also evident from the Fool’s walking along the cliff; here is a sign of the Fool’s total trust. He also carries a white rose, a token of honor. He is accompanied by a small dog, representing the instinctual Earthly life and acting as a loyal threshold guardian of the nekyia, the Otherworld transmigration of souls typically led by a psychopomp. The Fool’s green tunic, similar to the robes of medieval physicians and devotees of Hermes, is covered in a fancy pattern aligning him to the sun, and he wears a heart on his sleeve. The crown of laurel is an emblem of immortality and hidden knowledge of astronomy, plants, mathematics, music, rhetoric, cosmology and the liberal virtues of friendship, generosity, compassion, courtesy, and pure intellect that privileges erotic love as a noble passion.
Perceval’s anima initiation and encounter with the damsel-in-distress reveals the Grail. Each of the primary texts in the Perceval legend offers a different object as the Grail: a serving platter for salmon, a ruby or emerald chalice, a glowing stone, and more recently in popular mass market fiction, a French dynasty linked to Mary Magdalene and Christ. Eschenbach’s claim that the Grail is a stone has bewildered scholars (Loomis 28), but Murphy suggests the clues given in the text point to the Bamberg Paradise altarpiece, housed at the Tomb of Clement the II. This vessel for relics features the twelve apostles on the side, and on the top, shows a map of the Ganges (representing contemplation), the Nile (for strength), the Tigris (for compassion) and the Euphrates (for justice) with the Four Trees of the Garden of Paradise and the treasures of gold, ruby, diamond and emerald, all gifts from God who sits on a sapphire throne in Heaven. His argument, while provocative, especially in locating a relic mapping four trees in the Garden of Paradise, is not convincing, as Eschenbach explicitly calls the grail the lapis exilis, a thin stone that shines; instead, it is more worthwhile to consider the altarpiece as a clue to the origins of the Grail as a gemstone from Paradise and trace the relevant connections in a cross-cultural mineralogy.
The Hermetic tradition has long regarded some stones as possessing special qualities for healing and transformation. For example, diamonds promote incorruptible truth, aid in fasting, banish anger and evildoers. Emerald enhances sight and restores memory. Sapphire encourages virtue and peace. Ruby banishes sorrow, restrains lust and gives resistance to poison. Gold is “mineral light” and extends life. Moreover, the Hermetic tradition regards some stones as being gifts from Heaven, both literal meteorites in some instances and also marvelous stones entrusted to neutral angels disguised as fairy creatures who left the Grail on Earth with the Knights Templar (Loomis 208, van der Sluijs 42). Emma Jung suggests that the Lapis Exilis of Wolfram von Eschanbach is Alexander the Great’s Stone of Paradise, originally from Jewish sources and known as the Tzohar (213).
When Adam and Eve were exiled from Paradise, they were given a gift from the angel Raziel: a stone glowing with the Light of the first day. The treasure passed from Adam to Seth to Enoch who became Metatron to Methuselah to Lamech and then to Noah, who hung it on the Ark to light the ship in darkness and then when he was drunk, lost it in an underwater cave. Many years later, Nimrod is warned that his kingdom will be usurped, so the king orders all the males born that year to be killed. Abraham’s mother hides her newborn in the cave, and the boy is nursed to maturity in 13 days by the angel Gabriel, who also gives him the recovered Stone of Destiny. When Abraham’s mother returns to him, she doesn’t recognize him. Later, Abraham and his son Ishmael build the Ka’aba of Mecca (“the House of God in the City”), with a black cornerstone speculated to be a meteorite that was originally white. There may have been another red stone. This site housed various icons until Mohammed removed them.
With his mother’s favor and initiative, Jacob steals his older brother’s inheritance from their blind father Isaac in a deathbed deception and then he escapes with his mother’s help to live with his Uncle. In the separation, Jacob is wearing the marvelous gem when he dreams of a ziggurat or a ladder to Heaven and a blessing from God at an ancient site of initiation called Beer-sheeba, also Luz or Bethel. When he awakens, he is fearful and awestruck at being at the gate of Paradise. He anoints the rock he used as a pillow and bargains with it for practical favors. His Uncle then tricks him into marrying his cousin and volunteering 14 years of labor. The Uncle learns through an oracle that he is only blessed because Jacob is blessed. Meanwhile, Jacob fathers twelve sons and a daughter among four wives then uses magic in a trade competition with his Uncle, exploiting rods carved from poplar, almond and sycamore trees to produce marvelous striped sheep. The two dispute an amassed fortune, which the wives take for their children.
Then, as they flee from the envy of the Uncle’s sons, Jacob’s wife Rachel steals her Father’s anthropomorphic icons, the household deities. The Uncle pursues with an army, and as he approaches, he dreams of a warning from God not to harm Jacob. He adopts a diplomatic attitude, and Jacob allows him to search for the missing icons. Rachel hides them under her seat and claims she cannot move while she is menstruating. The Uncle does not find the icons and a truce is established. The Tzohar later passes to Joseph, who could interpret dreams and predict the future when he put it in a chalice. He was entombed with both objects, later stolen from the grave by Moses. The Tzohar is described as an egg-shaped pearl lost in Babylonian exile or perhaps swallowed by a whale.
Moses is also linked to other glowing stones. The Hermetic tradition recalls the first set of tablets given by God to Moses as carved from the corner of His sapphire throne and inscribed with text of black fire. In a fit of anger at his people, Moses shattered the original Decalogue then laboriously carved another set in rough rock. A canopy above God’s throne may have been the source for an earlier set of tablets, the Tabula Smaragdina, or the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus. Emerald is also the stone that the archangel Michael struck from Lucifer’s crown. Sapphire and emeralds feature prominently in descriptions of the Urim and Thummim, a divination tool used by priests that has been described as dice, two emeralds and light blue diamonds. When questioned, the stones would light up an answer. The Urim and Thummim, the motto of Yale University meaning light and truth, Lux et Veritas, is also linked to an ancient breastplate of twelve stones with one shining on the shoulder strap.
A parallel idea to the Urim and Thummim is found in India and among Tibetan Buddhists. The wish-fulfilling stone is called ratna and maniva, the fiery stone of miracles guarded by a snake. Inscribed with AUM Mane Padme Hum, “the jewel of the lotus”, the cintimani fell from the sky. It is lapis lazuli, a blue stone like those of Afghanistan and Siberia, and one object among a collection. Like Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Grail, which fulfills wishes of unlimited food and eternal life, the stone of the East glows, creates wealth, banishes evil, purifies water, controls the climate and the weather, flashes colors to heal sickness and cure blindness, and it gives unnaturally long life. This seems like the eight powers that can be gained through esoteric Indian Yoga objectified and made concrete: the power to shrink or become invisible, radical expansion, the power to walk on water and air, the power to becoming immovably heavy, knowledge of others’ thoughts and events past and future, infinite enjoyment at will, perfect mastery even over death, and the power to bewitch. No doubt the similarity is what inspired Manly P. Hall to suggest the bleeding spear of the Grail procession is a symbolic correlative of the sushumna column topped by the pineal gland, and the glowing stone itself is lit by the Platonic ideal of Light, known also as nirguna brahman in Sanskrit or Ein Sof in Hebrew.
Louis Buff Parry links the cornerstone of the Master Apartments, a tower in New York City originally designed in the 1920s to include a rooftop stupa, a shrine of Buddhist relics, to the activities of Jesuits and the Grail. He claims a secretive society smuggled Jacob’s pillowstone, the anthropomorphic icons stolen by Rachel, or some other Grail correlative out of France and England and into Canada in the 1740s. A related enigmatic vessel of interest to the modern Jesuits was supposedly hidden in the cornerstone of the Master Apartments. The building featured a museum dedicated to the work of Nicholas Roerich, a Russian mystic, artist and public figure associated with Annie Besant’s Theosophical Society. The building’s Masonic superintendent, whose last meeting was with officers of the Jesuit order, was murdered in the basement near the black stone supposedly housing the Grail.
Thus ends the survey of the legend of the Grail, including both a consideration of the legend itself and various contenders for the object. The quest fulfills the spiritual function of transformation, a cosmological function of linking microcosm and macrocosm, a psychological function in the heroic task of individuation, and a sociopolitical function in outlining ideals of civil life and courtly love. After explicating the character of the quest hero, we reviewed the possibilities for the Grail (with special attention to what it does and how it works) as an actual object within various religious traditions.
CONCLUSION
The common definition of a Grail object is the treasure hard-to-attain, seemingly non-existent, until the rare seeker finds it against impossible odds. Is there such a miraculous stone as the Tzohar? Perhaps it is merely the fanciful tale of the literate elite, whose mystical interpretations of the Bible are called the Zohar. Or, perhaps the Gemstone of Paradise does exist in a hidden vault in an obscure but symbolically-rich location. Perhaps it is only a vivid allegory for a material form with a divine origin. The Grail seeker may not find a shining pearl, but within the cave of his chest beats rhythmically the life of Spirit: we are born human creatures but evolve as souls. The treasure we seek is not always the treasure we find, and the treasure we find is not necessarily the treasure we were seeking. In a work-a-day world lacking imagination, it is a great accomplishment to grow a soul, to know the definitive answer to the difficult questions “Who am I? Where am I? When am I?” Then, by careful word, thought, and action, it is possible to fulfill essential duty without burden and without seeking praise and approval. Then, it is possible to experience unity, peace, and freedom as a soul-at-play in the Big Dream of the undivided, unchanging, infinite Spirit. This is the goal of the alchemist’s work; this is the end desired by the Hermeticist; this is the victorious attainment of the Philosopher’s Stone.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Albanese, Catherine. A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion. Yale UP, 2007.Buff Parry, Louis. “Rachel Ressurexit: Deconding the Shepherd’s Monument.” The Epigraphic Society. V27, pp23-61.
Chevalier, Jean and Alain Gheerbrant. The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols. Penguin: Paris, 1994.
Chretien de Troyes. Arthurian Romances. New York: Penguin, 1991.
Ebeling, Florian. The Secret History of Hermes Trismegistus: Hermeticism from Ancient to Modern Times. Cornell University Press, 2007.
Edinger, Edward F. Anatomy of the Psyche: Alchemical Symbolism in Psychotherapy. Open Court; Chicago, 1994.
Eschenbach, Wolfram von. Parzival Trans. A.T. Hatto. New York: Penguin Books, 1980.
Hall, Manly P. The Secret Teachings of All Ages. Philosophical Research Society: NY, 2003.
Jung, Emma and Marie-Louise von Franz. The Grail Legend. Sigo press: Boston, 1970.
Linden, Stanton J. The Alchemy Reader: From Hermes Trismegistus to Isaac Newton. Cambridge: New York, 2003.
Morgan, Estelle. “‘Lapis Orphanus’ in the Imperial Crown.” The Modern Language Review. Vol. 58, No 2 (Apr 1963). 210-214.
Murphy, G. Ronald. Gemstone of Paradise: The Holy Grail in Wolfram’s Parzival. Oxford UP: New York, 2006.
Schwartz, Howard. Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism. Oxford UP: New York, 2007.
Sherman Loomis. Roger. The Grail: From Celtic Myth to Christian Symbol. Princeton UP: New Jersey, 1963.
Tvedtnes, John A. “Glowing Stones in Ancient and Medieval Lore.” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies. 6/2. (1997). 99-123.
Van der Sluijs, Marinus Anthony. “The Wish-granting Jewel: Exploring the Buddhist Origins of the Holy Grail.” Viator. 42 No. 2 (2011). 1-48.
Von Franz, Marie Louise. Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology. Inner City Books: Toronto, 1980.
Yates, Frances. The Rosicrucian Enlightenment. Routledge: New York, 1972.
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Moses
Give ear, O my people, to my teaching;
incline your ears to the words of my mouth.
I will open my mouth in a parable;
I will utter dark sayings from of old,
things we have heard and known,
that our ancestors have told us.
We will not hide them from their children;
we will tell to the coming generation
the glorious deeds of the LORD, and his might,
and the wonders that he has done.
(Psalm 78:1-4)
Introduction
When Man believed in God, Man could talk with God, “a presence to be found everywhere in the world, in the multiplicity of events, in the intertwining of its forms” (Calasso 6). Among the most famous to speak with God is Moses, or Mosheh, the ancient Hebrew shepherd compelled by theophany to liberate the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt. For thousands of years, the Exodus narrative of freedom and union with God has inspired Man and endowed special meaning to life. That being so, my purpose is twofold. First, I will apply the prevailing methods of analyzing the mythic hero archetype to the life of Moses. Then, since a good story has endless possibilities of interpretation, I offer a metaphorical reading of Exodus for a time when God and imagination are in exile, and our contemporary civilization is excessively absurd, oppressive and exploitative.
First Focus: Moses and the Mythic Hero Archetype
Moving beyond contemporary definitions of hero as an altruistic public servant, the mythic hero follows a prescribed life pattern centered on a crucial event that unlocks the flow of life in the world and renews society. “An individual is named the ‘hero’ of a particular incident, which means that he or she had intervened in some critical situation in an extraordinary fashion, acting outside, above, or in disregard to normal patterns of behavior, especially in putting his or her life at risk” (Miller 1). In this respect, the lowly Moses, aided by otherworldly power, vexes the Pharaoh of Egypt with plagues, disasters and murder until the Jewish slaves are released from bondage. Moreover, “[t]he hero is the one who, while still alive, knows and represents the claims of the superconsciousness which throughout creation is more or less unconscious. The adventure of the hero represents the moment in his life when he achieved illumination...” (Campbell 259). True to form, after following God’s command to liberate the Jewish people in Egypt, Moses alone speaks to God “face to face, as one speaks to a friend” (Exodus 33:11) and receives “tablets of stone, written with the finger of God” (Exodus 31:18)—the Decalogue, or Ten Commandments, and the 613 “divers laws and ordinances” intended to govern, according to divine principles, the new life in the promised land of Canaan.
The mythic hero archetype is typically separated from normal patterns of family life. “[T]he makers of legend have seldom rested content to regard the world’s great heroes as mere human beings who broke past the horizons that limited their fellows and returned with such boons as any man with equal faith and courage might have found...the tendency has always been to endow the hero with extraordinary powers from the moment of birth, or even the moment of conception” (Campbell 319). While Moses lacks the immaculate conception of Jesus or the colorful legends of Muhammad’s childhood, the Jewish hero is spared a drowning death in the Nile River, as commanded by the Pharaoh of all Hebrew firstborn males, when his mother hides him in a papyrus basket discovered by none other than the Pharaoh’s daughter, who adopts him. This leads inevitably to antagonism between the mythic hero and the stand-in father. When Moses sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, he empathizes with the suffering of his kinfolk, kills the Egyptian and conceals the corpse in the desert sand. Under threat of murder by Pharaoh, Moses flees Egypt in the first of two pilgrimages.
The adventure of the mythic hero adheres to a fixed outline. “A hero ventures forth from the world of the common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man” (Campbell 30). Following this prescription, Moses settles in the faraway land of Midian, where he defends the daughters of a shepherd from wandering thugs and takes up residence near Mount Horeb, which becomes “a transitional or liminal topos between the human, profane world and a supernatural zone or Otherworld; and one of [the] obsession[s] of the hero, to find and penetrate into threatening or unknown places and terrains, with the near certainty of encountering alterity in the form either of hostile human, animal or supernatural forces, is absolutely a key feature in his biography” (Miller 147-48). During his time living in the foreign land, he is summoned by God in the guise of a burning bush to bring the Israelites out of Egypt into “a land flowing with milk and honey...” (Exodus 3:8).
Miller describes the adventure pattern of separation-initiation-return as, simply, “Someone extraordinary/Goes or is sent/To search for and retrieve/Something important” (Miller 162). Following the solitary pilgrimage, Moses is sent to liberate the Hebrews from bondage—a second pilgrimage by all the Jewish people “from the evil land where Pharaoh reigns through the desert to the holy mountain where the God of Sinai reigns” (Coogan 83). Upon hearing the command, a reluctant Moses says “O My Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue” (Exodus 4:10) and begs God to “please send someone else” (Exodus 4:13). The protests anger God, and Moses submits.
“For those who have not refused the call, the first encounter of the hero-journey is with a protective figure...who provides the adventurer with amulets against the dragon forces he is about to pass” (Campbell 69). Moses encounters two protective figures as he returns to Egypt. God traditionally requires Israel to offer foreskin as sacrifice, and the wife of Moses, Zipporah, circumcises their son and touches the bloody flesh to Moses’ genitals to win God’s protection. Finally, “[t]he conclusion of the childhood cycle is the return or recognition of the hero, when, after the long period of obscurity, his true character is revealed” (Campbell 329). God appoints Moses’ brother Aaron as his travel companion and directs Moses to his destiny. “You shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth; and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth, and will teach you what you shall do. He indeed shall speak for you to the people; he shall serve as a mouth for you, and you shall serve as God for him” (Exodus 4:15-16).
“From obscurity the hero emerges, but the enemy is the great and conspicuous seat of power” (Campbell 337). The king is damned in the eyes of the mythic hero as the man who misuses the seat of power and “directs or manages a social order from which the hero is self-excluded or which he follows only on his own terms” (Miller 181). Specifically, the king of Egypt, the incarnation of the sun god, built cities with the forced labor of the Hebrews “and made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick and in every kind of field labor. They were ruthless in all the tasks that they imposed on them” (Exodus 1:14). Moses appears with Aaron and tells Pharaoh, “The LORD, the God of the Hebrews, sent me to you to say, ‘Let my people go, so that they may worship me in the wilderness’” (Exodus 7:16). Pharaoh is unmoved by the command of the God of slaves and Moses’ show of magic. Thus begins the ten plagues, beginning with the source of life and fertility for Egypt, the Nile River, turning to blood; swarms of frogs, mosquitoes and flies; a deadly livestock epidemic; boils—inflamed pus-filled swelling on the skin of the Egyptians; a hail and fire storm that destroys the flax and barley crop; a swarm of locusts that devours the wheat, spelt and fruit of the trees. Finally, darkness covers the land, and in an “eye-for-an-eye” revenge punishment reminiscent of Babylonian law, God strikes down the firstborn of all the Egyptians; the Jews are protected by a smear of blood on their doorposts. The Pharaoh relents.
The Hebrews depart Egypt with God’s protection. But, wandering the wilderness and pursued by Pharaoh and his soldiers, they cry out to Moses, “What have you done to us, bringing us out of Egypt? Is this not the very thing we told you in Egypt, ‘Let us alone and let us serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness” (Exodus 14:11-12). But Moses stands firm. “The hero is devoted to combat and confrontation: he must be prepared to seek out, or at least never avoid, those aspects of the quest involving ‘blocking’ strategies, threats and finally violence” (Miller 163). With divine assistance, Moses divides the sea so the Hebrews may pass upon dry land, but when the Egyptian chariots are stuck in the mud between the walls of the sea, Moses stretches out his hand so that the waters return and drown the Egyptian army.
Three days into the wilderness, God said “If you will listen carefully to the voice of the LORD your God, and do what is right in his sight, and give heed to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will not bring upon you any of the diseases that I brought upon the Egyptians; for I am the LORD who heals you” (Exodus 15:26). Accordingly, God rains bread upon the Hebrews, who call it manna, likely the “carbohydrate-rich excretion of two scale-insects that feed on twigs of the tamarisk tree” (Coogan 106). “[I]t was like coriander seed, white, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey” (Exodus 16:31). Quails descend upon the camp in the evenings. Moses purifies bitter water with a piece of wood and strikes water from a rock. Furthermore, in the forty years of wilderness travel, “[t]he clothes on your back did not wear out and your feet did not swell...” (Deuteronomy 8:4)
Three months into the wilderness, Moses and the Hebrew people camped in the shadow of the sacred mountain of Horeb, known also as Mount Sinai. God descended upon the mountain in a cloud of smoke and fire, and God summoned Moses alone to receive teaching: “Freedom to pass back and forth across the world division, from the perspective of the apparitions of time to that of the causal deep and back—not contaminating the principles of the one with those of the other, yet permitting the mind to know the one by virtue of the other—is the talent of the master” (Campbell 229). In other words, the mythic hero alone can cross freely between the sacred world and the world of Man. With stone tablets that were “the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved upon the tablets” (Exodus 32:16), Moses returns after forty days to discover the impatient Hebrew people are anxious, rebellious and perversely worshipping a calf sculpted from their gold jewelry. “The first problem of the returning hero is to accept as real, after an experience of the soul-satisfying vision of fulfillment, the passing joys and sorrows, banalities and noisy obscenities of life” (Campbell 218). When he saw the dancing and the idol, Moses was furious. “[H]e threw the tablets from his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain” (Exodus 32:19). God demands Moses carve another set of tablets so God may rewrite the commandments. “As he came down from the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant in his hand, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God” (Exodus 34:29). Moses covered his face with a veil, which he removes when speaking with God.
“Precisely because the hero is easily detached from the societal matrix, he is often as dangerous to the social fabric as he is useful in defending it” (Miller 164). God is furious at the transgression of the Hebrew people and is poised to destroy them. Moses intercedes and says, “O LORD, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent he brought them out to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people” (Exodus 31:11-12). The appeal of Moses to the reputation of God is a success, and Moses delivers the commandments intended to govern life in the promised land:
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house...nor any thing that is thy neighbor's.
If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him as an usurer, neither shalt thou lay upon him usury...
Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil...
Ye shall not steal, neither deal falsely, neither lie one to another.
Ye shall not therefore oppress one another...
The land shall not be sold for ever...
Exodus is the story of liberation from slavery in Egypt, but the people become servants of a different lord—the LORD God. In the wilderness, after receiving the commandments intended to regenerate society, the struggle of the Hebrews turns to emigrating to the promised land of Canaan. But, during the journey, the people bitterly whine and show little faith. “And the LORD said to Moses, ‘How long will this people despise me? And how long will they refuse to believe in me, in spite of all the signs that I have done among them? I will strike them with pestilence and disinherit them, and I will make of you a nation greater and mightier than they” (Numbers 14:11-12). As before, Moses appeals to God’s reputation: “Now if you kill this people all at one time, then the nations who have heard about you will say, ‘It is because the LORD was not able to bring this people into the land he swore to give them that he has slaughtered them in the wilderness’” (Numbers 14:15-16).
God is not as easily convinced after complaints and mutiny: “I do forgive, just as you have asked; nevertheless—as I live, and as all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the LORD—none of the people who have seen my glory and the signs that I did in Egypt and in the wilderness...shall see the land that I swore to give to their ancestors; none of those who despised me shall see it” (Numbers 14:20-23). “And the LORD’s anger was kindled against Israel, and he made them wander in the wilderness for forty years, until all the generation that had done evil in the sight of the LORD had disappeared” (Numbers 32:13).
Finally, Moses—and his companion Aaron—“with whom the welfare of the tribe or nation is identified, must die to atone for the people’s sins and restore the land to fruitfulness” (Guerin 166). Early in the wilderness journey, when there was no water for the people, God directs Moses and Aaron to command water from a rock. Moses strikes the rock twice, and God reprimands him for his error: “Because you did not trust in me, to show my holiness before the eyes of the Israelites, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land I have given them” (Numbers 20:12). Aaron dies alone on a mountaintop in the fortieth year of the wandering. Moses is shown the promised land but is forbidden to cross the River Jordan. He is one-hundred-twenty years-old when he dies, and he is buried in an unmarked grave.
Second Focus: A Metaphorical Interpretation of Exodus
Voltaire writes, “Was there really a Moses? If a man who gave orders to the whole of nature had really existed among the Egyptians, would not such prodigious events have played a leading part in the history of Egypt? Would not Sanchoniathon, Manetho, Measthenes, Herodotus have spoken of him? The historian Josephus collected all possible evidence in favour of the Jews. He dared not say that any of the authors whom he cited had said a single word about the miracles of Moses!” (Voltaire 317) Truly, as Voltaire argued in 1764, there is no evidence the Hebrew people lived in Egypt as slaves—so then, why do the ancient stories tell of it?
“[W]hen a civilization has passed from a mythological to a secular point of view, the older images are no longer felt or quite approved” (Campbell 248). Thousands of years ago, people did not speak of social stratification, functionalist theory, conflict theory or symbolic interactionism to describe the relationships, inequality and dangers of civilization. “[T]he development of the scientific method of research, have so transformed human life that the long-inherited, timeless universe of symbols has collapsed” (Campbell 387). Ancient Man was not a positivist but a poet. “Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed. The living images become only remote facts of a distant time or sky” (Campbell 249).
Whereas modern Man relies on observable, measurable, predictable facts to describe reality, ancient Man relied on imagination and myth. “[M]yth can be described as an independent, closed, symbolically rich narrative about some archetypal character whose story, which takes place in the primeval time of the beginning, represents some universal aspect of the origins or nature of humanity in its relation to the sacred or the divine...[M]yth, by narrating a ‘sacred history,’ stabilizes and orders, or regenerates and gives meaning to, what is seen as the chaos of human, or secular and profane, existence” (Moye 578-579). Modern Man, with a withered imagination, a bored apathy amidst material clutter, and a compulsion for fact, is apt to overlook—or worse, dismiss—the truth and wisdom hidden in ancient metaphor. “But remember this, the sun that shines today is the sun that shone when thy father was born, and will still be shining when thy last grandchild shall pass into the darkness” (Clason 25). In other words, though our props may be different, our human nature remains the same. “The present convergence of crises was written into the future thousands of years ago. It is the inevitable culmination of the separation that began in the deep past, and that once initiated, could do no other than to build upon itself. From the very moment we began to see ourselves as apart from nature, our doom was sealed...[T]hroughout history perceptive individuals have seen...the inevitable destination toward which our conception of self and world propels us. Long ago they saw the first stirrings of a gathering calamity written into who we are, and they couched their insights in the language of myth and metaphor” (Eisenstein 437).
The ancient myths are more than stories about particular men, but truth about Man and the inevitable fate created by the nature of Man. “[T]here have always been visionaries who have seen where our separation from self, nature, and other would inevitably lead. Centuries ago, millennia ago, they pointed us urgently in the other direction, even as they recognized the inevitability of the still-ripening catastrophe. All of them did their best to leave us messages, clues and hints that a different way is possible, not so much to stem the tide of history but to teach us how to proceed after the crash of our unsustainable story of self. Their messages are about transcendence, transcending the limited, limiting, and delusory Separated self of our present science, religion, economics, medicine, and psychology. They spoke their messages in different ways, by whatever means expedient to transmit them through the ages....Some communicated with the future by creating myths and legends, poems and songs, dances and rituals for receptive people to decode or, more often, that plant a seed in the unconscious mind of the listener or performer” (Eisenstein 545). Perhaps no myth has been more enduring, or controversial, in the history of Man than the Bible, the repository of the knowledge and wisdom of our ancient ancestors.
“The books of the Bible are not separate units, but a series of scrolls telling a continuous story” (Carroll 330). In the context of the Hebrew Bible, the story of Exodus and the entrance to the promised land of Canaan comes as the conclusion to a narrative arc that generally follows Campbell's adventure pattern of separation-initiation-return. “[T]he story of the Pentateuch as a whole is preeminently the story of the fall, or the exile, of humanity from the harmony of paradise and the perfect balance and order of God’s creation into the disordered realm of human history and the subsequent desire for a reunion with the divine, a reunion that is accomplished not by a return to a mythical Eden but by the manifestation of the divine on earth and within history and by the return to a human and historical version of Eden, the promised land given to the chosen people by God” (Moye 598). In other words, the story of the Pentateuch begins with Man’s separation from God and the Paradise of nature, followed by a period when Man builds a dysfunctional, hellish life based on the assumptions of separation; then, unable to sustain the separation, Man returns to God and the wilderness.
“Thus, we move, in the...creation story and in the story of the fall, from the initial harmony...of Eden to the man’s recognition of his difference and otherness to the full separation of the human from the divine and exile eastward from Eden” (Moye 585-586). Separated from paradise, Adam further escalates the divide by manipulating and exploiting nature when he is “sent forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.” (Genesis 3:23) The destructiveness of Man multiplies across the generations: the murder of the nomad shepherd Abel by his civilized farmer brother Cain, Sarai’s contempt for the slave-girl Hagar, the discourteous men of Sodom, Jacob’s treachery against his brother Esau, Rachel’s rebellion against her father, Joseph thrown into a pit and sold as a slave by his envious brothers. “The LORD saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. And the LORD was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the LORD said, ‘I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created—people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.’ But Noah found favor in the sight of the LORD” (Genesis 6:5-7). “[T]he exclusion of Noah from the rest of humanity transforms the theme of separation from God...to the dominant theme of God’s selection of the Patriarchs, separation for God” (Moye 586).
The destructive patterns intensify in the generations leading up to the separation of Moses from the crowd, when Man, in grand hubris, erects the Tower of Babel, “a story of the transgression of human limits in seeking integration with the divine and immortality” (Moye, 587). “Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves...” The LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built. And the LORD said, “Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will no be impossible for them” (Genesis 11:4-6). Such is the condition in Egypt, where by the twisting of the Nile River, Man fabricates a garden paradise in the desert. But the artificial realm of human life cannot be sustained without both an inequitable social stratification that subordinates, or enslaves, a large swath of the population to the goals of the controlling few and an exaggerated, delusional and dangerous separation from nature.
“Who could have guessed, when the first granary was built in prehistoric Mesopotamia and the first forest cut down in Sumer...where it would all lead?” (Eisenstein 545). Ancient Man suspected the dangers of a civilization founded on separation, and nowhere was the tragedy more apparent than in Egypt, which undoubtedly became the metaphor of the Hebrew people for an unsustainable society. In this interpretation, Moses—at the end of the narrative arc of the Hebrew Bible—leads God’s People from imprisonment in a volatile civilization to a most unadorned living in the wilderness, where Man learns how to construct a new way of life based on principles of justice, simplicity and harmony. In this interpretation, the people of God are the builders of the split existence that afflicts them, wherever and whenever that may be, subject to a Man elevated to the status of God. Ancient wise-guys warned of the consequences of living apart from God and nature, and the plagues of Egypt metaphorically represent the crumbling of precarious control: nature intrudes into the imagined separateness of civilized Man, and, worse, destroys the meticulously cultivated food supply and sickens the animals; the health of the people fail. Failing to heed the lessons of the past, Man elevated to a God is humbled. “[I]n a pattern that has repeated itself from ancient Sumer to Rome and now to the American Empire, the society collapses under the weight of the structure it has erected” (Eisenstein 30).
At the dawn of the twenty-first century of the Christian era, ignorant of the wisdom of the centuries, Man has constructed a wobbling Tower of Babylon and submitted to the oppression of Egypt: “For people immersed in the study of any of the crises that afflict our planet, it becomes abundantly obvious that we are doomed. Politics, finance, energy, education, health care, and most importantly the ecosystem are headed toward near-certain collapse...” (Eisenstein 431). But an ending is truly a beginning in disguise, as demonstrated by the Pentateuch. When the present way of life fails, as it most certainly will, from a state of simplicity emerges the possibility of recreating the world from the lessons of civilization. “When we awaken to the enormity of our crisis and the magnitude of our loss, often the first response is a crushing despair...Yet on the other side of despair is fullness and an urgency to live life beautifully. We can choose a different world—the ‘more beautiful world our hearts tell us is possible’...—but to choose it we must be familiar with what we are choosing. We must be fully cognizant of the world we have chosen up until now” (Eisenstein 353).
A new civilization is the proposal of Ancient Man in the wilderness of Sinai, who foresaw an amplifying pattern of destruction and suggested an alternative to catastrophe. “The modern hero, the modern individual who dares heed the call and seek the mansion of that presence with whom it is our whole destiny to be atoned, cannot, indeed must not, wait for his community to cast off its slough of pride, fear, rationalized avarice, and sanctified misunderstanding...It is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse.” (Campbell 391). In opposing corrupt society, the hero offers a boon that renews that society; in the story of Moses, the people are rescued from slavery and led to a new beginning. They cannot imagine any other way of life and do not trust the wisdom from the mountaintop, so they recreate their previous conditions in a new place. To reform a society in danger of extinction, we must overcome the hypnosis of Egypt. Our City is not separate from the wilderness, but built in the wilderness; mankind is not separate from the Source of all Creation, but sustained through reconciliation and harmony with the Absolute Spirit which is his true nature.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Calasso, Roberto. Literature and the Gods. New York: Vintage Books, 2001.
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero With A Thousand Faces. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949.
Carroll, Robert & Stephen Pricket, eds. The Bible: Authorized King James Version. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Clason, George S. The Richest Man in Babylon. New York: Penguin Books, 1955.
Coogan, Michael D. ed. The New Oxford Annotated Bible, Third Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Fant, Clyde E., Donald W. Musser, Mitchell G. Reddish, eds. An Introduction to the Bible, Revised Edition. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2001.
Eisenstein, Charles. The Ascent of Humanity. Harrisburg: Panenthea Press, 2007.
Guerin, Wilfred L., Earle Labor, Lee Morgan and John R. Willingham. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Miller, Dean A., The Epic Hero. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2000.
Moye, Richard H., “In The Beginning: Myth And History In Genesis And Exodus.” Journal of Biblical Literature; Winter90, Vol. 109 Issue 4, p577, 22pp.
Shepard, Jon M. Sociology. United States: Wadsworth, 2005.
Voltaire. Philosophical Dictionary. London: Penguin Books, 1972.
Yacovone, Thomas J. "Sociology 1 - Lecture Notes." Los Angeles Valley College. Valley Glen, California. July 2005 – Aug 2005.
Zucker, Alfred J. "The Bible as Literature – Lecture Notes." Los Angeles Valley College. Valley Glen, California. Autumn 2006.
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The Christian Gospel
CONTENTS
Introduction
1. Method and Models
A. Approaching Jesus
B. Cultural Poetics
C. The Hero's Journey
D. The Bible as Literature in Translation
Fig. 1 - Origins of the English Bible
2. Historical Context
A. Ancient Judaism
Fig. 2 - Map of Israel circa 30 A.D.
B. The Roman Empire
Fig. 3 - Debt in First-Century A.D. Palestine
Fig. 4 - Herod's Temple
C. The High Priesthood and Apocolyptic Cults
Fig. 5 - Contemporary Imagining of First Century A.D. Semitic Man
D. Disciples and Evangelists
3. The Secret of Eternal Life
A. Overture (1:1-1:15)
B. Birth, Childhood, and the Missing Years
Fig. 6 - Tree-stem of Indo-European Languages and Letter Comparison
B. Irony and Awe (1:16-2:12)
C. Subversive Teaching (2:13-4:34)
D. The Sermon on the Mount
E. Renewal and Rejection (4:35-6:29)
F. Feeding the People (6:30-8:21)
G. Journey to Jerusalem (8:22-10:52)
Fig. 7 - Map of Jerusalem circa First Century A.D.
H. Coronation in Jerusalem (11:1-12:44)
I. The Mock King (13:1-15:47)
J. The End (16:1-17)
Afterword
Bibliography
INTRODUCTION
The project is divided into five sections. Following this Introduction, the first chapter explains the critical method and models I employ in reading. The second chapter provides the contextual metahistory necessary for an informed interpretation, presented as detailed commentary in the third chapter. Finally, in the Afterword, I briefly consider the contemporary relevance of the character and teachings of Jesus and the future of the Bible as literature.
1 - METHOD AND MODELS
In Jungian
psychology, Christ is the highest expression of the self, though not
without a shadow, and in some religious thinking, the purpose of life is
to attain perfection with Christ as an example. Despite the love that
delivered this enigmatic character to us across two thousand years of
storytelling, many people, including myself in past times due to
irrelevant anxieties concerning the Bible, are more aware of the
distortion of Jesus for schismatic economic and political gains than the
inspiring and ironic portrayal of Jesus and the heroic caution he
offers against social destruction in the Christian source texts. In
approaching such an iconic figure, it is necessary to establish the
critical precepts and justified assumptions I utilize in my
interpretation of Jesus as a mythic hero, subversive teacher and unruly
social reformer in the Gospel of Mark.
APPROACHING
JESUS
Cultural Poetics, more restrictively known as New Historicism, is an accepted mode of literary study since the early 1980s that places a text within the social practices and institutions of a culture at a particular time-space to deduce the text’s meanings and effects. In the academic specialization of Biblical studies, similar approaches are known as the Socio-Historical Method and the Contextual Method, both principally concerned with the meaning of a text within a community’s social history. The dominant trend in modern academic studies of the New Testament, especially in the last twenty-five years by the Jesus Seminar, is the search for the historical Jesus, the reconstruction of an actual person in time-space and his authentic teachings, from 1) archaeological evidence, 2) less than a dozen ancient text sources, and 3) well-informed speculation.
My focus is not concerned with whether the story is factually correct—it isn’t; nor am I overly concerned with later institutional doctrine regarding Jesus, such as the Nicene Creed recited in Catholic liturgy since the fourth century A.D. Instead, I propose the story follows the archetypal hero quest pattern, constructed within a paradigm, or universe of discourse, intended to yield wisdom and irony, if properly read as mythopoeia. An intelligent and imaginative interpretation necessarily considers Jesus in his distinct cultural context, which is better estimated from the knowledge gained through the pursuit of a historical Jesus. The cultural context of Chapter Two includes not only a survey of the political and economic state, but also a broad overview of the Hebrew texts that inspire the story of Jesus. Indeed, the Gospel of Mark explicitly demands intertextuality, the framing of the story within a symbolically rich literary tradition.
Jesus, so far as he is portrayed in the Synoptic Gospels, is an archetypal hero. Archetypes are repeated “narrative designs, patterns of action, character-types, themes and images which are identifiable in a wide variety of works of literature, as well as in myths, dreams, and even social rituals” (Abrams 13). Carl G. Jung, initially a disciple of Sigmund Freud, suggests all humans inherit primordial images from our ancient ancestors, and further, that “access to the archetypal images...succeeds in revitalizing aspects of the psyche which are essential both to individual self-integration and to the mental and emotional well-being of the human race” (Abrams 260). Indeed, the crucifixion of Jesus expresses a most fundamental archetype, a death/rebirth theme associated with the cycle of seasons and seasons of life. In this way, the story is myth, “an independent, closed, symbolically rich narrative about some archetypal character whose story, which takes place in the primeval time of the beginning, represents some universal aspect of the origins or nature of humanity in its relation to the sacred or the divine” (Moye 578).
The popular monomyth scholar Joseph Campbell asserts, “The hero is the one who, while still alive, knows and represents the claims of the superconsciousness which throughout creation is more or less unconscious” (Campbell 259). Especially for those who believe life is lived in God’s image, the story of Jesus offers insight into human nature and the often hidden ways and will of God; the Bible is the story of God’s people, a story not only of characters created by the Author, but also a story of the Author as a character in the Author’s own play. When the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament are taken as a whole—from creation, what God has done in the past, to new creation, what God makes possible for and requires of us in the present—Jesus is a mythic hero who teaches that God’s action to rescue a lost and broken world becomes operative when enacted by human agency. In this way, the literary tradition functions like myth, “by narrating a ‘sacred history,’ [it] stabilizes and orders, or regenerates and gives meaning to, what is seen as the chaos of human, or secular and profane, existence” (Moye 579). Also in this way, Jesus fits Northrop Frye’s definition of the mythic hero, a God-man superior to other men and the order of nature. Thus, Jesus overcomes death as a mythic hero who exists in the timeless literary universe of symbols, clues, messages and hints that urgently point toward the eternal, immortal, infinite and beautiful mystery of the Real while offering direction to guard against social destruction. However, when Jesus enters Jerusalem as told in the Gospel of Mark, though perhaps greater in power than other men, he is subject to social forces and the order of nature, to his death, as a fitting example of Frye’s hero of epic tragedy—if not for the ironic ending. In acting against the “great and conspicuous seat of power” (Campbell 337), Jesus is the hero, “which means that he...intervened in [a] critical situation in an extraordinary fashion, acting outside, above, or in disregard to normal patterns of behavior, especially in putting his...life at risk” (Miller 1). In his heroism, Jesus is a subversive teacher and unruly social reformer, a symbol for contemplation, and image of freedom, the great boon of the heroic journey that unlocks the flow of life in our hearts and the world to regenerate society (Campbell 40). In the detailed commentary of chapter three, I explicitly show how aspects of the archetypal hero’s quest are portrayed in the Gospel of Mark and influence the accretion and elaboration of the story in later texts.
Because no original source text exists, choosing which Biblical text to interpret is a peculiar challenge that requires a survey of how the text has been delivered across time. Man has been illiterate for most of existence, and despite several thousand years of writing, only a small few, even with the widespread literacy common in contemporary society, can be counted among the literate elite. Thus, oral tradition was the primary mechanism for transmission of rituals, social commentary, entertainment and wish fulfillment for most of human history. Because of a passion among Europeans in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for folktales, characteristics of oral tradition are well known. Unlike a fixed text, oral traditions are inherently improvisational. Using standard themes, archetypal characters, rhythmical melodies, and memorable words, an oral transmitter spontaneously reinvents the tale in a performance that may include acting, dance and music. Oral transmission is not a memorized word-for-word recitation, but an entertaining extemporization based on mastery of a tradition coupled with a feel for pace, repetition and surprise.
The Bible is an example of an ancient oral tradition that swallowed regional folktales. Once attributed to Moses, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, known as the Pentateuch, are likely edited together into a continuous tale from four distinct sources. The written texts in Hebrew, and some Aramaic, record an oral tradition with origins stretching back to the earliest civilizations of Mesopotamia; Sumer, Babylon and Assyria. Jewish religious practice developed into the study of documents and oral traditions chronicling man’s interaction with God. Jews living in exile in Babylon under Persian rule during the 6th century B.C. collected, combined, edited and rewrote the stories that form the Hebrew Bible, later known to Christians as the Old Testament or Old Covenant, which was intended to preserve Jewish cultural identity and serve as a guide for proper living. Canonization, which was not definitive until after the Christians selected their primary texts, was a gradual process of embracing the documents most widely accepted as inspiration, belief and practice. The first translation into Greek in the 3rd century BC at Alexandria is named the Septuagint (LXX), after the seventy authors supposedly associated with the project. The first century A.D. authors of the New Testament use Greek to record the story of Jesus, who taught in Aramaic, and New Testament intertextuality references the Greek Septuagint, not the Hebrew texts.
From oral tradition to written Hebrew, to teaching in Aramaic recorded in Greek, the trend of encounter with the Bible is primarily in translation, which is why I interact with an English New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) as my primary source augmented by other versions in Hebrew, Greek and English, as noted. English translations, earliest rendered from the Vulgate, a 4th century A.D. Latin translation of the Septuagint, were not generally available until the fourteenth century A.D., when John Wycliffe was exhumed and posthumously burned for his so-called vulgar translation. William Tyndale translated the New Testament and the Pentateuch before he was arrested and burned at the stake. Such were the passions in 1517, when Martin Luther’s assertions—that 1) salvation is determined only by faith, not strict adherence to ritual, and 2) scriptures, not clergy or tradition, determine what an individual must believe and practice—inaugurated the displacement of the Roman Catholic Church as the dominant institution of Western civilization.
Within fifteen short years, Henry VIII furthered the Protestant Reformation when he founded the Church of England to escape the commands of the Pope. After Henry’s death in 1547, England jerked from King Edward’s radical Protestantism to Queen Mary’s aggressive Roman Catholicism in 1553, then to Queen Elizabeth’s renewed Protestantism in 1558. Reflecting the Protestant belief of direct access to the Bible, a variety of competing English translations, including the Geneva Bible, a translation used by Shakespeare, circulated when James I ascended to the throne following Elizabeth's death. In a time when people attended church as the central focus of their life, James—renown for his drunken parties and bisexuality—ordered his bishops in 1603 to produce the most widely-read English translation, the Authorized King James Version (KJV), in a complex committee structure that reviewed the individual work of forty-seven translators working in six separate groups.
At the time of the translation, the Puritans, known then as Separatists and later as Congregationalists, were enraged by the decline of society and the corruption of the rulers of England and the Netherlands. Distressed by the decadence and debauchery of Europe and interpreting the Bible as an infallible guidebook for living, the Pilgrims drunkenly sailed across the North Atlantic Ocean to the wilderness of the New World with plans to create a Christian utopia to inspire the globe. The Separatists justified their escape from the Old World by claiming parallels with the Hebrew liberation from slavery in Egypt and journey to the Promised Land; the new exodus produced the American Civil Religion and carried the Protestant Work Ethic into the Industrial Revolution. An abundance of English translations of the Bible marketed to different consumer categories were published since the turn of the twentieth century A.D.
To show how the teachings of Jesus are subversive (that is, intended to disrupt), and what social reform he advocates, it is first necessary to establish the metahistorical framework that gives meaning to the complicated symbolism of the text. To that end, I offer commentary and a brief overview of the history and beliefs of ancient Judaism, then discuss the intricate political, economic and religious governing structures of Jerusalem under the Roman overlords, including the Hellenic cultural influences and major groups and characters of the period. Finally, I survey the history of the writing and earliest distribution of the Gospels, both how and when they were written, and also their intended audience, as justification for interpreting the Gospel of Mark.
ANCIENT JUDAISM
Judaism begins as henotheism, the worship of one supreme god to the exclusion of other gods, and evolves into monotheism, the belief of only one God. Because of its origin in ancient Mesopotamian practices, and the long established link to the oldest religion—the Vedic tradition of India—a comparative study of the world’s religions and philosophies, which assimilated features of extinct practices like Zoroastrianism and Mithraism, is useful but beyond the scope of this treatise. An intertextual reader will find links asserted between the various traditions in many sources, such as Dante Aleghieri’s Divine Comedy, the thirteenth century CE literary masterwork highly praised by the Roman Catholic Church, and the seventh century CE Muslim Qur’an, which includes Jews, Christians, Hindus and Buddhists as “people of the book.”The earliest myths assimilated later into the Hebrew Bible were not likely regarded as strict fact by ancient people, but instead, the gods served as symbols to explain the wonder and principles of existence. In the central myth of Judaism—the exodus from bondage in Egypt to living in harmony with God’s will in the Promised Land—the voice from the burning bush declares itself as amorphous and ambiguous being, “I AM WHO I AM,” also potentially translated as “I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE” (Exodus 3:14), a mystery exhibited in creation through degree or gradation depending on the time, place and character of a situation. More practically, the Israelites’ worship centers on a storm god known by the tetragrammaton YHWH (translated “Jehovah” in many English versions, but more likely expressed as “Yahweh”). Yahweh wins the Hebrews’ devotion after intervening in their centuries-long exploitation in a corrupt social stratification, and through Moses, sets forth ordinances to reform society toward justice, mercy and charity.
Yahweh impressively advances from a minor Mesopotamian rain god to the exclusive god of the Hebrew people to the transcendent Lord of Creation, but even the Bible admits Yahweh is not the sole paranormal or supernatural being in existence. With nary a detail, the Hebrew Bible recounts a distant beginning: “The Nephilim [giants] were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God cohabitated with the daughters of men, who bore them children. Those were the heroes of old, the men of renown” (this scribe’s rewording of KJV/JPS Genesis 6:4). Furthermore, “there was a day when the sons of God presented themselves before the LORD, and Satan [the Adversary] came along with them” (scribe’s rewording of NRSV/JPS Job 1:6); in the divine council known in esoteric Judaism as “the Shed,” Yahweh brags of Job’s piety to Satan, who tempts Yahweh into a wager that severely tests Job. In 1 and 2 Kings, the prophets Elijah and Elisha serve as Yahweh’s champions against the rival storm god Baal, and Biblical scholars Diana Edelman, John Day and Mark S. Smith argue that urban priests suppressed ancient folk practice that included rites for Asherah, a figure associated with wisdom and the tree of life who was also worshipped as Yahweh’s consort and queen of Heaven (Jeremiah 7:18).
Yahweh accepts the Hebrews as his chosen people, but their relationship is fraught with conflict from the start. For example, in the garden of Eden, the primeval paradise, Adam and Eve’s sin is not that they ate the forbidden fruit—which calls to suspect Yahweh for the tree’s location since he knew its risk; instead, primitive man’s corruption is in denying an act of free will and shamefully accusing others of coercion. Later, Yahweh shows favor for Abel’s nomadic sheep herding, and Cain, his farmer brother, is jealously enraged to murder; like his parents, Cain profanes his free will and shows the volatile and vicious character of man. The fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree: in Genesis 6:5, Yahweh destroys man’s violently corrupt civilization by flood, then promises never to repeat the infantile tantrum; instead, Yahweh confuses the languages and scatters the people. Yahweh becomes a psychotic megalomaniac demanding Abraham sacrifice his son Isaac (Genesis 22) to prove his loyalty; Yahweh is arguably sadistic in denying Moses entrance to the Promised Land, because one tap is sufficient to draw water from a rock—two shows lack of faith (Numbers 20:11). Still, Yahweh also shows a capacity to learn through experience and adapt to changing conditions, which offers hope of man’s redemption from corruption too.
“In the burning-bush story a situation of exploitation and injustice is already in existence, and God tells Moses that he is about to give himself a name and enter history in a highly partisan role, taking sides with the oppressed Hebrews against the Egyptian establishment” (Frye 114). Thus, the Exodus myth displays Israel’s most important contributions to Western Civilization: first, the belief that all other gods are false—which not only gives rise to disbelief and marginalizing of potent mythopoeia by bigoted secularism and positivism, but also the competition and conflict between beloved, rejected or distorted mythopoeic icons by an audience that generally lacks the metaphoric framework for proper reading. Second, unlike other ancient societies that positioned a golden age in the far-distant past, the Israelites anticipated a utopian future, an approach that extends into the Hegelian-Marxist dialectic of history, inspired the Separatist migration from Europe across the Atlantic Ocean and fuels American notions of progress.
In the Diaspora following the Babylonian destruction of Solomon’s Temple, and especially during the political and religious oppression of subsequent Persian, Hellenic, Maccabean, Hasmonean and Roman overlords, belief was widespread in a coming Messiah (“anointed one” in Hebrew). The Christ, from the Greek word Khristós, “covered in oil”, is a Jewish king who fulfills God’s utopian promises—a warrior like King David; a judge of the earth; and a priest with authoritative interpretation of scripture. The Messiah ends the existing world order and introduces a time of peace when the righteous live in honor of the Spirit. Some contemporary Christians assert Jesus was the Messiah and eagerly await the Second Coming described in the Revelation to John; many present-day Jews believe the Messiah has yet to make a first appearance.
THE ROMAN EMPIRE
At the same time when Ovid created the Classical equivalent of the Bible, The Metamorphosis, Virgil—Dante’s poet-guide through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise in The Divine Comedy—wrote the epic poem The Aeneid which chronicles, in the cycles of history, the rise of the Roman Republic, which during the ministry of Jesus, was a newborn Empire in control of Palestine, a center of trade located along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea and known alternately as Canaan or Israel. Northrup Frye proposes the Christian Bible as a whole is a sequence of U-shaped patterns depicting the loss and subsequent renewal of Israel, both the land and the people. The series of declines rising to brief liberty fits the typical comic plot—as Frye describes it—moving through descent from prosperity into humiliating disaster and bondage, usually from a failure to act, followed by a repentance—a change of mind—and a fleeting deliverance and restoration, a structure repeated across a linear narrative using metaphorically related, identical, and interchangeable synonyms culminating in the late appearance of the Messiah. “[W]e find that the sequence of U’s can also be seen as a sequence of rises and falls of heathen kingdoms, each an inverted U [the typical shape of tragedy], which differs from a cyclical movement in the fact that at each turn of the wheel the empire has a different name” (Frye 176).At the time of Jesus, Rome was a five hundred year old republic turned militant empire governed by an aristocratic oligarchy of the richest and most influential elite of society. “Roman warlords, emperors, and other patricians became obscenely wealthy” through deliberate economic exploitation and conquest (Horsley 24); after overtaking the Hasmonean oppression of Palestine, Roman overlords established indirect rule by appointing Herod the Great, a sworn ally of the Caesar, as ruler of Judea, when he was approximately twenty-five years old. Though foreign policy belonged exclusively to Rome, Herod secured his power by collecting taxes, providing military troops and supplies, and building cities with temples, arenas and baths in honor of the Caesar. Herod also sponsored the Olympics, hosted games at Caesara Maritima and patronized Greek arts and literature, which was eagerly adopted and adapted by the Romans (Chilton 409).
The early Greeks modeled the image and behavior of their gods after themselves, characteristic of humanism, a set of beliefs emphasizing man's greatness, the importance of the individual and the power of reason. The Hellenic thinkers divided into two primary groups: the Rationalists and the Universalists. The Rationalists—philosophers like Thales of Miletus, Democritus of Abdera and Hippocrates—divide into three branches. The Milesians searched for natural laws to explain the operation of Creation, which they believed is mechanistic and materialistic. The Atomists proposed Creation consists of an infinite number of indivisible atoms constantly in motion. The Sophists, like Protogoras, abandoned the quest to find an absolute truth and proposed all is relative and measured by man. The Sophists advocated knowing what is practical, such as methods of persuasion and how to create success in society.
The Universalists, represented by Plato, Socrates and Aristotle, rejected the relativism and uncertainty of the Rationalists. The most influential philosopher, Socrates, asserted one could know absolute truth through observation, learning and reason: “I say that it is the greatest good for a man to discuss virtue every day and those other things about which you hear me conversing and testing myself and others, for the unexamined life is not worth living for men...” (Plato, Apology 38a) Socrates also proposed an immortal soul released from the troubles of the body at death:
To fear death, gentlemen, is none other than to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know. No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they know that it is the greatest of evils. And surely it is the most blameworthy ignorance to believe that one knows what one does not know (Plato, Apology 29b).The practical release from earthly suffering, instead of accentuating the afterlife, is the focus of the Hellenistic philosophy that dominates Roman religion, which emphasized collective ritual, not individual belief. Roman cults adopted and renamed the early Greek gods; Romans saw themselves as neither completely free nor totally submissive to supernatural forces. In general, ancient Rome valued a disciplined obedience to human and supernatural powers to secure a prosperous life. Roman philosophers proposed men are masters of their own being and choose whether to live in ignorant rebellion against nature (sin) or in harmony through tolerance and compassion. Expanding Hellenic (Greek) tradition, Hellenistic philosophy is dominated by 1) the Epicureans, who locate personal peace in the simple pleasures of embodied aesthetic experience, and 2) the Stoics, who propose reason as the ordering principle of a seemingly chaotic world.
At the peak of the Roman Empire, any religious expression was allowed if it a) submitted to the authority, and contributed to the continuation of the Roman government, and b) accepted the Roman Emperor and members of his Imperial Club, typically members of his family, as gods. In an attempt to control the high priesthood of Israel, Herod not only lavishly rebuilt the Temple in Jerusalem but also appointed his own loyal priests from Babylon, which caused an eruption of peasant revolts “[l]ed by popular leaders, some of whom claimed to be divinely anointed kings with messianic or prophetic status” (Chilton 412). Burdened by taxes totaling a third of a paltry peasant income (see Fig. 3), Jews appealed to Herod’s heir Archelaus for a reduction in taxes in 4 BCE (Ehrman 241); Herod Archelaus answered with a military slaughter of the gathered mob. Violent rebellion exploded across the realm, prompting the Roman governor of Syria to send soldiers to suppress the insurrection by 1) looting and burning towns, 2) enslaving the population and 3) crucifying over two thousand Jews (Chilton 413). Consensus opinion places the birth of a historical Jesus, Yeshua Ben Yosef, at this volatile time.
After Herod the Great’s death, his kingdom was divided among his sons. Following continuous rioting by Judeans, Augustus Caesar replaced Herod Archelaus with a Roman governor; Jerusalem was now ruled directly by a foreign empire. “The Roman official in charge of Judea was at first a prefect (a military commander) and later a procurator (a civil administrator)” who appointed and often overruled the chief priest and council on behalf of Rome (Chilton 419). The supreme authority in Jewish society was now subordinate to Roman control, interference and exploitation; Pontius Pilate, appointed in 26 C.E., unscrupulously used the position to enrich himself. Herod Antipas, the tetrarch of Galilee from his father’s death until 39 AD, notoriously suppressed critics, especially John the baptizer, a popular peasant preacher—and teacher to Jesus—who “denounced Antipas’s marriage to his brother’s former wife” and openly demanded Antipas obey Leviticus 20:21 (Chilton 490); Antipas beheaded his outspoken and widely respected opponent, which further roused the populace to sedition.
Facing onerous economic conditions (see Fig 3), peasants turned to banditry and messianic cults with “two interrelated goals: to attain freedom from Roman and Herodian rule and to restore a more egalitarian social-economic order” (Horsley 50). Fearing civil unrest during pilgrimage festivals at the Jerusalem temple, Rome stationed garrisons in the city and further poisoned Judean attitudes. “Jews celebrating the Passover were not simply remembering the past, when God acted on their behalf to save them from their subjugation to the Egyptians, they were also looking to the future, when God would save them yet again, this time from their present overlords, the Romans” (Ehrman 242).
THE HIGH PRIESTHOOD AND APOCALYPTIC CULTS
After centuries of oppression, apocalyptic fervor was a fever among the Judeans. The expectation that social ills and evils would be divinely annihilated and replaced in the near future by eternal bliss motivated the high priesthood to debate whether the dead should be resurrected, if they were worthy of sharing in the auspicious event. “The supreme legislative, executive, and judicial council in Judea met in the Temple compound” called the Sanhedrin, the Greek word for council (Chilton 421). In addition to leading public prayer and daily sacrificing animals, the Sanhedrin functioned like a municipal assembly by collecting taxes, managing international relations and acting as judiciary of legal issues. In addition to lower ranked scribes, the Sanhedrin was populated by a) local elders, typically from the wealthiest families, and b) appointees of the Roman overlords, most notably in the post of chief priest, the only man allowed to enter the Holy of Holies—the room Yahweh inhabits in the “House of Yahweh” featuring an altar of incense, a seven-branched lamp stand and bread table. Placed beyond the curtained room, a burnt offering, and a wash basin for ritual purification—another topic of hot debate, especially among the two main factions of the Sanhedrin, the Sadducees and Pharisees.
The Sadducees, an aristocratic majority of the Sanhedrin acting in cooperation with the Roman overlords, 1) insisted on strict interpretation of scripture, 2) reacted strongly against Hellenic influences and 3) denied the promise of resurrection. The Pharisees, in contrast, a) acknowledged an apocalyptic resurrection and b) emphasized free interpretation and sincerity of intent in religious practice, though they were especially concerned with rigorously observing the Sabbath, and ritual purity—that is, being in the appropriate state of mind for worship. Other groups, such as the Essenes, considered the Pharisees too liberal and Sadducees as corrupt, and withdrew from Jerusalem; the Convenanters—an Essene group led by a Teacher of Righteousness, a priestly messiah who could discern the secrets of the prophets—retreated to the desert where they wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, lost for two millennia and finally recovered in the mid-twentieth century A.D. The Fourth Philosophy is characterized by violent opposition to foreign domination of Judea; one group, the Zealots, invaded Jerusalem in the uprising against Rome in 66 A.D., overthrew the reigning aristocracy and committed suicide rather than surrender to the Roman Empire. North of Jerusalem, the Samaritans rejected all scripture except the Pentateuch and showed outright contempt for Judeans. In this fickle mix, Jesus emerges: “Christianity began in the proclamations of a Jewish teacher, and the correct interpretation of his teaching is the key to eternal life” (Ehrman 11).
DISCIPLES
AND EVANGELISTS
Shortly after the time of Jesus, “tensions between Jews and Rome continued to increase over economic, political, and religious issues” especially when the Roman emperor Gaius Caligula ordered his statue erected in the Jerusalem Temple (Chilton 434). Herod Agrippa I, grandchild of Herod the Great, abused the Jews, most notably the public flogging of thirty-eight members of the Sanhedrin (Chilton 435); following a period of increasing incidences of armed insurrection, Rome launched a military assault on Jerusalem in the late ’60s that culminated in a years-long siege, destruction of the Temple and utter devastation of Jerusalem (Chilton 448). In this ferment, the gospels were produced—not by the disciples of Jesus, but by associates of the apostles, and later evangelists who spread the story across the Roman Empire.
Authorship of the New Testament texts, originally in Greek, is commonly and incorrectly ascribed to their respective namesakes. Consensus opinion among biblical scholars dates the writing of the gospels between 35 and 60 years after the death of Jesus, circa 30 A.D. Many scholars also propose the existence of a yet-undiscovered document code-named “Q” used as a source for Matthew and Luke, both of which expand upon Mark, likely the earliest recorded text. The form of the gospel, which means “good news” from the Anglo-Saxon word god-spell, is a written account of the ministry, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus. Perhaps this distinction is what has excluded more than 30 documents from the canon for 1,500 years. Omitted scriptures, like the gospel of Thomas, are collections of sayings with no narratives—offering some precedence for the “Q” source theory; others, like the gospel of Mary or the recently-discovered gospel of Judas—in which Judas is not an evil betrayer but a loyal follower of Jesus’ specific instruction to report him to the authorities—are detailed episodes from the life of Jesus without the overarching narrative found in canonical texts. “It was typical for a great rabbi to have an inner circle of especially dedicated and beloved students with whom he was most closely associated and to whom he communicated the most confidential teachings, including secret mystical lore” (Hauer 250).
The generally held opinion asserts that Mark’s gospel was written in the years prior to the Temple’s ruin around 65 A.D., and Matthew and Luke followed around 70-75 A.D. John was the last of the canonical gospels around 90-95 A.D. Intended to be read aloud during a small gathering typically in a private residence, Mark’s gospel specifically offered lessons for a suffering community experiencing social disruptions and persecution. The gospels also fit the pattern of Greco-Roman biography, and proceed through a series of public encounters that demonstrate the hero’s identity, which was thought to be constant throughout life. “Historical accounts in ancient days were not objective, verifiable accounts of the past, but a story told to relate divine purpose and themes” (Hauer 41). Ancient audiences expected a miraculous beginning and end to life, divinely inspired teachings and supernatural deeds, to see how the character acted and reacted to challenges with well-crafted words and masterful deeds, and to be given interpretive insight into the character and narrative in the opening scene (Ehrman 65).
The earliest Christians were apocalyptic Jews who followed the teachings of Jesus, an apprentice of John the baptizer, and expected a total reversal of the oppressive social order due to his death and resurrection. “Not all the Christian communities that sprang up around the Mediterranean were completely unified in the ways they understood their belief in Jesus as the one who had died for the sins of the world” (Ehrman 280). Early Christians were called Nazareans. Jewish-Christians like the Ebionites retained Jewish religious practices and believed Jesus was empowered by God’s spirit to do miracles and teach the truth of God; he died on the cross, and afterward, God raised him from the dead to Heaven. Marcionite Christians believed Jesus saved humanity from a wrathful god. Gnostic-Christians believed the creator god is inherently evil, as is his creation, and gnosis—knowledge—releases the trapped divinity in man. Proto-Orthodox Christians believed the disciples wrote the gospels to be followed literally for salvation. This group eventually won the favor of the Roman Empire in the fourth century A.D. and used their association with the Roman military to suppress other Christian expression, including the destruction of many non-canonical texts that were lost until a treasure trove of ancient papyrus was located in the Egyptian desert in the mid-twentieth century A.D.
OVERTURE (1:1-1:15)
True to form, the opening scene of Mark’s gospel provides interpretive direction by not only outlining the themes and structure of the text, but also by providing information outright to the reader that is denied to the characters in the play, who persistently fail to comprehend the teaching, actions, and identity of Jesus through the final scenes. “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (1:1) identifies Jesus at the start as an anointed one, the Messiah who fulfills Jewish eschatological expectations as the “Son of God,” an ancient epithet given to those persons who act as the agent of God’s will on earth, not necessarily limited to any single person and better translated as “Man of God.” It is only the beginning, as will be shown, because the reader is invited to carry on from the end of the text to complete the gospel; it is also an ironic opening, considering that the text concludes with an ambiguous denial of the fulfillment it promises. The opening line also parallels the first line of Genesis (“In the beginning when God created…”), and the appearance of John the baptizer at the River Jordan not only implies a new exodus but also a new creation. Before his arrival, though, is a quotation “As it is written in the prophet Isaiah” (1:2) that actually references three sources (Exodus 23:20-21, Malachi 3:1-2, Isaiah 40) and helps the intertextual reader in framing the narrative: in Jesus, the Spirit sends a messenger as a comfort and guide to a lost and wayward people who may reconcile with God by attention and obedience to a new testament.
In this way, John the baptizer represents the Father by offering a purification ritual associated with God’s new covenant; aside from the obvious wilderness parallels in Exodus, his clothing and diet also suggest the harmony of opposites and rebirth. His camel’s hair clothing calls to mind the awkward animal used for desert crossings; his leather belt suggests the gradual process of awakening and rebirth symbolically associated with cattle. Analogous to the tree of knowledge of joy and suffering and the tree of life, he eats locusts, a destructive scourge, and also honey, which sweetly nourishes. By immersing the people of the Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem in the renewing waters of the river, the text’s theme of the fluidity of form is introduced. When Jesus, a disciple of John, emerges from the water, the heavens tear apart, which invokes both God’s original creative acts through separation, but also the conclusion of the text and tearing of the veil that hides God from the people (15:38). The Spirit descends upon Jesus like a dove, a symbol of peace and renewal. This indicates a divine descent, which in Vedic thought is a periodic appearance of the Creator in creation so that man may enjoy a golden age after the avatar of God destroys thieves and cleanses minds of impurity.
Following the archetypal hero model, Jesus is estranged from typical family patterns. His kin is identified in 6:3 and his mother is present at the crucifixion in 15:40, but after his baptism in 1:9, Jesus is adopted as the Beloved Son in 1:11 by a voice from heaven, presumably the transcendent active creative pattern typically identified as the Father, or Lord of Creation. But since “the tendency has always been to endow the hero with extraordinary powers from the moment of birth, or even conception,” when the story is retold in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, an auspicious virgin birth is added to better fit the audience expectations and classic archetypal hero model of a miraculous beginning (Campbell 319). As it stands in Mark, Jesus as the Beloved Son parallels Genesis 22:2, when God tests Abraham by demanding he sacrifice his only son Isaac; unlike Isaac, Jesus does not escape suffering and slaughter, which is poetically previewed in 1:12-13 as 40 days of temptation in the wilderness by Satan, the Adversarial Son of God. Again, the accounts in the gospels of Matthew and Luke expand this reference, failing to see its function as previewing the archetypal quest pattern of separation-initiation-return and setting up the narrative of Mark’s gospel as a whole for the audience: Jesus is isolated in a series of controversies, rejected and executed, then risen as a sign to inspire man (1:15).
BIRTH, CHILDHOOD, AND THE MISSING YEARS
Zechariah was a priest of advanced age and no children. During a rare offering of incense in the Temple sanctuary, he was shocked into prolonged silence by a visitation from the angel Gabriel, who promised a son named John to herald the Messiah. Six months later, Gabriel appeared to Zechariah’s cousin by marriage, a virgin named Mary engaged to the carpenter Joseph, and the angel promised that an immaculate conception would produce the son of God and heir to the throne of David. When Joseph found her pregnant, he feared disgrace and planned to break the engagement; he was comforted by an angel during a dream and promised that the child would redeem Israel.
In those days, Rome decreed a census, and while all the people were busy registering, Mary hid in a barn and gave birth to a boy. Shepherds, inspired by angelic visions, gathered round her and praised the child. Babylonian wise men notified Herod that the astral aspects indicated the birth of the Messiah; this alarmed Herod, who called his chief priests and scribes to council in secret and asked the astrologers to search for the child. They followed a star to the place of the child’s birth and offered gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrhh. They were warned in a dream not to return to Herod. During the baby’s circumcision at the Temple in Jerusalem, a devout man named Simeon approached and predicted, “This child will divide Israel, and reveal the inner thoughts of many.” Joseph had another angelic dream vision that warned him that Herod would try to kill the boy, so he took counsel and fled with his family to Egypt. When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the Babylonian wise men, he was outraged and ordered all boys under the age of two to be killed, a parallel of the Pharaoh’s decree in the book of Exodus but an event with no historical evidence. Hidden in a foreign land, Jesus survived the massacre of the innocents. After the death of Herod, Joseph had a third angelic dream visitation telling him it was safe to return to Israel.
According to “The Infancy Gospel of Thomas”, Jesus speaks at birth, and like other five year-olds, he is often maliciously clever and mischievous. For instance, when Jesus is playing near a stream on the Sabbath, he fashions twelve clay birds in the sand. Other parents complain about his profaning the Sabbath, and when Jesus is reprimanded by his dad, the boy claps his hands and cries so that the birds come to life and fly away. Another tale describes when Jesus is bumped by another lad running through the village. Jesus says “You shall not go further on your way,” and the boy instantly collapses and dies. When the parents complain, Jesus blinds those who accuse him. Joseph and Mary lock Jesus in his room so he doesn’t cause further trouble, but when a village boy falls from the roof and dies, the village parents quickly blame Jesus, who raises him to life. Next, he heals a boy who accidentally split his foot with an ax. What these tales suggest is a child blessed with extraordinary powers who is all too human and unaware of his divine antecedents. Thus, Jesus has humanly characteristics that he transcends to become a Man of God and thus serves as a lesson for our potential, but the early church was careful not to allow Jesus to appear too human and emphasized an otherworldly and pure nature. Plus, it sets a bad example when Jesus, annoyed by an incompetent teacher, curses and strikes him for failing to correctly explain the origins of the letters. Obviously, the ecclesiastical hierarchy and pious devotees could not accept such behavior in their hero.
This revelation would especially illumine the first five verses of the Gospel according to John, which is so poorly translated in English so as to be meaningless. The English text famously says, “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.” Aside from being a run-on sentence, this also translates two Greek words “theon” and “theos” with the same English word. A better translation, in light of the Greeks idolizing the Brahmins of India and considering the missing years of Jesus, would read:
In nature is a pattern, and this pattern was before the satirical poet, and Brahman is the pattern. This was in nature before the satirical poet. Everybody through Brahman exists, and nobody exists without Brahman. In Brahman is life, and the Light of Brahman is the life of the anthropod. And the Light in the darkness shines, though the darkness does not know it.Though Brahman is an unfamiliar term to most Christians, its most direct equivalent is Spirit. Brahman is creative, conscious existence. It is infinite, undivided, and unchanging, though it seems divided, changing, and finite in appearance. The secret of Creation is that all things have their origin and end as Spirit, or Brahman. The repeating pattern of separation and reconciliation with Spirit is bridged by an avatar, or a mask of God. The avatar is not God, yet plays Creator like a mock king in the image of God; this is a comedic role, not to be taken seriously, except as it reveals Truth.
IRONY
AND AWE (1:16-2:12)
If we accept Northrup Frye’s literary classification of the Bible as comedy, then we cannot ignore the text’s irony, a technique of advancing a multiplicity of meaning, usually hidden beyond the obvious meaning, in as few words as possible (Frye 40). Applying the classification to the opening scene of Mark, the Creator enters creation in a most absurd virgin birth tended by a deviant midwife clad in animal skin who eats insects. Liminal continuity is not certain: measurement of time in Mark’s gospel is consistently recorded in days, which suggests the 40 days of temptation by Satan in the wilderness begins in Galilee when Jesus calls his disciple Simon Peter, whom he rebukes in 8:33 as Satan, and ends in abandonment and death six weeks later in Jerusalem for slander and treason. Surely then this explains Simon Peter’s fisherman’s net, a symbol of a twisted trap. But fish too are a symbol of wisdom hidden in the depths of the ocean, itself a symbol of undifferentiated formlessness representing the transcendent unity beyond visible creation. Later, disciples mend their nets (1:19), and by catching wisdom from the chaos, offer spiritual nourishment: “Follow me and I will make you fish for people” (1:17) which can be read either as their role as apostles, or as nourishment—food for people as an example to examine. Jesus and the disciples embody the relationship between God and Israel (the people) in the Hebrew Bible and offers insight into the nature of man and the nature of the Creation. While incarnated in the form of Jesus, leading another wilderness crossing and renewal of a vicious society, “the angels waited on him” (1:13).
The teaching and exorcism in the synagogue (1:21) and the healing (1:30) set the structures followed throughout Mark’s gospel: a sandwiching technique, whereby the links between teaching, exorcism, healing and other parallels provide the key for overall interpretation (Barton 890). In 1:25, when Jesus silences the demon with his words like fists, he commits his first unruly act: he works on the Sabbath. When he heals Simon Peter’s mother-in-law, aside from another transgression of the Sabbath, the action establishes the structure for all healing scenes in Mark’s gospel: illness (in bed with a fever), request (the disciples appeal to him in unison), healing (takes her by the hands and lifts her up), cure (fever leaves her), and demonstration of wellness (she serves them). Meanwhile, the whole city gathers ’round the scene at sunset (1:32); Jesus heals the sick until morning (1:35), when he retreats for brief solitude and private worship. “Everyone is searching for you” says Simon Peter (1:37), and in his reply, Jesus reconciles all people, not only the Hebrews, as God’s people: “Let us go out to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim my message there also; for that is what I came out to do” (1:38). Simon Peter later founded the church that absorbed and extended its mother religion and distorted the teaching of Jesus in a visibly corrupt institution akin to a leper (1:40).
Aware that his teacher John the baptizer was arrested (1:14) and his own popularity now endangered his ministry, Jesus “stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter” (1:45). When reports circulated that he was home, the crowd tore apart his house to hear his word, and four men requested he heal a paralytic, a man numb and unable to move due to poison and injury (2:3). Pleased by the show of faith, he heals the man, scolds the Temple scribes for their inadequate attitude, and by referring to himself as the Son of Man, introduces his overarching purpose in Mark’s gospel: the harmony of opposites through suffering and vindication.
SUBVERSIVE
TEACHING (2:13-4:34)
Jesus shocks the Temple scribes and Pharisees when he shares table fellowship with a tax collector, among other sinners (2:15). Sharing a meal equalizes social status, and among the Jewish population, the unclean tax collector was one of their lowliest own working in evil collusion with Rome. His curt reply, “I have come to call not the righteous but the sinners” implies the loyal servants of the Empire questioning him ought to join him too (2:17). In 2:18, Jesus openly deviates from John’s teaching, challenges authority, and foresees the consequences: he predicts the bridegroom who nourishes the wedding guests in the time of fulfillment will be taken from them—foreshadowing the cross and calling to mind the fish, and later the bread, that nourishes. In a parallel to the imagery of the Last Supper of 14:22, he adds that the wine of suffering does not share the same flask as the wine of initiation, knowledge, joy, and immortality—in the same way a patch is of no purpose on a frayed fabric. While harvesting grain, Jesus defends breaking the Sabbath law with a mocking reminder to the Pharisees that King David and his companions violated ritual prescription by eating the bread of Yahweh, a dangerous public association between a peasant preacher and the Messianic bloodline (2:23). The questioner of authority finally clashes with authority at the synagogue, an extension of the Temple akin to a withered hand, and frightened by the disturbance, the Pharisees conspire with the Herodians to murder him (3:1). The crowds shout, “You are the Son of God” (3:11), but Jesus retreats to a mountain, not only a place of safety but also symbolic of transcendent ascension and a parallel to Mount Sinai in the Hebrew Bible. When he returns home, his family doubts his sanity and the scribes taunt him into talk about binding Satan and the unification of division (3:20). More and more isolated from his family and townsmen, he defends the Spirit and calls kin any who surrender to God.
Jesus next teaches the crowd principles of existence—the mysteries of the kingdom of God—with a series of related garden metaphors. The first admits a quality of gradation in creation, the expression of Spirit in degree depending on the time, place, and character of a situation (4:1). The second, quoting Isaiah 6, suggests many will not believe the fulfillment now manifested, and the holy seed for most becomes nothing more than a stump to be burned (4:12). He suggests that, in general, man’s nature is all branches, no roots—like tumbleweed—or sown upon infertile soil (4:13). Following various sayings regarding secrecy and candor, and declaring human attitudes as ruler of the constriction or flow of Spirit, he compares the judgment of end days to the cyclical harvest of a wheat field, extending the bread and nourishment motif. He suggests the mustard seed is most like the kingdom of God in the way that a point manifests a range of possibilities the further it extends from the center to the circumference (4:30).
THE SERMON ON THE
MOUNT
·
Blessed are the poor, the hungry, the mourning,
and the exiled.
·
Blessed are the meek, the merciful, the sincere,
and the peacemakers.
·
Woe to the rich, the proud, the thrilled, and
the flatterers.
·
Do to others as you would have them do to you.
·
Love your enemies and people who hate you.
·
Reconcile with your enemies; seek no revenge.
·
Do good to those who curse you.
·
Persevere and be more virtuous than scribes and
priests.
·
Show mercy: don’t be a scoffer or a bigot.
·
Be loyal; give no false witness.
·
Make no promises, but do as you say.
·
Do not worry about food, drink, clothing, or the
trouble of tomorrow.
·
Give to beggars, borrowers, and thieves. Do not
seek return of what is stolen.
·
Lend with no expectation of return. Do not
horde.
·
Do not make a show of your generosity or your
religion.
·
Pray simply in secret. Fast without complaint.
·
Protect wisdom from abuse; show no folly in your
words and actions.
·
Beware false prophets.
The traditional definition of a prophet is an inspired
interpreter of the will of Spirit. The warning to beware false prophets needs
some qualification, especially since later Christianity has great fear of the
enemies of the Christ. There is no mention of an Antichrist in any of the four
gospels; the popular idea is a conflation of Satan, the adversary and
prosecutor in the divine council of the Most High, and Lucifer, an enlightened
Babylonian king and slaveholder associated with Venus. The original term was an
insult by early Christian devotees against anybody who denied Jesus as a Man of
God. Though not explicitly referring to the Antichrist, 2 Thessalonians 2
describes a “Man of Lawlessness,” which means anybody who rejects the Five
Books of Moses; it also mentions a “Son of Perdition,” a hyperbolic description
of ignorant confusion that does not know Spirit as the Life of all Creation.
The text can be summarized as thus:
In the end
times after the rejection of corrupt religion, the breath of God enters the mouths
of sinners and the mysteries are revealed. God approved a powerful delusion so
that belief in the deception would revive the dead, the poor in spirit. The Man
of Sin is separate no longer when exalted in the knowledge of Spirit as the
essence of his being and unity of existence. The inspired Man of Sin destroys
irreligion by love and Truth as a redeemed Man of God.
The second reference to the Antichrist is in the book of
Revelation: a false prophet assembles the whole world for battle, and the Christ
returns like a thief in the night to make war with a sword that comes from his
mouth. Those expecting him to “walk in
the clouds” should know that in Greek, the phrase is a hemp joke. In an
apocalyptic caution, Jesus warns that he will cause division in the world until
the days when an idol is erected in the Temple, and the disciples must be as
wise as serpents yet innocent as doves.
RENEWAL
AND REJECTION (4:35-6:29)
Embarking in a boat “across to the other side,” a great windstorm arises that swamps the boat (4:35). Aside from the storm tossing parallels with Noah’s Ark—a story of renewal and a new covenant in the Hebrew Bible—the boat imagery suggests a ritual voyage to cure sickness and explore the unconscious, a haunted otherworld of the dead. Like Yahweh in his attempts to rescue an anxious and lost people in the Old Testament, Jesus stills the wind and sea, calms the chaos, another parallel with Genesis and suggestive of his inheritance of powers that once belonged to Yahweh. The boat is saved from sinking. On the other side, Jesus exorcises the demon called Legion—5,000 Roman soldiers—from a man living in bondage among the tombs. Returning to the theme of fluidity of form, Jesus commands the unclean spirits to enter swine, a beast raised only outside Israel and a symbol of gluttony, greed, and ignorance. Then, suggesting the deliverance of the Hebrew people from bondage and the sinking of the Pharaoh’s army in the parted sea of Exodus 15:4, Jesus commands the swine to charge down the hill and drown in the sea. But rather than celebrate their newfound liberty, “[t]he people were apprehensive that Jesus had disrupted their delicately balanced adjustment to the alien possession” (Coogan 65) and beg Jesus to leave their neighborhood (5:17), an escalation of his isolation and rejection. Rather than accept the cured man as his companion, Jesus commands him to spread the good news among Hellenistic Gentiles (5:20).
When Jesus returns across the sea, a leader of the synagogue requests a healing for his daughter, an Eve antitype whose twelve years of hemorrhaging ceases when she touches Jesus’ cloak. When Jesus calls the crowd to account, even though she is afraid, she admits her act of free will, shows faith, and wins healing. In a parallel revival of a marriage-ready twelve year-old girl from death by the power of the word, Jesus not only foreshadows the resurrection but also suggests a rebirth of Israel—the people of God expanded now to include Gentiles and Jews free from their military overlords. But before revival is rejection, and when Jesus returns to his hometown, many are offended and show widespread unbelief (6:1). Facing a hostile and doubtful context, Jesus performs no miracles (6:5). Instead, he resumes traveling and sends forth disciples to heal and anoint others (6:13). He insists on austerity in their mission, and in Matthew’s gospel, he directs them to work without compensation and dwell with the virtuous.
“King Herod [the younger] heard of it, for Jesus’ name had become known” (6:14). Jesus is fully aware that the messianic fervor, his clashes with local rulers, and his association with John the baptizer curse him and demands confrontation. “From obscurity the hero emerges, but the enemy is the great and conspicuous seat of power” (Campbell 337). The king is damned in the eyes of the hero as the man who misuses the seat of power and “directs or manages a social order from which the hero is self-excluded or which he follows only on his own terms” (Miller 181). By cutting away from Jesus to a scene that looks back in time, the narrative again raises the identity theme and questions of the mystery hidden behind the name and fluidity of form. Herod, whose chef’s wife was among the crowd of devotees, surmises that Jesus shares the Spirit of John the baptizer, which damns Jesus to the same fate, shown in flashback: at a party honoring the governor’s own vanity, Herod, eager to please his daughter (Jerusalem) beheads John the baptizer (Jesus) as a wish fulfillment for his wife (Rome, who does not accept any challenges to her supreme position). The scene, while not entirely factually correct, is not without wicked cannibal humor: in presenting John’s head on a platter, the text suggests by association that the death of Jesus—who learned and spread the word of the Father as a Beloved Son and an apprentice to John—is an offering for corrupt people (6:28), calling to mind fish and loaves as nourishment for people. The disciples place the headless corpse in a tomb (6:29-30).
FEEDING
THE PEOPLE (6:30-8:21)
In a parallel structure, both within the sequence of feeding the Jews (6:35) and feeding the Gentiles (8:1), and beyond to the Last Supper (14:22), Jesus mirrors the wilderness feeding of Israel by Moses in Exodus 16:13 and Elisha in 2 Kings 4:42 by offering a feast of fish (wisdom for the mind) and a total of twelve loaves of bread (harvested grain risen by yeast—the Spirit of God, the transcendent active creative force). After the miraculous exponential multiplication of nourishment at the first feeding, Jesus departs to the mountain, and the disciples, mirroring the suffering of lost and wayward people, row their boat against an adverse wind and strain without their captain (6:47). In walking on the water, Jesus passes across the water, like the wind of God passing over the water in the Genesis creation story, suggesting a renewal of creation. He nearly passes them, which suggests the Passover when Yahweh freed Israel from bondage in Egypt, but also the Gospel of Thomas, which advises, among the sayings said to bestow eternal life, to “become passers-by” (Cameron 30). They are terrified, so Jesus joins them in their boat and calms the chaotic wind. He declares, “Take heart, ego eimi (“I AM” – Greek); do not be afraid” (6:50). Their doubt and confusion escalates across the sequence.
Between the parallel feeding scenes, the Pharisees and scribes from Jerusalem are investigating the popular peasant preacher and miracle worker, and demand to know why his disciples do not follow tradition, which for Jesus is akin to washing cups and vessels without consideration of the purity of the contents ingested (7:1). Jesus first quotes Isaiah 29, a prophecy concerning the siege and renewal of Israel then sarcastically accuses the Pharisees of insincerely abiding by human custom learned by rote rather than a concern for authentic spiritual nourishment and guarding against social destruction (7:9). Using toilet humor, he accuses them of corrupting the proper honor of God and of neighbor by supporting a fraudulent Temple (7:19).
Then in a parallel to the healing of the dead Jewish daughter in 5:35, Jesus attempts to escape attention by hiding in the home of a Greek Gentile, a woman who acts as a model of courage and faith (7:28). After insulting her and accepting her brave rebuke, Jesus heals her possessed daughter with an acknowledgement that they share the same God in the transcendent unity beyond obvious manifest appearances (7:29). Next, he baptizes the deaf mute of Hellenic origin with spit—mirroring the earlier verbal insult—and by the power of the word, heals the corruption (7:34). Aware of the controversy of Hellenic philosophy in Jewish circles, especially the low opinion of Sadducees toward Greek teaching methods, Jesus orders secrecy, but his eager followers openly declare his embrace (7:16). Jesus accepts the gathered crowd of Gentiles and oversees a smaller feast for those who traveled a great distance and remained loyal (8:2).
Mirroring the disciples’ doubt, the Pharisees test him by asking for a sign; Jesus refuses to produce a miracle, impossible except in selfless service and a context of faith. He sails away with the disciples and cautions them against mixing the grain of the harvest with corrupt yeast—the spirit of the Pharisees and Temple scribes (7:15). The disciples bemoan a lack of bread, starving even in the presence of that one loaf in the boat with them, the bridegroom who nourishes the wedding guests (7:14). Moreover, Jesus questions them on the miracles he does produce—showing the text’s theme of harmonizing opposites and unifying division; they fail to comprehend the association of the twelve loaves for Israel and its relation to the fulfillment of the solar cycle, and for the Gentiles, seven—the number of cyclical renewal, the lunar phases and progression of enlightenment and wholeness through perpetual renewal in its season, the seven-year release of debt (Fig. 3), the seven-branched candlestick in the House of Yahweh, the seventh day of rest as a crowning achievement and time for contemplation, and initiation—the crossing from the known to the unknown.
JOURNEY
TO JERUSALEM (8:22-10:52)
“One had
better not challenge the watcher of the established bounds. And yet—it
is only by advancing those bounds, provoking the destructive other
aspect of the same power, that the individual passes, either alive or in
death, into a new zone of experience” (Campbell 82). The extended
sequence of initiation sandwiched between two scenes of healing the
blind frames the meaning of discipleship and suggests a gradual
awakening to eternal life as the principles of existence are mastered.
Jesus performs another baptism of spittle upon a blind man led out of
the village of Bethsaida, “house of the fisherman.” First seeing people
as walking trees, then seeing clearly after a second healing (8:24), the
possible meanings are multiple: the blind man may be the disciples’
progression toward enlightenment as they journey to Jerusalem. The blind
man is Israel on another exodus from bondage in Egypt; the blind man is
the Temple, corrupted by the chief priests and the Roman overlords.
Confrontation is inevitable: “The hero is devoted to combat and
confrontation: he must be prepared to seek out, or at least never avoid,
those aspects of the quest involving ‘blocking’ strategies, threats and
finally violence” (Miller 163). Jesus journeys to Jerusalem at his
peril.
The theme of identity and the fluidity of form rises again, when Jesus inquires of his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” (8:27). Some suggest he is a reincarnation of John the baptizer or Elijah, in a mirror of Herod’s questioning in 6:14; others say he is a new prophet, an inspired interpreter of the will of God (8:28). Simon Peter declares Jesus the Messiah—the Jewish king who fulfills God’s utopian promises: a warrior of the Davidic bloodline; a judge of the earth; and a priest with authoritative interpretation of scripture who ends the existing world order and introduces a time of peace in which all live in honor of the Spirit of God, the transcendent unity and power in and beyond the obvious manifested and differentiated illusion. Acknowledging duality as the nature of the cross, Jesus says the Son of Man must undergo suffering, rejection, and persecution before vindication as the Son of God. Simon Peter, who first calls him Christ, now tempts Jesus to abandon the call, and Jesus silences him, “Get behind me, Satan!” (8:32).
Jesus foreshadows his death and vindication by reference to the cross—in geometrical terms, a center point that transverses the four directions of the compass, soars upwards to a zenith and dives below to an abyss. The cross creates a totality: by it, God and man are conjoined; time—a continuous and invariable succession of instants—and space are intermingled. By the cross, man climbs to atonement with God, and by the cross, man learns images of the center and of the circumference are linked in symbolic dynamism and differ only by the angle of observation. Because of the inherent oppositional nature of the cross, creation is imperfect—giving rise to confusion, conflict, and the seasonal need for purifying and renewal; the cross necessarily creates suffering, as shown by the isolation, rejection, and death of Jesus, who teaches man to seek authentic spiritual nourishment and guard against social destruction. As his devotee, the reward of initiation is awakening to eternal life (9:1). Jesus is a correlative of the active creative principle, the Lord of Creation, as explicitly shown in the mountaintop transfiguration, when Jesus, accompanied by Peter, James and John, is purified and divided into 1) Moses, the lawgiver and guide of God’s people through the wilderness atonement, 2) Elijah, the supreme teacher whose apprentice Elisha—meaning salvation—inherited 2/3 of his spirit, and 3) the storm god Yahweh present as the overshadowing cloud, the Lord of Creation—another virgin birth scene showing the text’s fluidity of form and identity themes when all three collapse into a single coterminous being, Jesus, “my Son, the Beloved, listen to him!” (9:7).
Coming down from the mountaintop, the disciples are afraid and doubt; they inquire on doctrine, to which Jesus mockingly asserts, “Elijah has come, and they did to him whatever they pleased, as it was written about him” (9:13), linking John the baptizer to Elijah, and by association, linking Jesus to Elisha, the man of wisdom and miracle worker. The healing story that follows in 9:14-28 is a call to awe, absolute trust, and dependence on God, but also displays more of Mark’s humor in a vision of Jesus purifying his inheritance: a father, with the simple prayer of “I believe; help my unbelief!” (9:24) asks Jesus to heal his boy of disturbing, fitful losses of consciousness since childhood that remain even after the demon submerged him in water and burned him; Jesus, full of Yahweh’s wrath, chastises the crowd then commands the demon to depart “and never enter him again!” (9:25). When the demon is exorcised, the boy is a corpse until Jesus raises him by the power of faith. Mirroring the scene, Jesus passes through Galilee predicting his betrayal into human hands, his execution, and his resurrection. Mark narrates, “they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him” but that is another example of Mark’s irony (9:32). Jesus asks, “What were you arguing about on the way?” (9:33). They are too ashamed to admit “they had argued with one another about who was the greatest” and ignored most of his teaching (9:34).
Jesus outlines the proper attitude of a devotee; he advocates service to and honor of the Spirit of God with the vulnerability and surrender of a child, the lowest rank in ancient society (9:35). His line, “whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me” (9:37) echoes the teaching of Krishna in Hindu mythopoeia—Brahminic religion based on the reconciliation of all paths to God: “In any way that men love me, in that same way they find my love: for many are the paths of men, but they all in the end come to me” (Mascaró 23). Jesus cautions against sectarian bigotry (9:38) and assures that all sincere effort is rewarded (9:41). For those who distract and block devotees, Jesus warns “it would be better for you if a great millstone [used for grinding grain] were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea” (9:42), calling to mind the harvest of the wheat field, the miraculous bread, the first teachings of the kingdom of God by garden metaphor, and the imagery of the various boat voyages. Water purifies desire, an unquenchable flame that also, paradoxically, transforms and awakens. With an allusion to the holy seed of immortality for most becoming nothing more than a stump to be burned (4:12), Jesus teaches that man must reject whatever frustrates the duty to honor God as the living, immortal, eternal, infinite transcendent unity and power in and beyond obvious manifested and differentiated illusion—God’s play (9:43) in which man, like the Author, is not merely audience but player and writer too.
The necessary season of suffering and trial is a progression of awakening, an initiation that renews and rewards so far as man’s attitude rules the constriction and flow of Spirit, (9:48). Since the worm, the serpent coil of desire and ignorance, burns eternally, peace is in sincere duty as a guard against social destruction (9:50). By substituting salt for faith, Jesus raises the theme of harmony of opposites and unification of division but with a caution against vanity by a subtle reference to the last chapter of Isaiah, a homecoming, vindication, and judgment by fire. Salt, according to Jung, is a lunar symbol representing the bitterness of wisdom gained through harmonizing opposites into wholeness, and suggests danger lies in a shadow denied, repressed, and twisted by blindly staring at the sun. Shadow and reflection is a part of the light too, so long as there is light.
On a journey across the river, a symbol of fluidity of form, fertility, death, renewal and the transcendence of obstacles (10:1), the Pharisees question Jesus on marriage customs, and Jesus mocks their wrongheaded vanity; Jesus teaches that marriage is like the link between heaven and earth, a lifelong reciprocal interdependence, in which neither command, exploit, or approach the other as property to trash (10:2). His second reference to receiving the kingdom of God as a child is not an invitation to infantile solipsism: instead it is call to surrender and duty as an agent of spiritual nourishment (9:18) and guard against social destruction, quoting Mosaic law in a way that further suggests a new exodus wilderness initiation and crossing to a new creation rejected only by the rich man—the fraudulent authorities of Rome and the Temple (this scribe’s composite rewording):
The theme of identity and the fluidity of form rises again, when Jesus inquires of his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” (8:27). Some suggest he is a reincarnation of John the baptizer or Elijah, in a mirror of Herod’s questioning in 6:14; others say he is a new prophet, an inspired interpreter of the will of God (8:28). Simon Peter declares Jesus the Messiah—the Jewish king who fulfills God’s utopian promises: a warrior of the Davidic bloodline; a judge of the earth; and a priest with authoritative interpretation of scripture who ends the existing world order and introduces a time of peace in which all live in honor of the Spirit of God, the transcendent unity and power in and beyond the obvious manifested and differentiated illusion. Acknowledging duality as the nature of the cross, Jesus says the Son of Man must undergo suffering, rejection, and persecution before vindication as the Son of God. Simon Peter, who first calls him Christ, now tempts Jesus to abandon the call, and Jesus silences him, “Get behind me, Satan!” (8:32).
Jesus foreshadows his death and vindication by reference to the cross—in geometrical terms, a center point that transverses the four directions of the compass, soars upwards to a zenith and dives below to an abyss. The cross creates a totality: by it, God and man are conjoined; time—a continuous and invariable succession of instants—and space are intermingled. By the cross, man climbs to atonement with God, and by the cross, man learns images of the center and of the circumference are linked in symbolic dynamism and differ only by the angle of observation. Because of the inherent oppositional nature of the cross, creation is imperfect—giving rise to confusion, conflict, and the seasonal need for purifying and renewal; the cross necessarily creates suffering, as shown by the isolation, rejection, and death of Jesus, who teaches man to seek authentic spiritual nourishment and guard against social destruction. As his devotee, the reward of initiation is awakening to eternal life (9:1). Jesus is a correlative of the active creative principle, the Lord of Creation, as explicitly shown in the mountaintop transfiguration, when Jesus, accompanied by Peter, James and John, is purified and divided into 1) Moses, the lawgiver and guide of God’s people through the wilderness atonement, 2) Elijah, the supreme teacher whose apprentice Elisha—meaning salvation—inherited 2/3 of his spirit, and 3) the storm god Yahweh present as the overshadowing cloud, the Lord of Creation—another virgin birth scene showing the text’s fluidity of form and identity themes when all three collapse into a single coterminous being, Jesus, “my Son, the Beloved, listen to him!” (9:7).
Coming down from the mountaintop, the disciples are afraid and doubt; they inquire on doctrine, to which Jesus mockingly asserts, “Elijah has come, and they did to him whatever they pleased, as it was written about him” (9:13), linking John the baptizer to Elijah, and by association, linking Jesus to Elisha, the man of wisdom and miracle worker. The healing story that follows in 9:14-28 is a call to awe, absolute trust, and dependence on God, but also displays more of Mark’s humor in a vision of Jesus purifying his inheritance: a father, with the simple prayer of “I believe; help my unbelief!” (9:24) asks Jesus to heal his boy of disturbing, fitful losses of consciousness since childhood that remain even after the demon submerged him in water and burned him; Jesus, full of Yahweh’s wrath, chastises the crowd then commands the demon to depart “and never enter him again!” (9:25). When the demon is exorcised, the boy is a corpse until Jesus raises him by the power of faith. Mirroring the scene, Jesus passes through Galilee predicting his betrayal into human hands, his execution, and his resurrection. Mark narrates, “they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him” but that is another example of Mark’s irony (9:32). Jesus asks, “What were you arguing about on the way?” (9:33). They are too ashamed to admit “they had argued with one another about who was the greatest” and ignored most of his teaching (9:34).
Jesus outlines the proper attitude of a devotee; he advocates service to and honor of the Spirit of God with the vulnerability and surrender of a child, the lowest rank in ancient society (9:35). His line, “whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me” (9:37) echoes the teaching of Krishna in Hindu mythopoeia—Brahminic religion based on the reconciliation of all paths to God: “In any way that men love me, in that same way they find my love: for many are the paths of men, but they all in the end come to me” (Mascaró 23). Jesus cautions against sectarian bigotry (9:38) and assures that all sincere effort is rewarded (9:41). For those who distract and block devotees, Jesus warns “it would be better for you if a great millstone [used for grinding grain] were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea” (9:42), calling to mind the harvest of the wheat field, the miraculous bread, the first teachings of the kingdom of God by garden metaphor, and the imagery of the various boat voyages. Water purifies desire, an unquenchable flame that also, paradoxically, transforms and awakens. With an allusion to the holy seed of immortality for most becoming nothing more than a stump to be burned (4:12), Jesus teaches that man must reject whatever frustrates the duty to honor God as the living, immortal, eternal, infinite transcendent unity and power in and beyond obvious manifested and differentiated illusion—God’s play (9:43) in which man, like the Author, is not merely audience but player and writer too.
The necessary season of suffering and trial is a progression of awakening, an initiation that renews and rewards so far as man’s attitude rules the constriction and flow of Spirit, (9:48). Since the worm, the serpent coil of desire and ignorance, burns eternally, peace is in sincere duty as a guard against social destruction (9:50). By substituting salt for faith, Jesus raises the theme of harmony of opposites and unification of division but with a caution against vanity by a subtle reference to the last chapter of Isaiah, a homecoming, vindication, and judgment by fire. Salt, according to Jung, is a lunar symbol representing the bitterness of wisdom gained through harmonizing opposites into wholeness, and suggests danger lies in a shadow denied, repressed, and twisted by blindly staring at the sun. Shadow and reflection is a part of the light too, so long as there is light.
On a journey across the river, a symbol of fluidity of form, fertility, death, renewal and the transcendence of obstacles (10:1), the Pharisees question Jesus on marriage customs, and Jesus mocks their wrongheaded vanity; Jesus teaches that marriage is like the link between heaven and earth, a lifelong reciprocal interdependence, in which neither command, exploit, or approach the other as property to trash (10:2). His second reference to receiving the kingdom of God as a child is not an invitation to infantile solipsism: instead it is call to surrender and duty as an agent of spiritual nourishment (9:18) and guard against social destruction, quoting Mosaic law in a way that further suggests a new exodus wilderness initiation and crossing to a new creation rejected only by the rich man—the fraudulent authorities of Rome and the Temple (this scribe’s composite rewording):
• Do not profane your free will.
• Honor
your mother and father.
• Honor
your spouse and children.
• Do not murder.
• Do not
cheat.
• Do not
bear false witness.
• Honor
appropriate limits.
The disciples, rather than considering the steep challenge of entering the kingdom of God through a seasoning of fire, show man’s inherent weakness for glamour as they debate and lust for anticipated positions of rank in the kingdom of God. Echoing the earlier prediction of death, Jesus explicitly foreshadows his condemnation, execution, and resurrection (9:12), and parallel to the disciples’ contest of superiority in 9:34, Jesus responds to their request “to do for us whatever we ask of you,” (10:35) by offering himself as scapegoat for the Jerusalem tyrants and Roman overlords, and thus, becoming a memorable teacher to others to guard against social destruction (10:45).
Finally, the pilgrims arrive in Jericho, the city of palm trees and moon, the oldest city in the world visited by Elijah and Elisha in their conquest of the Promised Land. Reflecting the healing scene that began the initiation journey in 8:22, a blind man calls Jesus the Son of David, heralding the king’s return, and asks Jesus to restore his vision. Jesus says “Go; your faith has made you well” (10:52) before traveling on to Jerusalem and rejecting the first blind man’s grave warning, “Do not go into the village” (8:26).
CORONATION
IN JERUSALEM (11:1-12:44)
Fearful of mob action by his delighted and spellbound crowd during the Passover festival, especially after Jesus effectively and ironically dismisses a confrontational inquiry of the source of his power (11:33), the fraudulent Temple authorities escalate their plans to kill him (11:18) while Jesus teaches submission to God, mutual trust, and honor (11:21-25). He completes the garden metaphors by comparing Israel to a vineyard (12:1), a garden for immortality and wisdom with clear boundaries, oversight, and tools for harvest. The landlord sends a sequence of servants, who are turned away, insulted, beaten, and killed; finally, he sends his beloved son to collect a share of the harvest, but foreshadowing the crucifixion, the tenants seize and kill the son. “What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others” (12:9).
When Jesus suggests his teaching will replace the Temple establishment, they set a trap in collusion with the Herodians. In perfect sophist form, the Pharisees first flatter his authenticity then ask whether it is lawful to pay tribute to the Roman overlords (12:14). Jesus stalls by asking for a coin; the hypocritical Pharisees know it is not lawful, but if he says as much, he is admitting rebellion against Rome and inviting sure death. “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (KJV 12:17). A true master of deliciously ambiguous irony, below an apparent show of respect to the Emperor, Jesus also hides the precedence of God over Empire and a rejection of tribute to Rome. Next, the Sadducees emerge to question him on a convoluted property rights and inheritance issue (12:18); Jesus draws attention back to proper contemplation (12:26) by naming three crucial laws (12:29) to Temple scribes broken by ostentation “and for the sake of appearance long prayers” (12:38), exploitation (12:41), rote ritual sacrifice and burnt offerings (this scribe’s contemporary rewording):
• God is the infinite, undivided,
unchanging Spirit in differentiated appearances.
• Honor God with your whole
being.
• Honor your neighbor.
Winning the silence of the Temple scribes, Jesus quotes Psalm 110, a coronation song for a priestly king that alludes to the ancient royal order of Melchizedek, the king of righteousness (loyalty to social commitments and duties) in ancient Jerusalem who worshiped the Canaanite god El – God Most High, and in Genesis 14:19, blesses Abram and receives his share of the inheritance in the King’s Valley at a feast of bread and wine as the Lord of creation establishes his everlasting testament.
THE MOCK
KING (13:1-15:47)
Mark 13 follows the typical structure of an apocalyptic testament, an eschatological prophecy that informs present struggles with a call to vigilance through the destruction, personal suffering, and general corruption of the last days, when Roman overlords occupy and destroy the Temple, a political conflict realized for Mark’s first audience. In the intertextual reference to Isaiah 13 and 34, Ezekiel 32 (Egypt as dragon), and Joel 2-3 (a locust plague, call to repent, salvation, deliverance, and judgment), Jesus declares a crisis of the natural order will define the end time (13:24), which is followed by a new beginning, a spring renewal of the garden and fig tree, a new blessing of sweet spiritual nourishment for those who stay alert as faithful servants of the master of the vineyard (13:32).
In the house of Simon the leper, in anticipation of his ordeal, Jesus is anointed with luxurious oil imported from the Himalayan mountains (14:1). This detail is essential to an understanding of the Christ, the anointed one. In Mark, an unnamed woman pours the oil on his head. The detail of the “rich Indian perfume” is further textual confirmation of the link to the Brahmins of India and the need to read for irony; Jesus is an outcaste Jew who pretends to be the God of Israel. The scene is repeated in all of the gospels with variation. Luke narrates in 7:36-50 that Jesus was in the home of a Pharisee, and a sinful woman bathed his feet with tears, kisses them, and dries them with her hair. The Pharisee scolds him, but Jesus silences him. “I entered your house, and you gave me no kiss,” he says to the Pharisee. Irony demands that we observe double-meanings: the woman was likely a prostitute, and Luke’s narrative may be employing common euphemisms to imply that Jesus enjoyed sexual favors from her. In 12:1-8 of John’s text, the anointing scene is in the home of Lazarus, and Mary [Magdalene] uses her hair to wipe and anoint his feet with expensive pure nard. Judas Iscariot and the other disciples are outraged and suggest the jar could have been sold and money given to the poor. Jesus tells them to stop complaining; he declares that wherever the good news is truly spread in the world, it will be in honor of the woman and in memory of her deed (Mark 13:9).
Judas Iscariot, who stole from the common purse, reports him as a pretender to the throne of David and accepts a bribe from the fraudulent authorities scheming to kill him (14:10). Jesus covertly arranges a Passover meal with his disciples: he warns that one of the twelve sharing the bread and dipping into the bowl of learning and wisdom—the bowl a symbol of knowledge through death and rebirth akin to a boat—will sell out, though none admit to it (14:17). In a parallel of Exodus 24, Jesus offers a new covenant for a new people of God initiated by his sacrifice: he vows that after the wine of suffering, he will drink new wine of immortality, knowledge, and joy in the kingdom of God. All sing Psalms 115-118, a sequence that glorifies the Lord with thanks for healing, praise from all nations, and gratitude for victory in battle. Approaching the Mount of Olives, Jesus predicts by allusion to Zechariah 13 that his followers will scatter and foreshadows his resurrection as a sign of renewal. Simon Peter insists he will not desert or deny his teacher, but Jesus explicitly predicts his radical abandonment and failing (14:30). Despite his exhortation to “keep awake” in 13:37, his disciples fall asleep twice at Gethsemane, “the oil press”, while Jesus shows distress, agitation, and grief in surrender and obedience to Abba, God as Father (14:36). A mob of chief priests, elders, and scribes appear with swords and clubs; Judas singles out the leader of the rebellion to the fraudulent authorities by a kiss, a distortion of the sign of affection, respect, and mutual bond. One of the scribes loses his ear in the scuffle; then, the Jerusalem rulers arrest Jesus, who willingly submits with a mocking insult (14:43) and watches his disciples desert and scatter. (14:50). Matthew describes how later Judas returned the silver to the Temple, where it is refused; he throws it on the floor and hangs himself in regret. The priests use it to buy land for a graveyard (27:3-10).
A common reading of 14:51 is to interpret the naked young man who flees the arrest scene as symbolic of the disciples’ doubt and abandoning Jesus to authority. Again, because of Mark’s pervasive irony, an informed reading requires further explication without inhibition. The healing of the Greek daughter (7:29), the awakening of the Hellenic deaf mute (7:34), and the adoration of eunuchs—males castrated for the purpose of halting physical maturation beyond adolescence as the people of God (Isaiah 56)—provides intrinsic framing that demands intertextuality, especially since the Gospel of John is attributed to the disciple Jesus loved (John 21:24). Even the language of the narrative itself—Greek for a story about Jews who spoke Hebrew and Aramaic—suggests further meaning. There is a strong indication that the fleeing youth was Jesus’ Greek beloved, a respected relationship in Hellenic culture but scorned among the Jews. When Jesus was arrested, he was committing a crime punishable in Judaism by death: homosexuality.
Whereas the Greek practice glorified the natural erotic love between males when serving the purpose of teaching arête, the democratic and masculine virtues of courage, strength, justice, and truth, Jewish culture was repressive and prohibitive of same-sex relations. Nevertheless, there are instances and practices within the tradition hidden behind knowing double-meanings and ironic euphemisms. For example, the phallus played an important role in ancient Judaism when affirming a bond. In Genesis 47:29, Jacob, on his deathbed called Israel, asks his son Joseph, a prefiguration of Jesus: “If I have found favor with you, put your hand under my thigh and promise to deal loyally and truly with me. Do not bury me in Egypt, but let me lie with my fathers’” and they swear together—four thousand years later, we testify when we swear an oath, a covenant, a testament (Friedman 17), derived from the Latin word meaning both a dead man’s bequest but also a witnessing of testicular virility.
Ironic puns abound: Simon, who suffers corruption of the skin, is Peter after the apostles reverse the circumcision clause of the Old Testament. Other examples in the Hebrew Bible include jealous Saul’s embarrassment and rage when Jonathan swears loyalty to David after stripping naked (1 Samuel 18:1-4) and eating honey from the tip of a long staff (1 Samuel 14:27). Another example is when the prophet Elijah lays on top of a lifeless teenaged boy; he kisses the youth, who becomes warm, rises, then sneezes seven times (2 Kings 4:32-37). Ambiguity of language and images is the key to interpretation, as homosexual activity was taboo and would not be explicit nor direct.
When the beloved disciple of Jesus flees naked from the Temple authorities, it not only shows the fear of persecution from the Sadducees toward Hellenic methods of pedagogy, forbidden in the Old Testament by outnumbered Palestinians in hostile territory directing all sexuality toward breeding, but also suggests Jesus is forsaken by God as an antitype of Abraham’s sacrificing his only beloved son. The disavowal serves as an initiation ordeal following the archetypal quest pattern that transforms a Son of Man to a Son of God. In John 18:15, in a scene following a parallel of Judas’ kiss of betrayal in Mark, the beloved disciple is also known to the high priest, perhaps by a secret bond, and he sweet talks access into the courtyard for Simon Peter, who is later found naked with the beloved disciple in his boat after Jesus is executed (John 20:7). The high priest likely advocated the weak charge of blasphemy to hide his own homosexual associations.
At the first trial by the Sanhedrin, false witnesses accuse Jesus, and when asked directly if he is the Messiah, Jesus replies “I am” with an intertextual reference to the prescribed suffering, death, and vindication of the Son of Man (14:61). The high priest (named Caiaphas in Matthew and condemned as a hypocrite by Dante) rushes the trial to conclusion and exposes Jesus to the mob—who spit on him, blindfold him, strike and beat him (14:65). Meanwhile, Simon Peter—the first to call Jesus “the Christ”—ironically swears an oath: “I do not know this man you are talking about” (14:71) and denies any association with him three times before the cock’s crow.
When asked if he is the King of the Jews by Pilate in the Roman trial, Jesus returns to ironic ambiguity, “You say so” (15:2). Jesus—meaning “Yahweh saves”—is offered to the mob with a criminal named Barabbas—meaning “son of Abba” (Father). Luke emphasizes that Pilate did not suspect Jesus for the accused crimes and tries to avoid involvement; Matthew describes how the governor’s wife dreamt of Jesus’ innocence. John shows how the high priest manipulates Pilate to nurture an alliance with Herod by executing Jesus on charges of insurrection and Messianic claims. Master of political theatre and passing responsibility, Pilate convinces the mob to reject the false son for the true son (15:15), who is beaten and handed over to be crucified as a scapegoat, a purifying sacrifice that removes barriers to the covenant and the atonement of society. The scapegoat is innocent so far as what happens to him is obscenely excessive, but the scapegoat is also guilty by inescapable association with an unjust and cruel society (Frye 41). The Roman soldiers mock him, crown him with thorns, beat him, spit on him, salute and bow down in respect before bringing Jesus to Golgotha, the place of a skull, where Jesus refuses wine poisoned with myrhh, a sedative, in an mythic parallel of the hemlock that killed Socrates (15:21). In John’s account, he drinks it in the last moments before death.
At nine o’clock in the morning, he is crucified for treason against Rome (15:25). Hard of hearing passers-by taunt him; so do the chief priests, the scribes, and (in John) the other criminals condemned to death. Six hours later, Jesus cries out Psalm 22, a sunrise lament of unconditional love. Darkness covers the land in a crisis of the natural order, and Jesus is dead (15:37). His last words are either: “My god, my god, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 14:34 and Matthew 27:46); “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit,” (Luke 23:46); or, “It is finished” (John 19:30). The curtain of the Temple is torn, making the hidden God visible to all (15:38). The Roman soldiers provide witness, “Truly this man was God’s Son” (15:39) and remove him from the cross. The corpse of the Son of Man is released to Mary mother of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, whom Jesus cured of seven demons and in extracanonical texts caused jealousy among the disciples by kissing the teacher. Joseph, a passer-by, entombs the corpse with honor (15:45).
THE
END (16:1-17)
The original
conclusion, in an ironic variation of literary deconstructionism,
forever defers meaning and calls the reader to complete the narrative.
In the tomb at sunrise on the first day of the week, the angelic young
man of 14:51 declares, “He has been raised; he is not here” and tells us
to look for him again in Galilee (16:6). Jesus will be seen again as
promised in the north, corresponding to Heaven: Galilee—the start of
discipleship, initiation to ease suffering, and sea crossings; connected
in a harmony of opposites and unification of division by a river and
wilderness to Jerusalem, the serpent, and the Dead Sea in the south. The
ladies flee in ironic terror from the tomb; the earliest ending stops
with another divine command rejected, when the witnesses do not report
the stiff lifted because they are afraid, echoing Genesis 3:10 when Adam
and Eve eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge of joy and suffering,
then profane their free will.
This ending proves unsatisfying and later scribes added two further conclusions the text of Mark: in the longer ending, the ghost of Jesus appears and reprimands the disciples for lack of trust and wrong-headedness; he directs them to heal and to spread the revelation of Spirit. In the shorter ending, the disciples declare the promise of eternal life to the world. Matthew, Luke, and John develop the finale with supplemental details that when considered in composite, answer the greatest of all literary mysteries.
The day after the crucifixion, the Sadducees and Pharisees asked Pilate for guards to the crypt; “Secure the imposter’s tomb, or his devotees may steal the body and report that he is raised from the dead. The last deception would be worse than the first.” Soldiers were posted, but at dawn on the third day, there was an earthquake; the soldiers fainted from fright. Later, they confessed to the chief priests, who paid the soldiers to say the disciples stole the body while they were sleeping. Meanwhile, the women who found the empty grave told the disciples of the missing body, and they doubted the story. Simon Peter and the beloved disciple set out to investigate, and John reached the tomb first. Mary Magdalene waited outside, and while she was weeping, she saw angels and the ghost of Jesus. The group returned to the village, and the other disciples did not believe the foolish lie and hid from the villagers. During the week, they gathered and claimed many sightings of his ghost, until along the road to the Mount of Olives, they saw him risen to the stars. Thereafter, they spoke in various tongues about the glory of Spirit.
This ending proves unsatisfying and later scribes added two further conclusions the text of Mark: in the longer ending, the ghost of Jesus appears and reprimands the disciples for lack of trust and wrong-headedness; he directs them to heal and to spread the revelation of Spirit. In the shorter ending, the disciples declare the promise of eternal life to the world. Matthew, Luke, and John develop the finale with supplemental details that when considered in composite, answer the greatest of all literary mysteries.
The day after the crucifixion, the Sadducees and Pharisees asked Pilate for guards to the crypt; “Secure the imposter’s tomb, or his devotees may steal the body and report that he is raised from the dead. The last deception would be worse than the first.” Soldiers were posted, but at dawn on the third day, there was an earthquake; the soldiers fainted from fright. Later, they confessed to the chief priests, who paid the soldiers to say the disciples stole the body while they were sleeping. Meanwhile, the women who found the empty grave told the disciples of the missing body, and they doubted the story. Simon Peter and the beloved disciple set out to investigate, and John reached the tomb first. Mary Magdalene waited outside, and while she was weeping, she saw angels and the ghost of Jesus. The group returned to the village, and the other disciples did not believe the foolish lie and hid from the villagers. During the week, they gathered and claimed many sightings of his ghost, until along the road to the Mount of Olives, they saw him risen to the stars. Thereafter, they spoke in various tongues about the glory of Spirit.
AFTERWORD
George Aichele argues that the Gospel of Mark is “an incoherent, fragmentary narrative” (53), and John Meagher suggests the text has no deliberate concealment, only the distorted clumsiness of a sometimes clever storyteller (86). J.L. Magness notes the earliest text ends in a barbarous Greek conjunction that is confusing and chaotic, and Douglas W. Geyer claims the narrator is a befuddled bard who mixes up the punch-line of the joke (8). “Jesus is found unconvincing and without honor, his wisdom and works implausible…No changes in local beliefs are made because of his visit” (Geyer 186, 194). With the exception of the dignity given at his birth and the early awe of the crowd, Jesus is an outcaste: a bastard son who runs away from home to live with strange foreigners then returns as a scandalous sorcerer to be tortured and killed as a political rebel. The first ending of the text is tragically ironic: there is no blessing, only a regression into fear and silence; there is no redemptive appearance, only prophetic failure and persecution of his followers. The further endings of Mark add the resurrection as a vengeful ghost; the accretions in Matthew, Luke, and John imply a deception: his body is stolen, perhaps by lying soldiers; the disciples, who misunderstand his teaching throughout the text and give false witness when questioned, are unreliable, gullible, and stupid. Their priestly cult is founded on confusion and a blood-drinking, flesh-eating human sacrifice ritual.
In Matthew, at a dinner with the Pharisees, Jesus bemoans that his reputation among the children of the marketplace will be that of a glutton and a drunk (11:19). The Greek word for “glutton” implies decadent sense enjoyment, not only for food but also for eroticism and other delights. His ministry is surrounded by rumor and conflict, and his mystery-mongering and teaching by riddles obscures wisdom and preserves ignorant superstition. He is a hypocrite: rude toward his family, aggressive toward his enemies, scorning of his devotees and disciples, a sexual deviant with a prostitute and a teenaged boy, and an inflated personality who is sometimes angry and restless. His directives are contradictory: he often commands the disciples to be silent, and other times he tells them to shout secrets from the rooftops. He is an intriguing character study.
The Bible as literature, and as a tool in religious practice, has a complicated future. There will always be those of simple faith who believe that if they are good and pray, their wishes will be fulfilled and a fantasy of personal immortality will be approved. Others will miss the point, and in their misunderstanding, uphold sectarian bigotry and foolish irreligion. Some will avoid the book based on prejudice and anxiety. A few will take the hint from the text and explore the world’s religions, especially Brahminism, the complete account of the evolution and action of the impersonal Spirit in Creation and in man, and also Buddhism, the cure for suffering and enlightening path to joy, peace, and freedom. Many will discover an increase in their pleasure of the story, and the clarity of its message will be more obvious after further education in other wisdom traditions. In the encounter with the ancestral inheritance and knowledge of the elders, they will grow as a soul with a purpose in the world.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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-------------------------------------
Muhammad
The
timeless universe of symbols, clues, messages and hints points urgently
toward a transcendent reality, the more beautiful world our hearts
desire. “[M]yth can be described as an independent, closed, symbolically
rich narrative about some archetypal character whose story, which takes
place in the primeval time of the beginning, represents some universal
aspect of the origins or nature of humanity in its relation to the
sacred or the divine...myth, by narrating a ‘sacred history,’ stabilizes
and orders, or regenerates and gives meaning to, what is seen as the
chaos of human, or secular and profane, existence.” (Moye 578-579) The
purpose of this essay, then, is to apply the prevailing methods of
analyzing the mythic hero archetype to the life of Muhammad.
The first question is what is a hero? “An individual is named the ‘hero’ of a particular incident, which means that he or she had intervened in some critical situation in an extraordinary fashion, acting outside, above, or in disregard to normal patterns of behavior, especially in putting his or her life at risk.” (Miller 1) This definition most certainly applies to Muhammad, as his egalitarian attitude was at odds with the social stratification dominant in seventh-century Arabia. “The hero is the one who, while still alive, knows and represents the claims of the superconsciousness which throughout creation is more or less unconscious. The adventure of the hero represents the moment in his life when he achieved illumination...” (Campbell 259) The revelation of the Qur’an, God’s final message to the people of the world, is the threshold-crossing moment of Muhammad’s adventure and indicative of his special status. “The hero is unique and isolate.” (Miller, 163) Most certainly, in his estimation by the community, both past and present, Muhammad was a man of extraordinary integrity, a virtue bestowed by a lifetime of meditating alone in the desert. “The hero is the man of self-achieved submission.” (Campbell 16) Islam means “submission to God,” and believers say Muhammad, the prophet who received the text, is God’s messenger, following Moses, Jesus and others.
Having thus established Muhammad as a mythic hero, the next question is what is the pattern of heroic adventure? First, the hero is typically separated from normal patterns of family life. “[T]he makers of legend have seldom rested content to regard the world’s great heroes as mere human beings who broke past the horizons that limited their fellows and returned with such boons as any man with equal faith and courage might have found...the tendency has always been to endow the hero with extraordinary powers from the moment of birth, or even the moment of conception.” (Campbell 319) Muhammad ibn ‘Abdallah was born in the Arab desert city of Mecca around 570 CE. Colorful legends of these early years include a tale of his father’s encounter with a stranger who saw a light shining from his forehead the night Muhammad was conceived. His mother allegedly heard a voice proclaim her pregnancy divine, and she supposedly saw a light shining from her swollen belly that allowed her to view castles in far-away lands. The father died before the boy was born, and following tradition, young Muhammad was sent to a wet nurse in the arid desert. The infant purportedly met two men in white robes who removed the heart from his chest, washed it in a golden bowl of snow and disappeared after replacing it free of black slime.
Muhammad’s mother died when he was six. The orphan lived with his grandfather until the old man’s death two years later; then, aged eight, he joined his uncle, Abu Talib, on caravan expeditions that likely traded with the Christian, Zoroastrian and Jewish tribes of the region. On one legendary mission, a Christian monk named Bahira, who studied a secret book that foretold the coming of a new prophet, observed a cloud shielding Muhammad from the scorching sun and invited the group to a meal at the monastery. The monk questioned the nine-year-old baggage guardian. After intense scrutiny, he declared the boy “the Messenger of the Lord of the Worlds” (Aslan 21) and commanded the Uncle to protect him.
“The conclusion of the childhood cycle is the return or recognition of the hero, when, after the long period of obscurity, his true character is revealed.” (Campbell 329) In his twenties, Muhammad’s excellent reputation of integrity and expert negotiation earned him the nickname al-Amin, “The Trustworthy” (Denny 50). A prosperous, highly-regarded widowed female merchant, Khadija, hired him to lead a caravan to Syria. Muhammad returned with more than double the anticipated profit, and Khadija, fifteen years his senior, proposed marriage. They were devoted to each other for over twenty-five years until her death.
After cultivating a reputable character, Muhammad is prepared for the heroic journey: “A hero ventures forth from the world of the common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.” (Campbell 30) Miller describes the pattern of separation-initiation-return more simply: “Someone extraordinary/Goes or is sent/To search for and retrieve/Something important.” (Miller 162) According to Campbell, the prize won by the hero unlocks the flow of life in the world and regenerates society.
Following this pattern, Muhammad entered his forties around 610 CE, increasingly upset by the immoral exploitation of the orphans, widows, outcasts and poor by the ruling wealthy elite of Mecca. He regularly retreated from the city to Mount Hira, where he would quietly reflect at the desert, a key feature of the heroic biography, where a hero visits “a transitional or liminal topos between the human, profane world and a supernatural zone or Otherworld... [an] obsession of the hero, to find and penetrate into threatening or unknown places and terrains, with the near certainty of encountering alterity in the form either of hostile human, animal or supernatural forces....” (Miller 147-48)
Leading up to the winning of the boon—the revelation of the Qur’an which will purify society according to God’s will—Muhammad’s dreams turned increasingly vivid; he heard the trees and stones wish him peace. Then, one night as he meditated alone in a cave, he experienced the first revelation, here imagined by the scholar Reza Aslan (34):
“From obscurity the hero emerges, but the enemy is the great and conspicuous seat of power.” (Campbell 337) The symbolic king is damned in the eyes of hero, the man who misuses the seat of power and “directs or manages a social order from which the hero is self-excluded or which he follows only on his own terms.” (Miller 181) Muhammad’s revelations increasingly stressed general principles of justice, compassion and charity—a call to socio-economic justice that threatened the ruling elite. Muhammad’s growing multitude of companions were abused. In a short period, both Abu Talib and Khadija died, and suddenly lacking protection, Muhammad was stoned in the streets of Mecca.
“Freedom to pass back and forth across the world division, from the perspective of the apparitions of time to that of the causal deep and back—not contaminating the principles of the one with those of the other, yet permitting the mind to know the one by virtue of the other—is the talent of the master.” (Campbell 229) Muhammad achieved mastery in what has become known as “the Night of Ascension”, when the angel Gabriel approached Muhammad as he slept. The angel sliced open the Prophet’s chest; removed his innards, which he washed in a basin of faith; next, after replacing his bowels and sealing the wound, Gabriel led Muhammad in one night from Mecca to Jerusalem, then through the seven heavens into the presence of God, where he met Abraham, Moses, Jesus and all the preceding prophets. The Divine Presence revealed paradise and hell, then blessed Muhammad. He returned to Mecca and an much-needed invitation to act as arbitrator in a feud between Arab tribes in nearby Yathrib (Medina). Muhammad and his companions secretly left Mecca in 622 CE shortly before a planned murder attempt.
“Precisely because the hero is easily detached from the societal matrix, he is often as dangerous to the social fabric as he is useful in defending it.” (Miller 164) In Yathrib, Muhammad implemented the “Constitution of Medina”, which served as an administrative framework for ensuring a stable community acting together for mutual benefit and defense. Accordingly, the revelations during this period introduce laws for marriage, commerce, international relations, war and peace.
“The hero is devoted to combat and confrontation: he must be prepared to seek out, or at least never avoid, those aspects of the quest involving ‘blocking’ strategies, threats and finally violence.” (Miller 163) The leaders of Mecca saw the growing Muslim community in Yathrib as a threat, and violence escalated between the two cities. Muhammad led three-hundred men to victory against a large Meccan force in the Battle of Badr, but his over-confident army lost the Battle of Uhud three years later. For two years, skirmishes heightened tension until Mecca sent a force of ten-thousand men to a stalemate that emboldened Muhammad to return to Mecca in 630 CE and purge the 360 idols from the Ka’ba. Muhammad and his Muslim companions emerged as the undeniable power on the Arabian peninsula.
In the first two centuries after Muhammad’s death, several different groups competed for the hearts and minds of the growing Muslim community. The Hadith is a collected body of traditions and reports about the sayings and activities of the Prophet Muhammad to guide Muslims in both individual and collective religious, social, civil and legal life. In the next two centuries, a group of collectors traveled among towns to collect the opinions and deeds of the Prophet that guided the decision-making of the early Muslim community. The Hadith began to be systematically verified for authenticity, using a “science of biography” that traced the chain of transmitters and rejecting questionable reports. It was essential that the transmitter be a moral character of the highest quality before being deemed trustworthy. The Hadith is used to confirm, extend, elaborate, explain and supplement the Qur’an, and the acts of the Prophet are regarded as an inspiration of imitation. Eventually, the Prophet came to be seen as an ideal and perfect human, and by better understanding their Prophet, Muslims can view space, time and the human condition better, perhaps even by creating a paradise on earth in the present age.
Muhammad died without leaving clear instructions on who should follow him as leader of the growing Muslim religion. His cousin Abu Bakr was chosen as the first caliph, the successor to Muhammad. In the decades immediately following the death of the Prophet, leadership passed from Abu to Umar then Uthman, who was murdered during prayer. Finally, Ali, Muhammad’s son-in-law, ascended to power. Shi’a believe the caliphate should pass only to direct descendants of Mohammad and refer to themselves as “People of the Prophet.” Ali was not unopposed. Abu’s daughter criticized Ali’s laziness in pursuing Uthman’s killers, and Uthman’s cousin declared himself caliph. Ali’s elder son accepted payment for renouncing the caliphate and was poisoned. The younger son Hussayn died in a battle against Ali’s son Yazid, who claimed the caliphate, but Hussayn’s son survived and continued the Sunni line. Aside from difference in who is the rightful heir to Muhammad, Shi’a are committed to a strict interpretation of the Qur’an and feature a different call to prayer. The basic beliefs are the same: Muslims testify that none has the right to be worshipped but God; Muslims are obligated to pray five times a day, the salat; pay charity, the zakat; make a pilgrimage to Mecca, the hajj; and fast during the month of Ramadan. This is called the five pillars of Islam, the essential practices of a Muslim. Muslims are expected to believe in God, the angels, the revealed books, the prophets, the resurrection and the predestination of all things and events. This is called the six pillars of faith.
The Sufi tradition emerged in the 8th century A.D. and does not require conformity or submission to an uniform outward expression. Sufis encouraged diversity and easily incorporated other religious traditions. Essentially, Sufis cultivate intuitive and emotional faculties considered dormant until activated by guided training. Sufis aim at dispersing the illusion of separation in favor of an undifferentiated unity with God through a renunciation of the world and abandonment of the transient pleasures of life. The word sufi strictly applies to advanced mystics, those qualified to be teachers to beginners, a relationship . Mutasawwif means “novice,” one who is learning. A mustawif is one who seeks admiration as a seeker of spiritual truth but is actually a poser or a phony. In its original form, Sufism was an elite spiritual quest concerned with following God in a sincere manner, living a simple, unadorned life without ostentation, self-righteousness or excessive piety. Sufis claim there is nothing but God and that nothing exists apart from God, the only reality.
Abdel Haleem, M.A.S. The Qur’an. Oxford University Press; Oxford, 2005.
Ali, Abdullah Yusuf. The Qur’an: Text, Translation and Commentary. Elmhurst: Tahrike Tarsile Qur’an Inc, 2005.
Aslan, Reza. No god but God. New York: Random House, 2006.
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero With A Thousand Faces. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949.
Carlson, Peter. "History 007: World Religions – Lecture Notes." Los Angeles Valley College. Valley Glen, California. Spring 2006.
Denny, Frederick Mathewson. An Introduction to Islam, Third Edition. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education Inc, 2006.
Ernst, Carl W. Following Muhammad. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2003.
Fisher, Mary Pat. Living Religions – Sixth Edition. Prentice-Hall; Upper Saddle River, 2005.
Miller, Dean A., The Epic Hero. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2000.
Moye, Richard H., “In The Beginning: Myth And History In Genesis And Exodus.” Journal of Biblical Literature; Winter90, Vol. 109 Issue 4, p577, 22pp.
Saeed, Abdullah. Islamic Thought. New York: Routledge, 2006.
The first question is what is a hero? “An individual is named the ‘hero’ of a particular incident, which means that he or she had intervened in some critical situation in an extraordinary fashion, acting outside, above, or in disregard to normal patterns of behavior, especially in putting his or her life at risk.” (Miller 1) This definition most certainly applies to Muhammad, as his egalitarian attitude was at odds with the social stratification dominant in seventh-century Arabia. “The hero is the one who, while still alive, knows and represents the claims of the superconsciousness which throughout creation is more or less unconscious. The adventure of the hero represents the moment in his life when he achieved illumination...” (Campbell 259) The revelation of the Qur’an, God’s final message to the people of the world, is the threshold-crossing moment of Muhammad’s adventure and indicative of his special status. “The hero is unique and isolate.” (Miller, 163) Most certainly, in his estimation by the community, both past and present, Muhammad was a man of extraordinary integrity, a virtue bestowed by a lifetime of meditating alone in the desert. “The hero is the man of self-achieved submission.” (Campbell 16) Islam means “submission to God,” and believers say Muhammad, the prophet who received the text, is God’s messenger, following Moses, Jesus and others.
Having thus established Muhammad as a mythic hero, the next question is what is the pattern of heroic adventure? First, the hero is typically separated from normal patterns of family life. “[T]he makers of legend have seldom rested content to regard the world’s great heroes as mere human beings who broke past the horizons that limited their fellows and returned with such boons as any man with equal faith and courage might have found...the tendency has always been to endow the hero with extraordinary powers from the moment of birth, or even the moment of conception.” (Campbell 319) Muhammad ibn ‘Abdallah was born in the Arab desert city of Mecca around 570 CE. Colorful legends of these early years include a tale of his father’s encounter with a stranger who saw a light shining from his forehead the night Muhammad was conceived. His mother allegedly heard a voice proclaim her pregnancy divine, and she supposedly saw a light shining from her swollen belly that allowed her to view castles in far-away lands. The father died before the boy was born, and following tradition, young Muhammad was sent to a wet nurse in the arid desert. The infant purportedly met two men in white robes who removed the heart from his chest, washed it in a golden bowl of snow and disappeared after replacing it free of black slime.
Muhammad’s mother died when he was six. The orphan lived with his grandfather until the old man’s death two years later; then, aged eight, he joined his uncle, Abu Talib, on caravan expeditions that likely traded with the Christian, Zoroastrian and Jewish tribes of the region. On one legendary mission, a Christian monk named Bahira, who studied a secret book that foretold the coming of a new prophet, observed a cloud shielding Muhammad from the scorching sun and invited the group to a meal at the monastery. The monk questioned the nine-year-old baggage guardian. After intense scrutiny, he declared the boy “the Messenger of the Lord of the Worlds” (Aslan 21) and commanded the Uncle to protect him.
“The conclusion of the childhood cycle is the return or recognition of the hero, when, after the long period of obscurity, his true character is revealed.” (Campbell 329) In his twenties, Muhammad’s excellent reputation of integrity and expert negotiation earned him the nickname al-Amin, “The Trustworthy” (Denny 50). A prosperous, highly-regarded widowed female merchant, Khadija, hired him to lead a caravan to Syria. Muhammad returned with more than double the anticipated profit, and Khadija, fifteen years his senior, proposed marriage. They were devoted to each other for over twenty-five years until her death.
After cultivating a reputable character, Muhammad is prepared for the heroic journey: “A hero ventures forth from the world of the common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.” (Campbell 30) Miller describes the pattern of separation-initiation-return more simply: “Someone extraordinary/Goes or is sent/To search for and retrieve/Something important.” (Miller 162) According to Campbell, the prize won by the hero unlocks the flow of life in the world and regenerates society.
Following this pattern, Muhammad entered his forties around 610 CE, increasingly upset by the immoral exploitation of the orphans, widows, outcasts and poor by the ruling wealthy elite of Mecca. He regularly retreated from the city to Mount Hira, where he would quietly reflect at the desert, a key feature of the heroic biography, where a hero visits “a transitional or liminal topos between the human, profane world and a supernatural zone or Otherworld... [an] obsession of the hero, to find and penetrate into threatening or unknown places and terrains, with the near certainty of encountering alterity in the form either of hostile human, animal or supernatural forces....” (Miller 147-48)
Leading up to the winning of the boon—the revelation of the Qur’an which will purify society according to God’s will—Muhammad’s dreams turned increasingly vivid; he heard the trees and stones wish him peace. Then, one night as he meditated alone in a cave, he experienced the first revelation, here imagined by the scholar Reza Aslan (34):
Suddenly an invisible presence crushed him in its embrace. He struggled to break free but could not move. He was overwhelmed by darkness. The pressure in his chest increased until he could no longer breathe. He felt he was dying. As he surrendered his final breath, light and a terrifying voice washed over him...
“Recite!” the voice commanded.
“What shall I recite?” Muhammad gasped.
The invisible presence tightened its embrace. “Recite!”
What shall I recite?” Muhammad asked again, his chest caving in.
Once more the presence tightened its grip and once more the voice repeated its command. Finally, at the moment when he could bear no more, the pressure in his chest stopped, and in the silence that engulfed the cave, Muhammad felt these words stamped upon his heart:
“For those who have not refused the call, the first encounter of the hero-journey is with a protective figure...who provides the adventurer with amulets against the dragon forces he is about to pass.” (Campbell 69) Terrified from the experience, Muhammad ran to Khadija, who wrapped him in a blanket and held him until he stopped trembling. She sent for her cousin who encouraged Muhammad to embrace his calling to prophecy. Muhammad feared himself insane, especially after an extended period of no further revelations. Muhammad was anxious and uncertain. Then, in disturbing fits, the messages returned to reassure him:Recite in the name of your Lord who created,
Created humanity from a clot of blood.
Recite, for your Lord is the Most Generous One
Who has taught by the pen;
Taught humanity that which it did not know. (96:1-5)
Your Lord’s grace does not make you [Prophet] a madman:“The first problem of the returning hero is to accept as real, after an experience of the soul-satisfying vision of fulfillment, the passing joys and sorrows, banalities and noisy obscenities of life.” (Campbell 218) Muhammad reluctantly shared the earliest revelations with Khadija, his slave and his cousin Abu Bakr. The first messages concentrated on the power, glory and oneness of God; the signs of God; Muhammad’s role as prophet; and the Resurrection and Final Judgment. The initial revelations emphasized the relationship between “the People of the Book”, which extended from Judaism and Christianity to Zoroastrianism and Hinduism.
You will have a never-ending reward--
Truly you have a strong character. (68:2-4)
[Y]our Lord has not forsaken you [Prophet], nor does He hate you, and the future will be better for you than the past; your Lord is sure to give you so much that you will be well satisfied. (93:2-5)
“From obscurity the hero emerges, but the enemy is the great and conspicuous seat of power.” (Campbell 337) The symbolic king is damned in the eyes of hero, the man who misuses the seat of power and “directs or manages a social order from which the hero is self-excluded or which he follows only on his own terms.” (Miller 181) Muhammad’s revelations increasingly stressed general principles of justice, compassion and charity—a call to socio-economic justice that threatened the ruling elite. Muhammad’s growing multitude of companions were abused. In a short period, both Abu Talib and Khadija died, and suddenly lacking protection, Muhammad was stoned in the streets of Mecca.
“Freedom to pass back and forth across the world division, from the perspective of the apparitions of time to that of the causal deep and back—not contaminating the principles of the one with those of the other, yet permitting the mind to know the one by virtue of the other—is the talent of the master.” (Campbell 229) Muhammad achieved mastery in what has become known as “the Night of Ascension”, when the angel Gabriel approached Muhammad as he slept. The angel sliced open the Prophet’s chest; removed his innards, which he washed in a basin of faith; next, after replacing his bowels and sealing the wound, Gabriel led Muhammad in one night from Mecca to Jerusalem, then through the seven heavens into the presence of God, where he met Abraham, Moses, Jesus and all the preceding prophets. The Divine Presence revealed paradise and hell, then blessed Muhammad. He returned to Mecca and an much-needed invitation to act as arbitrator in a feud between Arab tribes in nearby Yathrib (Medina). Muhammad and his companions secretly left Mecca in 622 CE shortly before a planned murder attempt.
“Precisely because the hero is easily detached from the societal matrix, he is often as dangerous to the social fabric as he is useful in defending it.” (Miller 164) In Yathrib, Muhammad implemented the “Constitution of Medina”, which served as an administrative framework for ensuring a stable community acting together for mutual benefit and defense. Accordingly, the revelations during this period introduce laws for marriage, commerce, international relations, war and peace.
“The hero is devoted to combat and confrontation: he must be prepared to seek out, or at least never avoid, those aspects of the quest involving ‘blocking’ strategies, threats and finally violence.” (Miller 163) The leaders of Mecca saw the growing Muslim community in Yathrib as a threat, and violence escalated between the two cities. Muhammad led three-hundred men to victory against a large Meccan force in the Battle of Badr, but his over-confident army lost the Battle of Uhud three years later. For two years, skirmishes heightened tension until Mecca sent a force of ten-thousand men to a stalemate that emboldened Muhammad to return to Mecca in 630 CE and purge the 360 idols from the Ka’ba. Muhammad and his Muslim companions emerged as the undeniable power on the Arabian peninsula.
In the first two centuries after Muhammad’s death, several different groups competed for the hearts and minds of the growing Muslim community. The Hadith is a collected body of traditions and reports about the sayings and activities of the Prophet Muhammad to guide Muslims in both individual and collective religious, social, civil and legal life. In the next two centuries, a group of collectors traveled among towns to collect the opinions and deeds of the Prophet that guided the decision-making of the early Muslim community. The Hadith began to be systematically verified for authenticity, using a “science of biography” that traced the chain of transmitters and rejecting questionable reports. It was essential that the transmitter be a moral character of the highest quality before being deemed trustworthy. The Hadith is used to confirm, extend, elaborate, explain and supplement the Qur’an, and the acts of the Prophet are regarded as an inspiration of imitation. Eventually, the Prophet came to be seen as an ideal and perfect human, and by better understanding their Prophet, Muslims can view space, time and the human condition better, perhaps even by creating a paradise on earth in the present age.
Muhammad died without leaving clear instructions on who should follow him as leader of the growing Muslim religion. His cousin Abu Bakr was chosen as the first caliph, the successor to Muhammad. In the decades immediately following the death of the Prophet, leadership passed from Abu to Umar then Uthman, who was murdered during prayer. Finally, Ali, Muhammad’s son-in-law, ascended to power. Shi’a believe the caliphate should pass only to direct descendants of Mohammad and refer to themselves as “People of the Prophet.” Ali was not unopposed. Abu’s daughter criticized Ali’s laziness in pursuing Uthman’s killers, and Uthman’s cousin declared himself caliph. Ali’s elder son accepted payment for renouncing the caliphate and was poisoned. The younger son Hussayn died in a battle against Ali’s son Yazid, who claimed the caliphate, but Hussayn’s son survived and continued the Sunni line. Aside from difference in who is the rightful heir to Muhammad, Shi’a are committed to a strict interpretation of the Qur’an and feature a different call to prayer. The basic beliefs are the same: Muslims testify that none has the right to be worshipped but God; Muslims are obligated to pray five times a day, the salat; pay charity, the zakat; make a pilgrimage to Mecca, the hajj; and fast during the month of Ramadan. This is called the five pillars of Islam, the essential practices of a Muslim. Muslims are expected to believe in God, the angels, the revealed books, the prophets, the resurrection and the predestination of all things and events. This is called the six pillars of faith.
The Sufi tradition emerged in the 8th century A.D. and does not require conformity or submission to an uniform outward expression. Sufis encouraged diversity and easily incorporated other religious traditions. Essentially, Sufis cultivate intuitive and emotional faculties considered dormant until activated by guided training. Sufis aim at dispersing the illusion of separation in favor of an undifferentiated unity with God through a renunciation of the world and abandonment of the transient pleasures of life. The word sufi strictly applies to advanced mystics, those qualified to be teachers to beginners, a relationship . Mutasawwif means “novice,” one who is learning. A mustawif is one who seeks admiration as a seeker of spiritual truth but is actually a poser or a phony. In its original form, Sufism was an elite spiritual quest concerned with following God in a sincere manner, living a simple, unadorned life without ostentation, self-righteousness or excessive piety. Sufis claim there is nothing but God and that nothing exists apart from God, the only reality.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abdel Haleem, M.A.S. The Qur’an. Oxford University Press; Oxford, 2005.
Ali, Abdullah Yusuf. The Qur’an: Text, Translation and Commentary. Elmhurst: Tahrike Tarsile Qur’an Inc, 2005.
Aslan, Reza. No god but God. New York: Random House, 2006.
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero With A Thousand Faces. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949.
Carlson, Peter. "History 007: World Religions – Lecture Notes." Los Angeles Valley College. Valley Glen, California. Spring 2006.
Denny, Frederick Mathewson. An Introduction to Islam, Third Edition. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education Inc, 2006.
Ernst, Carl W. Following Muhammad. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2003.
Fisher, Mary Pat. Living Religions – Sixth Edition. Prentice-Hall; Upper Saddle River, 2005.
Miller, Dean A., The Epic Hero. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2000.
Moye, Richard H., “In The Beginning: Myth And History In Genesis And Exodus.” Journal of Biblical Literature; Winter90, Vol. 109 Issue 4, p577, 22pp.
Saeed, Abdullah. Islamic Thought. New York: Routledge, 2006.
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Buddhism
Buddhism is generally concerned with final liberation from a life of suffering (caused by desires), sickness, old age and death. The earliest practice was individual seated meditation that produces the true wisdom of self-knowledge and the nature of reality. In the years following the death of the first Indian Buddha, Sakyamuni, a number of councils sought to codify and preserve authoritative teachings; this gave rise to a conservative literalism, a resistance to change any portion of the accepted canon, its language or form. This attitude toward safeguarding doctrine led to a three-step process whereby practice (orthoprax) was subordinated to hearing and mastering the correct text (orthodox) for transmission.
The Lotus Sutra is a late poetic synthesis of early Buddhist thinking and practice. It was transcribed from the common language into Sanskrit to add to its prestige in the monastaries, where it was given as the final teaching by a Master Guru to a disciple after a long initiation. This text speaks in the mythology and symbolism of priestly Brahmanism, the form being a Greco-Indian theatrical setting that begins with discourse (sophistry, rhetoric, speculation). Following meditative absorption (samadhi), the gathered aspirants, devotees, gods, fantastic creatures and eminent monks of no doubt enjoy further and greater truth on a transcendent visionary plane accessed by suprasensory perception. There are many teachings by parable; claiming position as the supreme teaching, the text insists that all bodhisattvas are subject to a discipline of authentic Buddhism, meaning a progressive adaptation of the wisdom of all traditions to fit local custom and language, though it admits all minor means as interim steps toward salvation and a certain end of enlightenment, and as previously mentioned, orthoprax was secondary to proper transmission of orthodox.
As a Japanese Buddhist eschatological prophet, Nichiren Daishonin the Great Sage of the Sun Lotus born in the house of an exiled fisherman, preached a rhetoric of doctrinal legitimacy among clashing Buddhist sectarians by privileging the Lotus Sutra in his social activism, political dissent and religious criticism; he also relentlessly pointed to the failures and corruption of the community, suffering backlash, arrest, and nearly execution. Nichiren was saved by a lightning strike that caused the crowd to panic; especially in a context of natural disasters and losses in war that seemed like divine punishment, Nichiren viewed himself as a purifier reconciling a wicked world and an Ideal world, and himself as the fulfillment of a transpersonal reality transferred into a historical concretization (an avatar) anticipated by the earlier incarnations of the Eternal Buddha.
The Lotus Sutra arrives from India in Japan after several translations; though Nichiren rejected the Pure Land Buddhists and the Zen Buddhists, he saw value in the Brahmin worship of Shiva as a loving father, the social order gained by Confucianism, and the place of meditation as part of a practice in praise of the Lotus Sutra and social activism as spiritual discipline (what the Brahmins call Karma Yoga). He also accepted Shinto, which included the indigenous ethos and mythological worldview, kinship with nature, purification rituals and a shrine sanctuary, featuring a mandala with the native Sun Goddess and God of War among the characters gathered to chant and perform (devotional) Bhakta Yoga for the Lotus Sutra. Nichiren believed that Buddhism originated with the Moon Tribe in India and spread east to Japan, the land of the Rising Sun, and because of astronomical signs and missionary zeal, and he applied the decline tropes from later translations of the Lotus Sutra to himself as prophecy fulfilled. He exhorted the accurate preservation and transmission of the Lotus Sutra and its teaching of true dharma to a degenerate age, an offer of salvation for anyone who seeks liberation. His early fanaticism, at odds with orthopraxy, eased when he adopted the ideal of Sadaparibhuta, or Bodhisattva Never Disparaging, who was beaten with sticks yet still declared witness to the potential buddha in his attackers.
Nichiren taught that all humans are potential buddhas, or bodhisattvas who vow to postpone final liberation until all beings are saved, an idea fitting his eschatology whereby historical progress is the decline and subsequent return to the perfect origin of the individual and society. It also produces "permanent bodhisattvas" who revel in the status of spiritual masters and sensuous life. This is different from Theravada Buddhism, which teaches there is only one Bodhisattva who will become the Future Buddha (a teacher of gods and men, and a further incarnation of the Eternal Buddha, of which Sakyamuni was the first and Nichiren an interim embodiment); practice is thus nothing more than the refinement of an already attained enlightenment. In this system, practice is seated meditation which leads to the wisdom of right views and right intention, the ethical conduct of right speech, right action and right livelihood, and finally, the right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration that produces samadhi.
Other Buddhist sects (schools) in Japan included the monastic community of Kukai, who taught ten stages in the life of the mind. First, the goat life of greed, anger, ignorance and animal impulse. Next, in the childlike state, one has some ethics and rules for conduct, rights and duties (the purpose of Confucianism). Third, the fearless mind that practices discipline for immortality and rebirth in a pure land; fourth, self-enlightened apathy, followed by cultivated compassion; sixth, meditative union and seven, logical arguments. Eighth is knowledge of multiple worlds and ninth is qualified non-dualism. Last and most supreme is the most secret and sacred Glorious Mind, or complete realization of oneness with the cosmic body of the Great Sun Buddha. By this means, perfect enlightenment can be gained in this lifetime by any aspirant through a combination of meditation and rituals prescribing posture, gesture, mantra and mandala. Zen Buddhism in Japan was represented by Dogen, who taught that non-dual consciousness and living is not possible without strict practice of seated meditation. For Dogen, practice is not doctrinal argumentation or play with words, though critique is necessary to rid oneself of erroneous beliefs.
The Pure Land sect gained popularity in Japan by adopting tropes earlier associated with the Future Buddha. Declaring the path to enlightenment and final liberation beyond the capacity of most people, Amida Butsu's vow to the Buddha Sakyamuni is that anyone who chants his name once will be reborn in the Western Paradise. Facing the suffering of natural catastrophe and threat of war, many ceaselessly chanted "Namu Amida Butsu" with hope of reprieve from suffering by the intervention of an outside entity and higher power. Preaching a gospel of purification, Nichiren roared at the community's resignation to corrupt politics and lack of vigorous activity towards the renewal of the individual, society and earth.
Nichiren advocated a program of praise to the Lotus Sutra, and encouraged people to social reformation and personal transformation. However, his eschatology shows the need for the Future Buddha, as the formless Eternal Buddha manifests in imperfect but progressive temporal buddhas, incarnations, forms or avatars. In the Theravada tradition, this figure is the only Bodhisattva, Maitreya. The Lotus Sutra abounds in references to the Future Buddha, including his past life as Fame Seeker. This ancient composite savior and king of great power comes after the early Buddhist contact with Zoroastrianism and inspiration by Persian duality and eschatology. The figure was an especial favorite of early Greco-Buddhist artists, and after the first Sakyamuni statue in Japan was thrown into a canal, six Maitreya statues were erected in various Temples, four of them nunneries. The seventh Temple was dedicated again to Sakyamuni.
As the Bodhisattva Ideal, Maitreya inaugurates a golden age of righteousness, unified social order and victory of truth. He represents the creative impulse of social activism and purification, an ideal of redemption distorted by politics that attached qualities of omnipotent monarch to the figure, warped in our time into a clown. "The image was appropriated and distorted, as it was in the Theravada countries, by the Chinese rulers as they sought to enhance the Buddhist kingship. In doing so, the Maitreyan image lost its prophetic role. On the other hand, the cult of Maitreya, which emerged on Chinese soil in order to meet the genuine Spiritual needs of the clergy and laity, was soon superceded by a more popular Amitabha cult. It is tragic that popular minds have associated Maitreya with the jovial laughing Buddha, an image which had lost the historic meaning of the lofty Bodhisattva who was expected the become the future Buddha" (Kitagawa 117).
The cult of Maitreya, the White Lotus Society, was known for its long hair and white robes. Until his iconic descent before the close of the cycle as the chief of men, the Future Buddha Maitreya lived in a perfect society and paradise of saintly hermits seeking deliverance by seated meditation. Devotees sought entry to his Heaven for a face-to-face encounter by chanting a mantra, or hoped to prolong life or be reborn on earth during his mission to hear him preaching the True Word and witness his use of empire to unify the social order. In Korea, the King built a Temple for Maitreya's descent, a place where he could regularly explicate the True Dharma. Led by an evangelical aristocrat, a writer, lover of wine and music who often meditated in the mountains, the group was a non-sectarian Buddhist synthesis promoting non-violent patriotism and social activism, love of Maitreya, self-realization, purification of sins, and good rebirth for the self, ancestors and family by way of seated meditation and active contemplation.
Offering an Ideal of human and social perfection, the Maitreya ideal thrived among oppressed sectarians living outside of traditional Buddhism, whose naive Romanticism, lack of coherent ideology and lack of group organization could not withstand the rise of Pure Land Buddhism and its Western Paradise. The figure was revived and extended in the nineteenth century by European and American theosophists.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
de Bary, William Theodore. The Buddhist Tradition in India, China and Japan. Vintage Books: New York, 1969.
Habito, Ruben L.F. "Japanese Buddhist Perspectives and Comparative Theology: Supreme Ways in Intersection." Theological Studies 64 (2003): 362-387.
Hubbard, Jamie. "A Tale of Two Times: Preaching in the Latter Age of the Dharma." Numen, Vol 46, No 2 (1999): 186-210.
Kitagawa, Joseph M. "The Career of Maitreya, with Special Reference to Japan." History of Religions, Vol. 21 No 2 (Nov 1981): 107-125. Univ. of Chicago Press.
Kodera, Takashi James. "Nichiren and His Nationalistic Eschatology." Religious Studies, Vol 15, No 1 (Mar 1979): 41-53. Cambridge University Press.
Ozaki, Makoto. "The Historical Structure of the Eternal: Nichiren's Eschatology." Philosophy East and West, Vol 29, No 3 (July 1979): 295-306.
Reeves, Gene. The Lotus Sutra. Wisdom Publications: Boston, 2008.
Scott, David. "Buddhist Functionalism--Instrumentality Reaffirmed." Asian Philosophy 5.2 (1995): 127.
Werner, Karel. "On the Nature and Message of the Lotus Sutra in the Light of Early Buddhism and Buddhist Scholarship (Towards the Beginnings of Mahayana). Asian Philosophy Vol 14, No 3 (Nov 2004): 209-221.
The Truth about Cannabis (2006)
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The American
“War on Drugs” unjustly incarcerates more than 700,000 people annually
for marijuana-related crimes (Rosenthal 86). This plant, with a
10,000-year history of many uses and purposes, if decriminalized, could
reshape American industry, farming and health-care. Most important,
cannabis can contribute to a strong national security. But first, to
understand this unique plant’s many qualities, the cannabis story must
be presented, including a proper telling of its legal woes. A truthful
accounting of its medicinal benefits and intoxicating effects will be
offered, including responses to the most common lies advanced in
business-sponsored government propaganda. Finally, I will conclude with
a proposal for how a well-regulated decriminalization of cannabis will
transform our society to better conquer the unprecedented challenges of
the twenty-first century.
The history of cannabis is as old as civilization. Hemp may have been one of the first plants cultivated by humans. Archaeologists in Taiwan discovered fibers dating to 8000 BCE, and hemp was used for linen as early as 3500 BCE, a thousand years before cotton. Russians manufactured strong and durable rope from hemp beginning around 600 BCE. The ropes enabled successful ocean exploration and powerful navies, and in 1533, King Henry VIII fined farmers who did not grow hemp. His daughter Elizabeth increased the fine. (Earlywine 4-5) The Chinese invented hemp paper around 100 BCE, and “[w]hen Gutenberg’s presses started rolling, it was hemp paper that received the ink and spread the word of the Bible to an awakening Europe.” (Robinson vii)
In America, the Jamestown colonists raised hemp beginning in 1616. “Thomas Jefferson considered hemp so vital that he risked his life to smuggle hemp seeds out of France.” (Rosenthal 43) Seven early American presidents smoked cannabis, including James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor and Franklin Pierce. Jefferson and George Washington, both wealthy hemp farmers, exchanged smoking gifts. Early drafts of the Declaration of Independence were written on hemp paper before copied to animal parchment. The first U.S. patent was issued to Jefferson for inventing a hemp threshing machine. (Robinson 129-135).
The first use of cannabis for health dates to 2737 BCE, when the Chinese noted its potential treatment for pain, seizure, muscle spasm, poor appetite, nausea, insomnia, asthma and depression. The sacred Hindu text Atharvaveda praises marijuana as a holy plant for calming anxiety and relieving tension. Marijuana use to ease the pains of childbirth and postpartum depression is documented in early Jerusalem. A physician to Nero, emperor of Rome from 54 CE to 69 CE, recommended hemp seed for earaches, later confirmed by scientists as an effective cure. Wealthy Romans ate a hemp seed dessert, and it is now known that hemp seeds provide all the amino and fatty acids necessary for proper nutrition. (Earleywine 8-11) The hemp seed is the most complete vegetable protein. (Robinson 55-56). Cannabis was more widely marketed as a medicinal remedy after an 1842 publication by Irish physician William O’Shaughnessy. In 1850, cannabis was added to The U.S. Pharmacopoeia, and in 1860, the Ohio State Medical Society summarized the then-known medical uses of marijuana. (Earleywine 13-14)
In the 1930s, Henry Ford developed an all-organic automobile, constructed of hemp and other annual crops powered by the carbohydrates of hemp fuel. Ford’s vision, with plastic from hemp polymers; biomass fuels; and everyday products made of hemp, like fish nets, bowstrings, canvas, strong rope, overalls, tablecloths, towels, linens and paper, provoked the newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst. With business ally Lammont Du Pont, who supplied chemicals to the Hearst timber holdings and owned General Motors on a loan from Andrew Mellon, the Secretary of Treasury and owner of Gulf Oil (now Chevron), Hearst manipulated public opinion with frightening tales of cannabis-induced rape, murder, frenzied orgies and other lies. Harry Anslinger, commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics in the Treasury Department, reported the newspaper stories to Congress, who quickly passed the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, bringing cannabis and its non-psychoactive sister plant hemp under the regulatory power of the federal government. Despite protests from the American Medical Association, he also organized an international conference for the purpose of a worldwide ban on cannabis trafficking. (Robinson 138-159)
Aiding the prohibition lobby was the recently liberated alcohol industry; the federal law enforcement, who would be assured of work through the Depression; and the pharmaceutical companies, whose early support of cannabis prohibition advanced their high-profit synthetic prescriptions. (Rosenthal 85-86; Robinson 150) Research on the plant was limited through the 1940s and 1950s, but Czech scientists discovered its antibiotic properties. Congress increased penalties as investigators learned of its great use in treating glaucoma. (Earleywine 15) Independent committees recommended decriminalizing marijuana to Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B Johnson, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, who all rejected the advice. (Robinson 168-169) The government instead sponsored “pathology theory” marijuana research, forcing investigators to start with preconceived notions that trump sound science. (Rosenthal 36) Supporting the ongoing “War on Drugs” is the criminal justice system that costs taxpayers $160 billion/year: the police, state’s attorneys, judges and court employees, probation and parole departments, and drug-rehabilitation clinics. Marijuana prohibition is also good business for prison construction; the manufacturers of police vehicles, weapons, protective gear; and the vendors who supply food, clothing and other supplies to the prison system. Overall, 46% of drug arrests are marijuana-related, and 88% of those arrests are for simple possession. (Rosenthal 86-88) Funding the spread of discredited science are notable corporate-sponsors like Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, Bayer, General Motors, Pfizer and ExxonMobil. (Rosenthal 83-84)
“In 1996, California voters overwhelmingly passed a people’s initiative called The Compassionate Use Act, Proposition 215 [California H&S Code 11362.5], which amended state law to allow legal access to marijuana when recommended or approved by a physician...Senate Bill 420 drastically expanded the Compassionate Use Act in 2005.” (Margolin 18-19) Critics of the legislation advocate a synthetic THC dronabinol, marketed as Marinol, as a safer alternative, but “many argue for marijuana’s superiority on medical and economic grounds. Patients prefer smoked marijuana to this medication. Anyone who is vomiting and nauseated may find swallowing a pill quite difficult. Because patients must digest the orally administered dronabinol, the effects do not appear as rapidly. Many claim that the dosage is much easier to modify with smoked marijuana, too. After a few puffs and a brief waiting period, patients can decide to increase their dose as they see fit. Dronabinol pills do not lend themselves to this sort of quick and easy alteration of dosage. The pills are also markedly more expensive. Patients could spend from $600 to over $1,000 per month on dronabinol...” whereas a medicinal marijuana plant can be grown free with a small patch of soil, sunlight, proper ventilation and water (Earleywine 16). Cannabis is now recognized as a legitimate and effective treatment of glaucoma, chronic pain, headache and migraines, cancer pain, nausea and vomiting, seizures, insomnia, anxiety, depression, asthma, menstrual cramps, post-traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder, arthritis, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and many other ailments. Recent data suggests oral consumption of THC, through baked goods, for example, minimizes disturbed behavior in Alzheimer’s patients, and further, THC, the psychoactive chemical compound in cannabis, appears to block clumps of protein that inhibit memory and cognition, perhaps stalling the decline of Alzheimer’s patients better than the currently available drugs. (Earleywine 184) As written in the Wisdom of Jesus, Son of Sirach 38:4: “The Lord hath created medicines out of the earth; and he that is wise will not abhor them.”
Yet critics are quick to point out a number of exaggerated dangers and make demands of marijuana studies not applied to many commonly accepted prescription medications. The first argument against decriminalizing marijuana is known as the gateway theory, or marijuana as a stepping-stone to dangerous drugs. “Descriptions in popular culture create the impression that marijuana intoxication produces an insatiable urge for more and different drugs, something similar to the way eating salt makes people thirsty. Data do not support these ideas.” (Earleywine 50) Support for gateway theory comes from correlational studies usually indicating marijuana as a contributor to a cluster of behavior problems. Data expressed as a correlation coefficient shows an actual correlation between marijuana and crack cocaine as a paltry .02, smaller between marijuana and heroin, thus offering little support for a link between the drugs. (Earleywine 50-57) No empirical data shows marijuana as a stepping-stone to dangerous drug abuse, and the little correlation that exists is likely because “the most common one occurs first simply because it is more common.” (Earleywine 57)
Critics also warn of alteration of brain function, usually followed by a physical description of how THC, like other chemical compounds, affects the hippocampus then a description of the subjective effects of intoxication, like an altered sense of time and space; altered perception of emotions and humor; short-term memory impairment; and difficulty focusing. Actual alteration of brain function is not supported by research. “Chronic marijuana consumption does not appear to create gross neuropsychological impairments.” (Earleywine 77) “Quite a bit of research reveals no gross cognitive impairments related to chronic consumption of marijuana.” (Earleywine 82) “Studies suggest that long-term use of cannabis does not lead to overt signs of gross intellectual impairment.” (Earleywine 86) “Careful research on humans shows no structural changes associated with chronic cannabis exposure in adulthood.” (Earleywine 148) However, there is reason to set age restrictions when decriminalizing marijuana. “In contrast to all of these studies that found no structural changes in adults, adolescent users of marijuana may alter the development of their brains. In a new study using MRI, researchers reported smaller brains, a lower percentage of gray matter, and a higher percentage of white matter in adults who started smoking marijuana before age 17...The participants who started smoking earlier also had smaller bodies, which is consistent with arrested development. The men who started smoking before age 17 weighed an average of 20 pounds less and were an average of 3 inches shorter.” (Earleywine 149-150)
Another argument of critics is the potential threat to one’s life. Nevertheless, there is no documentation of a fatal overdose, whereas the fatalities for tobacco stand at 430,700 per year, alcohol at 110,000 per year, prescription drug reactions at 32,000 a year, and aspirin at 7,600 per year. (Rosenthal 40) Another scare tactic used by critics is to suggest a link between smoking marijuana and lung cancer. “Currently, no data reveal definitive increases in rates of lung cancer among people who smoke marijuana but not tobacco. A retrospective study of over 64,000 patients showed no increases in risk for many types of cancer once alcohol and cigarette use were controlled.” (Earleywine 156) Because inhaling smoke is not ideal for the lungs and “chronic users of cannabis do show adverse respiratory symptoms, including cough, phlegm, wheezing, and bronchitis,” marijuana users may opt for a safer method of ingestion, like a use of a vaporizer to inhale medicated steam, or through oral ingestion, like brownies or cookies. (Earleywine 154) Furthermore, unlike consuming alcohol while pregnant, “A study of more than 12,000 newborns found no link between cannabis use and gestation, birth weight, or malfunctions.” (Earleywine 160) Further more, “children of heavy users appeared less irritable, as well as more alert and stable...American children exposed to marijuana prenatally showed no deficits on gross motor skills at age 3...and no differences in total growth at age 6.” (Earlywine 161)
The final arguments of critics are social-related problems, like amotivational syndrome, impaired school or work performance, poor driving skills and aggressive behavior. The lazy, lethargic pot smoker is a stereotype based on modern Western values about productivity. What is more likely true is intoxicated humans are less likely to perform tasks they dislike and may not share the same ideal lifestyle or goals as traditional America. “Over half a dozen studies reveal that marijuana smokers and nonsmokers have comparable grades in college...Surprisingly, at least two other studies found higher grades in the marijuana smokers than in nonsmokers.” (Earleywine 204) “People who perform repetitive, simple tasks may turn to cannabis to relieve the boredom...Perhaps marijuana makes monotonous physical labor more bearable. In contrast, jobs that require complex or rapid decisions likely suffer during intoxication.” (Earleywine 205) “[M]otorists intoxicated with cannabis compensate for the drug’s cognitive effects. They drive more slowly, leave more space between cars, and take fewer risks. Thus, current data suggest that cannabis likely does not increase reckless driving or [collisions].” (Earleywine 210). Finally, links between aggression and marijuana tend to indicate hostility as a personality characteristic, not as a effect of cannabis consumption, and “studies reveal small but significant links between cannabis and aggression with very select populations under extremely circumscribed conditions.” (Earleywine 215)
It is obvious the prohibition of marijuana and its non-psychoactive sister plant hemp should be abandoned. Because of the research suggesting stunted growth in adolescents, I propose we educate children with the truthful information on the short-term and long-term effects of use. Children should also be given techniques for decision-making that minimize harmful consequences. Then, at age 21, like with alcohol, people are free to grow or purchase, with appropriate taxes, marijuana for medical or recreational use. Its bountiful use as a medical therapy no doubt will transform the structure of our malfunctioning health-care system and perhaps reduce fatalities from prescription drug reactions. The nutritional aspects of the plant could potentially reduce our meat-intake, reducing the amount of land dedicated to the environmentally unsound practice of cattle ranching.
Recently, the governor of California vetoed a bill legalizing the growing of hemp for industrial purposes, and this is flat-out wrong. Our national security would be strengthened, and our agriculture improved, if we abandoned oil and instead retrofitted our current technology with a hemp-based alternative:
Say you are the United States government. You are presiding over a runaway technological freight train heading for the brink of environmental collapse. More and more of your scientists are sounding the alarm: heavy reliance on fossil fuels is causing soaring pollution levels...Your forests are disappearing at an alarming rate to serve the housing and paper industries, leaving behind vast tracks of eroding soil. Farmlands that have not eroded are so overused and contaminated with pesticides and insecticides from cotton and other crops that farmers must add as much as forty times the fertilizer they did a century ago to get the same yield. And the runoff from this soil is contributing to the degradation of your water supply...What you need is a new industry, one that can fill the needs now met by fossil fuels and virgin timber; one that can be worked sustainably without polluting soil, air, or water; one that is self-sufficient and local, neither exploiting nor dependent on foreign countries. This industry would need to employ those citizens previously employed by the petrochemical, timber, and cotton industries. (Robinson 18-19)
Hemp “yields four times more fiber per acre than trees” and “absorbs heavy-metal contaminants from soil, gradually purifying the earth.” (Robinson 21) Using merely 10% of farmland to grow hemp for biofuel could power all our energy needs with a great reduction in the production of greenhouse gases, to say nothing of the repair to the overworked soil. Overall, cannabis and hemp offer a great many solutions to the problems our nation faces, and the suppression of this wonderous plant for economic gain by a small few must end.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Earleywine, Mitch. Understanding Marijuana: A New Look at the Scientific Evidence. New York: Oxford, 2005.
Green, Greg. The Cannabis Grow Bible. San Francisco: Green Candy Press, 2003.
“Marijuana.” The National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign website. 1 Dec 2006. 1 Dec 2006. http://www.theantidrug.com/drug_info/drug-info-marijuana.asp
“Medical Marijuana in California.” Institute of Governmental Studies: UC Berkeley website. June 2003. 1 Dec 2006. http://www.igs.berkeley.edu/library/htMedicalMarijuana2003.html
Margolin, Bruce. The Margoline Guide. West Hollywood: Law Offices of Bruce M. Margolin, PLC, 2006.
“National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.” California Chapter website. 14 Nov 2006. 1 Dec 2006. http://www.canorml.org/
Robinson, Rowan. The Great Book of Hemp. Rochester: Park Street Press, 1996.
Rosenthal, Ed & Steve Kubby with S. Newhart. Why Marijuana Should Be Legal. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2003.