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Sitaram
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 Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2005 12:22 pm Post subject: Literary Analysis and the Early Church |
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Literary Analysis & the Early Church
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It is my theory that present day literary analysis, metonymy, allegory,
metaphor, at. al, has its roots in the early Church's attempts at
exegisis.
It is Augustine who said : "The New Testament is in the Old Testament
concealed, and the Old Testament is in the New Testament revealed."
"Novum testamentum in veteri latet, vetus in novo patet"
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=2136&letter=A
Quapropter in veteri Testamento est occultatio novi, in novo Testamento est manifestatio veteris.
Quaestiones in Exodum
Catechizing of the Uninstructed, 4:8)
http://www.catholicculture.org/docs/doc_view.cfm?recnum=6811
Here are a few more examples of biblical typology:
• Peter uses Noah's ark as a type of Christian baptism (1 Pet. 3:18-22).
• Paul explains that circumcision foreshadowed Christian baptism (Col. 2:11-12).
• Jesus uses the bronze serpent as a type of his Crucifixion (John 3:14; cf. Num. 21:8-9).
• The Passover lamb prefigures the sacrifice of Christ (1 Cor. 5:7).
• Paul says that Abraham, in his willingness to sacrifice Isaac, "considered that God was able to raise men even from the dead; hence, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back" (Heb. 11:19).
http://www.ibs.org/niv/mct/10.php
| Quote: |
http://www.apollonius.net/wheless1.html
Most notable of these forged Christian addenda to the Pagan-Jewish
forged Oracles, 'Is found in Book VIII, a lengthy composite of Jewish and
Christian fraud, consisting of some 500 hexameter verses. The first 216
verses, says the CE., "are most likely the work of a second century Jew,
while the latter part (verses 217-500), beginning with an acrostic on the
symbolical Christian word Ichthus is undoubtedly Christian, and dates
most probably from the third century." (CE. xiii, 770.) Ichthus is the
Greek word for fish, and the fish was the fitting and universal symbol of
the early Christians as typical of the "catch" of the Apostolic fishers of
men. This cabalistic word Ichthus, worked into the professedly Pagan
Oracle in the form of an acrostic, is composed of the initial letters of the
popular name and title of the Son of the Christian God, in the Greek:
"Iesous Christos Theou Uios Soter -- Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior"
This fish anagram was an ancient Pagan symbol of fecundity, of great
vogue and veneration throughout Pagandom, and was adopted by
Christendom for the double reason that the initials acrostically formed the
name and title of its new deity, and that in the ancient science fish were
supposed to be generated in the water without carnal copulation, and
were thus peculiarly symbolic of the Virgin-born Christ. Says Tertullian:
"We, little fishes, after the example of our Ichthus, are born in water." (On
Baptism, ch. i; ANP. iii, 669.)
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God becomes "author" in various senses. Jesus, who spoke in
parables, confides to his disciples that there is an outer carnal
meaning for the masses and an inner, concealed, spiritual meaning
for the elite.
Jesus even invites us to join in the "easter egg hunt" of literary
analysis when he says, "Search the scriptures for therein shall ye find
eternal life."
http://www.cgc.org/inkhorn/apostles.html
Matt 13:10 The disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou
unto them in parables?
11 He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to
know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not
given.
If you trace back these disciples, you will come to the fact in Chapter
11:1, it came to pass when Jesus had made an end of commanding
his twelve disciples. This is the original twelve group which became
apostles outside of Judas, who by transgression, fell. And so, it says
here they had been given to know the mysteries (secrets) of the
kingdom of God.
Matt 13:12 For whosever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall
have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be
taken away even that he hath.
When they said, "How come you're speaking in parables?", He
explained it more to the disciples and gave them insight into it,
because it was given to them to know the mysteries and secrets.
Matt 13:36.Then Jesus sent the multitude away, and went into the
house: and his disciples came (these were His twelve disciples, which
were called apostles) unto him, saying, Declare unto us the parable of
the tares of the field.
And Jesus explained:
He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man;
38] The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the
kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked [one];
39] The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end
of the world; and the reapers are the angels.
40] As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so
shall it be in the end of this world.
41] The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather
out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity;
42] And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing
and gnashing of teeth.
43] Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of
their Father. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.
The crisis of the Old Testament in the early Church peaked around the
middle of the second century. At that time, two positions emerged that
embodied the most extreme attitudes to the Old Testament possible in the
Church. They are represented, on one end, by a man, Marcion of Sinope,
and on the other end by a document, the Epistle of Barnabas. In brief:
Marcion interpreted the Old Testament literally, and only literally, and
threw it out of the Church. The author of the Epistle of Barnabas
interpreted the Old Testament figuratively, and only figuratively, and took
it away from the Synagogue.
Marcion of Sinope is one of the more intriguing, if peculiar, figures of the
second century. He was a native of Asia Minor, where his father may have
been a bishop. He made a fortune in the shipping business and then got
serious about religion. Around 140 he moved to Rome and contributed a
great sum of money to the church there. A few years later, around 144,
the church at Rome expelled him for his wrong teachings and
-interestingly - gave him his money back.
Marcion read the Old Testament very carefully, and what he read appalled
him. He read, for example, that the god of the Old Testament created
Adam, and was thus was responsible for the entry of evil into the world.
This god was ignorant; when he walked in the Garden he had to ask
Adam, "Where are you?" This god was fickle, too; he first forbade Moses
to make graven images but later commanded him to make an image of a
saraph serpent. This god could be vicious; he ordered the most awful
slaughters of women and children. Jesus would contradict this god, for this
god commanded "eye for eye, tooth for tooth," whereas Jesus bade us to
love our enemies.
Marcion also read Christian writings, especially St. Paul's letters, and
found there a wholly new religion. He concluded that there are two gods:
the inferior god of justice of the Old Testament, and the higher God of
love of the New Testament.
Marcion, in other words, was convinced that every single word of the Old
Testament was literally true, and only literally true. And as such, the Old
Testament was unworthy of the God of Love and of the Christian Church
and hence had to be rejected.
The other extreme is represented by the Epistle of Barnabas. This curious
document is classed among the writings known as the Apostolic Fathers,
those eight or nine Christian writings that survive from the first half of the
second century.
Like Marcion, the author of this strange document also read the Old
Testament intensely but proposed a diametrically opposed theory: the
whole Old Testament, he held, is a great allegory, and concealed within it are the truths of the Christian faith. In the process, "Barnabas" put forward some of the most bizarre interpretations of the Old Testament ever proposed by Christians.
On God's covenant with his people, Barnabas set up a simple dichotomy:
is the covenant for us or for them? His answer is clear: the covenant was
meant for Christians only. More precisely, Moses received the tablets on
Sinai, but because of the people's sin in worshipping the golden calf he
hurled the tablets to the ground, and the covenant was invalidated. A
wicked angel then caused the Jews to take the Scriptures literally. In a
spectacular section, Barnabas contrasts the erroneous, literal
interpretation of Scripture with its true, spiritual sense. A few examples
will make his method clear.
He deals at length with dietary laws. The Jews had erred by taking the
texts literally, as if they really were about food. Barnabas knew better.
The prohibition against eating pork, he writes, really forbids us to
associate with men who think of the Lord only when they are in need, for
swine bellow when they are hungry but otherwise ignore their keepers.
The prohibition against eating eagle, hawk, kite, and crow really forbids us
to associate with men who refuse to work for a living, since these birds
feed on what others have killed. The prohibition against eating eel or
octopus really forbids us to associate with the impious, since these
creatures are bottom-feeders. To avoid eating rabbits, hyenas, and
weasels really means avoiding deviant sexual sins. And so it goes on.
But Barnabas' real triumph - one of which he was immensely proud - was
his interpretation of Gen 17:23, which says that Abraham circumcised 318
men in his household. Abraham himself, Barnabas writes, foresaw Jesus
in the spirit and received the precious teaching on this number. When the
number 318 is written in Greek (which used letters for numbers), 10 and 8
are I and E, the first letters of the name of Jesus, and 300 is T, the cross.
This is the higher knowledge, and Barnabas exults, "No one has learned
from me a more trustworthy lesson!" The fact that Genesis was written in
Hebrew, not Greek, did not slow him down for a moment. This, of course,
is the stuff of
madness.
In summary: what was the situation around the year 150? In the technical
sense, the Church did not have an Old Testament, because it did not yet
have a New Testament. As so often, the Church first defined its doctrine
negatively, by rejecting what it perceived as wrong, and tried thereby to
steer a middle way between Marcion and Barnabas. The norm by which
the Church judged was soon to be called the "rule of faith," that sense of
the essence and heart of Christian belief and doctrine. When the Church
rejected Marcion, it affirmed its belief in one God, and one God only.
Further, it affirmed that this one God had revealed himself in the Old
Testament to Abraham, Moses, and the prophets, just as he revealed
himself definitively in Jesus the Christ. The Church also affirmed that the
Jewish Scriptures it inherited were indeed the Word of God and would
never cease to be that, a conviction later enshrined in the third article of
the creed, which states that the Holy Spirit "spoke through the prophets."
And finally and most significantly, the Church affirmed that there was no
dichotomy between Creation and Redemption. Matter was not the work of
one god and grace the work of another; redemption was not an escape
from the corporeal world; and the work of the one God, Creator and
Redeemer, was manifested in all of history.
Consider the example of Jesus profound literary insight, when he points
out that, in the Old Testament, God DID NOT say "I WAS the God of
Abraham and Isaac and Jacob" (which would imply that those three
patriarchs were dead at the time) but rather "I AM the God of Abraham
and Isaac and Jacob" (implying that the three patriarch live and worship
even through they no longer walk the earth in the flesh).
Of course, someone shall surely object and say that what Jesus did was
not literary analysis but rather, grammatical analysis, or possibly just
plain common sense.
So, we must attempt to define what we mean by "literary analysis."
I was so enormously impressed by Nabokov's essay on Kafka's
"Metamorphosis" where he says (paraphrasing from memory) "I shall now
share with you something for which you shall be grateful to me for the
rest of your lives. All beetles have wings, (concealed under their
carapace). The great tragedy of "Metamorphosis" is that the protagonist
NEVER found his wings. And there are many of us in life who never find
their wings." Nabokov and Jesus are so clever, each in their own way of
course.
Now, as far as we know from the scriptures, Jesus never wrote anything
EXCEPT for one time, when he wrote in the sand with his finger, after he
told the crowd that "he who is without sin" may cast the first stone at the
adulteress. It says that one by one, slowly, each person walked away until
there was no one left but Jesus and the condemned woman. Now, early
Church theologians, being literary analysts of the caliber of Nabokov,
speculated about WHAT Jesus might have been writing in the sand, as
people slowly left, one by one. They speculated that Jesus was writing
obscure things in the sand, known ONLY to each individual in the crowd,
which would convict them in their hearts of the fact they each was INDEED
with sin, and not qualified to caste the first stone. Now, in these modern
times, if someone were to write "Holiday Inn, Rm. 512, July 2" and YOU
remembered that this is the exact date and room where you committed
adultery.... well you get my point.
When Jesus meets Nathaniel (my memory may be faulty on this), Jesus
exclaims, "Behold and Israelite in whom there is no guile." Nathaniel is
perplexed and says "How is it that you know me?" Jesus answers, "I saw
you beneath the fig tree." Now, we shall never know what that meant to
Nathaniel, but he was utterly THUNDERSTRUCK and exclaimed something
to the effect that surely Jesus must be the Messiah, the promised one.
Perhaps Nathaniel was sorely tempted to steal a fig, but wrestled with the
temptation and overcame it. Perhaps he was under the fig tree with a
woman, and refrained from doing something improper. Who knows what
Nathaniel did, but he sure as heck remembers that old fig tree.
The Proverbs of King Solomon mention "the wisdom of the wise and their
DARK sayings." Now, for me, a DARK saying is one which is
MULTI-VALENT and implicit, and lends itself or rather invites us, to literary
interpretation and analysis. The proverb, "A word of wisdom, fitly spoken
is like unto an apple of gold in silver filigree (fittings)" has been taken as a
paradigmatic metaphor for how we analyze literature which, on the
surface, appears to be one thing, but beneath the surface, is altogether
something else.
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