biblicalia

The bride Moses loved the Bridegroom in the same way as the virgin in the Song who says, Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth; and through the face-to-face converse accorded him by God (as the Scripture testifies [cf Num 12.8]), he became after these theophanies more intensely desirous of such kisses, praying to see the object of his yearning as if he had never glimpsed him. In the same way, none of the others in whom the divine yearning was deeply lodged ever came to a point of rest in their desire. And even as now the soul that is joined to God is not satiated by her enjoyment of him, so too the more abundantly she is filled up with his beauty, the more vehemently the longings abound. For since the words of the Bridegroom are “spirit and life” (John 6.63), and everyone who is joined to the Spirit becomes spirit, while everyone who is attached to life “passes from death to life” (John 5.24) according to the Lord’s word, it follows that the virgin soul longs to approach the fount of the spiritual life. That fount, however, is the mouth of the Bridegroom, whence “the words of eternal life” (John 6.68) as they gush forth fill the mouth that is drawn to it, just as the prophet does when drawing spirit though his mouth (cf Ps 118.31 LXX=119.131). Since then it is necessary for the one who draws drink from the fount to fix mouth to mouth, and the fount is the Lord who says, “If anyone thirst, let him come to me and drink” (John 7.37), it follows that the soul, thirsty as she is, wills to bring her own mouth to the mouth that pours out life, saying, Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth.

St Gregory of Nyssa, Homily 1. The Church’s Bible: The Song of Songs. Translation by Richard A. Norris, Jr

When knowledge cleaves to the love of the body, it gathers up the following provisions: wealth, vainglory, honour, adornment, rest of the body, special means to guard the body’s nature from adversities, assiduity in rational wisdom, such as is suitable for the governance of the world and which gushes forth the novelties of inventions, the arts, sciences, doctrines, and all other things which crown the body in this visible world. Among the properties of this knowledge belong those that are opposed to faith, which we have stated and enumerated above. This is called shallow knowledge, for it is naked of all concern for God. And because it is dominated by the body, it introduces into the mind an irrational impotence, and its concern is totally for this world. This measure of knowledge does not reckon that there is any noetic power and hidden steersman over a man, nor any Divine care that shelters and takes concern for him. It takes no account of God’s providential governance; but on the contrary, it attributes to a man’s diligence and his methods every good thing in him, his rescue from what harms him, and his natural ability to avert the plights and many adversities that secretly and manifestly accompany our nature. This degree of knowledge presumes that all things are by its own providence, like those men who assert that there is no Divine governance of visible things. Nevertheless, it cannot be without continual cares and fear for the body. Therefore it is a prey to faintheartedness, sorrow, despair, fear of the demons, trepidation before men, the rumour of thieves and the report of murders, anxiety over illnesses, concern over want and the lack of necessities, fear of death, fear of sufferings, of wild beasts, and of other similar things that make this knowledge like a sea made turbulent by great waves at every hour of the night and day. For knowledge does not know how to cast its care upon God through the confident trust of faith in Him; wherefore in all things that concern it, it is constantly engaged in devising devices and clever contrivances. But when in some instance the modes of its contrivances prove fruitless, it strives with men as though they hindered and opposed it, since it does not see in this the mystical hand of providence.

The tree of knowledge of good and evil, the tree that uproots love, is implanted in this very knowledge. It investigates the small faults of other men and the causes thereof, and their weaknesses; and it arms a man for stubbornly upholding his opinion, for disputation, and aids him in cunningly employing devices and crafty contrivances and other means which dishonour a man. In this knowledge are produced and are found presumption and pride, for it attributes every good thing to itself, and does not refer it to God.

Faith, however, attributes its works to grace. For this reason it cannot be lifted up with pride, as it is written: “I can do all things through Christ Which strengtheneth me”; and again, “Not I, but the grace of God which is in me”; and also “Knowledge puffeth up”; which the blessed Apostle said of this same knowledge, since it is not mingled with faith and hope in God, but he said it not concerning true knowledge, far be it!

By humility true knowledge makes perfect the soul of those who have acquired it, like Moses, David, Esaias, Peter, Paul, and the rest of the saints who have been accounted worthy of this perfect knowledge to the degree possible for human nature. And by diverse theorias and divine revelations, by the lofty vision of spiritual things and by ineffable mysteries and the like, their knowledge is swallowed up at all times, and in their own eyes they reckon their soul to be dust and ashes. But that other knowledge is puffed up, even as is meet, since it walks in darkness and values that which belongs to it by comparison with things of earth, and it does not know that there is something better than itself. And so all who cling to such knowledge are seized by the uplifting of pride, because they measure their discipline according to the standard of the earth and the flesh, they rely upon their works, and their intellects do not enter into incomprehensible matters. But as many as reflect upon the waves of the glorious splendour of the Godhead, and whose labour is on high, their minds do not turn aside with inventions and vain thoughts. For those who walk in the light cannot go astray, and for this reason all those who have strayed from the light of the knowledge of the Son of God, and have turned away from the truth, journey in these pathways just mentioned. This is the first degree of knowledge; in it a man follows the desire of the flesh. We find this knowledge blameworthy and declare it to be opposed not only to faith, but to every working of virtue.

But when a man renounces the first degree and turns toward deep reflections and the love of the soul, then he practises the aforementioned good deeds with the help of his soul’s understanding, in co-operation with the senses of his body, and in the light of his soul’s nature. These deeds are: fasting, prayer, mercy, reading of the divine Scripture, the modes of virtue, battle with the passions, and the rest. For all these good things, all the various excellences seen in the soul and the wondrous means that are employed for serving in Christ’s court in this second degree of knowledge, are made perfect by the Holy Spirit through the action of its power. This knowledge makes straight the pathways in the heart which lead to faith, wherewith we gather supplies for our journey to the true age. But even so, this knowledge is still corporeal and composite; and although it is the road that leads us and speeds us on our way toward faith, yet there remains a degree of knowledge still higher than it. If it goes forward, it will find itself raised up by faith with the help of Christ, that is, when it has laid the foundation of its action on seclusion from men, reading the Scriptures, prayer, and the other good works by which the second degree of knowledge is made perfect. It is by this knowledge that all that is excellent is performed; indeed, it is called the knowledge of actions, because by concrete actions, through the senses of the body, it accomplishes its work on the external level.

Hear now how knowledge becomes more refined, acquires that which is of the Spirit, and comes to resemble the life of the unseen hosts which perform their liturgy not by the palpable activity of works, but through the activity accomplished in the intellect’s meditation. When knowledge is raised above earthly things and the cares of earthly activities, and its thoughts begin to gain experience in inward matters which are hidden from the eyes; and when in part it scorns the recollections of things (whence the perverseness of the passions arises), and when it stretches itself upward and follows faith in its solicitude for the future age, in its desire for what has been promised us, and in searching deeply into hidden mysteries: then faith itself swallows up knowledge, converts it, and begets it anew, so that it becomes wholly and completely spirit.

Then it can soar on wings in the realms of the bodiless and touch the depths of the unfathomable sea, musing upon the wondrous and divine workings of God’s governance of noetic and corporeal creatures. It searches out spiritual mysteries that are perceived by the simple and subtle intellect. Then the inner senses awaken for spiritual doing, according to the order that will be in the immortal and incorruptible life. For even from now it has received, as it were in a mystery, the noetic resurrection as a true witness of the universal renewal of all things.

These are the three degrees of knowledge wherein is brought together a man’s whole course in the body, in the soul, and in the spirit. From the time when a man begins to distinguish between good and evil until he takes leave of this world, his soul’s knowledge journeys in these stages. The fullness of all wrong and impiety, and the fullness of righteousness, and the probing of the depths of all the mysteries of the Spirit are wrought by one knowledge in the aforementioned three stages; and in it is contained the intellect’s every movement, whether the intellect ascends or descends in good or in evil or in things midway between the two. The Fathers call these stages: natural, supranatural, and contranatural. These are the three directions in which the memory of a rational soul travels up or down, as has been said: when the soul works righteousness in the confines of nature, or when through her recollection she is caught away to a state higher than nature in the divine vision of God, or when she recedes from her nature to heard swine, as did that young man who squandered the wealth of his discretion and laboured for a troop of demons.

From Homily Fifty-two, The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian, translated by the Holy Transfiguration Monastery. Partial photocopies of this beautiful but very hard to find book are available from the monastery, here. The copies include all the homilies, but lack the introduction and appendices. They’re worth every penny spent on them.

Thou, flood of light, poured into a manger!
Thou, hope and promise!
Tottering from the shadows to the sky.
Thou, eternal dream of the universe!
Thou, song of heaven’s blessing!
Sleep, sleep, O springtime of salvation!
Thy star lightens the horizon,
And burns away the darkness of ignorance.
By Thy coming redemption is enkindled
With love and light,
And the world recovers its existence.

Sœur Marie Keyrouz OSB, from her Cantiques de l’Orient, 1996.
English translation of Arabic lyrics

It was nearly a quarter of a century ago. The teenaged boy and his mother went to the newly restored Mission La Purisima near Lompoc, California, the full name of which is Mision La Purisima Concepcion de Maria Santisima. It was a beautiful Easter Sunday morning, warm and clear, and the nave was so full that it was standing room only by the time they arrived. Not long into the service, however, the young man, overdressed for the heat and suffering from the closeness of the centuries old, unventilated church, began to feel unwell. Though he was distressed at leaving in the midst of Holy Mass, he was afraid that he might become sick in the church itself, which was not an option. So he excused himself from his mother and stepped outside. Finding a bench in the shade near a small fountain in the gardens, he sat down to catch his breath and allow his stomach to settle. Not long afterward, a woman in a sky-blue nun’s habit joined him on the bench opposite. The young man thanked her, of course, for her concern for his well-being, and the two continued to talk for some time, with the young man feeling better as time passed. At one point, he saw his mother briefly leave the church and approach, checking on him. She returned to the Mass and her son continued to talk with the kind nun. Eventually taking his leave of the sister, he rejoined his mother for the rest of the Mass. On the way home, the young man mentioned the conversation with the nun, and how much he enjoyed it. His mother, surprised, noted that she didn’t see anyone talking with him on the other bench by the fountain, which fact surprised him indeed. For the woman was there, as plain as day, and they had a good conversation.

Yet to this day I can’t remember what we talked about for all that time….

The Logos justifiably rebukes the tardiness of those who drag out their time in the practice of the virtues and do not wish to advance beyond this and to rise to the higher state of contemplation. “Fools and slow of heart” He calls them—slow to place their trust in Him who can reveal the meaning of the contemplation of the inner principles of the created world to all who spiritually explore the depths of the Spirit. For not to wish to progress from the initial struggles to those that are more advanced, and to pass from the “exterior” or literal meaning of Holy Scripture to its inner or spiritual meaning, is a sign of the sluggish soul, one with no taste for spiritual profit and extremely resentful about its own advancement. Such a soul, since its lamp has gone out, will not only be told to go and buy oil from those that sell it; but, finding the bridal chamber closed to it, it will also hear the words, “Go away, I do not know you or whence you come.”

Nikitas Stithatos (c 1020-1100), On the Inner Nature of Things, 97. Philokalia 4.136.

Several months ago, a friend at church asked me for a good book about the period between the Old Testament and the New Testament. He’s a numismatist and familiar with Greek and Roman history, but not so much on the Jewish history of the so-called Intertestamental Period. “How do we get from there to here?” I recall him asking. I hadn’t a recommendation for him at the time. After asking around, I picked up a few different books to read through, intending to hand over to him whichever I might find to be the best of the bunch. So, consider that the context of this short review.

I’ve just finished reading Shaye J. D. Cohen’s From the Maccabees to the Mishnah, second edition (Westminster John Knox Press, 2006). The first edition was volume seven of the Library of Early Christianity series edited by Wayne Meeks; apparently this second edition is not to be considered part of that series, oddly enough. The cover is unlike the standardized cover of the series, as one may see here. At xiv + 250, it is neither too short nor particularly detailed, and footnotes are kept to a minimum, and extremely economical even at that. There is a glossary and general index, and the whole is certainly geared to “students and other nonspecialists” as Cohen notes in the Preface to the First Edition (p. xi).

The book is an introduction to Jewish history between roughly 200 BCE and 200 CE, thus the “Maccabees to the Mishnah” of the title. Note my careful choice of phrasing: it is an introduction to Jewish history of that period, and not a history of the period in itself. This I find to be the case in that the chapters are thematically rather than chronologically arranged. After the Foreword to the First Edition by Wayne Meeks, and the Prefaces to the First and Second Edition of this book by Cohen, chapter one, “Ancient Judaism: Chronology and Definitions” (which is really the Introduction to the work, discussing concerns of phraseology for the period and other issues) is followed by a Timeline. One might at this point, particularly in light of the title, expect the work to be arranged chronologically, but this is not the case. As I mentioned, the book is arranged thematically, in the following chapters:
2. Jews and Gentiles
3. The Jewish “Religion”: Practices and Beliefs
4. The Community and Its Institutions
5. Sectarian and Normative
6. Canonization and Its Implications
7. The Emergence of Rabbinic Judaism
There then follows a helpful thirteen pages of annotated “Suggestions for Further Reading,” arranged by chapter, and then the glossary and general index.

The thematic arrangement I found to be a distraction, in all honesty. The book is well-written and clearly up-to-date, being an especially clear presentation for those who might be new to the subject. Cohen shows himself an adept at summarizing without oversimplifying. But I found myself often relying on my own fund of knowledge in order to fill in the gaps, as I ran into explanations that were at times too drastically curtailed, no doubt due to limited space. Yet I especially thought that more of a chronological arrangement would have made the book that much more valuable and useful. As it is, I would need to recommend this book in conjunction with another, something like Julius Scott’s Jewish Backgrounds of the New Testament (Baker Academic, 1995) or Anthony Tomasino’s Judaism before Jesus: The Events & Ideas That Shaped the New Testament World (Intervarsity Press, 2003). [As an aside, how many books on this period are going to be titled alliteratively? “From the Greeks to the Godfearers” “Persians to Pharisees” “Apocalyptic and Afikomen”] Scott’s book is particularly successful at combining chronological and thematic chapters, and that, I think, would be much more useful to the kind of audience that Cohen’s book is aimed at: the “students and other nonspecialists.” One might hope for a vastly reworked third edition in not so limited a format (223 pages of text really is too short; Scott is just over 350 pages of text, and Tomasino just over 300) in which Cohen could “go to town” on the subject, rather than being so limited and therefore occasionally too terse.

We might not expect a third edition to come from the same publisher, however. As Cohen notes in an addition to his preface for this addition, dated December 2005:

The first edition of this book was published by Westminster Press in 1987 in the Library of Early Christianity series edited by Wayne Meeks. I was delighted then to be associated with a Presbyterian publishing house. It is one of the blessings of America that a Presbyterian publisher would commission a Jew to write a book on early Judaism for a series oriented to students of the New Testament. This never happened in the old country. Eighteen years later I am grateful to Westminster John Knox Press for publishing this second edition and remain grateful to the press for its courtesies to me over the years. I am no longer happy, however, to be associated with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the parent body of WJK, because I am deeply pained by the recent anti-Israel turn in its policies. The fact that WJK is editorially and fiscally independent of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) affords small consolation; by publishing this book with WJK I am associating myself perforce with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), an organization whose anti-Israel policies I condemn and distrust.

Bravo, Professor Cohen.

Parts I, II, III, IV, and V in this series covered the gospel evidence regarding the Pharisess in nineteen parallel pericopes between the three synoptic gospels primarily, with one pericope included from the Gospel of John. Now I’d like to look at how the gospel evidence regarding the Pharisees has been, intentionally or unintentionally, misunderstood throughout the ages.

First, it is important to understand that the Gospel of Matthew was and is by far the most popular gospel of the four. It received pride of place in Patristic citation from the second century onward. In later established lectionary pericopes as well, much more of Matthew was read during more of the year than was the case with the other gospels. Therefore, even aside from concerns of compositional theory, the Gospel of Matthew appears to have been effectively The Gospel, with the others contributing secondarily. So, even though our focus in the previous contributions to this series was on Matthew as the earliest gospel according to the Griesbach Hypothesis of the compositional history of the synoptic gospels, that perspective of “Matthew first” is upheld in the de facto status of Matthew as the preferred gospel throughout Church history.

Secondly, it is likewise important to understand the disruption of Judean society caused by the Great Revolt of 66-74 and the subsequent severance of proper comprehension of the picture of the Pharisees in the Gospel of Matthew. After the Great Revolt, the old societal structures and institutions were all overturned: the chief-priestly families and other aristocracy were obliterated by the rebels, and those surviving the subsequent Roman onslaught were faced with a society which had no need of them after the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. The surviving Pharisees and others worked at constructing a new societal structure, under more direct oversight from both the Romans and the rabbis. The societal context depicted in the gospels was no longer existent, and relatively quickly faded from memory, with readers culturally further distant losing the original understanding of the context even more quickly, as they had perhaps never had a good grasp on it at all in the first place. The depiction in Matthew of a dialogue between Jesus and the Pharisees, one rooted in different bases for halakhic argumentation but still a generally workable relationship, and the function of the rhetoric in the gospel as part of that argumentation, was all lost. Indeed, as we have seen from the earlier parts of this series, the argumentation was already unimporant to both Luke and Mark in their presentations to gentile audiences. This lack of both interest and comprehension led to statements in Matthew being taken not as part of a rhetorical strategy in argument, but as bald fact, particularly Jesus’ diatribe against the Pharisees and scribes in Matthew 23. But Matthew 23 simply cannot be taken in isolation as a freestanding critique of all scribes and Pharisees in every particular (that is, of the Pharisaic program of halakhic rulings and the personal failings noted of individual unnamed scribes and Pharisees) as it has been and, in some quarters, still is. It is only correctly understood when viewed in the context of the interactions between Jesus and the Pharisees depicted throughout the earlier chapters of Matthew, and particularly only in the view of Jesus’ different focus in admitting the Word of the Lord found amidst the prophetic texts in determining his halakhic rulings. It is only from within Jesus’ own halakhic program that the critique of the Pharisaic halakhic program is properly comprehended. Thus the foundation for the charges of hypocrisy lie within those debates, the subtext of which is determining the will of God in ordinary life. Jesus’ emphasis is on fostering a moral interiority rooted in God’s mercy toward and love for man in addition to maintaining ritual purity; this is the source of the charge for hypocrisy among the Pharisees: their halakhic program is found by Jesus to be only inconsistently guided by the example of the same Divine mercy and love for man, and thus the Pharisees only hypocritically claim to consistently reveal the will of God to man. With the loss of understanding this context, Christian commentators very early on thereby considered the Pharisees to have been one and all personally hypocritical and gulty of the personal failings described in Matthew 23. Thence, whether knowing or not that the Pharisees were the source of Rabbinic Judaism, this charge of empty hypocrisy was transferred to all Judaism. And that mistaken perspective was (surprisingly, to a thoughtful and sympathetic reader) maintained throughout the ages until only the last generation.

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