Exegeting Isaiah 44.

[John D. Brey]

He cuts down cedars, or perhaps took a cypress or oak. He let it grow among the trees of the forest, or planted a pine, and the rain made it grow. It is man's fuel for burning; some of it he takes and warms himself, he kindles a fire and bakes bread. But he also fashions a god and worships it; he makes an idol and bows down to it.

Isaiah 44:14-15.

Once I was a trunk of fig, a useless piece of wood, when a carpenter, unsure whether he should make a bench or a Priapus, decided to make a god.

Horace quoted in Wikipedia entry on Priapus.
​

The thread on Exegeting Genesis 17:13-12 pointed out that verse 12 of the chapter is speaking not of "circumcising on the eighth day" בן–שמנת ימים (as is the traditional interpretation), but rather, "in the days of the son of oil (בן–שמנת)." ------The identity, purpose, and nature, or this "son of oil" בן–שמנת is hidden so deep in the text of the Tanakh that we need a fishing line strong enough to bring to the surface a killer whale, leviathan, or perhaps an oceanic version of Priapus, if we're to see the holy entity in the crosshairs of the god-manufacturing idolatry of the holy see.



John
​

 

[John D. Brey]

He cuts down cedars, or perhaps took a cypress or oak. He let it grow among the trees of the forest, or planted a pine, and the rain made it grow. It is man's fuel for burning; some of it he takes and warms himself, he kindles a fire and bakes bread. But he also fashions a god and worships it; he makes an idol and bows down to it.

Isaiah 44:14-15.

Once I was a trunk of fig, a useless piece of wood, when a carpenter, unsure whether he should make a bench or a Priapus, decided to make a god.

Horace quoted in Wikipedia entry on Priapus.
​

The thread on Exegeting Genesis 17:13-12 pointed out that verse 12 of the chapter is speaking not of "circumcising on the eighth day" בן–שמנת ימים (as is the traditional interpretation), but rather, "in the days of the son of oil (בן–שמנת)." ------The identity, purpose, and nature, or this "son of oil" בן–שמנת is hidden so deep in the text of the Tanakh that we need a fishing line strong enough to bring to the surface a killer whale, leviathan, or perhaps an oceanic version of Priapus, if we're to see the holy entity in the crosshairs of the god-manufacturing idolatry of the holy see.​

Marriage ceremony of firstborn conception.

Throughout the ancient Mediterranean, Middle East and even into India, images of Priapus (or Hermes, or some other phallic deity) with a phallus were used in deflowering rituals of newlywed virgin brides. Though the bride would later consummate the marriage with her husband, the deity was said to impregnate her with her firstborn child. In early times, this child begotten of the deity was sometimes then offered to the deity as a sacrifice, just as the first fruits of all kinds were offered to the deity who provided them. Though the Romans gave up human sacrifice, they still held this ceremony of firstborn conception.

Wikipedia, Priapus.​

In the encyclopedia noted in the Wikipedia entry above, St. Augustine is quoted denouncing Roman women for being too willing to "sit on the masculine monstrosity representing Priapus."

As in all myths of divine births, the maiden might have an earthly husband, but he didn't lie with her until after she brought forth her firstborn child, who was the son of God, or, in Buddha's case, the son of Ganesha, the Lord of Hosts.

Barbara G. Walker, TWEMS, p. 311.​

Walker notes that anointing the god head with holy oil was a natural necessity for using it not to warm the fires of concupiscence, but for inserting it into the oven to produce leavened bread (sex and bread-making being parallel symbols even in the Tanakh). The fact that in Hebrew this "holy oil" is called "semen" or "shemen" שמן merely documents the interconnectedness of all symbols, myths, and doctrines.

Very little of Isaiah's symbolism can be rightly understood without knowing that throughout his writing he's referring to the concepts being discussed. In Isaiah's time these ideas weren't outliers but were the typical concepts undergirding nearly all religious symbolism and conceptualism. As Professor Nahum Sarna points out, Israel's own symbolism and conceptualism, although it doesn't slavishly follow the ideas of the nations surrounding them, does in fact use every one of these concepts as the backdrop, or fore skene, through which Israel's unique set of ideas is carved ברית מילה, or created, and then used, in the manufacture of their own, unique, Priapic god, otherwise known as the "son of oil."



John

 

[John D. Brey]

Marriage ceremony of firstborn conception.

Throughout the ancient Mediterranean, Middle East and even into India, images of Priapus (or Hermes, or some other phallic deity) with a phallus were used in deflowering rituals of newlywed virgin brides. Though the bride would later consummate the marriage with her husband, the deity was said to impregnate her with her firstborn child. In early times, this child begotten of the deity was sometimes then offered to the deity as a sacrifice, just as the first fruits of all kinds were offered to the deity who provided them. Though the Romans gave up human sacrifice, they still held this ceremony of firstborn conception.

Wikipedia, Priapus.​

In the encyclopedia noted in the Wikipedia entry above, St. Augustine is quoted denouncing Roman women for being too willing to "sit on the masculine monstrosity representing Priapus."

As in all myths of divine births, the maiden might have an earthly husband, but he didn't lie with her until after she brought forth her firstborn child, who was the son of God, or, in Buddha's case, the son of Ganesha, the Lord of Hosts.

Barbara G. Walker, TWEMS, p. 311.​

Walker notes that anointing the god head with holy oil was a natural necessity for using it not to warm the fires of concupiscence, but for inserting it into the oven to produce leavened bread (sex and bread-making being parallel symbols even in the Tanakh). The fact that in Hebrew this "holy oil" is called "semen" or "shemen" שמן merely documents the interconnectedness of all symbols, myths, and doctrines.

Very little of Isaiah's symbolism can be rightly understood without knowing that throughout his writing he's referring to the concepts being discussed. In Isaiah's time these ideas weren't outliers but were the typical concepts undergirding nearly all religious symbolism and conceptualism. As Professor Nahum Sarna points out, Israel's own symbolism and conceptualism, although it doesn't slavishly follow the ideas of the nations surrounding them, does in fact use every one of these concepts as the backdrop, or fore skene, through which Israel's unique set of ideas is carved ברית מילה, or created, and then used, in the manufacture of their own, unique, Priapic god.

When these concepts are brought out into the light, the true blue Jew, or the dyed in blood of the woolen lamb of God Christian, tends to see the interrelationship between Priapus, and Shaddai, or Jesus, as paganism run rampant. Their natural instinct is to shun such ideas as, if not merely pagan, then demonic too. These ideas, notwithstanding their hoary historicity, are implicitly difficult to swallow for the true blue believer, such that there could hardly be a better mezuzah into the city of Zion than the blood of ideas that can only be ingested and digested by those believers able to follow the truth into the zones forbidden by the orthodox guardians who are stationed as the fence around these Torah-truths.

Even the form itself, under which the god was represented, appear to them a mockery of all piety and devotion, and more fit to be placed in a brothel than a temple. But the forms and ceremonies of a religion are not always to be understood in their direct and obvious sense; but are to be considered as symbolical representations of some hidden meaning, which may be extremely wise and just, though the symbols themselves, to those who know not their true signification, may appear in the highest degree absurd and extravagant. It has often happened, that avarice and superstition have continued these symbolical representations for ages after their original meaning has been lost and forgotten; when they must of course appear nonsensical and ridiculous, if not impious and extravagant.

Richard Payne Knight, A History of Phallic Worship, p. 27.​

Knight, writing in the eighteenth-century, is speaking specifically of the rituals and religious ideas centered around the concepts under discussion. He knows, as anyone who finishes this thread will know, that the fore skene of phallic worship, though it disgusts and revolts the true believer, is, in truth, something like the disgust, and revolt, Abraham would have first endured when told to cut his phallus with extreme prejudice, and then to offer up the symbolically virgin son born after that symbolic emasculation set the stage for a unique birth promised not when his bled organ was the cause of that birth, but when a divine envoy gave a victorious proclamation of a new kind of conception so absurd by normal reckoning that Sarah, hiding behind the veil listening, took to laughter so loud it offended the giver of the proclamation promising that she would become pregnant apart from Abraham's now bled and lifeless organ.

Such is the case with the rite now under consideration, than which nothing can be more monstrous and indecent, if considered in its plain and obvious meaning, or as a part of the Christian worship; but which will be found to be a very natural symbol of a very natural and philosophical system of religion, if considered according to its original use and intention.

Ibid.​

Far from merely exposing an acceptable religious or philosophical concept related to symbols that initially appear monstrous, it's the case that when properly dissected Priapus can be shown not only to glorify the legitimacy and sanctity of Jewish ritual, but if cut deep enough, an understanding of Priapus can show that the same blood flows through Judaism as flows through Christianity, flows through Isaac, as flows through Jesus, flows through the pages of the Tanakh, as flows through the reddened Red Letter Edition of the Gospel truth.



John

 

[dybmh]

sex and bread-making being parallel symbols even in the Tanakh). The fact that in Hebrew this "holy oil" is called "semen" or "shemen" שמן merely documents the interconnectedness of all symbols, myths, and doctrines.

Parallelomania and parallelophobia - Wikipedia

"observations of similarity between historical events are often less than valid, but at times lead to a phenomenon where an author first notices a supposed similarity, overdoses on analogy, and then "proceeds to describe source and derivation as if implying a literary connection flowing in an inevitable or predetermined direction"

 

[John D. Brey]

Parallelomania and parallelophobia - Wikipedia

"observations of similarity between historical events are often less than valid, but at times lead to a phenomenon where an author first notices a supposed similarity, overdoses on analogy, and then "proceeds to describe source and derivation as if implying a literary connection flowing in an inevitable or predetermined direction"

When a man hath taken a new wife, he shall not go out to war, neither shall he be charged with any business: but he shall be free at home one year, and shall cheer up his wife [enjoy conjugal relations with her] which he hath taken. 6 No man shall take the nether or the upper millstone to pledge: for he taketh a man’s life to pledge.

Deuteronomy 24:5-6.​

One shall not take an upper or lower millstone as a pledge. The Midrash notes a symbolic linkage between this verse and the previous passage having to do with marriage. After the first sin, Eve was told, your craving shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you (Genesis 3:16). . . [The set of upper and lower millstones are considered to be an analogy for a husband and wife, with the lower millstone, corresponding to the wife.].



Rabbi Elie Munk, The Call of the Torah: An Anthology of Interpretations and Commentary of the Five Books of Moses (Parenthesis is Munk's).
​

Rashi notes that the lower stone is called רחם, (spelled with the addition of a yod vowel --matres lectionis--- רחים) which in Exodus 13:2 is (רחם is) the "womb" that God's son will open since its still closed signifying the strange nature of the conception and birth of this son of oil בן–שמנת. For the purposes of justifying the correct reading of Deuteronomy 24:5-6 (which Ibn Ezra hates and denies, for he knows where it leads) it should be enough to know that the lower stone is called the same thing as the closed womb רחם.

In Exodus 13:2, the word for opening the womb is ironically, "peter" פטר. The peter opens the womb, duh. While in Deuteronomy 24:5-6, the upper stone is called, ורכב, which is the "rider, or driver," of a thing. The upper stone ורכב is riding the womb רחם as the peter פטר opens the womb רחם.



John

 

[dybmh]

When a man hath taken a new wife, he shall not go out to war, neither shall he be charged with any business: but he shall be free at home one year, and shall cheer up his wife [enjoy conjugal relations with her] which he hath taken. 6 No man shall take the nether or the upper millstone to pledge: for he taketh a man’s life to pledge.

Deuteronomy 24:5-6.​

One shall not take an upper or lower millstone as a pledge. The Midrash notes a symbolic linkage between this verse and the previous passage having to do with marriage. After the first sin, Eve was told, your craving shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you (Genesis 3:16). . . [The set of upper and lower millstones are considered to be an analogy for a husband and wife, with the lower millstone, corresponding to the wife.].



Rabbi Elie Munk, The Call of the Torah: An Anthology of Interpretations and Commentary of the Five Books of Moses (Parenthesis is Munk's).
​

Rashi notes that the lower stone is called רחם, which in Exodus 13:2 is the womb that God's son will open since its still closed signifying the strange conception and birth of this son of oil. But for the purposes of justifying the correct reading of Deuteronomy 24:5-6 (which Ibn Ezra hates and denies, for he knows where it leads) it should be enough to know that the lower stone is called the same thing as the closed womb: רחב.

In Exodus 13:2, the word for opening the womb is ironically, peter פטר. The peter opens the womb. While in Deuteronomy 24:5-6, the upper stone is called, so Rashi notes, ורכב, which is the rider, or driver, of a thing. The upper stone is riding the womb as the peter פטר, opening the womb.



John

I love this so much. I can't put words to it. This is why I read your threads. Moments like right now. Solid gold! It's parallelomania in the best-best possible way.

 

[John D. Brey]

When a man hath taken a new wife, he shall not go out to war, neither shall he be charged with any business: but he shall be free at home one year, and shall cheer up his wife [enjoy conjugal relations with her] which he hath taken. 6 No man shall take the nether or the upper millstone to pledge: for he taketh a man’s life to pledge.

Deuteronomy 24:5-6.​

One shall not take an upper or lower millstone as a pledge. The Midrash notes a symbolic linkage between this verse and the previous passage having to do with marriage. After the first sin, Eve was told, your craving shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you (Genesis 3:16). . . [The set of upper and lower millstones are considered to be an analogy for a husband and wife, with the lower millstone, corresponding to the wife.].



Rabbi Elie Munk, The Call of the Torah: An Anthology of Interpretations and Commentary of the Five Books of Moses (Parenthesis is Munk's).
​

Rashi notes that the lower stone is called רחם, (spelled with the addition of a yod vowel --matres lectionis--- רחים) which in Exodus 13:2 is (רחם is) the "womb" that God's son will open since its still closed signifying the strange nature of the conception and birth of this son of oil בן–שמנת. For the purposes of justifying the correct reading of Deuteronomy 24:5-6 (which Ibn Ezra hates and denies, for he knows where it leads) it should be enough to know that the lower stone is called the same thing as the closed womb רחם.

In Exodus 13:2, the word for opening the womb is ironically, "peter" פטר. The peter opens the womb, duh. While in Deuteronomy 24:5-6, the upper stone is called, ורכב, which is the "rider, or driver," of a thing. The upper stone ורכב is riding the womb רחם as the peter פטר opens the womb רחם.

In the commentary Chizkuni, it's noted that verse 7 of Deuteronomy 24 is a repeat of Exodus 21:16. The idea of "stealing" a life implies that the metaphor of taking the upper or lower millstone implies that someone tries to take first dibs on a bridegroom's bride, jus primae noctis, (or else enslaves her or him) in order to pay an existing debt. Idea being that this is tantamount to murdering the bridegroom's firstborn son by not allowing him to be conceived on the night of the chuppah. The person who takes a man's bride in payment for a debt (or vice versa) is taking his firstborn son in payment for the debt.

In the Exodus 21 version of the commandment, the final remedy is an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Which lets us know that both passages are referring secretly to the Passover such that Egypt is taking God's lower millstone to pay the debts Joseph and his brother's allegedly incurred during the lean years when Egypt fed, housed, and clothed them.

When God, with Moses as his emissary, asks Egypt to allow Israel to join him under the chuppah out in the desert, Pharaoh refuses since he's taken God's lower millstone, God's רחם, as a pledge to pay debts allegedly accrued in the lean years during the final days of Jacob.

Using the principle noted in Deuteronomy 24:5-7, and its parallel, Exodus 21:16-25, on Passover God takes an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, that is to say, a firstborn for a firstborn.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

John D. Brey said: ↑

Rashi notes that the lower stone is called רחם, which in Exodus 13:2 is the womb that God's son will open since its still closed signifying the strange conception and birth of this son of oil. . .In Exodus 13:2, the word for opening the womb is ironically, peter פטר. The peter opens the womb. While in Deuteronomy 24:5-6, the upper stone is called, so Rashi notes, ורכב, which is the rider, or driver, of a thing. The upper stone is riding the womb as the peter פטר, opening the womb.​

I love this so much. I can't put words to it. This is why I read your threads. Moments like right now. Solid gold! It's parallelomania in the best-best possible way.

It's nice that you appreciate the ideas enough to find them stimulating even if you think of them as paralleomania (which I guess in a sense they are). And you've given me the grammar to speak of a fundamental difference between some forms of Judaism, and some forms of Christianity.

Whereas Christianity is more likely to be a victim of paralleomania, on the other hand, "parallelophobia," is a very good description for what Professor Susan H. Handelman labels Judaism's "weak exegesis." She uses that word to describe the fact that Judaism tends to reject a transcendental signifier that's not only the singular root from which every word, concept, ritual, symbol, in the Tanakh grows (i.e., a Logos), but that it (modern Judaism) denies that every single narrative or concept, since it grows out of that root (no matter how complex the branching system), can, with effort, be traced back to the root. She calls the Christian exegetical prejudice (that we're labeling "parallelomania") "strong exegesis" in the sense that the Christian exegete is willing to believe every word, narrative, or ritual, goes back to the root, and is thus willing (the Christian exegete is) to attempt to show that that's the case through his exegesis.

Case in point.

When I speak of the interrelationship between making bread, and making love, most Jews might scratch their head and feel they're in the presence of parallelomania in the bad sense since it doesn't matter to them that in many ancient mills, the upper stone was a perfect analogue (cast in stone) for the phallus. While the the lower stone, the רחם, perfectly mirrored the idea of the womb (Hebrew רחם).

Should a curious Jew research images of ancient mills, he'd see that in a number of them, almost beyond belief, the grain was poured down a shaft in the center of the upper stone so that it passed through that stone landing in the lower stone (the רחם) where it was ground.

Once it was ground, a new level of the symbolism sees the ground grain placed in a miseret משארת (a Hebrew word that spells "husband" מת, with leaven שאר right smack in the middle מ–שאר–ת) where some dough from the last batch is added to the mix to share the patrilineal leaven (that made the last batch such a good batch), after which mixing ---in the miseret ----the new dough is put in the warm womb of the oven to bake, gestate, until, voila, it's pulled out of the oven as though it were a new born loaf, in both senses of that word, since it's a leavened loaf not an unleavened bread.

The entire idea of "unleavened" bread is that the leaven isn't added since the leavening organ doesn't participate in the production of the unleavened bread.

Earlier I noted that Ibn Ezra hates the idea that the upper mill stone represents the phallus, and the lower the womb, since in his huge grasp of ritual and symbol, and in a time when Judaism was in a violent battle with Christian exegesis, he knows full well that the Christian parallelomaniacs are going to use these symbols to imply that unleavened bread speaks of a virgin conception and birth where the upper millstone is broken, along with the miseret, so that the original sin, the evil-inclination, that's passed down through the male, doesn't get passed down to the son of oil בן–שמנת.

In his Chumash, Exodus 4:22-23, Rabbi Hirsch says this about the firstborn:

The form of the word [בכור] is active, not passive. The בכור [firstborn] is not the one who is set free, but the one who sets free . . . The forces of the womb, which heretofore have been restricted, are released and unfolded by him. He is פטר רחם. He is בכור not for himself but for those who come after him. . . His קדושה lies in that, through him, the home is first blessed . . .​

For those unfamiliar with the Hebrew, it's significant that word for "firstborn" is בכר (the vav is added as a vowel --matres lectionis). The very word for "firstborn" is a beit ב, which is a "house" (which is a man's bride, Yoma 2a) followed by a kaf כ, (which represents a "hand") and a reish ר, which represents the "firstborn" (rosh ראש). Which is to say the very word "firstborn" in Hebrew speaks of a "house" (a womb) opened by the "hand" (kaf כ) of the firstborn (rosh ראש), since the male-organ that typically opens the womb has been dealt a bleeding blow. If we reverse the word for the "firstborn" ראש, we get, voila, the word for "leaven" שאר.

Worse, a careful exegete might note that in "leaven" שאר, the shin ש comes before the reish ר, while in "firstborn" ראש, the reish ר comes before the shin ש. In the Hebrew alphabet the reish comes before the shin, such that the word "leaven" represents offspring from the Torah-text that reverses the true birth-order of things (something Scholem termed a "primal flaw"): the second-born shin thinks its the firstborn son (ראש), who, the true firstborn son, is stillborn (in text and ritual), but still born, late, no doubt, but in God's good time (the first century CE).

Rabbi Hirsch literally calls the personage we're calling the "son of oil" בן–שמנת, the "פטר רחם," the "peter who opens the womb." Which segues into the revelation hidden beneath Rabbi Hirsch's normally piercing glance; that the person who opens the womb with his hand, not his peter, is God's פטר, God's reproductive organ, abel (not Cain) to impregnate those born the first time with the traditional peter, but who, if they're born again, must be conceived through God's פטר rather than man's (John 1:13). In this sense, God's פטר (womb-opener) is the true, singular, first born personage that the ancient pagan's saw, through an opaque speculum, as Priapus בן–שמנת.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

In this sense, God's פטר (womb-opener) is the true, singular, first born personage that the ancient pagan's saw, through an opaque speculum, as Priapus בן–שמנת.

As I have suggested, moreover, a distinctive feature of the ocularcentrism in medieval Jewish mysticism is phallocentrism. . . The development of Jewish mysticism, therefore, can be seen as the move from an implicit to an explicit phallocentrism. . . That is, common to the visionary accounts in the different mystical sources I examined in this work ---the writings of the Hekhalot mystics, German Pietists, and theosophic kabbalists---is the notion that the object of the mystical vision is the male deity and, more specifically, the phallus.

Professor Elliot R. Wolfson, Through a Speculum that Shines, p. 395.​

Justifying Richard Payne Knight's earlier quoted belief that worship of the phallus only appears sensational, profane, pagan, or demonic, to those left holding the outer trappings of a truly important doctrine, Professor Wolfson, in the conclusions of his study, makes it patently clear that the kabbalists examined in his book, all, came to the same, or similar conclusion as Richard Payne Knight, that for whatever reason, a genuine visual encounter with the incarnate God takes place in the sanctified imagination as it encounters the circumcised phallus.

From rabbinic texts . . . we actually learn of the view hypothesized as a genuine Jewish theologoumenon. Some of the Rabbis read circumcision as a necessary preparation for seeing God, the summum bonum of late-antique religious life (Boyarin 1990a). . . That is, circumcision here is not the sign of something happening in the spirit of the Jew, but it is the very event itself --- and it is, of course, in his body. Moreover, as I have argued elsewhere, for the rabbinic formulation, this seeing of God was not understood as the spiritual vision of a platonic eye of the mind, but as the physical seeing of fleshly eyes at a real moment in history.



Daniel Boyarin, A Radical Jew, p. 126.​

John

 

[John D. Brey]

As I have suggested, moreover, a distinctive feature of the ocularcentrism in medieval Jewish mysticism is phallocentrism. . . The development of Jewish mysticism, therefore, can be seen as the move from an implicit to an explicit phallocentrism. . . That is, common to the visionary accounts in the different mystical sources I examined in this work ---the writings of the Hekhalot mystics, German Pietists, and theosophic kabbalists---is the notion that the object of the mystical vision is the male deity and, more specifically, the phallus.

Professor Elliot R. Wolfson, Through a Speculum that Shines, p. 395.​

Justifying Richard Payne Knight's earlier quoted belief that worship of the phallus only appears sensational, profane, pagan, or demonic, to those left holding the outer trappings of a truly important doctrine, Professor Wolfson, in the conclusions of his study, makes it patently clear that the kabbalists examined in his book, all, came to the same, or similar conclusion as Richard Payne Knight, that for whatever reason, a genuine visual encounter with the incarnate God takes place in the sanctified imagination as it encounters the circumcised phallus.

From rabbinic texts . . . we actually learn of the view hypothesized as a genuine Jewish theologoumenon. Some of the Rabbis read circumcision as a necessary preparation for seeing God, the summum bonum of late-antique religious life (Boyarin 1990a). . . That is, circumcision here is not the sign of something happening in the spirit of the Jew, but it is the very event itself --- and it is, of course, in his body. Moreover, as I have argued elsewhere, for the rabbinic formulation, this seeing of God was not understood as the spiritual vision of a platonic eye of the mind, but as the physical seeing of fleshly eyes at a real moment in history.



Daniel Boyarin, A Radical Jew, p. 126.​

The idea of God's incarnation being related to Priapus, i.e., a permanently erect phallus, can only be limpid if that part of the mind that reveres or reviles the image or concept of the phallus goes limp. So long as the guilt-ridden psyche that demonizes the phallus (as the source of the original sin) ---even though it loves the natural passions founded there ---rules the mind, then the vision of God hidden behind that burning passion (be it carnal or self-righteous) is guarded by the most powerful instincts known to man.

As Abraham had to overcome the most powerful desires and instincts of a husband, and a father, in order to gain access to his vision of God ----through his willingness to sacrifice his firstborn, aka, the Akedah (ritualized at his circumcision: "Happy are Israel who bring a favorable offering to the blessed Holy One, offering up their sons on the eighth day" The Zohar, Lekh Lekha 1:93 a.) ----so must anyone who would follow in his footsteps encounter cross currents (so to say) powerful enough to wash their righteous desires away with the tides. The theory that one wants to see God runs up against the very real guardians in the psyche who in nearly every case say, No, Stop, you can go no further.

Biblical and rabbinic circumcision transforms the penis into a sacred phallus. The male body becomes an ideal image of human reproduction for, as noted, a circumcised penis continuously resembles an uncircumcised erection [since the crown, head, or corona, is made permanently visible by removing what veiled it].

Eric Kline Silverman, The Covenant of Circumcision, (Edited by Elizabeth Wyner Mark), p. 59 (bracketed comment mine).

Priapus' iconic attribute was his priapism (permanently erect penis); he probably absorbed some pre-existing ithyphallic deities as his cult developed. He was represented in a variety of ways, most commonly as a misshapen gnome-like figure with an enormous erect phallus.

Wikipedia, Priapus.​

John

 

[John D. Brey]

Priapus' iconic attribute was his priapism (permanently erect penis); he probably absorbed some pre-existing ithyphallic deities as his cult developed. He was represented in a variety of ways, most commonly as a misshapen gnome-like figure with an enormous erect phallus.

Wikipedia, Priapus.​

Wikipedia adds an image to the statement above:



The image implies that the manhood of Priapus is his veil, or fore skene. For in truth, if you remove the fore skene of Priapus, you find that he's the only pure male, for which every other man merely has a small homunculus created in his image. Priapus is the macrocosm, and the man created in his image has a token seminal organ created in that image.

In spectacular fashion, the Jewish system of mystical thought reverses the paganism of priapism such that whoever appreciates the anthropomorphic image of the tetragrammaton (Adam Kadmon) sees that contra the pagan idea that the divine organ's veil is his natural manhood (humanity), the Jewish visionary image sees the divine organ's deity (Yah יה) as the veil hiding his humanity: it's the humanity hidden beneath the monotheistic deity יה (Yah) that's the vision the righteous adept gets to spy. By removing the man-hood ערלה, circumcision reveals that beneath the veil isn't lurking some otherworldly deity, as traditional Judaism supposes, but rather, that beneath the man-hood ערלה is a particular, singular, spectacular, man, male-flesh (through and through), the spectacle of whose circumspect death (where his claim to deity appears defunct, utterly removed), becomes the visionary afflatus that's the foundation יסד of every serious theophany that's ever been or ever will be.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

In spectacular fashion, the Jewish system of mystical thought reverses the paganism of priapism such that whoever appreciates the anthropomorphic image of the tetragrammaton (Adam Kadmon) sees that contra the pagan idea that the divine organ's veil is his natural manhood (humanity), the Jewish visionary image sees the divine organ's deity (Yah יה) as the veil hiding his humanity: it's the humanity hidden beneath the monotheistic deity יה (Yah) that's the vision the righteous adept gets to spy. By removing the man-hood ערלה, circumcision reveals that beneath the veil isn't lurking some otherworldly deity, as traditional Judaism supposes, but rather, that beneath the man-hood ערלה is a particular, singular, spectacular, man, male-flesh (through and through), the spectacle of whose circumspect death (where his claim to deity appears defunct,utterly removed), becomes the visionary afflatus that's the foundation יסד of every serious theophany that's ever been had or ever will be.

As people of deep faith and of great literary and aesthetic sensibility, the kabbalists also found themselves impressed by, and perhaps even attracted to, certain aspects of the Christian story and the religious lives of the large and powerful monastic communities that were so prominent in Christian Spain. . . Much that is to be found in the Zohar was intended to serve as a counterweight to the potential attractiveness of Christianity to Jews, and perhaps even to the kabbalists themselves.

Professor Arthur Green, Intro to Pritzker Edition Zohar.​

Professor Green's statement is the perfect segue into the quintessential imagery that's at the heart and soul of the Zohar and the Jewish mystical thought associated seminally with the kabbalah. Throughout the Middle Ages, cathedrals and sanctuaries were ornamented with the prototype image in the cross hairs of this examination: Christ as Jewish Priapus.

In these images, which are typical of the genre, a transparent veil is seen surrounding the groin area as if to revel something important: there's no male genitalia. On the other hand, the rib-cage is used to create the image of the backside of the male-organ replete with corona and penile-raphe forming the very cross revealed on the underside of the male organ after the veil is removed in a ritual circumcision.

In the images above, the angel is looking away, in modesty, as she receives the seminal fluid from the true male-organ of God: blood. While correspondingly, in the last image, John is peering purposefully at the translucent loincloth directing the viewer to the absence that reveals the unique Presence in the viewer's purview (viewed through a veil that veils what isn't there), while the less modest Magdalene is peering at the artistic adjunct to what John is viewing. The image is a tour-de-force in mystical brilliance though it merely reveals in a less veiled manner what's found in hundreds of images found throughout the cathedrals of Europe.

As has been noted in various literary venues, when a man was hanged, at the moment of his death he often emitted semen. The image above appears to play on that nuance implying that the blood of the Godman, emitted at his death (on the cross) is the seminal fluid required to be born anew from the divine male-organ that was hidden under the guise of divinity until the death that was supposed to put the lie to the outer skene of his proclaimed identity instead turned his death into the seminal power of his life.

Christ, even when resurrected from the dead, is valued for his body, and his body is the means by which communion in his presence is incorporation—oral drive --- with which Christ’s wife, the Church as it is called, contents itself very well . . ..

Jacques Lacan, On Feminine Sexuality, The limits of Love and Knowledge, 1972-1973. In, Encore, The Seminars of Jacques Lacan Book XX, p. 133, 116.​

Contrary to his death putting the lie to his divinity, his blood (symbolizing his death), which is seminal in the Gospel of his person and purpose, has given rise to his exceeding fertility such that his offspring (found throughout a multitude of nations) as of the time of writing outnumber all of Abraham's natural seed combined, be they through Ishmael, Isaac, and or those born after Sarah's death.

Verily, verily, I say unto you, except ye put the flesh of the Son of Man in your mouth and drink his blood [metzitzah] ye have no life in you. Whosoever takes my flesh in his mouth and drinks my blood, therein has eternal life, and I will therefore raise him up at the last day . . . my blood is drink indeed.

John 6:53-54.​

John

 

[John D. Brey]

As people of deep faith and of great literary and aesthetic sensibility, the kabbalists also found themselves impressed by, and perhaps even attracted to, certain aspects of the Christian story and the religious lives of the large and powerful monastic communities that were so prominent in Christian Spain. . . Much that is to be found in the Zohar was intended to serve as a counterweight to the potential attractiveness of Christianity to Jews, and perhaps even to the kabbalists themselves.

Professor Arthur Green, Intro to Pritzker Edition Zohar.​

Professor Green's statement is the perfect segue into the quintessential imagery that's at the heart and soul of the Zohar and the Jewish mystical thought associated seminally with the kabbalah. Throughout the Middle Ages, cathedrals and sanctuaries were ornamented with the prototype image in the cross hairs of this examination: Christ as Jewish Priapus.

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In these images, which are typical of the genre, a transparent veil is seen surrounding the groin area as if to revel something important: there's no male genitalia. On the other hand, the rib-cage is used to create the image of the backside of the male-organ replete with corona and penile-raphe forming the very cross revealed on the underside of the male organ after the veil is removed in a ritual circumcision.

In the images above, the angel is looking away, in modesty, as she receives the seminal fluid from the true male-organ of God: blood. While correspondingly, in the last image, John is peering purposefully at the translucent loincloth directing the viewer to the absence that reveals the unique Presence in the viewer's purview (viewed through a veil that veils what isn't there), while the less modest Magdalene is peering at the artistic adjunct to what John is viewing. The image is a tour-de-force in mystical brilliance though it merely reveals in a less veiled manner what's found in hundreds of images found throughout the cathedrals of Europe.

As has been noted in various literary venues, when a man was hanged, at the moment of his death he often emitted semen. The image above appears to play on that nuance implying that the blood of the Godman, emitted at his death (on the cross) is the seminal fluid required to be born anew from the divine male-organ that was hidden under the guise of divinity until the death that was supposed to put the lie to the outer skene of his proclaimed identity instead turned his death into the seminal power of his life.

Christ, even when resurrected from the dead, is valued for his body, and his body is the means by which communion in his presence is incorporation—oral drive --- with which Christ’s wife, the Church as it is called, contents itself very well . . ..

Jacques Lacan, On Feminine Sexuality, The limits of Love and Knowledge, 1972-1973. In, Encore, The Seminars of Jacques Lacan Book XX, p. 133, 116.​

Contrary to his death putting the lie to his divinity, his blood (symbolizing his death), which is seminal in the Gospel of his person and purpose, has given rise to his exceeding fertility such that his offspring (found throughout a multitude of nations) as of the time of writing outnumber all of Abraham's natural seed combined, be they through Ishmael, Isaac, and or those born after Sarah's death.

Verily, verily, I say unto you, except ye put the flesh of the Son of Man in your mouth and drink his blood [metzitzah] ye have no life in you. Whosoever takes my flesh in his mouth and drinks my blood, therein has eternal life, and I will therefore raise him up at the last day . . . my blood is drink indeed.

John 6:53-54.​

The final nail in this priapic Christ comes when Wolfson's hammers home the concept in the final statement of his master work, Through a Speculum that Shines:

That which is hidden from sight comes into view for the kabbalist who has been transformed by visually contemplating the theophanic image of God reflected in Scripture through the mechanism of the phallic imagination. The hermeneutical circle is inscribed in the biblical verse "from my flesh I will see God," that is, from the sign of the covenant engraved on the penis the mystic can imaginatively visualize the divine phallus. The movement of the imagination is from the human body to God and from God back to the human body again.​

Though he likely doesn't intend it, the last sentence in Wolfson's statement justifies the idea proposed earlier, that the true visualization of God requires the removal of the fore skene not just of his manhood, but of his deity; and in a manner that returns the adept back to the human body again. The prohibition against such a move, and thus the antinomian nature of it, seems well-situated in (and suited for) prototypical Abrahamic-faith (ala, or aka, the Akedah).



John

 

[Sand Dancer]

Marriage ceremony of firstborn conception.

Throughout the ancient Mediterranean, Middle East and even into India, images of Priapus (or Hermes, or some other phallic deity) with a phallus were used in deflowering rituals of newlywed virgin brides. Though the bride would later consummate the marriage with her husband, the deity was said to impregnate her with her firstborn child. In early times, this child begotten of the deity was sometimes then offered to the deity as a sacrifice, just as the first fruits of all kinds were offered to the deity who provided them. Though the Romans gave up human sacrifice, they still held this ceremony of firstborn conception.

Wikipedia, Priapus.​

In the encyclopedia noted in the Wikipedia entry above, St. Augustine is quoted denouncing Roman women for being too willing to "sit on the masculine monstrosity representing Priapus."

As in all myths of divine births, the maiden might have an earthly husband, but he didn't lie with her until after she brought forth her firstborn child, who was the son of God, or, in Buddha's case, the son of Ganesha, the Lord of Hosts.

Barbara G. Walker, TWEMS, p. 311.​

Walker notes that anointing the god head with holy oil was a natural necessity for using it not to warm the fires of concupiscence, but for inserting it into the oven to produce leavened bread (sex and bread-making being parallel symbols even in the Tanakh). The fact that in Hebrew this "holy oil" is called "semen" or "shemen" שמן merely documents the interconnectedness of all symbols, myths, and doctrines.

Very little of Isaiah's symbolism can be rightly understood without knowing that throughout his writing he's referring to the concepts being discussed. In Isaiah's time these ideas weren't outliers but were the typical concepts undergirding nearly all religious symbolism and conceptualism. As Professor Nahum Sarna points out, Israel's own symbolism and conceptualism, although it doesn't slavishly follow the ideas of the nations surrounding them, does in fact use every one of these concepts as the backdrop, or fore skene, through which Israel's unique set of ideas is carved ברית מילה, or created, and then used, in the manufacture of their own, unique, Priapic god, otherwise known as the "son of oil."



John

Which book is this? I like Barbara Walker.

 

[John D. Brey]

Which book is this? I like Barbara Walker.

The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myth and Secret.

Imho, it's one of the best books on mythology on the market. It's quoted, or paraphrased (with attribution) in Wikipedia's article on Priapus.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

Though he likely doesn't intend it, the last sentence in Wolfson's statement justifies the idea proposed earlier, that the true visualization of God requires the removal of the fore skene not just of his manhood, but of his deity; and in a manner that returns the adept back to the human body again. The prohibition against such a move, and thus the antinomian nature of it, seems well-situated in (and suited for) prototypical Abrahamic-faith (ala, or aka, the Akedah).

The idea being proffered is that circumcision both removes the flesh hiding God in man, and at the same time removes the idea that God is anything but man. This idea is toyed with throughout Jewish gnostic texts and filters into the Zohar, and kabbalistic works in general such that in On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead (p. 98), Scholem quotes The Bahir:

It was I who planted this tree, so that all the world could delight in it, and I engraved all with it, and called its name "the All"; for all hangs from it and all comes from it and all need it, and all look up it and set their hopes upon it, and from thence all souls emanate.​

For traditional Judaism this tree of All is represented by the Torah scroll. The rod in the middle of the scroll is called the tree of life; and the scroll itself is coiled around the tree of life representing its outer skene. For Christian thought the tree of life in the quotation above is "planted" (rather than seeded); it doesn't grow from a seed, implying it's the product of sexual mechanisms, but is a shoot, or branch, a nazar or nazarene, growing directly from the root of ha-adam prior to his division into sexual or binary gender. The nazarene is a product of coppicing whereby the nazarene grows as a basal-shoot (out of the root of the cultivar rather than growing out of a sexually produced seed).

The idea of this nazarene growing out of the root of the original cultivar (prelapse ha-adam) implies that the offspring of this nazarene or branch, will all be cultivated through coppicing rather than sexualized seeding. Whereas in horticulture, the root that sends out the shoot is the heart an soul of the plant that exists beneath the earth, in biological coppicing this heart and soul, root, is the organ that pumps blood such that biological coppicing is done through the blood of the cultivar implying something more akin to cloning than sexual reproduction.

With this in mind, Scholem, in work noted, segues into Isaiah chapter 44 by pointing out that in the passage quoted above, from The Bahir:

The tree is never mentioned before, but suddenly appears in a mystical reading of Isaiah 44:24: "I am the Lord that maketh all; that stretched forth heavens alone; that spread abroad the earth by Myself." It is obvious that everything said about the symbolism of this tree fits neatly with the cosmic column representing the righteous and the foundation of the world [the sefirah Yesod]. . . What we read about the aeon of "All" in this indubitably Jewish-Gnostic fragment seems to me to bear a striking resemblance to one of the enigmatic passages in the Slavonic Book of Enoch. . . In two places (chaps. 11 and 17), he speaks about a primordial "great aeon" bearing the thus far inexplicable name of Adoil.​

Much that's stated concerning the nazarene (the branch, or tree, of All) in The Bahir, is repeated in the Slavonic Book of Enoch, thereby focusing attention on the name "Adoil" used to represent this "great aeon."



John

 

[John D. Brey]

The tree is never mentioned before, but suddenly appears in a mystical reading of Isaiah 44:24: "I am the Lord that maketh all; that stretched forth heavens alone; that spread abroad the earth by Myself." It is obvious that everything said about the symbolism of this tree fits neatly with the cosmic column representing the righteous and the foundation of the world [the sefirah Yesod]. . . What we read about the aeon of "All" in this indubitably Jewish-Gnostic fragment seems to me to bear a striking resemblance to one of the enigmatic passages in the Slavonic Book of Enoch. . . In two places (chaps. 11 and 17), he speaks about a primordial "great aeon" bearing the thus far inexplicable name of Adoil.​

Much that's stated concerning the nazarene (the branch, or tree, of All) in The Bahir, is repeated in the Slavonic Book of Enoch, thereby focusing attention on the name "Adoil" used to represent this "great aeon."

By pointing out the parallel between the passage from the Slavonic Book of Enoch and Isaiah chapter 44, Scholem does most of the footwork for this thread by making us aware of the contextual nuance the prophet Isaiah has in mind when he undeniably demonizes the person who fashions wood into a phallic idol upon which their worship is based. Isaiah is referencing Priapus but more specifically the ritual directly associated with Priapus, and the priapic cults who practiced a sacerdotal jus primae noctis whereby the virgin engages in sacred union with the tree, or branch, of life, prior to consummating her engagement to her human spouse.

Whereas Judaism, with the more self-righteous and puritanical branches of Christianity, read Isaiah 44 as merely a rebuke of paganism and idolatry, Isaiah has something far more layered, and mysterious, in mind. We can know this by the way the prophet juxtaposes the idolatry of Priapus with the true identity of the divine Presence. A serious exegete can hardly ignore the strange imposition Isaiah makes that there are two quasi-idolatrous images whereby one is idolatrous in the bad sense, and the other, though easily confused with the former, is instead the heart and soul of a hidden truth from which the priapic practices gain their incomplete and skewed symbolic framework.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

By pointing out the parallel between the passage from the Slavonic Book of Enoch and Isaiah chapter 44, Scholem does most of the footwork for this thread by making us aware of the contextual nuance the prophet Isaiah has in mind when he's undeniably demonizes the person who fashions wood into a phallic idol upon which their worship is enacted. Isaiah is referencing Priapus but more specifically the ritual directly associated with Priapus, and the priapic cults who practiced a sacerdotal jus primae noctis whereby the virgin engages in sacred union with the tree, or branch, of life, prior to consummating her engagement to her human spouse.

Whereas Judaism, with the more self-righteous and puritanical branches of Christianity, read Isaiah 44 as merely a rebuke of paganism and idolatry, in truth, Isaiah has something far more layered, and mysterious, in mind. We can know this by the way the prophet juxtaposes the idolatry of Priapus with the true identity of the divine Presence. A serious exegete can hardly ignore the strange imposition Isaiah makes that there are two quasi-idolatrous images whereby one is idolatrous in the bad sense, whereas the other, though easily confused with the former, is instead the heart and soul of a hidden truth from which the priapic practices gain their incomplete and skewed symbolic framework.

In his book, Along the Path, Professor Wolfson has a chapter on the tree of All described in The Bahir, and seemingly referenced in the Slavonic Book of Enoch:

This tree, which is referred to at the end of the passage as God's secret (sod), is clearly the Demiurge, the aspect of divinity that corresponds to the phallus [the sefirah Yesod]. It is likely that the term sod in this context has that connotation as well.​

Lending his expertise to the earlier imagery in this examination (where Christ was compared to Priapus), Professor Wolfson goes on to say:

A close examination of these fragments indicates that the All-Tree, which is the divine anthropos comprised of three powers, has Messianic implications. Indeed, the theosophic mythologem that I have reconstructed is based on the divinization of the Messiah and his contextualization as the demiurgic phallus.​

By establishing Messiah as a branch, nazarene, growing out of the root of ha-adam (his blood, or marrow, rather than his semen), the priapic, or phallic-nature of Christ, as the divine organ through which God will engender his offspring, is laid bare such that in that context one's eyes might have the veil removed to see precisely what the Medieval artists had in mind when they envisioned, and created images, of Christ's entire body as the phallic tree of All, implying therein that the opening in his "side" (or rib) produces the blood from which his offspring, who ironically are his bride (ala Eve), come, so to say.

The image above not only clarifies the meaning of Eve being taken from the first Adam's side/rib (the first Adam being the prototype of his son), but it uncovers the "primal flaw" in the telling of the original story since where blood is the seminal fluid doing the conceiving, those so conceived are clones rather than sexual deviations from the non-binary gender of the one being cloned.

Adam's offspring, like the offspring of his only non-binary son, were all slated to be clones of the spiritual Adam and not Cain-like deviations prone to the evil-inclination come, most often, from the testimony of the diminutive and discrete organ that's on Cain but which was not on Adam until Genesis 2:21.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

This tree, which is referred to at the end of the passage as God's secret (sod), is clearly the Demiurge, the aspect of divinity that corresponds to the phallus [the sefirah Yesod]. It is likely that the term sod in this context has that connotation as well.​

Lending his expertise to the earlier imagery in this examination (where Christ was compared to Priapus), Professor Wolfson goes on to say:

A close examination of these fragments indicates that the All-Tree, which is the divine anthropos comprised of three powers, has Messianic implications. Indeed, the theosophic mythologem that I have reconstructed is based on the divinization of the Messiah and his contextualization as the demiurgic phallus.​

Earlier in the thread a distinction was made between parallelomania versus parallelophobia, "weak exegesis" versus "strong exegesis"; "strong exegesis" being parallel with parallelomania, and "weak exegesis" with parallelophobia.

Without rehashing what's already been said, the strong-exegete, in contradistinction to the weak-exegete, tends to believe in the concept of verbal plenary inspiration, which implies that what's found in the writing of scripture is directly guided by God's Spirit such that the text doesn't just function according to the rules of communication as practiced by the human amanuensis, but is divine in its power to reveal concepts beyond the ken of the human author but decipherable to his audience either at present, or in an eschatological aeon. The text has multiple facets, meanings, and gleanings, some of which are invisible to the exegete who doesn't truly believe the text is endowed with, or as, a divine communique.

Nothing seems more obvious than that even the great Jewish exegetes are circumscribed by weak-exegesis and parallelophobia when the divine text is most forthcoming in its eschatological import such that reading Rashi, Ibn Ezra, or a half-dozen other Jewish exegetes rendering the heart and soul of Isaiah chapter 44 is almost unbearable to anyone who believes God is the author and the prophet the amanuensis:

The carpenter stretches out his rule; he makes a line; he fitteth it with planes, and marketh it with with a compass. With the lines and the radius he makes the figure of male-ness [the male-organ] as the glorious תפארת man [Priapus] so that it might be the heart [yod, yad, or yid] of the shrine.

Isaiah 44:13.​

Though you wouldn't know it reading the Jewish exegesis, verse 13 is speaking specifically of drawing two straight lines, and capping it off with a compass, which is to say two parallel lines with a radius at the top. Isaiah is clearly speaking (in strong-exegesis) of the carpenter or sculptor forming the generic shape of the male-organ which the phallic cults considered the glory of man and god: tiferet תפארת. The entire chapter is juxtaposing the phallic cults of Baal, and Priapus, with the Personage they worship in carved wood and molten metal. Isaiah's primary message, uttered repeatedly throughout this chapter (and the next), is that these phallic gods have no real life, no seed, no blood, nothing that would cause them to be subjects of genuine worship.




John

 

[John D. Brey]

The carpenter stretches out his rule; he makes a line; he fitteth it with planes, and marketh it with with a compass. With the lines and the radius he makes the figure of male-ness [the male-organ] as the glorious תפארת man [Priapus] so that it might be the heart [yod, yad, or yid] of the shrine.

Isaiah 44:13.​

Though you wouldn't know it reading the Jewish exegesis, verse 13 is speaking specifically of drawing two straight lines, and capping it off with a compass, which is to say two parallel lines with a radius at the top. Isaiah is clearly speaking (in strong-exegesis) of the carpenter or sculptor forming the generic shape of the male-organ which the phallic cults considered the glory of man and god: tiferet תפארת. The entire chapter is juxtaposing the phallic cults of Baal, and Priapus, with the Personage they worship in carved wood and molten metal. Isaiah's primary message, uttered repeatedly throughout this chapter (and the next), is that these phallic gods have no real life, no seed, no blood, nothing that would cause them to be subjects of genuine worship.

Wouldn't Moses qualify as a carpenter in the sense of Isaiah 44:13? He makes both a molten graven image פסל, the serpent of brass, and then adding insult to injury adds it to a wooden graven image that had long been the shepherd's rod he shares with Aaron. Tradition implies he'd carved, or dare we say graven, Hashem into the wood of the rod as an embellishment that should embarrass a Jew fearful of ideatic idolatry. Scour Jewish exegesis and commentary for why Nehushtan isn't idolatry or sorcery and you'll find mostly silence as though only a fool would ask the question.

Why isn't the wonder-working brass-serpent (nailed to the wood) idolatrous? Heck. It possesses quasi-divine power over life and death such that Rabbi Elie Munk states that by looking up at it the Israelites were casting their gaze toward Hashem (who alone has ultimate power over life and death). What's the relationship or fundamental distinction between a molten graven image like Nehushtan (manifesting power over life and death) versus pagan divinity worship? If the brass-serpent isn't used to get you to gaze up at Hashem, what will take its place? What would qualify as a non-idolatrous-idol outside the brass-serpent, and why?



John