Ibn Ezra and Maxwell's Demon vs. the Incarnate Logos.

[John D. Brey]

I'm not really sure what benefit there is that you're claiming is coming from the Christian bible? Jews have written Torah scribed by God. Christians have stories delivered orally, then written down. Both of us can point to each other's scripture and claim it was corrupted, misinterpretted or mistranslated. Regardless of whether you're right or wrong that the Torah is incomprehensible, both have the same flaws by those standards. The path to peace is deferring to what is written. Otherwise the arguing never ends.

The Christian bible is also missing spaces between the words. And while the Torah is missing vowels, it was God's voice communicating the law to Moses. So, we don't have just letters, we have words directly from God. That's the story.

As you rightly note, both testaments come first as oral revelation alleged to be from the mouth of God, such that the written reminder (Plato, Phaedrus, 274d-275b) of what was initially oral revelation comes only later in both testaments. Nevertheless there's a fundamental and important distinction between the first testament's presentation of the interrelationship between the initial oral revelation and its later written version, versus the interrelationship between the oral and the written as presented in the second testament. Everything important about the distinction between the Jewish and the Christian versions of the transfer of an oral revelation to a written revelation revolves precisely around the nature of the transfer of the oral revelation to a written reminder of the revelation.

In his commentary on Exodus 32:15-16, Rabbi Hirsch realizes, as few have, just how important is the mechanism for the transfer from an oral revelation ----from the mouth of God ----to a written revelation; he expends a brilliant two or three pages laying out his theologoumenon (his personal theology) concerning the nature of the transfer from the mouth of God to the written word.

In the Torah's presentation of this advent, i.e., the revelation from the mouth of God being transferred to the written tablets of the Law, the revelation is initially offered to Israel orally, from the mouth of God. But Israel intuits something crucial about the nature of this transfer from God's mouth to their ears that's glossed over in all the commentary on the event. Israel tells Moses that they realize that if they receive the oral revelation from the mouth of God they will die. The Masoretic text and the commentary treat this fearful realization as a flaw or fault in Israel, as though they're just too cowardly or spiritually inept to withstand the revelation from the mouth of God such that they speak of the the revelation from the mouth of God as the kiss of death. The truth of the matter is quite different. Israel's fear of receiving the kiss of death from the mouth of God is not spiritual ineptitude or cowardice but a correct intuition of what's being placed before them.

The tradition in Song of Songs Rabba (1.2. xvi) goes on to ask how we can further learn that not only these saints but all the righteous die by the kiss; and it answers: "for it is written: `Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth.'" The plural proves the point. What is particularly striking about these traditions is that death by divine kiss is a sign of special favor, a mark of grace given to the saintly. Indeed, as the full passage in Songs Rabba makes clear, this is particularly the reward granted to the most faithful adherents of the norms and ideals of rabbinic Judaism ---the sages themselves . . . the death scene by God's kiss is exalted to the pinnacle of saintly life.​

​

Michael Fishbane, The Kiss of God: Spiritual and Mystical Death in Judaism, p. 18.​

John

 

[John D. Brey]

As you rightly note, both testaments come first as oral revelation alleged to be from the mouth of God, such that the written reminder of what was initially oral revelation comes only later in both testaments. Nevertheless there's a fundamental and important distinction between the first testament's presentation of the interrelationship between the initial oral revelation and its later written version, versus the interrelationship between the oral and the written as presented in the second testament. Everything important about the distinction between the Jewish and the Christian versions of the transfer of an oral revelation to a written revelation revolves precisely around the nature of the transfer of the oral revelation to a written reminder of the revelation.

In his commentary on Exodus 32:15-16, Rabbi Hirsch realizes, as few have, just how important is the mechanism for the transfer from an oral revelation ----from the mouth of God ----to a written revelation; he expends a brilliant two or three pages laying out his theologoumenon (his personal theology) concerning the nature of the transfer from the mouth of God to the written word.

In the Torah's presentation of this advent, i.e., the revelation from the mouth of God being transferred to the written tablets of the Law, the revelation is initially offered to Israel orally, from the mouth of God. But Israel intuits something crucial about the nature of this transfer from God's mouth to their ears that's glossed over in all the commentary on the event. Israel tells Moses that they realize that if they receive the oral revelation from the mouth of God they will die. The Masoretic text and the commentary treat this fearful realization as a flaw or fault in Israel, as though they're just too cowardly or spiritually inept to withstand the revelation from the mouth of God such that they speak of the the revelation from the mouth of God as the kiss of death. The truth of the matter is quite different. Israel's fear of receiving the kiss of death from the mouth of God is not spiritual ineptitude or cowardice but a correct intuition of what's being placed before them.

The tradition in Song of Songs Rabba (1.2. xvi) goes on to ask how we can further learn that not only these saints but all the righteous die by the kiss; and it answers: "for it is written: `Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth.'" The plural proves the point. What is particularly striking about these traditions is that death by divine kiss is a sign of special favor, a mark of grace given to the saintly. Indeed, as the full passage in Songs Rabba makes clear, this is particularly the reward granted to the most faithful adherents of the norms and ideals of rabbinic Judaism ---the sages themselves . . . the death scene by God's kiss is exalted to the pinnacle of saintly life.​

​

Michael Fishbane, The Kiss of God: Spiritual and Mystical Death in Judaism, p. 18.​

In his discussion of the meaning and purpose of the tefillin, Rabbi Hirsch teaches that the batim (the actual leather boxes of the tefillin) must be made of the hide of a kosher animal to reveal to us that the purpose of the tefillin is to teach us that the word of God is to be placed in our mouth so that we might swallow the divine revelation from God; problem being that in the construction of the tefillin, the batim (the shel rosh and the yad rosh, i.e., the head and hand tefillin), the outer home of the tefillin, is made from a kosher animal to imply that, like the flesh of the kosherly sacrificed animal, that flesh is fit for the mouth, fit to be placed in the mouth and ingested. Rabbi Hirsch says that analogically, the Word of God must similarly be placed in the mouth and ingested and digested.

And right here the problem arises that segues with Israel's unwillingness to take God's word into their bodies to be ingested and digested at Sinai since only the outer home of the kosher animal (its flesh) is fit for the mouth. Its blood is forbidden such that taking the blood into the mouth subjects one to death therein relating the logic for Israel's rejection of swallowing the blood of God's revelation rather than some mediating kosher body that's first drained of the blood the ingesting of which would subject Israel to the penalty of death.

The construction of the tefillin is like the construction of ha-adam, the original human, prior to the later shenanigans associated with the fall from innocence and the rise of the yetzer hara: the body is constructed first, and then the blood, the breath, or word, of God, is breathed into the home/target precisely as occurs in the construction of the kosher tefillin: the body is made first, and then the word of God (on the scroll) is placed into the body (ala Genesis chapter 2) transforming the tefillin into a living being (a kosher animal) with the life-blood dwelling inside.

Rabbi Hirsch's demon, as it relates to Ibn Ezra's and Maxwell's, is the fact that the flesh of a kosher animal can be placed in the mouth, swallowed, and digested, so long as the animal isn't terefah (killed and or prepared in a non-kosher manner), or nebelah (specifically the corpse of an animal killed by another animal, or in other than a kosher manner). Nevertheless, even if the tefillin represents the flesh of a kosher animal (so that it can be placed in the mouth and swallowed) the blood in that animal, the word, or breath, of God, breathed into the animal, cannot be placed in the mouth and swallowed without a capital crime occurring.

Where Rabbi Hirsch's equated kosherness of the tangible tefillin with the animal sacrifice whose flesh is placed in the mouth is in the crosshairs of his argumentation we have the peculiar fact that only the body of the word of God, not the soul, blood, or meaning of the word of God, can be ingested by a kosher Jew. The Jew's unwillingness to accept the blood of God at Sinai is an unwillingness to drink the blood of God, the soul, or meaning, of God, which would therein subject one to the death penalty come from the kiss of God as the kiss of death.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

In his discussion of the meaning and purpose of the tefillin, Rabbi Hirsch teaches that the batim (the actual leather boxes of the tefillin) must be made of the hide of a kosher animal to reveal to us that the purpose of the tefillin is to teach us that the word of God is to be placed in our mouth so that we might swallow the divine revelation from God; problem being that in the construction of the tefillin, the batim (the shel rosh and the yad rosh, i.e., the head and hand tefillin), the outer home of the tefillin, is made from a kosher animal to imply that, like the flesh of the kosherly sacrificed animal, that flesh is fit for the mouth, fit to be placed in the mouth and ingested. Rabbi Hirsch says that analogically, the Word of God must similarly be placed in the mouth and ingested and digested.

And right here the problem arises that segues with Israel's unwillingness to take God's word into their bodies to be ingested and digested at Sinai since only the outer home of the kosher animal (its flesh) is fit for the mouth. Its blood is forbidden such that taking the blood into the mouth subjects one to death therein relating the logic for Israel's rejection of swallowing the blood of God's revelation rather than some mediating kosher body that's first drained of the blood the ingesting of which would subject Israel to the penalty of death.

The construction of the tefillin is like the construction of ha-adam, the original human, prior to the later shenanigans associated with the fall from innocence and the rise of the yetzer hara: the body is constructed first, and then the blood, the breath, or word, of God, is breathed into the home/target precisely as occurs in the construction of the kosher tefillin: the body is made first, and then the word of God (on the scroll) is placed into the body (ala Genesis chapter 2) transforming the tefillin into a living being (a kosher animal) with the life-blood dwelling inside.

Rabbi Hirsch's demon, as it relates to Ibn Ezra's and Maxwell's, is the fact that the flesh of a kosher animal can be placed in the mouth, swallowed, and digested, so long as the animal isn't terefah (killed and or prepared in a non-kosher manner), or nebelah (specifically the corpse of an animal killed by another animal, or in other than a kosher manner). Nevertheless, even if the tefillin represents the flesh of a kosher animal (so that it can be placed in the mouth and swallowed) the blood in that animal, the word, or breath, of God, breathed into the animal, cannot be placed in the mouth and swallowed without a capital crime occurring.

Where Rabbi Hirsch's equated kosherness of the tangible tefillin with the animal sacrifice whose flesh is placed in the mouth is in the crosshairs of his argumentation we have the peculiar fact that only the body of the word of God, not the soul, blood, or meaning of the word of God, can be ingested by a kosher Jew. The Jew's unwillingness to accept the blood of God at Sinai is an unwillingness to drink the blood of God, the soul, or meaning, of God, which would therein subject one to the death penalty come from the kiss of God as the kiss of death.

In the same sense that only the flesh, not the blood, of a kosher beast can be put in the mouth and swallowed, so too, the flesh fit for the mouth must be dead. A Jew is forbidden from placing flesh taken from a living beast in his mouth and swallowing. The animal must be killed in a kosher manner, and only then can the flesh be placed in the mouth and swallowed.

The tefillin, is thus kosher only if it's made from the dead flesh of a kosher animal killed in a kosher manner. The flesh of the tefillin is fit for the mouth if the flesh is both dead, and that death occurred in a kosher manner.

But even then the blood is forbidden since, as we know from scripture, the blood represents the soul-life of the beast so that even if the body of the beast is dead (and thus fit for ingestion) the blood, representing the immortal soul, is never dead, and thus, never able to be put in the mouth and ingested.

To cut to the chase, after a painfully long-winded introduction, if flesh represents the house, or home, of the soul, and the blood is the soul, and if the soul is the life, which in cognition is "meaning," then for the meaning of God's revelation to be put in the mouth and swallowed, i.e., for the spirit of God's revelation, the raw soul of God's revelation to be put in the mouth and swallowed, the blood, the raw soul (think "meaning") of God's revelation would have to die, like the flesh, for it to be kosher for a Jew to swallow, ingest, digest.

Stated kerygmatically, God would have to die two deaths, physical, and spiritual (body and soul) before a Jew would be authorized to swallow the meaning of the chukim חקים, the decree, the doctrines, rather than just learning, wearing, even etching into the flesh as a hieroglyph, the undigested meaning of the written word. A righteous Jew would have to wait till God poured out his meaning as a drink offering, sacrificed his body and soul, before the kosher Jew could fill his chalice, his shel or yad rosh, or gobblet, with the true meaning of the dead-letter he summarily drinks down with gusto.

Can anyone imagine any Jew standing around waiting, or willing, to drink the blood of a God who's died both physically and spiritually such that the meaning of the dead-letter of the Law might finally be made available for ingestion and digestion? Can anyone imagine, I mean other than say John chapter six, any Jew stating anything so strange and unkosher in the presence of god-fearing Jews? Can we imagine a Jew whose considered clinically sane implying that only by drinking the dead body and soul of a dying God can anyone have the true life of God indwelling them?

Imagine this questionably sane Jew saying we must not only put the dead flesh of a dead God in our mouth, but we must swallow the dead blood of a dead God so that when, according to a plan hatched before the foundations of the world, this dead God is raised from the dead, wherever his formerly dead flesh, and blood, is found to be residing, that flesh, and blood, now no longer subject to death, having endure it and over come it, will provide something greater than ha-adam's fragile, as it were, and was, immortality: it will share a kind of life no longer subject in any way to the death that's already been overcome once, and for all, or rather, all who can close their eyes, plug their nose if necessary, and drink down the dead flesh and blood of a dead God.

As profane and disturbing as the fore going might be, it pales in comparison to the irony that as grotesque as would be the fore going be it the true case, we could imagine that only with all the preparatory hullabaloo about the tefilin, and Jewish law, could anyone even hope to appreciate a questionably sane Jew speaking of such strange Jewish things so that if we said most Jews plugged their noses and covered their ears and hightailed it to the nearest mikveh to soak for a few days we should think the case closed and nothing more about it would ever darken the light of day. To say that two-thousand years later, billions and billions of non-Jews would literally crawl over one another like sex-starved groupies to get to the stage where the font flowing from a dead God's blood-spouting chest was throbbing out the precious fluid as though it were wine fermented in Ponce de Leon's own cellars, well that is just simply beyond the ken of any possible narrative that could possibly ever be written let alone see the light of day.

And now with all of that said, I have just one more question before I call Airmen Rodriguez and OMally. In the words of Gatorade's most successful add campaign, I ask (the editorial kind of asking) that one question: Is It In You? . . . Can you handle the truth? In Clintonian diatribe: Did you inhale or swallow when the truth was right there swirling around in your mouth about two paragraphs ago? Or did you spit it out and wash your mouth out with soap? Remember your answer. And if you're a brave soul, archive it here where it can be broadcast on that rapidly approaching day. Put your name on it. So if it's not found in another book being read out loud on that day it'll still be archived in this thread for posterity.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

Stated kerygmatically, God would have to die two deaths, physical, and spiritual (body and soul) before a Jew would be authorized to swallow the meaning of the chukim חקים, the decree, the doctrines, rather than just learning, wearing, even etching into the flesh as a hieroglyph, the undigested meaning of the written word. A righteous Jew would have to wait till God poured out his meaning as a drink offering, sacrificed his body and soul, before the kosher Jew could fill his chalice, his shel or yad rosh, or gobblet, with the true meaning of the dead-letter he summarily drinks down with gusto.

This is where Ibn Ezra's demon cohorts with Maxwell's. In a thread discussing Judaism's heremeneutic as it relates to Maxwell's demon (Weak Exegesis and Negative Theology) the sound logic of Judaism's primary hermeneutic was compared to the logic of Maxwell's demon:

The current state of scientific knowledge appears (so to say) to make transparent the logic behind Judaism's strange aniconism and weak exegetical maneuvering since current studies in quantum physics imply that because of the nature of quantum mechanics, it can now be known that knowledge, or information, if used too heavy-handedly, can actually create negative information, which, so to say, would be false, or incorrect information. -----Stated nakedly, if known facts, positive information, is used with too heavy a hand in the process of obtaining greater information, that process can backfire (quantum "backaction"), creating negative information.​

As the talmudic scholar Daniel Boyarin points out through many excellent essays, Jewish exegesis tends toward a midrashic examination of the text rather than seeking out an allegorical ---or hidden meaning ---the acquiring of which (allegorical meaning) requires going so deep beneath the literal surface text that, ala Maxwell's demon, it could, and in many cases no doubt does, lead to a sort of heremeneutical quantum back-action that produces negative information in the act of trying to acquire a more positive and deeper understanding of the surface text. In a brilliant essay juxtaposing Origen's Christian exegesis with Judaism's more midrashic approach to the text (The Word and Allegory; or, Origen on the Jewish Question), Professor Boyarin lays out a fundamental problem of all exegesis while at the same time showing that Judaism's exegetical sages are clearly aware of the problem. Below, he quotes the Talmud (BT Hagigah 3a-b) addressing the problem:

[What does the phrase] "the masters of assemblies" [means]? These are the disciples of the wise, who sit in assemblies and study the Torah, some pronouncing unclean and others pronouncing clean, some prohibiting and others permitting, some declaring unfit and others declaring fit. Should a man say: Since some pronounce unclean and others pronounce clean, some prohibit and other permit, some declare unfit and others declare fit ---how then shall I learn Torah? Therefore Scripture says: All of them "were given by one shepherd." One God gave them, on leader (i.e., Moses) proclaimed them from the mouth of the Lord of all creation, blessed be He, as it is written, "And God spoke all these words" [Exod. 20:1; my emphasis]. Therefore make your ear like the hopper and acquire a perceptive heart to understand the words of those who pronounce unclean and the words of those who pronounce clean, the words of those who prohibit and the words of those who permit, the words of those who declare unfit and the words of those who declare fit. [BT Hagigah 3a-b].​

​

Daniel Boyarin's presentation of BT Hagigah 3a-b (all brackets are Boyarins).​

The talmudic passage notes that from the same revealed text various ---conflicting---interpretations arise. So how is the person studying the text ---through the masters of the assemblies ---supposed to anchor into the meaning of the text in order to move confidently forward in further exegesis and learning augmented by the authority of masters of the assemblies if the masters disagree on the seminal meaning and how it should be exegeted authoritatively? How, if the masters don't agree, and even produce talmudic arguments that don't agree, is a student of the text supposed to move from an agreed meaning of the text to a greater understanding and knowledge of the text?



John

 

[John D. Brey]

The talmudic passage notes that from the same revealed text various ---conflicting---interpretations arise. So how is the person studying the text ---through the masters of the assemblies ---supposed to anchor into the meaning of the text in order to move confidently forward in further exegesis and learning augmented by the authority of masters of the assemblies if the masters disagree on the seminal meaning and how it should be exegeted authoritatively? How, if the masters don't agree, and even produce talmudic arguments that don't agree, is a student of the text supposed to move from an agreed meaning of the text to a greater understanding and knowledge of the text?

Although this particular text does not say so, others recognize that despite the divine polysemy [multiple legitimate interpretations produced from polygamous relationship to the text, JD] . . . practice must be unified within a community. It is only at this late period that we find such explicit statements that "These and these are the words of the Living God." The rabbinic text, despite its fairly blithe solution to the problem in its statement that all contradictory opinions are equally the words of God, nonetheless evinces, therefore, a sense of the same problem raised by Origen, namely that a doctrine based on the interpretation of a written text will inevitably result in controversy and discord, even if the late rabbinic theory of divine polysemy or indeterminancy solves the theoretical problem and reduces the danger of actual schim by celebrating the indeterminancy of divine language rather than lamenting it as earlier in the rabbinic tradition.​

​

Ibid.​

Throughout his essay, Boyarin shows that though the earlier traditions intuited the huge hermeneutical problem (stated above), and lamented there seemingly being no solution, more recently the problem has been simply accepted and addressed even it it's addressed with a rather "blithe solution." In the the thread on Ibn Ezra's Demon, and even more thoroughly in the thread Exegeting Genesis 17:17, Ibn Ezra was shewered on the horns of precisely this dilemma:

Here's the problem as exemplified by Ibn Ezra in his description of his approach to properly interpreting the text, " . . . our Sages of blessed memory said long ago, A biblical verse never loses its straightforward meaning." Therefore, based on that foundational principle, Ibn Ezra states what his interpretive stance toward the scripture shall be: "I treat God alone with awe, and will show no favor to the Torah, seeking the correct meaning of each and every word with all my might. Then I will interpret each verse as best I am able." When Ibn Ezra says he will show no favor to the Torah, but seek the correct meaning (through interpretation) of each and every word, he's surely implying that he won't privilege an a priori interpretation or codification of the text, ala the Masoretic codification of the text, but will seek the correct meaning of every word according to the principle that a verse, or phrase, never loses its straightforward meaning. He says he will treat God alone with awe, and show no favoritism to foregone conclusions, but only favor God himself.​

​

Exegeting Genesis 17:17, p. 2.​

But then Ibn Ezra is confronted with his own polysemous interpretation of Psalms 2:6 where, in his exegesis of Koheleth, he implies that in strict, literal, interpretation, Psalms 2:6 says the Lord will pour out the King on his holy mountain (whereas when he exegetes the verse in his interpretation of the Psalms he leans heavily on the allegorical meaning that the King is "anointed" rather than poured out). Ibn Ezra was challenged over and over again by the fact that the holy text is clearly ---in many places ----literally allegorical. His acknowledgement of such was extremely frustrating in his conflict with the Christians whose interpretation he berated for being overly allegorical since he was himself caught between a rock and a hard place when he was forced to acknowledge that the holy text's literal meaning is very often literally allegorical. The problem is similar to the one noted by Boyarin's interpretation of the Talmud at BT Hagigah 3a-b. If a given text is allegorical by its nature (the Lord will pour out the King on his holy mountain), then how is Judaism to combat the fact that the clear allegory of many passages lends itself to the Christian's exegesis seemingly without request for it eventually being returned to Judaism? When he confronts the antinomy that his stated interpretive approach too often not only doesn't reproach the Christian exegesis, but rather, and ignominiously supports it, Ibn Ezra was left trying to formulate a more consistent approach to the text. When he does that, he ends up distorting even the blithe solution found in Hagigah 3a-b:

To be sure, when it comes to the laws, if we find two possible meanings, we will follow the one handed down by our righteous Sages. We can rely perfectly on them. . . Our Sages were true; all their words are true. May the true God guide His servants on the true path.​

​

Ibn Ezra's regressive statement on interpretation.​

No statement could possibly illuminate the problem more than the one quoted above. Initially Ibn Ezra says he won't even worry about existing exegesis but will, with the guidance of the Lord, seek out the clear and obvious literal meaning of the text. But half way into that approach he's approached by Christians with more and more passages like Psalms 2:6, many in the Pentateuch, whereby Ibn Ezra's goodhearted and seemingly legitimate approach to exegesis runs smack dab into reality so that he retreats to the idea that the masters of the assembly must be the foundation of the true and faithful interpretation of the holy text. Except that they themselves, having run into the same problem as Ibn Ezra, are forced to accept the seemingly promiscuous reality of a polysemous meaning derived from what now appears to be a Lord God willing to practice revelatory polygamy based on marrital covenants with Jews, Christians, and who knows whom else?



John

 

[John D. Brey]

​

No statement could possibly illuminate the problem more than the one quoted above. Initially Ibn Ezra says he won't even worry about existing exegesis but will, with the guidance of the Lord, seek out the clear and obvious literal meaning of the text. But half way into that approach he's approached by Christians with more and more passages like Psalms 2:6, many in the Pentateuch, whereby Ibn Ezra's goodhearted and seemingly legitimate approach to exegesis runs smack dab into reality so that he retreats to the idea that the masters of the assembly must be the foundation of the true and faithful interpretation of the holy text. Except that they themselves, having run into the same problem as Ibn Ezra, are forced to accept the seemingly promiscuous reality of a polysemous meaning derived from what now appears to be a Lord God willing to practice revelatory polygamy based on marrital covenants with Jews, Christians, and who knows whom else?

Things take a turn still worse for the Jewish reader when in his essay on these exegetical problems, Professor Boyarin seems to have a eureka moment by realizing that as difficult as it is for a talmudic scholar to admit, Origen seemingly has a viable solution to the exegetical problem of polyseme, i.e., the problematic admission of a revelatory divine-polygamy (producing polyseme) based on recognition that allegory indeed and legitimately contaminates what would otherwise be a text so explicit on the surface narrative that allegory and allegorists could be body-slammed in any fair-minded exegetical wrestling match.

Origen's Jewish Alexandrian predecessor Philo had understood the theoretical problem, and also proposed a solution to it. For Philo, something, of course, exists for sure, namely God and his Logos. Philo explicitly expressed a theory of the "magic language" of the Logos, the language of nous, a language that is, in Wittgenstein's terms, self-interpreting. . . For Philo, only prelapsarian Adam among men had had direct access to this magic language of Logos. He had "been able to see the nature of each thing" (De ebrietate 167), and had therefore, been able to name everything with its perfect name, the name that corresponds perfectly to the language of nous or Logos. For Philo, God's language is entirely different from the language of humans.​

Ibn Ezra's demon is slain only where there's a "magic language" where words have such an obvious and singular relationship between sign/word and its signifier/meaning, that interpretation is just as Ibn Ezra started out thinking it would be for him. He just needed to block out the noise and look straightly into what this magical language of obvious literal meaning was saying. The undeniable revelation that this magic language that prelapsarian Adam possessed, went the way of Adam and the dinosaurs in the garden when Adam was kicked out of the garden, leaves only children and the cognitively dissonant reader still believing that they're reading a magic language rather than a language forced to wear the same seminal-organ-hiding fig leaves worn by postlapsarian Adam.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

Ibn Ezra's demon is slain only where there's a "magic language" where words have such an obvious and singular relationship between sign/word and its signifier/meaning, that interpretation is just as Ibn Ezra started out thinking it would be for him. He just needed to block out the noise and look straightly into what this magical language of obvious literal meaning was saying. The undeniable revelation that this magic language that prelapsarian Adam possessed, went the way of Adam and the dinosaurs in the garden when Adam was kicked out of the garden, leaves only children and the cognitively dissonant reader still believing that they're reading a magic language rather than a language forced to wear the same seminal-organ-hiding fig leaves worn by postlapsarian Adam.

Hence, interpretation is always allegorical, as opposed to midrash which is not interpretation, for all that it is commentary. The allegorist reaches this level of interpretation through a process of contemplation, as described in Philo's On the Contemplative Life. . . "Origen's" imagination [as well, I would add, as his theoretical passion] is captured by Moses' ability to see God without a veil and by Moses' transformation in body no less than in spirit by virtue of his direct knowledge of the divine."​

​

Ibid. Quotation in text is from John D. Dawson, Christian figural Reading and the Fashioning of Identity, p. 32.​

As he does in many of his essays on Origen's interpretative maneuvers, Boyarin points out that Jewish midrashim isn't really interpretation but merely commentary. Like the Talmud itself, Jewish midrashim cross-references scriptures, and debates/comments on them, without, strictly speaking, venturing an interpretation that would ---as interpretation ---be considered an authoritative meaning able to silence any polysemous and contradictory argumentation, or differing midrashic reading. The nature of Jewish midrash, even as found in the Talmud, is to acknowledge the impossibility of interpretation without a magical knowledge of the singular meaning of the text, which magical knowledge, the quotation above attributes to Moses, as the earlier quotation attributed it to prelapsarian Adam.

For midrash, however, in its final development, there is no transcendental signified. God himself can only participate, as it were, in the process of unlimited semiosis and thus of limitless interpretation. The result will be not simply a multiplicity of interpreations that we cannot decide between, nor even a plethora of interpretations that all stand in the Pleroma of divine meaning, but finally a rabbinic ascesis that virtualluy eliminates the practice of interprertation entirely. Midrash in its culminating avatar, eschews not only allegory and a discourse on the true meaning but renounces "interpretation" altogether . . ..​

Jewish exegesis eschews interpretation in favor of midrashic commentary and crossreferencing between narratives (the latter no doubt bringing some illumination to the various passages of scripture). This acknowledgement of the limitations of interpretation in a world of fallen man where there's no magic access to a singluar meaning strips the Jewish exegete of a perceived power over the Christian or non-Jewish exegete that few Jews are able or willing to swallow. For instance, Rabbi Hirsch concocts a theologoumenon from Exodus 32:15 whereby the divine revelation given to Moses in writing must needs be something otherworldly, magical, in order for the Jew to retain a superior relationship to the divine revelation than the non-Jew. Rabbi Hirsch's exegesis of Exodus 32:15 is a veiled acknowledgement (no pun intended) of the problem that arises without a magical reference point to a revelation transmitted through the written word (although the problem exists in oral interpretation as well):

The truth of the revelation was secured against all acts of deception in which people try to turn God's revelation to man into a revelation from within man, God's revelation to Moshe into a revelation from within Moshe, thereby turning revelation into a non-revelation. . . If the Tablets of the Testimony were written on one side only, the person responsible for reading to the people the laws written on the Tablets would be placed in a dictatorial position vis-a-vis the masses listening to his speech. He alone would have the text before his eyes, and the masses would have to simply accept what they would hear from his mouth. Clearly, he would be the intermediary between the people and the law.​

​

The Hirsch Chumash, Exodus 20:16; Exodus 32:15.​

Rabbi Hirsch claims the tablets of the law were written in such a way that the letters showed through the tablets from front to back ----magically of course since parts of the Hebrew script would then be hovering (levitated) in the middle of the script as it passes right through the material of the tablets. Point being, as he elicidates with no small verbostity, that if Moses alone could read the written text in its singular meaning, then not only would he alone have access to the singular meaning of the writ, but once he read the singular meaning off the page, or tablet, the hearer would have to accept Moses' reading/interpretation rather than reading it and seeing it himself, in which case, if that weren't the case, i.e., if too had access to the magical singular meaning, then his understanding of the text would be identical to Moses, proving that he too, like Moses, should be reckoned to have access to the spiritual rung of knowledge and insight that returns one to prelapsarian times and the magical power of a semiosis with absolute and singular meaning. In a sense that Rabbi Hirsch probably intended, every thoughtful Jew could then body slam thoughtless Christians precisely because Jewish persons, one and all, have access to the magic language of prelapse Adam while the Christian must labor in the polyseme of the fallen word and the contaminated languge of the non-Jew.

Unfortunately, notwithstanding the brilliance of Rabbi Hirsch's argumentation (and the fact that there's some valuable stuff it in), his argumentation is like Ibn Ezra's prior to an experiential attempt at body slamming Christians that failed miserably; and which in fact got turned around on Ibn Ezra so that he high-tailed it back to the masters of the assembly whom he assumed had access to the same magical language Moses did, though they did not, and admitted they did not.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

​

Unfortunately, nothwithstanding the brilliance of Rabbi Hirsch's argumentation (and the fact that there's some valuable stuff it in), his argumentation is like Ibn Ezra's prior to an experiential attempt at body slamming Christians that failed miserably; and which in fact got turned around on Ibn Ezra so that he high-tailed it back to the masters of the assembly whom he assumed had access to the same magical langauge Moses did, though they did not, and admitted they did not.

All of which segues back to Origen, and Boyarin's eureka moment of exegeting Origen. He points out that Philo had seen the aforementioned problems of midrash, and the problem associated with any attempt to believe the holy writ retains its magical ability to reveal a singular meaning from the Hebrew letters and words themselves, but had not, Philo had not, really solved the problem:

What seems to me lacking in Philo's thought, the "incompletion" [Origen allegedly solves], is a way of accounting for the fact that he, via interpretation, claims to accomplish that which Moses himself could not. One way that this could be articulated is to say that Philo answered Gorgia's two challenges: What there is is God and the way we know it is through God's revelation to us through mystical contemplation of scripture. He has not, however, even attempted an answer to the third point of Gorgias, namely that even if we know something we cannot communicate it to others.​

Even if Moses indeed obtained to the prelapsarian rung of Adam, so that he could understand a transcendental, singular, meaning, from God's communication, he could not, as Rabbi Hirsch pointed out (and attempt to get around), communicate it to anyone who wasn't privy to the self-same level of spiritual attainment.

Christian theories of the Logos in flesh seem better equipped to address this issue. For Christians, the magic language has appeared on earth and spoken itself, thus answering to Philo's aporia. The prologue to the Gospel of John makes this point in its utterance that through the Torah it had proved impossible to communicate Logos to humans and that only through the Logos's actual taking on of human flesh was God made knowable to the people.​

Though Boyarin's statement above is attempting to move in a semi-workable direction, it doesn't itself appear to relate why the Logos taking on flesh would be fundamentally different than coming to Israel, or Moses, in a fiery language once accessible to Adam prior to the sin. Boyarin's statement doesn't address, yet, the significance of enfleshed Logos rather that inflamed Logos ala Moses and Israel.

The problem of the Son's knowing of the Father, and the question of how the Father can be made known to humans is a Christian formulation of a general fundamental problem in epistemology and language theory, and also a brilliant Christian solution to that problem. The Platonism and the Christianity of Origen's allegoresis are much more . . . nuancedly integral to each other than one might have thought . . . In contrast to the usual discription that sees Platonism as a service (or disservice) to Christian theology, I am here positing that Christian theology provided an important service to philosophy by articulating the only possible conditions within which interpretation is possible. Paradoxically, it would seem, it is only theology that makes philsophy possible.​

Though he intuits and legitimizes the problem of epistemology, hermeneutics, and language theory, and seems to see a profound solution in the incarnation of the Logos (so that the Word is spoken through human flesh rather than merely inflamming the problem through God's prelapsarian nature and burning divine-tongue), Boyarin doesn't make explicit how the solution is fully met? Or at least it's not explicit in the reading being examined here; though this reader would appreciate anyone claiming to intuit in Boyarin's essay the fulness of how the incarnation of the Logos in flesh, rather than flaming tongue of fire, solves the conundrums already laid out. ----Professor Boyarin closes out the essay as follows:

In a striking--and perhaps not coincidental ---convergence, both the Rabbis and the Father imagine the practice of lectio divina as a moment of fiery encounter with God. Both imagine that through the properly intended study of the holy writ, direct contact with God the Father can be achieved, but the differences are important as well. For the Rabbis what is found is no interpretations and no knowledge of truth, but only the words themselves, as radiant, joyful, and sweet as when given on Mt. Sinai; for Origen, it is not finally the words but the Word and with it the Truth that is to be located in the otherwise so kindred a spiritual practice of reading. For Origen, those who find only the words and enjoy the words remain irrational beasts and only those who strip the meanings of flesh off the bones of word and read the text more allegorico, which means in Christ, could ever even have hoped for the experience of hot love that both he and the rabbinic interlocutor seek.​

John

 

[John D. Brey]

Though he intuits and legitimizes the problem of epistemology, hermeneutics, and language theory, and seems to see a profound solution in the incarnation of the Logos (so that the Word is spoken through human flesh rather than merely inflamming the problem through God's prelapsarian nature and burning divine-tongue), Boyarin doesn't make explicit how the solution is fully met? Or at least it's not explicit in the reading being examined here; though this reader would appreciate anyone claiming to intuit in Boyarin's essay the fulness of how the incarnation of the Logos in flesh, rather than flaming tongue of fire, solves the conundrums already laid out. ----Professor Boyarin closes out the essay as follows:

​

Returning to argument from earlier in the thread:

But even then the blood is forbidden to be placed in the mouth and ingested since, as we know from scripture, the blood represents the soul-life of the beast, so that even if the body of the beast is dead (and thus fit for ingestion) the blood, representing the immortal soul, is never dead, and thus, never able to be put in the mouth and ingested. If the flesh represents the house, or home, of the soul, and the blood is the soul, and if the soul is the life, which in cognition is "meaning" (versus the mediator of the transfer), then for the meaning of God's revelation to be put in the mouth and swallowed, i.e., for the spirit of God's revelation, the raw soul of God's revelation, to be put in the mouth and swallowed, that blood, the raw, immortal soul (the living "meaning") of God's revelation would have to die, like the flesh, for it to be kosher for a Jew to swallow, ingest, digest.​

​

Except that's not precisely true. The halacha forbidding the drinking of blood is not found in the actual text of the Torah. It's a fence around the Torah designed to protect the Jew from accidentally breaking a law; except that in this case it might accidentally prevent a Jew from entering behind the fence where the true heart and soul of the halacha, and thus the font of everlasting life, resides.

​

אך בשר בנפשו דמו לא תאכלו. Here, דמו is usually understood to be in apposition to בנפשו [blood is in apposition --parallel-- to soul]: "However, you shall not eat flesh whose soul ---i.e.,, whose blood ----is still in it." This interpretation, however, contradicts the Halachah and is even contrary to the meaning of the words and the accentuation. According to this interpretation, Noachides would be prohibited from eating meat with the blood in it. This this is incorrect.​

​

The Hirsch Chumash, Genesis 9:4.​

And so:

Blood is not forbidden to a בן נח [son of Noah], nor even is דמ מן החי; only אבר מן החי is forbidden to him. The blood in meat, which would be the meaning of "flesh whose blood is still in it" ---דם אברים שלא פירש --- is not forbidden even to us. Nor does it say here: בשר אשר בו נפשו דמו; rather, it says בנפשו דמו. Furthermore, בשר is accentuated with a strong separator. The wording and the accentuation indicate that our verse should be rendered as follows: "However, you shall not eat flesh while its blood is in its soul." The words בנפשו דמו describe an animal that is still alive ---i.e., אבר מן החי (see Sanhedrin 56a).​

​

Ibid.​

Rabbi Hirsch brilliantly exegetes the truth out of the Hebrew text; which is that ingesting blood is not forbidden the Noahide, nor even the Jew him or herself. The true halacha forbids ingesting blood only if it came from an animal that's still alive; that is, whose blood is still in the soul (implying that a linkage between the blood and the soul is broken at the death of the animal ---as Rabbi Hirsch's further commentary makes explicit). He expounds that the materialistic concept that the blood is the soul is incorrect such that in the truth of the Hebrew, the blood is in the soul, represents, materially, the immaterial soul.



John

​

 

[John D. Brey]

Boyarin doesn't make explicit how the solution is fully met? Or at least it's not explicit in the reading being examined here; though this reader would appreciate anyone claiming to intuit in Boyarin's essay the fulness of how the incarnation of the Logos in flesh, rather than flaming tongue of fire, solves the conundrums already laid out. ----Professor Boyarin closes out the essay as follows:

In a striking--and perhaps not coincidental ---convergence, both the Rabbis and the Father imagine the practice of lectio divina as a moment of fiery encounter with God. Both imagine that through the properly intended study of the holy writ, direct contact with God the Father can be achieved, but the differences are important as well. For the Rabbis what is found is no interpretations and no knowledge of truth, but only the words themselves, as radiant, joyful, and sweet as when given on Mt. Sinai; for Origen, it is not finally the words but the Word and with it the Truth that is to be located in the otherwise so kindred a spiritual practice of reading. For Origen, those who find only the words and enjoy the words remain irrational beasts and only those who strip the meanings of flesh off the bones of word and read the text more allegorico, which means in Christ, could ever even have hoped for the experience of hot love that both he and the rabbinic interlocutor seek.​

The distinction between the Rabbis and Origen, notwithstanding their joint desire for an encounter with God, diverges in the most pronounced and fundamental manner concerning their method for achieving this encounter with God. The distinction between the two is almost perfectly circumscribed in an essay by Professor Elliot Wolfson (Temporal Diremption and the Novelty of Genuine Repetition) where he accuses D.G. Leahy's "missa jubilaea" (a universal celebration of Mass) with exhibiting "an unresolved tension between the universal and the particular":

The supersessionist bias is conspicuous in Leahy's avowal that in the thinking now occurring there are no elements in essence apart from the elements in Christ. Needless to say, this approach has deep roots in Christian dogma, epitomized scripturally by the baptismal formula,"For in Christ Jesus you are sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:26).​

As Professor Wolfson rightly notes, Leahy reads Galatians 3:26 as a "missa jubilaea," a universal baptism into Christ that dissolves all former distinctions. Wolfson claims this dissolution of all former distinctions is fine for those who take part in it, but that it doesn't address those who aren't a part of it:

What is conveniently ignored by many interpreters of this seminal passage is that the pledge that we are one in Christ Jesus is an inclusivity that excludes its own exclusivity; that is, the capacity for alterity attested in this text, and the ritual of baptism implied thereby, disregards those who might not desire to be incorporated into the body of Christ. For those baptized in Christ it may be reassuring to know there is an eradication of ethnic, socioeconomic, and gender difference, but what is the fate of those who resist assimilation?​

And:

The missa jubilaea may announce the now wherein "the appearance itself of faith itself in essence is effected in a transcendentally differentiated substance, that is without being other than itself in essence," but in the end it is not clear that this mass is as all-encompassing as Leahy supposes it to be. At the very least, the claim concerning the new apocalyptic actuality exhibits an unresolved tension between the universal and the particular.​

In a nutshell, Wolfson's statements parallel Boyarin's distinction between Jewish midrash versus Origen's "interpretation." Jewish midrashim, though it recognizes the unresolved tension between a particular reading of the text (the Rabbis'), versus an "interpretation" that's universally correct (even if that universal correctness requires some kind of transcendental root to anchor the universality of the correctness), doesn't (the Rabbis' midrash doesn't) possess a means, nor seemingly desire one, to collapse midrash into "interpretation."

As Boyarin notes throughout his engagement with Origen, the Rabbis clearly acknowledge that their particular engagement to the text doesn't consummate the relationship between text and reader in a way that would give birth to a living "interpretation" transcendentally correct because of the nature of the unification involved; they're tacitly aware that midrash, though it might sneak peeks beneath the surface text at various places on the body of the text, nevertheless doesn't participate directly and unashamedly in what Boyarin refers to as "hot love." Which is to say there's one place in the middle of the seminal body of the text the Rabbis won't go: a "forbidden zone" if you will, that Dr. Zaius might assure them they won't like if they do go there.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

As Boyarin notes throughout his engagement with Origen, the Rabbis clearly acknowledge that their particular engagement to the text doesn't consummate the relationship between text and reader in a way that would give birth to a living "interpretation" transcendentally correct because of the nature of the unification involved; they're tacitly aware that midrash, though it might sneak peeks beneath the surface text at various places on the body of the text, nevertheless doesn't participate directly and unashamedly in what Boyarin refers to as "hot love." Which is to say there's one place in the middle of the seminal body of the text the Rabbis won't go: a "forbidden zone" if you will, that Dr. Zaius might assure them they won't like if they do go there.

To blatantly spit it out in the most antinomian manner, this "forbidden zone," where the Jew allegedly can't go, is the death of God which Leahy's missa jubilaea implies opens up direct relationship to God for one and all. And it would be sad if the Jew can't go there since it resolves the unresolved tension between the particular and the universal in a seemingly universally acknowledgeable manner that's perhaps forcibly opposed to Wolfson's epistemology and hermenuetic whereby Judaism and the Jew possess their own particularity, which is also a communal-singularity. It's this communal-singularity and particularity that's so pronounced that it establishes the unresolved tension between the Christian missa jubilaea (a universal singularity that dissolves all particulars) versus the Jew's communal-singularity of Jews that universalizes all outside the particular Jew therein singularizing and particularizing the Jew and the absolute particularity of Judaism against the universalized Mass and masses outside Judaism.

In effect, Judaism establishes Judaism as a singular in a manner that universalizes all outside Judaism as the "other" whose particularity is the fore skene, or background, upon which Judaism grounds its own particularity. A universal Judaism, open to all, despite birth, ethnicity, race, etc., has no fore skene, or background, to establish it's particularity as against all others such that as perceptively noted by Elad Lapidot in his, Jews Out of the Question: Thinking the Unthinkable, the very existence of a particularity outside of Judaism is a necessary requirement to the existence of Judaism itself:

WHAT IF---anti-Semitism has been, after Jewish assimilation, one of the only remaining traces that there ever has been an actual Jewish question, a question posed by Jews as Jews, a Jewish being, namely, that subsists not in the realm of pure substance [in the flesh], but in the realm of questions, of answers, of debates, of pro and also anti, the realm of thought?​

If the "substance" of Jewishness is assimilated away through science, i.e., if the fleshly Jew, the Jewish fleshly particularity, is finally exposed as non-scientific, as not really fleshly, then, ala Lapidot, the assimilation of Jewish thought would dissolve or eradicate the only particularity that would remain for the Jew such that, ala Leahy, the Jew, too, would be included in the dissolution and eradication of all fleshly, ethnic, racial, concrete, particularity. This eradication of all fleshly, concrete, particularity, would clearly be the "forbidden zone" that could scare a thinking Jew right to the bone of his bone and the flesh of his flesh such that his former joy and jubilation in the fleshly act whereby another particular Jew is conceived, might start to justify a more Catholic demonization of the act and the reading of the text that glorifies the marriage of only Jewish readings of text and reader (Jewish midrash), and Jewish marriage in general, since only those readings and acts protect a form of unification that's both seminal and also absolutely necessary for Jewish particularism.

We can say absolutely necessary since notwithstanding the possibility of conversion to Judaism by those not born Jewish, it's probably fair to say that the idea of all future Jews one day coming about through conversion (ala the missa jubilaea) rather than through carnal birth, segues precisely into Lapidot's fear that at that point, since the conversion isn't fleshly, isn't registered in the particulization of the body of Judaism (against a foregrounding other), there's no written text (no fleshly register), only oral registry in the conversion process, to protect the particularity of Judaism against dissolving into some kind of universal Mass or missa jubilaea.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

If the "substance" of Jewishness is assimilated away through science, i.e., if the fleshly Jew, the Jewish fleshly particularity, is finally exposed as non-scientific, as not really fleshly, then, ala Lapidot, the assimilation of Jewish thought would dissolve or eradicate the only particularity that would remain for the Jew such that, ala Leahy, the Jew, too, would be included in the dissolution and eradication of all fleshly, ethnic, racial, concrete, particularity. This eradication of all fleshly, concrete, particularity, would clearly be the "forbidden zone" that could scare a thinking Jew right to the bone of his bone and the flesh of his flesh such that his former joy and jubilation in the fleshly act whereby another particular Jew is conceived, might start to justify a more Catholic demonization of the act and the reading of the text that glorifies the marriage of only Jewish readings of text and reader (Jewish midrash), and Jewish marriage in general, since only those readings and acts protect a form of unification that's both seminal and also absolutely necessary for Jewish particularism.

We can say absolutely necessary since notwithstanding the possibility of conversion to Judaism by those not born Jewish, it's probably fair to say that the idea of all future Jews one day coming about through conversion (ala the missa jubilaea) rather than through carnal birth, segues precisely into Lapidot's fear that at that point, since the conversion isn't fleshly, isn't registered in the particulization of the body of Judaism (against a foregrounding other), there's no written text (no fleshly register), only oral registry in the conversion process, to protect the particularity of Judaism against dissolving into some kind of universal Mass or missa jubilaea.

Based on this argumentation, Wolfson's unresolved tension between the universal and the particular, is produced precisely by Judaism and her requirement not to assimilate (for fear of dissolving into the universal body). This requirement to neither assimilate, nor evangelize toward a missa jubilaea is inherent to, and a necessary requirement of Judaism and the Jew's very existence and being. Which is to say that part and parcel of Jewish existence and being is, far from seeking a universal Judaism (mass conversion), precisely the need to separate and segregate the Jew from the universal population, i.e., the requisite requirement both not to assimilate, but further, not to evangelize or seek out a missa jubilaea kind of mass conversion that in the case of the Jew and Judaism would eradicate Jewish being/existence (since Jewish being and existence gestates through, and requires precisely this tension between the particular and the universal). Rather than establishing as a final goal or achievement a oneness of humanity that resolves the previous tension between the universal and the particular, quite the contrary, Judaism creates, and protects, the tension between the particular (Judaism) and the universal (non-Jew) as the creation and protection of Jewish being, and arguably, Being itself (if the latter requires the binary between particular and universal).



John

 

[John D. Brey]

Based on this argumentation, Wolfson's unresolved tension between the universal and the particular, is produced precisely by Judaism and her requirement not to assimilate (for fear of dissolving into the universal body). This requirement to neither assimilate, nor evangelize toward a missa jubilaea is inherent to, and a necessary requirement of Judaism and the Jew's very existence and being. Which is to say that part and parcel of Jewish existence and being is, far from seeking a universal Judaism (mass conversion), precisely the need to separate and segregate the Jew from the universal population, i.e., the requisite requirement both not to assimilate, but further, not to evangelize or seek out a missa jubilaea kind of mass conversion that in the case of the Jew and Judaism would eradicate Jewish being/existence (since Jewish being and existence gestates through, and requires precisely this tension between the particular and the universal). Rather than establishing as a final goal or achievement a oneness of humanity that resolves the previous tension between the universal and the particular, quite the contrary, Judaism creates, and protects, the tension between the particular (Judaism) and the universal (non-Jew) as the creation and protection of Jewish being, and arguably, Being itself (if that latter requires the binary between particular and universal).

The statement implying that Judaism may protect not just Jewish existence/being through her refusal to assimilate or evangelize, but Being itself, lends itself to the communal-singular reading of the Suffering-Servant of Isaiah chapter 53 whereby within the construct of Jews protecting all Being through their guardianship of the particular versus the universal (guarding the binary relationship that might be required for the existence of a human kind of Being) Jews and Judaism suffer the attack of anti-Semitism precisely when the universal other intuits the Jew's and Judaism's grotesque (in the eyes of a universal mass), and seemingly unjustified, hyper-particularism. If this Jewish particularism protects human Being-ness, then Judaism and the Jews, in their periodic and pronounced suffering, at the hands of the universal other, are, in every way, producing through their suffering a substitutionary redeeming atonement of the very ones producing the suffering. In this way the communal-singular Suffering-Servant is made parallel to the singular-universal Suffering-Servant the latter of whose suffering and salvific act is accepted (by the missa jubilaea) whereas the communal-singular Suffering-Servant's act is neither understood nor accepted by the universal other, nor seemingly can be, without eliminating its efficacious effect.

In effect, an argument could seemingly be affected to the effect that the singular Suffering-Servant's salvific-act on the cross requires, for its effect, the existence and maintenance of the unresolved tension between the universal and the particular Wolfson lays in the lap of Leahy (and his catholic triumphalism), but which in fact belongs to the faithfulness of Judaism and the Jew. It might even be said that there can be no Christian without the Jew, in a manner that can't be reversed since the Jew's existence and persistence is a a pre-requisite for the Christian in a manner that gives the Jew, if ironically, precedence.

Until that (messianic?) moment, it seems we are required to maintain the two poles of this dialectic, the "Christian" and the "rabbinic" understandings of gender, in tension and in suspension such that neither of them can overwhelm the other. "Christianity" and "Judaism" are names, then, for the poles of an irresolvable antinomy or aporia; neither can sublate the other, nor is there yet any third term that can clearly resolve this antithesis. Even in the absence of the synthesis, the thesis and the antithesis themselves can perhaps protect us each from the excesses of the other.​

​

Daniel Boyarin, Gender (the final statement in essay).​

John