Are you a smoothies dude?
The Saunterer http://saunterersjournal.blogspot.com/ e-mailed me this morning.
Is Joshua a hawk or not!
Our journey of reading the Bible again, for the first time, has us now at the point of entering Canaan.
Hawkish or not!
My e-mail response to him . . .
Are you a smoothies dude? Or a fruit-salad dude?
OK! It's a trick question!! LOL
But to amalgamate the metaphor even more-so, are you a dude that can actually chew real food? Or must you revert back to the smoothies?
As usual, the QBC [Queer Bible Commentary] provides another epiphany for me.
In my reading this morning, pages 151 and 152 in the QBC, it really struck me for the first time, the explanation, and for me, a rational explanation, of the why-for, how-come of the multitude of 'gods' in this biblical record.
Going all the way back to Melchizedek.
I recall from my previous fundie days the enigma Melchizedek would cause in the literal reading of Genesis. Like there was something more there, that somehow God was not going to let mere humans know this complicated secret, that we simply had to be protected or something, from this mysterious connection that transcended our simplistic paradigm of theology.
And then enters Margaret Barker. OK, she may be an outlier, a non-orthodox, an out-of-box instigator, but what she says makes a lot of sense to me. Especially when I shift my viewpoint from a literal, canonical-reading of these books.
Going on Michael Carden's (author of the chapter on Joshua) assumption that these stories meet the 4th explanation for their existence, i.e. that they are fiction and a reconstruction of a history that was accomplished partially in King Josiah's day and completed in the post-exilic era, and that the indigenous peoples of Canaan are one and the same as the Israelites, and the concept of "god" was an evolving and involving amalgamation over centuries . . . this now comes as a very rational understanding for me.
El Elyon with the androgynous Asherah, as the Canaanite high god, dwelling in a mountain Edenic garden, promoting the movements in heaven as enactments on earth. The successive kings of these earthly nations were the earthly manifestations of their heavenly patrons, that the subordinate deities of the supreme El-Asherah . . . i.e. Yahweh-Anat, Baal-Anat, and Chemosh, were the patrons of these Canaanite cults, that angels and demons were the lesser deities, and in time, El-Asherah and Yahweh-Anat were fused into one monotheistic god that became more "fleshed out" in the New Testament era.
And so to the smoothies or fruit salad.
The QBC telling me, and Margaret Barker suggesting, that to read the "Old Testament as the writings of a monotheistic faith which had one God with several names", is to sanitize it "for the benefit of modern readers for whom mythology, ritual and mystery are too reminiscent of all that has been cast aside with the Reformation."
To "sanitize" it!
To "smoothie" it. To make it Paul's "milk" for the weak and uninitiated? One amalgamated god. Convenient. Congeal the individual components. Blend. Emulsify. Strain. Slurp it, suck it up. No teeth necessary.
But in reality, a fruit salad. Individual gods with individual characteristics. A dominant flavor but with individual characteristic textures. A series of nuances that provide an essence of complexity. The hints of pungency. A cohesive nectar. Fiber and pith. Acid. Sticky. Slimy. Chewy. Crunchy. Bouquet. Fragrance. Satisfaction. Fragments that literally need to be picked out of one's teeth. Paul's "meaty" organoleptic experience.
The understanding, by this, a 21st century gay man, of the truly wonderful gift this history is to me. The awakening to the why-for, how-come of this theological evolution. The testimony of an ancient sharing people, real people with a real sense of what it means to be human. With what consisted of "their" understanding of reality. A reality that I am now beginning to be aware of and to try to understand and to accept for what it is.
They believed what was rational to them . . . with the experience and understanding of the world as they could only know it. And I must respect and honor them for that.
To understand this ancient history is not unlike how one must deal with a loved-one with Alzheimer's. One must simply exist in "their" reality.
As a former fundie, I was taught to abhor fiction. We were not to read it as children or students. For it was a lie.
Little did I know at that time, that my old King James Bible consisted of, among many genres of literature, fiction.
Nenad, in this quest of reading, again, for the first time, I have come to realize how valuable this old Bible with its collection of genres really is.
What I had jettisoned with the paradigm-shifting-jolt of Thomas Paine's "The Age of Reason," I am now reclaiming in a totally new, and enlightening way.
I never knew this aspect of the old story could ever exist.
The story now, is beginning to make sense. What Thomas Paine found as his "rationality," I am now finding what is mine. And I am learning that the key is to accept it as "their" reality.
And as you so wonderfully allude, like a little boy with a stack of well-worn adventure books, these are the stories of heroes and heroism. Of dreams and ambitions. Of conquests of unimaginable wars and conflicts and conquests and dramas. And some victories. And some defeats. Of the fighting with and for the deities. Of seeding one's own self awareness and identity with a sense of bravado. These truly are the things of sheer inspiration.
This morning, I read again, the story of Rahab.
These writers were so very human. They knew the plots that make people of any and all ages real, believable, people.
They knew how to write a story to make a point. To catch the attention of the reader.
They knew how the risqué piqued the imagination.
And if it took a prostitute to make a point, and including her to make, with the innocence of a straight face, a double entendra to the King's surrogates looking for the two spies: "But the woman took the two men and hid them. Then she said, 'True, the men came to me, but I did not know where they came from." Joshua 2:4. From the footnotes in the HarperCollins Study Bible for this text, "'Come to you' and 'came to me' have a double meaning. Understood as 'come into you/me, the phrase can imply sexual intercourse as well as arrival at Rahab's house" . . . well, it adds a jewel to the subsequent plot line of what happens centuries later.
These stories truly are precious gems.
The jewels that brighten and enrich one's life.
But why , I am forced to ask, are these jewels so pulverized like industrial diamonds that then scour, abrade, cut, mar and deface?
That become in and of themselves, the weapons of war against the gay and lesbian. Against those of us in today's culture, that are perceived as the "other."
And what can be an inevitable consequence . . . throwing out both the smoothie and the fruit salad of these Biblical stories. Their total rejection.
And I still can't help ask, yet I know the answer. Whether it be smoothie or fruit salad . . . why must these ancient stories be adulterated so as to poison the very spirituality of the 'other' people.
For me, this is what a spiritual journey is all about.
And so my friend . . . as we enter "Canaan" with Joshua. Whether he is a war-mongering hawk or not. With his "rules of Sacral War" securely rolled up with his armaments . With his valor and heroism and sense of purpose-driven mission. Whether the populace had his confidence or not. It was and is the adventure series of "Be strong and Courageous."
And like little boys reading adventure books for the first time, we can at least "pretend" like we don't know the end of the story.
But of course we do.
So that means the plot line becomes even more intriguing . . . and embellished.
And in our imaginations . . . we play the various roles. Over and over and over.
Hugs
The Refectory Manager
P.S. I'll pass on the smoothie. But a big helping of fruit salad will hit the spot.
Is Joshua a hawk or not!
Our journey of reading the Bible again, for the first time, has us now at the point of entering Canaan.
Hawkish or not!
My e-mail response to him . . .
Are you a smoothies dude? Or a fruit-salad dude?
OK! It's a trick question!! LOL
But to amalgamate the metaphor even more-so, are you a dude that can actually chew real food? Or must you revert back to the smoothies?
As usual, the QBC [Queer Bible Commentary] provides another epiphany for me.
In my reading this morning, pages 151 and 152 in the QBC, it really struck me for the first time, the explanation, and for me, a rational explanation, of the why-for, how-come of the multitude of 'gods' in this biblical record.
Going all the way back to Melchizedek.
I recall from my previous fundie days the enigma Melchizedek would cause in the literal reading of Genesis. Like there was something more there, that somehow God was not going to let mere humans know this complicated secret, that we simply had to be protected or something, from this mysterious connection that transcended our simplistic paradigm of theology.
And then enters Margaret Barker. OK, she may be an outlier, a non-orthodox, an out-of-box instigator, but what she says makes a lot of sense to me. Especially when I shift my viewpoint from a literal, canonical-reading of these books.
Going on Michael Carden's (author of the chapter on Joshua) assumption that these stories meet the 4th explanation for their existence, i.e. that they are fiction and a reconstruction of a history that was accomplished partially in King Josiah's day and completed in the post-exilic era, and that the indigenous peoples of Canaan are one and the same as the Israelites, and the concept of "god" was an evolving and involving amalgamation over centuries . . . this now comes as a very rational understanding for me.
El Elyon with the androgynous Asherah, as the Canaanite high god, dwelling in a mountain Edenic garden, promoting the movements in heaven as enactments on earth. The successive kings of these earthly nations were the earthly manifestations of their heavenly patrons, that the subordinate deities of the supreme El-Asherah . . . i.e. Yahweh-Anat, Baal-Anat, and Chemosh, were the patrons of these Canaanite cults, that angels and demons were the lesser deities, and in time, El-Asherah and Yahweh-Anat were fused into one monotheistic god that became more "fleshed out" in the New Testament era.
And so to the smoothies or fruit salad.
The QBC telling me, and Margaret Barker suggesting, that to read the "Old Testament as the writings of a monotheistic faith which had one God with several names", is to sanitize it "for the benefit of modern readers for whom mythology, ritual and mystery are too reminiscent of all that has been cast aside with the Reformation."
To "sanitize" it!
To "smoothie" it. To make it Paul's "milk" for the weak and uninitiated? One amalgamated god. Convenient. Congeal the individual components. Blend. Emulsify. Strain. Slurp it, suck it up. No teeth necessary.
But in reality, a fruit salad. Individual gods with individual characteristics. A dominant flavor but with individual characteristic textures. A series of nuances that provide an essence of complexity. The hints of pungency. A cohesive nectar. Fiber and pith. Acid. Sticky. Slimy. Chewy. Crunchy. Bouquet. Fragrance. Satisfaction. Fragments that literally need to be picked out of one's teeth. Paul's "meaty" organoleptic experience.
The understanding, by this, a 21st century gay man, of the truly wonderful gift this history is to me. The awakening to the why-for, how-come of this theological evolution. The testimony of an ancient sharing people, real people with a real sense of what it means to be human. With what consisted of "their" understanding of reality. A reality that I am now beginning to be aware of and to try to understand and to accept for what it is.
They believed what was rational to them . . . with the experience and understanding of the world as they could only know it. And I must respect and honor them for that.
To understand this ancient history is not unlike how one must deal with a loved-one with Alzheimer's. One must simply exist in "their" reality.
As a former fundie, I was taught to abhor fiction. We were not to read it as children or students. For it was a lie.
Little did I know at that time, that my old King James Bible consisted of, among many genres of literature, fiction.
Nenad, in this quest of reading, again, for the first time, I have come to realize how valuable this old Bible with its collection of genres really is.
What I had jettisoned with the paradigm-shifting-jolt of Thomas Paine's "The Age of Reason," I am now reclaiming in a totally new, and enlightening way.
I never knew this aspect of the old story could ever exist.
The story now, is beginning to make sense. What Thomas Paine found as his "rationality," I am now finding what is mine. And I am learning that the key is to accept it as "their" reality.
And as you so wonderfully allude, like a little boy with a stack of well-worn adventure books, these are the stories of heroes and heroism. Of dreams and ambitions. Of conquests of unimaginable wars and conflicts and conquests and dramas. And some victories. And some defeats. Of the fighting with and for the deities. Of seeding one's own self awareness and identity with a sense of bravado. These truly are the things of sheer inspiration.
This morning, I read again, the story of Rahab.
These writers were so very human. They knew the plots that make people of any and all ages real, believable, people.
They knew how to write a story to make a point. To catch the attention of the reader.
They knew how the risqué piqued the imagination.
And if it took a prostitute to make a point, and including her to make, with the innocence of a straight face, a double entendra to the King's surrogates looking for the two spies: "But the woman took the two men and hid them. Then she said, 'True, the men came to me, but I did not know where they came from." Joshua 2:4. From the footnotes in the HarperCollins Study Bible for this text, "'Come to you' and 'came to me' have a double meaning. Understood as 'come into you/me, the phrase can imply sexual intercourse as well as arrival at Rahab's house" . . . well, it adds a jewel to the subsequent plot line of what happens centuries later.
These stories truly are precious gems.
The jewels that brighten and enrich one's life.
But why , I am forced to ask, are these jewels so pulverized like industrial diamonds that then scour, abrade, cut, mar and deface?
That become in and of themselves, the weapons of war against the gay and lesbian. Against those of us in today's culture, that are perceived as the "other."
And what can be an inevitable consequence . . . throwing out both the smoothie and the fruit salad of these Biblical stories. Their total rejection.
And I still can't help ask, yet I know the answer. Whether it be smoothie or fruit salad . . . why must these ancient stories be adulterated so as to poison the very spirituality of the 'other' people.
For me, this is what a spiritual journey is all about.
And so my friend . . . as we enter "Canaan" with Joshua. Whether he is a war-mongering hawk or not. With his "rules of Sacral War" securely rolled up with his armaments . With his valor and heroism and sense of purpose-driven mission. Whether the populace had his confidence or not. It was and is the adventure series of "Be strong and Courageous."
And like little boys reading adventure books for the first time, we can at least "pretend" like we don't know the end of the story.
But of course we do.
So that means the plot line becomes even more intriguing . . . and embellished.
And in our imaginations . . . we play the various roles. Over and over and over.
Hugs
The Refectory Manager
P.S. I'll pass on the smoothie. But a big helping of fruit salad will hit the spot.
posted by The Refectory Manager | 10:56 PM
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