Sensus Plenior supplements
Discover more from Leaves in the Wind
Sensus Plenior supplements
A final installment, an old lecture, a scrap of Gregory of Nyssa...
A third and final installment of Sensus Plenior will arrive at some point—wherein our intrepid author attempts to discern and describe the difference between the finished literary artifact that is the book of Genesis and the mythic materials that the book assumed into itself, reworked, and integrated into a larger mythic and historical narrative of majestic range. But the date of that installment is not yet settled. Moreover, when it does arrive, it will come in a slightly different form than that of the previous installments.
Below is a lecture from about a decade ago (or longer: my memory is not trustworthy) that covers much of the same material and many of the same themes as my most recent articles. I had forgotten about it entirely, but James L., a reader of this newsletter, reminded me of it.
Before stepping back from the recording, however, I thought I might leave readers with another passage from Gregory of Nyssa, this time form The Life of Moses in the standard Abraham Malherbe and Everett Ferguson translation, slightly altered by me. Here Gregory is reflecting on the story of the slaying of the first-born of Egypt and explaining why his spiritual reading is valid even though the tale as recounted at the literal level is not true:
How would a concept worthy of God be preserved in the description of what happened if one looked only to the narrative? The Egyptian acts unjustly, and in his place is punished his newborn child, who in his infancy cannot discern what is good and what is not. His life has no experience of evil, for infancy is not capable of passion. He does not know to distinguish between his right hand and his left. The infant lifts his eyes only to his mother’s nipple, and tears are the sole perceptible sign of his sadness. And if he obtains anything which his nature desires, he signifies his pleasure by smiling. If such a one now pays the penalty for his father’s wickedness, where is justice? Where is piety? Where is holiness? Where is Ezekiel, who cries: The man who has sinned is the man who must die and a son is not to suffer for the sins of his father? How can a narrative so contradict reason?
[…]
Do not be surprised at all that both these events—the deaths of the firstborn and the outpouring of the blood—did not actually happen to the Israelites and on that account reject the contemplation that we have proposed concerning the destruction of evil…
Sensus Plenior supplements
Many thanks for all your theological and philosophical reflections. Those that deal with the interpretation of the Bible touch me particularly. In addition to my work on Gnostic texts, I teach ancient Christian literature and appreciate the beauty of the various exegesis of the ancient Christian writers. I really agree with you about those peremptory fundamentalisms, in an epoch of increasingly literalist treatments of scripture, religious and secularist alike. We no longer understand what is a religious language.
I would say that the Bible is not made up of naïve and uplifting stories. You know it well: It begins with a fratricidal murder, continues with incessant massacres and wars, blessings but also many curses, adulterers. For example, among many others, the story of the rape of Dinah by Shechem in Genesis 34, which ends in retaliation in the form of a mass slaughter. It really cannot be said that the Bible suffers from idealism or untimely naivety. That's why I also appreciate it.
And that's also why I am sensitive to the reactions of contemporary Jewish writers who see the biblical narrative as a laboratory of theological ethics. For example, Robert Alter, who was a professor of Hebrew and literature at Berkeley, California (The art of Biblical Narrative and The art of Biblical Poetry, New York, 1981 and 1985) insists, as many others, that the accounts require a moral evaluation of human behavior and behaviors that confront God and man in complex and provocative situations. This is what Meir Sternberg calls "the drama of reading" (The Poetics of Biblical Narrative).
For Alter, the valorization of this type of reading is also a form of Jewish reappropriation of the tip of the revelation of the Hebrew Bible. The immense metaphorical and typological system between Old and New Testaments is fascinating, and full of grandeur. It nevertheless obscures the ethical drama that occurs in the story told by the Bible. All the richness of the drama, in its political, erotic, religious and ethical stakes "disappears in a fog of archetypes". This is to be discussed.
Besides, as you said, the often quoted rabbinic saying, "The Torah spoke in human language," and the fact that the Bible, for a Christian, is not the word of God: it is a word or words about the Word, the Logos, allow us to discern in these stories, the biblical God changing from a warlike tribal chief into a more abstract personification of the realities of love, justice and universalism.
Once again many thanks for these reflections in our post-narrativity world.
Anne Pasquier, Université Laval, Québec (I'm sorry for my bad English)
Since I see another request below, I’ll throw one out as well. Would you consider a reflection some time on the nature of time (comparing its fallen and its higher forms)?