MDDM Subjunctive Spaces

[Terrance]

Dave Monroe wrote:
> 
> "... there is a strong sense in which the very idea of
> history as a linear unfolding from darkness toward
> light, and from ignorance toward truth, is rooted in
> neither Jewish nor Classical thinking but, as Jonathan
> Boyarin has argued, entirely in 'the early church
> fathers' idea of the progression from Judaism to
> Christianity.'"
>


Those damned church fathers! How could they. Did they really do all
that? 


There was a revolt against "Archaic Religion" by both  Judaism and
Christianity. Almost everywhere in archaic and civilized ancient
cultures,  the problem of history was
central, and the solution, the escape, was found in some form of the
myth of eternal return. As Eliade discovered, the pattern is so
widespread, that only in one place---among the Hebrews of ancient
Palestine---can something different be found. It is in ancient Israel
that, for the first time on the world scene, a new religious outlook
makes its appearance. While not entirely rejecting the idea of a
mythical return to
beginnings, Judaism proclaims that the sacred can be found in history as
well as  outside of it. With this, the whole equation of archaic
religion is significantly altered. In Judaism, and later in
Christianity, which derives from it, the idea of the
meaningless cycles of nature is pushed into the background, while human
events come to center stage, where they take shape along the line of a
meaningful story--a history--with the sacred, in the form of the God of
Israel, a participant in its scenes. 
In place of endless, pointless world cycles, Judaism asserts a
meaningful sequence of sacred historical events.

This striking innovation was fashioned chiefly by the great prophets of
Israel (Isaiah and Jeremiah, and others). 




When disasters fell on their people, they presented these troubles not
as miseries to be escaped but as punishments to be endured (in history)
because they came from the very hand of God. In their oracles and
speeches, says Eliade, the prophets affirmed the idea
that historical events have a value in themselves, insofar as they are
determined by the will of God. This God of the Jewish people is no
longer an Oriental divinity, creator of
archetypal gestures, but a personality who ceaselessly intervenes in
history , who reveals his will through events (invasions, sieges,
battles, and so on). Historical facts thus become "situations" (bloody
situations mostly)  of man  in respect to God, and as such they acquire
a religious value that nothing had previously been able to confer upon
them.

Now, if Isaiah and Jere are play a role in P's fiction, and I think they
are kinda important, more important is God telling Abraham to kill his
son. 

Abe said where you want the killin done
G-d said out on highway 61. 

The cross is a rocket is a gallows is a tree and newton's apple and the
Zen man under it with adam and eve and jesus on the lapels of the men
who sell the arms to the wars that are fought in places where their
business interestests run. 

There is blood on the wire....