"david.bircumshaw" wrote:
> Never quite 'bought' the Gnostics. Who would claim to 'wisdom'.
Another Jesuit contact, Fr. Richard Roach (last seen around Seattle) used to say
that America had become overwhelmingly gnostic. Gnosticism differed from X-ity
or Judaism in that X-ity and Judaism hold that Genesis belief of "And it was
good", that the world is fundamentally good, and that we've somehow slipped out
of that original goodness but could aspire returning it through specific paths
(faith, good works, . . .): these "salvations" were associated with traditions
(priestly, canon) that moved through generation-by-generation succession and
ultimately traced back to (what was believed, however questionable the history,
to have been) a uniquely authoritative founder (Moses, Jesus). (I don't know
Islam well enough to plot it into this. Sorry.) Gnosticism, to the contrary,
believes that the world at its base is evil, bad, corrupt, that it was created
not by a good God but by a daemon imposter God who, along with the bad "flesh,"
restricts our freedom; and that "salvation" was through independent,
spontaneous, visionary enlightenment (wisdom) where an apparition of some
mystical being (the gnostic Christ) would raise the level of the gnostic without
any recourse to society or tradition.
America's "gnosticism" (via Fr. Roach) should be easily self-evident, if you
just loosen the religiosity of some of the gnosticism and see its basic
principles re-playing themselves.
"david.bircumshaw" wrote:
> I always end up at the Matthean Sermon, where life does matter but no
> answers are forthcoming, 'elohim, elohim, lama sabacthani'. If I quote
> aright.
Richard, a pretty quotable Jesuit, also had a rather brilliant and novel
interpretation of that. The Hebrew is the opening verse of Psalm 22:1. The
psalm goes on to culminate in majestic hope, triumph over death ("shall live
forever") and good global unification: "The meek shall eat and be satisfied:
they shall praise the LORD that seek him: your heart shall live for ever. All
the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the LORD: and all the
kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee."
Fr. Roach's take on it was: The Greek doesn't say Jesus "spoke" those words.
The Gk. is closer to "intoned" or "hummed" or sang. Hebrew psalms all had
distinct melodies, instantly recognizeable (Name That Tune) within the first few
bars. So, like hearing only the words "Somewhere over the rainbow . . .",
everybody knows the rest. And the sentiment or "message" of that verse was in
the remainder of the psalm and its optimism (the truth hidden in the "invisible"
unrecited words that ever listener could fill in on their own).
The KJV transliteration is: " Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani" [Mark 15:34]. (The
original Gk. has two m's in ~lamma.~)
I don't mean to "evangelize." Just seemed on-topic.
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