Your
Going In and Your Coming Out
Fr.
Tony’s Midweek Message
October
23, 2019
People
who study ancient Hebrew in depth are usually impressed by how hard it is to
express abstractions in this language. There is a shortage of abstract nouns and limited
ways of turning concrete adjectives or nouns into abstraction. There is a notoriously “baggy” system of
predication (the verb “to be” is often not used as a copula; equivalence of the
“a = b” sort is often expressed simply by juxtaposing the two ideas to be
joined.) As a result, ancient Hebrew addresses
abstraction periphrastically, i.e., it often talks around an issue so that the
idea becomes clear without directly expressing it.
Sometimes,
abstractions are expressed by listing concrete examples of the unifying idea. An example is the near endless examples of
clean vs. unclean in Leviticus; another is cataloguing of types of animals or
nations in the primeval history in Genesis 1-11. Though expressed occasionally with such generalizing
rules such as “that which has a cloven hoof and chews cud is clean; but if it
has one of these but not the other it is unclean,” note that this is not
expressed abstractly, but rather is followed by lists of concrete examples (Lev.
11:1-8).
Another
example is narrative story-telling. The
best example is Genesis 1, where the author talks about the creation of the
framework of the world in days 1-3, and then, in mirrored format, about the
ornaments that adorn the framework in days 5-6: day 1’s division of light and darkness is paralleled by day 4’s
appearance of the sun, moon and stars ; day 2’s division of waters above and below by the firmament and
then its separation of dry land from the waters below is paralleled by day 5’s
appearance of flying birds above and sea creatures beneath; day 3’s production
of vegetation from the land is paralleled by day 6’s appearance of land animals
and human beings. Such a
framework/ornament structure is the author’s way of expressing ex nihilo creation: God making the
universe from out of nothing.
Another
way of periphrastically expressing abstraction is listing polar opposites when
what is intended is a diverse spectrum of reality between the poles. Examples
include:
“Yahweh
shall preserve your going out and your coming in” (Psalm 121:8), where this
means “preserve you at all times”; “I
know your rising up and your sitting down” (Isaiah
37:28), where this means “I know you completely.”
This
periphrastic way of expressing abstraction is important to note since reading such
phrases literally can make you totally miss the point. “God created man in his own image, in the
image of God, He created them, male and female created He them” (Gen 1:37 KJV) is
often used as a proof text by Biblical fundamentalists for the immutability and
prescriptive normativity of gender difference, a misreading strengthened by the
mistranslation of ‘adam as “man” rather than “humankind.” This is where the idea “God created Adam and
Eve, not Adam and Steve” comes from. But
here, polarities are clearly representing the spectrum between them and a much
better translation should be:
God created humankind in God’s image;
in God’s own image God created them;
male, female, and all in between: God created them.
Grace
and peace. Fr. Tony+
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