Walking backwards to the Cross: Passivity and Suffering in the Passion of Christ

(See follow-on related post On passivity, mood and free will in Christian regeneration: With a little help from Glen Miller and Little Richard).

Passion week is approaching where many preachers are racking their brains over how to produce a sermon on the crucifixion that is both powerful and pivotal.

How do I construct a Good Friday sermon? Working backwards through the text might work well, for in walking backwards we may gain fresh insights. Backwards need not be disordered or illogical, unless you’re a goon walking backwards for Christmas across the Irish sea.  For example, Ephesians 1 tells of the believer who has been  raised into heavenly places, while Ephesians 2 describes the believer’s lost condition before he was raised into heavily places. Now, say you want to switch Chapters 1 and 2 by starting with the lost condition of man and then describing what happens when God “finds”him, that could also be useful.  Can we do something similar with 1 Peter 1 and 1 Peter 2, if only for the purpose of encouraging us to think more deeply on what we read in the Bible?

Let’s see whether walking backwards for Good Friday is useful. We start with the original chapter progression. The first two chapters of Peter’s first letter. These chapters are divided into:

Chapter 1

1. Greeting of Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elect exiles, according to the foreknowledge (forelove) of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood: May grace and peace be multiplied to you.
   (1 Peter 1:1-2 ESV)
2. Born again to a living hope.
3. Called to be holy.

Chapter 2

4. A living stone and a holy people. The Apostle appeals to believers, who have become sojourners on this earth:“As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious,  you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. [6] For it stands in Scripture: ‘Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.’…you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. [10] Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy” (1 Peter 2:4-10).
5. Submission to suffering, often involving submission to someone else’s will or authority“Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the unjust.  For this is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God.  For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.  He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls (1 Peter 2:18-25).

Our obedience to Jesus and sprinkling in his blood brings us grace and grace brings peace (1 Peter 1:1-2).

1. Born to a living hope.
2. Called to be holy.
3. We come to the living stone.
4. We are a royal priesthood.
5. We suffer for Christ because He suffered for us.“He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. [25] For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls” (1 Peter 2:24-25).

Lets now walk backwards for Good Friday:

“He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.  For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls” (1 Peter 2:24-25).

So, we suffer for Christ because He suffered for us.

We become a royal priesthood through the living stone. Being a royal priesthood we are called to be a holy people. W are able to be holy because we have been (re)born to faith. This faith is the substance of our living hope.

We end the sermon where 1 Peter begins, namely: Our obedience to Jesus and sprinkling in his blood brings us grace and grace and peace (1 Peter 1:1-2), which brings us back to where 2 Peter ends:“He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. [25] For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls” (1 Peter 2:24-25).

What else could we call to remembrance on Good Friday?

To focus on the physical suffering of our Lord is secondary to a much deeper meditation on His spiritual suffering. How, though, do you talk for five minutes, never mind a half an hour or more about such an intangible unearthly thing as spiritual suffering? Isn’t it much easier, and more experiential, to go the more palpable route by describing how Jesus’ body was broken for ”you.” For Jesus did indeed say, “Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19).

What is the Lord asking us to remember – on Good Friday? The graphics; the whipping, the flaying of skin and flesh, the blows with rods and fists, the one-inch razor sharp thorns (no, not three-inch ones)? Many a sermon has taken that emotive route, with great effect; “Jesus did all that for me.” The question is whether that route really gets to the root of Christ’s Passion? I suggest we are led astray by the term “passion.” In normal English usage, “passion” means “strong emotion” of short duration. Armed with this – as we shall see – faulty understanding of meaning of the term ‘The Passion,” the preacher may ask the congregation to try and feel some of the emotions Christ felt hanging on the cross. It’s the sort of meditation common in the Roman Catholic “Stations of the Cross.”

The heart of the “Passion” lies in its historical (etymological) meaning. “Passion” comes from the Latin root passio “to render.” So when we suffer, we have to submit to causes that deprive us of our freedom or well-being.

When I was at the 1993 Congress of Philosophy in Moscow, where I presented a paper, I attended a session where the French philosopher,Paul Ricoeur, “one of the most distinguished philosophers of the twentieth century,” (Stanford Encyclopedia) spoke on “suffering.” He spoke in English. I noticed, after he had used the word “suffering” several times, that his context nothing to to do with the English meaning of “suffering,” namely, extreme distress or pain. I studied the mesmerised faces of the audience. It seemed to me that even if he had talked backwards, they would’ve accepted it as Gospel. Hopefully the backward flip that I have done with my prospective sermon has faired a little better.

As I had some familiarity with Ricoeur’s philosophy, I was pretty sure that his “suffering” had nothing to do with extreme mental or physical pain but rather with one of his important philosophical themes, namely “passivity in action” See END NOTE¹). At question time, I asked him what he meant by “suffering.” The problem was, I said, that in French there exists the two words “subir” and “souffrir,” which originate from the same etymological root. “Souffrir” means “suffering”(extreme pain), while “subir” has the meaning, as in the King James Bible Version, of “suffer little children to come unto me,” (Mark 10:13), that is, let, or allow, them to come to me, or don’t take in action that will prevent them coming to me. So, when Ricoeur used the word “suffering,” he was thinking “subir” (passivity). And what was Ricoeur’s response? He meant “subir” (passivity) not “suffering.” He had committed a common error in French-English, English-French translation called “faux amis”(false friends). (For an example of a Yiddish-Hebrew “false friend” see When is a Hebrew youth not a Yiddishe fool?

To return to the Passion of Christ; its main meaning is the French “subir” – passivity, submission, undergo, be subjected to.

There are different degrees of passivity. For the Christian, the highest degree is when Jesus had reached his lowest point – in the garden of Gethsemane: “falling with his face to the ground, he prayed, ‘My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will’” (Matthew, 26:39). This leads on to he more evident events in his Passion.

What kind of suffering (passivity) must it have taken to submit to not only the brutal onslaught of men but to the crushing anguish of being torn from the bosom of his Father. How does one begin to grapple with such a mysterium tremendum? (See Rudolph Otto’s “The Idea of the Holy”). Human wisdom is useless. Understanding has to be granted from above, as does everything that is the Gospel is granted from above. To see even darkly into this holy “mystery,” one has to have the same vantage point as Christ; looking from above. He always was from above; we, if he has drawn us to him, has also drawn us up above, into heavenly places. We’re seated there now, yet still suffering in this world. Every Christian knows when he is suffering, but few realise they’re doing so in heavenly places; which makes all the difference to one’s attitude to towards that suffering.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.  In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Ephesians 1:3-10).

A very important point. Just because Christ is passive in his Passion, this does not mean that he is helpless. Not at all; He is deeply involved.  The deepest aspect of this involvement is his voluntary emptying of Himself (Philippians 2:5-10).

Scripture (the words) is not the revelation itself. “Revelation”is when the Holy Spirit of God reveals to you the meaning of the words. This meaning is far deeper than the linguistic meaning. The Passion begins more or less when Jesus is led “from the house of Caiaphas to the governor’s headquarters (John 18:28) and ends in his Death with, “When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. (John 19:30). The Passion is one of those moments, but of course, a pivotal one.

I ask the question again: What is Jesus really asking us to remember? After all, there were thousands that suffered a more barbarous and excruciating death. It is this: He suffered the full wrath of His Father. All the horror of sin was concentrated in those few hours. But worse; He was also cut off from the Father. To understand some of this requires to be borne on high by Christ, but first we have to be born again. Only then will I be able to see what the world or no psychology can see.

“It is finished.”

Now “Father, the time has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life: that they may know you (the Father), the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent”(John 17:1-3).

1“Ricoeur’s account of the way in which narrative represents the human world of acting (and, in its passive mode, suffering)” “Asserting Personal Capacities and Pleading for Mutual Recognition”

Kluge Prize Winner 2004 – Paul Ricoeur Acceptance speech of Paul Ricoeur – December 2004

“I identify myself by my capacities, by what I can do. The individual designates himself as a capable human being—and, we must add, as a suffering human being, to underscore the vulnerability of the human condition.”

Related articles

• 1 Peter 2:24 – “By His Wounds You Have Been Healed” (readingacts.wordpress.com)
• Give It Up and Take It Up (tomdesomer.wordpress.com)

Jewish scholars and the play dough of interpretation

About a month ago I was listening with mind half-cocked to an audio by a (North) American Christian scholar on “Ancient heresies.” I was sure I heard the words “play dough.” Owing to the fact that the discussion touched on Greek philosophy, I thought he was talking of Plato, pronounced by Americans as Plado. In fact, he was indeed talking about how some doctrines were handled like play dough. As I love preying and playing on language especially when the play helps to reveal reality, how I wished I could have used Plado(UGH) somewhere in my writing. Well today my wish is coming true. The occasion is my reading of David Stern‘s Midrash and Indeterminacy. Here is his opening paragraph:

“Literary theory, newly conscious of its own historicism, has recently turned its attention to the history of interpretation. For midrash, this attention has arrived none too soon. The activity of Biblical interpretation as practiced by the sages of early Rabbinic Judaism in late antiquity, midrash has long been known to Western scholars, but mainly as either an exegetical curiosity or a source to be mined for facts about the Jewish background of early Christianity. The perspective of literary theory has placed midrash in a decidedly new light. The very nature of midrash (as recorded in the Talmud as well as in the more typical midrashic collections) has now come to epitomize precisely that order of literary discourse to which much critical writing has recently aspired, a discourse that avoids the dichotomized opposition of literature versus commentary and instead resides in the dense shuttle space between text and interpreter. In the hermeneutical techniques of midrash, critics have found especially attractive the sense of interpretation as play rather than as explication, the use of commentary as a means of extending a text’s meanings rather than as a mere forum for the arbitration of original authorial intention.”

What’s the difference between Stern’s “interpretation as play rather than as explication” and my interpretation of Stern, which is: “interpretation as play dough rather than as explication.” Nothing. Stern hates arriving at final destinations and prefers, like a Derridaring Jew, shuttling from one departure lounge to another through the “dense space (read: playdough) between text and interpreter.”

And what about Walter Brueggemann, the “biblical theoligan?” For Brueggemann, any interaction between 1. certitude, which he considers limited because it is restricted to a single meaning (univocity) and 2. fidelity, should be frowned upon. We should, therefore, be open, as Derrida says to “an unlimited number of contexts over an indefinite period of time,” and thus there should be an unrestricted interaction between suffering persons longing to tell their personal stories. For Brueggemann and Derrida, and all post-modernists (who all believe there is no metaphysical centre, no fixed structures), there exists no such entity as Being, no such entity as essence, no such thing as a True story, but only (human) beings telling their true-ish stories, which are the only stories that ultimately matter. And if the Bible stories are able to buck – and back – them up, thank you God (See Certainty and Fidelity in Biblical Interpretation: The Deconstruction of Walter Brueggemann).

And then there’s Jacob Neusner, the most prolific writer on Judaism with about 950 publications. What does his life work come down to? I suggest to this excerpt from his writing:

“l wonder, however, whether in the context of faith-whether concerning Moses, Jesus,or Muhammad, such a thing as “critical history” in the nineteenth-century sense indeed can emerge. I ask myself whether, to begin with, the sources came into being with any such purpose in mind. And I question whether when we ask about history in the sense at hand, we address the right questions to sources of such a character. And, anyhow, what ‘critical historical’ facts can ever testify to the truth or falsity of salvation, holiness, joy, and love? (A counterpart to the problem of the historical Jesus,” in Jacob Neusner, “Judaism in the Beginning of Christianity”, p. 88).

Indeed, “what ‘critical historical’ facts can ever testify to the truth or falsity of salvation, holiness, joy, and love?” (Neusner above). Why indeed do we need, as David Stern says, to dichotomize facts and interpretion? As the French symbolist poets loved to say – and Walter Brueggeman as poet would also love to have said, un poème est un prolongement, a poem is an extension. Extension of what? Why, the longings of the reader. Prolongement means “extension.” I am playing with “prolongement” and “longing” whose only connection is its “historical sedimentations,” as Derrida would say). In postmodern literary (pioneered by Derrida) there is no difference between “critical historical” facts (Neusner above) and a game of shuttlecock.

To return to Stern’s “shuttle” (above): [The] literary discourse to which much critical writing has recently aspired [is] a discourse that avoids the dichotomized opposition of literature versus commentary and instead resides in the dense shuttle space between text and interpreter. In the hermeneutical techniques of midrash, critics have found especially attractive the sense of interpretation as play rather than as explication, the use of commentary as a means of extending a text’s meanings rather than as a mere forum for the arbitration of original authorial intention.” Authorial intention is out. Give me the reader’s intention instead.

Which reminds me of Rabbi Bronstein “crash course in Reconstructionist Judaism. In brief, he said it doesn’t matter whether the Torah is objectively true, as long as it is accepted as true – at a deeper level than objective truth, which is for Bronstein the “obvious” level. What can be less objective than The truth, and more objective than My truth. Recall Neusner’s “what ‘critical historical’ facts can ever testify to the truth or falsity of salvation, holiness, joy, and love?”

What, for Neusner, and everyone else here, can be more obvious than salvation, holiness, and especially pulsating joy. But doesn’t Jonah’s critical historical text say “salvation is of the Lord.” (Jonah 2:9). Shhh – do you want me to lose my tenure! Reconstructionist Judaism (and Reform Judaism, by and large) says it doesn’t matter whether all the Bible stories are just “stories,” myths, folklore; what’s important is that they are shared myths, and it is the sharing of a common heritage that binds a community together. What matters, in Reconstructionist Judaism, is not the Book but the binding – of communal love and joy (Neusner).

The Jews, “the people of the Book.” No, I’ve got it back to front: “The Torah, the book of the People.” That’s better.

Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer, a reconstructionist Jew, believes that the Torah stories, even if not true in the historical sense, are central to Jewish life. The Torah, she says, is one of the “noblest employments of the mind and soul aiming at knowledge and wisdom.” Fuchs-Kreimer – who is a reliable spokesperson for Reconstructionist Judaism says much more: “Perhaps religious experiences provide no new information about the universe. Rather, they give us the emotional impetus to tell certain kinds of stories. We may indeed be nothing but a pack of neurons and our religious experiences may be neurological phenomena; nevertheless, the stories we tell ourselves about those experiences come from our higher cognitive functions. When we choose to link ourselves to a religious civilization, we opt for a narrative tradition that will shape raw experience in particular ways.” The weight of evidence, according to Fuchs-Kreimer, shows that religious experience cannot provide any new evidence – “knowledge and wisdom” – about the universe. But, according to Fuchs-Kreimer we can’t deny that we feel it in our bones that there is something else besides neurons and meat loaves. So, we tell one another stories about how those emotions emerged, but we don’t go overboard to the point of hysteria only to drown in historia. Meaning doesn’t have to be objective for “if there is nothing but matter, all the more do we need stories to make meaning” says Fuchs-Kreimer, and it’s stories – the more evocative the story the better – that make or break a religious civilisation. There’s no “core self” so we need to make up stories – based on authentic emotion, naturally – to “tell us who we are.” And that, according to Fuchs-Kreimer, is the basis of “tradition”, of Jewish tradition, of solid Jewish tradition (See The Torah: shared myths and other stories in Reconstructionist Judaism).

What have all these Jewish scholars have in common? (for all intents and purposes, Walter Brueggeman, a Gentile Lutheran, might as well be a Jew, a Lutheran Jew). Herein lies the genius of the Jew-Ish (Hebrew ish “man”): He rips the the text, the historical – read: “surface” – text, out of the hands of the Holy One of Israel and from his inwormings, he spawns and spins the Holy Israel of One. On earth or in (reconstructionist) heaven, there’s nothing like Israel.

Fellow Jews, if you love wallowing in the sediment of literary theory, then post-modernism, reconstructionism and deconstruction are for you. All I say to you is:

What advantage then hath (you) the Jew? or what profit is there of circumcision? Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God. For what if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect? God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar; as it is written, “That thou might be justified in thy sayings, and might overcome when thou art judged” (from Psalm 51:4). Don’t play with God’s word; rather build your interpretations on a surer foundation, and what surer foundation is there than “let God be true and every man a liar” (Romans 3:1-4).

Related articles

• Ben Zakkai: Judaism, humility and the good death (onedaringjew.wordpress.com)
• The Flat and the Fat: The Poetic Gospel of Walter Brueggemann (onedaringjew.wordpress.com)
• Jacob’s and Jacques’ Gate: Rhetoric, grammar and pragmatics in Derrida’s Deconstruction (onedaringjew.wordpress.com)
• Chabad: The Humanism in Judaism (onedaringjew.wordpress.com)
• Chabad and Abraham: The Humanism in Judaism (onedaringjew.wordpress.com)
• In Talmudism, the Talmud, though a human construction, is divinely approved and preserved (onedaringjew.wordpress.com)
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The Flat and the Fat: The Poetic Gospel of Walter Brueggemann

Walter Brueggemann, the biblical theologian, states “the truth of the Gospel cannot be articulated in flat, certain prose, but it must be articulated in a poetic rhetoric in which when you hear it, you as the listener, still get to decide what it means.” (Brueggemann’s Q&A session). I examine this statement in terms of the rules of rhetoric (discourse) and the distinction between the intentionality of a text, that is, what the writer wants the text to mean, on the one hand, and the listener, or reader, getting to “decide what it means,” on the other. 

Living in our post-modern, post-structural age, we need to be reminded that idea that the original intentions of a poet, or any writer, can be discovered through a responsible reading has been expressed a century before the first  stone was laid for the construction of  the wall of China. It was the Chinese philosopher, Mencius (372–289 BC), who said: “Therefore, a commentator of the Shijing (Book of Odes) should not allow literary ornaments to harm the wording, nor allow the wording to harm the intent of the poet. To trace the intention of the poet with the understanding of a reader — only this can be said to have grasped the poet’s intention.”

For the poet, there are two main links in the chain of being; the one is God, the other, the poet. It wasTorquato Tasso,  (1544-1595), the Italian poet of the late Renaissance, who said, “No one merits the name of creator except God and the Poet. (Non merita nome di creatore, se non Iddio ed il Poeta).

Brueggemann has written about 60 books, most of them on biblical topics. The book he is most proud is “Finally comes the poet” in which he describes how, through the proper use of the imagination, the Bible can breath new life into the depressed soul.

 He grew up in a community that didn’t value the arts. “I think the arts are always in contention with moralism and my community was all on the side of moralism. So my attempt to discover the arts that characteristically speak of openness in ambiguity has been a huge thing for me. That is why personally, my personal accomplishment is in my book, “Here finally comes the poet.” It was my struggle to say that the truth of the Gospel cannot be articulated in flat, certain prose, but it must be articulated in a poetic rhetoric in which when you hear it, you as the listener, still get to decide what it means.”

 “Art” (the arts) for Brueggemann opens in ambiguity; not only art but the whole modern system of knowledge opens in ambiguity, where “you as the listener still get to decide what it means.”

If I have rightly interpreted Brueggemann’s intentions (which I can only do through the words he uses), he is saying that not only the arts but all of reality is wrapped in a blanket of ambiguity, universal ambiguity. Modern educators also advocate an openness to ambiguity, but do not see ambiguity behind every bush. A deconstructionist might say that ambiguity can never be behind nor in front of every bush, or behind any bush; for the simple reason that ambiguity is the bush. Christians can learn much from deconstruction: the devil isn’t behind the bush, silly; he is the bush. But I digress. Here is a modern educator’s view of openness to ambiguity:

 “The component of openness and tolerance of ambiguity is much neglected in schools. What we learn in school is how to do things correctly, to find the one and only right answer. Learning how to avoid mistakes prevents us from being open for other experiences. Risk-taking, socially and cognitively, is often being rewarded negatively. Working in a group or a class does not seem to go along with non-conformity. School is not normally considered to be the place for relaxation. In general , I believe that the pedagogical concept of open teaching and learning, open school and open instruction, recognizing the ecological/environmental living and learning conditions for an all-round education towards creativity” (Klaus K. Urban: Assessing Creativity: A Componential Model 167-186, in Creativity – A Handbook for Teachers, World Scientific Publishing Company).

 Let’s apply this openness to ambiguity to a text, a biblical text. For Brueggemann, the biblical text is the inarticulate text, which requires to be artistically articulated by the reader’s “poetic rhetoric.” I would add “passionate,” of which I think Brueggemann would approve. So we have the reader’s “passionate poetic rhetoric.”

“Rhetoric” has two meanings: 1. the negative meaning of “grandiloquence,” in plain lingo, “hoopla;” the bread and butter of most politicians, and 2. the positive meaning of “the art of discourse.” The second diagram shows how “rhetoric” slots into the “humanities.” “Rhetoric” applies to the sciences as well, indeed, to any kind of writing; letter writing, for example – and theological writing!

 

 Now, to a biblical text as an illustration of the distinction I want to make between:

1. Brueggemann, who says, in his “Here finally comes the poet” that “the truth of the Gospel cannot be articulated in flat, certain prose, but it must be articulated in a poetic rhetoric in which when you hear it, you as the listener, still get to decide what it means.”

   And

2. The intentional meaning of the Gospel, that is, the novel idea that the Gospel intends to say what it wants to say, and to do it in articulated “flat certain (of itself) prose.”

Consider the following sentence of Jesus from the Gospel of John:

“I am the way, the truth and the life, no man comes unto the Father but by me” (John 14:6). Brueggemann says away with the inarticulations of the “flat certain prose” of traditional biblical inspiration, and displace it with my personal passionate “poetic rhetoric.” How, I ask, in the name of rhetoric (the rules of discourse), do you think you have the imaginative right to exchange the logos with your internal rhetorical rhema.

 The distinction between “internal testimony” and “inspiration” is related to the popular distinction in “God-gave-me-a-Rhema-today” circles between rhema (“the Holy Spirit talking to me” as someone said) and logos (the “flat” word written for all). This distinction is false. Rhema and logos are synonyms for “word,” any kind of word, spoken or written. Debonnaire airs it well:

“This false dichotomy between the two words has been used to give false credibility to doctrines that tickle the ears, trouble hearts and minds, and lead astray. For in fact , when we examine the scriptures where both words (rhema and logos) are used, we see that a word/rhema is not more inspired of the Spirit of God than a word/logos. Neither is it larger or more personal.”

To consider rhema personal, round and fat, and the logos impersonal square and “flat” (Brueggemann), indicates symptoms of schizologia: a split between what “this verse means to me” and what “this verse means,” what this verse intends, that is, what Jesus means by the words, which, surely, is as clear as prosaic day. (See my Schizologia: Internal Testimony versus Inspiration of Scripture).

What should also be clear to any basically competent exegete is that the Bible  consists of different genres such as legal codes, psalms, historical narrative, prophecy, and symbolic narratives (apocalypses). Whether the text be immediately clear or requiring deep study, it is to the text we must bow (I’m using a metaphor, of course).

“The spiritual native beauty of heavenly truths, is better conveyed unto the minds of men, by words and expressions fitted unto it, plainly and simply, than by any ornaments of enticing speech whatever; and therefore we say with Austin, that there is not anything delivered in the Scripture, but just as it ought to be, and as the matter requires.” (John Owen: Exposition of the letter to the Hebrews, Volume 1).

Jacob’s (Jacques) Gate: Rhetoric, grammar and pragmatics in Derrida’s Deconstruction

In several previous posts, I pondered on the literary theory of “deconstruction.” (See here and here). It was Jacques Derrida, the Jewish French philosopher (1930-2004, who coined the term “deconstruction.” The question is, “Is deconstruction merely a fancy term for “destruction” where, after digging beneath its archaeological sedimentations, all I find are etymological bones.

The discussion is divided into two parts: 1. What is deconstruction, and 2. Rules of language, which show up the weaknesses in deconstruction.

Part 1 – Deconstruction

“Here or there, says Derrida, the French Jewish philosopher I have used the word deconstruction which has nothing to do with destruction. That is to say, it is simply a question of…being alert to the implications, to the historical sedimentations of the language which we use – and that is not destruction.

(Derrida, J. 1972 Structure, Sign and Play. In: Macksey, R. & Donato, E. (eds.) The Structuralist Controversy. Baltimore, P. 271).

In Derrida’s deconstruction, language is the sediment of the desire to mean, to communicate, and has no locatable centre nor retrievable origin; its existence is a network of differences between signifiers (sounds or written symbols signifying meaning), each tracing, tracking, leaping over the other, where the story of reality consists in nothing more more than pseudo-stable signs (signifiers and signifieds) chasing after one another’s enigmatic tales.

In deconstruction there is no necessary connection between the desire to signify (to mean) and the signifiers that evoke that desire.

“[I]f language is not inherently determined by a set of univocal (single) meanings, then language use, given an unlimited number of contexts over an indefinite period of time, becomes an unrestricted interaction of signifiers, the Nietzschean affirmation of free play without nostalgia for a “center” or for ‘origins’” (J. Derrida 1981, Dissemination. Translated by Barbara Johnson. London: Athlone, 278-93).

But surely, if you give a specific chunk of discourse an unlimited number of contexts, no communication is possible. For example, if it is true that language has no locatable centre, and all is free play, I would be free to allocate any meaning I desire to Derrida’s paragraph above, and in so doing bury myself in nostalgia for the time when language was not an “unrestricted interaction of signifiers,” but I should, advises Derrida, not pull my syntactic sinews and semantic flesh together, for to do so will only result in the return (nostos) of suffering (algos).

This kind of linguistic free play is linguistic foul play. I say this because, all deconstructionists are at bottom constructivists. A constructivist believes that knowledge is not discovered but constructed. In other words, reality is not  “given” (existing out there), but  “taken” (from your constructive imaginations). 

Part 2 Rules of language and the weakness of deconstruction

Derrida, however, insisted that you could only understand deconstruction if you obeyed the rules of grammar, rhetoric and pragmatics.

“What I, on the other hand, must recall to your attention – and I will remind you of it more than once – is that the text of an appeal obeys certain rules; it has its grammar, its rhetoric, its pragmatics. I’ll come back to this point in a moment, to wit: as you did not take these rules into account, you quite simply did not read my text, in the most elementary and quasi-grammatical sense of what is called reading.

(J. Derrida. 1986. But beyond…(Open letter to Anne McClintock and Rob Nixon). Translated by Peggy Kamuf. Critical Enquiry, Autumn, pp.155-170, p.157)

The context of the above quotation is Derrida’s response to McClintock and Nixon [1986] whom he rebukes for misunderstanding the context in which he was using the term “apartheid” and for gross distortions, according to Derrida, of his theory of deconstruction. (McClintock, A. & Nixon, R. 1986. No Names Apart: The Separation of Word and History in Derrida’s ‘Le Dernier Mot du Racisme.’  [The lawst word in racism], Critical Enquiry, Autumn, pp.140-154).

Therefore, it is Derrida himself who insists that his writing obeys certain rules, the abuse of which leads to misreading his intentions. Accordingly, Derrida does believe in communication, i.e. codes that mean (Lawlor 1983; Scholes 1988). But for codes to mean, they must mean something particular, that is, they must be connected to a particular (specific) context – or contexts. Contexts can be plural but should, surely, never be unrestricted. Recall (above) Derrida’s description of “deconstruction” as an unrestricted interaction of signifiers, the Nietzschean affirmation of free play without nostalgia for a “center” or for ‘origins.’” Typology is an example of plural contexts; for example, from the Christian perspective, the exodus is an historical event in itself, and so it unfolds within a historical context, but the exodus also points to the believer in Jesus passing through the “waters” of regeneration (Catholics would say the literal waters of baptism).

Derrida cannot have his cake and eat it; he can’t have a communication, a message, a specific interpretation, and his free play at the same time. It goes without saying (it too much) that although interpretation are imperfect vessels of meaning, they nevertheless mean. (See my Tower Derrida’s Tower of Babel).

What are these rules of “grammar, rhetoric and pragmatics” to which Derrida refers? “Grammar” refers to how words are used in sentences, “rhetoric” refers to the art of discourse, which aims to improve language facility in speaking and writing in the the different functions of language such as transacting (providing) information and persuasion.

Now, when we say language means something, we mean at least two kinds of meaning: sentence meaning (what Geoffrey Leech calls “semantic meaning”) and meaning beyond the sentence (in linguistic terms, suprasentential, intersentential meaning). This intersentential meaning is called “pragmatic meaning” (Leech), that is, the way sentences are used in larger chunks of discourse (Language use). So, there is a difference between sentence meaning (semantic meaning) and the meaning of a discourse as a whole (pragmatic meaning).

(Leech, L.G. 1983. Principles of pragmatics.London. Longman.1983].

The sentence in isolation from a functional (sociolinguistic) context only has potential meaning. It is this potential meaning which has to become actualised in language use. What is meant by the potential meaning of sentences?

It is obvious that every sentence in isolation from its functional context must contain meaningful units. For example, each of the three words in the sentence I am reading is a meaningful unit. These three units are combined into a larger meaningful unit, namely, the sentence.

The sentence, in turn combines, with other sentences to form an even larger unit called discourse. And it is only at the discourse level that parts of sentences and sentences come alive. Meaning at the sentence level and below is referred to in linguistics as semantic meaning, while meaning at the discourse level is referred to as pragmatic, or sociolinguistic meaning. So, from the point of view of discourse ( language use), the sentence has potential meaning only.

The distinction between semantic and pragmatic meaning can also be explained in the following way (Leech 1983):

- the meaning of X, which is the semantic or sentence meaning,

and

what you mean by X, which is the pragmatic or sociolinguistic meaning.

The sentence “I am reading” means that there is somebody, namely me who is reading. This meaning is the semantic or sentence meaning.

We use “I am reading” in a life situation:

Student A is sharing a room with Student B. Student A is reading in the room while Student B is out. Student B returns, sees Student A bowed over a book, and shouts: What are you doing? It is obvious to Student A that Student B is not requesting information as to whether Student A is reading a book – it is obvious that this is so.

Suppose Student A’s answer is I’m reading. The semantic meaning of this utterance is clear, namely, Student A is not eating, or sleeping, but reading. But what does Student A mean by I’m reading and what does Student B mean by What are you doing?

Here are a few possibilities of the pragmatic meaning of these two sentences, one a question, the other the answer to the question:

Question: “What are you doing?”

1. Hey, what are you doing in my bed?”

2. What a miracle, you’re reading a book!

3. We’ve been looking all over for you, and here you are all the time, rotting at your desk.

Answer: “I’m reading.”

1. I vant to be alone.

2. It’s no good, I’ll never speak to you again.

3. I’m so bored, the TV is not working; what else is there to do but read – yawn.

4. Who the blazes do you think you are to speak to me like that?

5. You illiterate idiot, go back to your comics.

So the pragmatic context of language does not merely go beyond the sentence meaning, it actually makes the sentence meaningful, and actual meaning (enacted in language use) is the only kind of meaning that we can live by. (See my Structure in Grammar and in Function: A Marginal Note).

Let us now return to the sentence we started with, namely, Derrida’s definition of deconstruction (keeping in mind that this definition is far from exhaustive).

“Here or there I have used the word deconstruction which has nothing to do with destruction. That is to say, it is simply a question of…being alert to the implications, to the historical sedimentations of the language which we use – and that is not destruction.”

Deconstruction, therefore, deals with the dregs of what language used to mean, while grammar, rhetoric and pragmatics deals with language use, what it means on this page. 

And, unsurprisingly, there are no mistakes in deconstruction, because, reality is a taken, not a given; in other words, you construct your reality, and if you do so using the historical sedimentations of language as your foundation, you would be doing deconstruction. Here is an example, which, again unsurprisingly, originates in the confusion of tongues at Babel. The example is Derrida’s “mistaken” view of the origin of the very term “Babel.”

We read Derrida writing about reading Voltaire. Voltaire makes the following assumption about the etymology of “Babel”:

BA = father BEL = god

We follow Derrida following Voltaire. Derrida refers to Voltaire’s observation that Babel besides being a proper noun has, as a common noun, two further meanings, namely (1) disorder, and (2) perplexity, i.e. the perplexity which confronted the architects before the interrupted work. All these senses, he claims, became confused. This is so. But watch what happens.

We observe Derrida in his “Des Tours de Babel” imitating Voltaire’s interpretation of Babel as “father-God”. But Voltaire is wrong, for BEL has nothing to do with God; Babel derives from BAB-ILU and does not mean “father-God”, but “God-gate”.

(J. Derrida. 1985. The Tower of Babel. In: Graham, J.F. (ed. and Trans.). Difference in Translation . Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Here is another edition. The English translation“The Tower of Babel,” of the French “Des Tours de Babel” loses the play on words of “detour” and “des tours”).

What does Derrida’s “Des Tours de Babel” lose in taking the wrong detour? Not much is lost on the BA(B) because what Derrida considers to be the father seme does not disseminate into the remains of his tortured text. But it is the unbeautiful gate ILU, mistaken for BEL (God) which ties the rest of “Des Tours…” into an unsacred knot (p.203-4 of “Des Tours…”).

Towards the end of his detour in “Des tours…”, Derrida is upset in the saddle of his own interventions: an unstrategic spillage, displacing the displacement of his own pluralities. I’m reminded of Walter Brueggemann’s “pluriform” versions of the “big story”.  He gives the example of Mark’s Gospel. “Luke came along and said that’s (Brueggeman’s emphasis) not the way the story is put together and so from what I understand from New Testament scholars, he put it together very differently…there is a big story but it is profoundly pluriform.”

 He gives the example of the “pluralism of our faith”: you’re a new pastor whose moved to town and you don’t know any of the families. A mother dies and and you ask the five daughters what their mother was like. You’ll get five contradictory stories where they’ll say “she wasn’t like that at all.” And you’re the pastor and have to weave that altogether. (My transcript of part of the Q&A session of the 2004 Emergent Theological Conversation with Walter Brueggemann. (The audio and the Brueggemann’s theses can be found here).

To return to Derrida. The law/lore of deconstruction imposed on the text sanctions (which can mean either “commands” or “forbids,” but in deconstruction means both! depending on which detour you want to take) Derrida to pass the gate off for God; ILU for (B)EL. The question is whether this disclosure of the sediments of repetition and reversal of gate and God weaken the foundations of deconstruction? On the contrary, it is these very fortuitous (strategic?) repetitions and reversals – every loss is always aGAIN – which make more explicit the hidden sedimentations of language.. I try and show why this is so:The gate re-opens (is it the same gate?), revealing a path (the same path?), a track, a trace, departing from the tower of Babylon and arriving at a stairway in Bethel. The stairway rests on the earth and reaches up to heaven. On the stairway, angels coruscate up and down. At the top of the ladder stands the God of Genesis; at the bottom, Jacob, the heEler of God; asleep:

I am the Lord the God of your Ab[FATHER]raham and the God of Isaac [LAUGHTER]. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the West and to the East, to the North and to the South. All people on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring.

Jacob awakes; filled with awe he bursts into worship and praise:

Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it…How awesome is this place. This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of God.

Jacob’s gate is the gate of El, while Jacques’ gate; well, that’s his BEL.

(For a fuller explanation of Derrida’s error see Babel: Can Derrida’s Tour (Surprisingly) Translate Us Anywhere?

Certainty and Fidelity in Biblical Interpretation: The Deconstruction of Walter Brueggemann

Part of my title is ambiguous: “The deconstruction of Walter Brueggemann.” Do I mean that I am going to deconstruct Brueggemann or that I am going to examine Brueggemann’s deconstruction of hermeneutics? I leave the reader to decide on the (re-)interpretation. After all, it’s Brueggemann’s thesis that every text must be continually reinterpreted. Besides, I think I’m (relatively) better at talking about deconstruction than deconstructing.

 I offer a few thoughts on Walter Brueggemann, the biblical theologian, for whom theology and Bible interpretation is not a matter of certainty but of fidelity; fidelity to the divine office of creative imagination. One of his books is entitled, An Introduction to the Old Testament: The Canon and Christian Imagination

 Here is a transcript of part of the Q&A session of the 2004 Emergent Theological Conversation with Walter Brueggemann. (The audio and the Brueggemann’s theses can be found here). There are four Q&A sessions. In this discussion, I deal with Session 1.

QandA Session 1 (Parts in brackets have been added)

Question:

 How do you live with the ambivalence of biblical narrative.

Brueggemann

 “We all have a hunger for certitude. The problem is the Gospel is not about certitude, it’s about fidelity. So, what we all want to do, if we can, is immediately transpose fidelity into certitude, because fidelity is a relational category, and certitude is a flat mechanical category (such as systematic theology, says Brueggemann in his theses ). So, we have to acknowledge our thirst for certitude, and then to recognise that if you had all the certitudes in the world, it would not make the quality if your life any better because what we must have is fidelity. …It all went haywire in the 17th century with Lutheranism and Calvinism when we tried to outscience science and switch into categories of certitude …Fidelity is like having a teenager in the house and you never get it settled for more than three minutes, and you’ve got to keep doing it again or you don’t have a relationship.

Questioner 

“Part of the job of the pastor is help people see the difference between the two (certitude and fidelity), or to deconstruct their certitude.”

Brueggemann 

“Yes, that’s right; to realise that the promise for certitude that is given by any voice is a phoney promise that cannot be kept. There’s not enough certitude to make us happy and make us safe.”

If Brueggemann believes that the Bible has no certitude, then, deconstruction is definitely up his street. We need to know, though, that “deconstruct” is not at all the same concept as “take apart,” or any of the many other wrong understandings of it. It’s far more complicated (and confusing) than man could ever dream. It’s a specialist term invented by the Jew, Jacob (Jacques) Derrida.

In Derrida’s deconstruction (there is no other kind of deconstruction), language – the sediment of the desire to mean, to communicate – has no locatable centre nor retrievable origin; its existence is a network of differences between signifiers (sounds or written symbols signifying meaning), each tracing and tracking the other. In deconstruction there is no necessary connection between the desire to signify (to mean) and the signifiers that evoke that desire. Desire for such a connection results in nostalgia; the return (nostos) of suffering (algos):

“[I]f language is not inherently determined by a set of univocal meanings, then language use, given an unlimited number of contexts over an indefinite period of time, becomes an unrestricted interaction of signifiers, the Nietzschean affirmation of free play without nostalgia for a “center” or for ‘origins’” (J. Derrida 1981, Dissemination. Translated by Barbara Johnson. London: Athlone, 278-93).

Now, if signifiers, namely, what words appear to mean, are continuously jumping, bumping toppling over one another, this does not mean, according to deconstruction, that they are doing so in order to arrive at some specific meaning, or essence. Indeed, deconstruction attempts to reverse the Platonic (no, nothing to do with no-sex, this time) notion that “essence is more valuable than appearance. In deconstruction however, we reverse this, making appearance more valuable than essence,” where “essence” connotes a specific meaning, which deconstruction eschews.

Neuralgia, nostalgia. Non-deconstructionists are painfully aware that the dictionary meaning of “nostalgia” has nothing to do with its etymological meaning of a “return (nostos) of suffering (algos)” (Derrida above). So, we must be careful of getting bogged down in the historical sedimentations of language, as is the wont of deconstruction. And where did – I suspect – Derrida find his deconstructive inspiration? Surely, from the letters of Hebrew fire – the depth and death of meaning and the different levels of meaning PaRDes:

Peshat (פְּשָׁט) — “plain” (“simple”) or the direct meaning.

Remez (רֶמֶז) — “hints” or the deep (allegoric: hidden or symbolic) meaning beyond just the literal sense.

Derash (דְּרַשׁ) — from Hebrew darash: “inquire” (“seek”) — the comparative (midrashic) meaning, as given through similar occurrences.

Sod (סוֹד) (pronounced with a long O as in ‘bone’) — “secret” (“mystery”) or the mystical meaning, as given through inspiration or revelation.

I elaborate on Brueggemann’s distinction between “certitude” and “fidelity.”

For Brueggemann, any interaction between 1. certitude, which he considers limited because it is restricted to a single meaning (univocity) and 2. fidelity, should be frowned upon. We should, therefore, be open, as Derrida says (above), to “an unlimited number of contexts over an indefinite period of time,” and thus unrestricted interaction – if I understand Brueggemann – between suffering persons desiring to tell their personal stories. For Brueggemann and Derrida, and all poststructuralists (who believe there is no metaphysical centre, no fixed structures), there exists no such entity as Being, no such entity as essence, no such thing as a True story, but only (human) beings telling their true-ish stories, which are the only stories that ultimately matter. And if the Bible stories are able to buck – and back – them up, thank you Holy Spirit.

Jesus: The Truth will make you certain and free.

Brueggemann: The Truth will make you uncertain and flee.

The Truth necessarily brings suffering and makes you feel very unsafe. Unsafe in the world, yes; for the supernatural reason that the biblical story clashes with the world’s story/stories (the world system). 

En passant, much of rabbinical Judaism, but certainly not all, resonates with the idea that life is mainly about what makes us happy and safe. We still, though, don’t know what Brueggemann means by “fidelity.” He explains: “The symbol of that (fidelity) is the way of the cross. The way of the cross is always to be departing certitudes so that we may be in the company of Jesus.”

According to Brueggemann, therefore, fidelity means being in the company of the crucified Jesus, but this can only become a reality if we “depart” from our “certitudes;” If language has consensual meanings, I presume Brueggemann means by “certitudes,” all certitudes. Surely, though, if we are to be faithful (fidel) to the way of the cross, as Brueggemann suggests, we need to be certain that “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3).

What Brueggemann is advocating, in different words, is that we shouldn’t be cocksure about anything, even about, “Verily (surely, certainly, truly) I say unto thee, that this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice” (Matthew 26:34).

Derrida, Jean Paul Sartre, Andre Gide, Albert Camus, as well as every postmodernist, poststructuralist, deconstructionist, in fact, anyone who doesn’t believe in Certitude, would ask the question: “What fun’s left once you find the Messiah, once you’ve found the “Cross?” After all, the ideal, says Renan, is fundamentally a utopia. What is more ideal than Truth? 

Brueggemann is on a journey; never arriving, always departing; a sitting on suitcases, all packed and ready to leave for the next departure lounge. That, as I said elsewhere, is deconstruction. But doesn’t Jesus himself make his disciples uncertain? Here is Brueggemann:

“And Jesus doesn’t make any of his disciples certain. I think that’s why essentially teaches in figures and parables and enigmatic statements that always have to be reinterpreted… When you’ve emptied everything out to make it plain and clear and unambiguous, you’ve emptied it out of what’s happening in the transaction.”

Jesus did, in contrast to Brueggemann’s assertion, make his disciples certain (much of the time). The Bible certainly states:

“And with many such parables He spoke the word to them as they were able to hear it. 34 But without a parable He did not speak to them. And when they were alone, He explained all things to His disciples” (Mark 4:33-34).

I’m emptied out. And it’s also time to pack my suitcase for the next departure lounge.

(To be continued – at the next departure lounge).

Speaking pure Hebrew without vowels

Here is a Jewish view of the Torah Scrolls.

“In looking at the scrolls themselves, the first thing we notice is that they are written in Hebrew without vowels and one’s Hebrew has to be very good in order to read them. The absence of vowels in the text is, I suspect, to safeguard the purity of this gift of God because in its original form Hebrew was a language spoken without vowels.”

With regard to the last clause, “in its original form Hebrew was a language spoken without vowels”:

I would imagine that any language spoken without vowels would not be a language at all, because all spoken languages, by definition, require the speaking of both consonants and vowels, even the p(u)r(e)st of all languages. Try it it yourself; try saying “pr drvl.”

The reason why the original Torah was not written with vowels was because the original writer/s (Moses, and/or others) and readers could understand the txt wtht vwls. So why write more than is necessary especially when the Hebrew vowels had to be written underneath the consonants, which botches up the neat linearity of its consonantal structure. The Gematrists might disagree and attach a more Kabbalistic reason for the absence of vowels, indeed for the absence of spaces between groups of letters in the Torah, which is the usual way words are written in other languages.

All languages begin spoken. So we have speaking before writing, where writing represents speaking. Well that’s the linguistic way of seeing it.

A language is a dialect with an army (and a navy): The case of modern Hebrew

Without Christian missionaries, many indigenous languages would never have acquired a written form. Many of these languages would have never acquired the status of a “language” and would have remained in the less honorary state of “dialect.” Sometimes it took more than a missionary to do the job; it took an army and a navy. The Jewish linguist, Max Weinreich is famous for the quip A shprakh iz a diyalekt mit an armey un a flot – “A language is a dialect with an army and a navy (1945).

If a country has a big army, few would be willing to mess with it. Which brings me to the Zionist state of Israel. According to Neturei Karta (Ultra-Orthodox Judaism), the
Zionist movement’s early misfortune was that it lacked what other nations possessed, namely, a state and army. “Their salvation is possession of a state and army etc. This is clearly spelled out in the circles of Zionist thought, and among the leaders of the Zionist State, that through changing the nature and character of the People of Israel and by changing their way of thinking they can set before the People of Israel ‘salvation’ — a state and an army..”

Neturei Karta gives several reasons why the Zionist State is contrary to the Torah. Here is their first reason:

“FIRST — The so-called “State of Israel” is diametrically opposed and completely contradictory to the true essence and foundation of the People of Israel, as is explained above. The only time that the People of Israel were permitted to have a state was two thousand years ago when the glory of the creator was upon us, and likewise in the future when the glory of the creator will once more be revealed, and the whole world will serve Him, then He Himself (without any human effort or force of arms) will grant us a kingdom founded on Divine Service. However, a worldly state, like those possessed by other peoples, is contradictory to the true essence of the People of Israel. Whoever calls this the salvation of Israel shows that he denies the essence of the People of Israel, and substitutes another nature, a worldly materialistic nature, and therefore sets before them, a worldly materialistic “salvation,” and the means of achieving this “salvation” is also worldly and materialistic i.e. to organize a land and army. However, the true salvation of the People of Israel is to draw close to the Creator. This is not done by organization and force of arms. Rather it is done by occupation to Torah and good deeds.”

((See Neturei Karta’s other reasons here http://www.nkusa.org/AboutUs/Zionism/opposition.cfm).

Neturei Karta states that this the “Orthodox” position of the “People of Israel.” Many Orthodox Jews (those who are strict observers of the Torah precepts) would not find any contradiction between Zionism and Orthodoxy.

Could it be that modern Hebrew, the lingua Franca of Israel, is a language today because the Zionist State has a strong army (if not such a strong navy)?

Elohim: A bamboozle of grammar and meaning

Ibn Anwar, in his “Elohim. One or Plural?” responds to Tony Costa:

Here is the excerpt from Anwar.

Reverend Tony Costa said,

“The Hebrew word “elohim” is a third person masculine plural noun. It is grammatically always plural. It is used of the one true God Yahweh but when it is used of the true God “elohim” is generally followed by the singular verb. For instance Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God ["elohim"; plural noun] created ["bara"; singular].”. “Elohim” is also used of false gods in the Old Testament, used of human judges and angels. The context is vital in the use of “elohim”. This noun is used of Yahweh more often than the other Hebrew words”el” and “eloah”.”

Anwar’s Response

… Reverend Costa says in the first sentence of his brief thesis that, “”The Hebrew word “elohim” is a third person masculine plural noun.” That is right. The word is a combination of the noun Eloa [it is pronounced Eloah due to the vowel markers chataf, segol an chirik) with the pronominal suffix (masculine plural ending) +iym(í). However, he has made a crucial error in the next sentence where he says, “It is grammatically always plural.” It is a scriptural and grammatical fact that whenever the word Elohim refers to God the creator who deserves worship the co-text and context clearly uses ‘signals’ to make the word singular. What are the ‘signals’? Let us examine the first verse of the Bible as a starting point.

“bereshit bara’ ELOHIM et ha shamayim va et ha erets”

The verb used in the verse is bara’ which is a verb inflected in the perfect third person singular which has already been mentioned by Rev. Tony. However, what he failed to mention is that the verb controls the meaning of the subject(elohim). If the word elohim really denotes a plural subject grouped in one(collective noun or uniplural) as Trinitarians would suggest surely it would have used the plural (bar’u). Elohim in verse 1 is understood and translated as singular in all English Bibles because it behaves as a SINGULAR noun(the Elohim is the subject of the verb bara’ which is singular). In fact Genesis 1:26 follows the same rule! The verse says,

“And God (Elohim) said (vayomer), let us make man in our image…”

The noun elohim is the subject of the singular verb vayomer as a result of which determines the former as singular.

End of excerpt from Ibn Anwar.

I now examine Anwar’s argument in terms of the distinction between the linguistic terms “grammar” and “meaning.”

In linguistics, “grammar” has a wide and a narrow meaning.

Costa (and I would think most who read him) distinguishes between the narrow meaning of grammar (the “cement”) and vocabulary (the “bricks”) of language, where wrong grammar does NOT affect the meaning. For example,

How….milk have you got?

(a) a lot (b) much of (c) much (d) many

Answer – much.

We went….the store by car. (a) at; (b) on; (c) for; (d) to

Answer – to.

Here is the use of the wrong verb form with the noun

*They likes sugar.

And more pertinent to our topic:

*God judge (present tense) mankind.

In the dictionary we find vocabulary (lexis), not grammar; for example, we find prepositions but not how to use them. Or verbs (for example “create”) but not their conjugations; for example, I create – he creates.

In Hebrew we have “Elohim bara,” a plural noun with a singular verb, which in normal Hebrew would be regarded as ungrammatical. Tony Costa is talking about a grammatical issue, not a meaning/vocabulary/lexical issue. So, although it is true, as Ibn Anwar points out in his example (“And God Elohim said vayomer, let us make man in our image…”) that the noun “Elohim” is the “subject of the singular verb vayomer, where vayomer determines Elohim as singular,” this fact is independent of the fact that Elohim is a grammatical plural.

Here’s the nub:

Although it is true, as Ibn Anwar points out that “bara” (as a singular verb) determines the meaning of “Elohim” to be a singular, this fact is independent of the fact that “Elohim” is a grammatical plural.

Tony Costa cannot, of course, use his grammatical argument for a lexical (meaning) purpose, namely to assert that if Elohim is grammatically plural then it follows that it must MEAN plural. So Ibn Anwar, you are right on that score.

Ibn brings his presuppositions into the ring while Tony Costa brings his; the former, Islamic, the latter, Christian presuppositions. Here’s the presuppositional rub – from my presuppositional view: it is God who opens the eyes. It is through this divine opening that God comes to sup with us. Evidence won’t convince without Revelation.

So, whose presuppositions are true? God knows.

Theological Aphasia and Language as Communion

There is language as communication and there is language as communion. The difference between the two is that the second is always personal. For those who believe in a personal God, language as communion is possible between both man and God. I describe some of the issues of human language in the secular and theological context.

The three paramount concerns of language, or aims of discourse, are the creation, expression and communication of meaning, which could be summarised as “learning how to mean” ( Halliday, M.A.K. Learning how to mean. London, Arnold, 1975). ”Functions” of language is the major dimension of language study ” (Kinneavy, 1983:131) because the functions of language tell us about the why (content), the where (context) and the how (well) of language use.

Roman Jacobsen defines the different functions of language:

The Referential function (transactional, informational) corresponds to the factor of context and describes a situation, object or mental state.

The Expressive (“emotive” or “affective”) function relates to the addressor (speaker) and refers to utterances that do not change the denotative (informational) meaning of an utterance but adds information about how the addressor feels about something.

The Conative function involves influencing or trying to change the Addressee’s (listener) behaviour.

The Poetic Function focuses on “the message for its own sake” (Jacobsen) as in literature and slogans. The Phatic function (the term was coined by Bronislav Malinowski) involves language in interpersonal/social interaction; for example, greetings and casual chat. (”Phatic” from Greek phatos ”spoken.” Aphasia is a speech defect). The Phatic function is the “getting to know you (better)” function; small talk, where the emphasis on the communication of information is small, while the emphasis on the communication of feelings is big.

The Metalingual (“metalinguistic” or “reflexive”) function – what Jakobson calls “Code” – is language used to think about, discuss, describe itself. (See my “Cognition and Language Proficiency”).

Chomsky suggests that expression, not communication, is the central function of language (Chomsky, Language and Responsibility, 1979:88). Ryle (1959), in a similar vein (at the end of his introduction to “The concept of mind”), states: “Primarily I am trying to get some disorders out of my own system. Only secondarily do I hope to help other theorists to recognise our malady and to benefit from my medicine.”The “purgative” (“suppository”) function of language is one function that did not occur to Jacobsen; and neither to Chomsky – I suppose.

Consider Devitt and Derelny’s view on the origin and functions of language. (Devitt, M., and Sterelny, K. 1987. Language & reality: An introduction to the philosophy of language. Basil Blackwell). Devitt and Derelny (1987) are committed to “physicalism”, that is, people are nothing but complex parts of the physical world. Devitt and Derelny (1987:127) maintain that language originated out of a need to understand the environment and ourselves in order to use and control the environment. Primitive man conveyed meaning through body language such as grunts and gestures. Grunts and gestures caught on out of which linguistic conventions were born. The capacity to think – according to Devitt and Derelny – is borrowed from those who created these conventions and thus primitive thought was made easy. The drive to understand leads to more complicated thoughts, to more complicated speaker meanings to more complicated conventions.

“If this sketch is right, we have, as individuals as a species, engaged in a prodigious feat of lifting ourselves up by our own semantic bootstraps…The picture is of a language of thought expanding with the introduction into it of a public language.” (Devitt & Derelny, 1987:127).

Devett and Derelny’s description echoes the modern atheistic-Darwinian view of the origins and function of language. Contrast this view where the main emphasis of language is theological:

“God speaks humans, like the rest of creation, into being. “Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness’…” (Genesis 1:26). In the creation stories in Genesis God’s speaking is God’s doing. “Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light” (Genesis 1: 3). The relationship between God and creation and the relationship in particular between God and human beings is mediated by the Word. God creates by speaking and humans are to listen and then in light of what they bear address God and one another. Human speech, therefore, is neither exclusively nor even primarily a social phenomenon between neighbors, but first and foremost a theological reality. Speech has something to do with who God is and what it means for humans to live, first, before God, and second, in communion with one another” (“Before God:” A Crisis in Sin and Redemption” by George Stroup).

(The excerpts above are from one of Stroup’s lectures. This lecture has been fleshed out in his book “Before God”).

The language of theological reality in Christianity  is the biblical narrative, which is at enmity with the worldly narrative. Here is the biblical communicative relationship between addressor and addressee:

“In biblical narrative humans are called to listen because it is God who speaks first. Human speech, therefore, is true when it responds obediently to the prior reality of God’s Word and God’s address. False speech—the lie—is not simply the distortion of the truth, although it is that, but, more significantly, it is speech that is not obedient to the Word by which it has been addressed, but an attempt to find some ground, some basis, other than the reality of God’s Word and God’s address…To live before God and to be truly and faithfully human is, first, to allow oneself to be addressed by God, and, second, to speak truthfully to God. It is listening to and speaking obediently to God that is also the basis for allowing oneself to be addressed by and to speak truthfully to one’s neighbor.”

In sum, those who reject the theological priority of language suffer from theological aphasia. The Apostle John provides a scriptural basis for Stroup (above):

“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us—that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:1-3 ESV).

In the phatic function of language, says Malinowski, ”The breaking of silence, the communion of words is the first act to establish links of fellowship, which is consummated only by the breaking of bread and the communion of food.” For the Christian, communion – which is the gathering of believers to break bread before the Lord’s Table – is the consumate theological emphasis on the Word made flesh.

Life, life, eternal life: The word made Fish

Towards the end of Albert Mohler’s “Thinking in Public” podcast, “Why we can’t all just get along: A conversation with Stanley Fish” (Jan 11 2011), Fish, a legal scholar and literary critic, and Mohler are discussing Fish’s latest book “How to read a sentence and write one,” in which Fish describes the marks of a good sentence. He ends his book with some of his favourite sentences. Fish tells Mohler that his favourite sentence is from Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress.” Here is his description:

“I end the main body of the book with my favorite sentences from the book which is a sentence from Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and that sentence describes the moment when Bunyan’s hero Christian having discovered that he is burdened with original sin and mourning to rid himself of it starts to run from his village toward a light that he barely sees and now here is the sentence, “now he had not run far away from his own door.  But his wife and children perceiving it began crying after him to return.  But the man put his fingers in his ears and ran on crying ‘life, life, eternal life.’” That is both a great sentence absolutely amazing sentence, the way in which it is structured and a lesson in what it is that sentences can and cannot do.  Sentences can send us in the direction of something greater than they and therefore greater than us so sentences in a way perform their best office when they turn us in the direction of life, life, eternal life.

[Fish calls Bunyan's delectable chunk of discourse, a "sentence." As we all know, a sentence ends  with a full stop (period)].

Mohler:   I have to end by asking you the question that came to my mind at the end of your latest book. In a secular age is it perhaps true that for most sentences are all that remain?

Fish:  Yes.  And that is what I call in the book at a certain point the religion of art.  And when the liberal ethos doesn’t so much as give up religion but puts it in a corner it has to worship something. And what it usually worships is art, and one form of that art are sentences.  But I believe that the sentences that really matter don’t, neither invite nor allow that worship but in fact encourage you and invite you to search for something greater. (Podcast transcript can be found here).

Fish reminds me of Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, which studied in my French course at university. Brian Simpson writes on Flaubert’s novels in the John Hopkins magazine:

“The novel on your bedside table did not spring fully formed from the head of its maker. It was mulled over, massaged, fleshed out, scratched through, revised, set aside, and revised some more.”

Simpson quotes Flaubert: “When I’m finished with my novel . . . I’ll bring you my complete manuscript. . . . You will see through what complex mechanics I manage to make a sentence.”
(Gustave Flaubert in an April 15, 1852, letter to his lover Louise Colet).

As in Flaubert, so in Fish; language, not the plot, counts; because all that matters is what natters.

“Flaubert, Simpson continues, rewrote each page of Madame Bovary at least four or five times, and many a dozen times. In an 1855 letter to Louise Colet, he confided, “Last week I spent five days writing one page.” At the end of such weeks, he had finished only 500 words. But they were 500 perfect words.”

And for Jacques Neefs, an authority on Flaubert, “the vision is in the revisions.”

That’s Fish all over: vision is revision. Never standing still, always moving; never arriving always departing. Art for art sake, L’art pour l’art, in it’s many forms: language for language sake, painting for painting sake, sculpture for sculpture sake, where language, the supreme art form, cuts, not through, but into the Word – made, not flesh, but Art. The reason why there is no attempt to cut through language is because for Flaubert and Fish, there is nothing outside Art, outside the Art of language. Only sentences remain (Fish above), only sentences live, only sentences are eternal, only sentences live eternally. Sentences, says Fish, must be religiously nurtured (“the religion of art”- Fish), for they are the springboard to newness of life, to a newness of more sentences. There’s no centre, no arriving, no presence, no God; always departing never arriving. All these men remind me of Jacques Derrida and my friend, Bill, who asks: “So what’s the deal with having a messiah who’s arrived?  There’s a question for you. Where is the mystery once he’s exposed and had his say?”

The Word was made flesh (the Messiah), and the flesh was made fish (the word). There’s the Fisher of men and the fisher of words. For the fisher of words, there will be – unless something changes – no resurrection from the boggy sediments of language, but only a sentencing to an eternity of sentences – “one has to worship something” (Fish above). Or perhaps there will only be a sentencing to a single phrase, drumming over and over and over in those finely tuned literary ears: Bunyan’s “life, life, eternal life.”

Towards the end of Albert Mohler’s “Thinking in Public” podcast, “Why we can’t all just get along: A conversation with Stanley Fish” (Jan 11 2011), Fish, a legal scholar and literary critic, and Mohler are discussing Fish’s latest book “How to read a sentence and write one,” in which Fish describes the marks of a good sentence. He ends his book with some of his favourite sentences. Fish tells Mohler that his favourite sentence is from Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress.” Here is his description (my italics and underlining):

“I end the main body of the book with my favorite sentences from the book which is a sentence from Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and that sentence describes the moment when Bunyan’s hero Christian having discovered that he is burdened with original sin and mourning to rid himself of it starts to run from his village toward a light that he barely sees and now here is the sentence, “now he had not run far away from his own door.  But his wife and children perceiving it began crying after him to return.  But the man put his fingers in his ears and ran on crying ‘life, life, eternal life.’” That is both a great sentence absolutely amazing sentence, the way in which it is structured and a lesson in what it is that sentences can and cannot do.  Sentences can send us in the direction of something greater than they and therefore greater than us so sentences in a way perform their best office when they turn us in the direction of life, life, eternal life.

Mohler:   I have to end by asking you the question that came to my mind at the end of your latest book. In a secular age is it perhaps true that for most sentences are all that remain?

Fish:  Yes.  And that is what I call in the book at a certain point the religion of art.  And when the liberal ethos doesn’t so much as give up religion but puts it in a corner it has to worship something. And what it usually worships is art, and one form of that art are sentences.  But I believe that the sentences that really matter don’t, neither invite nor allow that worship but in fact encourage you and invite you to search for something greater. (Podcast transcript can be found here).

Fish reminds me of Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, which I read in my French studies at university. Brian Simpson writes on Flaubert’s novels in the John Hopkins magazine:

“The novel on your bedside table did not spring fully formed from the head of its maker. It was mulled over, massaged, fleshed out, scratched through, revised, set aside, and revised some more.”

Simpson quotes Flaubert: “When I’m finished with my novel . . . I’ll bring you my complete manuscript. . . . You will see through what complex mechanics I manage to make a sentence.”
— Gustave Flaubert in an April 15, 1852, letter to his lover Louise Colet

As in Flaubert, so in Fish; language, not the plot, counts; because all that matters is what natters.

“Flaubert, Simpson continues, rewrote each page of Madame Bovary at least four or five times, and many a dozen times. In an 1855 letter to Louise Colet, he confided, “Last week I spent five days writing one page.” At the end of such weeks, he had finished only 500 words. But they were 500 perfect words.”

And for Jacques Neefs, an authority on Flaubert, “the vision is in the revisions.”

That’s Fish all over: vision is revision. Never standing still, always moving; never arriving always departing. Art for art sake, L’art pour l’art, in it’s many forms: language for language sake, painting for painting sake, sculpture for sculpture sake, where language, the supreme art form, cuts, not through, but into the Word – made, not flesh, but Art. The reason why there is no attempt to cut through language is because for Flaubert and Fish, there is nothing outside Art, outside the Art of language. Only sentences remain (Fish above), only sentences live, only sentences are eternal, only sentences live eternally. Sentences, says Fish, must be religiously nurtured (“the religion of art”- Fish), for they are the springboard to newness of life, to a newness of more sentences. There’s no centre, no arriving, no presence, no God; always departing never arriving. All these men remind me of my Jacques Derrida and my friend, Bill, who asks: “So what’s the deal with having a messiah who’s arrived?  There’s a question for you. Where is the mystery once he’s exposed and had his say?”

The Word was made flesh (the Messiah), and the flesh was made Fish (the word). There’s the Fisher of men and the fisher of words. For the fisher of words, there will be no resurrection from the boggy sediments of language, but only a sentencing to an eternity of sentences – “one has to worship something” (Fish above). Or perhaps there will only be a sentencing to a single phrase, drumming over and over and over in those finely tuned ears: “life, life, eternal life.”

How do you say that in Hebrew like a Hebrew?

When I was a French teacher in the 1970s at the Catholic St George’s College in Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe), my pupils were very bad at French pronunciation. For example, Bonjour Monsieur became either “Bonjews MooseEar,” or “Bonjewer Monsewer.” No surprises there; most English-speaking learners of foreign languages are linguistic klutzes. When, though, I find pronunciation on a par with my French pupils on the BlueletterBible site – this time, Hebrew – I get a little more critical. I often consult the BlueletterBible site for the Hebrew and Greek of the biblical text. I was reading Ex. 31:15a about the sabbath rest, the shabbat shabbaton. “Six days may work be done; but in the seventh [is] the sabbath of rest (Hebrew – shabbat shabbaton), holy to the LORD” (Exodus 31:15a). שֵׁשֶׁת יָמִים יֵעָשֶׂה מְלָאכָה וּבַיֹּום הַשְּׁבִיעִי שַׁבַּת שַׁבָּתֹון קֹדֶשׁ לַיהוָה שבת shabbath שבתון shabbaton – sabbath of rest I stress the last syllable /ton/ on shabbaton because there is something wrong with Blueletterbible’s pronunciation of שבתון shabbaton. Click on the loudspeaker on the right side of “of rest” and listen to the pronunciation of שבתוןshabbaton. The “t” (tet) is pronounced “th” to give “shabbathone.” The /th/ sound exists in Greek but not in Hebrew. The /thown/”in “shabbathown” is the American pronunciation 0f /ton/. I wish that BlueletterBible would find someone who knows how to pronounce Hebrew; but not a liberal or reconstructionist Jew, because he would probably know less Hebrew than the person BlueletterBible’s got doing the job now. If, though, BLB does employ someone who speaks proper Hebrew, they must ensure he doesn’t speak with a lithp. And if they persist in digging in their heels, wouldn’t they be bibically better off running a B&B? I have to say that when it comes to Hebrew, I’m no fountain of wisdom¹I once mixed up my Hebrew “ems”- my mems: the final Mem םwith the lower case מ. I told everybody, who all happened to be very fruM Jews – that my confusion was a pure case of meMory loss. “Yeah right!”

Translation, transflation and betrayal: Plato’s Gorg(i)as

“Translation” is the process of decoding the ideas of one language (the source language, say, French) and encoding them into another (the target language, say English). In A Jewish view of a French bottom, I discussed the French expression de fond en comble, which the Head of Modern Languages at the University of South Africa translated as “from top to bottom.” I alerted him to the fact that it didn’t mean “from top to bottom” but “from top to toe.” As anyone who is on nodding terms with human anatomy should know, your bottom is nowhere near you toes, unless you’re a midget.

Had the Professor been betrayed. Betrayed? By what, by whom? Was I to blame for being de fond en comble (from top to bottom; to toe?) impossible? Or is the impossibility of translation to blame? Is it true that traduttore, traditore :“to translate is to betray?”  Is Robert Payne, Chairman of the Translation Committee of the American PEN Organization, correct when he says:

“The world’s languages resemble infinitely complicated grids, and the basic patterns of these grids scarcely ever coincide. [Except] on some rare occasions translation does succeed – beyond all possibility.” [1]

And:

“Whenever we translate exactly and accurately it is a coincidence–in the sense of the purest accident. And the task of the translator is to move sure-footedly among these accidents, he cannot do it by logic.”[2]

If Robert Payne is right, this would mean that the structure of a language defines the structure of thought. In his study of the differences between Hopi and English, Edward Sapir was ostensibly the first to propose this idea.  His associate, Benjamin Lee Whorf picked up the idea and developed it into his system of “linguistic determinism,” where a language determines what we think, which implies that differences in language reflect differences in world view. In such a “linguistic relativity” view, human beings are like Orwellian zombies (Orwell’s “1984″) who are conditioned to think only what the language of  “Newspeak” dictates.

There is much research to show that traduttore, traditore “to translate is to betray” is not as radical as the above writers claim. I think there is a bigger problem than the translation between languages; the main problem lies with translation within languages. What I mean is the miscommunications and misunderstandings (often wilful) between people speaking the same language. Betrayal, therefore, does not only occur between languages, but also within languages, which often means between personalities.

As I said earlier, the usual meaning of the term “translation” is decoding the ideas of one language and encoding them into another. But there is another meaning of “translation” that only involves one language.  “Translation” has the literal meaning of  trans “across” and latus “carry”. “I can’t get across (transfer my thoughts) to you”,  is a familiar complaint.Here is an example from the university of Fort Hare where I taught English language and Applied Linguistics:

I now want to consider cultural differences (i.e. differences in the way one symbolises and constructs one’s world) in the educational domain. I present one example of how academics who share the same mother tongue (in this case English) can disagree. The example is of lecturers’ judgements in the evaluation of a student’s writing.

When I asked some of my Practical English students at Fort Hare to write a definition of culture, they invariably came up with rote textbook descriptions culled from their other subjects: “Culture refers to the norms and values…” etc. Now, norms and values are the kind of “objective” things that do indeed belong to specific groups, which an individual has to conform to. But let us for a while suspend this traditional definition of culture and consider it anew.

Here is an (uncorrected) extract from an essay of one of my more imaginative Practical English students. The title was “Home is where the hope is”. I have substituted “culture” for “home” in the student’s text:

“In a universal perspective home [culture] may be defined as an individual continent or world, where its inner circumstances is perfumed and gorgeoused by the sounding existence of happiness created by freedom of religion, personal custom, uncramped dignity, norms and values. The happiness which permits its development, a compounded feeling which proves itself to be only love which is strong as death, that love which many waters cannot quench, nor the floods drown, beside which the passion usually by called by the name is evanescent as a dream.”

I asked (separately) two Practical English lecturers and one philosophy lecturer for their judgements. I quote:

First Practical English lecturer: “What a lot of nonsense. It does not make sense.”
Philosophy lecturer: “I like it. I would give it a good mark. A bit flowery.
Second Practical English lecturer: “He has imagination. Creative. A good effort.”

One other lecturer’s comment on the text was “celebration” – it seems that from these lecturers’ comments above that there are two broad ways of looking at text (and life): celebral or cerebral.

I discussed the above student’s passage with the first Practical English lecturer and the philosophy lecturer together. Here are two quotes, one from each of them:

First Practical English lecturer (addressing the philosopher and me): Both of you are philosophers. You are used to extending boundaries. I like to impose them. My training is in the legal field. It is different to yours. I look for the limits of things. You look beyond the limits of things.

Philosophy lecturer: If you think this passage is meaningless you should try Derrida for size.

(See more in my Culture, Conceptual Frameworks and Academic Ability: A Biocultural Perspective).

So, betrayal (traditore) does not only occur in translation (traduttore) between languages, but also within languages. We saw that “translation” has the literal meaning of  trans “across” and latus “carry”. Plato’s dialogues illustrate this miscommunication problem. One Greek (Socrates, for example) tries to get another Greek (Gorgias, for example) to see his (Socrates) point of view, all the time convincing Gorgias that his (Socrates’ point of view) was Gorgias’s real thoughts screaming to get out. Finally, they do see eye to eye – but not without some clever engineering  on the part of the master of dialectic, himself, Socrates. What  happens, though, when Gorgias hasards to direct the dialogue? It goes to potty; Gorgias transflates into Gorgas: Trans-latus ends up as trans-flatus.

Earlier, I mentioned the “linguistic relativism” of Whorf and Sapir (the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, or “Warp and the Woof” hypothesis), which, by definition, is “cognitive relativism,” where speakers of different languages think different thoughts. “Postmodernism” goes beyond – goes below the belt of linguistic/cognitive relativism.  If you think “inarticulate, meaningless, fragmentation, incoherence, let’s have fun with nonsense”, you’ll get an articulate, meaningful, unified, coherent, sensible picture of postmodernism. Here is one of Cornelius van Til’s favourite illustrations of modern philosophy (from 17^th century onwards): Imagine an infinite number of beads with no holes in them, and an infinite length of string.[1] Now, let me take Van Til’s necklace and try and make a postmodern necklace for your Mother – and then translate her tongue into French.

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[1] This is one of Cornelius van Til’s favourite illustrations of modern philosophy (from 17^th century onwards). Van Til is a Christian philosopher and theologian in the Reformed tradition. His critique of Karl Barth’s idea of history is incomparable.

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[1] 3. Payne, Robert. “On the Impossibility of Translation”, The World of Translation. New York: PEN, 1971, pp 361-4.

[2] Ibid, p.363.

A Jewish view of a French Bottom

In When is a Hebrew youth not a Yiddishe fool?, I mentioned that one of the perils of translation is “false friends” (faux amis), which is the idea that a word in the target language ( the language you are translating into) may look like the word of the source language (the language you are translating from) but does not share a common meaning. For example, the Yiddish naar/nar originates from Hebrew na-ar, but Yiddish naar and Hebrew na-ar have different meanings. The Hebrew na-ar means “lad, young boy,” whereas the Yiddish naar, means “fool.”

Translation between languages, though not as demanding as translating translators from one place to another, bristles with problems. In the 1980s, I was teaching French at Mmabatho High School, South Africa. I went to visit Professor Haeffner, the Head of Modern Languages at the distance university, the University of South Africa. The occasion was my desire to do a B.A. Honours in French (which is done after the B.A., which I had obtained from the University of Cape Town).

I met Professor Haeffner in the corridor outside his office. He was very bristly and discouraging; but not as much as a rabbi accosted by a gentile who wanted to become, not merely one of the “sons of Noah” (bnei Noach ), but wanted to go the whole hog – be a Jew. The Prof was not taken in by bits of paper (B.A. ShmeeA). He wanted to test me then and there – in the corridor – whether I was Honours matériel. Now what can you ask someone in a corridor that will convince you that he will be able to do “French Honours.”

Prof – What is a “military parade” in French (Aside - “I’ve got the Yiddishe fool; watch him say “parade militaire”).

BogRaphy (moi) – un défilé militaire. (Aside -Who’s laughing inside now!).

Before Prof could ask me another, I shot back:

BogRaphy: “What does de fond en comble mean?” (BogRaphy’s ghost voice: de fond en comble means “from top to bottom” OR “from top to toe”).

Prof: (bristling – this time with confidence): “From top to bottom.”

Bography: Wrong. That’s only half-way (I twist my arm behind me and, like a onederringjew, index my derrière – for those who don’t know French – toches). It means top to toe.

A mutual hee hee hee. And that’s how I laughed my way into B.A. Honours (French). I returned to our little house in Mmabatho, built a make-shift wood and green fibre-glass lean-to on the side of the house, and spent many gutsy gusty night hours agonising over J.-P. Vinay and J. Darbelnet’s contrastive analysis of French and English. If a Frenchman had to stagger into this conversation and groan – that in his English Honours translation class – he was (also?) “agonisant” over Vinay and Darbelnet, it would mean something completely different: he didn’t survive the course. Another “false friend” faux ami.

Agonie (French) refers to death pangs or mortal agony.
Agony (English) means severe physical pain or mental anguish.

In When is a Hebrew youth not a Yiddishe fool?, I mentioned that one of the perils of translation is “false friends” (faux amis), which is the idea that a word in the target language ( the language you are translating into) may look like the word of the source language (the language you are translating from) but does not share a common meaning. For example, the Yiddish naar/nar originates from Hebrew na-ar, but Yiddish naar and Hebrew na-ar have different meanings. The Hebrew na-ar means “lad, young boy,” whereas the Yiddish naar, means “fool.”

Translation between languages, though not as demanding as translating translators from one place to another, bristles with problems. In the 1980s, I was teaching French at Mmabatho High School, South Africa. I went to visit Professor Haeffner, the Head of Modern Languages at the distance university, the University of South Africa. The occasion was my desire to do a B.A. Honours in French (which is done after the B.A., which I had obtained from the University of Cape Town).

I met Professor Haeffner in the corridor outside his office. He was very bristly and discouraging; but not as much as a rabbi accosted by a gentile who wanted to become, not merely one of the “sons of Noah” (bnei Noach ), but wanted to go the whole hog – be a Jew. The Prof was not taken in by bits of paper (B.A. ShmeeA). He wanted to test me then and there – in the corridor – whether I was Honours matériel. Now what can you ask someone in a corridor that will convince you that he will be able to do “French Honours.”

Prof – What is a “military parade” in French (Aside - “I’ve got the Yiddishe fool; watch him say “parade militaire”).

BogRaphy (moi) – un défilé militaire. (Aside -Who’s laughing inside now!).

Before Prof could ask me another, I shot back:

BogRaphy: “What does de fond en comble mean?” (BogRaphy’s ghost voice: de fond en comble means “from top to bottom/from top to toe”).

Prof: (bristling – this time with confidence): “From top to bottom.”

Bography: Wrong. That’s only half-way (I twist my arm behind me and, like a onederringjew, index my derrière – for those who don’t know French – toches). It means top to toe.

A mutual hee hee hee. And that’s how I laughed my way into B.A. Honours (French). I returned to our little house in Mmabatho, built a make-shift wood and green fibre-glass lean-to on the side of the house, and spend many gutsy gusty night hours agonising over J.-P. Vinay and J. Darbelnet’s contrastive analysis of French and English. If a Frenchman had to stagger into this conversation and groan – that in his English Honours translation class – he was (also?) “agonisant” over Vinay and Darbelnet, it would mean something completely different: he didn’t survive the course. Another “false friend” faux ami.

Agonie (French) refers to death pangs or mortal agony.
Agony (English) means severe physical pain or mental anguish.

Purgatory: The Greatest Doctors Go There

(This is a follow-on from Deconstruction: Onederringjew’s glorious route to nowhere).

The problem for interpretation, translation and communication that Derrida poses is whether it is possible to ever know what one’s mother tongue is made of through all the pulling and tearing at her syntactic joints and semantic flesh (Johnson 1985). Can the mother tongue (the source language) ever communicate her meaning through translation into another language (the target language). The problem lies deeper than the differences between languages; it lies in the mother tongue itself. How many times have you not confronted someone who speaks the same mother tongue as you –  your mother? – with “what do you mean!” The blogosphere may justifiably be described as the bogosphere : your bog and my bog; which is one of the reasons – very minor – why my blog user name is “bography.” (See my B(i)ography of truth).

What do you think is the primary function of language? Unless you’re smoking something or are the greatest linguistic scientist of all time, you will probably reply “communication” or something to that effect. But what does the greatest linguist¹ and one of the ten most quoted people of all time say? The central function of language is not communication but expression (Chomsky. 1979. Language and Responsibility. Sussex: Harvester Press). “Expression,” of course, means self-expression. And Chomsky (like Derrida), of course, is Jewish. As my mother would have said of Derrida and Chomsky: they are greste dokteirim “great doctors,” but lacking one thing, the main thing; they’re not medical doctors.

Self-expression usually entails a purging. For Gilbert Ryle, this purging reaches into the very bowels of his mind – into the “ghost in his machine.” At the end of his introduction to “The concept of mind” (1959), Ryle says: “Primarily I am trying to get some disorders out of my own system. Only secondarily do I hope to help other theorists to recognise our malady and to benefit from my medicine.” Ryle’s main reason for writing is to purge his system. I suggest that this urge to expurge is also true of Chomsky and Derrida.

“Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of thy name: and deliver us, and purge (כפר kaphar) away our sins, for thy name’s sake (Psalm 79:9).”

“How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge ( katharizō “catharsis”) your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” (Hebrews 9:14).

1“Linguist” has two meanings: the non-academic meaning of “someone who knows (how to speak) several languages, and the academic meaning of someone who is a specialist in the linguistics (linguistic science).



Deconstruction: Onederringjew’s glorious route to nowhere

Deconstruction is a literary movement invented by Jacques Derrida, a Jew, naturally. What is deconstruction? No one really knows, but think they know. They think it means “to take apart,” “to unpack” (an idea). It doesn’t mean that. This is what I “think” it means. Deconstruction is a journey; never arriving and always departing; a sitting on suitcases, all packed and ready to leave for the next departure lounge.

In contrast to deconstruction, I’m reminded of the Christian theologian and philosopher, Jonathan Edwards (quoted in R.C. Sproul’s “Sitting on suitcases): “No person who seeks to go on a pilgrimage to a glorious and exotic place will take up permanent residence at an inn along the way.” The person Edwards describes is like a sojourner who gets stuck along the way because he loses sight of his glorious destiny. The deconstructionist, however, doesn’t believe he is stuck in a rut, not only because there is, for him, no such thing as destiny or glory, but also because there is nothing to stick to. Here is Derrida’s definition of deconsruction:

“Here or there I have used the word deconstruction which has nothing to do with destruction. That is to say, it is simply a question of…being alert to the implications, to the historical sedimentations of the language which we use – and that is not destruction” (Derrida 1972: 271′ my italics).

What does Derrida mean by “historical sedimentations.” The meaning of a word can be studied in two ways:

1. What the word means now (called “synchrony” in linguistics; Greek syn “together” + chronos “time”),

and

2. What the word meant in the past – the history, the etymology (called “diachrony” in linguistics; Greek dia “through” + chronos “time”). “Nice” is a nice example. Here are its layers of “historical sedimentations” from an etymological dictionary.

“late 13c., “foolish, stupid, senseless,” from Old French nice “silly, foolish,” from Latin nescius “ignorant,” lit. “not-knowing,” from ne- “not” (see un-) + stem of scire “to know.” “The sense development has been extraordinary, even for an adj.” [Weekley] — from “timid” (pre-1300); to “fussy, fastidious” (late 14c.); to “dainty, delicate” (c.1400); to “precise, careful” (1500s, preserved in such terms as a nice distinction and nice and early); to “agreeable, delightful” (1769); to “kind, thoughtful” (1830). In 16c.-17c. it is often difficult to determine exactly what is meant when a writer uses this word. By 1926, it was pronounced “too great a favorite with the ladies, who have charmed out of it all its individuality and converted it into a mere diffuser of vague and mild agreeableness.” [Fowler].

“Deconstruction appeals to history, to the historical sedimentations of language. In language use, speakers/writers try and find common (univocal) meanings to the words they use. OnedeRRingjews like DeRRida think otherwise. He says:

“if language is not inherently determined by a set of univocal meanings, then language use, given an unlimited number of contexts over an indefinite period of time, becomes an unrestricted interaction of signifiers, the Nietzschean affirmation of free play without nostalgia for a “center” or for “origins”. (Derrida 1981a: 278-93. Writing and Difference. Trans. Alan Bass. London: Routledge, Kegan & Paul).

According to deconstruction, language has no locatable centre nor retrievable origin, where there is no necessary connection between meaning (the signified) and words (signifiers). Well that’s at best silly, at worst, words fail me. Deconstruction plays with language only to prey on language. So then “where can deconstruction lead us, if anywhere?” asks Merrill 1984:126. (Merrill, F. 1984 Deconstruction Meets a Mathematician: a-semiotic Enquiry. American Journal of Semiotics 2(4): 125-152).

Deconstruction leads us to the via rupta? Via rupta means a way cut through the forest, or broken by a plow, wheel, travel or other means. “Route” and “rut” are derivations of via rupta. And that’s deconstruction: a ripping apart of “syntractic joints and semantic flesh” (Barbara Johnson) en route to the glorious mystery of nowhere. Nice.

P.S. I had a paper published on deconstruction (1997). The full paper can be read here).