alleen voor liefhebbers/lovers en ietwat 'ouderen'


Genoeg gemopper{d}.
Eerst maar even wat anders voordat ik verander
in 'n echte zwartkijker{d}?

Describing this phenomenon historically:
admittedly, individual leaders claimed that their own individual interpretation of the law was right,
and that other interpretations were wrong.

But systematically,
at some unknown date,
Jewish rabbis seem to have come to the conclusion, however reluctantly,
that they were bound to disagree,
and that disagreement
was endemic!

Analyzing it,
on the other hand, functionally:
the great achievement of Rabbinic Judaism is not that it triumphed over competitors,
organized and unorganized, but that it created
a framework which tolerated,
even encouraged disputes,
but did not create sects
[anymore]!

[Midrash & indeterminacy
also emphasizes the functional cast of this aspect of rabbinic Judaism,
contesting romanticizing accounts of midrash
as protodeconstruction or the like.]

To be precise:
rabbinic Judaism did not engage
in the formation of schisms & the existence of so-called
"Jewish Christianity" is not really an exception
to this point?

Indeed,
as is eminently clear by now,
the conflict between rigorist approaches vis-a-vis martyrdom
versus accomodation to the Empire and ones similar to those of a Rabbi like Yose the son of Kisma repeatedly led to schism in the later
ancient Church.

Novatianism,
Donatism, and the Meletian schism were all products
of such conflicts.

A large proportion of the monks
in Antony's close neighborhood took the Melatian side
in the schism which had arisen (as schisms often do)
during the persecution.

It just seems right in this context
that the Donatist schism began, or at least was prefigured, according to some,
in the conflict between a trckster, Bishop Mensurius of Carthage,
who had handed over heretical books to the Roman authorities for burning during the Great Persecution, and the primate Secundus of Numidia, who took his stand on the example of the martyr-priest Eleazar
in 2 Maccabees and claimed to have defied them.
The Talmud, as we have seen before, comprehends both of these
seemingly mutually exclusive options
on the same page!

Rabbinic Jews and Christians
were debating the same question of deception, flight, or martyrdom
through the third century, but only Christian textuality
seems bound to answer the question
"Quo vadis?."

For the Rabbis, the destination can remain open.

It is not finally
the issues themselves, or even the positions taken on them, that divide the traditions,
but the forms of textuality and authority
that they generate
and venerate.

This is also a point
that will need much further development
in future research.

For the nonce,
on the Christian side: the canon of the select fathers would be set, not just by convention,
but as a literary entity from which one borrowed and on the basis of which one developed one's theology,
and that canon would be so detached from the historical diversity and inconsistency of the fathers them-selves, so worked-over and reconciled with itself ~ a process in which forgery would certainly play its part ~
that it could be assumed to represent, not a living and developing tradition,
but the majestic unfolding of a simple
and monolithic theology.

An argument could be made
that a similar process of theoretical rejection of all development, history, and heterogeneity
was to take place in rabbinic Judaism with respect to halakha, but not until very late in the Middle Ages
or even in the early modern period.

For the moment and the current project,
it is sufficient to suggest the differences between the forms of text and authority
as current in the nascent Catholic Church and rabbinic orthodoxies
of late antiquity.

On the internal "otherness"
of rabbinic texts as a product of their social location and form, see elsewhere.
Ambrose (and other patristic "authors"knipoog control their texts in ways that the unauthorized rabbinic text does not. A useful analogy could be to Bakhtin's distinction between Tolstoy and Dostoevsky,
with Ambrose playing Tolstoy to the Talmuds's Dostoevsky: this analogy should make clear,
as well, that this typology does not imply a hierarchy. It should also be emphasized
that "tolerance" for diversity is
NOT
what was at issue here.

There is
no reason to see the Rabbis
as any more tolerant than the Fathers.
The issue is rather the elasticity or plasticity
of the discourse of the different traditions in their ability and desire
te allow heterogeneity
on certain kinds
of questions.


Het mooie
aan onze myditijdreisjes
is dat we al die zaken nu rustig naast elkaar kunnen zetten
zonder enig gevaar voor arrestatie, opsluiting,
marteling, onthoofding
& al die andere
enge dingen?
Althans:
in de meeste {?} landen!
Er zijn nog steeds streken waar je
heel goed moet oppassen
met wat je
zegt en
doet
...

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05 aug 2008 - bewerkt op 05 aug 2008 - meld ongepast verhaal
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Asih, man, 80 jaar
   
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