desire to have sex with a prostitute: pecunia non

Ik
kom haast
nooit meer in kerken
behalve voor 'n gespreks~
groep een keer
per maand
ofzo
...

Naarmate je
met die verschillende religies bezig bent
zie je steeds meer overeenkomsten
en verschillen.

Als klein kind
was ik ook al vroeg gek
op kerkdiensten vol met orgelmuziek,
de psalmen, gezangen
& preken?

Het sloot
helemaal aan
bij het elke dag uit de bijbel lezen,
zingen onder de afwas, bidden,
sprookjes, stripboeken
& de literatuur.

Bovendien
gingen die eerste twaalf jaar samen
met een groene tuin in een groene straat met vlakbij alle
zandpaadjes omringd door bomen, struiken,
planten, grassen, spelen in
heidevelden/zand~
verstuivingen!!

Wat wil een kind nog meer
dan een liefhebbende & zorgzame moeder
& allerlei fantasierijke invloeden
van her & der?

De kolossale
oude houten radio
met hoorspelen, muziek, reportages &
van alles & nog wat
vanuit de wereld!!

Bovendien
kwam 't allemaal zeer van pas
bij die latere omzwervingen
door tientallen landen
& streken
...

Nu
zit ik
dan alweer ongeveer
een halve eeuw later dat alles
te herkauwen tot ik 'n ons weeg: invloeden
moeten nu eenmaal zo nu & dan kunnen bezinken.
Als 't leven 'n rivier is
dan zijn de oevers
van belang!

Onderweg
van gletsjers
naar oceanen komen
we dan haast als vanzelf
wel geschiedenissen van
de mensheid
tegen.

It
was really
very fascinating to
see how similar all this is structurally
to the problem of defining the boundaries
between heresy and orthodoxy within early Christian writings.
Thus, ... writing with respect to strategies for interpretation of Scripture:
"On this matter,
it is scarcely possible to make any distinction
between a Clement of Alexandria or an Origen and the heretical gnostics ...
But where the 'church' was in competition with heresy,
the close agreement with heresy in this respect
soon became distressing!"

Note
how similar
this is to the situation portayed in the text{s}
we have been reading! It is scarcely possible to make any distinction
between Rabbi Eli'ezer and the heretical Christians, and this "close agreement" is distressing indeed.
The desire to learn Torah from "them" can only be compared to the desire to have sex with a prostitute, which is doubly suitable as a metaphor for "true" Torah learned from a heretic
because the sex itself is identical in substance to legitimate sex
and only its "source" renders it illicit, and similarly,
as yet another common coin of metaphor
for Torah, of which one could
say, but the Rabbis
don't,
"pecunia non olet!"

A very important intertext
for our stories can be found toward the end
of the chapter on Vespasion in Suetonius. We find there the following report:
"Titus complained of the tax which Vespasian had imposed on the contents of the city urinals.
Vespasian handed him a coin
which had been part
of the first day's proceeds:
"Does it smell bad?"
he asked. And when Titus said
'No,'
he went on:
"Yet it comes from urine!"
Suetonius,
The Twelve Caesars
...

Anyway,
what we can learn from these stories,
then, particularly in their highly elaborated & sophisticated later versions,
is that the Rabbis themselves understood that in notably significant ways there was
no difference between Christians and Jews, and the difference had to be maintained via discursive force, via the tour de force. This was the cae, as well, with
"the making of martyrdom!"
It is not beside the point
to invoke ... particles of language here, ...
to catch this moment:
"The martyrs ...
were not particularly noteworthy as men and women
who faced execution with unusual courage:
as the notables
of Smyrna told a
later bishop:
they were
TOO USED
to professional stars of violence ~
to gladiators & beast hunters ~ to be [really] impressed
by those who made a performance of making
light of death! Rather those martyrs
stood for a particular
style of religious
experience!"

At one
and the same time,
the Talmud story both concedes the point
& contests the model: through its very negation ~
Rabbi Eli'ezer enjoyed the Torah of Yeshu, but repented that enjoyment ~
the Rabbis do reveal their understanding that not only was there contact between rabbinic Jews
& Christians throughout their period, but that this contact resulted in religious fecundity in both directions. There is Torah to be learned from them, and although we insist that we shouldn't,
that their coin is "a whore's wages," nevertheless,
we recognize that the coin of their Torah
has value and gives
us pleasure?!

Such,
I would suggest,
can be said as well
of the discourse of martyrdom
as it was reconfigurated in the early part of late antiquity.
A discourse highly contested by some of the rabbinic tradition,
it was nevertheless enthusiastically adopted by formidable parties within
that very tradition, together with the early Christians
{and later Muslims} for whom it
became, of course, a
centrally valorized
practice
...


HET
jodendom nam
van alles en nog wat over
van de omringende culturen tussen Ararat,
Eufraat, Tigris, Perzische Golf, Hermon, Megiddo,
Yardeen, Yeroesjalayiem, Avdat, Petra.
Sinai & de Nijl: de Christenen namen
aanvankelijk haast alles over van
de Joden en de Moslims pikten
daar weer uit wat paste in hun
locale tradities & neigingen
tot op de mydiday
van vandaag
...