Enough for now {I hope}


Martin Buber once said, in a conversation, that if a man has the gift of listening, he can hear the voice of Yehoshua himself speaking in the later accounts of the Gospels. This authentic note can, I believe, be de-tected in Yeshua's comments regarding the Baptist. These are at once simple and profound, naive and full
of paradox, tempestuous and yet calm. Can anyone plumb their ultimate depths? Yeshu was addressing those who had made their pilgrimage out into the wilderness to see the new prophet. That was no place to
find finely clothes courtiers, who live in palaces, & bend like a reed in the wind to every change of opinion!

We observe that the imagery is taken from a well-known fable of Aesop, with which the rabbis, too, were familiar. The reed outlives the storm because it bends to the wind, whereas a stronger tree, that refuses to bend, is often uprooted by the storm. Now we know who was the target of Yehoshua's scorn: Herod Anti-pas and his fawning cortiers, against whom the unbending, fearless desert prophet, dressed in a garment
of camel hair, hurled his preaching of doom. It can surely be no accident that Yeshua recast a fable of Ae-sop. Clearly he regarded the tetrarch and his court as a kind of "animal farm." Later, in Aesop's style, he
was to describe Herod as "that fox" (Luke 13:32). Nevertheless, in Palestinian Hebrew and Aramaic the term "fox" was sometimes used to designate someone of insignificance. Thus, Yeshu's nickname for Anti-pas should be read as a not-so-subtle insult dierected at the Galilean tetrarch. Anyway, in Yehoshua's view
Yochanan was a prophet, if you like, the one who was preparing the way of "G d" at the end of time, the E-liyah who was to return. With Yochanan, the end-time begins - the decisive eruption into the history of the
world. All the prophets have prophesied until the time of Yochanan the Baptist; but from now on, the king-dom 'of heaven' is breaking through, and 'those who break through', take it in possession! These enig-matic words are connected with the saying of the prophet Micah (2:13). "HE WHO OPENS THE BREACH WILL GO UP BEFORE THEM; THEY WILL BREAK THROUGH AND PASS THE GATE, GOING OUT BY IT. THEIR KING WILL PASS ON BEFORE THEM, THE LORD AT THEIR HEAD!"
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Asih, man, 80 jaar
   
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