"lafaards & helden" en onze gegijzelde martelaars?

Question
is unfortunately
{?} we seem to retreat
from our own perspective when
we read later in the essay
as if "martyrdom"
is a
"REAL"
event to which there could be different {!}
cultural responses, rather than itself a 'cultural response'
and form of "portraiture."

Thus,
in such texts,
the portrait of the martyr
can rarely be clearly
disconcerned
...

There
are many
ways of snatching
meaning out of the deaths of martyrs,
of turning physical disaster into psychic (and perhaps ultimately physical) victory.
The diverse Jewish literature of the period, which incorporated a highly
diversified religious world,
generated varied
reactions.

Our
concern here
is with responses
manifested by way of
the evocation and depiction
of individual martyrs and expressed in extended narratives.
Since, however, we have defined martyrdom as portraiture, a martyrology
in which the "portrait can rarely be clearly discerned" seems a contradiction in terms!?

So what were
the collective stories
of deaths that were being told
in the rabbinic and Christian worlds of the first,
second, third, and fourth centuries, and how did they vary over this time,
to the extent that we can learn this? I believe that they varied,
in fact, in ways that are remarkably similar.

These actors shared,
I suggest, a common, or at least an overlapping cultural world.
This avenue of thought would account for the patently close connections
between the Maccabean texts and the Eusebian Letter of the Martyrs of Lyons,
or the Letters of Ignatius, both of which
have been demonstrated
so compellingly?

We don't know for sure
[after all] whether we can consider 4 Maccabees
a later text, and deny the Ignatian affiliations, but do argue
for a common source in Asia-Minor for the language
of both texts.

There are also
very striking parallels [of the prayer of Polycarp]
with 4 Maccabees 6, 27-29
(the prayer of Eleasar).

Our
best evidence
therefore seems to
suggest a complexly imbricated
origin for this discourse in the second,
third, and even fourth centuries in which Greek-
speaking Jews, Jewish Christians, Roman Christians,
and rabbinic Jews all had a hand in different ways
and to different
degrees.

They
brought with them
all of their collective cultural traditions:
the Roman generals' devotio, with its Greek analogues,
their chaste Greek and Roman wives (and virgins) threatened with rape,
Maccabees, gladiators, Socrates, Yeshu
'on the Cross', even
Carthagian child
sacrifice.

THE "INVENTION"
OF MARTYRDOM, FAR FROM BEING
EVIDENCE FOR CHRISTIAN INFLUENCE ON JUDAISM OR THE OPPOSITE,
IS MOST PLAUSIBLY READ AS EVIDENCE FOR THE CLOSE CONTACT BETWEEN THESE COMMUNITIES
OR THEIR DISCOURSES
THROUGHOUT THIS
PERIOD!

In short,
these are, after all,
also as many elegant examples
of the extreme care and delicacy required for working out the details
of the intertextual production of such a complex cultural practice as martyrology,
for, as some of us show, following others, the place of death,
the neck rather than the breast, is determined
by Greek tragedy as a subjugating,
'female' death?

On the other hand,
for defeated gladiators,
death by the neck was an honorable death,
through which the feminized, defeated gladiator recovered
his 'masculine'
honor.

So
one could
conceivably read the death
of the female martyrs as a paradoxically virilizing death,
in that it afforded then the stature of the honorable (and thus paradoxically victorious) gladiator. However, as shown, it is in the details of the intertextual allusions that the interpretation lies,
and in this case, it is the fact of the choice offered of the breast or the neck and the chosen
neck that mark the death as belonging to the tragic
Polyxena and not Roman gladiator topos.
But also it is a case study on the over-
determination of this most complex,
nuanced, & fascinating
of cultural
praxes!

We chose
our words advisedly:
"imbricated" thus also seems precisely the right word.
Like the tiles on a roof, these discourses and practices were
overlayed on each other in a partly overlapping manner. Truth to
tell, all of us seem to involve ourselves
in virtual self-contradiction
on occasion.
Thus:
'IN THESE EARLY YEARS
OF THE SECOND CENTURY, IN BOTH
THE POLYTHEIST AND CHRISTIAN CONTEXTS
AND ALSO, I SUSPECT (ON THE BASIS OF OUR INTERPRETATION OF SECOND MACCABEES),
THE PALESTINIAN JEWISH CONTEXT, THE CONCEPT OF MARTYRDOM AS WE KNOW IT
GRADUALLY TOOK SHAPE!'

One cannot help wondering
therefore whether or not this invention of martyrdom had some kind of root in western
Asia Minor, that is to say Anatolia? I far prefer, for obvious reasons,
this first suggestion.

Others,
in contrast,
seem intensely committed
to this second one! On the other hand,
I could not disagree more with a conclusion
that the problem which the Christians posed to the Empire was fundamentally the same as that
posed by Judaism. Judaism was assimilable to the system of ancestral cults, while Christianity was not,
for there is no evidence whatsoever for persecution of the Jewish religion
at the time of the Decian or Diocletian persecutions of Christians,
and even the persecutions of the time of Hadran,
which provided the Rabbis with some claims
on the crown of martyrdom, had
more to do with politics
than religion.

Laten
we het
dus nu maar
niet meer hebben
over Jan van Schaffelaer die
van de toren sprong
& Van Speyk
die zich
opblies
...

Het
moge ondertussen
wel [over]duidelijk zijn
dat al die ideeen {& praktijken} van bijna alweer meer dan
2000 jaar geleden hun sporen hebben achtergelaten op allerlei latere generaties mensen
die bekneld zijn geraakt in diverse 'sektarische',
religieuze, politieke & sociale conflicten
'waar ook ter wereld'?!

De historie
van allerhande landen &
streken staat vol met min of meer bloederige taferelen,
[massa]moorden
& shit!

Wij blijven voorlopig dus
waarschijnlijk nog wel even 'doorleven'
met de Twin Towers van 9/11, Pim Fortuyn &
Volkert van der Gra{a}f, Theo van Gogh & Mohammed
Bouyari, Ayaan, Geert & de probleemprachtwijken vol met mensen
van nabij & elders tussen al die andere buiten- &
binnenlanders van
heinde & verre:
Afghanistan,
Iran, Irak, Koerdistan,
Armenia, Pakistan, Kashmir, Nepal, Birma,
Thailand, Laos, Cambodja,
Vietnam en
zovoorts!

Kortom,
of we het nu hebben over 's{j}emieten',
"Arabieren", "Joden", Grieken, Turken, Marokkanen &
al die andere 'Moriaantjes zo zwart als roet', Christenen, Moslims, nitwits,
[bij]gelovigen, [a]politiekelingen van wat voor 'afkomst' en/of toekomstbeeld dan ook:
hardleers zijn we nog steeds want anders zouden de massamedia er niet bijna elke dag en nacht
over blijven reppen in al die onderscheiden toonaarden over "lafaards, helden, gijzelaars, martelaars, slachtoffers" & de daarbijbehorende daders die nu naast de oude middelen van weleer
gebruik maken van de modernste techniek om zichzelf en/of anderen te doen
en laten onthoofden, ophangen, stenigen, kruisigen, opblazen &
ontploffen of anderszins om zeep & naar 'n
eventuele andere wereld te helpen
onder het uiten van
hun onderscheiden
kreten.

Bezint eer ge [alweer] begint!

Er is
blijkbaar meestal
maar heel weinig voor nodig
om vonken in al die potjes & pannetjes te doen springen [e.d.]
& hele huizenblokken, flatgebouwen, prachtwijken & probleembuurten
vatten voorts verder vlam door toedoen van 'lafhartige/heldhaftige'
heethoofden, slachtoffers van ALLE leeftijden & wat daar verder
nog bij van pas komt aan [on]mogelijke scheldpartijen,
overdreven beschuldigingen & daden vol waanzin,
wellust der al of niet wedergeborenen compleet
met de 'spuitjes', gaskamers, atoomknoppen,
raketten, bommen & granaten die nu vaak
de plaats hebben ingenomen van messen,
zwaarden, speren, pijlen &
katapulten: droom hier
maar liever niet van,
maar ontkennen
helpt niet
meer.

We
moeten er
wel rekening mee
gaan houden of we
dat nu leuk
vinden of
niet.

DAT
hangt af
van al die
verhaaltjes die we vertellen,
lezen en ook
zelf [mede]
schrijven
...