mydichai tussen waanzinnig~ & werkelijkheden ...

De drie-enige Macho-afgoden van de moderne tijd zijn nog steeds Mammon, Moloch & Machiavelli!

Geld, geweld & uebergeile geslepenheid als middel tot dominantie, onderdrukking, uitbuiting, bedreiging?

Yehosjoea stelde daar
volgens het NT in navolging van psalmisten & profeten zijn euangelium tegenover:
moedwillig mededogen, martelaarschap & mededeelzaamheid! Niet harde,
maar zachte remedies
in feite.

Hij heeft 't
[alweer volgens z'n 'biografen']
wel over 'molensteen, tempelreiniging & eindtijd', maar toch is
zijn 'methode' die van zijn Vader de Schepper van hemel & aarde, natuur, cultuur & {r}evolutie{s} in ons:
inzicht, uitzicht, doorzettingsvermogen gecombineerd
met barmhartigheid, vergevingsgezindheid
& liefde!

Danny Boyarin
[waarover we het al eerder
en vaker hebben gehad in mydi de afgelopen jaren]
zegt er het volgende over o.a. in z'n
Dying for God ~
The making of Christianity and Judaism:
'In late antiquity, for the first time the death of the martyr was conceived of as the fulfilling of a religious mandate per se, and not just the manifestation of a preference "for violent death" over "compliance with a decree!" For Christians, beginning with Ignatius, it was a central aspect of the experience of Imitation of Christ. For Jews, it was a fulfillment of the commandment to "love the Lord with all one's soul," {and your
neighbour as yourself}!'

Powerful erotic elements,
including visionary experience, were introduced into martyrology at this time.
In earlier versions of martyrdom, other passions were dominant. Elazar in 2 Maccabees is "glad to suffer these things because I fear him" (2 Macc. 6:30). [This expression 'belongs
to a well established tradition of Israelite wisdom literature!'

Compare this
to Philo's Embassy to Gaius,
in which it is said that "the Jews would willing endure to die not once but a thousand times ... rather
than allow any of the prohibited actions to be committed!" In 4 Maccabees, the whole proposition is that the piety of Elazar enabled him to prove that
"devout reason is leader
over our passions"
(7:16)
...

Indeed
"for the author it is the Stoic virtue
of the mastery of the passions by the agency of reason which
enables a person to subordinate himself or herself to the rule of 'divine law' [of nature!], living temperate-ly, displaying piety, and ultimately, if necessary, mastering fear & dying with fortitude before abandoning those same principles!"

This Jewish Stoicism, in fact,
seems to be the main burden of meaning ['taking it
like a man']: but it is not that the text is a polemic defenze of Jewish (and Christian?) martyrdom against Stoic charges that it is not considered and judges in a proper philosophical manner, but that, by the time of Marcus Aurelius, a new form of martyr praxis had developed among Christians and Jews,
very different from the older Stoicizing forms.

Thus there is a crucial {!}
difference between the ideology of suffering promulgated by 4 Maccabees and that of the later talmudic (and fourth-century Christian)
martyrologies
...

Philoctetes,
a hero in the tragedy of Sophocles,
by the time of Cicero, 'passion-filled & suffering' "had become a symbol of masculine weakness,
of effeminacy, of the failure of a man to endure with courage as a man"? A Marcus Aurelius would find nothing startling about the ideology of 4 Maccabees, while texts like the midrash of Rabbi Akiva, to say nothing of Ambrose's or Prudentius's Agnes,
would have shocked him deeply!

Rabbi Akiva was anything but a Stoic!
For the older formation, see the Assumption of Moses,
in which a group of Jews enter a cave, prepared to die, "rather than transgress the commands of the Lord of Lords!"

He and some of his Christian brothers and sisters,
in direct opposition to both Maccabean works, are said to suffer torture & death because
they are passionately in love with G d, not because they fear his punishment or to demonstrate
their Stoic fortitude or apathy.

These eroticized elements produce
effects that have to do with sex and gender systems, as well!
All of these elements were new in the martyrologies of both Christians & Jews of late antiquity.
There are crucial elements that are lost in the later traditions, as well!
"One observes that the essential ideas of the Maccabeans are lacking:
the atoning power of martyrdom & its substitutional character!"
In a sense, this gap between earlier and later forms
could be encapsulated in the gap between
"Dying for the Law", &
"Dying for G d"
...?

Om zo'n proces
nader aan te duiden,
te omschrijven, toe te lichten.
te illustreren & uit te pluizen, kunnen we
niet zo bar veel anders dan terugkeren naar de wortels
van ons bestaan: waar & wanneer komt dat voor 't eerst voor,
hoe is 't zo gekomen & 'waar moet [kan] dat heen'?! 't Lijkt mij dat
'n voorlopig antwoord op die vragen vooral ligt
in ons eigen dagelijkse mydileven:
& van daaruit 'verovert'
't vervolgens de
hele bewoonde
wereld
...