mydicommentaar/~ontdekking/~uitleg/~variaties ...

THE
midrashic equation
of Esaw with Christianity
is very rich,
but also very problematic.
Its is very rich because it incorporates
in powerful symbol
the sense of the highly fraught
family relationship
between Jews and Christians,
eventually between Judaism and Christianity,
between the Rabbis and
the Church.

IF
for the Church
Judaism
ultimately was
a superseded ancestor
of the true heir to the promise,
for the Rabbis,
the two entities were more like constantly
struggling twin
siblings.

THIS
metaphor,
however, also is deeply
and productively problematic
for two reasons.
It shifts the gender of the descendents
from sisters to brothers,
and more importantly, since, according to the biblical narrative,
Esaw was the elder of the twins,
and Ya'akov, who is Israel, was born holding the heel of his elder brother,
it implies paradoxically
that of the two new religious entities,
Christianity is the elder
and Judaism the [slightly]
younger.

THE
symbolic resonances
of the recognition that Judaism and Christianity,
or perhaps Israel and Christendom,
are not very irenic brothers were abundant,
but the chronological paradoxes
of making Esaw be the elder
must have been palpable
as well!

THE
Rabbis,
it seems, resolved this problem in part
by thinking Esaw as an elderly Rome become lately Christian.
But some Christian writers saw her other opportunities,
naming "the Jews" as the elder son, Esaw,
and the ultimately dominant Ya'akov as the younger,
"the Christians."

IF
this interpretation
seems forced vis-a-vis the text of the Torah,
it certainly already would have seemed quite plausible
vis-a-vis the historical situation
by the third century.

MEANWHILE
we have to remember
that this whole 'library' of books and stories
consists of 'twins':
the beginning and 'g d',
heavens and earth, formless and form,
emptiness and fulfillment,
darkness and light,
the deep and the spirit,
waters and
land.

THUS
light [good]
was separated from darkness [bad],
water and sky, seas and land, vegetation and animals,
plants and trees, stars and fruit, sun and moon, day and night!
Reminding us of the unique origin of species: 'g d saying'
"LET US make man in our image, in our likeness,
and let THEM rule over the fish of the sea
and the birds of the air,
over the livestock,
over ALL the earth,
and over all creatures
big and small
that move along
the ground."

SO,
the story goes,
'g d' created man in its own image, in the image of g d they created them:
male and female they created
them ...

THOSE
fertile divisions
and allegorizing human stories
permeate all scriptures and mydistories from the very beginning
till 'the end'!

ONE
of the clearest
early instances of the patristic tradition of reading Esaw as "the Jews"
and Ya'akov as "the Church"
is in Tertullian:

FOR THUS unto Rivka did G d speak:
"TWO nations are in thy womb, and two peoples
shall be divided from thy bowels;
and people shall overcome people,
and the greater shall serve the less."
Accordingly, since the people or nation of the jews is anterior in time,
and "greater" through the grace of primary favour in the Law,
whereas ours is understood to be "less" in the age of times,
as having in the last era of the world attained knowledge of divine mercy:
beyond doubt, through the edict of the divine utterance,
the prior and "greater" people - that is, the Jewish -
must necessarily serve the "less;"
and the "less" people - that is, the Christian -
overcome the "greater."

ACCORDING
to tertullian's reading of the verse,
then, which includes a version of the hebrew subtly different
from the way the Rabbis read the verse,
one of the peoples was to overcomes the other,
and since the greater would serve the less,
then obviously, it is the less who overcome?
Since the Christians already were both younger and more powerful
than the Jews by Tertullian's time
(cf. Justin for similar claims),
it would have seemed obvious to Tertullian
that only the Christians could be read as Ya'akov,
that is, as Israel!

SUCH
patristic claims
help us to explain a diffecult misdrashic passage.
In Genesis Rabbah, the midrash wards off the problem of Christianity as Esaw's apparent senior
[and perhaps, as well, the Christian readings] by reading the awkward verse
NOT about Ya'akov and Esaw at all,
but about the twelve tribes that
would issue from
Ya'akov:

And G-d said to her:
there are two peoples in your womb ...
"TWO peoples," behold two.
And "two nations," behold four.
"And one nation will struggle with the other," this makes six.
"And the elder will serve the younger," behold eight.
"And her days became full for giving birth, and behold there were twins in her stomach," this is ten.
"And the first was born ruddy," this is eleven.
"And afterwards his brother was born," this makes twelve.

THIS
midrash has thus taken the verse entirely OUT of its literal sense
and entirely OUT of the USUAL equation - for this very same midrash - of Ya'akov with Israel
and Esaw with Rome.

SUDDENLY,
Esaw ends up being one of Ya'akov's twelve sons, since the "two peoples" in Rivla's womb
are translated midrashically as two of the twelve tribes of Ya'akov,
and a displacement effectively
erases Esaw.