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CARNAL ISRAEL!
Reading sex in talmudic culture?


In his Tractatus adversus Judaeos.
Augustine lays the following charge against "the Jews":
Behold Israel according to the flesh
[1 Corinthians 10:18].
This we know to be the carnal Israel;
but the Jews do not grasp this meaning & as a result they prove themselves indisputably carnal!

Augustine knew what he was talking about. There was a diffe-rence between Jews and Christians that had to do with the body. He begins by quoting a hermeneutic remark made by Paul in the Epistle to the Corinthians in reference toa verse of the Hebrew Bible that speaks of "Israel." Paul claims by this statement that the verse refers to Israel "according to the flesh," that is, "Israel" understood literally.

Paul here is alluding to his platonizing doctrine that external realities - things in the flesh - all have spiritual signifieds. This is as true of the words of the texts as it is of the things of the world.

Just as there is an Israel in the flesh, there is also an "Israel according to the spirit," the Gentile (& Jewish)
believers in Christ. Augustine here argues with fine paradox that Israel according to the flesh - i.e., the Jews - by its very insistence that it is the true Israel demonstrates that it does not understand that there is both a varnal and a spiritual sense to scripture, and by this demonstration, this people condemns itself to remain forever and indisputably varnal and not spiritual. The carnality of Israel's understanding is what consigns it forever to the realm of the flesh. That is to say, the hermeneutic practices of the rabbinic Jews, their corporeal existence as a people & their emphasis on sex and reproduction, are all stigmatized
as "carnal" by the Father. Rabbinic Judaism is, by Augustine's time, virtually the only kind of Judaism left extant, although it is quite unlikely that Augustine refers to living Jews at all! It is important to emphasize that the term rabbinic Judaism refers not to the Judaism practiced by Rabbis but to the Judaism practiced by Rabbis and by those who considered the Rabbis their spiritual authority. This accusation against the Jews, that they are indisputably carnal, was a topos of much Christian writing in late antiquity.

Danny Boyarin proposes in his book to account for this practice of Augustine and the others who characterize the Jews as carnal, indeed to assert the eseential descriptive accuracy of the recurring Patristric notion that what divides Christians from rabbinic Jews is the discourse of the body, & especially
of sexuality, inthe two cultural formations. He also explores the consequences of that difference for the construction of gender and other aspects of social life in the Judaism of the Rabbis who produced the talmudic literature and their followers. He is well aware that this very formulation already raises serious theoretical and epistemological issues, not all of which he is able to control! Who were the followers of the Rabbis? What does it mean to speak of their social life? If we speak of the "culture" as misogynistic (or as not misogynistic), what does this mean, or rather, to whom are we referring? To the men, the women, the elites, hoi polloi? What would it mean, indeed, to call any culture, or assuming that they are victims of false consciousness and themselves have internalized misogyny? He tries to avoid the most abvious traps of his discourse, without, however, any real confidence that this wiil always be possible.

Although in many modern accounts the difference between "Jewish" and "Christian" discourses of sexuality has been homogenized into a putative Judaeo-Christian tradition, one of the leading modern interpreters of the Church Fathers, regards the fundamental difference between Christianity and "Judaism" as habving to do with the body and sex in the two cultures.

Hij legt eigenlijk al meteen de vinger op de eeuwenoude zere plek: wie of wat is nu eigenlijk joods en/of
christelijk? Hoe zien joden en christenen dat zelf in de loop van bijna tweeduziend jaar? Vanwaar komen al die beschuldigingen over en weer? Kapitalist, bolsjewist, "Unter- & Uebermensch", uitverkoren volkeren,
'g dsnamen' & betekenissen als elohim, yahweh, aanwezige, eeuwige, komende, 'verborgen bondgenoot'.

En wat zijn dan de joden en christenen die niets meer te maken willen hebben met religie, traditie, cultuur?

Zien die elkaar ook nog steeds als behorend tot het 'uitverkoren volk'? Of als heidenen/goyiem, barbaren
& 'voor eeuwig verlorenen'? Wie trekt waar lijnen voor wat & welke consequenties verbinden mensen daar dan weer aan, speciaal nu ook weer Arabieren, Palestijnen, moslims, kopten, nestorianen, soenni's/sjia's?

Die allen onderhand ook weer hun 'ongelovige' versies hebben van deze en gene 'godsdienst'-tradities ...

Toen ik in '66 op weg ging via Noord-Italia & Griekenland naar Israel wist ik eigenlijk niet veel meer dan 'n
bijbelverhaaltje met 't paradijs van Adam & Eva, Kajien & Abel, Noach & de Ark, Avram, Yitschak, Ya'akov &
alles wat daar allemaal nog op volgde in de loop der eeuwen, plus wat horrorstories over de oorlogen e.d.!

In 1967 kwam ik dan ook verzeild in een wereld die ik alleen maar kende uit bijbelboeken EN in de werke-lijkheid van de moderne tijd met prikkeldraad, mijnenvelden, bunkers, mitrailleurnesten, straaljagers etc.

Zoiets zet je nog eens extra aan het denken over je eigen ouders in oorlogstijd, dat strafkamp, onderduik
en 'toevallige' kogels ... En voordat ik het wist zat ik zelf binnen een half jaar tot over m'n oren middenin die haat- & liefdesgeschiedenissen van tientallen eeuwen tussen primitieve stammen & wijze profeten met
alles wat daar tussenin zit [de hele bewoonde wereld op alle continenten], 'out of Africa', into "Space" ...