snakebites miracles double bottoms & meanings ,,,

All
kinds of
inconsistencies in 'biblestories'
and related commentaries, frequently
noticed by earlier commentators but never really resolved by them,
suggest usually all kinds of
other moments of
interpretation.

For
according to
the cited verses
[see also Rav El'azar Ben Dama
& Ya'akov the man of Kefar Sama
who came to cure him in the name of Jesus
the son of Panthera a.s.o.],
the snake bite is a punishment
for the transgression that Ben Dama had not made ~ yet ~
but was only considering making
because of the very snake bite that he had suffered.
The snake had bitten Ben Dama even before he contemplated making use of the Jesus doctor.
Indeed had he not been bitten, he would not have thought of doing so.
So the punishment has come before the crime.
As a late gloss in the Palestinian Talmud
wonders,
"But wasn't he already bitten by a snake?!
Rather it means that he won't be bitten by a snake in the next world."
The clumsiness
of such answers disclose the validity of the conundrum.
I think that once more, by indirection, hint, and insinuation,
the story is indicating that this Ben Dama,
otherwise a kosher rabbinical Jew, just like Rabbi Eli'ezer,
had been an intimate of the Christians,
explaining, by the way, why this Ya'akov/James
showed up so quickly to cure him.
This also explains why Ben Dama is already primed
and ready with a halakhic justification for the appropriateness of cures in the name of Jesus.
This story is also indicating the work of strict separation that was taking place
at the explicit ideological level
of the rabbinic text.
Rabbi Ishma'el,
after all, would rather see him die than be saved by "Christian" magic!
This story thus provides a remarkable parellel to the story of Rabbi Eli'ezer ~
indicating the same tensions between manifest and suppressed elements within the narrative ~
and, in fact, in both early Palestinian sources for this narrative tradition,
the Tosefta and the midrash Qohelet Rabbah,
we find these two stories,
Rabbu Eli'ezer's near martyrdom
and Ben Dama's near cure, together as doublets of each other.
Even though the two stories are not placed together syntagmatically in the Babylonian Talmud,
we will find a startling verbal similarity, a sort of rhyming, that suggesta that they are doublets there,
as well.
First,
we need to see the version of the Ben Dama story
that appears in the Talmud:
"It happened to Ben Dama, the son of the sister of Rabbi Ishma'el
that a snake bit him.
And Ya'akov the man of Kefar Sekhania {= Sikhnin/Sachnin?} came to cure him,
and Rabbi Ishma'el refused to allow him.
He said to him:
Rabbi Ishmael my brother,
let me be cured by him, and I will bring a verse from the Torah that proves that this is permitted,
but he did not suffice to finish the matter until his soul left him and he died.
Rabbi Ishma'el cried out over him:
Blessed art thou, Ben Dama, for your body is pure and your soul left you in purity,
and you did not violate the words of your collegues, who would say,
"One who breaks down a fence,
let a snake bite him!"
{Ecclesiates 10:8}
Avoda Zara 27b

NOW
let us
look at the end
of Rabbi Eli'ezer's lief-story
as the Babylonian Talmud
relates it?

Maar
eerst wat
eten koken &
kijken naar 't
jeugdjournaal!
Tot straks of
misschien
later {na
't 'leer~
huis'}?!

OK!
30 jan 2008 - meld ongepast verhaal
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Asih, man, 80 jaar
   
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