"T.L.:D.R." DAVE SIM (YAWN) ON JOHN 19!" Part 7

Hi, Everybody!

First off: Auctions!
SOMEBODY WITH A LITTLE HAMMER by MARY GAITSKILL PB signed by DAVE SIM
SOMEBODY WITH A LITTLE HAMMER by MARY GAITSKILL HC signed by DAVE SIM
And check the  bonecrusher86 on the eBays to see when the next thing is up.

Anyway, From Dave Sim:

17 Feb 18

Hi Matt!  

Since you were asking about Biblical commentaries, I thought I'd send this to you.  It's part of my RIP KIRBY COMMENTARIES which hit a religious off-ramp requiring a lengthy digression (about a year or so now) into the "Song of Deborah" (Book of Judges) with the November 8, 1950 strip.  Which then dovetailed with John's Gospel, which then dovetailed with my commentaries on Gertrude Stein's THE WORLD IS ROUND and BLOOD ON THE DINING ROOM FLOOR, finally circling back to John 19. So this is, really, the 17-page punch-line.

I can't imagine anyone would be interested, but you did ask about Bible Commentaries. 

You could maybe run it a page a week on sequential Sundays.  "T.L.:D.R."
DAVE SIM (YAWN) ON JOHN 19!"

Grab a Bible and follow along!

 Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 Part 5, Part 6, and now Part 7:

16 Feb 18 pg. 4

  

I think Elisha inferred that "Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven". I infer, however, that it was a YHWHistic bait-and-switch. The chariot of fire and horses of fire appear out of nowhere as soon as Elijah's words are out of his mouth. Which I read as the YHWH being nothing if not opportunistic. The YHWH creates the vision of the "chariot of fire and horses of fire" and that's what Elisha sees, inferring that Elijah is in there. It's like the pillar of fire that led the Hebrew people through the wilderness and the burning bush. The term "infernal" exists for a reason.   Fire has a specific connotation. 

And Elisha saw, and he cried, "My father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof."

It's a very metaphysically potent YHWHistic misapprehension/invocation, I think.  First of all,  it starts out being a "chariot of fire and horses of fire" and suddenly Elisha a) addresses a previously unidentified "father"…

(which we are at liberty to decide is any one of or a combination of: i) Elisha's actual father ii) Elijah, Elisha's metaphorical father iii) God iv) the YHWH)

 …b) declares the chariot to be "the chariot of Israel" and c) suggests it's driven by "horsemen" (plural; i.e. God and YHWH). All of which, it seems to me, prefigure the fractal theoretical perceptions of who the Synoptic Jesus was and who the Johannine Jesus was. "Parted them both asunder" indeed!

    

And he took hold of his own clothes and rent them in two pieces.

He's taking what was unified, monotheism, and metaphorically turning it into a duality, God and YHWH. As Elisha and Elijah have "parted them both asunder", so Elisha does with his own garment, his own mantle.

He took up also the mantle of Elijah that fell from him, and went back and stood by the lip of Jordan.

And he took the mantle of Elijah that fell from him, and smote the waters and said, "Where is the YHWH God of Elijah?" and when he also had smitten the waters, they parted hither and thither: and Elisha went over.

17 Feb 18 pg.1

God, I infer, is fine with this. It's weirdly elaborate, theologically misapprehended and all, I infer, part of God's Grand Comedia. It's all new to the YHWH, but it's nothing God hasn't seen, I'm sure, reiterated quadrillions of times everywhere in the universe. It's, I infer, something the YHWH needed to see enacted (in what I view as a Scriptural prophetic sideshow to the swiftly eroding Israel/Judah monarchy documented in 2 Kings, a sequentially unfolding YHWHist misapprehension) in order to move past this latest misconstruction in the ultimate direction of accurate perception.

A central purpose, I infer, of human beings is to enact these metaphysical constructs in three-dimensional space where time takes place sequentially (an illusion but easier to follow for a relatively simplistic being like the YHWH) instead of simultaneously (time's factual nature) and to do so in such a way as to incarnate the YHWH's shifting perceptions of what it is that is taking place.  To (I infer) leave no hypothetical metaphysical stone unturned and un-enacted in the YHWH's turbulent imaginings.

No wonder that we're all here, in our sequence, for billions of years.  

As I said, I can only follow parts of the "mantle" narrative: I don't know what the actual Deeper Meaning is, but I definitely see the Elijah/Elisha succession?/not succession? dichotomy with Elijah's mantle at the centre of it as another permutation of it. 

Which explains, I think, on a metaphysical level, why the Johannine Jesus' garments were considered such a big deal.  The YHWHistic inference, being occult-based -- Garden of Eden Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil stuff -- is that these are magical fetish objects.  God, I infer, plays along -- the only Entity capable of actually effecting the miraculous but fully aware of the severely corrupting downside of miracles.  If You feed a multitude with a few loaves and fishes they expect You to keep doing it. If You heal one sick person You are going to be expected to heal all sick persons. If You make a prophet seem god-like, You undermine the One God central Reality of monotheism.    

I infer that Elisha no more parted the waters of the Jordan than Elijah did;  that Elijah's mantle no more parted the waters of Jordan than Elijah and Elisha did. Moshe no more parted the waters of the Red Sea than his staff did. The lone source of all miracles, I infer, is God.

I would presuppose that the irrefutable greatness of the Johannine Jesus implied --  to the YHWHistic sensibility --  a predictable tactical extrapolation: as Elijah's mantle had been to Elijah, so the Johannine Jesus' garments had been/would be to the Johannine Jesus.

17 Feb pg.2

And I assume that there had been a certain level of validity to that: that all four Roman soldiers had had a metaphysical tiger by the tail when they walked away from the crucifixion, each of them with a quarter of the outer garment.  Likewise, whoever won the lot cast for the inner garment. The YHWH's metaphysically tactical question:  What happens with "Elisha's mantle on steroids" in the custody of complete pagans?

My best guess would be: a certain number of unexplainable phenomena, sufficiently powerful, efficacious and impressive from the YHWH's perspective to keep those garment fragments moving from YHWHist Roman-Empire pawn to YHWHist Roman-Empire pawn, getting them back to Rome itself -- and as close as possible to the Emperor -- as quickly as possible.  

How MUCH of a tiger-by-the-tail the Roman soldiers had had, I infer, took some centuries to fully hatch out. 

The tiger proved to be big enough to -- rather effortlessly -- devour the entire Roman Empire in the space of a few hundred years. What the Johannine Jesus was, his essence was, to say the least, infinitely greater than the sum of his clothing.  But if you "invest his vesture" metaphorically and metaphysically -- as the YHWH had already accepted with the Elijah-to-Elisha mantle bait-and-switch -- then you can't very well complain when your continent-spanning Roman Construct falls victim to the step-by-step extrapolation "baked into" that.

Which is, again, why it's never a wise idea to try to play chess with an omniscient Being. 

You can think you've won a major victory in making Elisha Elijah's successor and, short term, you have: it's an enactment efficacious in creating the appearance of a deistic binary construct through misappropriation of a prophet's personal artefact  -- but all you've really done is to set in motion a far greater victory for God and for monotheism some 1400 years later within the confines of your own too-clever-by-half manipulations.  

I explained all that so that I can now, hopefully, tie all of this together into what I infer was one of God's primary motivations -- His "end-game" in one sense and his foundational purpose with the Johannine Jesus in another sense -- at the apex moment in human history documented in John 20: 

Next Time: 17 Feb 18 pg.3, and POSSIBLY the LAST installment of : "T.L.:D.R." DAVE SIM (YAWN) ON JOHN 19!".