"T.L.:D.R." DAVE SIM (YAWN) ON JOHN 19!" Part 8, Part the Last

Hi, Everybody!

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, Part 7 and now Part 8 (The big finish!):

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I think it's necessary to see the "fell upward upon the breast of him" as a visual metaphor reiterating the essential character of the excision of A Dam's rib -- from which this epoch's first woman was "builded" -- itself a metaphor, I infer, for the creation of the seminal YHWH by God. That is, that the seminal YHWH was derived from God's Essence in a way that the excision of the rib echoes in extreme microcosm (itself, I infer, a metaphor for the distinction between gestation and creation; itself a metaphor for the distinction between creation and Creation).

John is, in a real sense, I infer in a central monotheistic sense, the Johannine Jesus' rib. 

Like the Johannine Jesus' physical rib, John "fell upward upon the breast of him."

That is, as A Dam's rib came from a place near to his heart but well below his "well-minded" intellect so, it seems to me, is the essence of the seminal YHWH relative to God.  That is, I infer that the human body represents an iconic metaphysical topography of the proper interrelationships of higher-natured beings: the lower-natured heart is below (or, rather, Below) the higher-natured head just as the lower-natured genitals are below (or, rather, Below) the higher-natured-than-genitals/lower-natured-than-the-head heart. The metaphysical hierarchy is the physical hierarchy and vice versa.  And this is nowhere more true than in the interrelationship between John and the Johannine Jesus.  Which culminates in:

"Had stood however beside to the cross of the Jesus the mother of him and the sister of the mother of him, Mary, the ____ of the Clopas and Mary the Magdalene. Jesus therefore having seen the mother and the disciple having stood alongside, whom he was loving is saying to the mother, Woman, see the son of you; next he is saying to the disciple See the mother of you. And from that the hour took the disciple her into the own."

[One of the few things we know for certain about the mother of the Johannine Jesus was that she wasn't named Mary, for the obvious reason that her sister's name is given as Mary.  You wouldn't have two daughters named Mary. The corruption/inference that there is only one Jesus would result in a perceived triune YHWHist Mary construct at the foot of the Johannine Jesus' cross -- and centuries of Church contortions to explain how Mary had a sister named Mary. I digress.]

It seems to me a distillation of the essence of seminal Creational as opposed to creational maternalism: an attempt on God's part for those "with ears to hear" to understand the purpose, the larger Reality behind the symbolism of gestative maternalism.  That is, that maternalism -- the gestative function -- has, in its purist form, a single Deistic masculine point of origin and metaphysical analogue.  The link between John and the Johannine Jesus -- of which their physical proximity to each other is a minor

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manifestation -- is actually a conjoining of their mutual faith in God, and that by this enactment means God intended/intends/will always intend to communicate His essential character to mankind, thereby drawing a distinction between the YHWHistic portrayal of Him by the Synoptic Jesus and His actual nature as enunciated by the Johannine Jesus and documented by John.     

As John himself puts it in John 1:18:  "God no one has seen at any time; only-begotten god the ___ being into the bosom of the father that explained". It is literally the Last Word on the nature of Reality in John's "In beginning…" preamble to his Gospel (which, I infer, represents a fine-tuning -- the first and only fine-tuning -- of Genesis 1 since its revelation)  before switching to the formal historical narrative of the Johannine Jesus' ministry, beginning with John the Baptist.   

One of the compelled inferences of the passage is "God the Father", which I think both John and the Johannine Jesus believed to be the relationship of the Johannine Jesus to God, although I believe they inferred it differently.  The Johannine Jesus, I think, inferred it in the "sons of God" sense as per Genesis 6:2: he was just the first to express his stature as one of the "sons of God" by referring to God as his father.  And, arguably, as the best of God's sons. John, I think, inferred that literally:  that the Johannine Jesus was God's "only-begotten god".  Which is why, I infer, when he uses that phrase, it's followed by the corrective "the ___ being into the bosom of the father that explained." 

To believe in "God as father", I infer, is to adopt a misapprehension analogous to confusing gestative maternalism with the larger idea behind gestative maternalism of which gestative maternalism is merely symbolic.  Which is why, I infer, "the ____ being into the bosom of the father, that explained" strikes the exactly appropriate note. 

God didn't, I infer, create the Johannine Jesus by means of a procreative carnal act with the Johannine Jesus' mother, which is what is implied by the term "father".  Rather, I infer, God created the Johannine Jesus at the same time and in the same way as He created the seminal YHWH and the Big Bang: the macrocosmic Event for which and of which the excision of the rib from A Dam "the being into the bosom of the father…" is a microcosmic prototype i.e. "…that explained." 

God would, I infer, allow John's "only-begotten god" misapprehension to stand so long as it was side-by-side with the actual circumstance "the ___ being into the bosom of the father that explained."  It's, I infer, a comparable temptation: to believe that there are other gods with God, just another variant of the YHWHist "he/she/it" corruption and conceit. The Johannine Jesus chooses to be absolutely faithful to

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God while conceiving of God one way; John chooses to be absolutely faithful to God while conceiving of God a different way; the YHWH, by contrast, chooses to be entirely disloyal to God while propagating a triune lie about Him. That, it seems to me, is the essential difference.        

Expanding on where I see this line of thought dovetailing with the current subject, it seems significant to me, that the Johannine Jesus addresses his mother not as "Mother" but as "Woman" as he does in the Wedding in Cana narrative. 

I think this was intentional: i.e. that there is a resonant fidelity implicit in the term "Mother" that had become critically lacking in female nature and that that critical lack was exemplified by the Johannine Jesus' own mother (more concerned with her personal desire for more wine -- I assume she was already tipsy -- at the wedding than with the proper sequential unfolding of the Johannine Jesus' ministry/enactment). The Johannine Jesus' attitude towards her, it seems to me, is,

appropriately, that mandated for a devout and loyal monotheist in contemplating a completely-beside-the-point  biological implication of his personal, physical genesis :  "What to me and to you, woman? Not yet is arriving the hour of me."

Still, "Honour thy father and mother…" is one of the Ten Words (Hebrew) Ten Commandments (Christian), placing the Johannine Jesus between the rock of his loyalty to God and the hard place of his fidelity to the Law of Moshe. He capitulates. In actual fact, God changes the water into wine.  And it's a very fine wine, attested to by the governor of the dining room.  Much finer than the wine that had already been served.     

It seems to me that the larger point remains the same. That is, the mother-to-child relationship is supposed to resonate with the God-to-woman relationship, as the John-to-Jesus relationship resonates with the Jesus-to-God relationship, but usually doesn't.  It's a female vice to see themselves as creators of babies rather than gestatory-custodians of babies. It's an easy vice to slip into but that's part of the potency of God's gift of free will. Temptation is never further than a stray thought away.  The "well-minded", accurate, monotheistic apprehension is that the baby is God's. God created the baby and created the process by which the baby was created. Just as God created all mothers before they became mothers.

The concept of "he/she/it" is, I infer, a primary rebellion model against God. It attempts, structurally, to corrupt and marginalize and externalize the Central Fact of God as the creator of all things.  The Johannine Jesus' address from the cross, as I read it, redresses and provides a corrective to the "he/she/it" misapprehension at the highest metaphysical levels: i.e. this is as close as Actual Reality gets to he/she/it and vice versa:

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"Woman, see the son of you." 

On one level, the surface meaning, I infer, he's discussing himself.  Behold your son, physically born of your womb, on the cross. 

On another level, what I infer is the higher-natured level of what he's saying, he's discussing John: This person is going to be a son to you with all of the fidelity implicit in that.  It's John's fidelity to the Johannine Jesus expressing itself as a microcosm of the relationship of the Johannine Jesus to God that makes John's compliance a certainty. And it's that certainty that is an essence of the Larger Enactment of what genuine maternalism is. 

John, presumably, had a birth-mother of his own.

That relationship, however, is not just secondary to but inconsequential and irrelevant to the enactment taking place. John's fidelity to God enacted in his fidelity to the Johannine Jesus means that caring for the Johannine Jesus' mother takes priority over his biological link to an unknown woman who never enters into or is alluded to within the Scriptural narrative.  Genuine maternalism -- maternalism which echoes and resonates with God's Act of Creation -- supersedes mere biological linkage and physical happenstance.  

"See the mother of you."

Again, there's the surface meaning:  the Johannine Jesus is appointing his mother to be John's mother. His connection to God and John's connection to him, I infer, not only allows him to do this, it compels him to do this.

But, above that, I infer, is the Larger Meaning. That the Johannine Jesus' absolute fidelity to God and John's absolute fidelity to the Johannine Jesus does resonate with God's Act of Creation, the larger idea behind maternalism. That is, the Johannine Jesus is telling John, at the threshold of his death in service to God, that he and John are linked by that larger idea.  The essence of the Johannine Jesus is the mother of the essence of John.

Okay, God willing, back to Deborah and Freddie and "The Missing Nightingale".         

Next Time: Dave sent me this: "You must be running out of my Biblical commentaries along about now. So…" There's more if we want it!