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!"
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| 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!):
17 Feb 18 pg.3
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
17 Feb 18 pg.4
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
17 Feb 18 pg.5
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:
17 Feb 18 pg.6
"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!
